Fidelity (31 page)

Hobart could tell from the way Emily Kramer hurried from the black woman’s house that she was more preoccupied than before. She wasn’t looking over her shoulder for him, and she wasn’t taking any precautions. As she walked to her car, he kept his eyes on her. He couldn’t see anything in her hand or under her arm, so he couldn’t be sure that she had the evidence with her, but something had happened. Maybe she had it in her purse. He had to do it now.

He drove after her. As he followed her car, he felt himself move into a familiar mental state. The world around him seemed unnaturally bright and clear. He felt he could hold in his consciousness all of the trajectories of the moving objects in the hundred eighty degrees he could see, and track in his mind the ones he had merely caught in an earlier glance. He felt it would be possible to predict the rest of the motion and intercept any one of them, but all he needed was to put himself where Emily Kramer was about to be.

He kept Emily Kramer’s Volvo in his field of vision as he drove, but concentrated on keeping her from noticing him. After he had watched her drive for a few minutes, he was certain that she was driv ing to Ray Hall’s house, where she had been staying. Maybe Hall was waiting there for her, but he could be up north setting up Theodore Forrest to pay for evidence. The thought made him more convinced than ever that he had to make his move now. Hobart turned at the next corner and drove hard toward the house. It was crucial that he be there before she was. He stopped his rented SUV one door from Hall’s house.

Hobart got out, walked to Hall’s driveway and around to the side of the garage, where he entered through the side door. There was no car in the garage, so Hall couldn’t be at home. Hobart stood in the dim light, smelling the floating dust, a faint scent of wood stain, a whiff of motor oil. He moved to the side of the big garage door, so that if it opened he would be out of sight. In a minute, the sound of another car reached him. It was the distinctive high metallic hum of a Volvo’s five-cylinder engine.

The car stopped outside. He heard a door slam. He listened and heard Emily Kramer walking on the concrete driveway toward the back door of the house. She must have a key. He moved to the side door of the garage, opened it a crack and risked a look. She wasn’t carrying anything but her purse.

He waited with the door open an inch. When he saw her come close, Hobart began to move. He stepped quickly out of the garage right behind her, in step. With a single smooth motion, he slipped the purse strap off her shoulder and tugged the purse away. He could feel from the weight of it that he had guessed right about the gun. Even a novice like her would be too smart to meet Theodore Forrest without a gun.

Hobart kept her in motion, merely changing her direction and increasing her speed. His face was above her left shoulder, his lips almost to her ear. “Don’t try to look back at me. You know who I am.”

“Let me go,” she said loudly.

He knew she was testing her courage, her ability to scream. He squeezed her arm more tightly with his right hand and jabbed the index finger of his left into her ribs. She gave a little cry of pain. “You’ve got to be very quiet right now, or I’ll kill you. We’ll talk later.”

“I don’t have what you want.”

Hobart considered killing her. He could even reach into her purse and do it with her own gun. But her voice was quiet, its tone normal, so he didn’t. It would look and sound to anyone as though they were walking along and having a cordial conversation. “We’ll discuss all of it later. Right now, just get into the SUV.”

He opened the door to the back seat of the rented vehicle and she climbed in. He tore a strip of duct tape off the back of the seat in front of her, pressed it across her eyes, and covered it with a pair of sunglasses. He reached behind her, dragged both of her wrists together and clicked a pair of handcuffs on her. He pulled the seat belt across her and belted her in. Then he got into the driver’s seat and pulled out down the street. He turned left at the corner and went to Vanowen, then turned right. They were moving along at the speed limit.

Hobart could see her in the mirror as he drove. She was leaning her body forward a little, but the belt kept tightening. She tried to move both hands to the side to reach the belt buckle. There was no chance that she could reach the release with her hands cuffed behind her and the belt across her chest tightening every time she moved. He drove along the street trying to adjust his speed so he wouldn’t have to stop at traffic signals. Whenever he couldn’t make it through an intersection on green, he turned right so Emily Kramer wouldn’t feel the vehicle stop and try to jump out. He was almost certain she couldn’t free herself, and if she did, he didn’t think she would jump. There were many people who might jump from a moving car, even in handcuffs. There were few who would do it blindfolded. He kept up the speed.

