by Nick Thacker
It took every ounce of strength and mental fortitude not to shoot the guy in the kneecaps, then the elbows, then the head, maybe a few minutes later, just to watch him suffer. It wasn’t about the handgun, either. Even though the pistol would attract unwanted attention if I discharged here, it was about more than that.
It was about Hannah.
I’m not sure when I’d stopped caring about the money and started doing it just because it was her, but I knew it was the truth. Staring down at the hired hand of a man who now had Hannah Rayburn in his possession, I could think of nothing else than getting her back.
I didn’t care about my own father, I didn’t care about his money, and I didn’t care about this guy enough to even make it painful for him.
“Get out,” I said, forcing the words out through my teeth. I turned and nodded to Joey.
The man struggled a bit, trying to wake up a sleeping appendage or something, then pulled his neck and shoulders sideways and started to lift them up.
I waited until his head had gotten out of the trunk and up a little bit, then I reached up and slammed the hatch door as hard as I could.
There were two bumps, one from his skull on the inside of the hatch door, and another for his body as it slumped unconscious once again. I checked that the trunk was closed tightly, then watched Joey come over with the keys.
“That ought to do it,” I said, reaching for the keys. “You know the drill. Take him out, string him up, and dump him. Be clean, be careful. Put one through his head if he whines too much, but otherwise keep the gun out of the picture.”
Joey was already in motion, taking the pistol back from me and guarding the trunk when I opened it. The man was bleeding from two spots now, but he appeared to still be breathing. We rolled him over and picked him up out of the trunk, and Joey threw him over his shoulder. He was heavier than the kid from yesterday had been, but Joey didn’t even seem to notice the massive, sloppy weight that had been added. He was stocky, and wide enough to make it work.
I walked over to the gate I’d used for my phone call earlier and forced it open, this time kicking out the earth that had piled up on the other side so it would open wider. Joey navigated through with the unconscious man’s body on him, then started back toward the bar. There was a path, barely noticeable unless you knew where to look, starting there somewhere and winding around to the coast. It was the path he’d taken when he’d gotten rid of the first guy, the younger kid, so he probably had the bleach and other supplies down there already, stashed in one of the cupboards inside the skiff. The bleach helped remove anything that could be dredged up later, like fingerprints on eyeglasses or shoe leather, and even though the ocean did a more than fine job of that itself, I always erred on the side of caution.
I watched Joey until he disappeared into the woods, nothing but a black shadow swirling around and becoming one of many. In another few seconds, I couldn’t even hear him.
I walked back to the steps, sat down where he had been waiting earlier, and watched the fence, hoping that I wouldn’t soon be hearing a gunshot.
27
THE LONGER I WENT WITHOUT new information, the further out of reach Hannah would be. I had told her the truth; I wasn’t a private investigator. I wasn’t a cop, or a detective. I wasn’t trained to put pieces together and hunt down a killer, or find a kidnapped child. I knew what I knew — I was good at that stuff, always had been. But I also knew what I didn’t know.
The problem was that I’d exhausted my options. Joey was good for a sidekick, but he needed direction and assignment. My father had proven how helpful he would be, and it had gotten us nowhere. Possibly even made things worse. And my contact in Washington had already explained to me that to meddle with his investigation was going to get me killed. Or worse, locked up.
So I was out of assets. I had myself, and I had the small amount of knowledge of the situation. I was running low on money, as my bank would start auto-drafting the month’s mortgage payment early next week and my utility payments would be due shortly thereafter. My apartment had a rent as well, and even though it was cheap it wasn’t nothing. I couldn’t exactly afford to build an arsenal anywhere, pay for help, or spend the money traveling around and figuring things out.
Hunting Island was just a little over a stone’s throw (if you could throw a stone exactly five miles) from Edisto Beach, but there were no bridges that spanned the five miles. Instead, 174 connected to 17, then to 21, which shot east and south again, reaching through to Hunting Island and the Atlantic Ocean just beyond. It was a two-hour drive that could be crammed into one-and-a-half if one was dedicated and lucky enough to miss any police.
Didn’t matter how long it took, I’d decided, Hunting Island was in my near future. I was already making plans as I headed out to Joey’s car. I needed to leave him a note, letting him know the next steps I wanted him to take. Mainly it was keeping the bar open and afloat, but there were some other things as well. There were people after me, so I didn’t want to let him continue on without a watchful eye on the door. If he saw anyone suspicious hanging around or asking about me, I instructed him to call me immediately. Likewise if he got any strange questions or looks in general while tending the bar.
The plan was to head to my place, to get a couple hours of sleep before heading down to Hunting Island to snoop around. I was hoping to still get to Hunting Island early morning, before it was light, so I’d be able to walk around the property without being seen if the need arose, which meant I had only a couple of hours of sleep available.
Before I drove southwest across town to my place, however, I needed to stop by and check on Hannah’s brother. He hadn’t ever spoken to me, but I felt somewhat responsible for getting his sister kidnapped. She’d sworn me to secrecy about the details surrounding her father’s death, which meant for whatever reason she didn’t think he could handle the disturbing truth of her father’s business.
