No Legal Grounds (27 page)

Sam’s heart spiked. “All right!” He unclipped his cell phone and tossed it like a softball onto the porch. It clattered up against the wood-frame house. “There.”

“That’s much better.”
“Let me see Heather.”
“It’s what I wanted to do all along, Sammy. But I’m afraid we

won’t have any time for heartfelt good-byes. She is going to move right on past you to wherever she wants to go. Except to the police, of course. She knows what will happen to you if she opens her mouth. Tell your father you understand.”

Heather’s voice, swollen with fright, said, “I understand. I won’t tell.”
Smart girl, Sam thought. Just tell him what he wants to hear.
“Would you like to have a good look at her, Sammy?”
“Please.” The word was bile in his mouth. But he was going to do anything he could to get Heather out of there. Then he would have it out with Nicky Oberlin, even though he knew Nicky must be planning some unpleasant business for him.
Just get Heather out.
“Now listen very carefully, Sammy. Because if you don’t follow my instructions exactly as I lay them out, it’s going to be very bad, very bad for everyone, but especially for your daughter. I’m going to let her out onto the porch. You are not to move. Not one inch. If you do I will pull her back in and kill her. Do you understand that, lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“I will tell you what to do after that. If at any time you disobey me, Heather dies. You see, I learned a long time ago that you must not disobey the one with all the power. And that’s what I have right now. You know that, don’t you?”
Sam said nothing.
“Answer me! ”
“Yes, Nicky. You have all the power.”
“I wish you really meant that, Sammy. But you know, there’s just part of you that’s a liar. You’ve always been a liar. Always showing one face to the world and keeping that other face turned away, just like all the others at the old UC.”
This guy was a walking psychological disaster. He didn’t belong in the world.
The screen door squeaked. It was opening. In the very last of the dark gray light, Sam saw the outline of his daughter moving slowly in front of the door. He could barely make out her form. He wanted to run up to her and hold her and comfort her, but Nicky’s warning kept him firmly planted.
“He’s got a rope around my neck,” Heather said. Then Sam heard Heather grunt as she was yanked backward. She cried out.
A lethal mixture of rage and hate boiled inside Sam. He saw nothing but a vision of a torn and dead Nicky Oberlin.
“Looks like I have to train her, just like a doggie,” Nicky said from behind the door. “Well, I never liked dogs. That kid of yours back home, he’s much better off without that mutt. I’d much rather train you, Sam. So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to make an exchange. But it’s going to be done very carefully. You have to remember that I have a firearm pointed at your daughter’s head. Are we clear about that?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m going to let you walk right up to the steps, where you will find a set of handcuffs. When you get to them you will be told what to do.”
For a moment Sam hesitated.
“Come on, Sammy,” Nicky said as if talking to a dog. “Come on, boy.”
Clenching his teeth, Sam started toward the house. He kept his pace slow, not wanting Nicky to get nervous. He told himself it was all for Heather, he was getting closer to Heather, and they would find a way out somehow.
When he was ten feet from the front steps he could see Heather’s features. She was looking at him with fear and something resembling love. He loved his daughter, and he knew that. But he felt it now as one would a fire in the bones.
I will get you to safety, he thought. If that’s my last act on earth, that’s what I’m going to do.
He took another step and the ground disappeared.

“What are you do — ” Heather’s words were choked off as Nicky — she knew the guy’s real name at last — pulled on the rope around her neck.

She was back inside the house. Her eyes burned with tears of rage. “You liar,” she managed to say. Her hands were still secured behind her with some sort of cord. She wished she could scratch his eyes out.

“Now, now. That’s a terrible thing to say to your husband.” “What did you do to him?”
He twisted the rope around her neck, burning her skin as he

She resisted. He pulled harder.
“Don’t be such a hard body,” he said.
“I want my dad.”
“I want a hit Broadway show. Can’t have everything you want,

Oh, please don’t call me that. Don’t make me more sick than I already am.
Dad.
He was taking her toward the back of the house. To do what?
All sorts of creepy pictures popped into her mind. He’d do something bad to her and then to her father.
Suffering and death.
“That’s a good doggie,” Nicky said as he pulled her.
God. God, be there. I’m bad and I know it, but please help my dad and me get out of this and kill this man, please, God.
“Please don’t hurt my dad,” she said.
“You know, I’m really tired of all this. When will you and Daddy figure it out? You can’t do anything or say anything.”
He stopped pulling for a moment. Darkness enveloped them. Her eyes, adjusting, could see only gloomy shapes.
“You like James Cagney movies?” he said.
“What?”
“James Cagney.
Yankee Doodle Dandy
and all that claptrap?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know who I’m talking about?”
“I think so.”
“Yeah, he only did one movie worth talking about.
White Heat.
Ever see it?”
“No.” She was starting to shiver a little.
“Oh, baby, we’ve got to see it sometime.”
Did that mean he was keeping her alive? To be with him? Maybe death was preferable.
“See, in this movie, Cagney plays a criminal, a really good one. Nobody can tell him what to do. Isn’t that sweet? Well, he does something in the movie that’s really funny. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Pulling again. She had no choice but to follow.
Oh, God, help my dad. Don’t let him be dead.
Nicky opened the back door, the one off the small kitchen.
He was taking her outside.
His feet crunched on the dirt.
Why was he doing this?
To kill her. He wouldn’t shoot her in the house. He was going to do it out here.
She held back, but he tugged her forward.
The darkness seemed to go on forever. The stars were the only light, and they were dazzlingly brilliant. But they were silent. No voice of God.
But he was there. He had to be there.
Then she heard a click.
The gun.
Nicky had just cocked his gun.

