by Donna Ball
“Okay,” I said, before she could say something to make me mad, “you told me to call if I saw Greg Sellers so I’m calling. He was here only a few minutes ago, at my booth at the fair. The thing is, I don’t think he’s the one who stole my purse anymore. He was looking for the transmitter. He thinks I still have it.”
Jolene said tersely, “Is he still there?”
I covered my free ear with my hand to block out some of the noise and music. “No. He wants to meet me later.”
“How long ago did you see him?”
“I don’t know. Five, six minutes.”
I heard her muffle the mouthpiece with her hand and speak to someone, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. It went on longer than I liked and I said, just a little sarcastically, “Hey, sorry to bother you. You told me to call.”
She came back on the line. “Stockton, listen to me. I’m here at a homicide scene. Tony Madison’s CR-V was found a few minutes ago behind the abandoned furniture warehouse on Highway 83. Madison’s body was inside, shot through the chest.”
I managed on a single indrawn breath, “And you think Sellers …?”
“He is a person of very particular interest in this case, yes. Under no circumstances are you to meet with Sellers again. We have a team at the fair now and the sheriff is dispatching two more units. If Sellers is still at the fairgrounds, we’ll find him. Meanwhile, you need to stay away from him.”
My heart was thumping unevenly. Tony Madison, dead. But how could he be? He was the one who had killed April. He had killed three other wives and had fled when he heard the name of Greg Sellers, who knew the truth. Why was he dead?
I said, “Jolene, you didn’t say anything on the police band about April being knocked out before she went into the gorge, did you?”
“What?” Her tone was sharp. “We never discuss details of an investigation on the radio. That’s what our phones are for. Why do you ask that?”
I swallowed hard. “He knows where I live. Sellers. And he thinks the transmitter is at my house.”
There was the briefest of pauses. “We’ll dispatch a unit to your house. You stay put.”
“My dogs are there!”
But she had already hung up. “Damn it,” I whispered. I stared at the phone, not knowing what to do. What if Sellers got there before the deputies did? I wanted to call Corny and warn him, but what would I say? If Corny did know where the transmitter was, he would only take it and run. If he didn’t, what could he do that the police could not?
One thing was certain. I could not stay here while the man who had probably murdered Tony Madison was on his way to my house.
Marshall was using a handful of paper napkins to sponge the cotton candy off of Cameo’s fur when I returned to the booth, and was doing a much better job than I had done. Cisco stood in his crate, watching intently. I wasn’t sure whether he was jealous of the attention or worried about competition for Cameo’s affection.
Marshall glanced up from telling Cameo what a beautiful girl she was, and his smile faded a little when he saw me. “Is everything okay?”
“Um, actually, no.” I glanced around worriedly. “I have to get home. Something’s come up. Listen, I hate to ask, but …” I looked at him apologetically. “My shift isn’t over for half an hour and I can’t leave the booth unmanned … is there any way you could sit here and keep an eye on the donation jar until my relief gets here?”
He lifted an eyebrow, looking amused as he straightened up. “That’s a pretty big favor.”
“This is one of the most popular booths at the fair,” I pointed out, reaching for Cameo’s leash. “And people always vote for animal lovers.”
“How are people going to know I’m an animal lover if you take the dog?”
I was getting a little frantic. Every minute I stayed here was another minute Mischief, Magic, and Pepper—not to mention all the other dogs in the kennel—were vulnerable. And it wasn’t just paranoia. Once a crazy man had set my kennel on fire. Another one had thrown a Molotov cocktail, and yet another had tried to drive his truck through the front of my house. I knew what could happen, and I could not stay here, oblivious, while it did.
I slung the day bag over my shoulder and said quickly, “I’ll take Cameo to the car and be right back for Cisco and the crate. All you have to do is sit here and make sure no one walks off with the donation jar. Thank you so much!”
He replied, “You owe me.”
