The reply was typical Mack: “’K.”
Shaw said to Mulliner, “Can I see Fee?”
He left and returned a moment later with his daughter. She wore a thick burgundy robe and fuzzy pink slippers. Her right arm was embraced by quite the cast, pale blue. And there were bandages on the back of her other hand.
Her eyes were hollow, red-rimmed.
Sophie leaned into a gentle hug from her father.
“Mr. Shaw.”
“How does it feel? The break?”
Expressionless, she looked at her arm. “Okay. Itches under the cast. That’s the worst.” She walked to the refrigerator and poured some orange juice, then returned to the stool and sat. “They put you in a police car. I told them you saved me.”
“Not a worry. All good now.”
“Did you hear? He kidnapped somebody else?”
“I did. I’m going to help the police again.”
A fact the police did not yet know.
Shaw told her, “I know it might be tough but would you tell me what happened?”
She sipped the orange juice, then drank half the glass down. Shaw guessed she was on painkillers that made her mouth dry. “Like, sure.”
Shaw had brought one of his notebooks and opened it. Sophie looked at the fountain pen, again without expression.
“Wednesday. You got home.”
In halting words, Sophie explained that she’d been angry. “About stuff.”
Frank Mulliner’s mouth tightened but he said nothing.
She’d biked to Quick Byte Café for a latte and some food—she couldn’t remember what now—and called some friends to check on lacrosse practice. Then to San Miguel Park. “Whenever I get pissed or sad, at anything, I go there to bike. To shred, rage. You know what I mean ‘rage’?”
Shaw knew.
Her voice caught. “What Kyle used to do on his board. Half Moon Bay and Maverick.” Her teeth set and she wiped a tear.
“I pulled onto the shoulder of Tamyen to tighten my helmet. Then this car slammed into me.”
The police would have asked and he did as well: “Did you see it?” Shaw thinking gray Nissan, though he’d never lead a witness.
“No. It was, like, boom, the fucker slammed me.”
She’d lain stunned at the bottom of the hill and heard footsteps coming closer. “I knew it wasn’t an accident,” she said. “The shoulder was really wide—there was no reason to hit me unless he wanted to. And I heard the car spin its wheels just before it hit, so he was, like, aiming. I got my phone to call nine-one-one but it was too late. I just threw it, so they could track it maybe and find me. Then I tried to get up but he tackled me. And kicked me or hit me in the back, the kidney—so I was, like, paralyzed. I couldn’t get up or roll over.”
“Smart, tossing your phone. It’s how I found out what happened to you.”
She nodded. “Then I got stabbed in the neck, a hypodermic needle. And I went out.”
“Did the doctors or police say what kind of drug?”
“I asked. They just said a prescription painkiller, dissolved in water.”
“Any more thoughts about their appearance?”
“Did I tell you . . . ? I was telling somebody. Gray ski mask, sunglasses.”
He showed her the screenshot from the security video at the Quick Byte.
“Detective Standish showed it to me. No, I never saw anybody like that before.” She rose, found a chopstick in a drawer and worked it under the cast, rubbing it up and down.
“If you had to guess, a man or a woman?”
“Assumed a man. Not tall. It could’ve been a woman but if it was she was strong, strong enough to carry me or drag me to the car. And, I mean, kicking me in the back when I was down? You wouldn’t think a woman would do that to another woman.” She shrugged. “I guess we can be as messed up as a man.”
“Did they say anything?”
“No. Next thing, I woke up in that room.”
“Describe it.”
“There was a little light but I couldn’t see much.” Her eyes now flared. “It was just so fucking weird. I thought, in the movies, somebody’s kidnapped and there’s a bed and a blanket and a bucket to pee in, or whatever. There was a bottle of water. But no food. Just a big empty glass bottle, this wad of cloth, a spool of fishing line and matches. The room was really old. Moldy and everything. The bottle, the rag—that stuff was new.”
Shaw told her again how smart she was, breaking the bottle to make a glass blade and cutting through the Sheetrock.
“I started looking for a way out. The only windows that weren’t boarded up were on the top floor. I couldn’t just break one and climb out. I started looking for a door. They were locked or nailed shut.”
Screwed shut, actually, Shaw recalled. Recently. He told them that he too had looked and found only one open—in the front.
“Didn’t get that far.” She swallowed. “I heard the gunshots and . . . Kyle . . .” She sobbed quietly. Her father approached and put his arm around her and she cried against his chest for a moment.
Shaw explained to him how Sophie had made a trap from the fishing line and had used another piece to tie it to her jacket and made it move back and forth so there’d be a shadow on the floor. To lure the kidnapper closer. And nail him with an oil drum.
Mulliner was wide-eyed. “Really?”
In a soft voice she said, “I was going to kill you . . . him. Stab him. But I just panicked and ran. I’m sorry if you got hurt.”
“I should’ve figured it out,” Shaw said. “I knew you’d be a fighter.”
At this she smiled.
Shaw asked, “Did he touch you?”
Her father stirred, but this was a question that needed to be asked.
“I don’t think so. All he took off was my shoes and socks. My windbreaker was still zipped up. Your handwriting’s really small. Why don’t you just write on a computer or tablet? It’d be faster.”
Shaw answered the young woman. “When you write something by hand, slowly, you own the words. You type them, less so. You read them, even less. And you listen, hardly at all.”
The idea seemed to intrigue her.
“Anybody at the Quick Byte try to pick you up recently?”
“Guys flirt, you know. Ask, ‘Oh, what’re you reading?’ Or ‘How’re the tamales?’ What guys always do. Nobody weird.”