Captors

by Farris, John

  Felice was no longer crying but she remained painfully fetal with a cheek pressed against the soft vermilion back of the chair, her eyes slitted and apprehensive, a kind of pallor just beneath the skin of her face, as if the bones were showing through. Sam, flushed with dismay, looked at her, swallowed a lump of his gin.

  "All right," he said, the taste citric on his tongue. "What happened?"

  "She didn't have much to defend herself with. A pair of sewing scissors left out on a table. She kept jabbing until one of the blades hung up in his rib cage, but he wouldn't go down. Lone was in a state of shock by then, Sam. She hunted up a knife in the cottage kitchen and used that on him. A dozen times or more. Lone doesn't remember."

  "It was a dull knife," Lone commented, not moving her lips, seeming not to be very interested.

  "Nightmare, nightmare," Felice said, quietly.

  "We honestly thought he was dead. We found an old awning and carried him in that to the potting shed and left him there while we cleaned up the cottage. I put his hat and coat on and drove his car to La Guardia and turned it in. Turo followed in my car. We weighted that satchel of Dev's with a building block and threw it off the Whitestone Bridge. While we were gone, Dev made the best of a spark of life we overlooked and crawled out of the potting shed to the house. Felice found him on the kitchen floor. Lone was still in the cottage. When she heard Felice scream she ran to the house with the knife and finished him."

  The fly that liked brandy buzzed around Lone's head and she waved him away impatiently. Turo sat down at the far end of the porch with his hands clenched between his knees and stared at the sun-blazed tile.

  "The body's in the pond?" Sam asked.

  "We added his weight in stones and sewed him up in the canvas with an awl and rowed him out to the middle of the pond in that leaky boat of Kevin's. The time comes, Sam, when you want to raise him up to ship him home for a proper burial, remember that he's as close to the middle as we could figure in the dark, with all that rain."

  "Good Christ," Sam said, and finished his drink in two swallows.

  "We're sorry," Rich said. "Lone did her best. We thought he'd be sensible. You never know how a man's going to react under stress. It was just one of those unpredictable accidents. It shook us some, but we're all right now. Could I fix you another drink? No? Carol, isn't it about time you got dinner started?"

  "Don't call her that," Sam rasped.

  "He still doesn't catch on," Lone said, with a glance at Rich and a shrug.

  "We have to give him time," Rich explained. "He just got here. It takes some getting used to."

  Sam said carefully, "I think I've heard enough to know what you're doing. You elaborately faked a kidnapping so you could substitute this girl for Carol. You depended on the fact that we'd be so happy to have our daughter back we'd ignore minor differences. By continuing to hold Carol you had control over us, so if we did become suspicious it wouldn't matter. With a substitute Carol in the house you invited yourselves as guests. You came prepared to stay awhile if necessary. You're a cold-blooded bunch of killers and it's the General you're after. God knows why."

  "Good for Sam."

  Felice lifted her head and looked hopefully at her husband, as if the sound of his voice had convinced her that somehow he'd be able to reason with their captors.

  "I object to the part about being cold-blooded killers," Lone said, sulking coltishly.

  "I was going to correct him on that," Rich assured her.

  "One of our objects is the General, Sam. The other is his friend and associate Vernon Metts. We plan to kill both of them as efficiently as possible, without warning, without ceremony or unnecessary suffering on their part. Once you're familiar with our motives and procedure you won't think we're so cold-blooded."

  "Vernon Metts," Sam mused. "Now I see why you need us, and the house. It makes a little bit of sense now."

  "Well, the General is always accessible, killing him wouldn't be a problem. Metts is much harder to pin down. When we began a feasibility study we realized it would be best to let him come to us. Metts customarily visits General Morse three times a year. His last visit was in late February. The General tells us we can look for him any day now. The General has made our work a lot easier by giving us the run of his house. We didn't expect that."

  "Why kill them? No, I don't have to ask that question. You're eliminating someone's competition, aren't you? Who's behind it? Who sent you?"

