Skulduggery

by Carolyn Hart

  The eyes of the youth at the door flickered toward me and my captor then back again to the door. He moved a step closer. Richard would not have a chance.

  My captor shifted his grip and his right hand, smelling of machine oil and dust, fastened over my mouth and he pulled, arching my head backwards.

  Still, if I jerked sharply, cried out, there should be breath enough for Richard to hear.

  It was hard to breathe with his hand clamped against my mouth and nose, pulling, smothering.

  Richard knocked again.

  If they took me from my apartment, carried me out into the night as their captive, I would have no chance at all. There would not be, wherever they took me, anyone to hear my cries, anyone to help me. Anyone to care.

  Richard did care. I knew that. He would do his best for me. He was a gentle man, a civilized man. Had he ever struck anyone? I doubted it. As a boy, he would have moved quietly in an orderly world. Danger is a choice, conscious or not. Teenagers who roam mean streets, drink in shabby bars, carry tire chains after a football game, they find danger because they look for it. Richard had told me of his job after school in a shoe store. He had not walked late night streets.

  If I cried out . . .

  “Ellen?”

  Oh Richard, I might have loved you still. I might have. I wasn’t sure. But, love or not, I couldn’t cry out, see you hurt, see you crumple before me, cut down by that deadly remorseless young man who waited, the knife easy in his hand.

  I wanted to cry out. I so desperately wanted to scream for help.

  Then my body sagged hopelessly against my captor’s. I could hear so clearly, so unmistakably, the harsh clip of Richard’s shoes as he strode away from my door.

  He would not come back. He would be safe.

  And I was alone with my enemies.

  FIFTEEN

  Blinded, gagged, hands tied tightly behind me, I never saw the van that carried me. I knew from the chill of the metal floor and the slam of the rear door that it was a van.

  I lay as they dropped me, a heavy dusty moving pad covering me, as the van lurched out of the alley behind my apartment. How much time did I have? God knew. More than likely very little. Awkwardly, I rolled up on one elbow, shrugged the pad away from me. Panic washed over me. I couldn’t see and the gag threatened to choke me. I knew I had to get loose. When they opened the door at our destination, that would be my last chance, my very final chance to break free, scream, attract attention. And I couldn’t do it gagged.

  I was on my knees now, shaking the pad away from me, trying to get to my feet. The van was pulling up a steep hill and, without hands to brace me, I couldn’t balance on the tilting floor.

  Time, Ellen, time!

  To hell with getting up, just get there. I began to move on my knees, struggling like a penitent toward the rear of the van. I had a muzzy hope of standing at the back and trying to hook the gag and the blindfold on a door hinge and pull them off.

  The van swung sharply left and I toppled to one side. I took the force of the fall on my shoulder. A wave of sickness swept over me but, once again, I got up on my knees and moved ahead. I even managed to stay upright when the van made another turn. I reached the back and, using my elbow as an awkward support, began to stand. Bracing against the side wall, I used my cheek to hunt for the protruding hinge.

  For an instant, I felt a surge of hope and a quick thrill of pleasure in my planning. There was the hinge. Now, if I could hook the taut strip of dishtowel that gagged me, then I would be able . . .

  It was a lazy casual shove. Just enough to topple me backwards. As I fell, I realized, shockingly, that one of them was in the back of the van with me, that he had watched my useless struggle and waited until the last instant before striking me down.

  With no hands to reach out and break my fall, I knew I was going to be hurt, no matter how I tried to twist and turn.

  My head cracked painfully into the metal side of the van. Pain spread like a live thing down my neck and into my shoulder. I sagged gracelessly onto the floor, struggling to breathe as I fought the shock and the brackish taste of blood and the bitterness of defeat.

  I lay in an awkward heap, too much in pain to care. I don’t know how much longer the van rumbled up and down hills. I made no move when the motor finally stopped. Unable to see, unable to make more than a gasping sound, I had no more hope.

  The rear door opened and the van floor dipped as the driver climbed up. Then the two of them shoved me roughly over onto the moving pad and rolled me up like a sausage in a pancake. Now, blindfolded, gagged, immobile and completely hidden, they swung me up and carried me out.

