Bone Valley

by Claire Matturro

  Jimmie, apparently sensing it was safe to come out of his room, stuck his head in the kitchen and asked, “What you fixing to fix for supper?”

  “Stuffed green peppers,” I said. “I stuff the peppers with texturized vegetable protein, cheese, and a combo of onions and tomatoes, with sliced carrots on the side.”

  “Uh-huh. Maybe I bests go see how Dolly’s doing in all this here mess.”

  “I think Dolly knows how to come in out of the rain.”

  “Yeah, and she also knows how to fry chicken,” Jimmie said, and took my London Fog out of the hall closet without asking and ducked outside.

  Seeing as I’d spent the day chasing dust and germs, I needed a shower before cooking, so I checked all the doors and windows, found them locked, and showered until the hot water was gone. After that, confident I was home by myself for a Saturday night, I threw on a pair of tight jeans a good decade out of style and a loose camp shirt with baggy front pockets. Because my feet were cold against the marbled-concrete terrazzo of my floors, I slipped on a pair of Keds that had thousands of miles on their soles. Thus, dressed appropriately for moping around the house alone on a Saturday night, I went into my kitchen and started sautéing some onions as a first step in preparing the stuffed peppers. The battering of the rain was driving me crazy, so I tried to drown it out by turning on the radio to listen to WMNF, the cool, alt-radio station out of Tampa.

  As I started scraping carrots, it never once occurred to me that Henry and I weren’t the only people in Sarasota who could open a locked door without a key or dynamite.

  Chapter 28

  Someone threw a quilt over my head.

  Needless to say, that got my attention and I started frantically flailing about, but the quilt thrower proved much stronger than me. Besides, dancing around blind inside a quilt didn’t lend itself to effective self-defensive kicking. As I couldn’t even raise my arms to punch, I tried the time-tested technique of screaming my brains out.

  When my yelling didn’t bring forth help, I tried to conquer panic by concentrating on the details, that is, until I could figure out what to do.

  What I could tell so far was that someone had entered my house and thrown my own quilt—in the moments before darkness enveloped me, I had recognized the quilt as one that lived on the back of the couch in the den and was made of a blend of delicate blue organic cotton and wool and I had paid a small fortune for it and I didn’t want it hurt, thank you—over my head. While I was assessing details, my assailant yanked tighter on what felt like a rope or a belt around my waist. Then he knocked me down and rolled me on the floor until I hit something, possibly the kitchen wall. In spite of it all, I was still clutching the carrot in one hand, and the small kitchen knife in the other.

  Though the sound was muffled by the quilt over my ears, which was also doing a number on the breathable air quality in the immediate vicinity of my nose and mouth, I could hear my uninvited guest slamming drawers and other things around and figured Miguel had finally come after those fertilizer receipts. I profoundly wished that Bearess still lived with me, or that Jimmie would get his face out of Dolly’s fried chicken and see or hear something amiss and call 911. I also realized this would not have happened if I had listened to Philip about going to his house. But now was hardly the time to rethink my past decisions, and I pushed against the wall with my body, trying to right myself, though for what purpose, I wasn’t entirely sure.

  After I gave up trying to stand, I rolled about on the floor trying to find the doorway on the off chance I could roll through it into a hiding place while Miguel looked for receipts.

  But, proving my own adage that things can always go from bad to worse and one should never think otherwise, my assailant came stomping back into the kitchen and started banging on my head with his fist.

  This didn’t seem like very Miguel behavior.

  But then I remembered the splintered canoe paddle, whacked to kindling in one hit against the picnic table.

  “Where’s the videotape?” a forced, whispery voice asked.

  Muffled by the quilt, my fear, the rain, and the fakey stage whisper, I couldn’t tell if this was Miguel.

  But Miguel wouldn’t want a videotape.

  Miguel would want receipts.

  Nope, I had an unknown assailant pummeling my head in my own house.

