Chapter Seventeen

Silhouettes

“YOU SHOULD SLOW down.” It was the first time James had spoken since they’d gotten in the car.

Vincent checked the speedometer. They were going twenty over the speed limit, but it seemed like they were crawling down the street. He had this sinking feeling that he’d soon receive a notification showing the stocky man driving out of the parking lot, taking any chances of catching these assholes with him. But getting pulled over for speeding would only ensure that they’d never get there in time. He begrudgingly let off the gas pedal.

The next light they reached was red. Vincent slowed to a stop. They were only a few minutes from the bar, and, as if to counter his momentary relief, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He brought it eye level and steadied his hand as best he could. A new image from the game camera. Of course. He opened it. A biker with a long, braided beard was captured midstride in front of the white truck, which was still parked.

“We’re okay,” he told James, whose expression didn’t change. Vincent knew James was nervous, but they were so close to ending this he could taste it. The reward far exceeded the risk.

The light changed, and he took off down the street. He only slowed down when they arrived at the parking lot. His headlights pierced the darkness, lighting up the graveyard of cars. A shirtless man with red lipstick smeared on his face raised his head from the back of a car. Vincent cut his lights and continued through the lot until he reached a black Jeep parked directly behind the truck. He drove past the Jeep, then reversed to try to get a good view of the stocky man’s license plate, but the Jeep was parked so close to the truck that he couldn’t see anything.

Shit.

They’d have to leave the safety of the car if they were going to get the picture. He glanced at the door of the bar. It was just around the corner from the truck. A few feet away at most. If the stocky man walked out while they were taking the picture, he’d be on them in a matter of seconds.

We don’t have a choice, he told his racing heart. We’ll be fine. The stocky man was probably still working on his first beer. They just needed to do it. Now.

Vincent unbuckled his seat belt and grabbed his phone.

“What do you think you’re do—” James started.

“I’ll be right back. Just keep an eye on the door.”

James unbuckled his seat belt. “No, I’ll do it. Give me the phone.”

“Watch the door.” Vincent got out of the car before he thought better of it. He hurried around the Jeep. His ribs burned, and the cold air refused to enter his lungs, but he didn’t care. He’d worry about it after he got the license plate. He wedged himself between the Jeep and the truck and snapped a picture.

No flash.

He fumbled to switch it on. An engine roared to life somewhere behind him. He looked back. A car was pulling out of the back of the lot, headlights shining through the parked cars. Perhaps whoever they’d caught in that car when they’d arrived was leaving. He focused on his phone. A little white lightning bolt icon in the corner of his screen was supposed to control the flash. Despite how many times he pressed it, the flash refused to turn on.

“Come on!” He closed his camera app and reopened it.

All of a sudden, the music and chatter from the bar became far louder and clearer than it had been a moment ago. The front door. He hadn’t seen anyone walking over to it from the parking lot, which meant someone was leaving the bar. He checked for a warning. James motioned that it was all right. That didn’t mean the stocky man couldn’t be right behind whoever had just left.

He took another photo. Still no flash. He fought against the urge to chuck his phone into the dumpster and run for it. Work, you bastard, work! He smashed his pointer finger into the screen and lost his grip on his phone. He lunged to grab it, but it fell through his fingers, and he lost his balance. Something hit him hard in the face. It took him a moment to realize he’d fallen face-first into the hatchback. Before he could even get back on his feet, the taillights flashed, and the alarm sounded.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

Pain radiated from his nose, and something hot and thick gushed from his nostrils. No, no, no. He knelt as low as he could between the two cars, searching through the rocks for his phone. Footsteps on gravel. Getting closer. He was a dead man.

“What happened?” James stood over him.

There was no time for relief. The stocky man would be coming for them any second now.

“I dropped my phone. Help me find it!”

James got down on all fours and pulled it out from under the Jeep. “Here. Come on.”

“One second.” Vincent unlocked the phone and tried the flash button one more time. The lightning bolt turned yellow. It was on. He took a picture of the license plate. James grabbed his hand, and they were running.

“Hey, stop!” screamed an unfamiliar voice behind them.

Vincent didn’t turn around. He ran to the car, and as soon as James was beside him in the passenger’s seat, he peeled out of the gravel lot. His phone vibrated nonstop in his pocket from the crowd that must’ve formed outside of Rob’s.

The stocky man would be among them.

How close had they come to crossing paths with him again? Vincent didn’t want to think about it. He needed to drive. They weren’t out of the woods yet. He turned at random until even he couldn’t remember how they’d gotten to the residential street they were on. He parked his car by the curb and took a breath for what felt like the first time in minutes. Only then did he realize he could have easily just copied down the license plate number in his phone, but that didn’t matter now.

