by Parnell Hall
He frowned. “That’s no good. That’s too long. How about something a little sooner? Let’s say five o’clock.”
Kraswell reached to the back of the clock, turned something. “There we go. Five o’clock. All set and ready to go. Just one more thing.”
Kraswell reached on top of the clock, pulled the button up. “There. Now the alarm is set to go off at five o’clock. And guess what happens when it does. I don’t have to tell you, do I? You’re not a stupid man. You know perfectly well the dynamite goes boom. Otherwise, why would it be there? But I’m not a cruel man. I’m not going to make you assume the dynamite goes off. I’m going to personally assure you that it does. So, the alarm is set for five o’clock. It is now three-eighteen—make that three-nineteen—so, you have a little over an hour and a half to suffer.”
He looked at me. Smiled enigmatically.
“Perhaps.”
After a moment’s pause he said, “But first, a few more preparations.”
Kraswell bent down, took a cloth and a roll of duct tape out of the bag. He held them up, said, “Good news. I’m going to solve your rhetorical question problem for you. From now on, you won’t have to make that decision, whether to answer or not. Just to show you I’m basically a nice guy.”
Kraswell took the cloth, wadded it up, shoved it in my mouth. It was a huge wad of cloth. Not only could I not speak, I could barely breathe. I choked. Gagged.
“Oh, gee, is that too much?” Kraswell said. “I’m sorry, but that’s the way it’s going to be.”
Kraswell took the duct tape, attached it to my cheek, wound it over my mouth, and pulled it tight. He ran it over my other cheek and behind my head. Either the chair had a very high back, or Kraswell had attached a board to it, because he pulled my head back flush with something hard, and wound the tape around it. He continued on around until it covered my mouth again. He wound the tape around a couple more times, then stopped, slashed it off with the razor.
Next he put the tape in the middle of my forehead and wound it around a few times, until my head was attached firmly to the board or the back of the chair or whatever. When he’d finished, I was totally helpless.
I could not move.
I could not speak.
I could not make a sound.
“How’s that?” Kraswell said. “I know it’s not comfortable, but I’m wondering if it’s effective. Can you communicate at all? Tell you what, make a sound for me, any small sound, and I’ll figure this is ineffective and take the gag out. What do you say? Go ahead. Can you make a sound?”
I tried. I knew I shouldn’t, but still I did. I tried like hell to make a sound. And while my mouth was totally gagged, my nose wasn’t covered. I couldn’t talk, but by straining hard I could make a high-pitched, whiny hum.
“Oh, dear,” Kraswell said. “Well, now, that’s no good, is it? I might as well just take the gag off if you can make noise like that.”
Kraswell reached for the gag. Then withdrew his hands. “But why bother? Let’s leave it on just for show. Oh, I know I said I’d take it off. But I lied. To encourage you to make a sound. Now that I know you can, I’ll have to do something else.”
Kraswell bent down, reached into the bag. Took out a hypodermic syringe.
“Do you see this? Do you know what it is? Yes, I’m sure you do. But how about this?”
He pulled out something else. It was a small vial.
Kraswell held it up, smiled. “You learn a lot of things in prison. A lot of things. Do you have any idea what this is? No, I’m sure you don’t. Well, it’s a serum made from venom. That’s right. Poison from a snake. It’s used in medical research.
“Nowadays I’m sure it’s used intelligently, but way back when there’s a little story goes with this stuff. When doctors first discovered it they thought they’d found the perfect drug. Why? Because it paralyzes the muscles. Well, not paralyzes. Paralyzes is a bad word. Makes you think of stiff. What it does really is relaxes the muscles. Renders them absolutely incapable of movement.
“The doctors figured this would be invaluable in surgery. Even with the patient unconscious, the muscle will retract, or spasm, or what have you, and cause the surgeon to make the wrong cut. With this, the muscles don’t move. The patient lies there, not a twitch.
“So, the doctors went ahead, tried it in surgery.”
