Perfect Victim (2 page)

All Colleen wanted was to get to Westwood, but she told them she wouldn’t mind a short detour.

There was some discussion in the front seat about where exactly the turn-off was, and soon they were off the highway, bumping down a dirt road, the afternoon sun flashing through the pine trees.

About a mile or so down the road they stopped. It was quiet, still, with the pine needles swaying only slightly in the breeze, a small stream bubbling nearby. They were completely alone, with only the mountain birds there to watch them.

The wife stepped from the car, carrying her baby over to the nearby stream. Then the driver climbed out, leaving Colleen momentarily alone in the back seat of their two-door Colt.

He came over to the passenger’s side of the car, suddenly pulled the seat forward, jumped in, and put a knife to her throat.

“Put your hands above your head,” he ordered.

Colleen froze, too frightened to move.

The man repeated the order, and she felt him press the blade harder against her skin. Its point pricked her throat, and she felt his hand shaking. Weakly, she lifted her arms above her head.

She was shaking too.

A pair of handcuffs flashed across her vision. The man grabbed her hands, and swiftly locked them behind her back.

He had everything ready, and he moved quickly, with practiced motions. He pulled out a piece of cloth and tied it tightly over her eyes. “Are you going to do what I tell you to do?” he demanded. There was menace in his voice.

Colleen managed a feeble “Yes.” Maybe if she went along with him he wouldn’t hurt her, maybe she could somehow calm him down.

Next, she felt a strange leather strap encircling her head, tightened at her cheek until the strap beneath her chin made it impossible for her to open her jaw — a gag, of some sort. Then He grabbed her ankles, wrapping rope around them and tying an expert knot.

Now she was handcuffed, blindfolded, bound, and gagged.

But he had more in store for her.

The peculiar wooden box that Colleen had noticed sitting on the seat beside her was this man’s special creation. Its construction was deceptive, for though it was made of plywood and was only about the size of a hatbox, it was surprisingly heavy, weighing nearly twenty pounds. Dense insulation was sandwiched in between its double walls, and it was hinged with metal. He opened it now.

The circular hole at the bottom split into semicircles on either side. The interior of the box was carpeted.

Forcing his hostage to lie down, he maneuvered her head into the box, fitting her neck into the sculpted hole. Then he closed it around her head with a snap.

It shut out all light. It muffled all sound. It pinched her neck, trapping her thick hair tightly against her nape, the stranglehold heightening her terror. The carpeted interior pressed against her face with a sickening closeness, and her breathing turned to gasps.

Colleen would come to know this horrific contraption as the head box.

The man covered Colleen with the sleeping bag she had so conveniently provided, and then he was done. He called to his wife, and she brought their infant daughter back to the car and got in. Then he started up the engine, turned the car back down the dirt road, and this average-looking family headed leisurely toward home, their human cargo secreted in the back seat.

The head box was suffocatingly hot, terrifyingly claustrophobic.

And Colleen felt smothered beneath the sleeping bag. Her heart thudded in her ears, adrenalin shooting through her veins elevating her temperature. For a time, she felt the weight of the baby placed on top of her, but it cried and the mother took it back up front.

Now the car had turned back onto the pavement, and Colleen could feel it accelerate, rushing her toward some fearful destination.

They wound downward, and she sensed they were backtracking, heading west now, back into the valley.

It seemed a long, hot eternity before Colleen could make out traffic noises, a few at first, then more, as if they were entering a town. She guessed it must be Red Bluff.

Suddenly the car stopped. Colleen could make out some conversation in the front seat; the woman was to go and get something. A car door opened, there was a slight shifting of weight, the door closed. Then they were moving again, driving short distances, turning, driving, and turning — aimlessly, as if they were circling the block. Then the car came to a stop again. The door opened, the woman climbed back in, and the car drove on. Odd.

