Drawn Into Darkness (23 page)

A sensible woman would have felt relief that he was not threatening her for a few moments, but I had deteriorated way beyond being sensible. I hated him. I wanted to lie down and sleep too. Slumping in the chair as far as I could, I rested my chin on my collarbone and closed my eyes. Almost instantly I dozed off, for what might have been ten or fifteen minutes but seemed like a few seconds.

Then an intensely irritating shrill peeping sound awoke me. At first I could not think what it was other than just egregiously the last straw, the icing on my crappy cake, the cherry on top of my wretched captivity. Then, wincing at the clamor it made, I realized it was the smoke detector.

I looked. Smoke was starting to rise from something on the stove.

I looked at Stoat lying on the living room floor. He showed no signs of hearing the smoke detector. Maybe he was conked out or in a coma. Maybe he was deaf. Maybe he was dead after all.

Which would have been delightful under other circumstances. But right now, if the stove went on burning Stoat's dinner long enough, the house would catch on fire. With me in it. Unable to escape.

It was a definite “Oh, shit!” moment.

Despite the obvious fact that I could not move, somehow I had to get to that stove. My feet touched the floor in close proximity to the chair legs. I pressed my toes into the linoleum and shoved, but nothing much happened. I attempted a sort of seated hop. Nothing. Wisps of smoke wafted over my head now. If I could have opened my mouth, I would have screamed. I panicked, and somehow my panic enabled me to fling my entire body into levitation mode. Lo and behold, the chair and I moved a few inches, although not exactly in the direction I wanted.

I tried again, of course. And again, and again, I have no idea how many times, with varying degrees of success, although I could not correct or predict my heading. The chair and I scratched a wavering path across the linoleum in the general direction of the stove as the smoke in the kitchen fast-forwarded from wisps into clouds into a billowing overcast that hung only inches above my head. The panic that energized me now was fear of suffocation, asphyxiation, dying of smoke inhalation even before my house burst into flames. Damn Stoat and his damn spaghetti and his damn duct tape.

By the time I finally flumped my way to the stove, smoke settled like a kind of attack fog around my head, stinging my eyes, depriving me of proper breath, making me cough through the tape covering my mouth. And what the hell did I expect to do about it anyway, stuck in a chair with my hands behind me? I couldn't even see, let alone think. More frantic than ever, I ducked my head in an attempt to find better air, and in so doing I banged my nose against the stove knobs that turned the burners on and off, which gave me a thought.

I nudged one of the knobs with no effect, and the heat from the stove top singed my hair and nearly blistered my face, meaning it was probably way too late for my pitiful heroics to make any difference. By being a good Stoic I could have sacrificed myself and let an appropriately hellish inferno take Stoat along with me. But the survival instinct trumped philosophy. Slewing my head at an improbable, muscle-straining angle, I positioned my duct-taped mouth on the handle of one of the knobs, pressed against it until my teeth hurt, and attempted to turn it to the “off” position.

Attempted more than once. Heads are not trained in fine motor skills, let alone working through duct tape, so it was not easy. But I finally, clumsily, very nearly toppling into the stove, got one burner turned off. I leaned sideways and stretched my neck to reach the other, applied my muffled mouth again and turned it—not quite off, but it would have to do. With no strength left, unable to breathe properly or open my mouth to pant, feeling weak and queasy, I let fear advise me once more and did something desperate and counterintuitive. I deliberately tipped myself over onto the kitchen floor.

Ow. I banged my already-banged-up head pretty good.

But there was still some air down there. I could breathe again.

And I could let myself sag onto the linoleum. I could rest.

So that's what I did. With no idea whether I would ever get up again, I lay on the floor, let my legs hang from their bindings, closed my eyes, and relaxed. Despite the yammering of the smoke detector, I actually dozed, dreaming I was back in the swamp with Justin, walking through drippy Spanish moss that groped us and Spanish daggers that tried to neuter us and a variety of other insults. Justin struggled with tangled vines and I scratched mosquito bites and we had a great conversation about what we would eat when we got out of there. He wanted to gorge on Snickers bars. I just wanted to bury my head in a five-gallon tub of chocolate-chip cookie dough ice cream.

A
gain Bernie drew missionary duty, driving the Leppo brothers back to Stoat's house, where they had left their car. He was hungry, and he should have been on his way home, but he did not mind, for the slanting late daylight gave him a mellow mood in harmony with the yellow halos it limned on the rows of soybeans in the fields, the tousle-headed pine trees, the cows strolling home—Bernie had always liked cows. He liked simple, humble things. He noticed that someone had erected a pole with crossbars from which hung white gourds, now rimmed in saffron by sundown light, for birds to nest in. Bernie decided he wanted to do the same in his backyard.

