Текст книги "Stranded"
Автор книги: Alex Kava
Соавторы: Alex Kava,Alex Kava
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 18 страниц)
CHAPTER 38
MANHATTAN, KANSAS
“He’s afraid,” Maggie told Detective Lopez and Tully.
“That this so-called madman will come back and get him?” Lopez wasn’t buying it. “Then why not give us a description? Why not tell us where we can find his friend?”
“This killer is not just confident and efficient, he’s …” Tully paused to search for the right word. “To put it mildly, he’s brutal.”
Lopez shook his head.
They were waiting at the rest area for Ryder Creed and Grace. Lopez had brought two of his uniformed officers to assist, but he’d already explained how he had a crew of a dozen men search the woods for ten straight hours the day before. They hadn’t found anything valuable for their efforts.
“And it’s mushroom season,” Lopez said.
“Mushroom season?” Maggie asked, glancing at Tully to see if he had any idea what that meant.
“As soon as the redbuds bloom, wild mushrooms sprout up,” Lopez explained. “They’re a delicacy. People hunt for them. Which means there’s been a bunch of people traipsing around these hills and bluffs and nobody’s reported finding a lost teenager. Or a body.
“You want to know what I think,” Lopez continued. “I think Noah Waters is afraid, all right. I think he’s afraid I’ll arrest his ass. You say this killer you two are looking for is confident and efficient? Pretty sloppy to let one of his victims go. This case obviously doesn’t have anything to do with your guy.”
“You still think Noah did something to Ethan?”
“Hell yes. Why else would that kid be throwing up every time we want to discuss the details? Maybe he can’t even believe what he did. I’ve seen how a guilty person acts and Noah Waters is guilty.”
“So what did he do with Ethan?” Tully asked.
The detective shrugged. “I’ve checked hospitals in a hundred-mile radius. Just in case someone found him and picked him up. His parents have called all of his friends. I put out an APB. If he’s injured he could be delirious. Maybe a trucker picked him up. He could be in another state by now.”
Maggie took a good look at Lopez. Mid to late forties, military buzz cut, a short but compact body, eyebrows that were perpetually knitted with worry. He projected a serious, experienced, and tough demeanor, yet he still didn’t appear to believe her or Tully that this case could possibly be related to their hunt for a serial killer. She couldn’t decide if he really did believe that Ethan was still alive or if he simply wanted to believe it.
“But your men didn’t find the knife?” Tully again, playing the skeptic.
“What knife?”
“You have a severed finger,” Tully said. “You haven’t looked for the weapon that may have cut it off?”
For the first time Lopez looked like he had been caught off guard.
Just as Creed’s Jeep appeared on the interstate ramp coming down to the rest area, Maggie noticed the garbage truck, its hydraulic brakes hissing. It was finished collecting at the far end of the other parking lot and was heading for the ramp to get on the interstate.
She turned to Lopez and asked, “Your men didn’t check the trash receptacles?”
“My men were busy doing a search and rescue.” He seemed annoyed and defensive.
“How often is garbage collected here?”
“What? Once a week maybe. I have no idea.”
Maggie motioned to Tully to give her their rental’s keys.
“We have to stop that truck.”
“I’ve got it,” Tully said as he took off running for their SUV.
It was parked clear on the other side of the winding road in the cars’ parking lot.
Maggie gauged the distance. The garbage truck hiccupped and belched diesel. Tully would never make it in time. She sprinted over the lawn and sidewalk, dodging travelers. Through the trees she could see the road that wound around the rest area. The truck would need to follow it to get to the interstate’s entrance ramp. It was shorter for her to race through the trees that surrounded the small brick building. She ran at a diagonal, pumping, pushing, willing her legs to go faster. The truck had started up the road. She’d need to intercept it before it got to the ramp.
She didn’t, however, give it much thought as to how she’d stop it.
As she ran toward the road she pulled out her badge and waved it, but she was on the wrong side and too close for the driver to see her running alongside him on the passenger side. The truck started to accelerate and so did Maggie.
