The Daredevil Corpse (The Departed Book 2)

by Sean Arthur Cox

Chapter 20

  OLIVIA

  LOST AND FOUND AND SEEK TO HIDE

  Several miles down a back-country road, I take the tire iron from my trunk and smash my front and rear windows out completely. Bullet holes raise questions. Then, Blondie and I find a nearby gas station and pick up some seat covers and dashboard tchotchkes to cover the damage I can’t remove outright. Squeezing what little phone signal I can find, I locate a glass repair shop to get the windows street legal again.

  “Geez, what happened?” asks the man behind the counter.

  “Ex,” I say, putting on just a hint of an accent, like a barebones version of Meg Ryan’s accent in Top Gun. “Well, his ex.”

  The man looks to Blondie for elaboration, but he just shrugs and makes a non-committal grunt, which the clerk accepts with a nod. I get the suspicion I could have left the bullet holes visible and he’d have given the same shrug. Man, how bad do exes get out here?

  “Good news is we have the glass, but it’ll take a couple hours for us to install it.”

  “That’s fine,” I say and wonder how I’ll kill that much time. “I don’t suppose you have Wi-Fi, do you?”

  “No ma’am,” he says, “but the café across the street does.”

  “Thanks,” I say and toss him the keys. “We’ll see you in a couple hours.”

  The café is a small, mom-and-pop main street establishment with the usual small-town fare. Soups, sandwiches, pie. The faded, chipping paint gives it a little charm instead of making it look sad and run down. Blondie and I take a table outside and enjoy the nice southern breeze coming in from the Atlantic. Our server, a matronly woman with tendons strung tightly beneath her papery skin, takes our order.

  “BLT with a glass of lemonade,” I say. “You want anything?”

  Blondie considers the menu for a moment as though he’s not that hungry, but I can see in his eyes he needs something a little more substantial than day old Taco Bell.

  “I’m buying,” I say, and his interest in the menu spikes visibly.

  “How’s this meatloaf sandwich?” he asks.

  “It’s a thick slice of meatloaf and gravy served with grilled onions, tomatoes, the usual condiments.”

  “Can I get some fries with that?” he asks, more to me than the old woman. “Maybe a side of that hashbrown casserole?”

  I nod.

  “Sure thing,” she says and jots it down.

  “And a Coke,” he says.

  She nods and leaves.

  “Big appetite,” I say.

  “Heroin makes you forget everything, including hunger,” he says at full volume.

  A little shocked and taken aback, I glance around to see if anyone else overheard, but we’re alone. I suppose that’s the advantage to stopping in these small towns. “Good to know,” I say. “So, while I have you here, what do you remember about Dan Germany’s disappearance?”

  “Nothing, really,” he says. “I shot up. Passed out. Woke up and he was gone.”

  “You don’t remember any details? Nothing strange?”

  “Well,” he says, “I mean, I think the door chain was broken, but it was a pretty cheap chain anyway, so it may have broken on its own. And I thought I saw a woman in there for a second, but I figured it was just the cleaning lady.”

  “All of that counts as ‘nothing really’ in your book? Evidence of forced entry and a possible look at the kidnapper?”

  “I guess,” he says.

  We pause our conversation while the server gives us our drinks and tells us it’ll be just a moment on our food. Once she’s gone, I return my attentions to Blondie’s flakey eye witness testimony.

  “Did you get a good look at the woman?” I ask.

  “Not really,” he says. “I mean, she was like… not really short, but probably not really tall either. And she had hair that wasn’t long unless she had it pulled back. I don’t know.”

  “So, we’ve established that she had a height, but we don’t know what that is, and that she does have hair,” I say. “Great. That narrows things down.”

  “Why don’t you try calling his phone? Maybe he can answer it and tell you where he is.”

  “Because it’s probably dead,” I say. “I couldn’t get a read on his GPS.”

  “What if it’s just almost dead?” he says. “That satellite stuff probably takes a lot of power, but a phone call’s just a phone call.”

