Unsound (A Lei Crime Companion Novel) (12 page)

“It’s my habit to take notes while we talk. Is that all right?” I asked. I wanted to establish my authority position again after the drinking incident. Taking notes and listening was also where I felt most comfortable.

“Of course.” Russell Pruitt set the dishes in the sink, ran water over them, and lumbered to his bunk. He folded himself into its short, narrow space, lying on his side, those glassy-bright eyes on me as I picked up the folder with Freitas’s profiles inside.

“I’ll just use the back of these papers here.”

“I’m interested in what you think of those profiles,” he said. “They must be suspects in a case of yours.” How had he had time to so thoroughly search my things?

“It’s a consultation,” I said carefully, lifting my knees and setting the folder on them to write. “Confidential. This is
your
time. Now, you said this was a matter of life and death.”

“Yes. A matter of my life and your death,” Russell Pruitt replied.

“Hmm,” I said, writing “making veiled threats” on the paper. “That sounds serious. Tell me about what’s brought this on.” My heart beat triple speed, and the vodka and pasta weren’t mixing well. I belched, hoping I wasn’t going to vomit.

“I’ve got some health issues. I need to sort them out, come to some conclusions.”

“The stakes clearly couldn’t be higher. Why don’t you tell me where this all began for you.” I needed to keep him talking as long as possible, and keep him liking and respecting me. Hopefully I could drag the therapy out until someone came looking for me—four more days. The thought made my bladder loosen.

“I found out I had gigantism when I was thirteen. Can you imagine what it’s like to be a normal kid, then suddenly find yourself six feet tall within just a few months?”

“No, I can’t imagine,” I said honestly. “Tell me more about what that was like.”

“I was in unspeakable pain because my bones and sinews grew too fast. I have stretch marks in my skin.” He pushed up a sleeve so I could see striations lining the insides of his arms, like the laddering of a snag in a nylon stocking. “I was teased and picked on. The bullies all wanted to fight me because I was so big, and I had no idea how to fight.”

“You were overwhelmed emotionally by the changes in your body as you grew too fast, and it attracted unwelcome aggressive attention,” I said, reflecting back both the content and emotion of his tale. I found myself feeling compassion for this tormented young man; at the same time, I was burning with my own questions:
Why me? Why now? Why this way?

“Yes, that’s it exactly. I became a freak, almost overnight, and it came at a very bad time for me.” He closed his eyes in a long pause, and I couldn’t wait any longer.

“That must have been terrible, and I want to know everything about what led you to this point. But earlier in the evening, I had two questions for you, and you said you’d answer them after we ate. I’m still wondering about those questions. Do you remember what they were?”

“I do.” Russell Pruitt rolled onto his back, his blue-jeaned legs folded and still so long the tops of his knees brushed the underside of the top bunk. “It’s all part of the story. I’ll answer the easiest one first. I tracked your cell phone. I hacked your carrier, bought a phone tracker app, and had it ping your phone’s location. I knew everywhere you went, and I knew when it went off the grid at the top of Haleakala. I knew you must have hiked in. The only gamble was which cabin you’d headed for, but this one was the most logical choice for someone not in the greatest shape physically.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling deflated by this practical solution to what had seemed an impenetrable puzzle. “So you have some computer skills too.”

“I’m very good. If only curing myself could be done on computer.”

“What’s wrong with you, exactly?”

“I’m doing all the hormone therapies that are best practice for this syndrome, but damage was done to my heart and internal organs when I was younger and everything was growing too fast. I didn’t have parents looking out for me.”

“Tell me about that,” I said, making a note: “No parents. Hacker. Tracked my cell phone
.
” I realized I was actually very interested in his story.

“I don’t think I’m ready to tell you about that. But I will tell you about your clients.”

“What about them?” I looked up at him, feeling protectiveness rise up in me.

“I wanted to know what kind of people you saw in your practice. Who thought you were a good enough psychologist to work with. It was an interesting piece of research.”

I breathed through a wave of nausea. “How did you do that?”

“Now, if I told you that, I’d have to kill you.” He snorted a laugh that sounded boyish and young. But he wasn’t a kid, and it wasn’t cute. “I particularly like the Southern chick. She’s a bit of a psychopath herself, running around stealing stuff with that fluffy hair and the dog. I wanted to take the dog, but he would have been a hassle. I felt sorry for Mrs. Kunia too. Didn’t know depression was so prevalent in older people.”

“Mrs. Kunia has had a lot of grief,” I said. “Please leave my clients alone. They’re just people like you, people trying to work through problems.” I thought of the “World’s Greatest Grandma”
mug. “Did you take items from them and leave them for me to find?”

