Unsound (A Lei Crime Companion Novel) (17 page)

Russell Pruitt rubbed his hands together. They made a dry, whisking noise that raised the hairs on my arms, and I wondered if I’d gone too far toward popping his bubble of denial. I decided to switch gears. “I’ve been wondering about the shoe.”

“The shoe?” He slanted a dark eye at me. He really did have some lovely long eyelashes. I swear I could see Ruth Gardo looking out of her son’s eyes. Maybe Ruth’s spirit would win over Hank’s—a fanciful notion.

“The shoe. Cream-colored pump, size eight, mud all over it.”

“Oh, that.” Russell Pruitt smiled. “I thought that would get to you. It’s Angie Pinheiro’s. Poor girl had to be a bridesmaid again a few weeks ago. I didn’t think she’d miss it.”

“Angie.” I covered my mouth with my hand. “She’s always had such bad luck.”

“Yeah, no kidding. Struck by lightning? Broke her back horseback riding? Finally gets married, and he’s a bigamist and a gambler?” Russell Pruitt shook his big shaggy head. “She’s cute though. I thought of asking her out, being her fourth strike of bad luck.”

“Thanks for not asking her out. She’d go, you know. She has no sense of personal safety.”

“So you don’t think I’m safe.”

“Not really, no. Weren’t we just discussing whether or not you were going to kill me?” Incredibly, we looked at each other and laughed. I smacked my knee. “You and Angie. What a pair, damn!”

“Hey,” Pruitt said. “You should take this more seriously.”

“Why? Taking it seriously just makes me sad about things I can’t change. I love Angie. I care about her, and I feel bad for her. Thinking of you breaking into her closet and stealing her dirty bridesmaid shoe—it’s just so sad, Russell Pruitt, that it’s funny.” I laughed some more, and there was definitely an edge of hysteria in my voice.

Russell Pruitt shifted. “You still haven’t told your story.”

“I still don’t see the point.”

“You could work some personal issues out. I could help you figure out what’s next for you.”

“Hard to care when I don’t know if I’ll live past tomorrow.”

“Okay, I promise I won’t kill you tomorrow. Does that help?”

“Weird, but it kind of does.” I extended my hands to the fire. Unlike Russell Pruitt’s, my fingers were almost transparent, the skin pale and waxy. With the fire behind them, I could see the glowing red outlines of my slender bones. “Okay. I’ll talk about something you might be able to help me with. You see, my husband ran off with a woman.”

“I know.”

“Yes, you do. Anyway, Chris is at school, and Richard is gone, and frankly, I don’t want him back. One thing I discovered recently is that I hadn’t loved him for a long time. I’d just been in the habit of thinking I did. Well, I kept the house to hold on to something of the life I had before, and now it’s not feeling good. It just reminds me of what I’ve lost.” I twisted my fingers together, feeling the loss of my wedding band. I’d taken it off six months ago, and my finger still felt funny. “It’s part of why I drink. To fill the house with sound, to not feel so alone. I think, as part of my sobriety, I need to move.”

“Sounds like you do.”

“Yeah. I’ve always wanted to live by the ocean, but it was too expensive. Well, it’s not too expensive to get an oceanfront condo for one, just a little studio.”

“Good idea.”

“So that’s why I think this talk is a waste of time. It assumes I’ve got a future to figure out. And anyway, Hector wouldn’t like it.”

“He’d get used to it.”

“You know about Hector?”

“I know everything about you.”

“Really?”

“Well, not everything.” Russell Pruitt stood, dusted his pants. “I have been studying you for a while, though.”

“God. I am so boring.” The floor of the cavern felt cold and gritty to my bare feet as I got up. “I can’t imagine how that was any fun.”

Russell Pruitt looked around for something to bank the fire and ended up dropping rocks on it.
Sparks flew up in swirls as we withdrew to the entrance of the cave. “I’m kind of glad the surveillance stage is over. It was hard to stay mad at you once I saw what your life was like.”

