The pick up, p.12
The Pick-Up, page 12
“Fuck,” Hanna shouted, holding her fist back for another punch.
Not taking a chance, she pressed her finger to the pulse in his neck. She must have crushed his windpipe and suffocated him. Vlad was dead.
Chapter 30
Vlad’s gun in her hand and her clothes and skin stained with sweaty dirt. Hanna stumble-ran on wasted legs back to the house. She stopped at the back door and listened. No sounds came from the house. Did Matilda hear Vlad’s screams? If she did she wasn’t pacing in the kitchen worried about him or peeking out the same door for signs of life.
Hanna cautiously stepped into the kitchen and held the gun with both hands, aimed low. She rushed to the wall next to the threshold that led to the living room and pressed against it.
“Look at you,” Matilda said. “I have never met such a pathetic little shit in my life. You just lay there playing possum.”
Lay?
Hanna knelt and peeked into the room. Kate’s head wasn’t sticking out from the couch anymore. Maybe she was on the floor in front of it. Did Matilda pull her out? Beat her out of it? From the sound of it, Kate was still responsive. Matilda, who stood at the end of the couch, looking down, and holding her gun, seemed infuriated.
“Even when you try to be a boy, you don’t pretend to have any balls,” Matilda said. “Not like my Vlad.” She smirked. “He’s a real man. He could teach you a thing or two. Now don’t get the wrong idea. We don’t need some kid tagging along. We only wanted to use you for one night back at that hotel. Use you like trash. A toy. No, we wouldn’t have taken you along. Kids ruin relationships. Also, we don’t want to be pushing you around in a wheelchair. You’re halfway to dead. Be a shame not to finish you off.”
Straightening her legs and taking a few deep breaths, Hanna brought the weapon up and tightened her grip. She never fancied herself a sharpshooter but she felt she could do this.
“C’mon,” Matilda shouted. “Say something!”
Hanna revealed herself in the threshold, aimed at Matilda, and squeezed the trigger. The other woman glanced up at Hanna as the bullet left the gun. Her eyes wide and confused, she jerked to the side. The woman wasn’t fast enough. The bullet still hit its target but plunged into her shoulder instead of center. Matilda spun and fell.
Hanna ran to the other side of the couch. Kate was on the floor, on her side. Appearing dead with her eyes open. Matilda, on her knees, her back to Hanna, held her shoulder wound. Matilda’s gun wasn’t around. It could still be in her hand behind the wounded shoulder.
“Put your hands up,” Hanna said, inching her way around the couch, getting a better view of the other woman. “Let’s go. Show ‘em to me.”
Matilda glanced at Hanna and revealed the fear in her eyes. It caught Hanna off guard. She had no idea the woman was capable of it.
“Where’s my Vlad?”
“You want to join him?” Hanna asked. “C’mon. Hands where I can see them.”
Matilda panted. Anger, no, rage replaced the fear. Her face twisted under strands of fake blond hair. Her body shivered, neared explosion.
“Where is my Vlad?” she screeched.
“Show me your hands!”
Matilda screamed, leapt to her feet, and charged her. Hanna squeezed the trigger. The bullet missed the middle-aged woman and landed in the wall next to one of the front windows. Matilda collided with Hanna. They slammed to the floor. Matilda straddled Hanna. The gun flew from Hanna’s hand and slid closer to the kitchen, way out of her reach.
“Where is my Vlad?” Matilda screamed as she pounded at Hanna’s face. The Hanna’s automatic was still in Matilda’s hand as it cracked against her features. “What have you done to him!”
Hanna, each attack pushing her brain closer and closer to shutdown, held her weakened hands up and tried to block the fists. Matilda was too fast. Too violent. Too passionate. Hanna couldn’t catch up to her, let alone think, and suffered the metal pounding her face and the nails scratching her skin.
“Where is he?” Matilda bellowed, using her whole body to push the words out.
