Unsound (A Lei Crime Companion Novel) (11 page)

I wiped with a square of paper towel, put the waste in my ziplock bag like a good little camper, stowed the pot under the sink, and began an FBI-level search of the kitchen for something to use as a weapon.

“I took all the sharp objects out of the kitchen,” Russell Pruitt said from outside. “It’s okay. You’re safe with me.”

I ignored this, continuing to search, my mind shuddering at the thought of Russell Pruitt’s enormous hands—just one of them was big enough to crack my skull like an egg. It didn’t bear thinking of.

The only thing I could find was the extra stove lighter, a bulb of lighter fluid with a striker on the end that made a flame when the trigger was pulled. Maybe I could stick it in his eye or something.

“I’m getting cold out here. I’m going to come in, and I want you to get back into your sleeping bag so we can talk,” Russell Pruitt said. “I’m going to fix us some dinner. You’ll like it.”

“And if I don’t want to get back into my sleeping bag?” I said, holding the barbeque lighter aloft, bemused by its uselessness.

“I’ll put you in there myself. It’ll take longer for us to get to know each other,” he said in his pedantic way. The thought of him stuffing me into my sleeping bag had me hyperventilating again. It was unfair that I’d been ambushed at my lowest point mentally and physically, but I was a savvy psychologist who’d dealt with hundreds of psychopaths and criminals in my time.

I just needed to outwit him; that was all.

If I could escape somehow, I’d need my boots.

“Okay,” I said meekly. “I want to at least hear what you have in mind.” As if I had a choice. I shoved my feet into the boots and swung my legs up to my sleeping bag, stuck them inside, climbed in, and zipped myself up. I tucked the lighter along with the flashlight down into my sweatpants. “I’m in.”

Russell Pruitt opened the door and entered, bending his enormous head because he barely cleared the ceiling. He looked over at me, cocooned in my bag.

“Good. We can get started.” He carried his backpack back in and took out a screwdriver and a tongue-and-hasp combination. Walked back to the door and began screwing the hasp side on. He was putting a lock on the door.

I felt terror rising up again, but I did a couple of calming breaths and focused on engaging him.

“You’ve said you want to establish trust with me. I’m wondering how putting a lock on the inside of the door is going to help me trust you,” I said, with the warm tone of neutral curiosity I used to help clients explore conflicting goals. “Locking the door sends a message that I’m a prisoner, and neither of us is to be trusted.”

“Aha. Motivational interviewing,” Russell Pruitt said, correctly identifying my technique, his back massive as a wall as he put heft into turning the screws. “I wondered what your opening gambit would be. Nice try, Dr. Wilson, but I’m not actually a journalist. I’m a psychology grad student.”

“Interesting.” I fumbled my phone up, hit the video button, aimed it at him from beside me. I wanted to record some of this—for law enforcement or posterity, whichever came first. “If so, you must be aware that taking me captive to do therapy is a flawed scenario. The unconditional positive regard and trust necessary to the therapeutic process are compromised.”

Russell Pruitt turned back, the screwdriver tiny in his fist. I hoped he didn’t see the edge of the camera phone poking up with its blinking red
record
eye. “I needed to see you. It’s a matter of life and death.”

I took a moment to absorb this—his face was very pale, and greasy sweat had sprung up along his hairline as his eyes shone with feverish, glassy light. I wasn’t the only one who looked ill. Something besides delusion was going on with him—something physical. I seemed to remember gigantism was caused by tumors on the pituitary gland and that many giants didn’t live long due to enlarged organs.

“Two questions. No one knew I was coming here. How did you find me? And why didn’t you just make an appointment?”

Russell Pruitt, if that was indeed his name, walked back over to his backpack, slid the screwdriver inside, and took out a combination lock. He walked back to the front door, pulled the tongue over the hasp, hooked the steel lock through the eye, and clicked it shut with a final-sounding click. I almost moaned aloud—and bit my lips instead.

