Out Cold (23 page)

McKibben smiled. “What a vivid imagination you have. But you have not answered my question. I bet Albert would like to see how you'd react to getting tapped on your elbow.” He looked at Cranston. “Am I right?”

Cranston smacked his blackjack into his palm.

“You guys murdered Sunshine and Misty,” I said. “You've got a big secret to protect.”

“A secret, eh?” said McKibben. “What exactly is this alleged secret?”

“I don't know.”

“Why in the world would you think we'd murder anybody?”

I shrugged. “They learned your secret.”

“He doesn't know anything,” said Cranston.

“I know you've got something to hide,” I said. “Something you think is worth murdering for.”

“Albert's right,” said McKibben. “You don't know anything.” He turned to Cranston. “What do you think, Albert? Should we let Mr. Coyne go home?”

Cranston shook his head. “I don't see how we can do that.”

McKibben sighed. “I suppose you're right,” he said. “We can't risk anything interfering with our work.”

“Your work?” I said.

He smiled.

“What's your work?”

“Don't worry about it, Mr. Coyne,” he said. “Albert will take care of you.”

“Horowitz knows I'm up here,” I said. “Detective Mendoza, too. She and Horowitz. Both of them. They'll have the police come looking for me, I guarantee.”

“Maybe so,” said Cranston. “But not for a few days. Not until they decide that something happened to you. And where do you suppose they'll look? Let's see. They'll begin here in Churchill. That's the last place they knew you were. They'll ask around, trying to track you down. They'll probably start at the motel where you spent the night. Joanne Sweeney will tell them you paid your bill and said you were heading home. No doubt she saw you drive out of her lot and turn south on the highway. Nick will tell them you stopped there for breakfast. You told her you were heading home, too. After you ate, sure enough, you continued south. You stopped at the Exxon station to fill your tank, and you told Francis that you were heading back to Boston. Then you pulled onto the highway, still heading south. So the place to start looking for you would be somewhere alongside the road south of here.” Cranston was smiling. “It's another snowy night out there. The roads are slippery. Terrible visibility. There are dozens of places in the mountains south of here where someone unfamiliar with the area might take a wrong turn, and if he was driving a city car like a BMW, he could go skidding off the road and tumbling down into a rocky ravine, and if nobody saw it happen—if it happened late on a Sunday night, say, and if the snow kept falling—the car might not be found until springtime.”

As Albert Cranston spun out his scenario for my death, I tried to spot the holes in his logic.

I didn't notice any. It would be easy enough to crack my skull with that damned blackjack, strap me in my seat belt behind the wheel of my car—which I assumed they'd spotted at Don's Auto Body—and push it off the road on some mountainside. If the fractured skull didn't kill me first, I'd freeze to death, and unless they made a blatant mistake, it would be impossible to tell that it wasn't some late-night winter automobile accident. A deer or a moose in the road would make you stomp on the brakes and go into a spin. You could hit an icy patch. It would be the obvious explanation, and easy to believe.

“You guys've got it all figured out,” I said. “Except for the fact that the police know the reason I came up here was to get the goods on you. They'll be all over you.”

McKibben was nodding. “I expect you're right about that, Mr. Coyne. Thank you. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say. But one thing at a time.” He pushed himself to his feet. “We'll be back in a little while. Try to make yourself comfortable. You won't have to wait too long.”

Cranston suddenly snapped his blackjack down on my shin.

I screamed.

Then both of them walked out of my stall. The door closed and I heard the bolt slide into place.

Their footsteps scuffled away on the dirt floor and faded into the distance.

A minute later, the lights went out, and I was left there in the cold stable in absolute darkness, wrapped in duct tape, with my knee and shin and shoulder and head shooting off darts of dull throbbing pain with every beat of my pulse.

I didn't have the luxury of wallowing in pain and self pity, even though wallowing was an attractive option.

I had to get away from there, and I didn't think I had much time. When McKibben and Cranston came back, if I was still there, they'd kill me.