Hanna drooled blood, trying not to choke on the tooth that teased the back of her throat. With her tongue bit and bleeding, there was no way she could answer her now.
Hanna’s silence infuriated Matilda even more. She gripped Hanna’s gun with two hands and shoved the barrel into her broken mouth. Staring at her with insane, wild eyes, Matilda screamed.
A bullet plunged into Matilda’s chest. Surprise consumed her face. Another pierced her neck. Her arms went back, taking the gun out of Hanna’s mouth. She looked up at the shooter. Kate, on her knees and holding Vlad’s gun. Her face passive, her mind in a trance. The teen fired another into Matilda’s collarbone. That one pushed her off Hanna.
Hanna, on her back, inch-wormed away from the woman. She had no idea who shot her, too focused on creating distance from the psycho woman.
Matilda, on her side, wheezed, gasped, fought to pull air into her lungs as the blood slopped from her mouth. Her eyes connected with Kate’s who stood a few feet away. The girl aimed at Matilda, an unemotional statue.
Using her whole body, Matilda inhaled, gurgled, through the obstructions but she never exhaled. Instead, she shivered and her eyes glazed over. Her heart stopped and she finally reunited with Vlad.
Chapter 31
Hanna rested on the floor. Silence and death filled the air. The scent of blood laced with shit oozed from Matilda’s body. Hanna’s eyes fought to stay awake even though she wouldn’t mind falling asleep. At this point, she felt she could sleep anywhere.
The sound of the gun thumping the floor made her jerk. Kate knelt beside her. Her face still in a trance, unemotional, undisturbed.
“Are you okay?” Hanna croaked, managing to form words with her battered tongue.
Kate slid onto her side and curled up against her. Hanna raised her arm and took the girl in close. Kate shivered against her.
“We have to get up,” Hanna rasped. “But I’m so fucking tired. We have to make sure there’s no trace of us here. Then find a phone and let the cops know about the couple. Right?”
Hanna wasn’t positive but she might have felt Kate nod against her shoulder. Hanna pressed her nose to the top of the girl’s head and inhaled. The girl’s perfumed shampoo was not at all weakened by the sweat that coated the scalp.
“So fucking tired,” Hanna whispered.
“Then what do we do?” Kate asked, her voice so small.
Hanna smiled, glad for the sign of life.
“Then we go home.”
“We?” Kate asked in monotone.
“We,” Hanna said. “Me and you. Back to Iowa.”
Kate hugged Hanna. Hanna smiled against her scalp.
“In five minutes, I’ll get up,” Hanna said. “I promise.”
“Okay,” Kate whispered. “Okay.”
March 2021
Bonus!
Two short Hanna Posner crime stories.
By The Neck
At the Star Quality Motel on Route 9, Hanna Posner returned with her can of soda to her room. Every mid-morning she ventured out to experience the weather and check for cops in places she couldn’t see from the room window. This time, instead of her empty room, she found a dead body.
Frozen as the door closed behind her, she squeezed the can and wondered if she entered the wrong room. No. Her open bag filled with over-flowing clothes was still on one of the single beds. The body on the other.
She placed the can with water bottles and snacks on the small table by the curtained picture window, grabbed the heavy wooden chair, and dragged it to the bathroom. She positioned the chair under the industrial-tiled ceiling and stood on it. Using the light on her cell phone, she peeked into the roof and found the merchandise, still sealed in its 12 X 6-inch cardboard box.
Returning everything back in its place, Hanna stood over the woman’s body. It appeared to be around her age, thirty-four, with auburn hair and the remnants of a tail at the back of the head. She wore a short skirt, fishnets, a black cotton shirt, and a puffy, dark green winter jacket. Hanna searched the
woman’s pockets and found nothing inside them. Not even a used gum wrapper. But she noticed the purple bruise wrapped around the woman’s neck.
“What the hell?”
Hanna backed away and checked her phone for messages as if the woman’s identity was there on the screen. No messages. The last one from Bagley who arranged the pick-up for the merchandise, a date three days away from now.