She raced ahead. Beat the truck by less than a hundred yards. Then she jumped into the middle of the road waving her badge. The clutch and gears ground. Hydraulic brakes screeched. The truck’s front lift claws jolted to a stop within three feet of her, so close her nostrils instantly filled with the scent of garbage.
“Jesus, lady,” the driver yelled as he stuck his head out the window. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“FBI. We need to take a look at your garbage.”
CHAPTER 39
Creed watched from inside his Jeep. He’d just parked when he saw Maggie jump in front of the garbage truck. Now he shook his head and smiled. Even Grace stepped onto the console beside him, wagging her tail and raising her head to watch as she stood between the front seats.
“Stop it,” he told the dog. “I already know you like her.”
Work colleagues were off limits. Despite what Hannah thought, he did have some standards and limitations. But damn, this woman had, indeed, sparked something inside of him. He should have been headed back home. He didn’t like putting Grace through another grueling search on an entirely different terrain and making her shift from cadaver to live rescue in such a short time. Grace could do it, no problem. And she’d be more than willing. But Creed didn’t like that the only reason he agreed so quickly was because he wanted to spend more time with Maggie O’Dell. That wasn’t his style. He didn’t mix business with pleasure.
He had worked to separate the two so that there was never any overlap. Often the women he slept with didn’t even understand what he did for a living, nor did they usually care. He liked keeping it that way. His work could bring on too many emotions, too many memories. It was complicated, for sure, but he had learned long ago that it was best to keep it all separate.
His women friends understood. No, that wasn’t true. They didn’t understand it. They accepted it.
Now that Maggie had stopped the garbage truck it looked as if she was handing over her catch to a couple of uniformed police officers. Before Creed realized the officers were with Maggie he thought it looked like they might arrest and cart her away. But they were already directing the garbage truck driver to back up, as soon as they could move the two cars and one eighteen-wheeler that were behind it on the exit ramp.
What a mess, Creed thought. But the local cops should have thought about going through the trash. He patted Grace’s head and said to her, “More amateurs, Grace. God help us.”
His cell phone started ringing. He went to shut it off when he noticed the caller’s ID.
“You missing me?” he asked in place of a greeting.
“Something awful,” Hannah said without missing a beat. “What part of ‘please check in with me’ do you not understand?”
“Actually I don’t remember there being a ‘please.’ ”
“Everything going okay?”
She was still worried about him. He could hear it in her voice and he didn’t like it. He could tell her he hadn’t had a drink since Sunday, but he knew she didn’t expect any kind of a report.
“Grace was amazing as always.” Concentrate on the things that matter, he told himself.
The dog licked his hand at the sound of her name but she continued to watch the commotion outside.
“Was it bad?”
“Grace gave six alerts.”
“Holy mother of God.”
Creed smiled. He could almost see Hannah making the sign of the cross. He never understood how she was able to keep such faith with the evil they witnessed every week. But he admired the hell out of her for trying.
“Two cadavers. We didn’t stick around to see what the other sites produced. There were a couple in the woods that might have been scatter.”
“So you’re on your way home?”
“Not exactly.”
He told her about the missing teenager and the possible connection. Hannah, being all businesslike, said she’d call Agent Alonzo to make sure there would be an official request put in and processed.
“You’d just go do these searches without even thinking about being paid, wouldn’t you?”
“Guess that’s why I have you.”
“There’s something else going on,” she said, catching him by surprise. “I can hear it in your voice.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Five, maybe six possible cadavers and yet you sound … cheerful.”
“Cheerful? That’s something nobody’s ever accused me of before.”
“I know it sounds ridiculous. So what’s going on?”
Creed’s eyes found Maggie O’Dell. “Don’t be silly, Hannah,” he said. “I assure you, I’m just as miserable as I always am.”
CHAPTER 40
Maggie watched Creed dress Grace in a bright yellow vest and harness with a lead. The rocky terrain here in Kansas looked much more dangerous than the wooded slopes around the Iowa farm, and Maggie questioned the reasoning.
“This is her search and rescue gear,” he told her as he swung the backpack onto his shoulders. He attached to his belt a water container with a pop-out bowl that he used for Grace.
“Usually I don’t train dogs for multiple searches. Grace is an exception. But when I make a switch of what I want her to search for, I also need something that tells her that we’re switching. I’ll use different words, but using different gear prepares her.”
