Devil's Spring

by Aaron Lazar

  “Thanks, I know how to do all that. I think I’ve got it.” She forced a smile. “Maybe I’ll let you get to your own job and I can call you when I get stuck?”

  “Oh, of course. How thoughtful of you.” Nancy’s eyes twinkled and she rose, giving Lollie an encouraging squeeze on her shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll do just fine, honey.” With that, she shuffled over to her own station and was soon lost in her own computer.

  Lollie stumbled through the first few pages of registration, and then used PayPal to join the first site. She’d had that set up years ago with her own password, so she could access their checking account without having to open her wallet and type in the credit card numbers. Thank God for Colby’s money.

  She started to think of all the possibilities. With access to the computer now, with her PayPal account, she could do so much. She could buy gifts for the babies and mail them to the Hawke and Rockwell families. Once she found the addresses, of course. She could hire someone to help her break out. Or even find a lawyer who could advise her on her rights. She hadn’t even thought of that. Heck, she might even be able to order a pizza delivery.

  She chuckled at that idea.

  And she could try to contact Rosita, rather than worrying about when she’d visit.

  Did Rosita have Facebook? She’d have to ask her next time she came.

  Painstakingly, she entered her parents’ names and dates of birth. A twinge of guilt struck her. She hadn’t called or seen them since Colby died. And she’d told the hospital staff she didn’t want them on the visitor list. Just Rosita. She was the only one allowed to visit.

  Would her parents care? They’d probably been relieved. She felt like they’d given up on her years ago, anyway. She’d been quite the handful and she knew she wasn’t easy to live with. Her parents had never looked quite so happy as when they handed her off to Colby on her wedding day.

  She had been pretty rotten to them. Always screaming. Always complaining. Always accusing them of not doing enough, not caring enough. She guessed she couldn’t really blame them for being glad to get rid of her.

  She got stuck on her paternal grandfather’s birthday. Was he born in 1928 or 1929?

  To play the part, she raised her hand and meekly called Nancy’s name. “Hello? I have a question.”

  Nancy scurried to her side, anxious to be of help. “What is it, dear?”

  Lollie pointed to the screen. “Well, see, I’ve got my folks and grandparents names in here. But I’m not sure on my grandfather’s birth date.”

  “Well, let’s just click this button over here, now, honey. It should show up all possible people with his name and his birthplace, etc. If you add his middle name, it will narrow down the results greatly.”

  “Oh! I forgot to put in middle names.” She quickly filled his out and then clicked on the “find” button next to his name.

  “There! See? Not too many Algernon James Tourneau in the books. Did you say he was born in the twenties? This looks promising, here’s one from 1929.”

  A screen filled with data, including schools attended, addresses lived at, and family connections.

  “Wow,” Lollie said softly. “This actually is cool.”

  “I knew you’d like it once you got started. And see? You can go up on his family tree and see who his folks were, and who their folks were, and so on.”

  “I might find a distant cousin or someone I never knew about.”

  “That you might. And who knows? Maybe there’s somebody from France who’d like to meet you eventually who’s your long lost auntie or something like that.”

  “Cool.” Lollie made sure she smiled at Nancy. “Thanks.”

  “Okay, I’ll leave you to it, then.” She ambled over to a cart piled with library books. “I’m just going to reshelf some of these. Let me know if you need me.”

  As soon as she saw Nancy’s head bobbing on the other side of the stacks, Lollie typed in, “Kidnapping, Vermont, 2016, Hawke.”

  News articles filled the page, and right at the top was the most recent coverage, showing Boone and Portia Hawke beside Anderson and Grace Rockwell, both holding her babies with teary smiles.

  My babies.

  My Scarlett and Rhett.

  Don’t worry, sweeties. I’ll be back to get you soon.

  Chapter 37

  By the time Rocco returned to get Lollie for lunch, she’d made some excellent progress. With one window open in the ancestry page to make her searching look legit, she used “alt-tab” to flip between the various windows so that she could hide her real work from Nancy’s over-eager and annoyingly helpful eyes.

