Poison Flower (6 page)

"Why"

"I didn't want to wake you up." He turned to the nurse and said, "Okay, honey. Why don't you go take a break We'll call you if we need you."

"Yes, sir," the girl said. She stood up, walked to the door, and went outside. Jane saw that the parking lot was dark.

Jane watched the tall man. He took his time appraising the progress of her decline. He stared at her bruised and swollen arms and hands above the sheet. "Do you have anything to tell me yet"

She moved her head from side to side slowly, not taking her eyes from him.

"The thing is, we're in a bit of a bind here. You've taken something of mine. Not to mention hurting several friends of mine in a public place, where they couldn't really give you an idea of the consequences."

"You're persuading yourself that whatever you do to me, I deserve it, and that you'll just be paying me back. That's not true. Nothing you or your friends have done was legal or justified."

His eyes narrowed. "I don't think you're going to help your cause any by pissing me off. Fair warning."

"I don't have a cause."

He looked angry. "Not much of one. So, before things get a hell of a lot worse, I'd advise you to listen to me for a minute. The doctor tells me you're too weak to run away, even if you could get out of your bed by yourself. What you've managed to do by getting shot is to delay things by three days. Your boy Jim Shelby has had seventy-two hours. He could be anywhere in the country by now. Isn't that true"

"If he drove most of the time and didn't stop long, sure."

"What that means isn't what you seem to think. His arriving where he was going doesn't take the responsibility to talk off you. It makes you even more important. You're going to have to tell us where he is."

"I still don't know."

"Tonight, I expect to find out if that's true. Each time you don't answer is going to cost you. Maybe it will be a finger. Maybe the next thing will be an ear, a toe, or an eye. I can tell you that it's best to give in early."

"I don't have anything I can tell you," she said, "so it will be a very unpleasant waste of time."

"Well, in a little while the others will get here with the tools, and we can get started. So sit tight." He walked off.

Jane tightened the muscles in her uninjured left leg. That was still strong, and so were her hands and arms. But her right leg would barely hold her, and she was too weak to put up much resistance.

The air where the tall man had stood still held his smell. A smoker. He had probably just gone out for a cigarette. He certainly would before he began to torture her. That was the way the habit seemed to work-a cigarette before anything and one after.

She wondered where her purse was now. She had sacrificed it when she had fought on the courthouse steps to buy time for Jim Shelby to get away. Inside it was a bottle of a particularly strong batch of water hemlock she had harvested and processed last summer.

Some people in upstate New York called the plant cowbane, because now and then a cow would eat a bit and die. The Latin name for the plant was Cicuta maculata, and it was related to the carrot, but the water hemlock was the most deadly plant on the continent. The traditional Seneca method of suicide was to take two bites of the root. About once a year Jane went to swampy places to look for the tall plant with tiny white flowers arranged in a flat circular group. She cut the roots from the stems and mashed them to get the clear yellowish liquid that held the strongest cicutoxin. Then she repeatedly strained the liquid until the particles were gone, and distilled it to remove most of the water. One swallow from the cut-glass perfume bottle she carried in her purse would have killed her in minutes.

Without the water hemlock, Jane would have to wait and see what tools her captors planned to use on her. If they were the right kinds, maybe she could use one to accomplish her death. If her hands were free she could tear out the stitches in her leg and get the blood flowing again. Maybe the men were novices who would accidentally cut an artery and she'd bleed to death quickly.

The nurse returned to the desk and sat in front of her computer. As the man walked by her, he said, "Take the rest of the night off, honey. We'll take care of her. And if the doc ever brings you back, don't bring the computer or a cell phone with you. Leave them at home. Understand"

"Yes, sir." She looked terrified. "I understand." She hurried to pack up her things. She started the shutdown process on her laptop.

"I hope so," he said. "Because I'm not going to tell you again."

"I'll be sure to remember." She moved quickly. She had seen the marks on Jane and was eager to get away from the people who had made them. She closed the laptop even though it had not fully shut down, slid it into her bag, and hurried out the door.

Jane stared after her. She could not quite guess what the girl would do next. Jane had carefully nudged the girl's mind, inch by inch, until she was cornered, unable to think of a reason not to let Jane call the police. She had been ready to give in. But this had been a terrible, frightening experience for her, and Jane had seen people react to danger in many different ways-some had a first impulse to be heroic that carried them only through the initial moments and got them killed. Some people ran not only from the danger but even from the memory of the danger.

It was possible that the girl would get out of here, think about getting her boyfriend and herself into legal trouble or about bringing on them the hatred of an unknown number of violent criminals-six and counting-and pretend that she had never seen Jane. She would tell herself that Jane would talk and be released, or if Jane didn't talk, the consequences would be her own fault. And the girl would stop thinking about her. In a month Jane would seem like a dream. In a year the experience would be so far back in her memory that she would never revisit it.

Jane lay on the bed and studied the man. She hadn't had as much time to observe him as the others, but had no desire to be around him a second longer than she was forced to be. Clearly he was in charge. He was taller than the others, and spoke louder. When he was gone, the others all waited for him to come back and tell them what to do. When he was here, they all watched him and unconsciously mirrored his movements and expressions. But there was something else, and listening to him talk to the nurse helped her identify it: people were instinctively wary of him. There was a volatile, vindictive quality to him that was so strong that people timidly observed his moods for signs of change, and humored him.

He came closer and sat beside her on the bed. Jane was acutely conscious of the restraints on her arms. "Now we're alone for a few minutes, and we can talk." His voice and expression were friendly, almost conspiratorial. "If you'll give me some help and say where Shelby is likely to be now, we can avoid bringing everybody in here to spend the night thinking of new ways to make you tell us. We can avoid wear and tear and loss of limb." Jane decided to play him for time. If the girl did call the police, it would do no good if they didn't have time to get here. She had to keep him talking.

