Do I detect a twist of sarcasm?
She continues, “You wish to hear the whole story. It was a routine patrol. It lasted longer than I expected, and I … needed to slip away. I’d drunk more water than I intended.”
“So you told the guys that you had to go to the bathroom.”
“That wasn’t necessary. They’d stopped to examine a campsite, and I said I wanted to see animal tracks we’d passed on the trail. One of the men offered to walk with me. I demurred. I retreated on the path and then slipped off it. I went farther than I intended in my quest for privacy. After I finished, I started back, heard the men calling, and realized I’d gone in the wrong direction. That’s when I was grabbed.”
From there, her story progresses as I’d heard it before. She was taken captive by two men, who threatened her and then decided it was time for a nap—because threats are just so exhausting. She escaped while they were asleep.
I ask her to physically describe the men. One could be Nicole’s captor, but that would be more heartening if it was a more unusual description. I home in on their appearances otherwise, in hopes of expanding my understanding of hostiles. How did they look? What did they wear? How did they speak?
The first time she told this story, she sniffed about the men communicating in poor English, barely understandable. When I probe, though, it’s clear that Val’s idea of “poor English” isn’t exactly the same as mine. It turns out the hostiles weren’t the grunting Neanderthals she first described. They sounded like guys I’d expect to meet in these woods—men who might have been mining or hunting all season and not exactly bathing regularly.
Except they aren’t. There’s little doubt of that. They were aggressive in a way that goes well beyond a couple of rough miners who find a woman in the woods and act out their dark fantasies. These men had stylized scar patterns. Deliberately blackened teeth. Braided hair and beards. They’d been dressed in cured animal hides, roughly sewn and decorated with bones. They seem like guys who recalled seeing old National Geographic magazines and emulated a hodgepodge of tribal customs.
When they spoke, it was understandable enough, but with words that Val couldn’t understand, like you might expect from people who spoke only to one another, inventing their own dialect. The gist of their message had been clear, though. You are on our territory. We are going to show you why that is a very bad idea.
“And then they fell asleep?” I say.
She could come up with some explanation for this, however implausible. Instead she just looks me in the eye and says, “Yes.”
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
I don’t need details of what happened between the threats and the escape, just like I didn’t need details of what happened to Nicole in that cave. Details do not impact my case.
“You know what happened to Nicole,” I say. “You know that man didn’t just hold her captive for conversation.”
“I don’t need to hear—”
“And I’m not going to tell you, because that’s none of your business. I’m saying that you know what happened, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Given the short time you spent with these two men, would you believe them capable of doing that to Nicole?”
“Yes.”
“Mentally capable of holding her in a cave and remembering to provide rudimentary care?”
“Yes.”
“Earlier, your opinion of their intelligence—”
“I would not attempt to discuss the fundamental theorem of algebra with them, but I have no doubt they could have done this.”
We talk for a few more minutes. I thank her, and I’m leaving, and as I reach the door, she says, “Do you believe it could have been the same men?”
I open my mouth, and she says, “Yes, I know, Nicole was taken by one person, but there is no reason two couldn’t have been involved, one as an accomplice.”
“That’s a possibility. Either way, it wouldn’t rule out one of your attackers being her captor—and the man who killed Victoria and Robyn.”
“That’s what I avoided, then,” she says, her voice dropping. “If I hadn’t escaped…”
“You avoided something,” I say. “You got away. Which does not mean that Nicole failed to escape.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Well, with the way you talk sometimes, I thought I’d better make that clear.”
She flushes. “I don’t mean—”
“I’m not interested in hashing it out tonight, Val. Nicole never saw her attacker. He knocked her out from behind, and she woke in that hole. She didn’t have the chance to escape.”
“Possibly because I had. They learned.” She wraps her arms around herself. “I keep thinking of that. Dreaming of it. Waking up in a hole and—” Her breathing accelerated, and she steps back quickly. “I’m sorry, Detective. I’m overtired.”
“Would you like me to post a guard?”
“No, of course not. I’m fine.”
“I will ask the militia to do extra passes by your house. If there’s any chance this is the same guy, he targeted you once. If you want a night guard, just ask me. They don’t need to know anything other than that there’s a suggestion you could be a target. The only catch is that he’d have to stay in your living room—we can’t ask him to stand on your porch all night in this weather.”