Poison Flower (7 page)

The driver said, "Maybe she told us the truth. Maybe she doesn't know where he went."

"Then she's really stupid. You should always have -something-one precious thing-that you can use to keep this kind of shit from happening to you." He was heating the skewers again, and this time, he dropped all of them on her back at once. Jane's vision clouded red again, with only a small point of light in the center. The muscles in her arms and legs tightened in a spasm, but she held back the scream, kept the air moving in and out through her nostrils so it wouldn't pass her vocal cords and make a sound.

The burns on her back were now throbbing from the first attack, the air sweeping across them and making the pain flare again. She felt the bruises from the beating under her, and the burned flesh on her back, and together they seemed to overwhelm her nervous system until she was barely aware of the men and their movements.

"You know how to make this stop. All you have to do is give us back what's ours."

It was getting harder to keep silent. The bullet wound in her leg hurt again. Her body was a raw, throbbing, aching set of nerve endings, all sending hot, screaming alarms to her brain at once, and she couldn't soothe herself, couldn't turn away, couldn't even move. Inside her closed eyes she had a vision of her husband, Carey-not wishing he could save her, not wishing him into this horror at all, just feeling the loss of him.

What the tall man did next came with no warning, no sound that reached her ears, but brought an explosion of pain, and then the red cloud in front of her vision closed the point of light in the middle, and went black.

At first the darkness was like being in a pocket, but then she sensed that it was big, like a starless, infinite space. She wondered for a moment if she was dead. Moving was impossible, and she couldn't feel her body touching anything. And then, without warning, she felt all of it. The skin of her back was on fire. Her eyes opened like a camera shutter, and closed again at the glare of the lights.

She tried to look at the men again, and saw that they had gone. She couldn't see them or their shadows or hear their voices. She was cold, and she suddenly realized she was wet. She looked around at the table, and saw that someone had attached the two insulated wires to the car battery. That was it. They must have given her a shock, and she had passed out. She wondered how long she had been unconscious. She tried to run an inventory of pains, but she didn't detect any she hadn't felt before. They had let her alone after she passed out. They wanted her to feel every single sensation. There was no point in hurting a person who couldn't feel.

She had lost track of time. She had heard from people who had been broken in interrogations that losing track of time had weakened them. A person had to feel that there was a whole world outside his prison where time proceeded in an orderly, uniform way, where the sun rose and set as it always had. She realized that this was part of the distress she had felt when she had first been dragged in. The high windows that had been blacked out had scared her a little, and the single dim desk lamp had been worse. It was always gray twilight in the big room.

Jane took a deep breath, asked herself how long she could hold out against the pain, and realized that she was still willing to die. As long as she didn't reveal where Jim Shelby was, she could buy him time, and keep these men occupied with her instead of searching for him. Shelby and every one of her earlier runners would have another day of safety, another day for their identities to mature and be more solid, another day to make a friend who might help them. And another day would give Jane's captors a chance to get impatient and careless.

She thought about her runners. Over the years she had taken dozens and dozens of them away. Shelby was only the most recent. They had almost all come to her in the last days of wasted, ruined lives, sometimes just hours before their troubles would have changed from dangerous to fatal. She would obliterate the person's old identity and turn him into a runner, a fugitive she would guide to a place far away, where nobody knew him, and certainly nobody would ever think of killing him. She would give him a new identity and teach him how to be that new person for the rest of his life. By now there were people all over North America and Europe who bore names that she had made up.

She thought about her husband, Carey, the surgeon who spent every day of his life fixing and curing people. He had been her reward, the part of the world that she had taken for herself for no better reason than that she wanted him and he kept pestering her to take him. She loved him so much she could picture every centimeter of him with such clarity that she could feel him against her skin. She had lived a good life, but now she had to be ready to die to preserve the other people, the ones who had trusted her with their lives.

