Chapter 58
CHAPTER
By nine ten on Monday evening, Gary Soneji had Bunny Maddox in the van, liquored up, doped up, and bound with duct tape. He was driving northeast by nine fifteen.
To give the area a wide berth, Soneji drove for hours through thick fog, sticking to state highways and dark county roads.
It was shortly before dawn when he finally reached his isolated cabin.
He pulled the van forward to the mouth of an old logging road that wound toward the rear of his property and the boundary with the state forest.
When he got out, a cold wind gnawed at him. He went around the back and opened the van. Bunny Maddox lay on her side in the trash and the leaves, eyes closed, wrists, ankles, and mouth duct-taped.
He shook the bottom of one red Chuck Taylor sneaker.
Bunny’s eyelids fluttered. She groaned, tried to sit up, but couldn’t; she closed her eyes again, probably still high from the barbiturates and vodka he’d made her ingest before putting her in restraints.
“C’mon, Bunny,” he said. “Time to wake up, my friend.”
Bunny opened her eyes groggily and made confused whining noises when he pulled her toward him by the ankles. She shrank when he reached for the tape across her mouth.
“Do you want to be able to speak or not?” Soneji asked.
The stripper stared at him, still dazed, puzzled. Then she nodded, shivering.
Soneji slowly peeled the tape off her mouth.
“There now,” he said. “Let’s get you inside by a nice warm fire. Poor thing. Scooch forward a little more so I can undo your ankles.”
He knew what he was doing. He’d read about how captives’ minds could be turned, controlled even.
Bunny’s teeth were starting to chatter when she slid toward him through the leaves and trash. He tore the tape from her ankles and wrists and supported her by the elbow when she tried to stand up.
“Easy,” he said. “I think someone overserved you last night.”
Soneji led her toward the cabin. Bunny blinked slowly, as if trying to remember something. As they neared the porch, she slurred, “Where are we?”
“My cabin,” Soneji said. “I told you all about it, Bunny. You said you wanted to see it. Don’t you remember?”
She shook her head, yawning, but continued to shuffle along as he led her up to the porch. “Tired.”
“I’m sure you are,” he said, fishing in his pocket for the key. He slid it in the lock, opened the door, and brought her inside. “But then again, I told you about this place more than two years ago. It’s no wonder you forgot.”
She looked bewildered as he brought her to a couch. It was then he took note of the sleek ring she wore on her left fourth finger, two small rectangular diamonds flanking a larger emerald-cut diamond in an unusual setting.
“You engaged, Bunny?” he asked after she plopped down on the couch.
“Yeah. Billy’s at sea.”
“Nice ring.”
“Isn’t it something? Billy says it’s art deco style or something like that. Diamonds are real. Platinum is too. His grandmother got it made in the 1920s.”
“Real nice,” he said. “Billy a navy man, then?”
“No,” she said, still sounding dazed. “Merchant marine. I gotta pee.”
“Oh, of course,” he said. He led her through the kitchen and out the back door to the outhouse. “I’ll wait right here for you.”
After a moment, she opened the door to the outhouse and went in. Soneji kept it spotless. He knew she’d approve.
But when she came back out a few minutes later, she gazed at him with eyes that were less confused than they’d been before.
“Why am I here?”
“You wanted to see my place,” he said.
“No, you put a gun to my head in my driveway. You made me eat those pills and drink the rest of that bottle.”
“A gun?” he said and managed a chuckle. “Me? Not a chance. And I made you? No, you gulped that down all on your own. But you must be hungry, Bunny. Thirsty.”
He could tell she did not want to admit it, but she bobbed her head.
“Then let’s go inside and cook you up some eggs and bacon and toast. Maybe a cup of coffee with a little hair of the dog in it?”
“God, yes,” Bunny said and she let him lead her back inside. He sat her down in front of a Formica table in one of the two ladder-back chairs that still had intact wicker seats.
“Do I need to retape your ankles?” Soneji asked. “I mean, you’re not going to try to run, are you?”
“With my knees?” Bunny said and snorted. “After ten years of field hockey and nine dancing on platforms? You don’t have a cigarette by any chance, do you?”
“Your favorite kind, as a matter of fact,” Soneji said.
He retrieved a fresh pack of Winston menthols from his jacket and a lighter from a drawer by the sink. He opened the pack and slid a cigarette and an ashtray to her across the table, past an antique snow globe. He came around and lit the cigarette, which she held with trembling fingers.
Bunny took a drag, then exhaled, and seemed to swoon a bit. She gestured at the metal and glass snow globe with her cigarette. “That for me too?”
Soneji smiled as he went to the refrigerator. “I remember you collected them.”
He brought out bacon, eggs, and a package of ground coffee. “I’ll get the coffee going first. You look like you could use some.”
Bunny cocked her head, her eyes glassy but focused. “I remember you now.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah. You’re that brainiac guy who used to come to the club and have me dance. Gary, right?”
“I’m flattered you remembered,” Soneji said, knowing that this changed things; sped up timelines, certainly. But he tried not to alter his tone of concern as he said, “How do you like your eggs?”
“Scrambled, like my brain,” she said, and laughed. “You said something about hair of the dog?”
Soneji smiled. “Let me get a pot brewing and I’ll show you what I’ve got on hand.”
Bunny took another deep drag off the cigarette. “That what this is all about? You want me to dance for you in private, Gary?”
“Maybe a little later,” he said, winking as he took the coffeepot off the stove and turned toward the sink to fill it.
Soneji heard her chair squeak and the hush of fabric rustling just before something heavy and hard smashed into the back of his head.
He lurched and heard glass shattering before his left cheek struck the counter edge. He landed on his back, his awareness swirling toward black.