Forrest and Quinn saw none of this, he could tell, for they looked only at their own hands. Heads bowed as if grieving a death, they did not speak. Bernie knew some Americans preferred to keep their silences, but he could not stand it. “You hear bad news from Deputy Kehm?”

The older, taller one, Quinn, shifted his bleak gaze to Bernie for an ominous moment before he spoke. “Not from Kehm. Our mother left us a note that said she, um—”

“I hear about the note,” said Bernie to spare Quinn, who seemed to be having difficulty going on. “But what Kehm say?”

“Nothing.”

This sounded like Deputy Kehm. Everyone on the force knew his good ol' boy act was just that: an act. Really, Kehm cared about his food and his mustache but not much else.

“Nothing,” Forrest echoed, “and that's what he expects us to do.”

“Go back to the hotel, watch TV, and go to sleep?” Quinn sounded incredulous. “As if we could sleep? Isn't there any local TV or radio or someplace with computers—”

“We need to get the word out,” Forrest explained.

“—or photocopiers where we can put together a poster—”

Bernie said, “Down in Panama City, maybe.” Fifty miles away.

Neither of them seemed to hear him. “Not just posters. Organize a search.” With every word Forrest sounded more fervid and more desperate. “With tracking dogs, helicopters—”

Quinn interrupted. “Bernie, is anybody staking out Stoat's house?”

“I don't know. But Kehm will check with the Stoat family to see if they know where he is.”

“Do you think they will?”

“No,” Bernie admitted.

“He's probably in California by now,” said Forrest morosely.

Quinn muttered, “They still should stake out his house.”

Bernie saw Stoat's skink-tail blue shack ahead, with the Leppo brothers' rental car parked in front. He offered his last, best advice. “For the posters, try the churches. They have offices.”

“Open after business hours?” Quinn asked.

“No. But look in the phone book, call the preachers at home. Someone will help.”

Almost in a whisper Forrest said, “It's no use, is it, Bernie?”

In all probability, Bernie knew, he was right, but no one with a heart would say so. “More use than to lie in bed looking at the ceiling.” Bernie turned left, bumped over a culvert, and stopped in front of the bright blue shack, now embellished by even brighter
CRIME SCENE DO NOT PASS
tape. A large yellow X of the stuff sealed the front door.

“Thank you, Bernie. You're a friend.” Quinn reached toward Bernie and shook his hand with sudden fervor before getting out of the cruiser.

Forrest said thank you and shook his hand too. Both gave him wan smiles as they waved and headed toward their rental car.

Bernie felt as if he should not leave them. But what could he do? He had no copy machine to make the posters, no tracking dog, no helicopter, only Tammy Lou, who was waiting for him at their
casa feliz
, their happy home. Bernie left.

•   •   •

A disturbing sensation of Stoatness awoke me, and I twisted around to look up from where I lay on the kitchen floor. Sure enough, looming over me, Stoat stood at the stove ravenously eating spaghetti sauce out of the pot with the big wooden spoon I had been using to stir it, which left smears of blood red on his face. When he sensed me staring up at him, he gave me a look of pure malice. “What the hell you think you're doing?”

The duct tape still sealing my mouth prevented me from voicing any of the several trenchant replies that came to mind.

“Goddamn spaghetti looks like Elmer's glue,” Stoat said. “My dinner is ruined.” He kicked at me as if ruining his supper had been my intention. But the effort made him almost lose his balance, and his pointed cowboy-boot toe harmlessly hit the kitchen chair. “Now there ain't no damn time to cook none. Git up.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to telegraph to him that he'd overlooked one important detail.

He railed, “I said git up! What the hell's the matter with you—oh.” Belated realization did not make him any less pissed off. He swore luridly as he got out his knife, and I could not help cringing at the sight of the long blade shining in the dim kitchen—why so dim? The answer took a moment to float into the mist of my mind: Stoat and I had slept for hours. Day was fading. An unmistakably evening breeze reached me on the floor, and belatedly I realized the smoke had cleared; Stoat must have opened some windows. Come to think of it, the noise from the smoke detector had stopped.

