He punched me in the stomach.
I doubled up and gasped for breath, and Dwyer grabbed my shoulder and turned me onto my belly. I felt the handcuffs click around my wrists. Then Dwyer spun me around and hauled me into a sitting position.
Claudia came over and sat beside me. She touched my face. “If you cooperate, he won’t hit you anymore.”
“What’re you two up to?” I said.
She shook her head. “Please cooperate, Brady. That will make it a lot easier for all of us.” She turned to Dwyer. “We better get going.”
“Stand up,” said Dwyer to me.
With my hands cuffed behind my back, it was a struggle to get to my feet, and when I did, a wave of dizziness made me stagger. Claudia grabbed my arm before I fell and held me upright.
After a minute my head cleared. “I’m okay now,” I said. “So are you going to tell me—?”
“Shut up,” said Dwyer. To Claudia he said, “Get his car keys.”
Claudia wormed her hand into my pants pocket and came out with my keys. She held them up for Dwyer to see.
He nodded, then went to the door, pulled it half-open, and glanced around outside. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
He went out and Claudia steered me out behind him. A black SUV was parked directly in front of my motel room. Dwyer was holding the passenger door open. Claudia led me to it, and the two of them shoved me in and snapped the seatbelt across my chest. Then Claudia got in the backseat behind me, and Dwyer went around and slid in behind the wheel.
“Do it now,” he said over his shoulder.
Suddenly Claudia’s forearm went around my throat and she levered my head back. Her wrist pressed against my windpipe cutting off my air, and I struggled to drag in a breath.
“Hold still,” she said. “It’ll be quicker that way.”
Then I felt a prick in my right shoulder, followed by the unmistakable burning of a hypodermic needle sliding into my muscle.
I thought I could actually feel the drug enter my bloodstream and seep up into my brain. When it got there, it radiated warmth and peace throughout my body, and I felt better almost instantly.
In fact, I felt really good. Relaxed, carefree, happy, calm.
Not a care in the world.
Everything was going to be just fine …
NINETEEN
After Claudia hit my shoulder with the needle, she leaned forward, stroked my cheek with the palm of her hand, and murmured, “There, now. Isn’t that better?”
I wanted to tell her it was better. In fact, it was terrific.
But I couldn’t seem to find any words.
Sometime later, she got out of the back seat, and when she slammed the door, it sounded like a bomb going off inside the car.
I was aware of her talking to Dwyer through his window, and I heard her say, “See you there.”
Then Dwyer and I were riding through the night, and I closed my eyes and let myself enjoy the sensation of movement.
I didn’t entirely lose consciousness. I drifted on a hazy fog in some gray, dreamy never-never land. Vague thoughts and foggy images and odd, disconnected memory fragments floated around in my head, but as hard as I tried to pin them down and make sense of them, I couldn’t seem to latch on to a single one of them.
But that was okay. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything.
After a while—a few seconds? hours? days?—the movement changed. We seemed to be going much slower, and we were bumping and rocking and swaying. Now and then I heard scraping sounds on the sides of Dwyer’s truck.
The bumps and jerks aroused me a little, although it took an exhausting amount of concentration and willpower to open my eyes. It seemed as if I had to send specific directions to my eyelids to make them move.
There wasn’t much to see. Just varying shades of darkness. Here and there a lighter patch appeared, and there were shadowy shapes blurring and morphing right outside the window.
At one point we stopped moving and Claudia got in the backseat. She reached around and touched my cheek. “You okay?” she said.
I don’t think I answered her.
Then we started moving again. Beside me, Dwyer was humming and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. I might have asked him where we were—the question had formed in my mind, though I wasn’t aware of actually saying anything—because he said, “Almost there. Just relax.”
I think I told him that I was as relaxed as I could possibly be.
