by Neal, Toby
“Let’s get going,” I said. I hoisted the pack and set off with renewed vigor.
“That sugar really gave you some juice,” Russell Pruitt said after a long moment. “Wish I had one more for the hike out. I hear the Switchbacks Trail is pretty strenuous.”
I didn’t reply, preoccupied with the changes that had been subtly happening between us—the adjustment of our body rhythms to be in tune. The gradual shedding of layers of defense and pretense into self-disclosure. I’d accepted my captivity and stopped trying to run after being prevented a few times (albeit violently) and begun to have a motherly concern for Russell Pruitt’s health.
His virus had infected me as effectively as mine had him.
I’d stopped noticing our surroundings, but as my frenzied thoughts wound to their sorry conclusion, I came back into my body and the mechanics of the hike. Weight on my tender back. Boots rubbing. Deep breathing as I did the hill as best I could, determined not to be yanked along behind my captor anymore.
Stockholm syndrome has to be confronted head-on with facts, I told myself sternly, even as I considered telling Russell Pruitt that if he left me alone at the end of the hike, I would never tell anyone what had happened. I would even help find him medical and mental health support.
Then you’ll have a crazy man with a fixation roaming around free to attack you or someone else. Constance’s voice.
The fine-grained volcanic sand puffed up like breath with every step. The vivid streaks of color on the hill we were traversing were bright red, sienna, umber, mustard, and the red-purple of old blood. The sky above was a depthless, blind blue, unmarked by clouds.
I could hear Russell Pruitt panting behind me.
Good. I hope he drops dead.
Guilt stabbed me, but I pushed through it. Constance was right. Pruitt was not my son, my friend, or even my client. He was a kidnapper, a psychological torturer, a sick bastard who somehow blamed me for the ills of his own life. Russell Pruitt was my enemy.
And you better not forget it again, my dead twin concluded.
I felt angry, finally, and that gave me an additional burst of energy. At the top of the hill, I stopped. It wasn’t really a choice. I was tasting blood in the back of my throat. I bent over with my hands on my knees, looking back down the long gray trail, rainbow-colored cinder cone, and wide-open sky.
Fucking Maui, so distracting with its scenery, as if nightmares don’t come true right here in the middle of beauty. Constance’s voice was definitely getting louder.
Russell Pruitt had kept up with me, but it had cost him. He was pale, with greasy sweat sliding down his massive cheeks. “Wish I’d had a cinnamon roll too,” he said with a flash of smile. His teeth were normal sized in his overlarge face, giving a fun-house-mirror effect.
I smiled back, because it was important that he think nothing had changed between us. We stood side by side, and I noticed how he copied my posture—a primary way to establish a connection with another person was to imitate their body language, and he’d been doing that since he ambushed me.
Russell Pruitt wasn’t just good at cooking and hacking computers. He was damn good at psychology too.
“Seems like you didn’t like what I told those hikers,” Pruitt said. “What would you like me to tell anyone else we meet?”
“The truth.” I kept my voice soft, with a trace of humor.
“Ha. Good one.” He seemed piqued, and turned and got a head start on the trail. My rope jerked tight and reminded me I was a prisoner.
I walked along behind him as we wound down into the central bowl of the crater. Mounds and formations created an undulating topography of lava in various states of degradation. The piercing sky blazed sun down on us, but wind whipped the warmth away before it could be felt, making the temperature perfect for hiking.
We passed a wooden barrier circling a deep hole marked danger. Mildly curious, I wished I could look into the pit, see into that deep lava tube. I wished yet again that I was alone, beginning to feel better from my acute withdrawals, that I was making this trek as I’d planned—a woman overcoming her past and her present.
Maybe that’s what I was doing—only now I was doing it in the shadow of Russell Pruitt.
We entered a valley area with massed clouds ahead. This side of the crater was older. The cloud forest on the sides of Haleakala had pushed uphill and crested into a broken rift of the volcano, moving into the crater and taming the raw lava by inches. From the trail, I could look down the valley formed by the disintegrated side of the volcano into jungle pouring all the way down to the far blue ocean.