She said, “I don’t have what you want. I’ve looked, but I haven’t found it.”

“Then you’re a very unlucky woman.”

EMILY WAS TRYING to fight off shock. She couldn’t let fear make her sluggish and stupid. The man had simply materialized at her elbow while she was walking from her car to Ray’s house, his big hand already tightening around her arm, his face beside her neck. She had nearly fainted, the pain making her unable to think or move.

She had been carrying the gun right in her purse, where she could reach it in a hurry. The thought had never occurred to her that putting the gun there wasn’t smart, but of course it wasn’t. She was wearing tight black pants and a short fitted jacket. There was nowhere else for a gun to be but her purse. This man had simply taken her purse, and then she was disarmed. She winced and felt the tape tighten across her cheekbones and her eyebrows. It hurt. She was furious with herself. For the first time, she forgot the discomfort and the surprise and realized she was almost certainly going to die.

Phil had warned her that if a man ever tried to drag her into a car, she should do everything she could to resist. She must instantly recognize that she was in a fight to the death. Whatever she was going to do to save herself had to happen before he got her into the car. Any chance she got after that would be a rare bit of luck, and probably would not be more than a second’s inattention by her captor. Emily had not used her chance, not brought herself to fight to stay out of this car. And she had practically given him her gun.

Emily felt the car swing to the left again and tilt her against the door. The movement made her body push against the seat belt and then settle back, and when it did, the belt tightened another notch. She tried to move her hands again, but now she couldn’t reach even as far as she had before.

Emily wanted to work her hands around behind her enough to release the seat belt. Then she would hold the belt in place with her fingers and rub the side of her face against the leather cording of the seat, looking as though she had collapsed in despair. That might push the tape off one eye and permit her to see well enough to open the door, lean out, and drop to the pavement of the street.

She was aware that she would roll and slide, but that she must try not to let her head hit the pavement or the curb squarely, or she would die. If she got out, the man might shoot her, but she believed he wouldn’t. Shooting would add enormously to his risk, and shooting her would not get him the information he wanted.

The last thought caught her attention. She had meant to reassure herself, but when she considered it, she realized that it was not comforting. He certainly didn’t want to kill her and lose the information. But now she really knew what he wanted-or knew where it was, anyway. Probably he was capable of making her tell. After that, what? What could he possibly do but kill her?

Strapped in the back seat with her eyes taped shut, she could only detect his presence by small sounds: the seat creaking or his breathing or his right foot slipping from the brake pedal and moving to the gas pedal. She still had not seen his face.

Emily realized she was crying. It might be that he would start killing her today, but stretch out the process for as long as he could. In Los Angeles, a woman who was driven away in a car might as well have been swallowed by the earth. There would be nobody even wondering about Emily until Ray came back at the end of the day and found her car parked in front of his house. That would be in-what? Six hours.

A lot could happen to a person in six hours. This man was a fear expert. It was as though he knew what scared her most. No, the word scare wasn’t adequate. It was terrifying to imagine what he might do to her to get the information he wanted. No, she thought. She must push that thought out of her mind. The minute she gave in and told him, she was dead.

She knew that he could easily make the choice more ambiguous. What would he have to do to her before she was ready to tell him where the evidence was and die? Would she be so eager to live on after he popped out her eyes or burned her badly enough? Under the right circumstances, she would probably beg him for death.

She realized that she was doing his work for him. Her imagination had begun her torture as soon as she had felt his grip and heard that voice-so familiar, not because she had heard him speak that one night, but because she had heard it over and over every night since.