  After searching through dozens of major newspaper articles about the miraculous return of the babies found in Maine, she finally found one human-interest story that made her sit up and take notice.

  Tragedy abounds. Cursed Sisters, Kidnapped Babies.

  Portia Hawke and Grace Rockwell, daughters of Dirk and Daisy Lamont, have lived cursed lives, and their bizarre stories make this current kidnapping hard to believe.

  Both girls live with their husbands and parents in the quaint town of The Hollow, nestled at the base of the Green Mountains in Vermont. The family residence of Bittersweet Hollow Morgan Horse Farm is home to them all now, where little Dirk “Joey” Hawke (named for Portia’s father) and Caroline Rockwell (named for Anderson Rockwell’s long-ago murdered fiancée) will be triumphantly returned tonight. The babies were discovered in an ill-fated mansion in Maine, where the faux-adoption took place just days before the owner, Mr. Colby Belvedere, died in a tragic accident. The Belvederes were unaware they’d “adopted” trafficked children.

  The Lamont family has been no stranger to trauma in the past years. Portia, the eldest daughter, was kidnapped and held for two years in a remote cabin in the Wisconsin woods by now deceased serial killer Charles Murphy. The cabin, located near Devil’s Lake, has since been razed and has become a temple of honor for those lives claimed by the murderer. In a bizarre parallel, nineteen years earlier, a Mr. Harry Turner, aka Hank, a contemporary devotee of the murderer Murphy and sworn enemy to Grace Rockwell’s husband, Anderson, kidnapped and killed Anderson’s first fiancée, Caroline Wells.

  As if that weren’t enough, last year Turner came after Anderson again when he kidnapped Grace and attempted on multiple occasions to murder them both to evoke further revenge near a waterway he renamed Devil’s Creek, in honor of Murphy’s killing spree. The bizarre story ended when Turner took his own life at the grave of Caroline Wells.

  Now she had everything she needed. The town. The name of the farm. The insane history linked to the Devil. It was as if their lives were entwined with the Devil, and she had to get her poor babies out of that situation before another kidnapping occurred.

  Lollie typed in the name “Bittersweet Hollow Morgan Horse Farm.” Immediately, she found the website for the farm that featured gorgeous barns, green pastured fences filled with horses, a nice farm house, and it was all set against the background of the beautiful Green Mountains.

  She had to say, it looked like a nice place for children to grow up. But Lollie knew appearances could be deceiving, and those people were magnets for trouble, especially for trouble with the Devil. She sure as hell didn’t want her little Scarlett and Rhett around them when the next big event went down. She’d have to get them out of there.

  Clicking through the website, she studied the pictures of the family and horses. They even had their dogs in the photos.

  She started to memorize their faces.

  Dirk was Portia and Grace’s father. He was a lean, tan farmer who had reportedly worked his whole life to make their place successful. She thought he seemed okay. Maybe she’d be able to reason with him. He might understand how much she needed her babies back.

  The mother, Daisy, wasn’t in too many pictures. Never up on a horse. Maybe she was more of a farm wife who spent her days in the kitchen making pies?

  Lollie sat still for a minute, remembering the Lassie shows she wat
ched as a child and Timmy’s mother on their farm. She’d always liked the idea of a mother like that. Maybe she could sit down for coffee and apple pie with Daisy Lamont.

  The daughters were shown on various horses in show rings and riding on the woodland trails. The elder sister had reddish hair and seemed pretty serious. She was taller and lankier than the younger, blonde sister, Grace. Grace had a spunkier look, was a little curvier. Lollie guessed that she might be a tougher opponent when it came to wresting her daughter out of her arms.

  Two dogs—one a little mutt named Cupcake and the other a lab named Boomer—seemed to smile into the camera. They looked gentle and friendly and she was sure she could tempt them into liking her. Especially if she carried some nice chunks of steak to feed them. She didn’t want to hurt them, by drugging the meat. She liked dogs. She’d leave that as a last option, just in case.