I had to find a way to get the duct tape off my wrists and free my hands. If I freed my hands I could unwrap the rest of the tape. If I could get the tape off my arms and legs, I could climb and crawl and run, and if I could climb and crawl and run, I could find a way out of the stable.

If I could get out of the stable, I'd run like hell and they'd never find me.

I was sitting on the damp dirt floor with my taped-up legs sticking straight out in front of me. Faint gray light glowed from the small mesh-covered window high on the outside wall, but it wasn't enough to enable me to see more than shades of black in the dark stall. My wrists were bound behind me, and my shoulders were leaning back against the wall. I found I could bend my knees a little. The one that Albert whacked with his blackjack shot hot darts of pain up my leg when I flexed it. Nothing I could do about that. By pulling up my knees and then pushing against my feet, I found I could slide my back up the wall. It was an inch-by-inch process, but after a minute or two I levered myself into a standing position supported by the wall.

As I stood there I felt the blood suddenly begin to recirculate through my numb legs, and with the blood came the intense pain of reawakening nerve endings. I gritted my teeth and endured it for what seemed like hours, although it was probably no more than a couple of minutes.

As the pain subsided, feeling and balance returned to my legs. I was standing on my feet. I could wiggle my toes. If I could get the tape off, I could walk.

I inched my way along the wall in the darkness, shuffling my feet, which were bound at the ankles, using my shoulderblades and elbows to keep my balance. I was feeling for something sharp—a nail head would've been perfect. If I came to nothing as I slid along the wall, I remembered the latch on the inside of the stable door. I assumed Cranston and McKibben had made sure that lifting the inside latch would not open the door. I had noticed the large metal rods that served as deadbolts on the outside of all the stable doors.

But the latch was about the right height to hook my taped wrists under, and if there were any jagged edges on it, I might get a tear started. That was all I needed. A small tear in the tape.

So I emptied my mind of everything else and focused on finding a way to start that little tear in the tape on my wrists. I knew that my life depended on it.

I inched my way along the wall, working toward the front corner of the stall, teetering uncertainly on my bound-together feet, feeling for a nail head, or anything hard and sharp. A couple times wooden splinters dug into my shoulders.

Then I lost my balance and fell on the same shoulder that Cranston had smacked with his blackjack. Pain once again throbbed through my body. I was drenched with sweat. I was dead tired. Dehydrated. Nauseated.

I lay there. I didn't have any energy left. My whole body hurt. The hell with it. It was futile. I was getting nowhere. Soon Cranston and McKibben would come back to kill me. The easiest thing would be to accept that, to lie there and wait for it.

The easiest thing.

Since when did I settle for the easiest thing?

After a while—one minute? half an hour?—I gritted my teeth, took a deep breath, and pushed myself up the wall into a standing position again.

I resumed inching my way toward the front of the stall.

Then I thought I heard something. I stopped. A minute later I heard it again. It was a soft sibilant sound, a quick movement of air, so faint that I wondered if what I'd heard was my own breathing, or my pulse pounding in my ears.

I stopped, held my breath, kept my body still.

And I heard it again. It was closer. The quick exhalation of a small breath. Somebody—or some thing, some animal, maybe—was out there in the darkness. A dog. A barn cat. A rat.

Then a whisper. “Mr. Coyne?”

I said nothing.

Again: “Hey, Mr. Coyne. Where are you?” It was a woman's voice, soft, not quite a whisper.

I cleared my throat. It was dry. It hurt to swallow. “Here,” I rasped. “I'm in here.”

“Can you tap on the wall? I can't tell what stall you're in.”

I made fists behind me and rapped my knuckles against the wall planks.

A minute later I heard the clank of the latch on my stall door. Then the door creaked open. “You in here?”

“Right here,” I said.

Suddenly there was a beam of light. She had a flashlight. It swept around the stall and stopped on me. She shined it in my face, and I clenched my eyes shut.