I crushed a bit of native pukiawe shrub in my fingers, smelled its sharp, juniper-like scent. This area was being settled by plants and wildlife—grouse, lizards, and even a few red honeycreepers had come to sip the nectar of the bright yellow mamane blossoms blooming all around us.
“Let’s take a break,” Russell Pruitt said, hoisting his pack onto a boulder. I complied without speaking, resting my pack and then unstrapping myself from it, my wrist still tied.
I squatted behind the boulder and did what needed to be done, this time with no problems. His back to me, resting on the boulder, Pruitt had taken out a granola bar and his water jug; he ate and drank without offering me any. Something had definitely shifted between us.
I wasn’t sure if it was to my benefit or not. I got out a snack too, and we ate in silence, our postures imitating each other, but as far apart as we could be and be tied together.
We started walking again, and Pruitt pointed to a side trail marked silversword loop.
“Want to go through that?”
“Not really. It’s up to you,” I said.
He didn’t reply, just put his head down and gave a tug on the rope. Apparently, he didn’t want to see any more silverswords either; there were plenty on the main trail. We trudged on and, like before, I eventually got into a rhythm with him. Thoughts ceased and there was just the body moving, timeless and absorbing.
Holua Cabin appeared suddenly as we came around a knob of lichen-studded stone, identical to the other cabin and butted up against a grassy slope studded with boulders big as Easter Island heads. An emerald carpet of plushy grass rolled up to the front stoop, and a spigot leaked a few drops of crystalline water into a cement trough for a pair of nene in a reprise of my favorite aspects of the previous cabin. A picnic table in front completed the picture of rustic bliss.
“Get inside,” Russell Pruitt said. “I have some things to do.”
That didn’t sound good. I went inside.
“Get into your sleeping bag,” he ordered.
I took it out of my pack, unrolling it on a bunk identical to the one I’d left behind, and climbed inside, boots and all. I’d set the backpack beside me. I felt reassured by the handle of the butcher knife protruding up beside me, within reaching distance.
Russell Pruitt screwed the lock onto the inside of the door, went through the kitchen removing everything he thought I could use as a weapon, then went outside and locked me in from there.
He hadn’t brought his backpack in, so I couldn’t search it for my pepper spray. I heard him doing something out there, a rustling, and then silence as if he’d left.
“Russell Pruitt!” I called.
No answer.
Maybe he’d gone.
I had a few minutes to try to find something new that could change my situation—and the first thing I did was turn on my phone. Two bars lit up. It was a miracle. I hit Bruce’s speed-dial button, the number a little worn from use, and was unable to speak when his familiar bass came on the line. “Caprice, how’s rehab?”
“Oh my God,” I stuttered. “I’m in the crater. I’ve been taken prisoner by a giant. You have to help me!”
“What? Slow down, Caprice, you’re talking crazy,” Bruce said, and I looked up as I heard the rattle of the lock on the front door.
“Holua Cabin in Haleakala. I’m a prisoner. Help me!” I whispered fiercely. I turned the phone off a
nd slid it into my pocket as the door flew open with such force it slammed against the wall, and the whole cabin shuddered.
The giant was back, and he was angry.
Chapter 16
“Who were you talking to?” he growled, filling the doorway and blocking the light.
“I was praying,” I said. “I was asking God for help.”
He stepped inside, turned, put the hasp and lock on. “I don’t believe you. One thing I never found was a phone. You must have had it on you all this time.”
“No. No phone on this trip. I was going low-tech.”
“Dr. Wilson, for a psychologist, you’re a lousy liar. Get out of the sleeping bag and turn out your pockets.”
I promptly slipped the phone down alongside me and kicked it into the bottom of the bag. I felt it vibrating; Bruce was calling me back. Mercy of mercies, it was muted already. I got out of the sleeping bag, turned my pockets inside out.