Which meant she thought he was as innocent as she was. That was fine with me — I had no interest in trying to explain the details to anyone else, so I figured I’d just check in on him, see if he’d started to worry about his sister yet. I would tell him a little bit about it, just so he understood the magnitude of the situation and to try to get him to understand that calling the cops was a very bad idea, and I would stand there in his doorway and wait until he agreed with me.
I didn’t think I’d need to rough him up at all, as that might be counterproductive, but my feeling was that if he was actually as fragile as he’d seemed in the bar and as innocent as Hannah was portraying him, he wouldn’t really be in a state of mind to offer much help or resistance. So I needed to get to him, make him understand the basics, and give him the instructions. Don’t call the cops, don’t try to get involved, don’t even leave the apartment.
He’d nod his head, solemnly, and tell me to get her back. He might even be shaking, trying to push down the fear.
Hopefully.
That was if everything went the way it was supposed to. That was if he cooperated.
I hated third parties when it came to stuff like this. Previous victims, siblings, witnesses, they all created problems and extra variables that I didn’t want to deal with. They were sometimes loose cannons, trying to do things they weren’t trained or prepared for.
In all, it created a hell of a mess, and I was hoping Daniel Rayburn wouldn’t be a mess.
28
I DROVE UP TO MARLEY’S for the third time that week and parked along the curb. I got out of Joey’s car and started up the steps, heading toward the porch. I involuntarily relived my previous experience as I saw the same shrubs, the same garden, the same dark shadows falling in the same way across the wide lawn. The two grunts who’d come at me, at us, and had taken Hannah.
I shuddered, then stepped onto the porch.
Something didn’t feel right — I knew it as soon as my hand reached out and grabbed at the handle. The great wooden door was leaning a bit, closed but somehow crooked. I focuse
d my attention closer on the wood around the door until I realized what was wrong.
The old, dried wood frame surrounding the door was cracked and splitting just about all over it, a symptom of age and lack of upkeep. I’d never been this close to Marley’s front door, but I figured it was a typical feel for a door that was over a century old. The problem was that there was another crack in the door. I could tell that it was newer.
The crack started at the top of the jamb, near the ninety-degree joint that started into the horizontal framing, and fell straight down and widened, opening up to almost a half-inch across where the handle and strike met. The strike itself was fractured, and had slid backwards on a screw and was partly visible.
I reached for the handle, turned it, and pushed. The door wouldn’t give, but it wasn’t locked. I could see the strike, which meant the door wasn’t even fully closed, so I pushed again. It was stuck hard, so I backed away and gave it a shoulder-jab on my right side and felt the splintering wood crack and bow a bit, then finally give way to the large door. It fell open then on a single hinge, smacked against the floor as it slid open, and a few pieces of wood that had been previously broken fell away into the house.
Someone had come in here already, taking the brutish break-down-the-door approach, and they’d left me with a partly closed door that was held together only with its own weight and the pressure of the slot the door had been designed to fit in. As soon as I’d forced it open once again, the structural integrity of the whole thing had been compromised.
The door fell away, losing its balance on the single remaining hinge and it twisted away from me, buckling the last hinge off its screws and falling with a huge thud onto the entranceway floor.
I waited, listening.
No one yelled or responded. I stepped farther into the house. The entranceway was immaculate, just as I’d seen it pictured online. The spot I was standing in offered me the best view of the majority of the layout, including an unobstructed view of the top level. The entranceway split off both directions, a small sitting room on my left, and a tiny open den area on my right. The den had a fireplace, one of three I remember seeing pictured. The other two were alongside the back wall of the house, one in a large master bedroom and the other in a larger, spacious living area on the main floor.
There was a stairway to my right, inside the front room there, and I knew there was another one on the other side of the house, starting in the main living area and ascending right up to the left of where I was standing now. The top level of the house was all bedrooms, each accessible by the square-shaped hallway that ran around the second story. A wraparound porch gave each of the bedrooms double doors to outside. It was a perfect example of the southern-style homes I loved.
I felt the urge to scrap the plans I’d made and just sleep here for the night. It seemed like no one was home anyway, but I knew better. Whoever had come in here had done it wanting something. Wanting something bad enough they had decided it wasn’t worth waiting for the old man to let them in. They’d come barging in, destroying the front door, and had done something inside.
The ‘something’ was the part I was beginning to wonder about.
“Marley?” I yelled. “You in here?”
I had never met his wife, but I’d always heard the locals say he was married, so I assumed there was a Mrs. Marley somewhere inside as well. I called out again, and didn’t hear anything.
I walked toward that room now, still listening intently for any out-of-place noises. Or any noises at all.
