Lost
Chapter Two
Rick was still sitting on the front stoop when Linda came home. It was only one o'clock so Rick wasn't surprised to see the look of worry on Linda's face as she walked up the front path to him. Her brows were creased in a frown and she kneeled down, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder, her blue eyes meeting his dark brown ones.
"Rick? What are you doin' home already, darlin'?"
He tried to open his mouth. His strength had been sustaining him since he'd gotten the news. Now he could feel that it was about to give out. He couldn't hold on to his stoicism in the face of Linda's loving kindness.
He choked as he tried to speak, the tears suddenly spilling down his cheeks to drop off his chin. Rick hurled himself at Linda, almost knocking her down with his superior weight and size. But she just rocked back on her heals and wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders, holding him tight.
Rick sobbed against her throat, burying his face there as he stumbled over the words. "Kyle. His dad killed him last night. He killed him! The fucking bastard killed him!"
He felt Linda tense and shudder, her arms tightening even more around him. He hadn't realized how strong she was until that moment. "Oh God. Rick, oh baby. Oh God. Evan killed Kyle?"
Rick nodded. "He beat him to death with a baseball bat and then hid his body in the attic. Glenna's in the hospital with a fractured skull and broken arm. They're pretty sure she'll make it, but Kyle's face was bashed in."
When the police had told him Kyle was dead, Rick had refused to believe it. He'd ran to the hospital, catching the local transit to get there. The cops had tried to trail him but he was quick, using back alleyways. They were waiting for him at the hospital but he was bigger and too determined to be stopped. He bowled his way to the morgue, demanding to see the body. When they wouldn't show it to him he started ripping sheets away from the bodies laid out on steal tables. The third one had been Kyle.
Stripped bare except for the sheet, Rick had been able to see all the damage Evan had inflicted on the boy's body. His head was caved in on the left side from a crushing right handed baseball bat swing; the finishing blow the coroner told him as he recovered from his vomiting. His ribs were cracked and misshapen from the intensity of the baseball bat blows.
The coroner said the beating probably lasted for a while before Evan finally crushed his head with the bat. He said it would have taken more than one swing to inflict that level of damage.
Rick sat in the tight circle of Linda's embrace for two hours. The other kids came home from school, their faces masks of shock. They'd gotten the news just as school was letting out. Linda stayed quiet, nodding the kids into the house and rocking him back and forth, crouched on the stoop.
Rick knew her legs must have been aching terribly from sitting that way for so long but she never moved or grimaced, just held him close as she would her own children.
"Linda?" he asked quietly, feeling nauseous. This was something he'd wanted to ask her for a long time but had never had the courage for. He'd been too afraid of rejection but now a part of him needed it terribly. An affirmation in the form of words.
"Yeah, darlin'?" she asked, pulling away a little to look him in the eye.
Rick glanced down between them at the concrete ground. He forced himself to look up at her and felt a sob shake his chest and shoulders. "Can I call you Mom?"
Linda sucked in a breath and he saw tears well up in her eyes. "I would love it if you did."
Rick felt almost guilty at the joy that filled him in that moment. Guilty for having so much joy in his heart when his best friend was lying cold and still in a morgue drawer. The reminder was enough to make him shudder once more and Linda pulled him close again.
"It's okay," she whispered. "It's not okay that Kyle is gone, but it's okay to hurt, Rick. It's alright to cry about it. It doesn't make you weak to have loved Kyle. And it's okay to have loved another boy. He was with you through everything and you did your best to protect him from Evan. I know he loved you."
Rick nodded mutely against her shoulder, thoughts of murder in his mind. Revenge.
"Let's go in, okay? You can try and eat something and wait for Dale to get home."
------
Rick woke up early the next morning despite not having finally drifted off to sleep until about four in the morning. Visions of Kyle's caved in skull had haunted him continuously throughout the night, refusing to leave him alone. He'd woken up in the midst of a nightmare where he'd been standing by helplessly as Evan beat Kyle with the baseball bat, the hollow thud of wood meeting flesh and the sickening crunch of bone filling his ears.
All he'd been able to do was watch, a fly on the wall. He'd woken up just as Kyle had died, sweating and panting heavily.
The sky was still dark as he pulled on jeans and a t-shirt. He pulled on clean socks before grabbing his sneakers and heading for the back door. He pulled on his shoes outside the door then checked that his blade was secured in his waistband. It was plastic, carved and honed sharp as a razor blade. It had been his midnight project, designed for what he was preparing himself to do. It would go through the metal detectors at the police station easily.
Eddie's new mountain bike was secured to a rail concreted to the ground on the side of the house and Rick put in the combination for the lock to get it free. He was pretty sure he'd be getting a new bike for his upcoming birthday, too, but knew that he'd never find out now. Not after he'd completed what he was going to do.
"Sorry, everyone," he muttered under his breath before climbing on the bike and taking off in the direction of the police station where Evan Sullivan was being held.
It wasn't too long a ride, Rick estimated it to be about three and a half miles and was locking the bike up outside the police station in under a half hour. He walked into the police station, feeling a strange numbness filling his limbs.
Rick passed through the metal detectors set into the door jam on either side of him, holding his breath. When they didn't go off he let out a sigh of relief and passed into the small anti-room. A female officer was sitting behind a high counter just inside the inner doors of the police station, flipping through a stack of papers. Her black and gray uniform looked starched and pressed and Rick automatically pegged her as a rookie. As he approached the counter the woman looked up at him with steel gray eyes and her mouth turned into an easy smile.
"How may I help you?" she asked, letting the papers in her hand settle back on the counter.
