Drawn Into Darkness (5 page)

F
eeding me a pink salami sandwich on cheap white bread for lunch, Justin wouldn't look at me or speak to me.

“There's no reason for you to be angry,” I said.

He gave me no response except silence and averted eyes. Just the same, something about the stillness of his face told me he wasn't angry, not really. He just didn't want to talk to me anymore. Didn't want to get to know me as a friend. Didn't want to care about anything that happened to me.

Which meant he did care.

It also meant I had to shatter his silence so he would care more.

“Justin,” I began, “did your parents beat you?”

“No!” Shocked, he not only yelled, but he faced me. “Hell, no, my parents are good people! They would never beat us. They—” His voice cracked.

Blandly, as if I hadn't noticed the emotion he didn't want to feel, I went on. “Us? You have brothers and sisters?”

“Yeah. Younger than me. Twins. Kyle and Kayla.” I think he didn't want to say their names, but they forced their way out and made his face wince, his lips tremble. He was not used to thinking about his family.

I intuited that he had survived the past two years by not thinking about his life before being abducted, not thinking about his family, and not thinking about his own future either. No goals or dreams or plans. Numbing his mind and emotions just to survive day to day. What had once been normal wasn't anymore, not for him; he had to survive in a new normal, and he did so by functioning like a robot.

My only chance—and
his
only chance—depended on coaxing or jolting him out of robot mode.

What should I say now? My mind raced. This wasn't any ordinary conversation, not with me lying shackled in a spread-eagle position and him hovering over me, poking a junk food sandwich into my face. Instead of saying something conventional, maybe asking whether his twin brother and sister looked alike or what color their hair and eyes were, I said, “I bet Kyle and Kayla are supersmart.”

His hand about to offer more sandwich stopped in midair, his other hand lifted to his nose as if I had punched him, and he stared at me. “How'd you know that?”

“Because you're very intelligent.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You're alive, aren't you?”

His hands slowly lowered. “I figure that's because I'm a wuss.”

Kind of grinning, I shook my head. “I can be the biggest wuss in the world and Stoat's still going to kill me, isn't he?”

Justin's jaw dropped, I guess because I was willing to say it.

“Which will make you his accomplice,” I added as an afterthought, “so then he'll have even more power over you.”

“Shut up,” Justin whispered.

“Why am I still alive? What's he waiting for?”

“Shut
up
.”

“Tell me, Justin—what would you do if Stoat got his hands on your brother or your sister?”

His face reddened and contorted with such fury—accumulated fury he'd swallowed during the past two years, maybe—that he threw down the sandwich, lunged up from the bed, and for a heartbeat, as he loomed over me with his fists clenched, I thought he might hurt me, sparing Stoat the trouble.

Instead he rammed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. He had forgotten to put the gag back in my mouth, but I didn't yell anything after him. I stayed quiet all afternoon. I was still hungry, I was thirsty, I needed the bathroom but had hours to go before any hope of that; my body ached more each minute from its forced immobility; fear of death weighed stony on my chest and tried to make me weep; I could barely keep from sobbing. But I managed to stay as still as a windless day because I hoped that, somewhere in that peacock blue shack of a prison, Justin was thinking.

•   •   •

Extracting a dog hair from a crack in one of his ridged, splitting fingernails, Ned Bradley thought:
I'm getting old.
He used to be able to pat his dog, for God's sake, without getting hair stuck in his nails. He studied his own hands, dry and taupe like winter leaves, as he held Oliver and stroked him. Oliver, small enough to heft yet big enough to provide a warm and reassuring weight in his lap, felt like a grandchild—but Ned knew that was wistful thinking. What little family he had didn't want anything to do with him. That was what came of being an alcoholic, taking no responsibility, losing job after job, deserting his wife and kids. Going for a geographical cure instead of for sobriety.

Well, he finally had sobriety now, starting right after his ex-wife had died, shocking him into taking a hard look at his own mortality. He'd stayed at the same address in Birmingham, same apartment, for almost eight years now. He had a steady job, and he had Oliver, named after Oliver Twist because his puppy eyes had constantly begged,
Please, sir, may I have more?
That was last year, when Ned had found him shivering in an alley. Now Oliver had plenty to eat, and he was Ned Bradley's own very special spotted mutt and cherished companion.

