by Mark Gimenez
The other door was closed.
Her closet at home was bigger than this bedroom. But it was a cozy little room, like her room at Ben’s cabin, where she wished she were now, safe and secure with Ben and looking forward to a day in the workshop or hiking the hills or driving into town for dinner. She wished she were safe with Ben. She wanted to cry, but she refused to let the tears come.
Instead, she pushed the blanket back and almost screamed out loud: she was wearing pink flannel pajamas. Like, way pink! What’s with this guy and pink? She vaguely remembered changing into the pajamas but not putting on the thick green wool socks. She knelt up, wiped the moisture off the window, and put her face to the glass; it was cold. Outside, white snow covered the ground and icicles hung on the limbs of the tall trees, but they were not at all like the trees back home. They were Christmas trees. In the distance, among the trees, she noticed a movement … and then a head … and a—wow, a deer tiptoeing through the snow! Bambi! Oh, golly, it’s so cute, maybe later she could feed it and—
Bambi suddenly shuddered, then its legs gave way and it collapsed. Oh my gosh! Gracie heard an echo, like a loud bang. Bambi just lay there. Then the snow around Bambi turned red; the red spread out and formed a little river cutting through the snow and running downhill. Her eyes followed the red river until a big boot stepped right into it and splashed the red like Sam jumping into a mud puddle. Two men holding long guns walked up to Bambi; a big fat man lifted the deer’s head then dropped it. He was grinning. Gracie fell back onto the bed and dove under the blanket. I’ve got to escape before they shoot me too!
“Patty?” There was a knock on the door. “You awake?”
Junior.
She stuck her head out from under the blanket. “No, but Gracie’s awake.”
“Got hot water for your bath. You decent?”
“As decent as a girl can be in pink PJs.”
The door opened, and Junior entered; he was carrying two big buckets of steaming water and wearing another plaid shirt.
“Did you hit like, a going-out-of-business sale on plaid shirts?” she asked.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“We don’t got no running water or electricity up here,” he said, disappearing into the bathroom, “but I can still fix you a hot bath every week.”
She heard the water being poured into a bathtub.
“Every week? I take a bath every day.”
Junior appeared in the doorway with a big smile. “Just like my mama. I used to fetch hot water for her every morning. Bathtub, that was hers. And all that girl stuff in there.” He paused a moment like he was remembering a good time. Then he abruptly snapped out of it. “It’s yours now. Breakfast be cooked time you’re done. And I got a big surprise for you.”
“Bigger than being kidnapped?”
“Now, Patty, you gotta let that go. What’s done is done.” He gestured around the room. “You like your room? Got it done right before we come for you. Everything’s new—sheets, blankets—hey, you like that Barbie doll? Ordered that special.”
“I don’t do dolls.”
He motioned to the clothes rack. “Got you some winter clothes, too.”
“How’d you know my size?”
“I know everything about you, Patty.”
“Except my name. It’s Gracie Ann Brice.”
His first stern look of the day. “No. It’s Patty … Patty Walker. Same as my mama.” Then, abruptly, he was smiling again. “Make a list of any other stuff you need. I’ll get it next week when I go into town.”
“I’ve got a surprise for you, too—I started my period. I need tampons.”
Junior blushed like Dad that time she had walked in on him naked. “Uh, okay, I’ll, uh, I’ll get some. How … uh … how many do you need—one, two?”
“Hel-lo! A whole box. And I need them today, like real soon or I’m going to bleed all over the place!”
“Oh, shit, don’t do that! Okay, I’ll, uh, I’ll go into town and get ’em today. Uh, write it down, so I know what to ask for.” He walked out, shaking his head and muttering to himself. “Jesus, why didn’t I think of that?”
Boy, talk about diminished capacity. Of course, she had not started her period. They had learned about periods and tampons and all that stuff in health class, but according to Ms. Boyd, she was probably two years away from her first period. But how would mountain boy know that? With no electricity, he couldn’t watch the Discovery Channel. And she wanted him in town today.
Because Ben might be in town today.
