“Are you sure about that?”
/> “I should be. I kicked his ass today,” she said.
“I got the sheriff on the line,” Clete said.
FELICITY’S EYES HAD been bound when he laid her down on the bedsprings and secured her hands and feet to the four bedposts. She assumed the electric current came from a wall socket, but she could not be sure. The first jolt knocked her unconscious. When he threw water on her and shocked her again, she heard a grinding sound inside her head that could have been a generator or the vibration of the bedstead against the concrete floor.
There were interludes when he went away, stomping as he climbed the wooden stairs, not unlike a resentful child. While he was gone, she drifted in and out of consciousness and experienced dreams or hallucinations she could not separate from reality. He had gagged her and left a window open, probably to clear the air of the sweaty odor that seemed painted on the basement walls. At first she thought she heard the wind blowing through a copse of thickly leafed trees; then she realized the sounds were not leaves rustling together but the voices of human beings, many of them talking at once, creating a drone that made her think of a beehive.
The cotton pads taped over her eyes admitted no light, but she believed she could see tropical plants and flowers and palms, and she wondered if her ordeal had not bought her passage to the place where her father had died among the Indians in South America.
All her anger toward her father had disappeared. She wanted to reach out and touch his fingers and tell him that her life had not been bad after his death. She wanted to tell him that she had gotten by on her own, and she was proud of the sacrifice he had made for others, and that as long as he was in the basement with her, no harm would come to either of them.
Then she realized she was not in touch with her father. Instead, she was in an arid country where date palms grew along the roadways and the stone in the amphitheater was hot enough to scald the hands of the spectators in the noonday sun, and the only shade was over the box where Roman nobility sat.
Her warders had been Nubians who were so black, there was a purple shine on their skin. They herded her and her companions with spears from the dungeon below the seats into the brilliance of the day, and only then did she smell the blood that had dried in the sand and see the array of executioners with trident and flagellum and gladius and a metal-sheathed instrument she had not seen before.
They’re going to scrape you first, a voice whispered close to her ear. Then you’ll be given a chance to reconsider. A flick of incense on the fire, and you’re free.
I won’t do it, she answered.
Many of the others have. Are you too proud? Do you think you’re special?
Yes.
Don’t mock me. I can hurt you very badly.
I want to die.
Not really. You think you’re better than others. Your pride wants to live. You’ll beg. I guarantee it. Here’s another little reminder of reality.
She knew the pain had driven her mad. She didn’t care. The next shock was so great, it seemed to rattle the entire room.
I TOOK THE CELL phone from Clete’s hand. The moon was down, and the lake looked as dark as oil. “What are you guys into now?” the sheriff said.
“The gumball who was killed up here, what’s-his-name, he was dragged by a wrecker?” I said.
“The gumball? You’re talking about Kyle Schumacher?”
“I don’t remember his name. He was down on a child molestation beef of some kind in California.”
“What about him?”
“He was dragged by a wrecker, wasn’t he?”
“We’re not sure. There was only one witness, a man driving back from a bar. He was pie-eyed when he called 911.”
“Did you find the vehicle that dragged him?”
“The sheriff there checked out a place where the killer may have boosted it.”
“The killer?” I said.
“Okay, Surrette. If he boosted it, he returned it. So we’re not sure.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Thanks? That’s it?”