“You said it was better she not have a collar or leash that would tangle her in the brush. This landscape looks more challenging than the last.”
“Exactly. That’s why I’ll keep her on a lead right beside me. She won’t be able to run free here. I don’t want her running off on her own.”
Finished and ready to start, he hesitated, his eyes on Maggie.
“Is everything okay?” he asked, looking over at Detective Lopez and Tully. Both men were bent over a map that was spread out over the hood of Lopez’s cruiser. “Locals don’t seem too keen on having us join their party.”
“It’s not that.” Maggie wasn’t sure what Lopez’s problem was. Yesterday on the phone he’d sounded relieved to find that the number he had called belonged to an FBI agent. “He doesn’t believe our highway killer is involved in this. He thinks the boys were playing some weird game with each other that went too far.”
“Occam’s razor,” Creed offered.
Maggie looked at him in surprise.
“The easiest explanation is often the correct one,” he said and smiled. “You think that just because I use a dog instead of a gun that I don’t know stuff?”
“That’s not true,” she protested too quickly, most certainly helping indict herself. She could feel a flush of embarrassment and tried to turn it around. “I know you know stuff.”
That made him smile. He wiped the back of his hand over his jaw as if he were trying to wipe the smile off or keep it from taking over his face. That small gesture made her realize how much she liked that he was here, and the realization caught her off guard.
“So how does he explain your phone number?” Creed asked, getting back to business.
“He has no answer for that. He also thinks the teenager we’re looking for might still be alive.”
“Thus the search and rescue.” Creed waved a hand over Grace’s new uniform.
“And that might be a mistake.”
“Because you think he’s dead?”
“Yes.”
“That’s important for Grace and me to know.”
“You’re right. I didn’t realize that until you were putting her gear on. If you instruct Grace to search for a live person, will she miss finding his corpse?”
“He’s been missing, what? Twenty-four hours?”
“More like forty-eight.”
Creed looked like he was calculating it in his mind. He rubbed his fingertips over his right temple and his eyes scanned the landscape beyond the rest area where they would start their search.
“They know a finger’s been cut off, right?” Creed asked.
“Yes.”
“But the surviving boy …”
“Noah.”
“He had lots of blood on him when he was found?”
“That’s right. Most of it not his.”
“Weather’s cool. Even if the body’s been disarticulated, decomp should be minimal. That much blood and it’s about forty-eight hours fresh, she’ll scent it.” Then he bent down to pat the dog’s head. “Won’t you, Grace?”
CHAPTER 41
Creed didn’t like this.
Not even a half hour into the search and Grace was already leading him up into the rocky limestone bluffs behind the rest area. Pebbles replaced dirt underfoot. Patches of grass, wildflowers, scraggly pines, and short redbuds with purple blossoms sprouted out of the cracks and crevices. And the wind was picking up.
The farther away they got from the rest area and the higher they climbed, the more rugged the terrain became. Grace hadn’t experienced anything like this and Creed was starting to question his own judgment. But already the dog’s nose was high in the air. She was breathing more rapidly. Both were signs that she was in a scent cone.
Maggie, Tully, and Detective Lopez followed. Creed asked them to stay back ten feet and a few minutes ago he’d asked them to please keep conversation to a minimum. He heard Lopez mumble under his breath, but Creed didn’t care as long as he shut up. The detective had found it necessary to tell Creed every step of the way that his men had already gone over all of these same paths. Lopez claimed they had found nothing the day before. It was a waste of time to do it again.
Creed was surprised that Grace could smell something this soon. He couldn’t see any rust smears or smudges. No dark-colored droplets. The light color of the limestone would certainly show bloodstains. He tried to pay closer attention to the foliage, looking for broken branches, a swatch of fabric, maybe a thread or two.
Suddenly he stopped Grace. He held out his hand to stop the others. Then he made Grace sit. She obeyed reluctantly, her haunches waggling all the way into a sitting position. Then Creed took a few steps forward into the path. He squatted down to examine a thorny vine that sprawled over the rock. Touched it. Poked a finger and jerked back his hand. It had drawn blood. He sucked the injured finger.