  When she’d gone through every page and link on the website, including some recent photos of Grace winning ribbons at a horse show on a Morgan mare named Sassy, she went through them all over again. She needed to memorize the layout of the place so that it seemed like home to her. There would be no hesitations allowed, no mistakes possible. Once she had her plan in place, she would get in, get the kids, and get out. But there was a lot more planning to be done.

  She started to play with Google Earth, but first made sure to practice on her grandparents’ original homestead in Maine so that she could show Nancy what she’d found. After a half hour of learning the controls, she became familiar with zooming in and out, changing angles, and going from the satellite view to street view. When Nancy received a phone call, she decided to use the opportunity to type in the horse farm address and zoom in on Bittersweet Hollow.

  I need to know every road, every field, every building, and every entrance. I need to know this place as if I grew up there.

  Slowly, she zoomed down to the house and barns. The layout wasn’t too complex. One big farmhouse. One huge barn nearby. Paddocks and pastures around it. Big fenced fields surrounding the whole place. It amazed her, but she could even see the dots of horses in the fields. Farther out, there were small structures she assumed were lean-tos in the pastures. Must be shelters for when the horses were out in the bad weather or heat. A few little sheds populated the space behind the big barn.

  She went in closer and realized she could even see the cars and trucks and their colors from the satellite view.

  “Amazing,” she said out loud.

  Nancy hung up from her call and trotted toward her. “Yeah? Really? Are you having fun? Learning a lot?”

  With fumbling fingers, Lollie hit the back button on Google Earth so that her grandparents’ farmhouse came back into view. Her pounding heart subsided when Nancy rounded the corner just in time to see the quaint little yellow house fill the screen.

  “What’s this one, now?” Nancy said, drawing up a chair too close to Lollie.

  “Um. My mother’s parents’ old house. They lived outside of Bangor. It’s owned by someone else now. But I remember it well.”

  “Oh, how pretty. Did you used to swing out there?”

  Lollie’s heart constricted. She loved that swing. She used to be happy there. “Yes,” she said in a soft, quivering voice. “I loved that swing. My Gramps used to push me. High as the sky.” The last few words came out in a child’s voice, but she quickly cleared her throat and came back to her purpose.

  She pasted a sweet, hopeful smile on her face and turned to the librarian.

  “May I come back after dinner? I’m learning so much, Nancy.”

  Nancy frowned. “Well, honey. It’s not on your orders.” She released a slow grin and stood, patting Lollie’s shoulder. “But you just let me see what I can finagle with the good ole Doc. If I put in a word for you, he might just change them.”

  Lollie made herself reach out and take Nancy’s plump hand in hers. “Oh, that would be so wonderful.” She let her eyes water a little. Not too much. She didn’t want to seem overly attached to the computer in a way that the doctor could call obsessive or compulsive or whatever label he might slap on her.

  Nancy checked her watch. “It’s almost dinner now. Rocco will be back soon for you. But you go ahead and enjoy while you can. Be sure to bookmark your places. You know how to do that?”

  Lollie slowly rolled her chair so that the keyboard was blocked when Nancy reached out as if to move the mouse to show her how to do it. “No, I'm good. I already did that on all the important places.” She pushed out another smile. “Thanks so much for all you’ve already taught me.”

  Nancy flushed and smoothed her hair back, pleased. “Oh, I don’t know about that. You seem to be quite the self-starter, Lollie. I’ll have a good report for you.”

  Lollie relaxed. This was going just fine. In a few days, she’d have all the information she needed to start planning for the return of her two sweet babies.

  Chapter 38

  During dinner, Lollie plotted.

  It was as if her brain was having a live conversation, and it completely blocked her out from the messy, noisy diners who surrounded her. She methodically cut her chicken cutlet into small squares and popped little pieces in her mouth, alternating with forkfuls of peas and mashed potatoes.

  You have to be smart about this.

  I know. I can’t just barge in there, can I?

