One
Liz Martin sits alone at the bar of Sally’s Brewhouse, a popular pub in North County San Diego. Grabbing a late dinner after work, she pushes a long strand of hair away from her face and munches on a crisp French fry. A baseball game is playing on a large screen TV, but since it’s not the Padres, Liz isn’t paying much attention.
As she soaks another fry in ketchup, a tall muscular man sits down on the barstool next to her. He gives Liz a quick look, nothing flirty, before shrugging out of his jacket.
She freezes, unable to ever forget that cocky face. A visceral fight-or-flight response is triggered and Liz’s hands clench, squashing the ketchup-soaked fry in her palm. Unable to catch her breath, her heart thumps wildly against her chest. Clutching the knife from her plate, still smeared with ketchup, she slips it into her lap, hiding it beneath her napkin.
Liz met the man two years ago at The Beer Joint off Harmony Grove. Even now, she can’t believe she survived their violent encounter. She expects a swift double take, his hooded eyes opening wide when he looks back in surprise and sees her. But he casually picks up a menu, ignoring her completely.
How can he not recognize her or is this one of his sick games? Breaking out in a nervous sweat, a wave of nausea twists her stomach. Fists clenched, she fights the urge to throw up.
Using her peripheral vision, she furtively gazes his way. His hair’s longer and his jawline’s softer. He’s put on a few pounds, and his muscles aren’t nearly as chiseled as a few years back. She doesn’t remember his name. Maybe he never told her or more likely, she blocked it with all the other memories she’s tried hard to forget.
But no matter how much she wants to wipe that night from her memory, flashbacks bring a series of quick, sharp pictures she can’t erase. She lowers her head, recognizing the black tattoo at the base of his thumb – a sideways V with a slash through the middle. But it’s his smell that hits her like a gut punch. He’s wearing the same sickly-sweet aftershave as when he dragged her down into that deserted lot behind the bar.
He might not remember her, but she remembers.
Looking at her reflection in the tinted smoke/gray mirror behind the bar, Liz wonders how much she’s changed. Her face is rounder and her waistline larger but otherwise, she hasn’t changed much. Dark hair, almost black, hangs past her shoulders. Pale blue eyes dart nervously over the man who sits beside her as if he doesn’t have a care in the world.
Liz might not remember his name. But she knows one thing. Whatever he calls himself, he will die tonight.
Two
A shiver runs down Liz’s spine. Although she carries no visible scars from that night, no outward signs that mark her as broken, she is as shattered as a bike caught beneath the wheels of a Mack truck.
If he turns and suddenly recognizes her, will she be fast enough to stab him with the table knife before he goes in for the kill? Does he still carry that long silver blade in his jacket pocket that he held against her throat?
Lifting a fry to her lips, she puts it back down, unable to eat. She can barely swallow, leaving her glass of beer untouched. She pulls out her phone, wasting time, until he’s done eating. Slipping the knife into her pocket, Liz pays the bill and pulls her hair into a scrunchie, getting it off her neck. The man belches softly as he pays with cash and walks out into the night without giving Liz a second glance.
The Brewhouse is in the rear of the mall, so she expects him to head directly to his car. But instead, he walks behind the pub toward the street. He finds a narrow dirt footpath that cuts through the back bushes and steps down onto a sidewalk. He’s walking quickly so Liz uses the same footpath to cut through the bushes, watching until he moves further away. She doesn’t want to follow too close.
Even though it reached the high 80s this afternoon, the heat of the day rapidly dissipates in southern California after the sun sets. Unlike the sticky humid nights of southern states, nights in San Diego are almost always cool. Liz didn’t bring a jacket, but her silent fury is raging like an out-of-control wildfire.
The man crosses Beethoven Street and heads down Bear Valley Parkway, a busy road that runs parallel to Kit Carson Park, named after the legendary frontiersman. The park is only about five miles west from where Kit Carson fought in the 1846 Battle of San Pasqual, a bloody battle during the Mexican American War.
Liz follows, keeping her distance. The 300-acre park is directly on their left and even though it’s dark, lights from passing cars illuminate the ancient pepper trees, giant invasive reeds and low-hanging vines along the park’s perimeter. It’s an impenetrable thicket with no park entrance along this stretch of road.
