“Who’s Wilma Mankiller?”
“She was a Cherokee tribal leader. She wasn’t a man killer. That was just her family name, like people named Smith and Baker aren’t actually blacksmiths and bakers. White New Agers think they invented positive thinking, as if Natives have no intellect, no philosophy. Wilma Mankiller is one of my heroes. President Clinton gave her the Medal of Freedom.”
“Did you understand what that was all about?” Crystal asked, referring to the pastor’s sermon.
Kim replied, “Yes. I liked it. I believe so-called right and wrong and good and bad are no more than personal opinions. John Kennedy said kind of the same thing. Here’s one of his quotes. He said, 'A man does what he must, in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures. And this is the basis of all human morality'.”
Allie felt she could be drawn into an interesting debate here, but chose not to comment. Instead, she turned to Crystal and asked, “What’s going on with you right now? What did he say that made you cry?”
“I don’t know, maybe just about kids and how innocent and sweet they are. It made me think of my kids, and then it made me think about my uncle. Kim and I call him the blood sucker.”
“The blood sucker? Kim, you knew him too?”
“We lived on the same street, him and my family and Crystal’s. It would have been hard to live in Camp Verde and not know him. He was one of the few real estate agents in town. He was in and out of his house all hours of the day and evening, every season of the year.”
Allie said nothing but questioned with her eyes.
Crystal nodded. “We started going over to his house in the summer when he was home because he would give us ice pops and soda.” She slumped further down in her metal chair, as if weighted by memories.
Kim said, “None of the parents minded because he was our neighbor and everybody knew him. Then one day he asked if we wanted to go for a ride with him to look at a new listing. I still remember how he talked about his car and how proud he looked when he told us he had a new 1978 Datsun 280-Z Two-plus-Two, as if we knew what that meant.”
Crystal said, “I didn’t understand, either. He said, 'Let’s go look at my new house', and from then on I thought the empty houses were all his.”
Kim continued, “He told us to go ask first, the ones who had parents at home to ask. Then he piled us in the car, two in the front with him and four kids in the back. I think Crystal was the youngest one there. He put the air conditioning on high. Our parents didn't have air conditioning in our cars. We loved it.”
Allie knew, but asked anyway, “What happened?”
Kim chose not to answer.
Crystal had begun looking around the room with anxious eyes, inspecting its open cubby holes full of paper, glue, paints and fabric scraps. As if satisfied, she leaned back in her chair, her face calmer, and said, “It’s quiet in here. It feels safe in here.”
She stared at her hands in her lap without seeing. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing happened that day. It was fun to run around in the empty house and on the way back he bought us all a Dream pop, you know, those orange and vanilla ice creams on a stick.”
Allie thought, He had a new car and he let six little kids ride in it? Gave them ice cream? He was grooming them, picking his victims, planning it.
Both her clients were silent. Allie waited.
Crystal continued with a wavering voice. “We trusted him. We thought he was our friend, that he just liked kids. After that first ride, I went with him a lot. Sometimes the houses were empty but sometimes they weren’t. Those felt creepy and I didn’t like it. I thought they must belong to someone else but he acted like they were his. He used the kitchens, the bathrooms and--and the bedrooms.
“I really don’t remember much about how it started, and then only parts.” She paused and drew a deep breath. “One thing he did--he used to make me take off all my clothes and lie in the bed on my stomach with my legs together. Then he put his--thing--in between my legs, near my butt, and push. One day when we were at his house...one day he pushed inside of me. It hurt, it hurt so bad.” She began to sob. “My face was shoved against the bed and I could feel the pain of him doing something to me, I didn’t know what, and I felt like I was going to die.”
Kim reached for her friend. She held Crystal while the woman sobbed against her shoulder. At last, Crystal stopped crying. She reached down to pull more tissues from her purse. Her face had become hard, set in anger. She wiped her eyes and continued, “When it was over and he got off me, I tried to run outside. I didn't care that I didn't have on any clothes. He caught me. I screamed at him. I told him I was going to tell my parents. He didn’t say anything, he just took me in the bathroom and cleaned me up, wiped away the blood and stuff. I guess he knew he couldn’t let me go until the bleeding stopped.
