B00CCYP714 EBOK

by Bradshaw, R. E.

  Rainey knew he was not sleepy or tired. It would be a long time before Patrick Asher crashed. The amphetamine effect of a missing child would disrupt his sleep for nights to come. Even if they found her alive, the fear would wake him in the dark, panicked and out of breath. Should they find her too late, Rainey doubted the colonel would ever have another good night’s sleep.

  In the bathroom, Rainey splashed water on her face and re-corralled her hair. She stared into the mirror, talking to the UNSUB. “You are so close, I can feel you.”

  Her cellphone began to ring. She pulled it out of her jacket pocket and saw Katie’s face smiling up at her. She opened the door and stepped outside, careful to bring the key she had to return to the clerk, and answered the call.

  “I guess you’ve been watching the news,” she said into the phone.

  “Yes, I have,” Katie replied. “It’s been non-stop coverage on Cookie’s channel, and the networks keep breaking in with updates. I saw Danny and Brooks. I didn’t know she was coming.”

  “Neither did Danny,” Rainey said, laughing. “She’s going to stay a few days, after this is over.”

  “You sound pretty confident that you will find this guy.”

  “Katie, he’s close, so close I can almost smell him.”

  Katie was quiet for a moment. When she did speak again, some of the lightness had left her voice. “Are you out there looking for this guy without a weapon?”

  “The colonel has one. We’re not confronting these people. We just pull up, shine a light on the back of the truck, and drive off. They don’t even know we’re there, most of the time. These are country folks. They don’t park their trucks in garages.”

  “So you and the colonel are driving around looking at trucks, while your former colleagues are investigating, and I quote, ‘the largest body recovery in recent North Carolina history.’ Oh, and I think my favorite sound bite so far was the young cop, whose entire quote was, ‘This guy is a …’ followed by a long series of bleeps, interspersed with words like animal, freak, abomination. I was kind of glad to hear that last one being used appropriately for once.”

  “I’m glad the show is still going on. He’ll be glued to the screen, probably multiple screens, watching every minute of the coverage. He won’t see me coming,” Rainey said.

  “It’s obviously pointless to ask you not to do this without backup,” Katie said, followed by a deep sigh.

  “If we find the truck, we back off and call it in. I know what I’m doing, Katie. You have to trust me.”

  “Okay, then you have to trust me. Gunny and the grandmothers are going to watch the children for about an hour. They are already in bed anyway. Ernie and Henry are coming to take me to the hospital to see Mackie. I’m taking food for the boys and Thelma. I can’t let him go under tomorrow morning, without seeing him. I will be safe and well protected.”

  “I’m okay with that,” Rainey said. “I need to see him too. Maybe I can swing by tonight sometime. Tell him I’m thinking about him.”

  “I will, honey. I love you. Be safe.”

  “I love you, Katie, and you be careful, too.”

  Katie answered with Rainey’s signature, “Always,” and then she was gone.

  Rainey joined the colonel inside the little store, returning the bathroom key to the clerk. The old man eyed her up and down, and then said, “Aren’t you Billy Bell’s daughter, that FBI girl?”

  Rainey smiled at him. “Yes, I’m Billy’s daughter, but I’m not in the FBI anymore.”

  “My name’s Wilton. Knew your daddy pretty well. I remember you coming in here with him when you were younger. Sure was sorry to hear he was killed.”

  “I’m glad he had friends like you,” Rainey said. She pulled the tailgate picture from her back pocket. “Wilton, maybe you can help me. I’m looking for this truck.”

  She handed the picture over the counter. Wilton studied it for a moment, and then handed it back to Rainey. “Well, Miss Virginia had a truck that color, but she passed about three years ago. I see her oldest son driving it sometimes, but I don’t think he’s supposed to.”

  “Why is that?” The colonel asked.