  Rich laughed. "You took a wrong turn, Sam. No one sent us. We're not part of some sinister international conspiracy. Nothing melodramatic like that. We're just a little group of friends who share a moral concern, a founding concept."

  "Concept?"

  "Ethical murder, Sam. Do you know the term?"

  After a few moments Sam said worriedly, "I've written about it."

  "That's right."

  "As a matter of speculation, not advocacy. If you take the trouble to read carefully what I write."

  Rich said with apparent seriousness, as if he were addressing a mentor, "We read you carefully, Sam. We hold you in high esteem. I hope, when time permits, that you'll be proud of us."

  Sam didn't reply. Instead he looked helplessly at his wife.

  "What's he talking about?" Felice asked. "What does he mean, ethical murder?"

  "It would take an hour—"

  "Let me try, Sam," Rich said enthusiastically, and addressed himself to Felice. "This is a time of revolution, moral and political revolution, as anyone who reads a newspaper knows. Most people associate revolution with violence and a period of total anarchy. We've already had a little violence, which is probably necessary to earn recognition, but this country is well organized against the revolutionary impulse, so a major and bloody upheaval is as unlikely as it is undesirable. For one thing, there would have to be an economic basis for it, another Great Depression, a worldwide economic collapse. I think we can rule out that possibility. Therefore the revolution now taking place will remain youthful, a student revolt; the working class won't be involved at all. In fact this class is the greatest enemy the revolution has because the values of the proletariat are, as Elijah Jordan proposed, the values of institutions, not individuals."

  Felice looked uncomprehending. "Who is Elijah Jordan?" she said.

  "An American philosopher who deserves more of a public than he has."

  "And does he say it's all right to murder whomever you feel like murdering, as long as you're sincere about it?"

  "No, he hasn't said that. I've mentioned him and one of his major precepts so that you'll better understand what the revolution is about. It's not happening just because we're all tired of school and war or because we want to embarrass Mom and Dad for not toilet training us properly. It's happening because only the young mind seems to grasp the essential tragedy of this country: the values of its institutions are self-serving, masterpieces of cynicism and duplicity. It's happening because we reject cynicism and the unscrupulous ways of government. We have to assert our own values if we're going to survive, if there's to be meaningful change."

  Sam said, "The premeditated murder of someone you barely know but still condemn is the most cynical act I can think of."

  "Not when corrupt institutions permit the immorality of men like General Morse and his partner. In a half-crazed and volatile world they're allowed to sell arms and encourage aggression by doing so. If it's in our power to eliminate, completely, a source of human suffering, then we're justified, we're compelled to do it. The act of murder then becomes ethical. In a religious sense, it's holy."

  Felice came up out of her chair and was stopped by Sam's warning hand on her shoulder. "They're all insane," she said, fevered but calm. "Sam, they must be." She looked uncertainly at Turo; he didn't raise his head but seemed to feel the heat of her eyes. To Rich she said scathingly, "You'll just shoot the two of them down? For God's sake—the General's an old man. He's crippled."

  "Bang, bang, bang," Lone said softly. "He's lived his three score a
nd ten. Three score too many if you ask me."

  Rich quieted her with a disapproving look. "We have guns," he admitted to Felice, "because we'll need them at first. But we don't plan to do any shooting. We'll use gas to kill them. It's quick and it eliminates suffering."

  "Gas them? Like dogs?"

  "Exactly like dogs," Rich told her. "Believe me, it's the best way. A long time ago I worked at a humane shelter. It was my job to put to sleep the strays and mongrels nobody loved and wanted. I know how effective gas is. Do you have any idea how many sick, friendless dogs I put away over a two-year period? Make a guess."

  Felice's eyes were rounded in horror. "I don't want to guess," she whispered.

  "Four hundred and twenty-four," Rich said proudly. "And not one of them suffered."

  "I suppose we won't suffer, either," Sam said with an angry tremor. "It's going to be cyanogen for all of us, isn't it?"

