Literature Discussion - Lit-Talk.com

Rational Conduct

By Kevin Tatro (US)

Chapter Four

After a Wolf Attack

Chapter 4 – After a Wolf Attack

The kidnapper had no intention of driving fast once he left the neighborhood.  As a matter of fact he had passed a speed trap on his way out of this sleepy little town.  The little girl on the seat next to him was slumped over; unconscious by the time he passed the cruiser.  As he drove on past that fine officer, he had become nervous for a second as the cruiser started spitting up rocks and dust, screaming out onto the roadway, heading in the opposite direction with lights flashing, for no apparent reason. 

But the reason became obvious.  Though he had met up with that cruiser just after crossing the border into the next town, he knew that cop was heading for the site of a kidnapping.  The adrenaline rush felt good, but he probably got less out of it than the twenty five year old cop who was rushing off to be a super hero.  For a moment he envied the cop and the adrenaline rush he was feeling right now.  The kidnapper’s rushes were a lot harder to get now.  Much harder.  But when they came… what a rush.  Stupid cop would never know such a rush.  Getting off on a super hero fantasy.  Pathetic.

David was off on his own adrenaline rush.  He went from crazy speed forward to zero with just as much insanity.  The smoke from the tires filled the roadway.  Somebody driving by at a later date must have wondered how those amazing log skid marks got there.  A car had to be doing a hundred and fifty to skid that long.  David was probably going faster.

The BMW hadn’t dipped far below the posted speed limit when the pilot decided to aim for a small space in the median divider to make his U-turn.  No oncoming traffic was a good sign.  The bumpy fearful moment that it took to cross the grass median into the oncoming lane and head the other direction added nothing to the driver’s adrenaline rush.  The average human would have had a heart attack, sliding sideways in a car full of smoke, but it had no effect on a man who was yet again a failure.  A man who thrived on craziness and was in his element.  He shifted into second turned the wheel, and lowered the windows to clean the air.

He had gone the wrong way.  The Merritt Southbound was a bad choice.  Though he had only a twenty percent chance of taking the correct road, and the odds of catching the scumbag who had his daughter was even slimmer.  He had failed, and it was his fault.  He wasn’t unfamiliar with failure.  He wasn’t where he should have been in his career. His relationship with his kids was iffy, he had no close friends other than the ex-drug users and drunks who had been his childhood friends, and he felt like he and his wife hardly knew each other any more.  Kelly would say he had done more than anyone could ask, and yet he had not succeeded.  No matter what one woman who loved him thought, he hadn’t succeeded, and that is failure.

David was tired.  He had failed again, and his insane dreaded fantasy world had become a full blow psychosis, which somehow now became reality.  That reality could become worse than the shit he dreamed and feared was hard to believe, yet here it was.  The shift to fourth went unnoticed as he flew by the slower cars at over one hundred miles an hour.  A flash back to reality drew his foot from the accelerator.  He had been doing well over a hundred and didn’t know why.  He could get home to comfort his wife, but he wanted to be the twenty five year old cop who was fulfilling the fantasy, stifling the fears that drove him, and becoming a super hero by saving the day.

The failure concept was returning, after having been masked by the once hopeful call to action.  He was falling back into despair, where he spent so much of his life, when his heart skipped a beat and his arms and legs surged like the spasms of that repair main zapped on the high voltage wires.  There was a black Benz way up ahead.

He put his foot on the accelerator and he knew he would catch it as it passed over the Sikorsky Bridge. 

He had no fear of the bridge and would not slow at all going over it  That Bridge meant nothing to him. It was just a bad dream.  It held no fear that would stop him from catching that car right after the bridge.  He would pull up next to the black car before they saw him coming and would force them over to the side of the road.  The accelerator was rammed to the floor, and he was moving on track once more. He would be the hero this time.  The dread and despair instantly gone.  He wished the car was more powerful.  He always wanted more power.

As he crossed the bridge the passenger side door of the Benz started to open.  He was a hundred yards behind the black car, and stepped hard on the brakes to assure he didn’t catch up too quickly.  The passenger door was opening.  David’s heart seemed to stop.

The back of an elbow showed first, and then the little head.  He was viewing the scene from only inches away when her right hand went out to break her fall as she hit the pavement face first.  Her hand would be badly scratched having hit the pavement at fifty miles and hour, but her face hit the pavement hard.  Her left hand came forth to break the fall, but was snapped behind her as her little body began to roll, her feet now coming over her head.  She rolled over on her back when her feet hit the pavement, and almost as if she were moving to stand up her torso became erect, and she began to flip forward again doing summersaults face first with her head obliterated on the pavement.

