When he was able to talk, he said, “If Mom knew anything . . . if Stoat is a pedophile and she caught wind of it . . .”
“She would have called the cops.”
“But she didn’t. So . . .”
“So maybe he knew she wanted to call the cops? So he—what? Grabbed her?”
Worse than that, Forrest feared. Much worse than that. But he could say only, “Quinn, I’ve got a really bad feeling about this.”
TWENTY-ONE
Down on my hands and knees, ruining my bathroom towels by wiping blood off the floor with them, I ignored my own blood dripping from my head, and I tried to bypass the pounding pain where Stoat had bashed my scalp with the shotgun butt, because I had a more serious problem: survival. Stoat held me captive. Making an annoyingly rapid recovery from his rattlesnake bite, he no longer really needed me. So how to stay alive?
I figured Stoat could still use some tender, if not very loving, care. In my experience there was no man alive who would not want to be fussed over, especially with part of his face turning black and falling off. I knew Stoat liked to order me around like a slave. And I knew he sometimes liked my big mouth. Could I make him comfortable and get him talking? Somehow pull a Scheherazade on him?
Huh. I’d never thought of the Arabian Nights in that way before, but Scheherazade was the archetypal victim of Stockholm syndrome, pleasing her captor with her storytelling skills, then joining with him in marriage, and that was supposed to be a happy ending? I sure as hell did not want to spend a thousand and one nights with Stoat the Goat, but any future after today was not my immediate worry.
By the time I stood up and gathered the bloodstained towels into my arms, I had thought of an opening gambit. On my way to the washing machine with Stoat following close behind me, I paused in the living room and turned on the TV. Moving into this isolated slice of Eden, I had treated myself to more satellite TV than I could really afford, almost certainly more than Stoat had.
Stoat halted, transfixed by the Animal Planet spectacle of a pack of African wild dogs disemboweling an impala. As I moved on toward the washing machine, he snapped, “Stop. Drop that stuff. Set.”
Obligingly I plopped the armload of bloody towels on the carpet, handed Stoat the remote, and sat down. Shotgun handy, he sat down also, comfortably, on the sofa, and when Animal Planet cut to a commercial, he began surfing the channels. I swear the pupil of his one visible eye dilated when he found a noisy show featuring oversized men, “gladiators,” in an eight-sided chain-link “cage” instead of a boxing ring, savagely fighting with their fists and feet. One kicked the other in the jaw. The other reeled, then retaliated with a wrestling clinch. An announcer kept up a stream of commentary while a large audience of surprisingly normal-looking people watched, yelling in excitement. This barbaric spectacle was apparently present-day and considered a sport. Stoat seemed fascinated. I found it difficult to plan my next move under the circumstances, but I tried.
After a while I stood up. Stoat, damn him, alerted instantly, grabbing his shotgun and barking, “Where you think you’re going?”
“To the kitchen for some snacks.”
He grunted assent but followed, watching me closely as I put together a couple of plates of Ritz crackers, sliced cheddar cheese, and stick pretzels. Back in the living room, I placed one plate on the coffee table for him, took the other for myself, and sat down again. My stomach, much more frightened than I allowed my mind to be, wanted nothing to do with food, but I methodically chewed and swallowed anyway, partly to keep up my physical strength and partly to foster the illusion I was trying to establish, that of a happy housewife watching TV with her guest.
In due time I set my plate aside and stood up again.
“Now what?” Stoat barked, turning away from the TV with evident frustration.
“Would you like something to drink? Those pretzels are salty.”
“I’ll show you salty if you keep interrupting,” he muttered as once again he followed me to the kitchen, where I filled a couple of glasses with ice and Sierra Mist.
“Ain’t you got no proper soda?” Stoat complained.
“If I’d known you were coming, I would have stocked up on beer,” I said lightly. “What do you like to drink?”
“Root beer.”
“Next best thing,” I said with a blithe little laugh, back in the living room, delivering his drink and sitting down with my own. “Tell me,” I prattled on, “if a lion, which is from Africa, fought a tiger, which is from India, which one do you think would win?”
He gave me a surprised look. “Now, that,” he said, “is an interesting question.” But he did not answer, fixated again on the TV screen. The fights, I had seen on the menu when he was surfing, would be on all day. If Stoat’s interest did not wane, I had time.