by J. A. Kerley
She’d heard the sound of a vehicle creeping close, stopping. Footsteps. A long period of … what, appraisal? A freezing cold cloth over her nose and mouth – chloroform?
And now …
A world of shapes and shadows. Rein took a dozen deep breaths and pushed to sitting, her arms free, her legs still bound. A wave of nausea overtook her and she vomited. The process helped to clear the toxin from her body and she surveyed her surroundings.
She was in a cave. No, a mine … dusty beams supporting the ceiling. It was a tight area, little more than a tunnel. The moving shapes were shadows thrown by a lantern in the corner, glass globe in a metal frame. She could suddenly smell its acrid fumes, as if her senses were rekindling one at a time.
There was an animal in the corner, a small one, like a rat. Not moving. She blinked twice and refocused on the dark shape. Not an animal, a pile of hair.
Her hair. She’d been shaved bald. What did Dr Kavanaugh called it … defeminized? Rein fought her pounding heart and listened into the dark beyond the slender range of the lantern light.
Heard footsteps approaching.
Chapter 57
Cruz and I studied shreds of rope at the base of a fir tree. “Flood staked Rein here until someone came and cut her loose,” I said, seeing impressions in the dirt: Rein’s footprints. “Took her.”
“We’ve got tire tracks,” Cruz said, trying for glass-half-full. “Maybe more. The state’s best forensics people are coming.”
I stared into the sky, achingly blue. “That and another month might lead somewhere. We have to move to the next lead … the password leak from the center.”
We arrived at the center an hour later, Carol Madrone out front on her cell. “I’ve called an emergency staffers meeting,” she said. “Like you asked.”
“Who’s coming?”
“Five volunteer staffers and all five active directors; six, if you include one who’s more of an in-absentia advisor and never attends meetings.”
“Five volunteers for the whole center?”
“Staff volunteers. We have nineteen phone volunteers who mainly answer the hotline and write call reports. If the caller fits the profile of abuse, we try to get her to talk with a trained staffer or director. Find some way to communicate safely. Our upper-level folks – volunteer staff and directors – are trained in all aspects of domestic abuse, including domestic-violence advocacy in the legal system.”
“You’re saying hotline volunteers don’t know the password?”
She shook her head. “There’s no need for them to see files on our clients. Or access the escape system.”
“The staffers and directors all know the passwords?”
“As a matter of protocol, yes. But most aren’t involved in day-to-day operations. Most are high-profile community leaders who advise and help secure donations.”
“Do they have anything to do with the system?” I asked. “The directors?”
“Do I really have to –”
“You have to answer,” Cruz said. “We need to know everything. And we’ll do our best to protect any information.”
Carol nodded. “When a woman seems to be a prospect for, uh, relocation, all the directors are consulted. Everyone has to be in agreement that it’s the only step left. Why do you need them here?”
“It seems one of them leaked the password,” I said. “Or sold it. Or –”
Carol shook her head. “We change the password once a month at our directors’ meeting. Plus it’s not a systemwide password, it’s –”
“It’s an entry point for a hacker,” I said. “In this case a very talented fellow who used the foothold to pry open the hood and get at the engine.”
Carol looked about to weep.
“When will your people arrive?” I asked.
“In a few minutes. They’re all local.”
I studied the tiny house. “You can get them all in the center?”
She pointed across the street. “Our meetings are held in a side room in the Beacon. The owner lets neighborhood organizations meet for free. We have planning and training get-togethers there.”
“Excuse me?” said a voice at my back. “Are you in charge?”
I turned to a slender woman with blonde hair and intelligent eyes, a blue backpack over one shoulder. I gave her a raised eyebrow, What? Cruz turned to listen, sensing something in the young woman’s nervous voice.
“I’m Liza Krupnik. I volunteer here, on the staff. Meelia called us, something about attacks on the center?”
“Do you know anything?” Cruz asked.