  Dear heavens, he’s right. I didn’t even consider it might have a power saving mode which would shut down pretty much everything but phone calls. “Blondie, you’re a genius,” I say and plant a kiss square on his forehead.

  “Well, been a while since anyone’s done that,” he says with a big grin.

  “What?” I ask. “Kiss your forehead or call you a genius?”

  “Both, I suppose.”

  “Well, you earned it.”

  I dig up the phone number I tracked down and give it a call from my own phone. It rings and rings but goes to voicemail. Figures. It seemed too good to hope.

  Then, much to our mutual surprise, my phone rings with Dan Germany’s digits in the caller ID.

  “Hello?” says a woman’s voice.

  “Hello, I’m looking for Dan Germany,” I say coolly. If this is her, I don’t want to spook her and send her and her captive on the run. I’ve had it up to here with tracking Dan Germany down.

  “Who?” she says.

  “Dan Germany,” I say. “Danger Man? He was a daredevil in the 80s. You have his phone.”

  “No, I found this phone by the side of the road.”

  “Really?” I ask. “Where?”

  “Boston.”

  “Like the city in Massachusetts?” That’s a bit of a drive, but not unreasonable, depending on how long into Blondie’s high he was taken.

  “Yes, Massachusetts,” she says.

  “Listen, my friend Dan is missing and-”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she says.

  “Yeah, me too, anyway, I was hoping I could reach him on his phone, but you say you found it on the side of the road?”

  “I didn’t know who to turn it into so I thought I’d just reset it and give it to my son.”

  “Well, I hate to ask, but I need it back. It might have information that will help me track down my friend. He’s old, he gets lost. You understand.”

  “Well, if you give me an address, I can mail it back to you,” she says.

  “That would be perfect,” I say and spit out the address of a post office box I keep for just such occasions.

  “Uh huh,” she says, which I assume means she has it written down.

  “Hey, I really appreciate it,” I say.

  “No problem,” she says, strangely chipper given the nature of our conversation.

  “No, seriously,” I say. “Some people would have taken advantage of the situation, said finders keepers. Thank you for being a good person.”

  I hope I’m not laying it on too thick.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I’ll let you go so you can get the phone in the mail.”

  “I hope you find him.”

  “Thanks. Me too.”

  “Bye,” she says and hangs up.

  “So, he’s in Massachusetts?” Blondie asks.

  “Of course he’s not in Massachusetts,” I say.

  “But she said-”

  “She’s probably the kidnapper,” I say. “She was definitely lying about something at least, as perky as she was while talking about a missing person. Anyway, she thinks she’s throwing us off the scent by saying she found the phone in Boston.”

  “But you know better?” Blondie asks.

  “But I know better.”

  The old woman delivers our food and hooks me up with Wi-Fi access. Apparently, their world famous biscuit burger must be something special because it’s the basis of their password. Blondie dives mouth first into his meatloaf sandwich and fries, pausing only long enough to wet his throat with his cold glass of Coke. I nibble at my BLT,
which is certainly worth the five bucks she’s charging, but my attention is on my laptop. I may not have been able to squeeze GPS coordinates out of the phone, but I can track down the cell tower that carried the call, just like in that episode of The Wire. It won’t pinpoint Dan Germany’s location, but it will at least narrow the search down to a couple blocks if he’s in the city, or a fifty-mile radius in flat, open country. It takes the whole two hours while my windows are being replaced, but I’m finally able to get through phone company security and pinpoint the tower. Lucky me, it’s only a little over a hundred miles away and deep in the woods.

  We pick up the car and pay the guy for his job well done, then spend the next few hours poring over Google Maps. Wikipedia tells me the maximum range of a cell tower like this one is twenty-two miles, give or take. Factor in that this is a rural area with a lot of trees providing interference, and I figure I can probably half that range, at least to start. We skim up and down the maps, making note of every house, cottage, and cabin we can spot. There aren’t many, but finding them among all the trees is like finding a needle in a haystack. Still, in the end, we have a list of seven likely candidates and a full tank of gas to track them all down.

