“I don’t know that we have the facilities to give these children the care they need,” he stated.
“No, you probably don’t. However, you could give them a roof for a night and alert the authorities in the morning.”
“I assume that you two would like to be left out of it.”
“Let’s say that it is in our best interests to be left out of it.”
“I won’t lie,” Gideon informed us.
Leo glanced at me.
“However, given that it’s dark,” Gideon continued, “and I don’t know your names. I’m not sure what I could tell the authorities. As far as I know, the two of you may be the avenging angels of from God smiting the houses of Sodom.”
“That’s not far from the truth,” Leo said.
“Let me get Mary and my daughter, Sarah,” Gideon said standing.
“These kids need real care and love,” I said.
“That’s all we offer in this house, son.”
He walked up the stairs carrying a lantern.
“He just gave me goosebumps,” Leo remarked.
“This is a good idea,” I confirmed.
“Maybe they’ll give us a fried pie,” Leo said. “Would it be rude to ask?”
“Yes, they are willing to take six children off our hands. They don’t need to cook for us.”
Gideon returned down the stairs with two women. Neither woman made eye contact with us.
As he passed behind them, Gideon said, “It’s best if they can’t see you either.”
We followed behind as they walked around the bakery to the Tahoe. The women lifted the children out of the car. Lucy woke up at the commotion and got out of the truck when beckoned by the older of the two women.
“What’s going on?” she asked diminutively.
“Lucy,” I said. “These are really nice folks who are going to take care of you tonight. Tomorrow will be a new day, okay?”
“Are they Amish?” she asked staring at Gideon.
“Yes, and they are going to take care of you tonight.”
She peered up at me. “Will you be back?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Things are going to get complicated over the next little bit, but it will be better.”
She stared at me without speaking.
“Now, I know it’s been hard, but you may have to help the others. You are kind of the oldest.”
“I had a little brother,” she said. “Miss Maggie still had him at the other house.”
“About two years old?” I asked.
She nodded.
“He’s safe, Lucy. With a friend, I’ll make sure that she finds you.”
She smiled faintly. I wondered if she believed me or not.
“Lucy, when the police or F.B.I. come to talk to you, you have to tell them everything that happened. These men have to be punished, but there are other kids out there that need to be found.”
She nodded.
I stood up as Gideon came near. I felt Lucy touch my arm, and I looked at her.
“What’s your name?”
“I’m Max,” I said quietly.
“Thank you, Max.”
Gideon put his hand on my shoulder, and I straightened up. “Son, these children have had it rough.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know that I would have approved of your methods, but you do seem to have been an angel of mercy to them.”
“Just get them some help tomorrow,” I said. “There’s a girl with two more of the children down in Florence. I’ll try and get her to bring them up tomorrow so they can be together.”
“Do you know the scriptures?” Gideon asked me.
“Some, yes.”
“Paul told the Christians in Rome, ‘Be not overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.’”
“Good thought,” I said.
Gideon took my hand. “Don’t let evil overcome you while you try to overcome it.”
I shook his hand. “Thank you, sir.”
Leo was behind the wheel waiting for me. I climbed in the front seat and looked as the last of the kids went into the bakery with Gideon’s family. The Tahoe pulled out of the drive and onto the highway heading north.
34
The water was nice and clear. Lindsay came walking up from below deck. She had lost her bikini two days earlier when she realized that we would be so far from civilization. We weren’t really that far. About two, maybe three miles from No Name Key in Florida. But we were anchored behind Johnson Key which seemed as remote as some south Pacific island.
Thanksgiving for me was always a crappy holiday. Since Lindsay had a long break from school, I decided to fulfill my promise to her for sandy beaches and clear water. I rented a thirty-six foot catamaran. We spent the first day sailing around the islands until we found one that seemed idyllic.
Lindsay was enjoying the view, and I admit that since she ditched the bikini, my view was quite nice as well. She walked over to where I was sitting in the cockpit and slid onto my lap.
“What’s up, sexy?” I asked.
“Loving this,” she smiled. “I think this is the life we should have.”
“I’m down with it. I love this area.”
“Me too.”
“Maybe I should buy a hotel or a bar down here.”
She kissed me. “You would need to have like a three-day beard, but I could see you as a rummy runaway.”
My phone dinged. It was sitting on the chart plotter charging. Without moving from my seat, I reached over and picked it up. Lindsay squirmed a little in my lap to get my attention.
“Who’s bothering you out here?” she asked.
Swiping the screen, I saw Leo’s message. The number “29” was all that it read.
“Twenty-nine,” she read. “How long has he been gone?”
I counted the days and said, “Thirty-two.”
