Drawn Into Darkness(67)
Focus, I coached myself. Concentrate. I quite thoroughly believed Stoat intended to kill me now that he was feeling better.
“You scared, Miss Lee Anna?” he taunted.
Without answering and without much finesse I flipped the eggs. Somehow, their yolks retained their integrity. Those eggs must have been laid by an honest hen, to whom I felt gratitude as I turned the burner off.
“Answer me, bitch. You scared?”
“Yes, sir.”
Must not think about Justin. Must not cry.
I took a deep breath. With my back to Stoat, I reached for a cupboard door.
“Hey!” I heard the thunk of boots on the floor, and a nasty snick from the shotgun. I froze.
“I need a plate for your eggs,” I said.
“Woman, you call me ‘sir’!”
“Sir, I need to get a plate for your eggs, sir.”
“Is that so, tricky bitch?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Move slow.”
Yes, sir. Whatever you say, Stoat, you goddamn effing goat with a goatee, sir. Moving as if I were trying not to awaken a sleeping baby, I got out the plate, slid the eggs onto it from the pan, then added stale and marginally moldy bread rendered edible by the toaster and a lot of margarine.
Placing the plate in front of Stoat, I wished my thoughts could poison the eggs.
I imagine he knew this and I could see he didn’t care. He dug into his breakfast with evident satisfaction.
I sat down across the table from him. He stopped eating to glare. “I didn’t say you could sit down.”
I didn’t move, but said dully, “Sir, request permission to sit down, sir.”
Quick as a striking snake he deployed his shotgun as a club, and I stiffened and winced—not quite heartsick enough to be indifferent—but Stoat lowered his weapon and began to laugh like a kindly uncle. “Lee Anna, Lee Anna,” he said, shaking his head and chuckling as he went on eating his eggs, “you’re a piece of work. You must be hungry; fix yourself something.”
This, too, this occasional humanity, was the real Stoat, making me feel bad for hating him so much. Yes, bad. With the back of my neck bleeding from constant contact with his shotgun barrel, nevertheless I felt like a bad little girl.
And making the victim feel bad, I realized in silent epiphany, was the whole point, the tipping point of torture. This was the unspoken understanding between the person with the club and the one on the floor: inflicting pain did not merely make the victim suffer physically; it made the victim feel what the shrinks call loss of self-esteem. Extreme loss, as exemplified by the way I felt at that moment: diminished by helplessness, unable to understand such punishment, but inclined, like a child, to accept blame. This was the strange dynamic between captor and captive, torturer and tortured, abductor and—Justin. Stockholm syndrome. Hanoi Hilton. Auschwitz. All cut from the same rotten old fruitcake.
Son of a bitch.
“I’m not hungry,” I said, which because of the sickening circumstances was true.
• • •
Forrest yanked out a kitchen drawer and emptied it on the floor, making quite a bit of noise as an emotional release. It annoyed him that Quinn cringed, yelping, “What are you doing?”
“Ransacking.” Forrest poked through the junk on the floor with the toe of one of his work boots, saw nothing of interest, and reached for the next drawer.
His older brother reached to stop him. “Don’t!”
“Why not?” Overwrought feelings gifted Forrest with a rare, pellucid, very articulate moment. He stepped into the Suit’s space, almost nose to nose. “Why the fricking hell not? We’re trespassers, we’ve been ordered to leave, we’re scofflaws. Why not do it right? Go turn on the damn air conditioner and then help me out. Mom was here. Whoever lives here probably has her. The fastest way to find anything with his name on it is to tear this place apart. Where’s your balls, Quinn?”
“Not anywhere I’d want you to find them,” Quinn retorted. “Would you try to be a little bit quiet? We can’t turn on the AC. We need to keep an ear out in case the guy comes back.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, have some brass.”
“Screw you. What do you plan to do if some gun-toting redneck walks in, kick him in the head?”
“That’s pretty much what I’d like to do, yeah.” Again, Forrest reached for a drawer, and again Quinn stopped him.
“On TV, don’t they generally start by looking through the suspect’s trash?”
“Only because that doesn’t require a warrant.” Admitting only tacitly that it was a good idea, Forrest strode to the kitchen trash and overturned it with a satisfying clatter of empty jars and cans. “Phew! Why no trash bag? And where’s the junk mail?” The mess on the floor consisted almost exclusively of food containers along with a few soppy paper towels and napkins.