The woman looked away, her pale face reddening with embarrassment. “I, uh, can’t be sure. I’m still trying to process …”
“We’re in a hurry here.”
“I, uh, found a hidden article, angry and full of slurs against women. Ugly, really. I never thought –”
“You have this thing?” Cruz asked.
The woman slung off her backpack and pulled out a sheaf of clipped-together pages. “I made a copy … I’m not sure if I should have it.”
Cruz began reading aloud. “… Analyze the hierarchy of femicentric organizations and one invariably discovers moronic followers led by a few ‘intellectual’ lesbians for whom the control of the robo-slut masses fills the void of the missing penis …”
“One of the more rational passages,” Krupnik said.
Cruz flipped a page. “… women are by nature id-driven proto-humans clinging to men for food, clothing, shelter, protection (and any baubles they can wring from their bread-winner) in one breath, using the next breath to decry their ‘victimization’ at the hands of men. This anti-male movement has systematically castrated an entire gender, leaving them wallowing in the shit of self-pity and begging their whore overlords for mercy …”
“My boss hid it in a book in his office,” Krupnik said, crimson with embarrassment. “He was acting so strange and I was curious and –”
“What’s his name?” Cruz interrupted. “Your boss.”
“Sinclair. Doctor Thalius Sinclair. I teach undergrad classes for him, know his work. It’s his style, but … the words are so ugly.”
“Where could we find Sinclair?” I asked.
“He might be in his office, but he doesn’t keep a regular schedule and …” I saw her eyes move from my face to behind me.
“There he is,” she said, eyes wide in amazement, pointing across the street. “Professor Sinclair.”
Moving at double-time into the bar was the scowling man whose table I had usurped when Harry did his act and I’d needed to surveil the center.
Had Sinclair been doing the same?
Rein heard a sound at her back, swung her head. A tunnel entering the cavern held the outline of a man, slender. He wore a cowboy hat over his eyes and she saw a holster at his belt, slung low, like in old movies. The other side of his belt held a knife. He wore a flannel shirt and jeans, hiking boots at bottom.
I hear his breathing, Rein registered, her heart pounding. Fast and shallow: Fear? Anger? Arousal? “Who are you?” she asked as he walked within a dozen feet, stopped.
“You will never, ever, ask me a question,” the man replied. “The next question will be met with pain. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Rein said quietly.
“Ask me a question.”
“You just said I couldn’t –”
“Please. Ask me a question.”
“Where am –”
He crossed the room in a heartbeat, slapping her. “Ask me a question,” he repeated.
“I don’t want to,” Rein whispered, hand to her stinging cheek.
“See how it works?” he said.
Rein nodded and started to sit up.
“No,” he said. “Lay flat on the floor. Look up at the ceiling, not at me. If you look at me I’ll have to discipline you.”
Rein did as ordered. Her captor produced three lanterns from the wooden cabinet, lighting them. He sat on the chair and she felt him staring
at her for several minutes.
“When will you ripen?” he finally asked. “Soon, right?”
“I don’t understand.”
He bent and spoke slowly, like Reinetta was a five-year-old. “When … will … you … ripen?”
“I don’t understand the question. I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, turning and walking away. “I’ll smell it.”
I unsnapped the restraint strap on my under-jacket weapon as we entered the Beacon’s meeting room. Carol was assembling directors and upper-level staff, a half-dozen women and one man in attendance. Carol was gesturing toward the man.
“… Doctor Thalius Sinclair is with us today. Most won’t know him, since he’s not directly affiliated with the center – a very busy man – but he’s instrumental in our work. Ms Balfours asked that he be included in today’s …”
Sinclair was big and powerful looking, wearing a light jacket loose enough to conceal an armory. He was studying the floor and scowling. I caught Cruz’s eye and nodded toward Sinclair. We slipped to the man’s side. Cruz produced the gold badge and tapped his shoulder, provoking a glare.
