Trish said, “Where is he now?”
“In ICU.”
“Can I see him?”
“Of course you can. Come with me.”
Trish followed the surgeon through a set of orange doors marked SURGICAL INTENSIVE CARE. When they arrived at cubicle 9, the curtain drawn in there, the doctor said, “I just want to prepare you a bit before you go in. He’s on a ventilator right now and he’s been heavily sedated, so he won’t be aware of you at all, do you understand?”
Trish nodded, feeling the thump of her heart in her throat.
“He looks pretty beat up, I’m afraid,” the doctor said, “but he’s stable and I’m optimistic.” She smiled and placed a warm hand in the small of Trish’s back, guiding toward the cubicle door. She said, “Just come ahead out when you’re done,” then hurried away, pulled by other duties.
Trish drew the curtain and went inside. The room was dim, the big railed bed centered in the cramped enclosure. A bank of monitors glowed above the head of the bed and a cluster of blood bags hung from an IV pole on the left. Motionless on the bed lay a man who at first glance looked nothing like her father; but several years had passed since that photo was taken and people changed. Still, instinct told her there was no way this shaggy, skull-eyed vagrant could be her dad, and above everything else she felt relieved. Because if this really was her father, she wasn’t sure she could handle it. Not this.
No. She’d find her real dad someday—someday soon—and together they’d work things out, build some kind of future together.
Trish moved closer to the bed, studying the man’s face more closely now. Gingerly, she lifted one of his eyelids, revealing the same sky-blue color she’d inherited. She let the lid go and raised the blanket off his chest.
And there it was, the same tattoo, exact in every detail.
Trish remembered something else then, a puckered scar she’d noticed on the dome of his right shoulder on the album cover...
It was there.
Trish said, “Dad?” and cried for a while, holding his calloused hand. Then she pulled up a chair and began to wait.
* * *
Patty came to propped upright in an old barber chair that had been fitted with Velcro restraints, the one across her chest so tight she could hardly breathe. He’d taken the bag off her head, but she could still smell the musty fabric. Her bottom lip was split, and blood trickled into her throat from her broken nose, making her want to vomit. Bobcat was nowhere in sight, but she could hear him in a nearby room, clattering through what sounded like kitchen utensils. From what she could see in the poor light, she was in a workshop of some kind, with a wooden workbench and an assortment of tools arrayed on pegboard.
Startling her, a small dog jumped into her lap, a frisky Jack Russell terrier, the mutt licking the blood off her chin now.
Then that metallic clattering ceased and the lights came on.
He was beside her now, but she couldn’t see his face. She heard him say, “Oh, you’re awake,” like she’d been having a pleasant nap. Then to the dog, “Sammy, get down out of there,” and the dog jumped to the floor and curled in a wicker basket.
He moved and now Patty could see him, just his back as he stepped past her to place something on the workbench; whatever it was, she caught only a glimpse—ten or twelve inches long, snugly bundled in terrycloth—but when he set it down on the bench, it sounded like whatever he’d been working with in the other room, steel against steel, like knives and forks.
Then he turned and Patty saw his face.
“You,” she said and he smiled, showing those teeth.
“None other.”
“Who
are
you? What do you want?”
“Fuck, girl,” he said with an obscene chuckle, “don’t you know shit? I’m what happens when you get in people’s way.” He stood in front of her now and unzipped his fly. “But to business. How about you suck me off, real nice, then I let you go. How’d that be?”
Patty said, “Okay,” no fight left in her.
“You wouldn’t tell anybody about this...would you?”
“I won’t tell.”
“Well, alright.”
He had the trace of an accent.
Southern
, Patty thought.
He shuffled closer and Patty swallowed her revulsion and closed her eyes, praying she wouldn’t gag. She’d keep her eyes closed and think about getting home and give him the best damn blowjob he ever had...and then maybe, please God, just maybe, he really
would
let her go, drive her blindfolded to the highway and throw her in a ditch, it didn’t matter. As long as he let her go. She hadn’t really seen anything yet, just a glimpse of a rundown farmhouse in the dark and she would never tell a soul—
“I’m thinking you’d bite ol’ Bobcat.”
“No, please, I’ll do whatever you want.”