“We did it,” he said, laying his head on James’s shoulder. Their plan had quickly dissolved into chaos, but they had gotten the picture and made it out of there relatively unscathed.

James handed him a tissue to clean the blood from his face. “We did.”

 

ONCE VINCENT HAD gotten his breathing under control and decided how he wanted to frame their discovery, he called the detectives. The phone rang. And rang. He checked the time. Close to ten thirty. Not exactly early, but this couldn’t wait until morning.

The call went to voice mail. He hung up and redialed. Wasn’t it bad enough that they had to find these fuckers on their own? Did they really have to track down the detectives too? Just when he expected it to go to voice mail again, someone answered the phone.

Silence.

“Hello?” Vincent said.

A garbled cough. “This is Detective Ralbovsky.”

He sounded groggy. They’d woken him up.

“I was out, and I saw one of them. The stocky guy. He’s in a white truck at Rob’s bar in West Oakland. I don’t know how much longer he’s going to be there, so you guys should hurry. But I got his license plate. Let me know when you’re ready for it.” Vincent switched his phone to speaker and pulled up the image in preparation.

A long pause. Vincent assumed he was grabbing something to write with until Ralbovsky said, “Vincent?”

“Yes, I—”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in my car. I drove off as soon as I saw him. I’m safe. Are you ready for the license plate?”

He yawned. “Have you been drinking?”

“What?” Was he even listening? “No, we found one of them.”

Indiscernible sounds of movement came through the line. “We’ll look into it. You should, ah, head on home.”

“I have the license plate,” Vincent repeated for what seemed like the millionth time.

“That’s right. Good. I have my notebook. Ready when you are.” There was something in his tone—a false eagerness that you might use with an upset child—that convinced him Ralbovsky hadn’t moved from his bed.

Vincent fought the urge to scream into his phone. “Are you sending people out to the bar?”

“We’ll look into it.”

That wasn’t an answer.

“It’s him. I’m sure,” Vincent said.

“I believe you.”

The implication was hardly disguised. I believe that you believe, but that doesn’t make it true.

“Why would I lie?” Vincent said before he thought better of it. James put a hand on his thigh, but he shook it off. He was tired of placating these idiots.

“I didn’t say you were lying,” Ralbovsky said.

“Are you even sending anyone out to the bar?”

“Vincent, we’ll look into it. Trust us.”

He didn’t. “But?”

“But we can’t go rushing around every time someone thinks they see someone. There’s a lot of stocky guys in Pittsburgh. We will look into it. I promise. So how about you tell me that license plate and head back home? It’s late.”

Vincent ended the call.

They’d done everything. Risked their lives. And even now, the detectives refused to do their jobs. A thought burrowed its way into his brain. A question. Because they couldn’t be that incompetent. Because someone in law enforcement had been involved in what happened that night. Because, despite the funeral and grave, James was still alive.

Could Ralbovsky and Tillman be involved?

And if they were, who could he and James trust?

Vincent’s phone continued to vibrate. Ralbovsky calling him back amid further notifications from the game camera. He ignored the call and focused on the images. Men standing around, checking their vehicles. The back of the stocky man, inspecting his truck and talking to another guy. They had him, but what was there to do if the people tasked with protecting them weren’t going to step up to the plate?

“We could go to a news agency,” Vincent said. “I know they haven’t called us back before now, but what if we hand them the license plate and a picture of the man who we know attacked us? Let them know just how helpful these detectives have been.”

James mulled it over. “Then they’d have to do something.”

Vincent flipped back through the images for one of the stocky man. The best one they had was still his unfocused figure walking to the bar. A green photograph clearly taken with a game camera. They couldn’t give them this shot. Beyond how unclear it was, it’d raise too many questions about how exactly they’d acquired it. “We need a picture though. Not with the game camera. With my phone.”

“Then, we can end this,” James said. His gaze never left the windshield, but he seemed to grasp the gravity of what they’d been working toward this whole time. There was a light at the end of the dark tunnel they’d been trapped in since the night of the attack, and they were close to reaching it. They just needed to hang on a little longer.

Vincent leaned over the center console and wrapped his arms around James. “One more picture, and we can end this.”

 

VINCENT TYPED THE address for Rob’s into Google Maps. He’d made so many turns that eventually contradicted one another he hadn’t put more than a mile between them and the bar. The plan wasn’t elaborate. They’d wait for the stocky man to leave and snap a picture of him from the car. Then, Vincent would fly out of there like a madman. They’d be long gone before the stocky man got the chance to climb into his shitty truck.

