Stranded

by Alex Kava

  “What are you willing to do?” The voice wouldn’t shut off. “What are you willing to do to survive?”

  Noah bit his lip and tried to ignore the voice. He worked the sock up over his ankle, wincing from the pain. This was nothing, he told himself. Then he saw blood drip down. He saw the bright red fall onto the white bedsheet and panic fluttered inside his stomach. A second drop joined it before he realized it was his own. He was biting his lip so hard he had made it bleed.

  There was a commotion in the hallway and Noah turned. A uniformed officer had joined Detective Lopez. They were looking at something, trying to keep it away from Noah’s father.

  Then suddenly he heard his father say, “Oh my dear God!”

  And Noah felt the panic surge from his stomach to his heart and lungs. He didn’t want to know what had shocked his father. But he saw Detective Lopez look at him and even from the doorway Noah could sense the detective’s repulsion and his anger.

  He saw Detective Lopez grab the item out of the officer’s hand. It was something inside a plastic ziplock bag. He marched into the room to stand in front of Noah.

  “They found this inside your friend’s trunk,” Detective Lopez said. “All neat and tucked into a plastic bag. What kind of sick game are you playing?”

  He held the plastic bag up for Noah and everyone else in the room to see.

  Noah heard his father tell his mother, “Don’t look at it.” Then he instructed Noah, “Don’t answer that, Noah. Detective Lopez, my son will not be answering any more questions without his attorney present.”

  Noah stared at the blood-stained sheet of paper that filled the plastic bag. The numbers written on it looked like a phone number. There was only one other thing in the plastic bag and that was what Noah’s father had reacted to. Without needing to look closely, Noah knew exactly what it was. At the bottom of the bag was Ethan’s severed index finger.

  CHAPTER 32

  The minutes felt excruciatingly long to Maggie but every one that went by without an explosion was a relief. Then suddenly without warning Ryder Creed emerged from the barn. He gave them a thumbs-up and a smile, then immediately went to Grace. The dog was still sitting, obviously trained to do so until Creed gave the release command, but her entire hind end was wagging. Creed tapped his right open palm to his chest like he was tapping his heart and Grace came rushing to him.

  “I checked all doors and gates, glanced in the stalls and the hayloft,” he told them, brushing cobwebs from his hair. “I think we’re good to go.”

  Then to Grace, he said, “Go find.” And the dog scampered into the barn, nose in the air.

  Maggie found the search fascinating. Her own dogs had come into her life unexpectedly. Harvey, a white Lab, had belonged to a neighbor whom Maggie had never met. The woman had been brutally taken from her home despite Harvey’s bloodied effort to protect her. Jake, a black German shepherd, had rescued Maggie in the Sandhills of Nebraska. He’d been a stray, refusing to belong to anyone—even to Maggie when she first brought him into her home, digging his way out of the sanctuary she thought she was providing. The two dogs continued to teach her hard lessons about herself, about trust, about life. But she’d never seen a team, dog and master, work so closely together, so in sync, each recognizing the other’s movements, reactions, and expectations.

  She and Tully stayed in the corner where they wouldn’t be in the way. They watched while Creed used the spearlike rod to pierce the dirt of the barn’s floor. He called it “venting” and explained that poking holes into the hard-packed dirt allowed air to circulate and help release any scents, making it easier for Grace. The dog didn’t seem to need it. With her nose in the air she walked the barn like she was breaking up the area into a grid. She didn’t rush around erratically, but instead went up and down, along the side, and worked back and forth in almost perfect parallel lines.

  With each sweep Grace appeared to get more and more animated. At one point she stopped and pawed at the straw and dirt. She sniffed it again, turned, and urinated on the spot. Then she moved on.

  Creed had been right beside her. He bent down to take a closer look and said to Maggie and Tully, “Dead mouse.”

  “You think that’s all she’s been smelling?” Tully asked.

  “No, she’s trained for human remains.”

  “But maybe this confused her?” This time Tully sounded like he thought this was all a waste of time.

