Ribbons (25 page)

36

Matt heard Adam scream through the door of the VIP room. He raised the pistol up in front of him. Now it seemed like such a simple machine. One handle, one trigger, and only one way for the bullet to come out. He also only had one bullet. No room for error.

He took the house key out of his pocket. His thumb pulled back the hammer on the gun until it clicked into place. He took a deep breath. And then another. And another.

“Hey, Matt. What’s going on?”

A jolt of panic and adrenaline shot through Matt. He turned to look behind him. It was Amber. She looked worried. He wondered how many people had heard Adam scream. He realized she was looking at the gun in his hand. Maybe that’s what worried her.

“Get everyone out. Now,” Matt hissed.

Amber stared for a second, then turned and ran for the parlor.

Adam started to scream again, but this time his own voice cut himself off. “Ahh! The-Lord-is-faithful-He-will-establish-you-and-guard-you-against-the-evil-one!”

Matt had to move. Now. He held the key up to the lock. He pushed but it wouldn’t go in. He tried turning it upside down but it still wouldn’t budge. The scratch of metal on metal sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard. He had to be doing something wrong. Then he remembered he had two keys. The big one was in his hand. The small one was still in his pocket.

His hands were shaking so hard, he almost dropped it as he fished it out. This time the key slid in, and when he turned it, he felt the bolt slide back.
Thunk
. Three quick breaths and he was in motion. He twisted the knob and threw the door open, pistol raised. He started to charge inside but had to stop short. There was a man standing right in front of him. The killer from the news.

“I heard the key in the lock,” said the man. Matt remembered the name below the mug shot on TV—Foster.

Matt tried to take in more details of the room, but all he could see was the box cutter in Foster’s hand. His finger slipped. The hammer fell on the pistol with a sharp metallic
click
. No
boom
.

Both men looked at the gun. Matt was confused. The simple machine was supposed to work. He’d put the bullet in the chamber directly in front of the hammer.
Oh shit.
The cylinder
turned
when the trigger was pulled. The bullet was in the wrong place.

Foster looked confused, too. “Did you just try to—”

Matt squeezed his eyes shut and pulled the trigger over and over again. He flinched with each click, expecting an explosion and a splatter of blood.
Click. Click. Click. Click.
Then
cloof
!

It was much quieter than he thought it would be. Matt opened his eyes. There was a cloud of dust billowing through the air. Foster wasn’t covered in blood. He was covered in white powder.

Foster sniffed and then sneezed.
“Aaachoo!”

Then he slashed at Matt with the blade.

Matt’s arms were up in front of him, so the box cutter just cut his wrist. At first it stung, then a second later, it felt like it was on fire. He stumbled back a step, his foot landing on something soft and squishy. Vanilla shake splattered as Matt tumbled back onto the floor.

He looked up at Foster, who just stood in the doorway for a second.

“Weird,” said Foster.

Then he took the key out of the lock and closed the door. There was another click as it locked from the other side.

37

“Police! Everybody get the fuck out of my way!”

Dwayne’s boot splintered the frame of the front door as he kicked it open. The door was probably unlocked, but Dani wasn’t going to fault him for that. She felt like kicking something too.

They got the call maybe five minutes ago and had driven through two separate front yards on their way over. They had already been in the sergeant’s car, heading toward a high-rise condo complex near the Strip. They were supposed to be checking out a noise complaint, probably related to a fight. Most likely a halfhearted, drunken throwdown or maybe a domestic brawl, but after the failed operation at the orphanage, they were checking out anything that sounded potentially violent.

That had all been forgotten as soon as Dwayne heard the report from dispatch. His name was called out specifically. So was Christy’s.

They were first on the scene. Nobody came to meet them in the foyer, even after Dwayne broke down the door. The lights were dim, and slow, sultry music played from the parlor. Dani remembered seeing a few of the girls out on the sidewalk by the house, as well as an older guy, who was clearly a customer. He had stared right at Dani as she’d run up the steps with Dwayne. It was odd. Maybe he forgot he was doing something illegal.

Dani checked her watch. “Backup is still at least two minutes out.”

“Christy? Adam?” Dwayne yelled into the house.

Somebody answered from the hallway. “Down here!”

It was Matt. He was leaning up against the wall at the far end of the hall across from the VIP room. As Dani got closer, she realized he was covered in blood. He was clutching his wrist with the other hand, but it didn’t seem to be doing any good. Blood still trickled down his arm and dripped from his elbow. Dani crouched next to him, but Dwayne went straight for the door.

“Wait!” said Matt.