“That’s almost one a day.”
After we got Lindsay back to Florence, where she and Jessica took the two babies to be with the other children. Leo an I drove back to Memphis. I offered to buy Leo another truck, but he turned me down. He said he had one picked out already.
The next week, Leo left town. He carried the list we printed with him. He would tell me his plans later, saying that he knew I would want to go. He was visiting each name, or at least, that’s my supposition. We had discussed it briefly on the ride back to Memphis. The kids in foreign nations would need to be returned to an American embassy. When he left, I guessed those were his plans.
Each text was a number on the list that he had marked off. Again, at least that is my assumption. Leo might tell me about it in person one day over a beer, but never on the phone or via email.
“He is nothing, if not efficient,” I said.
“I hope he’s okay.”
We never had any agency show up to question us after that night at the ranch. Trevor Lee had done his part. He made it to the ranch and found enough evidence to write a blaring story. He called the authorities after he covered the details of what Kerry was doing. There was talk of pressing charges against him for disturbing a crime scene, but he noted that he was the one who found the scene.
The five men were quite cold, and one, the judge, lost a toe to frostbite. It was hard to feel sorry for him. The F.B.I. arrested all of them, and with the video evidence found on Keller’s computer, they would all be convicted of the rape of a child. Multiple accounts of what occurred. Each one of the men confessed and gave a detailed description of how Keller had operated.
The F.B.I. found Keller in the woods. They also found a fresh grave. They exhumed the body of Elizabeth Warlow.
Keller’s companies took a dive. Virginia Keller was found dead one morning at their beach house after having taken a bottle of sleeping pills. The only heir to the Keller fortune was Angela, who after several weeks returned from Africa. Her first statement to the press was a condemnation of everyone who ignored her own pleas for help. She was vocal, she was bold, and she named na
mes.
Angela actually led the charge to find help for the kids we rescued, as well as finding the one’s we missed. She reached out to me a week ago and asked why my name was nowhere near any of this.
“It’s hairy. I don’t really want to get hairy.”
“You’re the hero, though,” she tried to tell me.
“No, just following some words of wisdom I heard long ago.”
“Is there anything I can do?” she asked.
“No, you seem to be doing a bang-up job from here,” I said. “But if you can make sure that you tell Lucy, the oldest one of that group, that I’m watching out for her.”
“Will do. I believe she and her brother are staying with the Keim’s.”
“Who?”
“The Amish family,” she exclaimed.
“Wonderful,” I exclaimed. “They seemed nice.”
“The social workers want to make sure everyone is getting the proper help. It’s chaos because of all the heads rolling.”
Heads rolling was an accurate statement. Angela opened up the company’s records as soon as she arrived stateside. The lawyers had been fighting to keep the company out of the investigation, but Angela changed that.
Payoffs to politicians, bureaucrats, local officials, auditing agents were discovered, as well as every line up and down the board was contaminated. The governor, himself, resigned shortly after the scandal broke. Besides the payoffs, which were innumerable, Kerry kept files on every person he had at the ranch, and even before the ranch was built. He had videos dating back decades.
Now, I didn’t want to think about it. Not about Kerry, Mother Maggie, or any of the other hideous perverts that I encountered.
Instead, I slid the phone back up on the chart plotter and leaned back in the cockpit. Lindsay lay beside me and ran her fingers down my chest. The sun was warm. A cold beer sat an arm’s length away. A gorgeous, naked woman lay across me stroking her fingers over my chest. As far as I was concerned, the world outside of this little key could be damned.
Thank you for reading Crimson Blood. I had the opportunity to live in Florence, Alabama for a few years. While I made a few changes to the scenery for artistic license, the ambiance of the Shoals area is definitely there. The railroad bridge that Max and Lindsay jump from is actually there, however it’s height and dimensions are slightly altered. It is actually a very interesting story that I encourage you to read. The Marriott Shoals Hotel and Spa is a real hotel, and I was actually employed there. The staff there is great, and the antics of someone like William Kerry would not have been allowed despite his standing. However, for the purposes of hyperbole, I did create that atmosphere.
There is one character at the hotel that I did bring over from real life. Cole, the room service server, was my representation of young man who worked for me there. He was tragically killed in a car accident a year after I left. He had a great spirit and a happy outlook. I just wanted to remember him here.
Thanks for listening to my ramblings. I look forward to sharing the next Max Sawyer book coming in a few months.
Thanks for reading,
Douglas Pratt
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Want more of Max? Read his other adventures here
Blood Remembered
Baptism of Blood
Blood Stained
Bloody History
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Crimson Blood (Max Sawyer Book 4) Page 16
