The Hanged Man

by T. J. MacGregor

If he was caught this time, they would throw away the fucking key. He would get the chair. But first they would have to catch him. Indrio the creep got what he deserved.

  And so, Hal thought, would he.

  Chapter 26

  Her eyes opened into a hazy, ephemeral light.

  Death, she thought, and wondered when someone would appear. Her father, perhaps. Or her grandmother. She’d read those books, seen those people on Oprah.

  But she heard the soft intake of her breath and when she blinked, she felt the movement of the muscles. Then the air snapped into astonishing clarity and she saw the bands of afternoon light falling through the slats in the wooden shutters.

  The chickee, not death, not yet, no matter how much her traitorous body wished it.

  “Hal?” Her voice shot off into the stifling room, a probe seeking the presence of another body. It found only emptiness.

  He had drugged her again, but hadn’t given her as much this time. Or maybe it had been a different drug, milder. She had vague memories of waking, of wandering out to the Jiffy John, of sipping water, of corn flakes floating in powdered milk and water. The drug had brought on the thick, crippling lethargy that she hadn’t been able to shake off earlier. But the sex had made her lazy, sated. Good sex did that to her.

  She knew he had left and since he hadn’t shackled or restrained her in any way, she got to her feet. She didn’t have any idea where he’d gone or how long he would be away, but she intended to make good use of his absence. She’d gotten what she wanted: time.

  Rae threw open one of the shutters to admit fresh air, but didn’t open all of them. He would be alert for something like that, for some change from the way he’d left things when he’d split.

  She realized, suddenly, that she didn’t hear the generator. As far as she knew it hadn’t been turned off since he’d brought her here. Maybe he’d done it to preserve fuel. Why keep it running with him gone and her dead to the world and all the perishable foods used up? Logical, certainly. But she doubted it was the only reason.

  If nothing else, Rae had learned that Hal always had multiple motives for doing something. So when she found his note in the kitchen, explaining that he’d gone into town for supplies, she knew it wasn’t the only purpose for the trip.

  The real question, the only one that mattered, concerned time—how much of it she had and how much of it she needed to escape.

  Rae took a quick shower, changed clothes, brushed her teeth. These acts humanized her, cleared her mind, and washed away the remnants of Hal’s touch. That most of all.

  Afterward, she walked out to the edge of the platform. Fish jumped in the lagoon, she didn’t see the gator. The skiff was gone. She couldn’t swim to the mangroves, so she would have to find some other way off the chickee.

  Rae found a backpack in the kitchen and stuffed it with things she would need. Then she headed into Hal’s locked room, the backpack slung over her shoulder. He’d apparently had other things on his mind when he’d left; he’d neglected to snap the padlock. She turned the knob, but didn’t push the door open.

  The right to privacy had been so ingrained in her that even under these conditions she hesitated violating it. Although she had searched Andy’s things several times in the years of their marriage—his desk, his bureau, his files—she had always felt guilty afterward. And if she entered this room, would Hal sense it?

  She nudged the door open with her toes. It swung inward, creaking. She stepped inside, her eyes skipping across the handmade furniture, the TV, the braided throw rug, the shelves crammed with videotapes. He’d taken the cell phone, but who would she have called? The cops? Hell, she didn’t even know where she was. Andy? Hi, hon. I got laid last night and came so many times I lost count.

  She moved farther into the room and began pulling the tapes out at random, one here, another there. She checked the labels, not entirely certain what she sought, but equally certain she would recognize it when she saw it.

  He’d arranged the movies alphabetically by titles, except on the bottom shelf, where several dozen movies had been grouped together. Rae recognized some of the titles—Resurrection, Poltergeist, The Dead Zone, The Fury, Siesta, Carrie. Psychic phenomena movies, she thought.

  Maybe Hal had an unwritten script inside him that he was acting out, maybe that was what this was all about. Or maybe these events she had been living were scenes from a movie that already existed.

  Psychic mutant abducts wife of prominent psychiatrist, imprisons her in Everglades, breaks down her resistance, makes love to her.

