Blind Pursuit

by Michael Prescott

  He was standing more than six feet away. Too far. He had to be within reach.

  “We still have work to do,” she said, hoping to draw him closer.

  “No more work. That’s done now.”

  “We were making progress—”

  “Uh-uh. I’m discontinuing therapy, Doc.” He stepped around the chair, advancing on her. “We’re going outside now. Out to the arroyo.”

  “You don’t want to do that.”

  “Oh, yes.” A yard away. Half a yard. “I do.”

  He reached for his pocket. For the stun gun.

  Now.

  She twisted sideways, seized the chain, then shot upright, swinging it in a wide, looping arc.

  Instinctively Oliver stepped back.

  The loose end of the chain flashed past his face and found its target.

  The light bulb shattered in a tinkling rain.

  Darkness. Intense and absolute in the windowless room.

  Even as the bulb exploded, Erin sidestepped away from the chair. A heartbeat later the wooden legs scraped noisily on concrete. Oliver had lunged blindly at the spot where she’d stood.

  Her right hand fumbled behind her, prying the spout free of her waistband.

  To her left, the flashlight snapped on, its pale beam dissecting the dark. The circle of light whipped toward her, sudden glare dazzling her vision.

  She raised the spout and brought it down, knife-quick, aiming just behind the flash.

  The pipe chopped Oliver’s wrist. Gasp of pain, and the flashlight fell free.

  It struck the floor and rolled, its beam painting yellow spirals on the cellar walls. In the blurred half-light Erin saw Oliver again reaching for the stun gun.

  She lashed out with the spout a second time.

  Oliver sensed the attack, dodged to one side, then seized her right forearm, his grip painfully tight, squeezing a gasp out of her.

  Involuntarily her fingers splayed. She had time to think that the pressure of his clutch had paralyzed her radial nerve, and then the spout dropped from her hand like a discarded toy. She heard it clatter on the floor.

  No weapon. But she could still fight. Months of self-defense classes must have been good for something.

  Don’t think. The voice in her mind belonged to Mr. Sanders, her tae kwon do instructor. Thinking is too slow. Let your reflexes take over.

  Oliver, still holding her right arm, jerked her toward him. His face rushed at her, his eyes sparkling in the dimness.

  Reaching across her body with her left hand, she grabbed the wrist of her captured arm, then snapped her upper body back and tore free of his grasp.

  She retreated a step, and then his two hands closed over her throat.

  Brief panic shook her—she couldn’t breathe—before habits more deeply ingrained than she’d suspected, habits that mimicked instinct, dictated the correct response.

  She raised her arms fast, over Oliver’s forearms, then swung sharply to the right, bending at the waist. Her left elbow came up, and she whipped back to an upright posture, using the momentum of her upper body to drive the elbow savagely into Oliver’s jaw.

  Stunned, he released her throat.

  Her right hand wasn’t paralyzed anymore. She curled it in a tight fist, the first two knuckles projecting slightly, and directed a reverse punch at Oliver’s ribs, pivoting as she delivered the blow.

  He gasped but didn’t go down. With her left hand she executed a crippling palm-heel strike to his groin.

  Grunt of pain, and he staggered backward, then dropped to his knees.

  She’d done it. She’d beaten him.

  Erin spun away from him, her next moves fully formed in her mind. Simply get out of the room, bolt and chain the door, then lock the door at the top of the stairs also. He might be able to shoot his way out, but not before she’d fled the ranch.

  These thoughts crowded her brain, borne on a cresting wave of triumph, as she lunged blindly for the door frame, found it, began to step through—

  The chain fastened to her right leg was jerked taut.

  She lost her balance, slammed down on hands and knees.

  Oliver, still sprawled on the floor, gave the chain another tug. Erin slid on the smooth concrete, dragged closer to her adversary.

  She rolled onto her side, bent her left leg at the knee, and aimed a punishing snap kick at Oliver’s head.

  Crack of impact. She ripped the chain free of his grasp, then scrambled to her feet.

