No Ransom

Crime Fiction by Jim Courter

As the car bumped over unpaved country roads, Ernie Sticklin bouncing in the trunk along with the jack and the spare and who knew what else, it occurred to him that he should have taken more seriously the plot-making gears in his head that had imagined this scenario, that one or more amateur criminals with dollars signs in their eyes would think he had made a bundle for publishing a novel that was made into a film and calculate that he might fetch a hefty ransom. If they only knew.

Only a couple of weeks earlier, Ernie had been out in LaLa Land to attend the premier of His Father’s Son, the film based on his novel of the same title, about a guy who follows in his father’s criminal footsteps. The novel’s publisher had paid him a pittance for royalties and took seventy-five percent of the sale of film rights to a third-rate studio that hadn’t asked Ernie to contribute to the script, buried his name in fine print in the credits—“based on a novel by Ernie Sticklin”—granted him no approval over the cast (none of whom he had ever heard of) or production values (shoddy), and turned His Father’s Son into a screen version he barely recognized. Neither the film nor its premier had been mentioned in Variety.

Ernie had returned home, not exactly to a celebrity’s welcome or a ticker tape parade—they didn’t go in for such things in gritty, working-class Maynerd (Pop. 14,000), with its high unemployment rate after factory closures—but at least a writeup in the Daily Gazette:

Maynerd High English Teacher Feted in Hollywood!

Fated was more like it, Ernie thought—fated to be frustrated and disappointed by what he had always imagined, as a writer, to be a boost to his ego and his bank account. Without the fanfare of a local premier, His Father’s Son was given only a one-week run at the Rialto, the six-screen multiplex in a strip mall between the Discount Shoe Shack and Billy Wu’s all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. When Ernie asked the Rialto’s manager why, he cringed, shrugged, and said sorry, but it couldn’t compete with the steamy rom-coms and sensationalist action-adventure and sci-fi stuff that drew larger audiences.

So much for achieving fame and fortune as a writer.

But somebody apparently thought he had. A week after settling back into town, Ernie had been accosted at night by two guys in the parking lot of CVS. He was bear hugged from behind by one while another put a cloth bag over his head and cinched it with a drawstring. His first thought was that someone was playing a joke on him, but within seconds he was bound with zip ties at the wrists and ankles and stuffed into the trunk of a car. A half hour or so later, about the time Ernie thought he couldn’t take any more of jostling around back there—as if he had a choice—the car took a hard right, slued down what must have been a muddy track, then nosedived to a stop.

Ernie heard the two guys get out and close their doors. They talked a while. He couldn’t make out what they said but thought the voices sounded familiar. The trunk opened.

“Get out,” one of them said.

“I don’t think he can,” the other said.

They each took an arm and pulled him up and out, banging his head on the underside of the trunk lid. They closed the trunk and walked him to a creaky wooden porch and into a house. A screen door slammed shut behind them with a loud thwack.

A light came on. A rough shove sat him down into a chair. From behind, one of them removed the sack from his head but left his wrists and ankles tied. He looked around. He was at a long, rough-hewn plank table in a kitchen. The two guys came around to the other side of it to face him.

It was the Keefer brothers, Darrell and Cody. Both had been in Ernie’s American Lit class at Maynerd High School, Cody, the younger one, just the previous year, Darrell a couple of years before Cody. Cody had been quiet, unassuming, uninspired as a student—dim, in Ernie’s estimation—but no source of trouble. Darrell had been quiet, too, but with an air of brooding menace and antagonism that smoldered just below the surface, and managed to be unsettling without saying a word. Cody had passed with a gift-wrapped C, the kind teachers give to students with a resigned shrug. Darrell hadn’t done the assigned work, showed up less than half the time, and failed. Soon after that he dropped out of school.

In spite of his predicament, Ernie breathed a sigh of relief. Better the devil you know, he told himself.

“We meet again,” Ernie said.

Cody smiled. Darrell ignored him.

“Bring stuff in from the car while I keep an eye on him,” Darrell told Cody.

Darrell opened his jacket to reveal a nickel-plated revolver tucked in the waist of his jeans. Cody made several trips, carrying plastic Walmart sacks and a couple of gym bags. On orders from Darrell he put food in the fridge and kitchen cabinets and took the rest to other rooms.

Ernie looked around. Everything he saw appeared ramshackle and outdated. The floor was covered with gray linoleum that resembled the cratered moon. He was uncomfortable and needed to use a bathroom and asked to be untied. Cody looked sympathetic, but seemed unable to act without permission from Darrell, who looked suspicious.

