Needful Things - Stephen King [264]
She saw the handcuffs, and her eyes widened. "Danforth, what happened?"
"Nothing I can't handle. Pass me that hacksaw, Myrt. The one on the wall. No-on second thought, never mind the hacksaw right now.
Give me the big screwdriver instead. And that hammer."
She started to draw away from him, her hands going up to her chest and joining there in an anxious knot. Quick as a snake, moving before she could back out of his reach, Buster shot his free hand through the open window and seized her by the hair.
"Ow!" she screamed, grabbing futilely at his fist. "Danforth, ow! owww!"
Buster dragged her toward him, his face clenched in a horrible grimace. Two large veins pulsed in his forehead. He felt her hand beating against his fist no more than he would have felt a bird's wing.
"Get what I tell you!" he cried, and pulled her head forward.
He thumped it against the top of the open door once, twice, three times. "Were you born foolish or did you just grow that way? Get it, get i't, get it!"
"Danforth, you're hurting me!"
"Right!" he screamed back, and thumped her head once more against the top of the Cadillac's open door, much harder this time.
The skin of her forehead split and thin blood began to flow down the left side of her face. "Are you going to mind me, woman?"
"Yes! Yes! Yes!"
"Good." He relaxed his grip on her hair. "Now give me the big screwdriver and the hammer. And don't try any funny business, either."
She waved her right arm toward the wall. "I can't reach."
I He leaned forward, extending his own reach a litt e and allowing her to take a step toward the wall where the tools hung. He kept his fingers wrapped firmly in her hair as she groped. Dime-sized drops of blood splattered on and between her slippers.
Her hand closed on one of the tools, and Danforth shook her head briskly, the way a terrier might shake a dead rat. "Not that, Dumbo," he said. "That's a drill. Did I ask for a drill? Huh?"
"But Danforth-oww!-I can't see!"
"I suppose you'd like me to let you go. Then you could run into the house and call Them, couldn't you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about!"
"Oh no. You're such an innocent little lamb. It was just an accident that you got me out of the way on Sunday so that fucking Deputy could put those lying stickers up all over the house is that what you expect me to believe?"
She looked back at him through the tangles of her hair. Blood had formed fine beads in her eyelashes. "But but Danforth you asked me out on Sunday. You said-" He jerked hard on her hair. Myrtle screamed.
"Just get what I asked for. We can discuss this later."
She felt along the wall again, head down, hair (except for Buster's fistful) hanging in her face. Her groping fingers touched the big screwdriver.
"That's one," he said. "Let's try for two, what do you say?"
She fumbled some more, and at last her fluttering fingers happened on the perforated rubber sleeve which covered the handle of the Craftsman hammer.
"Good. Now give them to me."
She pulled the hammer off its pegs, and Buster reeled her in.
He let go of her hair, ready to snatch a fresh handful if she showed any sign of bolting. Myrtle didn't. She was cowed. She only wanted to be allowed back upstairs, where she would cuddle her beautiful doll to her and go to sleep. She felt like sleeping forever.
He took the tools from her unresisting hands. He placed the tip of the screwdriver against the doorhandle, then whacked the top of the screwdriver several times with the hammer. On the fourth blow, the doorhandle snapped off. Buster slipped the loop of the cuff out of it, then dropped both the handle and the screwdriver to the concrete floor.
He went first to the button which closed the garage door. Then, as it rattled noisily down on its tracks, he advanced on Myrtle with the hammer in his hand.
"Did you sleep with him, Myrtle?" he asked softly.
"What?" She looked at him with dull, apathetic eyes.
Buster began