Field of Prey

by John Sandford

  22

  Mattsson was beginning to lose contact. She kept trying to wrench her brain back to the reality of her situation, trying to concentrate on what she might do, but then she’d blank out. She had no idea how long she’d been in the room. Sometimes, she thought she’d been in it for a couple of hours. Other times, a couple of days. Other times, more frequently, she thought she was dreaming, and that she’d wake up safe in her bed, covered with sweat from the nightmare.

  One of the things she’d done as an investigator was to handle the rape cases, because a lot of victims simply weren’t ready to talk to men after an attack. She’d always bought the argument that rape wasn’t about sex, it was about power. Her faith in that view had been shaken. The killer was about violence, domination, power, whatever you might call it. But he was also all about sex.

  Another item of faith that she was dropping behind: when she was dealing with rape as a cop, and as a woman, she’d always thought that rape was about the worst that could happen to you. Maybe it was, in the normal range of attacks on women . . . but for her, the rapes were a minor part of her immediate problem.

  They hurt her, but wouldn’t kill her.

  But this man was killing her, literally killing her, inch by inch. He was beating her to death. When she went down for good, she sensed, there’d be one last rape or two, and then he’d strangle her, and by then, she’d be in no shape to resist.

  • • •

  HE’D SO FAR beaten her twice, and raped her five times. He’d make her get to her feet, and then it’d start: he’d take up a boxing pose, and start hitting her, and he’d scream at her, “C’mon, Cat, let’s see it, punch back, goddamnit, let’s see a little fight, this is no fun,” spraying her with saliva as he screamed.

  He was bigger than she was—not taller, but probably fifty pounds heavier, with arms like a gorilla, long and muscular. And he was fast. She’d try to block the punches, but he’d hit her as fast and as easily as if he were hitting a speed bag. Just bang-bang-bang and she’d go down and he’d have her by the hair, throwing her around the room, smashing her against the door, letting her get back to her feet and then going again, and when she could no longer resist, he’d rape her.

  • • •

  WHEN HE WAS DONE, he’d drag the weight bench out of the room and lock her in. After the first beating, she managed to crawl to the door. The lock was a heavy steel box; she could feel the keyhole, but no light came through it. The door fit tight, which was disappointing. She’d once seen a movie where a man locked inside a room had slid a newspaper under the door, then used a pin to push the key out of the lock on the other side. It’d fallen on the paper, and he’d pulled the key under the door. . . .

  That wouldn’t happen here. She didn’t have a newspaper, and she didn’t have a pin. In fact, she had nothing at all, except a green army-style blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

  She was in a barren rectangular room with concrete walls. When he was in the room with her, she’d seen joists overhead, with a half dozen lights set behind hard glass panels, between the joists. There was nothing obvious, like a protruding nail she could use, not even a sliver. There was a steel bar, which would have made a weapon, but it was held in place by two heavy steel sockets. After the man finished raping her the last time, he’d done a half dozen pull-ups as she lay on the floor, looking up at him with one eye—the other had been bruised closed—and couldn’t believe it.

  After the first attack, she’d lain in a corner of the room. She was naked: he’d taken her clothes with him. When she’d recovered a bit, she’d crawled around the room in the dark, patting the doors and walls, but there was not a scrap of anything useful in the room. She went back to her corner, and her blanket, and waited. How long, she didn’t know.

  Then he came back, and did it all again.

  She got to her feet, and got her hands up, and he laughed and said, “Atta girl, let’s box.” She’d staggered around the room, her good eye going to the door—could she run for it? Probably not, but if she got out in the basement, she might get lucky. If there was a workbench with a hammer or a hatchet or a wrench . . .

  Distracted by the thought, she never really saw the punch that broke her teeth and knocked her down. She didn’t want to get back up, but she did, but she’d lost all discipline and went for him, windmilling, shrieking, and she got him, slashing one cheek with her fingernails; and he shouted at her, and then hit her again and again, knocked her against the wall and broke her nose with a wind punch, and she sagged to the floor again, and he dragged her by her hair, smashing her into the wall, then let her lie, moaning, as he dragged the weight bench back into the room.