  Dimly, I could hear the sounds of cars passing, the slam of the van door, shoes clicking on pavement, the screech of a door opening. Then my padded prison tilted and I heard the hollow sound of feet striking wooden steps and knew I was being carried downstairs.

  Another door creaked open, shoes gritted again on cement. They dropped me on my back without warning but the moving pad absorbed most of the impact.

  The door creaked shut.

  My heart thudded painfully. I was now well and truly lost. I felt the beginnings of panic, the desire of a maddened animal to twist and pull and scratch my way to freedom, knowing all the while that it would do no good, that the harder I strained, the tighter my bonds would get. I knew it, I tried to hold to that understanding, tried to keep a bar of reason between myself and hysteria, yet, all the while, I felt my back beginning to arch, my muscles to strain.

  The sound just reached me, just barely. It was so muted, that thin almost inhuman sound, that I barely heard it, but, when I did, I knew it for what it was—a moan of pain.

  I lay absolutely still and listened, trying to hear over the thudding of my heart.

  There was no other sound, nothing, not the scuff of footsteps or the slam of a door or even the faraway rattle of cars in the street. Nothing. Just the beating of my heart and the thick smothery warmth of the moving pad and the tickle of dust in my nose.

  Then, faintly, the moan sounded again.

  I began to rock back and forth, trying to loosen the moving pad. I was rolled up in it. I should be able to unroll. Sweat oozed down my sides, slipped down my legs. Back and forth, harder and harder I rocked but the pad seemed only to tighten around me. Farther, farther, then I was turning over and, abruptly, the pad pulled free beneath me. I kicked until I was free of it.

  I rested for a moment and once again listened.

  The moan, faint and high, didn’t have a conscious sound and the sick feeling inside me grew.

  I patted the cement floor behind me. I needed something sharp and stationary to try and cut free of the ropes that tied my hands. Using one elbow for support, I wriggled around and up on my knees and then to my feet. I stood unsteadily, uncertain what to do next for, of course, I couldn’t see. I decided to step cautiously backward with my bound hands poked out behind me like stunted antennae.

  Three uncertain paces back and I came up against the wall. It was of brick and fairly rough but nothing protruded enough to snag my blindfold.

  Once again came that low pain-ridden moan.

  I began to slide along the wall and had only gone a foot or two when I came up against something hard and wooden. Turning my back to it, my fingers felt the sleekness of lacquered wood. My hands moved up and down the edge at the front.

  The hinges that supported the cabinet doors were small but they did protrude. I hooked my blindfold onto the hinge, then, slowly, steadily I began to pull down. The blindfold resisted, tightened around my head, then, abruptly, pulled free.

  I could have wept in dismay.

  The room was totally dark. I could see no more than before. For a long moment, I leaned wearily against the chest. Then, once again, that low faint moan.

  The skin on my back prickled.

  Who was it? Who was in that dark room with me? Who moaned in pain?

  There had to be a light switch. If I kept on moving along the wall, found a
door, a light switch should be near. I was tired and frightened of what the light might show. But I had to know.

  Patiently, I moved along the wall, skirting out to pass obstacles such as the chest, until I reached the doorframe. I found the switch, reached it awkwardly with my hands behind me, and turned on the light.

  I made a whimpering noise deep in my throat when I saw him. Mercifully, he was unconscious. That recurring sigh of pain came from deep inside, the body’s uncontrolled lament.

  I had never before seen anyone who had been deliberately hurt. Accidents, yes. The horror of a broken leg, the bone protruding, on a ski slope. A hand burned by spilled grease. But, never before the deliberate torture of one human being by another.

  I wanted to cry out to Jimmy, wanted to help him.

  His feet touched the ground, but he was unconscious, his body slumping forward, hanging from the rope that bound his wrists and suspended him from one of a row of large hooks that studded the low ceiling.

  But I didn’t look at his lacerated wrists or his head that dangled loosely forward between his upright arms.

  I looked at his back.