  “You ready to go?” asks Blondie as we pile into the car.

  “Does this mean you trust me?” I ask.

  “Well, let’s just say it means you’re my best bet at finding him.”

  “I’ll take it,” I say and pull out onto the darkening highway.

  We spend a couple of hours getting lost in the back woods of Virginia. GPS, it turns out, does not get along with heavily wooded areas, and people who live in heavily wooded areas are not in the habits of marking their dirt roads with easily identifiable signs. Still, we manage to knock out four of the seven cabins by ten and are making decent progress tracking down the fifth. A couple more wrong turns and stopping for a wild pig that refuses to leave the road and we’re ready to tick the next one off the list.

  “Ready?” I ask Blondie as I double check my pistol, making sure yet again it’s loaded.

  “I don’t suppose I can have a gun too?” he asks, glancing nervously about in the darkness.

  “Not on your life,” I say, “but if you’re feeling defenseless, feel free to get the tire iron out of the back.”

  I don’t know why I’m surprised that he does go to fetch it, but I am. Still, better he has something to defend himself with if things go pear shaped.

  We cautiously approach the cabin. It’s small, probably a one room hunting cabin. There aren’t any other cars present, and I hear no sounds coming from within. The curtains are drawn and from the looks of it, probably tacked in place. Someone this far out in the middle of nowhere taking extra precautions to ensure their privacy? No, that doesn’t feel suspicious at all. I’m not able to find a crack in the curtains to peak through, but I can make out the weak flicker of a flame from the fireplace. “What sort of person has a fire going this late at night in July?” I whisper to Blondie.

  He just shrugs at me in the pale moonlight, practically a ghost against the inky blackness of the woods surrounding us. “You wanna find out?” he whispers back.

  “After you,” I say with a smile.

  “Ladies first,” he says and gestures toward my pistol with the tire iron.

  “You make a good point.” I ready myself to clear the room. “I don’t suppose you can be a gentleman and hold the door for me?”

  He takes a moment to realize what I need from him. Then his eyes light up with slow understanding, and he quietly turns the handle.

  I close my eyes, center my breathing, and kick in the door.

  “Police!” I shout. “Down on the ground now!”

  But there’s no woman here. No hunters. No lovers trying to keep things on the sly. Just wall after all of torture implement, and there in the center of the room, suspended naked from chains, is Dan Germany.

  Caked in crusted blood and grime, he looks like Hell had its fill of him and then came back for seconds. His body is a road map of clean incisions and ragged gashes. His back glints in the firelight from all the broken glass shards embedded in his flesh like some macabre mosaic. Burns of all shapes and sizes litter his body, some bearing the distinctive patterns of branding while others simply look like hot coals from the fireplace were seared into his frail and withered frame. There’s a sparkling mash at his feet the consistency of mud, and it takes me a moment to realize it’s not dirt and water, but broken glass, blood, and vomit. As I rise to survey the damage, I see where his torturer cut him, castrated him.

  “What have they done to your body?” says Blondie as he delicately traces over the many wounds with a tender familiarity that suggests he knew this man intimately. The look on Blondie’s face, the sadness, the horror, the sense of deeply personal loss, it devastates me. So complete is his pain that there, surrounded by torture and death at the end of a long search, I cannot help but wonder how they met, how long they were lovers. I wonder what it must be like to find someone I cared for in this state. I can’t even imagine the sorrow and hatred he must be feeling right this moment.

  Blondie adds his own vomit to the mud at our feet, and I cannot even feel disgusted by it. I don’t even flinch. All the while, Dan Germany has not moved once.

  “We’re too late,” I say softly, resting a hand on Blondie’s shoulder. “I think he’s dead.”

  “He can’t be,” Blondie says between sobs. “It’s not possible.”

  His disbelief is palpable.

  “Come on,” I say. “Let’s find the keys and get him down.”

