Perfect Victim Read online

  DEDICATION

  DEDICATED TO COLLEEN JEAN STAN

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Part One: Not Even a Scream

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part Two: The Chorus of Disbelief

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part Three: “K”

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Four: Dangerous Precedents

  Chapter 12

  Part Five: Homecoming

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part Six: The Malleable Psyche

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Part Seven: Return to Darkness

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Part Eight: Scandal

  Chapter 20

  Illustrations

  Chapter 21

  Part Nine: Confession

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Part Ten: The Machinery

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Hear me, O God, as I voice my complaint;

  protect my life from the threat of the enemy.

  Hide me from the conspiracy of the wicked,

  from that noisy crowd of evildoers,

  who sharpen their tongues like swords

  and aim their words like deadly arrows.

  They shoot from ambush at the innocent man;

  they shoot at him suddenly, without fear.

  They encourage each other in evil plans,

  they talk about hiding their snares;

  they say, “Who will see them?”

  They plot injustice and say,

  “We have devised a perfect plan!”

  Surely the mind and heart of man are cunning.

  But God will shoot them with arrows;

  suddenly they will be struck down.

  He will turn their own tongues against them

  and bring them to ruin;

  all who see them will shake their heads in scorn.

  All mankind will fear;

  they will proclaim the works of God

  and ponder what he has done.

  Psalm 64:1–9

  As quoted from the Bible by Colleen Stan

  PART ONE

  NOT EVEN A SCREAM

  May 19, 1977–November, 1977

  I never let her see papers. I never let her have a radio or television. It happened one day before ever she came I was reading a book called Secrets of the Gestapo—all about the tortures and so on they had to do in the war, and how one of the first things to put up with if you were a prisoner was the not knowing what was going on outside the prison. I mean they didn’t let the prisoners know anything, they didn’t even let them talk to each other, so they were cut off from their old world. And that broke them down.

  The Collector, by John Fowles

  Nobody who has not lived in a dungeon could understand how absolute the silence down here is. No noise unless I make it. So I feel near death. Buried.

  Miranda, The Collector, by John Fowles

  CHAPTER 1

  Straddling the cool, green rush of the Sacramento River is a town too small and undistinguished to warrant a stop by most tourists. It’s a long way from postcard visions of the West Coast—no beach-front condos, few flashy sports cars, not even a whole lot of freeway.

  This sleepy metropolis is the heart and capital of Tehàma County, a bucolic expanse of olive, plum, walnut, and almond orchards; a few busy timber yards; and rolling cattle range.

  Red Bluff got its name from the russet bluffs that plunge to the edge of the Sacramento River, cut there by time, glowing nearly iridescent in the afternoon sun. When early settlers steamed up from San Francisco on big paddle-wheelers in the 1850s, they spied those cliffs and christened this town after them—but most of today’s residents wouldn’t know that, so little time do they spend on that swift, dangerous river.

  It must be the cattle ranchers that give that Southwestern twang to this place. Never mind the California address, chewing tobacco is more popular than alfalfa sprouts. Men in cowboy boots, denims, and an occasional Stetson stride up the sidewalks, and more than a few pickups rumble down the streets.

  They say that Red Bluff’s annual Bull and Gelding Sale, held every January, is the biggest in the country. And Round-Up Week, “a celebration of the Best in the West,” tops off the silliness of a cowchip-throwing contest, a whisker-growing contest, and a roving jail for unlucky locals wearing non-Western garb, with what is billed as “America’s Biggest 2-Day Rodeo.”

  With those new fast-food places and shopping centers sprouting up by the freeway, you’d think Red Bluff was booming, but in fact the population has only just crept past 10,500, and “going out of business” sales plague the older parts of town. The economy is depressed, the streets are quiet, the pace is slow. There’s not much to do here on a Saturday night.

  Like other small towns, Red Bluff is a place with few secrets; broken marriages, accidents, and affairs are big news. But it’s a fine place to raise a family, a place where strangers still get a nod and a “hello” on the street, a place where old-fashioned values are upheld by the congregations of little churches that seem to stand on nearly every corner.

  The heart of Red Bluff is still Main Street, a long, wide road with only two stoplights that lies on the edge of a downtown grid less than a mile square. The names of the streets running north and south are as all-American as a marching band: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Lincoln. And those running east and west ring as honest as wood: Cedar, Hickory, Walnut, Pine, Oak, and Elm. The Tehama County Courthouse presides over it all. Built in 1920, the impressive brick structure opens onto Washington Street, its front made appropriately solemn with massive columns and its entryway boasting trophies and ribbons from past rodeos, parades, and Little League championships.

  A right turn on Oak leads away from the interstate to an older, quieter part of town, where shade trees have grown large and houses have settled deep into their shrubbery. It’s a comfortable, quiet neighborhood, if not especially prosperous. Modest homes from the forties and fifties watch children pop wheelies on bicycles while local dogs sniff about for news.

