of coffee, much weaker this time—more for warmth than anything else. Without the heater on, it was chilly in here; I could almost feel the bite of the wind that kept snapping and howling at the cabin walls outside. I moved around to the cot, picked up one of the blankets and folded it around my body.
As I stood sipping my coffee, my gaze came to rest on the calendar that lay open on the card table. Open to this week, the first week in December. With my free hand I flipped through some of the pages. One of those two-year calendar/daybook things, for this year and next. Today was … what? Sunday? Sunday, December 6. The calendar was there because he wanted me to know what day it was, to count how many had gone by and how many lay ahead. But I could turn that knowledge into an advantage by using it to maintain my orientation, my sense of order and normalcy. One thing that would surely weaken your grip on sanity would be losing track of days of the week, dates, time itself. That would put you in a shadow world, a kind of deadly limbo, and it was a short fall from there into madness.
Using one of the pencils I drew an X through the box for Saturday, the fifth, my first day here, and another X through the box for today. This would become another part of my morning routine.
I started to put the pencil down. Didn’t do it because I found myself looking at the pads of yellow ruled paper—and remembering what he’d said yesterday, in his sly way, about my writing my memoirs. Well, maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. But not in the way he’d meant it. Suppose I made a record of what had happened to me since Friday night, every detail I could remember, every impression? It might help me figure out who he was, what his motive was.
It would keep me busy too, keep my mind occupied for long periods of time. And once it was done I could go on to something else—a sort of journal, a damning chronicle of my ordeal. Put down whatever came into my head. Make writing a daily activity, to go along with an exercise program and the routine I established. I had done enough client reports in my time; I had a pretty fair grasp of English. It wouldn’t be difficult work, and it was the kind I could lose myself in once I got started.
The idea energized me a little, enough so that I caught up one of the pads and sat down with it in my lap. And before long I began to write.
----
The Third Day
----
It’s all down on paper, everything that happened during the twenty-four hours between Friday night and Saturday night. Twenty-nine pages using both sides of a sheet to conserve paper. I spent most of yesterday working on it and half of today. My fingers are stiff—writer’s cramp. But the important thing is that I’ve included
all
the details, even the smallest one. You can’t forget something that might be vital when you’ve got it down in black and white. Or black and yellow.
I wonder if anyone else will ever read it.
It won’t be him. I’ll make sure of that.
I still don’t have an inkling of who he is. Men like me, men who have been in law enforcement work for better than three decades, touch thousands of lives directly and indirectly. We have a profound effect on some of those lives; we inflict pain on some, in most cases because they deserve it but, in a few unavoidable instances, even when they don’t. You can’t help that, no matter how hard you try, how many precautions you take. So he has to be someone I hurt once, intentionally or by accident, deservedly or otherwise … but that narrows it down not at all. He could be any one of a hundred or two hundred people out of my past.
What do I know about him? So damned little. He’s intelligent, well-spoken—white collar rather than blue. Average height, slim build. Caucasian. Age? Hard to tell from either his mannerisms or the disguised voice; say somewhere between thirty and forty-five. Drives an American-made car, make and model undetermined. Carries a snub-nosed revolver.
As I stood sipping my coffee, my gaze came to rest on the calendar that lay open on the card table. Open to this week, the first week in December. With my free hand I flipped through some of the pages. One of those two-year calendar/daybook things, for this year and next. Today was … what? Sunday? Sunday, December 6. The calendar was there because he wanted me to know what day it was, to count how many had gone by and how many lay ahead. But I could turn that knowledge into an advantage by using it to maintain my orientation, my sense of order and normalcy. One thing that would surely weaken your grip on sanity would be losing track of days of the week, dates, time itself. That would put you in a shadow world, a kind of deadly limbo, and it was a short fall from there into madness.
Using one of the pencils I drew an X through the box for Saturday, the fifth, my first day here, and another X through the box for today. This would become another part of my morning routine.
I started to put the pencil down. Didn’t do it because I found myself looking at the pads of yellow ruled paper—and remembering what he’d said yesterday, in his sly way, about my writing my memoirs. Well, maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. But not in the way he’d meant it. Suppose I made a record of what had happened to me since Friday night, every detail I could remember, every impression? It might help me figure out who he was, what his motive was.
It would keep me busy too, keep my mind occupied for long periods of time. And once it was done I could go on to something else—a sort of journal, a damning chronicle of my ordeal. Put down whatever came into my head. Make writing a daily activity, to go along with an exercise program and the routine I established. I had done enough client reports in my time; I had a pretty fair grasp of English. It wouldn’t be difficult work, and it was the kind I could lose myself in once I got started.
The idea energized me a little, enough so that I caught up one of the pads and sat down with it in my lap. And before long I began to write.
----
The Third Day
----
It’s all down on paper, everything that happened during the twenty-four hours between Friday night and Saturday night. Twenty-nine pages using both sides of a sheet to conserve paper. I spent most of yesterday working on it and half of today. My fingers are stiff—writer’s cramp. But the important thing is that I’ve included
all
the details, even the smallest one. You can’t forget something that might be vital when you’ve got it down in black and white. Or black and yellow.
I wonder if anyone else will ever read it.
It won’t be him. I’ll make sure of that.
I still don’t have an inkling of who he is. Men like me, men who have been in law enforcement work for better than three decades, touch thousands of lives directly and indirectly. We have a profound effect on some of those lives; we inflict pain on some, in most cases because they deserve it but, in a few unavoidable instances, even when they don’t. You can’t help that, no matter how hard you try, how many precautions you take. So he has to be someone I hurt once, intentionally or by accident, deservedly or otherwise … but that narrows it down not at all. He could be any one of a hundred or two hundred people out of my past.
What do I know about him? So damned little. He’s intelligent, well-spoken—white collar rather than blue. Average height, slim build. Caucasian. Age? Hard to tell from either his mannerisms or the disguised voice; say somewhere between thirty and forty-five. Drives an American-made car, make and model undetermined. Carries a snub-nosed revolver.
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