“That’s it exactly.”

“Why?”

“I was curious about them, about your practice. I wanted you to figure out what was going on, but you weren’t getting it.”

“Like a stalker.”

“No, like a psychology student doing fieldwork. Work I wanted to share with you.”

“Clients have rights. Their privacy and confidentiality is protected. Studying them because of me—it violates every code of our profession.” My voice trembled with conviction and outrage, and I burped again, feeling the shrimp dinner pressing up against my esophagus. I set the folder aside. “I don’t feel well. I don’t think I’m used to all this rich food. Can we take a break? Can I just sit outside a moment, see if the nausea passes? I don’t want to throw up right here.”

He turned his head and looked at me a long moment, considering. The sun was long gone, and the dark was palpable beyond the windows. I gulped, trying to settle the roiling of my stomach, and he must have seen my symptoms were real because he got up with frightening swiftness and went to the combination lock, spun it with a memorized combination, and opened the door. A square of starlit liberty gleamed before me, light from the lantern falling on the lush grass in front of the stoop.

I kicked the sleeping bag off and stumbled to the door, wild to get outside and try to run—but as I passed, he caught hold of my hair, bringing me up short with my own momentum. He reached back and picked up my sleeping bag, still holding my hair. My head bent back, my face pulled achingly tight, and tears of pain and disappointment started in my eyes as he walked behind me to the top step, following me down onto the grass.

“Get into your sleeping bag,” he said gently. “You might get cold.” I also couldn’t run with the sleeping bag on. I obeyed, drew it up to my waist. He let go of my hair, a relief so intense it felt like pleasure.

We sat. The nene were gone, back to where they roosted at night, and the stars flamed in a timeless Milky Way rainbow overhead. Russell Pruitt closed the door behind us, and I did some relaxation breathing, calming my nausea, and slowly lay back on the short, thick grass, folding my arms under my head. He did the same, and we both looked at the vast infinity of space.

I was momentarily disoriented, feeling so close to those stars, as if gravity would suspend its bondage and I might fall out into them, drifting away forever among those spinning balls of light and energy. Thin air and no light pollution made me feel like I was on a space station. I reached a hand over to touch the prickly softness of the grass as an anchor.

“I wonder where we go when we die,” Russell Pruitt said.

“I wonder too. What do you think about that?”

“I kind of like the idea of living forever,” he said, and there was infinite sadness in his big, slow voice. “But I don’t believe it.”

“Why not?”

“It just seems like a child’s wishful thinking, and I’m not a child. I just wish I had longer to figure these things out.”

“You’ve implied several times that this is a matter of life and death and that you didn’t have long to figure things out. Tell me what’s going on.” In the dark, side by side, our conversation took on a new intimacy, as if I were the priest and he in the confessional beside me. It felt comfortable, like he was any other client coming to me for help.

“I’m dying. Congestive heart failure. My heart is enlarged and weak from overexpansion; whole parts of it are dead. The doctors give me a few months to live—and I’m not a candidate for transplant because of the gigantism.”

“I’ve heard there are heart problems with your diagnosis. I’m so sorry. Getting down to the cabin must have been a tremendous strain.” I thought of my own travail. His must have been even worse.

“You have no idea. I had to take nitro when I got here, and rest. Almost didn’t make it.”

“So that leads me to the second question I asked you before. Why have you followed me? Why not just make an appointment?”

“Because.” He sighed, a long slow sigh into the chill night air. “Because I knew I had to confront you at some point with how you’d destroyed my life, and I was worried you’d come down here to commit suicide.”

I closed my eyes, unable to really process this—there were too many missing pieces. I racked my brain. Nothing about him—his name, his appearance—was familiar, and yet he seemed to blame me for something. “I wonder how I could have destroyed your life.”

He didn’t answer.

“You have good instincts,” I finally said. “But no. I’m not suicidal.”
Constance’s voice in my head cried,
Denial
, but I ignored her. Most of me really did want to live. “I came here because I want to get sober. I want to get past my divorce and to adjust to the empty house with my son, Chris, gone to college.”

“Well, that’s good, at least.”

“It was until you got here. Insisting on therapy.” The words popped out before I could stop them, and I could swear they were spoken in Constance’s voice.

“All part of what’s meant to be, Dr. Wilson.”

Another long silence spun out between us, and I thought about how all we are is energy trapped in different forms, subatomic particles vibrating in arbitrary patterns. We’re all the same at the particle level, even him and me.

“So you said you wanted to confront me. Why didn’t you just make an appointment? I would have been happy to see you. To try to help you.”