“What is it?” Maggie asked.
He waved them forward while he told Grace to stay put. He leaned down for a better look. All the way down until he was braced on one elbow.
“This vine is crossing the path.”
“Wow! We would have never found that without your help.”
Creed ignored the detective’s sarcasm. He carefully pinched the vine between thorns and lifted a section.
“Looks like it was pulled from the side where it was growing and looped over the path.”
“On purpose?” Maggie asked.
Creed couldn’t be certain, but on the side of the path where the plant originated, it climbed up into the brush. It didn’t appear to climb rock. Not only that, it looped back and forth over the narrow pathway, one strand over another. It didn’t look natural.
“Noah was barefoot, right?”
“Yeah, and his feet were in bad shape,” Lopez said.
Creed sat back in a squatting position. He looked up at Tully and pointed to where several strings of the vine had tangled. “I think there’s some blood and skin.”
Earlier he had seen Agent Tully fill his jacket pockets with latex gloves and plastic evidence bags. Without hesitation, he pulled one out now and bent over the area that Creed had pointed out.
“It could be anything,” Lopez said. But he didn’t push it. Instead he leaned in, curious, and watched as Tully clipped and bagged the section of vine.
“If there are scattered pieces of both teenagers, Grace might be trying to track in two different scent cones,” Creed explained.
“One that’s alive and one that’s not,” Maggie said, as if reading his mind.
He nodded. “It might be confusing.” He glanced at Lopez. Maggie had said that the detective didn’t want to believe that the missing boy was dead. He was staring at the vine and probably wondering how his men had missed that the previous day.
In the meantime, Grace’s tail was wagging as she sat, swatting the pebbles from side to side. She couldn’t wait to get back to work. Her nose hadn’t stopped sniffing even when Creed had made her pause.
“Okay, Grace. Let’s search,” he said, continuing to give her the command for a live rescue.
They climbed the rocky ridge top. Below on their right, a river valley stretched for miles. Grace was getting more and more animated. Creed had to clutch her lead tight. Unlike a collar, the harness allowed him to slow her down without choking her. She was a small dog—twenty pounds, at the most—but she was strong and strained against the end of the lead.
She had taken them off the path. Rubble made it difficult to go at a quicker pace. They found what looked like a smeared handprint, five lines of rust on the side of a limestone wall. The hair on Grace’s back went up and Creed felt it on the back of his neck, too.
He allowed Grace to keep going. They were climbing slabs of limestone now, a rugged staircase. Some of the slabs jutted out at odd shapes, threatening to trip dog and man. Grace had to jump up twice to make a step. What had been cracks alongside them were now becoming ravines.
The sun beat down on them. Geese honked overhead but nothing seemed to distract Grace. She was definitely on a mission.
Creed wasn’t sure how it happened. Later in the weeks that followed when he tried to explain it, it would be a blur. That moment in slow motion, three or four seconds. A flash of bright yellow sliding out of his grasp. Falling down into the cracks as if Grace had been swallowed whole.
She had gotten ahead of him, straining, pulling him down a rocky incline. He felt her slip and he grabbed the lead with both hands. He saw her body disappear down into a crack. He held on tight to the lead, trying to pull himself to her, hand over hand. He almost succeeded when he heard something snap and the weight of Grace was gone. Followed by a sickening thump and one last yelp from Grace.
CHAPTER 42
Maggie clawed at Creed’s backpack. He had thrown it off his shoulders trying to wedge his body into the crack where Grace had fallen. Maggie ripped open the pack and rummaged through the side pouches until she found the nylon rope and flashlight. She handed the flashlight to Tully, who joined Creed, belly down on the rock.
Detective Lopez was radioing for help, trying to direct a unit to where they were.
She could hear Grace whimpering. She was alive, but Creed was frantic.
He called down to the dog in a soothing, gentle voice, “It’s okay, Grace. Stay calm, girl. I’m coming right down.” Then he shoved his shoulder into the crack, slamming himself against the rock and groaning when he wasn’t able to squeeze through. His shirt was damp with blood where the jagged rock cut him.
