Unsound (A Lei Crime Companion Novel)

by Neal, Toby

  He came over, untied the knot at my throat.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked, looking up at his vast pale face, shadowed with beard stubble and pitted with old acne scars.

  “Like you care.” He sounded as petulant as my son in his teen years.

  “I do care,” I said, and was surprised to find it true. For all his terrible strength, I could see what a boy he was, and I didn’t like that he was dying—even as I remembered the butcher knife was still under one of the bunks and I probably should have stabbed him with it yesterday.

  “I’ll have to take you to the outhouse. Get your pot.” He tied the rope around my wrist. “Glad you found this rope for us.”

  “Yeah, wow, that backfired,” I agreed, and was surprised by a snort of a laugh from Pruitt. He followed me as I went into the kitchen.

  “Why are you wearing your boots?” he asked, as I got the pee pot out from under the sink.

  “Why do you think?” I said.

  He shook his big head. “No running. You’ll be sorry if you do.”

  I stood next to him like a dog on a leash as he spun the combination lock, let us out the front door. “I don’t want you to kill me.”

  “I’m still undecided about that.” He followed me out onto the steps, down into the dewy grass. The indigo sky still had a few reluctant stars studding it, but golden dawn welled in the east and brazed a few puffy clouds with fluorescent salmon. Everything here in the crater seemed hypersaturated with color, as if all filters were removed.

  “What can I do to tip things in my favor?” I led him down the short path to the coffin-like box of the outhouse.

  “I have to think on that.”

  That was not what I’d hoped to hear. I went into the outhouse, shut the door as best I could on the rope tied to my wrist. Sitting on the wooden seat, I was unable to pee, my bladder cramping.

  A long moment passed.

  “You done yet?”

  “No. Sorry, I can’t go.” I got up, hoisted my pants, came out.

  “Well, I have to go. Maybe that will help.” He went inside, shut the door. I stood awkwardly, my hand with the rope on it extended to the door, looking around at the awesome vista. It occurred to me to untie the rope and try to run, but I had no confidence I’d make it more than a few yards before he caught me, and I felt like I’d tested his patience as far as I was willing to at the moment. Resigned, I soaked in the stark beauty and colors of the towering crater wall behind us, the sweep of the valley floor before us, the ocean in the way far distance, blue and mysterious, the sky given dimension by the brilliant clouds overhead.

  I heard Russell Pruitt doing a very long pee, and suddenly I had to go in the strange way of these things, and as soon as he came out I darted in and did my business, number two as well. I came out carrying the folded squares of used napkin.

  “Thanks for waiting,” I said. “Gotta pack these out.” Like I’d live to do that. I had to keep thinking like I would.

  “Glad you could go. We might have been out here a long time,” he said. “I want to fix us some breakfast; then we need to get on the trail to Holua Cabin.”

  He’d read the permits, after all.

  The second time hope died was only slightly less painful than the first time.

  Russell Pruitt locked us back into the cabin, untied the rope on my wrist. “You can pack your own things while I fix breakfast.”

  I thought of sassy things to say back, of trying to engage him in some discourse about the logic of taking me prisoner to do therapy, but in the end I just turned to my bunk and began packing up my meager belongings.

  On the plus side of all of this, the physical misery of my first days in the cabin was gone—and I couldn’t chalk my rejuvenation up to just a dose of alcohol and a pasta dinner. The current peril I was in was having a salutary effect on my body—a side effect of the threat of death, I decided. This conundrum would be very interesting to do a sociological study on, if ever I could design one ethically. At that challenge, my overused brain boggled.

  Rolling up my sleeping bag, the dirt and grass stains on the once-new fabric reminded me of the physical altercations of the day before. That reminded me of the butcher knife, still under the bunk across the room.

  My situation would be greatly helped by the addition of a butcher knife.

  Russell Pruitt banged a few pans in the sink, and I heard him filling the big pot with water. His back was turned. I let the flashlight I still carried in the leg of my sweats fall out, and I gave it a kick so that it rolled across the cabin under the same bed as the knife.

