The Wrangler: The only thing standing between the beautiful kidnapped heiress and death was -- The Wrangler. (9 page)

"So, you'd like me to put my question in the form of, "Why would a hypothetical kidnapper kidnap my daughter?" asked Willock.

"Yes," the Wrangler replied. "To which I might reply 'for the money.'"

"I suppose we can proceed along those lines," said Willock. "Very well, why would someone hypothetically pick my daughter? What might the proximate cause have been for picking her rather than someone else who had money?"

"I think I know what you're getting at," said the Wrangler. "You want to know how she got selected so other hypothetical kidnappers might not strike again, right?"

Willock nodded yes and the Wrangler told him about a hypothetical kidnapper who staked out a liquor store near a wealthy enclave, knowing some rich man's kid might be taking risks to get at it.

"Clever," said Willock. "Now, if it was just for the money, why did you rape her?"

"A hypothetical kidnapper of the kind I am imagining would agree that it's not a good idea to rape a kidnappee," said the Wrangler. "He might not regard it as professional. Other kidnappers might not agree with this viewpoint."

"So you let it happen," said Willock.

"Not exactly," said the Wrangler. "And as I said, I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about a hypothetical kidnapper. Understood?"

"Understood," said Willock.

"OK then," said the Wrangler, "the other kidnappers this hypothetical kidnapper was working with might be hard men to say 'no' to -- hardened criminals, as law enforcement might say. When you say 'no' to such men, you have to have something strong -- some reason they understand and agree with, or a gun, or some equivalent to a gun. Otherwise they'll just do as they please and to hell with you. The hypothetical kidnapper might not have been willing to get involved in a shootout with his buddies over your daughter's cherry."

"Why wouldn't the other 'hypothetical kidnappers' think raping me was unprofessional?" Kathleen Willock burst out. She said the term 'hypothetical' with a sneer, but the Wrangler didn't mind. He was not an easily offended man.

"The other hypothetical kidnappers might be hardened criminals, but that doesn't mean there's any real agreement on a topic like this," said the Wrangler. "I don't imagine that criminals have any official code or ethics or standards or anything like that. The other hypothetical kidnappers might have regarded you as just ... an opportunity."

"An opportunity to hurt and degrade someone," said Christine.

"Not my take on it," said the Wrangler. "I think they might just regard it as an opportunity to get some free pussy and nothing more. Whether or not it made the woman happy or sad wouldn't matter to them. You have to remember, these men were prepared to kill the kidnapee if the money didn't come through. Why would men who didn't care about their victim enough to kill her, care about her feelings one way or the other?"

"Good point," said Willock. "Now, let me tell you a few things I know about you. You don't need to confirm or deny them -- I don't need your confirmation and I won't believe your denials."

The Wrangler nodded. He didn't care.

"Your real name is Robert Perrowski, you live at 457 Agincourt Drive in upstate New York," said Willock. "You have a cover profession as a restaurant manager, but that's just something you pay some organized crime buddies to put on the books for you. Your real profession is kidnapping. In that profession, you are known as the Wrangler. Your particular skill is restraining your victims and rendering them unable to collect any information about you or your associates. You picked up these skills as a result of your sexual bondage fetish. You are noted for being very good at what you do -- no person kidnapped on any of your "jobs" has ever been able to furnish any clues as to the identify of their captors. You're considered to be "soft" on your captives -- you try to keep them alive if you possibly can. You also have a reputation of being dangerous to cross -- there's apparently some kind of story about you winning a shootout with quite a few other criminals over some kind of disagreement."

Willock paused and looked at the Wrangler.

"I understand that these are all things you believe to be true," said the Wrangler. He was not disposed to admit to anything. But Willock clearly did have the goods on him -- everything he said was dead accurate.

"I have not given any of this information to the police," said Willock. "Understand, the police have a lot of resources, but I can command some resources, too, and mine are not inhibited by the rules policemen are. And not all of them are investigative resources. Which gets me to the point of my visit.