Tully pulled him back and told him, “It’s too narrow. You’re not going to fit no matter how much you slam against it.”
Then Tully shined the flashlight down.
“Jesus, it’s about ten, twelve feet down.” He moved the light from side to side then stopped. “Hey, Grace.”
“You can see her?” Creed rolled back into position. “Hey, Grace, how you doing? You’re gonna be okay.”
Maggie heard him whisper to Tully, “Oh God, she doesn’t look okay.”
“I’ve got an emergency unit on its way,” Lopez said.
Creed started to wedge his shoulder in again, only to have Tully stop him. “Don’t waste your energy. We can’t fit.”
Maggie glanced at her watch. It’d taken them thirty-five to forty minutes to get up here. It might take another hour before the emergency unit reached them. She started tying the nylon rope around her waist, making a knot that would hold her.
“You guys can’t fit, but I should be able to.”
Both of them looked up at her as though they had forgotten she was there. In seconds they were helping to secure the other end of the nylon rope. As soon as Maggie swung her legs over the edge of the crack she felt the familiar cold sweat. Her mouth went dry and her pulse started to race. Tully handed her the flashlight and she shoved it into a pocket.
She held on to the rock edge as the men grasped the nylon rope. She took in greedy gulps of fresh air as if they would be her last, and she hadn’t even squeezed through the hole. Then she wiggled her torso between the cracked edges. Sharp rock stabbed her back. As she twisted to get away from it, she felt it cut through her shirt and her skin.
“Wait a minute,” Tully said. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” And she continued, letting her body’s weight and gravity pull her down. The whole time she couldn’t stop thinking, How the hell am I going to get back out of here, let alone with an injured dog?
As much as Maggie hated to admit it, she was claustrophobic. An occupational hazard—ever since a madman stuffed her in a chest freezer and left her there to die. This was not as bad, she told herself as her head left the surface and the men slowly lowered her down. A musty scent of earth and damp rock immediately engulfed her. Her breathing became labored and triggered a fresh panic. Her heart galloped and she started to feel a bit dizzy.
She looked up and watched the sky spin and disappear, now only a sliver of blue. The cavern around her looked and felt like a tomb. And as she descended, she realized it even sounded as quiet as one. The men’s voices became muffled.
Her heartbeat echoed in her head. Sweat slithered down her back. The space grew darker and darker and it became harder to breathe. By the time her feet found the floor of the ravine she felt so weak-kneed that she wobbled to stand.
Then she heard Grace whimper a greeting somewhere behind her.
Maggie fumbled for the flashlight, turned it on, and avoided pointing it directly into Grace’s face. The dog was lying on the rock floor, but she raised her head, excited to see Maggie. Grace’s eyes found Maggie’s and held them, intense and unrelenting.
“Stay, Grace. Don’t move.” She didn’t know whether the dog was able to move but she didn’t want her bounding up out of instinct. That she could raise her head was hopefully a good sign.
There wasn’t any blood surrounding or under Grace. That was another good sign. But Maggie could see that her left hind leg was stretched out at an awkward angle. The other hind leg was tucked under so Maggie couldn’t see.
“How does she look?”
Maggie glanced up, startled to see Creed’s head hanging over the edge.
“No blood. I can’t tell if there are internal injuries. Both back legs might be broken.”
She heard his intake of air and the attempt to hold back his emotion. Instead of swearing he called out to Grace, “Hey girl. We’re gonna get you out of there.” Then added to Maggie, “Do you think we can move her?”
Maggie watched Grace as she walked closer to her. She squatted down beside her and the dog attempted a slow wag of her tail but ended up whimpering. Maggie ran a hand over the dog’s back as she told her what a good girl she was.
Grace licked her hand and again, stared directly into Maggie’s eyes. That’s when Maggie suddenly realized Grace was looking at her the same way she looked at Creed. It was her way to alert him—to tell him—that she’d found their target.
Maggie felt a new chill crawl over her body. She gripped the flashlight and slowly swiped the light over the rock walls. Then she turned around to do the same on the other side of the long and narrow ravine.
The beam found what looked like a heap of rags. That is, until she saw hands sticking out from under the pile. Two hands. Only nine fingers.
