Most traces of the smash-up and ensuing conflagration had been removed, but a sizeable gash could be seen in the giant oak, and the ground was still charred where the gas tank had exploded. My first thought surprised me: I wished that the injury to the tree did not prove fatal to it. It was a magnificent oak, even now while just partially leaved. Then, purposefully, I reviewed the events of that night. When my pulse had subsided and my breathing had become normal, I knew that I’d taken a step that would improve my mental health regarding the death of Ernest.
I continued on to the road that led to Harry’s house and hung a left turn. Several miles later the road leading to the nudist colony forked off to the right; half a mile further on I came to a private road that apparently went directly to the ranch, as I could just make out what seemed to be one of the outbuildings about half a mile away. I dared not go closer. In fact, I was engaging in risky behavior as it was, for Harry would surely recognize me if he happened by.
The ground on either side of the road was flat—no surprise, it being Florida. As far as I dared explore, it was not swampy—a pleasant surprise, it being Florida. Properly clothed and equipped with a flashlight, I’d be able to case the house at night with little fear of discovery.
I drove into Lakeland and bought a pair of black jeans, a black shirt and black sneakers. At a camping supplies store I purchased a flashlight with a shutter and fresh batteries.
It was dusk when I got back to the Raphael. I was hurrying to snag a parking space when I saw a sight that nearly caused me to flatten an overconfident pedestrian. Two women were standing beside a minivan parked under a light pole. One of them was counting a wad of bills. The other held a sleeping child in her arms. Even in the poor light I recognized the child as Ashley’s daughter Jeanne-Renée.
CHAPTER 29
The woman carrying Jeanne-Renée laid her in the van and climbed in behind her. The other woman took the wheel and carefully backed the vehicle into the traffic lane. For a brief moment I thought, “Hey, I was hired to find Ashley, not her kid,” but logic prevailed. If I followed Jeanne-Renée, I might find Ashley, and anyway, I saw it as my duty to protect the child. I positioned my car to follow them.
I had two ideas as to what was happening. Ashley may simply have hired these women to child-sit Jeanne-Renée while she pursued her interest in Harry. More sinister, the women had kidnapped Jeanne-Renée for ransom. The sheaf of bills that the one woman was counting was far too large for childcare unless she’d been paid in small denominations—hardly Ashley’s style.
The van took an all too familiar route. By the time we were halfway to Lakeland, I began to think that I was wading in waters far deeper than I’d expected. They had to be going to Harry’s house. The coincidence was too great otherwise.
I’d been tailing them long enough to draw their attention if they were wary, even though I’d stayed back as far as I dared. When the van sped past the BP station I took a gamble that they were indeed headed for Harry’s. I turned off to take the shortcut I’d discovered a few hours earlier. That would put me ahead of them and at the same time allay any suspicions they may have harbored about being followed.
If I was wrong about their destination, I’d call the police immediately and inform them of the kidnapping. At least I knew what direction they were taking. With all this going through my head I sped along that road of doom. There wasn’t room in my thoughts to appreciate that I wasn’t handcuffed to the wheel and in mortal fear. I didn’t even notice the gashed oak at the road’s bend.
When I reached the road that led to Harry’s, I was certain that I’d gotten ahead of the van, providing I was right about its destination. I pulled off the road and doused my lights to wait, fighting irresistible urges to smoke, bite my nails, or chew off my lower lip.
Two extraordinarily long minutes later, the van cruised past. I pulled back onto the pavement with headlights off to follow them from afar, and to assure myself that they had indeed turned onto the spur leading to Harry’s ranch. I drove slowly up to the fork in the road and once again pulled off the pavement, this time to cogitate.
I should have called the cops immediately. I had my cell phone. Why didn’t I? On the one hand, I was afraid that Ashley, and now her daughter, might have their lives put in jeopardy if they were in Harry’s power when the cops showed up to make polite inquiries. On the other hand, I could imagine that Ashley and hirelings had Harry strung up by the balls, a fate with which I was not entirely unsympathetic, but which the cops might misinterpret if they stumbled in. My client hired me both to find and protect his daughter. Getting her killed, or getting her arrested, wasn’t what he had in mind. I needed to check more closely into the situation before acting.