  “Dead animals are just a distraction. That’s why she peed on it. It’s her way of marking over that scent.”

  And Grace had, indeed, moved on. Maggie noticed her breathing was more rapid. Her ears pricked forward. Suddenly her tail went straight out and started wagging. She was scratching under one of the stall doors. There were three stalls side by side at the back of the barn. The wooden doors didn’t come all the way to the floor, leaving about three inches. The doors were about chest-high, making it difficult to see into the stalls.

  Creed shot a nervous look at Maggie and Tully.

  “I checked the doors but I didn’t go into the stalls.”

  To Grace, he said, “Just a minute, girl,” and he ran a hand over the hinges, rechecked the latch, and leaned over the top of the door to look inside the stall.

  In the meantime, Grace had become more animated, her nose up and sniffing. She was impatient, hackles raised and ready. But when Creed pulled up the latch and opened the stall door, the dog hesitated. She took a few steps in and backed out. Then she turned and looked up at Creed.

  The look actually sent a chill down Maggie’s back. The dog stared directly into her master’s eyes and held that stance like she was telling him, “Here’s what we’ve been looking for.”

  “Good girl, Grace.” Without looking away, Creed put out his hand in Maggie’s direction and said, “Could I have the elephant, please?”

  At first Maggie had no idea what he was talking about. Then she realized she still had Grace’s pink toy gripped in her left hand. She walked over slowly and gently placed the elephant in Creed’s outstretched hand. He, in turn, held it up for Grace to see. She immediately relaxed, started wagging again, only not at the frantic pace as moments earlier. She was back to being a dog wanting to have her reward.

  “Good girl, Grace,” Creed said again and tossed her the toy.

  Grace caught it, making it squeak. Maggie couldn’t help thinking how contradictory that playful sound seemed after finding what could be yet another grave.

  Creed let Grace romp around but he didn’t attempt to enter the stall. Finally he backed away from the open stall door and looked at Maggie and Tully.

  “I’m not trained to be part of the dig,” he told them.

  Tully still didn’t look convinced that there was anything to be dug up. Maggie walked over to take a look. The area inside was about ten feet wide by ten feet deep. From what she could see in the dim light, the floor looked no different from that in the rest of the barn. She couldn’t see any mounds or depressions in the dirt. The straw on top matched the straw in the rest of the barn and it didn’t look as though it had been disturbed. There was no trace, no hint of blood or residue, from a putrefied corpse. The wooden trough had been left filled up and covered with an old horse blanket. The five-gallon metal bucket beside it had a dusty lid still tightly in place.

  She glanced behind her and saw that Creed had taken Grace out of the barn. She could see him tossing the pink elephant and Grace racing after it. Tully had stayed on the other side of the barn but he had his cell phone to his ear now. He was telling someone—most likely the sheriff—to bring a digging crew. Even as he explained the situation she could hear the skepticism in his voice despite his best effort to disguise it.

  Maggie stepped farther into the stall and wondered if Grace could be mistaken. Now inside, she could smell a strong rancid odor that she suspected was horse manure. Then she remembered what Creed had said when Grace had found the dead mouse. Any other scent was a mere distraction. Grace had been trained to find human rem
ains, not dead animals and certainly not animal manure. Just then Maggie realized what she was smelling.

  Her eyes darted to the bucket. Five gallons, metal, and sealed. The smell couldn’t be coming from it and yet just the thought of what could be inside made her mouth go dry and her stomach do a flip.

  She pulled a pair of latex gloves out of her jacket pocket and slipped them on as she approached the wooden trough. With an index finger she poked the middle of the heap under the thick wool blanket.

  Something solid. Definitely not horse feed.

  She found a corner of the blanket and started to peel it back but stopped when it resisted and sounded like separating Velcro. That small effort had already leaked more of the rancid odor.

  Maggie glanced over her shoulder again. Tully was still on the phone. Creed and Grace were out far enough that the squeaky sounds were in the distance.