After a while, we stopped moving, and Claudia and Dwyer wrestled me out of the car and started half dragging me through the darkness. I wanted to cooperate, but I couldn’t seem to summon up the energy or the concentration to instruct my legs to move. I was awfully tired, and whatever they wanted to do with me was fine.
After a while, I guess I went to sleep.
When I woke up, I found that the fuzziness in my brain had been replaced with a sharp, throbbing ache. I blinked my eyes open, then shut them quickly. The light stabbed at my eyeballs like a fusillade of darts.
“I think he’s awake,” I heard Dwyer say.
“It’s been about two hours. It should’ve worn off.” That was Claudia’s voice.
I was aware of an achy tingling in my arms and legs. When I tried to move them, I discovered that I couldn’t.
I cracked open my eyelids. There was a bright light burning right in front of me. When my eyes focused, I saw that it was the flame in a glass-covered lantern. Dwyer and Claudia were sitting in the shadows beyond the lantern, looking at me.
I glanced down at myself. Duct tape had been wrapped around my arms, chest, thighs, and ankles. It felt like my wrists were still cuffed behind me. They’d taped me to a hard, straight-backed chair that was pulled up to a rectangular wooden table. A deck of cards and a cribbage board and a few beer cans were scattered on the table.
If I wasn’t mistaken, we were in Larry Scott’s hunting cabin deep in the woods by the pond. Dwyer had been here before. He’d been one of Scott’s deer-hunting partners.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” said Claudia. “How are we feeling?”
I tried to speak. My throat felt as if a Brillo pad was caught in it. “Thirsty,” I croaked.
Claudia got up, and a minute later she was holding a plastic bottle to my lips. “Take it slow,” she said. “We don’t want you vomiting all over yourself.”
She squeezed water into my mouth, and I held it there for a moment to savor the soothing moisture on my tongue before I let it slide down my parched throat.
“More,” I whispered.
Claudia gave the bottle another squeeze and then took it away. “That’s all for now,” she said. “You be a good boy and you can have some more.” She patted my cheek, then went back and took the chair beside Dwyer.
He was lounging back with his arms folded over his chest. Claudia had her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. The two of them were looking at me. I tried to read their expressions.
Amusement?
Curiosity?
Expectation?
“What do you want?” I said.
“Just a little information,” said Claudia.
“You could’ve tried asking nicely.”
“I did,” she said. “I thought I was terribly nice.”
“So that’s what that—that seduction act—was all about? You wanted information?”
She smiled. “It would’ve been more fun than this.”
“I don’t know anything you don’t know.”
“That’s not what your friend Detective Vanderweigh says,” she said. “He says you know a lot of things that you’re not sharing.”
“Like what?”
“Like what Larry Scott and Owen Ransom knew about Dr. St. Croix.”
“I have no idea what they knew.”
“But Evie knows,” she said. “Right?”
“Evie doesn’t know anything,” I said.
“That’s bullshit,” growled Dwyer.
Claudia frowned
at him, and he shrugged. Then she looked at me again. “So where is she?”
I shook my head.
“Brady,” she said, “we need to know where Evie is.”
“I don’t know where she is, but—”
Dwyer’s fist slammed down on the table. “Bullshit!”
“—but if I did know,” I continued, “I wouldn’t tell you.”
Dwyer pushed himself away from the table and came around so that he was standing beside me. “Where is she?” he said.
“I don’t know. Vanderweigh—”
Dwyer’s fist slammed into my solar plexus. It drove the breath out of me and released an explosion of pain. I wanted to double over, but the tape around my chest held me upright. I gasped and gagged, and just when I finally managed to drag in a breath, he slugged me again in exactly the same place.
“Where the fuck is she?” he said.
My chest felt as if a grenade had gone off in it. I could only shake my head and gasp desperately for air. Tears were running down my cheeks, and my entire body was soaked in sweat. I figured if he hit me one more time, I’d never breathe again.
I sat there gasping and sweating and trying to make my lungs work. Dwyer loomed in front of me, glaring down at me, pounding his fists against his thighs.