Dwayne spun around to look at them, and it was clear he had no intention of waiting.

Matt saw that and blurted out, “He’s got them both in there. Christy and Adam. And he already killed . . . what’s his face. The guy who keeps punching me.”

Dwayne slowly turned back to the door. Then he looked down. Dani followed his gaze and noticed the pool of blood he was standing in, along with some other kind of liquid. Dani took a second to look at Matt’s arm. That pool of blood wasn’t from him, but he
was
starting to make his own.

“You’re bleeding pretty bad,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, “everything’s getting fuzzy.”

“Here, let me see.”

She moved his hand away from the wound. Warmth splattered across her face as blood shot out across the hallway. She clamped her own hand around his wrist and reached for her radio.

She pushed the button. “Code two-seventeen in progress. Requesting eleven-forty-one.”

Matt shook his head. “Should I be worried? None of that made any sense.”

“They’re sending an ambulance,” Dani explained.

She pulled a zip tie off her belt and looped it around Matt’s arm. Matt looked like he was about to protest when Dani yanked the free end tight. One of Matt’s eyes squeezed shut, and the other went wide with pain.

There was a series of rapid thumps behind her as Dwayne pounded on the door.

“Foster!” he said. “This is the police. We know you’re in there. Drop you weapon and come out. Now!”

There was a pause, and then a faint voice said, “That would be dumb.”

Dwayne stepped close to the door so that his head was almost resting against it. “Christy, are you in there?”

Foster answered for her. “She’s tied up. I put one of those rubber balls in her mouth. She’s fine, but I do have a knife pressed against her throat.”

Dwayne’s hand started to clench around his pistol. He stopped it when his finger touched the trigger. “Adam? Adam, are you all right?”

“He’s here, too,” said Foster. “He’s shaking pretty bad. I didn’t do anything to him, though. He did that on his own.”

Dwayne held his pistol with both hands and pressed the top of it against his head. To Dani it looked like he was praying.

It wasn’t a prayer, though. “Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck.”

He was breaking. He wasn’t the sergeant anymore. He was a man trapped in a nightmare.

Matt’s arm was starting to change color. It felt cool and clammy. Dani took Matt’s free hand and placed it over the cut again. This time there was no shower of blood, which was good because Matt’s grip didn’t seem very tight. She couldn’t worry about that right now.

“Hey, Foster? My name’s Dani. We can work something out. Nobody else needs to get hurt. What do you want?”

Foster didn’t answer for a long time. Finally, he said, “I don’t know anymore. I think I’d have to start all over. I don’t suppose you could send in another woman. Somebody broken? I’d do an even trade.”

Dwayne’s pistol hung at his side. He was whispering now, mainly to himself. “He’s gonna kill them. He’s just gonna kill them.”

Dani stepped closer to the door. “Look, you know we can’t do that.”

“Yeah,” said Foster, “I figured.”

“That boy is in trouble,” said Dani. “He has seizures. We know you don’t hurt kids. You should let him go. We can take him to the hospital, and then we’ll have more time to talk this through.”

“I don’t think she’ll let me.”

“Of course she will. She’s his mother.”

“No,” said Foster. “I mean the Woman in the Garden. She won’t let him leave. He’s too dangerous.”

Okay, how do you reason with that?
Dani’s heart sank.
You don’t.

Dwayne was looking down at the ground. “There’s blood on the floor. He has a knife. He’s crazy. He’s gonna kill them.”

Then she heard Adam’s voice. It wasn’t comforting at all.

“The-voice-of-the-LORD-strikes-with-flame-The-voice-of-the-LORD-twists-the-oaks-and-strips-the-forests-bare.”

38

The boy stopped shaking. His lips parted, and blood ran down his chin. His hand fell away from his eye, and Foster could see red tears dripping down his cheek. He wasn’t sure if Adam was still breathing.

The boy’s mother twisted in her restraints, trying to get a better look at him. The strap over her mouth muffled her screams, but Foster could tell she was trying to yell his name over and over again.

Foster bent down to where Adam was leaning against the cross. The storybook was closed at his side. Foster grabbed it. Splatters of blood decorated its cover. He opened it back up to the page with the tree swing and laid it flat next to them. His fingers trembled as he touched them to the side of Adam’s throat to feel for a pulse.

Blood sprayed across Foster’s face as Adam coughed. He blinked away the red smears in his vision. He opened his eyes to look at the boy again, and another cough shot out more blood.

Adam’s voice sounded thick. “It’s gone.”

He was looking around the room wide-eyed. One of his eyes was normal, the other was shot through with jagged, red lines. There were no cuts or scratches on his face.