Bending over, he cut me free of the chair, and very nearly sliced my legs in the process. Then, barely giving me time to flex my numb feet, he grabbed my elbow and hauled me up—I think he would have dislocated my shoulder if I hadn't managed to get my feet deployed. The muffler on my mouth kept my scream of pain from sounding like much. He sawed and ripped to remove the duct tape from my wrists. I whimpered when the weight of my nearly lifeless arms swung forward to hang from my traumatized shoulders. Stoat shook his mangy head in mild rebuke. “See, my extra bedroom don't seem so bad now, does it?” He meant being spread-eagled and handcuffed hands and feet, and fuck him with a salty dick, he was right.

Then, orderly creep that he was, he could not seem to help picking up the chair and positioning it neatly at the table where it belonged.

Once I had reacquainted myself with my hands, I ripped the tape off my own mouth. Ouch. But why, at this point, should anything
not
hurt?

“Where's your damn car keys?” Stoat growled close to my ear.

The words were clear enough, yet I couldn't seem to comprehend them; maybe I had been hit on the head too many times. “Huh?”

He had not put his knife away. He lifted it slightly and glared.

“Huh
,
sir
?” I blurted.

He gave me a look that said
Read my lips.

“You want my car keys?” In order to look for them, I reached toward the kitchen light switch.

Stoat struck my hand away. “No damn lights! You want the cops to see?”

“Um, cops?”

“What the hell you think I want the car keys for?”

Ah. My weary and perhaps damaged brain began to function. “Are they still there?” Meaning at his house.

He railed, “How the hell should I know? I don't see no fucking cars, but there's fucking yellow cop tape out front. If I didn't feel so goddamn crappy, I'd kill you and steal your fucking car.”

Either he did not feel strong enough to drive, or he did not feel strong enough to break my steering column and start my car with a screwdriver. If the former, he would kill me eventually. If the latter, he would kill me when I found the keys. That part, the murderous part, was so shockingly clear it worked like a jump start on my mind. I must be as helpful to Stoat as I could, as long as I helped him get tired and get nowhere.

With clarity as if my mental lights had switched on, I remembered where my car keys were. In my purse. Which, according to Justin, Stoat had stolen and taken to his house—but he didn't know I knew that. Meanwhile, the spare keys lay right there under his hatchet nose in the pink pottery bowl on my kitchen table, along with Scotch tape, rubber bands, a coupon cutter, a three-socket electrical outlet converter, emery boards, a lint roller, and various other household detritus, including a small stuffed aardvark that had belonged to Schweitzer.

Looming over me with his head weaving like a water moccasin ready to strike, Stoat hissed, “For the last time, where's your
keys
?”

“In my purse!” I chirped just like my mother at her most virtuous and helpful moments.

“And where's that?”

“Um, in the living room, I guess,” I said, pretending not to know it was right where he had put it, at his house. If he didn't remember that, let him figure it out.

He grabbed me by the arm, yanked me forward, then stood behind me and nudged me in the middle of my back with the tip of his knife. “Walk.”

I walked. We progressed past the kitchen table, where the pink pottery bowl was barely to be seen in the dusk, and after that, each step took us farther away from it. But I didn't congratulate myself much, because psychosis only knew what Stoat would do when we didn't find my purse.

I led him to the place where I ordinarily parked it, between sofa and armchair, then made what I hoped was a convincing show of peering into the shadows. “It's not there.”

Stoat snapped, “Then where the hell—” He stopped, and I wished I could see his ugly face as he remembered. His tone changed when he said, “Oh,
fuck
.”

Gee, wherever could it
be
? But I had the good sense to remain silent.

Stoat poked the knife tip harder into my back and growled, “You gotta have spare keys. Where's your spare keys?”

With what I considered fairly convincing innocence I said, “It should be easier to find my purse.”

“Screw your fucking purse! I asked you, where's the spare keys?”

He terrified me so much that I babbled convincingly, “I, um, sir, I don't know!”

The sharp pressure against my back increased. “You dumb cow,
think
!”

As if I wasn't thinking? I had thought enough to know that if he found my car keys, he would probably kill me.

I squeaked, “Um, maybe, um, they could be in one of the boxes I haven't unpacked yet?”

Something slammed against my shoulders—his hard, constricting arm throwing me off-balance, jerking me back against him, as he switched his knife from my back to my throat. I felt the blade, razor-sharp, quivering there. Or maybe, as I vividly remembered his earlier lesson about the carotid and the windpipe and the jugular and so on, maybe I was the one quivering.

I felt his hot breath as he said, “Think harder, bitch.”

He didn't say it, but I knew: I could tell him where the car keys were. Or I could die now instead of later.