slimness of his waist.
How easy to imagine that between the facing mirrors, his father did not cast an infinity of echo reflections, as Mitch had done, and that the single likeness of him possessed so little substance that, to any eye but his own, it would appear as transparent as the image of a spook.
Chapter 18
At 5:50, only fifteen minutes after he had arrived at Daniel. and Kathy's house, Mitch drove away. He turned the corner and traveled a quick block and a half.
Perhaps two hours of daylight remained. He could easily have detected a tail if one had pursued him.
He pulled the Honda into the empty parking lot at a church.
A forbidding brick facade, fractured eyes of multicolored glass somber with no current inner light, rose to a steeple that gouged the sky and cast a hard shadow across the blacktop.
His father's fear had been unfounded. Mitch had not intended to ask for money.
His parents had done well financially. They could no doubt contribute a hundred thousand to the cause without being in the least pinched. Even if they would give him twice that sum, and considering his own meager resources, he would still have in hand only a little more than ten percent of the ransom.
Besides, he would not have asked because he knew they would have declined, ostensibly on the basis of their theories of parenting.
Furthermore, he had come to suspect that the kidnappers were seeking more than money. He had no idea what they desired in addition to cash, but snatching the wife of a gardener who earned a five-figure income made no sense unless they wanted something else that only he could provide.
He had been all but certain that they intended to commit a major robbery by proxy, using him as if he were a remote-controlled robot. He could not rule out that scenario, but it no longer convinced him.
From under the driver's seat, he retrieved the snub-nosed revolver and the ankle holster.
He examined the weapon with caution. As far as he could tell, it did not have a safety.
When he broke out the cylinder, he discovered that it held five rounds. This surprised him, as he had expected six.
All he knew about guns was what he had learned from books and movies.
In spite of Daniel's talk about inspiring children to be self-sufficient, he had not prepared Mitch for the likes of John Knox.
The prey must learn evasion, and the predator must learn to hunt.
His parents had raised him to be prey. With Holly in the hands of murderers, however, Mitch had nowhere to run. He would rather die than hide and leave her to their mercy.
The Velcro closure on the holster allowed him to strap it far enough above his ankle to avoid exposing it if his pants hiked when he sat down. He didn't favor peg-legged jeans, and this pair accommodated the compact handgun.
He shrugged into the sports coat. Before he got out of the car, he would tuck the pistol under his belt, in the small of his back, where the coat would conceal it.
He examined that weapon. Again he failed to locate a safety.
With some fumbling, he ejected the magazine. It contained eight cartridges. When he pulled the slide back, he saw a ninth gleaming in the breach.
After reinserting the magazine and making sure that it clicked securely into place, he put the pistol on the passenger's seat.
His cell phone rang. The car clock read 5:59.
The kidnapper said, 'Did you enjoy your visit with Mom and Dad?'
He had not been followed to his parents' house or away from it, and yet they knew where he had been.
He said at once, 'I didn't tell them anything.'
'What were you after — milk and cookies?'
'If you're thinking I could get the money from them, you're wrong. They're not that rich.'
'We know, Mitch. We know.'
'Let me talk to Holly.'
'Not this time.'
Let me talk to her,' he insisted.
'Relax. She's doing fine. I'll put her on the next call. Is that the church you and your parents attended?'
His was the only car in the parking lot, and none were passing at the moment. Across the street from the church, the only vehicles were those in driveways, none at the curb.
'Is that where you went to church?' the kidnapper asked again.
'No.'
Although he was closed in the car with the doors locked, he felt as exposed as a mouse in an open field with the vibrato of hawk wings suddenly above.
'Were you an altar boy, Mitch?'
'No.'
'Can that be true?'
'You seem to know everything. If you know it's true.'
'For a man who was never an altar boy, Mitch, you are so like an altar boy.'
When he didn't at first respond, thinking the statement a non sequitur, and when the kidnapper waited in silence, Mitch at last said, 'I don't know what that means.'
'Well, I don't mean you're pious, that's for sure. And I don't mean you're reliably truthful. With Detective Taggart, you've proved to be a cunning liar.'
In their two previous conversations, the man on the phone had been professional, chillingly so. This petty jeering seemed out of sync with his past performance.
He had, however, called himself a handler. He had bluntly said that Mitch was an instrument to be manipulated, finessed.
These taunts must have a purpose, though it eluded Mitch. The kidnapper wanted to get inside his head and mess with him, for some subtle purpose, to achieve a particular result.
'Mitch, no offense, because it's actually kind of sweet — but you're as naive as an altar boy.'
'If you say so.'
'I do. I say so.'
This might be an attempt to anger him, anger being an inhibition to clear thinking, or perhaps the purpose was to instill in him such doubt about his competence that he would remain cowed and obedient.
He had already acknowledged to himself the absolute degree of his helplessness in this matter. They could not strop his humility to a sharper edge than now existed.
'Your eyes are wide open, Mitch, but you don't see.'
This statement unnerved him more than anything else that the kidnapper had said. Not an hour ago, in the loft of his garage, that very thought, couched in similar words, had occurred to him.
Having packed John Knox in the trunk of the car, he had returned to the loft to puzzle out how the accident had occurred. Having seen the neck of the lug wrench snared in the loop of the knot, he had settled the mystery.
But just then he had felt deceived, watched, mocked. He had been overcome by an instinctive sense that a greater truth waited in that loft to be discovered, that it hid from him in plain sight.
He had been shaken by the thought that he saw and yet was blind, that he heard and yet was deaf.
Now the mocking man on the telephone: Your eyes are wide open, Mitch, but you don't see.
Uncanny seemed not to be too strong a word. He felt that the kidnappers could not only watch him and listen to him anywhere, at any time, but also that they could pore through his thoughts.
He reached for the pistol on the passenger's seat. No immediate threat loomed, but he felt safer holding the gun.