“Then he took me into his living room and put a movie on. It was a vampire movie. He kept making it go fast with the remote control to get to the scary parts. When the vampire would come on he’d say, 'That’s me. That’s what I’ll do to you and your parents if you tell anyone. I’ll fly into your house at night, when you’re asleep and kill you. Then you’ll turn into a vampire too'. That scared me the most. I didn’t want to be a vampire. I didn’t want to be like him.”
Kim broke her uneasy silence. “He did the same with me.”
Allie looked up in shock. Kim had never revealed she was sexually abused, but then the focus of her therapy had been managing anger, not exploring childhood traumas or seeking the etiology of her anger.
Kim said, “I believed his vampire stories too, until I turned eight years old. Then I told him it was just a movie and there weren’t any vampires. He grabbed me by the arm and sliced it with his pocket knife. Then he licked off the blood. I still remember the look in his eyes and the smear of blood on his chin. I guess he wasn’t sure he had me convinced, because then he showed me his gun. It was an evil looking thing, a shiny, dark blue color. I remember thinking I’d rather he shot me than drink my blood.
“I guess he decided he hadn’t cowed me enough because he put me in his car and took me out to the desert. There were empty shell casings on the ground all around, so I think other people went there to shoot, too.
“He set up some full cans of Pepsi. He shot each one. When they exploded, he'd say, 'That’s your mother', or 'that’s your brother Wayne...', until he named every member of my family. After that, I never questioned him any more. The f-ing pervert!”
Allie had never heard such horrific details of abuse. It both stunned and infuriated her. “You’re right. He is a pervert, a pedophile, a sexual predator. I can’t believe he’s walking around free. Hasn’t he ever been arrested?”
“I don’t think so,” said Kim.
“When did he stop? What made him stop it?”
Kim said, “I remember wanting to stop it but being so afraid for my family. Then, when I was about to turn ten years old, I remember the idea of having lived a decade impressed me. It made me feel like I was almost grown up. I told myself that when my birthday came at the end of January, it would be a new year and a new me, that I wouldn’t have to let him touch me any more. And I didn’t.”
“How?”
“It was a dark night, the new moon. When he...I’m not going to say any more. He never tried it again after that, after what I did and what I told him. Every January on the new moon I think about it and celebrate.” Kim’s chin tilted upward in a small gesture of triumph.
Crystal took her friend’s hand and squeezed it in a gesture of empathy. Then she turned to look at Allie.
“He’ll never touch my kids,” she said, wiping her nose with the soggy tissue. “I’d rather die first. I’d rather they were dead!”
She glanced at Allie in alarm. “I didn’t mean anything by that. I’m not going to do anything!”
Allie hesitated. “I’m glad you didn’t mean it.” She sensed that Crystal would say no more today because she felt she had already
said too much, her cathartic revelation ended.
Allie said, “We can talk about this a little more next week when you come for your appointment, right?”
Crystal nodded. Allie fervently hoped Crystal’s retraction of her new threat against Upshall was sincere. Even more horrible was the implied threat against her own children if Upshall ever tried to molest them. She had to believe her instincts that Crystal's denial of future violence was genuine.
In any case, she suspected that Crystal had learned to play the mental health game. In the game, a denial that she presented a danger to anyone might or might not be sincere but in either case it relieved mental health professionals of 'the duty to report' or any excuse to report, for that matter. Allie had no mandate to inform law enforcement, warn the uncle, or try to force Crystal into further treatment.
***
The session was going well.
“Any more nightmares? That one about not being able to scream?”
“No. I haven’t had a chance to use that lucid dreaming technique you talked about. I’m not dreaming much at all, or at least I’m not remembering them.” She paused, thoughtful, then, “Did you ever just wake up and question everything you believe, everything you’re doing?”
