“Well, we’re not getting any information out of him,” I said.
“Maybe,” Leeanne said.
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While Leeanne went into Vern’s office to see if she could find records for the bear from fifteen years ago, I went to move my truck back from the road, where no one passing by would see it. I ran back up to the shop. Leeanne was still going through files.
“Anything yet?” I asked.
“I don’t know how he found anything in here,” she said. “It’s amazing he wasn’t arrested for tax evasion, because there is no way with this record keeping that he ever filed a proper return.”
I watched her going through the files. The window, just over her shoulder gave me a good view of the big white barn.
“I wonder what’s in there?” I asked.
She stopped digging. She looked at the barn.
“Well, we might as well take a look,” she said. “There’s nothing here. I went through every purchase receipt I could find for thirteen to seventeen years ago.
If it’s here, I can’t find it.”
Leeanne ran ahead of me to the barn.
“Bring bolt cutters,” she called.
I grabbed a long handled red pair of cutters from the bed of the truck, watching the road. Someone would come along eventually, and then what? I didn’t want to be here when that happened.
Leeanne held the lock up. I grabbed it in the blades of the cutter. I pulled, until it bit in, then leaned the cutters against the barn door. I put all of my weight on the other handle. After a minute, the steel gave way. It took a second cut to get the loop off.
I pulled the fourteen-foot high door open. Leeanne walked in, and froze.
“Turn on the lights,” she said quietly. “They’re on that post, to the right.”
She said it with certainty. I jogged over and searched. There on the far side, was a circuit breaker box with a big switch. She couldn’t see it from where she was. Where were we and what was I about to see?
I threw the switch. The lights came on. They buzzed. Sodium bulbs. It took almost a minute before there was enough faint glow to make anything out. I still didn’t know what I was looking at.
Leeanne sank to her knees. She was weeping.
In the doom, some sort of arena was taking shape. There were wooden bleacher seats, and a tall cage, with a platform inside, in the middle. I looked around. Other than the structure, the barn was like any ordinary barn.
The room was at least thirty feet tall. There were a pair of sliding barn doors to one side, leading to stalls, or equipment sheds, I guessed. Besides the cage, I didn’t know what would be affecting her like that.
But, there, in the back, was a white van, with mesh over the windows. The kind they transport prisoners in.
I knelt beside Leeanne.
“Can you tell me what this is?” I said. My voice was soft.
“This is the rest of my story,” she said.
I stood up. My mind was racing. I couldn’t imagine what the connection was. The van, the ring, then I saw it, clearly.
“They made you fight here?” I asked.
“She, made me fight here,” she said.
“She?” I said.
I already knew the answer.
“Skinner,” she said.
She spat the name. It was like acid coming out. I’d never felt so much hate in a single word.
“How?” I asked.
I sat in the sawdust next to her.
“I got good. Real good. I never lost. So, she chose me to be her champion,” she said.
“They brought us here, but it was different. At the farm, the only people came to watch, were the owners,” she said. “But these stands, were filled, every Saturday night. They treated it like a real fight.”
“Once a week?” I asked.
I didn’t know much about MMA, but that sounded like a grueling schedule.
“At first. Until I won enough, then once a month,” she said.
“She paid you?” I asked.
Leeanne laughed, the crazy laugh from before, only angry. “Oh, she paid me. I had a room in her house, I swam in her pool, I ate her food,” Leeanne said.
“At first, I thought it meant I was free. But, when I got tired of it, I tried to leave. She had me hunted down, like a dog, and sent back,” Leeanne said.
She stood. She walked to the cage.
“I was there a week before she came,” She said. “She made it clear, I wouldn’t survive a second week. I was hers to command and hers to kill. Did I want my place back? So, I said yes. Everybody wants to live, I guess.”
“Two years she held me prisoner in that house. Two years they brought me here once a month, to make money off me killing other women,” she said.
“They sold tickets?” I asked.
There didn’t look like enough seats to make much on that.
“Gambling,” she said. “Like a dog fight. More if I killed my opponent, or maimed her for them.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“But, I did worse,” she said.
She sank onto one of the wooden benches, her shoulders heaved.
“What? Tell me,” I said. “I’m still here.”
“I seduced her son,” she said.
“Hal?” I asked.
The thought turned my stomach a little.
“Bert,” she said. “The sheriff’s bitch.”
“Okay, you were crazed,” I said.
“No, I wasn’t,” she said. “I knew what I was doing. I wanted him to help me escape. I thought if I gave him what he wanted, he’d help me. But, he was just crueler. Must have felt guilty. He used to whip me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Now I was crying.
“Then, I got pregnant,” she said.
“So, they’d let you stop fighting?” I asked.
She laughed again. “No, they’d never do that. If they’d known, they’d have had it ripped from my body right here, for their amusement.” She said.