  “Rats,” I said loudly, glancing at him. He hadn’t turned, but keeping him distracted and talking seemed a good idea. “You’re good at cooking. Bet there’s a story there.”

  “Yeah, actually there is.” He turned back to the propane grill with the big pot in one arm and the striker in the other. I walked deliberately across the room, got on my knees, and reached under the bed. The angle was out of his view unless he came around.

  I really hoped he’d forgotten about the butcher knife.

  “I always liked being in the kitchen. Guess you could say I had a knack for it. I’d cook for my foster families. Helped them like me, and thanks to my cooking, I had only three placements before the end of high school. What’re you doing?”

  The crack of suspicion in his voice made me jump, bumping my head on the bottom of the bunk. “My flashlight rolled under here.” I shoved the butcher knife into my sleeve, moved it down against my side hoping I wouldn’t cut myself, even as the fingers of my other hand curled around the slim, cool tube of the flashlight. “See?” I sat back up on my knees, held it up.

  “Okay. Well, anyway, my first job out of high school was for a restaurant, as a sous-chef. But I’d already discovered I was even better at computers than food—and I bet you can guess which one pays more.”

  “You have to do what you love,” I said, my heart thundering as I walked back to my backpack, wondering where I could hide a seven-inch butcher knife that he wouldn’t see if he decided to check my bag again.

  I turned the pack toward him and shoved the knife down into a slit where the straps attached to the stiff backing of the pack. The handle still protruded, so keeping all my movements rhythmic, I shook out the yoga pants, rolling them to wrap around the mouth of the backpack as if adding extra padding for the straps. “How did you switch from food to computers? And then to psychology?”

  “I never went to school for computers. Just started fixing them for people, rigging up networks within houses, things like that. Began getting work under the table that way. When I had enough saved up, I got my own place, supported myself with my own little tech business. I was always going to school for psychology.”

  I felt a chill pass across my skin, a reminder of the crawlies of yesterday. That he’d majored in psych meant he’d invested a lot of time and effort into his revenge scheme, something that didn’t bode well for me due to the foot-in-the-door principle—that is, the more little choices a person made in the direction of a certain course of action, no matter how bizarre or challenging it became, changing course became even harder because to do so meant admitting you’d been wrong hundreds of choices ago. The foot-in-the-door principle led to situations like the Jim Jones cult, where all voluntarily drank the Kool-Aid, though many were rational adults who knew what was happening and could have refused.

  “So when did you start tracking my whereabouts?”

  “Not that long ago, actually. When I met your son, Chris, at college.”

  I threw my head up to glare at him. I actually felt my eyes get hot as I said, “You leave him alone!”

  “Oh my. Hit a nerve, there, did I?” He retrieved his backpack, a vast dark green number the size of a sofa, and began filling it with the contents of the kitchen. “Quite the mama bear.”

  “Do what you want to me, but leave him alone,” I whispered fiercely, feeling my hand steal under the yoga pants to curl around the plastic han
dle of the knife. The thought of Chris hurt brought on a vivid fantasy of stabbing Russell Pruitt, repeatedly, messily, and with no reservation. I panted with terror and anticipation, adrenaline flooding my system with the means to execute that fantasy.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, his back invitingly exposed as he put the bag of pasta, coffee, and other foodstuffs into the depths of his pack. “I’ve got no beef with him. But it was meeting him that gave me the idea to track you, see what you were up to. I’d had a different plan up until then. But once I was observing you, I could see you were going downhill fast. I didn’t want you to beat me to the bottom.”

  “Bottom,” I repeated, releasing the handle of the knife, pushing it back down, sucking calming breaths to bring my heart rate down.

  I’d just learned that I could easily murder someone who threatened my child. It was one thing to entertain that idea intellectually; it was another to come up against it baldly and with opportunity.

  “Yeah, bottom. The end. Kicking the bucket. Tossing off this mortal coil. Pushing up daisies. Feeding the worms,” he chanted.

  “You know, Russell Pruitt, I don’t think you really are dying,” I said. The words burst out of my mouth and bounced into the room like bowling balls, disturbing our constructed universe. Words have power. Words define reality. And a new reality could change everything about our situation.