Kraswell frowned, shook his head. “There was one small drawback. While the muscles were totally relaxed, the mind was not. The patients never lost consciousness. They lay there, incapable of any movement, of any sign, of indicating in any way that they were awake. They lay there, fully conscious, through the entire operation, and went through the most excruciating pain.”
Kraswell paused, smiled at me.
It was chilling.
“So,” he said. “What do you say we give it a try?”
Kraswell stuck the hypodermic in the vial, pulled the plunger, drew the serum out.
“Well, now,” he said. “We have a bit of a problem. I can’t get at your arms. But in the hospital they always manage to get an I.V in the back of the hand.”
He leaned over and inspected the back of my left hand.
“Yes, there’s a vein. Let’s give that a try.”
A moment later I felt the prick of a needle.
“Bingo. Blood in the syringe. We must be there. And away we go.”
I could feel it going in.
He withdrew the needle, straightened up.
“And there you have it. We’ll have a few more minutes while the serum takes effect. After that, you won’t be responding any more, but don’t worry, I’ll know you’re there.”
Kraswell shrugged. “Of course in a hospital you’d be on a respirator. We don’t have one here. But I’m told your heart and lungs will still function. Though your breathing will be somewhat shallow. And you’ll have absolutely no control over it. But I’m told you’ll survive. I certainly hope so. It’s important to me that you do.”
Kraswell put the hypodermic back in the bag, straightened up and smiled. “Let me see. Where was I?”
He looked around.
Saw the clock.
“Oh, yes. The clock. I was telling you about the clock. The clock is set for five o’clock. When the alarm rings, the dynamite goes boom.”
He held up a finger. “But that’s just one possibility. Please bear with me.”
Carlton Kraswell turned, walked away into the darkness. I could hear his footsteps, but could no longer see him.
Suddenly a light went on. An overhead light. A hanging bare bulb.
Carlton Kraswell was standing under it, having just pulled the string.
The light lit up an area of the loft. Not the front door—it didn’t quite reach that far—but a portion of the side wall.
Along the wall was a row of lockers. Metal lockers, the type you find in a gymnasium or in a school hallway, a row of fifteen or twenty or them. In the dim light, they glimmered a metallic gray.
Kraswell walked back to me.
He pointed. “See that? See the lockers? It’s important to me that you do. So blink your eyes once if you see the lockers, two if you don’t.”
I did nothing. Looked straight ahead, unblinking.
“Oh, dear,” Kraswell said. “Do I sense a lack of cooperation? Or has the serum begun to work?”
He reached in his pocket, took out the razor, flicked it open. “Let’s try again while you still have eyes to blink. Can you see those lockers?”
Words can’t describe the terror of hearing someone threaten to cut your eyes.
Humiliated and ashamed, I blinked.
“Good,” Kraswell said. “Good boy. So, you can see the lockers. Then everything is as it should be. Everything is fine.”
He stooped down, picked up the homemade bomb, stood up.
“Now then, you remember the bit about this going off at five o’clock? Yes, I’m sure you remember that. Well, there is the other alternative, and let me just explain that to you now.”
>
Kraswell took the bomb, walked over to the row of lockers. He opened one somewhere in the middle of the row, and slowly eased the bomb onto the shelf on top.
“There,” he said. “That was easy. Now comes the tricky part. Watch carefully, because if I fuck this up, I will be blown to bits.”
He pulled out a wire attached to the bomb, held it up. “You see this? This is the hard part. This is where I mustn’t fumble.”
He cut off a small piece of duct tape, put it over the end of the wire.
“Now then, here’s my problem. I have to close the locker at the same time I tape the wire. You see what I mean? I’m taping the wire to the inside of the door. But when I tape it, I want the door closed. That’s not possible, of course, but I want to do the best I can. Keep the wire short and tight. See what I mean?”
Kraswell closed the locker door till it was open a narrow crack. He reached his hand in with the wire, taped it to the back of the door.
“There. That’s pretty good. You see the point? Now I close the locker, and everything is set.”