7:13 A.M.
Five hundred sixty miles due south, the black Land Rover was doing seventy on I-15 North.
Ben’s hands were shaking. He squeezed the leather-wrapped steering wheel and summoned the inner strength that had seen him through Big Ug’s fan belt beatings at San Bie. He could not fail Gracie.
It was Friday morning; he had taken over the wheel at 0400. John had crawled into the back seat and fallen asleep. That was over three hours ago, enough time to relive a life that had taken Ben Brice from West Texas to West Point, from Duty, Honor, Country to Quang Tri and the china doll. An hour from now they would arrive in Idaho Falls to talk to Clayton Lee Tucker at his gas station. He was the last person who had seen Gracie alive.
John’s cell phone rang. After three rings, John woke, dug the phone out of his pocket, and answered. “Yeah … Who’s this? … Lou? … Cripes, what time is it? … Oh, yeah, it’s later in New York … What? … Utah, I guess …”
“Idaho,” Ben said.
“Oh, Idaho,” John said, pushing himself up and rubbing his face. “I don’t know, Lou, however long it takes … What? … Price is up how much? … Dude, you’re breaking up, we’re in a freaking black hole out here, man … What? … Three billion? … Lou, I can’t hear you … Lou? … Lou? …” John frowned at the phone, then he disconnected. “Thing gronked out.”
He shoved the phone back into his pocket and put his glasses on. He climbed into the front passenger seat, leaned over, and dug into the bag of snacks he had bought on their last gas stop.
“Lou, my investment banker on the IPO. He says the stock is trading at ninety. I’m a billionaire three times over.” He reappeared with an Oreo cookie stuffed halfway in his mouth. “So why don’t I feel like a real man?”
The bathtub had feet like the one at Ben’s cabin. Gracie stepped in, sat down, and slid down until the water touched her chin. The hot water felt wonderful; her skin tingled. She couldn’t remember her last bath. She closed her eyes and went all the way under. When she surfaced, she smoothed her hair back with her fingers. She needed a shampoo.
Next to the tub was a small wood table with fresh towels and washcloths and a silver bucket like the one in Sam’s sandbox except this bucket was filled with little soaps and shampoos with Best Western Inn and Motel 6 on the labels. Gracie closed her eyes and tried to remember, but all she could recall were vague scenes from strange rooms.
She emptied one of the shampoos into her hand. The scent reminded her of Mom’s bathroom; they had had their only mother-daughter talk while Mom soaked in the big Jacuzzi tub one night after a verdict. Mom had poured a whole bottle of stress relief pellets into the water and soon the entire bathroom smelled of eucalyptus. Gracie sat on the floor while Mom lay back against a head cushion, closed her eyes, and offered motherly advice: “Grace, men are like dogs. They can smell fear on a woman. Never let them smell your fear. Never let them see you cry. Act tough even when you don’t feel tough. Curse. Don’t get mad, get even. If a boy doesn’t take no for an answer, kick him in the balls.” But she didn’t give her any advice for when she was kidnapped and taken to a cabin in Idaho by a crazy mountain boy.
Gracie stayed in the bathtub until the water lost its heat. She stepped out and dried off with one of the towels. Laid out neatly on the vanity were a silver comb and brush with a matching hair clip, a toothbrush and paste, and a small baby powder.
Baby powder never felt so g
ood.
She opened the bathroom door and caught a chill. She wrapped her arms and hurried over to the clothes rack and quickly dressed. This was so strange. All the clothes were her size: long underwear, heavy corduroy pants, plaid flannel shirts, wool socks, and hiking boots. She probably looked like a total dork—“Pretty in plaid? I don’t think so.” The boots were kind of neat, though.
She tied the laces and stood. Mountain girl. She stepped to the door, put her fingers around the knob, and turned slowly. It opened. There was no lock on the door. She opened the door slightly and smelled breakfast cooking. She wished she were back at home and Sylvia was cooking in the kitchen. When she stepped out of the bedroom and into a long rectangular room, she knew she wasn’t.