  A few of the homes are rented, as is 1140 Oak Street, a small stucco structure painted an unlikely pink and edged in a brick color that’s almost red. The owners of the home, an elderly couple by the name of Leddy, live next door. They’ve seen a lot of tenants in the past thirty-odd years, but they recall that in 1976 and ’77 they were renting 1140 Oak Street to Cameron and Janice Hooker.

  Mrs. Leddy remembers them as “a nice couple.” They paid the rent on time, were hardworking and quiet. Cameron struck them as the serious type. He piled the backyard high with young trees that he’d cut, then sold them in six- or seven-foot segments as fence posts. “He was all business, you might say,” Mr. Leddy says.

  After sixty years of marriage, the Leddys seem to agree on almost everything, and they agree that Cameron’s thin young wife, Janice, was very nice. She sewed, crocheted, and used to come over and sit under the arbor to visit.

  And the Leddys can’t recall anything at all abo
ut the Hookers that they would call strange. “They were no trouble whatsoever,” Mrs. Leddy recalls. “We liked them.”

  To neighbors and onlookers, Cameron and Janice Hooker seemed simply average, another young couple just starting out. At twenty-four, Cameron was tall and gangly. He worked as a millworker at Diamond International, a big lumber mill that at that time boasted of being Tehama County’s largest employer. Janice, at nineteen, was still slim, despite having become a mother several months before. Both wore glasses, both had brown hair—hers wavy and long, his straight and shaggy.

  They kept to themselves. They kept out of trouble. And none of their neighbors remember the slightest thing out of the ordinary, the smallest ripple of peculiarity about May 19, 1977.

  There were probably dozens of reasons Colleen Stan shouldn’t have been hitchhiking that day, but this was a time when hitchhikers were plenty and those reasons seemed less important. Thumbing rides on freeway on-ramps was almost a rite of passage for America’s youth. Whether it was prudent or not was hardly a consideration. It was cheap. It was easy. And you never could tell what interesting people you might meet out there on the road.

  Colleen left Eugene, Oregon, that morning at about eleven, when her roommates, Alice and Bob, drove her to the freeway. She stood at the side on the road under the gray Eugene sky looking virtually indistinguishable from any number of hitchhikers in a town nearly dominated by University of Oregon students. She wore a plaid wool Pendleton, jeans, and Earthshoes. She was medium height, medium build, and had thick, tawny hair so long that it brushed against the small of her back. And at twenty, her eyes still held a hint of naïveté.

  Colleen’s destination was Westwood, a small town in Northern California where her friend Linda lived. The occasion was Linda’s birthday. This was Thursday. Colleen told Alice that she’d be back on Saturday.

  Interstate 5, the long ribbon of concrete that snakes all the way from the Canadian border to San Diego, would be her route.

  She made good time. After just two rides, she was all the way down to Red Bluff, and it was just four o’clock. Here she would exit the freeway and head east, with another hundred miles to go.

  A carload of guys offered her a ride, but she turned them down—too risky. Another car stopped, but the couple said they were only going a short distance, so she turned them down, too.

  Then a blue Dodge Colt pulled over, and Colleen saw a young couple in front, the woman holding a baby in her arms. They looked about Colleen’s age, and not very different from her roommates, Alice and Bob—not wealthy, but not hippies either. From the looks of their faded clothes, they probably didn’t have much more than each other.

  The man said they were headed toward Mineral, a giant step in the right direction, so Colleen tossed in her sleeping bag and backpack and climbed into the back seat.

  Things started off badly. Colleen carried a jug of grape juice with her. She opened it to take a drink. As she raised it to her lips the driver accelerated, and purple juice spilled a stain down the front of her shirt.

  But Colleen didn’t take this as a bad omen. Nor did she pay particular heed to the odd wooden box sitting on the seat beside her. Nor did she notice the secret marital exchange that took place in the front seat as the little car sped out of town: The driver gave his wife a meaningful look; she frowned and shook her head, but said nothing.

  When you drive east on Highway 36, the fringes of Red Bluff soon fall behind. The road climbs past pastures into hills of oak strewn with chunks of lava as it heads toward Mt. Lassen, a dormant volcano that heaved off its mountaintop in 1914, leaving the black spores of that spectacular disaster scattered across miles of terrain. At Dale’s Station, the road banks right and climbs into the beginning of the pine country. To the right lies a magnificent canyon . . . but no matter how stunning the scenery, Colleen could not help but notice that the driver of the car kept glancing at her in the rearview mirror. It began to make her nervous.

  A few miles up the road they stopped for gas, and Colleen took this opportunity to go to the restroom and change her blouse. Standing in the small, cool room, she had a strange feeling that she should escape, as if a voice were warning her: Run! Get away! She noticed the restroom’s little window, and the voice insisted: Crawl out the window! Run! You can get away! But Colleen couldn’t understand why she was having such crazy notions; she shook off the impulse to flee and went back to the car.

  The wife had bought some candy bars, and as they continued toward Lassen National Forest, she shared these with their backseat passenger. There was chitchat, and soon the conversation turned to the subject of ice caves.