A knock at the door snapped Hanna out of her trance.
“Housekeeping,” a woman’s voice shouted.
The Do Not Disturb sign hung off the inside doorknob.
“Crap,” Hanna whispered.
Another knock.
Hanna grabbed one end of the comforter and flipped it over the body. She then tucked the arm under it, covering the whole thing.
The door opened. Hanna rushed over. The door hit her as she blocked the view to the room.
“Oh,” the maid, a woman in her fifties with blond hair like Hanna’s but dyed and slightly curly. “I didn’t know you were in here.”
“I am,” Hanna said. “I don’t need my room made up.”
The maid rolled her eyes and huffed.
“It’s been three days, Ms,” she checked the clipboard hanging off her cleaning cart, “Ms. Petit and I haven’t cleaned your bathroom or supplied fresh towels.”
“I’m clean and I don’t need them.”
“I swear, I won’t be a minute and I won’t bother you.”
She’d probably be five minutes and that’s five too many.
“No. I’m fine.”
Hanna, pushing at the maid, closed the door.
“I still have other rooms to do,” she said. “If you change your mind hang the sign for service on your door.”
Hanna peeked out the door hole. The maid shrugged, shook her head, and pushed her cart down the aisle to the next room.
Hanna sat in the chair, tapped her foot, and stared at the lump on the bed. No way she could call the cops. Not with the merchandise hidden in the bathroom wall. Not with her fake ID. And definitely not with her record. The body was not worth risking another ten years or more in jail. Nor was she worth a bullet in the head from Bagley for screwing up this simple job.
She was only out for a few minutes. The machines were in a kiosk next to the hotel office. Was it possible for someone to break in and drop it on the bed?
Hanna checked outside through the window and then opened the door. No scratch marks on the lock or the outer door. Someone could have used a magnetic pick. But that seemed too fancy for some psycho who killed a truck stop prostitute and had to dump the body on the fly. Could it have been someone with a key? A former guest? An employee?
She closed the door and sat back down. It was not important how it got in her room. What pressed harder was how to get it out before the buyer came for the merchandise.
The motel exploded to life around 9 PM. The parking lot and rooms filled with people in sports jerseys and short skirts carrying beer and snack bags. Some kind of football event at the local stadium? Hanna had no idea and no plans to ask. She just hoped that they would settle down later in the night so she could sneak the body out to the dumpster or the woods in the back.
For the next three hours, she munched on animal crackers and listened to the people laughing and shouting and saying the stupidest things she ever heard from both sides of the room and outside the picture window. She finally found salvation in the bathroom where she lounged in the tub and hoped to keep her eyes open before the party ended.
By 2:32 AM she fell asleep and the party continued on.
A pounding on the door woke Hanna up from the bathtub. She broke out of the haze with a headache and scrambled out. No way that could be the buyer. The sun shined through the window and blinded her. They were expected at night.
“Ms. Petit,” a husky male voice said. “Are you in? Please open the door.”
Hanna crossed the motel room and grabbed the doorknob. The body was still covered on the bed, filling the room with a rank odor.
“I’m not decent,” Hanna shouted. “Don’t come in.”
“Ms. Petit, we need to clean your room,” he said.
She peeked out the door hole. The manager stood with his hands hanging off his belt, dressed in a polo shirt and khaki pants that contrasted with his three days of stubble and ruffled curly hair on the way to gray.
“I don’t need my room cleaned,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Ms. Petit, I am required by law to clean your room. It affects the whole motel. God forbid there are bedbugs in there.” Hanna shook her head and smiled. She never heard of such law and doubted there was one, hence why bedbugs were so popular in places like this.
“Are you also required by law to have your guests party all night into the morning, preventing others from getting any sleep?” she asked.
“I am sorry about that,” he said. “They do this every Super Bowl season.”
“If you can’t handle it, then maybe I should call the cops.”
“Yes, by all means. Call the cops. That would help me.”