  First, you need to reach out to connect with them. Make them think you are sincere and a lonely, decent person who just misses those kids.

  I can use Facebook. I’m sure one of them is on there. Everybody’s on Facebook, right?

  Check it out. If that doesn’t work, try to email the farm address. They showed a contact email on the website today.

  Right.

  Next, you need to study the land farther out. We need a safe place to watch them from for a few days. We’ve gotta get their schedules down pat.

  Like what?

  Like a shed in the woods. Or a tent. Or someplace off the radar. Do your research on the area while you’re still in this damned prison. The place is surrounded by woods and mountains, it’s some kind of preserve. So nobody lives up there.

  I used to like camping as a child. Colby has camping stuff.

  Okay, when you get out of here, take inventory of his things. Practice with it. Work the camp stove. Set up the tent. Plan exactly what you need to bring. And don’t forget supplies for the babies. Food, milk, a way to keep it cold.

  What about a vehicle?

  You’ll need something all-terrain. Buy a new Jeep with Colby’s money.

  Poor bastard. I killed him.

  He deserved it.

  Yeah.

  Now, listen. When the day comes, you can’t just walk up, take the kids, and drive away. If you do that, the cops’ll be on your ass in minutes. You need a way to get to and from your shelter without them tracking you. You’ll have to hang in the woods for a while, then make a clever escape.

  Escape to where? I can’t go back to my house, can I?

  Hell, no. Unless you kill anyone who witnesses you taking them. But that’ll cause even more problems. We need to find you a house out in Montana or somewhere they’ll never look.

  I can do that. But how will I carry both children through the woods?

  You’ll figure it out.

  Maybe a double stroller with really big tires? Or a backpack for Scarlett and a single stroller for Rhett?

  Or a wagon. Something you can push or pull over hills and rocks. Go online and research that, too.

  I’m starting to get excited again.

  Me, too. Now listen. You need to reach out. Buy the family a present, something very tasteful.

  Maybe I could buy them that double wagon. Then it’ll already be on the farm when I need it?

  Good idea. Have it delivered with a card that says how sorry you are this happened and how much you miss the little buggers.

  I can’t say buggers.

  I know. Make it sound good.

  Lollie smiled up at Roc
co, who stood above her with his arms crossed. “You ready yet, Miss Lollie? You been pushing those last few peas around your plate for the past five minutes.”

  She jumped. “Oh! Sorry. Just daydreaming, I guess.” She rose and took her tray to the conveyor belt. “I’m ready.”

  Rocco looked down at his clipboard. “Looks like you’re going back to the library. You kinda took to that, huh?”

  She forced herself not to jump for joy, but let out a pleased smile. “Yes. I’m really enjoying it. Nancy’s been such a great help.”

  Rocco raised one eyebrow in her direction, as if he couldn’t quite believe this “new” Lollie, but he shrugged and started walking with her toward the hallway. “Well, that’s just nice, Lollie. Come on, let’s get you back there.”

  When they reached the library, Nancy was still there, busy behind the stacks with a patient in a wheelchair who couldn’t reach the top shelf. She gave a friendly wave over the tops of the books, and turned back to help her charge.

  Rocco nodded and pointed to the computers. “Go back right over there where you were. Nancy’s got you now. I’ll be back at seven-thirty. Library closes at eight.”

  Lollie thanked him, but when she turned to glance at her terminal, she saw the skinny kid with acne sitting in her spot. She thought his name was Elliot. He’d been brought in a few days ago, but had kept to himself, so she’d never spoken with him.

  Rage washed through her and she hurried around the tables to where he sat, thick glasses perched on his nose and his face about two inches from the screen.

  Hidden from the stacks, she lunged toward him and hissed. “Elliot! That’s my place. Get the hell out.”

  He turned dull eyes to hers. “You were looking at Google Earth. Kind of neat.”

  “GET UP!” she scream-whispered to him.

  He didn’t move, but gestured around him at the bank of terminals. “They’re all the same.”

  “NO, they aren’t. I bookmarked all my stuff here.”