Method 15 33 (7 page)

Although I didn’t suspect Boyd of anything, one quandary sticks with me about him: Who cared for his livestock while he was in Louisiana? It doesn’t matter, of course, but I’ve always wondered. By the time Lola had returned from her inspection, I had already cleared Boyd, so I thought it would be rude to inquire
about the attention he did or did not give his chickens. So I didn’t ask. And if this upsets you, too bad. I chase lost children, not neglected poultry. Go cry to PETA.

Boyd L. McGuire did, in fact, not own any other property. His brother and Mama in “Lou-c-ana” checked out as well. But Boyd checking out clean was the best break of all, for elimination of suspects is just as important as finding them. Plus, I got two great clues from our Boyd visit. First, forensics lifted three matching, non-Boyd thumbprints off the doorknob and black rubber toilet plunger—of all things—in Boyd’s bathroom. Second, down at R&K’s gas station, “at the end of the street,” I was shocked to find that the owner actually changed the tapes in his three security cameras every night and kept them all. Most owners overwrite their tapes. Not this fantastic man. “This way, here, I’ll show you where they are,” he said.

Not only did he have the tapes, they were stored chronologically and labeled, down to the second. I wanted to kiss the man. And what we saw on one tape in particular, well, now this is why people become detectives, for moments like that.

On the night of our productive day with Boyd and the miraculous gas station owner, I called my wife Sandra after a brief celebratory dinner. I had ordered a well-done filet and a Bloomin’ Onion at a not-so-nearby Outback Steakhouse—Lola insisted. Lola ordered two rare steaks, three Guinness, two loaded, baked potatoes the size of footballs, and extra rolls. “Hold those darn veges,” she said to the waitress, “and bring two slices of peanut butter pie too, please.”

“You know, someday this diet of yours is going to catch up with you,” I said, as I often said.

“With what I got to see in basements and crawl spaces, Liu, spare me the pleas about my food. Now shut up and buy me a Guinness, boss,” she replied, as she often replied. And then she burped.

What a charmer, that Lola.

Sandra was on an East Coast tour of comedy clubs and bars.
I caught up with her after her last set at some watering hole in Hyannisport.

“Hey, darling, you make them laugh tonight?” I asked.

“Oh, you know. Same old stuff I always say. Old material. I’m getting old to me.”

“You don’t ever get old to me. I miss you.”

“When you coming back? Where are you anyway?”

“Same place I always am, knocking on the devil’s door, darling. One of these days, he’s going to answer.”

“Don’t be so sure he is a he. Could be a she.”

“Could be a she.”

It takes a long time to knit a full-size blanket. The red knit blanket, Asset #5. Now, mind you, I had a lot of assets. Some of them I did not even use. Some of them I used only partially. Some of them were prepped and ready for use on the Day Of, but became superfluous or irrelevant in the final moments. Like my makeshift slingshot. The red knit blanket, however, was a pure gem. I used every last fiber of that twisted cotton. If I ever had any blood on my hands, it was just the red lint of a beautiful, poetic, knitted piece of art.
Bellissimo, bravo to you, red knit blanket, I owe you my life. I love you
.

On Day 20, I awoke to our regular routine, with three days to go until the Kitchen People would return, and no apparent threat that The Doctor or The Obvious Couple would grace my room. I felt pretty secure in the routine at this point, so I did not expect any houseguests. I was wrong.

In any event, my captor arrived on Day 20, as scheduled, with my breakfast. 8:00 a.m. on the nose. The Kitchen People had made another quiche and, as I expected, that’s what I had for breakfast, again, on the, you know it, toile china plate. As you are well aware, I had developed a severe hatred for that ridiculous plate.

Unable to withstand touching the plate for another meal, on Day 20, I picked up the quiche as though my fingers were tongs, unwilling to even brush the china with my skin. I set the slice on top of the television as a new place setting, and, using my sleeves as gloves, placed the plate on the floor where it belonged, with dust bunnies and mouse droppings, to await the hands of a villain,
the only attention it deserved. Of course, I laughed at myself, for, rationally speaking, the china held no blame. Nevertheless, I needed some diversion and I did hate the toile.