  “Well now, that’s one of those family tragedies, when greed and guile take over after a death. Miss Virginia had a small farm, just down the road a piece. John, her husband, died ten years back. He worked on heavy equipment and cars, when he wasn’t in the fields, and left her fair off. She rented out the land to her neighbor to farm. If she’d had no children, she could have lived to a hundred very comfortably, some say. I’m glad she’s not around to see what happened to them boys of hers.”

  Rainey knew they would have to wait for the point of the story, as this was a southern tale. The narrator of such a story felt compelled to add in the details and embellishments, so the listener not only heard, but was completely immersed in the experience. Southerners were of the mind that too few words were more apt to leave the story up for interpretation. They would rather you fully grasp the situation, than form an opinion on just the facts. She dared not interrupt Wilton, and simply offered a nod of understanding.

  The colonel was not so patient. “Was there trouble?”

  Wilton took a deep breath, storing up for the remainder of his tale. “That oldest boy, Vance, he stayed around here, but the youngest one, Nate, moved to Maryland. Nate visited often, but Vance spent a lot of time with his mother. He also drained her bank accounts. Virginia was always bailing him out of one financial scrape or another after he got kicked out of the army. His divorce practically broke her. She loved that grandson of hers. It nearly killed her when the judge ruled Vance couldn’t see him anymore. I think she died of a broken heart, fighting to see him again.”

  Wilton shook his head from side to side, a well-known storyteller tactic, giving the listener time to absorb the tragedy, before continuing. “When she died, Vance was befuddled to find his mother had been keeping a running tab on the money she’d given him. The land and everything on it, including her truck, went to Nate. She left Vance a few thousand dollars and called it even.”

  “I take it Vance didn’t like that very much,” Rainey said, growing more interested in the story by the moment.

  “No, not at all. Wasn’t long after the will was read that the farmhouse burned to the ground. Folks around here figured Vance done it to spite Nate. I seen ‘em fall out right here in the parking lot, fists a flyin’. They’ve been in court over the estate ever since, accusations going back and forth. That’s why I say Vance shouldn’t be driving that truck. It’s supposed to be put up in the garage with all of his daddy’s tools.”

  “Are you talking about V. A. Wayne’s place, back that way about a mile?” Rainey asked, pointing in the direction from which she and the colonel had just come.

  “Yeah, Virginia Afton Wayne, that was her. Knew her all my life.”

  Rainey was very interested now. “We just came from there. I didn’t see any garage standing on the property.”

  Wilton chuckled. “When John built that garage back in the seventies, Virginia made him put it up in the woods, away from the house. She said she couldn’t stand to hear him revving engines all day. You have to follow that little sand path into the woods about a hundred yards.”

  Rainey pulled out some cash to pay for the two coffees the colonel had placed on the counter. Wilton waved his hand at her.

  “It’s on the house. Your daddy ran down some bad checks for me once. Wouldn’t take no payment for it. I reckon I owe him two cups of coffee.”

  Rainey could barely contain her excitement, but remained calm until they were back in the car. She didn’t want to get the colonel’s hopes up, but she had a really good feeling about this. He evidently did, too.

  “Back to the Wayne address, right?”

  Rainey turned to face him. “We locate and identify the truck, then we back off. Understood?”

  “What if Bladen is in that garage?”

  “If he is there, we have to back off. He’ll kill he
r before he lets us take her. We’re going to need help.”

  The colonel backed the car out of the parking space, saying, “Like you said, I’ll do what I can live with.”

  “Hooah, Colonel.”

  #

  Bladen stayed in the shower stall longer than she needed to. He was gone, but fear kept her behind the closed bathroom door until she was absolutely sure it was not one of his sadistic tricks. While she waited, she broke the remaining part of the brush head completely from the handle, leaving a jagged stake for a weapon. When she had steeled herself against the paralyzing fear, Bladen turned the handle on the bathroom door, pulling it open slowly. The light from the bathroom spilled out into the dark chamber. She was alone.