“Come with us, Professor,” she said. “We need to talk.”
He glowered at Cruz, not recognizing me. “What’s going on here?”
“Get out of that chair, please,” Cruz said. “Hands away from your body.”
The room went silent. A handsome sixtyish woman in a red dress was standing in a corner with arms crossed, watching. “Excuse me,” she said. “What do you think Professor Sinclair has done?”
“Get up, Sinclair,” I said. “Hands out.”
Sinclair stayed seated, hands wide to his sides. The woman crossed the room to stand before us. “I repeat,” she said. “What has Dr Sinclair done?”
“Who are you?” I asked, maybe not as politely as I might.
“My name is Dorothy Balfours. I’m a director of the center. And who are you?”
I heard Cruz’s whisper at my ear, so close I could feel its warmth. “Miz Balfours has big money and big friends, Carson. Be nice.”
“I’m Detective Carson Ryder, Ms Balfours,” I said, switching to a more civil tone. “We’re here because it seems the professor has very ugly thoughts about women.”
“Bullshit,” Balfours said. “I’ve known Dr Sinclair for over thirty years. He’s the driving force behind the creation of the women’s center: his idea, my money.”
I removed the pages supplied by Krupnik from my briefcase and held them toward her. Sinclair saw the screed against women. “Oh shit,” he said, slumping. “That thing.”
Balfours donned reading glasses, took the sheaf and studied for a three-count before handing it back.
“I know this work,” she said. “I edited it.”
“What?” Cruz said.
“It was my small way of helping Dr Sinclair with his magnum opus.”
It seemed the world had gone mad. “Magnum opus?” I croaked.
Sinclair sighed from his chair, crossed one leg over the other. “I’m currently researching and writing a history of misogyny.”
“This?” I said, waving the sheaf of hateful pages.
“Of course not that,” Sinclair said, rolling his eyes. “What you’re holding is bait.”
“Can someone help me understand what’s going on?” Cruz said.
“I’d like that, too,” Sinclair echoed.
The loft of an elegant eyebrow said Ms Balfours would be appreciative of same.
We studied one another like visitors from different planets.
Chapter 58
“This horror is inside the system now?” Sinclair said after my three-minute synopsis of events. “Christ.” He shook his head in disbelief. “It’s for real.”
“What’s for real?” Cruz asked.
“A destructive action against women. I’ve been hearing about it for months.”
“How about you start at the beginning?” I said.
“The real beginning starts forty years ago.”
“Edit tight.”
Sinclair paced the room as he spoke, hands in pockets. He looked like a hulking pirate someone had mistakenly dressed in tweed and corduroy.
“My father died when I was eight. My mother remarried when I was ten, an angry and domineering military man who called me Sissy, Nancy-boy, Faggot … If I challenged him I’d regain consciousness five minutes later. It was horrific is all I’ll say. When she’d gotten me safely off to college my mother walked out. My stepfather found and killed her.”
Faces dropped in the audience, intakes of breath. Murmurs of consolation. Judging by the faces, only Miz Balfours had known of Sinclair’s history. Sinclair continued.
“I finally felt I could deal with my history from an intellectual point of view by writing a book. I researched misogynist websites but needed a more personal interaction with these … people. I learned the language of hate and joined in secretive chat rooms using the idiotic handle of Promale. I joined extreme sites and met all manner of women-haters, most of whom were notable only in their insecurities. Some, however …” He raised a dark eyebrow.
“Were flat-out scary,” I finished.
“One of the most disturbing entities went by HP Drifter. He was intelligent – very well spoken when not ranting – yet brimming with hatred. I yearned to get closer, to find the genesis of his hatred. But I was just one more angry newcomer to that world.”
“It’s hard to gain acceptance,” I said. “The paranoia effect.” I’d done research on the Aryan movement, knew newbies were automatically suspected of being plants.
A wry smile from Sinclair. “I engineered a breakthrough, Detective: I revealed to Drifter that a fellow chat-room member named Raisehell was a spy.”
