Deep-Fried Homicide (The Laurel Falls Mysteries Book 1)

by Patricia Lee Macomber

  Rick’s prize-fighter punch sent Dooley’s jaw jutting off in the opposite direction from the rest of his head and, he was sure, loosened a few teeth to boot. The man’s head snapped around and Rick saw him fall, arms reaching to the heavens as he tumbled toward the ground. When he hit, he was out like a light.

  Logan shoved the gun up under his chin for good measure and gave it a little shove. “You have no idea how bad I want to pull this trigger right now.”

  Rick put a hand on Logan’s arm and shook his head. “I know, pal. But let’s just cuff him and let the courts sort it out. Prison isn’t kind to cops, you know?”

  Logan nodded and then bent, grabbing one of the lost pairs of cuffs. Rick took the other and together, they bound the man’s ankles and wrists, left wrist to right ankle, right wrist to left ankle. There was no way he would escape after that.

  With a nod of approval, Rick said, “Now, let’s get Rachel out of that hole in the ground.”

  Chapter 12

  Everything in the tunnel had exploded into action and for a moment, it was like an episode of the Keystone Cops. Rachel’s hands were still bound by the partially intact rope but she managed to lever herself to her knees and now she simply stood there, watching and listening.

  Once the cooks had taken off toward the cemetery end of the tunnel, she had been left to her own devices. There were voices and noises coming from both directions now, though, and she wasn’t sure which way she should go. Heck, she wasn’t even sure if she should go.

  About two minutes after the cooks had vacated, the men from the beach exit ran past her at breakneck speed. They spared not a glance as they ran past, bound for where, she didn’t know.

  There were burners still lit on the main lab table and Rachel went to it. She had no idea just how shaken she was until she tried to remove one of the beakers from its burner and saw her hands trembling. For that matter, both her arms were trembling, right up to the elbows. But she managed to get the beaker safely onto the table, then adjusted the burner so that the flame was much higher and thinner.

  She wasn’t sure how it would go, whether she would end up free and burned or merely free, but she knew she had to get that rope off. She pulled her wrists apart as hard as she could and cocked her hands backward to their full extent. Then, gradually, she lowered the rope toward the tip of the flame, not wanting it to get too close to her wrists for too long.

  The heat hit before the ropes reached the flame and she bit into her lip. She had burned herself horribly one day while removing a large casserole from the oven. She still bore the scar from it and the pain from that burn had lasted for months. Now, she was risking a much worse burn. But she gritted her teeth and let the rope dart down into the flame. A bit of the fiber caught and smoldered, then fizzled out. She tried again but the heat of it was just too much to bear.

  Near hysterical now, she looked around for something sharp, something that could be used to cut the ropes. There seemed to be nothing in that lab that would do the job, and then she spotted it. Next to the pile of large boxes was a barrel full of heaven knew what. And on top of that barrel was a utility knife. She ran to it and grasped it firmly in one hand, using the fingers of her other hand to work the blade out of the end. It was old and rusty and the blade looked dull. She doubted it would cut a decent steak. But she clenched it in her hand and worked the blade furiously back and forth over the rope, watching as it ate through several fibers at a time.

  She had made better progress by picking at the fibers with her fingernails. Frustration boiled up and she almost screamed and threw the knife. But she kept at it, sawing faster, nicking her wrist twice, but finally working the rope down to where the remaining strands could hold her no longer. That last pull at her wrists popped the rope in two and it fell uselessly to the ground.

  “Ha!” she spat at the rope, then dropped the knife to the table.

  At that moment, both the cooks and the first group of men ran past once more, this time from the cemetery toward the beach. Whatever they had originally been running to, something had chased them back.

  The voices from either end were getting louder and Rachel thought she heard a gunshot. Sound echoed horribly in the confines of the tunnel, so she couldn’t be sure. Someone even worse than the thugs who had captured her were in that tunnel and now she was caught between the warring factions.