A notification from the game camera appeared after he made the first turn in that direction. Vincent clicked on it. A couple walked toward the bar. He went back to the map. He picked up the pace a little after that. But when another image came through, he was still a few streets away from the bar.

He clicked on it. The stocky man stood with his back to the camera, his hand stuck in his back pocket where he must have been shoving his wallet. He was leaving. He probably just went inside after his alarm went off to finish whatever he was drinking and close his tab.

Vincent floored it. Another image came through, but he didn’t waste time looking at it. He blew past a stop sign and continued onto the street of the bar.

The stocky man’s white truck pulled out of the gravel lot ahead of them.

“Fuck!” Vincent hit the steering wheel. They’d lost their chance. He’d been an idiotic klutz who couldn’t even take a picture without setting off a car alarm and scaring off the stocky man, and now, they were back at square one.

“Follow him,” James said.

“What?” Vincent must have misheard him. James wasn’t actually suggesting they trail a homicidal maniac. It was too dangerous.

“Follow him,” he repeated. Not so much a suggestion, but an order. James looked through the windshield, but his eyes were focused on something tangible. The truck. There was a hunger in his eyes. A need only Vincent could understand.

We could end this tonight.

Follow him to wherever he was going and get a picture when he reached his destination. No more waiting. They could send it to the papers first thing in the morning. Start the day thinking of something other than these monsters and their crimes.

The truck turned right at the end of the road.

Vincent sped up and did the same. He tried to turn onto the next road right before the stocky man turned onto the following. The white truck was easy to keep track of, even at night. Vincent was about to close out of Google Maps, which was trying to redirect him to Rob’s, until he recognized the value of an aerial view of the roads around them. He left it on the screen. A nice preview in the event the stocky man realized he was being followed and pulled into a winding driveway or a dead-end street.

Not that he gave any indication he was on to them. He drove fast and didn’t signal before making turns, but that just seemed to be the way he drove. There were no sudden cuts of the wheel or dashes to evade them. He wound through the streets of West Oakland, seemingly unaware that he was part of a cat and mouse game where he was the prey.

This side of Oakland, which Vincent had been warned by local students to avoid at night, wasn’t all that different from where they lived. Older houses were sectioned off into various apartments with minimal upkeep. Mixed colors of siding and cheap patches on roofs. There were, however, fewer students milling about at this hour.

Every once in a while, when his eyes weren’t glued to the back of the truck, he spotted residents. Smokers on a dark porch, their gaunt faces glowing in the embers of their cigarettes. A group of kids who scattered from the street when his headlights shone on them. An old man hunched over a garbage can with a bag of aluminum at his feet. They reminded him more of rougher parts of Butler than the city. He wondered if there were places like this all over the world or if something about this area drained the life out of people.

The stocky man slowed down on Allequippa Street. They watched him from the stop sign at the intersection. Just when Vincent was sure the stocky man had noticed he had a shadow with headlights following him, the truck turned onto what Vincent thought was a driveway until he consulted his phone and realized it was a side street that branched off into two other roads. To the right was a dead-end road and to the left was a narrow road that ran parallel to Allequippa for a block before rejoining it.

Vincent hung back until the truck’s red taillights were only a faint memory. Either the stocky man lived on one of these streets, or he was trying to lure them into some trap. Vincent turned off his headlights before he followed him. The stocky man had stopped in front of a house halfway down the road to their left. Vincent couldn’t make out many details outside the scope of the truck’s headlights shining down the road. The only streetlamp in sight was at the other end of the road, across from the cluster of houses far away from the spot where the stocky man had parked his truck.

His red taillights glared back at them for a moment before they blinked out of existence. The stocky man had stopped, and there was no way they were making it down the road without tipping him off. Vincent backed up and parked on Allequippa Street. He turned to James to ask him if he was okay going over there on foot. Before he said a word, James opened his door. They were on the same page at this point; they were getting that fucking picture.

The stocky man had already made it inside when they reached the narrow road. Lights glowed from the windows on the first floor. Vincent tried to ignore the weight of disappointment pressing down on him. They hadn’t gotten there fast enough to take a picture while he was still outside. “He might be leaving again soon. It could be a friend’s house or even a dealer’s place or something.”

“Yeah,” James said, “we should take a closer look.”

They hurried down the road at a fast walk that only mildly annoyed Vincent’s ribs. As they got closer, he realized the sheer pink and white materials covering the windows were various bedsheets. One had a pattern of Strawberry Shortcake on it. Silhouettes could be seen inside, and the glowing light enabled him to make out more of their surroundings.