  National Enquirer stuff. What seemed more likely was that, consciously or unconsciously, Hal had adapted scenes from any number of movies and put his own twist on them. Rae might be Patty Hearst, Hal could be the telekinetic freak in The Fury. The most vital point to her own well-being centered around what he envisioned for the two of them.

  The only inkling she’d gotten about his future plans was a remark he’d made last night, while they lay in the dark, whispering back and forth. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be, Rae?

  The mountains. Colorado, the Andes, the Himalayas, it wouldn’t matter as long as it’s high. What about you?

  The same.

  She shook the memory away; her fingers moved more quickly through the videos.

  Next to the psychic films, she found several labeled only with numbers. She slipped them out of their boxes, saw that the tapes hadn’t been labeled, either, and knew she’d found what she was looking for. Rae hurried back into the kitchen to start the generator.

  A few minutes later, she returned to the den, shut the door. She selected tape #1, popped it into the VCR, turned on the TV. A home movie. The camera zoomed in on a woman in a bikini, sunbathing by a swimming pool. Hal’s voice, off camera, said, “And here’s Lenora Fletcher, grabbing some sun. Smile for the camera, Lenora.”

  She shot him the bird and Hal laughed, zooming in on her belly button and the finger of his own hand inscribing circles around it. Then his finger slipped inside the waistband of her bikini. “Cut it out, Bennet,” she snapped, but didn’t slap his hand away.

  “C’mon now, babe, just one little smile.” The camera moved to her face; she stuck her tongue out at him. “Got to do better than that.” And the camera moved back to the bottom of her suit, his hand now moving inside of it, burrowing between her thighs like a small rodent.

  Fletcher’s thighs opened wider and her hand came down over his, covering it, guiding it, her hips moving against the pressure until Rae could hear her rapid breathing. Then the camera tilted, static filled the screen.

  Rae fast-forwarded the tape, hit PLAY again. The sight of herself and her son on the screen stunned her. They held hands and walked into a playground near the house. Her flesh literally crawled as she kept watching.

  There: herself and Carl strolling past shops in downtown Lauderdale, romping in the surf, feeding seagulls, leaving the day care center. And there, she and Carl were having a picnic one afternoon several months ago at a park in Palm Beach County.

  Dear God. To know that he had followed her and watched her was one thing. But this made her feel as though her life had been invaded, violated in the most intimate way.

  She watched the tape to the end, certain she would see a shot of the cabin, of the secrets she’d lived there six or seven months ago. Her heart twisted at the thought. I ended it because I was afraid Andy would find out, that he would divorce me and sue for custody of Carl. Now look at her.

  By now, her ex-lover certainly knew she was gone. What did he believe had happened? Had he gone to the cabin, perhaps thinking she had fled there?

  Rae rewound the tape, popped in another, a news broadcast from a Fort Lauderdale station, something the satellite dish made possible. A minute or so into the broadcast, Andy’s photo flashed on the screen and Rae hiked up the volume. “…body of Andrew Steele, a prominent Fort Lauderdale psychiatrist, was found Friday morning by the fami
ly housekeeper. His four year-old son is in a coma..

  Blood rushed into her head, pounded in her ears. She watched in stupefied horror until the tape ended and snow filled the screen. A thick, terrible sound suffused the room, a moan of exquisite pain. It was coming from her.

  She felt filthy, defiled, violated. She stumbled to her feet and tore at her clothes as she ran for the shower. Water, soap, oh God what have I done… Rae stood under the tepid spray for a long time, sobbing, scrubbing herself furiously, until she no longer felt the phantom touch of his hands, his mouth, until she’d been emptied.

  Then something cold and bright clamped down over her, an unnatural calm. It was as if she had been injected with a massive dose of a painkiller; she was aware that her emotions clamored deep inside of her, but they no longer seemed to be a part of her.

  She put on clean clothes, returned to the den to put the tapes back in order, and left the padlock exactly as she’d found it.

  She needed a weapon. Kitchen, she thought. Surely there would be something in the kitchen that would serve as a weapon. But from the beginning, Hal had used only plastic utensils, paper plates and cups. No metal knives. The pots and pans were iron, but too cumbersome. She needed something smaller, something she could hide in her clothes.