My skulking clothes were in the back seat in their original packaging. I cut off labels and price tags, slipped out of what I was wearing and donned my nighttime ninja warrior duds. Because I’d come to Florida directly from Turkey, I didn’t have my much-missed automatic. Instead, I was armed with a flashlight and my wits. I’d take the gun any day.
I walked stealthily into the fields surrounding Harry’s property, thankful that I had explored earlier and found the land dry. As I crept smugly along in my black ninja suit, it dawned on me that, duh, I’d done nothing about my blond hair—that is, my shiny, lustrous blond hair that reflected every photon of light within miles. I pulled my black shirt up over my head, exposing my midriff, and continued skulking, looking every bit like a ninja moron.
I moved cautiously toward the main house, bent low, slipping from shadow to shadow. Several vehicles were parked in the front, including the van that had transported Jeanne-Renée. I approached the house from its darkest side. There was activity within and I could hear voices, both male and female, but I couldn’t discern individual words.
I was outside a room that was completely dark and most likely unoccupied for the moment. I cut away the screen and tried to open the window. It wasn’t locked but it made a distinct creaking sound as I lifted it. A dog barked and something inside changed. I retreated to the woods and a moment later I heard a voice say what sounded like “sook, Adolf.”
Adolf “sooked” all right and the next thing I knew the largest German shepherd I’d ever seen was cantering straight at me. I lowered myself into a crouch to receive his leap, but instead he ran up and grabbed my wrist, the same tortured wrist so recently sewed together. I had the brief bizarre thought that the plastic surgeon would chew me out for being careless with her handiwork, but I needn’t have worried. Adolf locked his jaws around the wrist just firmly enough to keep me in place, but without breaking the skin.
“Helta, Adolf,” cried the voice, or so it sounded to me. “Nice boy,” I cooed, and reached with my other hand to scratch behind his ears. Dogs are usually suckers for that, but Adolf growled in a manner that said, “This is business, don’t fuck with me.” When I tried to release my wrist from his grasp he bore down just a smidgen and growled deep in his throat. I was as good as handcuffed again, and my current captor was undoubtedly brighter than my former one, the late Ernest.
Within seconds Adolf’s boss came running up, brandishing a short-barreled revolver. “Frei!” he commanded, and the brute let go. “Setz!” said the man, and Adolf sat. “Gut, gut,” he complimented the dog. With Adolf watching alertly, the man frisked me and ordered me to precede him toward the house. His Schwarzenegger accent confirmed that he was speaking some form of German to the shepherd. Won’t Harry be surprised to see me, I thought bitterly and correctly.
“Well, well, if it isn’t little Susan what’s-her-name,” said Harry. “This is a surprise. You may not’ve been drinking and driving, but you sure are gonna get hurt. In fact, I’m gonna make a lot of money off a snuff video showing you tortured to death, enough for me to retire. You can think on that while we wrap up current business. You watch her, Ernst, like a hawk. She’s Miss Trickery-slippery.”
Ernst, German for Ernest. Two bodyguards with English names of Ernest. Didn’t someone wr
ite a play about two Ernests? With a play on the spelling of Ernest and earnest? I couldn’t remember, and as the idea echoed through my mind it irked me that my brain, threatened with imminent extinction, could find nothing better to think about. This latest Ernest was larger and smarter than the one who had died in the passenger seat of his own car. Even if I eluded him and escaped from the house, I’d have to contend with Adolf.
I was in a room with eight or nine other people. Neither of the two women who had brought Jeanne-Renée, nor the child herself, was present. Video cameras were set up in every corner. Bright lights focused on a central stage consisting of a large round bed covered with red satin sheets and half a dozen pillows with floral designs.
“Quiet, shooting,” someone cried. The two women from the van escorted a dazed, dark-skinned, barely clad boy to the bed. He was tranquilized to a point of stupefaction. They probably used Thorazine, or a drug of that family, to ensure compliance from their subjects. A man came onto the set who “seduced” the boy in a sequence of 20 or so, carefully choreographed, sexually explicit, scenes. Two handheld cameras moved to tape the action from different angles, while three stationary cameras rolled continuously. The final gay-kiddy-porn video would be assembled in the editing room.
