Andrew Gross - 15 Seconds

“I don’t know… I don’t know,” Wayne groaned. “She didn’t get ’em from me…” He shook his head back and forth like it was on a pulley. “I promise. I swear that, Mr. Hofer…”

“You swear…” Vance tightened his grip around the lead pipe, the muscles in his wide forearms twitching. “Son, we both know that’s a damn lie. And lying won’t be the thing to help you now. But here’s a bit of the truth. I lied as well. You’re gonna have to pay for what you’ve done. Everyone is. Everyone up and down the line. Till I find where it came from. No way around that. That’s just where it stands, son.”

Wayne was trembling now, barely able to garble words back. “What I’ve done? What have I done? ”

“All those lives you stole, son. The girl and her baby.” Vance stared at him. “My Amanda too.”

“No…” Now the boy was squirming and sobbing, tiring himself out twisting all over the beam. Every time he jerked his legs, the rope tightened around his neck. “I didn’t do anything to them. I didn’t give her any drugs! I swear…”

Vance went over to the black bag he had placed on the chair. “Son, we can do this two ways, and I’m afraid you’re not gonna like either of ’em, but one surely more than the other. But I think we both know by the time I walk out that door”-Vance opened the bag-“it’s gonna be with those names.”

“ There are no names! You hear me, Mr. Hofer, there are no names!”

It was still dark and Wayne could barely see. He just heard things from wherever Vance was moving around. Things that made him scared. Like a sharp hiss-followed by the sweet smell of gas, propane, and then a whoosh, which sent an electrical current of fear jerking through his upended body.

He shat down his pants.

Then Wayne looked up and saw the blue flame from a welding torch in Vance’s hand, coming closer to him.

“Listen, please, Mr. Hofer, please… Listen! ” he screamed. Suddenly his answers changed, and he began stammering. “These aren’t like regular folk. They’re not from around here. They’re truly bad people. I can’t give you their names. I can’t! They’ll kill me.”

To which Vance replied, chuckling, “What do you think I’m doing, son, just playing around?” He adjusted the flame to high and brought it close to Wayne.

“Now, you can stay up there, whimpering like a child, long as you like. Trust me, I’ve got all night. But whimpering ain’t gonna help you in this situation. I want to hear you talking names, son. Otherwise…”

Wayne’s eyes bulged as the flame came close, darting back and forth. “ I didn’t do anything to them! I swear. I didn’t.” The heat was close to his face. He began to sob. “I didn’t!”

“Well, that’s just where you’re wrong, son. Where you and I disagree.”

Vance grabbed one of Wayne’s bare feet and put the blue flame against his sole, the boy’s skin sizzling and his leg kicking around like a half-killed bass and a shriek coming out of him that might have been heard in Lowndes County.

“Please, Mr. Hofer, please…”

“Where you got the Oxy from that you fed my daughter? You hear me? I can make this last forever, son, or I can make it quick. Either way, by the time I leave, I’m going to have what I want.”

He placed the blue flame on Wayne’s foot again, the kid jerking and crying and howling bloody hell. And a stink going up. “ Names, son… It’s only going to get worse. I think you must be hearing me now. No one’s leaving here without those names.”

He got them. Names.

Though it took longer than he’d liked-Wayne thrashing and screaming how these were bad people and they’d come and kill him, which seemed to suggest he didn’t fully appreciate what was happening to him right now.

The lad was passed out now. Still. The whimpering had stopped, though his feet smelled like meat on a spit and were puffed up bloody ugly, swollen, and blistered and blue.

Hell, they wouldn’t be much good to him now anyway.

Vance lowered him from the beam, the ropes still horse-collared around Wayne’s neck. He surely could have saved the kid a lot of pain and aggravation. But he had to pay-that was clear. Just like that girl and her baby had paid.

Just like Amanda had paid. Forfeited half her life just for being young and foolish.

Now Wayne had to pay too.

Vance hoisted up the body by the armpits. He figured as long as he had the apparatus all rigged up, he might as well put it to some use, and cinched the rope tightly around the kid’s neck, placing the noose under his chin. Then he began to squeeze.

Squeeze. With all the strength he had from those years of running that lathe.

All those years on the force and the way they’d pushed him aside without much of a thought to him.

Squeeze.

Wayne jerked awake, his eyes bulging. He made a gurgling noise and twisted to see what was happening. Strangled whimpers emanating from his throat as Vance tightened the noose, the boy suddenly understanding what was going on, his arms thrashing around behind him. Vance telling him in a soft voice, “No point in struggling, son. I told you plainly, you had to pay for what you’ve done.”

Wayne, grasping at Vance’s sides, jerking his head back and forth in some desperate, futile effort to say, “No, please, no…” But that just made Vance squeeze even tighter, spittle seeping out of the young man’s mouth and onto his chin. His fists striking with diminishing force against Vance’s thighs. His words barely even intelligible… His eyes stretched to the back of his head.

Please.

Vance didn’t let up. Not until there was no more fight in the boy. Or gasping for air. Not until he fell back on the floor in a curled-up heap.

He’d told him it had to be done.

Then he loosened the noose from Wayne’s blotched neck and undid the makeshift winch and pulley and set them aside. He wrapped the long rope over his arm into neat circles, unscrewed the propane tank from the welding torch, and put them carefully back into his bag.

Not much blood, he thought, pleased with his work. Just a few drops of spittle on the floor, which he wiped with a cloth and disinfectant. Then he put his arms under the dead boy’s armpits and lifted him up over his shoulders. Young Wayne was a sizable lad, though Vance had expected more of a fight out of him. Vance carried him outside and into the woods to the spot he had prepared. He’d already dug the hole, about forty yards in, amid a thicket of brush and brambles no one would ever find. Sweat picked up on Vance’s back as he carted the heavy weight in the humid night.

When he got to the hole, he was wheezing a bit. He dropped Wayne faceup, and puffed his cheeks so as to catch his breath.

He thought, Maybe I ought to say something, staring down at the young face. You probably weren’t a totally useless fool, though my daughter liked you, so who knows… Still, events don’t happen of themselves. They have a cause, and you were part of that cause, son. So here you lie…

He rolled Wayne’s torso inside the ditch and then kicked in his legs, which didn’t seem to want to go in. Then he started to fill up the hole with the shovel he had hidden here in the bushes.

When he was finished, he smoothed things out as best he could, but no one would ever find him here. No one but that tramp Brandee would even miss him likely.

Wheat from chaff, he said to himself, leaning on the shovel. The lowest rung on a tall ladder.

But he would do what he had to do and find his way to the top.