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Authors: Robin Hathaway

BOOK: Scarecrow

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CHAPTER 35

“Mr. Nelson?” Jack-the-night-clerk on the phone.

“What's up?” Paul's voice was groggy with sleep.

“A call just came through for Jo. They said she doesn't answer her cell phone.”

“Did you try her room?”

“No. I saw her go out. She said she might not be back tonight. Big date.”

“Huh? Are you sure she wasn't pulling your leg? Try her room on the house phone. I'll wait.”

Jack tried. No answer. He went back to the other phone. “No soap.”

“Did the call sound like an emergency?”

“They all do.”

“Tell the party to call nine-one-one. And Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“Let me know when Jo comes in.”

“Even if it's the middle of the night?”

“You heard me,” he barked and hung up.

Jack spent the rest of his shift daydreaming about what Jo could be doing that would keep her out all night.

CHAPTER 36

I woke to the stench of urine.

At first I thought I was back at Camp Minawoski and my tent-mates had locked me in the latrine again. They had done that to me once as a joke when I was twelve, the one and only time Dad sent me away to a summer camp. They didn't get away with it. I threw all their clothes in the lake.

I opened my eyes. Total blackness. Not a slit or a crack of light. No sound either, except a faint moaning to my right. I knew that sound. I had heard it in hospitals often enough. It was the moan of a person in pain. Where the hell was I? In one swift flood, it came back. The boat. The mud. Milac. I must be in that house. The attic or basement? I tried to move my arms. They wouldn't budge. Legs? Same thing. Something was binding meâsqueezing me. I felt as if I had been stuffed into a sewer pipeâtwo sizes too small.

I stopped trying to move and decided to try out my vocal chords. “Yoo-hoo!”

The moaning stopped.

“If someone's in here, speak up!”

Silence.

“Parlez-vous FranÃ§ais?”

Silence.

I cursed my poor language skills.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

Silence.

“EspaÃ±ol?”

That was itâthe full extent of my linguistic abilities.

“Sprechen â¦”
The word was no more than a whisper to my right. The same direction from which the moans had come.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”
I repeated urgently.

“Ja.”
A woman's voice.
“Bitte.”

I racked my brain for more German words. Something from high school. Anything. Something from the endless Grimms' fairy tales.
Mutter. Grossmutter. Wo?
Where? I wanted to say
Where are we?
but all I could remember was
wo.

“Wo?”
I said.

Silence.

“Wo?”
I repeated, louder.

“America,” the weak voice whispered.

Great. Wonderful. I want to know where in Bayfield I am. Specifically, in what house and which part of that house? And she tells me what country I'm in. If I hadn't been so tightly bound, I would have laughed. But I could barely breathe.

“Wo?”
I tried again.

The voice was weaker this time. I could barely make out the sounds. “U.S.A.”

Thanks a lot. I peered into the darkness, trying to see if any of my neighbors were as tightly bound as I was. I couldn't see a thing. How frustrating. How could I expect to find Becca when I was sealed up tighter than a hotdog in Handi-Wrap? Thank God my vocal chords were still intact. “Becca?”

“Hsssss.” My neighbors briefly came alive.

“Becca!” If I couldn't rescue her, at least I could let her know I was nearby. Maybe she could take some comfort from that.

Silence.

I lay staring into the dark, inhaling the smell of urine.

CHAPTER 37

I must have dozed off. When I woke, I had a splitting headache and a raging thirst. I decided it was time to call room service. I began to yell. Unfortunately my throat was dry and my yell was not up to its usual emergency-room standards. I tried again.

It wasn't totally ineffectual because the German-speaking woman on my left began hissing, “Shhh! Shhh!”

I yelled louder and was rewarded by the door being flung open and a man's voice: “What the hell's going on?”

“That's what I want to know,” I shouted. “And while you're at it, how about a glass of water and a toiletânot necessarily in that order.”

He didn't answer right away, stunned, I assumed, by my unorthodox request. Like Oliver's request for
more
.

“We'll see about that,” he said ineffectually and shut the door.

The meager light that filtered from the hallway during this interchange had allowed me to make out a long, narrow room under a sloping ceiling. It was lined with mattresses occupied by bodies, either sleeping or pretending to be. The body on my right had actually shot upright when the door opened, but instantly collapsed again. My companions were not physically bound, as I was. Something stronger than bonds were keeping them tied to their beds.

The room seemed darker than before. If nothing happened by the time I counted to one hundred, I planned to start yelling again.

“One, two, three, four â¦”

As I counted, I thought about the door-opener. It wasn't Doughboy. Even in that poor light, his faint silhouette was taller and his voice was different. Younger. And minus the foreign accent. Straight Bayfield country drawl, in fact.

“ â¦ twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six â¦”

My bindings were still a mystery to me. When the door opened, I had been so intent on looking at the opener, I hadn't noticed what was compressing me. All I could make out in the dim light was a long tube extending from my neck into darkness.

“ â¦ forty-four, forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven â¦”

A rug.

I was rolled up in a rugâjust like the ones I'd seen delivered by that boat!

“ â¦ sixty, sixty-one â¦”âor was it seventy? I'd lost count.

