Michael Prescott: Blind Pursuit

Even its ultimate fate? To be led to slaughter, to sag under a butcher’s saw?

The sticky stuff sealing her lips was tape. If she could lift her hands to her face, she could untape her mouth, then chew at the rope on her wrists until possibly the knot came undone.

But her arms wouldn’t move. They were pinned to her right thigh by another loop of rope, knotted so tightly it threatened to cut off the circulation in her leg. She was unable to work it loose.

Bending at the waist, she tried to bring her head closer to her hands, close enough that she could at least raise the blindfold.

No use. She would have to be a contortionist to do it.

Never had she been so vulnerable, so completely powerless. Even in her parents’ house on that August night twenty-three years ago, she’d been able to take action, fight for survival.

The noise in her throat was a choked moan.

Erin prayed that her sister wasn’t with her. Prayed that the voice over the intercom had been only a trick, and Annie was safe at home.

She wanted one of them, at least, to survive this night.

The van’s high beams splashed white light across a blur of macadam and roadside mesquite shrubs as Harold Gund sped south on Houghton Road.

He wondered if Erin was alert yet. The others had recovered quickly from the incapacitating shock. All three had been fully conscious when he’d carried them into the wilderness and hammered the stakes into the ground.

The memory of those women, of what he had done to them in the woods, made him feel…

But he didn’t know how he felt.

His hands gripped the steering wheel, the knuckles squeezed bloodless. From this clue he surmised that what he felt was fury.

Fury at himself? Or at the women, for having been so damnably easy to abduct? Or at a world that could make possible a thing like him? And what kind of thing was that?

He had no answers to these questions. Introspection was unknown to him. When he looked inside himself, he saw only darkness, as deep and still as the desert gloom.

His turnoff was coming up shortly. He cut his speed a bit and leaned forward, eyes narrowed. The unmarked side road would be easy to miss, especially in this dark landscape devoid of variation, this infinite sweep of sameness.

He wondered how many little lives were fated to be snuffed out tonight in the expanse of brush and weeds around him. How many cactus wrens would be plucked from their nests, how many rabbits would perish in their burrows? Even now, among the gnarled trees and glistening cacti, warm blood was being spilled, moist flesh tasted.

He was not so different from the rest of creation. Perhaps it was the safely civilized members of the human species who were unnatural, not he.

Or perhaps not.

He shook his head, defeated, as always, by the enigma of himself.

Sometimes he listened to the TV specials that promised to explain men like him, hoping for insight. So far he had been disappointed.

The experts consulted by the police and the media were fools. Possibly they knew something about others of his kind, but of him they understood nothing.

He recalled an interview with one such specimen, described as a psychological profiler. The man wore a gray suit and a red telegenic tie. He sat behind his office desk, haloed in diplomas, buttressed by shelves of books. His opinions were stated with the blunt obviousness of a factual report.

The typical serial killer, or lust murderer as he is more accurately identified, the man explained in a bland, professorial tone, views murder as a substitute for sex. He attains sexual release by spilling his victim’s blood or by abusing the body afterward. For him, killing is a form of intimacy, the only intimacy he knows.

The interviewer asked if such a man might experience twisted feelings of love for his victim. Oh, yes, the expert replied. Love or at least erotic desire. Often the woman is a surrogate for someone who rejected him or hurt him-a particular woman from his past.

He killed strangers to avenge a past wrong? That’s right. And to give a purpose to his existence. The only organizing principle of his life, the only order and structure imposed on it, is his cyclic pattern of violence. He lives solely to kill.

Would he ever stop? Never He doesn’t want to. He feels alive while killing, feels powerful and whole. This is not a tormented person. This is a man who’s quite comfortable with what he does… and what he is.

Gund closed his eyes briefly.

Jackass.

Less than a mile north of Interstate 10, he turned onto a narrow side road. The yellow sign warned NO OUTLET.

The road was a mere strip of rutted dirt, a foot wider than the van on either side. Palo verde trees, blooming yellow, lined the road, casting windblown blossoms on Gund’s windshield. Abruptly the trees on the left side vanished, replaced by a barbed-wire fence, rows of knotty strings gleaming white in the starlight.

Beyond the fence, ramshackle buildings slouched in crooked silhouette against the mountainous horizon. No lights burned in the windows.

Centered in Gund’s high beams was a gate, hinged on posts that straddled the road. A padlocked chain kept it shut-an unnecessary precaution, since nobody ever came here.

Nobody but him.

The vehicle slowed.

Erin perceived the gradual abatement of engine noise, felt the transmission shudder through a change of gears. The ride, which had been rough for several minutes, became rougher still.

Dirt road? Felt like one.

The brakes sighed.

Dead stop. Motor idling.

Creak of a door swinging open. Pause. Clunk-the door slammed shut.

Moving again, but only at a crawl. The chassis lurched and jounced, shock absorbers squeaking like mattress springs. Had he driven off the road altogether?

Whatever was happening, one thing was clear. He had reached his destination.

Her heart ran like a rabbit in her chest. She could be dead soon. Her private universe, extinguished.

Her parents, both strict Irish Catholics, had given her the beginnings of a religious upbringing, which Lydia Connor had carried on; but college had bled a lot of that out of her. She wasn’t sure if she could believe in a life beyond this one. It was a problem she hadn’t expected to face with any urgency for years. For decades.

Never got married. Never had a kid. Never took that trip to Ireland to look for the original Reillys and Morgans. Never, never, never; and now, maybe, she never would.

Stop that. Stay focused.

Again the vehicle was slowing. It rumbled to a stop.

For the second time a door groaned open.

Footsteps on dirt or gravel. Closer. Closer.

He was coming for her.

Fear soared toward blind panic; she fought to ground her emotions before they carried her away.

To struggle would be pointless as long as her hands were bound. For the moment her best hope was to feign unconsciousness. If he thought she was still out cold, he might get careless, give her an opportunity to strike.

She made herself go limp, drawing long, rhythmic breaths.

Turn of a key, rattle of a sliding door. Double thump as he climbed up into the rear of the vehicle where she lay.

He planted his feet directly before her. She smelled shoe leather.

“Still asleep?” he murmured, sounding puzzled.

She inhaled, exhaled, the slow cadence of her breath playing in counterpoint to the jackhammer pounding of her heart.

Creak of a knee as he crouched down. When he spoke again, his voice was very close.

“Well, not for much longer.”

What did that mean? Nothing, forget it, concentrate on breathing in, out, in, out, no break in the pattern, nothing to give herself away.

Hands.