In real life, a sharp blow to the head causes a momentary blackness, accompanied by exploding lights behind the eyes and a sense of falling through space. It lasts only a few seconds, and when it’s over, the victim is left with a crashing headache, dizziness, disorientation, and a queasy feeling in the stomach.
Get hit any harder and you’d at least have a severe concussion, and more likely a skull fracture and bleeding in the brain.
I woke up with my face pressed into the dirt. Yes, there was the dizziness, the queasy feeling, the sharp pain in my head. I tried to focus the disorientation away. I figured I’d been out for less than a minute.
Someone was kneeling on the small of my back. My arms were pulled behind me, and my wrists were bound together.
When I lifted my head, I saw a man wrestling J.W. to his feet.
Then someone grabbed me around the throat and hauled me to my feet, too. I staggered against the sudden dizziness. Then an even queasier feeling came bubbling up in my throat. I swallowed it back.
We were shoved and prodded toward the house, and I stumbled along, concentrating on the ground, which seemed to be rising and falling and swirling beneath me.
A door opened. We went into the garage. It was dimly lit. There were three or four vehicles in there. Then we came to another door. It opened, too, and J.W. and I were shoved inside. We both landed hard on the cement floor. Then came the click of a solid lock.
I lay there with my cheek on the cool concrete and my eyes closed. I took deep breaths and waited for the dizziness to pass.
After a minute, J.W. said, “Hey? You okay?”
“I guess so. You?”
“They are professionals,” he said. “They know just where and just how hard to hit you. It’s an art.”
I pushed myself into a sitting position with my back against the wall and looked around. The room was lit by a row of big fluorescent bulbs in the plaster ceiling. They were so bright they hurt my eyes. Concrete floor and walls, no windows.
J.W. wormed his way over beside me. “Feels like duct tape around my wrists,” he said. “See if you can get me loose.”
He pushed his back against mine, and after a few minutes I managed to pry loose the end of the tape and pull it off his wrists. Then he undid me.
“Thanks,” I said. “You know—”
“Shh,” said J.W. He rolled his eyes toward the corner of the room. I glanced up. There was a small video camera with its red light winking at us.
“Well, old buddy,” I said for the benefit of the microphone that I assumed was connected to the camera, “sorry about that. Mr. Duval was quite hospitable this afternoon. Guess I’ve about worn out my welcome.”
“Now what’re we gonna do?” said J.W. “I’m scared.”
I had to look at him twice to see the anger that glittered in his eyes. J.W. was playacting. He had never been scared in his life.
I took his cue. “It’s all my fault,” I said. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to see if Christa was here. I promised her father—”
“I told you it was a stupid idea,” he said. “But, no. Not you. Not the smart lawyer. Can’t mind his own business. Gotta go snooping around where he doesn’t belong.”
“I’ll explain it to Mr. Duval. He seems like a good guy. He’ll understand.”
“We were trespassing,” he said. “They’re probably calling the police. That’s just what I need. I don’t know why I ever listen to you. You always get me in trouble.”
I had to restrain myself from smiling at J.W.’s overacting. “I said I was sorry, dammit,” I said, maybe overacting a bit myself. “What more do you want?”
“I want to go home. You, you can stay here and rot for all I care.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said, and I turned away from him.
A few minutes later the door opened. One Simon Peter stayed in the doorway, and another one came into the room. He held a large, square, automatic pistol, which he pointed at J.W. “You,” he said. “Come.”
J.W. pushed himself to his feet, glared at me, then went out the door. The guy with the gun followed him. Then the door shut and the latch clicked.
Sometime later I heard the tumblers click in the lock. Then the door opened. A Simon Peter stood in the doorway and beckoned to somebody outside.
Then Christa Doyle stepped into my little cell.
“Christa,” I said.
“Hello, Uncle Brady.” She was wearing loose-fitting white pants and a white T-shirt and sandals, an outfit very similar to Alain Duval’s.
