Killing Ways

67

Ren’s heart was pounding.

Where are you, Joe? Did you get my text? You had to have realized it wouldn’t take us this long to get back. Maybe the tower, the steps, the lighthouse — it was all too much. It was another lifetime, a bigger nightmare, an overwhelming one.

Duke started unbuttoning her shirt.

No, no, no.

She squirmed under his hands. ‘No. Don’t.’

He laughed, opened the buttons even slower. When he was down to the third one, her cell phone beeped.

Thank God, thank God, please, please let him look. Please.

He took the phone, stared at the screen.

‘An email,’ he said. ‘Shaun Banner. Copied to Joe Lucchesi?’

Shaun Lucchesi? No! It’s the names of Duke’s abusers! No! Oh, no!

‘Don’t read that email,’ said Ren ‘Don’t read it. Please don’t. It is not in your interest to—’

She watched in the shattered mirror as Duke started to read. He blinked, twice. And Ren thought of the broken dolls’ eyes and the nightmares. And the pale blue glass. He blinked again. He was scrolling down. He was still scrolling.

Oh, God. How many names are on that list?

His whole body started to tremble. He kept swallowing, over and over.

‘We can get justice for you,’ said Ren.

Duke turned to her, squinted. ‘Justice? For me?’

‘Westley Ames...’ said Ren.

Duke was struggling to keep control of his facial muscles.

‘I know Police Chief Ogden Parnum is dead,’ said Ren. ‘But we can bring the others to justice. All those men. We can make sure that they rot in jail for what they did.’

Duke was looking around the room.

I have no idea what you are thinking right now.

‘So you know all my dirty little secrets,’ said Duke.

‘That’s not what this is,’ said Ren. ‘It wasn’t your fault. Don’t you want to—’

‘No!’ he roared. ‘No!’ He yanked her toward him, she could feel his breath on her ear. ‘Which one’s your locker?’ he said. ‘Which one?’

Oh, shit. What’s even in there?

Ren pointed to her locker, and he dragged her to it, opened it, and pulled out her wash bag.

What the?

They were back at the sink. He dropped the wash bag into it. He unzipped it, and frantically searched through it.

What are you looking for? I don’t want to think.

He pulled out her toothbrush.

What is he doing?

He pulled out the toothpaste.

He took the bag and threw it across the floor.

He released her waist, but grabbed her hair again, pulled it tight, held her head over the sink. He squeezed toothpaste onto the brush. He turned on the cold faucet, with a shaking hand.

‘Open your fucking mouth,’ he said. ‘Open your mouth. Open your mouth.’

He pulled up her hair.

‘Open. Your. Mouth.’

She did as he asked. He shoved the toothbrush under the water, then shoved it into her mouth and started scrubbing hard.

I am gone. I am gone. I am gone.

‘I always had a filthy mouth,’ he said. ‘Always had to scrub at it, always. And if I couldn’t? If I couldn’t get to brush my teeth, if I was in school, or the toothpaste was all gone, and I had no money to buy any more, you know what? I preferred the taste of puke.’

Jesus Christ.

He scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed Ren’s teeth until her gums bled. She was choking on the toothbrush, gagging, and he kept brushing.

‘You know what I did with my few cents?’ he said. ‘When all the other kids were buying candy? I was buying toothpaste.’

Ren coughed, over and over, until eventually he stopped. He shoved her head under the cold tap, and the water poured over her mouth, and she sucked it in, and it burned like acid, and she spat it out, and he pulled her head up again. Her gums were throbbing, her scalp on fire.

He threw her down on the bench by the wall, where she sat slumped back.

And then something happened that she could never have imagined. Duke Rawlins dissolved into tears.

‘Did I stand a chance?’ he said, wiping his eyes. ‘Did I? Did I? If you have a mother as fucked up as mine and a father who’s what — a whore-fucking vanishing act? What kind of blood’s going to be running through your veins? How did I stand a chance?’

‘You didn’t,’ said Ren. ‘You really didn’t.’

‘Do you know my mother allowed men into my bedroom?’ said Duke. ‘Knocked on their behalf — a weak and shameful, pussy’s knock. Knocking! As if there was an option! There was no safe place for me. Like every other kid, I’d make those homemade signs saying KEEP OUT! and DANGER DO NOT ENTER!’

‘What your mother did to you was—’ sick, unconscionable...

‘Do you know...’ he roared over her.

‘I’m sorry...’

His voice returned to normal. ‘... that my mother allowed groups of men to take me away to their cabins in the woods? They’d tell their wives or whoever the hell they had back home that they were going hunting. And they were hunting me. Through the woods. And I had to show up in school Monday like nothing had happened, like no one had handed me over to a pack of wild animals Friday night for a gram of coke.’ He stuck his neck forward, opened his eyes wide, like a threat, like a challenge. ‘’Course, it didn’t matter who caught me — they all got a piece of me in the end.’ He looked at Ren. ‘Thing is — there weren’t really any pieces. Someone like you might think I’m a broken man, but I’m not. You can’t be broken if all of you has been gone since you were about seven years old. That’s the fact of the matter. I didn’t know until I was seven years old that what was happening to me didn’t happen to most other kids.’

Oh. God. This is just so heartbreakingly, terrifyingly, chillingly fucked up. ‘Do you think I trust law enforcement after what a sheriff did to me? Came to me in his pristine uniform, came on me in his pristine uniform. Used his baton. Anything. Everything. No, sir. And he wasn’t the only man in uniform to come to my door. So you can all go fuck yourselves.

‘Bet you had birthday parties and... comfort! Comfort in your life. I had nothing. For the first four years of my life, I could feel: happiness, joy. And after that... I could feel only pain. And after that, nothing until my one friend. I had one friend... that Joe Lucchesi killed! And lied to me about — told me he was cheating with my ex-wife, lying son-of-a-bitch. I almost believed him, but it was just another load that someone expected me to swallow. And it was almost the worst part. Almost worse than him killing Donnie was him trying to shit on Donnie’s memory. Do you know what’s so terrible? If you’re like me, and you know nothing good in your life and you’re numb to all pain, but then something happens that makes you feel good? Or someone comes along that makes you feel good? Well, that’s a fucking miracle! That’s what that is. It’s the most precious thing in the world. And Joe Lucchesi took all that away. And I have made him pay, and I will make him pay some more.’

Shit on the memory of a rapist/murderer?! ‘You and Donnie Riggs killed women together!’ said Ren.

‘Which also makes me feel good!’ said Duke. ‘Don’t you fucking get that by now?’

Jesus. Christ.

‘But it’s not the same without him — it just isn’t,’ said Duke. ‘I fuck up without him, always have. I don’t get the same one hundred per cent joy I did from when he was with me. That was taken from me. The last bit of good.’

He slammed his fist into the mirror, and the phone dropped to the floor. ‘Where the fuck is Joe Lucchesi? Where is he?’

He pulled back, blood streaming down his knuckles.

‘I told you, he’s not in Denver,’ said Ren.

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Duke. ‘I don’t believe you.’

She glanced down at the phone, still open on the email from Shaun, and there were just so many names.

Duke bent down, picked it up, held it right up to her face, and scrolled through it. They were numbered.

Her heart lurched.

Sixty-three names.