Gundown (23 page)

She tried a little fake sympathy. “You look really tired.” Once she said the words, she realized that they weren’t all that fake.

• • •

She was up to something; Hank knew her interest wasn’t sincere, but he wished it were. He was weary of being on guard all the time. “I am.”

He stood, slipped off his belt, and stepped next to the cot.

She shrank back from him.

He said, “Please lie down and put your hands by your sides.”

She jammed her hands into her coat pockets and glared at him.

“Please, I just want to rest. I’m only going to secure you for a few hours. You can rest, too.”

Her gaze held his as she slipped her hands out of her pockets. When he leaned down to loop the belt around her and under the cot, she jammed something against the side of his neck. He knocked her hand away and touched his skin. It was wet.

She sat up and said, “I think you have a nap coming on.”

“Nice work, Ms. Washington.” He knew what would happen, so he dropped the belt, eased himself to the floor next to the fire, and surrendered to unconsciousness.

• • •

Jewel shuddered with relief and reaction. She dug into his pockets for the car keys and ran to the SUV, her only thought to get back to Chloe. But the dark was like black ink, a threatening nothingness to a city girl who had never known a night without the glow of a million lights. And she hadn’t driven more than a half dozen times in her life. She dug her cell phone out of her purse. No bars.

She’d never find her way through all those branching logging roads in the darkness, and she could drive over a cliff or run into a bear or something, so she returned to the shack. Soldado lay unconscious and helpless. Jewel took down the rope holding the kerosene lantern and used it to tie his feet tight to the post, and then put his hands behind his back and cinched them together with the belt.

Retrieving her stopper from his pocket and his pistol from where he’d tucked it in his belt, she moved the cot to the opposite side of the fire from him, added wood, and settled into a restless sleep, stopper in hand.

Deep in the night a rustling sound woke her. She bolted up and raised her stopper, hoping some wild animal wasn’t in the shack. It was cold, and the fire was down to embers.

It was Soldado, struggling to get out of the belt that bound his hands. With a grim kind of satisfaction, she hit him with nap again. She reloaded the empty chamber, then piled wood on the embers and fell asleep watching flames grow.

Morning sunlight woke Jewel. Stiff from her night on the cot, she turned to find Soldado’s intense gaze on her from across the dead fire. Startled, she sat up and aimed her stopper at him. His gaze was steady. “You’ve got me.”

He was still tightly bound. She relaxed. “Yeah, I have.” She stood and walked to the door.

“You going to leave me here?”

She started to say yes, but wondered if he’d be safe. There might be wolves or something. Or, considering what she knew of him, he’d escape. Leaving him could be letting a killer get away. “I guess not.” She went to him and aimed the stopper at the base of his neck, where his shirt opened.

He said, “You don’t have to do that. I’ll even drive, if you want. You’ve got the guns.”

Seeing the alertness in his eyes and knowing how quickly he could move, she pressed the button for nap. He winced when it struck his neck, then shrugged and closed his eyes.

She worked up a sweat dragging him to the car and buckling him into the backseat, cussing herself for not making him get in before she turned out his lights. Taking no chances, she used a shot of tangle on his bound hands.

As she followed the GPS and drove back through the mountains, she struggled with whether to go home first or to the police station. It wasn’t much of a fight; she wanted her baby in her arms. As it turned out, a cop car was at Franklin’s house when she slammed to a stop. She ran past a startled officer and yelled, “He’s in the car.”

Chloe burst out the front door and flew to Jewel when she reached the porch, and they held each other for a long time.

Franklin appeared. His hug felt awfully good, too. They watched as a police van arrived and the officers freed Soldado of his tangle and took him away. Jewel held Chloe on her hip and felt a moment’s weakness in her knees as she realized that it was over.

She sat on the porch swing, Chloe in her lap. No way she was gonna go to work, and she didn’t want to be more than a couple of inches away from Chloe for a while. She stroked Chloe’s hair and said, “Hey, how about a picnic in the park?”

Chloe said, “Can I make peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches?”

“You bet, honey.”

Chloe said, “Yippee!” and slipped off Jewel’s lap to dash into the house.

Jewel smiled up at Franklin. “Thanks for looking after her.”

“Hell, you don’t need to thank me. My pleasure.”

Jewel and Chloe spent the afternoon in Lithia Park, swinging and sliding at the playground and playing catch with an old tennis ball they found near a pair of courts.

Her daughter’s giggles pushed back the terrors of the last day and night. Hank Soldado was out of her life.

But his weary smile drifted through her mind now and then.

Captivity

For the second time, Hank woke in a cell after overindulging in nap. Figuring he wasn’t going anywhere, he lay quietly and gazed at the bars while his mind cleared.

He hated being caged.

He pictured the fierce determination on Jewel Washington’s face when she got him with the nap. One helluva woman.

The door opened and Benson Spencer entered, accompanied by a guard who looked like a senior citizen. The guard carried an orange jumpsuit. He glared at Hank as he limped to the cell, opened the door for Benson, and dropped the jumpsuit on the floor. “You’ll need to change into that.”

“I don’t know. It’s not really my style.”

“Your choice. We’ve got some big guys who would love to help you.” Hank picked up the jumpsuit.

Pointing at a ceiling camera, the guard told Benson, “Just signal when you want out.” He closed Benson in the cell and limped away.

Hank said, “Hello, advocate.”

