Side by Side

47

The sign that had been suspended from a bar between the brick columns had been taken down. As a precaution Winter handcuffed Click’s wrists behind him before he got out of the truck. He opened the padlock and swung open the steel pole that stretched, from hedgerow to hedgerow, across the asphalt driveway. The No Trespassing signs on either post glowed in the headlights. Winter watched Alexa drive through, took his truck in, then locked the gate.

The parking lot had been cut into the side of a hill studded with pine trees. The building at the base of the hill stood on a flat beyond a rock-walled stream. Its dark roof, accented by pools of rainwater, looked every bit as large as a football field.

“What is this place?” Click asked.

“Isolated,” Winter said.

Winter led Click and Alexa down a long run of wide stone steps, across a wooden bridge over a rushing brook. The slopes and flower beds were buried under a carpet of rust-colored pine needles. A motion-sensitive light came on, illuminating the walkway and the front of the structure. The trio crossed an expanse of concrete, beneath a cantilevered awning, to arrive at a set of glass doors. Streaks of adhesive were evidence of logo graphics that had been removed from the inside of the glass at some point with a razor. Subtle lighting from a fixture over the reception counter, which was faced with wood veneer, allowed the arrivals a view of a lobby that had been stripped of all other furniture. Winter took his keys from his jacket and, isolating one, used it to unlock the door. As he ushered the others inside, a rhythmic beeping filled the space.

“What is this place?” Click asked again, sounding like a curious tourist.

Winter strode behind the reception counter and, using another key, opened a steel box and typed in the numbers to disarm the alarm system. He removed an odd-shaped key that hung inside the alarm box and came back around the counter.

Winter gripped Click’s arm and led him roughly through a door, into utter darkness.

“No!” Click screamed, whirling in the dark. Winter pressed him against the wall with his left hand while he located and flipped a switch. The lights in the wide hallway came on.

When Click yelled, Alexa had pulled her gun, and the lights caught her crouched with her back against the wall, aiming at Winter and Click. She blinked, frowned, straightened, and put her gun back in her handbag.

Click’s face had lost all its color and was twisted into a mask of horror.

They walked fifty yards to a steel door. Winter unlocked it and pushed Click into a narrower hallway, where four very solid doors ran along one wall. Each door had an eye-level, sliding peep panel. Winter unlocked the first door.

“This a jail?” Click said.

Winter hit the light switch on the wall beside the door, illuminating a bare bulb in a cage fixture high up in the ceiling.

“Get in,” he said. He shoved Click and the young man hit the cell’s back wall.

“What is this place?” Click asked, his eyes darting around.

“A padded cell,” Winter said.

“What’re you going to do to me?”

“Like you said, I can’t torture you into talking. So I’m going to shelve you and move on. Sort of like a private maximum security cell block.”

“You can’t leave me in here!”

“Why not?”

“It’s kidnapping for one thing.”

“Now, that’s ironic,” Alexa said.

“Your family kidnapped the Dockerys. I kidnapped you. I don’t know where they are. Your family doesn’t know where you are. I don’t find the Dockerys, they’ll die. The Dockerys die, so do you.”

“You won’t kill me.”

“You’re getting the worst side of the deal, because the Dockerys will die soon, but you won’t die for a long time.”

“Bull,” Click said. “You’re not a murderer.”

“You don’t want to split that hair. A man can live for weeks without food before his stomach acids dissolve his vital organs. Water is a different story. Three to four days without it and you’re done. But. .” Winter reached into his coat and took out an eight-ounce bottle about half filled with water. “If you conserve it, you can ration this for a long time. It’ll give you more time to think about what your family did to the Dockerys.”

Click said, “It’s the same as shooting me.”

“Think so?” Winter scratched his head. “Doesn’t seem that way to me. More like you’re committing suicide.”

“Screw you!” Click’s voice was fierce, but his eyes reflected a deep uncertainty.

“Once I close this door, we are going to walk out of this building. If we find the Dockerys and they are still alive, I’ll come back and let you out. Nobody but me will ever come back to check on you, and even if the hall out here was filled with people, they wouldn’t hear you if you had a bullhorn. This room was designed so patients going through DTs couldn’t harm themselves or disturb others with their screaming. After a few days in here you might decide on suicide. It won’t be easy, but you might be able to get that bottle cap lodged in your throat and block the air passage, if you don’t just swallow it.”

