"A magnum slug," I said. "From your Winchester, you freak."
"That's right," the boy said. He took a step back. "I know about your woman. Amanda, right? Pretty hair, got that cute little birthmark under her neck. I know how she saved your life, Henry. Funny, she keeps your ass out of the ground and all you do is keep bringing 'maggots' like me into her world.
What I'm wondering, Henry, is if her skin is that pretty on the inside. Rifles aren't the only things I know how to use pretty well. You don't get any smarter, we're going to find out what her skin looks like when we turn that girl inside out."
"Amanda," I breathed. "You go anywhere near her…"
"I could walk up to her on the street right now and stick a knife into her heart and you'd still be stuck here wriggling like a stupid fucking fish on a hook. If I go anywhere near her you can't do goddamn anything. "
The boy's face seemed to unwind, the tautness leaving it.
In other light it might have even looked kind.
"Amanda," he repeated. "Amanda Davies. Daughter of
Harriet and Lawrence Stein of St. Louis. I got her name from someone at your office, that newspaper you work for that's going down the drain. People there are awful free with information. I know where she works, I know what train she takes to get to her office in the morning so she can save all the little children whose mommies and daddies didn't love them enough. Kind of like you and Amanda, right?
"That's right, smart guy. So listen, Henry, you and me, we're on the same page, right? You can do all the storytelling you want, hell there must be a million stories out there in this big bad city. I'm asking nicely, stay away from this one. And as a token of my friendship, I'll make it a little easier on you."
The boy stepped around to where I was sitting. I saw something shiny, the glint of metal. He held a knife in his hands.
I tried to crane my neck but I couldn't see him as he leaned down and reached toward where my hands were bound.
I started bucking like crazy, but between my head and the bonds my strength was gone. I felt a hand clamp down on my right wrist, holding it to the floor. I jerked my shoulder and tried to free it, gritted my teeth and attempted to pull away.
Suddenly I felt a searing pain on my right hand and a shout escaped my lips as the blade sliced through my skin. I cried out again as the blade kept cutting, tearing through me for what seemed like hours. I felt hot blood dripping through my fingers, I bit my lips to keep from screaming.
Finally the blade stopped. The boy stood back up over me.
His hands and the blade were covered in my blood. I thought my heart was going to burst through my chest, the room fading away as blood leaked from my veins.
"Now I'm going to just use your bathroom, clean all this mess up and then I'll be on my way." He stepped away and I heard running water. The pain was unbearable, blood leaving my body with every heartbeat.
Then he came back. Squatted down. Pressed the tip of the knife against my chest, hard enough so I could feel the point digging in between two of my ribs. One small shove and he would pierce my heart.
"You have a lot to lose, Henry. Think about where you're going. Take one bad step," he said, before walking out the door, "and you'll know what bad means."
33
I sat still as the nurse sewed my hand back together. After sinking the blade into my flesh, the man had traced every finger, carving a gruesome glove on my palm. He hadn't severed any tendons, and he'd missed or purposefully ignored the major blood vessels in my wrist. He wanted me hurt. Not dead.
Curt Sheffield sat on a stool next to me, watching as the black threads closed the wounds. He winced every time the needle pierced my skin, which was slightly disconcerting since between the novocaine numbing my hand and the extrastrength aspirin for my head, I wouldn't have felt it if someone hit me with a two-by-four.
"Glad to know the boys in blue get squeamish at the sight of blood," I said to Curt.
"Blood? Uh-uh. I'm just wincing in sympathy 'cause you're gonna have one ugly-ass hand once those stitches come out." Curt looked at me, shaking his head as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
"Least I still have my looks."
"Yeah, right. I'd say you look like hell, but I don't want to hurt hell's feelings."
"Mmph," I replied, as another nurse placed an ice pack on my head and secured it with an Ace bandage.
"You're lucky Amanda came home when she did," Sheffield added. "Docs said if you lost any more blood they might have had to amputate the hand."
"They didn't really say that," I said. "Did they?"
"Nah, just jerking your chain."
"Please, just go away. I bet there are some strangers in the waiting room who'd find you just hilarious."
But Curt was right. Amanda had come home to try and make things right, only to find me passed out on the floor, my hand flayed open, blood everywhere. I couldn't bear to think what it must have felt like for her to see me like that. Because
I knew how I would feel if the tables were turned.
"Where is Amanda?" I asked. "Curt, is she here? Excuse me, Nurse? Are you sure you can't give me any more novocaine? I think it's wearing off." The look the nurse gave me confirmed that if she gave me any more novocaine I wouldn't feel anything for a long time. She kept on sewing.
"Amanda's waiting outside," Curt said. "Girl's all broken up, crying like she sprung a leak. Docs asked her to wait outside while they finished upholstering you."
"Christ," I muttered. There was a dull throbbing in my head, and my hand was stiff as a plank of wood. I watched as the stitches were sewn in, knowing they would undoubtedly leave one hell of an ugly scar.
"In the meantime," Curt said, "we have a security escort looking after Agnes Trimble. Our guy would have to be crazy or stupid to go after her now."
"He's definitely crazy," I said, "but not stupid. And he's not going to touch her. That was just a threat. He's killing people for a reason, and that doesn't involve spite."
"Nothing more dangerous in this world than a fool with a cause."
Prior to being loaded with painkiller, I'd managed to give a sketch artist the best description I could of my assailant. Of course, due to my being knocked silly and his bandanna, it could have been any tan young white guy in New York City.
The nurse began laying strips of adhesive tape over the sutures. I watched with detached curiosity, like it was somebody else's hand being sewn up. From the corner of my eye I saw Curt playing with a spool of stitching. He was threading it between his hands and wrapping it around his fingers.
"Those are absorbable stitches," the nurse said to Sheffield.
"What's that mean?"
"They're made from specially prepared beef and sheep intestine."
Curt smiled and gently placed the spool back on the table.
Once the nurse finished taping me up, she said, "Keep it dry and clean for twenty-four hours. You can bathe again in forty-eight hours, unless the wounds begin to bleed or you notice a discharge leaking through the adhesive. The tape should fall off on its own in about five days. You need to come back in ten days to have the sutures removed, unless you break a stitch during that time. But try not to. You also have a grade one concussion. You'll have a bad headache for a few days, but nothing that some extra-strength Tylenol shouldn't help.
If you still feel dizzy or disoriented after a week, or you find you can't remember certain things, come back immediately."
Sheffield looked concerned. "Gonna be awful hard to type with all that junk in your hand. Not to mention your brain floating around in your head." The nurse shot him a look.
"I think that was the idea," I said. "Make my job a little harder."
"I heard they've made some really good advances in voice recognition software," Curt added. "Or maybe you can hire a helper monkey or something."