Hostage (25 page)

“You okay?” asked Matthew.

Rawlins replied, “I don’t know. I can’t even think straight.”

“Well,” mumbled Elliot with an edge of giddiness, “I can’t even talk straight, I can’t even walk straight, I can’t even look straight!”

“Jesus Christ, Elliot, don’t start up again!” snapped Matthew. “Now, get the camcorder.”

Elliot turned to Tina’s plastic-covered body, stared at it, and said, “I don’t know, Matthew. I don’t think I can do it, not now.”

“You don’t have a choice!” ordered Matthew.

“Oh, all right, Mr. Cecil B. DeMille.”

“We need to speed up our schedule a bit just to make sure everything happens.”

“Whatever you say, Mr. Great Director Man.”

Rawlins said, “What’s going on?”

“It’s time for Elliot to tell the world his story,” answered Matthew. “And it’s time for you to meet our honored guest.”

As Elliot grabbed the video camera and loaded it with a tape, Rawlins pushed himself back to his feet. Matthew then led the way to the other door, which he opened. And there, cowering in the corner of the next room and chained to a pipe, was a disheveled man, his fine suit a mass of wrinkles, his tie ripped away, and his face red and anxious. So this, realized Rawlins, was the famed congressman.

“You can sit over there,” Matthew told Rawlins, pointing to the floor. “And Elliot, you go over there and sit next to Johnny.”

“Oh, God, what are you going to do now?” Clariton pointed at Rawlins. “Who’s that?”

“A recruit.” Matthew laughed. “Actually, he’s a cop. But don’t get your hopes up. He’s a member of the tribe—my tribe.”

“What about that crazy bitch who tried to kill me? I heard all that crying. What did you do to her?”

Elliot wiped his nose. “Tina croaked.”

“Oh, Jesus. Why don’t you just let me go? You… you could just dump me somewhere and take off.” He clasped his hands together and started rubbing and folding them over and over. “If you let me go now I could still get you immunity.”

“Why don’t you just shut up?” Elliot went over and sat down next to him. “And don’t worry, I don’t got a syringe or anything. We’re saving that for later.”

“You’re pigs! You’re complete pigs!”

“Oh, like, hurt my feelings!” replied Elliot, clasping a hand over his heart.

Rawlins stared at the politician, who looked less a commanding leader of the right wing than he did a terrified boy, and asked, “Have they done anything to you?”

“Have they done anything? They tried to inject me with their poison blood, that’s what they tried to do! These disgusting people with their disgusting disease almost gave me a shot of AIDS!”

“Oh, just shut up, would you?” said Elliot. “Do you know how famous you’re going to be now? The whole world is going to know who you are. Of course, a lot of people already do, but your picture is going to be everywhere, I bet. Like, I’m sure tomorrow morning your picture’s going to be on the front page of every major paper in the world. You know, you can’t buy publicity like that. And just wait till everyone gets ahold of that video of you and Tina. I mean, every news show is going to play and replay that, not to mention CNN International, which will—”

“You’re depraved!”

“Yes, twisted and sick, perhaps, but trust me, several billion people will be tired of seeing your face by tomorrow evening. You’ll probably get your own theme song on each of the networks!”

“Boys, boys, boys,” chided Matthew. “I’m turning on the camera… now.”

Taking it all in, Rawlins sat quietly. So this, he realized, was how they were making their point—and why they dropped off a tape for Todd earlier.

Elliot bowed his head, then looked up. “Tina’s dead.” He let the words hang in the air. “She was so weak and dehydrated that she got dizzy, and then she stood up and fell and hit her head. She passed from this world just a few hours ago. What do you think of that, Mr. Clariton?”

Rawlins could see the fury on Clariton’s face. The hatred. It was quite clear that all the good congressman wanted to do was lunge at Elliot and rip out his throat. Instead, some little part of Clariton the politician held himself in control.

So instead of cursing and swearing at Elliot, Clariton jerked his handcuffed arm and demanded, “You have to let me go.”

