Salter, Anna C (25 page)

Involuntarily, I took a step backward. Oh, shit. I should have made my move immediately. Great, the first time in my life I hesitate and think about something, and it is exactly the wrong thing to do. I should have run into him as he was coming around the corner. Willy may have underrated me a little, but I sure as hell had underrated him a lot.

He reached back into the bag. Slowly, he pulled things out: a large bowie knife, precut lengths of rope, a gag, duct tape, and then some things that seemed even worse —a lighter, a scalpel, a pair of pliers, and some instrument-looking things I didn't recognize. He did it all so carefully it was almost hypnotic, pulling each one out and laying it precisely, just so, on a cardboard box he used as a table. He spaced them carefully, evenly apart from each other. I'd heard of torture kits, read about them, but I had never seen one and certainly never dreamed one would be used on me.

Strange what goes through your mind at bad times. I thought of Faulkner's story of the man who asked for a last drink of water before being executed and kept pretending to drink long after the water was gone. Some part of me wanted Willy to keep pulling things out of his bag forever, no matter how grotesque, because push wouldn't come to shove until he stopped. He pulled out handcuffs, which hit me harder than anything —I can't stand to be confined —and then he stopped.

"Willy," I said, with whatever dignity I could summon. "Don't be ridiculous. All I have to do is scream."

"I wouldn't do that," Willy said. "Because then I will be forced to put a bullet through your throat, which I can do before you finish even one. I'll be out of here long before anybody figures out where the sound came from. But you will not be out of here. You will be lying on the floor gargling and gasping for air for quite some time, dying very slowly."

Oh, shit. But wait a minute. Where was Keeter? I had forgotten all about her in the hypnosis of the torture kit. Where the hell was Keeter? I had a goddamn maniac attack dog somewhere behind me, behind the boxes where Willy couldn't see her, and she hadn't made a peep. They were supposed to growl or bark or something. They were supposed to attack people who threatened you with guns. What was she doing, cowering with her paws over her head?

There was no wa^^ I could turn around and look over the boxes without tipping off Willy. And whether Keeter could help or not, I didn't want to give her away; Willy would just put a bullet in her brain if he saw her. I covered my face with my hands for a second as though trying to collect myself and glanced as far behind me on each side as I could see.

There in the dim light on the side of the boxes on my left was Keeter. She had crept up silently on her belly without making a sound. Of course, that was how she had been trained.

Keeter was waiting, just like she always did, for the perp to enter the building and close the door. I'd as soon she didn't wait. I didn't know when Willy was going to close the door. I didn't know if Willy was going to close the door. Actually it was fine with me if she attacked right now.

It occurred to me a little late I should have asked Camille what the signal was for "attack." It was like bringing a gun without knowing how to get the safety off. I'd have to rely on Keeter's judgment because I couldn't tell her anything.

"Willy," I said, just to keep him focused on me. "What is the point of all this? Do you really think you can torture someone in a church building on a main street with no one knowing?"

"I know I can," he replied calmly.

"It's not going to happen, Willy. You can shoot me or not shoot me, but you're not going to handcuff me, period."

Willy laughed. "I don't think you understand, Michael. You are living the last pain-free seconds of your life. When I get tired of the anticipation I will simply put a bullet in each of your kneecaps. You will go down instantly, and while you are writhing in pain I will indeed handcuff you. The rest simply depends on my imagination. But I will be in complete and utter control."

Even from where I stood, even in the dim light, I could see that his eyes were starting to shine. "Oh, yes," he said. "That's never happened to you, has it? No one has ever had absolute and total control of you, able to do anything they choose, make you suffer, even take your life away.

"I doubt you appreciate the high that comes with controlling someone like that. It's better than crack, better than cocaine. Well, from the doer's point of view, of course."

The image was so gruesome I tried to block it out of my mind. What was Keeter up to? I tried to think. If she couldn't respond to me, I needed to respond to her. What was she waiting for? I put my hand on my forehead as though upset by Willy's plan —which I was —and glanced at Keeter. She was absolutely still and crouched. She looked like a spring compressed to the max. Her eyes never left Willy's face. Keeter, old girl, he's not going to close the door until he shoots me, so get on with it.

I measured the distance with my eye. He was too far away from her. He wasn't crowding her. That was the other thing that would make her go, if he crowded her.

There must be something that would draw him closer— something that would make Willy take a chance. What could I sell him that he'd want to buy enough to come closer without kneecapping me first? He already had everything he wanted: the setting, the control, the victim.

I held out my wrists handcuff distance apart. "I don't think you can do it, Willy," I said. "Shoot someone that you know from a distance maybe. But up close and personal? Put the handcuffs on my wrists and hurt me? You and I have talked for years. We've been friends of a sort. You wouldn't be human if you could ignore all that."

