Books by Philip Hoy
I know you're in here.
You open your eyes to find yourself staring at a dusty pair of blue leather Top-Siders. Boat shoes, you think they’re called. The kind worn on a fancy yacht or some sleek sailboat like the one in that Duran Duran video. Not the best shoes for running through the desert, especially without socks, which would explain the dark sweat-stain of dirt ringing the edges of your bare ankles.
When you lift your head, pain blurs your vision and you have to close your eyes until the dizziness passes. Finally, you open them to discover you are all alone in the cab of Timo’s truck. It’s parked at an angle just off the road with both doors ajar. Ahead of you are the warehouses you saw from the road. Now you remember, Ruth and Joanne made a run for it and you tried to follow. You lift your hand to your head expecting to find blood and discover instead a lump above your left ear the size of your kneecap. Timo must have left you for dead. How long have you been out, seconds, minutes, hours?
Head throbbing, you climb out of the truck to find an eight-foot tall chain-link fence standing between you and the buildings just ahead. The vehicle, you realize, is stopped in front of a pair of large, swinging gates, chained and padlocked in the middle. Timo must have followed the girls this far in the truck before abandoning it here. You look up at the jagged, unfinished edge of the fence and then down at its base only inches above the gravel driveway. But how did they get inside?
Heart racing, you shove against the fence with both hands so hard that the loosely bound chain holding the gates together pulls taut and a foot-wide gap appears between them. Quickly, you crouch down and slip sideways through the opening.
The crunch of your shoes on the gravel is the only sound as you run across the empty lot toward the first of three large, corrugated metal structures looming before you. Some kind of packing houses, you think, but obviously not in use at the moment. The large roll-down doors across the front are all shut, so you hurry toward the single visible door centered on the side of the first structure, but when you get there, it’s locked.
Which way now, along the front or around the back? Somehow this decision seems crucial, and you feel you haven’t a second to lose. On instinct, you move toward the rear of the building. Unlike the front of the property, the alley between the building and the back fence is overgrown with weeds and dry brush and you have to weave your way around the most overgrown patches until you reach the corner of the second warehouse. It’s identical to the first and has the same lone, side door.
As you cross the space between buildings, maybe twenty feet at most, it becomes obvious that the entrance has been forced open. There are rust-red scrapes around the doorknob and the wooden jamb near the lock is splintered inward. Did the girls do this, and with what? Or did they find it open and lock it behind them and it was Timo who had to break in. However it was, maybe it bought them some time. But time for what, to hide, to find another way out? Could they have escaped through some opening in the fence? Were they already safe among the tangled interior of the nearest rows of grapevines. Timo must have realized Tony and Bobby weren’t the only ones in the car the moment he found Joanne’s purse on the back seat. If he could murder his own cousin with hardly a moment’s hesitation, then he wasn’t going to let Ruth and Joanne get away so easily.
You step inside, all the while listening intently, certain that your thrumming pulse and the sound of your own breathing will drown out whatever it is you expect to hear … footsteps, voices, screams? Thin rays of sunlight enter through round turbine vents installed in the ceiling, slowly rotating with the outside breeze. As your eyes continue to adjust to the dimness, you begin to take in your surroundings. To your right is a wall of large wooden crates stacked nearly to the roof beams and continuing straight ahead into the depths of the building as far as you can see. To your left are pallets upon pallets loaded with flats of thick cardboard, and behind those you can just make out what appear to be long tables stacked and shoved together with other bulky furniture and equipment among them.
“I know you’re in here,” Timo says, causing you to flinch and duck your head. “I can hear you breathing.” But his voice is coming from somewhere deep within the warehouse, somewhere on the other side of these giant wooden boxes. You rush forward, realizing you’ve been only minutes behind them the entire time. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he reassures, as you frantically search the shadows for any sign of him. “I just wanna talk.” Suddenly, there is an opening to your right and you turn and hurry in that direction.
Three steps later your path abruptly dead ends and you nearly slam face first into another wall of crates. When your hand hits the side of the wooden box in front of you, you realize there is a gap at the base of the crate … of course, a place for the forklift to slide beneath. You step back to get a better look, counting five crates from the floor up, each about four feet wide and three feet tall. I giant ladder. Placing your foot in the first opening, you reach up to the second and begin to climb. As you grasp the edge of the top crate and begin to pull yourself up, it tips forward, and for one terrible moment you are falling, but you lean in, redistributing your weight to your lowest foot and the box drops back into place. Empty, you realize, they all must be. A storage of storage containers.
Carefully, with your chest pressed up against the rough plywood, you scramble over the edge and get to your feet with just enough room to stand without hitting your head on the roof beams. From here you can see that the crates you are on, stacked five, sometimes six across, fill the center of the warehouse and run the entire length of the building. As you make your way to the other side of the wall, you discover more of the same loaded pallets and packing equipment as when you came in.
“Joanne,” calls Timo in a sing-song voice. “Ruth.” He’s getting closer, moving this way. “Nice job on the door back there, by the way. Breaking and entering. I’m impressed. Too bad there’s no other way out.”
There is a sound from somewhere to your right, movement, a muted whimper. And then you see the striped sleeve of Joanne’s blouse, the cuff of Ruth’s jeans, her sandaled foot. They are over by the far wall, huddled behind one of the last pallets.
You step to your right along the top of the crates, trying to move into their line of vision. You can see them clearly now. Joanne is covering her mouth with both hands, Ruth is holding her close. You begin to wave your arms.
“No llores, mija,” you hear him say and then you see his white t-shirt emerge ghostly from the shadows to your left. Quickly lowering your head, you back away from the edge of the wall out of his line of sight. “Timo is very good at what he does. You won’t feel a thing.”