  She tugged at the corner of the wool blanket again, wincing at the sound and smell but continuing, slowly, inch by inch. The putrefied flesh had melted into the weave of the blanket and as she pulled it back, she was also pulling away a layer of skin. The thick wool had attempted to mummify the body, but peeling it off had started to release the gases.

  Maggie had to step away. Her pulse had begun racing. She needed to get her bearings. She turned and took a few gulps of air from outside the stall. It helped to settle her nerves. Then she went back to work. Again, carefully and slowly, she teased the wool away until she identified a forearm. That was enough. She was certain it was a dead body. She would leave it for the forensic investigators.

  Before she stepped away, she saw bright red and blue. Because she had peeled away a layer of skin the tattoo had become even brighter. She knew that was true of tattoos since the ink pooled down below the top layer of skin. They were valuable in IDing bodies. It made sense not to wait. She was this close already. At least she could take a look at it.

  She tugged the wool away until she could see the entire image—an eagle head with piercing eyes over a prominent beak. Stenciled above on two lines was STURGIS 2000.

  Maggie stopped. Stood back.

  The son of a bitch was telling the truth.

  Otis P. Dodd was right about there being a body in the barn. And it looked like he was right about it being a tattooed biker.

  CHAPTER 33

  By late afternoon the quiet farmstead was no longer quiet. Maggie’s and Tully’s roles were quickly reduced to traffic control and site management. The crime scene techs, Janet, Matt, and Ryan, had arrived again from Omaha with their mobile lab. Agent Alonzo had told them that an FBI agent from the Omaha field office would also be making his way up, but so far they hadn’t seen or heard from him.

  Grace had alerted to five other sites: one behind an old laundry house, another behind the barn, and three in the woods. Creed had given her a rest after each find, along with her pink elephant and some water. They were walking the pasture now but hadn’t gotten any more hits in the last hour. Creed insisted this would be their last grid of the property.

  Sheriff Uniss had brought an anthropology professor from a nearby university to help direct his deputies on how to dig the places that Grace had alerted. Creed had warned them that the three in the woods could be surrounded by what he called secondary scatter; in other words, pieces of the primary targets. He had marked the primary not only according to Grace’s alerts, but also to his visual observations, pointing out one spot in particular where the wild grasses were only half as tall as those surrounding it.

  Maggie didn’t envy the digging crew. There were at least a dozen of Creed’s fluorescent flags telegraphing sites and some were in hard to reach areas, way off the beaten path.

  The sheriff had sent one of his men to fetch sandwiches for everyone. Maggie and Tully were only getting to theirs. Tully went to get them some bottled waters and sodas while Maggie found them a quiet place at an old picnic table.

  The sun wasn’t quite as warm today but it was another beautiful day, and Maggie was struck by the absurdity—such beauty alongside the macabre. Watching Grace had reminded Maggie of her dogs and she pulled out her cell phone. She pressed the contact number before thinking what time it was or what she might be interrupting. She heard it ring only twice, then was sent to voice mail. She listened to Benjamin Platt’s smooth, deep voice ask her to leave a message at the beep.

  “Hey, it’s Maggie,” she said. “Just checking on my boys. Looks like we’ll be stuck here for a few days. I’ll try and catch you later. Bye.”

  It seemed too casual, almost too abrupt. This was a man she had considered having a serious relationship with only a few months ago. They had become friends so quickly that the next step seemed not just natural, but inevitable. Then they both put the skids on. No, that wasn’t true—Maggie put the skids on. Ben wanted something more permanent. He wanted a family. And kids. She knew he still hurt deeply from losing his little girl despite it being almost five years ago. But Maggie wasn’t sure she’d be able to replace the void Allie’s death had left in Ben’s heart and in his life. And she wasn’t sure she wanted children.

  “I snagged the last Diet Pepsis,” Tully said, coming back with sodas in his hands and bottled waters sticking out from each of his jacket pockets.

  He popped the tabs while Maggie spread out napkins and unwrapped the sandwiches. There was a certain rhythm to their daily rituals, a sure sign they had been spending a lot of time together.

