“Well, she told me about her being pregnant. She was kind of upset and I thought you were ditching her. That’s what I thought. You know there’s always been just the two of us. Our mother froze in the woods when I was eleven. Maggie raised me in our grandparents’ house. I would die for her.”
“Of course,” said John Wildstrand. “Of course you would. Let that be our bond, Billy. Both of us would die for her. But here’s the thing. Only one of us…right now anyway, only one of us can provide for her.”
“What should we do?”
“Something has come to me,” said Wildstrand. “Now I’m going to propose an act that may startle you. It may seem bizarre, but give it a chance, Billy, because I think it will work. Hear me out? Say nothing until I’ve laid out a possible plan. Are you ready?”
Billy nodded.
“Say you kidnap my wife.”
Billy gave a strangled yelp.
“No, just listen. Tomorrow night you do the very same thing. As if tonight was just practice. You come to the door. Neve answers. You show her the gun and you come into the house! You have some strong rope. A pair of scissors. At gunpoint you order me to tie up Neve. Once she’s taken care of, you tie me up and say to me, in her hearing, that if I don’t deliver fifty thousand dollars in cash to you tomorrow you will not let her go. Otherwise you’ll kill her…you have to say that, I’m afraid. Then you bring her out to the car. Don’t let her see the license plates.”
“I don’t think so,” Billy said. “I think you’re describing a federal crime.”
“Well, yes,” said Wildstrand. “But is it really a crime if nothing happens? I mean you’ll be really, really nice to Neve. That’s a given. You’ll take her to a secure out-of-town location, like your house. Keep her blindfolded. Put her in the back bedroom where you keep the junk. Lay down a mattress there so she’s comfortable. It’ll just be for a day. I’ll drop off the money. We’ll time it. Then you’ll let her out somewhere on the other side of town. She may have a long walk. Be sure she brings shoes and a coat. You’ll drive back to wherever and turn in the car. I don’t think we should tell Maggie.”
“Maggie’s gone, anyway.”
Wildstrand’s heart lurched, he’d somehow known it. “Where?” he managed to ask.
“Her friend Bonnie took her to Bismarck, just to clear out her head. They’ll be back on Friday.”
“Oh, then, this is perfect,” said Wildstrand.
Billy looked at him with great, silent, dark eyes. His and Maggie’s eyes were very similar, thought Wildstrand — that impenetrable Indian darkness. They had some white blood and both were cream-skinned with heavy brown hair. Wildstrand felt extremely sorry for Billy. He was so frail, so young, and what would he do with Neve? She worked outside shoveling snow all winter and in summer she gardened, dug big holes, planted trees even. Billy kept shifting the gun from hand to hand, probably because his wrist was getting tired.
“By the way, where did that gun come from?” Wildstrand said.
“It belonged to my mother’s father.”
“Is it loaded?”
“Of course it is.”
“You don’t have ammunition for it, do you,” said Wildstrand. “But that’s good. We don’t want any accidents.”
The Gingerbread Boy
WHEN BILLY PEACE knocked on the door the next evening, John Wildstrand pretended to have fallen asleep. His heart beat wildly and his throat closed as the quiet transaction occurred in the entryway. Then Neve walked into the room with her arms out and her square little honest face blanched in shock. She made a gesture to her husband, asking for help, but Wildstrand was looking at Billy and trying not to give everything away by laughing. Billy wore a child’s knitted winter face mask of cinnamon brown with white piping around the mouth, nose, and eyes. His coat and his pants were a baked-looking brown. He looked like a scrawny gingerbread boy, except that he wore flowered gardening gloves, the sort that women used for heavy chores.
“Oh no, I’m going to throw up,” Neve moaned when Billy ordered John Wildstrand to tie up his wife.
“No, you’ll be okay,” said Wildstrand, “you’ll be okay.” Tears dripped down his face and onto her hands as he tried firmly but gently to do his job. His wife’s hands were so beautifully cared for, the nails lacquered with soft peach. Let nothing go wrong, he prayed.
“Look, he’s crying,” Neve said accusingly to Billy, before her husband tied a scarf between her teeth, knotting it hard behind her head. “Nnnnnn!”
“I’m sorry,” said Wildstrand.
“Now it’s your turn,” said Billy.
The two of them suddenly realized that Billy would have to put down the gun and subdue Wildstrand, and their eyes got very wide. They stared at each other.
“Sit down in that chair,” Billy said at last. “Take that rope and loop it around your legs, not around the chair legs,” and then he gave instructions for Wildstrand to do most of the work himself, even had him test the knots, all of which Wildstrand thought quite ingenious of Billy.
Once Wildstrand had secured himself to the chair and Billy had gagged him, Billy told Neve to get on her feet. But she refused. Even as anxiety coursed through him, Wildstrand felt obscurely proud of his wife. She rolled around on the floor, kicking like a dolphin until Billy Peace finally pounced on her and pressed the barrel of the gun to her temple. Straddling her, Billy untied the cloth gag in her mouth and rummaged in his pocket. He drew out a couple of pills.
“You leave me no choice,” he said, “I’m going to have to ask you to dry-swallow these.”
“What are they?” asked Neve.
“Sleeping pills,” said Billy. Then he spoke to Wildstrand. “Leave the money in a garbage bag next to the Flickertail Club highway sign. No marked bills. No police. Or I’ll kill your wife. You’re being watched.”
Wildstrand was surprised that Neve took the pills, but then for some reason she always had been like that about taking pills, even asking the doctor to paint her throat when it was hardly pink — she’d always been a willing patient. Now she turned out to be a willing hostage, and Billy had no more trouble with her. He undid the rope on her legs and put a hobble on her ankle. She walked out dreamily, her coat draped over her shoulders, and John Wildstrand was left alone. It took him about half an hour of patient wiggling to release himself from the rope, which he left looped around the chair. Now what? He wanted desperately to call Maggie, to talk to her, hear the slow music of her voice. But for some hours, he sat on the couch with his head in his hands, replaying the whole scenario. Then he started thinking ahead. Tomorrow he would go in early. He would withdraw cash out of their joint accounts. Then he would take the cash and get in the car. He would drive out to the highway sign and make the drop. It would all be done before eleven A.M. and Billy Peace would free Neve west of town, where she could walk home or find a ride. There would be police. Investigation. Newspapers. But no insurance was involved. He’d have used all of their retirement money, but Neve still had the bank. It would all blow over.
Helpless
A BLIZZARD CAME up and Neve got lost and might have frozen to death had not a farmer pulled her from a ditch. Because Billy had actually scooped up her snowboots as they left, and her coat was a big long woolen one that ended past her knees, she suffered no frostbite. She ran a fever for six days, but she did not develop pneumonia. Wildstrand nursed her with care, waited on her hand and foot, took a leave from the bank. He was shocked by how the kidnapping had affected her. Over the next weeks she lost a great deal of weight and spoke irrationally. To the police she described her abductor as quite large, muscular, with hard hands, a big nose, and a deep voice. Her kidnapper was stunningly handsome, she said, a god! It was all so bizarre that Wildstrand almost felt like correcting her. Though he was delighted, on the one hand, that she had the description so wrong, her embroidery disturbed him. And when he brought her home she was so restless. In the evenings, she wanted to talk instead of watch television or read the magazines she subscribed to. She had questions.