Why had he shot his own car? He’d put four bullets holes in the trunk of his Mustang.
“Just like James Cagney,” Nicky said. “In that movie I was telling you about, he put some guy in a car trunk and the guy said he couldn’t breathe. So he shot air holes in the trunk. Unfortunately the guy was still in it. Ain’t that a kick in the biscuits? But I didn’t do that to you, did I? I wouldn’t do that to my wife. I wanted you to be able to breathe too.”
“What are you going to do?”
He tucked the gun into his pants, pulled out some keys, and opened the trunk.
“I’m not getting in there,” Heather said.
Nicky pulled her toward him with the rope. “You will do exactly as I say.”
No.
She kicked him between the legs.
Nicky doubled over with a grunt.
Heather moved with a quickness that surprised her. She moved backward, calculating the length of the rope in her mind. With a final push she felt the rope grow taut on her neck, then release.
She was free of him.
But how free? He still had a gun and she was still without her hands. But she could run.
Into the night.

“What did you do to her?” He fought back the thought that she might be dead.
“Spunky. That’s what I like about her.”
“Where is she?”
“Now I have to go look for her. Like she’s a dog that got out of the house.”
Heather was alive! “Leave her alone. Deal with me.”
“Oh, I will. I just didn’t want you to be lonely while I was gone.”
Sam heard a latch opening.
And then another sound. It couldn’t be —
Whump.
Something hit his shoulder. Sam jerked backward. The thing that hit him fell off and hit the ground.
And rattled.

Rattlesnake.
It was an unmistakable sound. In the dark he couldn’t see it. And he had nowhere to go.
The rattling got louder, faster.
Without thought, acting on pure instinct, Sam jumped and

kicked out with his right foot. He wanted to get a toehold above the ground, above the snake. If he could get his foot secure, he might be able to lean across the expanse and hold himself up.

His foot went halfway into the pit’s wall.
Falling back, he twisted so he could put both hands out. And caught the other side flush. He was now hovering over the

rattling sound.
But how long could he stay like this?
He calculated. If he moved upward, he risked losing the leverage

Sam moved his right hand upward, reached out. That would be as far as he could go.
He had just one chance at this. He would have to start from the floor again. He’d have to push off with his sore left foot, dig into the dirt with his right, and give it one big push upward.
If he did this right, he might be able to get his hands over the rim of the pit. Then he might be able to pull himself out.
Might might might.
The rattling stopped. That wasn’t good. Without the sound, it would be harder to calculate where to land. He could be landing on his own certain death.
Then he heard the sound of tires on gravel. Something was going on up top.
He had to get out.

“Heather!”
Nicky was calling her name, like she was a lost dog. “Come home!”
The headlights were making a slow, lazy arc. There was no way

she’d be able to keep hidden.
Maybe if she could free her hands . . .
She sat on the ground, her joints burning, putting her bound

wrists behind her knees. If she could slip her legs through, one at a time, she’d have her hands in front of her. She could work on the ropes then, maybe with her mouth.

The beam of the headlights was coming around her way. And the awful sound of tires crunching sand.
“Heather! I won’t hurt you, dear!”
Right.
She got her left leg through the hoop of her arms, feeling like she might dislocate her shoulder.
But she was halfway there.
“Where are you, honey? This desert driving isn’t doing my car any good!”
With every bit of her waning strength, she got her right leg through. She was now sitting on the ground, her hands in front of her.
The headlight beams hit her square in the eyes.

As the bite ignited his left leg, Sam lashed out with his right. He stomped and stomped, as if trying to put out some phantom flame. Fear and rage welled up as he covered the ground where he thought the snake would be.
He felt a crunch and squish under his foot.
The head. He knew it, and kept pounding.
The rattling stopped.
Sam didn’t. He kept up the jackhammering with his foot. Kept

When he stopped, breathing hard, fire in his lungs, he realized the clock was ticking on his life.
He’d read about rattlesnakes a couple of years ago, helping Max on a school report. Some species were more dangerous than others. But what was the procedure when you got bitten?
He had no idea. He couldn’t remember if it was a good thing or bad thing to try to suck out the venom. Didn’t matter, because the bite was low on the calf and he couldn’t get to it with his mouth.
He couldn’t remember if a tourniquet was good or bad. He took off his belt, then decided against it.
Maybe . . . maybe if he could get out of the hole now, right now, he could get into the house and find a first-aid kit. The car sound had faded, indicating Nicky might not be inside.
But for how long?
Do it now. He’d climbed a rock wall at a church camp last year, on a men’s retreat. Even with a safety harness, he felt pure macho joy in it. Okay, he told himself, you are
muy macho
now. Let’s see the great escape.
Sam jumped and kicked out with his right foot. As soon as he made contact, he pushed upward.
For half a second he felt poised over nothingness. He shot his arms out. His chin hit dirt, jarring his jaw.
He fell back, scraping the wall, and when he hit the bottom his left ankle was consumed by fire.