  Raised red welts crisscrossed his bared skin. On the right lower back, just beneath the ribcage, his skin was pulpy, so many welts that it was a mass of bloody disfigured tissue.

  The top of his pants was thick with blood, crusted with blood.

  My eyes dropped to the floor, to the strip of cord that lay in a heap. It was white nylon cord, no larger in diameter than a pencil, no longer than five feet. Two feet of it weren’t white any more.

  That beaten bloodied back moved up and down as he breathed. Slowly, so slowly. I had to get him down, ease some of the strain on that tortured body. I looked frantically around the basement room. I needed something sharp to cut me free.

  It was a storeroom of sorts, filled mostly with furniture that needed repair. One panel of the lacquered chest that I had used to pull off my blindfold was badly scarred. A heavy rosewood chair with a missing leg leaned against a water stained table. Chairs, tables, smaller chests, rattan pieces, all were stacked haphazardly against the walls and out into the center of the room.

  Past Jimmy, the corner of the room was shadowy and seemed oddly lopsided, as if it had spread sideways. I leaned forward, straining to see, then began to walk.

  A little alcove opened off the main storeroom. This was where the repair work was done. A toolbench ran the length of the nook. Above it hung files, chisels, hammers and a host of tools I didn’t know.

  I almost fell, I ran so quickly to the toolbench. We were saved, Jimmy and I. I had already spotted the best tool for me, a foot-long file with sharply abrasive sides. I would get the file . . .

  I could not reach it. I could not lift my bound hands high enough behind me to touch the hanging tools. The tool bench was the proper height for someone to stand and work. I could not, no matter how hard I strained, I could not pull myself up and onto the bench.

  Something to stand on, that would do it! I hurried back into the main storeroom and laboriously began to drag a small table behind me toward the alcove.

  I had no warning. The cellar was sturdily built, its door well fitted. The door swung inward and its creak was my only notice.

  I swung around to face the door and my heart began its familiar thudding.

  How old were they, the two of them? Surely not more than nineteen or twenty. Of an age with Jimmy. So young and so frightening; empty faces, cold eyes.

  They looked at me and for the first time I saw something move in the eyes of the stocky blunt-faced leader. I took a step backwards.

  He saw that and laughed, a light breathless laugh that sent a prickle down my back.

  “Take it easy, lady. All we want is a little cooperation, that’s all.”

  Easy voice, easy words. Nothing threatening there. Then he turned to his wiry smaller companion and made a little gesture, nodded his head toward me.

  I knew, knew with a horrid certainty, that something terrible was going to happen. But, at first, I didn’t understand what. Not at first.

  The thin boy didn’t look at me. He circled behind me and I felt the tugging at the ropes and realized he was cutting the cord from my wrists. As my hands fell free, he grabbed my arm, pushed me ahead of him until we were close to Jimmy.

  The stocky one was beside us now, too, the three of us so close to Jimmy who dangled there, his breathing heavy. The thin boy yanked my hands in front of me and the stocky one began to wind cord around them. It wasn’t until the cord was tight and they abruptly lifted me, pulling my arms up and jamming the taut cord over one of the ceiling hooks, that I understood.

  I began to struggle, twisting, pulling, kicking. My left heel caught the skinny one’s knee and he yelped. Stumbling back, he began to swear and then, without any warning, his fist smashed into my stomach.

  The gag muffled my scream. Nausea bubbled in my throat but I knew I must not be sick or I would choke. And, over the sickness and the pulsing pain in my stomach, was the slimy whispering rush of fear. What were they going to do to me? What were they going to do?

  I knew, with the sensitivity of fear, that they had moved away from me, behind me.

  “Get some water, yeah, some water.”

  I knew his voice now, the sound of the stocky one. He spoke the way he laughed, a breathless light voice.

  My chest still heaved as I tried to get enough air, tried not to vomit, and tried, too, to figure out what they were doing behind me.

  A water faucet was turned on, ran for a moment, then twisted off. Water splashed and dripped close behind me and I realized they were trying to wake Jimmy up.

  To hurt him more?

