Into The Fire jb-4

by David Wiltse

  When she bent over to grab the rope, he hit her from behind, hammering both hands together into her kidney.

  Aural fell onto her knees, gasping.

  He waited until she could hear him clearly before speaking.

  "I apologize for being so crude about it," he said. "I detest that kind of brute violence, but you really must learn to do what I say, exactly when I say to do it. Next time I tell you to put the lantern down and return to me, you do it right then, right that instant, not when it pleases you. Do you understand?"

  Aural nodded her head.

  "Well, good. Everyone's entitled to a first mistake.

  Let's not discuss it any further. Pull the bag over to the lantern."

  Aural was surprised at how easily she could drag the sack. It seemed to slide across the floor as if it were lubricated. When she got to the lantern she could see that the bottom of the sack was coated with a sort of gray slime.

  "What is it?" she asked. He had kept pace with her as she dragged the bag, seemingly unable himself to walk any faster than her six-inch stride would take her.

  "Guano," he said.

  "What's that?"

  "Bat shit, honey."

  She noticed now that he had the same slime on his boots, his pant cuffs, some almost as high as his waist.

  He must have waded through it at some point, dragging the sack.

  "It doesn't smell bad," he said. "Isn't that interesting?

  It's because of their diet."

  "I'm glad you told me."

  "You don't have to worry. The bats never come in here."

  "Might have made a nice change."

  "Nothing ever comes in here," he said, giggling.

  "Except you. On your belly."

  He started to say something, then put up a hand to cover his swollen eye and held his other hand out for balance. He swayed, then stepped back, away from Aural.

  Now, she thought, take him now, leap on him and pound his head against the rocks. But she did nothing but watch him.

  "Kneel," he said when he had recovered himself somewhat. Aural knelt, facing him. Here we go, she thought. Now he unzips his fly and reveals his ambition.

  She thought of the woman she had spoken about to Rae who had cut off her husband's penis and thrown it out of the car window. I'll bite it off, she thought. That ought to distract him for a while. But he made no gesture towards his fly.

  "Now onto your stomach," he said. Aural moved forward as she slid onto her stomach, getting as close as she could to her boots and the knife's hiding place without moving the boots. When she was still he knelt on her back, freezing her into position with his weight. His hands fumbled at her waist, undoing her jeans, then struggling to pull them down her legs. She tried to raise up to assist him but he pushed her back down.

  "I'll do it," he said brusquely. When her jeans were as far down her legs as the ankle irons would permit, he sat with his full weight on the small of her back and undid her handcuffs. Aural thought of going for the knife then, was about to try to roll him off and lunge forward to the hiding place, but he moved much too quickly for her.

  With a motion that had the sharp precision of practice, he yanked her onto her side and refastened the cuffs on either side of the ankle-iron chain so that she was now bound with her hands at her feet, forced by her constraints into the fetal position.

  "There," he said, obviously pleased with himself.

  "Oh, neat," she said.

  "Comfortable?"

  "Personally, I love this. Wouldn't you like to join me, sugar? We could share these cuffs."

  "I have already joined you," he said. "I'll never leave you again."

  He knelt in front of her so that he could see her face.

  "Will you lead us in prayer?" he asked.

  "I tell you what," she said. "Why don't you have the first go at it?

  I'll catch up with you the second time around.

  "I'd think you'd want to pray," he said.

  "Sugar, there are lots of things I'd like to do right now, but you know, you just can't do everything all at once.

  I'm so excited about what you and me are going to be doing together here with me trussed up like a turkey that I can't think of anything else."

  "Everyone always wants to pray now," he said, baffled.

  "Everyone?"

  "The others."

  "You mean you've had other girls? Well, now, that does it. You just cut me loose and take me home right this second."

  "You'll pray later," Swann decided.

  "I'm a professional prayer. Get me an audience and I'll be happy to say a few-"

  "Sweet Jesus," he intoned, cutting her off, "give us both the strength to get through the terrible ordeal that is about to come. Give this girl the courage and fortitude to survive for as long as she possibly can.