  And, worse still, I could now smell the oil and the onions burning in my skillet. I tried to shout out to please turn the stove off before he burned down my house, but apparently people who break into your house, wrap you up in quilts, throw you on the floor, and then beat you about the head with their fists didn’t care about such niceties as whether they accidentally burned your house down too.

  That is to say, the person continued to hit me over the head and then punched at my face. Mercifully the quilt muffled the punches. But the hot oil sizzled hotter.

  “Where’s the damn tape, the videotape?” he repeated, as if somehow in my fear I had managed not to process the question the first time.

  Not inclined at the moment to chat with this criminal about tapes, I tried to roll away from his fists. When he kicked me and ordered me to “stay put,” I decided to stay put. All I could think now was that Jason the baby lawyer, or the now-exposed fake-spinal-injury plaintiff, was trying to find and destroy the tape of the faker working in his own yard. But the smell of the burning oil on the stove refocused me from trying to place the voice.

  “Please, turn off the stove,” I shouted through the quilt.

  “Where’s the damn tape?” Punch, punch, punch.

  Okay, if that was the game, I guess I’d have to play it. “At the office, the tape is at my office,” I cried out. “Right on top of my filing cabinet. Now turn off the stove.” If my house burned up, not only would I lose, like, you know, my house, but poor Rasputin, my pet jay, frolicking on the porch with the wild crickets, would burn up too.

  But obviously my attacker didn’t care about adding arson or bird murder to his list of crimes, intent, apparently as he was, on kidnapping me. In other words, he was dragging me outside and I never heard the little popping sound the stove makes when turned off.

  As he bounced me through my own house to the door, I was bound up so tight I couldn’t fight back. In a minute, we were outside, and my door slammed shut behind us. Though the blanket protected me from the rain as the madman dragged me outside to a vehicle, I could hear the sound of the storm around me. Attack-kidnapper man unceremoniously dumped me in the back of a van, or an SUV, started the engine, and drove off.

  Okay, I’m not too proud to admit this. I was scared. I was petrified. I’d been kidnapped and my house and my pet bird left to destruction by a hot-oil fire. On top of that, I seemed to be suffocating. I kept trying to roll inside my prison quilt, as if somehow that would improve my situation, but all that effort did was make me breathe heavier and use up air faster than it could filter through the cotton stuffing in the quilt.

  In this haze and my ire, I slowly became conscious of being rocked against something hard, and realized it was the vehicle’s door, and that we had slammed to a stop. Before I could get reoriented, I heard the man ask me what the combination to my law firm’s back-door lock was, and too frightened not to, I told him.

  The vehicle’s door slammed, and then there was silence. I struggled to get a good breathful of air into my lungs before I passed out. Inhaling and exhaling, I forced myself into a deep, rhythmic pattern—air in, air out—until the panic passed. Oh, all right, I was still scared, but I made myself take stock. The knife. Yeah, the knife. It occurred to me that cutting my way out of the quilt and running into the night full tilt before my irate kidnapper came back might count as a good idea.

  Struggling and groping, I discovered that the rope tied around my waist only trapped my arms above my elbows. Within the confines of my quilt prison, I could actually move my hands and lower my arms a little. Not, as an orthopedic surgeon would say, a full range of motion, but it was something. I still ha
d the big carrot in one hand and the small kitchen knife in the other.

  With some difficulty, I stuffed the carrot into the loose pocket of my camp shirt and started cutting my way out of the quilt with the knife. But then I heard the sound of a vehicle door opening.

  “I got the tape,” Maniac Man said, snarling in his hostile stage whisper.

  “Jason Quartermine, you son of a bitch, you let me out of here right now or so help me, I’ll see that The Florida Bar strips you of your license and the state attorney stomps you under the jail.”

  Instead of an abject apology, I heard laughter, muffled again by the quilt, and then I heard the door slam and the vehicle start off. Once more I took stock. The only tape I knew about was the one Jimmie had made of Jason’s client clearly demonstrating to the world at large that he was not disabled, as he claimed in his lawsuit. Therefore, being a lawyer and an analytical sort, I had decided that Jason was trying to steal the tape so he could proceed with his stupid car-crash lawsuit. So it was all right that Jason—or the faker plaintiff if that’s who my kidnapper was—took the tape because I, Lilly, Queen of the Duplicate, had the original locked up in the firm’s safe upstairs, in addition to the copy my mad kidnapper must have readily found.

