Silenced Girls

by Roger Stelljes

  Warner saw him and fired. Braddock ducked back, more glass shards showering down.

  “I know it's you, Warner!” Braddock yelled, peering around the back corner of the truck.

  Another hail of shots rained down from the shed.

  As the truck was pelted Braddock looked back to the tree line, which was fifteen yards away. I can make that, he thought. He stayed low as he set his feet to fire and then run. “I know you’ve killed all those women, Warner, you sick fuck. It’s not Eddie Mannion, it’s you, Warner! It’s you!” Braddock yelled as the shots kept coming. And then the shots stopped.

  The magazine was empty.

  Warner would have another.

  Braddock peered around the back end of the truck and saw Warner pulling out the expended magazine. He rose up and fired at the open door, Warner ducking back inside.

  He took off and sprinted for the woods. As he reached the woods’ edge, he dove forward as Warner fired again.

  Tori could hear the mass of gunfire and then she heard Braddock’s voice. After another long moment there was more firing, but she sensed it was moving away and she squirmed forward to look around the corner of the desk. She peered up the steps and couldn’t see anything. There were ten steps up. They were steep. The door was open. I can make it, she thought.

  She strained to push herself back up off the floor, fighting against the restraints when she glanced back to the stairway again. Kyle Mannion, shotgun in hand, was coming down the steps, alternately looking back up and then over to Tori.

  “Get me out of here!” she exclaimed.

  Kyle saw nylon cuffs on her and went to the workbench, frantically looking for something to cut them with.

  Tori pushed herself up and hopped toward the workbench to join him when she saw the knife, lying on the floor under the steps.

  “Kyle, on the floor, under the steps.”

  Kyle turned around, reached down and grabbed the knife. He started slicing through the cuffs, first freeing her hands before cutting her legs loose. “We gotta help Will. Is that thing loaded?”

  “Locked and cocked.”

  Tori took it from him and ignoring the tingling and numbness in her legs, feet, and hands, ran up the steps.

  The blind dive into the woods was a bad move.

  Braddock tumbled down the steep hill, head over heels until he crashed against the base of a tree. He was deeper into the woods, but he was in a narrow crevice that looked back uphill now, ceding the high ground to Warner. And now he was lamenting his attire, especially his light blue-colored shirt and khaki shorts. He got to his feet and peered back up the steep hill, his gun up, scanning. He sensed movement to his left.

  Warner had flanked him.

  The first shot recoiled Braddock to the right, his upper right arm grazed. He spun away, stumbling, but staying on his feet, he ran and jumped through the woods, deeper into the crevice trying to evade fire.

  “Ahh!”

  He was knocked off his feet, hit in the lower left side. He somersaulted uncontrollably twice before his back landed hard against the massive trunk of a downed tree.

  “Aw, man,” he groaned. Breathing hard, he looked up to see Warner approaching him, carefully working his way down the hill with the steep grade and gravity bringing him rapidly closer. His own gun was laying on the ground ten feet to his right. Braddock tried to move to crawl over for it, but his body wasn’t responding.

  “I have to admit, Will,” Warner said breezily, ten feet away, raising his rifle, setting his feet and getting ready to finish him off, “I didn’t think you were smart enough to truly figure it all out. Well done, really, well done. But I’m afraid you still lose the game.”

  Braddock snorted a laugh, spitting up some blood, looking down to his now bloodstained lower left abdomen before looking back up at Warner, leaning his head back against the tree stump. “You know what helped me, Warner? You know what really helped?”

  “No, what?”

  Braddock smiled, a bloody grimace. “A really…good…” and then his pupils rolled left. “Partner.”

  Warner spun to his right.

  The first shot from Tori hit Warner in the left shoulder, twisting his body toward her. Then it was on, Tori and Kyle both unloading, the impacts of the shots strafing Warner as he tumbled backward into a pile of brush and cut branches, his rifle falling out of his hands to the ground.