I waved an acknowledgement and hurried off with Cameo, Cisco barking indignantly after us. I called over my shoulder, “Cisco! Quiet!” But apparently he didn’t hear me. His increasingly anxious barking followed me down the midway, and although I’d like to think he was barking for me, I knew it was all about Cameo.
I took the shortcut behind the carousel to the employee parking lot, hurrying Cameo along despite my throbbing knee. This time of day the entire back of the fairgrounds was relatively deserted, which was not that surprising since most of the entertainment and special events would take place after dark. The silver equipment trailers at the other side of the field practically shimmered in the heat, and a still dusty haze hung over the parking lot. Even the woods looked dry and wilted, and my footsteps crunched on the hard-packed dirt as I hurried across the lot. I dug into my pocket for my keys, and that’s when Greg Sellers fell into step beside me.
Cameo began panting excitedly and tried to lunge across my body to get to him, almost tripping me. I pulled her back instinctively and stopped still, darting my eyes around for options.
“Just keep moving,” Sellers said. He had one hand in the pocket of his trousers and he lifted it now, revealing the rubber grip of a compact, snub-nosed pistol. His voice and his smile were pleasant as he took my arm with his other hand, urging me forward. “Glad to see you were able to get away early. I thought it would be more efficient if I helped you search. I’ll ride with you, if you don’t mind. I’d take my own car but the front parking lot is swarming with police. I guess you called them.”
Somehow I managed, in an almost normal tone, “I thought you were going to tell them what you know.”
“Well, like I explained, that’s really not going to be in my best interests right now.”
“Especially,” I suggested, desperately trying to keep my voice even, “since the police just found Tony Madison’s body.”
His hand tightened on my arm. “Keep moving. Hurry up.”
I pretended to stumble. “I can’t walk any faster. I hurt my knee last night when you pushed me down.”
He was unsympathetic. “Good thing you don’t have to go very far, then.”
If I could stall long enough, surely someone would come down the path, or turn into the parking lot, or one of the deputies would think to patrol the employee lot. I thought about screaming or trying to break away, but I didn’t know where the gun was. I thought about letting Cameo go, but she would only trot right over to the man she adored. My phone was in my pocket, and it was absolutely useless unless I could break away long enough to call for help.
I said, “I don’t understand. You had my purse, why didn’t you take the transmitter?”
“Don’t mess with me,” he returned briefly. “If it had been in your purse, I would’ve found it. So now you’re going to show me where you really hid it. And we don’t have a lot of time.”
I said, “It’s not going to be Tony Madison’s voice on that recorder, is it? It’s yours.”
His lips tightened into a thin line. “I would never hurt April. I tried to save her from that bastard. That’s why I picked her up that evening when she was out walking Cameo. I had to warn her about what I’d found out about Madison, I never would have let her know I was following them if I hadn’t thought it was life and death. Of course she was mad about my being here, even after I explained things to her. She wouldn’t listen to me. She made me pull the car over on the other side of the mountain, by that overlook, and she and Cameo got out. It was getting dark and I didn’t want to leave he
r there. We argued about it and she pulled out her phone to call Madison. I tried to get the phone away from her and when she walked away I grabbed Cameo and put her in the car. April started yelling at me and I was afraid somebody would hear so I let her have the dog and I drove off. But I felt bad about leaving her out there on the side of the road so I came back after about twenty minutes … Just in time to see Madison pull up by the overlook. It was nearly full dark by then, and I turned off my headlights so he wouldn’t see me. She was standing by the overlook and when he drove up she turned around. He came up to her and took her by the shoulders like he was going to kiss her, then he slammed her head against the rail post hard enough to crack her skull. Cameo started barking. April slumped down and he dragged her up and over the rail and pushed her into the gorge. Then he got into his car and drove away.”
We had stopped walking. His face was tight and gray with the memory, his eyes dull with the effort to repress emotion. “I got out,” he finished quietly. “I ran to the rail, I looked … but all I could see was Cameo, scrambling down into the gorge. I thought April was dead.”
“Why didn’t you call someone?” I said. “Why didn’t you tell them what had happened? April was alive for two days in that gorge! We might have saved her!”