  • • •

  SHE BEGAN to understand that she was going to die. She didn’t welcome the idea, but it wasn’t completely repellent, either. Sometime during the last beating, he’d broken one of her ribs, as well as her teeth and nose, and when she moved, or coughed, the pain from her cracked rib lanced through her entire body cavity.

  • • •

  EVEN WITH THE BLANKET, she was freezing. Outside, the day must be hot. Down here, in the basement, naked, covered with concrete grime, it was cold. She wrapped the blanket around herself and tried to think, but she couldn’t think. She began to drift, dragged herself back, then drifted again.

  This time, he was gone for a good long time. How long, she didn’t know, but it seemed long. . . .

  • • •

  R-A DIDN’T SLEEP all that well; he was too excited.

  The first attack hadn’t really been much—he’d expected more resistance than he’d gotten. Probably, he thought, because she hadn’t been ready for what was about to happen to her. The second attack had been more entertaining. She’d really come after him, for a moment or two, and had managed to give him a pretty good scratch down his cheek. That would take some explaining.

  “Goddamned stupid thing to do,” Horn told him. “They’re out looking for a kidnapped female cop, and here you are, a single guy, the kind of guy they’re looking for, and you’ve got a big scratch right down your face. What are you going to tell Roy and the other guys? I cut myself shaving?”

  “That had crossed my mind,” R-A said.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sakes. You gotta think of something. Go look at yourself in the mirror.”

  He went and looked at himself in the mirror, and Horn was right. She’d cut him from the upper corner of his right ear all the way to the corner of his mouth. The cut looked like nothing more than a fingernail scratch from an angry woman.

  He checked the time: six-fifteen in the morning. He had an idea, but he had to hurry. He shaved and showered, got dressed, and with Horn shouting after him, “I don’t think this’ll work,” he half-jogged up to the store, went in, locked the door behind himself, turned on the lights, and hurried to the back. The first clerk would be arriving in ten minutes or so.

  On the back wall of the store, a heavy-duty Peg-Board held racks of gardening tools against the wall. He noticed a couple weeks before that the rack was shaky—nothing dangerous, but shaky, as if one of the screws that held it to the wall had pulled out.

  He got a step stool, found the loose screw, pulled it out; Horn, coming up behind him, said, “Now we got two loose screws.”

  “Fuck off,” R-A said.

  The next screw was tight. He got a big Phillips screwdriver and took it out, and then shoved it back in the wall with his fingers, enlarging the hole. The third screw was also somewhat loose, like the first one, and he pulled it out and dropped it on the floor: now the whole rack of tools wanted to tip.

  In the auto section, he found a vanity mirror that clipped to a car’s visor, pulled the wrapping off it, and looked at the scratch again. Already swollen a little, and starting to heal. He’d need to draw some blood. He got a nail from the hardware aisle, and the mirror, and took it back to the rack.

  Sat on the step stool and waited.

  The clerk named Roy showed up at four minutes to seven o’clock,
right on time. R-A heard the key rattling in the lock, and then Roy calling, “Anybody home?”

  “Yeah, it’s me,” R-A called back. “You want to get the front shades?”

  “Got ’em,” Roy called.

  R-A looked in the mirror, tilting his head just so, and dragged the nail down the length of the scratch. Blood began seeping out.

  Good enough. He threw the nail back behind the tool rack, put the mirror on a shelf, and then pulled the tool rack over on himself.

  • • •

  THE CLATTER sounded like the end of the world. All the hand tools came off, and a dozen rakes and a limb saw, smashing down through the adjacent bolt rack. The tool rack was made of three-quarter-inch plywood, eight feet long, four feet high, and it hit him hard—he didn’t have to fake the fall beneath it.

  Then Roy was shouting, “What happened? What happened? R-A, are you okay?”

  “Get the fuckin’ board off me,” R-A groaned. “Ah, Jesus. That hurt.”

