He thinks of Andy Paulson, of realizing that he was capable of following through on his threat. Capable, yes, but he did not do it. This, he may follow through on. But even knowing what it will make him, he believes the price will be worth paying. He can’t be certain until he has actually paid the price, and held what he purchased in his hand, but he believes it will be.
Car tires crunch on gravel outside. An engine goes silent. A door swings open and then slams shut. Footsteps come nearer, first on gravel and then on the steps outside the door. The doorknob rattles. The front door of the mobile home swings open and a shadow enters.
Ian grabs the hatchet by the handle and gets to his feet. He turns the blunt edge of the hatchet forward and swings it down. It hits the shadow on the side of the head. A soft thunk, like someone tapping a melon to check ripeness.
The shadow collapses to the floor with a dumb grunt.
Ian reaches out to the wall and finds the light switch and flips it. An overhead light comes on. The light is in a ceiling fan. The fan’s blades spin lazily. Ian looks down at Donald. He’s lying unconscious on dirty green carpet, bleeding from a split in the skin just inside the hairline behind the left temple. He smells of cheap beer. Several flattened cardboard boxes he carried in are lying beneath him. Apparently he was planning on packing when he got home, packing and leaving town, most likely. That won’t be happening now.
Ian sets the hatchet down on an end table and gets to work.
He’s sitting in an easy chair watching TV when, thirty minutes later, the first groans escape Donald’s throat. He picks up the remote from the arm of the chair and hits the power button. The sound of a sitcom laugh track is cut off and the screen goes blank as tomorrow. He looks over at Donald. He is naked, hands and feet taped to a wooden chair. His head hangs down, chin resting on his chest. A bit of drool hangs from his mouth and drips upon his hairy belly. His greasy hair hangs down from his head. Blood has dripped from his hairline, run down the side of his face, and begun to dry to brown. He groans a second time, lifts a head he momentarily can’t seem to hold steady, finally does manage to hold it upright, and looks around. His face is twisted with pain and confusion. After a moment, his eyes meet Ian’s.
‘Donald.’
‘What the fuck are you doing h-’
But the last word catches in his throat, the question apparently no longer of concern now that he realizes he can move neither his arms nor his legs. He looks down at his wrists. They are held in place by duct tape. As are his legs. He is still a moment. Then he shakes violently in the chair, trying to pull himself loose. His face purples in concentration and exertion, his hands form fists, his toes curl. He cannot get loose. His body relaxes again and his chest heaves. He swallows and looks at Ian.
‘So what do you want?’ After that display of violence his voice is surprisingly calm.
‘A man after my own heart,’ Ian says. ‘Skip the chit-chat. How about that weather, did you hear what Cora did to an eggplant at Albertsons, John Roberts has been arrested again. I want information.’
‘What?’
‘Information. You know what that means?’
‘Go to hell.’
‘If there is one, I suspect you’ll get there first.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Where’s your brother headed?’
‘What?’
‘Your brother. Henry Dean.’
Ian pushes himself up to his feet, feeling lightheaded but trying not to show it. The pain is tremendous, the pain-killers pumped into him at the hospital finally wearing off. He stands motionless a moment, thinking he may be sick. He isn’t.
Once he’s sure of himself he picks up the hatchet from the end table on which he set it and walks toward Donald. He simply lets it hang from his fist.
Donald looks from the hatchet to Ian.
‘You can’t do anything with that.’
‘No?’
Donald smiles, shaking his head.
‘And why is that?’
‘You’re the police.’
‘I’m just a dispatcher these days.’
‘You still can’t-’
‘There may be consequences, but I can do whatever I want, Donald, because those come later, and right here, right now, tonight, it’s just you and me alone with an axe.’
Donald swallows, the smile gone. ‘I don’t know anything.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘But I don’t know-’
Ian sets the hatchet blade down on Donald’s bare leg. Donald flinches. It must be cold. Ian drags it gently across the pale skin from the inside of his thigh to his knee. It’s not quite sharp enough to draw blood from pressure of its own weight, but it draws a thin pink line across the flesh.
‘Thing is,’ Ian says, ‘what you know and what you don’t know-that’s less important than what I think you know. Less important for you, I mean. You may be telling the truth right now, Donald. It’s possible. But I don’t believe it. And what I believe is what matters. Again, it’s what matters for you. Because I’m going to take you apart one piece at a time until I get the information I want. The information I believe you’re hiding from me in that thick fucking noggin of yours. Do we understand each other?’
Donald licks his lips. They’re dry and chapped. He looks from the hatchet to Ian’s eyes. Ian looks back. He can tell Donald is sizing up the situation, deciding what he will say, and Ian hopes, for Donald’s sake and his own, that the man says the right thing.
Instead what he says is, ‘Maybe I don’t believe you either. Maybe I think all you got is talk, and maybe talk don’t intimidate me.’
‘Questioning my sincerity right now would be a mistake, Donald.’
‘You’re lying. You don’t have the sack to-’
Ian slams the hatchet down into the floor, and lets go of it. It stays there at an angle, held by the wood into which it’s been imbedded.
Ian watches Donald’s face. For a moment he does not seem to realize what’s happened. Then he looks down at the floor. The hatchet’s blade is stuck between Donald’s right foot and his two small toes. The small toes lie on the green carpet looking like grapes that have been hiding under the couch for the last six months, shriveled and ancient, practically yellow raisins. Then the blood begins to flow.
Donald’s breathing gets strange and heavy. He does not scream, but his breathing gets labored and a series of groans escapes him, and he looks at his foot unbelievingly.
‘You can’t do that!’
‘Do what?’
‘You just cut off my fucking toes!’
‘I was just trying for the pinky toe. Hatchet isn’t exactly a precision tool.’
‘Put them back. You can’t fucking do that. You’re the police.’
‘That’s the kind of thinking that’s going to get you into trouble tonight, Donald. You need to understand that I can do whatever I want, and you need to understand that I will.’
‘I don’t. .’
He closes his eyes. He breathes in and out.
Ian watches him, feeling strangely detached from everything that is happening. There have been times when merely seeing an old man struggle down the sidewalk while pushing a walker in front of him has broken his heart: thoughts of the man sitting alone at some cockroach-infested diner eating a three-dollar bowl of soup, the only dinner he can afford on his pension; the pictures of his dead wife that surely litter the small house in which he lives; the house itself in disrepair; the lonesome bed; the going to sleep without knowing if tomorrow will come; the hope that it does not. Nothing more than a liver-spotted hand gripping a walker has broken his heart, but here he is staring down at fear welling in a man’s eyes and he feels nothing but contempt. Contempt and hatred. This man knows where his daughter is and he’s not talking.