Fear in a Handful of Dust

4

Mackenzie’s mouth was painfully dry and he was having trouble breathing with the rag stuffed against his tongue. His hands behind him felt heavy and dead; he could picture them thickened and darkened with blood. In fact he knew the wires were not that tight but everything was cause for terror and he was sensitive to every nuance of pain in his cramped bruised body.

He heard the key in the lock and soon the door swung open and admitted light into the camper from a streetlamp fifty feet distant. He expected Duggai’s silhouette; he was taken by surprise when three shapes appeared, one of them a woman.

Then he recognized them.

At first they didn’t see him in the shadows. Then as Jay Painter climbed awkwardly inside, his hands wired behind him, Mackenzie saw his eyes change with recognition.

Jay stopped bolt still for a moment. Duggai prodded him.

Their faces were half masked by clothesline gags. Duggai’s scheme left no possibility of outcry or rebellion. Duggai wigwagged the Magnum and Jay obediently sat beside Mackenzie on the cot. After the initial contact Jay refused to look at him again; he averted his head. Duggai performed his noose-on-the-floor trick to prevent being kicked while tying Jay’s feet. Then he shoved Shirley inside. She tripped and fell past Mackenzie against the provisions on the bench seat. Bent nearly double under the low roof, Duggai fastened Mackenzie’s hands to a metal support behind him and wired Jay’s hands to the adjacent support. It was to prevent them from untying one another’s hands.

Duggai dragged Shirley to the back of the truck and sat her down roughly beside Jay and tied her up in the same way. It put Jay in the middle.

Duggai went. When the door slammed it took the light with it; only a vague illumination penetrated the checkerboard curtains. It was enough to see Jay’s silhouette.

He felt it when Duggai climbed into the driver’s seat. The engine started. Mackenzie saw a refracted red glow in the rear window when the taillight came on. The shift went into gear. He touched Jay with an elbow, leaning back at the same time, trying to tell Jay that he should brace him self. Jay didn’t understand the message; he sat stiffly upright exuding anger and indignity and fear until the truck lurched away from the curb-Duggai was not a smooth driver. It caught Jay off balance and he nearly went off the seat. After that he leaned hard back against the wall and Mackenzie saw him hold his elbow out protectively in front of Shirley.

It was an eerie time. The three of them sat side by side in silent darkness in a tangle of unspoken emotions. Memories grenaded into Mackenzie’s mind so powerfully they all but obliterated the agonies of the present moment. He was drawn back into recriminative bitterness: the mingled sordid complex relationships of the past.

He imagined he felt waves of similar feeling coming off his companions.

The truck pitched through back streets. It kept stopping and starting up again; he knew it could be no thoroughfare. Possibly Duggai had a road map on the seat beside him and was avoiding main-traveled highways because he feared roadblocks.

It had been easy enough during the morning to follow the truck’s progress even though his imprisonment in the curtained camper had rendered him effectively blind. There’d been no mistaking it when the truck had gone out onto the blacktop county road, or when it had dropped through the foothills and gone onto the freeway. But at that point he’d lost his sense of bearings; he’d been uncertain whether they were traveling east or west until now. This of course had to be Palo Alto because that was where Jay and Shirley lived. He remembered their white stucco house, the red tile roof, the swimming pool, the sliding glass doors to the crisp modern living room.

The truck growled slowly through the streets: not hurrying. Hurrying might have attracted the attention of a prowling police car.

The pickup turned a corner, pressing Mackenzie back against the wall. He heard the folded transparent plastic raincoat skid lightly across the floor; he even felt it, light as it was, when it struck the side of his shoe. For some perverse reason he lifted his foot and stamped down on the little bundle, pinning it under the sole of his shoe. It was a bit softer than the truck floor. He held it there with the weight of his foot.

Mackenzie had a clear idea where Duggai would stop next. There had been four psychiatric witnesses at Duggai’s trial.