“I’ll answer your questions after I make dinner,” he said. He walked back over to his backpack and reached in to take out a silvery cold pack bag. “I brought all your favorite things.” He shook the bag, as if displaying doggie treats to a hound, and went into the kitchen.

I stayed silent, my brain scrabbling. How had he found me here? Literally, no one knew where I’d gone after I got off the plane in
Maui. It doesn’t matter how he found me, I told myself. What mattered was that I begin to take control of the situation and find a way to escape. I turned the phone off, slid it back into my pocket. I sat up, pushing the sleeping bag down around my waist—still technically obeying him, but concealing my boots.

His back was turned and he was chopping something in the kitchen. “You haven’t been eating well lately, Dr. Wilson. You’ve lost weight.”

“I know. I’ve been ill.”

“No. You’ve been drinking.”

I narrowed my eyes at the back of his enormous head. He had to be the stalker. There was no other answer. He must have been observing me. I clamped down on my millions of questions. I needed to stay on task. “I think it’s much more interesting to find out about
you
. What is this matter of life and death?”

“You like pasta with shrimp and cream sauce,” he said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “It’s amazing you’ve kept your figure all these years. Anyway, I thought you’d be ready for a really good meal after being down here a few days.”

“Thank you for being so considerate.” He was already showing me what he would and wouldn’t do. “I’ve read gigantism is a tough diagnosis. Many people with the disorder don’t make it out of their twenties due to health complications. Is that what’s happening to you?”

“I also brought asparagus,” he said. I saw the flash of the big butcher knife that used to be in the dish rack, heard it whack the cutting board with excessive force, making me jump. I looked around, wondering if I could sneak over to his backpack and search it while his back was turned. As if he read my mind, he turned, and the waning light of evening glanced off the blade, rendered tiny by his hand.

“You aren’t lying down.”

“You didn’t say I had to. I’m in my sleeping bag. I’m following directions,” I said softly.

He turned back and resumed chopping, then filled a pot with boiled water, turning to the stove. Good. He’d let me get away with something. I could build on that progressively until I gained the upper hand. He had some sort of respect or regard for me; I would use that authority to strengthen my position.

I had left the second striker near the stove, anticipating that he’d miss it if I took the only one—and now he lit the burner without comment even as I wondered how the hell the hidden striker was ever going to help me.

“Now a drink. You must be feeling terrible by now, when you’d been drinking so much daily.” He lifted a bottle of Grey Goose, my favorite vodka, off the counter, waggled it, and poured at least five fingers into a plastic cup.

My whole body tightened, and I felt my mouth fill with saliva. I was Pavlov’s dog incarnate, hardly human in the violent wave of longing that swept me. I shuddered with the power of it as he approached me, holding the full plastic cup in two hands like it was the Holy Grail.

“No, thank you,” I said feebly. “I’ve been cutting back.”

“I know you have. You’ve been very brave, trying very hard. But I think you’ve dealt with this wrinkle in your plans admirably, and you deserve a reward.” Russell Pruitt held out the yellow plastic cup of clear, odorless liquid. I held my quivering hands still in my lap to restrain them from taking it. I realized that, no matter how much I wanted that drink, I didn’t want it even more.

“Thanks so much, Russell Pruitt, but I just couldn’t.”

“Oh, but I insist.” Then followed a brief flurry of violence in which he sat on my bunk, lifted me like a doll over his legs, held me down, and pinched my nostrils. When I gasped for breath, he poured the vodka into my throat until I choked and swallowed. He then sat me up and handed me the cup.

“Drink,” he said. “Or we’ll keep doing that until it’s gone.”

I drank. When the cup was empty, I handed it to him.

He patted my tousled hair. “Now, isn’t that better?”

And horribly, revoltingly, I had to admit that it was—even as tears streamed down my cheeks. The heat of the liquor ignited in my belly, ran like liquid energy down my arms and legs, and every deprived circuit in my body and brain wanted to leap up and sing “hallelujah.” For some reason, I thought of Bruce, his hard brown eyes challenging me. How angry he’d be that I hadn’t gone to Aloha House. The tears wouldn’t stop pouring down my cheeks.