  The first thing Bladen did was turn on the lights and head for his desk. She opened the laptop, powered it up, but was disappointed to find it password protected. She dug around on the desk for any form of communication, and finding none, she turned her attention to other pursuits. Bladen had one mission on the top of her list. She walked over to the shelf where he kept his “tools,” and located the Pear. She picked it up and threw it against the far wall as hard as she could. The force of her throw only bent it a little, so she picked it up and threw it again. Her fury grew, as she chased the torturous contraption around the room, repeatedly throwing it against the walls until there was nothing left but pieces of bent metal.

  “Try using that again, asshole,” she raged.

  Next, she went for his whip, seizing it from the wall hook, where he returned it after each torture session. She found a pocketknife in his desk drawer and took great pleasure in cutting the whip into little pieces. Bladen might die tonight, when he returned and found out what she had done, but she knew two things. He would never use that whip to scourge her naked skin again, and his precious Pear of Anguish was no longer a threat.

  Once she was finished with the whip destruction, she set out to remove all the leather straps from the rack, yanked the hinged top off the pillory and used it to break the picquet stake from the floor. She cut all the ropes she could find into pieces, and general wreaked havoc on all his meticulously handcrafted torture devices. Bladen worked herself into such a frenzied state, she collapsed against a wall trying to catch her breath. She did not know how long she had been thrashing away at his possessions, but as she looked around the room, Bladen began to laugh for the first time in days.

  #

  The colonel drove the car slowly up the sandy path. Neither of them spoke. Both were processing the environment, as they slipped beneath the evergreen canopy. The headlights illuminated a structure in the center of a cleared area and surrounded by thick woods. The fine hairs on the back of Rainey’s neck stood up and her instincts screamed, “Alert! Alert!”

  “Yep, if I was going to build a lair, this is exactly the kind of place I would do it,” she said.

  “Rainey, are you willing to kill a man with knife?”

  She thought that an odd question at the moment, but answered honestly. “I am trained in knife tactics and would stab an assailant if I had to, but I prefer the distance a firearm affords me from my attacker.”

  He reached under his seat, never taking his eyes from the road, and pulled out a K-Bar, the seven-inch bladed U.S. Army fighting knife of choice. He placed it on the seat beside her. He then reached under his jacket, pulled his M-9 from its holster, placing it next to the knife.

  “Pick your weapon,” he said. “You’re not getting out of this car unarmed.”

  Rainey reached for the M-9. “Since I’m very sure that you are capable of defending yourself with that knife, I’ll stick with something I know I can use.” She looked at the colonel’s profile, seeing the muscles tightening in his jaw. “We need him alive, Colonel. Try to keep that in mind.”

  Right now, all Rainey had was circumstantial evidence. She could not call in the troops on a hunch. She could, however, gather more information and she knew just how to get it. She slipped the firearm in her jacket and pulled out her phone, speed-dialed a familiar number, and waited for Brooks to answer.

  “Girl, I hope you have some expensive bourbon at your house, ‘cause I’m going to need a drink, make that a bottle, after this.”

  “I do. I’ll even put a nipple on it,” Rainey answered, and then got right to her point. “I need everything you can find on a Vance Wayne. He is the son of John and Virginia Afton Wayne, both deceased. I can send you the parents’ address. The property is tied up in probate court. I know Vance is divorced, has a son, and was denied the right to see his child about three years ago.”

  “I’m going to totally ignore the humor in his father’s name, because the rest of it sounds like the preliminary profile the team just gave the task force. Give me a sec, and I’ll get right back to you with all things Vance Wayne. Send me the address. Bye.”

  A click and Brooks was gone. Rainey sent the address and then said to the colonel, “Just because this guy fits the profile does not mean he is the UNSUB. There are plenty of narcissistic momma’s boys out there that never commit a serious crime. We need evidence.”

  The colonel pulled the car to a stop, the headlights illuminating two garage bay doors and a single door at the far left end of the forty-year-old cement block building. The bay doors had three horizontal windows each, allowing the lights to penetrate the dark interior.

  “Something like that,” he said, pointing out the windshield.