  “Will! Will!” Tori exclaimed as she and Kyle quickly worked their way down the rest of the steep pitch of the hill. Tori stepped over Warner, still coming to Braddock while Kyle stopped. He kicked at Warner’s leg before shooting him twice in the chest at close range. Finishing him off.

  Tori kneeled to Braddock’s left.

  “Took you two…” Braddock coughed out with a wan smile, spurting blood, “…long enough.”

  “Stay still. Try not to move,” Tori ordered worriedly, carefully lifting away his shirt, inspecting the wound.

  “Man, my Tahoe, did you see it? It’s like me, all shot up,” Braddock said before coughing. “Two trucks in a week. They’ll never lease me…They’ll never lease me another one.”

  “Is that really your biggest problem at the moment?”

  Braddock coughed out a laugh. “Tell me, Special Agent Hunter. Do you always shoot people in nothing but a lace bra?”

  “Would you shut up?” Tori replied but with a little smile. “Just lay there, would you?”

  Kyle Mannion was already on his cell phone calling for an ambulance. “Warner place, out off of East Gull Road,” he relayed. “We have a sheriff’s detective shot out here! Get moving NOW!”

  “We got him, Tori,” Braddock said, laboring to breathe. “We got him…” His eyes closed.

  “No! No, no, no,” Tori wailed, reaching for his neck, checking for a pulse. “Come on. Come on! Will! Will!”

  Braddock’s eyes fluttered open and he grinned. “Hey Tori, you got plans later?” he asked hoarsely before coughing again.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus, would you just stop talking?” Tori admonished, looking up, her eyes locked on Braddock’s. “Kyle, come on, we gotta apply pressure. Where is that ambulance?”

  “It’s coming,” Kyle replied as he pulled his dress shirt over his head, knelt and pressed it to the wound. “It’s coming,” he said again as a siren was faintly audible in the distance.

  CHAPTER 34

  “IT’LL DEFINE US ONLY IF WE LET IT.”

  I t took the paramedics another five minutes to arrive. Then another two minutes to traverse their way down to Braddock with their equipment and yet another five to stabilize and then get him loaded on a stretcher. In the meantime, the fire department arrived. The firefighters, along with the paramedics, Tori, Steak, Cal and Kyle Mannion were able to climb their way back up the scraggly incline of the crevice, lifting the stretcher over downed trees and around debris piles to get him back up to the ambulance. By the time the ambulance doors closed, Braddock had lost a lot of blood, having suffered two wounds to his lower abdomen in addition to a flesh wound on his upper right arm.

  Cal and Steak led the ambulance back to Manchester and the Shepard County Medical Center. Braddock made it to the hospital alive—barely. He was rushed into the emergency room and shortly thereafter, into surgery.

  Tori, upon her arrival at the hospital, her own face streaked with dry blood and bulging with swelling from the blows from Warner, was taken into a treatment room. The doctor got the ten-thousand-foot summary of the physical beating. He examined her eyes, in addition to the cuts and bruises from being struck repeatedly. She also had a CT scan. “Agent Hunter, you are going to have a rough next couple of days.”

  “What’s the damage?”

  “Your pupils are quite large and you’re slurring your speech a bit. Now, some of that slurring could be the fact you told me you were punched in the face several times, but those blows to the head have left you with a concussion to go with all these bruises and cuts. That pretty face is going to swell up like a great big pumpkin, but I
don’t think there is any…long-term damage. Ibuprofen, ice and lots of rest are going to be your friends for the next several days. If you need a stronger painkiller, we can get you one.”

  After receiving treatment, she joined Kyle and Eddie, Steak, Cal and Backstrom in the waiting room with Braddock still in surgery. An hour into the waiting, she pulled Eddie and Kyle into a separate room. Ten seconds in Tori started tearing up. She apologized to them both, and especially Eddie. Then she just lost it. The last three weeks, the last twenty years just flowed out of her in a guttural cry.

  “Just let it go, Tori,” Kyle murmured. “Get it all out.”