“I’m guessing you did. When did this happen?”
Allie appeared not to have heard. “I don’t even know why. Maybe something someone said or something different in the way I feel...I can’t explain it.”
“A certain amount of introspection or self examination, if you want to call it that, is healthy. Is that what you’re experiencing or is it something more?”
“I’m not sure. I’m second guessing some decisions
I’ve made and starting to wonder if my life is headed in the right direction after all.”
“Maybe I can help you get a different perspective on things. Let’s talk about specifics. What decisions are you second guessing?”
A long silence. “I don't feel comfortable talking to you about them right now.”
Chapter 6
His gun felt obscene in her hand. Kim threw it onto the sofa as she followed his shuffling steps out of the house. She closed the front door behind her but left it unlocked. When they moved out of the small pool of light on the concrete step, she took out the stun gun and switched on its flashlight, the illumination little more than a pin point in the gloom of night.
They felt their way across the rocky earth toward the garage, he with bare feet that suffered every rock and cactus spine, judging by his muffled grunts and moans.
They reached the garage. She commanded, “On your knees!” He remained standing. She kicked the back of one knee, sending him sprawling. He remained face down in the dirt while she went into the garage to start the old two door Datsun. She had noticed earlier it gleamed with sparkling new metallic paint. Now she saw the interior appeared in mint condition, too. He had been restoring it.
She didn’t need to move the seat forward; her legs were as long as his. When she inserted the key into the ignition the car’s V6 engine roared into life on the first try. The manual transmission presented no problem.
She backed the Z out of the garage then replaced it with her own car after removing the last of her supplies, the long handled pitch fork. She checked, saw her prisoner sitting in the dirt picking thorns from his bare feet. She methodically closed the garage doors. Best to keep appearances normal in case of unlikely visitors.
The Datsun’s white paint made it a little easier to see what she was doing next. She lifted the hatch back, which had been fitted with black louvers, then went around to tilt the back of the front seat forward so she could reach into the rear. She had to put the gun down on the floor in order to use both hands to pull the levers on the ends of the seat back at the same time, which lowered the seat back to form a cargo compartment.
She picked up the gun and turned back to him. He knew she intended to put him in the compartment. He shook his head. She wondered if he was remembering children he had confined there, what he had done to them there and elsewhere.
“Get up,” she growled. Watching him, she felt a sick emptiness in her stomach. I want this whole disgusting job to be over.
Watching him struggle to his feet, then cover his genitals with his bound hands as he stood in front of her infuriated her more. Now he was modest? Now he was chaste?
Her anger flared. Then she remembered the sensual pleasure she had felt earlier in planning his humiliation and defeat. Earlier today, the surveillance and break in had produced an adrenalin rush accompanied by just a tinge of sexual arousal. It had faded tonight the second she saw him standing in his doorway. Then she felt only rage and now, as well, a secret shame. It’s not normal to get excited by anger and fear and violence. It’s sick! Oh, God, am I as sick as he is? Damn him to hell!
She put the gun in her pocket and picked up the pitch fork, resisting an urge to bash him over the head with it. She didn’t want to touch him. Instead, she used the back side of the curved prongs to prod him toward the low slung sports car. He made his way to stand at the rear bumper. One good shove with the handle toppled his upper body into the compartment. She started to use the pitch fork again to lift his legs and feet but he saw her intent and quickly folded himself inside.
A phrase she had heard from a friend in the Air Force came to her, self-loading cargo, a description that dehumanized any unessential or unwanted passengers. How appropriate.
It wasn’t until she closed the hatch and stood with her hand on it that she began to wonder what came next, what route to take to get to the Well. Strange, she thought. Her planning hadn’t gotten that far and now she had a choice to make. Go the shorter, more direct route on I-Seventeen to the exit at Maguireville or head south on Highway 260 to the Forest Road?