“I want you to suffer,” he said. “I want you to feel the loneliness, fear, and pain I felt. Just a little of it. I wanted you to figure out that I knew everything about you.”

I breathed through the surge in my heart rate. “What purpose would that serve?” I said, when I was sure my voice would be coolly interested and nothing more.

“Justice. It’s about justice.”

What did he mean? I didn’t know all the facts—he still wasn’t telling me everything.

“So. Help me understand here.” Back to motivational interviewing, a technique for exploring ambivalence and breaking through illogic. “You start ‘investigating’ me, tracking me. You follow and ambush me and take me prisoner when I’m ill and trying to change my life so you can get some therapy you’ve decided you need. What part of that is about justice?”

“Shut up!” he yelled. He stood in a surge of mountainous strength, took hold of my sleeping bag, and hauled me back into the cabin, bumping and flailing up the steps. He flung me in the direction of my bunk. I rolled and fetched up against the leg of the bed. I lay there, my cheek against the worn and pockmarked floor, the wind knocked out of me, looking at the dust bunnies hiding deep under the bunk against the wall.

I heard the thump of the front door closing, muttering as he slammed the hasp and lock home, floor-shaking stomps as he went into the kitchen—and then ordinary splashing as he washed the dishes.

I was going to need to go along with his version of reality. I saw that now. This wasn’t real therapy, where my job was to gently rattle clients’ cages and help them see their lives from a new perspective.

This was keeping the giant happy so I could live another day.

I was afraid to move and was still winded from the back of the step knocking the air out of my lungs as he’d dragged me up them. I slowly turned my head to observe him, but I didn’t move otherwise. I wondered how his heart was dealing with the strain of the last few minutes, and in a moment I had my answer—he staggered back across the big room and fell onto his bunk, fumbling for something in his pocket.

“Pills,” Russell Pruitt gasped, his face a bluish gray in the pale light of the lantern. “Help me.”

I wondered if he would conveniently die while I waited and watched—but if he didn’t, he would punish me for not helping. So I moved, but haltingly, as if crippled by pain, pushing myself up in the sleeping bag, unzipping slowly.

He fumbled and gasped, dropping the pill bottle of what I assumed was nitroglycerin, and it landed on the floor and rolled under his bunk.

My eyes on his, I pushed the sleeping bag down and then crawled across the floor toward him, reaching under the bed for the pills. Pressing down hard and twisting the childproof cap, I shook two out into my palm. He opened his mouth like an enormous baby bird, lifting his tongue, and I set the two nitro tablets under it. He closed his mouth and fell back onto the bed, and I crawled away.

It occurred to me that this was my chance to escape, if only I could restrain him, or arm myself, or both. I jumped up and hurried into the kitchen, yanking open one of the drawers for the piece of rope I remembered seeing. I took the big butcher knife out of the dish rack and the piece of rope and ran back to Russell Pruitt.

He was lying on his back, his breath rattling in his lungs, his color still bad. I’d made a loop with the rope, and I slid it over one of his massive hands, an awkward move with the knife in my other hand.

His eyes fluttered open, and I dropped the knife, reaching across him to grab his other hand, pulling them together and wrestling the loop over them. I pulled it tighter, my hands slippery with sweat, and threw the loose end around the tier of the bunk.

He sat up, swinging his tied hands like a baseball bat, and I dodged out of the way, kicking the knife far across the floor, where it skittered under one of the bunks. He surged to his feet, and I danced away around the corner of the bunk, wrapping the rope around the bed support, bracing one foot on the bunk and pulling with all my might to try to drag him down and tie him to the bunk.

He roared like a
Bengal tiger and yanked with all his giantness, and the rope ripped through my hands, tearing my palms. In a few blurred and terrible moments, I was back in the sleeping bag with the selfsame rope wrapped around my neck at the top of the bag to seal me in. He’d tied it in a square knot, just loose enough for me to breathe and no more. I thought of the scene in
The Hobbit
where all the dwarves were trussed in bags beside the fire by the trolls. I wanted to laugh. I must be losing it.

“You’re lucky we aren’t done with our therapy,” he said, sitting back on his haunches, panting, those oversized hands hanging between his knees. “Don’t try that again.”

“Okay,” I said.

I woke in the predawn of day four having to pee. I’d slept very well, trussed like a sausage in my bag. Maybe it was the dose of booze he’d fed me; maybe it was a whole new level of tiredness from all the exertions of the day. The night marchers never appeared, my crawlies were gone, and even the headache had dissipated. Only a few bruises from hitting the steps and rope abrasions on my hands hurt today.

