No Regrets

specifically asked for.
    “I know him,” Matteo said. “He often came to Sancho Panza as a drop-in client or just to visit so he could talk with me. I established some rapport with him while he was a residential patient.”
    “Do you know who the other man with him might be?”
    “No, I’m afraid I don’t. I left Sancho Panza last May to help run the Horizon House in Vallejo. I haven’t seen John since that time.”
    John Martin’s file held the names of many people he had allegedly been associated with, but most of them turned out to be fictitious. The only “real” people in his file were his mother and an ex-girlfriend. Otherwise, he had either made up people or concocted fake names for those who came up in his therapy. He had served time in prison at Vacaville, and been arrested for rape since his parole. Counselors who had worked with him noted the rape he was arrested for during the previous May. They said he respected his mother but hated his father, who he claimed had brutalized him. He was totally unpredictable, but clever and charismatic when he wanted to be.
    Kari had certainly seen that. Now, in her fifth hour of captivity, she could see that both John and Mike were onthe verge of being intoxicated. They vacillated between telling her that they weren’t going to hurt her to hinting darkly about how close she had come. “If you had been hysterical and tried to fight us,” John said, “we probably would have killed you.
    “We still might.”
    Still, they were headed toward Auburn and she felt she was very close to freedom. Something had to happen at Western Union. John and Mike, their tongues loosened by alcohol, appeared to have another change of heart. Now they apologized to Kari for kidnapping her, for the rape, and for scaring her.
    “Maybe we should go back to Fairfield,” John offered. “We can drive you back and surrender.”
    “Let’s go,” Kari said. “Let’s do it now.”
    John smirked slyly. “No. I’m not that stupid. I’m not going back.”
    John had been playing head games. Kari made up her mind that she would seize the first possible chance to escape. She couldn’t trust him at all. But he and Mike were growing sloppy and careless. The more they trusted her, the more lax they would become. She would pick her place to run. She felt she had nothing to lose.
    They were driving into Auburn, but they made no effort to stop at Western Union, and kept right on going.
    Kari’s stomach flipped over.
    John said he had to go to the bathroom and Kari said she did, too. They pulled into a Shell station, and John warned her, “Don’t you try to split,” as he went into the men’s side. She had every intention of doing just that, but she could find no way out of the women’s restroom other than the door, and one of the men stood outside all the time.
    Police were already stationed all around the Western Union Office, watching for a car with two men and a woman in it.
    Now Mike came up with another crazy plan. His grip on reality had weakened as he drank beer after beer. He wanted to go to the North San Juan area to find his mother. “She put a hex on me,” he told Kari. “If I take you to see her and tell her that you’re my wife, she’ll just
die
to see I’m married and that will take the hex off me.”
    “We’ll make it a picnic,” John said cheerfully.
    Kari almost gave up. Instead of heading toward Reno, they were turning north toward Grass Valley. The area was sparsely populated, and she knew she would have less chance to escape with every mile.
    “She lives in North San Juan,” Mike said. “We’ll go there and surprise her, and then we can go back and get the money in Auburn.”
    They stopped at the S&C Market in the little town to buy bread and bologna and more beer. John went to the bathroom again, and Mike stayed with Kari.
    But Mike didn’t have any money to pay for the groceries and he looked angry. John had kept it all in
his
pocket. They had to wait until he came back. Mike got fidgety whenever John was out of sight.
    Kari didn’t try to run. There was only one woman behind the counter, and she didn’t look strong enough to be any protection. Mike drove up Highway 49, and slowed down to study the mailboxes alongside a dirt road. Kari saw he was looking at one that said something like “Hostead” on it.
    “If we show up and she just looks at us, she’ll fall down dead,” Mike said grimly. “She’ll see you and fall down dead...”
    Kari