  She searched the pantry, his belongings, the cabinets. She pulled a chair into the main room of the chickee and checked the spaces in the corners up near the ceiling. Too obvious. Hal would be innovative, particularly if he were hiding something potentially lethal. He would choose a spot that she would be afraid of searching.

  Water.

  She ran out to the platform, to the ladder. She scanned the lagoon first and spotted Big Guy out near the mangroves. Far enough away, she decided, and dropped her legs over the side of the platform. She climbed down to the third rung, stretched her arm between the rungs and shone the beam around. Her heart leaped ecstatically. There, tied to a beam and resting against one of the horizontal planks, was a dark drawstring bag. But she couldn’t reach it from here. Rae ducked her head under the platform and swung around to the other side of the ladder. She hooked her left arm between the rungs and reached with her right. Her fingers brushed the bag, but she still couldn’t grab it. She had to get closer.

  She positioned both feet on the bottom rung, the water lapping at her heels, grasped a higher rung with her left hand, and stretched. She stretched until the muscles in her arm felt as though they were tearing away from the bone. Her fingers closed around the bag, she yanked hard, the string snapped, she grasped it.

  Suddenly, she heard wild splashing behind her and her head snapped around. The gator sped toward her with all the precision of a missile, its tail thrashing, jaws opening. Rae swung around to the front of the ladder, scrambled to the top, and hurled herself onto the platform. She lay there gasping for air, blood thundering in her ears.

  She still hadn’t moved when the gator’s massive tail slammed against one of the vertical wooden posts that elevated the chickee from the water. The entire structure shuddered, trembled, swayed. Rae leaped up and ran into the kitchen. Feed the fucker, she thought, and opened two cans of beans. She ran back out to the edge of the platform and tossed the cans into the water.

  Rae backed away from the edge and loped back into the kitchen. She emptied the contents of the drawstring bag on the table and pawed through her treasure. Screwdrivers, pliers, fishing line, hooks, nails, a small hammer.

  Which will hurt him?

  Hurt him? Who the hell was she kidding? If she could hurt Hal, then she had to be prepared to kill him. Because if she didn’t, he would kill her. He would reach so far inside of her nothing would be left when he finished.

  She picked the longest nail, which measured about half the length of her index finger. It wouldn’t do much damage unless she hit him in the eye. Forget the nail. The hooks were too small to be of any use. She might be able to strangle him with the fishing line, but she wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

  Screwdriver, then. Flat-edge or Philips?

  Philips. It was longer, it had a better grip, and the end, though rounded, seemed more likely to penetrate skin than a flat-edge. But where on the body? The base of the neck? The crotch? Maybe just a hard, driving blow to his spine would do it. Would he sense what she had done as he approached the chickee? Would he be ready for her when he docked? Would he squeeze and squeeze…

  She would use the mental room again. It had kept her true feelings away from him last night, otherwise he wouldn’t have left her unrestrained.

  Rae found a comfortable spot on the platform, sat down Indian-style, shut her eyes. Piece by mental piece, she constructed her magical room, her refuge. She fine-tuned the image, embellished it. Then she put her secrets inside of it and encased it in steel and cement, sealing the room completely.

  “I want to call my attorney,” Manacas shouted, beating his fists on the glass of the one-way window.

  Sheppard glanced at Young, seated next to him. The captain puffed on his cigar and blew a smoke ring at the glass. “The fucker really does resemble Kojak. How long has he been in there?”

  Sheppard glanced at the clock on the wall. “Eighteen minutes.”

  “Long enough. Let’s see what we can find out before Fletcher gets here.”

  “Fletcher? Why the hell did you call her?”

  Young finally looked away from Manacas. “I haven’t called her yet. But officially, the feds are still in charge of the investigation, Shep. I’ve got to call her or pay the fucking price.”

  “Give me fifteen minutes.”

  Sheppard pushed to his feet, his body aching from his confrontation with Bennet, and went into the holding tank next door. Manacas paced like a caged beast. “So what’s your lawyer’s name?” Sheppard asked.

  Manacas glanced at him. “I can’t remember. I need a phone book.”

