Randy White: Dead Silence

It wasn’t accidental, as his English teacher, Mrs. Thinglestadt, had proven to him back in Minnesota.

Pretty girls: something else that had gotten him into this fix. Well… a pretty woman, because Will couldn’t justly think of a teacher as a girl. Not after charming Mrs. Thinglestadt for three careful months and finally getting her to invite him home to seduce him.

Bull had agreed it was smart, the way Will had made her beholden by proving his trust. Meeting the woman late in the park off Minnehaha and 46th, no one around but a few drunken Skins. Handing her the baggie of weed, then pocketing her money, before telling her how heavy it made his heart seeing his ancestors living like shit-faced bums.

Will had almost used the word firewater but decided no, not everybody watched westerns.

Mrs. Thinglestadt was a type. A milky-skinned female eager to prove she was open indeed by helping her inferiors one at a time. But smart in her way, obviously smart enough to write a prizewinning essay.

So he couldn’t rightly blame her… unlike the jerk who’d ordered him back in the limo.

Big, goofy-looking dork. If I ever lay eyes on him again, just wait!

For now, though, Will was focusing on attacking the problem at hand. He’d been awake for more than an hour and was working in spurts to free himself even though his stomach was queasy from the ether.

He knew he was in a rental car-the assholes driving didn’t realize he understood Tex-Mex Spanish. And because of the steady speed, he also knew they were on a highway and he’d be safe until the car began to slow.

The men had duct-taped his hands behind his back. It wasn’t hard to wiggle his knees to his chest, then thread his feet through. Will had used his fingers to peel the tape from his mouth, then chewed his hands free. Next, his ankles, before tearing through the garbage bag they’d stuffed him into, not caring if he suffocated. He almost had suffocated when he vomited, the burn of upchuck being what saved him.

A garbage bag, like he was damn garbage or trash or an oil-patch ’groid. How many times had he been called names like that on the Rez or by drunk foster parents who hated kids but needed that good money the government paid?

Candy-asses.

First thing he did after peeling away that plastic bag was use the trunk liner to wipe has hands and face clean as he spit, spit, spit, trying to get the sick ether taste out of his mouth. No water. Nothing to piss in either. His new beaver cowboy hat was gone, too-the sonuvabitches wouldn’t say where, they had no appreciation for fine western headgear. They’d also taken his wallet, which had almost two hundred dollars in it, plus a debit card good for seven hundred and forty dollars more, which Will had earned himself, saving for something special he’d wanted to buy… if he ever got the chance. Which he probably wouldn’t, not after this.

They’re gonna kill me, didn’t even give me a can to piss in. Shows how much they don’t care.

Will came close to retching again, thinking about dying, because he knew it was true.

Now he was at the rear of the trunk, his nose burrowed close to the taillight, where air filtered free of exhaust, cold off the highway. It was eerie red inside the trunk because of the taillights, the carpet hotter over the wheel wells.

Beside him was a tire jack, a lug wrench and a screwdriver that he’d found under the floorboard. Still working in spurts, Will squared the jack on the frame and ratcheted the jack until it was wedged tight against the trunk lid. He continued ratcheting, hearing metal creak as if the lid was about to burst open. It didn’t.

Just wait ’til you open this sonuvabitch, you morons!

Will left the jack and rested for a few minutes before prying open the backside of a taillight. Every Skin on the Rez was a shade-tree mechanic. What he wanted was to short out the electrical system, but the damn fuses would blow first. Also, he didn’t have a stripper or side cuts.

Instead, Will grounded a secondary wire just to see what would happen. The brake light began blinking. On the other side of the car, he yanked the ground wire free. The light went out.

Good. Give the cops a reason to stop us.

It was peculiar, lying there in the car’s trunk, as the red taillight flashed. Piercing red, even with his eyes closed, while thinking about what they’d done to him.

Garbage… trash… oil-patch bucks. No water, his wallet stolen, no ID.

Yep, they were gonna murder him.

After several minutes of fuming about his situation, being killed by two spic-speaking strangers, Will felt a chemical sensation bloom in the back of his brain that caused his heart to pound. He sat up as the sensation radiated. He felt fear, then a suffocating panic.

“Stop! Stop this goddamn car!”

Will began kicking the floor, hammering at the trunk, wanting the assholes up front to hear. Kept yelling when the car veered right and began to slow. He didn’t care about signaling the cops now. The panic was fading, yet the chemical burn remained. The pulsing red light remained, too-even as he got on his knees and ripped both taillights from their harnesses.

The red light he saw was behind his eyes, Will realized. Red, a color so bright he could smell it. He opened his eyes, then closed them. Red-still there, now strong enough to muffle his hearing.

“A grand mal seizure or anger-management problems,” a government shrink had told Will’s parole officer the first time Will had screwed up and actually told the shrink how it sometimes felt when he got mad.

What he didn’t tell the shrink was that it had happened before. Happened again tonight, in fact, when the big Cuban-speaking asshole grabbed him by the back of the neck and shook him as if Will was a rag, no more valuable than a dog’s toy.

Flash.

The man had snapped a photograph, causing more searing red dots to bloom.

Whenever the fear inside Will changed to rage, he saw that pungent color. His vision sharpened, the world quieted. Will saw only his adversary, alone in a tunnel of red, red silence.

The darkness of the trunk was red-hued now, as the vehicle bounced off the road and braked to a stop. Will checked the jack and cranked it one more notch, putting so much pressure on the lid that the trunk’s hinges creaked like springs on a steel trap.

Will heard the car’s front door open, passenger side, a voice saying, in Spanish, “Hurry, check on the brat-it’s nine-thirty already!”

Door closed… Then Will listened to the heavy steps of a man walking on gravel, coming toward the back of the car to check the noise Will’d been making in the trunk.

Come on, you bastard, open it… Open it! Just you wait!

Will felt his brain burning, the anger was so strong. In his right hand, he gripped the lug wrench, while air molecules circulated around the trunk space in darkness, tracing pale gray contrails when the boy’s eyes were closed… but sparking silver-red when they collided with Will’s hard, dark eyes.

At 9:30 p.m., a security guard signed me into Barbara Hayes-Sorrento’s suite, which was actually two suites, courtesy of hotel management. They’d donated the adjoining rooms because there were almost as many staffers inside working for the senator as there were reporters outside waiting for a statement.

Hooker was expecting me because the front desk had called. He wore a corduroy shooting jacket with patches at the elbows, a blue cravat tucked into his shirt. Same clothes he’d worn when he’d excused himself to freshen his whiskey four hours earlier at the Explorers Club. Not a stain or a scratch on him.

“Any word from the kidnappers?” I asked, taking off gloves that Esterline had loaned me. From the next room, I could hear one-sided phone conversations, the voices of men and women blending with the clatter of a printer.