Hard Truth

by Nevada Barr

  “Pennsylvania.” Buddy sipped his tea. The temperature was to his liking and he took a longer drink. Anna realized how terribly thirsty she was. Not wanting to give him the pleasure of refusing, she didn’t ask for water.

  “Your name is Steve Whittfield, Steve D. Whittfield,” she said, suddenly remembering. An all-points bulletin had gone out to every state in the lower forty-eight when the suspect wanted for questioning had disappeared.

  “Stephen. Not Steve. And ‘E’ not ‘D.’ The ‘E’ is for Eisner, my grandfather on my mother’s side. Gunter Eisner. He was a guard at Buchenwald during World War Two. They moved to the United States when Mother was three.”

  “You’re a chip off the old block, is that it?”

  “Grandfather was a gentle soul who did his best for the unfortunates in his care. He was the soul of kindness. At our house even cockroaches were merely banished.”

  “Who else have you killed?” Anna interrupted the questionable eulogy.

  He smiled at her. “Other than Raymond Bleeker and that insufferable preacher boy? I’m not a serial killer stitching dresses out of women’s skin or eating livers with a nice Chianti, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “What are you?”

  There was genuine interest in her voice. It got a surprising reaction. He set down his teacup, leaned forward and looked at her as if, for the first time, he genuinely saw her.

  “I’m a sociologist.”

  “You killed two little boys as a sociological experiment,” she managed after a moment.

  “Not per se, no. And they weren’t little boys. Jason—they are all named Jason, are they not—was nearly as tall as I am and fifteen pounds heavier. Chad was somewhat smaller but not by a great deal. Jason was spineless. He actually killed himself, which, I admit, was handy. Chad showed promise but it was early in my new venture and I couldn’t trust him not to revert, so I had to put him down. Then things got a bit out of control. I had to . . .” He smiled ruefully. “Leave town in a hurry, as they say.”

  Anna’s hands were definitely going numb, as was her butt. She stood again, stomped, shifted, stretched. Muscles she didn’t want to spasm, did; muscles she would have been grateful to have the use of were too tired to so much as cramp.

  “I’d let you go but you can’t be trusted,” Buddy said. Anna found she could not think of him as Stephen the sociologist. He would always be Buddy the psycho-sociopath. “I’ll have to kill you. Killing. Now that’s inconvenient, did you know that? Bodies! Try and get rid of one sometime. I honestly believe Hitler would have won World War Two if he hadn’t wasted so much time, energy, manpower and money on killing Gypsies, Jews and cripples and whatnot. Think of the bodies he got rid of. It’s monumental. I’m having a heck of a time with the preacher boy. And now you.”

  Anna refused to apologize for creating a nuisance though he seemed to expect her to. “So why go to all the trouble? I mean what with the corpses and all?” she asked.

  “Trying to keep me talking to put off the inevitable?” He smiled. “Better rethink the old Scheherazade strategy. Wouldn’t it be smarter to hustle me along? Surely you’ll have a better chance of escape—or at least evening the odds—as we lumber through the dark fetching the preacher boy’s mortal coil.”

  He was right. Anna gave him the satisfaction of letting him see that she realized it.

  “Fine then. Let’s go.”

  “I haven’t finished my tea.” He sat again, crossed his legs neatly and picked up his cup, sipping, watching her over the brim.

  He was bright, educated. Anna guessed he believed himself to be even smarter than he was, believed himself to be almost a breed apart from ordinary human beings, an intellectual Titan. Maybe he was, but he was only half right about the wisdom of keeping him talking. She would have a greater chance for action uncuffed from the ladder, but once Proffit was in place, Buddy would kill her. Since leaving Bleeker’s body behind as a red herring had been so successful, he was probably going to try it again with Robert Proffit. Proffit was the prime suspect. With a bit of stage-managing, it might be made to look like a murder-suicide. Like as not, a hunt would commence for Raymond Bleeker’s body. Even if it were guessed “Bleeker” lived, it was an identity Buddy could shed as easily as his NPS uniform.

