made a muffled noise on the bed and moved. The noise was something like a groan. She made it again. The thrill of fear surged back. His face felt hot. He turned on the overhead light.
'Oh my Jesus Christ,' he said.
His wife was lying naked on top of the bed. Her ankles were bound together with clothesline and so were her knees. Her hands were tied behind her back. Three loops of clothesline pinned her upper arms against her body. Her underpants had been wadded tightly and wedged into her mouth. One leg of her panty hose had been ripped off and used to hold the gag in place. The length of tan nylon was very thin where it held the wadded cloth in her mouth, and wider at the corners of her mouth and across her cheeks to where it had been knotted behind her neck. Her eyes were wide and tearful but she looked more angry than frightened. On her stomach, just above the line of her pubic hair, someone had scratched AK with a sharp point. The scratches were shallow. The gag forced her mouth slightly open, and Newman noticed that the wadded underpants had a floral pattern.
She groaned at him again, insistently, and her eyes were as wide as she could make them. She shrugged her body angrily on the bed. For a moment he stood soundless and without motion. The panic that flooded over him gave way to an urge to rape her. There she was. Miss. Complete Control, absolutely helpless for the first time since he'd known her. She couldn't turn away. She couldn't even talk. The two impulses flushed his face and paralyzed him for a moment. Then he thought of who might have done it. AK. He reached behind the bedroom door and took the double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun he always kept there. From the ledge above the door he took two shells, broke the shotgun, put in the shells, and snapped the gun closed.
She made a series of grunting sounds at him through the gag. He cocked both hammers. Holding the shotgun in his right hand he sat on the edge of the bed and, with his left hand, he fumbled the length of panty hose from her mouth, slipping it down over her chin. He took the gag from her mouth. It was soaked with saliva. He kept his eyes on the door.
'Ahhhh,' she said. 'Ah, ah ah.' It wasn't crying. Exactly. Her breath shook as she dragged it in. 'They're gone, you so nova bitch, untie me. Bastard, so nova bitch. Fucking bastard untie me.' 'Who…?' he said.
'Untie me you bastard bitch fucking bastard untie me.'
She kicked her bound feet up and down, banging her helpless heels on the bed in a frenzy of frustration.
'Okay,' he said. 'Okay, hold still.' He slid the bolt on the bedroom door. They'd put it there so the kids wouldn't come in and catch them making love. Now the kids were gone and they usually didn't need it.
'Will you untie me you bitch master.'
He took a jackknife from his pocket and sawed through the ropes that held her. Cutting always with the blade edge away from her. He did it all with his left hand. In his right he still held the shotgun.
She sat up on the bed, her knees drawn up, her hands crossed across her breasts, her shoulders bent forward, her head almost touching her knees. She inhaled. Her breath went in long trembling gasps. He shifted the shotgun to his left hand and put his arm around her. She pulled away, then scrambled off the bed and went to the closet. She took out an ankle-length green robe and put it on and zipped it up.
Standing at the foot of the bed she looked at him as he sat with the shotgun held up, barrel toward the ceiling, both barrels cocked.
'They were here when I came home,' she said. 'I came home from my class and came in the kitchen door and put my briefcase on the table and there they were. Two of them. They had guns and one of them had clothesline coiled up, with the paper label still around it, right like it comes from the store. And I said 'What the hell are you doing here,' and they took hold of me and pushed me down on the floor and one of them tied my hands behind me and the other one undressed me. I tried to scream but the first one put his hand over my mouth, and then they gagged me and made me walk upstairs with no clothes on and they put me on the bed and tied me up the rest of the way, and then the one who had the rope took his jackknife and scratched my stomach with it and they left.'
'Did they say anything?'
She shivered. Her arms were folded tight across her chest and her shoulders hunched. He wanted to put his arms around her and have her bury her face in his shoulder and cry, and he wanted to say There there it's all right. I'm here. Go ahead and cry it out. But he knew if he reached for her she'd shrink away.
'No. It was awful. Neither one ever said a word. Not to me. Not to each other.'
'I'm sorry I wasn't here.'
She shrugged. 'They had guns. You'd have ended up beside me.'
'Maybe,' he said. 'The sons of bitches. I'll kill them if lean.' She smiled very faintly.
The phone rang. They both looked automatically at the clock. Four fifteen. It rang again. With the shotgun pointing toward the floor, the hammers still cocked, he stepped to the bedside table on her side where the phone sat. He picked it up with his left hand.
'Hello?'
'You find her yet?' The voice was uneducated, flattened by a Boston accent.
'Find who?'
'Your old lady. The bimbo we left done up like a wet wash in the bedroom.'
The fear wasn't a sudden stab anymore. It was a steady hurt that waxed and waned but never vanished. Now it was powerful and he felt weak from it.
'Yeah, I found her,' he said.
'See the initials above her snatch?'
Newman nodded.
'Did you?' The voice was harsher.
'Yes. I saw them.' He squeezed his hand around the smooth stock of the shotgun where it narrowed at the breech. What if they came and it wouldn't fire. Or there were three of them and they came from different directions. It was hard to swallow.
'You know whose initials they are?'
'AK?'
'Yeah, douche bag, AK. You was talking about him to some people just a couple hours ago.'
'Yes.' His throat seemed closed. It was hard to squeeze the words out. 'Yes, I know whose initials they are.'
'Good. Tomorrow you go in and tell those people you were mistaken, douche bag, and that you never seen AK do anything. Right?'
'If I do that you won't bother us?'
'Smart. Smart, douche bag. If you do that you won't never see us again. If you don't we'll come back and kill you both. You see how easy we done up your old lady. We can do you both just as easy. You believe that?'
'Yes.'
'Good. And don't think we won't know. You see how fast we knew what was happening? You see how fast we got there. You believe we can find out whatever you do?'
'Yes.'
'You gonna do what we told you to do?'
'Yes.'
'Good. Your old lady's got a nice-looking pussy. Be a shame to feed it to the worms.'
'I…' There was a click. The flat voice was gone. Newman put the receiver down very carefully.
Janet said, 'Was it them?'
Newman nodded.
Janet said, 'Call the cops.'
Newman shook his head.
'No?' Janet said. 'Why the hell not? If you won't, I will.'
He shook his head again. 'We can't,' he said. 'Listen.' Then he told her about the man with the slicked-back hair and the black woman and Corporal Croft and Lieutenant Vincent. He told her about the picture of Adolph Karl in the book and about seeing Adolph Karl in the lineup. He told her about Croft's warning and promise of protection.
'But they knew so fast. They must have a cop on the payroll,' Newman said.
She nodded. 'What a fucking mess,' she said.
'What could I do. I couldn't just keep jogging when the guy shot the girl.'