  Now Russell Pruitt was the one to lift his head and glare, and his dark eyes were definitely less glassy than this morning.

  “Yeah. I think you were told something that’s some doc’s best guess, but it’s not true. Here you are, hiking Haleakala Crater, no small physical feat. Slinging a grown woman around in her sleeping bag. Eating pasta and shrimp, drinking vodka, and feeling better than you have in years. Yeah, I think this death diagnosis is bogus.”

  Somewhere in my intuition, I’d come up with an idea—an idea that, if I could infect him with it, would change everything. The idea was coupled with emotion: hope that he would live. And if he were going to live . . . I could live.

  “No more talking,” he said, and I knew the seed was planted. I shut my mouth and let it take root.

  Chapter 14

  Ideas are viruses. They clamp on, drill through the epidural layer of denial and defenses, inject their DNA into the host cell, and then wait for baby viruses to be treacherously birthed. Good ideas are the ones that are hardest to shake and are the most compelling. The idea that Russell Pruitt might not be dying had timeless appeal.

  No one wants to know they’re dying. In fact, we’re all wired to hate that idea very much.

  I walked ahead of Russell Pruitt, the rope tied around my wrist, on the trail toward the far side of the bowl of the crater. According to the map, it was a traverse of four miles to Holua Cabin, and I could see most of it was going to be sand.

  Russell Pruitt’s ability to tolerate this hike would have a great deal to do with whether or not he allowed my offer of hope to take up mental residence; thus it behooved me to make sure he wasn’t overexerting himself. Every five or ten minutes, as we headed back into the main crater well, I found a reason to stop. A rock in my shoe. Wheezing (not much acting needed) and dehydration. Mismatched backpack strap length. Et cetera.

  At each of these stops, I checked his color and how tired he seemed—and he was fine, a towering kid with Coke-bottle glasses and a backpack the size of Kansas who hadn’t yet broken a sweat. Heart condition or not, he was twentysomething years old. I was the pushing fifty-year-old alcoholic divorcée who’d been drinking her meals and abusing Advil. My liver was probably shot to hell. I might be the one dying.

  Bent over, trying to adjust my sock through the toe of my boot, it occurred to me that if I stressed him and he had one of his attacks, I’d be in a position to get away. I could just ditch my pack and run for it. Yeah, it wouldn’t be pretty getting my butt out of the crater with no water, but with the consequences as dire as they were, I could get my hustle on and do it.

  Suddenly it occurred to me that by infecting Russell Pruitt with hope, I’d done the same to myself. I’d cast the die in the direction of staying tied to his side like a not-very-happy mule on a trail ride, carrying a pack and a bad attitude.

  That’s the thing about ideas. They’re free radicals, not controllable, and by trying to convince Russell Pruitt he could live, I’d “caught” that hope myself—one possible future that might well backfire. Caring that he lived, I might find myself unable to do what needed to be done—from untying myself to using the butcher knife whose handle was rubbing a blister on the back of my shoulder.

  Thinking clearly about all the options was the way to stay in control, I decided, my eyes on the gray sand in front of me. I couldn’t be overinvested in any one scenario of running away, disabling, killing, or even having Russell Pruitt walk out with me alive. I’d stay alert, and I’d take the path that offered the best chance of survival.

  I’d have to know it when I saw it and be ready to act instantly.

  The thought brought my heart rate up and sweat poured out of my pores, releasing that awful body odor born of booze and exertion. I straightened up, stopped, reached back for my water bottle.

  “Thirsty.”

  “You look like hell,” Russell Pruitt said. “Maybe you’re the one dying.”

  I tipped back my head and laughed to hear my earlier thought so perfectly echoed, and he shook his head and strode by me. The rope yanked on my wrist, and I stumbled after him.

  With Russell Pruitt setting the pace, we were definitely moving. Every time I tried to slow down, the rope yanked tight on my wrist, tugging me forward. I stumbled on at my top speed for a half hour at least. His heart seemed fine—it was mine that was overexerting. Finally, totally winded and facing a steep black-sand incline that wound up and around yet another multicolored cinder cone, I dug my heels in like the aforementioned mule. “Please. I need a break.”