  The driver was saying: “My brother said there were some ice caves up around here. Wouldn’t that be something to see?” With another glance at Colleen in the rearview mirror, he asked, “You wouldn’t care if we turned off for a quick look, would ya?”

  All Colleen wanted was to get Westwood, but she told them she wouldn’t mind a short detour.

  There was some discussion in the front seat about where exactly the turn-off was, and soon they were off the highway, bumping down a dirt road, the afternoon sun flashing through the pine trees.

  About a mile or so down the road they stopped. It was quiet, still, with the pine needles swaying only slightly in the breeze, a small stream bubbling nearby. They were completely alone, with only the mountain birds there to watch them.

  The wife stepped from the car, carrying her baby over to the nearby stream. Then the driver climbed out, leaving Colleen momentarily alone in the back seat of their two-door Colt.

  He came over to the passenger’s side of the car, suddenly pulled the seat forward, jumped in, and put a knife to her throat.

  “Put your hands above your head,” he ordered.

  Colleen froze, too frightened to move.

  The man repeated the order, and she felt him press the blade harder against her skin. Its point pricked her throat, and she felt his hand shaking. Weakly, she lifted her arms above her head. She was shaking too.

  A pair of handcuffs flashed across her vision. The man grabbed her hands, and swiftly locked them behind her back.

  He had everything ready, and he moved quickly, with practiced motions. He pulled out a piece of cloth and tied it tightly over her eyes. “Are you going to do what I tell you to do?” he demanded. There was menace in his voice.

  Colleen managed a feeble “Yes.” Maybe if she went along with him he wouldn’t hurt her, maybe she could somehow calm him down.

  Next, she felt a strange leather strap encircling her head, tightened at her cheek until the strap beneath her chin made it impossible for her to open her jaw—a gag, of some sort. Then he grabbed her ankles, wrapping rope around them and tying an expert knot.

  Now she was handcuffed, blindfolded, bound, and gagged. But he had more in store for her.

  The peculiar wooden box that Colleen had noticed sitting on the seat beside her was this man’s special creation. Its construction was deceptive, for though it was made of plywood and was only about the size of a hatbox, it was surprisingly heavy, weighing nearly twenty pounds. Dense insulation was sandwiched in between its double walls, and it was hinged with metal. He opened it now. The circular hole at the bottom split into semicircles on either side. The interior of the box was carpeted.

  Forcing his hostage to lie down, he maneuvered her head into the box, fitting her neck into the sculpted hole. Then he closed it around her head with a snap.

  It shut out all light. It muffled all sound. It pinched her neck, trapping her thick hair tightly against her nape, the stranglehold heightening her terror. The carpeted interior pressed against her face with a sickening closeness, and her breathing turned to gasps.

  Colleen would come to know this horrific contraption as the head box.

  The man covered Colleen with the sleeping bag she had so conveniently provided, and then he was done. He called to his wife, and she brought their infant daughter back to the car and got in. Then he started up the
engine, turned the car back down the dirt road, and this average-looking family headed leisurely toward home, their human cargo secreted in the back seat.

  The head box was suffocatingly hot, terrifyingly claustrophobic. And Colleen felt smothered beneath the sleeping bag. Her heart thudded in her ears, adrenalin shooting through her veins elevating her temperature. For a time, she felt the weight of the baby placed on top of her, but it cried and the mother took it back up front.

  Now the car had turned back onto the pavement, and Colleen could feel it accelerate, rushing her toward some fearful destination. They wound downward, and she sensed they were backtracking, heading west now, back into the valley.

  It seemed a long, hot eternity before Colleen could make out traffic noises, a few at first, then more, as if they were entering a town. She guessed it must be Red Bluff.

  Suddenly the car stopped. Colleen could make out some conversation in the front seat; the woman was to go and get something. A car door opened, there was a slight shifting of weight, the door closed. Then they were moving again, driving short distances, turning, driving, and turning—aimlessly, as if they were circling the block. Then the car came to a stop again. The door opened, the woman climbed back in, and the car drove on. Odd.

  They drove for a short time, the traffic lessening about them, and then the car came to a halt. To Colleen’s relief, the sleeping bag was lifted off and the stifling head box unlatched. She could breathe again. They let her sit up, and she felt her skin start to cool, the sweat trickling down her back, her long hair sticking to her bare, damp arms. The blindfold and her other bonds stayed on, but she was immediately aware of the smell of food. It was hours since Colleen had eaten, but she felt no appetite. Her stomach was a knot.

  The wife had fetched a fast-food meal, and now the couple sat in the front seat eating their greasy hamburgers and french fries. They were hungry, but they were also killing time, waiting for the sun to slip farther behind the mountains to the west.

  It was dusk now, and the solitary car sat in a wide parking lot overlooking a fat expanse of the Sacramento River. Some ducks paddled downstream toward the diversion dam, birds chattered in the trees, and distant mechanical noises came from the low, gray buildings of the Diamond lumberyard across the river.