They drove for a short time, the traffic lessening about them, and then the car came to a halt. To Colleen’s relief, the sleeping bag was lifted off and the stifling head box unlatched. She could breathe again. They let her sit up, and she felt her skin start to cool, the sweat trickling down her back, her long hair sticking to her bare, damp arms. The blindfold and her other bonds stayed on, but she was immediately aware of the smell of food. It was hours since Colleen had eaten, but she felt no appetite. Her stomach was a knot.

The wife had fetched a fastfood meal, and now the couple sat in the front seat eating their greasy hamburgers and french fries. They were hungry, but they were also killing time, waiting for the sun to slip farther behind the mountains to the west.

It was dusk now, and the solitary car sat in a wide parking lot overlooking a fat expanse of the Sacramento River. Some ducks paddled downstream toward the diversion dam, birds chattered in the trees, and distant mechanical noises came from the low, gray buildings of the Diamond lumberyard across the river.

Colleen sat wondering where she might be and how she might get away, but the couple soon made her lie back down. The awful box was again snapped shut around her head, and the sleeping bag draped back over her. When they had finished their meal, they headed back into town.

It was after dark when the blue Dodge Colt pulled into the alley behind their house. The man climbed out, came around to the back seat, untied Colleen’s ankles so she could walk, and took off the head box. Everything else-the blindfold, the gag, the handcuffs — stayed on. There was no danger of his hostage escaping.

Colleen was led out of the car, up some steps, and through a kitchen. Out of a narrow gap at the bottom of her blindfold, she glimpsed the base of a stove or refrigerator. Then she was guided through a narrow door and down a steep, short flight of stairs. The basement.

The woman didn’t come down with them. Now Colleen was alone in the basement with her kidnapper.

“Stand up here,” he ordered. Awkwardly, he maneuvered her up on top of something. As she stepped up, she saw that it was a green and white Coleman ice chest. He unlocked one wrist, then quickly draped the handcuffs across a pipe that ran along the ceiling and locked them again. Now her arms were suspended above her head. He proceeded to strip off her jeans, tossing them onto the floor. Colleen felt a wave of sick dread. This had to mean rape.

Suddenly, he snatched the handcuff from one wrist and locked the other to the pipe. She could feel that he was still shaking as he took off her shirt, one arm at a time.

Next, the handcuffs were replaced by wide, stiff leather bands, tightened around one wrist, then the other. These were then hooked to the ceiling, her arms stretched wide apart.

Colleen didn’t understand what was happening.

At once, the support went out from beneath her. The world fell away, and there was a hot strain on her wrists, a wrenching of her shoulders. She wanted to cry out but couldn’t — the leather strap trapped her jaw. Tears burned behind the blindfold. She thrashed the air like a frantic marionette, her naked legs striking out but meeting nothing, searching for something to raise herself up on. The hard leather cuffs cut into her wrists. She struggled, throwing her legs out again and again, churning the air.

Crack! Pain leapt across her back and wrapped around to her stomach. Crack! Another sharp line slapped around her torso.

Crack! The whip struck again, and the man shouted at her to stop kicking and just relax. Colleen went limp, sobbing silently into her blindfold, and the whipping stopped.

She hung there, stunned and trembling with panic, trying to hold herself still, afraid that the whip would bite into her again.

Hot, red welts rose on her back and stomach, like screams caught in her skin.

Now she could hear him moving about the basement. She tried to concentrate, to figure out what he was doing, but alarms were going off in her head. Taking deep breaths, she tried to calm herself. This couldn’t be real. This had to be a nightmare.

Then, out of that slender gap at the bottom of her blindfold, Colleen spied an open magazine. She cocked her head and tried to focus on it. It was opened to a photograph, and with a slap of recognition Colleen saw that it was a picture of a naked woman hanging in much the same position as she.

She couldn’t quite grasp the significance of this, but it magnified her fear. There it was in black and white. This was no nightmare, this was reality.

In the back of her mind a small voice cried, Why me? Oh God, why me?

The chilling truth was that there was no one to save her.

Her family in Southern California had no reason to think she’d left Eugene; her roommates in Eugene thought she was hitchhiking to Linda’s and would be back in a few days. When would they realize she was missing? By then she might be dead.