Tables and chairs were scattered about the big space, maps and charts hung on the walls, big metal containers with U.S. ARMY stamped on the side were stacked high against one wall, and a ratty old couch sat in the middle of the room. A door at the far end opened and Junior appeared. He shut the door quietly behind him then turned and saw her.
“Why, don’t you look pretty?”
“What’s in those Army boxes?”
“Ordnance. Why’d you cut your hair so short? You do look like a boy.”
“Soccer season. What’s that?”
Junior walked over to the kitchen area. “What’s what?”
“Ordnance.”
“Oh—grenade launchers, explosives, ammo, detonators, napalm, that sort of stuff. Breakfast is ready.”
Junior had set two places with paper plates, plastic forks, knives, and cups, and napkins on a small folding table. He was cooking on a little gas stove; there was a brand new one just like it in the back corner of the garage at home. He picked up a black skillet with a rag and slapped scrambled eggs and a slab of meat on her plate. She was really hungry.
“Mama taught me to cook,” he said.
She sat down and tried the eggs. He cooked pretty good eggs for a boy. Junior joined her at the table. She had a mouthful of scrambled eggs when Junior bowed his head and folded his hands.
“Dear Lord, thank you for this here food. And thank you for bringing Patty here.” His head raised up. “Let’s eat.”
She swallowed. “God didn’t bring me here.”
“Sure He did.”
“Hel-lo, earth to mountain boy—God doesn’t kidnap children.”
“No, He don’t. He just showed us the way.” He chewed with his mouth open. “God wants us to be together.”
He smiled and reached over and put his hand on hers; she felt something she didn’t want to feel. She jerked her hand away.
“Ya think?”
“Yep, I think.”
Gracie cut into the meat and put a piece in her mouth.
“So you followed me all last week?”
He grinned. “Yep.”
“Watching me at school and recess and practice?”
“Yep.”
“And you called me, didn’t you?”
“Yep.”
“And hung up every time?”
“Yep.”
“So you were just waiting for a chance to grab me?”
“Yep.”
“Why after the game?”
“ ’Cause your mama wasn’t there.” He pointed at the meat with his fork. “Eats good, don’t it?”
She assumed “eats good” was mountain-speak for “tastes good.” She nodded. “Sausage?”
“Venison.”
“What’s that?”
“Deer meat.”
Gracie spat out the ball of meat.
8:09 A.M.
Clayton Lee Tucker spat a stream of brown juice into a brass spittoon. His cheek bulged with a big wad of chewing tobacco and his face was wrinkled like used aluminum foil. His skin was darkened a shade from the grease; his black glasses sat lopsided on his bulbous nose; his hands were gnarly. Ben knew what a drunk looked like in the morning; Tucker didn’t fit the description. And he didn’t look like a man given to seeing UFOs in the Idaho sky. He was examining the blow-ups and Gracie’s photo.
The Tucker Service Station, located just off Interstate 15 in Idaho Falls, was a beaten-down place that smelled of gasoline and grease, a throwback to the days when you could get your car repaired at a gas station and it didn’t cost four bits to air up the tires. A telephone company truck was parked outside.
Tucker looked up and spat again. “Ain’t no doubt about it,” he said. “That’s the girl.”
John collapsed into a chair. Ben said, “What about the men?”
“Can’t say for sure, not from them pictures,” Tucker said. “But that’s the tattoo, I’m sure of that.”
Ben removed his jacket and rolled the left sleeve of his shirt up to expose his Viper tattoo.
“This tattoo?”
Tucker spat then angled his head to sight in the tattoo through his bifocals. “How come you got the same one?”
“Mr. Tucker, why didn’t you tell this to the FBI?”
“They never called.”
“No, sir, I mean the FBI agent who came here Wednesday morning and showed you these pictures.”
“Ain’t no FBI been here. First time I seen them pictures.”
“An FBI agent didn’t ask you about these men and the girl? You didn’t talk to him about UFOs? Tell him you drank?”
