“Finally, I got one free. I could feel the car slowing down. I got my hand free and swung the door open. It wasn’t even locked, thank God, because I wasn’t thinking of that. I was just thinking of getting out. So the door swings open and the guy in the passenger seat is hitting me and trying to grab me. And I can feel the cold air from outside, rushing past, and I just feel how fast it’s going, you know? So I don’t want to jump. We were still going too fast. But then he grabbed a handful of my hair and jerked me toward him, and started to suffocate me. I don’t know if he was trying, but he put his other hand over my mouth and nose, and held them there. And he was strong—strong—so I couldn’t move. He just sat there and pushed harder.”
His hand was covering her mouth, and she was able to bite it. She got her teeth around a finger and bit hard.
“I bit down so hard, Julian. As hard as I could. And then he let go with his other hand, and then I jumped out of the car.”
She ran into the woods, she said. It was dark and branches smacked her legs, arms, and face, but she didn’t trip. The woods were dense. She heard them follow after her, but she had a sizeable lead, so after a few minutes she found a pile of brush and lay down next to it. She heard their voices—yelling, blaming each other, cursing her—and periodically saw the beams of their flashlights. Once, they came close enough to hear the crackling of twigs beneath their feet. And in that time, she told me, she heard one distinct sentence.
Vince is going to be so pissed.
“They said it; I know they said it,” Suzanne said.
“You’re sure they said, ‘Vince?’”
“Positive. That’s when it made sense. Of course it was him.”
“So, because you stormed out of dinner, he had you kidnapped?”
She shook her head. “It’s more than that. He knew I wasn’t happy for a while. He’d been threatening me, saying, ‘bad things can happen’ if I didn’t shut up and get in line. He doesn’t like differing opinions.”
I thought about it and looked her in the eye. She’d stopped shivering.
“People have disappeared before,” she said.
“Like Damon?”
She nodded.
“And what do you think happened?” I asked.
“Dammit Julian,” she said, standing up and throwing off the blanket, “they killed him.”
42
“I need to go,” she said, walking toward the door. “I’ve already stayed too long.”
“Where?” I asked.
“I can’t be here.”
They killed Damon. She was sure of it. She told me this and the two of us cobbled together what we knew about his disappearance. Before Suzanne went away, I’d been careful about what I said to her. She was one of them, so I had to be careful. It was different now. It was different when she walked in to my apartment with white skin and blue lips and black hair.
She knew about Damon’s arrest, and I told her about Vince’s explanation to me. This cemented her opinion. They paid off the police, got him out of jail, drove him somewhere and killed him. There was no new life in Arizona. They just killed him, to get rid of the problem. The killed him and stopped talking about him, so we’d stop thinking about him. They killed him, just as they had probably done to others, they were going to do to her, and they would do to anyone else who caused problems.
“Still,” I said, “it doesn’t make sense for them to kill you over something so small.”
She shook her head. “You don’t know how they are. They’re crazy about little things. Vince takes things very personally.” She looked down. “I’d been thinking about leaving the community for a while. I just didn’t know how to do it. I was afraid. You haven’t seen his violent side.”
I nodded. “I have, actually.”
“When?”
I told her the whole thing. How I found out about the drugs. About the meeting with Vince. About what he told me when I threatened to go to the police.
You’d be dead before you reached the station.
She massaged her temples. “Drugs. Of course.”
“You didn’t know?”
“Not specifically,” she said. “I knew something strange was going on, something that probably wasn’t right. Something they wanted more people for. But they’re very careful to keep specifics from us. Adeline; when she started being his…leading woman or whatever. She started being very discreet about the things that went on. She never told me any specifics about the operation. I was always curious, but she never told me anything.”
“Where have you been living?” I asked.
“I need to go,” she said again. She looked at the door, then looked at me, and reached over and touched my hand. Her fingers were ice cold.
“Julian,” she said, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For bringing you into this. It’s my fault.”
“No it isn’t,” I said. “I came up here on my own.”
She shook her head. “Not really.”
“Yes, really.”
“No,” she said. Her eyes were solemn. “It wasn’t complete chance.”
I sighed. “Call it forces of the universe or whatever you want, Suzanne, but we make our own decisions. I decided to move here, and I decided to work for Vince. I’ll deal with the consequences of my decisions.”
“It wasn’t chance, that night, in Boulder,” she said.
“This is not the time to ponder the metaphysical properties of the universe.”
“I was a recruiter.”
“We need to find out how to get you… what?”
She nodded. Her demeanor was timid, shameful.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“A recruiter. That was my job in the community. I recruited people.”
I tilted my head. “A recruiter.”
“Yes. Men mostly.”
The truth was in front of me now, undiluted by guesses and intuitions. The truth. Finally.
“Okay,” I said, processing. “How many?”
“Enough,” she said. “And that’s what I did to you. I brought you in to work for Vince. You need to know this. You need to understand.”
I put my hands on my head to process, then stood up. I thought for a long while, processing what it was she said. Recruiter. I examined what that meant, or tried to, and then I stood. I stood and got mad, because I had earned that right.
“So what are you, a whore?”
She winced. “No. But if that’s what you need to call it…”
“That is what I need to call it, because that’s what it is,” I said, raising my voice.
“I’m sorry.”
“So all that was bullshit?” I asked, pacing the room now. “The whole thing? Just a ploy.”
“No,” she said, standing up and moving toward me. “It was at first, but not at the end. I really did have feelings for you.”
“Bullshit.”
“I did, Julian, and that’s why I’m here,” she said. “It wasn’t like with other men. You were different.”
“Other men?” I became incredulous.
“I told you…”
“Shut up,” I said, and turned away.
She took a step toward me. “I loved you, Julian. I do love you.”
I exhaled and looked at her. It was an irrational statement, but nothing had been rational for a long time. Maybe it was my surroundings—the town, the valley, the people—or maybe it was me. Maybe I was going insane, slowly and quietly, and I didn’t even know it. Do the crazy know they’re insane?
I put my hand up to stop her. “I don’t even know who you are, honestly.”
“Yes you do.”