Emily felt the car was coasting, heard the difference in the engine, and prayed that they were just stopping at a signal, or maybe were in a traffic jam. She heard a truck. Were they in a construction zone? Could anybody hear her if she screamed? She could lean to the right and bang her head against the window. She tried to decide, but the car was moving again, much faster. She waited while the minutes passed, and the next time she felt the SUV slowing, she got ready. When the SUV stopped, she shrieked as loudly as she could and hit her head against the glass, but it didn’t break. She rocked her body to the left and then tried again.

The door beside her opened quickly, and her head met nothing. She fell to the side, the belt holding her in. She felt a breeze that seemed to come in its full, steady current, not blocked by houses or even trees, and heard the call of a bird. It was far off, probably two or three hundred feet, but then another answered it with the same call. She could smell plants.

She felt fear come over her like nausea. Each second while she waited for him to kill her increased the sense of loss. She thought about her parents, Phil, her son Pete. They were all dead, and in a few minutes, she would be dead, too. She was the last one alive who knew what they had done for her and for each other, and then it was going to be as though none of them had ever lived. They would be no more real than the people in old photographs that nobody could identify anymore.

The man undid the seat belt, put something over her shoulders that felt like a big sweater, then half-lifted her out of the seat. He set her on her feet and she could still feel his hand on her shoulder. It felt the way a man walked with a woman he liked, maybe even loved. She knew he was doing it to hide the handcuffs that held her arms behind her, so she shrugged abruptly, turning, trying to pull away. He was prepared for each move, and simply tightened his arm around her shoulders and pulled her ahead. She did not stop resisting, but no amount of exertion seemed to have an effect on him.

He kept her moving up a slight incline, then stopped her. She heard him fiddling with keys, then heard a door. He said, “Step up.”

Emily pulled back, away from the place where she had heard the door, but his arms came around her, swept her up off the ground and swung her. She was in the air for a second, trying to brace for a fall, but with her hands behind her back it was impossible. She hit the floor hard, shoulder and hip first, and then her head. She lay there dazed and in pain for a few seconds, trying to determine whether any of the bones that hurt were broken. She was having trouble breathing because the wind had been knocked out of her, but it didn’t feel as though her ribs were broken.

She heard the jingling, the metallic clicks and snaps that she knew was the door being locked and deadbolted. His hand tightened around her arm again and jerked her to a sitting position. His face was close to hers. “You stupid woman. You can’t beat me by dragging your feet. You have to kill me. Are you up to that?” She didn’t reply. “Up!” he said. “Stand up.”

Emily made an attempt, but succeeded only because he was lifting her. She said, “You kidnapped me for nothing.”

He pulled her ahead by the arm. She heard another door opening. There was a peculiar smell. It seemed damp, musty, as though it had not been open in a long time. He led her across the room. She tripped, and realized that a curled-up edge of old linoleum had caught her shoe. He guided her through another doorway to what sounded like the center of an empty room. “Sit.”

He pushed her onto a seat with arms, then unlocked the handcuff on her left wrist, dragged it around, and closed it on the wooden arm of the chair. He wrapped something around her right wrist to hold it to the other arm of the chair.

Her mind kept suggesting different kinds of pain: electric shock, heated iron, cutting. She sat very still, listening, knowing that whatever it was, he would administer the first dose without warning. She tried to decide whether talking to him would delay the start of it and give her more time, or if it would make him angry and make him hurt her worse.

“You’re wrong.”

“What?” she said.

“We’re just going to talk for a minute.”

She wanted to say something, but she knew he was probably tricking her. The last time, she had learned to speak only if he asked for a response.

He said, “You’ve been busy. I’ve seen it. You have the evidence I asked you for, don’t you?”

“I probably would if you hadn’t burned my house and my office.”

“If I hadn’t?”

“Yes. You. If you had given me time to find it, I probably would have. ” Talking helped Emily. It seemed to warm her, to make her blood circulate again. “Burning my house wasn’t necessary. I was scared enough already. I was spending every minute searching for it.”

He said, “Don’t bullshit me. You burned your house and your husband’s office yourself.”