"I'm not going to give this information to the police," said Willock. "I wouldn't give it to them even if I wanted you dead. If I wanted you dead, I'd want you out of here, because I have people who would kill you for me, and not in one of those nice, legal ways, but in lengthy, brutal painful ways. A part of me wants you dead because you're part of the gang that kidnapped Christine. But I also am very sure that you saved Christine's life at least two times -- once, when they tried to kill her, and apparently you, by blowing up the trailer, and the second time, when you let them know Kathleen's whereabouts after the second bombing. You might well have been thinking of your own interests in each case -- in the first instance, to maintain her as a "card" you could play in future negotiations with me and your gang, in the second instance, to keep from facing execution if Kathleen died.

"I'm not convinced you acted entirely selflessly in either instance," said Willock. "In the first instance, you didn't really need Kathleen alive to keep her as a playing card -- your survival alone would have convinced your crew that their plan had failed, and given you credibility in any claims you might make about having Kathleen. And there's no way I could have known about any of this. So you could have left her to die in that trailer. And in the second instance, well, there was probably some self-interest there, but the Corpsman who found you said you were in pretty bad shape -- he thought he was listening to your dying words. You might have been thinking those were your dying words. You were almost certainly in shock. And yet you told the Corpsman where Christine was with those words. It argues for either great presence of mind or genuine concern for Christine on your part. Prior to meeting you, I tended to believe it was concern, because presence of mind at that level is rare, and especially rare among criminals. But now that I've met you, the whole 'presence of mind' theory is a lot more credible. You seem to be very self-possessed. But I am still sure some concern for Christine helped you stay conscious long enough to tell the Corpsman about Christine.

"And that's why I'm going to let you live, and get out of jail, because you did save Christine," said Willock. "I don't know if I buy the notion of a soft-hearted kidnapper-for-hire, but the evidence is there."

"Oh, it might not be a matter of soft-heartedness," said the Wrangler. "It could be that this guy doesn't like to see things wasted -- especially lives. Maybe he can handle using things up, or destroying things when there's a reason to do so, but he's generally against wasting things just for the hell of it, and tends to not waste them as opportunity permits. It might not be a small thing for him, either. He might find waste of this sort deeply offensive on a personal level."

Willock looked thoughtful. "Strangely enough, I see your point. While it's not the sort of attitude I'd expect from a criminal, it's one I've encountered before in people."

"I don't buy it," said Christine. She had been staring at the Wrangler the whole time as if he were some kind of strange bug she had discovered in her bedroom -- not at all happy to see it, but fascinated by its color and shape. "I mean, I'm not sure if he was one of the ones who raped me or not, but I don't buy his reason for not doing so. Professionalism? They grab people and demand money or they'll kill them. There's no professionalism there."

The Wrangler knew she had a point. The crew he'd been with on this job had been one of the sharpest ever. Some of the crews he'd been on in the past had guys on them whom he'd actively considered killing several times during the job, out of fear that they'd do something so stupid that it would get them all caught at any minute. In general, criminals weren't professionals, and when one called himself a professional he generally only meant that he worked hard enough to avoid getting caught that he succeeded most of the time. Or wanted to be known as someone who works that hard.

"Point taken," said the Wrangler. "So, let's take this hypothetical sexual bondage fetishist kidnapper you call the Wrangler and consider him. Maybe he sampled a few kidnap victims during his early career, and discovered something strange -- that he didn't really like doing it with actual captives as much as liked doing it with willing women who were only pretending to be his captives. Because women who really are captives are not having a good time, not enjoying themselves at all, and aren't nearly as much fun to be with as those who are. Real fear is to pretend fear as real guns are to toy guns. You can play with the one, but not the other. This might be something that a man who practices sexual bondage might understand much better than one who doesn't. So after sampling a few real captives, he might completely lose his taste for it, because pretend captives receive ... and give ... so much more pleasure from it.."

