The Alibi Man

Chapter 35

What is death? Where does the soul go?

People brought back from the dead by resuscitation always talked about a bright white light, about friends and relatives who had gone before them beckoning with smiles and open arms.

Lisbeth saw nothing. Blackness. She reached out with her hands and hit something solid. She pushed at it, but it didn’t budge. Coffin, she thought, and she began to panic. She wasn’t dead, she’d been buried alive.

She hit her fists against the lid again and again, crying. When she tried to scream, she couldn’t. Her throat felt raw and swollen, and her mouth was parched to the point that it felt as if her tongue had doubled in size and was made of cotton. She tried to pull the bag off her head but couldn’t.

Then it began to dawn on her that she felt motion. And when the sound of her own pulse pounding in her ears receded, she could hear the hum of tires on pavement.

She was in the trunk of a car.

As she realized it, a new wave of panic rolled over her.

Who had taken her? Where were they taking her? For what purpose?

There were no good answers to those questions.

The car began to slow, then stopped. A car door opened, then closed. She waited for the trunk to open, but it didn’t.

Her heart was racing. She was shaking. The smell of her own vomit burned her nostrils. She strained to hear voices, but there were none.

What would happen to her now?

Would she wish she had already died?

SPLASH! SPLASH! SPLASH!

Someone was throwing heavy objects into water.

Then silence.

The trunk popped open then, and Lisbeth was grabbed roughly, hauled out of the car, and put on her feet. Her legs felt like they were made of string. Her knees buckled beneath her, but her captor held her up on her feet by the rope around her throat, as if she were a dog on a leash. She scrambled to get her feet under her, but he still half-dragged her off the pavement and into grass. The ground was soft and wet.

“No,” she said, barely croaking out the word. “No. No!”

She stepped in water, tried to turn around and run. He shoved her ahead of him.

Now the water was ankle deep, shin deep…

He was going to drown her.

“No! No!”

A wild squealing sound rang in her ears. She didn’t even realize it was coming from her. It didn’t matter how she struggled and splashed, the water was at her knees, her thighs… Mud sucked at her feet.

“No! Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!”

Her captor said nothing.

“Please don’t kill me!”

… her crotch, her belly…

She was sobbing.

He said nothing, just drove her farther into the water.

It came up over her breasts.

He put his hand on her head, shoved her under, and held her there.

Choking on water, she fought wildly, in a blind panic.

Her captor yanked her up to the surface. Lisbeth had to tip her head back to escape the water trapped inside the cloth bag. She had swallowed water, inhaled water, couldn’t get a breath to cough it out. She clawed at the bag clinging like wet plaster to her face.

He shoved her under a second time. When he pulled her back to the surface, he dragged her ashore and dropped her on the ground like a sack of garbage.

Lisbeth coughed and choked and retched, trying to expel the water from her lungs and replace it with air. The taste and smell of it was horrible, like it had come from a sewer. She managed to push herself onto her hands and knees, although a part of her just wanted to lie down and give up. All the while her mind swirled with fear and panic, and questions. Who was doing this to her? Would he rape her? Would he kill her? Would he torture her first?

And during all this time, her assailant never said a word, which was in some way more frightening than if he had been screaming at her. It was as if there was no emotion involved on his part.

Lungs aching, Lisbeth lowered herself to the ground, feeling too weak to remain on her hands and knees, let alone get up and try to escape. She was totally at his mercy.

Off to her left, something groaned. Not a person, she thought. It groaned again. An animal. Then a loud hissing sound.

Oh, my God.

Alligator.

Lisbeth pushed herself onto her hands and knees again and started scrambling, but she couldn’t see, couldn’t know which way was safe or if she would be running into worse danger.

The panic seized her again. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God!”

Then, like a marionette, she was plucked off her feet. Her kidnapper crushed a forearm across her rib cage, trapping her against his body. The tip of a knife blade caught hold of the bag, pierced it, nicked her cheek, and split the cloth open on the right side.

The harsh glare of headlights was blinding. Then he swung her around so she could see where that light fell-on a section of paved road that ended with a striped road-block sign; on the bank of a marsh; on three alligators spread over that terrain, two on the bank and one on the road, hissing at the car. Empty ham cans littered the bank, and Lisbeth remembered the loud splashing sound she had heard while she was lying in the trunk. Bait.

Her attacker grabbed a handful of the sack and her hair and pulled her head back as he started moving toward the alligator on the road. Lisbeth began to struggle, frantic to get free of him. He pulled harder on her hair and kept advancing on the reptile.

“No! No! No! No!” she screamed.

The alligator opened its jaws and hissed.

Her captor stopped within ten feet of it and spoke for the very first time, whispering into her ear, “This is what happens to girls who talk too much.”