Certain Prey

After an hour, it had become obvious that they weren’t going to find the tape.
    “It might still be here,” Rinker said finally, after she’d torn out the under-seat lining of the couch and chair. “We can’t look everyplace—we’d need a wrecking ball.”
    Carmel was in the bedroom doorway, looking at Rolo.
    Finally, she walked around and ripped the tape off his mouth. He sputtered, and she said, “Last chance, Rolo; tell me where the fuck it is.”
    “In the bank,” he snarled. He’d won, he thought.
    “Fuck you.” Carmel got the roll of tape and reached forwardto slap it over his mouth, but he turned his head away. “Turn your head this way,” she said.
    “Hey, fuck you ,” he said; and there was a tone in the way he said it.
    “He’s just achin’ to be shot a little more,” Rinker said from the doorway.
    “You’ll kill me if you shoot me a little more,” Rolo said. “I’m still bleeding from my leg. And if you kill me, the cops are going to open the safe-deposit box . . . Hey!”
    He said “Hey!” because Carmel had crawled on top of him. She sat on his chest, grabbed his head by the hair and pulled forward, hard, until he was choking on the chain. He thrashed some more, but had started making gargling sounds when she let his head drop. “Keep your head straight,” she said as he took a half-dozen rasping breaths. “You fuckin’ . . .”
    He kept his head straight and she took a half-dozen wraps of duct tape across his mouth. “Now what?” Rinker asked as Carmel crawled off him.
    “I’m very good at cross-examination,” Carmel said. “One thing you could do is to get out a mop, and get the broom, and brush over every place we’ve walked.”
    “We’ve walked everywhere,” Rinker said.
    “Yeah, you don’t have to clean it, you just have to stir it up good, so if the crime lab comes through, they won’t know what’s old and what’s new.”
    “The crime lab?”
    “Yeah,” Carmel said. She leaned close to Rinker. “It’s pretty clear that after I cross-examine him, we’re gonna have to kill him. Eventually they’ll find him, and then the crime lab will come through.”
    “What about the videotape?” Rinker asked.
    “We’ll have the tape,” Carmel said. They were in the kitchen, and she went to the tool drawer they’d dumped, and picked up the electric drill and a box of drill bits. “We will have the tape.” C ARMEL WENT BACK to the bedroom, and as Rolo strained to watch, plugged the drill into an electric outlet and said to Rolo, “Did I ever tell you that I was crazy? I mean, absolutely fuckin’ nuts? Well, I am, and I’m gonna prove it,” she said. She climbed back on the bed and sat on his legs: “This is an eighth-inch drill bit,” she said. “I’m now going to drill a hole through your kneecap.”
    He flopped and strained against the chains and grunted, and she shook her head: “No, no, no. No negotiation. We’d just waste more time screwing around. So I’ll drill first.”
    And she did it. He bucked against her, but with his neck and feet tightly chained, was unable to move enough to lose her. She rode his legs, and with brutal efficiency drove the drill bit through his kneecap, the drill whining and sputtering, bringing up flakes of white bone, and black blood, driving it in until the drill chuck touched his jeans. Rolo bucked against it, his screams muffled by the tape; at the end, with the drill silent, he made an eerie dying-animal sound, a high keening groan. Across the room, Rinker turned away, finally walking to the living room, where she sat down on a chair and put her hands over her ears.
    When the drill bit had gone in as far as it would go, Carmel wiggled it, and said, “Feel good, fucker? Feel good? Tape is in the bank? What a crock of shit . . .” A little spot of white saliva appeared at one corner of Carmel’s mouth; Rolo fainted.
    “N OW, YOU PROBABLY think I’m just gonna take the tape off and ask you again; but I’m not gonna,” Carmel said, conversationally, when he was conscious again. “I’m gonna drill a hole in your other knee, instead.”
    And she did it all over again, Rolo strangling himself on the chain, kicking his heels, Carmel riding his legs.
    Then, “You know what I bet would really hurt? A hole in your heels.”
    And she drilled a hole through both of his heels, taking her time, developing a technique. Halfway through the first heel, Rolo fainted again; and again, halfway through the