“This is wrong!” Click’s eyes narrowed to slits, his lips thinned. He looked around and up at the bare bulb in a steel-wire cage. “This doesn’t bother me.”

Winter reached over and flipped the light switch, plunging the cell into darkness.

“You turning out the lights?” Click sounded afraid.

“Tough old Ferny Ernest isn’t afraid of whips, chains, knives, hot wire. But he doesn’t like the dark.”

“Please,” the young man begged. “Just leave the slot open and the hall light on.”

“Click, people pay good money to spend time in sensory-deprivation chambers. All alone with just your brilliant mind for company. You can do math problems or figure out computer programs to pass the time. Some religions believe that hell is a dark void where you spend eternity alone with only your thoughts for company. In every religion, murder is a mortal sin that guarantees hell.”

Click bolted for the door. Winter body-blocked him easily and flipped him onto his back. Then Winter stepped out and closed the door, silencing Click’s anguished screams. When Click pressed his face against the note-card-sized square of two-inch-thick Plexi, his eyes wild with terror, Winter slid it closed.

“How long are you going to leave him in there?” Alexa asked Winter.

“Good question.”

“So, what is this place?”

“A building Sean bought to turn it into a safe house for battered women. They start work on it in a few weeks. I had the keys because we’ve been meeting with architects and space planners.”

“Your own private Abu Ghraib. Great start, Massey. You just have one prisoner and you’re torturing him.”

On the way back up the hall, Winter told her about Click’s scars, the conditioning to physical pain the boy had been put through for years, probably starting when he was very young.

“God, child abuse for the good of the family,” Alexa said sadly.

“For the survival of the Smoots,” Winter said.

“He’ll bug out,” Alexa warned.

“His fear of the dark is a full-blown phobia, but he won’t die from it. If I leave him in there a couple of hours, it will seem like a lot longer to him. When we come back and give him a chance to come clean, he’ll do it.”

“This is so wrong,” Alexa said. “I can’t believe you. . that we can be so cruel.”

“Without him, you’ll never find the Dockerys in time, Bryce goes free, and not one of the Smoots will ever be punished for Lucy’s murder. What I got from reading Sarnov’s lips through a window won’t hold up in court. But knowing what we know might give us leverage with the next Smoot.”

Alexa grabbed Winter’s arm when they entered the lobby. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“Damn it, Lex!” Winter yelled. “Stop thinking about this little vermin, and think about Lucy and Elijah. Click is a career criminal who is conspiring to murder two people just to throw a trial to free another murderer so Bryce can go on being a death merchant. We let him out now and it’s all over.”

“Turn on the light,” she argued. “Keep him in there, but if he goes insane from the fear, he’s no good to us either.”

Winter thought it over for five seconds. “No way.”

“What do we do in the meanwhile?”

“See what we can learn from somebody else.”

“Peanut?”

“Don’t know where he is. We could go look at each Smoot house, maybe find another Smoot or two. We can’t torture them because they’ll never talk. We might follow Peanut if Clayton tells us where Peanut is-or was, since this phone-trap thing isn’t instant-and we could tag along behind him. If he goes to where they have the Dockerys. Too many ifs.”

“Why couldn’t we trade Click to Peanut for the Dockerys?” Alexa said.

“Peanut would never go for it. Click’s life isn’t worth a day in prison to him.”

“He might if we promise we won’t prosecute.”

“You think he’d believe that? We both know that men like Peanut Smoot aren’t the sorts you can deal with unless you have something they really, really want and can’t take away from you. And I don’t think Laughlin, Sarnov, and Colonel Bryce would let him do it and live. Peanut’s freedom is more important to him than the lives of any member of his family.”

“So how do we find Peanut?”

“We don’t. You go back to the hotel and get some rest. If I don’t call you by daylight, you call the cops anonymously and tell them where Click is. He doesn’t know your name. If I get the location, I’ll call you. I never show up, it’s not your fault.”

“What are you going to do?”

“The best I can,” he answered. “I know you want to help, but you’re in my way. If you really want the Dockerys, back off.”

“Tell me.”

“I’m going to go see someone who should know where they are, who might be willing to tell to save his skin.”

“Who?”

“A lawyer.”

“You’re not serious?” Alexa said. “You’re just going to tip our hand early. Laughlin isn’t some kid, Winter.”

“Lex, don’t worry. If he doesn’t tell me where the Dockerys are, I’ve got more padded cells.”