Aric Davis - The Fort

“When do you want me to start?”

“There’s no time like the present,” said Hooper, and she began to cut. He added the ball gag to his mouth just a few seconds later. The feeling of her cutting into his wounded skin was just about the worst thing he’d ever experienced.

“There’s like, black blood coming out,” said Amy. “It’s thicker than blood, and it’s really gross. There’s some yellow stuff leaking out too. Are you sure we need to do this?”

“That just means we should have done it yesterday,” said Hooper, after spitting the gag into his hand. He sure didn’t envy Amy’s having to wear it all the time. “Have you cut it enough yet?”

She hesitated, then said, “No, at least I don’t think so. This knife isn’t very sharp—”

Hooper cut her off. “It’s going to have to work. Just put your back into it and get it over with. I can’t do this all day.”

She started cutting in earnest then, and Hooper slid the saliva-slick ball back into his mouth and chomped down on it. And again the pain was somehow worse still than anything he’d ever felt. Worse than getting shot, worse than shrapnel had been, worse than falling off his bike when he was nine and breaking his arm.

“Done,” said Amy, after what felt like an eternity. “At least I think we are. The hole is big enough now that I think the forceps will fit. How will I know when I get to the bullet?”

Hooper had to pant for a while before he could talk. “You’ll feel it,” he said at last. “It’ll be like tapping metal on metal.”

“All right,” said Amy, sounding utterly unconvinced. “Here goes, OK?” When she was done speaking Hooper felt the forceps enter him, and he nearly swooned from the pain. Somehow, it was worse than even the cutting had been. The ball gag fell from his mouth to the cement floor, forgotten, at least for the moment. Looking over his shoulder, Hooper could see her working. The forceps were in his leg, several inches deep at least. The yellow pus, or whatever it was, made it look like a longtime smoker had blown a loogie full of snot and throat stones all over the back of his leg. He was surprised to see that aside from the pus and black coagulate, there was little fluid coming from the wound, and what was coming out was thin and looked diluted to his untrained eyes.

“Do you feel anything yet?” Hooper asked, his voice a wreck.

“No,” said Amy. “But there’s a lot more of that yellow stuff coming out. It’s really gross and it stinks super bad.” Hooper had smelled something foul through the pain but had been trying to ignore it. Now that he was fully aware of that awful odor, he recognized the smell. It was the stench of death. Thank God we’re getting it out now and didn’t wait any longer. The sensation of being stabbed made his eyes water and shocked his vision into black spots. Hooper took a deep breath, then opened his eyes and raised the gun. He was looking down the sights at the top of Amy’s head, expecting to find her jabbing away with the knife, intent on killing him, but she wasn’t. She was crouched in her filthy bra and underwear—something else that would need attention—with blood covering her hands, and she was digging away with the forceps.

Hooper felt his mind starting to clear, and thank goodness—he’d almost just shot her, and all she was doing was what he’d told her to do. He lowered the gun. She hadn’t even noticed how close he’d just come to killing her.

Hooper laid his head back down on the cement floor, trying to establish a rhythm of breathing, hoping that it would help keep him from further swooning or delirium. Suddenly there was a pain worse than anything, worse than being shot or cut. Hooper was scared he was going to break a tooth, when Amy exclaimed, “I got it!”

Hooper felt a warmth rush over his leg, and he began to crawl away from her. He was dizzier than before, but he had the sense to grab a pair of the towels as he crawled, as well as to hang on to the gun. He wrapped the towels around his leg—it hurt to even know that it was attached to him, much worse to touch it. He had moved as far from her as he could when he heard chopper blades in the night, as well as a young girl screaming for help. Hooper fell into the black.

40

“I’m going to lose my shield over this,” said Van Endel. “I know it.”

It was late afternoon, and he was sitting in Dr. Martinez’s office, blowing off steam. The trail following Molly Peterson was only a few days old, but it didn’t matter. Between the body still in the morgue with its lack of clues, and the lack of a dental report, the case was dead in the water. There was no evidence, no witnesses forthcoming. Van Endel had been over the notes so many times that he’d all but memorized exactly what all of the teenagers, boys, and movie theater employees had told him. They’d had the local news affiliates run pieces saying that they were looking for information from anyone who’d been to the drive-in the night Molly disappeared, and it had proven to be a colossal waste of time. There had been plenty of people there, all had seen teens, and none could confirm whether or not Molly and her friends had been there.

“You’re not going to lose your badge over this,” said Dr. Martinez. “And the GRPD is going to keep working with me. This isn’t our fault, not any more than the Riverside murders are. Whoever left that body there meant for the trail to die, and they achieved that goal. The fact of the matter is, that probably was Molly, and we aren’t going to catch the guy who left her there unless he does something very stupid, like trying to grab another victim from the drive-in anytime soon.”

It was true. From talking to the owner of the outdoor movie theater, they’d learned that a dead teenager found just off the premises had not been good for business, nor had the general assumption that she had been taken from the place. A large memorial had bloomed up at the entrance to the drive-in: flowers, crosses, teddy bears, pictures of Molly. The owner had complained about that too. It was an eyesore, but if he took it down he’d be a pariah. Van Endel had told him he was right, he couldn’t take it down, but had to fight back peals of laughter as he’d done it. It wasn’t funny, but had he felt like something in his head was starting to split, and the laughter was a symptom of it.

“OK, the drive-in is over,” said Van Endel. “What do you propose I do next? I’ve already considered reinterviewing the teenagers who were with her, but I don’t see it going anywhere. They had nothing for me the morning after she was taken, they’re not going to do any better now. If they were over eighteen I could try and break one of them, but none of them have committed a crime, not a severe one anyways. If I get tough—”

“Then the parents just lawyer up,” said Dr. Martinez. “I get it. Still, there has to be something out there. Someone has to have seen something.”

“That’s what I would have thought, but think about what we know about Riverside. Drives a green car—maybe. Is a white male who favors a ball cap and glasses. Of course, we were also told by pretty much every hooker on Division Avenue that they’ve been picked up by a guy with that exact description and came back A-OK to get back to business.”

“And because most of them return just fine, they’ll still get in green cars with white males,” said Dr. Martinez wearily. “And the ones who don’t aren’t noticed until we come around asking questions and showing off pictures.”

“Exactly,” said Van Endel. “There’s not much left on this one for either of us to do.” Van Endel chuckled to himself, and Dr. Martinez gave him a quizzical look. “It’s funny. If those kids—the three boys, not the teens—really had been telling the truth, we’d have tons of people to talk to.”