Chapter 18 #2
Justus nods at me and we both move. I snatch him up from the couch and Justus pulls his hands behind his back. He makes a strangled noise, jerking awake, but far too late. Justus already has his hands zip tied.
“Hey. What the fuck? Listen, I’ll have the money, okay? Just two more days. Tell Benny I only need two more days and I’ll pay with interest! Or is this about the car? Darla said I could use it. I was going to bring it back!”
Justus looks over at me and snorts out a laugh. “This guy really rubs people the wrong way.”
I tie the blindfold around his eyes, and he starts breathing heavily the second his vision disappears. That’s when fear really takes over, when there’s nothing left to hold onto. “Wait! Wait!” he shouts, and I grab his face, squeezing it.
“If you scream again, I’ll cut your throat, do you understand?”
Sweat pops out on his upper lip and he nods furiously. His voice is barely a whisper when he replies, “Yes, yes.”
I let him go and Justus lightly pats his cheek. “That’s better. Now, we’re going to take a ride.”
“No.” Desperation lives in that one uttered word, and he tries to run, but I pick him up as he kicks his feet. I carry him out to my truck like a wayward toddler throwing a fit, but he doesn’t yell. He believes I’ll kill him. Good.
I shove him in the passenger side, and Justus pushes him over farther while I get in the driver’s side. He’s sandwiched between us. He smells like panic sweat with a side of stale grease, and I roll down my window so we aren’t trapped with the scent.
As soon as the truck starts moving, he starts talking. “Listen, just tell me what this is about. Tell me what you want and I’ll do it. You don’t have to do this. Just tell me what to do. Tell me what to do.”
“Shutting up would be a good start,” Justus replies cheerfully. He might be enjoying this. I’m focused on making sure this guy is good and scared so he’ll talk, and sometimes the scariest thing you can say is nothing. Let his own worst case scenarios do the work.
He doesn’t say anything else until we stop the truck at the cabin and pull him out. “No, no, please. Don’t kill me.” Whether it’s the sound of the wind in the trees or the smell of them, he recognizes he’s in the woods. Of course he assumes we brought him out here to kill him.
“Walk,” Justus says, clutching his elbow and leading him to the cabin door.
“Where are you taking me?” We remain silent and Justus walks him inside where I lock the door behind us.
I imagine what he’s experiencing as we force him into a chair in the center of the room and tie him up. He can’t see, but he can hear the crinkle of plastic under his feet, the rough wood against his back, the silence that tells him we’re the only ones here and no one can help him.
When he’s secure, Justus unties the blindfold and pulls it away.
Fear slams into him as he takes in his surroundings with frantic jerks of his head.
The boards over the windows turn the room into a box.
The sheets of plastic spread across the floor make his eyes widen, but the sight of the tools sends him into a panic.
His breath comes in fast shallow gulps, frayed at the edges.
He looks at us and whispers, “Oh fuck.” He jerks forward, straining against the ropes until his face goes red.
“That looks like it hurts,” Justus remarks.
Realizing he can’t get loose, he goes back to talking. “Please,” he says. “Please, I can get money.”
We don’t answer. Justus walks past him to the table where we laid everything out beforehand.
Pliers, a hammer, a box cutter, a drill, and a reciprocating saw, along with other menacing looking tools.
The car battery with wires that Justus suggested was a nice touch.
On the other end of the table is a tray of medical supplies like gauze, gloves, and tape.
Justus lets out a low whistle. “This is great. We have everything here we need to fuck him up, keep him from dying, and fuck him up some more.” He holds up a small blowtorch and turns it on, grinning at the hissing flame. “We can use this to cauterize, right?”
The guy starts shaking and babbling. “I’ll get the money! My cousin! My cousin will pay you. Tonight, I swear!”
Justus ignores him, and returns the blowtorch to the table, picking up a pair of wire cutters. “Do you want to start with fingers or teeth?” he asks me conversationally. “Teeth are messy. Fingers are cleaner, but you have to commit or it’s a lot of screaming.”
The guy lets out a sob. “Please,” he says. “Please just tell me what you want.”
I finally step in front of him. “I want you to answer my questions and if you lie even once, my friend gets to have his fun with you. He’s really looking forward to it.”
Brian looks over to see Justus still examining the tools like a kid at Christmas. He holds up a large handheld vise. “How big are your balls, dude? Like literally. Would they fit in this? I’ll bet I could make them fit.”
