John Sandford - Field of Prey

Elle said, “When you talked with Agent Duncan, he asked you about the sequence of events that night. We’ve all read through that. We’d like to do something a little different, but I have to warn you, it won’t make you feel any better.”

“Well. .” She looked from Elle to Davenport to Mattsson. “What?”

“We want to get you very, very relaxed, with your eyes closed, on the couch here, and then we want to take you back through the whole sequence,” Elle said. “We want you to try to visualize it, rather than think about it. Like you’re dreaming it.”

“You mean, like, have a nightmare about it?”

“Not exactly,” Elle said. “Because you’ll be in control. Once we get you relaxed, we’d like you to stay in the dream as long as you can.”

“Okay. If you think it’ll help.”

Elle moved Jorgenson to the couch, pulled the drapes over the picture window, brought another chair from the kitchen, so she could sit close to Jorgenson’s head. She started by asking about Jorgenson’s relationship to Rex, got her laughing a bit, then about her parents, who were both still alive, and living in the house where Jorgenson had grown up. “My oldest friend still lives there. . beside my parents, she’s the only one in town who knows exactly where I am.”

Elle took her through her school years, then a couple of years at a community college, where she trained in food service management. When she took the job at Auntie’s, she’d thought she might eventually wind up as the manager, or even, in due time, the owner.

“That didn’t happen, because of what happened with Horn,” she said.

She started talking about the moment she was kidnapped-of her fear of dying, of the panic-stricken thrashing inside the heavy canvas postal bag. Elle slowed her down: “You’re going way too fast. Tell me, what was that night like, at Auntie’s? A lot of people there that night? Was it hot or cold outside? Could you see the stars when you went out?”

Elle asked a lot of safe questions that elicited brief, easy answers. They could feel Jorgenson slipping into the dream. Her words came more slowly, and her voice dropped a half-octave. Then, “There were about six bags of garbage when I finished, and one of them, with the grease pit stuff, really smelled. I took that out first because I wanted to get it out of the place.”

The dumpster was high, and she had to stand on tiptoe to flip the cover back. “Had to keep the cover down because, if we didn’t, people would come at night and throw their garbage in it. When I started closing the cover at night, I saved the store fifty dollars a month in garbage bills.”

She threw in the first bag, walked back to the diner and got two more bags and threw them in. . and the canvas bag came down over her head.

She began moving on the couch as she talked about it, her sentences growing choppy, and Elle patted her on the arm and said, “Easy, easy, we’re on your couch, right at home. . ”

The bag was rough and thick and dark and she really didn’t understand what had happened. She couldn’t see and could hardly breathe inside the bag, and then she was knocked to the ground, and the rope around the edges of the bag was tightened, binding her legs together above the knees. She began screaming and fighting against the bag. Her legs were free below the bag, and she tried to kick the kidnapper. But he picked her up, threw her in the back of his truck, and wrapped her ankles and legs with silver duct tape-she knew it was silver duct tape because some of it was still on her legs when the cops got to her.

Then he’d slammed the truck door, had jumped into the driver’s seat, and she’d felt the truck accelerate out of the parking lot, missing the exit curb-cut and bumping over the curb. “That was easy to do, I did it myself,” she said.

She knew she was on the backseat of a cab-and-a-half, because the seat on which she was lying was flat and narrow, and she could feel herself jammed between the back of the seat and the back side of the driver’s seat. Inside the bag, she’d nearly panicked. But not quite. She’d been fighting the bag and screaming when her hand hit the knife in her uniform pocket.

The knife.

A Leatherman with a long serrated blade. She fumbled it out, opened the blade, cut the rope edge on the bag, “like cutting butter,” then pushed her hand down to her ankles and cut through the tape.

She’d stopped struggling as she did that, but as soon as she’d cut her legs loose, she screamed some more, and struggled against the bag, hoping to fool the driver, keep him from looking back at her, as she hitched the bag up and slipped out of it.

When she was out, she’d pushed herself up with her left hand, her bottom hand, and found herself directly behind the driver. She hadn’t hesitated. She’d stuck him in the back and neck repeatedly. .

“I was so angry . I was insane . I wanted to kill him.” She was reliving it, her arms jerking as, in her mind, she stuck the driver again and again.

The truck had rolled, she’d gotten out, she’d run to a house not far up the road. . the cops had come. . the truck had belonged to Horn.

Horn was never seen again.

When she finished, she exhaled, and some tension, which had been building up in her body, visibly eased. Elle looked at Lucas, and he said, quietly, slowly, “Heather, I have a couple more questions. Just a couple more. You said he threw you on the ground and tied the bag around your legs, then threw you in the truck, taped your ankles and lower legs, and then slammed the door and the truck took off. . The way you were talking, that sounds like it was really quick. I mean, really quick.”

“It was,” she said. “I mean, he picked me up and threw me in and slammed the door.”

“You said you came up directly behind the driver. So your feet were on the passenger side?”

“Mm-hmm. I came up right behind him. My feet were on the passenger side. I didn’t hardly have any room to move.”

“When he picked you up and threw you in the truck, did he pick you up around the waist?”

“Uh. . I uh. . I was trying to kick, he was holding my feet. He picked me up by my feet. .”

“And he threw you into the truck. .”

“Let me see, I. . yes, in the truck.”

“When you took the garbage out to the dumpster, did you see the truck? You didn’t mention that.”

“No. . I never saw it.”

“How far did he carry you before he threw you in the truck?”

“Oh, not far. He picked me up by, he. .” She sat up, her eyes flying open, and said, “Oh, Jesus Mary and Joseph. There were two of them.”

Lucas: “I thought there might be.”

Mattsson stared at him, and Elle saw it, and spread her hands in a gesture that meant, “Like I told you. .”

Lucas pushed a little further: “When you stabbed this man, you told Jon Duncan that you stabbed him several times. When you stabbed him, did you really stick him? Or did you slash him, you know, like cutting a sandwich?”

“Oh, no, I stuck him. In and out,” she said. She was sitting up now, with her feet on the floor, eyes wide, and she mimed the stabbing, hard, overhand strokes, into Horn’s neck, back, and arm. “There was lots of blood. . the knife got all slippery. . I remember that, the blood on the knife. I stuck him and stuck him and stuck him. .”

“Did you see any other trucks? After you got out?”

“No. After the truck rolled over, I got out and I ran into the cornfield, and I thought I heard him coming after me, so I freaked out and ran away and fell down a couple times, and then I got to some woods and I hid in there, but all I wanted to do was get away from there. I saw some lights, I was trying to get there, but I didn’t see a truck. . I went down in this dry crick and crawled and crawled a long way, my legs were all cut, and then I was in another field, and then I stood up and ran. I had to cross the road to get to the Marshalls’ house-the Marshalls were the lights up the road. I saw the taillights in the ditch where the truck was. .”