All he knew about guns was what he had learned from books and movies.
In spite of Daniel's talk about inspiring children to be self-sufficient, he had not prepared Mitch for the likes of John Knox.
The prey must learn evasion, and the predator must learn to hunt.
His parents had raised him to be prey. With Holly in the hands of murderers, however, Mitch had nowhere to run. He would rather die than hide and leave her to their mercy.
The Velcro closure on the holster allowed him to strap it far enough above his ankle to avoid exposing it if his pants hiked when he sat down. He didn't favor peg-legged jeans, and this pair accommodated the compact handgun.
He shrugged into the sports coat. Before he got out of the car, he would tuck the pistol under his belt, in the small of his back, where the coat would conceal it.
He examined that weapon. Again he failed to locate a safety.
With some fumbling, he ejected the magazine. It contained eight cartridges. When he pulled the slide back, he saw a ninth gleaming in the breach.
After reinserting the magazine and making sure that it clicked securely into place, he put the pistol on the passenger's seat.
His cell phone rang. The car clock read 5:59.
The kidnapper said, "Did you enjoy your visit with Mom and Dad?"
He had not been followed to his parents' house or away from it, and yet they knew where he had been.
He said at once, "I didn't tell them anything."
"What were you after — milk and cookies?"
"If you're thinking I could get the money from them, you're wrong. They're not that rich."
"We know, Mitch. We know."
"Let me talk to Holly."
"Not this time."
Let me talk to her," he insisted.
"Relax. She's doing fine. I'll put her on the next call. Is that the church you and your parents attended?"
His was the only car in the parking lot, and none were passing at the moment. Across the street from the church, the only vehicles were those in driveways, none at the curb.
"Is that where you went to church?" the kidnapper asked again.
"No."
Although he was closed in the car with the doors locked, he felt as exposed as a mouse in an open field with the vibrato of hawk wings suddenly above.
"Were you an altar boy, Mitch?"
"No."
"Can that be true?"
"You seem to know everything. If you know it's true."
"For a man who was never an altar boy, Mitch, you are so like an altar boy."
When he didn't at first respond, thinking the statement a non sequitur, and when the kidnapper waited in silence, Mitch at last said, "I don't know what that means."
"Well, I don't mean you're pious, that's for sure. And I don't mean you're reliably truthful. With Detective Taggart, you've proved to be a cunning liar."
In their two previous conversations, the man on the phone had been professional, chillingly so. This petty jeering seemed out of sync with his past performance.
He had, however, called himself a handler. He had bluntly said that Mitch was an instrument to be manipulated, finessed.
These taunts must have a purpose, though it eluded Mitch. The kidnapper wanted to get inside his head and mess with him, for some subtle purpose, to achieve a particular result.
"Mitch, no offense, because it's actually kind of sweet — but you're as naive as an altar boy."
"If you say so."
"I do. I say so."
This might be an attempt to anger him, anger being an inhibition to clear thinking, or perhaps the purpose was to instill in him such doubt about his competence that he would remain cowed and obedient.
He had already acknowledged to himself the absolute degree of his helplessness in this matter. They could not strop his humility to a sharper edge than now existed.
"Your eyes are wide open, Mitch, but you don't see."
This statement unnerved him more than anything else that the kidnapper had said. Not an hour ago, in the loft of his garage, that very thought, couched in similar words, had occurred to him.
Having packed John Knox in the trunk of the car, he had returned to the loft to puzzle out how the accident had occurred. Having seen the neck of the lug wrench snared in the loop of the knot, he had settled the mystery.
But just then he had felt deceived, watched, mocked. He had been overcome by an instinctive sense that a greater truth waited in that loft to be discovered, that it hid from him in plain sight.
He had been shaken by the thought that he saw and yet was blind, that he heard and yet was deaf.
Now the mocking man on the telephone: Your eyes are wide open, Mitch, but you don't see.
Uncanny seemed not to be too strong a word. He felt that the kidnappers could not only watch him and listen to him anywhere, at any time, but also that they could pore through his thoughts.
He reached for the pistol on the passenger's seat. No immediate threat loomed, but he felt safer holding the gun.
"Are you with me, Mitch?"
"I'm listening."
"I'll call you again at seven-thirty—"
"More waiting? Why?" Impatience gnawed at him, and he could not cage it, though he knew the danger of the infection proceeding to a state of foaming recklessness. "Let's get on with this."
"Easy, Mitch. I was about to tell you what to do next when you interrupted."
"Then, damn it, tell me."
"A good altar boy knows the ritual, the litanies. A good altar boy responds, but he doesn't interrupt. If you interrupt again, I'll make you wait until eight-thirty."
Mitch got a leash on his impatience. He took a deep breath, let it slowly out, and said, "I understand."
"Good. So when I hang up, you'll drive to Newport Beach, to your brother's house."
Surprised, he said, "To Anson's place?"
"You'll wait with him for the seven-thirty call."
"Why does my brother have to be involved in this?"
""You can't do alone what has to be done," said the kidnapper.
"But what has to be done? You haven't told me."
"We will. Soon."
"If it takes two men, the other doesn't have to be him. I don't want Anson dragged into this."
"Think about it, Mitch. Who better than your brother? He loves you, right? He won't want your wife to be cut to pieces like a pig in a slaughterhouse."
Throughout their beleaguered childhood, Anson had been the reliable rope that kept Mitch tethered to a mooring. Always it was Anson who raised the sails of hope when there seemed to be no wind to fill them.
To his brother, he owed the peace of mind and the happiness that eventually he had found when at last free of his parents, the lightness of spirit that had made it possible for him to win Holly as a wife.
"You've set me up," Mitch said. "If whatever you want me to do goes wrong, you've set me up to make it look as if I killed my wife."
"The noose is even tighter than you realize, Mitch."
They might be wondering about John Knox, but they didn't know that he was dead in the trunk of the Honda. A dead conspirator was some proof of the story Mitch could tell the authorities.
Or was it? He had not considered all the ways that the police might interpret Knox's death, perhaps most of them more incriminating than exculpatory.
"My point," Mitch said, "is that you'll do the same to Anson. You'll wrap him in chains of circumstantial evidence to keep him cooperative. It's how you work."
"None of that will matter if the two of you do what we want, and you get her back."
"But it isn't fair," Mitch protested, and realized that he must in fact sound as ingenuous and credulous as an altar boy.
The kidnapper laughed. "And by contrast, you feel we've dealt fairly with you? Is that it?"
Clenched around the pistol, his hand had grown cold and moist.
"Would you rather we spared your brother and partnered you with Iggy Barnes?"