Isolated Judgment Page 22

  “I guess it’s probably fifty-fifty,” Darren said. “Either she’s horrified about what he did, or she thinks it’s the most romantic thing in the world.”

  Issabella stooped and gathered several dishes off a rickety, banged-up coffee table.

  “I think those odds are a little optimistic.”

  “What are you doing?”

  Issabella looked down at her armload of dishes.

  “Nothing. Shut up. You’re the one who needs to answer that question, not me.”

  She returned to the sink and deposited the dishes into the water. She poked around in the cabinet under the sink until she found a yellow bottle of dish soap. While he settled back into one of the plastic chairs, she squirted a generous line of soap into the sink.

  “Izzy,” he said.

  “I know. Okay?”

  “You’re washing their dishes, Izzy. It’s happening. Right now. As I say these words.”

  She rolled her sleeves up to the elbow, stuck her tongue out at him and plunged her hands down into the water.

  “It’s a thing I have,” she said. “You know that. If I let them sit out, it’ll bug me. Like, bug bug me. When we were at Tony’s, I pretended there was a force field that kept the yuck off me. Still, I want to drive back down there and clean his kitchen just so I can get the image out of my head. I can’t control it. You should be more understanding and volunteer to dry for me.”

  “That would be enabling, I think,” Darren said.

  “I enable for you. All the time. That’s love. Mutual enabling.”

  “I think professionals call that codependency, actually.”

  “Let’s not get hung up on labels.”

  She scrubbed the dishes and handed them to him one by one. He rubbed them dry with a clean dish towel and stacked them in the cabinets above the sink. For a few minutes, they just did that, and didn’t need to say anything more.

  Once all the dishes were washed, dried, and put away, she unstopped the sink and took the towel from him to dry her hands. He leaned in and planted a kiss on her forehead.

  “You could have been hurt a lot worse,” she said softly.

  “That’s why I brought the gun, kid.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “I needed to know what kind of man he is.”

  They both sat at the card table. There was a bowl of peanuts in the center. Darren took a handful of them and popped one in his mouth. Issabella wrinkled her nose.

  “Did you?” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “Find out what kind of man he is.”

  “I think so,” he mused, and ate another peanut. “I mean, not complicated things about him, no. But I found out if he has some self-control, yeah. And if he has a conscience. Two times I saw him freeze up with the memory of what he did to Daniel. Once at the fair, and then again here when he had me prone on my back. Both times, he froze. And he looked...haunted.”

  Issabella folded her arms across her chest and cocked her head. She looked bemused, but willing to listen.

  “And this tells you what?”

  “He’s not a rabid dog. He doesn’t have to be put down.”

  “Wait. Hold on. You...you goaded a man who kills people with swords into a fight, to see if he was sane?”

  Darren nodded agreeably. “Pretty much.”

  “And in case he wasn’t sane, you brought a gun with you.”

  “See? You’ve got it.”

  “A gun with no bullets in it.”

  “Oh. I see. You’re being critical.”

  They looked up in unison when they heard the bedroom door open. Darren leaned over and lowered his voice to a whisper.

  “Did you find out if Daniel assaulted her?” he said.

  “Daniel raped her,” she whispered back. “Assault is a euphemism.”

  “You’re sure he really did?”

  “Because if he didn’t, your whole guy code thing goes out the window, doesn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t be as inclined to help, no. So?”

  “Take it as a fact, Darren.”

  Michael and Rebecca appeared in the space between the dining nook and the living room. It was obvious that both of them had been crying—their eyes were raw from it, and their cheeks were red from wiping at the tears. Michael had a pale, washed-out pallor. Rebecca looked absolutely lost. She clung to him like he was a lifeline, one arm wrapped around him, the hand of the other resting on his chest. He held her against his side and stared at Darren and Issabella like a man confronting the gallows.

  “I think,” he said in a gruff voice, “that you guys can go ahead and tell us what’s going to happen now, okay?”