“Sorry,” she said.

I squinted at her. “Kayla?” I said. “Is that you?”

“Yes. It's me.”

“What are you—”

“Shh,” she hissed. “We gotta move. I've got a knife. Let's get that tape off you.”

She shined the flashlight over my body, then tucked it into her armpit. She went to work on the tape that bound my ankles together and soon had it off. I turned around and she freed my wrists, then cut through the tape that held my arms against my sides.

I rubbed feeling back into my arms and legs. It felt glorious to lift and bend my elbows, to rotate my wrists, to flex my ankles. I took a few experimental steps. I was a little shaky, but I could do it. I could walk.

Kayla was watching me. “How you doing?” she said. “You gonna be okay?”

“I'm good,” I said.

“You're limping.”

“I'm fine. Don't worry about it.”

“Okay. Good.” She grabbed my arm. “Let's go. We gotta get outa here. Follow me. I'm gonna turn off the flashlight. They might be able to see it from the house.”

The light went off and it was all dark shapes and shadows.

Kayla slid her hand down my arm, found my hand, held it tight, and tugged me along behind her. She led me out of my stall and then we shuffled down the wide aisle, staying close to the inside wall. There were more windows there in the open part of the stable, and in the gray light up ahead the shape of the Lincoln SUV materialized.

When we got to it, Kayla squeezed my hand, a signal to stop. She put her mouth close to my ear. “The other truck's right outside,” she whispered. “Albert always leaves the keys in the ignition. Do you think you can move quickly?”

“You bet,” I said.

She opened the door to the Lincoln, and the dome light suddenly lit the area. She reached in, snatched the keys from the ignition, shoved them into her pocket, then eased the car door shut.

“What're you doing?” I said.

“We don't want Albert following us. We'll take the van.” She looked at me. “Ready?”

“Let's do it.”

We went out through the side door. The area outside the stable was illuminated by outdoor floodlights. The panel truck with the bear logo on its side was parked there on the other side of the garage door.

“I'll drive,” she said. “Get in.”

I went to the passenger side, slipped inside, and latched the door shut without slamming it.

Kayla got behind the wheel. “Ready?” she said.

“Ready.”

She turned the key in the ignition. The engine started with a roar. Without turning on the headlights, she put it in gear and headed down the driveway, which wound around the barn and alongside the house, then curved down a long slope through the woods.

When we got to the end of the driveway, Kayla turned on the headlights.

And then we were moving. It was snowing hard, and the road hadn't been plowed in a while.

She glanced sideways at me. “You don't have a coat. I'm sorry. I should've brought a coat for you.”

“I'll be all right when the heater kicks in.”

“They took your boots, too?”

“Yep.”

“Well,” she said, “let's hope we don't have to walk in the woods.”

Kayla drove fast, and it was immediately apparent that the panel truck did not have four-wheel drive.

“You better take it easy,” I said. “If we go off the road we're screwed.”

“I just want to get away from here,” she muttered.

She leaned forward, tense and alert, gripping the steering wheel with both hands. The snow in the headlights was blinding.

“So what's going on?” I said. “What're McKibben and Cranston up to?”

“It's a long story,” she said. “I don't understand all of it. They bring girls…girls like me…up here. Street girls, I mean. Runaways. Girls with no families, no friends. Nobody who'll miss them. Albert finds them in Boston. He's got somebody down there who scouts around, helps him identify likely prospects. He promises the girls money, a warm bed, good food. It's a chance to do some good, he says. To make a contribution. It's for science. It gives meaning to our lives. He's very convincing.”

“Does it?”

She turned her head. “Huh?”

“Does it give meaning to your life?”

She blew out a quick, cynical laugh.

“You don't buy it?” I said.

“Me?” She shook her head. “I mean, I did at first. It sounded good. But I don't now.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged. “Lot of reasons.”

“You said someone in Boston helps Cranston find girls.”

