“No, no, no, no!” Jordan shouted. But the man didn’t even glance his way. He pulled something out from the back of his sweater and casually tossed it on the dock. Then he lifted Jordan’s mother in his arms, turned, and carried her up the back lawn toward the driveway at the side of the house. He looked like a groom, carrying his limp bride toward a threshold. They disappeared behind the hedges bordering the driveway.
Jordan was crying. He was so close to the dock, but not quite there yet.
By the time the kayak rammed into the dock pilings, he heard a car revving up and tires screeching. There was no time to secure the small craft. The kayak almost tipped over as Jordan jumped out of it. Staggering onto the dock, he shed the helmet and life vest. He spotted his mother’s sunglasses on the wooden planks and, beside them, something the man had left: a rubbery old Kewpie doll of a smiling sailor boy.
Jordan snatched up his mother’s sunglasses. There was something inside him that thought he might be able to give them back to her.
He ran up the sloped backyard as fast as he could, toward the driveway at the side of the house. But the only car he saw there was his mother’s.
Racing inside the house, he went for the phone in the kitchen, the same one his mother had used the night before to call the police. But when he took the receiver off its cradle, there was no dial tone. He cried out in frustration, then bolted upstairs to her bedroom and tried the phone on her nightstand. It was dead, too.
Panic-stricken, Jordan scurried back down the stairs and flung the front door open. Rushing outside, he saw the phone line at the side of the house was cut.
The cabin on Cedar Crest Way had no phone. Their neighbor on the bay was actually closer, but not by any paved road or path. It was a mile through a muddy, overgrown forest on the water’s edge. Jordan didn’t even know if they had a phone. But he had to try.
He plunged into the thicket, hoping to find a path, but it was as if no one had ever ventured through those dense woods before. Jordan kept looking through the trees at the bay to get his sense of direction. He tried to run along the water’s edge, but it was just sludge that swallowed up his feet—up to his ankles. Racing through those impenetrable, muddy woods, he thought he might never find the neighbor’s house. All the while, he couldn’t stop crying. He couldn’t stop thinking about what that horrible man might be doing to his mother.
It seemed like forever, but eventually, the ground beneath his feet became harder, and the forest thinned out. Jordan stumbled upon a gravel road and followed it to a frame-style house with big picture windows and a deck across the second floor. Sitting on a hill, surrounded by trees, it looked out at the bay. Jordan didn’t see a car in the carport by the house. Staggering up to the front door, he banged on it. His face and hands were riddled with scratches. Bay water, mud, and his own urine soiled his pants.
No one came to the door. He started screaming and pounding harder and harder.
The rest was a blur. Jordan didn’t remember cutting his hand when he broke a window in the back of the house and climbed inside. He had no recollection of phoning the police. And he could only take their word for it when they said they found him on the front stoop of the empty house. They said he was sobbing, half-covered in mud, and in his bleeding hand he held a pair of sunglasses.
They found his mother thirty-six hours later.
The casket remained closed at her wake. So Jordan’s last glimpse of his mother had been from a distance, when he’d watched her executioner carrying her away.
And despite some false alarms, he never saw that man again—until today.
“Do you remember my mother, Allen?” Jordan asked, pressing the gun against his silver-grey temple. “Or have you forgotten her, after all the others you’ve killed?”
Contorted in that awkward position inside the small trunk, Allen Meeker could only respond with a confused, pathetic whimper. He seemed to be choking on the rolled-up handkerchief in his mouth.
Jordan reached for the gag. “Go ahead and scream all you want,” he said. “There’s no one around to hear you.”
He carefully pried the handkerchief from his captive’s mouth.
Allen Meeker let out a raspy sigh. “I won’t scream,” he whispered. “I—” But he couldn’t finish. He started coughing. His face became even redder. Every time he tried to take a breath or talk, he choked and began hacking all over again.
Jordan gave the rope around his wrists a tug, just to make sure it was still tight. Then he went around to the driver’s door and found a half-full bottle of Evian on the floor of the backseat. Returning to his captive, Jordan tossed the bottle into the trunk and helped him turn around to a sitting position. He kept the gun on him the whole time, but the man didn’t seem to notice. He was still coughing uncontrollably.
Jordan stepped back to unscrew the water bottle cap. That took two hands, and he didn’t want to be anywhere near his prisoner—not even for a few seconds—unless he had the gun ready. Once he opened the bottle, he came in closer again with the gun trained on Meeker. He put the bottle to the choking man’s lips. Meeker gagged on the first gulp, but then drank greedily. Jordan had recently seen someone lift their dog up to a drinking fountain in the park, and that was how Allen Meeker guzzled this water. It dripped from his mouth and cascaded along his neck, but he kept swigging it down.
Meeker finally turned his head slightly, and Jordan pulled the bottle away. “Please,” he gasped. “Could you— could you splash some on my face? I’m burning up.”
“I can’t, you drank it all,” Jordan replied, frowning.
“Listen, if you want money, you can—you can take my wallet,” the man said, still trying to catch his breath without coughing. His voice was hoarse and gravelly. “There’s only—only about a hundred bucks—”
“I already have your wallet,” Jordan interrupted. He was thinking about his mother, begging the man to take her purse.
“You can have my car,” Meeker said, closing his eyes in a pained way. “It’s a BMW; it’s nice. The keys are in my pocket.”
“No, they’re not. I took them and drove your car into a swamp.”
Meeker gaped at him. “Are you fucking crazy? Good God, what’s wrong with you? Why are you doing this?”
“Why did you kill my mother?” Jordan quickly retorted. He stuck the end of the gun barrel under the man’s chin, then grabbed him by the arm and hoisted him toward the edge of the trunk.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Meeker protested. “If you—if you really think I’ve killed someone, why don’t you call the police? I mean it, please, take me to the police station! I have people worried about me, my fiancee and her little boy.” Even with Jordan pulling him, he had difficultly climbing out of the trunk. “What you’re doing here is insane,” he continued. “You’re just getting yourself into a lot of trouble. Believe me—you’re making a horrible mistake.”
“Is that a threat?”
“God, no,” he replied. “Listen, I’m sorry about your mother, but—but I don’t even know who she is….” He faltered once his feet hit the driveway. “Jesus, my legs are cramped up,” he sniveled, leaning against Jordan. “I’m sorry….”
Meeker staggered back like he was about to fall, but then all at once, he slammed his body into Jordan’s, full force.
The gun flew out of Jordan’s hand. He reeled back and landed on the paved driveway. He fell on his ass, and it hurt. But he’d encountered much worse during a normal lacrosse practice. Jordan sprung back to his feet and leapt for the gun.
Allen Meeker obviously had no use for it right now. He scurried up the driveway—in the other direction. “HELP ME!” he screamed. “SOMEBODY HELP ME! GET THE POLICE….”
He must not have been completely lying about his legs, because he hobbled as he ran. Then his feet suddenly seemed to give out from under him. He slid to one side. With his hands tied behind him, there was no way to break his fall. He went crashing down into some bushes along the driveway. He cried out in pain and tried to roll over.
Jordan slowly walked over to him, the gun drawn.
Defeated, Allen Meeker gazed up at him from amid the crushed bushes. Scratch marks and the bloody gash on his cheek from the earlier fall marred his handsome face. Tears mingled with the sweat running down from his brow. “Please…” he whispered.
“You say you don’t know who my mother was?” Jordan asked, standing over him. “Haven’t you figured it out