Hanna frowned. Not the answer she expected.
“I have to get dressed now,” she said.
“And then the maid can come in and clean the room?”
“No. I have too much work to suffer an interruption.” Hanna slipped on the door bar and turned the top lock. “I’d appreciate if you stopped bothering me the rest of my stay here.”
He huffed, shook his head, and bit his lip. Hanna heard him mumble to someone off to the side, probably the maid, and then walked off.
“Dork,” Hanna said.
Despite the party happening again in all the rooms around her, Hanna heard the knock on the door at midnight. The buyer was on time and not how she expected. A white woman in her early sixties wearing black leggings and a black-leather, biker jacket. Her red hair in long dreads and her face covered with too much make-up.
“Your name again?” the buyer asked.
“Hanna. Yours?”
“Shan.”
The sexless name Hanna expected.
“Come on in.”
Shan entered, her hands in her jacket pockets, and glanced around.
“What’s with the white trash party?” she asked grabbing one of the water bottles off the table.
“Football geeks,” Hanna said, closing and locking the door. Shan unscrewed the top and drank the bottle. “Help yourself to water.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Mind if we do this fast? I got plans tonight.”
“Superbowl party?”
“Ha ha. Cute.”
“It’s in the bathroom.”
“Not wet, I hope.”
“I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”
Leaving the bathroom door open, Hanna grabbed the box off the floor behind the door. From where Shan was at, she shouldn’t see the body still wrapped in the comforter in the tub. To cover the smell, Hanna also sealed the shower curtain around it and left the window open. It helped little.
Hanna returned with the box.
Shan suddenly gasped, dropped the open bottle, and held her nose.
“God damn. What is that smell?”
Hanna placed the package on the table and wondered if she had been getting used to the odor.
“Me. Been here all week and kept the maid out.”
“You better go see a doctor, honey.”
Hanna nodded. Shan took out the brick of cash wrapped in an enveloped sealed heavy with packing tape from her inner jacket, placed it on the table, and picked up the box.
“Do I need to count it,” Hanna asked.
“Please. Like I would do that to Bagley.”
Hanna nodded. No one cheated Bagley.
Shan let herself out of the room, no good-bye or any other word. Hanna stuffed the money brick in her duffle, under the clothes, and then texted Bagley that all was set.
Meet at Gary’s at 6 AM, he texted back.
“I hope so,” she whispered.
At 2 AM the party was still going on. Hanna waited for the animals to settle down. She hoped they would do it before sunrise. Until then she was packed and ready.
While pacing the room, Hanna picked up the empty water bottle Shan dropped on the floor and noticed something off about the wet gray carpet. A dark line divided the damp spot. She pinched an edge, lifted it up, and felt the weight. The 4X4-foot flap was attached to a metal door that opened up.
“Son of a bitch.”
Motels like these usually didn’t have a basement. If it did, why was there a trap door hidden in her room? In all the rooms?
Patting her butt and verifying her knife was still there, Hanna opened the door all the way and peeked into the darkness. A five-foot drop onto a dirt floor. The only light coming from her room. Cell phone in hand, she landed in the hole, puffing up a cloud of dirt, and turned on the cell flashlight. The jagged walls of Earth surrounded her, the width matching the height. Perfect size for someone to drag a body through and leave in the room while she was out.
Determined and peeved, Hanna walked down the tunnel. The only sign of life was a few grubs and roaches, all of which met her nonplussed. She aimed the light at the ceiling and found three more trap doors, about a half a yard between each one.
Turning off her light, she listened for any sounds above from the last door. She expected silence but one could never be sure in a place that supplied your room with a dead hooker.
Hanna reached up and, with her fingertips, pushed the door. It lifted freely. No locks. No carpet or furniture covered it. She jumped and pushed the door harder. It flew up and the dim light on the other side shined down on her. Her phone in her pocket and hands-free, she jumped again, grabbed the edges, and pulled herself up.