“I know you had your phone with you; it’s how I tracked you here,” Russell Pruitt said, patting me down. His hands were clammy, and I noticed his color was bad again. I’d already made up my mind that if he had one of those spells, I wasn’t going to get his nitro for him—and I wasn’t going to do CPR. I was going to watch him die, if I ever got that lucky.
“I did have my phone, but I left it in the car. All part of the intervention I was doing with myself. The intervention that you interrupted.”
He patted me down all the way to my shoes and then turned the sleeping bag upside down. The phone fell out with a clunk.
“You lied,” Russell Pruitt said. “I think there should be consequences.”
“Hm. So it’s okay for you to lie to me, and to others in front of me, but I can’t lie even in a situation where my life is in danger. I’d call that a double standard,” I said.
Russell Pruitt hit Recent Calls and held up the phone. “Who is Bruce Ohale?”
“A guy I’m dating.”
“Lies!” he bellowed, his face turning red. “All lies!”
He threw the phone on the ground and mashed it beneath his massive giant-boot. The phone crunched into shards and bits of what had been my lifeline: my video log, hundreds of pictures of Chris and my former life, and all the contact information of anyone who’d ever mattered to me—which of course, I’d never backed up.
I flung myself onto my bunk and burst into tears. “God damn you, Russell Pruitt! I hope you die and go straight to hell!”
Whatever he expected, it wasn’t that, I could tell—but frankly, I wasn’t in control, and all my attempts at strategy had backfired anyway.
“You lied,” he repeated, and went into the kitchen. I heard him filling the big pot with water, unloading the backpack, turning on the stove, lighting a Pres-to-Log—all while I cried extravagantly into the sleeping bag.
Mood swings and excess of emotion are also part of detox. I’d definitely hit that stage.
Finally he came to the door of the kitchen. I felt him looking down at me. “Stop crying,” he said.
“I can’t,” I sobbed.
“It bothers me. Stop.” Russell Pruitt sounded confused. Maybe he cared about me a little bit. The thought made me cry harder. He sat on my bunk, and it creaked in protest. He patted my back. “I know what you need. Some hair of the dog. Let me get you a drink.”
“No! No means no, Russell Pruitt,” I sobbed. “I’ll never drink again, and you can’t make me!” Which wasn’t true, but I wanted it to be.
“Dr. Wilson. We’re supposed to be doing my therapy. Please, stop crying.” He sounded like Chris—I heard the echo of my son’s voice begging me not to cry over his asshole of a father. I felt my son’s strong young arms around me again, his hand patting my back.
But Russell Pruitt wasn’t my son. It’s part of Stockholm to relate to one’s captor, I reminded myself, to ascribe positive characteristics to him like the kindness and love of my son. It was understandable but not acceptable.
I knuckled the tears out of my eyes. They were so puffy I could hardly open them, but I’d finally stopped crying.
Maybe Bruce would come to the cabin with the Maui Police Department and a troop of Park Service dudes in a helicopter. Maybe he wouldn’t just think I’d been having the DTs in that incoherent message about the cabin and the giant.
“What should I fix for dinner?” I asked, standing up.
“Did you mean that about me dying and going to hell?” Russell Pruitt asked, following me into the kitchen.
“Of course not. I’m just upset.” I needed to go back to keeping the giant happy. It had to be better as a strategy than pissing him off. I looked through the food on the counter. “I’d planned to do Top Ramen tonight. Will that be okay with you, if I dress it up with some other stuff?”
Russell Pruitt took the vodka bottle out of his bag. “Sure.” He poured two plastic cups of it. Mine was much fuller. “I really think you need this, Dr. Wilson. I want you to be able to deal with what I’m going to tell you.”
“You’re going to tell me more?” I kept my back to him, my heart skipping a beat as my whole body twitched at the prospect of alcohol and new, unwelcome revelations. I took three packets of Top Ramen and ripped the ends open with trembling hands. I broke the corrugated noodles into the pot. “I want to fix some prunes too.”