  It’s a little grisly searching through all of these tools of torture and murder. Most are clean but a few still carry the stains of blood and gore, most notably the barbed hooks. I shudder in revulsion and press onward. The main table is littered with tools still crusted from use, and I can almost recreate everything that had been done to Danger Man just by looking at how the torturer’s tools of the trade were left lying and how fresh the blood is. I also find Dan Germany’s phone, which I tuck into my pocket just in case. Table by table, rack by rack, we search the cabin but come up empty handed.

  “Maybe there’s something on the tape?” asks Blondie. “Maybe it shows where she put them.”

  I level my gaze at him. “Do you want to watch it and see?”

  His face sinks and drains of all color.

  “Me neither.”

  I give the place one last cursory look but find nothing.

  “Shit,” I say. “Wherever she is, she took the keys with her.”

  “Maybe we can find a wrench and take the chains with us?”

  “Another good idea,” I say. “Keep this up and we might just have to put you in charge of this expedition.”

  We both scramble for a wrench and upon finding no proper tools, scavenge among the murder paraphernalia to find an adequate substitute. So determined are we to find a functional wrench we don’t even notice the woman in a monkey mask slipping in through the cabin door until she’s stabbed Blondie in the back with her keys.

  Blondie cries out and collapses to the floor, and before I can react, she’s thrown a bowling ball at me, knocking Queen Mary out of my hand and sending her skittering across the floor.

  “Who are you?” she demands with a pair of vicious looking knives she’s just snatched up from a nearby shelf. “What are you doing here?”

  “Seems we could ask you the same thing,” I say and nod toward the body.

  “I don’t have to explain myself to you,” she says and edges her way around the room toward me. Naturally, I edge my way in the opposite direction. I’ve always seen scenes like these in the movies, the two characters slowly circling each other, waiting for one to blink. It’s a little surreal to find myself actually involved in one.

  “Look, I know why you’re out here in this cabin with a dead body,” I say. “You’re a seeker like me.”

  “He’s not dead,” she says.

  “You sure?”

  “You
son of a bitch, you better not be dead,” she says and jabs the knife into Danger Man’s leg.

  Danger Man’s head suddenly shoots up, howling in pain.

  “Good,” she says, pulling the knife back out and holding it in front of her, blade down and out, Spetsnaz style. “I’m sure I had enough torture footage to prove the kill and get the reward, but it’s so much easier if you can get the death rattle on tape.”

  “Video tape?” I ask. “Is your Betamax broken?”

  “You can’t pull geolocation metadata off of a VHS tape,” she says. “I’m not giving up my happy place. No one knows where it is.”

  “Well, we know.”

  “I guess we’ll just have to do something about that,” she says and lunges for me. I dive for the gun, but her blades slice at my bicep, and survival instinct snatches my arm instead of the weapon. Without thinking, I cup the wound, applying pressure to slow the bleeding.

  She charges again, and grabbing wildly, I snatch up a poker from the fire and parry right as she’s about to take another piece of me. “Little help here, Blondie?” I call out, but he’s cowering in the corner.

  Looks like I get to save the day myself.

  I make a tactical retreat to the far side of the room, buying me just enough time to swap my poker for a pair of hooks on a chain before she pushes at me again, surrounded by a flurry of whirling blades. I catch one of her arms with a hook and yank hard, throwing her off balance. If I had more room to maneuver, I could probably open up with this particular weapon, but as it stands, there’s not enough space for me to start swinging without risking harming Blondie or Dan Germany.

  The monkey woman spins and comes at me, her blade carving through the air toward me in a swift arch. Whipping the chain high and wide, I catch her arm in a loop, twisting it around her like some morbid playground game of Uncle gone horribly wrong. Reaching behind herself, she takes blind, wild swings at me, but aside from a few nicks, she does no harm. Pressing my advantage, I slam her into the shelf, hoping something might stick, but all that happens are a number of smaller blades she kept on the top shelf come tumbling down on the both of us. Not my best play. I pull back and hope to pull her back with me, but my hands are too slick with blood from earlier and she steals slack in the chain. I’m forced to retreat, and she frees her arm, leveling the playing field once more.