“Isn’t that what I said? But there’s something else you have to do before you get paid. Are you ready for this?” Her smile was that of a mean drunk. “What I want is all the dirt you can bring me on your buddy. That’s right, dear little Liberty, the deputy sheriff.” She paused, disappointed by my response. “You’re not shocked?”
“Liberty and I haven’t been friends that long. Even if I was willing, I don’t know much about her. Nothing bad anyway.”
“Put your mind to it, dearie, you will. There’s not a woman on this earth who doesn’t have a guilty conscience or some dirty little secret. Photos are good, but video is better. I’ll give you some microrecorders to plant here and there. Have duplicates made of her apartment keys, too. I want her hard drive copied, her texts and e-mails, everything. There’s not enough time to get my hands on all two hundred million before Bunny dies, but her niece is going to inherit a bundle. By then Liberty and I-you, too, of course-will have what’s called a special relationship.”
I tried to disguise my disgust but couldn’t. Lucia waved the bamboo as a warning and came closer. “You’ll drop all this holier-than-thou bullshit when I tell you the alternative. You’ll go to state prison on a murder charge-sound fun? A big attractive girl like you might actually enjoy herself.”
My hands, crossed behind my back, began to fidget. “Get away from me. You’re crazy.”
“No, I’m methodical. Guess who the last person was to see that little redneck girl alive? Honey… it was you. I’ve got audio of you both in the Cadence mansion. Her screaming at you, ‘Don’t touch me… Stay away from me.’ Heartbreaking, the way she pleaded. The girl called you evil, as I remember. Your voice records nicely, Hannah. I loved the part where you said, ‘Sometimes I have to fake being nice to people.’”
“I never said that.”
“Oh, but you did. In so many words anyway.”
My mouth was so dry, I couldn’t swallow. Pretending my hands were tied seemed a cowardly retreat from Lucia’s lies. Yet I sat there and tolerated them.
From a safe distance-or so she thought-the woman hiked her dress and knelt so we were eye to eye. “Why wouldn’t you leave that poor child alone? It was sickening the way you kept after her. Push, push, push. What are you, twenty-eight… thirty? Too old to invite a teenage girl into your car for a drink. But you did. Just the two of you alone. That’s how you lured her outside, isn’t it? It all came out quite clear on the audio. God only knows how drunk the little tramp was when you dumped her at the side of the road-or wherever you left her. I’ll flesh out the details after I’ve edited the tape.”
Lucia, with her smug certainty, smirked and attempted to stare me into submission. I stared back. She had liquid green eyes set deep into the hollows of a face that was stamped with crow’s-feet-smoky parties and whatever poisons that had scarred her from within. I don’t know what the woman saw in my eyes. Rage, no doubt. But something darker, too-or unfamiliar-because her expression gradually changed. I watched Lucia gulp and stand, her balance wobbly. Then she stepped back while her ego and her eyes sought a graceful excuse to look away.
She found it. “Who the hell opened that?”
My vision was so tunneled, I didn’t know what she meant until I followed her gaze to the opposite wall. The barred doorframe had swung open. I had closed it. I knew I had closed it. But to protest my innocence was, in fact, an admission that I had moved around the room.
“It was like that,” I said.
“It was not,” she snapped and walked toward the door. “That’s the room where Theo’s mother sent him when he was bad. He never opens it. Ever.”
I didn’t reply, just watched. Among the equipment near the milking table was a snake hook-not sharp, but on a five-foot aluminum pole. If I sat patiently until Lucia got to the door, I could have the thing in my hands and be ready when she turned around.
So I waited. The woman kept glancing over her shoulder to check on me. Maddening to pretend helplessness, but I did. Finally-finally-when she reached for the door, she looked away, but then spun around to surprise me.
I had just started to get up but stopped in time. Lucia continued to glare, one hand on the bars, her back to the door into the next room. I shrugged innocence and looked at the floor-which is when I saw what she had noticed: the tie wraps I had placed around my ankles were gone. They were several feet away where I had kicked them when I’d tried to stand.
Lucia raised the bamboo tube as if it were a flute. “You sneaky little bitch-show me your hands. You needed your hands to open this door.”
No more pretending for me. I stood and kicked the chair back-a metal chair that clattered across the tile. I was already moving toward the snake hook. “Call the police if you’ve got a complaint,” I said. “An ambulance, too, if you get in my way.”
I meant it. I didn’t waste a glance at the woman until I’d pocketed the box cutter and had the aluminum pole in my hands. Then I turned… but wasn’t prepared for the scene before me: Lucia had the bamboo tube to her lips and was zeroing in on me as if the thing were a blowgun.
A blowgun… ?
Yes, a blowgun. I hadn’t believed Theo when he said Lucia had studied with an Amazon tribe. But it was true. Extra darts, thin as needles, were visible in her right hand.
I yelled something, I’m not sure what, and hurled the pole at her, which clanged off the bars. Almost simultaneously, a wasp stung my left wrist. I looked down-not a wasp, a bamboo sliver three inches long. Lucia, her back pressed to the door, was loading the tube again as I twisted the needle out, careful not to snap off the point.
“Bet it burns like hell, doesn’t it?” She didn’t scream the question, instead sounded hopeful and eager, a woman whose pleasure would be delayed until I had experienced pain.
I picked up the folding chair to use as a shield. “What’s on those darts?”
Lucia was in no rush now. She had the tube loaded again. Twitched her nose in a way she thought was cute. “You’re bigger than most, so I’ll use five to make sure. Attractive girls”-a wicked smile-“usually only need two.” She braced her shoulder against the doorframe and raised the blowgun to her lips.
I ducked behind the chair and found a crack to peek through. Then I stood straight and forgot about everything else. “Get away from that door,” I told her.
Behind Lucia, through the hinged flap, a hand with freakishly long fingers had appeared. It was attached to an arm furred with auburn hair that glistened and snaked longer and longer as if squeezed from a tube or controlled by a contortionist. A fecal stink pushed ahead of it.
I started toward Lucia and yelled, “Get away from that door!”
Too late.
Long hairy fingers explored the hem of the woman’s robe, then sensed body heat. Lucia’s reaction was to turn and look. Then she opened her mouth to scream but instead made only a high-pitched choking noise.
It took a confusing moment before I understood: Lucia hadn’t lowered the blowgun. While screaming, she had inhaled one of her own darts.
18
By watching Lucia during the next few seconds, I learned something that would take time to understand: when panic transitions to horror in human being, God frees us from our bodies-an act of the greatest kindness. The sufferer is replaced by a mindless creature who is left to struggle and endure pain in the hope of escape.
For Lucia, there was no escape-unless I went to her aid. And I did go to her, although I’m not sure why. My reaction, however, was delayed by my own horror. The chimpanzee’s fingers, after burying themselves in her flesh, found her collar and tried to pull her through a slot no larger than a mailbox. Bones snapped. More bones snapped when he tried again. Finally Lucia fell after the robe ripped away. The chimp’s hand was searching for Lucia’s hair when I at last took action.