He did. Then walked back over to me.
“There. Now, you remember which locker it is? From here it’s probably hard to tell, but, hey, that’s half the fun.”
Kraswell stuck the duct tape back in the bag, straightened up. “You understand the bit about the wire? It’s short and tight, and attached to the door. When the door swings open, it will pull the wire. Pulling the wire sets off the bomb. Even before five o’clock. Five is just your outside limit, your fail safe. If nothing has happened by then, five o’clock, kerboom.”
Kraswell smiled. “But then again, who knows.”
He looked at me for a few moments, then said, “But first, a few last preparations. You see I have a light over there on the lockers. Which means I no longer need the one over here.”
He reached up, pulled the string that turned off the overhead light.
“You are now in the dark. You cannot be seen from the door. Or from the lockers, for that matter. You are more or less hidden from view. But, just to make sure ...”
Kraswell darted away. Then I heard a rustling sound. The sound of cloth. Then something obscured my view.
“So,” Kraswell said. “Curtains. Heavy, black curtains. I’ll leave a little gap for you to see out, but no one’s gonna see you.”
The curtains rustled as Kraswell came through. I could hear him step behind the chair.
“Just a moment. Let me check the sight lines here. I must be sure that you can see. Pretty good. I think I need to open this a bit more. There we go. Full view of the lockers. And if there were more light, you could even see the door. Excellent. Simply excellent.”
Kraswell came around to the front of the chair, bent down, looked me right in the face. Then he raised his hand, snapped his fingers once in front of each eye. He smiled.
“Perfect. You can’t even blink. But you can still see. You can still hear. You can still think. You probably hadn’t even realized. Hadn’t even noticed it happened.”
I hadn’t. I had been helpless to know I was helpless. It was an overwhelming thought.
What would he do now?
Kraswell slipped out through the curtains again. Then turned back to face me. “Just a word before I go. You cannot imagine the satisfaction this is for me. It is my life’s work, something I’ve planned for years. For the next hour and a half I would like you to think on what you’ve done, how you’ve brought this on yourself. But, hey, that’s just what I’d like. Your thoughts are your own. I’ll leave you to them.
“Here’s a phrase I absolutely hate, which is why I say it to you now.”
Kraswell smiled.
“Have a nice day.”
Kraswell turned, walked over into the light. He stopped, took something out of his jacket pocket. It was an envelope. He looked at it, then bent down and set it on the floor. He straightened up, took one last look around.
His eyes met mine.
He smiled.
Then he was gone.
47.
I HEARD THE DOOR CLOSE behind him.
I sat there in mounting dread.
Was that it? Was he really gone? Or was this, like everything else, another one of his psychological tricks?
Would he be back, within minutes, wielding the razor?
Because that, I confess, was uppermost in my mind. So much so, I was relieved he had left, even though he had set the bomb. A fiery death in an hour and a half seemed nothing compared to the immediate threat of a razor blade in the balls.
Then there was another thing.
The lockers seemed fairly far away. Could the bomb blast kill me from there? I mean, how powerful was dynamite, anyway? How many sticks were in the bundle? Eight? Ten? How much damage would it do?
When it went off, would I die?
Or was that it? Was that the point? Just as he said, he didn’t want me to die. Would I just be horribly maimed?
But if that was the point, why hadn’t he done it himself? He had the razor. If he wanted to inflict pain, why not that? It wasn’t as if he was too squeamish. He throttled the publicist. Shot Doug Mark. Could torture be beneath him? Not to hear him talk. It was what he lived for.
So why hadn’t he done it?
And why the serum? What was the point of that? The horror story of patients under the knife seemed to tie in with the razor. But if he was really gone, if there was to be no razor, then why had he done it? Unless to increase the terror, the added element that my heart might suddenly just stop. Though there seemed no danger of that. My breathing, though shallow, was steady. I wasn’t being deprived of air.
So why had he done it? Why had he left me here, utterly helpless, unable to make a sound?