“Wait,” said Claudia. She got up, came around the table, and took Dwyer’s hands in hers. “You’re being cruel,” she said to him. “I think Brady would like to cooperate.” She looked at me. “Wouldn’t you?”
“No,” I managed to whisper.
She frowned. “I’m afraid Johnny’s going to kill you if you don’t.”
“He’ll kill me anyway.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said.
“He killed Larry Scott and Owen Ransom.”
She glanced at Dwyer. “Did you do that?”
Dwyer grinned. “Me?”
“He burned down the barn,” I said. “Probably killed the doctor, too.”
“Now why would he do a thing like that?” said Claudia.
“I don’t know.”
She stroked my forehead with her fingertips. “Sure you do.”
I shook my head.
“So where’s Evie?”
“I don’t know.”
She shrugged, then turned to Dwyer and said, “Johnny, honey, maybe you should ask him.”
Dwyer smiled and showed me his fist.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Don’t hit me.”
“Where’s Evie?” said Claudia.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” I said. “You tell me what you two are up to, and I’ll tell you where Evie is.”
“I told you he knew,” she said to Dwyer. She patted my cheek. “It’s a deal. You tell us first.”
“You gonna let me go?”
“Of course,” she said.
I looked at her for a minute, then dropped my eyes. “Arizona,” I mumbled.
“What?”
“Arizona,” I said. “Evie’s headed for Arizona.”
She turned to Dwyer and arched her eyebrows.
“He’s lying,” he said.
“Are you lying, Brady?” said Claudia.
“No,” I lied.
“Where in Arizona?”
“Scottsdale.”
“Be specific.”
“With a friend.”
“Got a name for us?”
“Peters,” I said. “Barbara Peters. She owns a bookstore there.”
“How do you know this?”
“Evie told me.”
“When?”
“I don’t remember,” I said. “My brain’s fuzzy from your damn drug.”
“No, it’s not,” she said. “That’s not how it works. You’ve probably got a headache, and you might be feeling a bit nauseated. But your brain is not fuzzy. What else did Evie tell you?”
“That’s all. She told me where she was going. Then she left.”
“No,” said Claudia, “there’s more. Tell us what you know about Dr. St. Croix.”
“Give me more water.”
Claudia held the water bottle to my mouth and gave me a squirt.
I swallowed it a little bit at a time and tried to think clearly. The fact was, I didn’t understand what was going on, but it occurred to me that if I told them what I knew, they might decide not to go after Evie. So cleared my throat and said, “This is all I know, and it’s all Evie knows, too.” Then I told them about Owen Ransom’s brother Edgar committing suicide, about the Ransom parents dying in a boating accident in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, about how the Ransoms had once lived in the same Minnesota town where Winston St. Croix had his first pediatric practice, and how Owen and Edgar had most likely been St. Croix’s patients.
When I was done, Dwyer said, “Yeah? And what else?”
I shook my head. “That’s it.”
“Not according to Vanderweigh, it’s not.”
“Vanderweigh may know something else,” I said, “but I don’t. And neither does Evie.”
Claudia put her hands on my shoulders and bent to me so that her face was close to mine. “What’s the significance of all this?” she said.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
She stared into my eyes for a moment, then straightened up. “I don’t think we’re going to get anything else out of him,” she said to Dwyer.
“Maybe,” he said. “I’m gonna hit him again anyway, see if he changes his mind.”
She nodded. “Worth a try.”
This time I saw it coming, and I managed to tighten my stomach muscles. Still the blow left me gagging, and the almost unbearable pain made me wonder if he’d ruptured some important internal organ, like maybe my heart.
I let my chin slump onto my chest and pretended I’d lost consciousness.
“Did you kill him?” I heard Claudia say.
“Nah,” said Dwyer.
“Well,” she said, “let’s get it over with.”