The last he thing he saw was her body pitching off the side of the road, into the grass median where deer went when they are hit by passing Mercedes and Lexus.  As he crossed the last steel grid deck of the Sikorsky Bridge he was only a hundred yards from where her body was last seen flying.  When he hit the breaks to stop at the site, his peripheral vision picked up a black Mercedes Benz going past him on the opposite side of the highway, heading southbound where he had come from.

 His senses came clear as he swung his head sideways just in time to see the rear of the car that looked just like the one his daughter was in. 

There were two roads leading from David’s neighborhood to the highway.  He had taken the shortest and fastest way, and the kidnapper had taken the other.  David had driven at insane speeds while the kidnapper had actually stayed well below the speed limit.  While the father of the stolen child was flying down the highway playing with his own life and nearly killing everyone he passed in his superhero flight, his daughter’s newest jailer had actually gotten lost in the matrix of roads leading from the wooded suburban neighborhood.  Most thieves, kidnappers and scum balls are not really bright.  This guy was pathetic.

The Benz was gone and David looked forward again.  His latest horror fantasy was gone.  There had been no girl pushed from a black car.  The car he caught up to wasn’t even black.  It was dark blue and looked nothing like a Benz.  His fear had created yet another monstrous ending for the latest horror in his life.  Maybe the horrible ending was a wishful fantasy for him.  That life could be so horrible was something that perhaps he wanted.  If it was this bad, he could not be expected to control it no matter what kind of superhero he was. He would have an ending that he had no control over.  It would be as bad as it could be, and it couldn’t be his fault.

David took the next exit where could turn around and get back to the highway or bring him home. Despair was king now.  There were a thousand black Mercedes in the area, and he couldn’t tell a Black Benz from a Blue Lexus.

 Doing the speed limit, he hit the exit ramp and came to a stop in the left turn lane at the intersection that would lead homeward.

At home would be a thousand policemen, a crying wife, two children who would be freaked out, God knows how many friends and relatives there to help, and then again, more police.  He would be asked a thousand questions.  The cops wouldn’t let him go.  Some super cop would look to blame the parents and focus in on the psycho dad, asking question after question, as they all know it’s always one of the parents. 

This was different.  The kidnapper was not a relative or friend of the family.  It didn’t make any sense. Taken from the front yard in front of one of the other kids.  Speeding off in a Mercedes.  This dude was sick.  This guy was stupid, or sick.  Or maybe both.  Probably got a major rush out of it.  He probably did it for the rush.  He?  Did Callie say a he?  Did she see him?  Get a description?  And what of the cops?  David didn’t see a single cop on the highway.   Several times in his life he had been pulled over for doing seventy, and here he was at twice that speed, while an all points bulletin is out on a car almost identical to his own.  Every cop in the state should have been looking for a black German sedan.

The ringing of the phone saved him from a brain explosion.  “Kev?”  She was stressed. 

“Yeah it’s me.”

 A strained but strong voice reported to the general.

“Callie said she only saw a bit of the guy, but he was older and balding.”  “She couldn’t tell them anything else.  The FBI is here and...I...”

She was strong, but she was now lost in a symphony of sobs.  She started off great, but now she was loosing it.  Despite the cold calculating snarl of David’s voice, the familiar sound bound with memories of how he could be so warm and comforting, and that was the assurance Jill needed to go from concerned and directed to letting out all her pain.  There was nothing she could have done and nothing she could do now, but it was all her fault and she felt bad.  Fate ruled the world.

Jill was fearful of fate, and she never, ever, ever assumed she could do anything about it.  This latest horror in her life may have been brought on by her having done something wrong, and now she was paying for what she had done or failed to do.  Unlike David, who constantly felt tense because he always had something else he needed to get done or do better, Kelly wasn’t scared of the future or on guard for what would happen next, she was guilty of every imaginable crime for what she had already failed to do.  Whose hell was worse is hard to tell, but they both suffered unrelenting agony.  One always under attack, and the other always remorseful for what she had already screwed up.

“Is there any need for me to come home?”

“What do you mean? I need you.  The kids are here.  The police want to talk to you”….

She knew what he meant.  He was rarely available mentally, as there was always something that needed to be worked on … alone.  They had been married for fifteen years, but she knew he always lived and worked in his own mind.  He would work on this in his own time, and no policeman or anyone else would be allowed in his way.  He was a serious guy, and would not allow the well meaning but slow acting authority figures to get in his way.  He wouldn’t leave it to them.

“Won’t you need information from the police?  They say they really need to talk to you.”

David’s reply was about what she expected.  “They’ll just slow me down.”

He had hung up rather abruptly, with a soft and simple, I love you.  A moment later he was on the phone again, with the soft tenderness gone and the business tone back. “Artie, I need your help”