Tucker was clearly taken aback. He spat. “Only time I talked to anyone about the girl was when you called me. Hell, my phone’s been out of order ever since.” He picked up the phone and held it out to Ben. There was no dial tone. He gestured outside. “Phone company’s fixing it now, said the line was cut clean through. Figured kids.”
“Did the men say where they were headed?”
“The north country. Vehicle was burning oil like a refinery, asked me could it make another five hundred miles. No way, I says, rings is burned up, lucky it made it this far. Oil gets in the combustion chamber, bad news. Sent ’em down yonder to the motel.” He gestured down the access road. “They drove down there, big fella come back, left the truck. I got in about six the next morning—that’d been Monday—started tearing that engine apart, finished late that night. Big fella picked it up the next morning—that’d been Tuesday. Paid cash.”
“Idaho plates?”
“Yep.”
“Five hundred miles north of here, but still in Idaho?”
“That’d put ’em right near the border, up in the panhandle.”
“Where they grow Christmas trees?”
“Yep.”
“Where it’s snowing?”
“Yep.”
“I’ve got a map,” Ben said.
Ben spread the Idaho map out on the counter. Tucker said, “You know, I seen something on TV about them militias and Ku Klux Klan and Nazis, how they got camps in the mountains up north.”
“Any particular place?”
Tucker leaned over and put a finger on Idaho Falls and ran it north, tracking I-15 then 90, all the way to Coeur d’Alene; his finger left a slight trail of fresh grease on the map. Then his finger turned north, on state highway 95, all the way to—
“Bonners Ferry,” he said, tapping the map.
8:34 A.M.
“She’s alive, Ben.”
Back on the highway, images of his daughter were racing through John’s mind like a DVD on fast forward; his heart was trying to punch through the wall of his chest cavity.
“I gotta call Elizabeth.”
He dug the cell phone out of his pocket.
“Son, we don’t need to be pulled over by the highway patrol, not with what we’ve got in this vehicle.”
“What?” John’s eyes dropped down to the speedometer. “Shit.” He had the Rover doing ninety. He pulled his foot off the accelerator. When the Rover and his heartbeat were both down to seventy-five, John glanced over at Ben. “You were right.”
Ben just nodded and held his hand out. “Here.”
John handed the phone to Ben. “Home number’s on the speed dial, push—”
Ben rolled down his window and defenestrated the phone. John watched in the rearview as the phone bounced on the highway and splattered into pieces.
“Cripes, Ben! Why’d you do that?”
“Because from now on, we don’t call home, we don’t call the FBI, we don’t call anyone.”
“Why not? We need to tell them she’s alive!”
“They already know it.”
“How? We just talked to Tucker.”
“John, I didn’t need Tucker to tell me she’s alive. I knew that. But he told me something I didn’t know.” He turned to John. “The FBI lied about coming to see him.”
“Which means what?”
“Which means they know she’s up here.”
“Why would the FBI lie about Gracie being alive in Idaho?”
“Because they don’t want us up here, getting in their way. That’s why they cut Tucker’s phone line. They’re after the men that took Gracie, but for some other reason. And they’re willing to sacrifice her to get them.”
“Sacrifice her? You mean … Jesus … What could those men be doing that’s so bad the FBI would sacrifice Gracie to get them?”
Four hundred miles due north, Junior said, “Lemme clean up this mess, then I’ll show you your big surprise. After that I’ll show you around my mountain, before I go to town to pick up your, uh, girl stuff.” He smiled real big. “I mean, our mountain.”
Gracie gave him a weak smile then wandered around the room; she was trying to sort things out.
This was way strange. Mountain boy kidnapped her, but he treated her totally nice. Cozy bedroom, hot bath, new clothes, good breakfast—well, except for eating Bambi.
Gracie pointed at the door that Junior had come out of earlier. “What’s in there?”
He smiled. “Your big surprise.”
Uh-oh, Gracie thought. The bridal suite. She quickly continued her tour. On the short wall by the kitchen were photographs, pictures of a woman, a girl really, with an older man who looked like Junior and a small boy who was Junior.