The Highways of the Dead (A Creed Crime Story Book 1)

by James Evan March

  There was an outdoor light on the front of the shed but it wasn’t turned on and probably couldn’t be since the power line that came out of it angled down to the ground beneath the debris of the fallen tree. Another power line ran from a pole near the end of the access road to the side of the house. The front door was framed with porch lights but they were off. I couldn’t be sure if the house still had electricity but there was no exterior source of light.

  Two vehicles were parked in front. One was Guthrie’s Chevy. The other was a Buick station wagon that was at least twenty years old.

  I also couldn’t tell how many people were in the house, as I had no through-the-wall technology. Police, FBI and firefighters used handheld radar called Range-R. It’s expensive and I had never imagined I would need it. I had to get close and find a way to eyeball the interior, if possible.

  The stretch of fence downed by the fallen tree provided one route, but there would be a lot of branches and other debris to deal with. Instead I moved the other way, until I reached the spot where the fence turned left to run up the side of the private road to the gate. The corner post was stout and firmly in the ground, so I used it to vault over the four strands of barbed wire and landed in a crouch without a rattle, a clank or a thud.

  I moved towards the vehicles, walking not running, slightly crouched, maintaining muzzle discipline by keeping the MP 15-12 right below my line of sight. The front door had no window. Whoever had covered the three front windows with aluminum foil had done a good job; I didn’t see any light leaking through it or around it. So it seemed a reasonably safe bet that Andrew and whoever else might be inside could not see me unless they tampered with the foil on a window or came out the front door.

  Pausing between the two vehicles I checked the interiors by pulling the NOD down over my eyes and turning on the MP’s IR laser turned, set to flood. Neither vehicle was locked. There were no keys in the ignitions. The truck was pretty clean. The station wagon had some empty cans and bottles on the floorboards and a couple of full black contractor-grade plastic trash bags in the back.

  Moving around the house I looked for other windows and doors. There was one large and one small window on the west side, both covered with foil, none on the east side, and a back door on the south side, with covered wooden stairs leading up to it.

  I crawled under the house on my back. The ground sloped slightly, so there was from one to two feet of clearance. I inched along, bringing my knees up, digging in my heels and then straightening my legs – and repeat, without touching any part of the structure’s underbelly.

  Twenty feet in I heard a thump coming from the floor to my right. I stopped crawling and breathing – and listened for a moment before changing course and moving in that direction, stopping every few feet. I began to hear other sounds. The repeated creaking of metal, a high-pitched muffled sound that I thought was human, mingled with a low, rhythmic huffing noise.

  Crawling out from under the house, I moved to the back porch, testing the warped weathered steps before committing my full weight. The knob of the back door was loose in my grip. Using a piece of tensile steel the size of a credit card, I popped the lock in no time. It made a rusty grinding sound that was loud in my ears but wasn’t really loud at all. I paused a few seconds.

  Was I a hundred percent sure that the blonde girl was in the house? No.

  Was I absolutely sure Andrew Guthrie had been driving his truck that night at Express Stop? No.

  Did I know enough about what was or had been going on inside this house? No.

  Was I absolutely sure I needed to go in? Yes.

  I went in, opening the door very slowly, wary of rusty hinges, and closed it behind me. I was looking at what had once been a kitchen. No stove, no refrigerator. There was an old freezer against one wall, counters with old ceramic tile and a stained porcelain sink cluttered with trash.

  Crossing the room, I passed through an open doorway into a dark hallway. To the left were two more doorways. A faint light and the smell of reefer came from the first. The second door was closed. Considering the distance from it to the outer wall and where I knew the small window was located, I guessed that to be a bathroom. To my right were two closed doors facing one another. Moving that way, I put my ear to the door on the right. The room beyond was the source of the sounds I heard while underneath the floor.. The door wasn’t locked. I pushed up the NOD and opened the door, inch by inch, and looked inside.