“Come on, guys,” Ernie said. “I have no idea where we are or how far we are from town. If I tried to run, I wouldn’t know which way to go. Besides, it’s cold outside. I wouldn’t get very far before I’d freeze to death.”

That was far from being the case. The early October temperature was in the mid-forties, and Ernie’s tolerance for cold was considerable. He thought that if he could get a glimpse of the glow of town in the night sky and satisfy himself that it was within reach, and if an opportunity arose, he’d make a run for it.

Darrell took a switchblade from a pocket and cut Ernie’s ties.

“Take him up,” he said to Cody. He gestured toward an open door at the bottom of some wooden stairs. “This’ll be locked,” he told Ernie, “and the windows up there are painted shut. Go ahead and break one if you feel brave. It’s a long drop and there ain’t nothing to climb down on.” He gave Cody the gun. “If he tries anything, shoot him. And don’t give me none of your bleeding-heart routine.”

Cody, reluctantly resigned to the task, said, “Let’s go, Mr. Sticklin.”

Cody followed Ernie up some creaky wooden stairs. At the top Cody stuck the gun in the waist of his jeans and showed Ernie a grungy bathroom—“This here’s where you can do your business.”—then took him to a room across the hall. He turned on a dim bare bulb in the ceiling.

“This is where you’ll sleep,” Cody said.

Except for a straight-back wooden chair and a dilapidated mattress on the floor, it was empty. The walls were bare, the plain paper covering them peeling and dingy with age. The trim around the one window and an interior door was painted to match the floor and the stairs they had taken up, a dark brown that had peeled and cracked.

“This was my gramma and grampa’s house,” Cody said, smiling at the memory. “It’s been empty since they passed. I slept in this very room my own self when me and my brother was younguns and came to visit.”

“Your brother seems to have something against me,” Ernie said.

 “Step-brother, actually,” Cody said. “That’s just him. He’s kind of a sorehead. He’s got something against everybody.”

“Including you?”

Cody cringed, and Ernie sensed that he had raised a touchy subject.

“We got the same dad but different moms,” Cody said. “He disrespects my mom somethin’ awful. Calls her a slut, and worse. I ain’t saying she’s perfect, but she’s my mom. Hell, his mom and our dad wasn’t even married. He blames my mom for some of his troubles. Mostly, though, he blames you.”

“How does he figure?”

“After you flunked him in your class he dropped out of school and ended up on the wrong side of the law for one thing and another, and it ain’t been nothing but downhill ever since. It didn’t help none neither that a certain girl Darrell had eyes on—Twila Burroughs, if you want to know, also from your English class—couldn’t talk about nothing but you and the fact that you wrote that novel that got made into a movie. She went on and on about it—‘Imagine that, a guy from Maynerd!’ He went and seen the movie and came back saying it was about him and our dad. I told him no way, but he wouldn’t listen. He don’t listen to nothin’ I got to say.. Since then all he’s talked about is getting back at you.” He shrugged. “And here we are.”

At that point Darrell called up the stairs. “Git that done and git back down here.”

“Gotta go,” Cody said. He indicated the interior door. “There’s a pillow and blanket in that closet. Hope you can sleep.”

“Me, too,” Ernie said.

Cody turned to leave, then stopped and turned back. “None of this was my idea, Mr. Sticklin. It was all Darrell’s, and he didn’t give me no choice but to go along.”

Ernie thought it might serve his interests to try to convince Cody that he was being used and ought to stand up for himself, but before he could say anything Cody went downstairs.

Ernie went to the window and looked out. He didn’t know which direction he was facing. In the light of the half moon he could see that the house and some out buildings were surrounded by woods. Sighting over the trees he saw some lonely-looking lights from farms way off in the distance.

He thought of his wife Sarah and their kids, Jenny and Rob, and wished he could somehow let them know that he was unhurt. He wished he could feel confident of remaining that way. If Darrell and Cody asked for a sizable amount of money as ransom, thinking that Ernie had scored big with his novel and the movie, they’d be in for a surprise, and he’d be in for . . . what?

Ernie took the threadbare blanket and the sorry excuse for a pillow from a shelf in the closet and settled down on the mattress. Sleep eluded him, and he lay there pondering the dynamic between the brothers—Darrell talking down to Cody and addressing him as if he were an intractable servant, Cody chafing at that but seeming helpless to do anything about it—and wondered if he might somehow use that to extricate himself by driving a wedge between them.