  “Honestly,” Darren said, “that’s mostly going to be up to you. We need to hear the details of what happened out on that island, first. After that, I have some suggestions.”

  “You do?” Issabella said.

  “Did you guys clean up our apartment?” Rebecca said, blinking around as if coming out of a dream.

  “Just the dishes. Izzy has a thing.”

  “I’ll tell you,” Michael said. “I’ll tell you everything.”

  * * *

  He was past the beach and in the trees. His shoes and the bottoms of his jeans were soaked through from having to drag the stolen Bass Tackler up through the shallows far enough that he was confident it wouldn’t drift away into the lake without him.

  He stopped once in the middle of the thin woods. It would be the only time he hesitated, and the nagging doubt that welled up inside him was almost enough to turn him around and send him rushing back home to Rebecca. A marching line of apprehensions paraded through his mind: He’d stolen a boat, he’d trespassed on this private island and there was a dagger slipped in his belt. The trespassing was the least of it, he figured. A misdemeanor. Hightailing it away with some dude’s boat was probably a felony, though. He didn’t want a felony. That shit would follow you your whole life, every time you tried to get a job or a loan or go to school.

  The dagger was what stopped him in his tracks in the darkness. He’d brought it without thinking. It had given him a kind of confidence, its steely presence bolstering him to actually do what he’d been telling himself needed to be done for months now.

  But in the darkness of those woods, Michael had experienced a moment of sober clarity. Confronting Daniel with a dagger was asking for trouble a lot worse than getting caught stealing a boat. He thought it over for only a moment, nodded once to himself and headed back to the Bass Tackler. The interior of the boat was a black depth. Only the rim of the tackle box was visible, shining under the moon’s light. Michael bent in, opened the box and set the dagger inside it. He was folding the clasp on the box shut when he heard movement in the tree line behind him.

  “Hey! You can’t be here! This is private property, buddy!”

  Michael spun and stared up into the trees beyond the narrow beach, but he couldn’t see anyone. Still, his hands balled into fists at his sides. He knew the voice that had shouted down to him, had recognized it after the first word was out and on the wind.

  Daniel Prosner. The soft-bellied man’s face floated in his mind’s eye. It was a face that had always been on the edge of his field of vision when he practiced the duels. Always hanging around when he rehearsed his lines. Looking sour and unsatisfied in his stable boy costume. Lurking. Complaining. Expecting to be given things that weren’t his. And, in the end, taking something that wasn’t.

  Michael advanced two steps up the beach, searching desperately to see anything that might betray where Daniel stood.

  “Come on down,” he shouted at the tree line.

  A long moment of silence, only the cool night air stirring.

  “Michael? Is that you?”

  A flash of something shi
ning, reflecting the moon’s glow. There, just on the edge of the tree line above the beach. Michael ran at it without a word. He remembered Rebecca, trembling and folded into herself as she told him what had happened. Her face had been scarily empty. Her voice had been a hollow thing, seemingly coming from a faraway place as she recounted Daniel’s ugly assault.

  He thought of her and charged up the beach, his gym-muscled legs propelling him forward with long, lunging strides. A shadow in the trees moved and he heard Daniel’s heavy footfalls plunging away. Michael sucked air deep through his nose, let it out in a huff through his mouth and ran with every bit of strength he had. He vaulted over the rise of earth between the beach and the woods, plunged into the brush and kept running. Again, a flash of something shiny ahead and the sound of Daniel’s retreat.

  Get him. Before he can get inside. Get. Him.

  He burst out of the narrow woods. A sweep of manicured lawn rose ahead of him. Beyond that, the looming shape of a mansion. And halfway up the lawn, Daniel’s big, flabby shape running for the house. He had something in his hands, and Michael’s first impression was that Daniel was carrying a broom with him.