Willy practically sputtered. "My dear child. Surely you don't believe what you're saying. You can't be some airheaded Pollyanna who thinks I'm just a kindhearted, misunderstood soul?"

"I'm willing to bet my life on it, Willy. If you're right, you don't have to bother with kneecapping me: I'm willing to let you cuff me. But if you're wrong and you can't do it, then you go out and face the music for what you've done playing games with Camille. Deal?"

Willy hesitated. If good-hearted folk frequently don't know what to make of people who are bitter-hearted evil, then vice versa is also true. Willy wouldn't know whether to believe me or not. But he wanted to. He wanted to because betraying a trust was more exciting to him than winning a fight. Willy would get an erection just thinking about the look in my eyes when I realized he was going to do exactly what he said.

I glanced down again quickly. Keeter hadn't moved a muscle. She looked like she would wait in that crouched position forever. I looked up and saw the handcuffs flying toward me. "You put them on," he said.

I caught them and threw them back. "Not on your life. Easy to stand over there and give orders. No, you have to come close enough to see the look in my eyes. That's what you're avoiding, isn't it, Willy?"

Willy was salivating by now. He hesitated a moment longer and then moved forward slowly. "No tricks," he said.

"Well, you've got the gun and the knife and you outweigh me by about a hundred pounds. I'm not sure what more you want. But if it makes you feel better ..." I slowly lifted my hands in the air. I was hoping that might mean something to Keeter. I wished I knew something about how she was trained.

Willy paused and then kept moving forward slowly. He was focusing intently on me, looking, no doubt, for a kick or a hidden weapon. I shut up. I didn't want to confuse Keeter with friendly sounding conversation. Willy was eight feet away, maybe seven—how far was Keeter's territory? When was he too close?

He stopped again. Willy had decided he had come close enough. And goddamn it, Keeter hadn't. What was the distance between where he was and where she felt crowded? Was I going to get shot over a couple of feet? Why was he so goddamn leery of me, anyway; I have an honest face.

I held out my hands again. Willy was way too far to reach them. "You can't do it, Willy, so let's just go. Deep down, I've always had faith in you. I've always known there was something decent in you despite all the rotten stuff you've done. Maybe it was no accident you chose a church to listen from."

Willy couldn't help himself. The thought of destroying the trusting look I held up to him was too much. He took one more step, and I saw a blur move to my left, a completely soundless blur, moving through the air toward Willy, heading for throat-height. For a second I saw the stunned look on Willy's face, and then I heard the gun go off. In the next instance Willy was down with Keeter on top of him.

This time I didn't hesitate. I flew through the door and down the stairs. I hit the front of the church door on the run and tore across the street without looking. I burst into my office and grabbed the keys for the trunk. Camille was sitting at the desk with the phone in her hand. She was shaking, but she was still functioning. "Dial 911," was all I said, and turned to leave.

"Where's Keeter?" Camille called after me. I looked down, and there was blood on my shirt. It had to be Keeter's.

'T'll be back," I said, and headed out the door. I threw open the trunk and grabbed my fanny pack. I didn't even put it on. I just started running across the street and pulled the gun out on the way.

I got back upstairs before the sirens started. Willy was still down. Keeter had missed his throat but had caught his shoulder blade. From the looks of it she had crushed the bone and then bit him a few more times for luck before she got too weak.

Willy was sweating and crying, and his shoulder was bleeding pretty freely. Keeter had him pinned under her. She was bleeding too —how badly was hard to say without moving her. Her eyes were shut, and her body wasn't moving. Willy was in too much pain to try to get her off— she weighed easily over a hundred pounds. "Keeter?" I said, but she gave no response.

"Get her off," Willy said. Beads of sweat were popping out on his forehead, and he looked like he might be going into shock, which, oddly enough, didn't bother me in the slightest.

I was just sorry she missed his throat. I didn't bother to answer him, but headed back down the stairs, this time to get Camille. She was probably the only person who could do anything for Keeter.

I didn't even think about doing anything for Willy except calling the police. I personally wasn't in the mood to help Willy at all. On the contrary, I thought after we got Keeter off his chest, we ought to drive a stake through his heart.

The sirens came closer as I took off my blouse. I didn't care about standing around in my underwear; Keeter was bleeding badly. Camille and I tried to bind up her side as best we could to try and stop it. Then we tried to push her off Willy, but it wasn't easy. Camille said she weighed almost one twenty, and there was so much blood on the floor that Camille and I were slipping around in it. We worked as gently as we could.

Keeter was semiconscious but determined not to let Willy up, so mostly she wasn't cooperating. Whenever she was awake enough to recognize Camille, she'd listen to her and let us move her a little. We finally got her off Willy just as we heard footsteps on the stairs. Moments later Adam burst around the corner with two officers. He took a glance at Willy and asked, "Have you called an ambulance?"

