"Thank you, Candace," Anna whispered when the water was gone. The girl didn't acknowledge her. The phenomenon of prisoners siding with their abductors in the front of her mind, Anna believed she sensed more than just empty nothing coming from Candace. Was there an underlying sullenness, anger or resentment? There had to be. Anna hoped it would be enough so she could use it to break through to her at some point.
"I'm not interested in killing for its own sake," Buddy went on. 'A waste of time, really. Oh, I'm not averse to it, but it should have a point, don't you think?" Anna chose not to answer. He expected none. "I'm not a sexual predator, though I use it as a learning tool. It's not the best, frankly. Pain and reward remain the most powerful. Not much has changed since Pavlov and his dog.
"When you were grasping at degenerates with whom to compare me, Charlie Manson would have been your best bet. The man's a mess. Crazy as a bedbug. But his use of psychedelic drugs to break down the minds and wills of his followers, then the rebuilding of them to his own ends was an interesting study."
"Could I be uncuffed? Or at least recuffed so my hands aren't over my head?" Anna asked. Why not? Asking had worked with the water.
"No. I am a scholar, you know. My interest stems from my grandfather. He killed himself when I was five. Guilt over what he'd done during the war, or so my mother said. I expect that's what first interested me in soci-ology, then later, in socialization. I got rather fascinated by the idea that anyone could be turned into a monster, a sociopath with no sense of right or wrong. This isn't an original thought, but I've taken it to the next step. My contention is not only can anyone be made into a killer but can be taught to enjoy it, can be made into a serial killer so to speak, a human being, who once was like others, turned into a creature that feasts on the pain of living things."
He stopped then, seemingly to admire the lingering resonance of his verbal resume.
Anna's pains and fatigue were banished with the eruption of the fun one feels when made a complete fool of. "Then what the fuck was all the singsong, suck-my-gun bullshit?" she demanded.
Buddy's smile wavered for half a beat, then it was back. "You seemed to expect it. I didn't want your first serial killer experience to be a disap-pointment."
Anna met his eyes mostly because she was too pissed off to do the smart thing and be submissive. To her surprise he looked away to keep her from seeing... what? Shame? Fear? With cringing detail, the gun-as-phallus scene replayed in her mind. She doubted all-or even most-of it was an act, and that frightened him. Buddy wasn't so far removed from Gacy, Dahmer and the gang as he wanted to believe. This didn't strike her as a good time to point that out.
"A Modest Proposal," she said after a while.
His brows lifted in polite inquiry. Evidently it hadn't been required reading when he took his college English courses. There was no point in enlightening him. Anna had only thought of the story because, like its author, Jonathan Swift, Buddy had managed to make the unthinkable seem like an interesting proposition.
Mesmerized by the telling of his own story, Buddy drifted off into the contemplation of the bottom of his teacup. Anna wanted to think, to plot, plan, fight and ultimately live out the night, but her brain acted as blood-starved as her hands.
Punctuated by the occasional creaks inherent to old wooden buildings and the skritch of unseen mouse feet, quiet settled. Anna found herself wasting precious moments drifting into a Willard-like fantasy of hordes of mice pouring down the walls, devouring her captor.
"Besides," he said, rousing himself and sending Anna's mental sea of vengeance-bent rodents scattering, "You cannot imagine how boring teaching ninth-grade sociology can be. But enough of this, there's work to be done."
As he rose to do whatever was next on his list, a timid knock came at the door.
Moving as silently, and with the same linear grace, as a snake through clear water, Buddy slipped his service weapon from its holster, stepped across the room to the cabin door and pressed his eye close to the narrow gap between the faded red curtain and the window glass.
He snapped his fingers. Candace came instantly to heel. Buddy whis-pered to her, then leaned back against the wall and nodded. Anna thought to scream, "Save me!" but in the end she didn't. Shouting would not win her relief and it would most certainly cost some late-arriving or panicked camper his life.