“Excuse me, Doc,” Cruz said. “But how could you know that?”
Sinclair set his hands like a pianist spanning five octaves. “Two computers. My right hand played Promale, my left played Raisehell. I built suspicious little aspects into Raisehell. Promale detected them, snitched to HP Drifter.”
“Creating a bonding experience with HP Drifter,” I said, impressed.
“It allowed me to tout an anti-feminist essay I’d written. Such screeds abound, but Dorothy and I engineered mine to push every button –”
“Academic and insane in equal measure,” Balfours said.
“These people love pseudo-intellectual justifications of their pathology,’ Sinclair said. ‘Drifter was excited by my screed, ready to appoint me philosopher of his movement. He implied it was about to enter a new phase, something big was about to happen. But in that nasty little world …”
“Everyone’s planning something,” I finished.
“Still, something in Drifter felt sinister. I was trying to get closer to him with the screed. Then something amazing happened: I found out who he is …” Sinclair clapped his big hands. “Bang! Just like that.”
“You know who Drifter is?” Cruz said.
Sinclair pulled pages from his briefcase and a pen from his pocket and began underlining. “Copies of a recent chat-room conversation,” he said.
I peered over his shoulder at the underlined text:
PROMALE: I’ve got to get away for a while. Some where beyond the whining and mewling of women.
HPDRIFTER: I go to the forest to escape the castrating whores. There are mountains near. I sit in silence and plan the destruction of the Femisluticunt cabal.
PROMALE: Solitude!
HPDRIFTER: Yes. I love smelling pinesap and hearing streams tumbling down ravines like surprised by their joy.
PROMALE: Beautiful words, Drifter. You have poetry in your soul.
HPDRIFTER: I take my handle from the Clint East wood movie, High Plains Drifter. Sometimes I think I’m a solitary rider alone with the wind as it hisses through the pines and the moonlight snow is covered with the tracks of mule deer and rabbits.
PROMALE: Thank you for sharing. I have to go, Drifter, things to do.
�
�I’m missing something,”
I said. “Just hours before this conversation occurred, I’d spoken with a minor character in my department, an undergrad working – slowly and poorly – on a degree in sociological statistics. While waiting for him to make some copies, it occurred to me that I’d been a bit hard on the pathetic sap. So I took a few moments to talk to him, a meaningless chat about loving the outdoors.”
“And?”
Sinclair took the pages and snicked them with a finger. “The underlined words in the chat-room conversation are virtually identical to things I said to the undergrad … a boring little fellow named Robert Trotman.”
Chapter 59
Her captor seemed to move in and out of the cavern for no particular reason, Rein noted from the floor of the cave, her eyes riveted on the rock above. Sometimes he crossed at the edge of the room, sometimes making a point of stepping over her. It seemed ritualistic, as if he needed to demonstrate the territory was his. There was something childlike in his motions.
“I have to pee,” Rein said on his fourth repetition. “Plus the other.”
Robert Trotman stared. She said, “You do them, too, I expect.”
He left the chamber without saying a word. Rein heard the scrape of a shovel. He returned ten minutes later with a coil of lariat in his hand.
“Sit up and lean your head forward.”
Taking a deep breath, Rein did as told. The man swung a noose-like coil in front of her. “Put your head in there,” he said.
“Can’t I just –”
“PUT YOUR FUCKING HEAD THERE, YOU LITTLE PUNK!”
Rein shot a glance at her captor. He seemed to be looking through her with eyes like stones. She held up her hands in acquiescence and slipped her head through the circle of rope. He pulled tight and Rein’s hands went to her neck. “Y-you’re choking me,” she gasped. His eyes flickered as if awakening from a reverie. He fed rope through his palm, loosening the coil, and walked her like an upright dog down a lantern-lit tunnel, Rein moving in six-inch steps, all her leg-hobble allowed.