  And give me the patience not to rush things, let me proceed with the care and attention that she deserves. In Jesus' name, Amen."

  "Nice sentiment," said Aural. She felt a cold chill run down her spine that had nothing to do with the temperature in the cave.

  "You're a little frightened now, aren't you? I can tell."

  Aural refused to give it to him, but didn't trust herself to speak.

  "It's all right to be afraid," he said. "I'm always nervous myself before I begin. It's good, though, it helps to heighten the sensations."

  Not a word, Aural vowed to herself From here on, no matter what he did, she wouldn't cry out, she wouldn't speak, she wouldn't so much as grunt for him. Whatever he had in mind, he would have to do it by himself, she would not help him.

  He was rummaging through the leather sack, taking out the candles and a carton of cigarettes. Suddenly he clamped his hand to his swollen eye and bared his teeth as he groaned in pain and confusion. Aural watched him squeeze his good eye shut and sway back and forth on his knees.

  He dropped one hand to the ground and continued to moan, hanging his head like a sick dog. When he straightened up at last, Aural could see tears on his face and he looked frightened, but whatever it was, it had passed. He sat back on his heels for a moment, gathering himself, then ripped open the carton of cigarettes.

  Swann put a candle at Aural's head and another at her feet and a third behind her, then lit them. Like some kind of altar, she thought. And she was the sacrifice.

  He turned off the lantern, and the shadows in the cave went crazy, dancing wildly in the flickering of the candles.

  The darkness closed in around them and Aural could no longer make out the ceiling or the walls. There was only her, only Swann, only the gyrating shadows to bear witness. Aural's world had shrunk to a little fold of light in the universal blackness and she was at the center of the earth.

  Swann lit a cigarette and coughed. "Filthy things," he said. "I don't understand why anybody smokes them.

  Don't they know cigarettes can kill you?" He giggled as if he had suddenly realized what he had said. He looked her in the face and grinned. "They do kill, you know.

  Eventually."

  Aural tried to study him, to keep her eyes on his eyes and to ignore whatever else he was doing. She wanted to kill her imagination, to keep it from killing her. Whatever would happen would happen anyway, and anticipation would only make it worse. She stared at the asshole, whose eyes were dancing gleefully. He's insane, she thought. He knows exactly what he's doing, but he's as mad as he can be.

  Swann puffed on the cigarette several times until he was contented with the glowing ember.

  "Shall we begin?" he asked.

  "Shit, yes, let's get on with it," Aural said, forgetting her vow of silence already.

  "I usually like to start with the legs," he said, stroking her shin.

  Aural jerked away but he held her tightly, giving her a stern look of reprimand. When she stopped resisting, he ran his fingers over her calf like an acupuncturist seeking just the right spot.

  He found the spot, then held the cigarette over her skin, just close enough so that she could
feel the heat.

  Fuck you, Aural thought wildly. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. You want me to beg, you want me to cry, you want me to piss myself out of fear.

  Well, fuck you, you get none of it, none of it.

  He pressed the cigarette into her flesh and she screamed. She realized very soon that she would give him everything he wanted.

  Hatcher came announced this time, without pretense. He called and asked Becker for an appointment, and when he arrived he was accompanied by Karen and Gold and an agent from the Behavioral Sciences group whose purview included serial killers. Becker vaguely recognized the man.

  Becker met them in his front yard, golf club in hand.

  He'd been hitting plastic golf balls over the roof of the house and into the backyard with a pitching wedge.

  As Hatcher and the others stepped out of the car, Becker lofted a perfect shot over the house, then he turned and thrust the golf club into Hatcher's hands before allowing him to speak.

  "Try one," Becker said. "Aim just left of the chimney."

  Hatcher did not demur. He knew Becker wanted to make him look foolish and he was willing to oblige if that was the price to get what he wanted. He knew he would probably have to debase himself further before he was finished.