  He would need transportation that couldn’t be readily traced. She guessed he would take her patrol car and drive quietly out of the park. With blue light and a uniform, he could simply pick the kind of vehicle he wanted and pull it over. One with out-of-state plates would be best. Chances were, no one would even know it was missing till long after he’d abandoned it for another make and model.

  The longer Anna put off all of the above, the less night he would have remaining to clean up the evidence and pull his disappearing act, the sooner the rangers she’d requested to assist with her prisoner would be headed up the trail.

  “So, what makes you so darling damn different than your basic, scratch-and-grunt, run-of-the-mill mass murderer?” she asked equitably. “Didn’t you grow up torturing little animals like the other boys? Momma didn’t molest you? From where I stand, I see absolutely no difference between you and John Wayne Gacy.”

  Buddy was stung. He hid it well but nowhere near quickly enough, and Anna’s senses were preternaturally turned in to his moods. Like many a battered wife, her survival hinged on seeing and understanding every nuance of her batterer’s emotional repertoire.

  “All right, if you insist. We’ve got time to get to know one another.” He poured himself another cup of tea. Anna could smell the crisp enticing aroma. Dry enough to spit cotton, the old cliché came to mind, freed from some memory trunk by its stunning accuracy. What saliva she could muster was gathering in puff balls at the top of her throat and the corners of her mouth. Before pride had time to interfere, she heard herself saying, “I could use a drink.”

  “Certainly,” Buddy replied. “Tea, water, wine? All you had to do was ask.”

  “Water,” Anna replied, careful to keep the gratitude from her voice. After all, she’d not yet gotten it. After all, he’s fucking chained you to a wall, she reminded herself. Even when one was aware of the Stockholm syndrome, it was hard to remain utterly free of it.

  “Get our guest a cup of water.”

  Far quieter than the mice she shared the cabin with, Candace brought a cup of water and held it to Anna’s lips while she drank. Such was her incredible relief, she nearly missed Buddy’s first few words.

  “What makes me different from Gacy? You might at least have chosen Bundy. He was mentally ill but he didn’t let it ruin his fashion sense.”

  “Thank you, Candace,” Anna whispered when the water was gone. The girl didn’t acknowledge her. The phenomenon of prisoners siding with their abductors in the front of her mind, Anna believed she sensed more than just empty nothing coming from Candace. Was there an underlying sullenness, anger or resentment? There had to be. Anna hoped it would be enough so she could use it to break through to her at some point.

  “I’m not interested in killing for its own sake,” Buddy went on. “A waste of time, really. Oh, I’m not averse to it, but it should have a point, don’t you think?” Anna chose not to answer. He expected none. “I’m not a sexual predator, though I use it as a learning tool. It’s not the best, frankly. Pain and reward remain the most powerful. Not much has changed since Pavlov and his dog.

  “When you were grasping at degenerates with whom to compare me, Charlie Manson would have been your best bet. The man’s a mess. Crazy as a bedbug. But his use of psychedelic drugs to break down the minds and wills of his followers, then the rebuilding of them to his own ends was an interesting study.”

  “Could I be uncuffed? Or at least recuffed so my hands aren’t over my head?” Anna asked. Why not? Asking had worked with the water.

  “No. I am a scholar, you know. My interest stems from my grandfather. He killed himself when I was five. Guilt over what he’d done during the war, or so my mother said. I expect that’s w
hat first interested me in sociology, then later, in socialization. I got rather fascinated by the idea that anyone could be turned into a monster, a sociopath with no sense of right or wrong. This isn’t an original thought, but I’ve taken it to the next step. My conclusion is not only can anyone be made into a killer but can be taught to enjoy it, can be made into a serial killer, so to speak, a human being who once was like others, turned into a creature that feasts on the pain of living things.”

  He stopped then, seemingly to admire the lingering resonance of his verbal résumé.

  Anna’s pains and fatigue were banished with the eruption of the fury one feels when made a complete fool of. “Then what the fuck was all the singsong, suck-my-gun bullshit?” she demanded.

  Buddy’s smile wavered for half a beat, then it was back. “You seemed to expect it. I didn’t want your first serial killer experience to be a disappointment.”

