Authors: Victor Methos
23
Stanton stood on the edge of the platform at the front of the church as music started to play. It was Bach, but it was distant and muffled. He
hardly heard it because his stomach was so wound up in knots that he had a massive headache. His best man, a friend from long ago, was standing next to him. Melissa stepped out into the aisle and began walking toward him, and his tears began to flow. He’d thought they would be together until the end. He had pictured college graduations, weddings, retirements, old age… he’d never thought he would be saying goodbye to her at thirty-four and having to speak to her lovers.
Pain had a taste. It had a presence. It was a thing.
If allowed, pain could dig into a person like a worm and spread through the whole body. Pain affected not only the body but the soul, too. The dreary-eyed who drove to jobs they hated and returned home to families they despised may as well have been riding in their own coffins.
Pain was what
woke him—the thought of his children raised by another man while their memories of him faded until he was an abstraction in their minds. He was their father, yes, but more just the form of a father. He pictured Melissa standing on the stage, but he wasn’t the one next to her.
Stanton woke on his back. Above him was concrete.
A lightbulb with a long cord dangled from the center of the ceiling. The floors were bare cement, but there was no dirt or dust. The walls were also clean. He could see a furnace and an intricate array of pipes and wires, and shelves or cupboards filled the other side of the room.
His head began to pound. It came in circular waves
that started at the back of his head, and the circles grew tighter and tighter until they were focused in the space between his eyes. The pain radiated through him so forcefully that he gagged, turning to the side as vomit spewed out of his mouth.
When he was through vomiting, he lay flat on his back, the room spinning around him, and tried to monitor his breathing. He took long, deep breaths and exhaled slowly, focusing his mental energy on the spot just two inches below his navel. He pictured flowing water running through his arms, legs, torso, and head. He let the water pool at his navel and slowly spread to his limbs, his lungs, and his heart, returning strength to them.
Stanton visualized this for over five minutes before he felt well enough to sit up. But feeling the dizziness returning, he scooted back to lean against the wall. He noticed for the first time that thick plastic cuffs wrapped each of his wrists, which were behind his back, held together by plastic bars. A rope was around his ankles, but it was loose and moved freely.
The pounding in his head returned
, and he had to close his eyes. He sent the water from his navel to the back of his head. He pictured that the pain was a fire, a raging inferno in the space in his head. The water cooled it, brought it under control so he could function, or at least stop focusing entirely on the pain.
I
n a survival situation, his first concerns were to secure shelter, water, weapons, food, and a means of escape. He needed no shelter, and there was no water or food that he could see. The basement was bare and probably wouldn’t provide any weapons. The only thing left was to find a means of escape.
His wrists were bound so tight
ly that he was certain they were turning a light purple by now. The more he fought the intricate cuffs, the tighter they became. He put his foot in between his wrists and pushed as hard as he could, but the cuffs didn’t budge. Rather, they constricted around his flesh.
Stanton ran his eyes over the
windowless walls. A small set of wooden stairs led up to a door that was bolted with several impressive-looking locks. Farther down the room was a metal cabinet. Its doors were open a few inches, but he couldn’t see inside. There was also a poster of a nude woman at the beach, her toes dug into the sand. Her youthful glow came through in a massive smile as she lifted one free hand in an apathetic but sexual gesture.
Stanton’s gaze went back to the cabinet. It was out of the ordinary, the statistical outlier, the thing that didn’t belong.
His priority was to remove the cuffs then examine the cabinet. He tried to stand by leaning forward on his fists and pulling his legs up from behind him. He tipped over as his fists gave out from too much pressure against the concrete. He struggled back up and tried again. He kept his balance enough to realize that he had at least six inches of slack on the sloppily tied rope around his ankles. Someone had been interrupted when they were binding him.
He reached down and began to loosen the ropes so he could make it to the cabinet
, then he heard a phone ringing upstairs. He held his breath, listening intently. It rang five times and stopped. As he reached back down to the rope, he heard another sound: footsteps heading toward the basement door.
25
Parr walked into the precinct at six in the morning. He hadn’t slept. He didn’t need to.
