Poison Flower (3 page)

"Just stay where you are, with your hands in sight." He ran up to her, grasped her right wrist and brought it behind her, snapped a handcuff on it, then took the left behind her and closed the other handcuff on that wrist. He clutched her arm and tugged her toward the car. "Now come with me. We're going to get into the back seat of the car. Keep your head down."

He opened the door and put his hand on her head to keep it from bumping as she slid onto the seat. He moved in after her, and the lock buttons clicked down. The driver put away his gun, put the car into gear, and drove.

The car went up Hill to Temple, turned left away from the court building, past the cathedral and the concert halls, and swung onto the Hollywood Freeway moving north. Obviously, they were taking her, not back to the courthouse, but to their precinct station. She decided to introduce doubt. "You've got the wrong person," she said. "I haven't done anything wrong."

"I didn't ask you," said the cop beside her. "There will be plenty of time to talk later." He had small, close-set eyes and the sort of thick, dark hair that went down too far on his forehead so it looked like a cap.

"I was just getting on the subway and you came along and arrested me, so you must think I did something." She had begun the urgent business of keeping them from holding her long enough to connect her with Shelby's escape.

"I didn't say that."

"But whoever you're looking for is back there somewhere laughing at us. She's getting away." She didn't have much hope of persuading them it was a case of mistaken identity, but she had to keep probing to see if she could derail the inexorable process of getting her into a jail cell, where she'd be when the escape was discovered.

The cop beside her sighed wearily. "You had a little scuffle on the courthouse steps, didn't you You hurt some people. Does that ring a bell"

She knew cops lost their sympathy when somebody lied to them, so she'd have to try something that didn't contradict what they'd seen. "I was in front of the building when these three men rushed out of the building and attacked me. There are at least a hundred witnesses who saw what happened."

"These men just attacked you for no reason."

"If they had a reason they didn't tell me what it was."

The cop shrugged. "Could it be because you had just helped James Shelby to escape"

"Escape All I was there for was to get excused from jury duty."

"Consider yourself excused," the driver said.

"Those three men were trying to hurt me."

The cop beside her said, "I'm not arguing with you. I believe that's what happened."

"So why are you arresting me"

The cop beside her said, "When you see three men who mean you harm, how do you know that there aren't more"

The driver laughed. "There could be a couple more waiting in a car nearby."

Jane turned to face the man on the seat beside her. "What are you" Her hands were cuffed behind her, but she used them to grasp the door handle.

"We're the guys who caught you pulling a jailbreak."

She kept her eyes focused on his, but she was watching the speed of the fixed objects passing the window behind him-trees, buildings. The freeway was crowded, but the car was still moving about forty miles an hour. Even if she managed to survive a fall to the pavement at that speed, she would be hit by at least the car behind, and probably the next two after it. She had to wait and hope there was a bottleneck somewhere ahead that would slow the traffic to the stop-and-go crawl that was typical of Los Angeles freeways.

She said, "Since you're not cops, this is kidnapping, false imprisonment, and about eight other things. If you drop me off at any police station and say you saw me get James Shelby out, they'll arrest me and you'll be heroes."

"Sorry. We've got orders, and that isn't what they are."

"Whoever told you this was a good idea isn't doing you any favors. Will he be with you while you're serving a life sentence in a federal prison"

"Nobody's going to prison," said the driver. "Just sit back and relax for a little while, and everything will be fine."

"There's nothing fine about this," she said.

She watched for her chance impatiently, but the car never slowed below forty. It was still only a few minutes after noon, so the traffic was moving smoothly. She watched for police or highway patrol or sheriff's cars, but the only one she saw was an LAPD car about a quarter mile ahead, taking an exit onto a surface street.

They drove outside the city and into the dry, brown hills to the northwest. Beyond them there were the same rugged gray mountains that loomed like a wall on the east all the way up the coast from the Mexican border to Oregon. The traffic sped up instead of jamming.

