Blake Crouch: Birds of Prey

People like me.

The highway stretched onward, wiggly heat waves rising off the tarmac. There wasn’t much traffic. Only about twenty cars had passed Donaldson during his long walk, and not one had so much as slowed down. Bastards. Whatever happened to human compassion?

“Did you kill the car’s owner before you stole it?” Mr. K asked.

Alarm bells sounded in Donaldson’s head. He frantically pawed at his .38, but Mr. K slammed on the brakes.

Donaldson bounced off the dashboard, smacking his sunburned nose hard. During the momentary disorientation, he was aware of Mr. K throwing the car into park, unbuckling his seatbelt, and pressing a thin-bladed knife under Donaldson’s double chin with one hand, while digging the .38 from Donaldson’s front pocket with the other.

“You should buckle up,” Mr. K said. “Seatbelts save lives.”

Mr. K stuck the knife into his breast pocket, belted himself back in, then hit the gas. The tires screamed and the Continental shot forward.

“I’m bleeding,” Donaldson said, his hands cupped around his nose. He knew it was a stupid, obvious thing to say, but he was still dazed and trying to buy some time.

“Tissues in the glove compartment.”

Donaldson dug them out, feeling more ashamed than hurt. This guy had gotten the better of him much too easily. As he mopped the blood from his face, Mr. K pressed a button to open the passenger side window.

“Throw the used ones outside, please.”

Donaldson went through ten tissues, tossing each one onto the road whizzing by. Then he ripped one more into pieces, balled them up, and shoved them into each nostril, staunching the trickle. He kept an eye on Mr. K the entire time, alternating between watching the man’s eyes, and watching the .38 pointed at him.

This is a real bad situation.

“I don’t enjoy repeating myself, but you hit that dashboard pretty hard, so I’ll ask one more time. Did you kill the driver before you stole the Pinto?”

Donaldson knew he was screwed, but he didn’t want to get himself even more screwed.

“You a cop?” he asked, not sure if that would be a good thing or a bad thing.

The barest flash of mirth crossed Mr. K’s face. “No. But your biggest worry right now shouldn’t be getting arrested. Your biggest worry should be the hole I’m going to put in your head if you don’t answer me.”

The gears began to turn in Donaldson’s head. How the hell do I get through this? Talk my way out?

“You won’t shoot me,” Donaldson said, surprised by how calm he sounded.

“No?”

“You’d ruin your car.”

Again, a faint hint of a smile. “It’s not my car. And you still haven’t answered my question.”

Mr. K thumbed back the hammer on the pistol.

Donaldson contemplated his own death—the first time in his life he ever had—and decided dying would be a very bad thing.

“I killed him,” Donaldson said quickly.

Mr. K seemed to think about this. He nodded slowly. “Was it someone you knew?”

“No. Jumped him in a parking lot in Sarasota. Wouldn’t have wasted the bullet if I knew what a piece of crap his car was.”

Donaldson watched Mr. K’s eyes. They betrayed nothing. The two of them might as well have been talking about the weather.

“How’d it feel?” Mr. K asked.

“How did what feel?”

“Killing that man.”

What kind of freaky talk is this? Donaldson thought, but all he said was, “I dunno.”

“Sure you do. Did it feel good? Bad? Numb? Did it get you excited? Did you feel guilty afterward?”

Donaldson thought back to the day before. To holding the gun to the man’s ribs. Seeing the shock in his eyes when he squeezed the trigger once, twice, three times. Watching him flop to the ground in a way that had struck him as funny. The holes in his chest had made sucking sounds, blowing tiny blood bubbles.

“Excited,” Donaldson said.

“Did he die right away?”

“No.”

“Did you stay and watch him die?”

“Yeah.”

“How long did it take?”

It’s so strange that we’re both so calm about this.

Donaldson shrugged. “Few minutes, I guess.”

“Did you do anything else to him?”

“Like what?”

“Did you hurt him first?” Mr. K raised an eyebrow. “Rape him?”

Donaldson scowled. “Do I look like a queer to you?”

“What does being a homosexual have to do with it? You had a human being at your mercy. That excited you. I’m asking if you capitalized on that opportunity. If you made the most of it.”

Donaldson thought about it. The guy had been at his mercy. He’d begged for a while when Donaldson pulled the gun, and that was kind of a turn-on.

“I didn’t rape him,” Donaldson said.

“Could you have raped him?”

Donaldson licked some dried blood off of his top lip, let the salty, copper taste linger on his tongue. “Yeah. I could’ve.”

This answer seemed to satisfy Mr. K. He was quiet for over a minute.

The road stretched out ahead of them like a giant black snake.

Empty swampland and blue skies as far as Donaldson could see.

I can’t believe I’m telling him this stuff. Is it because he’s threatening to kill me?

Or because he understands?

“How’d you know?” Donaldson asked.

“Know what?”

“That I stole that car?”

Mr. K offered a half-smile. “I saw the gun in your pocket when you stopped, along with your clumsy attempt to hide it. You should get an ankle holster, or stuff it in your belt at the small of your back. You obviously aren’t a Florida native, or you’d have a tan already. That means you flew in or drove in. If you flew, you probably would’ve had a rental car, and those are usually new. That Pinto was an old model. When you first got in, I noticed the powder burns on your shirt, and under your rather oppressive body odor, you smell like gunpowder.”

Donaldson was impressed, but he refused to show it. He knew a lot about being victimized. One way to stop being a victim was to stop acting like a victim.

“I asked how you knew about the car, not my gun,” Donaldson said, sticking out his lower jaw.

If Mr. K noticed Donaldson’s display of bravado, he didn’t react. “Your loose jeans didn’t jingle when you sat down in the car. When people abandon their vehicles, they take their keys with them. So I assumed it wasn’t yours.”

Donaldson appraised Mr. K again. This was a smart guy.

“How about you?” Donaldson ventured. “Did you kill the owner of this car?”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“He’s tied up in the trunk. I’m taking him someplace private.”

Donald worded his next question carefully. “Do you want to kill me?”

Mr. K drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

Donaldson counted his own heartbeats, trying to keep cool until Mr. K finally replied.

“Haven’t decided yet.”

“Is there anything I can do to, uh, persuade you that I’m worth keeping alive?”

“Maybe. The Pinto owner you killed. He wasn’t the first.”

Donaldson thought back to his father, to beating the old man to death with a baseball bat. “No, he wasn’t.”

“But he was the first stranger.”

This guy is uncanny. “Yeah.”

“Who was it before that? Girlfriend? Family member?”

“My dad.”

“But you didn’t use a gun on him, did you? You made it more personal.”

“Yeah.”

“What’d you use?”

“A Louisville Slugger.”

“How did it feel?”

Donaldson closed his eyes. He could still feel the sting of the bat in his palms when he cracked it against his father’s head, still see the blood that spurted out of split skin like a lawn sprinkler.