In Fallujah, he had been dropped into enemy territory with a shortage of rations. His pack had to weigh less than twenty-five pounds to keep him light. Ammunition, the radio, his rifle, a handgun, and a knife made up over fifteen pounds. That left little allowance for food and water, so he was expected to find these on his own. A small container in the bottom right pocket of his pack held prescription amphetamines given to him by the army medic. Taking amphetamines was voluntary for the snipers, and many refused. But a few, the ones the army didn’t expect to come back, got the script.
He slept in one
-hour bursts whenever he could. Usually, he would find a car parked in a driveway and sneak under it or find an underpass or an alley. Once, he’d slept in a large trash container. He’d been up for three days, and he’d known he would be out for a while as soon as he fell asleep. The trash was the nearest place he could find that didn’t involve an intensive search.
Sometime after dusk, voices woke him
, then he heard an argument and gunfire. The bin was too tight to pull out his rifle, so he took out his pistol and held it close to him as he lifted the lid. Three people in civilian clothes were on the ground, where a thick black liquid mixed with the dirt to form mud. The two men standing over them with assault rifles exchanged a few words before going through the victims’ pockets. Roving bandits were common in the country then. Ex-soldiers and Saddam’s Republican Guard found it lucrative to scour the smaller towns and villages, raping and robbing along the way.
S
creams came from the house. Parr looked over and saw a woman in her forties, hysterical from the sight of her family shot to death on her driveway. She ran to them, and one of the soldiers grabbed her. They laughed as they tore off her clothes. The other soldier stuck one of her breasts in his mouth and fondled her as he dragged her back inside.
There were six targets in the area, and
Parr’s mission was clear: strike at as many of them as he could and get out. The incident he’d woken up to was not his fight. He sat in the trashcan, surrounded by garbage, and thought about sneaking out and moving on. He tapped his pistol on his forehead. This war was going to take his life, but he would be damned if it took his soul, too.
Parr sn
eaked out of the trash bin and stayed low as he ran to the front door of the house. The door was unlocked. He could hear the woman screaming from there, and he went inside. The house smelled like jasmine. Decorations cluttered the walls, and handmade rugs covered the floors. It was a modern-looking home. If he had seen it under different circumstances, it would not have looked out of place in any American city.
He followed the screams
, which led him around the kitchen to a back bedroom. He peered in and saw the men raping the woman. Parr tucked his pistol away and pulled out his fourteen-inch Heavy Bowie. He held the serrated blade facing down as he slipped into the room.
One man was on top of her
, and the other was pinning her arms down. Parr was in a duck walk, his knees almost touching the carpet as he came up to the bed. He stood and lifted the rapist’s head. He inserted the tip of the blade between his neck and shoulder, severing the voice box to prevent him from screaming. Parr twisted the knife so violently that a ragged chunk of flesh flew off his neck and onto the woman.
The other man was nude from the waist down as well and had left his weapon on the nightstand. He leapt for it as Parr jumped on
to the bed, stepped over the woman, and swung the knife down with both hands, throwing his weight behind it. It smashed into the man’s spine, breaking it instantly. The man collapsed like a heap of Jell-O. Parr could see consciousness in his eyes. He was paralyzed, not dead. Parr looked up at the woman and said in his broken Arabic, “Let the bastard starve to death.” He turned and left without looking back.
As he walked down the hall of the precinct, he wondered what had happened to that woman.
“Al,” Mindi said, running up behind him.
“Hey.”
“Hey. Any word on Jon?”
“Nothing yet. We got one
of Marty’s neighbors here, and I’m gonna find out what he saw.”
“Oh, right. I’m sorry about Marty.”
“People die in this job every day. It is what it is.”
“If you need anything, like
, I dunno—”
“I’m fine
.” He turned down another corridor and headed to the interrogation room.
Mindi had to quicken her pace to keep up. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“No.”
“I could help.”
“No. Listen, if you want to help, get on the horn to some people in San Diego and dig up some dirt about Stanton.”
“I really don’t think he had anything to do with this.”