  She hoped the kick would immobilize him, but no; he was rising, too, his recovery so rapid as to be almost instantaneous. He seemed impervious to pain. The thought flashed in her mind that the same neurological wiring that suppressed awareness of his deepest feelings might cut him off from unwanted bodily sensations as well.

  For the moment she’d forfeited her chance to escape through the doorway. She had to put him on the floor again.

  Turning to face him, she lashed out with another kick.

  Her intention was to disable him with a fractured kneecap, but he stepped into the kick, catching the blow on the side of his calf, then locked her in a crushing bear hug.

  Pain shot through her ribs. She smelled his breath, sour and close.

  Proper defensive move—knee strike.

  Her left leg shot up. Simultaneously Oliver pistoned out both arms, shoving her away.

  Caught off balance, she tried to find her footing, failed, and thudded down on her side with a gasp.

  Impact shocked all the breath out of her. She tried to rise, couldn’t. Her legs and arms wouldn’t work. For a long, helpless moment she just lay there, wheezing, until her lungs sucked air again.

  Then slowly she looked up, and there he was—Oliver, looming over her, a yard away, the stun gun in his hand, the flashlight on the floor throwing his huge, distended shadow across the ceiling like a great black stain.

  Sparring session’s over, Erin. Mr. Sanders sounded faintly disappointed. Better luck next time.

  Dazed, she crawled blindly backward, away from the weapon, the chain rattle-clanking in her wake.

  Brick walls bumped up against her shoulders. She had retreated into a corner. Nowhere to go.

  Oliver took a step forward, closing the short distance between them. His mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, and then he remembered speech.

  “You filth,” he muttered. “Stinking filth.”

  He switched on the stun gun. Electricity crackled between the prongs in a blue arc.

  “Oliver.” She coughed, then found the strength to speak. “You don’t hate me enough to kill me. You know you don’t.”

  “Wrong, Doc.” Still no emotion in his voice, no expression on his face. “I do hate you. You and your damn sister. I wish the two of you had never been born. I wish—”

  He stopped himself.

  “You wish Maureen had had us aborted,” Erin finished for him.

  His eyes narrowed, the lids sliding shut as if with sleep. Slowly he nodded.

  “But she didn’t,” Erin said, “because she was a Catholic, and it would have been a sin.”

  “There are worse sins.”

  “Like your sin.” Tick of silence in the room. “Incest.”

  Oliver said nothing.

  “Lincoln molested you for years. And when Maureen visited the ranch, you did the same to her. You raped her, because she was your mother’s sister, and incest was the only form of intimacy you’d ever known.”

  From between frozen lips, a faint sleepwalker’s murmur: “Shut up.”

  “And she got pregnant. With Annie and me.” Erin gazed up at his face, searching for a response. “You’re our father.”

  Something flickered in his eyes. A hint of personality, of human consciousness.

  He switched off the stun gun. The hiss of current was replaced by the labored rasp of his breathing.

  “Yes,” he whispered. “God damn you, yes.”

  52

  At the eastern end of the side road where she’d lost Gund’s trail a
t nightfall, Annie found a ranch with a padlocked gate.

  Brief excitement shook her. But the duplicate key marked GATE would not open the lock, and neither would any other key on the ring.

  Disappointed, she doubled back to Houghton Road and continued south.

  Already her quest was beginning to feel hopeless. It was one thing to assume that Gund had a ranch in this vicinity; it was quite another to search every side street, every dirt road, every unmarked lane intersecting with Houghton for miles.

  For all she knew, Gund’s ranch was far south of here, perhaps south of Interstate 10 and the Pima County Fairgrounds. Or—a grimmer prospect—it might be nowhere in the area at all.

  If Gund had known all along that she was following him, he might have driven out of his way deliberately, in order to give no clue to his true destination, before performing whatever mysterious maneuver had made him disappear.

  There were so many possibilities, and the desert was so dark, so vast. She could very well be wasting her time.

  Another side road passed by, this one on her left. Unmarked, barely visible. She nearly missed seeing it.