Candace unlocked the door and opened it so neither Anna nor Buddy could be seen.
"Come in," she said. "Robert will be back any minute."
Too late Anna realized who had come tapping at the door in the middle of the night. Raging against her manacles she screamed, "Run! Run! Run away!"
Beth and Alexis had already started through the door. Showing sur-prising strength, Candace grabbed them and pulled them the rest of the way in. Buddy kicked the door shut.
There was none of the crying and wailing Anna might have expected from normal thirteen-year-old girls in a like situation. Beth went dead still, replicating the way Candace behaved most of the time. Alexis whis-pered, "You really are alive" and reached out to embrace the smaller girl.
Candace batted away her arms. Her thin face contorted, lips pulled back from teeth, chin jutted forward, fury unleashed.
"Enough," Buddy snapped. Candace retreated toward the stove, still glaring at the others. It was the most life Anna had seen her exhibit.
"It's about time," Buddy said pleasantly to the girls. "Better late than never. I'm glad you could make it." He smashed his fist into Beth's temple, then Alexis' belly. Anna thought of the unborn child, but its life was of less interest to her than that of its mother. Both children collapsed. Buddy kicked them each several times: breasts, bellies, backs.
Looking at his handiwork, he said, "Well, hey, looks like I've got hostages to burn. Let's make a call to dispatch, shall we? Let them know we're A-okay and have no need for backup?" Buddy grabbed Beth by the upper arm in a grip so hard even in the cabin's uncertain light Anna could see the flesh turning white. The girl squeaked inadvertently, then clamped her lips closed on the sound. Teaching them not to make noise would have been one of the first lessons in Buddy's School for Psychopaths.
He led her to the stove. To Candace he said, "Get the mike on the base radio. Pull it out as far toward her"-he jerked his chin at Anna- "as you can. When I tell you to push the Send button, you do it."
Candace did as she was told, each action executed with the careful precision of one who knows the least infraction can have dire conse-quences. When she was in place and the curling wire stretched till the mike was only a few feet from Anna's face, Buddy gathered Beth's hair at the nape of her neck and forced her head down till her nose was an inch from the hot cast-iron of the woodstove.
"You will say exactly what I tell you. Word for word. No more, no less. Any deviation, any weird inflection or pronunciation, anything I even think is funky and we cook this pretty girl's face off. Understand me?"
Anna understood perfectly. The text was short and she memorized it with the intensity of desperation. Within two minutes, backup was canceled.
"Get a knife and cut the mike wire."
Candace did, then on his instruction, threw the mike into the fire. For half a minute Buddy continued to hold Beth's face near the stovetop. his eyes boring into Anna's. Anna did not breathe or blink, swallow or sweat, terrified anything, any change, would send the child's face onto the hot metal.
Buddy had her where he wanted her, paralyzed. He was good at his craft.
As if he'd seen the defeat in her gaze, he let Beth go.
"You two proved a disappointment and caused me a great deal of work," he said to Alexis and Beth. "But, out of the kindness of my heart, I'm going to give you an opportunity to atone. We're going to fetch Robert Proffit. It was him you came to see, was it not?"
The girls showed no relief at the sound of their beloved youth leader's name, and Anna wondered if they'd come to blame him, either for letting them be taken in the first place or failing to find them, to save them. The wariness in Alexis' pale blue eyes as, using the edge of the table, she pulled herself to her feet told Anna otherwise. The girls had learned to trust nothing, to expect nothing good.
"Robert is dead," Anna told them. Knowledge was power of a sort. If nothing else, it might reduce the number of mind games between the cabin door and wherever the body was stashed. It also served to get the girls to look at her. The room was not brightly lit and they'd been given little time for sightseeing.
When their eyes met hers Anna saw hope spark there; an adult to keep them safe. Then the shift that cut Anna so deeply she had to fight not to turn her face away in shame: resignation. Seeing her chained up, they accepted that, in the face of Buddy, everyone was helpless. Watching the young faces harden, the eyes dull, Anna could almost hear the faint cracking as they crumbled.