  The room was illuminated by a small but bright battery-operated lantern sitting on an old dresser. Andrew was on top of a woman on a filthy mattress. I didn’t see his face but I didn’t need to for identification. He was still wearing the red muscle shirt and his sneakers. His shorts were down around his knees. The woman’s legs were spread wide, dirty bare feet heel down on the floor. I didn’t see her arms. It was pretty obvious by the muffled sounds she made that she was gagged.

  I took a few seconds staring at the heavy chain attached to a steel wall anchor no doubt secured to a stud. The chain angled to the mattress and underneath the woman laying on it. I assumed it was attached to something around her wrists.

  So much for not being absolutely sure about what was happening in the house.

  15

  The girl couldn’t see me as I opened the door just enough to slip inside. Andrew’s bulk blocked her view. I took two steps and rammed the butt of the M4 against the back of his skull, a measure blow as I wanted to knock him out, not crack his skull. It was too measured. Andrew grunted and sagged, but then he pushed up again and rolled over, getting his legs under him, a rictus of pure rage contorting his face. He was tougher than I thought.

  “YOU MOTHERFUCK-....,” he roared.

  I was going to be better off if I took him out before he got to his feet so while he was using one arm to leverage himself upright I stepped in, aimed at the dressing taped across his nose and struck. This time he screamed, hoarsely, a sound cut short as he passed out, his body limp as he slumped to the floor alongside the mattress.

  Someone somewhere in the house cursed loudly in Spanish, and I heard the thumping of someone on the run.

  Slinging the MP 15-12 over a shoulder, I closed the door, then turned and glanced at the woman as I grabbed the side of the mattress. She was a mess, had duct tape over her mouth, and was in fact handcuffed to the stour chain. I left all that alone. “Be quiet. Stay still,” I whispered and then dumped her on the floor and turned the mattress over on top of her.

  Someone banged on the door, shouting, “What the fuck is going on in there?” in Spanish.

  I had heard Antonio Perez speak five words a few nights ago. I was pretty sure it was him on the other side of the door. I didn’t lean against the wall beside the door. That’s a good way to get shot. Instead I switched off the battery lamp, pulled the NOD down over my eyes, and sat on my heels in the back corner of the room, which gave me partial shelter behind the old dresser until I knew if he was going to come in or, if he was armed, do some shooting through the door.

  “Hey pendejo, open up!”

  I could have put some rounds through the wall and door but I didn’t want to kill anyone unless I had to, so I waited for him to come in.

  But he didn’t.

  A moment later I heard someone talking, but couldn’t make out the words. Either there was someone else in the house or Perez was on the phone.

  I moved to the mattress and lifted up a corner.

  “Be still. No sound.”

  She whined behind the tape, begging for help.

  I put a finger to my lips and moved to the wall left of the door, hunkered down and turned the door-knob with my right hand. Since Perez wasn’t going to cooperate, I had to find and neutralize him.

  I entered the hall in normal fighting stance, elbows tucked in, my eyes moving in sync with the laser beam. I swept the kitchen as I moved past the doorway leading to it. Moving on, I got low to take a quick peek into the front room from whence I had seen dim light and smelled marijuana smoke.
Then I heard the double crack! of a weapon discharge and the angry buzzing of two bullets passing my head to slap into the wall behind me.

  No matter how many times it happens, being shot at is a jolt to the system. I jerked my head back, then stretched out flat on my belly and inched forward, my left cheek touching the floor, looking right, the 15-22 aimed right, too, into the room. Spraying the room with rounds around the door frame wasn’t an option, since I wasn’t sure if there was another girl in the house.

  Perez was crouching in the far right corner, partially sheltered behind the end of an old, sagging couch. I could see part of his head and his right shoulder. He threw his left arm up as the bright light half-blinded him, while rising into a crouch and spraying bullets over my head.

  My instincts and training wanted me to aim center mass and take him out. But I was in Sheriff Guthrie’s jurisdiction and I had a hunch he would screw me if he could. So I shot Perez once in the right shoulder.. He caromed back against the wall then fell forward over the corner of the couch’s arm and his head and shoulder slammed down on a rickety coffee table that burst apart and ceased to remotely resemble furniture. He lay in the debris out cold.

