Blake Crouch: Birds of Prey

“I felt like Reggie Jackson hitting one out of Yankee Stadium. Afterward, I even went out and bought a Reggie Bar.”

Mr. K gave him a sideways glance. “Why buy candy? Why didn’t you eat part of your father? Just imagine the expression on his face.”

Donaldson was about to protest, but he stopped himself. When he broke Dad’s jaw with the bat, the old man had looked more surprised than hurt. How would he have reacted if Donaldson had cut off one of his fingers and eaten it in front of him?

That would have shown the son of bitch. Bite the hand that feeds you.

“I should have done that,” Donaldson said.

“He hurt you when you were a child.” Mr. K said it as a statement, not a question.

“Yeah. He used to beat the shit out of me.”

“Did he sexually abuse you?”

“Naw. Nothing like that. But every time I got into trouble, he’d take his belt to me. And he hit hard enough to draw blood. What kind of asshole does that to a five-year-old kid?”

“Think hard, Donaldson. Do you believe your father beat you, and that turned you into what you are? Or did he beat you because of what you are?”

Donaldson frowned. “What do you mean what you are? What am I?”

Mr. K turned and stared deep into his soul, his eyes like gun barrels. “You’re a killer, Donaldson.”

Donaldson considered the label. It didn’t take him long to embrace it.

“So what was the question again?”

“Are you a killer because your father beat you, or did your father beat you because you’re a killer?”

Donaldson could remember that first beating when he was five. He’d taken his pet gerbil and put it in the blender. Used the pulse button, grinding it up a little at a time, so it didn’t die right away.

“I think my dad knew. Tried to beat the devil out of me. Used to tell me that, when he was whipping my ass.”

“You don’t have the devil in you, Donaldson. You’re simply unique. Exceptional. Unrestrained by morality or guilt.”

Exceptional? Donaldson had never felt like he was exceptional at anything. He did badly in school. Dropped out of college. Never had any friends, or a woman he didn’t pay for. Bummed around the country, job to job, occasionally ripping someone off. How is that exceptional?

But somehow, he felt that the description fit him.

Maybe that’s the problem. I’ve been trying to be normal all of these years, but I’m not. I’m better than normal.

I’m exceptional.

“How do you know this stuff?” Donaldson asked.

“The more you understand death,” Mr. K said, “the more you appreciate life.”

“Sounds like fortune cookie bullshit.”

“It was something I learned in the war.”

“Vietnam?” Donaldson had been exempt from the draft because he didn’t pass the physical.

“A villager in Ca Lu said it to me, before I removed his intestines with a bayonet.”

“Was he talking about himself?” Donaldson asked. “Or you?”

“You tell me. Did you feel alive when you killed your father, Donaldson?”

Donaldson nodded.

“And when you killed the owner of the Pinto?” Mr. K continued.

“Goddamn piece of crap car. I wish I could kill that guy again.”

“How about someone else in his place?”

Donaldson squinted at Mr. K. “What do you mean?”

Another half smile. “The man in my trunk. If I gave you the chance to kill him, would you?”

“What’d he do?”

“What did the Pinto owner do?” Mr. K countered.

“Nothing. But I wanted his car.”

“So you killed him for his car?”

“Yeah.”

“Couldn’t you have just pointed the gun and told him to give you his keys?”

“He would’ve called the cops.”

“You could’ve knocked him out. Or tied him up.”

“I guess.”

“But you didn’t.”

Donaldson folded his chubby arms across his chest. “No. I didn’t.”

“This man in the trunk. I promised him it would take a long time for him to die. Do you think you could do something like that? Draw out a man’s agony for a long time?”

Donaldson wasn’t sure what Mr. K’s angle was. “Sure.”

“Is that something you’d like to do?”

Donaldson shrugged. “I dunno. Never tried it before.”

“You know what the alternative is, don’t you?”

“You kill me.”

Mr. K nodded.

Donaldson made his decision in a nanosecond. “How do you want me to do it?”

“You can use your imagination. I have plenty of tools you can choose from.”

Donaldson stared off into the miles and miles of endless marshland. Thought about this strange request. Found himself becoming aroused.

“I’ll kill him,” he said. “And I’ll make it hurt.”

Mr. K checked his rearview mirror, eased his foot off the gas, and then drove onto the shoulder. He put on his emergency lights, then ordered Donaldson out of the car.

Donaldson didn’t even attempt to run away. He walked around to the rear of the car without being told and waited, butterflies amassing in his stomach.

The man in the trunk was awake, completely naked, his wrists and ankles tied with rope. He was older, late forties maybe, and he squinted in the powerful sun. In his mouth was a gag made out of a rubber ball.

He looks positively out of his mind with terror.

Donaldson licked his lips again.

“I prefer clothesline,” Mr. K said. “You can buy it everywhere, so it’s untraceable. And it won’t hold a fingerprint. Get him out of the car. Hurry, before another car comes by.”

Donaldson muscled the man out. It wasn’t easy. The guy squirmed and fought, and he was pretty heavy and tough to lift. Donaldson quickly gave up trying. Instead, he dragged him nude across the asphalt as the man moaned around his gag.

That’s gotta hurt, Donaldson thought. But that’s nothing compared to what I’m gonna do.

Mr. K took a tool case and a gas can out of the trunk, then closed it. He instructed Donaldson to pull the man into the marsh. It was wet, moss clinging to Donaldson’s shoes, muck seeping through. High reeds seemed to reach out and tug at the bound man, making it even harder to pull him.

After fifty yards, Donaldson was exhausted.

After a hundred yards, Donaldson was seriously pissed off. He hated being in the sun again, hated the throbbing in his nose and muscles, and hated this heavy son of a bitch for squirming so much and for being so goddamn heavy.

“That’s far enough,” Mr. K said. He set down the tool chest and opened it up.

Donaldson stared inside at the contents like a kid ogling presents under a Christmas tree.

“Can you give me my ball gag back?” Mr. K held out a rag. “It’s my last one.”

Donaldson unbuckled the gag from the man’s mouth, disgusted by the spit dripping from it. He handed it to Mr. K and then kicked the naked man in the stomach for making such a mess.

The man screamed. The first of many to come.

“I’ll pay!” he cried. “I’ll pay!”

“What should I use first?” Donaldson asked Mr. K.

“Try the ball-peen hammer. Breaking before cutting or burning always seems to work better.”

The next two hours blurred by for Donaldson, his entire world reduced to hurting this unknown, screaming, naked man in this deserted marsh. Even Mr. K seemed to vanish to Donaldson, though he took pictures during the proceedings, and occasionally interrupted to offer advice or encouragement:

Don’t cut there too deep. He’ll bleed to death.

Try the pliers.

Tell him what you’re going to do next. It makes it worse.

That part’s particularly sensitive. Use the blowtorch.

He’s not looking at you. Make him look at you, or cut off his eyelids.

He’s passed out again. Use the ammonia rag to wake him up.