Chapter Two
Adriana
Before the drugs I slipped him take his senses, I want just one thing from him, and it doesn’t matter how it comes — a look, a whisper, a tear — but I want him to beg, to show some fear, some remorse, something that shows that my sister meant something to this fucking degenerate who seems to live the fucking high life, partying and drinking in Sacramento like he didn’t shoot a bunch of fucking heroin into my sister’s veins and leave her to die of an overdose.
I’ve dreamed of this moment. Cried for it. Never thought I’d find it.
Now it’s here.
As the large dose of Rohypnol floods his system along with the acrid-smelling whiskey he likes to guzzle by the glass, Ricky DeMarco sways in his seat, glassy eyes wide and staring, and he licks his sickly cracked and dry lips, smiles, and says, “You want to kill me? Good.”
I blink.
“Good?”
He nods. Slumps forward, barely stops his fall to the floor my smacking his face on the table. His mouth falls ajar, whiskey dribbles forth, and he chuckles. “Yeah. Good. Do it.”
Then he turns and hits the floor with a jumbled thud.
Well, what the fuck just happened? He fucking wants this?
No, that can’t be it. It can’t be. That has to be the alcohol talking, or something in the roofies that I gave him. He’s been here, drinking and celebrating, living it up ever since he killed my sister, and that’s the only explanation that makes any sense.
“Hey, this isn’t a fucking hotel. No sleeping on the floor,” Jayson, the bartender, says.
I nod, let some of the shock and surprise I’m feeling come into my voice, and call out, “I know. He just kind of passed out on me.”
“He does that. A lot. If he weren’t such a good customer, we wouldn’t let him in anymore.”
“I’ll get him out of here. I’m parked out front. But I don’t think I can carry him. Can you give me a hand?”
Jayson shakes his head, and for a moment, I regret giving him a tip. Why be nice to the guy if he won’t help me facilitate this kidnapping and murder? All I need him to do is help me carry the body.
“I can’t. But Bruce can,” he says. Then he calls out above the general din of the bar. “Bruce, can you give Adriana a hand here with Ricky? He’s passed out again.”
Moments later, Bruce, who looks like the second-generation descendant of a silverback gorilla, is by my side. He doesn’t just help me with Ricky — he carries him for me. “Where do you want this piece of shit?”
“I’m in the silver Taurus out front,” I say. Then, seeing a flicker of something on his face and feeling self-conscious, I add, “It’s a rental. I don’t normally drive a Taurus.”
I don’t. I have a 2002 Toyota Tacoma that was my first vehicle, that my dad and I turned into an off-roading truck.
Vanessa and I would sometimes go off-roading together, where we’d drive out to the Chequamegon forest and drive like reckless fools to try to embarrass all the boys.
Most of the time, we’d fail — we didn’t know what we were doing — but we had fun doing it.
But that was when Vanessa was still my sister, still alive, and the only mud she liked was whatever spattered the windshield of the truck, instead of the shit she’d stick in her veins.
But old pickups aren’t the best vehicles for kidnappings. However, an inconspicuous, old sedan that no one would willingly look at twice is perfect.
“I don’t judge. We all hit our low points. I see it all the time, working here.”
I sigh. There’s no point in arguing; Ford Taurus or not, this is the low point in my life.
But now that I’ve hit rock bottom and found the man who murdered my sister drinking in the sketchiest of bars in Sacramento, maybe now I can start healing.
Maybe life won’t seem so empty after this.
Maybe I won’t keep seeing Vanessa’s face in my dreams, wondering what might have happened if I had actually found her before she became a brief blurb in the obits section in fucking Boise.
It’s not like I wasn’t trying. It’s not like I didn’t go to sleep most nights hoping that, maybe, tomorrow I’d wake up and have a text or an email or a missed call from my sister.
That’s all I could do — hope. Hope that she’d decide she was done dropping off the face of the earth and that she’d want to come home to her family.
To the people who would love her no matter what she’d done.
“Thanks, Bruce,” I say, and open the door of the car as he dumps Ricky’s body in the back seat. “Appreciate it.”
“Ricky’s a big pain in the ass. If you could get him to settle up on his tab and then, you know, never come back here again, I’d appreciate it.”
“I’ll see what I can do to get him out of your hair for good. No promises, though. I just feel so sorry for the guy. He’s such a wreck. I’m going to get him home and maybe, I don’t know, leave him a note or something telling him not to be such a fucking asshole all the time.”
“He’s lucky to have found you. You have a good night.”
My lips stay sealed in a tight line when he says that — I don’t want to smile; especially the kind of smile that wants to come out at that comment. Lucky to have found me? No, Ricky’s lucky days of living and partying it up after killing my sister are over.
