Blind Pursuit

22

Erin waited, her gaze fixed on the closed door, until the rumble of the truck or van had faded into the night.

Then she stood, thighs fluttering, and surveyed the room. On the chair opposite hers was a small plastic bottle. She picked it up. Her Tegretol.

He had taken a considerable risk to bring her the pills. Absurdly she felt almost grateful to him. The feeling worried her; it was not unusual for hostages to bond with their captors.

She warned herself not to Stockholm. If she started to identify with him, she would lose any hope of resistance.

There appeared to be no immediate danger of losing her perspective on the man who had kidnapped her and continued to threaten her life. Still, she found it hard to condemn him as unequivocally evil.

On the one hand, he did seem to genuinely regret his crimes and to desire liberation from his pathological compulsion; and that compulsion might well be a byproduct of an epileptic fugue state in which he was not fully responsible for his actions.

On the other hand, though he had taken three innocent lives, he refused to submit to punishment-or even to treatment on any terms except his own.

Like the classic criminal personality, he was childishly oblivious to the needs, rights, or interests of others. Even the murders appeared to trouble him less for the tragic waste they entailed than for the inner turmoil they had generated. That turmoil, at least, implied the nascent stirrings of a conscience, but it was a conscience freakishly stunted and barely viable.

Did she hate him or pity him? Maybe both. Still, as long as she was trapped in this nightmare, facing death in their every encounter, hate would be the dominant emotion.

Well, perhaps she wouldn’t be trapped much longer. Perhaps she could complete the escape aborted earlier.

From the cardboard box she retrieved the wide end of the comb. Kneeling, she inserted it in the crack under the door, probing for the other half.

It had to be within reach. Unless her abductor had unwittingly kicked it clear as he stormed out. If so, it could be yards away, irrecoverable.

Slowly she swept the comb back and forth until it brushed against a small, hidden obstacle.

She drew both items toward her. The beaklike tip of the comb’s narrow end slid into view.

“Thank God,” she whispered.

Then she frowned at herself, ashamed of allowing a mere scrap of plastic to mean so much.

Either end of the comb was, by itself, too short to allow her any leverage. There had to be a way to effect a repair job.

Cleaning the room this morning, she’d found the strip of tape that had sealed her mouth. Her abductor had yanked it off-she winced, recalling the shock of pain as the adhesive tore free of her lips-and let it drop to the floor.

The tape was now part of the small, tidy pile of soiled paper towels and litter that she’d left in a corner of the room. She dug it out and touched the gummed side. It was still sticky enough to be of use.

Carefully she put the comb back together, then wrapped the ragged juncture of the two pieces with the tape, winding it tightly.

To test the comb, she flexed it slightly. Though less stable than before, it ought to hold.

Just call me Miss Fix-it, she thought with a smile, then corrected herself, remembering her Ph. D. Dr. Fix-it, that is.

Her brief flush of pleasure, rare in this dungeon, faded as she turned her attention to the double barrier before her-the dead bolt, the chain lock.

Frowning again, she set to work.

Gund was raging, raging.

Outwardly calm as he steered the Chevy Astro onto Houghton Road, heading north. But inside…

Bloom of flame. Thrash of limbs. A woman’s scream yodeling giddily toward the stars.

Erin’s scream.

He wanted to burn her, burn the bitch, soak her in gas and flick a lit match into the puddle- whoosh — and watch her smooth skin crisp and peel.

For a long time there was nothing in his world but the hum of the road, the engine’s steady grumble, the red petals of fire unfolding like a night-blooming flower.

His jaws slid slowly in a painful grinding motion.

So easy to kill her, and so good.

Part of him had wanted to destroy her all along. Last night he’d very nearly pulled the trigger when the pistol was in her mouth.

He hadn’t kidnapped her for that purpose, however. He’d taken her prisoner in order to help himself, save himself.

At least that was what he liked to believe. Perhaps it was only a convenient lie. Perhaps his true intention always had been to feed her to the flames.

Even now he could hear her final agonized shrieks, smell the mingled odors of gasoline and charred meat No.

The wheel spun under his hand. The Astro skidded off the road onto the dirt shoulder and shuddered to a stop.

He killed the engine, listened to the clockwork tick of its cooling parts. Around him was a vast silence and darkness, a waveless sea faintly foam-flecked with starlight.

Dry wind, unusually warm for an April night, gusted through the open window. The air had a velvet texture; it wrapped him like a winding sheet.

Sitting motionless, hands resting on the wheel in the ten o’clock position approved by driving instructors, chest expanding and contracting with slow, metronomic breaths, he struggled to marshal calmness and strength.

The fantasy of Erin staked out, drenched in gas-banish that.

He could afford no such thoughts and images. He was too likely to act on them, to make them real.

A chill passed through him as he understood how near he was right now to surrendering to the secret, deadly side of himself.

But he would not yield. Not tonight.

A long, slow exhalation shuddered out of him, leaving him limp.

He was nearer to the critical stage of his cycle of violence than he had realized. But still in control, for a short while longer anyway. Some time was left to him-and to Erin. Some, but not much.

He wondered if there was any chance he could hold off disaster. Perhaps he could. Perhaps.

Even in their abbreviated session tonight, Erin had offered some unexpected insights. The connection between the three women and his past-he had not been consciously aware of that. Yet as soon as she had identified it, he’d known it to be true.

He had selected the first one, Marilyn Vaccaro, because he’d seen her leaving a Catholic church. But at no time then or since, until tonight, had he permitted himself to recognize that fact or to consider its implications.

Though Erin’s probing questions had disconcerted him, objectively he had to concede that she’d been doing only what he’d asked her to do, and doing it well. Already he felt fractionally less mysterious to himself, felt that there was logic, of a kind, underlying his dark urges.

She was helping. She really was.

Whether or not she could free him, he didn’t know. But one thing was certain. If he killed her, or if he walked out every time she aroused his anger, he would never be cured.

To profit from her skill he had to do the work, ride out the emotional fever that such close interrogation brought on; and he had to be honest with her… as honest, at least, as he could permit himself to be.

All right, then. He would go back. Go back and try again, while there was still time.

He restarted the engine, guided the van onto the road, and executed a sloppy U-turn. The headlight beams scared a loping jackrabbit out of the southbound lane.

Flooring the gas pedal, he accelerated to sixty, retracing his route.