I walked by a small vase, seated atop a tiny four-legged table against the left wall. It was directly beneath a portrait of a woman seated in front of Marley. He was standing, smiling at the photographer, but she was stoic and expressionless. The picture was on a textured canvas, the raised paint perfectly spread on the canvas, the telltale sign of a photograph that had been rendered as a painting for economy purposes.
Mrs. Marley, I thought as I stared at the painting and the vase on the table. I didn’t need a look inside to know where the old lady had ended up.
That meant there were at least two more people in the house unaccounted for.
I walked on, stepping down once to get into the main living area in the back of the house, and found one of the people.
29
MARLEY HIMSELF WAS SEATED IN a rustic armchair, burgundy leather and brass knobs on all the seams. He was wearing a robe, with a white t-shirt peering out from underneath it, and his feet were on the floor in front of him.
Everything in the room seemed picture-perfect, including the man himself, but that was the problem. Everything was still, exactly like a photograph. Even sleeping, Marley should have been moving a little. It was dark in the room, so I walked over and flicked on a light switch using my sleeve. The room flashed on in bright orange light, and I could tell immediately what was off.
Mr. Marley was sitting, his eyes were closed, and his chin was down. In the dark it had seemed as though the man was sleeping, just catching a nap after a nightcap or late-night snack before heading off to bed. But I knew the truth now.
The light had illuminated the horrible hole in Marley’s head. The one that had splattered the inside of his head up onto the back of the tall chair and a little bit onto the wallpapered wall behind it. The hole I could see was small, nearly invisible in the dark, but there would be another one — a much larger one — on the other side. I didn’t need to see it, and I didn’t want to.
I backed up, nearly tripping over the single step into the living room, and turned away. I didn’t bother turning out the light — I’d already seen the dead guy. It was seared into the back of my eyes, forever stamped on my brain. I’d seen dead bodies before, and I would see them again, but every now and then there’s one that takes you by surprise. You half-expect you might see them, then you do, and you realize you didn’t expect it at all.
I sniffed, realizing the body hadn’t begun to stink yet, and then walked back to the opposite corner of the room where the stairs came down. It hadn’t been long since the man had been shot, probably only minutes. I had a feeling I wouldn’t find Daniel Rayburn inside, but I needed to know. There were three options. He wouldn’t have stayed here if someone had broken in to rob the place or just to shoot Marley. If it had been a breaking and entering, and they’d found Marley on the chair and just shot him to silence him, Daniel would have waited until they left and then ran to the police. Another option was he would have called the police from his room after hearing the shot, and this place would be swarming (with the two officers on night duty in Edisto). Or they were still on their way, Daniel was still in the room, which meant I needed to get up there, find him, and then get back out before they arrived.
All of those options were for events that hadn’t transpired, however. I knew the truth: they hadn’t come for Marley, and they hadn’t come to rob him.
They’d come for Daniel.
I rushed up the stairs, two at a time, only then realizing that I still wasn’t armed. I was asking to get shot, it seemed. I made a note to stop and grab a piece before I left for Hunting Island in a couple hours.
At the top of the stairs I was faced with the left-right decision the hallway offered. Since there were rooms all along the hallway around the second story, I wasn’t sure which one would have been Daniel’s and Hannah’s, or if they would have slept in separate rooms. I also didn’t remember how many rooms were up here. There were two small rooms downstairs, both off the main living room, which meant there should be space for at least six more up here.
I chose right. I carefully walked along the old wood floor, staying on the edge against the hallway wall to prevent any squeaking or creaking. The first room was to my left, and the door was hanging open a bit. I peered in, found it empty, and then continued along my journey around the top level.
The next two rooms were connected in the middle by a single door, and both were empty. Marley hadn’t had a lot of business in the last year or so, and I wondered if h
is late wife had been the main driving force behind the bed and breakfast’s existence. He might have kept the place running in honor of her, or because he didn’t know anything better. This week, it seemed, he had only two guests.
The fourth room, on the opposite side of the house from the stairs I’d come up on, looked to be the same size as the first one I’d checked. I paused outside this room, as the door was shut. It wasn’t locked. I turned it, slowly, the antique glass knob small and cold in my hand. I was afraid I would break it off if I gripped it any harder, but I finally got the knob turned enough to push the door open a crack without making a sound.
I gathered my confidence, feeling the adrenaline already beginning to rush in. There was a dead man sitting in a chair on the floor below me, I was tracking down a woman who had been kidnapped, and I was trying to do it before the cops got involved. I didn’t need to be holding a gun to know that I’d be a substantial force to fight in this state.
I pushed the door a bit more and it creaked. Softly, but it was like a cannon firing in the still night air. I sucked in a breath, then waited. I pushed it all the way open, realizing that anyone still waiting inside the room would have spoken or shot at me by now.
The door was open, and I glanced from the left to the right. The left side of the room was clean, empty. So was the right, but it was another two-room space. The door connecting the rooms was standing open a crack. I walked in, past the huge bed that sat against the back window. As I came around to the door, I saw a suitcase lying on the floor on the side of the bed. I stopped, turning down to peer at it closer.