  Her mind spun with possibilities. She might be able to get back to the hole through which she had fallen, but then what? She couldn’t reach it to climb out. And it would take her several trips to carry enough boxes and barrels to that hole that she could climb on them and escape…if she could lift those boxes and barrels.

  She had almost decided to run toward the cemetery and take her chances when a lone figure ran into view. His face was taut and pale and his eyes were those of a trapped wild animal. He took no care with her, simply grabbed her arm and wrenched her hard toward the far wall where the boxes were.

  The large metal trunk sat next to the barrel and the man kicked it open. Inside were several small boxes, some tools, and a first aid kit. He bent to removing these, casting them away rapidly and then shoving Rachel toward the trunk.

  “Get in!” he yelled and gave her another shove.

  She stepped in quickly, confused but ready to trust him, for some reason.

  The trunk was large enough to fit a stack of twin mattresses four deep. Once her feet hit the bottom of the trunk, the man placed his hand on top of her head and pushed. “Lay down. Hurry!”

  She did as she was told and the man climbed in next to her, spooning, for lack of a better word, as he placed himself between Rachel and the front of the trunk. He shut the lid and whispered to her, his voice oddly deadened by the confines of the trunk.

  “Don’t move and don’t talk. This’ll be over in a few moments.”

  “What’ll be over?”

  “Shh! What part of ‘don’t talk’ don’t you understand?”

  She said not another word as she lay there, in the dark, pressed between the back of the trunk and a strange man who had, she surmised, just saved her life.

  “Should we just go through the hole or do you think we should go in from the beach?” Logan asked, peering down into that dark, gaping hole in the ground.

  “There’s no telling where they’ve got her down there,” Rick said thoughtfully. “And it’s a hell of a long tunnel.” He scrubbed the back of his hand over his chin and stared at the ground. “It would probably be better to sneak in from the cave. But I don’t think the guns will do us any good. One shot and they’ll be onto us.”

  “Jungle warfare it is!” Logan declared. “But I’m keeping the guns on me just in case.”

  “Agreed.”

  The two men marched off toward the beach. The truck would have been quicker, but they didn’t want to alert any of the guards that might still be around the cave. Best to go in overland, nice and quiet, and take them by surprise. They were amazingly quiet for two such large men and they managed to hike through the woods and down the path to the beach without anyone knowing they were there.

  The sky was overcast; the moon a Cheshire Cat’s smile. They hugged the rocks as they closed in on the cave, wanting to keep themselves in as much darkness as possible. Walking in the sand requires special talent but walking quietly in the sand required training. Boots lifted straight up and went straight down on their toes, minimizing slippage and the tell-tale crunching of grit beneath them.

  They had rounded the first outcropping of boulders near the mouth of the cave and everything still felt right. They were aware but not paranoid, not easily freaked out. Earlier, they had scouted The Point and made sure that no guards had been posted there to keep a lookout on the cave mouth below. Now, they had simply to round that large pile of boulders and slip into the cave. Then they would be mostly home free.

  As they rounded those boulders, a curious thing happened. Logan happened to glance over at Rick, checking to see if he was ready to move into the cave pro
per. As he did so, he spotted two reds dots on Rick’s chest. Looking down, he saw there were two more on his own.

  “Snipers,” Logan whispered, pointing at his own chest.

  Rick looked, first at this friend’s chest, then his eyes, and he knew they were done for.

  What happened next was fast and furious and seemed to take on a life of its own.

  Outside of that trunk, the world had exploded into a cacophony of noise and movement. Voices yelled in anger and in fear, things were toppled and smashed. Twice, someone or something bumped into the trunk in which Rachel lay, making her clamp her hands over her mouth in order to fight back a cry. The man beside her was as still as stone and twice as silent. She figured he had done this before. His nerves were unshakeable.

  The sound of exploding glass made her wince and she feared that an explosion might follow. She didn’t know much about cooking meth, but she knew that the chemicals involved were volatile and tended to explode more often than not. It had never been part of her life plan to die in a meth lab explosion.