I took a step toward her, but she backed away.
“Are you okay?” I said.
“I am wonderful,” she said. “How are you?”
“They hit me on the head and locked me in this room,” I said. “Otherwise I’m okay.”
She smiled. It was pretty clear that what I’d said hadn’t registered. “I understand you wanted to talk to me?” she said.
“That’s why I’m here,” I said. “I have important news for you.”
Her eyes had a glazed look. Drugs, I guessed. Or maybe it was just the glory of the True Light. “Yes?” she said.
“Christa,” I said, “it’s about your father. He’s very sick.”
She continued to smile at me. It didn’t look like much was going on behind those glassy eyes.
“He’s dying,” I said. “He hasn’t got much more time. He wants desperately to see you. So does your mother.”
She gave me a little shrug and continued to smile.
“Did you understand what I said?”
“Those people are not my parents anymore,” she said. “I have a new family now. I am surrounded by love. Please tell them.”
“Christa,” I said, “listen to me. I don’t know how much you remember—”
At that moment the Simon Peter came back into the room. “Okay,” he said. “That’s it.” He put his arm around Christa’s shoulders and steered her out of my cell.
She smiled at me over her shoulder as she left.
“He loves you,” I called after her. “He just wants to kiss his little girl good-bye before he dies.”
Then the door slammed and the lock clicked.
I tried the doorknob. It wouldn’t turn, of course. I sat on the floor. I hadn’t handled that very well.
Now what?
Now I would wait. For what, I had no way of knowing.
I leaned back against the wall. My head hurt. I closed my eyes. After a while, I guess I dozed off.
I woke up abruptly. My cell was dark, and there was no hum of electricity and machinery. It was utterly and absolutely silent. The absence of sound was deafening.
I stood up and groped my way to the door. I tried the knob. To my surprise, it turned. As I opened the door, J.W.’s voice whispered next to my ear, “Hey, there you are. Come on. Quick!”
I led J.W. into the garage. A single light, apparently lit by an emergency generator, cast the big space in a dim glow. We edged around a big SUV, and as we did I noticed a long dented streak along its side where the paint had been scraped off.
I touched J.W.’s arm and pointed.
He nodded, then jerked his head for me to follow him.
There was a side door. J.W. opened it a crack and peered out. Then he beckoned to me.
We darted out, sprinted across the narrow side lawn, and dove for the bushes.
There were men’s voices, and from the back we could see flashlights playing around the house. They were moving randomly, and they didn’t seem to be in any hurry.
“No reason for them to think we got out,” J.W. said in my ear. “Far as they know, we’re still locked in our little cells.”
“How did we get out?”
“Me,” he said, “I cleverly broke out. You, you opened the door and walked out.”
“Somebody unlocked my door,” I said.
“And somebody must’ve hit the power supply,” said J.W., “because all the lights went out.”
“I figured that was you.”
“Nope,” he said.
“So what happened? Who cut the power?”
“How the hell do I know? Come on. We’ve got to move. They’ll be checking up on us.”
“Christa,” I said. “It had to be Christa.”
Chapter Nineteen
J.W.
When the very large Simon Peter with the very large pistol silently took me out of the room where Brady and I had been locked together, he had simply placed me in another one alone.
I suspected that we’d been split up so we could be questioned separately as Duval and the Simon Peters tried to figure out what we were really up to. Someone would therefore soon be coming to see me. I felt both alarmed and claustrophobic.
I was glad I’d left my .38 under the seat of the Land Cruiser. As the NRA likes to point out, it’s better to have a gun when you don’t need one than to need one when you don’t have one. However, if I’d had the old pistol with me when I’d gotten slugged, it surely would have been found and taken, so I was perhaps better off by having left it in the truck. I was sorry, though, that my pocketknife had been removed.