The man’s heavy steps came toward her and she held her breath, bracing herself for more pain. There was a dull scraping noise. The man grapped her ankles and something brushed against her toes. Just barely, on her tiptoes, she could stand, easing the weight off her wrists and shoulders.

Moaning deeply, Colleen didn’t notice the man’s footsteps on the stairs. He left the basement, fetched his wife, and brought her back down with him.

The small gap at the bottom of her blindfold afforded Colleen only a sliver of the scene below her. It was dimly lit, a single lightbulb casting a tentative spray of light about the room. The floor was concrete, and she could make out a low, wooden structure, something like a table.

an, Then she caught an unexpected glimpse of movement. Her captors. They seemed to be…taking off their clothes. She watched them lie down and embrace. Then, to her horror, she realized they were having sex — copulating almost at her feet, like hedonistic worshippers before some strange erotic icon.

She felt sick. This was too weird, too perverse.

When they had finished, she heard the woman’s light steps on the stairs. The door shut solidly behind her. Now she was alone again with the man with the whip. She heard him approach.

Perhaps he would let her down now.

Instead, the support was again yanked out from under her, and the pain shot down her arms, pulling at her underarms, across her back and ribs. She hung there for some time, sweating, her arms wide apart, naked but for the socks that he’d left on her feet.

The man watched her but she didn’t kick this time, so he didn’t whip her. After a satisfactory time, he pushed the ice chest back beneath her feet.

She could stand. The weight came off her wrists and shoulders with abrupt relief, but her body felt weak and rubbery.

Then the man unhooked her wrists from the beam and took her down. He steered her across a short distance, then forced her down into another of his strange constructions. It was a box, roughly square, standing about three feet high. One end was open, and he maneuvered her into it face first, so that her bare back faced him. Grabbing her wrists, he lifted them and replaced the leather cuffs with chains. These were locked to the roof of the box.

She sensed the walls around her, as if she were being caged.

Her position was cramped, with her arms awkwardly suspended above her and barely enough room to sit up. Then she felt the pressure on her jaw suddenly loosen and the leather gag come off. She begged him to please let her go, but her words were cut short as the awful head box was again maneuvered around her head. It snapped shut, closing tightly around her neck.

He had somehow affixed the heavy head box to the roof of the box. Its weight was supported, but she couldn’t move her head. It was a petrifying sensation: sealed in darkness, each inhalation labored, no air, immobilized. The head box pinched her neck, choking her. She tried to yell into the box’s thick lining, but her voice came back as a hoarse, strangled wail. She gasped, tried to swallow, the terror rising in her throat. The box held her in a deadly grip. She was suffocating! In a claustrophobic panic, she kicked at the sides of the wooden crate that held her, pounding for her life with the only part of her body she could still move, kicking harder and harder.

Suddenly he was back. He grabbed her ankles, wrapped them with cord, then tied them to the side of the box so she wouldn’t be able to kick. Then he was gone.

Colleen suffered in the basement for what seemed a very long time. Terrorized and in pain, she was still unable to accept the truth of her situation. She cried bitterly into the head box, her breathing now a tortured panting, sweat beginning to bead and run down her skin. From time to time she would yell, not knowing even if she could be heard. She thudded against the sides of the box with her feet, fighting as best she could against the cord wrapped around her ankles. She wasn’t going to die without a struggle.

After some time he returned. His hands fumbled with the clasps of the head box, and in an instant it was open. She sucked the air into her lungs, but before she could speak he was shouting at her. “Why the hell are you making so much noise?”

“I can’t breathe,” she croaked. “Please, please let me out. Let my arms down. It hurts so much. I can’t breathe.”

But his only reply was to shut the head box back up again.

He left for a moment, found what he needed, and returned with something she couldn’t identify. He fitted it around her chest and tightened it until the straps dug into her ribs. Now she could scarcely expand her chest; it was even harder to breathe.

And then something very odd. He put a prickly object between her bare legs. It felt similar to a hair curler, small and bristly.