From time to time during the shooting the boy muttered. It seemed like incoherent babbling at first, but after a while I realized he was saying, or chanting, or praying, something in Kurdish, a language that I’d heard spoken in Turkey when growing up there. I didn’t understand Kurdish—it’s quite different from Turkish—but I recognized it. While I pondered that mystery, I waited alertly for an opportunity to escape. I’d rather take my chances with Adolf than the sadistic Harry, but Ernst knew his job.
A technician reloaded the cameras. I was to get a reprieve while they shot another sequence. It appeared that Harry himself would be the star of the next movie, for he stripped to the buff, not in the least mindful of his audience. Indeed, he seemed to be anticipating his part with gusto, for his genitals weren’t in the shrunken state of an embarrassed man.
The director called for quiet and the two women escorted the latest victim into the pitiless light of center stage. It shouldn’t have surprised me in the least that it was a wholly somnambulant, mercifully semi-conscious Jeanne-Renée. I watched, horrified, as Harry began to exploit her in a series of scenes. He went slowly, exaggerating every movement, directing the hand-held cameras to assume specific angles and distances. Each scene became raunchier, with Harry becoming increasingly aroused.
I couldn’t stand it. I had to intervene and scream that he was abusing his own daughter. Perhaps others in the room would be so outraged that they’d help me. But these were hardened pornographers, used to the grossest kinds of sexploitation. A paralysis of indecision overcame me. I felt that the next moment, then the next, and the next after that, would be more opportune. The sequence of scenarios led at last to a scene where Harry was placing the hapless child on his lap. I drew a deep breath and prepared to spring into action, heedless of the consequences, when the sirens sounded. A hugely amplified voice penetrated the room with orders to lay down arms and exit the compound. Outside, lights from a platoon of law enforcement vehicles illuminated the grounds. Powerful shoulders were battering down the front door.
Harry tossed Jeanne-Renée aside and ordered the crew to destroy the videotapes. Ernst shifted his attention from guarding me to saving his own skin, and darted into another room. I snatched up the video camera that the cameraman had abandoned in a rush to escape and released the tape. Harry spotted me as I pocketed the evidence and leapt toward me.
The square-jawed man with a crew cut intercepted him, doubled him over with a stomach kick, dropping him to his knees, and then stunned him with a double rabbit punch. He grabbed my elbow and hissed “this way.” I let him lead me because it seemed the best of bad choices. Behind us, cops swarmed through the house.
My last glimpse of the set was of a policewoman throwing a coat over the cataleptic Jeanne-Renée, and of two officers subduing Harry while self-consciously trying not to touch his still half-erect penis.
We passed through a long corridor and exited the house via a side door, where the two women were waiting for him. To my surprise, they were speaking Turkish to each other, but so excitedly that I couldn’t understand.
My rescuer said, “I warned you that our next encounter would not be pleasant.” He had what I thought was a cell phone in his hand. He pointed it at me and pressed a button. Two antennae popped out, looking like the newly formed antlers of a young buck. The moment the probes touched me I collapsed, breathless and numb, shocked by a hundred thousand volts from the stun gun.
I didn’t lose consciousness, but the Taser had sent powerful T-waves through my body, jamming the nervous system and causing incapacitation. My brain started to work in a few seconds, but the frantic signals it sent to my limbs were scrambled, and I lay helpless barely able to breathe.
He removed the videotape from my pocket and inserted it into his own. Then he lifted me to his shoulder as if I was a sack of potatoes and carried me across the yard to the stables. He opened one of the stalls and laid me down on some hay in a corner, propped up in a sitting position. I was a rag doll, legs straight out in front of me, feet tilted apart, arms at the side, shoulders slumped and head lolling.
He kneeled down so we were face-to-face and said, “I’m going to lock you in the stall. In an hour or two, you’ll be strong enough to climb out.” He indicated a high transom with a head movement. “When you do, I strongly suggest you follow my earlier advice. I do not bear you ill will, Ms. Jamison, but you do tend to get underfoot.”