What was the point?
With my peripheral vision, I noticed something I hadn’t noticed before.
My left wrist.
The tape around my left wrist had been carefully wound so as to miss my watch. The watch faced up. It had a luminous dial. Even in the dark, I could make out the time.
Three thirty-four.
Son of a bitch.
He’d done it on purpose.
He’d planned it this way.
He wanted me to sit here, watching the minutes tick away, waiting for my execution, suffering the torments of the damned.
Indeed, the watch was the cruelest gesture. Because, much as I dreaded to see it, it was impossible to ignore.
Psychological torture.
I forced my mind away from it, made myself think about something else. The letter. The letter on the floor. What the hell was that? A confession, perhaps? An account of what he’d done? Entirely likely, but confession was the wrong word. It wouldn’t be confessing, it would be more like bragging. Claiming responsibility, the way terrorists do for some atrocious act. The letter would contain a list of my sins. The wrongs I had committed against Carlton Kraswell. The reason he had found me guilty and condemned me to death.
But would I die?
Again, the shadow of a doubt. With the bomb way over there, would I in fact die?
And what about the letter? It was much closer to the bomb than I was. If the blast was strong enough to kill me, wouldn’t it destroy the letter too?
So what was the point?
Unless that was the point. Had Kraswell left the letter there for the same reason he had done everything else, to fuck up my mind? If so, good god, how it was working.
The minutes ticked by. Four o’clock. That was a biggie. The minute it passed, I knew why Carlton Kraswell had chosen an hour and a half. So I could see four o’clock come and go. I was now in my final hour. The last half hour had been hell. This hour would be worse. Now the minutes would fly. Accelerating, picking up pace. Each successive minute slightly shorter than the last. Good god, four oh one already, which means we’re coming up on four oh two.
Stop it. Don’t do it. Look away from the watch. Concentrate on something else. Focus your attention. Think on anything. Just don’t think on
the watch, or you’ll go mad.
I tried to think about the case. The stupid, pointless case. Wannabe writer Noah Sprague. Poor, ineffectual, sniveling worm resorts to crank phone calls of an insidious nature. And that’s the extent of it. That’s all it was. The guy had nothing to do with the killings at all. Yet, irony of ironies, it occurred to me, if I were to blow up, and Kraswell’s letter were to be destroyed, Thurman and Frost might still nail Noah Sprague for the murders. After all, he made the incriminating phone call about the publicist being a warning. And he had the new unlisted number. If he couldn’t explain where he got that, his ass was grass. Christ, it was entirely possible he’d take the fall.
Of course, his attorney would be sure to raise bloody hell about how Winnington’s investigator happened to get blown up while his client was in jail.
Blown up.
Jesus.
Four fourteen.
Nearly down to three quarters of an hour.
Stop it. Get your mind on something else.
Carlton Kraswell. Twerpy little Carlton Kraswell. I remembered the first time he’d come into my office. Nervous, fidgety, tugging at his scrawny mustache.
Feeding me a pack of lies.
That was the unfair thing. I hadn’t searched Carlton Kraswell out and sent him to jail. He’d chosen me. Duped me, framed me, set me up. It was only luck I hadn’t taken the fall myself. Could he really blame me for striking back? I suppose I had rubbed it in, handing him my bill when the cops made the arrest—good god, I’d never make that mistake again.
But to spend all these years plotting revenge. I mean, it wasn’t as if I’d sent him to jail on a whim. The guy killed someone, for Christ’s sake. Had I really been unreasonable?
I know, what the hell did it matter? What difference did it make? If he sees it that way, he sees it that way. So what could I do, say you got no right to resent me, you gotta take back your bomb?
Bomb.
Jesus.
And just like that, it’s four forty-five.
Four forty-five.
Fifteen minutes.
Unbelievable.
Fifteen minutes to live.
The letter on the floor. What was it about the letter on the floor? It’s too close, and it’s gonna get destroyed in the bomb blast, so what’s the point?