  Roy was two feet away from him, looking down. “You’re bleeding. Let me get this . . .”

  Roy helped him up, and R-A put his hand to his face, then took it away and looked at the blood. There wasn’t much, but there was enough. “How bad is it?” he asked.

  “Not too bad,” Roy said. “You gotta put something on it. We got some triple antibiotic ointment in the first-aid kit. You’ll need a couple Band-Aids.” Roy looked around at the wreckage. “Jeez, how’n the heck did this happen?”

  “Screws must’ve pulled out of the drywall,” R-A said. “That hurt. Wasn’t the tools, so much, but that board is heavier’n hell, and I had to go and pull on that rake. Got hung up on the hook, and the whole shebang come down on me. You guys gotta put it back up, but screw it in there good. If this had fell on a customer, we’d be going to court. Goddamn, that hurt . . .”

  “Maybe you ought to take a break,” Roy suggested.

  “Yeah. Think I’ll go stand in the shower for a while. . . . Goddamn, that hurt. That really hurt.”

  He put a limp on, going out the door. Called back, “Hey, Roy? Why don’t you call Gene, see if he can come in early to help out? You need me, I’ll be down at the house.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Take it easy.”

  • • •

  HORN THOUGHT it was hilarious, but he was also impressed: “You could do Shakespeare. Or maybe one of those Mexican soap operas, anyway. ’Course, Roy isn’t the sharpest knife in the dishwasher. You might want to keep that scratch out of sight. At least, until, you know, you get rid of her.”

  “She’s breaking down already,” R-A said. “She won’t fight anymore. I’ll fuck her a couple more times, then get rid of her tonight. Gotta go up to the store and get a rope.”

  “Why don’t you just shoot her?”

  “What’s the fun in that?”

  “You shot the O’Neills . . .”

  “That was business, not pleasure,” R-A said. “Nope, I need a rope.”

  “After you get rid of her, if I were you, I’d take every bit of junk you got in the garage and throw it in that bomb shelter, so maybe they won’t do that science shit on the floor. There’s gotta be blood soaked into the floor and walls,” Horn said. “Because I’m telling you, they’re gonna get to you, and sooner instead of later. There probably aren’t three hundred single guys in town, and they’ll be looking at all of them. You might get through today, and maybe tomorrow, but she better be gone by then.”

  • • •

  ALL MATTSSON HAD were her fingernails and the blanket. For a long time, she used the blanket to wrap around herself, as her mind drifted away from her. When it came back, she tried to think of something that she could do with the blanket; could she shred it, make a rope out of it, use it somehow?

  That was all bullshit, she thought. That was like some old TV show, where the guy invents an anti-tank weapon with a hairpin and a jar of Vaseline.

  But she had her fingernails. If she could just get at an eye . . . if she could get at an eye, and then, after he was blinded or partly blinded, she could try to stay to that side of him, and maybe get the other . . . But she couldn’t get close enough.

  She thought about it.

  Fingernails and a blanket.

  • • •

  R-A WATCHED TELEVISION all morning, clicking around to local news channels. Everybody was looking for him, he thought, with some satisfaction. They were going crazy out there. Most of the search was in Zumbrota and Holbein, but a crime-scene crew was shown working in Red Wing, at Mattsson’s apartment.

  A little after noon, having eaten a lunch of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, R-A got his keys and went down to the basement. Outside the door, he stripped down—getting undressed during a violent rape was a lot of trouble, if there were any resistance at all, and he liked at least a little resistance.

  When he was ready, he shouted, “Coming again, Cat.” He put the key in the lock and braced his feet, in case she tried to kick it open. She didn’t. He opened it just an inch and looked through the crack between the door and the jamb.

  Mattsson was on her feet on the far side of the room.

  “What the fuck is that all about?” R-A asked. He stepped inside, pulled the door shut, locked it. He dropped the keys on the floor and sidled toward her. “Your suit of armor?”

  Mattsson had ripped the blanket into strips and wrapped the strips in multiple layers around her head—around her forehead, across her nose, across her chin. Then she’d folded the rest of the blanket into a thick pad, and with three more strips, tied the pad down the front of her body.