“Great. That’s just grand.” I followed him, walking tentatively, out into the star-spangled vault that was the crater, the air breathlessly cold. He shone the flash on the rocky trail, and we made a slow progress to the cabin after a pit stop at the outhouse. Once there, he locked us in.

We brushed our teeth in companionable silence, and I washed my sore, dirty feet with a rag from the sink and put my socks back on. He turned off the lamp after I was back in my sleeping bag, and sheltering darkness surrounded us.

“Good night, Dr. Wilson.”

“Call me Caprice.”

“Good night, Caprice. That’s such a funny name for a psychologist.”

“I’m aware.”

“What’s the story behind it?”

I wriggled a bit in my sleeping bag. The dark of the cabin seemed to invite secrets, and he knew so many anyway. “My mom was fanciful. I had a twin. Her name was Constance.”

“
Constance and Caprice. A twin?”

“Yes. She died when we were fourteen.”

“I didn’t know that.” Pruitt sounded irritated.

“I’m surprised you didn’t turn that up. It was quite the drama at the time.” I kept my voice light.

“I was focusing on the more recent past. Cute names.”

“It might have been cute, but I always thought it was more ironic. A misnomer. I was the steady, dependable one, and Constance the impulsive one. She ran out in the road and was hit by a car.” Old pain, like that of a phantom limb, stole my breath. “I still miss her. She shouldn’t have died.”

“That’s heavy,” Russell Pruitt said. We fell silent.

He’d promised me another day, and maybe Bruce would come. I had to live so
Constance, my mirror image, my identical set of DNA, could live too. I eventually drifted into dreams, and Constance was with me, laughing and running.

She was always laughing and running in my dreams.

I woke up to Russell Pruitt’s giant hand smothering me. My eyes flew open to see his bulk beside me, a shadow like a mountain, and the hand was heavy as a side of beef, cutting off all air. I clawed at his wrist, and he moved the hand down so my nostrils were clear. Squatted down beside my bed, he held a finger up to his lips so my bulging eyes could see he meant me to be quiet. Outside the cabin, I heard voices.

“Do you think anyone’s in there?” A loud woman’s voice.

“Don’t know. It looks locked up.” I heard the voices moving around outside, discussing whether they had time to boil water and refill their water bottles. I pictured them, these unknown and cheerfully loud hikers, sitting at the picnic table, taking pictures of the nene, haggling over the granola bar—having no idea of the tense situation in the nearby cabin.

“Let’s not boil water. We’re supposed to be in Kapala`oa Cabin, and since we got down here so early, I’d like to make it there before it gets too hot,” the male hiker said.

Russell Pruitt’s hand covered most of my face. With a movement a few centimeters to the right, he’d be able to smother me with so little effort it made my heart flutter, an overworked hummingbird. I longed to remind him he’d promised me another day, but his head was turned toward the door as he knelt beside my bunk.

So I lay there and endured my helplessness until the hikers finished their snack and we heard their voices fade.

“They’re gone.” Pruitt took his hand away from my face.

I batted at it reflexively as I sat up. “That was a very scary way to wake up.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what you would do.”

“We’re right where we were before. There’s no useful process without trust.” I swung my legs to the side, sat up, and went to the kitchen sink. I splashed the very cold clear water on my hands and face. There were tears on my cheeks, and I hadn’t even felt them falling. I stopped myself from mindlessly gulping the untreated water and picked up one of the water bottles, drinking half of it down.

“Not true. We have a day together and we haven’t decided what we’re doing. I got up early and found a trail back behind the cabin. I thought we could go explore a little bit, stretch our legs.”

“Okay. Whatever you want—you’re the boss.” I felt listless and exhausted after the surge of panic and remembered I was still having withdrawals. I went back to the bunk, lay down.

“I’ll fix some breakfast; then we’ll go.” He busied himself in the kitchen.

I didn’t answer. I was thinking about Constance. I was all we both had left. I’d always had everything inside me that Constance did. Everything, including the steely resolve to have her way. And I could feel how powerfully she wanted two things—for me to live and for me to get sober.

