by George Wier
The EMTs arrived, a second and a third cop arrived, followed minutes later by a terminally bored Sheriff's Deputy.
“The house hasn't been cleared,” Hank said. “We have no idea who is here and who isn't.”
The three cops turned the scene over to the Sheriff's Deputy, who bore a nametag that said B. Ross. One stayed with us, while the two others split up, one climbing the stairs two at a time with his weapon drawn, and the other, an older, seemingly more seasoned woman, who appeared to take it all in stride and went wandering aft.
“Who do I arrest?” Deputy B. Ross inquired.
“If anybody, that guy,” I said, pointing at Fenner, who had two paramedics hovering over him, shining lights in his eyes and checking his pulse. “But he's at least got a concussion.”
“Why am I arresting him?” the deputy asked.
“I dunno. Maybe for aggravated kidnapping. He was holding a gun on me and this woman, and he took a shot at her and hit the post over there. Then he made us all shut up, marched us at gunpoint into the living room—which reminds me of a whorehouse, for some reason, not that I've ever seen the inside of one other than in old movies—and proceeded to threaten to shoot us all one by one.”
“And he shot him?” B. Ross asked, first pointing at Fenner, then at Reece.
“Yes,” I said. “Well, he didn't mean to at the time, even though he directly threatened to earlier. You see, he had a ferret on his face.”
“He had a what?”
“Um. That guy?” I pointed upward, where Jennifer's ferret sat on the brass curl of one of the arms of the chandelier, his eyes glittering.
“No shit. Who's that guy?”
“That's Morgan Freeman,” Hank replied.
“Of course it is,” Deputy B. Ross stated.
“I'm Bill Travis,” I said and offered my hand.
“Bob Ross,” he said.
Bob Ross was about forty-five years old, probably old enough to have been boots on the ground in Desert Storm, and he looked the part of a professional soldier-turned-policeman. He had the obligatory burr haircut that was busily turning more salt than pepper, a clean-shaven face, over-sized blue eyes, and big jowls that could have done double-duty as wolf traps. His eyes bore an intelligence that had never seen a real challenge, hence the world for him was little more than a tableau of the mundane blurred into a background of monotony. I liked him immediately.
“Well, shit,” he said. “I reckon everybody has to come down to the courthouse. That is, those who aren't headed for the hospital.”
“Shit,” Hank said.
“Yeah,” Deputy Ross said. “But let's wait a bit and see what else turns up while the local boys finish sweeping the house.”
“I've got to go check on my daughter. She's sitting in a car three blocks west of here probably worried sick.”
“Tell you what,” he said. “I'll take you fellahs to her, then you can follow me down to the station. What do we do about Mr. Freeman up there?”
“I haven't a clue,” I said.
Hank stood up, held up his long arms and made kissing sounds. “Come on, Morgie Porgy.”
Deputy Ross looked at me and I shrugged. “Mr. Sterling regularly communes with the animals.”
The second most surprising thing happened then: Morgan Freeman did a swan dive right for Hank's hands. He skittered around his wrists before Hank could close his fingers, whirled twice around his neck, and ended up hanging from the back of his shirt.
At that moment there was a loud screech from the second floor, followed by several thumps that rattled the house.
“Crap,” Deputy Ross said. He and the cop started for the stairs, and Hank and I followed after.
*****
A second floor receiving area and a long hallway blurred past us. I heard the creak of what sounded like bed springs and the younger cop's voice ahead of us and through an open door. “It's okay. Calm down!”
We whipped into the room to see the cop trying to hold onto a woman who was flailing against her bonds. She was tied to a four-poster bed, the kind that Julie liked to show me from furniture catalogs late at night before lights out.
“Ma'am, hold still! We're gonna get you out of here,” the cop said, but her eyes were wild and her face was contorted with fright.
Deputy Ross turned back to the doorway and yelled, “Medic!” and I heard a jumble of feet running up the distant stairs.
The cop had apparently first loosened the band of cloth from between the woman's teeth, which accounted for the initial shriek. Her hands were tied together at the wrists with what appeared to be silk scarves. Her ankles were likewise tied to the posts at the foot of the bed. There were needle tracks on both her arms, and the surface of the nearby dresser was littered with discarded syringes and emptied vials.
“Oh shit,” a voice said from behind us. “That's Margaret,” Lorraine said. She stood in the center of the room, stock still.
The old woman on the bed appeared to be in her late seventies or possibly her eighties. She strained a final time against her bonds, even as the two cops attempted to loosen the knots that held them in place. But then her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed, inert and seemingly lifeless.
The paramedic, a thin, middle-aged woman who appeared about as attractive as a wolverine and just as businesslike, took up her station over Margaret and felt her neck. “Pulse thready. She may be going into cardiac arrest.” Then she yelled, “Charlie! Bring the paddles!” Then to the rest of us, “Clear the room. Someone cut these restraints, don't worry about trying to untie them.”
While Deputy Ross opened a pocket knife and went to work on Margaret's bonds, I nodded to Hank and motioned to the door, then came up beside Lorraine, placed my hands on her shoulders and gently turned her and steered her out of the room.