  Becker teed a ball into position and Hatcher dutifully il@ swiped at it, swinging stiffly in his suit. He missed the ball completely the first time, and tried again immediately as if the first attempt had been just for practice, hoping that his flub was not as obvious to the others as it was to him.

  On his second swing, Hatcher buried the head of the club in turf, disconnecting a sizable chunk of sod "So sorry," Hatcher said, staring at the clod of dirt and grass that he had just unearthed. It looked like a bad toupee unaccountably dyed green.

  He looked at Karen. "So very sorry."

  "It's not your game," Becker said in a tone that implied that he was intent on continuing to humiliate Hatcher until he discovered the game that was his.

  "I seem to have-" Hatcher bent over, thinking to retrieve and replace the severed turf, then stopped, wondering if calling further attention to it only made matters worse. Gold and the Behavioral Sciences man moved away from the lawn towards the porch, trying to disassociate themselves from the incident entirely.

  "Jack does things like that all the time," Becker said.

  Gold thought he sounded enormously pleased. He removed the club from Hatcher's hands as if taking a dangerous toy from a child. It was not lost on Hatcher that Jack was only ten years old.

  They proceeded into the house and arranged themselves in a living room that could comfortably seat only four. As if seeking the supplicant's chair, Hatcher sat on a leathercovered footstool that was a reproduction of a cobbler's seat, a piece of furniture used more for decoration than utility. The footstool forced Hatcher's knees higher than his waist, so that he looked like an adult at parents' night at grade school, sitting uncomfortably at the desk of his child.

  "Comfy?" Becker crooned, smiling with a benevolence that fooled no one.

  "Fine, yes, fine," Hatcher said.

  Gold and the other agent continued to avoid each other's eyes. The psychiatrist glanced at Karen and intercepted a look of cold fury directed at Becker, who seemed oblivious. Gold wondered about the long-term health of their relationship. Certainly the stress of the Cooper case was doing nothing to holster it.

  "So good of you to make time for us like this," Hatcher was saying. "I realize you must be very busy… uh… with your interests."

  "Yes. Today I was trying to learn to cut the ball,"

  Becker said, smiling. "My normal shot is a slight draw, very good for most purposes-better distance, for instance-but there are times when you want to have that high fade available. The kind Nicklaus hils. Faldo and Norman have it when they need it, too."

  "Ah, yes." Hatcher nodded. He thought he recognized the name Nicklaus.

  The others meant nothing to him.

  "It's hard, though. Especially with a wedge," Becker said.

  "Yes, difficult, I should imagine so," Hatcher said.

  "Well, now, John, we have come to see you-you do know Special Agent Withers of Behavioral Sciences, don't you?"

  Becker nodded. "Withers."

  "Of course," said Withers, who knew Becker only by reputation. He returned the nod of greeting.

  "We have come on a matter of some urgency which I believe you already know about."

  "What's that?" asked Becker.

  Hatcher looked at Karen. He hoped not to let Becker drag every bit of the story out of him, inch by painful inch.

  "The Cooper business," Karen said briskly. She was in no mood for Becker's antics. Being front man for Hatcher was bad enough for her without jumping through hoops held up by the man she lived with.

  "You know about the Cooper business, with the two girls in the coal mine." Her tone allowed no room for disagreement.

  "Special Agent Withers raised a few questions about the overall credibility of Cooper's story," Hatcher said.

  "Nothing crippling to the case, certainly, but an odd question here and there. When these-ah-doubts were brought to my attention, naturally I asked for more opinions. It was then that Assistant Director Crist and Dr. Gold came forward with what they tell me was originally your… idea."

  Becker smiled confusedly as if he had not yet fully grasped the meaning of the conversation.

  "You know what he means," Karen said sharply.

  Becker turned his countenance towards her, still looking bemused. She glowered back darkly.