  Anna met his eyes mostly because she was too pissed off to do the smart thing and be submissive. To her surprise he looked away to keep her from seeing . . . what? Shame? Fear? With cringing detail, the gun-as-phallus scene replayed in her mind. She doubted all—or even most—of it was an act, and that frightened him. Buddy wasn’t so far removed from Gacy, Dahmer and the gang as he wanted to believe. This didn’t strike her as a good time to point that out.

  “A Modest Proposal,” she said after a while.

  His brows lifted in polite inquiry. Evidently it hadn’t been required reading when he took his college English courses. There was no point in enlightening him. Anna had only thought of the story because, like its author, Jonathan Swift, Buddy had managed to make the unthinkable seem like an interesting proposition.

  Mesmerized by the telling of his own story, Buddy drifted off into the contemplation of the bottom of his teacup. Anna wanted to think, to plot, plan, fight and ultimately live out the night, but her brain acted as blood-starved as her hands.

  Punctuated by the occasional creaks inherent to old wooden buildings and the skritch of unseen mouse feet, quiet settled. Anna found herself wasting precious moments drifting into a Willard-like fantasy of hordes of mice pouring down the walls, devouring her captor.

  “Besides,” he said, rousing himself and sending Anna’s mental sea of vengeance-bent rodents scattering. “You cannot imagine how boring teaching ninth-grade sociology can be. But enough of this, there’s work to be done.”

  As he rose to do whatever was next on his list, a timid knock came at the door.

  Moving as silently, and with the same linear grace, as a snake through clear water, Buddy slipped his service weapon from its holster, stepped across the room to the cabin door and pressed his eye close to the narrow gap between the faded red curtain and the window glass.

  He snapped his fingers. Candace came instantly to heel. Buddy whispered to her, then leaned back against the wall and nodded. Anna thought to scream, “Save me!” but in the end she didn’t. Shouting would not win her relief and it would most certainly cost some late-arriving or panicked camper his life.

  Candace unlocked the door and opened it so neither Anna nor Buddy could be seen.

  “Come in,” she said. “Robert will be back any minute.”

  Too late Anna realized who had come tapping at the door in the middle of the night. Raging against her manacles she screamed, “Run! Run! Run away!”

  Beth and Alexis had already started through the door. Showing surprising strength, Candace grabbed them and pulled them the rest of the way in. Buddy kicked the door shut.

  There was none of the crying and wailing Anna might have expected from normal thirteen-year-old girls in a like situation. Beth went dead still, replicating the way Candace behaved most of the time. Alexis whispered, “You really are alive,” and reached out to embrace the smaller girl.

  Candace batted away her arms. Her thin face contorted, lips pulled back from teeth, chin jutted forward, fury unleashed.

  “Enough,” Buddy snapped. Candace retreated toward the stove, still glaring at the others. It was the most life Anna had seen her exhibit.

  “It’s about time,” Buddy said pleasantly to the girls. “Better late than never. I’m glad you could make it.” He smashed his fist into Beth’s temple, then Alexis’ belly. Anna thought of the unborn child, but its life was of less interest to her than that of its mother. Both children collapsed. Buddy kicked them each several times: breasts, bellies, backs.

  Looking at his handiwork, he said, “Well, hey, looks like I’ve got hostages to burn. Let’s make a call to dispatch, shall we? Let them know we’re A-okay and have no need for backup?” Buddy grabbed Beth by the upper arm in a grip so hard even in the cabin’s uncertain light Anna could see the flesh turning white. The girl squeaked inadvertently, then clamped her lips closed on the sound. Teaching them not to make noise would have been one of the first lessons in Buddy’s School for Psychopaths.

  He led her to the stove. To Candace he said, “Get the mike on the base radio. Pull it out as far toward her”—he jerked his chin at Anna—“as you can. When I tell you to push the Send button, you do it.”

  Candace did as she was told, each action executed with the careful precision of one who knows the least infraction can have dire consequences. When she was in place and the curling wire stretched till the mike was only a few feet from Anna’s face, Buddy gathered Beth’s hair at the nape of her neck and forced her head down till her nose was an inch from the hot cast-iron of the woodstove.

  “You will say exactly what I tell you. Word for word. No more, no less. Any deviation, any weird inflection or pronunciation, anything I even think is funky and we cook this pretty girl’s face off. Understand me?”