Jane waited and watched. If she had suspected that the men weren't police officers, she would have made her stand before she got into the car. The badges, the guns, and the make and model of the car had fooled her. If she hadn't been in the middle of the criminal court complex, expecting the police to be chasing her, the thought of impostors might have entered her mind, but it hadn't. She had allowed herself to be kidnapped in daylight on a city street without ever suspecting it was happening. She kept remembering what the experts said about kidnapping. Never get in the car. Once you're in the car, you're dead. If you're going to fight, you have to do it before then.

The car wasn't going to be stalled in traffic on the freeway, so she began to work out an alternative plan. Sometime they would have to pull off the freeway onto an exit ramp, and an exit ramp usually came to a stop at an intersection. If there was no traffic signal right away, there would be one soon afterward. As soon as the traffic stopped, she would unlatch the door with her handcuffed hands, lean out, and roll when she hit the pavement.

If she was lucky, the two men would panic and drive off. If, instead, the two tried to drag her back into the car, she would kick and scream that she was being abducted. She might be able to delay them long enough to attract help, or at least get someone standing nearby or in a passing car to call the police.

A few minutes later, at five after one, the car began to coast, then moved to the exit lane, and she saw the sign for Route 23 North toward Moorpark. She prepared herself. Their course seemed to be taking them from crowded places to empty ones, so this might be her only chance.

She felt the car losing momentum, heard the tires bump over the crack that separated the freeway from the ramp, felt the brakes slowing the car. As the car rolled to a near-stop, she pushed the door handle down, and the door swung open. As the car started to move forward again, she pushed off with both feet and propelled herself out. She hit the pavement hard, rolled with the momentum, went backward over her shoulder, and landed on her knees at the top of the ramp.

"Help! Help me!" she shouted. "They're kidnapping me!" A car with a frightened woman at the wheel nearly hit her as the woman swung past. "Call the police!" Jane yelled at her. "Help!"

The two men didn't drive on. They both flung open their doors and ran toward her. The man who had handcuffed her took out his gun. As Jane dived toward the bed of ice plants beside the exit ramp she heard the shot and felt the brutal impact of the bullet, and then the explosion of pain.

JANE'S RIGHT LEG FELT AS though it were crushed and on fire, throbbing with each heartbeat. She must have lost consciousness for a moment, because she didn't remember being dragged back into the car. She was strapped tight by the seat belt with her hands still cuffed behind her. The pain was like fire that seemed to grow hotter and hotter. The leg was weak, and if the bumping of the car moved it, the pain shot inward from her thigh to her spine. Jane could manage only shallow, quivery breaths that rasped in and out. She tried to keep the breaths quiet, to hide her weakness from her enemies, but she couldn't control them. She knew she had been shot only a few minutes ago, but she couldn't imagine living much longer with this pain. She fought the impulse to close her eyes again. She had to remain aware of what was around her.

Since she had come to, the man beside her in the back seat had been talking to her in a hiss of hatred, his face close to her right ear. What was he saying "You bitch. You stupid bitch. You did this to yourself. We would have found out what we wanted and then let you go-dumped you someplace so it would take you time to get to a phone. But you couldn't live with that. Now you're going to be crippled, or lose your leg."

To give herself strength, Jane gathered her pain and anger, like two hands scraping crumbs together and compressing them. "I doubt it."

"Oh You're a doctor, too"

"No, but I can see I'm bleeding out."

He looked down at her right thigh, and his eyes followed the dark wetness that was soaking her black pants, and where the blood dripped to the floor he could see a pool forming. He said to the driver, "She's bleeding a lot."

The driver said, "Then do something. We've got to keep her alive."

"Do something What"

"Stop the bleeding," the driver said. "Use a tourniquet."

The man unbuckled his belt and pulled it off, then wrapped it around Jane's thigh just above the wound and tightened it.

"Ahh!" Jane shouted.