If I didn’t tell Pruitt that we were supposed to leave for Holua Cabin today, the other campers might come—and I could tell them I was a prisoner. This heartening idea gave me the courage to call across the giant’s rumbling snores: “Russell Pruitt. I have to pee. Russell. Pruitt!”

He woke on the last yell and sat up carefully to avoid hitting his head on the bottom bunk. I had a sense he’d had a rough night of it, with at least a foot of him hanging off the end of the bunk.

“What?” he said, rubbing his hand across his face.

“I have to pee.”

“You always have to pee.”

“I know it seems like that. But I’ve been drinking a lot of water, trying to flush the booze out.”

He came over, untied the knot at my throat.

“How are you feeling?” I asked, looking up at his vast pale face, shadowed with beard stubble and pitted with old acne scars.

“Like you care.” He sounded as petulant as my son in his teen years.

“I do care,” I said, and was surprised to find it true. For all his terrible strength, I could see what a boy he was, and I didn’t like that he was dying—even as I remembered the butcher knife was still under one of the bunks and I probably should have stabbed him with it yesterday.

“I’ll have to take you to the outhouse. Get your pot.” He tied the rope around my wrist. “Glad you found this rope for us.”

“Yeah, wow, that backfired,” I agreed, and was surprised by a snort of a laugh from Pruitt. He followed me as I went into the kitchen.

“Why are you wearing your boots?” he asked, as I got the pee pot out from under the sink.

“Why do you think?” I said.

He shook his big head. “No running. You’ll be sorry if you do.”

I stood next to him like a dog on a leash as he spun the combination lock, let us out the front door. “I don’t want you to kill me.”

“I’m still undecided about that.” He followed me out onto the steps, down into the dewy grass. The indigo sky still had a few reluctant stars studding it, but golden dawn welled in the east and brazed a few puffy clouds with fluorescent salmon. Everything here in the crater seemed hypersaturated with color, as if all filters were removed.

“What can I do to tip things in my favor?” I led him down the short path to the coffin-like box of the outhouse.

“I have to think on that.”

That was not what I’d hoped to hear. I went into the outhouse, shut the door as best I could on the rope tied to my wrist. Sitting on the wooden seat, I was unable to pee, my bladder cramping.

A long moment passed.

“You done yet?”

“No. Sorry, I can’t go.” I got up, hoisted my pants, came out.

“Well, I have to go. Maybe that will help.” He went inside, shut the door. I stood awkwardly, my hand with the rope on it extended to the door, looking around at the awesome vista. It occurred to me to untie the rope and try to run, but I had no confidence I’d make it more than a few yards before he caught me, and I felt like I’d tested his patience as far as I was willing to at the moment. Resigned, I soaked in the stark beauty and colors of the towering crater wall behind us, the sweep of the valley floor before us, the ocean in the way far distance, blue and mysterious, the sky given dimension by the brilliant clouds overhead.

I heard Russell Pruitt doing a very long pee, and suddenly I had to go in the strange way of these things, and as soon as he came out I darted in and did my business, number two as well. I came out carrying the folded squares of used napkin.

“Thanks for waiting,” I said. “Gotta pack these out.” Like I’d live to do that. I had to keep thinking like I would.

“Glad you could go. We might have been out here a long time,” he said. “I want to fix us some breakfast; then we need to get on the trail to Holua Cabin.”

He’d read the permits, after all.

The second time hope died was only slightly less painful than the first time.

Russell Pruitt locked us back into the cabin, untied the rope on my wrist. “You can pack your own things while I fix breakfast.”

I thought of sassy things to say back, of trying to engage him in some discourse about the logic of taking me prisoner to do therapy, but in the end I just turned to my bunk and began packing up my meager belongings.

On the plus side of all of this, the physical misery of my first days in the cabin was gone—and I couldn’t chalk my rejuvenation up to just a dose of alcohol and a pasta dinner. The current peril I was in was having a salutary effect on my body—a side effect of the threat of death, I decided. This conundrum would be very interesting to do a sociological study on, if ever I could design one ethically. At that challenge, my overused brain boggled.

Rolling up my sleeping bag, the dirt and grass stains on the once-new fabric reminded me of the physical altercations of the day before. That reminded me of the butcher knife, still under the bunk across the room.

My situation would be greatly helped by the addition of a butcher knife.

Russell Pruitt banged a few pans in the sink, and I heard him filling the big pot with water. His back was turned. I let the flashlight I still carried in the leg of my sweats fall out, and I gave it a kick so that it rolled across the cabin under the same bed as the knife.