No wonder I couldn't move. I tried a shrug. My left shoulder rose about half an inch. Same on the right. I tried to wiggle my toes. My big toe quivered and died. God, my throat was dry. I was about to let out another yell when the door flew open. A figure paused, silhouetted in the doorway. Shorter and rounder than the first.

“I hope you have my water,” I snapped.

For answer, the figure walked toward me. He was carrying something. A bucket. I could just make out two black-currant eyes imbedded in a pasty face before the freezing water hit me. I gagged and spluttered. The worst part was not having my hands free to wipe the water from my eyes and nose. Like a dog, I shook my head from side to side, trying to get rid of as much water as possible. By the time I was breathing normally, Milac was gone. The room was dark again. And still. Not one of my companions had reacted to this assault. It was as if they were deadâor afraid they would be, if they came to my aid.

The only good that came from this incident was that some of
the water actually did make it down my throat. It felt a little less parched. The bad part was, contact with all that water had increased my urge to pee. Soon I would be adding to the stench that already surrounded me.

CHAPTER 38

The door was flung open. Four men came in quickly. Before I could speak or yell, a rag was stuffed in my mouth and a scarf tied over my eyes. I felt myself rise in the air and move forward, still in a horizontal position. There was a name for this, wasn't there? Levitation? I was dimly aware of someone rousing the remaining occupants of the room as the door closed behind me.

I was carried down two flights of wooden stairs. Fifteen steps, I counted, to the first landing. Then fifteen more. At the bottom, I was turned in to what must have been a narrow hallway, because I was tilted almost upright to make the turn. I think I was moving down the hall toward the back of the house. I heard a door open and felt the brush of cooler air on the exposed part of my face. Once outside, I was unceremoniously dumped onto a cart and trundled down a rough incline. The fishy smell of the marsh reached me and I knew we were nearing the river. I had the answer to one question: Where was I? I had been imprisoned in the Wistar house. We stopped with a jolt. Men's voices. Some words exchanged that I couldn't make out. The slap of water against wood. Levitation again, ending in a bruising bump. My destination was not to be stationary. It rocked and swayed under my back. The boat dipped twice in succession, as if from some weight. Two men stepping into the boat, one after the other? The creak of oarlocks.
(No motor?) The breeze on my face increased as we moved off. The only good thing about my swaddling clothes was they would keep me from freezing to death, on this night that was growing colder and colder. Again, the presence of water all around me was having an unfortunate effect. If I had an accident, I fervently hoped the carpet that bound me was a priceless Saruk.

I tried to call up some of my father's words of wisdom.

“There's no free lunch.”
Not useful.

“Too many cooks spoil the broth.”
Inappropriate, unless my captors were cannibals.

“Mind over matter.”
Better.

“A rolling carpet gathers no moss.”
Ha.

“He who laughs last, laughs best.”
Since I could barely breathe let alone laugh, this was no help.

I lay awhile, letting my mind go blank, feeling the river rocking under my back. I was sorry about the blindfold. One always likes to check out one's captain and crew before setting sail. But I was even more sorry about the gag. There were a number of things I wanted to say.

“The race is always won in the last lap.”
The phrase leapt into my head. Not original with Dad, but one of his favoritesâand certainly applicable. (Churchill was one of Dad's heroes.) Like the seasoned runner, I decided to conserve my energy for that final spurt. Closing my eyes, I waited for what would happen next.

CHAPTER 39

As soon as the alarm clock went off, Paul reached for the phone and dialed the motel. Jack answered, his voice blurred with sleep.

“Did she come in?”

“What? Who? No.”

“Maybe you were in dreamland,” Paul snapped. “Call her room.” He twisted and untwisted the phone cord while he waited.

“No answer,” Jack said.

Ignoring the breakfast Maggie had laid out for him, Paul pulled on his jacket, cap, and gloves.

“Be careful driving,” Maggie warned.

As he drove his pickup to the motel, Paul tried to calm himself. Maybe she
had
had a date and decided to stay all night with a boyfriend. What a fool he'd look. As Maggie said, Jo was a grown woman. And young people today were so much freer. God, when he thought of his courtship with Maggie he had to laugh. She had been a virginâand so had he. He had thought he'd concealed his innocence pretty well until Maggie said, “Where's the instruction manual?”

Pulling into his parking space, he scanned the lot for the motorcycle. Nowhere in sight. No accident had been reported
either, he hastily reminded himself. He had been flattered when Jo had asked if she could put his home telephone number in her wallet for emergencies. But he had never expected there would be one.

Jack was packing up his things.

“Did she say anything else? About where she was headed?” Paul couldn't help asking.

Jack looked up. “I told you, she said she had a big date. Then she winked.” He gave a sly smile.

That was the first he'd heard of the wink. But that could mean anything. That she really had a big date, or she was pulling Jack's leg. He hung up his jacket and took his place at the desk. He began running up some figures on the adding machine.

“Anything else?” Jack asked.

“No.”

He hesitated. “You really worried?”

“Go home and get some sleep.”

On his way to the door, Jack turned. “Maybe I should hang around.”

“Beat it.”

Jack left.