Snatched

by Pamela Burford

  The real Lucy, she decided, was the one who’d fought like hell back at the house, the one who’d been willing to slice open her foot on the slim chance she could crash through the French door and lose her attackers in the woods. The one who’d kicked in that insolent bastard’s face because somebody had to do it.

  It was that Lucy who resolutely crossed the room and pressed her ear to the door. Not a sound. She filled her lungs and slowly let the air out. She eased the door open a couple of inches, listened again, and peeked out. The corridor extended farther right than left from where she stood, and was vacant in both directions. The two doors on the right side of the hallway probably led to other rooms like the one she occupied. Men’s and women’s rest rooms were on the opposite side. She took the shorter route left, willing an exit to appear.

  Straight ahead, she saw that the corridor opened into a large space decorated with floor plants and wall hangings; a rowing machine and some other exercise equipment came into view. She hugged the wall as she approached the room and spied, near the entrance, a plate-glass door leading to the outside. Every muscle in her body tensed for the sprint to freedom. She started to cross the threshold, only to spring back and flatten herself against the wall.

  In a split-second glance she’d recognized the girl Cuba, sitting at a long dining table huddled over a spiral-bound notebook and some loose papers, her back to the doorway.

  Lucy retraced her steps, padding as silently as she could toward the other end of the corridor. As she did, she noticed that the door of the room where she was being held was labeled “C.” She tried the knob on door B; it was locked. She hoped to come across something she could use as a weapon.

  She expected door A to be locked as well. To her surprise, it swung open and she stood staring at a skinny, youngish man clad only in white Jockey shorts, hanging upside-down in the center of the room. His spindly forearms were duct-taped together behind his back. His face appeared parboiled.

  She scooted inside and pulled the door closed behind her. “Oh my God. I’ve got to get you down from there.”

  The man frowned in confusion. The speakers in this room dispensed a song she recognized from The Sound of Music: Julie Andrews do-re-mi’ing her little heart out.

  Lucy peered at the chain-and-hook arrangement connecting his leather ankle cuffs to the ceiling. “How long have you been like this?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Never mind that. We don’t have much time.” She spotted a straight chair identical to the one in her room. She dragged it close to the man and hopped up on it.

  “You can’t do that,” he said. “He promised me longer.”

  Had the torture begun to warp the poor guy’s mind? “Who promised you?” Straining against his weight, she tried to lift the chain so the hook would slip out of the ring in the ceiling. It didn’t move so much as a millimeter.

  “Your boss,” he said. “The one in the George W. mask.”

  George W. Bush? What happened to the Powerpuff Girls?

  “You really shouldn’t be doing this,” he said.

  “Let me worry about that.” Lucy gave another mighty heave. She hadn’t made noises like these since she was in labor. Whatever the scrawny twerp weighed, it was too much for her.

  “You’re not here to rough me up?”

  “Don’t worry, there’ll be no more of that.”

  “You know what I liked? All that screaming a while ago. Sounded like it was coming from right next door. It was blood-curdling. Was that you?”

  “’Fraid so.”

  “Nice touch. I’ll tell you who I really like, though—that mademoiselle in the Mary Poppins getup.” His eyebrows wagged. “I need my spoonful of sugar.”

  “Let me guess.” She gave the chain one more grunting, vein-popping, pushing-the-head-out try. “You despise Julie Andrews and you vote Democrat.”

  “Why don’t you send Mary Poppins back in here? Tell her to bring her umbrella. You ever get smacked with a closed umbrella?”

  “Okay, you know what?” Lucy jumped down from the chair and started tearing at the duct tape binding his arms. “I’m going to undo your hands and push this chair under you. Then you’re going to do kind of like a handstand to raise yourself up so I can—”

  “I get it.” He squirmed like an eel with an itch, making it impossible for her to grip the tape. “You’re gonna make me work for it.”

  Those strange vibes Lucy had gotten earlier, the nagging sense that something about this operation didn’t compute, were back with a vengeance. She couldn’t waste any more time here; someone could walk in any second. “Listen.” She bent over to look the fellow in the eye. “You just hang in there. I mean . . . you know what I mean. I’m going to come back with help.”