"No," I said. Actually, I hadn't even thought of it. He pulled out his walkie-talkie and spoke into it, then knelt down beside Willy. Willy's eyes were closed, and his color didn't look good. Adam pulled back his eyelids to look at his eyes, then took his pulse. Willy's breathing was rapid and shallow, and I'd be willing to bet his pulse was fluttering. "He's in shock," he said and pulled off his jacket and covered him up with it. Then he started trying to bind up the wound.

In the distance we heard sirens again. "Go downstairs," he said to one of the officers who just seemed to be standing around, "and direct the ambulance."

It was very odd seeing somebody in as much trouble as Willy was and having no impulse to help him. It was worse than that; I was hoping he'd die. I'd felt the same way about Ted Bundy. I thought he had forfeited his right to be among us, and, for my money, so had Willy.

I found myself resenting Adam trying to save him, but I kept my mouth shut. People who've been exposed to torture kits aren't objective; they aren't even rational. And Adam wouldn't stop doing his job no matter what I said.

We had done all we could for Keeter. Now we needed to get her to a vet. I looked up at the one officer who was still standing around. "We need some help," I said. "We need to get her to a vet."

"You," Adam said firmly, "are not going anywhere. Officer Barrett will help your friend get the dog to the vet."

I started to argue, but then stopped. Camille was functioning better than I'd ever seen her. Maybe it was a good thing for her to go deal with the vet on her own. "Call on the way," was all I said. "Let them know what they've got coming in."

Luckily Officer Barrett looked like he was one of those weight-lifting-type cops. He picked up Keeter easily and headed off with Camille.

The ambulance crew arrived a few minutes later, and after a period of scrambling and IVs and shots, Willy was put on a stretcher and the medics took off rushing down the stairs, leaving Adam and I standing around in the dim room. We were both covered with blood from our knees down from kneeing in the stuff.

Adam said to the one officer left, "Secure this scene and call for the state crime lab to come out. I'm going to take Dr. Stone's statement." He was not exactly warm. He was more like totally and completely pissed off, and my guess was, at me.

"Can we go to my office?" I said. I just wanted to get out of there and away from all memories of how close I'd come to losing my kneecaps and God knows what else.

"No," Adam said formally, "I want to keep an eye on things here. But," he added, seeming to relent slightly, "we can go to another room."

We found another room to talk in, and as the blood dried on our pants, I came clean with the story of Willy. It wasn't a pretty story. All Adam had asked of me was that I tell him if Willy contacted me, and I had not only not done that, I had bald-faced lied to him. Even last night I hadn't told him the whole story.

The more I talked about Willy and what he'd been up to, the more Adam's jaw set and the more his lips got thin and tight. He didn't say anything though. He just wrote down what I said and asked some questions, but he had a layer of ice around him that would have sunk the Titanic. I hadn't been very hopeful for my relationship with Adam before. I was pretty sure I knew where it stood now.

I started to tell him I was planning on coming clean that afternoon, but I didn't. It just sounded too weak. Too little, too late.

Besides, the truth was I didn't really know why involving Adam had been so hard for me. Disjointed images came to mind: swimming alone at night at fifteen on the inland waterway, where running into snakes wasn't even all that uncommon. Driving cars at 120 miles an hour at sixteen and waiting on every curve to see whether fate took a shot or not. I always seemed to have to walk up right to the edge of something, and I could never take anybody with me. The only honest thing I could have said to Adam was, "I don't know what this is all about, Adam, but it's old."

I didn't say it. I just kept plowing through the story. I finally got through all of it, but I was getting very cold and very tired. The adrenaline was long gone, and I felt like I'd been dropped off a cliff. Adam finally seemed to notice I wasn't doing well, and he stood up. "That's it for now," he said. "There're going to be some problems with this, but now isn't the time to talk about them."

I didn't know what he meant, but I was too tired to care. It was still morning, but I felt like it was midnight and I'd crossed the Sahara before dawn.

I started to get up when he said, "Give me a minute. I'll be right back." He went away, and when he returned he said, "Carlotta's on her way over. I'd like you to wait here until she comes." He didn't sound quite as stiff as before.

I started to protest. I get a knee-jerk reaction when people tell me what to do, but then I realized it didn't sound so bad. I was beat. "Okay," I said, and Adam raised his eyebrows. I think he realized, then, just how wiped I was.

He looked at me a minute longer, and I had the feeling maybe some part of him wanted to put his arms around me. Maybe some part of me wanted to put my arms around him. But he didn't and I didn't. I was feeling like a shit for lying to him, and I didn't even know why I did it.

And Adam? I don't know what he was feeling. He just shook his head and said, "Jesus, Michael, you're a work of art," and then he was gone. I guess that meant he was still mad.