Daniel curses, the toilet paper dispenser barely audible over the babble of running water and rushing air. The blackness is complete except for a razorthin line of light along the base of the door.
Luther stands beside the light switch stroking himself.
He inhales deeply, at home in darkness.
Daniel’s toilet flushes and as the zipper on his jeans ascends Luther grips the knife.
He would have preferred to spread Daniel’s brains across the wall with a Louisville Slugger, one judicious thwack. But the blade will do. In the car he settled on a name for his knife: Zig, short for Ziegler, Andrew Thomas’s middle name.
Luther hears the creak of the stall door swinging open.
Hesitant footsteps approach and eddies of Daniel’s cologne sweep over him.
He feels Daniel beside him now, the clerk’s hand on the cinderblock wall, groping for the light switch.
The knife feels coldly sublime in his palm.
Suddenly the restroom is awash in hard fluorescent light.
Daniel’s eyes register first bewilderment, then terror.
The blade moving, two graceful strokes—one to silence, one to open.
Daniel sits in a warm expanding puddle, fingering the gorge in his abdomen, unable to make utterance.
“Now you sit there and think about what customer service means.”
Luther reenters the stall and quickly dresses.
Then he hits the light and is out the door, one more cairn for this trail he’s blazing.
18
UPON regaining consciousness, Karen’s first thought was that she was no longer in the trunk. Though she couldn’t see, her present blindness owed to the blindfold tied around her head. She felt a cold wind in her face and an erratic source of light struggled through the oily-smelling cloth that masked her eyes.
Karen did not remember being moved. For all she knew she was dreaming again though the chill metal against her cheek seemed convincingly real. She tried to move but could not, her hands and feet now bound with thick rope. The numbing grogginess of thirst weighed down her head.
Footsteps approached, the tip of a boot now inches from her face. She smelled the grass and dirt that clung to it—raw and earthy.
“You’re conscious, I see.”
The voice contained no reverberation. She was outside.
“Where am I? Please take off the blindfold.”
“We better leave that on for now. I tell you, you’re a heavy gal. If I sound winded, it’s because I just carried you up two hundred fourteen steps.”
A prickling crawled through Karen’s spine. “Where is this?” she asked.
“Don’t you see the light? Even through the blindfold I don’t know how you could miss it.”
“I don’t under—”
“That light is magnified by a First Order Fresnel Lens, operational since October First, Eighteen Seventy-two. Karen, let me quell your fear.” The man sat down beside her. “I brought you here to let you go.” Karen began to cry, filling with the purest relief. “But I have to hold on to the Widow Lancing. You remember her from the trunk?”