“No problem,” replied Elliot. “I for one will certainly be glad to be rid of you. I mean, I find you entirely repulsive. Don’t worry, we’ll let you go just as soon as we’ve finished the videos—this one, then one with Matthew—and they’re shown on national television. Oh, and after we’ve given you a little shot of something special.”

From behind the camera Matthew the director said quietly, “Tell them why you’re doing this.”

“Why?” asked Elliot, looking right into the lens. “Why would nice little Elliot do something so terrible as kidnapping a top politician and threatening to inject him with AIDS?” He pulled back the sleeves of his shirt, exposing old scars on both wrists. “Because I won’t do this again. I won’t try to go quietly so that no one notices, so that I don’t bother anyone.” He shrugged. “The truth is that I’m really angry. I’m angry that I have AIDS. I’m angry that I’m going to die so young. I’m angry that I won’t get to paint anymore. And I’m really angry that people like Mr. Johnny Clariton want to declare the AIDS epidemic over when none of the drugs works for me. It happened before, you see, something like this. Someone tried to sweep me under the carpet, only I did nothing. Nothing! And you know what? It very nearly killed me. Or I should say I very nearly killed me.

“I’m from Omaha,” continued Elliot, turning to Clariton, “and when I was a kid there were nine boys in my neighborhood. We did everything together. You know, we rode bikes, we built forts, we went swimming in the gravel pits.”

It was something like five years ago, thought Rawlins, that he’d met Elliot, and even back then Elliot had been the trickster, the oddly jovial guy who lit up the room with a kind of manic happiness. Rawlins recalled that first time, seeing the animated face, hearing the nonstop voice, and wondering just what it was Elliot was trying to run from. And here it was, his core, his heart of pain. For the first time since Rawlins had met him there was no jive in Elliot’s voice.

“Well, to make a long story short, I had sex with a kid from another town out at the gravel pit.” Elliot blushed. “It sounds kinda tacky, but I swear I wasn’t a major-league slut. No way. It just happened. Boys will be boys, and we were just trying to figure it out. It was just kid sex, you know.”

“This is disgusting!” barked Clariton.

“Oh, shut up! That’s the trouble with you, you know that? You’re always bossing people around, telling them they’re this or that.” Elliot shook his head, took a deep breath. “I won’t go into details—my modesty overwhelms me—but we were exploring, you know.”

“Oh, please,” spat Clariton, turning his head away in disgust.

Elliot glared at him, then continued, saying, “The only thing is, we got caught when we were doing it. Well, the other kid just took off, but from then on all my supposed friends made my life miserable. They sent me threatening mail. They spray-painted obscenities on the sidewalk in front of my home. They slashed the tires on my bike. And, worst of all, they told the entire junior high school that I was a queer. Kids are so cruel, and it got so that I couldn’t walk down the hall without people taunting me: ‘Hey, Elliot, how about a blow job? Hey, Elliot, look at your homo lips. Hey, Elliot, let’s see your hairy palms.’ ” He shook his head, raised his eyes to the heavens. “I don’t know why I didn’t say anything. I don’t know why I didn’t tell anyone about the other guys I knew who’d had a same-sex experience—that Gary and Ron did it up in the treehouse at least twice, or that Chris and Joe and Pete all did it in a circle whenever there was a sleepover. But I didn’t say a thing, I guess because… because I was afraid they were right, that I was a homo. And that’s when I was sure my life was over. I didn’t want to be different, that’s all, but I knew I was and I knew there was only one way out—death. That’s when I did this, when I cut myself.”

Elliot again pushed back his sleeves, exposing the scars of that time. Staring at the grievous marks, he started to rub them, the thin ridges of skin that time had healed but never would erase.

“I did it in the bathroom with a razor, but of course Mom found me and called an ambulance. And then eventually it all came out—I couldn’t hide it. I got sent to the nut house, and the shrink asked me so I told him, and he told my parents. Of course, they nearly killed me. Their boy a homo? Oh, God, it was awful, I mean we’re talking thirty years ago in Omaha. I wouldn’t go back to the same school, and so my father sent me to his brother’s in Rockford, Illinois, which was actually worse. I was supposed to finish high school there, but I stayed only a week, and then I ran away to Minneapolis. I started washing dishes in a restaurant and…”

Elliot started crying. Not much. Just a few large tears. He turned his head aside, wiped his face with the back of one hand, and stared off at something no one else could see. So this, Rawlins understood, was the deciding event in Elliot’s world. This was what had driven him—driven him deep into the gay community, driven him into his passion for painting, and driven him to the point of doing something like this abduction.