“Time to get down, woofhead,” Ned told the dog with a final pat, standing up. Lacking a lap, Oliver decamped. Ned took a few long-legged strides across his apartment to the computer, drawn like a moth at twilight to the white light of its screen. He never took part in Birmingham's Southern-fried bar scene anymore; now this was his evening ritual. Once online, he went directly to the Web site dedicated to the search for Justin Bradley.

His grandson.

Still missing.

There seemed to be no new developments, dammit. There hardly ever were anymore. So Ned lost himself in contemplation of the boy's captured-in-time face, absorbing it visually and viscerally, memorizing it in his gut, warming his heart in the cappuccino glow of the boy's eyes, more heartening to him than anyone else's best smile. Justin looked like a kid with his soul intact. Those openhearted eyes and the firm curves of the kid's chin reminded him of his son, Chad, when he had been that age, which was about the time that Ned had left for good.

Not that he had seen Chad much since, drunken ass that he, Ned, had been. But he did remember.

And he dearly remembered his few hours with Charles Stuart Bradley's children. Ned had gone to see his dying wife mostly to apologize. His apologies were accepted by her but not by their son, all grown up and pissed at him proportionately. It was meeting Justin and Kyle and Kayla that had really pushed Ned to change. He had three grandchildren. He had wasted too much of his life.

So he had done the hard work to get himself clean and sober. And then, just when he was getting up the nerve to approach his son and his family again, he started to see their faces nightly on the TV. Chad all choked up, and Amy crying alongside her husband and begging an unknown abductor to please bring back her child.

Justin. Taken away.

Ned had thought he could only make things worse for them by intruding. Or maybe, face it, he was a coward. But ever since then, Ned had dedicated himself as if he were a candle lit for Justin. Visiting the Web site daily. Anonymously donating all the financial help he could afford. Alert day after day, at the office building where he worked and around town, in case he might, just might, be the one to sight the boy, even though he knew that his chances were ridiculously, outrageously, infinitesimally small.

Ned explored the Web site and found nothing new except a few more sympathetic comments. No fresh hope. And with every day that passed, hope was harder to hold on to. With a kind of glum, muted anger Ned booted down the computer. The damn thing took its time, finally darkening like a blinded Cyclops, leaving the apartment shadowy; it was getting dark outside. Nightfall.

“Oliver,” Ned said to the dog, “I want to get out of here.”

Go to a bar, get a drink, be with other people escaping their misery? It was an old, familiar urge and one that Ned had learned he must acknowledge but refuse. The silence of the apartment enveloped him. Always around this time of day he found it paradoxical that this comfortable place, with his big Tree of Life tapestry on the wall, his Bev Doolittle prints, his chunky sofa with a genuine Navajo blanket thrown over it, his books and glossy Sierra Club magazines piled on every surface, could feel so empty.

Ned got up from the computer chair, turned on some lights, then stood studying the intricacies of the Tree of Life—a gift from his AA sponsor, handmade by her—until the difficult moment had passed. He knew that the apartment's smell of Budweiser and black bananas was in his imagination, an olfactory hallucination.

Sensing watchful eyes on him, he looked down at the dog, rendered almost shapeless by long white fur splotched with black patches.

“Oliver,” Ned gravely addressed the presence, “this is not a dive and I am not a drunk anymore. Let's see what's on TV.”

He would far rather have phoned his son. But he knew if Chad had felt too pissed to deal with his fuckup father after his mother's death, he sure as hell wasn't going to feel any better now, with his son missing. And maybe he never would.

•   •   •

Stoat arrived home from work in a mood as expansive as the aroma of the Popeyes fried chicken he carried in with him. At cheerful gunpoint he released me from my bondage, laughed as I ran to the bathroom, and invited me to join him and Justin at the supper table afterward.