  It went on forever, or so it seemed to Rachel. If the TV shows she watched had any degree of accuracy, no one would fire a weapon in the vicinity of all those chemicals. That much was in her favor. Little else was.

  Someone large and with a deep voice came to stand near their trunk then. He yelled orders and threats and apparently took every opportunity to use physical force on the others.

  “Get down! On your knees! On your knees now!”

  Rachel quivered and out of instinct she put a hand on the man’s arm. Then he did the most peculiar thing. He reached out and gave her hand a squeeze and a pat. That and nothing more.

  There were yells of complaint and threats of lawyers bandied about outside. Faces were punched as the unmistakable sound of flesh hitting flesh could be heard. Rachel listened hard, waiting for the moment that she would hear a familiar voice. There was really only one voice Rachel wanted to hear: Rick’s.

  Rick and Logan stood in a halo of bright light, hands raised to shield their eyes from the spotlight. Voices yelled, some carrying more than others. Seemingly out of nowhere, men appeared on every side of them, guns raised, voices angry and panicked at the same time. Out of experience, Rick and Logan shot their hands into the air and two men raced in to relieve them of their weapons.

  “Get on the ground. On the ground now!”

  The orders were barked mere seconds after rough hands shoved them into the sand, boots planting themselves on the sides of their faces. Rick and Logan didn’t resist. They knew better.

  Other hands moved in to pat them down, looking for other weapons. They were stripped of their phones, flashlights, spare ammo clips and anything else they had on them. Then they were pulled brutally to their feet and slammed against the rocks. All the while, they kept their hands raised, offering no threat whatsoever to the men who were manhandling them.

  The men all wore tactical gear. They had body armor on, capped by either face masks or shields. There was something written on the back of every uniform, but things were too frenzied for Rick to make it out. Then a single man stepped forward, clearly the one in charge. His face was steel-set and immovable. His right cheek bore a long scar.

  “Who are you and what are you doing here?” he growled.

  Rick recovered first. Above all, he wanted to present as innocuous a story as possible, leaving the cops no room to suspect him or Logan of any wrongdoing.

  “My wife and I were in the woods earlier, looking for our dog. It was barely dark, but she screamed and then she disappeared. I called my friend here for help and we were looking for her.”

  “With weapons?” The man in charge squinted his eyes nearly closed and scowled. His face was far too close for Rick’s liking.

  “You never know what kind of animals you’re going to find in the woods.”

  “And I take it you didn’t find your wife? Why were you sneaking around down here?”

  “I thought she might have gone over the cliff.” Rick’s face was unreadable. He had had some practice at lying, to be sure.

  The man’s face relaxed, though he continued to stare at Rick like he was a trapped insect, ready to be squashed beneath his thumb at any moment. “You got permits for those guns, mister?”

  “Yessir.” Rick swallowed again. “Concealed carry, shoot to kill, the whole nine yards. I’m ex-law-enforcement and we’re both ex-military.”

  “I see.” The man paused, stepped back, let his eyes widen a bit. “I haven’t seen anything of your wife. But I have an operation going on here and I need the two of you gone. I suggest you go back to the woods and continue your search there. It’s not safe for you here.”

  Rick nodded curtly and rubbed his arm where the officer had grabbed it hard. He was sure there was a bruise there and while he had no hard feelings about that, he was experiencing a bit of discomfort. “We’ll do just that. But the only thing we found in the woods was her cell phone. It was lying on the ground next to a hole which dropped into some sort of cave or something.” He watched the back of the man’s head, then looked him right in the eye as he turned, wide-eyed, to stare at Rick. “The hole was easily large enough for a woman to fall through.”

  The man’s frown twitched once, twice. He spun away, bringing the mouthpiece to his mouth and speaking in a deep growl. “Be advised, there may be a hostage. I repeat, there may be a hostage inside. Proceed with due caution.” He pulled the mouthpiece away from his face and cast an order back over his shoulder. “Hold them here. Do not let them near the site.”

