The Sound of Broken Ribs(52)

“Fuck. Fuck!” Carl dropped the curtain on the bed to see about Belinda.

She tucked her wounded hand under her armpit and held the other one up to fend him off. “Not me. Not now. Her. Make sure she’s secured.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I’m fine. Get her. Get her before she spits out my socks.”

“She already did.”

“Fuck.”

Carl reached for the socks. Belinda said, “Watch it. She bites.”

“I see.” He looked around, grabbed the remote that was anchored to the top of the nightstand and ripped it from the particle board as easily as he’d snapped Jack’s arm.

Jack hadn’t woken up, but her jaw had gone slack again. Like Belinda before him, Carl waited for Jack to inhale, and then shoved the remote into her mouth. The jaws snapped shut like a bear trap. He twisted the remote, opening Jack’s mouth wide enough so he could stuff in the sock.

“Get me the curtain, would ya?” Carl held his hand aloft. Belinda dashed around him, hand still tucked into her pit, and grabbed up the shredded curtain. Handed it to him. He wrapped one long strip around Jack’s mouth, doubled it, ripped it from the rest of the curtain, and tied it into rabbit ears behind the woman’s head.

Jack’s eyes snapped open. Her good arm shot up behind her like a trap door flipping open before it crashed back down. Carl slammed the pad of his fist down into the woman’s shattered elbow as if he were staking a vampire’s heart. Belinda didn’t think the woman’s eyes could get any wider—but they did. Before she passed out a second time, Jack’s eyes seemed to all but pop out of her head. And then Jack was gone again—snaffling and snoring.

“Jesus Christ,” Carl said. “I’m gonna have a heart attack ‘fore tonight is over.”

“Fuck,” Belinda breathed. It seemed the only thing she was capable of saying, so she repeated it: “Fuck.”

Carl tied Jack’s broken arm to her good arm. Then he rolled her over onto her back. The pain of being flipped onto her injured arm brought Jack back to consciousness. She snorted and blew snot like steam from her flaring nostrils. Belinda thought of bulls and tea kettles.

And then Jack inhaled the socks.

Belinda couldn’t believe her eyes. First, the woman’s cheeks bulged with the foreign matter stuffed into her mouth. Then it was gone, just like that, and Belinda could see the bulge in the woman’s neck where the socks had lodged themselves in her throat.

“No fuckin’ way,” Carl said. There was little emotion in his voice. He might as well have been telling Jack that she had pretty eyes.

“That—” Belinda started and stopped. She blinked a few times, as if she could erase what was happening from her vision. “That never happens in the movies.”

Cords bulged in Jack’s neck. She twitched and flopped and kicked, but was oddly silent. Not a sound came from her mouth or any other part of her. She flopped off the bed onto her knees. Slammed cheek first into the wall that separated the bedroom from the bathroom. She threw herself into the dresser, almost crashing into Carl in the process. Her forehead smashed into the television, cracking the screen in a starburst pattern.

Carl danced out of the way. Belinda had never seen the big man move so fast.

Jack crashed to the floor, stomach first, hands still tied behind her back, and worm-crawled in quick, spasmodic jerks. She reminded Belinda of an electrified eel she’d once seen in a video on the internet.

After a long time of quiet thrashing, Jack’s spasmodic thrusts and jerks slowed. And then they stopped altogether. She lay on the carpet, silent and unmoving.

Belinda and Carl were also silent and unmoving.

From somewhere far away came the dum-bump, dum-bump, dum-bump, dundun dundun, that Belinda thought was the staple of all Mexican music.

“She’s not breathing,” Carl said.

Belinda shook her head. When she realized Carl wasn’t looking at her, that he was staring intently at the still woman on the floor, she said, “No. She’s not.”

“We killed her.”

“Yeah.”

“She killed herself.”

“Yeah.”

“Which is it?”

“I don’t know.”

In the distance, the band played on.

*

On Flight 600 out of Kennedy Airport, Lei worked at a pimple on the back of her neck. The zit had bothered her since leaving her hotel room. She’d likely already popped the thing and was now pinching at nothing more than irritated skin.

Forcing herself to ignore the bump, she lay her head against the rest and closed her eyes. Soft voices spoke here and there, none of them loud enough so Lei could distinguish actual words, though. Morning flights were notorious for their quiet passengers.

Lei imagined, not for the first time, what she would do when confronted with the woman who’d hit her with a car and left her for dead. No. Belinda Walsh hadn’t simply left her for dead. That would’ve been bad on its own, but that’s not all that had happened. Belinda—Lei considered them on a first name basis because you didn’t get much closer than attempted murder—had hit her with a car, dragged her broken body into the tree line and out of sight, and then she had left her for dead. Then Belinda’s brother—Anthony Marchesini—had come along. But why? Why had the brother come? Had he meant to clean up after his baby sister? Had Belinda had a sudden burst of conscience and sent him back to check on Lei? Not likely. She’d probably sent him back to check to make sure the Lei was dead.