From a Dead Sleep (34 page)
Stumbling into the kitchen, I grab a white hand towel from the drawer and wrap it three times around my hand and form a fist to keep it in place. Returning to the register I find I’ve created a large enough opening to reach my good hand in and retrieve the key. Once I do, I survey the disarray I’ve created between the bloody streaks along the floor and the demolished register.
For a fraction of a second, I find myself musing that the sight might make Moretti think that someone else had gotten to me first and had saved him the trouble. It’s then that my body freezes with only my heartbeat and brain left in movement. My observation urges me to ponder how my desperate situation might be remedied in part if I leave Moretti with a different assumption—an assumption that I didn’t find Valentino, but Valentino found me. If Valentino escapes, takes me as a hostage, and flees into the wilderness, it changes many things. At worst, they’ll form a search plan based on where they think he would flee to and not me. After all, he knows the area and I don’t. They’ll waste time checking out his shop and wherever he lives in town. Most importantly, it will delay the substantiation of his story and buy Arianna and me some time. If I play my cards right, Moretti will view an assault on me from Valentino as a shadow of doubt cast across Valentino’s entire claim.
I rush to the window and check again for headlights. I then unwrap the blood-soaked towel from my throbbing hand and imagine what kind of struggle would take place if I was suddenly attacked by a desperate man who’d just escaped from a torture chamber. I smear my hand repeatedly along the textured wall above the broken register, streaking blood across it as if I had been trapped against it. I yank a large picture frame from the wall, snapping its mounting wire and letting it crash down in a heap that cracks the sheet of glass encased in it. I kick over a nearby chair before clenching my fist and letting more blood drain from it onto the floor and the edge of a large, oval-shaped rug that leads into the dining room. After rewrapping my hand, I grab one of my shoes from in front of the door that leads to the garage and drag the heel of it through one of the small puddles of my blood. I streak it across the floor as if I was manhandled and dragged.
There’s relief in Valentino’s eyes when I fling the door back open. A grotesque smile shapes on his face as he struggles to lift his head back up off the floor. He’s wearing a beard of his own blood, which makes him look like a feasting cannibal. Battling time, I skip filling him in on my plan until I finish business first. I close the door behind me and grab a short crowbar that I had noticed earlier hanging from a mounted pegboard above some shelves. I wedge its claw between the edge of the door and the doorframe, and grimace from exertion as I yank at the bar wildly for what seems like minutes but is probably no more than twenty seconds before wood splinters and the door gives. I drop the crowbar on the floor, making certain the others will see it first when they return. My blood’s on it, but they’ll assume it belongs to Valentino. I use the key and secure the lock on the doorknob, then wipe it on the chest of my shirt to make sure there’s no visible blood before I return it to its original position above the outside door frame.
I stretch the headgear straps of the night-visions behind the back of my head and let the eyecups rest against my forehead. The entire time, Valentino looks at me as if I’m crazy. He hasn’t a clue what I’m doing and I wouldn’t expect him to. I stand before him and lean forward, speaking clearly and concisely so he’ll understand me as I tell him that I’m setting him free but we have to leave together.
The gratitude in his eyes is accompanied by glistening tears. He says something that appears to be a question that I can’t quite read so I use the back of my sleeve to wipe blood from his mouth. He tells me that he’ll need help walking because he broke his ankle trying to get free. My heart stops and I gape at the sight of his twisted foot, which I hadn’t noticed before, pinned underneath the steel chair leg, which was bent—probably from the collision when he fell to the floor.
My head goes light as the adrenaline rush that had been pumping through my veins is suddenly squelched. I drift back a step, feeling my sense of balance faltering. I realize immediately that this changes everything. Those guys will be here any minute. With Valentino anchoring me down, we won’t get thirty yards from the house before they catch up to us. My entire plan is shot.
“Come on, man!” he yells. “Let me go! I’ll do my best!”
He scrutinizes the glaze covering my eyes and he shouts again for me to set him free. My shoulders are sunk and I feel the helplessness of defeatism that I’m convinced God has dealt on me as punishment for the sins I’ve committed throughout my life.