  “Don’t forget to take your antibiotic,” she told him. “And drink water with it. Lots of water.” She uncapped and slid a bottle in front of him.

  “I actually feel better today.”

  “You still have to take it.”

  “You’ve been talking to Gwen.” But he was already digging the plastic bag with the pills out of his trousers pocket. “I hate that she’s going back to talk to Dodd. I don’t care if she insists he’s harmless. I just don’t like her going back there.”

  “Otis is the only one who can tell us who this killer is.”

  “Do you think his name really is Jack?”

  “Doubtful.” She took a bite. The lunch deputy had done good—turkey, provolone, and spicy mustard.

  “Alonzo said that the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was in August,” Tully said. “Sturgis, South Dakota, is about six to seven hours away from here. I-29 north then I-90 west. Alonzo also said attendance was around a half million. Can you believe that?”

  Maggie shook her head. “August seems too long ago.” She pointed to his discarded wrappings. “Aren’t you going to eat your pickle?”

  “Knock yourself out.” He slid the pickle atop the waxed paper to her.

  “Just because he was one of the faithful doesn’t mean that’s when Jack got a hold of him.”

  “How long ago do you think?”

  “The wool blanket makes it tough to say.”

  “He didn’t even bother to bury this one. Is he just getting sloppy?”

  The CSU tech, Ryan, came out of the barn carrying the metal bucket. The picnic table was beside the house about a hundred feet away. When he noticed Maggie, he pointed to the bucket and gave an exaggerated nod, then continued to the mobile lab parked next to the barn.

  “What was that about?” Tully asked.

  “I told him our biker friend’s head might be in the bucket. Guess I was right.”

  “Jack’s starting to be very predictable.”

  Maggie’s cell phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number or the 785 area code.

  “This is Maggie O’Dell.”

  “Ms. O’Dell, my name is Lieutenant Detective Lopez. I’m with the Riley County Police Department in Manhattan, Kansas. Can you please tell me who you are and what the hell your phone number is doing in a plastic bag alongside a missing college student’s finger?”

  CHAPTER 34

  “Just when we thought this scavenger hunt couldn’t get any stranger,” Tully had told Maggie as they started yet another road trip.

  “It might not have anythi
ng to do with our guy Jack.”

  “Your guy Jack,” Tully corrected her.

  Detective Lopez had shared very little, though he seemed to welcome Maggie’s offer of assistance. Actually, Maggie thought the man sounded relieved. What he had told them was that a nineteen-year-old college student named Ethan Ames was still missing. A search team had scoured the woods surrounding the rest area where he had vanished. His friend Noah Waters, who had been with him, was only babbling what amounted to nonsense. But because Detective Lopez believed the boy might be involved in his friend’s disappearance, the father refused to let him answer their questions without a lawyer.

  Lopez explained that Maggie’s cell phone number had been scribbled on a piece of paper and enclosed in a plastic ziplock bag. Also in the bag was what they believed to be the right index finger of Ethan Ames. They had found it when processing the trunk of the teenager’s car. The car had been confiscated from the rest area.

  The last thing the detective said to Maggie before ending their phone conversation was, “So is this some crazy satanic cult?”

  Maggie and Tully had left the Iowa farmstead in the hands of a very young field agent from the Omaha FBI office and the CSU techs. The drive from Sioux City, Iowa, to Manhattan, Kansas, was five to six hours. Maggie took over driving the last half when she noticed Tully fading. They stopped only twice: once for gas and coffee and again for more coffee and to use the restroom. Each time they pulled off the interstate to a truck plaza, Maggie found herself watching and listening and searching.

  It was late and the last 136 miles from Lincoln, Nebraska, was four-lane highway, then two-lane instead of interstate. Lots of small towns slowing them down and long, dark stretches of blacktop lit only by the moon and their headlights. There were few other vehicles on the road.

  By the time they entered Manhattan, Kansas, and passed by the university’s campus, both of them were bleary-eyed and exhausted.