“Don’t you think I know that?” He turned on me with his face torn with anguish. His fingers dug into my upper arm so hard that I had to smother a cry, and I shrank back from his fury. “I thought she was dead! I thought she was dead and I couldn’t tell anybody because of that damn transmitter! Mine was the last voice on it—my voice arguing with her, threatening her. The recorder didn’t pick up her phone call to Madison because Cameo was in the car with me when she made it. I thought April was dead and all the evidence pointed to me!”
He gave my arm a single hard shake and I lost my balance and almost fell. Cameo looked at me, and at him, anxiously. If anyone had been around to witness that, surely someone would have come to my rescue. There must have been over a thousand people at the fair today; how could none of them be in this parking lot?
He took a swift, calming breath and started walking again, pushing me forward toward the rows of cars. “I went back to look for Cameo, but by then I’d lost her signal. I didn’t pick it up again for two days.”
I said, “How did you find Madison today?”
“I didn’t,” he replied. “He found me. Called me, to be precise, after someone—I’m guessing you—told him I was here. He had some idea that I’d recorded the murder, and he tried to threaten me with some cock-and-bull story he was going to take to the police if I didn’t turn over the evidence.”
“So you agreed to meet him behind the warehouse,” I said, “and you shot him.” I could see my car at the end of the row just ahead of us. I put my thumb on the panic button of the key fob, having faint hope that it would do any good. No one even noticed car alarms anymore, and if anyone did he would simply think I had lost my car in the parking lot and was using the alarm to locate it. But it might distract Sellers long enough …
“He killed four women!” Sellers said harshly. “He deserved to die! Whoever shot him did the world a favor.”
“I’m not arguing that,” I told him, weighing my options, trying to stay calm. “Maybe it was even self-defense. But you’ll have a better chance of the police believing your story if you go to them now. They already have a county-wide search out for you. Maybe even roadblocks.” Probably not true, but he had no way of knowing that.
“They can’t tie me to Madison. The only thing that ties me to anything is that damn transmitter. As soon as I have it, all our problems will be over.”
My car was only a few dozen steps away. I could not let him get in my car. If he drove to my house he would see the police cruiser that had been dispatched there and I would be a kidnap victim. If by some chance the deputies had the foresight to conceal their presence, Sellers had a gun and the chances of leaving my property without shots being fired were very, very slim.
The first rule of survival: never let the criminal take you to a second location. Not ever.
I said, “I’m parked over there,” and I tried to turn the opposite way. His grip steered me straight.
“Nice try, Miss Stockton,” he said. “I know your car.”
Suddenly Cameo turned around, tugging on the leash, and barked. My heart leapt as I heard an answering bark and I swiveled my head, crying, “Cisco!” I saw him flying toward me, ears slicked back, tongue lolling, a wild and joyful triumph in his eyes. The flimsy canvas crate with its zippered door would not hold a determined golden retriever, and this was not the first time he had broken through it in pursuit of something he loved.
I dropped Cameo’s leash and the two dogs met in a playful bounce a few feet away from us, rolling over in the dirt parking lot, leashes tangling. Sellers took a half-turning step toward the ruckus, surprised enough to lighten his grip on my arm. I used the opportunity to transfer the keys to my free hand and I called, “Cisco!”
He looked up at me happily. “Cisco, fetch!”
I drew back my arm and tossed the keys as far as I could into the field of weeds. Cisco took off after them with Cameo in hot pursuit, and I took advantage of Sellers’s confusion to wrench my arm away and run as fast as I could in the opposite direction.
I knew I wouldn’t make it very far. But I was younger and lighter than Sellers, and, even with a bum knee, I thought I could reach the row of supply trucks and use them to hide long enough to call 911 before he caught up with me. I almost made it, too. I had my phone in hand when a sudden patch of uneven earth sent a shaft of pain through my knee and I went sprawling in the shadow of one of the silver trucks. My phone flew from my hand, the contents of my day bag scattered, and Greg Sellers dragged me to my feet by my hair. I screamed then, but no one could hear. In the background, bluegrass music wailed and children squealed on the Ferris wheel and announcers’ voices boomed through the microphone. It occurred to me that if Sellers fired his pistol, people would think it was the sound of fireworks.