“A couple of the other girls mentioned it,” she said. “I don't know who it is. A doctor, I think. A friend of Dr. McKibben.”

“Dr. Rossi?” I said. “Does that ring a bell?”

“I know her,” said Kayla. “She's nice.” She hesitated. “I guess it could be her. I just went with Albert. He talked to me, made it sound good. Maybe Dr. Rossi told him about me and he tracked me down. Maybe that's how it works. I don't know.”

We came to a stop sign. Another narrow two-lane road intersected the one we were on. Kayla turned left onto it.

“Where does this go?” I said.

“I don't know,” she said. “South, I think. I don't know where the hell I am. This road looks like it was plowed recently, that's all. We can move faster. We've got to get away from here and ditch this van.”

This new road may have been plowed, but we were still driving through a blizzard on a layer of hard-packed snow.

“Dana Wetherbee was pregnant,” I said. “She came up here, she got pregnant, she ran away, and then she died. Can you explain that?”

“Everybody who comes up here gets pregnant,” said Kayla. “As far as I can see, that's the whole point. That girl Dana wasn't the only one who died.”

“You mean these men—”

“It's nothing like that,” she said. “It's not about sex. They get us pregnant in the laboratory.”

“What laboratory?”

“In the basement of the house. It's got all kinds of equipment and instruments and stuff.”

“Why? What are they trying to prove?”

She shook her head. “They don't explain it to us.”

“Are you pregnant?”

“Me?” She laughed quickly. “Not yet. I've only been here since last Tuesday. They do a lot of tests first. They take your blood, take your urine, check your blood pressure and heart and everything. They were gonna do it to me next week, I think.”

We were rounding a curve. Kayla downshifted. I felt the rear end of the truck begin to slip, but she pulled us out of it.

“You came here voluntarily?” I said.

“Yes.”

“So why are you leaving?”

“Escaping is the word,” she said. “You come here voluntarily, but you can't just leave. They give you drugs. Downers. Tranquilizers. You lose your will to do anything. I faked it, didn't take them. I know how they work. I would never have tried this—what we're doing—if I was swallowing their pills.”

“I don't understand why you came up here in the first place,” I said.

“I came here,” said Kayla, “because I wanted to do something good for once in my life. Albert makes it sound good. Important. Misty and Zooey, they tried to talk me out of it. Misty kept saying it was wrong. She said it was evil, but I didn't think she knew what she was talking about. I figured it was just Misty being selfish, wanting us to stay together. We were a good team, me and Misty and Zooey, you know what I mean?”

“Friends,” I said.

“Best friends.”

“Okay,” I said. “So you came here voluntarily. But now you want to leave. What happened?”

She was silent for a minute. Then she said, “I snooped. I always snoop. I'm a nosy person. They don't watch you very closely, and they're not careful about what they say in front of you. They think we're all dumb robots because of the drugs they give us. So it wasn't hard, snooping, eavesdropping. I overheard things they were saying. Albert and Jeanette and the doctor. The girls all die. I heard them talking about it. They say it's for science. When they're done with you, you die—they give you drugs that kill you—and they bury you out back. That girl Dana got away, but it didn't matter. She died anyway. And Albert, I heard he killed some homeless woman because she knew something. They'll kill anybody.” Kayla hesitated. “I think they wanted to kill Misty.”

“They did,” I said. “Misty was murdered.”

She turned to look at me. “It's true?”

I nodded. “I'm sorry.”

She pounded the steering wheel with the heel of her hand. “Son of a bitch. I'm gonna—oh, shit.”

We were rounding a bend, and headlights suddenly appeared ahead of us, coming in our direction. The vehicle seemed to be driving right down the middle of the narrow road. Its high beams were blinding.

Kayla hit the brakes. Too hard. We skidded, spun, and the rear end of the truck slammed into the snowbank.

About then a blue light began flashing on the roof of the on-coming vehicle. It was a police cruiser, and it was coming toward us.