“I'll go bring Jennifer back,” Hank said, once the three of us were in the hallway. Charlie, the other paramedic, came at a run, dodged the three of us, and disappeared into the room.
“Stay outside with her,” I told Hank, as he walked away. “I don't want her in this house. I think it's cursed.”
“It is,” Lorraine said. “I wonder where Sam is. And Gus.”
“Who's Gus?” I asked.
“Aunt Tinnie's nephew, my uncle.”
“And Margaret? Who's she?”
“Aunt Tinnie's daughter.”
“Hmph. How old was Tinnie when she died?”
“A hundred and four.”
“Now that makes sense. I'll bet you thought she was ancient when you were a kid.”
“I did.”
“Okay, this whole thing is just weird. You got Reece, all flakified—”
“That's not a word,” she said.
“All flakified, but he tried to protect you at the front door by turning you away. You've got Fenner—what the hell kind of name is Fenner, anyway?—you've got Fenner who is trying to steal the family fortune for himself from back when he was sufficiently ingratiated to be included in the will, but now he's not. Ingratiated, that is. He's now so completely not ingratiated that he feels he has to resort to tying up old ladies and using a gun to make sure everything goes his way. You've got Sam—who may or may not really be Todd—who's missing in action and so invaluable that my daughter can't have a decent piano recital without him. You've got an old lady, Margaret—and please don't tell me that everyone calls her “Maggie”—who should be sitting on a nursing home front porch in a rocking chair, but who's instead tied to a bed and being drugged to keep her quiet. You've got Gus—short for Augustus or Augustine, right?—who's probably supposed to be here taking care of Margaret but who's also missing. And then there's you—Lorraine—a woman who's afraid of her own shadow and who's willing to wait a week holed-up in a bed and breakfast in a small town on the backside of Creation, but who has summoned enough courage to help us find Sam—Todd—because my daughter happens to have a pet ferret named Morgan Freeman. Just nod when I've got it all right.”
She nodded.
“Did I miss anything?” Deputy Ross asked, coming up behind us.
“Not a thing,” Lorraine said.
“I need a drink,” I offered.
“You and me both,” Deputy Ross replied. “Where'd the old guy go?”
“Hank? He and Morgan Freeman went to get Jennifer.”
“Morgan Freeman,” he said and chuckled. His laugh was infectious, and Lorraine was shortly laughing. I shook my head.
“Is the old lady gonna make it?”
“Looks like maybe so, for the time being. They're calling another ambulance. We need three of them.
The last cop walked toward us down the hallway from the stairs, forty feet away.
“What's so funny?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Ross said. “You had to have been here. Who's watching the guys downstairs?”
“Uhm. I guess I better go back—”
I heard the distant creak of the front door; the same creak I'd heard when I first pushed my way in.
“Shit,” Ross said.
We ran for the stairs, down them, and into the front foyer. Reece lay strapped to a gurney where the paramedics had left him, but Fenner was long gone.
CHAPTER NINE
“Well if this isn't the biggest bag of horse manure I've ever seen in my entire life,” the man with the cowboy hat sitting in the middle of his desk said.
We were in the San Sebastian County Sheriff's Office, in the inner office of the Sheriff himself. Lorraine, me, Hank, Jennifer, Morgan Freeman, Deputy Bob Ross, and Sheriff Dusty Singletary. I imagined political posters with his name on them last fall, all red, white and blue, but mostly blue. Singletary in red would have hurt voters' eyes and he would've lost. There weren't enough chairs, just the two for Lorraine and Jennifer, so the men folk stood there.
“Why didn't you just burn the Bledgrave place to the ground? That's the only way this could be any worse.”
“There was a screaming woman upstairs,” Bob carefully stated.
“So how many people went running upstairs and left Fenner Schoonover lying on the floor?”
Dusty Singletary was a big man. I was sure he topped four hundred pounds, but he was the kind of fellow who knew how to carry it well. He made sweeping motions with his arms and his face was red.
“You put out a BOLO on Fenner Schoonover, right?”
“What's a BOLO, dad?” Jennifer whispered.
“Be On Lookout,” I whispered back.
“Yes sir,” Bob Ross stated.
“Has anyone checked the Bledgrave warehouse? The hangar?”
“Warehouse? Hangar?” Bob asked.
“They're right beside each other at the Municipal Airport.” Sheriff Singletary stood still for a moment, and the silence lingered. I thought he was going to explode, but instead of doing so, the quiver in his hands slowly dissipated and he breathed a deep sigh.
“Okay. You didn't know. You're just learning this county all over again, Bob. It's okay. It's the red hangar and the big warehouse next to it south of the runway. The Sky Chief has the key to every building out there, so get with him. He lives in the little bungalow next to the airport office. You'll have to get one of the local cops out there because it's city property, and I don't want to step of Chief Banger's toes.”
