Catherine Nelson - Zoe Grey 02 - The Trouble with Theft (27 page)

I made my way back down the hallway.
When I came into the kitchen, Dillon had her back to me, bent over Natalie,
whispering something in her ear, almost romantically. But I could see Natalie
trembling, and I knew Dillon’s words were full of terror, not love.

“Please, don’t,”
Natalie sobbed. “Please, please, no.”

Dillon stood upright and
pressed a knife to Natalie’s shoulder.

“No!” Natalie cried.
“No, please!”

“Excuse me.”

Dillon jerked around.
“You!” she snapped.

“Me,” I said. “Listen,
I hate to interrupt, but my friend and I need to be leaving. I’m sure you
understand.”

Dillon smirked, her
brown eyes dark. Slowly, deliberately, she stepped around Natalie and held the
knife to her throat. Natalie whimpered.

“I’m not finished
yet,” Dillon said.

“I will shoot you.”

Suddenly, Dillon’s
stare darted behind me, and her smirk widened to a wicked smile. I thought I
knew where Lyle Young was now.

“No, you won’t,”
Dillon said with a confidence that was almost taunting.

I felt something
unmistakable press against the back of my head.

“Drop it,” Young said.

I complied, the heavy
gun clattering to the tile as I raised my hands.

“I got her, babe,”
Young said, and I hoped he was looking at Dillon.

I spun around and
knocked the gun aside. It flew out of Young’s hand and slid across the floor.
At the same time, I let loose a series of blows to his torso and head, then
swung back with a roundhouse kick. Young’s head snapped to the side, and he was
unconscious before he hit the tile.

I knelt and grabbed up
the Glock, raising it in front of me as Natalie screamed. As I sighted Dillon,
I could see blood running down Natalie’s neck from under the knife Dillon still
held there.

“I’ll kill her,”
Dillon said, something in her eyes now that almost resembled glee. To prove her
point, she pressed the knife tighter.

Natalie was sobbing,
beyond hysterical, consumed by fear.

Before I could really
think about it, I had dropped the gun a second time. “Okay, okay,” I said,
holding my hands up. “Stop.”

Too late, I realized I
was suffering from the same handicap I’d been afraid Amerson would have. I
cared about Natalie, and it was affecting my judgment. I hoped it didn’t get us
both killed.

Dillon smiled like a
gloating victor and released some pressure on the knife.

“Very good,” she
cooed. “Now, bring a chair over here.”

I rose and got a chair
from the kitchen table, a solid oak one, and placed it where she directed. Then
she nodded at the duct tape on the island, next to all her torture tools.

“Tape yourself to the
chair,” she directed. “Feet first, then one hand. And no funny business.” She
pressed the knife into Natalie’s neck for effect.

But I was already
complying. Or, mostly complying.

“Tighter,” she said.
“Don’t fuck with me.”

I did as instructed,
taping both legs and my left arm to the chair. When I was finished, she moved
away from Natalie, dropping the knife onto the island with the others. If she
wanted me to stay in this chair, my other wrist would need to be taped, too,
and she’d have to do that herself. But if she thought it was any safer for her
now that I was down to just one hand, she was seriously mistaken. Of course, my
window of opportunity would be very narrow; I’d have to be very accurate. I
thought I could be.

“I’ve been looking for
you,” Dillon said. “And you came to me. What a treat.”

She walked over, as
excited as a kid with a new toy. When she was within striking distance, I
tossed the tape at her then swung my fist. I saw her eyes flit to the tape and
watch it come toward her, then, suddenly, to something behind me. My first blow
was perfect; Dillon was winded and dropped to her knees. But before I could strike
again, I felt something connect with the back of my head and everything went
black.

When I came back
around, the first thing I’d been aware of was the horrendous pain in my head.
Once the initial waves of pain and subsequent nausea passed, I became aware of
other things. I heard bubbling and muttered talking.

I discovered I was
still taped to the chair and both Danielle Dillon and Lyle Young were upright.
Guess this went to prove Ellmann’s point: one little misstep could totally
upend a situation, no matter how capable I am or incapable my opponent is. And
I’m not invincible, however inconvenient that is.

Dillon stood with
Young near the island, their heads together, discussing something. Natalie was
gone, as was the chair she’d been taped to. There were marks in the blood on
the floor that indicated her chair might have been dragged from the room, in
the direction of the hallway. Perhaps she was being stored in the master
bathroom with Priscilla.

I began to test the
integrity of my bindings. From what I could tell, no one had added any tape to
the limbs I’d secured, though there was quite a bit more tape on my right arm.
Still, everything felt depressingly secure. I leaned to one side and then the
other, testing the chair to determine how solid it was. I felt just a tiny bit
of give in it when I moved from side to side, enough to keep my spirits up.

I knew my first
objective needed to be getting free of the chair. While I was strapped here, I
was a sitting duck. I didn’t have any illusions about what would happen to me
now that it was my turn in the kitchen. Not only did I want to avoid this, but
I thought it was time to get help. Clearly the security alarm thing had not
panned out, otherwise the police would have shown up by now.

Young shot a glance in
my direction and saw me watching him. He stood and ambled over.

“You’re awake,” he
said. “I thought it’d be longer.”

“Sorry if I’m not
cooperating. I find all my kidnappers have that complaint. My head hurts, Lyle.
That was a good little smack you gave me.”

He smirked and pulled
the gun I’d knocked out of his hand earlier from his waistband. Now that I had
time for a good look, I recognized it. It was mine. It was
my
gun. Which
added insult to injury, the bastard.

“If you think you’re
in pain now,” he said, “just wait ’til she gets started on you.”