In sitting on the floor with the quiche on the television, I had a changed perspective on the room. The vantage was only slightly different, yet still, the alteration in my eating routine and my stance caused a shift. Perhaps the vertical course of blood in my brain sparked the idea or maybe looking at the bed at a different angle jolted the solution that must have lain dormant from the moment I walked in and saw those three exposed beams.
The blanket can be turned into a rope
. Everything seemed so clear, finally, on Day 20, that I became disappointed with myself for failing to note the obvious earlier.

Sometimes, I think, we prevent ourselves from admitting inevitable conclusions because we are not yet ready for whatever task is at hand. Our vision becomes blocked to realized knowledge. For example, my mother, a woman who bore a child herself, neglected to admit her own daughter was a full seven-months’ pregnant until the OB forced the truth upon her. Perhaps the mind holds us back from connecting the dots so we do not take conscious steps toward difficult changes until we are ready. I must have been ready on Day 20, because I finally achieved in a crystal vision, my entire plot. Until this point, I had put into place only pieces of the puzzle. I previously thought my resolve was hardened, but not until I envisioned the blanket as a weapon, did I realize just how far I was absolutely going to go to free myself and my baby and exact revenge.

You are kidnapped. They will steal your baby and sell him to monsters. They will throw you in a quarry. No one knows where you are. You must save yourself. This is the truth, accept it. Your only tools are the tools in this room. Figure this out. Execute the plan
.

I finished the quiche with a smile on my face. Not one crumb cluttered the television top.

It takes a long time to knit a full-size blanket. It takes even longer to unravel. Somehow I knew this innately, and so I wanted
to get started immediately. I waited until my jailer came for my breakfast tray and went through the whole bathroom routine. When that ordeal was complete, he left, and I thought I had three-and-a-half hours until lunch in which to un-knit and un-purl. I removed the bucket handle and began the de-knotting.

The air that morning had a yellowy tinge, the melancholic glow that both deflates and sedates you. The sun was an even overcast, which tricked the mind to think the day held no surprise, the blah, the drag-down type of day with no promise. I was wrong about this too.

I fought with a stubborn corner knot by jamming the bucket handle into its core and widening the gaps between strands of yarn, first with my pinky nail, then my whole pinky, and then ferreted the jumble out into a kinked, five-inch entrail. This took one hour, five minutes, and three seconds. At this rate, my projected timeline was already delayed. But before re-casting the completion projection, I figured I would collect de-knotting times over the course of the day to calculate an average. With one of the pencils from the two-horse, pink case, I plotted the first metric in a bar chart I designed.

With the chart started, I began the first row’s deconstruction.
La Boheme
serenaded me from Asset #16, the yard-sale radio. Naturally, I chose the classical station: I needed passionate upheaval and eternal, unrequited longing—the kind of emotion you’d die trying to quell—as my motivation. Bubblegum pop-songs might have cost me the extra edge I required. Of course, the hard-core rap of Dr. Dre and Sons of Kalal that I prefer today, seventeen years later, could have done the trick as well as any love-sick opera. Currently, as an adult, I crank gangsta rhymes during my daily Marine-level boot-camp workouts, especially when the retired sergeant I hired barks in my face that I’m “slime.” But the grinding tunes work, because after a fifteen-mile sprint and on my nine-hundred-and-ninety-ninth stomach crunch, Sarge is hiding a reluctant smirk of pride from me. No one is ever going to take me again.

Sometimes I like to spit a wad of blood at ol’ Sarge’s feet. It is done with the utmost of respect, like a cat delivering a decapitated mouse on his owner’s porch. Meow.

But enough with the present. Back to the past.

As Hour 2 set in on Day 20, a black butterfly slapped against the high triangular window and pasted itself in place, wings spread. Was he warning me?
Are you warning me about something?
The universe holds many unsolved secrets and invisible connections. So perhaps he was indeed warning me.

I studied him whole, placing my red dismantling on the bed and tip-toeing toward the window for closer inspection. But because he was so high, the best viewpoint was from about mid-room.
Are you visiting me? Sweet angel, fly to them, tell them I’m here
.