Christine remembered the way the fear had overridden her every feeling when she'd been raped, even when she'd been orgasming the fear had really been in control, and she understood perfectly. She had not enjoyed herself, not even for a second, because of the fear.

She had nightmares every night, and she woke up screaming because of them sometimes. She also had the occasional moment when some visual or aural trigger would bring the fear right back, full force, or at least the memory of it, and she'd freeze up in horror.

She'd never lose that sense of fear, it would always be with her at some level. Once experienced at the intensity and duration she'd experienced it, it didn't go away. It could put a damper on her mood for hours at a time, if she let it.

But she was getting some good counseling and had learned to fight those feelings off with a certain amount of success.

There was also a good side to her experience. She found that she valued and enjoyed her life a lot more. It wasn't some abstract thing, as she'd imagined it to be when other people had used such phrases in the past, generally in association with religious conversions. Christine hadn't had a religious sort of conversion, but she did find that on a visceral level, she enjoyed many things in her life a lot more now.

And the Wrangler's words made it clear to her that he understood what she'd been going through to a much greater extent than she'd imagined. Which made him seem like more of a monster in Christine's eyes.

Because how could he subject her to what he'd subjected her to, KNOWING what it felt like for her?

That was how the others could stand to rape her. They didn't know. Weren't smart enough to figure out what it felt like for her. So they fucked her, because she was about as much of an enigma to them as all the other women who'd writhed beneath them. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, as far as they were concerned.

But the Wrangler KNEW what it was to be helpless and in fear of your life, or at least understood it. What a BASTARD.

And yet the one thing she had wanted, wanted with all of her being, when she had been in fear for her life, was to live another day. And the Wrangler had been the one who had given her that. It could not be a coincidence that he was the one who had understood the depths of her fears, and that he was also the ones who had done what he could to see that they were not realized.

"Thank you," Christine said. "I don't know if anyone has just said it yet, but thank you for saving my life. I'm not sure if I believe your reasons for doing it, and I hate you for being in the business you are in. It's an evil business. I hate that I was raped by your buddies ... maybe by you. But I am so grateful that you let me live. And that's the reason ... the ONLY reason ... that my father is letting you live. He doesn't understand what I felt ... the horror of it ... I think you do. So I'm letting you go. I think you'll go right back to your old ways. And I think you'll save some more lives. I know that putting you behind bars wouldn't put the kidnapping people out of business ... you're replaceable, you know that. So I want you out there, saving the lives of people like me, instead of another man who might not care. Otherwise, I might let you live but you would live in a jail cell. Understand?"

"I'm sure that if I were the fellow you speak of, I'd be very glad of some of the decisions I had made recently," the Wrangler said.

Kathleen rolled her eyes at the Wrangler's pretense.

"All, right, daddy, I've said my piece," said Kathleen. "Let's go."

"Sure, honey, but first I have to tell Mr. Wrangler something," said Willock. "Could you wait for me?"

"Sure, I'll be in the lobby," said Willock, and she rose and signaled the guard outside to let her out.

As soon as Kathleen left, Willock said, "I just want you to know ... and I'm sure you have more sense that this, but I want to make it very clear -- if you come anywhere near my family or anyone I care about for the rest of your life, you're a dead man. Understood?"

"If I were a criminal, I'm sure I'd be far too cagey to try the same crime twice after the first one was a fiasco that landed me in jail," said the Wrangler.

"I'll take that for 'yes,'" said Willock and he left, too.

* * * * *

The Wrangler had been out of jail for about a week when he got a call from the Agent. They met at a quiet bar where people who wanted to talk sat at the bar and people who sat in the booths weren't bothered.

"Good to see ya," said the Agent, looking spruce in a quiet but expensive suit.

"Nice to see you, too," said the Wrangler. "I halfway expected you to be found in a marsh when I was in stir."

"Speaking of which, thank you very much for keeping me out of things when you were talking to the cops," said the Agent. "I heard they were looking for someone like me, but they did not have a very good description."