I slip into the driver’s seat, start the engine, and look back at him over my shoulder. He’s snoozing away, off in wherever a murdering piece of shit like him goes to dream.
“It won’t be long now.”
He twitches. Murmurs. “Vanessa.”
I hit him across the face; he’s so drugged it doesn’t wake him. “Fuck you for saying her name.”
I drive.
Not long after, we’re in an even seedier part of Sacramento, parking in the lot of a place called the “Red Eye Motel.” A bloodshot, neon eye looks down from the billboard, and gives the parking lot a dystopian hellscape vibe; they take cash only, the front desk guy watches porn on his phone at full volume, and the vending machine is empty except for spider webs and a single tuna sandwich. The vending machine isn’t refrigerated.
“Not much longer now,” I say. Then I get out, grab a rolling dolly from the trunk that I’d picked up at a hardware store earlier, and set it by the back passenger side door. With a few grunts and curses — mostly at having to touch Ricky DeMarco — I heft his bulk onto the dolly.
“The fuck you doing?”
The voice makes me turn and release my grip on the dolly as I pull it into the squeaky, rusted elevator.
A man dressed in a hoodie and torn “Sailor Moon” pajama pants, his back resting against the door of room ‘17’ and a forty in his hand, peers at me with eyes that shine in the red glow of the hotel’s neon sign.
“None of your business.”
“I don’t give a fuck about your business, lady. Play with that body all you want. But if you need help moving that thing, I’ll help you for five bucks or a pack of Doritos. Nacho cheese only. You got either?”
“No.”
“Fine. Whatever. I don’t give a fuck.”
Without waiting for an answer, he turns away and brings his bottle to his lips.
I drag Ricky into the elevator, press the button, then drag him into my room.
It’s a dirty place that seems to get dirtier every time I blink my eyes.
Every time I want to use the toilet, I have to fight a cockroach the size of a Pomeranian that I’ve taken to calling ‘Charlie.’ Grunting, I roll Ricky off the dolly and dump him into a pile of dust bunnies.
He moans, inhales a dust bunny, then breaks into a hacking cough. I smile.
Then I kick him in the ribs. “Suffer, you piece of shit.”
It takes me thirty seconds to cuff him and tie his legs together.
Smiling and whistling, I open the mini fridge, take out a beer, and flip the TV on.
I find a mindless action movie — Jean-Claude van Damme has to infiltrate an underground fighting ring in Hong Kong using only his fists, wits, and his ability to do the splits — and settle in to wait.
Ricky has to be awake for what comes next.
He has to know exactly why he’s dying.
He has to feel every bit of pain that he put me through by ruining my sister’s life with the fucking poison he sells.
I want to hear the fear in his voice, the remorse, want to hear him beg for his life, just so I can look him in the eyes and tell him ‘No.’
Then I’ll take him apart, piece by piece.
Every so often, I reluctantly look away from the Muscles from Brussels to take in the sight of my sister’s murderer sprawled out and bound on the floor.
He’s dirty, yes, inside and out, and he smells like he’s been on a bender for so long that the cheap whiskey’s become a part of his essence, but beneath the dirty and the funk, he’s not bad looking.
Handsome, even. Tightly muscled, bright features, eyes that still — despite the murder, despite the drug use, despite drinking himself silly — shine with something magnetic.
What a waste of a good-looking man.
During the middle of the epic last fight between Jean-Claude and an absurdly muscled guy, Ricky stirs.
“Where the hell am I?”
“Not in Hell, that’s for sure,” I say. “Bakersfield is a long way from here. But you’re in the next worst place: stuck in a room with me.”
“Why the fuck haven’t you killed me yet?”
His question pokes at something inside me, and I frown. Why the fuck is he so eager?
“Shut up. I’m watching the fucking movie.”
“Your sister’s dead because of me. You want to kill me, I want you to kill me, so why the fuck are you choosing to watch a Jean-Claude van Damme movie?”
I look over at him, annoyed. Both at his eagerness and the fact that he’s taking my attention away from the movie.
“Because you need to suffer first. You deserve it.”
“I do. So when are you going to make that happen?”
“Maybe making you wait is part of making you suffer.”
“Seems to me like you’ve lost your nerve.”
“Seems to me like you need to learn how to shut up and let someone watch a movie.”
“If you don’t want to kill me, fine, I get it. You can let me go. I won’t turn you in. I’ll just find another way to make it happen since you seem to be too chickenshit to kill the man who’s responsible for your sister’s death.”
“That isn’t it,” I say. “I just want to watch the movie.”
But as the movie ends, and I look over at my sister’s killer, one question burns through my mind.
Why the fuck is he so eager?