  Rick and Logan exchanged worried glances. Rachel had definitely gone into that tunnel. And now, there was some sort of police operation going on. There was tactical gear and assault weapons galore. If Rachel was still in the tunnel, chances of her coming out unscathed were slim.

  Rachel nearly screamed as she heard the very-near crashing of boots and screams of pain. She had seen enough TV shows to know that it would be suicide for them to fire a weapon in the vicinity of the lab. They would all have to rely on hand-to-hand combat to end this little war. With no idea who was out there or what their beef with the meth cooks was, she was convinced that she wouldn’t make it out of all this alive.

  When your life is measured in minutes, odd things go through your mind. Rachel wondered first if she had remembered to tell Rick that she loved him this morning. Then she worried over who had fed the cats. She pictured them in the house for days, nearly starving, trying to break into the cabinet where the food was kept. Then she wondered if Rick would hire a new waitress immediately, or wait to replace her.

  She tried to shake off all these strange thoughts, but the sounds of glass shattering and bodies being pummeled only made her more nervous. Then came the loud and commanding voices and the rest of it stopped. The only sound inside the trunk was Rachel’s hard and fast breathing. To her, it sounded like a wind tunnel.

  The man next to her patted her hand again. She couldn’t see his face in the complete darkness, but she thought he might be smiling. Maybe they would get out of this alive. Maybe it would be soon.

  There was chatter on the headsets of the two men left to guard them. Rick listened, knowing the terminology but not really giving a damn about the operation. He was waiting to hear word of Rachel, something that indicated they had found a civilian inside. So far, there had been none.

  To his left, men were being marched out of the cave at gunpoint. They were cuffed, each of them looking like a refugee from a bad gang movie. They were taken to a large truck, prodded with the muzzle of a gun if they moved too slowly, and shoved roughly inside. Rick pushed off from the rocks so that he could get a better view, hopefully catch sight of Rachel.

  The officer raised his weapon, aiming it directly at Rick’s chest. “You stay right where you are. Nobody goes anywhere until we get the all-clear.”

  Rick checked his eyes, seeing a bit of fear there. Sure, Rick had a good sixty pounds of pure muscle on the man, and he had been trained in a great many d
isciplines. But the officer had a weapon and Rick had nothing. In the interest of not getting his chest ventilated, Rick merely nodded and sank back against the boulders.

  More men were marched out of the cave and into the truck. Rick’s hopes soared with each person who came out of that cave. His heart skipped a beat.

  Still, there had been no sign of Rachel, no word that she had been seen.

  Inside that trunk, Rachel was all ears. Every sound, scrape, bump or rattle made her jumps inwardly. She wasn’t sure who was outside, other than the bad guys. More bad guys? Worse guys? The police? She could only hope.

  After a long while, the tunnel fell silent. The man next to her shifted slightly and disentangled his arm. As quietly as he could, he opened the lid of the trunk millimeter by millimeter, squinting out of the darkness and into that little slit of light. When finally the lid was open a good four inches and he could see most of the cave, he let out a long breath.

  “I think we’re clear now. Let’s get out of this thing.”

  He unfolded himself by degrees, hauling himself out of the trunk and then offering his hand to help her out as well. Every muscle in her body ached from the tension and from being folded up inside that trunk. She unfurled slowly, trying to reach a standing position before the cramps in her legs threw her to the ground.

  Then she was out, free, but by no means safe. She offered a smile of gratitude to the man who had shoved her into that trunk. He didn’t have to. He could have let her fend for herself.

  “Thank you for saving me,” she offered feebly. “I know you didn’t have to and it was a risk.”

  He waved her off. “No sweat.”

  There were footsteps coming toward them now. They came from the cemetery end of the tunnel and Mr. Hoodie turned quickly in their direction. Every muscle in his body was taut, braced for a flight or fight situation. When he caught sight of who was coming toward them, he relaxed all at once.