  Hatcher continued. "I refer to your-suggestion-that Cooper was somehow coached into confessing the murder of the Beggs girl. While not granting that that is the case at all, — not at all, it still raises an interesting line of speculation that one must conscientiously pursue.

  Dr. Gold has been good enough to do a bit of research into the subject."

  Becker turned his attention to Gold. He imagined that Hatcher had given the assignment to Gold for two reasons.

  The first would be to keep the possibility that Hatcher might be wrong about Cooper's guilt-and that Becker might be right-within as small a group as possible. Since Gold was one of the group that had originated the doubt, Hatcher would be containing the spread of doubts if he had Gold do the work. The second reason, a happy offshoot of the first from Hatcher's point of view, was to punish Gold for having been a party to the doubts in the first place. Becker also imagined that Hatcher's greatest punishment would be reserved for Becker himself It was Hatcher's way.

  Gold cleared his throat. "Well, not to get overly technical, we have done a number of studies on eyewitnesses, as you all know, and the results are not only that they are notoriously unreliable but that they actually 'see' and 'remember' those things which they are preconditioned to see. If they are shown videos of a traffic accident, for instance, and are personally inclined to believe that women are worse drivers than men, given the least bit of ambiguity in what they see, they will identify the driver who has caused the accident as a woman. That's a very simple example, of course. Any skillful questioner can plant suggestions in their minds as to specific details of the scene and they will soon parrot what they were told, convinced that it was what they saw. A rather extensive study of this phenomenon was done at Princeton, where Johnson was able to make her subjects swear they saw and heard things that never happened. They can be shown pictures of people embracing and interpret them as acts of violence, if they have been lead to believe that's what they will see. Most common, of course, is the identification of a perpetrator as being a member of whatever race the spectator identifies with criminal acts. Whites are notorious for believing all black men are dangerous, and consequently 'seeing' all dangerous men as black.

  "Of most interest to us in this case, of course, are those examples in which the questioner can make the witness remember' things that did not happen. It is not difficult to do, and the witnesses are by no means stupid or pliable people. It is simply a mat
ter of playing into their preconceptions as to how things are apt to happen, or supplying details that they missed but that their minds tell them should be there. It is easier still if the ideas are planted before the witnesses see the event. If the scene is dark, if details are obscure and the witnesses have been told to watch for a man with a knife, they will 'see' a man with a knife, no matter the facts of the event.

  "Now these are ordinary people with no ax to grind beyond ordinary prejudices and preconceptions. Cooper is a very stupid man with a strong desire to believe that he is a killer. Such a notion enhances his self-esteem-and indeed actually gets him the esteem of others within the prison system, where he has spent a good deal of his life.

  Again, without getting technical, the more people he thinks he killed, the better Cooper feels about himself. To be simplistic about it, we all know high school athletes whose exploits become more and more heroic in the telling the further they get from the event until by the time they're in middle age or beyond they themselves actually believe their stories of past glory. They have convinced themselves through repeated telling.

  "With Cooper, we have a man who could have been convinced through repeated telling that he did something which in fact he never did. I stress the could because right now we really don't know what happened.

  But given Cooper's need to believe the worst about himself, given his prolonged isolation with Swann, given an apparent cleverness on Swann's part — ." Gold trailed off, not wanting to reach the dangerous conclusion aloud.

  "Well, hardly the sort of thing to convince a jury", Hatcher said, "but helpful in a speculative way." His fear, of course, was that it was precisely the kind of thing to convince a jury, just exactly the sort of vagary that in the hands of a skillful attorney could turn into a weapon of doubt with which to pry the case wide open. Juries were acquitting people right and left with not much more to justify their verdict than what Gold had just said. There was a predisposition to innocence abroad in the legal system that Hatcher found alarming. He did not dare to risk such an outcome while Beggs stood to lose face.

  "What do you think, Withers? This is your line of work," Becker asked.

  Withers had been hoping that no one would address him at all. It seemed the sort of conference in which no participant was going to win.