I tried the door handle. Locked. Moon and starlight came into my room through a window, but it was barred and looked out at dark woods where I could see nothing at all. The floor and walls were stone. On the bright side, I was still alive, my hands were free, and my head was beginning to clear up. And maybe the person who had been monitoring Brady and me actually believed that I was mad at him. If so, it was an edge that might come in handy sometime, somehow.
I circled the walls. They were quite sound. Maybe if I found a rusty nail I could work on the mortar and, like the Count of Monte Cristo, escape in ten or twenty years. I didn’t think I had that much time. I found a light switch near the door and flicked it. No light. I looked up and saw that there was no bulb in the socket that hung on a single cord from a rafter.
I studied the roof. If I couldn’t get out horizontally, maybe I could vertically. The roof rose to a peak above ancient-looking crossbeams that supported a small loft. I jumped and caught a beam and pulled myself up into the dark loft. It was harder than it would have been ten years earlier.
From the loft I could see that the roof boards were old and dry and I felt a small hope flicker in the midst of my anger and fear. I got close to the stone wall, bent my knees, and put my back against one of the boards. I straightened my knees and heaved up.
The board held, but a nail squeaked. I tried again. Something popped and it seemed that the board moved a bit. Progress, perhaps. Many a task on Martha’s Vineyard has been accomplished by brute strength and stupidity. I had plenty of the latter, but did I have enough of the former?
I bent again, put my hands on my knees, and straightened once more, pushing hard with both arms and legs. More squeaks and pops. The board was definitely looser. I rested, then repeated my attacks. A few minutes later I could see stars through a gap where the board had lifted away from the stone wall.
Two more heaves and there was a clatter of falling shingles as the board tore free. I felt a rush of joy as I pulled myself up and out onto the roof.
There I filled my lungs with fresh air while I squatted and listened. Had anyone heard the sounds of the falling shingles? Across a sweep of lawn I could see figures moving about the main house. To my right was the garage, where Brady must still be imprisoned in a side room. I eased down the roof and dropped to the ground.
So far, so good. As I peered around the corner of the stone building, the lights in the main house suddenly went out. A moment later a dark figure materialized near the garage and disappeared inside. A woman, certainly.
Lanterns and flashlights began to wink around the main house, but the garage was still in darkness. I went that way, then suddenly flattened against the wall as someone emerged from the building and ran silently toward the moving lights.
Mysteriouser and mysteriouser. I sidled over to the door, listened and heard nothing, then slipped inside. The garage was dimly lit by some sort of emergency light, and on the far side was the door behind which Brady and I had first been jailed. I was almost there when it opened and Brady stepped out.
There was another door on the side of the garage nearest the woods. “Hey, there you are. Come on,” I said, pointing. “Quick!”
He never hesitated but instead led the way. We passed parked cars, and he pointed to a big SUV with a serious new dent in its side. Then we were outside and moving fast through the trees away from the compound.
We hadn’t gotten far when Brady asked the logical question: “How did we get out?”
I told him of my exit through the roof and of the dark figure I’d seen.
“Christa,” he said. “It had to be Christa.”
I didn’t have breath enough to trot and talk at the same time, so I concentrated on getting away from the compound as quickly and quietly as possible. In the pale moonlight we were able to avoid running into trees but not to keep from being whipped by branches and undergrowth. I saw no lights behind us and heard no sounds of pursuit but I expected both before long.
We were both huffing and puffing, a sad commentary on early middle age. It occurred to me that maybe I should cut down on my beer consumption. Nah.
As we approached the Land Cruiser, Brady touched my arm and put his mouth near my ear. “Listen,” he whispered. “If I was a Simon Peter and I caught a couple a guys sneaking around where they didn’t belong, I’d wonder where they came from and send somebody out to find their car to see if there were more of them.”
A wise thought. Our truck was out of sight, but there were only so many places we could have hidden it, and the Simon Peters probably knew the territory well enough to find it now that they had cause to go looking.