  “Hey, why aren’t you wearing a mask?”

  After a quick listen at the door, Lucy slunk out of the room. Great. Now she’d never get do-re-bloody-mi out of her head. At the end of the corridor was a vestibule—and another door to the outside. She sprang for it.

  Locked, and the key was nowhere in sight. Through the plate glass she viewed a massive expanse of lawn and trees in the twilit gloom, reinforcing her sense that this place was off the beaten path.

  She gave the door another futile tug and quickly scanned her surroundings. A table against the wall held three identical boom boxes. The machines were labeled A, B, and C. Wires snaking from them had been bundled and stapled up the wall to where it met the ceiling. Down the corridor, the wires split into the three classrooms, where they were no doubt connected to the speakers and electrical panels. No sound came from the machines themselves.

  Boom box A was on. A stack of CD cases sat next to it, the top one featuring a picture of Julie Andrews belting it out on an Alp. The others were soundtracks from Mary Poppins and the stage versions of My Fair Lady and Camelot. Lucy pushed the Off button. From inside his room, she heard her upside-down pal shout, “Hey! Where’d Julie go?”

  She turned her attention to machine C, popping it open to find a recordable CD on which someone had scrawled “Spears/Aguilera for L. Narby.” The mix album Cuba had made. Using the table for leverage, Lucy snapped it in two. So there.

  The other side of the vestibule had clearly served as a coat room in another life. A mélange of garments hung from three steel rods arranged in a U shape against the walls. They included army camos, police uniforms, nuns’ habits, priests’ cassocks, a full-body yellow Big Bird costume, a leather Hell’s Angels jacket, an intricately detailed gladiator getup, an SS uniform, several head-to-toe burkas, a doctor’s white lab coat, and a short-skirted nurse’s uniform. Not to mention a whole mess of clown outfits that looked like they’d been purchased at Big and Tall Bozos. A laundry basket sat at one end of the coat rack, piled high with coordinating hats, wigs, and props—everything from a rubber gasmask to a German spiked helmet.

  Of more immediate interest were the objects on the wire shelves above the rods. Chains. Ropes. Handcuffs. Shackles. Stacks of blank CDs. About thirty rolls of duct tape; Will must get a volume discount. A stack of empty coffee cans. A pile of knit ski masks. She looked inside a shoe box and saw sticks and tubes of makeup in white and primary colors—the kind of makeup she’d used one Halloween to turn John, then age six, into a clown.

  Then there were the masks: a couple of dozen plastic Halloween masks neatly stacked on the shelves. Buttercup, Blossom, and bashed-in Bubbles had been set aside, as had Dubya and Mary Poppins. The presidential pantheon included everyone from Nixon through Obama, the single exception being Gerald Ford. Maybe no one hated him enough. The usual superheroes were present and accounted for, as were various monsters, from Frankenstein to Freddy Krueger, in pliable, full-head latex.

  A cardboard carton sat on the shelf. Still on the lookout for a weapon, Lucy reached up and shook it. All that clanking and rattling sounded promising. She started to haul the box down when her gaze lit on an item that had been tucked behind it.

  The SIG-Sauer. Just sitting there. S
he snatched it up. She’d never held a gun. It was heavier than she’d expected. This was the only firearm she’d seen during her ordeal. With any luck, it was the only one in the whole place.

  Lucy was debating the wisdom of returning to Cuba, of forcing the girl at gunpoint to free her, when that familiar hoarse shriek split the silence. She jumped. It was louder than before, less muted. It came from behind the closed pocket door that led off the vestibule. How many people were in there? She wondered yet again what they were doing to their poor captive. Those screams were practically inhuman. She pressed her ear to the door and made out voices. She looked at the weapon in her hand.

  Lucy knew if she hesitated, she’d just talk herself out of it. As it was, her galloping heartbeat threatened to choke her. She gripped the gun in both hands. Her index finger teased the trigger. She said a quick prayer, yanked open the door, leapt across the threshold . . .

