Flying Clean

Flying Clean Chapter 10

Chapter 10

I didn't know what they did with Susan for those hours that I was alone in the room, banging the walls and infuriated that the Desmonds would be returned to Hell after only the briefest visit to the world. John and the twins were likely spotted by now- after the news of Derrick Hardy's capture in the station, they were sure to have been tracked down. I shouted and pounded the walls for hours it seemed, until all the strength had left me and my fists were dark with fresh bruises.

Finally, my cries were acknowledged as the two train men and a local police officer with a mustache and a smug expression of triumph entered to peer at me, as if a particularly amusing specimen in a zoo.

"Derrick Hardy, I presume," the policeman said. "My name is Gordon Hathey, and I'll be your arresting officer." He said this as if he was already imagining the newspaper article which would glorify his heroic act of sadism which would return the Desmonds to Harry and Marjory.

I said nothing. I refused to speak to them, and for a long time, while listening to Hathey's alternating threats and questions, I held to that resolution.

"You know what we're going to do to you?" he asked, when I refused to tell them why I had kidnapped them. "We're going to string you up by your neck in the middle of the street. We're going to take turns poking you with hot irons. How do you feel about that?"

I said nothing. He had been going on like this for a half an hour, now.

"But most of all, you child murdering rapist," he said, "we're going to tear off that pervert-pecker of yours." I still said nothing, but I was more than a little puzzled.

"Where did you bury the little ones?" he asked. "And John? Did you kill him right away when he tried to stop you from molesting his family? Or did you make him suffer, too?"

I still said nothing.

"Where did you bury them?" he asked again. When I didn't speak, he hit me in the face with his club, raising a goose-egg on my left cheek and closing my eye in a pocket of skin. I spit out blood and rejoiced to see that some of it had hit his shiny shoes. The two train men stood in the corner, neither speaking or seeming bothered by the battery.

"I didn't bury them," I said finally. "They aren't dead."

"Then where are they?"

"Safe," I said. "And happy for the first time in their lives."

Officer Hathey rocked back on his heels and crossed his arms, as if he knew better. "You are only going to make this worse for yourself, Hardy," he said. "You have committed a serious crime."

"All I did was help them run away," I said.

"Help them?" Hathey said. "Help them? You took them from their homes."

"Their parents beat them nearly to death every night," I argued.

Hathey laughed bitterly and tugged at the corner of his moustache. "We didn't find a mark on Susan," he said. "Which is the only reason you're still alive."

The threat didn't escape me, but I did my best to ignore it. If what Hathey said was true, than this whole thing was about to blow out of proportion and the electric chair would be the least of my worries. It sounded like private, vigilante justice was my enemy now. How had this gotten so big?

"They never hit Susan," I said. "They wanted her clear so she would marry someone with money."

"Uh huh," he said. "But you wanted her for yourself. So you took her- maybe you killed the others long ago like you did Dirk Desmond. Maybe their bodies just never washed up."