I circle behind Valentino and hunch down before I begin peeling at the strands of duct tape constraining his wrists. I can see from the widening of his cheeks and movement of his head that he’s talking to me. I assume he’s lavishing gratitude upon me. While I steadily strip away at his bonds, I think about today’s sunset that lowered behind the tranquil mountains out behind the house. I wonder if it’s the last time I’ll ever see the sun. I then remember nearly falling through the large hole in the earth, which I concede could have served as a metaphor for the events that have transpired tonight. The obscure cognizance calls on me to stop what I’m doing.
I peer down at the sight before me as if I’m outside my body, hovering above the room. I see the back of Valentino’s head and his contorted body hunched forward in the shape of the overturned chair he’s strapped to. In front of him is the clear, plastic sheet Alvar had laid underneath him to keep blood from seeping into the concrete.
My despairing thoughts convince my mind that my plan is too good to jeopardize, and my warped sense of reason offers little resistance. Valentino’s inability to participate can’t detour my only shot at my new life with Arianna. I tell myself that it’s the only chance we have of breaking free and starting over. As if I’ve resigned control over my body to a darker force, I find myself leaning forward and stretching my arms along each side of Valentino’s head. Before he can take notice of the evil brewing behind him, I grab a handful of the plastic sheet in each hand and savagely pull it back toward me. It covers his face and his body reacts in panic, jerking and buckling as much as his constraints allow him to. I step over the back of the chair and place my shoe into the back of his neck, forcing his head deeper into the plastic as I keep it taut.
I close my eyes and see only waves spreading along the Lake Michigan shoreline with Arianna lying in my arms in the white sand. I repress the thought that if I could hear Valentino right now, I’d be sickened to death by the sound of a man dying at my hands. A well of tears eclipses my eyes and they roll down my face as I relentlessly keep up the pressure.
God forgive me. It’s all for you, Arianna. It’s all for us.
T
he last step is a brutal one, as were the twelve before it. With Valentino’s heavy body draped across my shoulders, the act of reaching the top of the staircase feels for a moment like I’ve conquered Everest. He weighs more than he looks. I hope that I mashed in his chair enough to make it look like he twisted through the tape and broke free of his own accord. Catching a fresh perspective of the raw scene just outside the kitchen, I’m confident that the calamity appears authentic as if a massacre took place. I carefully slip my feet into my shoes, relieved they’re monk straps so I don’t have to deal with laces with Valentino’s dead weight bearing down on me.
The temperature outside is surely much cooler than it was before the sun set and the storm came through. Coupled with the fact that my shirt is a bright cream color and might catch someone’s eye in the dark, I reach for my trench coat that’s hooked along a wooden knob beside the front door. The moment it touches my hand, however, I realize how suspicious it will look for me to take only my own coat when it’s supposed to be Valentino who’s in control. I grab both mine and a dark jacket that Tony left behind to collaborate the perception that two men left. I also snatch Arianna’s stocking cap that she left behind. It will conceal my golden-haired homing beacon of a head.
I freeze when I see a flash of light dance off the wall beside me. It’s coming through the front window. They’re here. Shit.
I preserve as much composure as I can possibly muster as my eyes bounce from one side of the room to the other, taking inventory to ensure there’s nothing I missed. My brief bag is strapped over my shoulder with the coat and jacket draped over it. I place my arm over everything like a paranoid man checking for the bulge of his wallet in his pants pocket.
When Moretti realizes that his books, along with all of his account numbers and proof of his ties to the cartel are missing and presumably in the hands of Valentino, it ought to send a piercing shock through his dark soul. I hope it gives the fat bastard a second heart attack.
My legs feel like they’re weighted in cement as I hurriedly but carefully glide toward the side door that leads to the garage. I nearly lose my footing when Valentino’s weight shifts the moment I drop down a step onto the pavement of the garage floor. I manage to stay upright and a second later I’m out the backdoor of the garage and diligently hurrying along the flat concrete of the back porch. It has a glimmer to it from the thin layer of moisture brought in by the lightning storm, so each step is carefully planted. The smell of rain is still in the air, and I worry that there’s enough moisture on the ground to leave traceable footprints behind on the forest floor.
I reach up and pull the goggles down from my forehead to my eyes, exposing my vision to the surrounding landscape with clarity and a distinct shade of green. The goggles are loose from being sized to Alvar’s larger head, but I’ll adjust things later.