“I can’t see it anymore,” said Adam. “It’s just a room again. There’s no tree.”

Foster still saw the tree and the Woman in the Garden. Her owl had returned to her and sat perched on her shoulder. Her white dress was stained red by one of the clenching talons. She was standing over by the boy’s mother now. She looked down at her like she was trying to find some kind of meaning on her face. It was clear that Christy couldn’t see her at all. If she could, she wouldn’t be straining forward so much.

“What did you do?” asked Foster.

“I reminded him where he belongs,” said the Woman in the Garden. “And where he’s not wanted.”

Adam crawled over to his mother. “I tried, Mom. I tried.”

He laid his head down on her stomach. She mumbled something soothing.

“Will he be all right?” Foster asked.

The Woman in the Garden shifted her gaze to the boy. “Kill him. Take your blade, slash his veins, and hang him from this cross. Drain his blood, and end his corruption. If you don’t, he’ll bring a blight to all that I’ve sown.”

“How? He’s just a boy.”

“He walked the path and entered the garden unbidden.”

“So he should die?”

Christy whipped her head back to look at him. Her eyes fluctuated between rage and pleading. She must have heard that. At least the part that Foster had said.

The women in the tree swing continued staring blankly ahead.

“You’ve killed others,” said the Woman in the Garden. “You said it was getting easier. In your heart you were starting to enjoy it.”

“That’s what scares me,” said Foster. “But I knew I was sending them to you, so you could help them.”

The Woman in the Garden turned her head toward the corpse by the door. “Not him.”

“He was going to ruin everything,” said Foster.

“So is this boy.”

“He’s just scared. He got lost and found you.”

“He was drawn to me. And something else came with him. He doesn’t realize what’s just under the surface of his skin. He’s beyond saving. He should never have been born.”

That sounded familiar. Children could be cruel, and orphans were easy targets. Being defined by something you didn’t have, and would probably never have, changed the way you thought about yourself and your place in the world. Some kids hardened to it like a calloused fist; others drifted through life believing they should never have been born.

As Foster went to the bench, Christy pushed her head back into the leather cushion. He knelt down next to her on the side opposite Adam. Foster reached toward her face, and she squeezed her eyes shut. He unfastened a buckle and the strap over her mouth fell away.

“What are you doing?” asked the Woman in the Garden.

Foster kept his eyes on Christy.

“Let my son go and I’ll stay,” she said. “He needs a doctor. They won’t care about us. You and I. They’ll be too busy with him. They’ll . . . they’ll give you more time if you let him out.” She looked down at the patterns on her chest. “You could start over.”

“No,” said Adam. But it was quiet and weak.

A door crashed open in some other part of the house. There was yelling and lots of boots stomping across the floor. The woman on the other side of the door was yelling out warnings:
Don’t shoot. Don’t engage. Don’t open that door. He’s got a knife. He’s got hostages. He has a kid in there. He’s dangerous.

Foster wiped his nose with the back of his hand. As he did, he noticed he was still holding the box cutter. He quickly lowered it down by his side and looked at Christy.

“What would you do if you were my mother?” he asked.

It seemed like she didn’t understand him at first. She just looked confused. Then her face softened and her chin shook. She blinked, and two fresh tears squeezed out from her eyes.

At first she spoke in a whisper. “I would cry.” She took a shuttering breath and then spoke a little louder. “Because I would have failed you. I would tell you not to hurt anyone. And I would tell you that everything is going to be all right. I would hold you close and do everything I could to protect you.”

She wouldn’t, of course. He knew that. But it didn’t matter.

When the Woman in the Garden spoke, it sounded like she was right behind him, whispering in his ear. “She’s not your mother. She pities you. She just wants to keep living so she can continue to grind out her shadow of a life.”

Foster started to look at her but then turned back to Christy. “Do you pity me?”

They both answered his question.

“No,” said the Woman in the Garden. “Together we will build something divine.”

“Yes,” said Christy. “I’m sorry.”

He could tell they were both telling the truth.

“The thing is,” said Foster, “people feel pity because they care. It’s humiliating. You realize you’re at your worst, and you can see it reflected in their eyes. Even if it makes you feel less than human, when people pity you it’s because they want you to be a better person. They think,
What if that were me?
They feel a little afraid and a little relieved.”

The whisper in his ear said, “I’m giving you the chance to be above those people.”

Christy just nodded.

Foster held up his blade again. He clicked the blade closed, then open. Closed, then open.

“Do exactly as I say and the boy will live.”