"We'll not need you," Buddy said to Anna and she felt another crack, this time within herself. On his way out the door he picked up her service weapon, removed the magazine, shoved it in his gun belt and dropped the pistol back on the bed. "Enjoy yourself," he told Candace and left. Beth and Alexis followed meekly.
When the door had closed, Anna looked to Candace, only to find the girl who had studiously avoided eye contact since their unfortunate intro-duction over the sights of Anna's SIG Sauer, staring fixatedly at her.
thirty
Small and emaciated, in the hard light of the single lamp, Candace's eyes seemed to take up half her face. Despite weeks of abuse, Goth hair and ill-fitting men's clothes, she was gamine pretty. The triangular face and flawless skin added an otherworldly touch.
Instinct warned Anna to treat this elfin child as a cornered animal.
"Hey," Anna said softly. "How're you doing?"
Candace stared. The noise of the Coleman lantern filled the cabin with the hiss of a thousand snakes.
"Could I have a bit more water?" Anna asked in the same soothing voice. Though a drink would be welcome, she wouldn't have wasted pre-cious time just to procure it. By requesting help she hoped to establish a bond; one in which Candace felt she had the power for good, the ability to help, first Anna then herself.
"Don't you want something pointed to unlock the handcuffs? I know how they work," Candace sounded so kind, so intelligent, so... so okay, that Anna was momentarily stunned to silence. The unutterable delight she should be experiencing at this unexpected deus ex machina, turning tragedy into triumph in an instant, was not forthcoming.
"That would be nice," she said carefully
Candace went to the bed and peeled back the mattress. When she returned she had a bit of wire about six inches long and about half the diameter of that used to make coat hangers: ideal for opening handcuffs.
"Is that what you used to get free when Buddy handcuffed you? You're a clever girl."
"His name isn't Buddy."
"Stephen, then."
"Ray"
"Okay." Why the name was important, Anna couldn't guess, but what Candace chose to call the son-of-a-bitch was all the same to her.
Holding the wire up in front of her the way the priest holds the com-munion wafer at Mass, Candace stayed where she was.
The delay was driving Anna nuts but she didn't want to do or say any-thing that might shut the child down. "Ray won't be gone long unless he's put the... it someplace far away," she hinted gently.
"Robert's body. I saw it. It's not far. We put it in the lake wrapped in plastic bags and held down with big rocks. The cold keeps it fresh, just like meat in the refrigerator."
Elfin-faced abused waif or not, the kid was beginning to give Anna a bad feeling.
"Could you give me the wire?" she said, abandoning psychology.
"Yes." Candace dropped the weird chalice pose, walked over to the ladder and drove an inch of the wire into Anna's thigh. The pain and shock made her scream.
"Shh, shh," Candace whispered, her index finger in front of her lips. "Quiet as a mouse." The wire was jerked out and plunged in again.
This time Anna didn't scream. It wasn't that she didn't want to or had the iron control to resist. There simply wasn't enough air remaining in her world to do more than grunt. Arching her back against the ladder, she jammed her knee into Candace's midsection and pushed. The girl flew back, landing on her butt. The piece of wire was still sticking out of Anna's thigh. A thin trickle of blood oozed from the first puncture wound and was quickly lost in the dirt and abrasions from their march down from Loomis.
"Why did you do that?" Anna demanded. "Jeez. What a little creep."
Candace remained on the floor for a second, looking neither pleased nor displeased with her handiwork and completely unmoved by having been sent sprawling.
Recovering from the anger brought on by the unexpected attack, Anna said in a kinder, if less honest tone, "I'm not here to hurt you, Can-dace. I'm here to help. I've seen how Buddy... how Ray treats you. Look at your legs. You fell down as many times as me. You were cuffed just like me. Us girls have to stick together."