“Give him the needle,” said Dwyer.
“Let’s get him over to the bunk first,” she said.
Then their hands were on me, and they were tearing the tape off my wrists and legs and chest. When they were done, they grabbed me under my armpits and hauled me to my feet.
Claudia was right. I wasn’t going anywhere. I had no strength, and my wrists were still cuffed behind me, and my arms and legs were numb. I was also dizzy, and the sharp, deep pain in my stomach and chest made me gasp when they moved me.
They dragged me across the room, laid me on the bunk, and Dwyer took off my handcuffs.
Then Claudia knelt beside me and showed me a hypodermic needle. “It’s not going to hurt at all,” she said.
“That how you killed the doctor?”
She smiled. “This much isn’t going to kill you,” she said. “It’ll just make you nice and relaxed.”
“You’re not going to kill me?”
“I didn’t say that,” she said.
She jabbed the needle through my shirt and into my upper arm, then bent so close to me that I could smell her perfume. “It would’ve been so much more fun if you’d done it my way,” she whispered.
“Let’s get going,” said Dwyer.
I waited for the drug to hit me. It seemed to come more slowly this time.
Claudia stood up and moved toward the door, and then Dwyer picked up the lighted lantern from the table. He brought it over beside me, unscrewed the bottom, and tipped it on its side. The kerosene poured out of it and splashed on the wooden floor next to the bunk where I lay.
I tried to push myself up, but the dizziness hit me and I fell back. The room began to spin, and in its slow whirl I saw Dwyer drop the still-lighted lantern onto the floor in the pool of spilled kerosene. The glass mantle shattered, and an instant later there was a sudden whoosh of fire. It seemed to fill the room, a spinning explosion of flame right beside me.
I tried to move. I had to get the hell out of there. But I couldn’t. My brain wasn’t getting through to the rest of my body. I couldn�
�t wiggle a finger.
The smoke burned in my nostrils, and the flames leapt all around me, bright in my eyes, roaring in my ears, fiery on my skin.
I had to get out of there …
But then I felt Claudia’s drug. It began as a kind of soft, wet blackness somewhere in my belly. It filled my chest, and began slowly to ooze its way up into my head, and I realized that it really didn’t matter after all.
Nothing mattered.
I just wanted to sleep. Sleep would be nice.
I closed my eyes and relaxed.
TWENTY
I lay there on that bunk surrounded by flames and smoke and blistering heat, and even Claudia’s tranquilizing drug couldn’t lull me into ignoring the fact that I was about to die.
There was nothing I could do about it. My body was limp and unresponsive to the halfhearted commands I sent to it.
Anyway, it just didn’t seem terribly important.
Over the roar and crackle of the fire, I gradually became aware of other sounds—distant explosions, muffled shouts, faraway thumps and bumps and crashes. And then someone was beside me, grabbing at me, hauling on my arm, yelling at me to stand up, to get going, to hurry.
I tried to tell whoever it was that I couldn’t move, but not to worry. What was the rush, anyway?
Then I felt myself being dragged through the flames and the smoke, and suddenly we were out of it, and the air tasted sweet and clean.
I lay on my back staring up at the star-filled sky, vaguely aware of people around me and hands prowling over my body.
Then a bright light shone in my face. “He’s breathing,” somebody said. It was a female voice.
“Hey, Brady,” said somebody else, a man. “How’re you feeling? You all right?”
I tried to smile and nod and say the word, “Drug.” It came out as a croak.
“Give him some water,” said the male voice.
I felt arms around my shoulders, helping me lift my head and prop it up in somebody’s lap. Cool, wet water on my face and lips and in my mouth. A damp rag wiping my forehead, neck, and throat.
I squinted against the bright light and turned my face. The light moved away, and then I saw Detective Neil Vanderweigh squatting beside me.
“Did you catch them?” I said.
He nodded.
“Claudia and Dwyer?”
Past Tense Page 23