He was directly above the kitchen and could hear some of their talk. They seemed to be arguing.  He thought he heard the word ransom. Finally, in spite of the chill and discomfort and worry, he nodded off, his last waking thought being regret that when he published His Father’s Son he hadn’t used a pen name.

***

Ernie awoke the next morning to light coming through the window and the sound of someone calling up from the bottom of the stairs. It was Cody.

“Breakfast is on the table, Mr. Sticklin. Come on down when you’re ready.”

Ernie got up and stretched and went into the bathroom—and realized he had nothing with which to brush his teeth. He went down to the smell of coffee. The table was set with plastic plates, a bulging paper bag showing grease stains, and a roll of paper towels.

“Have a seat and help yourself to a donut, Mr. Sticklin,” Cody said, as, still standing, he dipped a hand into the bag for one. Ernie sat. Cody poured coffee into a mug and set it in front of him.

“Thanks,” Ernie said.

“Hope you like it black. We ain’t got cream or sugar.”

“Black’s fine,” Ernie said.

He tore off a paper towel and folded it to resemble a napkin. He put two glazed donuts on a plate, commenced eating one, and drank some coffee. It was good, strong stuff. He dunked the rest of the donut and when it was gone started on the other. Ernie had a weakness for donuts that he seldom indulged, and for a while he was almost able to forget about his predicament.

Cody stayed standing, leaning back against the kitchen sink.

“This coffee’s righteous stuff,” Ernie said. “Did you brew it?”

Cody beamed. “I surely did. My specialty. Darrell don’t drink it. He don’t know what he’s missing.”

“Where is Darrell?” Ernie said.

”He’s outside somewhere.”

Remembering what he had overheard the night before, Ernie said, “If he ever gets around to asking for a ransom, I’m afraid he’ll be disappointed. I barely made lunch money from my novel and the movie. And high school English teachers don’t exactly get paid a fortune.”

Cody didn’t respond to that. In fact, he looked uncomfortable, then turned his back on Ernie and looked out the window above the sink.

Later, back upstairs, Ernie overheard Cody ask Darrell about a ransom demand—why one hadn’t yet been made, if and when it would be, and for how much. Darrell told Cody to shut his trap and let him handle things.

***

At some point it occurred to Ernie that what ensued over the next few days might look to a casual observer like nothing more than the domestic activities of three guys sharing a house—including disagreements over who had kitchen cleanup duty after meals. Not that those meals involved a lot of preparation or left much to clean up. Neither  Darrell nor Cody used the stovetop or the oven to cook, and Ernie wondered if they were out of commission. Their fare was mostly donuts for breakfast; cold cuts, including lots of bologna, on white bread for lunch and supper, with cheap generic potato chips; not a bite of fresh fruit or a vegetable. After several meals’ worth of dishes had accumulated, Darrell ordered Ernie to clean up.

By then impatient and aggrieved, Ernie said, “And what will you do if I don’t, kidnap me and hold me against my will?”

Darrell glowered but seemed to have no good answer for that. Instead, he ordered Cody to do the job. Cody slumped but didn’t protest, at which point Ernie relented and did as Darrell had ordered, calculating that earning Cody’s gratitude might somehow pay off.

The job of keeping an eye on Ernie fell mostly to Cody. Darrell spent much of the days somewhere outside and would return dirty and sweating, in spite of the cool air. When Darrell came in one afternoon to find Ernie and Cody playing a friendly game of spades at the kitchen table, he broke it up and sent Ernie upstairs. From there he heard Darrell upbraiding Cody for treating Ernie with respect and deference. “Your Mr. Sticklin, ain’t done no favors for neither of us. You need to get that through your thick skull when the time comes.”           

When the time comes for what, Ernie wondered. On his third full day in captivity, he found out.

***

Late in the afternoon on that day, Darrell returned from one of his solitary excursions and said to Cody, “Tell your friend to come down. We’re taking a walk.”

“Where we goin’?” Cody said.

“You’ll find out when we get there. Just do what I told you.”

Cody got up and unlocked and opened the door to the upstairs and yelled up to Ernie to come down. When Ernie got into the kitchen Darrell had his gun out. He shoved Ernie toward Cody. He gave Cody a plastic zip tie and said, “Tie that ‘round his wrists—front or back, it don’t make no difference.”

Ernie accommodated Cody by putting his hands together in front of him. As Cody put on the zip tie he gave Ernie a hangdog look of apology that Darrell couldn’t see. With the gun in one hand Darrell herded them toward the door to the outside.

Ernie had a bad feeling. “What’s going on?” he said as they went across the porch. “Where are we going?”

Darrell didn’t answer.

Cody started down the driveway toward the car. Ernie followed him.