“If it’s all the same
to you, I’ll pass on the entertainment portion of the evening. I’ll take my gun
and my friend and get out of your hair.”

That gun had been in
the drawer beside my bed last time I’d seen it. At some point, Young, or
perhaps Dillon, had been in my house. Which meant first thing Monday, if I
didn’t go to jail, I was having a security system installed. What had the world
come to?

Of course, Dillon said
she’d been looking for me. It made sense she’d been to my house. And I suspect
it had been Young at the Conrad house earlier. He likely followed me from here,
after I’d come around asking about Heather Neuman. What I wasn’t totally clear
on is why they wanted me.

What I know about
torture can’t fill a thimble, but here it is. Torture serves some kind of
purpose. That purpose may simply be the pleasure the torturer gets from the
act. In other cases, it may be used as a method for brainwashing.

The human mind has a
breaking point. That breaking point is different for each person, but once it’s
reached, it’s possible for someone else to reach inside that broken mind and
rearrange the furniture, or even redecorate altogether. The pain and
powerlessness that come from torture are an effective way of accomplishing
this.

Torture is also used
as a means of extracting information. Either, “Tell me what I want to know or
I’ll hurt you,” or, “Tell me what I want to know and I’ll stop hurting you.”
This is also very effective, since the human mind is inherently programmed with
an aversion to pain.

I guessed this was an
information-extraction situation—that they wanted something from me. But I
didn’t know what. If I knew something, I didn’t know I knew.

Young stuffed the gun
into his waistband then marched around and grabbed the back of the chair. He
tipped it back then dragged me roughly across the tile to the spot Natalie had
occupied previously. He let go of the chair, and it banged back to the tile
violently. I threw my weight forward and felt the strain on the joints of the
chair. Perfect.

“You’re not going
anywhere,” Dillon said, smiling.

“Maybe I should tell
you the story of the last time I was kidnapped. Although, I don’t think you’ll
like it. It didn’t have a happy ending for the kidnappers.”

Dillon looked at
Young, still standing behind me, and tipped her head. Immediately I heard
footsteps behind me. I glanced back and saw Young leave the kitchen.

Dillon brought another
chair over from the table and sat down near the island. The pot on the stove was
bubbling. The instruments laid out on the island were sharp and painful looking,
several of them bloody. Dillon crossed her legs then folded her arms across her
chest.

“I’m afraid I’m only
interested in one story,” Dillon said.

“You have a thing for
kitchens,” I said, looking at the blood covering her and the floor.

That same tickling
sensation happened again in the back of my mind. But this time it was much
closer. As I looked at the floor and at her, I remembered the Conrads’ kitchen
and Grandma Porter’s kitchen. Then the tickling turned into a sharp sting as
the thoughts came together in my head.

The Conrads and
Grandma Porter were not the only two kitchen crime scene cases I’d come across
recently. I’d read a newspaper article about a woman found murdered in her
kitchen, a woman whose body showed signs of torture. That woman had once been
Desirae Dillon’s boss.

I looked up again at
the woman sitting before me. She was smiling darkly.

“They say the kitchen
is the heart of the home,” she said. “I say the kitchen has the best tools.”

__________

I took a deep breath and forced
myself to think.

The woman in front of
me looked like the woman in the photo I’d been flashing all over for the last
three days, the woman I believed to be Danielle Dillon. But this woman was
covered in blood and seemed to delight in inflicting pain on people.
Remembering what I knew to be true about the victims of abuse, and what I knew
about Danielle Dillon so far, I had concluded she was the third type, the type
that fights back. I’m not an expert, but torturing people isn’t the same as
standing up for yourself.

After reading about
Desirae Dillon in the old newspaper articles, I’d concluded that she, also the
victim of abuse, had become the first type, the type that becomes the abuser.
Torturing people seemed much more the speed of that type of person. Despite my
current circumstance, I stood by these conclusions. Then it hit me.

Grandma Porter had a
photo album in her drawer. When I’d looked through it, I’d only seen one girl:
Danielle Dillon. But I’d only known it was Danielle Dillon because the girl in
those photos was the same as the girl in the police photo I had. My mistake had
been believing there was only one girl. There was only one
face.
Two
girls, one face: twins. Danielle and her sister Desirae were identical twins.
This made a lot of sense, because I’d wondered why a grandmother would only
have pictures of one granddaughter.

This wasn’t Danielle
Dillon sitting in front of me. This was Desirae Dillon.

In a small, distant
part of my brain, I was disappointed, because this meant I still hadn’t found
Danielle.

“Tell me,” I said.
“How does one progress from arson to torture?”

“I see you’ve been
doing some reading,” she said. “Lyle did say you knew too much. You have a way
of sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

I nodded. “I get that
sometimes. That guy you killed when you were eighteen, was that the first time
you killed someone?”

“What is this,
therapy?” she asked, standing.

“Probably more like an
interrogation, but we could split the difference and call it an ‘interview’ if
that would make you feel better.”

She scoffed and went
to the island. She picked up a particularly long knife and carried it to the
stove, where she deposited it in the pot.

“What made you start
torturing people?” I asked. “Your first kill, you used fire. Why change?”

“Any time you do
something more than once, you get better at it.”

“Why kill at all?”

“When I was thirteen,
I watched that old hag, Martha, kill my uncle.”

Was she saying what I
thought she was saying?

“After seeing that,
you thought it was okay to kill people?”

I was going to need to
have a very serious conversation with my brother as soon as this was over. I
didn’t think he believed it was okay to kill people, since he never has, but I
was going to make sure.