"So what you're saying is that if I give you Shelby, then you will let me go. Is that right"

He nodded, his face earnest, but then began to modify his expression. "After a reasonable interval. I'd have to send someone after Shelby to be sure you told me the truth, of course. And we would have to be able to get some distance away before you were loose. Probably we'd get on an airplane and fly somewhere, and then make a call from there to let a person of your choice know exactly where to find you. Sound fair"

"It sounds like a plan that would give you unlimited chances to change your mind and kill me, or just leave me here to die."

"Of course you have to remember that you're my prisoner. I'm not your prisoner."

"That's hard to forget."

"But aside from my leaving myself some wiggle room, do we have a deal"

"No," she said. "I don't know where Shelby is."

"I'm sure you do."

"I got him a car and a change of clothes and some cash. If he doesn't make any mistakes and drives somewhere that's reasonably free of cops and people who hunt fugitives for a living, he can be invisible for months. He didn't tell me what his destination was, and I didn't suggest any."

"Did you get him credit cards"

Jane saw the trap. "No."

"How about false ID A driver's license"

"No."

"Why not"

"I didn't want to know what his new name would be," she said. "If people had his new name, they could eventually get his new address."

He looked at her closely. His blue eyes had probably looked innocent to many people over the years, and that was why he was trying to use them again on her. But to Jane his eyes looked cold and opaque, like flat metal disks. He manufactured a half smile. "I don't think I understand you yet. Is this about the money Is somebody paying you a bonus for each day Shelby stays hidden"

"No. Nobody's paying me anything."

Suddenly, she understood what he was doing. After the captured warrior had been brought into camp, he would sometimes be bathed and his wounds would be bandaged, and he would be allowed to rest. That evening he would be brought to an important man's dwelling, fed, and treated as an honored guest. Some enemy peoples would even formally adopt him, so he would become a relative. In doing these things the captors were trying to make his body stronger and his will weaker, to force him to live through the cruelest treatment, all the time feeling the terrible contrast between the feast and the torture. Almost the minute after the feast was over, the captured man would face the first of the major torments that would end only in his death.

The tall man looked at her with a friendly, concerned expression, as though he genuinely cared about her. "If you're not getting paid, then why would you put up with the kind of treatment you've been getting, and what's about to happen to you"

"As you've said, you've got me. I don't have you." His hand shot out suddenly and slapped her face. She had watched for it and decided in advance to take the blow. If she did anything to deflect it or counter it, she would reveal how strong she really was, and this was a secret that might be important to her later. Her face felt hot and sore, and she knew it was probably turning red.

His smile returned. "You just reminded me that I can do whatever I want."

Jane heard cars pulling up outside the building, and her heart began to beat harder. The young nurse must have gathered enough nerve to call the police and say she had been hired to care for a kidnapped woman. Jane lay there, her eyes on the tall man. She knew that when the police came through the door he would either try to use her as a shield, or kill her. She would have to roll off the bed and stay low. Maybe she could deliver a kick to distract him for the police. She bent her strong left leg so she would be ready to push herself off the edge of the bed.

She heard the door swing open, and after a second he called out, "It's about time you guys got here."

The man who had driven the car when she was caught walked in carrying three bags against his chest. He said, "It took us a while to find all this stuff."

The man who had shot her said, "You wanted to talk to her alone. Should we wait"

"She's buying time and bullshitting. We might as well get ready."

The men brought in a folding table, opened it, placed it about six feet from Jane's bed, and then began to take things out of the bags and lay them out on the surface. Jane considered not looking, because the fear would only weaken her, but she reminded herself that she needed to see what implements were going to be lying where she might be able to reach them later.

There were assorted knives, some of them serrated and some smooth, a package of steel skewers for barbecuing meat, a small handheld blowtorch. So this stage of her ordeal was going to be what she had expected-cutting and fire. There was a car battery, and a set of insulated wires with alligator clips. Just another kind of fire.

The tall man disconnected the IV needle from the back of her left hand and wrapped the tube around the steel stand. "Here. Roll her over on her stomach and use the restraints to secure her wrists to the bed."

The two men turned her over roughly, and tightened the Velcro restraints on the bed frame around her wrists. She heard a cigarette lighter, and then a hiss. She turned her head toward the sound and watched the tall man holding the lighted torch, adjusting the feed valve until the flame was a small blue point.

The tall man used the torch to heat up a set of four steel skewers while the driver held them with a pair of long-handled pliers. Jane pictured the warrior, tied to a stake by now, watching the embers being heated, the torturers' eyes glowing like cats' eyes in the reflected firelight. The proper response was complete indifference. The warrior would pretend to be unafraid, would show calm when the pain came, would pretend that he felt no despair.

Jane could see that the skewers were red and glowing. The driver pulled the oversize man's shirt she was wearing up to her shoulders, and the tall man simply laid the skewers, one by one, across her back. Her muscles tensed, and her vision narrowed, with a red halo at the edges. Her eyes were wet, the tears spontaneously running as the hot steel seared her back. She believed she smelled her own flesh cooking, but she pictured the warrior's eyes staring into hers, silently urging her to endure the pain and the horror, and remained still.

The tall man picked the skewers up with the pliers. "Hot enough, you think" She couldn't tell who he was talking to, and it no longer mattered. "You know, that was a shame. You really did have a beautiful back. I hated to ruin it with those burn lines. Well, guys What should we try next"

Another voice said, "We should have just killed her when we got her here."

"You shot her. You could have fired again or just aimed higher and said it was an accident." He was enjoying her ordeal, but it seemed to be making his friends uncomfortable. "She has a lot of determination, doesn't she"