“Not that way,” Darrell said. Cody and Ernie stopped and turned. Darrell waved with the gun toward the woods.

“There’s a path up ahead,” Darrell said. “Follow that.”

Ernie guessed that if he went into those woods he wouldn’t  come out alive. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said to Darrell, “not until you tell me what this is about.”

Darrell fired a round into the ground near Ernie’s feet. Ernie jumped. Darrell went to Ernie and stuck the muzzle in his left ear. It was warm.

“You’ll go in those woods on foot or be drug there dead by your buddy here. Your choice.”

Ernie calculated that this wasn’t the time or place to make a stand. He turned and moved down the path behind Cody, telling himself that if he bought time he might find some way out of this.

They walked awhile at an angle that took them further from the road that led to the house. Ernie thought of how much he would have enjoyed such a walk with Sarah and the kids, especially at that time of year. At a clearing, Darrell told them to stop.

In the middle of the clearing they came to a rectangular pit about six feet by three feet and three feet deep. Next to it was a mound of dirt with a shovel stuck upright in it.

Cody looked at Ernie, who looked at Darrell, who smiled evilly at both of them.

“I’d’ve made you dig it,” Darrell said to Cody, “but I wanted the job done right. Besides, you’da probly figured out who it was for and raised a caterwaul.”

Darrell held the gun out toward Cody and said, “Here, you get the honors.”

“He wants you to take the rap for murder,” Ernie said with hot desperation.

“You shut up!” Darrell barked.

Cody looked pleadingly at his brother. “Don’t make me do this, Darrell. I ain’t got it in me.”

“You’ll do it,” Darrell said, “or I’ll use this on the both of you. I ain’t dug for two, but I’ll work the pair of you in there nice and snug if I have to.”

Cody held out a trembling hand for the gun.

“He’s taking advantage of you, Cody” Ernie said. “Don’t do something you’ll regret the rest of your life.”

“Don’t be a boy the rest of your life.” Darrell said. “Time to grow up and do a man’s job.”

Cody held the gun down at his side and sobbed. “Darrell, please . . .”

“Damn it, you dimwit,” Darrell said, “shoot the bastard!” 

Cody stopped sobbing. He brightened. Ernie saw a light in his eyes that he had never before seen, not when Cody was in his classroom and not during his captivity. Fairly beaming, Cody looked down at the gun in his hand, then at Darrell, who looked suddenly unnerved.

Cody wiped tears from his cheeks with his free hand and said, “By golly I believe I will.”

His face suddenly flush with alarm, Darrell said. “Hey!” But that was all he said.

Cody fired, then fired again, then again and again until Darrell fell next to the open grave he had dug for Ernie, blood spreading on his shirt. He stirred and groaned. With the sole of his muddy boot, Cody tipped Darrell into the grave and put him to rest with one more shot. He pulled the trigger again, but the hammer clacked on an empty chamber.

***

The air was cool, but the woods were so dense that no breeze came through the trees, most of which hadn’t yet shed their leaves. After a hard fifteen minutes of shoveling, the body in the shallow grave wasn’t quite fully covered; the tip of the nose and toes of the boots stuck up above the loose dirt. Cody stopped and leaned wearily on the shovel to catch his breath. He wiped sweat from his brow with a shirtsleeve, sighed wearily, and was about to get back to work when he heard, “Take a break and let me do some. No reason you should have to do it all.”

Relieved and grateful, Cody looked up and said, “I ‘preciate it, Mr. Sticklin. I gotta admit, much as I’m enjoyin’ this, it’s wearin’ me out.”

As Ernie got to work, he said, “You get an A+ for this, Cody.”

“That’ll be the first I ever got, Mr. Sticklin.”

“Not only that,” Ernie said, “but if I work this into a story and sell the film rights, I’ll cut you in on the profits.”

Cody looked alarmed. “Oh, Mr. Sticklin, people are gonna reconize . . .”

“Not to worry,” Ernie said. “I’ll use a pen name.”

---

Bio: Jim Courter’s short stories have appeared in the United States, Canada, and England. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee and recipient of an Illinois Arts Council award for short fiction. His essays have appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Smithsonian, and on the op-ed pages of the Chicago Tribune and The Wall Street Journal. His mystery novel, Rhymes with Fool, was published in 2018 by Peasantry Press. Its sequel, Reflecting Pool was issued in September, 2024. His mystery novel, Murder Happens, was published in November, 2024, by Histria Fiction, an imprint of Histria Books.

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Cover photo by:pexels/Harrison Haines

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