  “I’m so sorry, Eddie. Oh my God, I’m so, so sorry. I accused you of all those awful things. God, I…”

  “Jeff played all of us, Tori,” Kyle said quietly. “You, me, Eddie, everyone. For twenty years, he got us all.”

  “But he isn’t going to get anyone else now,” Eddie consoled with a soft voice, sitting down next to her, wrapping his right arm around her, drawing her in. “We have the answers and now we know what happened to Jessie, Katy, Genevieve, so many others.”

  “My gosh,” Tori said after sobbing herself out, wiping away the tears, getting her breathing back together. “The damage this is going to do to all of you, to the town…”

  “We’ll just have to put everything back together,” Kyle answered, undaunted, already looking ahead to life’s next challenge. “It’ll define us only if we let it.”

  “If what Warner said to me is true, there are a lot of bodies buried on that property, just outside that little house,” Tori explained to Cal and Steak.

  “I think we’re going to need help,” Cal surmised.

  “Yeah, a lot of it,” Steak agreed.

  At 7:50 a.m. the surgeon found them all still congregated in the waiting room.

  “He’s alive,” the doctor reported, taking off his surgical cap and slipping off his glasses to rub his tired eyes. “Detective Braddock was hit twice in his lower left side, in his back but those bullets found their way into his abdomen. He lost a lot of blood because the gunshots, those bullets got into his intestines, exploded and rattled around in there and made a bunch of little holes, but I think we plugged them all.”

  “Is he going to make it, Doc?” Kyle asked.

  The doctor nodded. “I’m very encouraged, Kyle. He made it through the surgery. We got him closed and the vitals are holding, so right now I’m not seeing any signs of trouble. But we’ll be monitoring him very closely, especially the next twenty-four hours. If we get through that without any issues, I think we’ll be good.”

  “Can we see him?” Tori asked.

  “From the viewing room. We’re going to keep him sedated and in the ICU for now.”

  “And recovery?” Cal asked.

  “In time, I’m optimistic that he’ll make a full recovery, but he’s got some downtime ahead of him, that’s for sure, Sheriff. It was a little hairy when he got here with all that blood loss. It’s fortunate, I guess, that there were a couple of you that were there to apply pressure to those wounds. Otherwise…” the doctor’s voice trailed away. “But that’s not what happened so let’s all think good thoughts and get him through this.”

  Tori made her way back to the hotel and collapsed fully clothed onto her bed, two ice packs on her face as she laid on her back. She slept hard for five hours, waking a little after 3:00 p.m. with a pounding headache. Her jaw, chin and cheeks ached. She went to the bathroom and took in the damage. She looked like she’d just gone fifteen rounds with Ronda Rousey. She had two nasty black eyes, her right cheek was varying shades of yellow, red and purple, with multiple cuts to her lips and two runs of stiches on her left upper forehead.

  She called the hospital. Braddock was stable but remained unconscious. He was now being watched over by Roger and Mary Hayes and his son, Quinn, who’d flown back from Michigan on Kyle Mannion’s private jet early in the morning.

  Next, she checked in with Cal, who was back at the Warner place in the woods. “If you’re up to it, you might want to come out here.”

  Cal’s call was followed up by a call from Special Agent in Charge, Richard Graff, her boss in New York. After talking about the case for a bit and checking on her physical and emotional wellbeing Graff stated, “I do need you back here at some point.”

  “You should see me right now. It’s not pretty, sir.”

  “Bruises and cuts heal. I’m more worried about you…mentally. Do you need to talk to somebody? Whatever you need, I’ll see to it.”

  “I’m fine. I’ll be back,” Tori answered. “I just have to take care of a few things here before I leave.”

  An hour later, Steak picked her up outside the hotel. As she climbed up into his Tahoe, he couldn’t hide his reaction to the cuts and bruises, visible even though she was wearing large sunglasses. “Hey, we don’t need to do this.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “You sure?” Steak reached for his friend’s hand. “We can do this later.”

  “No, my friend, let’s go.”

  Steak nodded and pulled away, exiting the parking lot and making his way north on the H-4.

  Tori asked, “What’s going on up there?”