“You promise?”
Patty nodded, the movement impeded by the restraints. A tear rolled over her lips and she licked it away.
“Shit, I don’t know. You look like a biter to me.”
She heard him zip his pants, then retrieve the bundle off the workbench. She opened her eyes.
“I’m betting that smart mouth of yours’d look prettier with no teeth in it anyways.”
Bobcat stepped on a pedal and the chair-back dropped, the illusion of falling making Patty cry out—then she saw the dental extraction forceps in his hand and screamed.
He pulled an overhead surgical spot into view and switched it on, the glare bringing water to Patty’s eyes. Strangely, he apologized and adjusted the beam to focus on her mouth.
Patty tried jerking her head aside, bucking against the restraints, but she was completely immobilized.
He sat on a stool and leaned over her head. “Now open up.”
Patty clamped her jaws shut, and when he forced the instrument into her mouth she bit down on it as hard as she could.
“See? I
knew
you was a biter.”
He punched her in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her, and Patty had to gasp for air. “Come on, little toad,” he said. “One way or another, this is gonna happen. Might as well open up.”
She was helpless now, too weak to fight him anymore, and she felt the forceps glide into the back of her mouth. She gagged—and then screamed in pain as Bobcat’s hand came up with the forceps, a bloody molar in its jaws. He dipped the tooth into a jar of water, swishing it around, then held it up to the light, appraising it.
“Fillings. Useless.”
He tossed the tooth on the floor and Patty saw the Jack Russell scoot over to give it a sniff.
The forceps went in again—grasped, rocked—and came out with another tooth, an incisor this time, and Patty screamed in horror and pain, her clutching fingernails fracturing against the metal arm rests.
Outside, in counterpoint to Patty’s cries, dogs began to bark and howl.
After a rinse and a cursory inspection, Bobcat dropped the incisor on the floor, saying, “Useless.” Saying, “
Fuck
me, now you got them damned shithounds stirred up,” punching her again.
Patty could feel herself slipping into darkness.
“Wasting my time. Gonna be up fuckin’ with you all night. Now
open up.”
* * *
Trish said, “You don’t know how long I’ve waited for this moment. How many different ways I’ve imagined it.” She glanced around the ICU cubicle and laughed, a clipped, humorless sound. “This certainly wasn’t one of them.”
She knew he couldn’t hear her, but it needed to be said.
“Mom would never tell me about you. Whenever I asked, she’d just say, ‘You don’t have a father’. So I stopped asking. Then I found some of her things in a steamer trunk. Pictures, old letters, stuff like that. The album you guys made was in there, too. That was unbelievably cool. You and Mom, recording artists. I nearly wore that record out listening to it.”
She squeezed his hand. “There was this one photograph; you and the band in a bar someplace. I knew it was you right away. I spent hours just staring at that photo, memorizing every detail of your face. Wondering where you were. How you could have left me. Funny, I never blamed you. I guess I blamed Mom. And myself. I started looking for you after that. Tracked down some of the other band members. But no one knew where you were. One said Toronto, another L.A. Your bass player figured you were dead.
“But I never gave up. We’ll work it out. You’ll see, Dad. We’ll work it out...”
* * *
In the pit under the barn Gail Grafton stopped breathing and froze, her hearing preternaturally keen in this animal state. There was a scream, distant and shrill, like a death cry peeling across a savanna. Then the chainsaw rattled to life and the screaming ceased.
Gail remembered the chainsaw.
She squeezed herself into a crouch against the dirt wall and began to rock, hands clapped over her ears, dry tongue running her raw, toothless gums.
––––––––
Sunday, June 28
JUST AFTER SUNRISE, site foreman Rob Toland parked his Jeep in front of the mobile office trailer and switched off the ignition. It was still early and only a few crewmen had arrived ahead of him, a small circle of them standing by the Porta Potties, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.
Before getting out of the vehicle Rob checked himself in the rearview, thinking,
Fucking mess
: nose taped; two black eyes, the left one swollen shut; a goose egg the size of a golf ball in the middle of his forehead.
Jesus.
He got out of the Jeep, not moving very fast.
Rudy, one of the machine operators, was approaching him now, saying, “Man, you look like shit. What happened? You try some errant moves on that flag girl last night? Jesus, look at you.