Benson wasn’t his usually jolly self. “You’re not an easy man to side with, Hank. I can’t decide whether you’re a good guy or a bad guy.”

“Hey, I had to run. You didn’t do much of a job defending me.”

“Defending you wasn’t my job. My job was to find the truth and to make sure you weren’t screwed. The truth is, you did kill Earl, and you did it with an illegal firearm.”

Something had flickered in Benson’s eyes when he mentioned Earl. Hank said, “You knew him, didn’t you?”

Benson’s gaze dropped to the floor. “He was once a friend.”

“You’re one of the guys they told me got pickled.”

Benson looked up and laughed. “Pickled! Man, if you knew the sweat I wasted being afraid of therapy. That’s what I’m here about—your alternative to the Keep.”

“Some alternatives: prison or a pickle jar.”

Benson’s tone sharpened. “Do you know anything about either one of them?”

“No.”

“How about some facts before you draw conclusions?”

“So tell me.”

“The Keep is to Oregon what Australia was to Britain in the 1700s. Every violent criminal in Oregon is sent there. There are two Keeps, a big one for men, a smaller one for women.”

“Where is it?” When he escaped, Hank wanted to know where he could run to.

“Southeastern Oregon, out where there’s nothing but sagebrush and high desert.”

He’d better pack a lunch.

Benson said, “Like the judge explained, you lose the things society creates. No television, no mail, no medicine, no air-conditioning, no weight rooms, no basketball courts, no extras.

“The state provides the basics: shelter, food, water, and clothing. There are no guards, no pastors, no doctors. No cells and no bars. Just violent people.”

Hank said, “I can see why the life expectancy is only two years.”

“The Keep was built to handle five thousand. Four years ago it was nearly full, but we estimate there aren’t more than three thousand now.

“The alternative to the Keep is therapy in a small hospital the docs call the Repair Shop.”

“Cute. Better than Butcher Shop, I guess.”

Benson rolled his eyes. “First they analyze you. As Noah says, you are what you think. They isolate the things that drive the behavior that got you in trouble. Then they help you change ’em.”

Hank snorted. “Brainwashing!”

“No. They start with noninvasive techniques such as deprogramming, which can work on problems like racial bigotry.”

“Noninvasive. So there are ‘invasive’ techniques, too? What, lobotomy?”

Benson shook his head. “They use neurosurgery, and the decision is completely up to you. It’s voluntary. You don’t want to do it, they’ll try other approaches.”

“They operate on your brain? Why?”

“Think of it as having an abscess—the infection poisons your whole body. A doctor uses invasive techniques to clean it out, and your body returns to a healthy state.”

“That’s what they did to you?”

Benson nodded. “I wanted it. Like the rest of the men in my family, I had a fanatical belief that I had an unrestricted right to own any kind of gun, and that anyone who said different was a traitor. My belief was bulletproof, and there was no way to reason me out of it. Earl thought the same way.”

The old Benson would have been a man after Hank’s own heart. He’d grown up believing the same thing, mostly because it was true, but, he had to admit, his family had a lot to do with it.

Benson said, “At the Repair Shop they took out the basic belief, which left me with no opinion at all. Since then I’ve studied what the National Rifle Association says and the Supreme Court’s decisions, and decided I don’t have an unlimited right to carry any kind of gun. More than that, I’m convinced that states have the right to control guns. At least that part’s been upheld by the Supreme Court. There was no brainwashing, no attempt to convince me one way or the other.”

“That you know of.”

Benson threw up his hands. “It’s not like that!”

Hank watched Benson for signs of . . . of what? What did a washed brain act like? There didn’t seem to be anything wrong, but . . . “So that got you out of the Repair Shop?”

“When the stuff that causes the problems is gone, then so is the wrongdoer. You’re considered a different person. The idea is to help people, not punish them.”

“How could you let them do it to you?”

Benson gazed at Hank for a long moment. His voice was soft when he said, “There came a time when I had to trust.”

Hank shuddered inwardly. “I’m not going to let anybody carve up my mind and trust that they won’t screw with it while they do.” His mind was who he was!

Benson said, “They don’t do anything you don’t agree to, and you have a medical advocate who makes sure that’s all they do.”

“Sure, they tell you that.”

“I’m the same guy who went in, I just don’t think the same way about guns.”

Yeah, he
thought
he was the same guy.

Leaning forward, Benson said, “Hank, choose the therapy.”

“No thanks. I don’t care how lousy the Keep is, at least I’ll still be me.”

“Maybe the you that you are isn’t the best you can be.”

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

Benson stood. “That’s it, then. You’ll be transferred tomorrow. But you can change your mind anytime.” He waved at the camera.

Hank asked, “How’s Jewel? I feel bad about her. She just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“She’ll recover. Strong woman.”

“You’re telling me.”

The gimpy guard returned, unlocked the cell door, and stood well back with his stopper ready. As Benson stepped out, Hank said, “Let her know I’m sorry. It wasn’t personal.”

Benson studied him. “You don’t get it, do you? Violence is always personal. It was her personal chin you jammed that gun barrel into.”

“Just tell her?”

Benson’s energy bubbled back up. He beamed and said, “Will do.”

After they’d ended the visit, Hank stretched out on his bunk. Into his mind came the image of Jewel’s indomitable face as she hit him with nap. Beautiful, and he wasn’t thinking of appearance.