Rick didn't smile but tried to keep from looking nervous and angry. "I'm looking for Evan Sullivan," he said quietly.
The woman's face went from open friendliness to guarded caution. "You are, are you."
"Yes, ma'am," Rick replied, falling easily into the pattern of well-taught manners.
"What business have you got with him?"
"I just want to talk to him."
"Do you know what he's here for?" the woman asked, all pleasantness gone, her tone brisk and businesslike.
"Yes, ma'am," he answered. "But I wanted to hear it from him."
"Hold on." The woman stood and went deeper into the room behind her, approaching a plain clothes detective at his desk. The talked for a moment, with the woman officer gesturing to Rick over her shoulder. The detective looked over the woman's shoulder to gaze at him and Rick tried to keep from shifting nervously from one foot to the other, forcing himself to be still and composed.
The detective leaned forward and said something else to the woman then nodded his head. Rick read his lips: "Sure. Let the kid see the bastard."
The woman officer returned to the counter and looked at him shrewdly. "What's your name?" she asked him.
"Richard Riddick," Rick answered.
"All right, Riddick. You can see Sullivan for a moment, but that's it."
"Thank you," Rick said, dropping his eyes slightly.
"C'mon," she ordered and lifted a section of the counter set on hinges to allow him through.
Rick followed the woman through the station to the back where she opened a steel door and directed him to sit at the table that sat between two metal chairs in the center of the room. Rick did as he was told.
"I'll bring in Sullivan," the woman said and Rick nodded.
He waited in the room for what seemed like forever. He could feel the seconds ticking by like hours and wondered if he had the guts to do what he'd come to do. To finish the life of the man they were bringing him. He was nervous but Rick knew he had to do it. That was enough to strengthen his resolve.
The door opened after what seemed like years and Rick turned to see Evan Sullivan shuffling into the room, chains on his ankles, connected to a belt at his waist, and then to a set of far spaced cuffs on his wrists. At the sight of Evan's black eye and split lip Rick felt pride flush through him for Kyle, knowing his friend had fought back.
Evan moved slowly, like a man in pain and Rick hoped his ribs were busted some. Evan glared at him and Rick didn't react.
"You've got five minutes, Riddick," the woman officer said and shut and locked the door behind her as she left.
Evan seated himself across from Rick, but Rick ignored him for a moment, searching the room. He found what he was looking for and sighed. There would be no way out, two cameras were mounted in the corners of the room, recording everything that was happening in the room.
"What the fuck do you want?" Evan snarled when Rick continued to ignore him.
Rick's black-brown eyes snapped to Evan's face and his lip curled in disgust. "You're a fucking bastard ass, woman beating coward, you know that, Sullivan?" Rick snarled back.
Evan's face twisted in rage. "Did I mention you're ugly?" Rick added quietly. He was fingering the grip of his shiv beneath the table. It was almost time, he just had a few things left to say before he could end it.
"What the fuck do you know, orphan?" Evan spat.
"I know that no real man beats his children or his wife. That no real man drinks himself into forgetting and hurting unless he's trying to escape the facts he knows to be true in his own mind."
"And what facts are those?"
"That you're a weak, sniveling, poor excuse for a piece of shit and that nothing in this world will fix that. Not drink, not beating your wife, and not killing your son, the only good thing you ever made in this world, with a baseball bat just because you suck balls."
Evan lunged at him, quite suddenly, across the table, but Rick was quicker, and expecting the attack. He jumped back, shoving his chair across the room into the wall behind him. Evan was halfway across the table now and Rick whipped out his shiv and pressed it coldly against Evan's throat.
"I want you to know who did this," Rick said as Evan went completely still, his eyes going wide enough that the whites shown around his pupils. "I want you to know a kid sent you to hell."
The door was flung open just as Rick pressed the blade in tight and yanked it across Evan's throat. Blood sprayed across Rick's arms and chest and face, but he didn't flinch.
The woman officer and the detective were both staring at him from the open door, faces crowding the door to stare inside at him around the officer and detective.
Rick dropped the shiv and held out his hands to them, then he turned his face to one of the two cameras and said, clearly, "I'm sorry, Mom."
------
"It happened late one night six months ago in the low-rent district. The story that we've all heard so many times coming to the expected ending; a young boy, Kyle Sullivan, age fourteen, was beaten and murdered by his father, Evan Sullivan, with a baseball bat.
"The boy's mother, Glenna Sullivan, was also beaten, but was released from the hospital with broken bones and a few other minor injuries two weeks after her son's murder.
"The part of this story that made it surprising to the public was how quickly Evan Sullivan was brought to justice. Another young man, Richard B. Riddick, who was Kyle's closest friend, went to the police station the next morning and killed Evan Sullivan with a homemade plastic knife that the police refer to as a 'shiv'."
The Vibbards sat clustered around the holocube, watching the news. As the reporter talked a scene of Rick walking up the courthouse stairs, hands cuffed behind him, his head high, was being played. At the top of the steps he paused and turned to face the camera. A small smile crossed his lips and he mouthed a few words that the Vibbards all understood. "I love you guys."
Linda started to cry, leaning on her husband and the children at their feet huddled closer together, sniffling with grief.
"Riddick was tried for Sullivan's murder this morning while protesters demanded his freedom and called him a hero on the courthouse steps," the reporter continued.
"However, Riddick was convicted of first degree murder and awaits sentencing on Thursday at eleven am next week. It's expected that he will spend the next four years, until his eighteenth birthday, in a maximum security youth facility and will then be moved to the state prison to serve the rest of his sentence, which will likely be fifteen to twenty-five years. This reporter wishes Rick Riddick the best and hopes he gets out before then."
FINIS