Michael Prescott - Blind Pursuit

Blue eyes, red hair. Erin saw it then. The link between the first of his victims and his past. “Was your mother Irish?”

In his startled silence she heard the answer he didn’t want to give.

“Catholic?” she pressed.

This time he spoke, his reply drawn out of him with painful slowness. “Yes.”

“Marilyn Vaccaro was kidnapped after attending a midnight church service.” He said nothing. “If you saw her leave that church, you must have known she was Catholic. That’s why you chose her, isn’t it?”

“I… don’t know.”

“I think you do.”

“No, I mean… It wasn’t a conscious decision on my part. I never realized…”

He sounded genuinely astonished to have discovered this unsuspected facet of himself.

“Do you realize it now?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Why do you suppose you focused on her religion?”

“I can’t say. Really.”

“Do you have something against Catholics?” No response. “Do you?”

“Why would I?”

“You tell me.”

“I’ve got nothing against them.” He coughed, a nervous sound.

“Don’t hide things from me, please. Not if you want my help.” He wouldn’t speak. “I’m Catholic, you know. Irish Catholic, like your mother. Did you pick me for that reason?”

“No. No, it was those articles you wrote, the ones on fire starters.”

She wouldn’t be sidetracked. “Are you a practicing Catholic?”

“Of course not.”

“Why of course?”

“I just… I could never accept it. An afterlife. Eternal punishment.”

Punishment again. The idea that had set him off last time. Plausible enough that he would hate and fear a religion that held out the prospect of damnation for his sins. But somehow his answer struck her as too facile.

“What else do you object to about the Catholic faith?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it. I’m not a theologian.”

“You don’t need to be a theologian in order to have an opinion. Did your mother raise you as a Catholic?”

“Yes.”

“You must have learned some tenets of the religion. What turned you off?”

“It’s crap,” he said with sudden vehemence. “All of it-everything they believe.”

“What about it is crap?”

“All of it, I said.”

“What, specifically?”

“Abortion.” The word was blurted out, and she knew she’d penetrated to the heart of the matter.

“The church doesn’t permit abortion,” she said quietly.

“No.”

“And it ought to?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Some people shouldn’t be born.”

His answer chilled her.

“Like you?” she whispered.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Do you wish your mother had aborted you?”

“ I didn’t say that!”

Perilous to ride him any harder, but she had to. She couldn’t let it go.

“Do you hate her,” she asked with quiet insistence, “for bringing you into the world? Is that why-”

“No, God damn you, no!”

He was up now, and close-must have leaped out of his chair. She could picture him standing over her, balled fists shaking as he contended with the impulse to lash out and stifle her questions forever.

A long, crackling silence passed while she waited to learn if she would die tonight.

Sudden footsteps circled away from her, toward the door.

“I brought you the Tegretol,” he said from a distance, his voice empty of feeling. “You’d better be sure to take it, Doc. We wouldn’t want anything to jeopardize your health.” The door did not slam. It clicked shut politely. She heard the rattle of a key, then a receding drumroll as he climbed the stairs.

Our first session, she thought as her trembling hands groped for the blindfold’s knot.

She was by no means certain she would survive a second one.

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.