The cover of trees grows thicker the farther from the cabin I get and the bite of the brisk breeze that flows through it creeps in through my clothes.
I look behind me to examine what kind of trail I’m leaving in my wake. I see no legible tracks among the scrub and pine needles that line the soil, and I sigh in relief. My attention is drawn to the blazing light that ignites from behind a window at the back of the house. A second and a third one follow moments later. By now, they’ve seen the blood on the main floor and have probably split up, checking each room for me and Valentino.
The combination of fatigue and high altitude leaves me gasping for breath, but I push forward like my life depends on my steadfastness, which it does. Worry builds in me when I can’t find the tree with the heart carved into its base, but it soon reveals itself under the green brilliance of the goggles.
I feel a sudden tug along my shoulders and my heart screams when I fear I’ve already been discovered by one of the boys. Valentino’s body is ripped from my shoulders and I’m propelled forward to my hands and knees. I spin around with my arms out in front of me, prepared to absorb a bullet or the toe of a boot but find nothing but the body lying by itself in a heap. I quickly crawl back to it, feeling rocks and twigs under my knees, and discover a dead pine branch about four feet long with a couple of its top twigs hooked under Valentino’s collar. The splintering along the thick end suggests that the body was snagged from the large tree I just crossed under. I worry that the loud sound of cracking wood just echoed through the encompassing area, but I stay focused.
In my good deed of covering the well earlier, I inadvertently camouflaged it among other fallen branches. I know it has to be close though. My legs feel like rubber when I rise up, even though the burden of Valentino’s weight has been lifted. The thin mountain air wheezes in through my open mouth as I scramble along the ground cover. I fight the panicked urge to punt congregated limbs out of my way to expose their undersides, fearing the noise it’ll create. When I spot the shallow lip of the well beneath a low teepee of branches, I quickly clear it.
With the wind intermittent in its powerful gusts, I wait for a strong rush and then pry each board up with my hands from its nailed position along the well’s frame, hoping the cry of rusty nails isn’t audible. The planks are rotted and light in weight, and they come up easier than I could have hoped for. Before I retrieve the body, I carefully pan the area to look for pursuers. Seeing no one, I grab Valentino by the back of his shirt collar and drag him along the dirt.
I don’t even remember positioning him for his fall but his body drops through nonetheless into the deep hole with nothing hindering its rapid descent. I’d find my indifference to his inelegant burial unnerving if it wasn’t so damned crucial to me staying alive. They’ll never find him down there—not tonight and not years from now. He’s down so far that not even the night-visions pick up a trace of him. I lay the boards back across the opening and press the nails back through as best I can with the bottom of my shoe. I cover the planks again with the limbs and add several more for good measure, wary not to make the aggregation appear artificial. I’m sure that none of the guys have tracking expertise, but despite this I sweep the surrounding dirt with the needled end of a thick pine branch like I’ve occasionally seen in movies.
When I’m confident there’s nothing left to be done, I lean forward with my hands on my thighs and breathe. I still feel Valentino’s weight on my shoulders, and I dread that I always will.
I tighten the goggles to my head, shove my trench coat into the brief bag, and slide my arms into Tony’s jacket. It fits me pretty well. I pull the stocking cap on over my head. It smells of Arianna’s perfume.
The strength of the wind that’s rushing along the mountain seems to be building. I hope its shriek has drowned out whatever clamor I’ve caused. A burning beam of a concentrated light flickers through the flush branches of a tribe of wavering pines, and I fear that my hope is squelched. Its source is a flashlight, and I make out two figures approaching quickly from behind the glare. One tall and the other short. They’re advancing from the direction of the house. I halt to a dead stop and watch breathlessly as the imposing beam slices through a family of thin, bare aspens beside me. My eyes drop to the side of my jacket that the beam flashes along. It passes on by. Whichever one of Moretti’s thugs is guiding it didn’t notice me. I drop down to my hands and knees, cradling the brief bag in my arm so it doesn’t scrape along the ground. To my relief, they take off in an adjacent direction away from me and away from where I dropped the body. The mountain and wind are most likely playing tricks with their senses.