He cinched the belt tighter and held it there. Jane could tell he was happy that he was inflicting even more pain.

Jane leaned back in the car seat but kept her eyes open, searching for signs-a street, a city, a direction. There was a shopping mall, but she couldn't see its name. They were passing the delivery entrance, and the sign was facing the other way on another street.

She wasn't sure she should have mentioned the blood. She might soon wish she had bled to death before these two started doing things to make her give up James Shelby.

Her husband Carey's image appeared in her mind, but she blinked and glared at the sights flashing by-chain-link fences around parking lots, low gray or beige buildings with trucks parked at loading docks. She couldn't let her own feelings distract her. She had to be alert to the next chance to save herself, and not think about losing the world full of things she loved.

She was held upright by the seat belt, and she kept her eyes open, scanning the lines of cars in each direction, looking for a police car. That would be all it would take-a police car. She could attract the cop's attention, and this would be over. She watched for what seemed to be twenty minutes, but she knew it couldn't have been that long.

The police car never seemed to appear, and the pain of the gunshot wound was worse and worse. She felt sweat at her temples, the back of her neck, her sides. She kept fighting waves of dizzy nausea, then faintness. She couldn't lose consciousness now, or she might miss her chance to stop the two men before they got her out of sight somewhere.

The car slowed a bit, sped up, slowed, and she realized the driver was looking for an address. As he did, other cars began to pass him on the right-a chance. The seat belt, the handcuffs, and the man's hand holding the tourniquet tight would prevent her from moving anything but her head now. She shrieked as loudly as she could, her voice tearing the air, and threw her head against the side window of the car. She shouted, "Help! Call the police!"

A man driving the car beside her looked shocked. He slowed, then stared at her. Her captor put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her inward. He held up his badge and gave an authoritative wave to tell the gawker to move on. The man pulled over and turned right. She screamed, "No! They're not cops!"

The man holding the tourniquet tugged on it and the pain shot up her leg. "You really are stupid," he said. "There's no need to kill yourself. Leave something to us, for Christ's sake."

The driver was staring intently in his mirrors. "That guy's gone, right"

The other man looked out the rear window. "Yeah. It's safe to go in."

The car turned left and went between two one-story gray buildings that looked like small factories or warehouses into a parking lot. There were three more low buildings ranged around the lot. The car stopped beside the door of the second one. "Let's get her inside."

Jane's world was becoming a place with dark patches that would join at the periphery of her vision and then spread like a stain. The man swung open the car door, but she mostly heard it, because almost instantly the pain in her leg was sharp and deep, like a blade thrust into the muscle. She felt as though the knife's serrations were scraping the bone, and then the men had her arms over their shoulders, half carrying, half dragging her to a door, and then inside.

The inner space was huge, like a small high-tech factory with brushed concrete floors and acoustic tile ceilings. "Let's put her on the couch." The voice had a slight echo as though the place were entirely empty, but it wasn't. There were rooms of some sort built along the side-offices, maybe.

The two men, now just shadows, dragged her to a couch and then lowered her onto it. The pain always grew, never diminished. Every movement seemed to set off a spasm, bending her body over like a hook. The two shadows stayed there, two blots in the middle of her burning red pain. One of the shadows said, "If you want to scream now, go ahead. That's why we brought you here. But while you're doing it, start thinking about something. You're going to talk. Everybody does."

2.

Jane woke up and saw that a new man was beside her, wearing a surgical mask, headgear, and gloves, using a pair of curved bandage scissors to cut along the outer seam of her pants. A doctor. He pulled back the flap of fabric and examined her wound for a few seconds, then began to talk to the man standing above her behind the couch. His mask muffled his voice.

"You had to shoot her" He was angry. "This is going to make everything harder for you than you can even imagine. She could die." He had a foreign accent, but with the mask she couldn't place it. His skin was light brown, and his eyes were dark.

"Then make sure she doesn't die."

"Easy to say after the bullet has been fired."