  You’ll eat that fucking broom, he thought, and didn’t have to concentrate on catching Daniel anymore. The sight of the man was like that moment in car chase movies when the driver flips the switch for the nitrous-oxide. The engine would roar like a beast and the muscle car would suddenly surge like lightning unleashed. Michael closed the distance, a roaring in his ears, and when his hands closed around Daniel Prosner’s shoulders he almost laughed out loud in triumph.

  They twisted in the shadow of the mansion, tangling together and falling forward with their shared momentum. The sound of glass shattering replaced the roaring in Michael’s ears, and then he was down on his back.

  “Don’t—”

  “Motherfucker!”

  “Michael, wait—”

  He was on top of Daniel, now. Glass crunched under his knees and he smelled a rich, earthy odor wafting around them. Dimly, he knew it was a greenhouse they’d fallen against, but he ignored that bit of information and focused on driving his right fist into the small of Daniel’s back.

  Daniel’s answering squeal of pain was the most satisfying thing Michael could remember ever hearing.

  “You filthy, fucking bastard,” he hissed and forced Daniel over, onto his back. The second blow landed against Daniel’s ear and again he squealed.

  “Stop!”

  Holding his weight across Daniel’s legs to keep him pinned on the ground, Michael regained enough of his senses to consciously aim his blows. He delivered three fast, brutal shots to Daniel’s soft belly. After the third punch, Daniel vomited.

  His breaths coming in haggard, heaping gasps, Michael got to his feet and stood over Daniel. He listened to the man dry-heaving, and watched as he curled into a fetal ball. As Michael’s breathing slowly came back under control, his focus broadened out. He glanced at the mansion looming above them. There was a single light on high up in a window.

  The wind was picking up, kicking and whistling through the trees below the lawn but, other than that, there was no sound. He looked around, but saw nobody running in alarm. He looked up at the lit window again, certain that any moment a figure would appear there, but it remained empty. Good. He could do this. He could make this happen the way he’d envisioned it a thousand times since figuring out where exactly Daniel Prosner had fled to after savaging the girl Michael loved.

  “It don’t matter who your uncle is,” Michael said in a low hiss. “You can’t hide behind some rich judge out here. You won’t get away with what you did, you sick cocksucker.”

  Daniel’s round face was pale, contorted in fear.

  “Don’t kill me.”

  “I ain’t killing you, bro. I’m kidnapping your ass. We’re going back to Fenton and you’re telling the cops what you did.”

  Michael took a half step back and drove his foot into Daniel’s crotch. Daniel twisted around in the bits of glass and his mouth opened in a silent howl.

  “You’re going to admit it,” Michael hissed. “Or I will kill you. I swear to God, I will.”

  Once he’d scoured the internet to find out everything he could about Daniel Prosner—finding out about his judge uncle, and then the fact that this judge had a private little island on Lake Erie—the first thought Michael had entertained was murdering Daniel. In the gym, as he heaved weights and pounded the heavy bag, he was murdering Daniel in a dozen different ways. Each straining rep on the bench press was Michael reaching out and strangling the life out of the man. Each blow to the heavy bag was Daniel’s face crumpling in on itself. Over the months since Rebecca had told him what had been done to her, Michael had murdered Daniel again and again.

  “You’re not going to kill me?” Daniel’s voice was a pathetic, cowering whisper.

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  All those days in the gym and all that mental murdering of Daniel had eventually diffused his rage just enough to allow him to think about consequences. Killing Daniel meant prison. That was a given. Michael was no criminal mastermind. If he left a body behind him, the cops were going to CSI his ass into a life sentence. He’d leave behind saliva or fingerprints or fucking fibers, or whatever. Cops could trace you off a piece of dust for all he knew. He’d seen the shows.

  More than that, there was Rebecca. It would ruin her life. He’d be a murderer, locked away in prison for the rest of both their lives. She’d be alone and sick with guilt. She’d blame herself for what he’d done. He couldn’t do that to her. He couldn’t hurt her worse than she’d already been hurt.

  That dismal scenario was what kept Daniel alive while Michael hauled the blubbering man to his feet. Daniel stood in a trembling hunch, as if expecting another blow to his belly or groin. Tears streaked his face, and there were bits of vomit clinging to his chin.