  Steak sighed. “I just think…you just need to see it for yourself.”

  The two old friends drove quietly together back to the Warner place. As they approached the driveway, a sheriff’s deputy backed up his patrol Explorer, and Steak drove through the mangled iron entrance gate and up the steep hill to the main house and parked amongst the sea of multicolored police vehicles.

  The two of them slowly walked down the slight incline of the narrow driveway to the small house and the clearing, which was a sea of investigators now led by the Minnesota BCA, although Cal was present along with agents from the FBI. There was a rectangular area with two lines of four gravestones each, the burial ground for the Warner family. Then to the south of the rectangle was another long and wide rectangular stretch designated by small orange flags stuck in the ground in two parallel rows.

  “The flags signify what?” Tori asked.

  “Bodies,” Steak replied calmly. “Warner didn’t lie to you. The BCA has that ground radar going. There are a lot of bodies buried out here in neat rows as you can see. All very orderly.”

  Later in the evening, under the theory that if Katy Anderson was found at the far edge of the property and given that Jeff Warner said Jessie was seventy-five feet away, the crew exhumed the body buried closest to the shed and cemetery. Twenty-four hours later, the skeletal remains were identified with dental records.

  After twenty years, Jessie Hunter was found.

  In a small private ceremony two days later attended by Tori, Cal and his wife Lucy, Steak, Eddie and Kyle Mannion, Mickey, Corinne and Lizzy and select other high school friends, Jessie Hunter’s remains were properly laid to rest next to those of her mother and father.

  One other thing Warner had told Tori was about the women he’d taken while in college.

  Cal placed calls to his opposite numbers in Mesa and Tucson. There were three unsolved disappearances of college co-eds in the years Warner was a student at Arizona State University.

  The three disappearances bore many of the signature elements of Warner’s abductions.

  Tori had one more thing to do, and she needed to wait two more days until Braddock was fully conscious and with it. She was able to come in early in the morning, when he was alone in his room. He was gaunt and weak, but he was in the clear and would be released from the hospital in a few days.

  “Hey,” she greeted softly as she came to the side of the bed and gently cupped his face for a moment before she sat down in the chair. She reached for his right hand with both of hers.

  “You’re starting to heal up,” Will observed.

  Tori simply nodded and sighed a big breath as she sat down in a chair next to him.

  “You’re coming to say goodbye,” he said with a raspy voice and a wan smile. “I’m a detective, I k
now things.”

  Tori nodded her head while looking down to the floor, unable to meet his eyes. “Duty calls.”

  “Does the job always come first?”

  “For me, it has.”

  “Maybe that’s because you never had a reason to put something in front of it.”

  Tori finally looked up and met his eyes, giving him a little smile.

  “I was kind of hoping I could get you to think about staying,” Will said, his eyes locked on hers. “You know, try something new.”

  Tori smiled. “I thought I drove you crazy.”

  “Oh, without question.”

  They both smiled and laughed lightly.

  “But I think I’ve come to like it a little bit. You have a certain charm.”

  Tori tried to stay stoic, but her eyes betrayed her, the tears forming. She’d done a lot of crying lately. “I just…can’t.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  She kept her head down but held his hand in hers.

  “Why?” He wasn’t going to let her off easy.

  She respected the fact he wasn’t afraid of difficult questions or hard truths. Tori shook her head, looking away. “I don’t think I’m wired right—anymore. I’m kind of broken, I think.”

  “Anything that’s broke can be fixed.”

  “But this place, all of the…”

  “Pain,” Will offered, nodding his understanding. “It’s too much to overcome, I guess?”

  She brushed her hand along the side of his face. “You have such a good life here with Quinn. You deserve someone who will be good for both of you. Me? Here? I just—I don’t think I could do it. I’d just screw it up eventually. I don’t think I could take that.”

  “I think you’re selling yourself short.”

  “No, Will,” Tori replied as she stood up and kissed Braddock on the forehead, then his lips. “I’m doing the right thing,” she said before kissing him one more time. “Goodbye.”