  Her arms hung free.

  “You think that’s gonna protect you?” R-A asked as he moved in on her.

  She said nothing, but moved back into a corner, and crouched.

  “Come on, get up,” R-A said. In a crouch like that, she’d be harder to hit. Back in a corner, he couldn’t maneuver around her. “Get up and fight like a cop.”

  “Fuck you, fat man,” she said. “I’m gonna pull that pathetic little dick right off your fat gut.”

  Get him mad, she thought. She flicked her fingernails against the palms of her hands. She’d found one good use for the concrete walls—she’d used them to hone her nails, which were now as sharp as a cat’s claws.

  “Get up here, you . . .” and his hand arced at the top of her head and he grabbed her hair . . . as she thought he might. When he pulled, instead of resisting, she launched herself straight up toward his face and slashed at his eyes with both hands.

  And missed.

  Slashed his face, but missed his eyes. He screamed and staggered backwards, but didn’t fall. She went back to the corner and her crouch. He was so angry that he hurtled at her, and just before he would have crashed into her, she launched herself again, and they collided, his weight knocking her backwards, but her claws were slicing at his face again.

  He hit her in the face, but the pads took the blow, knocking her back but not down, and she tried for his eyes again. He hit her twice in the body, twisting his face away from her, but again, the heavy padding gave her some protection.

  Again he came straight at her, but this time, his arms full-length in front of him. Her nails sliced up his forearms, but he got a hand at her throat and smashed her head against the wall, and she sliced at his hands, but he held on, and smashed her again, and this time she blacked out for a second, and then he was beating her down and unconscious.

  When she came to, her eyelids fluttering, her head and body had been stripped of the padding. She didn’t know exactly where she was, or what had happened to her, but then a dark object . . . a head? . . . blocked out some of the light, and R-A said, “Here he comes again.”

  He raped her only once, then dragged the weight bench out of the room and said, “You cut me up good that time, Cat. You better think of something else, though. Your armor’s gone, and when I come back, I’m bringing my rope.”

  She said, “Fuck you,” and passed out on the floor.

  23<
br />
  Lucas was coming up to the Red Wing bridge on the Mississippi when his phone rang. Letty calling from El Paso.

  “What’s up?”

  “They’ve taken Del back into the operating room,” she said.

  “Ah, no. Why? How bad?”

  “They say he’s sprung a leak—that’s Cheryl’s language, not the doctor’s. The doctor told me that it wasn’t unusual. The shot that did all the damage just nicked the point of his pelvis and sprayed some bone fragments back into his intestinal cavity. He started running a fever and they think they have some contamination to clean up. The doc said they should be able to handle it, but it’s not good.”

  “Ah, man. Ah, man, I oughta be there,” Lucas said.

  “Not until you get Catrin back,” Letty said. “When will that be?”

  “Tonight. I’ll get her back tonight.”

  “I’ll call you when they take Del out of the operating room,” Letty said. “Cheryl’s trying not to freak out. You call me when you get Catrin.”

  “Deal,” Lucas said. “You turned out to be a pretty good kid, you know? Even if you do date soccer players.”

  • • •

  HE CALLED DUNCAN, and asked where they were.

  “We took about ten guys to interview Bonet. He pronounces his name bone-ay. Anyhow, he’s not the guy. We know that because he was at a party here until sometime after twelve last night, with his wife. He couldn’t have gotten to Red Wing even if he fit the rest of the profile: he’s big, he’s too young, and he’s got a wife who’s been with him since high school, and they’ve got four young kids.”

  “All right. How about the other guy?”

  “We’re saddling up right now,” Duncan said. “From the facts and figures, he looks better.”

  “I’ll see you there,” Lucas said. “I’m crossing the Mississippi.”

  • • •

  HE TURNED ON HIS FLASHERS and ran through Red Wing in a hurry, the navigation system taking him up Highway 61, the one that Bob Dylan revisited, and then west toward the town of Cannon Falls.