Chapter 109

Rawle Powder was walking from the back parking lot to the front of the SaveEasy on Main Street in Wolfville, picking up a barbequed rotisserie chicken for dinner.
Dinner for one.
The line up was long, as usual, but it was worth it for that 16 year-old black-haired cash girl. She looked almost like the homicide cop, Biz Digby.
Coming out into the soggy street, he swore he felt the smell of spring in the air. The air smelled like honey or something.
It wouldn’t be long now until March.
He plopped his groceries into the trunk and slid the key into the driver’s door. The Golf was a mess. Kelloway had been gone less than two weeks, and the car was already filled with garbage.
He reached down to open the car door, slowly. It still hurt his body to move. The bullet had only grazed his skull, but the force of the impact had still wreaked havoc on his body. His muscles were stiff all over. It hurt to breathe.
He opened the door and the sound of a gunshot rang out on the left somewhere, on Front Street at the back side of the parking lot.
Rawle froze solid and felt ice run down his back and arms. At first he thought it wa san auditory hallucination, but then he saw other people inth eparkinglot reacting too.
His first instinct was to look in the direction of the gun-shot, stupidly, not duck down.
Everyone else flinched and then gawked over at Front Street, toward the health food store.
Rawle did not notice a white van parked behind him. The sliding door ripped open, making a loud whirling noise. Rawle looked back as an incredibly strong set of hands grappled him by the jacket and yanked his body up backwards into the belly of the van, as if he were an empty suit.
Fuck! Rawle was pulled into the messy interior of the van and driven face down to the ground. The arms belonged to a huge black man with light skin the colour of a café latte and big eyebrows.
The sliding door rolled shut hard at Rawle’s feet, and the van began to peel away.
No, no, no!
The man held him down hard, crushing him into the carpet. Rawle could smell dust burning in his nostrils and tried to scream.
“Did I get shot?” he asked after a minute. He wasn’t thinking straight. His body was ringing all over.
The kidnapper looked down at him with a frightening monster-face. He had enormous bone structure, like a Neanderthal. He laughed. His laugh sounded like Count Dracula: “Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah.”
The unseen driver of the van was laughing too.
“Don’t be a pussy, Rawley,” the kidnapper said. “It was just a firecracker.”