So we moved very carefully, with many pauses for watching and listening, as we got closer to the old Toyota.
The Simon Peter on watch was not so careful. He lit a cigarette.
He was on the driver’s side of the truck in the dark shade of a large oak tree. If anyone tried to get into the driver’s seat, the Simon Peter would be a very short pistol shot away.
We watched and listened for a minute, but saw and heard nothing to suggest that our smoker had a compatriot.
It was my turn to whisper in Brady’s ear: “We may not have much time before there’ll be people on our tail, so I’m going to circle around to the passenger side. In about five minutes you get twenty yards or so behind that guy and make a lot of noise and do some cussing. When I hear you I’m going to get to the truck, open the passenger side door, and snag my pistol and flashlight.”
“Forget it,” hissed Brady. “When you open the door, the inside light will go on and he’ll see you!”
“That inside light hasn’t worked in five years!” I said, and before he could argue more I moved away through the woods, making a circle around the truck. I’m no Lew Wetzel or Abraham Mahsimba, but I was quiet enough not to attract the attention of the tobacco-addicted Simon Peter.
I’d just gotten myself positioned opposite him when Brady snapped some branches and uttered a few imaginative oaths, which he immediately pretended to smother. Something moved in the shadow of the oak, and I ran fast across the moonlit sand to the side of the Land Cruiser. I crouched, eased the door open, and stretched a long arm under the seat. The comforting butt of the old .38 slid into my hand. Another grope and I had my five-cell flashlight in my other hand.
Under the oak the Simon Peter had snuffed his cigarette and was speaking quietly into what I guessed must be a cell phone. I couldn’t make out his words but I imagined he was calling for reinforcements. Beyond him, Brady continued to thrash around like a man who had fallen into brambles.
I took a deep breath, stood up, and put the beam of my flashlight under the oak tree. A black-clad Simon Peter whirled toward me, a pistol in one hand, a cell phone in the other.
“Police officers!” I shouted. “Put down your weapon and raise your hands!”
He hesitated, squinting into the
light.
“Drop it or I’ll drop you!” I shouted. “Sanchez! If he makes a break your way and I miss him, you shoot the son of a bitch! You other men do the same if you have to!”
“I got him in my sights, Sarge!” shouted Brady.
The Simon Peter hesitated a moment longer, then dropped his pistol and raised his hands. His face wore an angry, worried expression.
“Get over here and spread ’em,” I snapped in my best Boston PD voice. “I’m damned sure you know the routine!”
The Simon Peter came to the truck, put his hands on the hood, and spread his legs. I walked around behind him and kicked his legs farther back. “Don’t try to be smart,” I said.
As I relieved him of his phone and patted him down, Brady came out of the woods. I gave him the flashlight and said, “Keep him covered and keep this in his eyes, Sanchez.”
I found no other weapons, but my boy did have a wallet identifying him as George Muldoon. George was from L.A. and belonged to the VFW and the NRA. He had his own set of handcuffs. Convenient. I backed him against a small tree and used the cuffs to secure his hands around its trunk.
“That should hold him for a while, boys,” I said to my imaginary band of officers. “Now let’s get after the rest of them. Sanchez, you and I will get the truck out of here. Come on!”
Brady and I slipped into our seats and left George Muldoon to darkness and deep thought.
“His pals are on their way,” I said. “It would be interesting to listen to what they have to say to each other.”
“I’m more interested in getting Christa away from that bunch,” said Brady, as we drove away.
“Was Christa the dark-haired girl on the far side of the fire?”
“Yes. It must have been her who unlocked my door.”
“I couldn’t tell you that, but I can tell you this: If the girl at the fire was Christa, she was warbling away with Frank Dyer, and the two of them looked pretty cozy.”
“Frank Dyer,” said Brady. “Isn’t he the assistant soundman? That doesn’t make any sense. Christa got herself an Eye of Horus tattoo. That’s Duval’s mark.”
Second Sight Page 18