I was able to make some weak sounds, but I couldn’t form words. Apart from wanting to say, “fuck you, asshole,” I wanted to ask what had become of the child, and where Ashley was, for I was sure he knew the answer to both questions.
The two women had followed us to the stable. They had calmed to the point where I could understand their Turkish, except now they were whispering. They sounded as if they were talking about Harry, and I thought I heard the Turkish expression that I would translate “hoist with his own petard,” or perhaps, “what goes around, comes around.” Languages do not translate seamlessly. In the next moment the stable door swung shut. A hasp creaked over a staple, and a padlock rattled into place and latched. The sound of their footsteps faded away.
I heard the occasional start of an engine and the sound of tires on gravel as one by one the police vehicles departed. My whole body felt oddly anesthetized from the electric jolt. When I tried to move an arm, it felt “asleep,” like it had been slept on half the night. I focused on my fingers, flexing first one, then another, then a whole fist. I practiced clenching and unclenching my hands. Now I tried to rotate my wrists, and I could. And I could move them up and down, too. Moving my arms became possible, but I was so weak that tears of frustration filled my eyes. At one point I stopped trying to move and let the tears flow freely, tracking down my cheeks and salting my lips.
I resumed the struggle with better success. I could move my right arm, then my left. I could feel my toes, twitch my ankles, and flex my knees. Finally, I toppled onto my side. I lay there panting, my cheek pressed into the hay that covered the stable floor. My nose filled with the smell of horses and their excreta, but I was beyond minding odors. I managed to rise to my hands and knees, my arms quivering. I paused, gasping for breath and thankful that I was physically fit. Finally, I was able to wobble to my feet and remain upright, fighting off the dizziness that would have me totter and fall.
It was at least an hour before the transom stopped looking like Mt. Everest, though it wasn’t but twelve feet above me. There were plenty of hand- and footholds, but my arms and legs were too weak to raise the weight of my body. Finally, with frequent pauses to catch my breath, I was able to inch my way up and squirm through the opening. I hung by my fingertips along the outside wall of the barn, stretching downward to minimize the fall. I let go and dro
pped the remaining five feet, ending up on my butt because my legs were so unsteady.
I was sitting on the ground, resting, when I heard a snuffling sound. I looked up and sucked in my breath. Slinking toward me from out of the shadows was Adolf. The vitreous gleam of his eyes and his half-opened jaw made him look every bit the Hound of the Baskervilles. From my sitting perspective he appeared even larger than I remembered, and in that posture I was entirely defenseless.
He crept within a few feet and stopped. I stayed very still and avoided direct eye contact, but, viewing him asquint, I could see he was doing the same thing: avoiding eye contact and acting cautious. His ears were folded back and his head and tail were lowered. Without Ernst to command him, he was a lost and leaderless dog. When I stood up, he did nothing hostile, but continued to eye me obliquely.
I had to relax and try to remember the German words that Ernst used, and for which Adolf was trained. “Sit” was setz, I thought I remembered, so I said, “Adolf, setz!” (I knew from dog obedience class that you first call out the dog’s name, and then give the command.) The beast sat. “Good dog,” I said, but then remembered the German: “Gut, gut, Adolf,” I tried again, and he seemed pleased. I reached over to scratch behind his ears. This time he welcomed the attention, leaning into my hand. Adolf had accepted me, at least for the moment, as his new pack leader.
It was a long and, in my condition, exhausting walk back to the car. I was just in sight of the highway where I’d parked when something red glinted under my feet. I bent to pick up the butt of a designer cigarette. I placed it in a shirt pocket.
My car was far enough away from the scene of the crime to have escaped unwanted attention from the cops. By the time we reached it, I could barely crawl. Adolf willingly jumped into the back seat, while I lay down in the front. We both slept until the coming of dawn awoke us.
On the drive back to Orlando we stopped for breakfast. Adolf was still docile, accepting me as “Alpha,” but to secure my rank I needed to feed him. All that the convenience store had in the way of dog food was puppy chow. Adolf didn’t mind. He was a bit of an oversized puppy that happened to be trained as a police dog, not unlike some of the kids I knew in Raleigh, who happened to be trained as cops.
Where Evil Lurks Page 23