  “All right.”

  Russell Pruitt steered us to the side of the path, where he helped me by lifting my pack and setting it on a boulder. We’d eaten a breakfast he fixed at the cabin of oatmeal and boiled prunes that he’d spiced deliciously with cinnamon, but I was a little embarrassed to hear my stomach rumble loudly—and in another odd echo of our bodily functions, his belly rumbled too.

  We grinned spontaneously—and Russell Pruitt opened his enormous pack. “I have a treat I’ve been saving for you.”

  He extracted a Tupperware container and opened it. Resting inside on a paper doily, shiny with glaze, plump with raisins, was a cinnamon roll.

  Cinnamon rolls had been my favorite breakfast for twenty years, on a Sunday morning with Richard and Chris, drinking our coffee and reading the morning papers . . . I felt tears prickle my eyes as he handed me the Tupperware. I leaned over, putting my nose into the container, inhaling the sweet, sugary fragrance laden with memories.

  “I can’t believe you brought this.”

  “I was going to torture you with it,” Russell Pruitt said, blinking rapidly behind his thick glasses. “I was going to get you really hungry and eat it in front of you, reminding you of your family and all you’d lost and would never see again. But I realized you’re already starving, you’re already grieving for all you’ve lost, and it just didn’t seem fun anymore.”

  I couldn’t take a bite of the cinnamon roll. I was crying too hard.

  He took it out of my hands, put the top on and set it aside, and then he slung a huge arm around my shoulder and hauled me against his side. My head leaned on his chest, and I heard the thump and swish of his great big enlarged heart, and I cried some more onto his shirt.

  He wasn’t a psychopath. He cared about me, felt empathy for me.

  “Is everything okay?” A tenor voice, concerned, unfamiliar. I opened my streaming eyes, peered through my unspeakable greasy hair, still clamped against Russell Pruitt’s side.

  Two male hikers stood in front of us. They wore matching Columbia hiking outfits, with sleek little backpacks and black hi
king poles. Perfectly groomed, tanned, gleaming with health, they were as matched as a pair of Dobermans. I resented the intrusion and reminded myself I was supposed to be ready to act on my own behalf with agility and ruthlessness.

  “My mom’s grieving,” Russell Pruitt said, his giant’s voice pitched low. “We’ve been scattering my dad’s ashes on the trail all morning.”

  That’s when I realized I’d succumbed to Stockholm syndrome.

  Chapter 15

  I kept my face against his shirt, the tears congealing on my cheeks at the ease and potency of his lie. Maybe he was a psychopath after all—how could he be so kind and yet such an agile liar? Which of the behaviors was being put on, or were they all?

  “So sorry for your loss,” one of the hikers said.

  “That’s a beautiful thing to do. Take care,” echoed the other, and I felt the shift in Russell Pruitt’s weight that told me he’d lifted a hand to wave to them.

  I kept myself very still.

  “They’re gone.” Russell Pruitt’s voice really did have a texture to it, a heft like a complex fisherman’s sweater, especially when heard through the barrel of his chest. I sat back up.

  “I’ll take that cinnamon roll now,” I said, my voice cold. I brushed the tears off my cheeks. “You sure are a good liar.”

  “What was I supposed to say?” He snorted, but he sounded hurt. I told myself to remember how easily he’d lied when I met him at the door of the cabin. He was a bundle of contradictions: one moment sabotaging my sobriety by brute force, the next helping with my backpack. One moment cooking delicious oatmeal, the next tying me to him with a rope.

  Russell Pruitt was so much more than he appeared to be.

  He handed me the Tupperware, and I looked up the hill the hikers were doing at speed, watching their neat rear ends and glossy poles disappear over the top of the ridge. I would need my energy, now more than ever.

  I ate the cinnamon roll in a few quick, hard bites, ignoring the explosion of flavor and the way the raisins burst against my tongue. I wouldn’t have eaten it at all if I didn’t need the energy, I told myself. I would be prepared to act on my own behalf with speed and ruthlessness. I didn’t need to fall prey any longer to the emotional dependency pattern of Stockholm, in which hostages and kidnap victims developed attachment to their captors.