Jane let go of Carey's image and prepared herself for the next phase. The pain of torture was almost unbearable, but she had discovered it had other qualities, too. It set her apart from the rest of humanity. Each time the pain didn't destroy her was a failure for the enemy, a wall that had held against an attack. The cuts and burns were decorations of valor and at the same time proof of the torturers' unworthiness. The pain was the means of consecration, the welcome fire that proved the victim's nobility.

She would wait for the next torment, and if she got the chance she would use their implements as weapons. And when she couldn't do that anymore, she would use one of them on herself.

4.

Jane waited several hours lying facedown on the bed. The young nurse had not scraped up the courage to call the police. Jane had made a number of excuses for her during the past few hours. Maybe she had not known the way here. No, she had come along with the doctor once, and she had come alone and left alone last night. Maybe she had felt she needed to wait for her boyfriend the doctor to return home so she could explain to him in private what she had seen and why they had to call the authorities. She had said something last night about wanting to talk to him.

The girl had said he was smart. That didn't mean he was smart; it meant only that he had persuaded her of his intelligence, and that he wouldn't have much trouble talking her out of helping Jane. That was the smart choice, the one that would probably keep them both out of trouble, preserve his freedom and his license to practice medicine, and let them forget they had ever seen her.

The easiest thing for them to do was to separate themselves from this unpleasantness. He had treated her bullet wound, and what had happened to Jane after that was not his business. He would use the girl's belief in his authority and her faith in his wisdom to smother her conscience.

Jane heard an engine, and then footsteps, and she lifted her face off the bed, straining to see. Even though she knew better, she couldn't help holding her breath, hoping the police had arrived. But a key unlocked the door. The door swung open and she could see the blinding yellow-white light of the morning sun slice into the room and illuminate it for a second. When the door closed, the same three men were standing in the room.

Jane could see there had been a change. They seemed to know something she didn't, and it had lightened their mood, as though they'd been excused from a big, unpleasant job. She felt a sick fear for Shelby. The man who had driven her here said, "Hey, Wylie. You going to tell her now"

The tall man turned his head and glared at the driver. He said, "Yes, I am, Gorman."

"Sorry," the driver said. He looked at his feet.

Jane silently repeated the names to herself a dozen times. Wylie was the tall one, and Gorman was the fake cop who had served as the driver. She had an irrational fear that she would forget their names, even though she knew that this would be impossible. She would still remember them if she lived to be a hundred and the fresh burn scars on her back healed to invisibility. Wylie and Gorman.

Wylie stood over Jane with his arms folded on his chest. "Normally I'd kill Mr. Gorman for that, but it doesn't matter, because I've learned something I didn't know before. Want to know what it is"

"No," Jane said. She was still in restraints and lying facedown on the bed. She turned her face away from him.

"I'll bet you don't." He undid the Velcro strips that held her wrists, and grabbed her hair so she had to turn toward him onto her side. He grinned, and she noticed how his mouth was twisted to make a smile that was really a snarl. It was as though the meanness behind his eyes distorted his expressions. "I started to get curious about you the first time I heard about you. A lot of people go through the jails and courts every day, but the only ones who ever get away seem to be the ones where some clerk screws up the paperwork or something. Nobody breaks out. So I started asking around. And you'd be amazed at all the people who are interested in you."

Jane studied the blue eyes and saw spite in them, and greed. But what she saw that was most disturbing was joy. He was celebrating a victory.

"What have you done" she asked.

"In a way, it's good news for you. I'm arranging an auction for tomorrow. There are people who say they're willing to pay some really big money just for the privilege of meeting you in person for a leisurely chat."

Jane's stomach felt as though it had turned cold and heavy. She said, "Who"

"The bidders are coming here, so you'll see them. And they want to see you before they hand over the money. One is named Barraclough. He's the younger brother of someone you had an altercation with years ago, I understand. He owns a security company. There's a private detective named Killigan, who represents Robert Eckersly. You apparently took Eckersly's wife away from him. There's a gentleman named Grady Lee Beard, a bounty hunter, I think, who says you gave him a knife scar that runs from his collarbone to his navel. He says you got him arrested in an airport only a year or two ago."