  Turo sprang to his feet. "You won't be harmed in any way," he said, too loudly, anxious to be reassuring. He looked around, startled, and sat down again, like a schoolboy who'd had a piece to recite but couldn't remember any more of it.

  "Listen to Turo," Rich said. "Now that you know just how serious we are, we shouldn't have to force cooperation from you. I apologize again for Dev Kaufman; we didn't come here to kill innocent people. When we've finished our work, you'll be given a drug that will make you sleep a minimum of two days. After you wake up it'll be another two or three hours before you're tracking well enough to get your story told. By then we'll be long out of the country. Where we're going, of course, is privileged information. We expect to be very comfortable there. Eventually those of us who want to will come back to the States."

  "If you have Carol," Felice said, "then I want to talk to her. Right now."

  "That isn't possible," Rich replied. "But we'll have her write you a note tomorrow. I don't want you worrying about Carol. She's fine now."

  "What do you mean, now?" Felice said ominously.

  Rich smiled. "She had a little cold, nothing serious."

  Lone spied the General a long way off, headed for the house. "Guess who's coining to dinner?" she said, with an ugly delight.

  "Sam," Felice groaned. He looked silently at her, lips compressed, and shook his head.

  "Carol's fine as long as you're cooperative," Rich said. "Make our work harder and she'll be permanently regressed to infancy with a combination of drugs. Think about it: is there a choice? Turo, let's have some drinks. We're all too damned tense here."

  Lone pressed against him. "Rich," she said, wheedling. "I'm way down again. I do need a jolt."

  "Love, I'm sorry. We're almost out."

  "Out? I've only had two good jolts since I've been here."

  "Sorry, Lone. Babs spoiled a batch."

  Lone pouted. "Honest to God, she's got the touch of a blacksmith. Some chemist. Straight speed, then. I can get by on that. Never mind the gamma glob and the monkey balls."

  "Get back into character," Rich said fondly. "You'll be rewarded."

  She turned her glossy eyes on his amiable face, stung the end of his nose with a playful fingertip slap, sighed, composed herself, lowered her head in concentration. Sam watched her, fascinated, as she filtered out dissonant elements of her own personality, the cruel and concupiscent, allowing the nuances and complexities of Carol Watterson to emerge without effort. She blinked owlishly several times, sighed again as if refreshed. Turo at his bartending popped cubes into a glass. Following the chilly musical sound of ice in crystal her head bounced up and she gave her blonde hair a settling shake across one bare shoulder and surveyed them, with a Carol look and a Carol smile that was hauntingly precise. She let herself off the porch and ran to the General's side and put an arm around him; they could see her smiling again, smiling up at her favorite man in the whole world. The General's pleasure was obvious.

  Felice leaned against Sam, nails biting into the flesh of his thumb.

  "Stop them, stop them," she begged, in a tenuous voice that Rich overheard. He turned to gaze chidingly at her. Felice shrank closer to Sam, avoiding Rich's eyes. Rich presented her with another brandy. His hand shook a little; it was the first indication of how keyed up he was. It was the first time he had really seemed dangerous to Sam, despite his Nazi technician's talk of the goodness of gas and of Dev slashed and bloodless deep in the pond.

  "Last one until bedtime," he said. "You know the drill, now be good." Felice looked at Sam once more, quickly; when she saw no hope there all expression drained from her face, leaving it as desolate and impoverished as a mud flat. She accepted the belied glass and drank deeply from it, and shuddered.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Wednesday, July 10

  "She must be getting away with it," Carol said vexedly, "but I don't see how. Granted she's a good actress, but Lone just doesn't look anything like me. You swear she hasn't had plastic surgery?"

  She was sitting on the bed in the upstairs room, one ankle and her wrists in chains. Her newly washed hair was wrapped in a towel. There was a summery breath of air in the room, green and rye. The windows of the white room squared a depthless portion of black sky, turning it into artifact. Below them Jim Hendersholt chipped and chiseled relentlessly at stone.