I slid closer, rubbing my belly, my baby, and stood beneath the window, leaning my face in until my cheek was flush against the wall. Due to my growing girth, I had to bend. With eyes closed, I tried to feel whatever vibration the butterfly’s heart sent from above.
Is this loneliness? Am I lonely? Please shake this wall with your wings, tell me you hear me, black beauty, black friend. Please anything. Tell me anything. Save me. Help me. Shake this wall
.

Since I allowed the emotion in, I began to sob. I thought of my mother. I thought of my father. I thought of my boyfriend, the baby’s father. What I would have given to have the touch of any one of their hands on my back or the brush of any one of their lips on my cheek.

But this wallow into deep sadness didn’t last long. As though I had come to a right angle in the road, at the very height of my tears, the day, my plan, and the outlook took a sharp turn. While my shoulders slumped and my body heaved under the weight of depression and solitude, the stairs outside my room groaned under pounding footfall. A fast approach: I heard it. I ran back to the bed, the butterfly abandoned, folded the blanket, shoved my notebook with my chart into the mattress—which I had slit open
about six inches on the side facing the wall—and with only one second to spare, lay the bucket handle atop the bucket as though it were attached. In he burst.

“Radio off. Follow me, now. And keep your fucking mouth shut.”

I detect fear in your voice, smell danger in your sweat, dear jailer
. I wiped the tears with my sleeve in an exaggerated motion of confrontation, as though smearing blood in a heated street fight and in so doing, inviting the match to continue.
Bring it
.

I slowly walked to the radio and with the lethargy of an obstinate, maniacal child, turned the dial to off, unwilling in my movement to meet his agitation.

“Move your fucking ass. I will throw you down these stairs if you keep this shit up.”

Having fun with you, imbecile, you make this so easy
.

I returned to the insipid, compliant captive I was supposed to play. With head bent and shaky voice, I delivered my catch phrase, “Yes, sir.”

“Move.”

You are so predictable, dumb beast. Throw me? As if. You’d lose your cush job
.

He gripped my forearm and pulled me so hard off balance I nearly collided with the bucket. Unfortunately, my foot brushed the side and for three heart-wrenching seconds, I watched the handle tilt and rock on the rim.
If it falls, he’ll inspect closer. He’ll find me out or he’ll give me a different bucket, which might not have a metal handle. Don’t fall. I need you. Don’t fall. Don’t, don’t fall. Don’t fall. Don’t, don’t fall
. Still it tilted and rocked. With head backwards as I was yanked forward through the doorway, I saw upon the butterfly’s blessing that Godsend handle defy gravity to bend to my will and stay put.
It didn’t fall. It didn’t fall. It didn’t fall
.

Out on the landing, where the walls were papered in a brown and dingy-pink floral print, he stalled. The cool, musty air and low lighting in this space reminded me we were in an old country house or building.

Twisting my wrist to near breaking, he peered over the railing to the steps leading down and then the narrow stairs leading up. Between these two choices, he shifted his gaze, seemingly unable to decide. A knock broke the stilted air. I presumed an unexpected visitor was at the door off the kitchen below. He froze.
A hare trapped by hunter
.

With the posture of a lizard who knows his camouflage has betrayed him, he hissed on low, “If you make one bloody sound, I will find your parents and cut their hearts out with a dull knife.”

“Yes, sir.”

As though we were some derelict soldier team, chest crawling through high grass, he beckoned me with folded elbow forward, “Move quietly. Go up these stairs now. Hussle, hussle, hussle.”

Yes, Captain
.

I did as told, him at my heels, his head so close to my ass I felt like saying,
Get your head out of my ass
, but I didn’t. He pushed me mid-spine to move faster.

“Faster,” he hissed.

At the top, I found myself in a long, steep attic. It was this view of open space, about three-quarters of a football field in length, when I realized I was in a colossal building. The sides jutted out in four spots, four wings, one of which was mine.

“Walk straight down the center to the closet at the end. Now!”

I practically skipped because he was pushing so hard. “Faster,” he repeated, whispering madly. Unfortunately, there was nothing to see along the way—whatever may have been stored up there must have been moved and the floors swept cleaned. Not even a mousetrap remained.