“I have some carrots in the cold bag,” Russell Pruitt said. “I’ll cut those up.”
He got them out and chopped them with a steak knife he’d produced. I prepared the prunes, laying them in the bottom of a bowl and pouring boiled water from one of our bottles over them.
“Remember I told you this was about justice? And you didn’t see how it was justice that I came out here and found you?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said cautiously.
He turned and held up the cup of vodka. It was sunshine-yellow plastic and shone like a beacon. “I really want you to drink this.”
“I will, if you let me clean up what’s left of my phone.” Maybe the SIM card hadn’t been destroyed. If I was going to bow to the inevitable, I wanted to get something in return.
“It’s a deal,” he said, and I took the cup. The vodka felt like acid as I took the first swallow, and while my body responded with the same joyous rhapsody as before, I felt those helpless tears start again.
I really, really didn’t want to drink anymore.
I walked over to the smashed phone, knelt. The main body of the sturdy early version iPhone was bent and mangled, rays of broken plastic forming a starburst pattern in the center of the rectangle of metal. Bits had spread from where he’d kicked them. I took another sip of vodka and looked at the mess.
“We need something to put this trash in.”
“Use the plastic from the Top Ramen.”
I went back into the kitchen, took one of the bags, knelt, and began putting broken glass, plastic, and metal parts into the crinkly plastic.
“So here’s why I picked you for my therapy.” Russell Pruitt leaned in the doorframe of the kitchen, looming over me. “My mother was killed by my dad. Domestic violence, you know. And then you evaluated my father. Testified against him for the prosecution. He had consecutive life sentences. He didn’t make it past a year.”
“Oh no.” I sat back on my heels, looking at him. My eyes stretched, filling. “Oh no. Russell Pruitt, are you Hank Gardo’s son?”
“The very same,” he said. “I changed my name after the case.” And I knew I was in very deep trouble indeed.
I threw back the rest of the vodka in a couple of big, hard swallows.
On my hands and knees, I kept picking up phone bits, the alcohol lighting a fire in my stomach. My fingers closed around the main metal case. I sat up and twisted it, and a shower of innards and shards fell out, along with the small metal piece that was the SIM card. It was still in the frame that had once been a loading slot. I slid it into my pocket and put the rest of the phone into the Top Ramen bag, thinking about Hank Gardo.
Hank was a psychopath of the succes
sful white collar type. He had been implicated in the disappearance of several women in his downtown Honolulu building. Honolulu Police Department had brought me in to watch footage of his interviews and to review his case file, and I’d identified him as one of those truly horrible human beings with something missing in his brain that drove him to seek thrills at the expense of others.
Three female temp clerks had disappeared before Gardo tipped his hand by beating and strangling his wife.
I remembered testifying and spotting a tall teenager with thick glasses sitting next to some sort of caregiver midcourt as I talked about the mind-set of the man who’d been habitually abusing his wife and one day had simply gone too far as his hunger for violence escalated. I remembered looking at that dark-haired kid and hoping he had somewhere to go.
We hadn’t been able to get Hank Gardo for the temp clerks—but we’d been able to work the sentencing so he got consecutive life sentences, and six months into his bid, he’d died at the hands of another inmate. I’d felt a sense of relief at the time.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Russell Pruitt said.
“I was remembering you in the courtroom at your father’s trial,” I said, getting up to walk to the corner where an old corn-stick broom rested. I swept the area and scooped the last shards of my lifeline into the dustpan, kneeling on the floor. “Why did you change your name?”
“For obvious reasons.” He leaned on the doorway of the kitchen, stirring the Top Ramen in the pot with a wooden spoon. “I remember you too.”
“I did my job, Russell. I assessed your father as a Psychopathic Disorder with co-occurring Narcissistic Personality Disorder—yes, I’m using that diagnosis a little early before the DSM-Five makes it official. Hank was a very violent man. We couldn’t get him for the temp clerks that disappeared from his building—but he slipped up by killing your mother.”