I struggled harder, but the man was twice my size and stronger than he looked. He grabbed my arms and twisted them behind my back, slamming me up against the side of the supply truck hard enough to knock my breath away. In a moment I heard a ripping sound and felt my wrists being bound tightly together. He had found the duct tape that had fallen from my bag and was using it to tie my hands. He growled in my ear, “You’d better hope that dog of yours finds those keys.”
Cisco was a retriever, and more importantly, a search dog. It was entirely possible he would be able to find one set of keys in the vast field of tall weeds, but the point had been to get Cisco to run, not to retrieve. “He’ll never bring them to you,” I gasped, just before he flipped me around and pressed a piece of tape across my mouth, winding it around my neck and my hair in a double thickness.
He grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the back of the truck, where he used his other hand to lift the lever that secured the doors. “You better be wrong,” he said grimly. “Otherwise you’re going to rot in here.”
He lifted me off my feet and pushed me inside. I landed hard on the floor, and before I could even struggle to my knees I heard the metal door slam and the security lever screech down, leaving me alone in the dark.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I struggled to my feet, nostrils desperately sucking in air that felt like a blast furnace and smelled like oil and sawdust. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark, but even then I saw nothing, no shapes or shadows; just flat gray-black desert-hot air.
It had to be a hundred ten, maybe a hundred twenty degrees inside the metal container. With no air circulation it felt even hotter. I would not survive here long. I had to find a way out.
I knew that the biggest mistake victims of life-threatening situations made was to panic. The hiker lost in the woods who wanders aimlessly until exhaustion and dehydration do him in. The driver of the car that goes underwater who uses up all her strength trying to esca
pe the car before even determining which way the surface is. The victim of the house fire who desperately runs toward the nearest door and dies of smoke inhalation before he reaches it. Panic kills. I knew that. And I also understood for the first time what a powerful, seductive killer it was.
I wanted to plunge blindly into the dark in search of the exit, and I had to fight back the useless, pitiful screams that tried to rise in my throat. No sound I could make would be heard through the muffling layers of tape, and if I gave in to panic and started stumbling around in this heat I would only use up energy and become hopelessly disoriented. I forced myself to stand still, to breathe slowly, to think.
I tried to remember which way I’d been facing when I was pushed in here, which way I had turned when I stood up. I tried to envision how many steps I was from the door. Then I tried to picture the truck in my head. How many feet wide? How many feet long? The pulsing of terror in my ears slowed, and the breaths I took no longer burned my lungs.
I turned and walked forward. Five steps, six. All I could see was thick gray air. I felt the panic start to rise again. And then I slammed into something hard. It made a dull metal thunk when I hit it. I didn’t know whether it was the door or a wall, but I turned my shoulder to it and hit it again. I leaned back a step and threw my weight forward, hitting it again, and again. Sweat soaked my hair and dripped into my eyes and the hot dry air that I dragged into my lungs scratched at my throat, returning too fast with a wheezing exhale. I pounded at the metal until I couldn’t feel my shoulder anymore and then I turned and used the other one. I didn’t really expect to make any progress toward escape, but if anyone passed by surely they would hear me. Surely.
I kept it up until I grew too dizzy and breathless to stand, and then I sank to the floor and used my feet to kick at the metal. My clothing was soaked now, my skin drenched. Bright sparks of light popped in front of my eyes. I had to stop and breathe.
I knew the police were looking for Sellers. If he took the time to search the weeds for my car keys, they might very well find him. If they did, if the police did search this part of the parking lot, the only way they would know I was here is if I kept making noise. And two golden retrievers running loose at the fair were bound to attract attention. Surely Marshall had noticed Cisco’s escape, surely he had chased him here. If he had, he would hear me, of course he would. I just had to keep trying.