The shorter way would get her there in less than twenty minutes. The back way was twice as long. She recalled seeing state troopers on the local stretch of Interstate 10. They patrolled it regularly, hoping to ambush drunk or disgruntled drivers leaving the casino in Camp Verde. The thought of being stopped by a trooper while carrying self-loading cargo, naked, bound, self-loading cargo, decided her.
She got in, headed in the opposite direction from the Interstate, careful to keep to the speed limit. She was relieved that she met not a single other car on the way to the turnoff onto Forest Road 618. As she bumped onto the dirt road, she heard a groan of discomfort from her prisoner.
The washboard-like road stretched dark and deserted, a thread strung across an inhospitable landscape. She accelerated until she felt the car’s vibration chattering her teeth. She liked the way the car handled as the road dipped into a canyon, passed an abandoned salt mine, then rose onto a plateau.
The cliffs here were horizontal layers of rocky earth in shades of chalk white, tan, and tarnished-copper green, but tonight they were nothing but blanched shadows banking the road. When the banks gave way to flatter terrain, the vegetation, creosote bush, scrub mesquite, rattlesnake brush and yucca, appeared like small, malignant mounds against a stark horizon.
A machine gun-like clatter and hum startled her. Then she knew: the tires going over a cattle guard. More of the iron barred inserts in the road ahead failed to startle her.
She recognized the halfway point when she passed a side road marked by a typical ranch gateway, a twenty-foot tall, square structure with a wrought iron sign that said 'D-Diamond Ranch,' its cattle branded with the 'D' inside a diamond shape.
Impatient for the destination, she pressed harder on the accelerator. The car began to fishtail on the loose, graveled soil. She cursed under her breath but wary of losing control, slowed the car that was doing thirty-five miles an hour on a dirt road that was fit for maybe twenty-five.
As if in recognition of pushing the limits, she felt an impact on the undercarriage. The car’s suspension failed the challenge of another rapid series of bumps. A muffled whine from her prisoner indicated his concern for the car as much as for himself, then another machine/hum
an duet as she bottomed out again.
Reluctantly she slowed a little more, wary she might slide into a ditch or disable the car before she reached her destination. She glanced into the back to check her naked passenger, pleased that the beating the car was taking pained him and the jouncing would keep him off balance enough to prevent an escape attempt. The brief glimpse of his pale, curled form reminded her again of a maggot.
Thirty minutes later, by the time the car crossed the bridge over Walker Creek, she felt hypnotized by the headlong rush into darkness, the incessant road noise, the constant vibration. She could almost believe that time had stopped, that she would ride this road for eternity.
A small sign on the shoulder appeared. Trying to read it in the dark pulled her back but she already knew what it said: 'Dead Wood Draw.' She slowed a little, not wanting to attract attention from the roadside campground when the car crossed Wet Beaver Creek. The campground appeared silent, dark, still, then gone as they passed it in a split second.
The road was paved again here but soon became a roller coaster of steep hills and sudden turns that challenged her driving skill. At the metal 'no shooting' sign marked by dents and bullet holes she turned left, onto another dirt road. She hadn’t seen another car or another person since they left Camp Verde.
Almost there. Her eyes searched into the distance. She made out a pale haze like the imminent break of dawn but the dawn was hours away. A mile later, the haze revealed itself as a large cloud of mist writhing upward against the backdrop of the star studded night sky. It appeared like a living thing but she knew it was only vapor produced by the contrast between the lukewarm water of the Well and the freezing cold air.
The road was paved here, the ride smoother, but for some reason inexplicable to herself she slowed her approach toward the column of mist that marked her destination.
She thought of the countless people, both Native and non-Native, who had been killed or had died at the Well. Her imagination conjured ghosts from the ethereal mist. The smaller tendrils were the Native babies buried in the floors of the cliff dwellings, literally beneath their grieving parents’ feet.
The Well - Book One of the Arizona Thriller Trilogy Page 11