  Michael had one hand on Daniel’s shoulder and was preparing to shove the man down the lawn, back to the Bass Tackler, when he noticed the sword lying on the ground.

  “You’re fucking kidding me,” he whispered, and bent down to lift the big weapon up in one hand. As strong as he was, he couldn’t hold it out with one hand for long, so he rested the blade across his shoulder.

  “What are you doing running around with this?” he said.

  Daniel peeked over his shoulder at him and saw the sword.

  He mumbled something.

  “What?” Michael snapped.

  “Patrolling,” Daniel repeated sheepishly.

  Michael snorted derisively and they were on their way. The wind had risen into a gusting, wild thing around them. He kept a firm hold on Daniel’s shoulder as he marched them down the lawn and into the woods. Daniel stumbled once, falling forward. Michael yanked hard, heaving the man sideways into the trunk of a tree. Daniel grunted in pain and kept moving forward.

  When they reached the little beach, Michael brought them both to a sudden halt. There was a large yellow dog trotting around the Bass Tackler, poking its nose into the sand beneath the boat. As the two men stopped above the beach, the dog peered up at them and its tail wagged furiously.

  “Does he bite?”

  “God, I wish.”

  “Yeah, I bet you do, dude. Let’s go.”

  Halfway across the beach, the dog loped up to them and sniffed around their legs. He did little circles and made playful whining sounds, begging for attention. Despite where he was and what he was doing, Michael had to resist the urge to let go of Daniel and pet the dog.

  “What’s his name?” he asked.

  “I didn’t rape Rebecca,” Daniel whispered.

  “Shut your fucking mouth—”

  Daniel wrenched away from him. The pudgy man wheeled away and stopped a few steps from Michael. He held his arms out at his sides.

  “I
didn’t force her, man,” Daniel said. “Is that what she said? She did, didn’t she?”

  A terrible, scarlet rage slithered into Michael, and he knew he had to stop what was happening before it could grab hold of him.

  “Get in the boat,” he barked, low and gruff. “Don’t say anything, dude. I mean it. Don’t say her fucking name.”

  Daniel’s big, round face was suddenly full of a forced earnestness, like he was delivering an unpleasant truth he didn’t want to divulge.

  “She liked me,” he said, the words pushing their way past Michael’s conscious mind, burrowing down in the cavernous depths where the scarlet rage was taking hold. Feeding it.

  “Daniel,” Michael choked, a warning. “Don’t.”

  “She wanted it,” Daniel continued, oblivious to the change taking hold of Michael. “She liked it. She liked me that way. Didn’t you know that? We did it twice, actually. Seriously, man. She came, Michael. She didn’t tell you that, did she? We were going to tell you she was with me now. I don’t know why she’s lying now, but you have to...”

  The wind stole whatever else Daniel said. It was a high, keening gale, sweeping over them. It dove into Michael and set the scarlet rage free. He saw Rebecca’s haunted, wounded face. He could smell her on the wind, that soap-clean way her skin smelled when they fell asleep in front of the television, his arms around her and his face against her neck. The sword was in his hands. His hands moved of their own accord, repositioning themselves along the hilt, knuckles whitening as his grip tightened down.

  “Michael, she wanted me.”

  Michael lunged forward, the sword held back behind his right shoulder, its point aimed forward. All of his body moved in fluid, practiced unison. His torso twisted forward, driving his right shoulder ahead, in turn driving the length of steel in his hands. The steel slid into Daniel, and Michael continued his motion forward. Daniel’s mouth gaped wide. His eyes bulged like a frog’s. Michael’s progress did not slow. He swept ahead. The steel advanced, inexorably, silently, drinking. Daniel was forced down, backwards, onto the sand. Michael continued, unblinking, a perfect machine of singular motion. His strength shifted direction, bearing down, down, down and finally coming to a halt when every last ounce of his strength was spent.