  But obviously Jason, or the faker plaintiff, meant me harm or he’d have just rolled me out of the van and left me to either drown in the storm or be rescued. Of course, I realized, Jason had to shut me up now because I’d just told him I knew he was my assailant.

  Chastising myself for doing a really stupid thing, I resolved earnestly not to do anything else stupid for the rest of my life, and to cut my way out of the quilt so that the rest of my life wouldn’t be measured in minutes. Working within the limited range of motion I had with my hands, I began to cut, not without some regret at ruining my expensive quilt.

  Okay, so, cut maybe was an overstatement. Saw, poke, jab, curse, breathe.

  Breathing being the hardest part.

  As I sawed at the quilt, I slid, bumped, and skittered about in the vehicle. My mad chauffeur was obviously taking a long and winding road to our destination. With nothing to do but worry and work at the quilt with my small kitchen knife, I sawed a little hole in the quilt, near my hands. Not without some struggling, I squeezed the knife and enough of my fingers out of this hole to get at the rope that bound the quilt around my body. My new plan was simple: Saw through the rope and be prepared to spring like a wild animal the first time the van stopped and the door opened. But naturally the rope was tough as all get out, and my little kitchen knife seemed hardly up to the task, and it was slow going, but it wasn’t like I had anything else to do. My mind ping-ponged about in various degrees of fear and irritation, but I worked slowly, steadily, and kept sawing away at the rope. All of this was, I decided, a decent analogy to trial preparation—hard, dull work mixed with fear and loathing.

  Still, it’s amazing what one can do when highly motivated, and I was pretty highly motivated. At last, the threads shredded and the rope was cut and I hunkered down in the back of the vehicle and waited for a chance at escape.

  While waiting and worrying, my feet went to sleep, and hunger bore down on me, and I felt a desperate need to both pee and take a shower. Suddenly the vehicle slowed, banging me against what I figured was a seat. I could feel the vehicle making a sharp turn onto what quickly appeared to be a very rough road, if in fact it was a road at all. Bump thunk bump thunk bump. The vehicle stopped again. Gears ground and tires whirled and my maniac captor cursed. After more wheel spinning and grinding, the vehicle started forward again, but more slowly. Bump—thunk—bump—thunk. Then the vehicle stopped, a door slammed open, and I could hear rain and thunder and a man’s muffled cursing.

  When the cursing faded, I surmised that this was my chance to break for new territory. After struggling out of the quilt, I found myself sitting inside an SUV. I slipped the knife into my jeans pocket, thinking I might need it again. Peering out the window, I saw nothing but dark and rain, but knew I was better off wet and lost than staying in the vehicle. I eased open the side door and climbed out.

  The rain hit cold and hard against me, and I shivered, but kept moving as fast as one can move in tread-bare Keds in a slick, thick, mud bog. A bolt of lightning, followed almost immediately by a clap of thunder, startled me so badly I accidentally made a little screeching noise. I ran blindly, maybe another fifty yards, before I flat-ass slid down, butt first, in the slippery muck. Okay, these shoes failed the runs-well-in-mud consumer test. After making a quick mental note to henceforth always wear mud-worthy hiking boots while cooking dinner, on the off chance I was kidnapped from my kitchen in a storm a second time, I got up and started moving, a little more cautiously this time. Another bolt of lightning and clap of thunder made me screech again. Okay, so spank me, but I didn’t have my usual self-control. Also, I didn’t have a clue as to where my kidnapper was, but when the next bolt of lightning hit with its brief flash of light, I saw where I was—at Lenora’s wildlife rescue.

  Well, now what?

  How would Jason know about this place?