  Babs had pulled up one of the white sling chairs and she occupied it to the bursting point. She was eating an apple with gusto, little finger poised to scoop the clear juice from her chin. She reached over the side of the chair with her free hand, sorted out the reading matter there and picked up a recent edition of The New York Times Magazine.

  "She's much more like you than you think," Babs said, leafing through the magazine. She stopped at a full-page color advertisement for a synthetic fabric and nodded. "Here, look at these three girls." Carol leaned over and took the magazine. "At first glance they're completely different, but the difference is basically in hair style and dress. Study their faces." She crunched into her apple. "See? The girl in the middle is slightly lantern-jawed but otherwise their faces are shaped the same. Their eyes are alike in color and shape but each girl draws her eyes differently. The other features are very close. Lighten the hair of the middle girl, change the style and redefine her eyebrows, she's the twin of the blonde on her left, n'est-ce pas?"

  "Maybe," Carol admitted. "This is a photograph, though. Makeup can do a lot, but there must be a hundred subtle differences that aren't revealed."

  "True. That's where impersonation becomes a high art. Lone is great, believe me. She slaved to get you down cold. It helped that she had plenty of time to study you."

  "All those 'accidental' meetings my last semester at Berkeley—Lone was stalking me."

  "Lone took a lot of photographs too. Just like a secret agent. She recorded your voice. But there's something about your voice—a timbre that's hard to duplicate. That wasn't important. Lone bruises real easy, she's almost a hemophiliac, so Rich decided she should fake a throat injury. It went with the dog collar anyway. That gave her an excuse to whisper for a few days until everyone was used to the sound. Then she gradually worked up to a normal speaking voice. There's a funny coincidence: you almost lost your voice for good."

  "Funny," Carol said dispiritedly, lighting a cigarette. She closed the magazine and watched Babs polish off her apple.

  "They give me the farts but it's worth it," Babs said, happily licking her fingers.

  It was difficult to think of hapless Babs as part of a conspiracy to commit murder. That part of the story—the reason for Lone's long and difficult impersonation—hadn't been easy to pry out of her. She'd stoutly defended the incredible murder plot. ("We're saving human lives, Carol, for goshsake can't you understand that?"

  "I suppose my grandfather isn't human."

  "His soul has been corrupted by the body it's in. It's an act of kindness to let his soul out of a body in which it's suffering so it can return to the Beautiful Country."

  "That's a pretty weird philosophy, Babs."

  "Weird? For goshsake there isn't any
thing weird about reincarnation. It's the only answer that makes sense in this miserable world. We've all lived before. I know I have." But after exhausting her store of secrets, Babs had been depressed and uncommunicative all afternoon. Carol believed that she was truly appalled by the whole business. She went along with Jim because, married to him, indebted, she had no real choice. Belonging outweighed guilt, and what fear there was. Carol could understand that much. Perhaps Babs was as serious and dedicated as the others, appreciably mad, but Carol preferred to think that she retained most of her innocence. Otherwise she wouldn't have been able to talk to Babs anymore, as friend and confidant. And as long as innocence persisted, Carol thought, there was hope she could persuade Babs to let her go. For her part she would see that Babs was protected, no matter what.

  She unwrapped the damp towel from her head, picked up a fresh towel and rubbed her hair vigorously for a minute. It was dry enough to brush. As she worked with her hair the fact of the impersonation, the audacity of it, continued to pique her. After all, she was an individual, one of a kind in habits, mannerisms, intellect, abilities. Riggs was a mutton-headed dog who accepted everybody. But how could Sam, Kevin and the General have been fooled this long? How could her own mother have failed to recognize an imposter? Even though they had seldom been together during the past four years, Carol felt especially resentful because her mother had been fooled; it gave her an odd panicky feeling that except for her captors she no longer existed, that Felice was oblivious, and content with her substitute daughter.