  And found herself in a large space outfitted as a living room, with mismatched furniture, lamps, and area rugs clustered into discrete seating areas. Eclectic artwork, including children’s drawings, adorned the walls. The voices she’d heard emanated from a gigantic flat-screen television tuned to a shopping channel. If Lucy had ever craved a cubic zirconia butterfly broach with a cunning loop from which to dangle reading glasses, here was her chance. Only $39.95, plus $5.95 shipping. An elderly Asian woman dozed in an recliner not three feet from the blaring TV. A gold AmEx card and cordless phone rested on her afghan-draped lap.

  The long wall opposite was interrupted by two sets of double doors, both closed. Creeping to the nearest one, she detected activity behind it—real, honest-to-God human activity this time, by the sound of it. This had to be where the poor woman was being held. Lucy’s fingers were so slick with sweat, she barely kept her grip on the gun as she took a deep breath and pushed through the door.

  ______

  IN JUDITH’S HOUSE, Hal followed the music up the carpeted stairs and down the hall to an open doorway, where he saw two young people on a king-size bed, copulating to the lively beat of “Sympathy for the Devil.” A blond guy was on top of a slim girl with blue-tipped platinum hair, her ankles hooked over his shoulders, her tiny tits rocking, her sharp gasps keeping time to Jagger’s irreverent lyrics.

  It was a pretty good show and Hal watched for a while until the girl looked over and screamed. Romeo didn’t even slow his rhythm as he demanded, “What the fuck is this?” He’d gotten his nose broken recently; it was bruised and swollen.

  “Don’t rush on my account.” Hal leaned on the doorframe, arms crossed. “I’ll wait.”

  The stud would have kept going, but his girl kicked up a fuss and knocked him off her. If anything, the smoky black makeup rimming her eyes only emphasized her youth; this little girl wouldn’t be legal for three more years at least. She made no effort to cover up but simply glared at both men, snatched up a pack of smokes by the bed, and stalked into the adjoining master bathroom. The door slammed as the next song started: “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.”

  The kid spread his arms in a gesture that said, You happy? He glanced around and grabbed a pair of jeans off the floor. “I don’t know who you are, but if you’re still here when I zip up, I’m gonna toss your ass down the stairs.”

  “Aren’t you a little old for a stunt like this?” Hal asked. “Leaving wet spots on Mommy and Daddy’s bed?”

  With barely one leg in his pants, the kid charged like a pit bull on crack. The heel of Hal’s hand shot out and tapped the purple nose. The guy flew backward as if on a string, shrieking and grabbing at his face as fresh blood gushed forth. If he expected his girl to investigate the commotion, he was to be disappointed. The bathroom door remained shut.

  The kid sat blubbering on the floor, his back against the bed, legs tangled in the jeans. Hal tossed him the bed sheet. “Get a grip, you pathetic little shit. What’s your name?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Hal crossed to the bathroom door and rapped on it. “Hey. What’s your boyfriend’s name?”

  “Juan Carlos.”

  Hal regarded the sandy-haired fool spitting blood onto his mother’s fine linen sheet. “No, this guy here.”

  “Oh. Mick.”

  “Thanks, honey.”

  A cream-colored dressing table and matching chair sat against one wall. Hal hauled the chair in front of the kid and planted himself on it. “I’m going to ask you this just once, Mick. Where are your folks?” Mick started to speak. Hal flipped open his switchblade. “Do yourself a favor, my man. Don’t say ‘fuck you.’”

  “My stepdad’s dead.”

  “Mom?”

  “On a date.” Still sitting, Mick started to struggle into his jeans.

  “When’s she getting home?”

  Mick shrugged.

  “Stepdad, huh?” Hal studied Mick’s eyes, the shape of his face. “How old are you?”

  “What is this, a fucking job interview?”

  “Let me guess,” Hal said. “You’re twenty-four. Your birthday’s . . . sometime in the fall.”

  Mick’s eyes narrowed. “November seventeenth. So what?”

  “So Judith has even more to answer for now, that’s what.”

  Mick sopped up blood with the sheet. “If this is about my mom, go bother her and leave me the hell alone.”

  “Nice to see you’re so protective. What did she tell you about your real dad?”