I became a psychologist to understand better what it had all been about. Her. Me. Her death. What it did to our family. This was my story—the story I saw no point in telling Russell Pruitt, who was stirring oatmeal on the stove.

He doesn’t deserve to know our story,
Constance said.
Don’t fall for his mind games.

A scent of cinnamon with a chaser of prunes filled the air like a solid, tasty substance. My stomach rumbled in response.

“You’re awfully quiet,” he said.

I shut my eyes and pretended to be asleep.

“People say twins can communicate mentally sometimes. Did you and Constance do that?”

I didn’t answer even as I heard
Constance chuckle in the back of my mind. I wished I’d never said anything to him about my twin, let him that far into my head. Lying on my bunk, gathering my energy, I had an insight.

Russell Pruitt was never going to just walk away and leave me alone. Even if he didn’t kill me, it wouldn’t be enough to just escape. I had to get him locked up, get him psychiatric help. There was no other way this could end, because he already knew so much about me and chances were good he’d always want to know more. I had to dig deep, find the resolve to end this stalemate.

I swung my legs out of the bag. “I’m just not feeling well this morning. Inhaled too much smoke, stayed up too late, I don’t know. How’s the coffee coming along?”

“Almost ready.” Russell Pruitt turned his back, pouring hot water over the drip cone that fed into the mug.

I stared at the handle of the butcher knife protruding from the backpack.

Stab him
,
Constance told me.
Upward stroke between the ribs on the right. Hit his kidney and he’ll never get up again.

That wasn’t my style, and I was the one in charge. But maybe there was something I could do to even the odds.

I padded swiftly over to his hoodie sweatshirt hanging off the corner of the bunk and rifled through the pockets, one eye on Russell Pruitt’s back. My hand closed around the cylinder of nitro pills and I slid it into my pocket. I was bending over my boots by the front door when he turned back. “I’ll take the rope today,” I said. “Barefoot wasn’t very comfortable.”

“Good,” Russell Pruitt said, bringing me a mug of black coffee. “I wasn’t going to offer that to you again. We went too slow. I heard there’s an old
heiau
on the ridge back a ways; I think we should go find it. Your reservations call for you to leave tomorrow, right?”

“Right.” I took a sip of the coffee—delicious—and considered what Bruce was likely doing. He’d probably blown my phone call off as some sort of DTs panic attack. But in the morning, he’d want to check on me. He’d try my cell, and it would go immediately to voice mail. Then he’d call Aloha House and find out I’d never been there. That’s when he’d crank up a rescue operation, probably by sending the Park Service to the cabin to see what was going on.

So all I had to do was get through today, and Russell Pruitt had promised not to kill me today. Hopefully the Park Service would come soon, and it wouldn’t turn into a situation with Russell Pruitt holding me hostage in the cabin. I laced the boots up around the elastic bottoms of my now-filthy sweatpants. I still had the flashlight and the barbeque lighter down in there, but wondered if that had been a wasted effort.

Russell Pruitt brought the steaming bowls of cinnamon-laced, prune-filled oatmeal over to the table.

“Wow, so healthy. My mom would approve.” I stirred the delicious-looking porridge.

“You never talk about your parents,” Russell Pruitt said. “Tell me about them.” He blew on his oatmeal, his lips a small pink Cupid’s bow in the mass of his face.

“Ha. Tricky, you.” I waggled my spoon at him. “Still trying to psych me into telling my story.”

“No, really. I’m interested.”

Now that I’d thought through the situation and knew I had his promise I’d have today and had a reasonable hope the Park Service would find me before it was over, I became a little expansive. “My parents weren’t very interesting. It was having beautiful twin girls that made them interesting.”

“So what happened to them after
Constance died?”

I was hungry, and I knew I needed my strength, but the question killed my appetite. “Your questioning technique needs work. Try nonthreatening and open-ended when your client first starts to talk.”