You hurry along the wall in his direction, lifting your head just enough to keep sight of him until you are almost even with him. Then you kneel and begin working your thumbs behind the last crate, the one just above his head. As soon as it tilts forward, you shove it with all of your might and send it toppling over the edge.
It lands with a crash.
“What the fuck?” says Timo.
Not the cry of pain you were hoping for.
You lift your head enough to see the crate in pieces at his feet. If only you’d waited a second longer. Then he spins and raises his gun. You scramble backwards and drop down on your stomach. There is a deafening bang, and then another as splinters of plywood fly up and shower down around you.
“Fucking, Datsun!” he shouts. “I see you.”
You roll onto your back, wedge both heels against the edge of the next crate, and kick out.
It hits the floor with a similar smash of shattered wood.
“Mother-fucker, that one almost hit me!”
You roll again, following the sound of his voice. This time you try two crates, digging a heel behind each, but when you shove against them they hardly budge. You grip the edge of the box beneath you and pull yourself forward with your arms while straightening your legs. Gradually, both crates begin to tilt away from the rest, but instead of tipping over they continue to sway outward, until you realize—too late—that it’s not only the top boxes, but both columns of crates that are falling forward like two toppled trees and taking you with them.
Twisting sideways, you reach for the exposed crates to your right, clawing desperately for a handhold. Finally, your fingers wedge into the space beneath one of the crates and your legs swing out and back again, leaving you dangling painfully by your right arm from the top of the wall. Below you the twin towers of empty plywood boxes crumble and shatter against the floor.
You look down to find crates everywhere, some smashed flat, others nearly whole, resting at dangerous angles against the stacks of cardboard on the pallets below. Timo is nowhere to be seen.
You manage to twist yourself around, the side of your face pressed roughly against the plywood while your feet search for the edge of the box below. Finally, you are able to grab hold with your other hand and lower yourself down one crate at a time as the broken mess on the floor behind you continues to settle noisily with loud creaks and scrapes of wood.
As soon as your feet hit the floor you spin around, but it’s too late, he’s already on you, his hands are around your neck, knuckles gouging into your Adams apple. His face is covered in blood from a dark gash across his temple. The eye below the wound is squeezed shut, and the other, cyclops like, seems to rage at you from the center of his skull. Your head feels like an over inflated balloon and your lungs are on fire. You claw desperately at his wrists, try to pry his fingers from your throat, but his skin is slippery with blood and he’s stronger than you, much stronger.
Your vision begins to blur and darken at the edges, and your only thought is for air. Timo is saying something, his mouth is open, teeth bared. Maybe he’s laughing. It no longer matters. The sound hardly reaches your ears. You are underwater now, sinking deeper and deeper.
Then the pressure is gone, and with it the pain, but the light, the pinpoint of light far above, continues to grow smaller and smaller.
“Mother!” someone shouts.
Suddenly your head breaks the surface and you gasp for air.
“Fucking!”
You’re lying on the floor staring up at the spot of sunlight coming through a slowly spinning vent in the warehouse ceiling.
“Bitch!”
You lift your head to find Timo is standing over you with one arm twisted over his back attempting to reach what appears to be the handle of a screwdriver protruding from his shoulder.
“Stabbed me!”
Ruth is just behind him, watching in wide-eyed dismay as he grips the handle and pulls the tool from his flesh.
“Shit,” she says, her back against a wall of pallets.
Timo takes a moment to examine the bloody tip of the screwdriver and then points it accusingly at Ruth. “Forget what I promised earlier,” he says. “This is going to hurt.”
You reach for his leg just as he lunges for her.
There is a deafening pop. Ruth flinches violently as Timo’s body jerks sideways and blood sprays across Ruth’s face and the front of her yellow blouse.
The screwdriver clatters against the floor at Timo’s feet.
There is a second pop and a third. His legs abruptly fold beneath him and he drops to his knees.
You turn to see Joanne holding Timo’s gun out in front of her with both hands. She is walking toward Timo, pulling the trigger again and again with each step until you lose count and then there is only echoing silence.
You manage to get to your feet and move in Joanne’s direction, but Ruth is there first, covering Joanne’s hands with her own and gently prying her fingers from the pistol’s grip. Only after Ruth tosses the gun onto the pile of broken crates does Joanne look away from Timo’s bloody, bullet riddled corpse and start to cry. Ruth wraps both arms around her and pulls her close as Joanne begins to tremble and sob in her embrace. You watch, overwhelmed with the urge to hug both of them, and to cry yourself. But you stay where you are, wishing it was you in Ruth’s arms.
You close your eyes and breathe in deeply, letting the unwelcome smells of gunpowder, wetness, and rust invade your nostrils and fill your lungs. You open them again, to find Ruth staring at you. She holds your gaze, unblinking and expressionless, for so long you are unsure she is even looking at you at all. Then she smiles, or at least attempts to, and nods. “We need to go now,” she finally says, maybe for Joanne’s benefit more than yours.
You turn and walk back to Timo’s body, aware with a repressed shiver that you are stepping in his blood. Avoiding the vacant stare of his one open eye, you lean over and slowly push your hand into the front pocket of his blood-soaked jeans. Why, you think, not for the first time today, did you do it, man? What are you hiding? His thigh is still warm against your palm. You pull out your hand, fist clenched around your prize, and quickly move away from Timo’s body to catch up with Ruth and Joanne.
THE MISADVENTURES OF MATTHEW VAN DER BOOT is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental … no matter how many times you ask.