  The bathroom door opened and the girl came out. “Take me home, Mick.” She plucked her undies off the floor. At some point during Hal’s enforced sabbatical, females had started shaving their pussies, a little or a lot. This one had gone for a lightning-bolt design. He still wasn’t sure what he thought of the trend. Hot, yeah, but where was the mystery?

  “He’s a little preoccupied,” Hal told her. “If you can wait a bit, I’ll give you a lift. What’s your name, honey?”

  Her gaze flicked over him. An interested smile tugged at her mouth as she wriggled into a sheer black thong. “Winnie.”

  “Wait for me downstairs, Winnie. Mick and I have to talk.”

  She gathered her things and started out of the room.

  “What, are you nuts?” Mick asked her. “This guy broke into my house. You’re gonna get in his car?”

  “It’s okay,” Hal told her. “I’m Mick’s dad.”

  Mick snorted, then choked on a fresh gout of blood. Winnie turned at the doorway and glanced from one man to the other. “Oh yeah, I see it now. Hey.” She scowled at Mick. “This jerk-off told me his dad is Keith Richards.”

  “It worked, didn’t it?” Hal asked, and he and Winnie laughed.

  “My dad is Keith Richards,” Mick insisted. Winnie rolled her eyes and sauntered out. “Why’d this dickwad have to ask you my name,” he called after her, “if he’s my dad? Huh? Dumb bitch.”

  “You’re one smooth operator,” Hal said. “I can see why you need that line about Richards.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Check it out, sonny.” Hal pointed to his own face with the tip of his switchblade. “Look familiar?”

  “So you got gray eyes, too,” Mick sneered. “So what? You fucked my mom way back when? You back for more? Be my guest. The ice queen could use a good corn-holing—dislodge that stick up her butt.”

  “You talk about your mother that way?”

  Hal never raised his voice. He didn’t have to. The quiet menace in his tone drew Mick’s gaze to his face, to those eyes so like his own. Mick opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it. He was learning.

  “I don’t know what Judith told you about your real father,” Hal said, “but here’s the deal. I knew your mother twenty-five years ago. We were together the first part of the year till the middle of March. She wasn’t with anyone else during that time.” Hal had kept her on a short leash—he didn’t like to share, and the other guys knew better than to come sniffing around behind his back. “How good are you at arithmetic?” Hal asked. “Can you count back
nine months from your birthday?”

  “Why should I believe you?” Mick got to his feet and buttoned his fly.

  “Richards and I are both guitarists, but the similarity ends there, at least since I got off the dope.” Hal gave him a dubious look. “You want to look like him? You should’ve picked Clapton. More of a resemblance and he’s the better guitarist. For looks alone, Cobain—but he was too young.”

  Mick had gone still. “You’re a guitarist?”

  “Used to be.”

  Mick frowned, studying Hal’s face as he pulled on his T-shirt. “Mom said my dad was a guitarist.”

  Hal stood, pocketed his switchblade, and spun the kid toward the dressing table mirror. He gripped his neck and made him look at the two of them standing side by side. “We can do a DNA test if you want, my man. Or you can open your eyes.”

  Hot color crawled into Mick’s face as he took in the truth. He jerked out of Hal’s grasp and faced him. Hal recognized the kid’s malignant glower; he’d seen it in the mirror often enough.

  Mick’s hands balled into fists at his sides. “Get out of here.”

  “Not yet.” Hal settled back on the chair. He folded his arms over his chest. “We have business to discuss.”

  “Business! You couldn’t be bothered sticking around when I was little. What makes you think I wanna have anything to do with you now?” Mick snatched a wad of tissues out of the decorative holder on his mother’s dressing table and pressed them to his nose.

  “I can’t say whether I’d have stuck around or not,” Hal said, “but I wasn’t given the choice. Your mother didn’t tell me about you. Even if she had, I wouldn’t have had much quality time with you. I’ve been in the joint your whole life, Mick. Got paroled last month.”

  “Bullshit.” Mick kept staring at Hal’s face. Hal saw the instant he realized it was true. “Jesus. For real? What were you in for?”