John Sandford - Field of Prey

After the first attack, she’d lain in a corner of the room. She was naked: he’d taken her clothes with him. When she’d recovered a bit, she’d crawled around the room in the dark, patting the doors and walls, but there was not a scrap of anything useful in the room. She went back to her corner, and her blanket, and waited. How long, she didn’t know.

Then he came back, and did it all again.

She got to her feet, and got her hands up, and he laughed and said, “Atta girl, let’s box.” She’d staggered around the room, her good eye going to the door-could she run for it? Probably not, but if she got out in the basement, she might get lucky. If there was a workbench with a hammer or a hatchet or a wrench. .

Distracted by the thought, she never really saw the punch that broke her teeth and knocked her down. She didn’t want to get back up, but she did, but she’d lost all discipline and went for him, windmilling, shrieking, and she got him, slashing one cheek with her fingernails; and he shouted at her, and then hit her again and again, knocked her against the wall and broke her nose with a wind punch, and she sagged to the floor again, and he dragged her by her hair, smashing her into the wall, then let her lie, moaning, as he dragged the weight bench back into the room.

She began to understand that she was going to die. She didn’t welcome the idea, but it wasn’t completely repellent, either. Sometime during the last beating, he’d broken one of her ribs, as well as her teeth and nose, and when she moved, or coughed, the pain from her cracked rib lanced through her entire body cavity.

Even with the blanket, she was freezing. Outside, the day must be hot. Down here, in the basement, naked, covered with concrete grime, it was cold. She wrapped the blanket around herself and tried to think, but she couldn’t think. She began to drift, dragged herself back, then drifted again.

This time, he was gone for a good long time. How long, she didn’t know, but it seemed long. .

R-A didn’t sleep all that well; he was too excited.

The first attack hadn’t really been much-he’d expected more resistance than he’d gotten. Probably, he thought, because she hadn’t been ready for what was about to happen to her. The second attack had been more entertaining. She’d really come after him, for a moment or two, and had managed to give him a pretty good scratch down his cheek. That would take some explaining.

“Goddamned stupid thing to do,” Horn told him. “They’re out looking for a kidnapped female cop, and here you are, a single guy, the kind of guy they’re looking for, and you’ve got a big scratch right down your face. What are you going to tell Roy and the other guys? I cut myself shaving?”

“That had crossed my mind,” R-A said.

“Oh, for Christ’s sakes. You gotta think of something. Go look at yourself in the mirror.”

He went and looked at himself in the mirror, and Horn was right. She’d cut him from the upper corner of his right ear all the way to the corner of his mouth. The cut looked like nothing more than a fingernail scratch from an angry woman.

He checked the time: six-fifteen in the morning. He had an idea, but he had to hurry. He shaved and showered, got dressed, and with Horn shouting after him, “I don’t think this’ll work,” he half-jogged up to the store, went in, locked the door behind himself, turned on the lights, and hurried to the back. The first clerk would be arriving in ten minutes or so.

On the back wall of the store, a heavy-duty Peg-Board held racks of gardening tools against the wall. He noticed a couple weeks before that the rack was shaky-nothing dangerous, but shaky, as if one of the screws that held it to the wall had pulled out.

He got a step stool, found the loose screw, pulled it out; Horn, coming up behind him, said, “Now we got two loose screws.”

“Fuck off,” R-A said.

The next screw was tight. He got a big Phillips screwdriver and took it out, and then shoved it back in the wall with his fingers, enlarging the hole. The third screw was also somewhat loose, like the first one, and he pulled it out and dropped it on the floor: now the whole rack of tools wanted to tip.

In the auto section, he found a vanity mirror that clipped to a car’s visor, pulled the wrapping off it, and looked at the scratch again. Already swollen a little, and starting to heal. He’d need to draw some blood. He got a nail from the hardware aisle, and the mirror, and took it back to the rack.

Sat on the step stool and waited.

The clerk named Roy showed up at four minutes to seven o’clock, right on time. R-A heard the key rattling in the lock, and then Roy calling, “Anybody home?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” R-A called back. “You want to get the front shades?”

“Got ’em,” Roy called.

R-A looked in the mirror, tilting his head just so, and dragged the nail down the length of the scratch. Blood began seeping out.

Good enough. He threw the nail back behind the tool rack, put the mirror on a shelf, and then pulled the tool rack over on himself.

The clatter sounded like the end of the world. All the hand tools came off, and a dozen rakes and a limb saw, smashing down through the adjacent bolt rack. The tool rack was made of three-quarter-inch plywood, eight feet long, four feet high, and it hit him hard-he didn’t have to fake the fall beneath it.

Then Roy was shouting, “What happened? What happened? R-A, are you okay?”

“Get the fuckin’ board off me,” R-A groaned. “Ah, Jesus. That hurt.”

Roy was two feet away from him, looking down. “You’re bleeding. Let me get this. .”

Roy helped him up, and R-A put his hand to his face, then took it away and looked at the blood. There wasn’t much, but there was enough. “How bad is it?” he asked.

“Not too bad,” Roy said. “You gotta put something on it. We got some triple antibiotic ointment in the first-aid kit. You’ll need a couple Band-Aids.” Roy looked around at the wreckage. “Jeez, how’n the heck did this happen?”

“Screws must’ve pulled out of the drywall,” R-A said. “That hurt. Wasn’t the tools, so much, but that board is heavier’n hell, and I had to go and pull on that rake. Got hung up on the hook, and the whole shebang come down on me. You guys gotta put it back up, but screw it in there good. If this had fell on a customer, we’d be going to court. Goddamn, that hurt. .”

“Maybe you ought to take a break,” Roy suggested.

“Yeah. Think I’ll go stand in the shower for a while. . Goddamn, that hurt. That really hurt.”

He put a limp on, going out the door. Called back, “Hey, Roy? Why don’t you call Gene, see if he can come in early to help out? You need me, I’ll be down at the house.”

“Yeah, yeah. Take it easy.”

Horn thought it was hilarious, but he was also impressed: “You could do Shakespeare. Or maybe one of those Mexican soap operas, anyway. ’Course, Roy isn’t the sharpest knife in the dishwasher. You might want to keep that scratch out of sight. At least, until, you know, you get rid of her.”

“She’s breaking down already,” R-A said. “She won’t fight anymore. I’ll fuck her a couple more times, then get rid of her tonight. Gotta go up to the store and get a rope.”

“Why don’t you just shoot her?”

“What’s the fun in that?”

“You shot the O’Neills. .”

“That was business, not pleasure,” R-A said. “Nope, I need a rope.”

“After you get rid of her, if I were you, I’d take every bit of junk you got in the garage and throw it in that bomb shelter, so maybe they won’t do that science shit on the floor. There’s gotta be blood soaked into the floor and walls,” Horn said. “Because I’m telling you, they’re gonna get to you, and sooner instead of later. There probably aren’t three hundred single guys in town, and they’ll be looking at all of them. You might get through today, and maybe tomorrow, but she better be gone by then.”