Chapter 40 Do I Look Scared?
Do I Look Scared?
The fourth home on the east side of the street was much like its neighbors, interwar single-story houses on postage-stamp lots, tended with pride.
A working-class community with great working-class character, one of the few in Los Angeles that had neither genericized with gentrification nor degenerated into poverty.
Front walk of concrete pavers, wicker chairs on a narrow porch, screen door and open windows compensating for no central AC. A few dead potted plants, a scattering of shoes by the doormat, a metal baseball bat propped by the jamb.
Evan’s hostility toward Tyler Russell had quickened with proximity.
I told you what would happen if you didn’t pick up when I called.
Kenzie’s mission had high emotional stakes and low operational risk. Despite the latter, he upheld the Third Commandment—Master your surroundings—taking several drive-bys, assessing the house from the rear alley, and acquainting himself with the surrounding network of streets.
He parked the Ford F-150 across the street and one house up, the built-to-spec push-bumper assembly pointed for Victory Boulevard.
For his escape route he could head to the 1–5 and down to the tangle of the 134.
If things got sporty, as Tommy used to say, he could jog northwest and lose himself in airport traffic.
Before he could get out, the RoamZone chimed.
Joey: y r u ignoring me?
Even from across the street, he spotted shadows moving beyond the screen door. The golden retriever barked and barked some more.
He swiped Joey’s text off the screen and called Candy.
“How is she?” he asked.
“We’re back at the hospital.”
“What happened?”
“She had a seizure at work. The convulsions, they tore some of her, um, stitches. She’s having them redone.”
Evan shut his eyes, breathed.
But Kenzie, I haven’t even told you what I want yet.
“X? You there?”
“Yeah. Jesus.”
“Right.”
“Is she okay?”
“She doesn’t complain.”
“No,” Evan said. “She doesn’t.”
“But you can bet it’s retraumatizing as fuck for her in there.”
“Right.”
“Those guys, those fucking animals. Do you think they have any idea?”
“Of what?”
“The pain. That she’s even real?”
Tell you what, Kenzie. I’ll give you until midnight.
Evan said, “No,” and hung up.
He got out of the truck. The door slammed shut behind him harder than he’d intended.
He took the pavers swiftly. Felt that storm brewing, the cutting edge of hostility razoring his insides.
He banged on the screen-door frame.
His fist didn’t loosen when he lowered it.
Tyler Joseph Russell came into shaded view. “Who are you?”
Evan said, “Friend of Kenzie’s.”
His voice was dead flat, devoid of affect, psychopathic. It was completely under control. The rest of him, less so.
Tyler’s head reared back. “You can’t come here, man.” He unclipped the hook for the screen, stepped outside, hand in Evan’s chest, pushing him back a few steps. He was a big kid, six feet, around 210 pounds.
From the shadowy glimpse Evan had caught of Kenzie, she’d looked petite. Slender neck, thin arms. Next to a kid this size, what chance would she have?
Evan looked down at the hand on his shirt. Tyler removed it.
“You her dad?”
“No.”
“Look, dude,” Tyler said, “I don’t know what creepy shit you’re up to with her. But what’s between me and her? Is none of your business.”
Evan looked at him.
“I’m not fucking around, man.” Tyler reached behind him, picked up the metal baseball bat.
Evan looked at him some more.
Tyler lunged forward, shoved Evan back another step with his free hand.
Evan let him.
Tyler drew the bat back.
Evan let him.
Tyler feinted with the bat.
Evan let him.
He felt heat shifting inside him, magma brewing, working toward eruption.
“Young man.” Evan’s voice was low, so calm it scared him. “You’re hopping around, waving that bat, sounding off. But I want to you look at me. Look at me closely. And ask yourself: Do I look scared?”
Tyler’s lips compressed and his nostrils flared, head tilting back.
Evan noted the arrangement of his features, his limbs—what tensed, what did not.
The muscles in Tyler’s chest shifted. An extreme lower jaw jut indicated an adrenaline surge. Evan watched it build.