Justin wasn't looking at me, and I let him alone. I did not talk either with him or with my jovial gun-toting host, but focused all my attention on getting spicy, Louisiana-style food I wouldn't normally eat into my very hungry stomach. Or I should say, almost all of my attention. I kept mental feelers reaching toward Justin, and sensed plenty of turmoil beneath his blank exterior.

“They didn't pack enough napkins,” complained Stoat, snapping his fingers at Justin. “Go get some paper towels.”

“Who was your slave before you got me?” Justin retorted, at the same time getting up to bring the paper towels.

Stoat flipped like a lightbulb from bright to dark, scowling. “That's exactly what you are, boy. My little sex slave.”

Face afire as he returned to the table, Justin protested, “It was a joke, Uncle Steve!”

“You call me sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are a slave and you can be replaced and don't you forget it.”

Sitting down, Justin mumbled, “Yes, sir,” to his plate.

“As a matter of fact you're too big and it's high time I oughta ditch you and get what I wanted in the first place.” Stoat's fingers gave a pop like gunfire, he snapped them so hard. “Look at me!”

The boy obeyed with hatred well disguised but still just barely visible, at least to me.

“Are you my personal favorite asshole?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Louder!”

“Yes,
sir
!”

Stoat transferred his glare to me. “What's this all about? You been making trouble?”

The pervert was no fool, damn him, but years of marriage and part-time jobs had made me a good liar when necessary. Motioning that my mouth was full but maintaining earnest eye contact, I shook my head.

His stare moderated from sharp to sour. “Damned if I know why I'm spending my hard-earned money feeding you.”

Swallowing my mouthful of food, I said pleasantly if unwisely, “Because you are such a nice person.”

I thought there was no trace of sarcasm in my voice, but Stoat stood up, glowering. “You got a mouth on you, bitch.”

By which he meant a brain in my head, I suppose. “Just joking,” I said meekly, and, like Justin, unsuccessfully.

“Shut up. That gag was out of your mouth when I come home. Who took it out?”

I said nothing.

He stepped toward me, fists menacing. “Who took it out?”

“You told me to shut up.”

He struck so fast I didn't even see it coming. Next thing I knew, I hit the kitchen floor, sprawling and unable to move because things were spinning around and fireworks seemed to be going off inside my eyes. I took mental notes, because I'd never been clouted on the side of the head before. Or on any part of my body, for that matter.

Fist raised to strike again, Stoat yelled, “Who took the gag out of your mouth!”

“Nobody,” I mumbled reflexively, like a child.

Stupid answer, when you think about it.

Certainly Stoat didn't care much for it. He punched my face again. “Who!” he shouted inches from my ear.

“I did, myself,” I told him. “I pushed it out with my tongue. I have a very strong tongue. See?” I stuck it out at him.

Luckily I got it back inside my mouth and out of danger just before his fist struck so hard I felt my teeth loosen and my lip split. Stoat howled, “Damn it, don't bleed on my clean floor!”

Oddly, none of the above particularly hurt. Yet. Bemused, I explored my bloody face with my fingertips.

He kicked me in the gut. “Up! Get up!”

This made no sense. The man wore scruffy cowboy boots with metal doodads on their pointy toes. He kicked me, and then he kicked me again, in the ribs, and he expected me to get up?

I lay limp instead. Now, in a sort of delayed reaction, parts of me were starting to hurt badly enough so that playing possum wasn't hard, except I had to keep from moaning.

Swearing fluently, Stoat shoved a paper towel into my mouth, then ordered Justin to help him carry me back to the bed. The poor kid had seen the whole thing, of course, and as he lifted my shoulders, I felt him shaking. He slipped his elbows under my shoulders to lift me, and I felt his chest heaving as if he was trying not to cry. He had that kind of heart. I think it hurt him more to watch somebody else get clobbered than if he had taken the beating himself.

They dumped me on the bare mattress, shackled me—Stoat snarling orders, Justin mutely doing as he said—and left me there in the dark. After I heard the door close, I opened my eyes, spit out the paper towel, and tried to comfort my lips with my tongue. No gag. Ironically, Stoat had forgotten all about it. Even more ironically, now that I had more reason than ever to cry, I did not feel like weeping. Oddly, I felt triumphant.