  I swept the room with the light. There was no place for anyone else to hide. I stood up and went in, knelt beside Perez and checked for a pulse. Rolling him over on his side, I checked entry and exit wounds. He was alive, of course, bleeding but not profusely, so I hadn’t nicked the subclavian artery. There was a cell phone in a pocket of his jeans. I confiscated it. A Taurus 9mm was on the floor. I picked it up by the barrel. That and the phone went into a pocket. In ten seconds I was out of the room and checking the rest of the house. I was pretty sure there wasn’t anyone else in the house but I had to confirm that. The room I had pegged as a bathroom was just that. The room next to the one where Andrew had been raping the woman was empty. It had a closet with two rolling doors, one of them off the track. I checked on Perez. His status was unchanged.

  I went back to the room where the girl was. I was worried about the call Perez had made, and felt it was urgent to get her out now. I removed the tape over her mouth as gently as possible.

  “Please please get me out of here, please!”

  She had been pretty badly battered. Her whole body was dirty and bruised and her face was swollen on one side. Her hair was matted and stringy. She hardly resembled the pretty girl I had seen coming out of the Express Stop. But she would again.

  “I will,” I promised. “Anything broken?”

  She shook her head and began sobbing.

  The first problem was the handcuffs. This pair was the chain double-lock variety. I hadn’t come prepared for that so I check the room’s closet. One of its rolling doors was missing entirely. There were a few wire coat hangers on the floor. Slinging the M4, I picked up one of the hangers, straightened the hook and knelt beside the girl. I didn’t need the Gerber multi-tool to bend the tip of the wire about ninety degrees. I just inserted the tip into the keyhole and bent it. It was then a simple matter to insert it into the keyhole at an angle pointing away from the center of the cuffs and turn it counter-clockwise. I felt more than heard a click as I disengaged the double lock. I rotated the tip clockwise until the lock bar moved away from the ratchet arm and the cuffs opened.

  Grabbing hold of Andrew’s thick ankle, I managed to drag him two feet until I could cuff his right wrist to the chain. Then I threw the girl over a shoulder and left the house, circling around the west side, behind the shed and to the section of fence which had been taken down by the fallen tree.

  We made it to the truck without incident. I put her in the back seat of the Super Cab and told her to stay down. Retrieving my duffel and the ARC, I stowed them in the front passenger seat and we were off. It was 10:14 PM.

  16

  A few vehicles passed going the other way, west, on 1881 before I reached the intersection with FM 555 at Shiloh. I marked my mileage and kept checking the rearview, not because Andrew or Perez would be coming after me, but because of the latter’s phone call.

  Paused at the 4-way flashing red-light in Shiloh, I fast-dialed Jenna. She was on duty and answered quickly.

  “You okay, Roy?”

  “I am. But the girl with me isn’t. The one that was kidnapped. Taking her to the emergency room.”

  The ER at the Municipal Hospital was the only place to take a victim of violent crime that still had a pulse.

  “I’ll alert them and meet you there. “How did you find her?”

  “Tracked Andrew Guthrie with a phone tag.”

  “You didn’t have to kill anyone, did you?”

  “No. But I shot Perez. He fired at me. You’ll find the slugs in a wall in the hallway.”

  She asked me for the location and I told her about the gated private road 7.9 miles west of the Shiloh stop on 1881. “To be sure, track this.” I gave her the number of the Android.

  “Tell me this is one of your phones.” It is against the law to track someone else’s phone.

  “Of course, Jenna. I happened to leave it under the rear bumper of Guthrie’s Silverado.”

  “Well aren’t you the clever one?” It was a rhetorical question.

  “Get ‘em out there in a hurry. Perez made a call before he went down.”

  I exceeded the speed limit heading down 555 towards Wayland. Halfway there two sheriff’s cruisers followed by an ambulance zoomed north past me, lights flashing. I reached the hospital in a bit over twenty-five minutes. The blonde and I didn’t chat. She was sobbing quietly, dealing with demons that would torment her for the rest of her life.

