was enjoying having them all by the short hairs.
Carlisle knew firsthand how abject submission works.
If he had learned nothing else, his tormentors in Florence had taught him that lesson well. He had seen how, in order to avoid pain, victims can become so eager to please that they transform themselves into willing participants in their own destruction. The old woman's reaction was a textbook case. Diana Ladd's would be as well.
With the younger woman, though, he would have to be careful. Pacing would be everything. He would have to restrain himself in the beginning and not go too far.
The kind of dehumanizing submission he wanted from her would take time and effort and a certain amount of finesse.
There were those in the prison community who took the position that raping a rapist qualified as poetic justice and maybe even as a kind of aversion therapy. Well, Andrew Carlisle was here to tell those jokers that it hadn't worked out that way for him. Physical violation hadn't 'cured' him at all. Instead, it had only added fuel to his Diana Ladd bloodlust, given him something else to blame her for. He'd spent years planning every move of his campaign against her. He wouldn't settle for anything less than total capitulation. He looked forward to having Diana Ladd crawling naked on the floor before him. He wanted to see her on her hands and knees, subject to his every whim. He wanted the pleasure of hearing the bitch beg.
Carlisle sat the boy down on one end of the couch and ordered him to stay still while he tied up the old woman.
Busy with the twine, Carlisle found he was having difficulty concentrating. His whole body pulsed with eagerness for the coming confrontation. What would happen in those first crucial minutes? he wondered. Would she fight or give in at once? Would the very sight of him strike terror in her heart? Would she guess what was in store for her?
He didn't think so. The others hadn't, why should she?
For the first time, Carlisle considered whether or not she'd bring the priest back with her. He hoped not. Carlisle was not a religious man, nor was he terribly superstitious, but the idea of killing a priest lacked appeal. Not only that, he was reluctant to expend his energies on any side issue that might dull his appetite for the main course.
'What are you going to do?' the old woman asked, intruding rudely into his thoughts. He didn't answer immediately. Finished tying her one good hand to the cumbersome cast, he went to work binding her swollen ankles together, hobbling her like a horse with the short lengths of twine he had cut up and brought along for that express purpose.
Advance planning was everything.
'Whatever I want,' he replied nonchalantly. 'I'm going to do whatever I want.'
Diana was about to call home again when Dr. Johnston returned to the waiting room. It was almost seven, a whole hour after the veterinarian's office had been scheduled to close.
'I think we're over the hump now,' Dr. Johnston said.
'He's been one sick puppy, but I believe he's going to be okay. Plenty of rest, plenty of liquids. Tell Davy not to overtax him for the next few days. He's probably through the worst of it, but we'd better cover your car seat with some old blankets, just in case.'
Dr. Johnston's assistant, a burly teenager named Scott, carried the ailing dog back out to Father John's car and laid him gently on a layer of hastily assembled blankets.
With a huge sigh, the dog put his chin on his front paws and closed his eyes.
'Call me in the morning,' Dr. Johnston said, 'and let me know how he's doing.'
Diana replied with a grateful nod. 'I'll call first thing.'
'That was weird,' Scott said as Father John's Buick pulled out of the office parking lot.
'What's weird?' Dr. Johnston asked.
'How come that lady was wearing a gun?'
'A gun? Was she really?' Dr. Johnston sounded startled. 'I was so concerned about the dog that I never even noticed.'
The old woman sat silently at one end of the couch.
Carlisle ordered Davy to the opposite end, where he began tying the boy up as well. He wanted his prisoners relatively immobile but easily trans-portable when necessary, because Carlisle had no intention of playing out his whole game in Diana Ladd's house.
it was fine for the first major skirmish to take place here. Invading Diana's private territory and bloodying her there was an essential part of his psychological warfare against her. But after that, after he'd humiliated her and established a pattern of absolute control, then he would take his prisoners to the cave, to Gary Ladd's own special cave, for dessert.
Carlisle theorized that the isolated cave by what had once been Rattlesnake Skull Village was eminently suited to his purposes. No one, not even that wise-ass young detective, had ever figured out that the cave, not the charco, had been the actual scene of Gina Antone's last moments on this earth.
During the pretrial proceedings, Carlisle had made absolutely sure that no one knew of the existence of Gary Ladd's manuscript with its whining references to the cave. Once he left three more bodies there to rot, he would have all the more reason to see that Gary Ladd's crude manuscript disappeared off the face of the earth. Too bad Myrna Louise hadn't thrown that in the burning barrel instead of Savage.
She would have been doing something useful for a change.
He thought longingly about the cool, dark cave, about how the timeless limestone walls would swallow up whatever agonized sounds his particular brand of pleasure might wring from his captives. In that dusky cave, with the added luxury of total isolation, no one would interrupt him or interfere with the process. There, once and for all