  So, hey, work it out later, I chided myself, and started running again in the general direction of where I thought the river was. In movies, those chased always flee to the river, and though no one with bloodhounds was on my tail, I figured it was as good a route as any. If I had a plan, I think it was to go to ground as soon as I was out of the compound.

  But moments after my second bout of screeching, I was tackled by the madman and landed facedown in mud. I struggled, but was no match for the crazy man jumping on me and thrashing me about. As we wrestled, I realized I wasn’t getting anywhere except worse off. Pummeled as I was by nature and a Ted Bundy reincarnate, I concentrated on keeping my nose out of the mud so I could breathe as the man lifted my head and smashed it down repeatedly into the soft, squishy ground under it.

  Apparently I ceased to struggle. I mean, I wasn’t totally paying attention to the details at this point, but I felt the man roll me over, slap me across my face, and begin to tie the rope around my waist, pulling my arms tight against my body. At least he didn’t re-enshroud me in the quilt, and, except for some mud in my nose, I could at least breathe.

  Grateful for the air that I was sucking into my lungs through my mouth in huge gasps, I made myself open my eyes and was rewarded by getting my face slapped at the same time that rain battered my eyeballs. Given the shortcomings of my situation, in the dark I got only the briefest, distorted glimpse of the man, and, in my renewed panic, I couldn’t recognize him.

  Maybe Jason. Maybe faker plaintiff. Maybe Jason had hired a tough guy to retrieve the videotape. By then I had forgotten to wonder who was mistreating me so, when the madman picked me up and carried me toward a shadowy building of some sort. One of Lenora’s shacky outbuildings. After he opened a door, Maniac Man unceremoniously dropped me, then I heard the sound of a door slamming and I was alone.

  Alone was good.

  Alone was not having someone smashing my face into mud.

  Alone was the reprieve I needed to get the damn knife out of my damn tight jeans, which, let me tell you, were destined for the Goodwill bag after this, and I slung my head trying to get the mud out of my eyes, and then I opened them. In the dank shed, I rolled and struggled to get to my feet, but I was unable to get any sense of balance. And then, to my horror, I heard the man return, laughing a laugh that I recognized as Big Trouble.

  The building was dark, but I could make out an outline of black against black, and could tell the man was coming for me again.

  Then he grabbed me and hauled me up to a sitting position.

  When I opened my mouth to begin negotiating my freedom, or screaming—I wasn’t sure which yet—Maniac Man began to smash raw hamburger all over me.

  Here, I officially lost it.

  And I screamed some more, for all the good it was doing me. I mean, under the best of circumstances, and these were not remotely in the running for even tolerable circumstances, let a
lone best, raw dead cow scares me, but having a strong and apparently totally demented man smearing wet, raw meat all over me while I was muddy and bound up in ropes plain scared me out of my wits.

  Despite the lack of any obvious benefit, I gave screaming another round or two. While I aired my terror through my vocal cords, my mad assailant pushed clumps of raw hamburger into my hair and smashed small handfuls into my clothes, even smushing some inside the pockets of my shirt. I imagined small, evil armies of E. coli bacteria crawling all over me and killing me slowly.

  Maniac Man eventually seemed satisfied that he’d smushed enough raw meat into me and he stopped. I stopped screaming. He picked me up, threw me over his shoulders like I was no more than a bedroll and we were on a Texas Chainsaw campout, and he carried me out of the small building over rough and wet ground as the rain pelted both of us. The next thing I knew, the man threw me on the ground, which was pretty much a mud lagoon, and while I sank and sloshed, Maniac Man pulled out a gun and shot something. The noise of the firearm set me off shrieking again, plus it injured my eardrums.

  Over my demented wailing, I thought I heard him say, “Gun’ll take a padlock any day.”

  Despite the kick to my ears and the mud and rain in my eyes, I made myself pay attention. I heard the sound of metal on metal, muffled as the sound was by my ringing ears and the pouring rain. Before I could calculate what this sound might mean, my vile kidnapper picked me up from behind and rudely shoved me into something that had a floor with straw on it. Without ever a clear look at the madman’s face, I rolled away from him until in the dark I hit a wall.