  With a squeal of brakes she cut her speed and executed a skidding U-turn, then pulled onto the narrow dirt lane.

  The Miata bounced lightly on the rutted surface. To the north, barbed-wire fencing glided by; beyond it lay the dim shapes of a house and barn.

  She stiffened in her seat as a distant memory snapped into focus.

  “Can’t be coincidence,” she whispered, unaware that she was voicing her thoughts. “Can’t be.”

  Her headlights picked up an obstruction ahead.

  A gate.

  The Miata slowed to a halt. Annie sat in the driver’s seat, very still, barely breathing.

  The twin circles of her halogen beams played on the gate. Unlocked, it creaked lazily on rusted hinges.

  If the labels on the key ring meant anything, then the gate of Gund’s ranch was padlocked.

  This couldn’t be it, then.

  But she knew it was.

  Because this was the old Connor place. The ranch she and Erin had tracked down on a spring day in 1985.

  There had been no reason to think of that visit in years. She’d forgotten all about the ranch, forgotten its location, its very existence.

  Until now.

  Now she knew—she knew—that this was the place she was looking for.

  Harold Gund owned the ranch ... and Erin was inside.

  Switching on her high beams, she scanned the grounds. Part of the fence, she noticed, had been torn apart as if by a speeding vehicle. She thought of the damage to Gund’s van.

  His van. If he was here, it ought to be within view. Parked in the carport or on the gravel court at the front of the house.

  It was nowhere. And the house was dark.

  Apparently Gund hadn’t returned. Perhaps he really had fled, as she’d hoped.

  Or perhaps he was on his way here right now.

  She killed the high beams, using only her parking lights. Cautiously she eased the Miata forward and nosed open the gate. The car hummed over yards of stiff brown grass and came to a stop fifty feet from the house.

  When she shut off the motor, the night’s sudden stillness pressed in on her, squeezing her chest, making it difficult to breathe.

  She left her key in the ignition—her experience in Gund’s neighborhood had alerted her to the advantages of a quick getaway—and got out of the car, being careful not to slam the door. The warm night wrapped itself around her, dry and dark.

  Her shoes crunched loudly on the gravel, an oddly hungry sound, like the grinding of some large animal’s jaws, as she walked to the house’s front door.

  It was locked. Searching the key ring, squinting at each hand-labeled tag in the starlight, she found the key marked FRONT DOOR.

  Even before inserting it in the keyhole, she was irrationally certain it would fit.

  It did.

  The door glided open under her hand. She stepped into a spacious living room, unfurnished, empty except for a potbelly stove bolted to the floor.

  No light was apparent, other than shafts of feeble

  Starlight lancing through the broken windows. No sound was audible save the hum and whistle of the wind.

  Annie moved forward, into the dark, and found her voice. “Erin ...?”

  53

  “It must have been the summer of 1965,” Erin said softly as the stun gun wavered in Oliver’s shaking hand. “You would have been fifteen.”

  “Fifteen,” Oliver whispered, memory dulling his gaze.

  “Maureen was twenty-one.”

  “And beautiful.” The flashlight on the floor shined up at him, casting weird shadows over his face. The hollows of his eyes were deep wells of ink. “So beautiful.”

  Erin squeezed more tightly into the corner. The floor under her was cold. The bricks at her back—cold. A trickle of sweat ran down her spine like an icy finger.

  “How did it happen?” she asked, fighting to hear herself over the pounding of her heart.

  He looked away, toward the open door, but she knew he wasn’t seeing it, wasn’t seeing anything around him.

  “In July of ’65,” he said quietly, “Maureen came out from Sierra Springs, alone, to celebrate Lydia’s birthday. One afternoon she set up a lounge chair out back. I sneaked through the arroyo to where she was sunbathing. And spied on her.

  “She took off her shirt. Squeezed suntan oil onto her breasts. Touched herself. I heard her moan. Skin wet with oil, legs twisting ...”

  Erin felt it was wrong somehow, a violation of some ancient taboo, to picture her mother touching herself so intimately.