  “Yeah, man, time to wake up.” It was the stocky one talking, his voice light and feathery. “Yeah, good man, come on now, wake up. Tell you what, man, we’re gonna cut you down even though you haven’t been so helpful. But it’s all right now ’cause we got somebody new.”

  He grabbed my hair, pulled my head around until I was looking over my shoulder.

  Jimmy stared. For a long moment, there wasn’t even a hint of recognition then, slowly, painfully, he shook his head. “Oh no, no.”

  “What’s the lady’s name, Jimmy boy?”

  Jimmy closed his eyes, turned his face away.

  “The lady’s name.” That light feathery voice and its undercurrent of viciousness.

  The only sound was Jimmy’s labored breathing. And, without warning, my scream, only partially muffled by the gag.

  He yanked my hair, pulling my head back until the strain on my neck was intolerable. Through my pain and panic, I heard that light feathery voice, “The lady’s name, Jimmy.”

  “Dr. Christie.” A broken whisper. “Dr. Christie.”

  He held my head back a moment longer then let go.

  “That’s nice. That’s much better. Now listen close, Jimmy, it will save all of us a lot of trouble. Not that Harry minds a little trouble.”

  Harry. The skinny one. I twisted my head, looked back, and a hot sick wave of fear crawled over me. Harry held loosely in his hands that length of cord that had lain on the floor near Jimmy, the cord with the bloodied end.

  Jimmy, his face dogged, wouldn’t look at the stocky one.

  “Where are the bones, Jimmy? All you have to do is tell us where the bones are.”

  Jimmy shook his head, back and forth, back and forth.

  The stocky one walked around, began to cut loose my gag. “Dr. Christie, here, she’s going to want you to tell us, Jimmy. She’s going to want you to tell us real bad.”

  He was tugging my blouse up and out of my slacks, pulling it up to my shoulders. I saw Harry moving behind me, that bloodied length of cord dangling from his upraised fist.

  SIXTEEN

  I knew, that frightful instant, that it was coming. I saw the muscles move in his arm, saw his hand tighten, saw the reddened cord begin to make its whistling descent, saw and began to twist and pull, but there was no escape.

 
A white-hot line of flame seared my back.

  I heard my cry from a distance, heard that explosive uncontrollable pain-wracked sound, knew that I had made it, and felt, over the pain and the fear, a kind of shame. That couldn’t be me, not Ellen Christie, not that animal-like shriek.

  Jimmy called out, “No, don’t, don’t, I’ll tell you, no . . .”

  But still the cord whipped through the air, harder now, and the haze of pain was even greater than the fear and sickness and I writhed and squirmed, my wrists burning, pulling against the ropes, trying somehow, anyhow, to move away from the hurt.

  I just heard the sharp order and sensed the stocky one moving between me and Harry. My chest heaved and my back was alive with a thousand tentacles of agony.

  “I’ll tell you, you bastard, but get her down first. Get her down.”

  “Sure, Jimmy. Sure thing. And you, too.”

  He lifted me up, unhooked my wrists, even put out a hand to steady me. Then he turned to Jimmy, unhooked him. But Jimmy couldn’t stand and crumpled to the cement floor. I moved unsteadily but determinedly and knelt by him.

  “It’s all right.” Jimmy rested on his knees, his head bent forward, then, taking a deep breath, he looked up. “Okay, I’ll tell you where the bones are. But I don’t want the person who has them hurt. I’m going to give you a letter to her so she’ll trust you, give you the fossils. You won’t have to hurt her.” He looked at Harry and his voice shook. “I swear, if you hurt her, I’ll kill you. Somehow. I’ll kill you.”

  They moved a little, the two of them. “All we want is the bones.”

  Jimmy nodded. He squinted at them, then asked, “What time is it?”

  “What’s it to you?” the stocky one asked.

  Jimmy was impatient. “It makes a difference.”

  “It’s almost ten.”

  “Ten at night, huh?”

  The stocky one nodded.

  “It’s too late tonight then. Take the letter, go see her in the morning. She won’t suspect anything then.” He sighed. “All right, get me some paper, a pen.”

  He stared at the sheet when they brought it, stared for a long moment, then began to write.