The man does not rise.
Two thoughts flash through my mind—he’s hurt and he can’t get up; he’s faking it and he’s going to stab you as soon as you move closer.
There’s no way my knife-hand strike disabled him. I’m strong, but I’m not that strong.
He’s faking it.
Only then do I see that his right arm is buckled beneath him. That was the hand that held the knife.
Still he does not stand.
I call to him. He doesn’t answer.
Check, you have to see.
Sparring didn’t prepare me for this, didn’t teach me what to do next. When you’re in the gym, you help your partner up when he goes down. But not here, not in a real fight. There’s no way I’m going to flee, but I’m not sure I want to get closer to him either.
He doesn’t move.
I edge toward him.
If I go in any closer and he rolls toward me with the knife, I’m not sure I’d be able to jump out of the way in time. He might manage to stab my leg, even my stomach.
I take a breath, try to calm myself, but it’s not exactly happening.
Something I’m going to have to work on.
If there was a way to roll him over without getting close enough for him to cut me, then I would—
The branch he hit me with.
Yes.
I retrieve it and approach him.
His back is rising and falling slightly with each breath, and that makes me think he really is hurt. Someone who was faking it would probably hold his breath to make it look like he was dead.
Only a couple feet away now.
I call to him again, but still he doesn’t reply.
Using the end of the branch, I press against his shoulder to roll him onto his back. He’s a big man and it takes some effort, but then he does roll over and I see the blood soaking his shirt and the handle of the knife protruding from his abdomen.
The blade is buried almost to the hilt, angled up just beneath his sternum. I can only guess that the knife tip either punctured his heart or is close to it. Either way, it went through his lung, and the frothy blood he’s spitting out tells me how serious the wound is.
His eyes are open. He’s still breathing, but his teeth are clenched and he’s obviously in a lot of pain. He coughs up a mouthful of blood and it splatters across his chin. If I turned him onto his side, it would keep the blood from pooling in his throat, help clear his airway, and keep him from aspirating on his own blood, and if he hadn’t killed Abina, I might have done that right away. But because of what he did to her, I’m not sure I want to help him at all.
But then I have another thought.
You need to find out what he was looking for before it’s too late.
Alright.
I kneel beside him.
Last night I saw him yank a knife out of his leg without flinching. To make sure he won’t pull out the blade now and kill me with it, I remove the knife. Toss it to the side.
He winces, then sneers.
I turn his head to the side to help clear his mouth of blood, and it does seem to help him breathe.
“What were you looking for in the center last night?”
He spits, coughs a little, doesn’t respond.
“Who are you? Who sent you here?”
“Akinsanya will find you.” His voice is sputtering and wet with blood.
“Akinsanya? Who’s Akinsanya?”
No response. Just a smug grin.
“Who’s Akinsanya?”
Nothing.
A compassionate person might’ve reassured him, told him that he was going to be okay, that help was coming. But that would have been a lie, and besides, right here, right now, more than compassion was at stake. There’s justice too, and after what he did to Abina, what he tried to do to Charlene, what he might’ve succeeded in doing to Dr. Tanbyrn, I don’t try to comfort him. Instead I lean close. “You’re dying. But it might take some time. I’ll help it along if you tell me what you were looking for.”
Something in his eyes changes.
“Go on,” I tell him. “I’m listening.”
“Screw”—his word is stained with hatred and a pathetic kind of defiance—“you.”
Alright then.
I stand up.
Watch him.
I don’t hurry things along, but let him die at his own speed.
It takes awhile.
And I’m not at all sorry that it does.
The last thought Glenn Banner had was not regret for what he had done, not remorse, not sorrow, just anger that he hadn’t killed this man, that he hadn’t gotten to spend some time with that woman from last night.
Well, at least you got to watch that skinny little whore burn.
Then the darkness descended.
And the silent, writhing journey toward forever began.
The Photos
I wait a minute or two after his breathing stops just to make sure that he’s gone, then I check his pockets.
A set of car keys, a cell phone, a lighter, a crumpled-up copy of the front page of today’s issue of USA Today. A wallet.
Opening up his wallet, I find out that his name was Glenn Banner. He lived in Seattle. A felon. I’m surprised to see that noted on his license, but it’s there, probably some helpful little law that I wasn’t even aware of.
I figure I have a right to know as much as I can about the man who tried to kill me, so I don’t feel any guilt searching him like this. I’m not going to take anything with me, I’ll leave everything here for the cops; I just want some information.
There’s twenty-nine dollars cash in his wallet, four credit cards, no family photographs. But there are photos — eleven of them.
A dark chill slides through me when I realize what they’re pictures of.
Corpses.
Eight men, two women, plus one body that’s mangled so badly I can’t tell the gender of the victim. Some corpses had been stabbed, two have plastic bags over their heads, others were strangled with wire. The first page of a USA Today newspaper lies beside each body.
To prove they died on that day.
Eleven horrible crimes that will finally be solved when the police follow up on this. Eleven families who’ll find out the truth. Terrible, brutal, yes, but at least they would get some sense of closure to their pain, and surely there’s some degree of justice to that, to knowing the truth?
Hard to say.
I’ve never been able to find the reason lurking behind why Rachel killed herself and our sons. I tell myself that knowing the truth would make a difference, would help me move on. But there’s no way to tell if it would really help anything at all.
I put the photos back in the wallet, slide it into his pocket.
On his phone, I check the last ten numbers called and received. Since I have nothing to write with, I record them on my own phone, typing them into the notepad. When I’m done, I return Banner’s phone to his pocket as well.
The last thing I find is a crumpled sheet of paper with a seemingly random series of sixteen numbers, upper- and lowercase letters, and punctuation marks: G8&p{40X9!qx5%8Y
All I can think of is that it’s a password or some kind of access code. I record it in my phone’s notepad as well, then stuff the scrap of paper back into his jeans pocket again.
The rain is picking up now, and I’m anxious to see if Dr. Tanbyrn has awakened — and to find out if anyone else might’ve been trapped in that fire.
All around me the forest looks the same, so as I navigate through the mist, I snap off twigs at regular intervals to mark the way so I’ll be able to lead the police back to Banner’s body.