“Rats,” I said loudly, glancing at him. He hadn’t turned, but keeping him distracted and talking seemed a good idea. “You’re good at cooking. Bet there’s a story there.”

“Yeah, actually there is.” He turned back to the propane grill with the big pot in one arm and the striker in the other. I walked deliberately across the room, got on my knees, and reached under the bed. The angle was out of his view unless he came around.

I really hoped he’d forgotten about the butcher knife.

“I always liked being in the kitchen. Guess you could say I had a knack for it. I’d cook for my foster families. Helped them like me, and thanks to my cooking, I had only three placements before the end of high school. What’re you doing?”

The crack of suspicion in his voice made me jump, bumping my head on the bottom of the bunk. “My flashlight rolled under here.” I shoved the butcher knife into my sleeve, moved it down against my side hoping I wouldn’t cut myself, even as the fingers of my other hand curled around the slim, cool tube of the flashlight. “See?” I sat back up on my knees, held it up.

“Okay. Well, anyway, my first job out of high school was for a restaurant, as a sous-chef. But I’d already discovered I was even better at computers than food—and I bet you can guess which one pays more.”

“You have to do what you love,” I said, my heart thundering as I walked back to my backpack, wondering where I could hide a seven-inch butcher knife that he wouldn’t see if he decided to check my bag again.

I turned the pack toward him and shoved the knife down into a slit where the straps attached to the stiff backing of the pack. The handle still protruded, so keeping all my movements rhythmic, I shook out the yoga pants, rolling them to wrap around the mouth of the backpack as if adding extra padding for the straps. “How did you switch from food to computers? And then to psychology?”

“I never went to school for computers. Just started fixing them for people, rigging up networks within houses, things like that. Began getting work under the table that way. When I had enough saved up, I got my own place, supported myself with my own little tech business. I was always going to school for psychology.”

I felt a chill pass across my skin, a reminder of the crawlies of yesterday. That he’d majored in psych meant he’d invested a lot of time and effort into his revenge scheme, something that didn’t bode well for me due to the foot-in-the-door principle—that is, the more little choices a person made in the direction of a certain course of action, no matter how bizarre or challenging it became, changing course became even harder because to do so meant admitting you’d been wrong hundreds of choices ago. The foot-in-the-door principle led to situations like the Jim Jones cult, where all voluntarily drank the Kool-Aid, though many were rational adults who knew what was happening and could have refused.

“So when did you start tracking my whereabouts?”

“Not that long ago, actually. When I met your son, Chris, at college.”

I threw my head up to glare at him. I actually felt my eyes get hot as I said, “You leave him alone!”

“Oh my. Hit a nerve, there, did I?” He retrieved his backpack, a vast dark green number the size of a sofa, and began filling it with the contents of the kitchen. “Quite the mama bear.”

“Do what you want to me, but leave him alone,” I whispered fiercely, feeling my hand steal under the yoga pants to curl around the plastic handle of the knife. The thought of Chris hurt brought on a vivid fantasy of stabbing Russell Pruitt, repeatedly, messily, and with no reservation. I panted with terror and anticipation, adrenaline flooding my system with the means to execute that fantasy.

“Don’t worry,” he said, his back invitingly exposed as he put the bag of pasta, coffee, and other foodstuffs into the depths of his pack. “I’ve got no beef with him. But it was meeting him that gave me the idea to track you, see what you were up to. I’d had a different plan up until then. But once I was observing you, I could see you were going downhill fast. I didn’t want you to beat me to the bottom.”

“Bottom,” I repeated, releasing the handle of the knife, pushing it back down, sucking calming breaths to bring my heart rate down.

I’d just learned that I could easily murder someone who threatened my child. It was one thing to entertain that idea intellectually; it was another to come up against it baldly and with opportunity.

“Yeah, bottom. The end. Kicking the bucket. Tossing off this mortal coil. Pushing up daisies. Feeding the worms,” he chanted.

“You know, Russell Pruitt, I don’t think you really are dying,” I said. The words burst out of my mouth and bounced into the room like bowling balls, disturbing our constructed universe. Words have power. Words define reality. And a new reality could change everything about our situation.

Now Russell Pruitt was the one to lift his head and glare, and his dark eyes were definitely less glassy than this morning.

“Yeah. I think you were told something that’s some doc’s best guess, but it’s not true. Here you are, hiking
Haleakala Crater, no small physical feat. Slinging a grown woman around in her sleeping bag. Eating pasta and shrimp, drinking vodka, and feeling better than you have in years. Yeah, I think this death diagnosis is bogus.”