“No means no, Russell Pruitt. I said no, and I feel violated by you making me drink that.”

“I think we need to suspend some of the social niceties for the duration,” he said. “I’m sorry you felt violated.” He got up and went back into the kitchen.

He’d very effectively shown me how strong he was and asserted total domination over me. I felt queasy with fear and the huge shot of vodka.

“So, what do you know about sociopaths?” he asked conversationally, stirring the pot of pasta.

“Quite a lot, actually,” I said. What was he getting at? The booze was working, loosening my tongue and the tight joints of my hips and knees, falsely restoring my confidence by expanding the constriction of my cerebral cortex. Knowing that was happening didn’t make it less effective. “Why do you want to know?”

He didn’t answer that. “Do you think the diagnosis of psychopathy should be admitted to the DSM-V in lieu of antisocial personality disorder? Many psychologists and psychiatrists in the profession are divided over this.”

“Sociopathology refers to a pattern of antisocial behaviors and is recorded Axis Two, but the group submitting the psychopathy definition have done neurological MRI studies showing that the brains of psychopaths don’t process emotion the way normal people do. That group wants to have a psychopathic disorder available on Axis One, the main diagnostic axis.”

“You didn’t tell me what your opinion was.” His back was turned at the stove.

“I’m not a part of the committee reviewing the submissions, but I think there’s merit in having that diagnosis available.” I leaned back against the wall so that the upper bunk would shield me from his view. “Why are you asking?”

He didn’t reply.

I brushed the tears from my cheeks, hoping that one drink wouldn’t make me have to go through withdrawals again—but if he made me keep drinking, I’d be right back at ground zero. What a horrible form of abuse, and it scared me down to my untied boots.

He was cooking shrimp in a frying pan, and it smelled delicious. I was disgusted by how hungry I was, how much better I felt after he’d fed me the drink.
You might have to do a lot worse to stay alive before you get away than eat shrimp and drink booze,
Constance said.
You can feel guilty later.

A thought occurred to me—maybe Aloha House would call Bruce and tell him that I’d never arrived, and he’d be worried. Kamani too. And Bruce might call Chris, and Chris would tell him I was on
Maui and that I’d always wanted to hike Haleakala, that Richard and I had always planned to, and they’d figure out where I’d gone. It was a dim hope, but a real one.

Someone might come looking for me. Someone might take it seriously that I’d disappeared, even if it was because of my own stupidity. One call to the ranger station, and they’d know I was in
Haleakala Crater.

And then they’d wait for me to come out of the crater. No one was going to come looking for me down here until my permit expired, at least four more days.

The feeling of hope dying felt so bad I wished I’d never had it in the first place.

“Dinner’s ready,” Russell Pruitt said. He carried two steaming plates of pasta and shrimp to the table along with a battery-operated lamp.

I was still ashamed of my hunger but resigned as I kept the sleeping bag over my legs and transferred myself to the bench in front of the battle-scarred table.

“Mmm. Smells delicious,” I said, and meant it.

“Good. We’ll start therapy after dinner,” Russell Pruitt said. “Eat up. You’ll need your strength.”

I got back onto my bunk after dinner, my booted feet still hidden in the sleeping bag.

“It’s good to get comfortable for our talk, Russell. Not too many places to sit—why don’t you just lie down on your bunk?”

He appeared to think this over, a crease appearing between black untamed brows as he collected the plates. His features showed some of the characteristics of gigantism—a protruding forehead with prominent brow ridges, a vast underslung jaw. My brain finally supplied the medical name for his condition: acromegaly.

His grayish color was a little better after eating (I’d had a bowl of the pasta, and he’d eaten the remainder of the pot), and he’d drunk a quart or so of water as well. I reminded myself he’d hiked down the Sliding Sands today. Russell Pruitt had to be getting tired.