Jane turned away.

"Don't you want to hear about all the bidders"

Jane thought, Now I understand why you don't care if I know your name.

"They all seem to have somebody they want to ask you about."

"I won't be telling anybody anything."

"No" He sighed. "What a shame. I don't think I'll want to watch. You know, when they were asking me questions to see if you were the same woman, every one of them mentioned those blue eyes. I was relieved that I hadn't popped them out. That was coming up soon."

"Why didn't you"

"You passed out. I'm glad I didn't do anything so they wouldn't recognize you. Now that I know how valuable you are, I realized I can't afford you. I have other ways to find Jimmy Shelby. He's got a sister, and he's a regular good old boy, who will probably make some dumb-ass mistakes and get caught. So tomorrow when the bidders get here, you go on the auction block." He turned to the others. "Maybe we ought to actually build an auction block. What do you think, Gorman Maloney"

The one who had shot her said, "Was that necessary"

"Sorry, Mr. Maloney. Just having a little fun."

Now she had all their names. Wylie. Gorman. Maloney.

Wylie laughed, turned away, and went to the door. "I've got some stuff to do. You two keep an eye on her. A couple of those bastards might be smart enough to come early and try to steal the merchandise." He went out the door and locked it.

Wylie was gone all morning, so Gorman went out to buy hamburgers and french fries and milk shakes for lunch. Jane had been fed intravenously, and it had been days since she had eaten solid food, so the lunch caused cramps, but then, hour by hour, she felt better and stronger. Wylie didn't return by dinnertime, and Gorman and Maloney grumbled. Maloney went out to buy the food this time. They let Jane sit in her bed and eat without restraints. Jane ate quickly. She knew now that this was going to be her last night before these men sold her. Once she was in the hands of any of the likely bidders, her chance of survival would end. She saw Gorman get up to throw away his trash, so she lay back in her bed. When Maloney went to the bathroom, she lay on her stomach and wrapped the Velcro restraint around her left wrist to tie it to the bed frame, then lay on her stomach. She put her right hand under the sheet so it couldn't be seen. She hoped that both men would glance in her direction and assume the other had made her secure. Then she arranged herself so she could open one eye a slit and see the rest of the big room.

After Maloney, Gorman, and Jane had eaten, the two men went to the steel door, looked outside, then locked it. She could hear them fiddling with something that clanked, but she closed her eyes. They were more worried about the bidders taking Jane than about her making an escape, and she had to keep them confident.

They came closer to her. Jane caught sight of Gorman's watch, so she knew it was ten in the evening when Gorman and Maloney made an agreement. Each of them would stay awake to keep watch for four hours. The first shift was to be Maloney's. He sat at the table near Jane's bed drawing pictures on the backs of some medical papers that the nurse had left. Jane could see the drawings were the sort that ten-year-old boys drew, fighter planes diving low toward a stronghold made of piled-up boxlike structures, strafing them with machine guns. A second wave came in higher, releasing large bombs from their bellies. After a while he obliterated the defenders with a couple of large, puffy explosions.

Next Maloney drew a few pictures of women, all with exaggerated breasts and bottoms, and impossibly thin waists. He wasn't very good at hands or feet, and when he got to the faces, he drew big, lipsticked mouths and cowlike eyes, but kept drawing bad noses and erasing them until they were gray smears. At last he tired of making art. He sat on the couch near Jane and stared at the closed door to the office where Gorman was sleeping, then at his watch. After a time his head tipped backward, his eyes closed, his mouth gaped, and Jane heard him snoring.

Jane waited. Gorman had retired to one of the offices along the side of the building, and he had been snoring for an hour. She knew she would move quietly but could not make herself perfectly silent. She had to let Maloney reach the stage of sleep that Gorman had already reached. If he heard a small noise now, his mind would try to remain asleep by incorporating the noise into his dream.