Satterfield
SATTERFIELD GLANCED FROM FACE to face, reveling in how well things were going—better, even, than he’d imagined they would. The three Brocktons and the girl were seated around the kitchen table in a bizarre variation on family dinner: four half-finished plates of pasta and salad in front of them, duct tape over their mouths, zip ties cinching their ankles and wrists to the frames of the ladderback chairs.
The girl had been a surprise. “She has nothing to do with this,” Brockton had tried arguing. “Neither does Kathleen or Jeff. This is just between you and me. Let them go.” Satterfield had cocked his head, pretending to consider the stupid request; then he’d smiled, shaken his head, and yanked the tape tight across Brockton’s mouth. The girl was a juicy little bonus; a windfall apple. Manna from heaven, he thought.
Brockton would be the last to die, of course. A big part of his suffering—though far, far from all of his suffering—would be to witness the agonies of the others, knowing that he himself was to blame. Utterly and solely to blame.
Laying the gun on the end of the table, Satterfield reached into his back pocket for the gardening shears. He held them toward the light, squeezing the spring-loaded handles, admiring the tight precision with which the blades closed and opened. Their curved edges—the upper blade convex, the lower one concave—reminded him of a cartoon fish, grinning with its oversized mouth. The coiled spring that pushed the handles apart made a soft, musical squeak each time the cartoon-fish mouth opened or closed. Pointing the tool toward each of them in turn, he recited, “Eeny meeny miny mo . . .” He paused and looked at Brockton again. “Or do you want to choose? Tell me—shall I start with the girl?” He smiled as Brockton grunted and shook his head frantically. “No? With your son, then?” He leaned across the table, the shears opening in his hand as he dropped the jaws below the table and toward the boy’s crotch.
“Nnnnhhh,” shrilled Brockton, struggling and thrashing so hard that his chair threatened to tip.
“No? Not him? Okay, whatever you say.” Satterfield stepped to Kathleen’s side and snipped the zip tie binding her right wrist to the chair. “I don’t know who I’ll send this one to,” he said, taking hold of her hand, lifting it by the little finger. “But I’ll think of someone.” He squeezed, and the handles of the shears came together, and the grinning fish closed its jaws on her finger.
CHAPTER 49
Tyler QUIT STALLING, TYLER BERATED himself again, and forced himself to stand and walk to the patio door. He was raising his hand to knock when he froze, his knuckle an inch from the door. On the other side of the glass, Jeff had reached out and taken hold of a small, slender hand—Kathleen’s hand, Tyler assumed—and clasped the pinky finger between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. Then he turned slightly—a few degrees, no more—but it was enough for Tyler to see that it was not Jeff at all. As his brain scrambled to interpret the data and identify the face, he felt a rush of panic. A moment later, his conscious mind caught up with the faster circuitry of his subconscious, and he recognized the face: the murder suspect, Satterfield! Just then he saw Satterfield reach toward Kathleen’s finger with his right hand. Light glinted on steel, and then Kathleen’s arm swung free, arced toward the floor, slinging blood as it dropped. Satterfield still clasped her little finger in his left hand, a pair of bloody gardening shears in the other. Her head jerked, and through her nostrils and the tape across her mouth came a muffled, whinnying scream.
Tyler gasped and staggered backward as if he’d been struck. He fought back the impulse to scream and the need to vomit, knowing that revealing his presence was almost certain to trigger a massacre inside. Think, he commanded himself. Think! God, why hadn’t he gotten a cell phone when Roxanne had suggested it? He spun, scanning in vain for the glimmer of lights in neighboring houses. Should he run back to the street and start banging on doors? Was there even time for that? How long would it take for the police to get here in force—ten minutes? half an hour? The image of the arrow-pierced bodies flashed into his mind—two brutal deaths in quick succession—and he knew that the Brocktons might not have ten minutes. It’s up to me, he thought. I have to stop it. But how? Jesus God, how? Satterfield surely had a gun—maybe more than one. Tyler had nothing, not even a set of keys. Sweaty running clothes and his bare hands, that was all he had. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.