Vincent might have assumed the house was abandoned if it weren’t for the lights. The right side of the house was covered in lime-green siding, and the front was just exposed wood. It was so close to a dilapidated red brick building on the other side of it that, from the angle they were standing, he couldn’t tell if they were connected. Either way, a shoulder-high chain-link fence went around both buildings. Garbage cans and blue barrels littered the yard among pieces of tarp and other bits of garbage and old toys.

They slowed when they neared the house. There was a large tree just off the road, a few feet from the fence, that they could easily hide behind. Vincent took a moment to catch his breath when they reached it. The night air chilled the sweat beading on his forehead. He wiped it away. “Now, we wait.”

They watched the house from either side of the trunk. A light turned on in one of the upstairs windows. Then another. The lights remained on for a few minutes until someone turned one of them out. Vincent’s heart pounded in his chest. He readied the camera on his phone. Any minute now, the stocky man would come walking out of the house, and they’d have him.

Silhouettes passed the windows on the first floor. He focused the camera on the front door. He would get the most light when the door was still open, so he needed to be quick. But the door didn’t budge. Lights turned on in the back of the house. He stayed in place until five minutes had passed and the likelihood of the stocky man leaving soon diminished. “What if this is his house?”

James poked his head out from around the tree so that they could see each other. “We could come back.”

Vincent turned back to the house. He didn’t want to return on another day. The anticipation would eat him alive. There was a lot of light shining into the backyard. More windows. Maybe they didn’t have enough bedding to cover every one of them, and the back windows seemed like the best ones to leave bare—on the other side of the fence in the back was just a patch of woods. “Do you want to check around the back? See if we can get a picture through a window or something? I just want to finish this tonight.”

After a moment of consideration, James said, “Okay.”

They crept along the fence to the backyard. Paint peeled back from the rusting metal, making it look like it had thorns. Once they were far enough back, Vincent could see the other side of the house. Yellow light poured out of several windows on the first floor, illuminating the yard. While nearly every window was covered with some sort of fabric, the square window in the top half of the back door was bare. They could see right into the house if they were close enough.

The fence was too high to climb. Vincent found a gate in the back right corner. James lifted the latch and opened it. He waved Vincent through before shutting it behind them.

A thought hit him immediately: What if he has a dog? Some big, foaming dog that’d give Cujo a run for his money. But Vincent hadn’t heard anything barking when the stocky man got home or now, so they were probably fine.

James drew close and whispered, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Come on.” Vincent started through the knee-length grass toward the house.

A red pickup truck without tires rusted in the middle of the yard, between the two houses. Among other bits of trash strewn about the yard was an equally rusted lawnmower and a large, curved piece of porcelain that must have come from a toilet. They snuck up to the truck and ducked behind the tailgate, which had partially sunk into the earth, to get a better look at the back-door window.

The back of the house was covered in green siding. Similar to the brick building beside it, the house didn’t have a back porch. Stacked cinder blocks served as steps. Vincent peeked around the side of the truck at the window. He could make out a stove and wooden cabinets behind a small collapsible table that had three empty plastic chairs around it.

“I don’t see anyone,” Vincent whispered.

James looked over the top of the truck. “Same.”

Vincent took out his phone and lifted it over the top of the truck until he got a good view of the kitchen on his screen without his whole phone being out in the open. His hands were shaking, distorting the image, but hopefully the camera would autofocus when the moment came.

Someone passed by the window. Vincent readied himself. An emaciated woman set a plate covered in tin foil and a glass of milk on the table. The stocky man sat down in front of the plate, facing the window. They couldn’t get a better shot if they tried. Chubby cheeks. Beady eyes. A thick unibrow and a narrow, pointy nose. Thin lips turned up in a disgusting little smile.

Vincent clicked on the screen to focus the image. Say cheese, motherfucker.

He was about to take the picture when the stocky man looked away. A girl who couldn’t be older than four or five, in a large pink T-shirt that she wore like a dress, hopped onto the stocky man’s lap and took a sip from his glass of milk. The stocky man pulled the glass away from her, snickering as he ruffled her hair.

Vincent prayed it wasn’t his daughter. No child deserved the misfortune of having such a sorry excuse for a human being as a father. The stocky man faced forward again, and Vincent snapped the picture. Light flashed from his phone. The stocky man looked up. Vincent dropped to the ground.

Shit!

He’d never turned the flash off.

The stocky man saw it.

They were trapped in his backyard.

“We need to go.” James helped him to his feet so that Vincent was squatting beside him.

Vincent didn’t have enough breath to say anything.

Darkness descended on them. Vincent poked his head over the top of the truck. The stocky man stood in the doorway, blocking out most of the light from inside. A silhouette with a shotgun in his hands. He looked down at them. A pause of recognition. “What the…”

He aimed the shotgun.