Tyler swung the bat.
At Evan’s head. A death blow.
Evan ducked it, popped up, delivered a shotokan front kick to Tyler Russell’s chest. His base had been set, the delivery perfect, the ball of his foot driving straight into the solar plexus.
Tyler left his feet.
He flew through the screen door, the mesh going with him, the frame barely rattling. He hit the floorboards, wind knocked out. Flopping around, mouth gaping, he fought off the netting.
Evan was on him.
He hauled him up, slammed his cheek down onto an entryway table lined with family photos, and dragged his face through the frames. Crashes and shattered glass.
Evan ran Tyler into the family room and threw him into an empty La-Z-Boy, which upended, dumping him by the open sliding glass door to the backyard.
Evan kicked him across the threshold, then onto the back porch, and then off the back porch.
Then he picked him up and threw him, bouncing him off the railing.
Tyler clipped the chicken coop as he fell, the frail wooden frame exploding, chickens bursting out in an eruption of feathers.
The dog—Cooper—sprinted in circles, barking furiously.
Tyler’s face was cut up, arm raised. “Wait, man, I won’t—”
The rectangular outline of his phone showed in the front pocket of his sweats.
Leaning down, Evan ripped it straight through the fabric.
He paused only to drop the phone—and the extorted image of Kenzie it contained—into a cargo pocket before he grabbed Tyler by the collar, hauled him up, and rammed him into the side of the aboveground pool.
The aluminum siding gave off a sound like a cymbal crash.
Evan jammed Tyler’s head in the water until he took in a gulp of water, and then hauled him out. Tyler spat and blubbered. The dog was at Evan’s heels, going crazy but too afraid to bite. Tyler shook his head, eyes shut in fear.
“Look at me,” Evan said. “Look at me. Look at me.”
Tyler managed.
“If you ever contact or harass Kenzie again—or any other young woman—I will come back for you. And I will drown you where we stand.”
He dunked Tyler again, shoved his head and shoulders in deep.
A wail from behind: “Stop! Stop!”
Evan turned.
Tyler’s mother stood on the back porch, hand over her mouth, crying.
At her side a shell-shocked little girl around six, her features blank, eyes wide and brimming.
Behind them, the father. He wore a bright blue polo shirt and a telemarketer headset, the boom microphone wand shoved up by his temple.
Much slighter than his son, he looked terrified.
“Please don’t hurt him any more,” the father said. “Please don’t hurt our boy.”
Evan let go of Tyler. The kid slid backward off the rim of the pool and fell onto the thinning lawn, vomiting water. The dog whimpered and tucked himself behind the mother’s legs.
Evan’s arms were wet to the shoulders. His hip flexor tingled from the exertion of the front kick. His breathing had barely quickened.
The Fourth Commandment had gone up in smoke, embers and ash floating away, clearing the view of what he had done.
Tyler squirmed and retched on the lawn, bits of grass stuck to his face.
His younger sister ran to him and knelt at his side, petting his arm.
Tentatively, the mother followed, giving Evan wide berth.
He was not a monster. But that part of him had come out. It had come out and taken over.
Evan walked back toward the house, mounting the few steps to the porch.
The father remained in place, trembling.
Evan halted at his side. They faced in opposite directions. Body odor came off the man, the stink of panic fear.
“He’s abusing and harassing young women,” Evan said. “Sexually.”
The father’s nod looked like a tremor. “When? How?”
“He coerces them into sending him pictures.”
“So just online?” A shaky exhalation of relief. “Not in real life?”
Slowly, Evan turned his head. “Would you like me to start terrorizing you? Just online?”
The father didn’t shake his head so much as let it shudder.
Evan looked at the wartime tableau he’d created—military-aged male injured on the ground, mother and sister weeping over him.
The mother lifted her face, flushed with fear, anger creeping in.
On his side, Tyler curled into her, head in her lap, knees drawn in to his chest. She put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders and hugged her in tightly.
Evan exited through the house, retracing the trail of wreckage he’d made with her son’s body.