  Anna understood perfectly. The text was short and she memorized it with the intensity of desperation. Within two minutes, backup was canceled.

  “Get a knife and cut the mike wire.”

  Candace did, then on his instruction, threw the mike into the fire. For half a minute Buddy continued to hold Beth’s face near the stovetop, his eyes boring into Anna’s. Anna did not breathe or blink, swallow or sweat, terrified anything, any change, would send the child’s face onto the hot metal.

  Buddy had her where he wanted her, paralyzed. He was good at his craft.

  As if he’d seen the defeat in her gaze, he let Beth go.

  “You two proved a disappointment and caused me a great deal of work,” he said to Alexis and Beth. “But, out of the kindness of my heart, I’m going to give you an opportunity to atone. We’re going to fetch Robert Proffit. It was him you came to see, was it not?”

  The girls showed no relief at the sound of their beloved youth leader’s name, and Anna wondered if they’d come to blame him, either for letting them be taken in the first place or failing to find them, to save them. The wariness in Alexis’ pale blue eyes as, using the edge of the table, she pulled herself to her feet, told Anna otherwise. The girls had learned to trust nothing, to expect nothing good.

  “Robert is dead,” Anna told them. Knowledge was power of a sort. If nothing else, it might reduce the number of mind games between the cabin door and wherever the body was stashed. It also served to get the girls to look at her. The room was not brightly lit and they’d been given little time for sightseeing.

  When their eyes met hers Anna saw hope spark there; an adult to keep them safe. Then the shift that cut Anna so deeply she had to fight not to turn her face away in shame: resignation. Seeing her chained up, they accepted that, in the face of Buddy, everyone was helpless. Watching the young faces harden, the eyes dull, Anna could almost hear the faint cracking as they crumbled.

  “We’ll not need you,” Buddy said to Anna and she felt another crack, this time within herself. On his way out the door he picked up her service weapon, removed the magazine, shoved it in his gun belt and dropped the pistol back on the bed. “Enjoy yourself,” he told Candace and left. Beth and Alexis followed meekly.

  When the door had closed, Anna looked to Candace, only to find the girl who had
studiously avoided eye contact since their unfortunate introduction over the sights of Anna’s SIG Sauer, staring fixatedly at her.

  thirty

  Small and emaciated, in the hard light of the single lamp, Candace’s eyes seemed to take up half her face. Despite weeks of abuse, Goth hair and ill-fitting men’s clothes, she was gamine pretty. The triangular face and flawless skin added an otherworldly touch.

  Instinct warned Anna to treat this elfin child as a cornered animal.

  “Hey,” Anna said softly. “How’re you doing?”

  Candace stared. The noise of the Coleman lantern filled the cabin with the hiss of a thousand snakes.

  “Could I have a bit more water?” Anna asked in the same soothing voice. Though a drink would be welcome, she wouldn’t have wasted precious time just to procure it. By requesting help she hoped to establish a bond; one in which Candace felt she had the power for good, the ability to help, first Anna, then herself.

  “Don’t you want something pointed to unlock the handcuffs? I know how they work.” Candace sounded so kind, so intelligent, so. . .so okay, that Anna was momentarily stunned to silence. The unutterable delight she should be experiencing at this unexpected deus ex machina, turning tragedy into triumph in an instant, was not forthcoming.

  “That would be nice,” she said carefully.

  Candace went to the bed and peeled back the mattress. When she returned she had a bit of wire about six inches long and about half the diameter of that used to make coat hangers: ideal for opening handcuffs.

  “Is that what you used to get free when Buddy handcuffed you? You’re a clever girl.”

  “His name isn’t Buddy.”

  “Stephen, then.”

  “Ray.”

  “Okay.” Why the name was important, Anna couldn’t guess, but what Candace chose to call the son-of-a-bitch was all the same to her.

  Holding the wire up in front of her the way the priest holds the communion wafer at Mass, Candace stayed where she was.

  The delay was driving Anna nuts but she didn’t want to do or say anything that might shut the child down. “Ray won’t be gone long unless he’s put the . . . it someplace far away,” she hinted gently.