Clark registered a flash of movement to his left. He turned in time to see a very large black man with long dreadlocks barreling at him from the open bathroom door fifteen feet away. Focused as he was on Palmetto, the attack caught Clark flatfooted, driving him against a wall and knocking the wind from his lungs. Clark attempted to bring the sap into play, but the man was too close, robbing the swing of any power.
The man was at least forty years younger — though with Clark’s balaclava, he hadn’t figured that out. What he did know was that he was a half a head taller than Clark.
Clark exhaled quickly, relaxing his paralyzed diaphragm. He couldn’t do anything about the searing pain in his ribs.
“You messed up!” the man growled, stepping back to have a good look at the little man he was about to crush. “Parrot is about to put a chop on you that you never gonna forget!”
Clark stopped listening when he heard this guy was Parrot. The name had come up too many times — always in association with a bruised or broken girl. He’d read Blanca Limón’s statement, heard the stories about the brutal “choppings” this monster used to discipline his girls and keep them in line.
With his back to the girl on the bed, Clark feinted with his right hand, drawing the much larger man’s attention to the leather sap.
“Punk ass,” Parrot said, and chuckled. “I’m gonna take your little bat an—”
Clark wasted no time on words. Bounding forward, he drove the screwdriver straight up through the bottom of the big man’s jaw, shoving upward, aiming for the ceiling. The steel shaft of the screwdriver pierced Parrot’s tongue and impaled the soft palate at the back of his mouth. His teeth slammed together. His eyes flew open in shock. He made a vain attempt to grab at the screwdriver, but Clark batted his hand away with the sap. Clark pressed the attack, slamming the lead-filled sap into the man’s elbow as he fell.
Clark shot a quick glance toward a sound to his right and saw a black girl in her early teens peeking around the bathroom door. The fog of battle made it difficult to tell for sure, but Clark thought she had a bloody nose.
Parrot gurgled, trying to draw a breath around the screwdriver through his sinuses. Clark turned in time to see the man claw for a pistol in his waistband.
Enraged at the sight of a bleeding child, Clark bounded forward, kicking the handle of the screwdriver, driving the remainder of the shaft into the man’s brain with a sickening pop. Like his life, Parrot’s death was brutal, ugly, and loud, and it was over.
Clark spun, dropping the sap to the floor in favor of his .45. He needed to be sure Dorian Palmetto was still out of play. Palmetto wasn’t dead — but not for lack of effort on Clark’s part. He’d learned long before that knocking someone silly wasn’t all that difficult so long as the possibility of killing them in the process wasn’t taken off the table. Palmetto’s eyes were closed and a thin trickle of blood seeped from his ear, but unlike Parrot, he was still breathing. The girl on the bed was either out cold or pretending to be.
Clark secured Palmetto’s Glock in his waistband, and then, his own .45 held at low ready, inched sideways to bring the bathroom into view. Cutting the pie.
He found the black girl huddled alone on the floor beside the tub. Blood soaked through a bath towel she’d wrapped around her naked shoulders. Clark holstered the pistol and held up both hands.
“I’m a friend,” he said.
The girl hugged her knees to her chest, rocking back and forth, eyes clenched shut.
Clark shot a peek around the corner to make sure Palmetto and the girl were still out. They were, so he squatted down to be more or less on the same level as the cowering girl.
“What’s your name?”
She said nothing.
“Look.” Clark took a deep breath. He was hell at being mean. Tenderness was a little more difficult, so he decided he’d just be honest, and as kind as he knew how to be. “These men aren’t going to hurt you anymore. Let’s get you some clothes.”
Clark backed out of the bathroom, not wanting to pressure someone who was already shattered. A few moments later, he had both Palmetto’s and the purple-haired girl’s hands zip-tied behind their backs. He suspected this one was still pretending to be unconscious, but she was an unknown entity, so he decided to leave her restrained until she came to.
Technically, Clark was holding the girl against her will, but compared to the other crimes he’d committed — and those he intended to commit in the very near future — kidnapping a juvenile for her own safety seemed like a minor offense.
A quiet voice drew Clark’s attention back to the bathroom door.
“Jo,” the girl said. “My name’s Jo.”
She stared, eyes locked on the screwdriver jutting like a gruesome goatee from under Parrot’s chin.
“Hi, Jo,” Clark said softly. He moved quickly to cover the dead man with a sheet and then held the heavier bedspread out for the girl. The blood-soaked towel slipped off her shoulders as she took it, revealing an angry burn on her neck. A brand.
“You want to call your mom?” he asked softly.
“My mom’s dead,” the girl said. Her chin quivered as she spoke.
“Your dad?”
The girl shook her head. “Oh, hell no!” she said, sounding heartbreakingly like someone twice her age.
“The police, then,” Clark said.
Adrenaline from the fight began to ebb, leaving him suddenly sore and exhausted. His eyes misted over as he imagined the horrors the poor kid must have endured.
“Are you a policeman?” the girl asked.
“Not exactly.”
“The police stopped Parrot’s car twice, you know,” Jo said. “But they was always lookin’ for drugs.” She closed her eyes, starting to tremble at the memory. “Parrot, he just hug me in close to him and say in my ear, ‘You my drugs, Jo. You my drugs.’ Them cops didn’t ever even notice me, I don’t believe. Maybe they think I was his daughter or somethin’.”
Clark put the back of a hand to his eye, wiping away a tear, and realized he still had the black balaclava pulled over his head. “Don’t be scared.”
Jo shook her head. “You ain’t scary, mister,” she said. “Nobody looked at me and cried in an awful long time. Nobody at all…”
Jo went into the bathroom and put on a pair of shorts and a loose T-shirt while Clark examined the camera and computer setup.
By the time she came out, he had Dorian sitting upright, hands behind his back, a piece of duct tape across his mouth. On the other side of the bed, as far away as humanly possible without falling off, the purple-haired girl breathed peacefully, fear or embarrassment making her keep up the unconscious act.
“You like music?” Clark asked.
Jo nodded.
He’d pulled up some music his grandson liked on his cell phone and connected the earphones he carried for backup communication with other Campus members.
“How about… Imagine Dragons… or… Maroon 5?” In truth, Clark was just reading off a playlist. He had no idea what either of the bands sounded like, but if his grandson liked them, maybe the girl would, too. He imagined she hadn’t gotten to make a choice about anything in some time.
Jo almost smiled.
Clark pulled the only chair in the room away from the wall.
“How about you listen to the music,” he said. “I have some things I need to talk over with Dorian.”
Clark put the purple-haired girl’s earbuds back in her ears. Hopefully, her music would blot out what was about to happen. He was beginning to fear that something might be physically wrong with her, but she opened one eye, chickenlike, and shot a quick look at him before slamming it back shut again.
Across the room, Jo slumped low in the chair, suddenly a teenager again. She looked up suddenly and took out one earbud to give Clark a quizzical look. Her voice was calm now, matter-of-fact.