The man looks back once. Does he recognize her from the restaurant? She’s gained 30 pounds since that night two years ago. No longer the pretty party girl with an infectious laugh, her life now is focused on building her business. She works late and comes straight home. Too embarrassed to have anyone see how much weight she’s gained, Liz cut off her old friendships.
Stopping after a quarter mile, just past a broken streetlight, he jumps down a small hillock. Liz races ahead, stopping at the streetlight where the dense tangle of trees and shrubs opens to a wide clearing. About 65-feet into the clearing is a massive Canary Island palm, 40 to 50 feet high, its trunk more than four feet wide.
Heavy boots kick through the thick weeds and dead vines as he heads directly toward the enormous palm. Its fronds, at least two feet wide, bend to the ground, creating a dense canopy around the base of the tree. Ducking beneath a dead frond, he disappears into the thick brownish skirt.
He can’t go very far, Liz reasons. On the other side of the tree, not that far away, is a baseball field and car park. But the park closes at sunset so the fields and lots are empty now.
She hesitates at the embankment, but she’s come too far to let him vanish into thin air like before. Pulling out her knife, she steps carefully down the embankment blanketed with prickly ground cover. Still dressed from work, Liz wishes she was wearing sneakers instead of her fancy flats. Cautiously, she steps through scratchy weeds, patches of dead grass, and clusters of dried out horehound, a perennial herb in the mint family.
Her heart is racing. There’s no going back now even if this overgrown edge of the park vaguely reminds her of the empty lot where he dragged her that night. She can still feel the pinch of a dead palm frond sticking into her back as she lay sprawled on the ground.
Biting her lower lip, Liz peeks behind the fronds of the Canary Island palm, but no one is there. She steps beneath its canopy, feeling the sway of the fronds in the evening breeze. A narrow path continues a few feet south before turning west, bordered by chaparral.
Hearing a loud thump, she pivots, moving her head quickly from left to right, trying to spot any movement. The scent of sage hangs in the air as she slides down a heavily overgrown path where some of the tall grasses have been crushed beneath a large boot print. She grips the knife tighter and moves ahead.
Taking a deep breath, Liz stops, listening to the crickets and frogs chirping their evening songs. The moon slips behind a cloud, and the park is shrouded in inky darkness. Hardly able to see where she’s going, she takes a tentative step forward, afraid that he’s hiding somewhere up ahead. She imagines him crouching behind a half-dead tree, waiting to pounce on her like the rattlesnakes hiding in the thickets waiting for unsuspecting prey.
The moon breaks through the clouds and Liz sighs with relief. Faint light illuminates the dark red branches of a Manzanita bush blocking the path. The overgrown trail is becoming almost impassable. Just two more steps, she thinks, and she’ll turn around. Two more steps, she says to herself, when her foot catches on a thick vine and she falls hard.
Her forehead bounces off something sharp. Pushing up, she looks down in stunned horror. She fell against the pointed chin of the man in the restaurant – the man who brutally raped her two years ago. He’s lying on a bed of crushed hollow-stemmed grasses, his neck ripped open. Blood is everywhere. It’s in her hair where she fell against him and on her hands. His hooded brown eyes now stare expressionless into the night sky. A tiny insect rests on his cornea.
Liz jumps to her feet and wants to scream but claps her hand over her mouth, accidentally smearing his blood on her cheek. She reaches for her knife before realizing that she dropped it when she fell. It’s lost somewhere in the bloody weeds around the body.
The crickets fall silent, and Liz hears someone moving stealthily through the weeds. She sinks down onto her haunches and holds her breath. Afraid to move, she sees the tip of an orange scarf catch on a long needle of a cactus only a few feet away before it’s roughly pulled free. It’s a thick scarf, crocheted or knitted, and more apricot than bright orange.
Barely breathing, she remains on her haunches, frozen in place. It’s only when she hears footsteps running away that she dares to stand, shaking uncontrollably.
She looks down at the dead man. The face that haunts her nightmares lies dead, his body concealed in deep weeds and shadows. He doesn’t look dangerous anymore, staring up at the sky. He looks pissed, angry that someone was faster with a knife.
Liz makes her way back until she stands once again beneath the canopy of the huge palm. Wiping her bloody hands and face on the dead fronds, she calls 911. Her voice is soft. She can hardly speak.
As soon as she disconnects the call, she drops to her knees, sobbing so hard she can’t catch her breath. She doesn’t know if it’s the shock of knowing he’s finally dead, or the realization of how close she came to lying dead next to her rapist.