Yo, Adrian!
”
Rob touched his nose, then his swollen eye. “Son of a bitch blindsided me. Broke my damn beak. Didn’t even see it coming.”
“You an ugly motherfucker anyway.”
“Fuck you, Rudy. You seen her yet?”
“Who, Patty? Nope.”
Rob scanned the site, eager to find Patty and get some answers. Like why he’d come to at one in the morning in the dirt behind Zak’s all by himself. Had she really just left him there? And who was that psycho? An ex boyfriend she neglected to tell him about? Or a
hus
band? No matter which way he imagined it, he couldn’t get his mind around it.
There was no sign of Patty, but what he did see pissed him off: one of the big Cat 5230 excavators with the bucket left straight up in the air.
He said to Rudy, “Where’s Ziggy?”
“Not here yet, boss.”
Cursing, Rob headed for the excavator. “How many times do I have to tell that shit stain to lower his bucket when he’s done for the day.”
Trailing him, Rudy said, “Shit for brains.”
Rob climbed aboard the machine and fished through the ring of keys on his belt—then he spotted a tangle of multicolored wires, some of them spliced, hanging out of the ignition panel.
“What the hell?”
He glanced at Rudy ten feet below sipping coffee, then tried the key and the engine started, spewing diesel exhaust as he gunned it. After giving it a minute to warm up, he worked the controls and the bucket began its descent, tilting forward as it came down.
He could see Rudy watching, saw his eyes widen as something slid out of the bucket to land at his feet, Rudy leaning in for a closer look now, saying, “Sonny Jesus,” and dropping his coffee in the mud as something else hit the ground, more heavily this time. Rob could hear it over the din of the machine, splashing into the muck as it landed, but couldn’t tell what it was.
Now several more objects Rob could see only in glimpses—pale, shapeless chunks—struck the ground and Rudy spun away to puke up his breakfast. Rob left the bucket ten feet up in the air and jumped off the excavator, jarring his ribs where his attacker had kicked him. And when he saw what it was, he felt his own stomach lurch and he looked away, up at the hovering bucket.
He saw Patty Holzer’s severed head up there, toothless and so terribly pale, teetering on the edge of the blade, staring down at him between the bucket’s blunt teeth.
* * *
Dean said, “You really have to leave so early? I could buy us breakfast. It’s cafeteria food, but it’s not so bad. You sat in that cubicle all night, Trish; you really should eat something.”
He was leaning on the sill, close enough that Trish could kiss him through the open window if she decided to, and it annoyed her vaguely that she was okay with that. She said, “Thanks, Dean, but I really should be going. I had some car trouble on the way down and I can’t risk being late for work. Not if I want to live.”
“Well, don’t worry about your dad, okay? It’ll be days before he even knows where he is. I’ll keep an eye on him for you, and I’ll call you with updates every day.”
“That’d be great...but if you happen to call the house and my mom picks up, please, don’t say anything to her about this.”
“You have my word.”
Trish could feel her face flushing again.
Damn it
. She looked at her feet and said, “She thinks you and I made up.”
He smiled. “How would you rate the chances of that actually happening?”
But the wounds were still too fresh. “Let’s just see how things go, okay?”
Touching her arm, Dean said, “Sounds good to me.” He straightened now, stepping away from the car. “Safe trip. I’ll call you tonight.”
Managing a tired smile, Trish thanked him again for the gas money he’d loaned her and pulled away.
* * *
By 6:30 that morning the construction site had morphed into a full-blown crime scene, a half dozen cruisers parked helter skelter, detectives and technicians milling around, the excavator cordoned off with bright yellow barricade tape.
Near the loader a slim, graying detective named Dan Boland stood in conference with a colleague, Alec Dunster, a fireplug in his late thirties with a twitchy, impatient manner.
Speaking around the cigar in his mouth, Boland said, “Get anything useful out of the date?”
“Says he didn’t get a good look at the guy,” Dunster said. “Sounds like he was seriously shitfaced at the time. All he knows about the girl is she was engaged once. She told him it was old news, but he said the perp said something like ‘That’s my little toad’ before putting his lights out. Some first date.”