  She blinked the thought away. “How long did you watch?”

  “Until she was finished. Then I returned to the house. Lincoln saw me as I entered. And he saw the stain. On my pants. A big, dark stain.

  “I didn’t even know I’d ... done that. Hadn’t felt it. Hadn’t felt anything at all.”

  She understood. He must have survived the years of abuse by disconnecting himself from his emotions, even from physical sensations—and from sexual feelings most of all.

  “Lincoln said he knew what I’d been up to. I’d been peeping at my Aunt Maureen. That kind of behavior demanded punishment. A boy needed to learn discipline.

  “Lydia was in town, and Maureen was still outside. Nothing to stop him, so he did it right then, on the living room floor, near the potbelly stove.

  “Afterward, I locked the bathroom door, scrubbed my pants and underwear. I didn’t think about Lincoln. I thought about Maureen.”

  He lowered his head, the flashlight’s pale radiance brightening his face like a flush of shame.

  “I wanted her. Before, it had been enough to just watch, but now I had to have ... had to prove ...”

  Erin knew what he’d felt the need to prove.

  “Next morning, Maureen was up before dawn; she liked to walk when it was cool. I found her by the barn. Said I’d hidden a birthday present for Lydia in the tack room.

  “She went in with me. Trusted me. I was only a kid, after all. But I was taller than she was. And in my back pocket I had a knife.

  “Her eyes got big when I popped the switchblade. I was going to stick something in her, I said—the knife or my cock. Her choice.

  “She was crying, saying I couldn’t mean it. Good hard slap shut her up.

  “We did it there, on the floor, with the knife at her throat and the horses restless in their stalls on the other side of the wall.”

  On the floor. The same way Lincoln had abused Oliver. The same pattern of perfunctory violence, repeated.

  The son had learned from the father, but it was not discipline that had been taught.

  “Once you let her go,” Erin whispered, “she didn’t tell?”

  “No. She was scared. I let her know that even if I served time, I’d be out in a couple of years. That was all I had to say.

  “She left later that day, even b
efore Lydia’s party. Made some excuse. Drove back to Sierra Springs. And not long afterward ...”

  “She found out she was pregnant.”

  “That’s right, Doc. I got twin girls started that morning in the barn. I gave you life.” He switched on the stun gun again. “And what I gave, I can take back.”

  Erin stared at the ribbon of current as Oliver guided it slowly toward her throat.

  Upstairs, the groan of a door.

  Her glance ticked upward. Oliver cocked his head.

  They listened, frozen, breathless, wax figures in a tableau.

  Softly, footsteps.

  Someone in the house.

  An emotion so intense as to be unidentifiable swept through Erin and set her body shaking.

  Oh, God—the words in her mind began as a plea, ended in a silent shriek—let it be a cop, please, let it be a cop!

  The footsteps stopped directly overhead.

  In the sudden silence, in the motionless air, a voice.

  “Erin ...?”

  Annie.

  Recognition jerked Erin half upright. All the breath rushed out of her lungs in an urgent, warbling cry.

  “Annie, get away, he’s got a gun, he’s—”

  The pincers slammed into the soft skin under her jaw, and she fell instantly into a lightless void, pursued by the echo of her scream.

  54

  Annie raced across the gravel court, her shoes scattering a fine spray of stones.

  The echo of Erin’s scream rang in her memory. A scream from the cellar, abruptly cut off.

  After that, footsteps drumming on the stairs. Gund, ascending at a run.

  He was here, after all. He was here, though she hadn’t seen his van, hadn’t seen any lights in the windows of the house. He was here, and if he chased her down, he would kill her. Kill her and Erin, too. Annie was sure of that.

  The Miata was just ahead, the driver’s window open, the door unlocked. She reached the car and fumbled for the door handle, Gund’s key ring slipping free of her grasp to land somewhere on the ground with a distant, barely noticed clink.

  The door swung open. She threw herself into the bucket seat, cranked the ignition key, and the motor caught.