Parr stopped and turned to her. “You remember that body we found? The crispy critter in the car?”
“Yeah.”
“Some of the cholos told me that was Stanton’s work.”
“No way
. I don’t believe it.”
“Yeah? Well
, you tell me how some piece of shit thug on the streets of Vegas knows Jon Stanton’s name.”
“It couldn’t be him.”
“Why? ’Cause you think he’s such a great guy? Lemme tell you somethin’, Mindi—you trust nobody. Everybody in this world is capable of fucking you. It’s just a matter of price. If the price is high enough, your own mother would do it.”
“My mother’s a bitch. Of course she would do it.”
“I ain’t playin’ around here. You said you wanted to help, so help. Get on that phone and tell me what kinda guy we’re dealing with.” Parr turned around and didn’t wait for her. He went left through a large gray door into the interrogation rooms.
B
ehind a two-way mirror, an older man with a white beard sat thumbing through his phone. Parr watched him a second. He appeared to be nervous; he glanced around and swore under his breath every few seconds. Parr reached up and pulled out the cord connecting the video recorder to the camera before stepping into the room.
He shut the door behind him and sat down across from the man.
“Are you a cop?”
“Yes,” Parr said.
“’Bout fucking time. I been in here two hours, sitting on my ass.”
“That’s a shame,” Parr said, leaning back in the chair.
“It is a shame, and I’ve had just about enough of it. I want out of here right now.”
“Sorry, can’t do that just yet.”
“Well, then, I want to speak to your supervisor.”
“My supervisor ain’t here. He’s telling the parents of Marty Scheffield that their boy’s dead.”
They sat quietly for a few moments.
“Marty’s dead? Nobody told me. How did he die?”
“He was taken out. Got the call a few minutes ago from the medical examiner. One gunshot wound to the cerebellum. Real professional. He never felt a thing.”
“Wow. Well, look, I’m sorry about Marty. I liked the kid. He always mowed my lawn when he was out mowing his.”
“That’s sweet of him.” Parr ran his fingers around the table edge.
“So, do you need me to identify his body or something?”
“No, his sister did that already.”
“Then what do you need from me?”
“You know, if you would’ve had some balls and called this in when it happened, maybe we would’a caught the son of a bitch who did this.”
“There’s no law against that. I don’t have to call anything in if I don’t want to. And how the hell was I supposed to know what this was? I just saw one guy chasing another guy. They jumped over my fence into the street and were gone.”
Parr took out his phone and brought up a picture of Edward Norton. “This the guy you saw chasing the other guy?”
“Yup, that’s him.”
“You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“No uncertainty at all? This is the guy. You’re positive?”
“Well, not a hundred percent
, but yeah, I think that’s him.”
“You didn’t see shit, did you?”
“It only lasted two, maybe three seconds. But that’s the guy.”
“And the other guy was in a ski mask
, you said?”
“Yeah. He was a bigger guy. Tall. He tried my backdoor and then hopped my fence. I never saw nothing of him.”
“Where’d they go after they hopped your fence?”
“Out into the street. They ran up for maybe half a block
, and then I couldn’t see them anymore.”
“Did you see anybody in Marty’s house the past few days? Think carefully before you answer. I’m not saying chicks in bikinis. I’m saying anybody. Who did you see there?”
“I can’t think of a single person other than the meter reader.”
“What’s a meter reader?”
“Someone from the electric company. You know, they came and read his meters in the backyard.”
“When?”
“Two days ago, maybe.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“No, I was in the shower. Just looked over and saw him reading the meters.”
“And this was someone from NV Energy?”
“Um, yeah. Yeah, I think that’s what the uniform said. Yeah.”
“Did you see what he drove up to Marty’s house in?”
“No, I only saw him in the backyard.”
Parr leaned forward on his elbows and stared into the man’s eyes. “Next time you see someone who needs help, you fucking help them.”
The man didn’t respond. Parr stood up and left the room. Before he was out the door, he turned and told him he was free to go. He went and hooked the camera back up before he pulled out his phone and Googled NV Energy.