Linwood Barclay - Too Close to Home

Slowly, I worked myself off the couch. “Boy, I was out like a light.”

“I nodded off for a while, too. We should both go to bed, get a good night’s sleep.”

I agreed. “First, I’m going to go outside, check the shed, lock things up. We don’t have cops up the road anymore, you know.”

“We don’t?” Ellen sounded concerned.

“They’ve packed it in,” I said.

“The guy was there when I got home with the pizza,” Ellen said.

“He left just after. They’ve wrapped it all up, you see.”

“No,” Ellen said defiantly. “They haven’t.”

I gave her an upturned thumb and went outside by way of the kitchen, locking the door behind me so that Ellen would be safe. There wasn’t much spring in my step as I walked across the gravel to the shed. My feet were dragging. It was dusk, and would be dark in another half hour or so. There were things I could do, equipment to tend, bills to prepare, but all I had the strength for was to lock things up.

They got me as I came through the open garage door. Coming from my right, a shadow, then the blow.

Followed by darkness.

I couldn’t have been out that long, because when I woke up, there was still some light outside. The world beyond the shed was gray, verging on black. Maybe only a couple of minutes. But it had been long enough to secure me into an old wooden chair from the shed.

Even before I began to assess my situation, I was aware that the fingers of my right hand were very sore. Other parts of my body hurt, of course. My head was pounding. But the four fingers of my right hand felt pinched and uncomfortable.

I moved my head around, started to say something, and realized my mouth was secured with tape. I looked down at my body and saw duct tape wrapped around me just below my shoulders, more down around my waist. I couldn’t move my legs, and while I couldn’t see them below my knees, I assumed they’d been tied to the chair with more tape.

Tape held my left hand to one of the rungs of the seatback. I had to blink a couple of times, however, to comprehend what had been done to my right hand.

It wasn’t tied to the chair. It was taped to my hedge trimmer, which was sitting in my lap. I couldn’t see my fingers or hand at all, there was so much tape wrapped around them.

I understood now what had been done to me. And what I was facing.

My fingers had been jammed into the open slots of the trimmer, the ones the blades went through at lightning speed when the trigger on the handle was squeezed. Then my fingers had been wrapped with tape to keep them there. Squeezing the trigger, only for a fraction of a second, would cut all four fingers, probably down to about the first knuckles. The blades might not have been designed to go through bone, but I had little doubt they could do it. I’d cut plenty of bushes with this machine, hacking through small wooden branches under half an inch thick.

And these blades, they’d go through flesh like butter.

Once I’d figured out my situation, my eyes moved to the back of the trimmer, and the yellow extension cord attached to it. I followed the cord down to the floor, where it came up from a huge coil, like a snake before a charmer. From the bottom of the coil, a single line of cord emerged, leading toward the wall. I couldn’t see, from my position, whether it was plugged in or not.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty’s awake,” someone said.

“Oooh, goody,” said someone else.

The voices came from behind me, and I turned my head to one side, then the other, trying to get a look at them. But I needn’t have bothered. They both came around in front of me.

They were wearing stocking masks. My guess was they hadn’t been wearing them until they’d seen me stir, because they were both tugging them down around their necks. Their faces were mashed and distorted behind the hose, but I could tell that one man’s hair was dark, brown or black, while the other man had almost no hair at all.

“Fuck,” said the dark-haired one. “It’s too fucking hot for these.”

“Try to cope,” said the bald one. He looked at me. “So, how ya feeling, asshole? You weren’t asleep all that long.”

I raised my head to look into their shrouded eyes. I wondered if they could see the fear in mine.

Where, I thought suddenly, feeling the panic well up in me, is Ellen? I wasn’t sure, if my mouth hadn’t been taped, whether I’d even ask what they’d done with her, on the off chance they didn’t know she was in the house.

But then, as if he were able to translate my darting eyes into words, the bald one said, “Your wifey is just fine, Cutter. She’s in the house, tied up like you, except she doesn’t have her hand attached to a hedge trimmer.”

“Woulda been easier, though,” said the dark-haired one. “Her fingers’d be smaller, easier to jam in.”

The bald one shrugged. “Not to worry. We should be able to get what we need from this one.”

They must have taken my keys off me, or somehow tricked Ellen to come to the door. I tried to place the voices, wondered if I had ever heard them before, didn’t think I recognized them. They were both in pretty good shape. Lean, close to six feet, dressed casually but not cheaply. Expensive-looking jeans, the bald one had on a Lacoste T-shirt, the little green alligator emblem on his left chest. The other guy had on a simple black T, cut high enough on the arms to reveal well-toned biceps and part of a tattoo on his right arm, what looked like the end of a knife blade.

I tried to recall whether I’d ever seen Lance without a shirt on-it seemed unlikely-and if I had, whether he’d had a tattoo like that. Surely, if I’d ever seen it, I’d have remembered. This guy was about the same height and build as Lance, and if his face was damaged from a run-in with a watering can, I couldn’t tell through the dark stocking. The few words he’d uttered didn’t put me immediately in mind of the mayor’s driver, but for obvious reasons, I had him on my mind.

“You’ve noticed that we have you at our advantage,” the bald one said. He reached down and picked up the hedge trimmer, which dragged my hand up with it. I started to pull my arm back, but all that did was take the trimmer with it. “Tut-tut, you better behave,” he said.

He grabbed hold of the handle, floated his finger just beyond the trigger.

“So you see what’s happening here,” he said. “I touch this button, just even for like a fucking fraction of a second, and all the tips of your fingers are going to come off.”

I could feel droplets of sweat rolling down my forehead. One of them found its way into my right eye, and the saltiness of it stung like hell. I blinked several times.

“It’s going to be messy as hell,” he said. “And I have to be honest with you. I don’t really like the sight of blood. The good thing is, there’s so much tape wrapped around your hand here, I won’t have to see it squirting around all over the place.”

“Jesus,” said the dark-haired one, who’d been looking at my hand but then looked away. “That’s going to fucking hurt.” He reached under the nylon and scratched his neck. “Man, this is so goddamn hot. Couldn’t we just tape his eyes so we wouldn’t have to wear these things?”

“I think we’ll have an easier time persuading Mr. Cutter here to help us out if he can see what it is we plan to do with him.”

I made some noises behind the tape.

“Say what?” said the bald one. “You don’t even know what I’m going to ask you yet, and already you’re ready to talk?”

I slowly nodded my head. The bald one took his hand off the hedge trimmer handle and ripped the tape off my mouth. It hurt like all get-out but I held back a scream through gritted teeth.