“I was quiet then, but I won’t be now!” Elliot wiped his eyes and breathed in deeply. “Ever since then I’ve hated straight people… straight people like you, Johnny Clariton! I hate you for backing the Defense of Marriage Act, because homosexuals are the last thing causing bad heterosexual marriages! I hate you for being against gays in the military, because as long as gays are marginalized we’ll never have a truly quote-unquote normal life! And I hate you for calling AIDS a gay disease and wanting to cut research funding and medical assistance, because… because I’m dying and nothing can save me!” concluded Elliot, looking straight into the camera, his voice full of anger. “And that’s why I’d do this again, kidnap someone and infect him with HIV—yep, he’ll be infected by the time we’re through—because if there’s anyone in this world that deserves AIDS, it’s Congressman Johnny Clariton.”

As Elliot pushed himself to his feet and stormed out of the room, as Matthew switched off the video camera and started cackling, as Clariton pulled up his knees and bowed his head against his legs, Rawlins understood. Hearing Elliot’s story was like drinking a huge cup of sobering coffee. Yes, today Rawlins had been panicked, fearful, furious, dejected, suicidal. But now Rawlins realized that that would eventually pass, for as terrified as he was about what lay ahead, as horrified as he was about having contracted HIV, he wouldn’t end up like them, like Elliot or Matthew. No, he was quite different in one simple but very profound way: The anger and fury that was theirs would never be his.

Todd didn’t head home
in the Channel 10 Ford Explorer that he’d borrowed. Nor did he proceed directly to his destination. Instead, he took the back roads, cutting through the suburb of Golden Valley and then steering onto the parkway system that encircled the city of Minneapolis. Following the landscaped road, which ran alongside bike and pedestrian paths, he passed the ski hill at Theodore Wirth Park, the golf course, and eventually reached Cedar Lake. Driving slowly, his eyes on the rear-view mirror, Todd proceeded along the wooded parkway system, passing around Lake of the Isles, Lake Calhoun, and finally Lake Harriet. Except for a few late-night strollers, the parks rimming the lakes were quiet and still. And the traffic almost nonexistent. Checking behind yet again, Todd was relieved to note that there was no one following him.

After he’d driven past the Disney-like band shell, with its towers and flags, and then around most of Lake Harriet, he cut over to the freeway and headed downtown. Reaching the edge of the central business district some ten minutes later, he found a parking place right in front of the Hennepin County Medical Center, shut off the Explorer, and headed into the beige building, a massive, brutal structure that had been dropped onto several blocks. It was almost midnight, much too late for this kind of thing, but of course he had to know. Sneaking into the building via the emergency room, Todd proceeded to the back elevators.

The halls on the second floor were deserted, the lights low. Todd proceeded to her room, which was at the far end. Reaching her door, he tapped lightly, pushed it open, and stepped in. In the bluish glow of the night-light she lay on the hospital bed, an IV of some sort attached to her left arm. Her eyes were shut, her blond hair pulled back, her head wrapped with a large white bandage. Todd had never seen anyone so pale.

Going up to the edge of the metal bed, Todd called gently, “Cindy? It’s me, Todd Mills. Cindy?”

His former coworker, Channel 7’s Cindy Wilson, didn’t flinch, and Todd stood there, one hand on the metal railing of the bed. Of course he shouldn’t have come.

“Cindy?” he called one last time.

He’d heard that she’d been awake earlier and that she’d answered some questions for the police, but perhaps she’d been given a sedative for the night. He was about to turn away when he saw her eyes flutter and her head move to the side.

“Cindy, it’s me, Todd Mills. Can you talk for a minute?”

She gazed up at him. “Todd?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” He touched her gently on the arm. “How’re you feeling? They say you’re going to be just fine.”