  “He probably knows you as Nick Laker. That is the name you’re going by now, isn’t it, Mr. Manacas?”

  “I did my time, I got paroled,” Manacas said hotly. “And there I was, having a beer with some guy I’d met and suddenly that other cop’s got me in a necklock.” He stabbed a finger at Sheppard. “You guys fucked up, not me.”

  “You were with a suspected murderer, Manacas.”

  “I just met the guy, for Christ’s sakes. We were having a beer.”

  “Richard Halbert Bennet did time for fraud. You two were participants in a project called Delphi. He was their star telekinetic, you were their remote viewer, and Vic was their telepath. Does that ring any bells, Manacas?”

  Manacas looked as if he had swallowed his tongue. His expression made it clear he suddenly realized his future and his freedom might vanish faster than the Brazilian rain forest. “I, uh, we …” he stammered.

  “Let’s cut the bullshit. Either you talk to me or you talk to Lenora Fletcher. Take your pick.”

  He paled visibly. “Who?”

  Sheppard lost his temper. “Get Fletcher on the phone, Gerry,” he called. “And give us audio in here so our friend Manacas can hear the conversation.”

  Young’s face came through the mike. “Got it.”

  The noise of electronic dialing filled the room, a tape recording. But Manacas didn’t know that. He ran over to the glass and banged his fists against it again. “Hey, hold on a minute!”

  The noise stopped. “Found your memory?’ Sheppard asked. Manacas whirled around, his face bright red, a vein throbbing at his temple. “Bennet killed Steele and nabbed his wife. He’s got her in the Glades, he lives out there somewhere, that’s all I know.”

  “Oh, c’mon,” Sheppard said. “You were Delphi’s star remote viewer. If anyone knows where Bennet is hiding, it’s you, Manacas.”

  Manacas squirmed inside his shirt, as if it were too small for him. When he spoke, it was obvious he didn’t know how much to say because he didn’t have any idea how much or how little Sheppard knew. “I never… I mean, I, uh… Christ. I never tried to find
him. I didn’t want to know.”

  “How often have you seen Bennet in the last few years?” Young’s voice boomed over the mike.

  “A beer, dinner, nothing regular. That’s not against the law. He didn’t tell me about Steele and Rae until today. He’s nuts, man, totally fucked.”

  Sheppard detested liars. “I hear from Vic that you guys planned all along to knock Steele off.”

  Something tragic happened to Manacas’s face. His jowls sagged, the corners of his mouth plunged, disbelief swept through his eyes. “Indrio?” He whispered it.

  “Who?” Sheppard mocked him.

  “But why?”

  “Because his heart wasn’t in it, Eddie. The past was dead for him. And he didn’t trust Bennet.”

  “Then it’s true. He’s dead. I knew it. I knew the bastard was dead.” He whispered these words, too, his voice crackling with emotion.

  “Why did you go to the bookstore for a reading?” Sheppard asked.

  Manacas rubbed his hands over his face, then sat back, his hands dropping to the table. He looked resigned now, defeated, exactly where Sheppard wanted him.

  “We thought we should check out the psychic, see whether we needed to worry about her. I shoulda told Hal to do it.”

  For the space of several seconds, his eyes glazed over. Sheppard felt a distinct and sudden emptiness in the room, as if Manacas had stepped out for a smoke, leaving his body behind. He snapped back just as abruptly, dropped his body into the chair, and said, “I can help you. But in return, I want your word that you won’t turn me over to Fletcher.”

  Sheppard started to reply, but Young beat him to it, his disembodied voice filling the room. “Let’s see what you’ve got first, Manacas. Then we’ll talk about deals.”

  Manacas obviously wanted more. But Sheppard suspected his fear of the alternative— of being turned over to Fletcher—would convince him to cooperate. “I need paper and a pencil.”

  Sheppard tore out sheets from his notebook and handed Manacas a pen. He jotted down a cell phone number and stared at it, his lips moving as he repeated it silently to himself. “In the old days, Steele used random numbers for a particular target. I don’t know why, but it acts like an e-mail address for whoever’s given the numbers.”