  The gurney was waiting when we reached the hospital’s emergency entrance. She grabbed my hand and gripped it tightly while she sobbed a hoarse and tearful thank you as they rolled her away.

  Jenna told me to stay put and walked into the ER with the gurney. Fifteen minutes crept by before she returned.

  “Her name’s Anna May Hopkins from Jonesboro, Arkansas. She confirmed that she was abducted and repeatedly raped by the men who were at the location tonight. Sheriff’s deputies arrived there a little while ago and took Guthrie and Perez into custody. Perez lost a lot of blood but he’s still alive, for now.”

  “Sounds good to me.” I handed her the gun and the phone I had taken off Perez.

  “Also sent Arlen Jennings out there,” said Jenna. “He’s WPD and a friend of mine. Not our jurisdiction but since I got the call, his being there won’t muddy any water. Oh and he retrieved the phone you put on Andrew’s truck.”

  “Thanks, Jenna. I guess I’ll go home then.”

  “Not just yet.” She took me by the arm and walked me over to her cruiser.

  “You going to cuff me?” I asked, grinning. “That’ll be different.”

  I think she blushed but it was hard to tell in the backlash of the glare of the outdoor lights around the emergency entrance. “Shut up,” she said, but she wasn’t angry. She looked me over. I was still wearing the web-belt with the mag pouches and the IFAK. “Can take the man out of the Rangers but you can’t take the Rangers out of the man, I guess.”

  “True words.”

  “A couple of things that maybe you need to know. Miss Hopkins says she was raped by several other men. All Hispanic. All with tats. She doesn’t speak Spanish but my guess is they’re Perez’s eses. She kept begging them not to kill her and at one point Andrew told her they weren’t going to. Said the others would be taking her on a one-way trip soon. ‘Going south’ is all he said about it, except that they’d taken other women before her.”

  I wasn’t grinning anymore and I didn’t say a thing for a moment, trying to tamp down a cold rage. Jenna could see it in my face and she took hold of my arm again.

  “You’re sorry you didn’t kill him, aren’t you?” She meant Andrew. “Being the sheriff’s son is not going to help him now. You didn’t just save one woman, Roy. You saved all the ones who would have come after her.”

  I nodded grimly, thinking about the ones who had preceded Ann
a May, spirited away to points south where they would be drugged, abused and used sexually on the way to an early death.

  17

  A lot happened in the next two weeks. For the most part I stayed home and worked with the horses. I did have to show up at the WPD to give a statement the day after delivering Anna May Hopkins to the hospital. Jenna wasn’t there. It was midday, so she was sleeping. Officer Arlen Jackson took the statement. When I was done he stood up and shook my hand and said “Good job.”

  Andrew Guthrie denied everything. After failing a polygraph examination he was charged with aggravated kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault. It didn’t help him that Anna turned out to be just shy of her eighteenth birthday. Evidence collected at the scene indicated that she hadn’t been the only victim. What had happened to the others? Anna told investigators what she had told Jenna in the emergency room, that when she begged for her life, Andrew told her she wouldn’t be killed but rather taken “south” where she would continue to do “the only thing she was good for.” If they hadn’t been killed and buried in a hole deep in the forest, that had been the fate of those who had gone before her.

  The continuous trafficking of persons, being a first degree felony, meant that if convicted on all counts Andrew could serve ninety-nine years in prison. That sounded good to me.

  Antonio Perez had a hospital stay ahead of him, under guard, prior to meeting justice. He didn’t say anything, but Andrew did after finding out what lay in store for him.

  I got a call from Samuel P. Lovett, the district attorney of Creed County. He shared the suspicion that once the Toros aligned themselves with MS13 they added sex trafficking to their resume, and so at some point Perez and Andrew had become acquainted while stalking possible targets. Lovett surmised that Andrew had probably signed on with enthusiasm, since it meant the victims would disappear without his having to kill them and dispose of the bodies.