Chris Mooney - The Dead Room

Thick strips of duct tape covered his mouth. She yanked the tape down across his lips, taking skin and hair.

Ben's eyes clamped shut. He gritted his teeth, hissing back a scream. She stared at him, taking in his features again: the dishevelled black hair matted against his sweaty, tanned face; his broken nose; big ears sticking out from the sides of his head; perfect white teeth.

Caps, she thought, and then stared at his neck. The first time she had seen him, that night in her home, he'd had what she called 'rooster neck', a wrinkled curtain of flesh dangling underneath his chin. It was gone now, and the skin along his face was smooth and tight, not a wrinkle anywhere. He's had a facelift. And his eyes… I could've sworn they were brown.

Ben opened his eyes. They were bloodshot and rheumy. After he had hit her back at the house, a good solid right cross that had nearly knocked her off her feet, she had wrestled him to the kitchen floor and slammed his head twice against the broken shards of glass.

Ben rested the back of his head against the opened boot lid. Moths batted against the lid's single bulb.

'How long have you been following me?' he croaked.

Hearing his voice released the vice-like grip on her heart. For the first time in years, she felt as if she could breathe.

'You going to answer my question?'

'Today,' she said. 'This… morning.'

'Where?'

'Drugstore.'

'Drugstore… drugstore… The one in Wellesley Center?'

'Yes.'

'You've been watching me all day?'

She nodded. He'd left the drugstore and climbed into the passenger seat of a black BMW with tinted windows. She tailed the car on the highway as Ben and his partner drove to Charlestown. An hour later, when the BMW pulled into the narrow driveway of a small corner home, she watched, from the minivan's rear-view mirror, Ben and the driver step out of the car. The driver was a few inches taller than Ben, maybe six two, and had grey curly hair and a dark tan. He wore white shorts and a bright floral Hawaiian shirt that couldn't hide his enormous stomach.

She found a parking spot at the far end of the street and watched the house for the rest of the morning and afternoon. She left the minivan once to run across the street to the drugstore to buy a couple of energy bars, a bottle of water and a box of latex gloves.

At half past eight the BMW pulled out of the driveway. It stopped once, in front of some shitty tenement in Dorchester to pick up the white man in the suit, and then the three of them drove straight to the house in Belham.

'You followed me all day and not once did I see you,' Ben said. He shook his head. 'I must be getting soft in my old age. What's your name, hon?'

'Say… it.'

'If I knew your name, don't you think I'd tell you?'

He blinked several times, then squinted as he tried to focus on her face. Fine white scars from the multiple corrective surgeries covered her jaw line, cheek and forehead. The side effects from the steroids and seizure medication gave her face a puffy, bloated look that no amount of dieting or exercise could diminish.

'Five… ah… years,' she said. 'Five years… ago, you… ah… ah… came, ah…'

'What's with your voice? You retarded or something?'

'No.'

'Then what is it? Some sort of birth defect?'

Jamie couldn't get the words out. She knew what she wanted to say: Five years ago, you came into my house and shot me in the head. You shot my two children while your two partners were downstairs torturing my husband. Her problem was actual speech. The.32 slug that had entered through her lower jaw, shattering her cheekbone and severing the optic nerves of her left eye, had lodged itself in the front lobe – Broca's area, the neurologists had told her, the brain's central processing system for language and speech. While she could understand language just fine, could form and process complex sentences easily inside her head, the brain damage had saddled her with expressive aphasia, this maddening, incurable condition that limited her speech to no more than four words at a time, mostly nouns and verbs delivered in a slow, telegraphic manner. On a good day.

'Shot,' she said.

'Someone shot you in the face?'

'You… ah… did.'

Ben staring like he didn't recognize her. Like he didn't remember.

'You… ah… shot me… and… ah… my children. Carter and… ah… ah… Michael. Your… ah… two partners… ah… murdered… my… ah… husband. Dan… Dan Russo.'

'Can't say I know anyone by that name.'

'He… ah… ah… a contractor. Wellesley.'

'That his company name? Wellesley?'

A slight grin on Ben's face, having fun with this.

'Lived… ah… in… ah… Wellesley. You're… ah… two… ah… partners, they… ah… ah… killed him. Rope. Tied it and… ah… ah… neck. Strangled him. Waste disposal… my house. Wellesley. Five… ah… years… ah… five years… ago.'

'I think you've got me confused with someone else.'

No. No, she didn't.

This morning, after she had dropped off her prescription, she had turned around and seen, at the far end of the aisle, a man looking over shelves stocked with pain relievers. This man had the same thin, almost feminine lips as the man who had forced his way into her home. The organizer, the man she knew only as Ben.

No… No, it can't be him, she had thought. Why would Ben come back to Wellesley after all this time? Ben and his two partners, the ski-masked men who had murdered Dan in the kitchen, had disappeared from the face of the earth five years ago. Those men were never found and never would be.

And Ben, she remembered quite clearly, had had a blond crew cut threaded with grey. The man standing in the aisle wore a dark blue baseball cap over long black hair that curled around the ears. Ben had had pale skin. This man had a dark tan and was dressed like someone who spent his days lounging on a boat Sperry Top-Sider shoes, khaki shorts and a pair of aviator sunglasses hanging in the V of a white untucked Oxford shirt. He wore a thick gold wedding band and a gold Rolex Yacht-Master watch. Ben hadn't worn a wedding ring.

Jamie remembered watching as the man reached for something on the top shelf. On the wrist of his right hand and stretching across his palm was a thick rubbery white scar shaped like a mutant starfish.

Ben had had the exact same scar. She had seen it when he wrapped the duct tape across her mouth. She hadn't seen the two men who had entered the house. Later, she'd heard one of them call upstairs: 'Let's go, Ben.'

'Partners,' Jamie said, reaching inside her windbreaker for the Magnum. 'I want… ah… their names.'

Ben hawked a gob of bloody phlegm over the side of the car, then leaned back against the boot lid. Nothing lived behind those eyes. Just two glassy lifeless balls polished to a bright shine. Soulless.

'Partners,' she said. 'Names.'

He didn't answer.

She pressed the muzzle against his forehead, blood pumping through her limbs.

Ben didn't flinch.

'I… I… will… ah…

'Oh, I definitely think you'll kill me. You shot your way inside the house, shot me in the thigh – and you did one hell of a job taking down my friend. You're a regular Calamity Jane, blazing new frontiers.' His voice was surprisingly calm. 'Nobody learns to shoot like that unless they're a cop. You still on the force, sweetheart? I'm assuming you are, since you go around carrying that big gun you've got.'

She didn't answer. She had retired from her patrolman days after Carter was born. After Dan had died, she carried the Magnum with her everywhere. For protection.

'Why… ah… woman and… ah… boy… ah -'

'Are you asking me what I was doing inside the house?'

She nodded.

'That's confidential information,' he said. 'Sorry.'