“I’ll talk!” the guy yells. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. I swear!”
“Tell me about Isla.”
Confusion and terror war on his face. “What? I don’t…I don’t know any Isla.”
I glance over at Justus who rubs his hands together gleefully and scoops up the pliers.
“No, no, I swear I don’t know who you’re talking about. I’ve never heard of anyone named Isla. Unless she’s a hooker? I didn’t…I don’t ask their names.”
“You’ve been texting me about her.”
“You’ve got the wrong guy! I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I walk over to the table and pick up a hammer, holding it out to Justus. “Kneecaps?”
Justus nods and smiles, accepting it. “You’re a fan of the classics. I approve.”
“No! Check my phone! I didn’t text anyone! Please,” he blubbers.
He’s telling the truth. I’ve been around hard men and he’s as far from one as you can get. There’s no way he’s with any of the traffickers. The piss running down his leg onto the plastic only reinforces that belief.
“You dropped a box off at Lucky’s Diner,” I tell him, keeping my voice calm.
He gasps and nods frantically, grateful that he has an answer to give. “Yes, yes I did that! Oh god, was there something terrible inside? I figured it was just dope or a gun she didn’t want to get caught handing off, you know?”
Justus’s eyes cut over to me. She. Are we dealing with a woman?
Brian continues to talk without me having to ask. “A woman paid me to deliver the box. She said to tell them it was for some chick she called Silver. Maybe it’s a stripper name or something, I don’t know.” He trips over his words. “I didn’t ask questions.”
Silver would shred this pathetic guy if she heard that. “Who was the woman?” I ask.
“I don’t know her or her real name. She’s a whore…a…a prostitute working the Moonlight Hotel in Paducah.”
Something cold slides down my spine. They used one of their trafficking victims. “What did she look like?”
He swallows hard. “Bad red wig,” he says quickly.
“Like, obvious wig that was the color of a Coke can. She was average height, maybe five and a half feet? Big tits that were fake, I think. I don’t know.
She sucked me off first. Afterward she said she wouldn’t charge me, and she’d give me a hundred bucks just to deliver a gift. I wasn’t going to pass that up.”
“Clearly it was a bargain,” Justus says.
“It was stupid! I’m sorry. I don’t know what was in the box. I didn’t text anyone. I don’t know who she is or Isla is. All I did was take the box inside, I swear.”
Justus looks over at me and sets the hammer down. “Well, that’s disappointing.”
“Listen,” Brian pleads. “I’m on probation. I don’t want shit to do with the cops. You don’t have to kill me. Just let me go and I won’t tell anyone anything.”
I scrutinize him for a moment and think about what he’s told me. His fear is real. He’s just an idiot they used to cover their tracks. Useless and not a threat.
“Please,” he whispers. “Don’t kill me.”
I glance over at Justus and see he’s come to the same conclusion. He nods at me.
“You’re never going to go near Lucky’s Diner again,” I order.
His whole body sags with relief. “I won’t! I won’t even go back to that county, I swear to god.”
I tie the blindfold back around his eyes. He’s still a wreck, sweating and shaking when Justus unties him from the chair. We keep his hands zip tied and hustle him back out to my truck.
The silence is only broken by his hard breaths as I drive out of my county and into his. I pull off the road near a deserted empty field a couple of miles from his place.
“Where are we?” he asks, as Justus pulls him out of the truck again. He walks him around to me, and I punch him, catching his jaw just right and knocking him out. Justus quickly cuts the zip ties off, stuffs them in his pocket, and we get the hell out of there.
He’ll wake up shortly with no idea what we look like, what my truck looks like, or where we took him. Even if he wanted to go to the authorities he has nothing to go on, but I doubt he will. It sounds like he has plenty of other shit to worry about.
“A prostitute with big tits and a red wig,” I grumble. “I’m really sick of hitting dead ends.”
“I’ll check out the Moonlight Hotel. See if they have any cameras I can hack.”
“They won’t be stupid enough to have her working the same area,” I point out.
“True, and even if I can get an ID on her, we know how well they hide their victims, but I’ll try anyway. Unless you have another idea?” Justus says.
All I do is shake my head. My last resort is to confront the guy they want me to kill. It’s insane and risky but it’s starting to look like the only option left.