“If it's all the same, Sheriff,” I said, “but my partner and I would like to go. We'll hang way back a few hundred yards—or half a mile, if you prefer—but this is also a missing persons case, and my daughter is the best person to identify Todd—or maybe it's Sam, I'm not sure—Landry.”
He regarded me, as if seeing me for the first time, then his eyes fell on Jennifer, who looked up at him with tired eyes. It was long past her bedtime.
“That's fine. You folks can follow, but stay back by the main gate.”
“Thank you, Sheriff,” Hank said.
His eyes fell on Lorraine. “This the woman Fenner shot at? Purposefully? And missed?”
“That's right,” Bob said.
“Miss, I'll need you to stay here and write a report. We're on the night shift, so there's just me and Bob and Carl. I'm sending Bob and Carl to look for Fenner, so it's just you and me. I'll help you with the report, if you need my help. It's best, though, if the whole statement comes from you.”
She nodded.
He jabbed a finger at me and Hank. “When Bob and Carl get back, with or without Fenner, I'll need a report from both of you.”
“Will Fenner be prosecuted, do you think?” Hank asked.
“That's up to the District Attorney, so I haven't a clue, and I have no intention of waking him up this late. Speaking of which, little girls should be in bed at this hour.”
“That's right,” Jennifer said. “But I'm worried about Todd. We came to find him, and I'm not going home until we do.”
“And this is all about a piano recital, is it?”
Jennifer nodded.
“It better be some recital, Miss Travis. Because I intend to be there.”
*****
On the way to the airport, we passed a short string of hotels. It was getting on toward midnight, and I had to start thinking about lodging for the night. I let Hank drive so that I could call Julie to let her know what was happening.
“No, honey, we're not checking into a hotel just yet. Probably within the hour, though.”
“What's going on? How's Jennifer? And Morgan?”
I turned and peered into the back seat. Jennifer was leaned against the locked passenger door with her eyes closed. Morgan Freeman was curled up on her lap.
“They're both fine,” I said. “I forget, what do you feed ferrets?”
“Ferret chow. Or dog food, if you've got nothing else. But they'll eat anything, so long as it's protein.”
“Good to know.”
“Has anyone shot at you yet?”
“What?” I asked, then laughed. “No, of course not.”
“Has anyone shot at anyone?”
I sighed. “Someone shot at a woman named Lorraine. Don't worry, honey. Jennifer was in the car, three blocks away at the time.”
“But where were you?”
“I was ten feet behind Lorraine.”
“That's what I thought.”
“How's the baby?”
“Claudia is doing fine. I don't know how many more I can have. I'm...getting too old for baby-making.”
“Not that we need to have any more, but you're not too old.”
“You haven't said it, but I know you want a son.”
“I haven't said it. Where did this come from?”
“From evolution. All men want a son.”
“I—well, honey, I don't think...”
“This is one of those things where you haven't thought out what you were going to say in advance, isn't it?”
“Yeah.”
“Good,” she said.
“Why is that good?”
“Because, it means that while you want a son—and you most certainly do want one—you're letting things happen naturally. You're letting life happen. And it also means that you're not going to blame me if we don't. Have a son, that is.”
“I—I. Honey, this is the longest conversation we've ever had over the phone. And it's over the phone and Hank is sitting right here, driving. And it looks like we're almost to the airport.”
“Okay. Well, hurry up and find her piano teacher, get a hotel for the night, and then come home. I have news when you get here.”
“What news?” I asked.
“I'll tell you when you get home,” she said.
“Tell me what when we get home?”
“That I'm pregnant again.”
I couldn't speak for a moment.
“It should come easier each time I tell you,” she said.
“It...I guess it doesn't. Come easier. Wait a minute. It's only been three months since Claudia.”
“I know. I need to learn to say 'no' to you. Either that, or have the procedure.”
“No procedures,” I said. �
��Not until you're fifty. Or maybe sixty.”
“Shit,” Hank said. “Another kid.”
“Can you hear what we're saying?” I asked.
“I can hear enough,” he replied.
“Bill, tell Hank to shut the hell up.”
“Shut the hell up, Hank.”
“Shutting. And...we're here.”
The gate of the San Sebastian Municipal Airport stood open before us. It wasn't so much a gate as a broad opening in the fence along the narrow lane. Ahead of us, a hundred yards or more, the two Sheriff's cruisers and the police car turned to the right and made their way along a row of hangars. They stopped at a small house next to the flat-roofed building I took to be the airport office.
“Honey, we're here. And I'm glad you're pregnant. We can afford it. When's your appointment?”
“Already had it. Today. Test confirmed.”
“Okay. Good. Honey, I gotta go.”
“I know. Get our first born to bed as soon as you can.”
“She's snoring in the back seat,” I said.
“Get her to bed.”
“We need her right now, in case we find Todd. For the life of me, I don't remember what he looks like.”
“That's okay. You're as bad with faces as you are with names.”
“No I'm not.”
“Goodnight. I love you,” she said.
“I love you too.”
She hung up.
Hank laughed. “Leave it to you to pick the most fruitful woman in the entire state.”
“Would you please, just this once, shut up?”
*****