  Rainey peered through the windows of the door on the right at the cab of a red pickup truck, but she thought the colonel was probably more interested in the hangman’s noose dangling over the truck bed.

  “Yep, that’s looking like probable cause,” she said.

  The colonel shut the engine off and doused the headlights. They sat quietly for a moment, taking in the surroundings. Nothing moved, the building was dark again, but if Vance Wayne were just a few feet into the woods, they would never see him.

  “Okay, let’s go see what we can tell from outside the building,” Rainey suggested.

  They exited the car together, closing the doors softly. Rainey pulled the M-9 and her flashlight from her jacket pockets. She took the weapon off safety and gripped it at her side, while trailing the beam from her flashlight on the ground in front of her.

  “Someone’s been driving in and out of that bay on the left,” she said, “and very recently. The dew settled earlier this evening, but these tracks have moisture on either side of them.” She pointed the beam of her flashlight at the concrete under the bay door. “Look, his tires left wet sand under the door. He was here within the last two hours.”

  They approached the garage door concealing the truck. The colonel was tall enough to look down through the glass at the tailgate, but it was so close to the door, he could not see it. Rainey studied the hangman’s noose with her flashlight and then trailed the beam through the garage. It was a typical two bay mechanic’s garage, with tools hanging on the walls and scattered on workbenches. The larger trappings of the trade—torches, lifts, compressors, and the like—were pushed up against the wall, allowing plenty of space for two cars. The smell of fuel and oil hung in the air.

  The sound of a compressor kicking on startled both Rainey and the colonel into defensive positions. It was several seconds before she realized the sound was coming from outside the building, around back. She motioned the colonel to follow her, and then slipped around the corner, sweeping the area with the beam of her flashlight and the barrel of her weapon. Seeing nothing, she continued to the rear of the building, cautiously turning the corner to find the source of the noise. A fairly new heating unit whirred away, pumping air into the garage. The ground behind the building was covered with old fifty-gallon drums and car parts. The shiny new heater looked out of place. Rainey was about to comment to the colonel, when she realized he was not behind her, and at the same time heard wood splinter at the front of the garage.

  “Dammit.”

  She ran toward the sound, catching a glimpse of the colonel
entering the now opened door at the far left end of the building.

  #

  Bladen ran to turn off the lights. She needed the element of surprise. She had not heard his car door slam shut, but something loud just happened above her. After trashing the place, Bladen had searched for weapons she could use to overpower him, or at least inflict some serious damage. She found a hospital scrub shirt folded in the bottom drawer of his desk and put it on, then assembled her arsenal.

  Bladen gathered pieces of the rope she cut earlier, tying enough together to create a tool belt of sorts. Carefully crafted leather loops, made from parts of the whip and the rack restraints, held the little pocketknife, a pair of scissors she found, and the stake she made with the wire brush handle, which she had spent some time sharpening to a fine point. She also had the handcuffs tucked into the belt and several lengths of chain at her feet. She modified the bleach bottle, cutting away a portion of the top and one side, which would enable her to throw the blinding liquid at his face upon his entrance.

  Prepared to fight to the death, Bladen crouched in the darkness near the door, gripped the bottle of bleach with both hands, and waited.

  #

  Several things happened all at once. Rainey stepped into the garage, her phone rang, and the colonel shouted. “It’s the truck. It’s him.”

  Rainey dug in her pocket for the phone, while she crossed the empty bay, joining the colonel at the back of a Vermillion Red pickup truck with a deep gouge in its tailgate.

  She saw Brooks’s number on the caller ID and answered, already spewing information, “We found the truck. It’s at the address I sent you. There’s a burned out house by the road. Tell them to follow the path into the woods about a hundred yards. He’s not here now, but he’s been here recently.”

  “Okay, I got all that, but you should know, this guy is a nurse at Memorial Hospital.” Brooks paused, which cranked Rainey’s already thumping heart into high gear. “Katie, rather the women’s shelter, has a protection order against this guy, and so do his ex-wife, his brother, and the owner of the farm next door.”