Page 63 of It Takes a Thief

Tobiah did so, and Nurse Joy shrank down to map size, standing in front of the bookstore. “Catch me if you can,” she taunted.

Duji suggested, “Maybe we have to go down to the bookstore.”

So, like a thundering herd of wildebeest, we all shuffled out the front door as one unit. We left only Sock Monkey there with his laptop logged into the game, just in case. Of course I called Maddy, but it went direct to voicemail. Cringing, I realized I didn’t know her roommate’s number, and I hadn’t even asked for Galileo’s. I punched Ogden’s number and texted:

Can you find out if Maddy’s all right? Call Galileo?

Was it true Noodlum had Maddy? Should I call the hospital and talk to that ancient hippie she was always mooning over? My dignity was above that, letting an outsider know I had no idea where my wife was.

But as our clot of people neared the bookstore, Wolf cried out, “Tyranitar is back! He’s at the bookstore!”

That was that dinosaur cartoon character, I supposed, as I kicked myself for knowing it. Since I had not stooped to download the game on my own phone, I had to plaster myself to Tobiah’s back and look at the laptop he carried with him.

Completely autonomous now, Tyranitar ambled to the bookstore, opened his mouth, and gulped down Nurse Joy in one fell swoop. It was noisy on the street, but I could hear poor Joy utter a dying scream.

“No fucking way!” cried Wolf. “If that’s Maddy and that’s Noodlum, he just fucking ate her.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

MADISON

Because I had to pee, Muldoon handcuffed my wrists behind my back.

What I saw in the bathroom was a whole wall of those glass blocks. Beautiful, but impossible to break out with your ass. When I returned to the bedroom, I saw we were on a sloping hill, and if I broke that plate glass with my butt, I’d tumble about twenty feet, more if I continued rolling through the glass down the hill and through the tumbleweeds. Handcuffed. Wearing just panties and a cold shoulder blouse.

No, the best bet was to grab his piece from his waistband, shoot him from behind my back. I saw some potential areas of vulnerability, as I’d heard Ford once say about an enemy. For one, Muldoon kept slapping at a phantom limb. That indicated brain damage. When he tossed the hank of hair from one eye, a wound was visible in the eye socket. The socket looked to have been crushed at one point, although he seemed to be able to see from that eye. Another indication of brain damage.

But the real coup de grace that utterly convinced me was when he ate poop instead of a banana.

Yes. He’d been keeping a cat, and seemed overly attached to it to the point where he moved the litter box into the bedroom. He was feeding me pieces of a banana and making oddly sexual remarks about it. I was playing along because, well, I knew one needed to eat to keep one’s strength up, and two, I remembered a couple stories about kidnapped women who played along. Eventually they earned more freedoms. By that point, though, they were so riddled with Stockholm Syndrome they didn’t even try to leave until, like, their kids were threatened.

So I was eating these banana pieces, and Muldoon was saying things like, “This is a big banana. It’s long and juicy. Your mouth looks fantastic around it. Here, open wide. Take this big thing into your mouth.”

When the banana was gone, he looked around quizzically. “Oh,” he said, and went to the cat box and grabbed a couple pieces of shit. He actually popped one into his mouth on his way back to the bed before holding one out for me. “One more,” he said, without malice.

“Muldoon,” I said, “you just ate a piece of cat poo.”

He wasn’t done chewing, so he just swallowed and smiled. “Did I? See, I’ve got this brain damage.”

“Limbic system,” I said.

“That’s right, you’re a nurse!” he cried, as though on a game show. “Right, the limbic system. That’s not the first time I’ve mistaken poo for food. Or anything else for food for that matter. I swear, I’ve eaten the same succulents in pots downstairs in the living room maybe five, ten times. I never learn.”

“I’ll bet you’re indifferent to physical pain.”

He held out a deeply scarred arm. Keloid and hypertrophic scars ringed it. “Right. Go ahead, punch me. Oh.” He nodded at my unseen hands, manacled behind my back. “Wait, I’ll be right back.”

He had to keep leaving to go do something in another room. I imagined his computer was there and he was maybe demanding ransom from Ford. He returned ten minutes later, taking a bite out of a pencil and chewing.

“You’re eating a pencil,” I said pleasantly. I wanted to be as pleasant as possible, and so far, I detected no threat from this brain-damaged redneck.

But this time, he frowned angrily at the pencil. His other hand grabbed the wrist of the hand that held the pencil and wrenched it, giving it an Indian burn. It was like his two hands were fighting. It wasn’t enough he had a phantom arm, now one part of his brain was fighting another. It was a fight to the death Muldoon acted out! One hand wanted to stick the pencil in his mouth so he could continue chomping. The other hand wanted to wrest it away from him!

“Muldoon! What’s happening?”

“Oh, this happens,” he said, calmly considering the circumstances. “This is how I knew you’d be the right woman for me. I need a nurse to watch out over me. Down, boy, down!”

“Yes, you do need a nurse,” I agreed. “Come here and let me help.”