TWENTY-TWO
CARA
It’s shocking and upsetting to think we unknowingly helped a fugitive and that she’s still on the loose. She did seem like a fundamentally good person, though.
—Sanjay Jain, speaking to ABC News
She stole my favorite shirt.
—Devin Mayer, speaking to ABC News
But gave it back.
—Sanjay Jain
Cara stood at the base of the wooden ladder, listening. She had no idea how much time had passed. Thirty minutes? An hour? Two?
Was Fisk still in the shed-cave above her? Or had he returned to his Frankentrailer to start a vision board of all the diabolical things he planned to do to her? If he was telling the truth andthe warning bell did signal that someone was coming to find her, wouldn’t he have shown more concern about being apprehended himself?
The longer she was down here, the more certain she became that Fisk was a madman whose tweak was luring desperate, gullible women into his hidey-hole, where he lulled them into complacency with food, shelter, and warmth. Then doing as he pleased until...
The food she’d stuffed so quickly into her mouth now rumbled ominously in her lower belly.
At least there was a toilet down here.
She shined the flashlight on the handwritten instructions taped to the lid.
COMPOSTING TOILET INSTRUCTIONS:
Do your business as normal and wipe with TP. For Number One, you’re all done. For Number Two, add a handful of bulking agent to break down the waste. DO NOT put feminine hygiene products of any kind into the bowl.
The open box of wood shavings next to the toilet was labeledBulking Agentand sat on top of a clear plastic storage crate filled with sanitary supplies. Courteously prepared for a menstruating female captive.
Or multiple captives.
“Stop it!” Cara told herself.
She’d seen curtains in one of the windows of the mobile home. Had they been hung by a wife who was free to come and go? Cara tried to imagine the female who relished living with him in the rugged compound he’d built, all but cut off from the world, preparing to live underground with him possibly for years.
What if she was his accomplice? Weren’t women like that typically colder and even more vicious than their male counterparts?
No!She couldn’t let panic run away with her. Besides, she had to pee and needed to change the tampon she’d gotten at the diner. Setting the flashlight on the ladder with the beam of light facing toward her, Cara lifted the cover of the toilet. Inside it had two sections, with a siphon that directed the urine into one container and solids into another.
As she hesitated, she thought of something else: if Fisk opened the hatch, she’d be directly below him, with her pants around her ankles.
“No can do,” she said, clenching everywhere.
Maybe lying down on the cot would relax her enough to do what would eventually have to be done.
And eating a chocolate bar. With graham crackers. And a dab of marshmallow fluff from the jar she’d spotted on an upper shelf.
Was this how Stockholm Syndrome started?
TWENTY-THREE
JORDAN
Turn yourself in and accept justice.
