Carved in Darkness

by Maegan Beaumont

  That should do it.

  He let go of Kelly, and she dropped to the floor. He looked down at his Melissa, let his eyes roam—go where his hands and knife would follow. Her arms were flung out from her body as if she’d hoped for wings to carry her away from the nightmare she’d been plunged into. But this nightmare had only just begun.

  This time his Melissa would not fly away.

  Seventy-three

  Strickland rattled off an address for a truck yard in Oklahoma, but he didn’t bother to write it down. A place like that would be constantly busy—truckers coming in from off the road, while others spent hours gearing up for cross-country trips.

  Not exactly private.

  He had questions, and there was only one person he could think of that might have the answers. A quick call to Tom told him that the person he was looking for had decided to make himself easy to find.

  The diner was busy, the Sunday after-church crowd filling the space to near capacity. Michael and his companions pushed their way in, and he stood in the doorway for a second, surveying the crowd. He zeroed in on the back of Carson’s head and started for him.

  Carson never moved, never looked up from the counter he sat at. He seemed totally unaware of what was going on around him, but Michael knew better.

  He looked away from Carson for a second. Tommy’s wife and daughter were on the other side of the counter, not more than three feet away. He smiled at the girl before looking at her mother. “Take her home,” he said in a low voice.

  She nodded once, picked up her daughter without a word. She gave Tom a look through the service window as she went, one he imagined that was meant to urge her husband to come with her. Tom shook his head—never once taking his eyes off Carson. He seemed to understand that this was it: the time for retribution had finally come. Tom wasn’t going anywhere.

  Ben turned to the crowded restaurant. “Alright, folks—today’s your lucky day. Lunch is on me,” he said with a smile, but the message was clear. People stood, looked at the pair of Desert Eagle pistols riding Ben’s rib cage, and looked away. It was time to leave.

  The restaurant cleared in record time. Ben ushered them all out and locked the door behind them while Lark pulled the blinds. He stood over Carson, joined by Tom on the other side of the counter. He looked at him. “Package come for me?”

  “Yup,” Tom said. “In my office.”

  He looked at Ben. “Gun’s in the back. Some assembly required.”

  Ben looked at Lark. “Take care of it.”

  Lark shook his head. “When did I turn into the unit bitch?”

  “When you opened your mouth and started squawking like one,” Ben said.

  He waited for Lark to leave before he pulled the .38 off his hip and laid it on the counter between him and Carson. “Where is she?”

  Carson finally looked up at him, seemed absolutely unconcerned with the fact that he was hemmed in by a couple of gun-toting thugs. He looked at Tom. “You’re just lovin’ this aren’t you, Tomahawk?”

  Tom shrugged. “It doesn’t suck.”

  Michael snapped his finger in front of Carson’s face. “Sabrina’s missing. I left her last night and now she’s gone.” He placed his hand on the gun. “Where is she? That’s the last time I’m gonna ask nice.” He watched Carson’s gaze drift down, settle on the hand that rested on the gun between them. Carson looked up. Smiled. Go ahead and try.

  The invitation was clear, but apparently Carson recognized that going for the gun would be a mistake. Instead, he leaned away from it, looked over his shoulder at Ben standing behind him. “Where is she? I don’t have a fucking clue, but I can do you one better, O’Shea.” He shifted to the side, pulled something out of his back pocket. Carson slapped it on the counter, nudged the gun out of the way to do it.

  He looked down, felt his throat go tight. It was a picture of Sabrina and the twins on the front porch of their house.

  Carson tapped the photo with a calloused finger. “Who is she?”

  Seventy-four

  Sabrina woke in the dark, riding wave after wave of nausea as the last of whatever Kelly had stuck her with worked its way through her system. Feeling the gorge rise in her throat, she breathed, drawing air into her lungs in deep, slow pulls meant to calm her rising panic.

  She was in the dark.

  Closing her eyes, she focused on her breathing. Used her hands to feel around and recognized almost instantly that she was in the trunk of a car. Her hands were bound together at the wrist. She twisted and tugged. It felt like duct tape. She moved her hands to her side to confirm what she already knew. Her gun was gone and she didn’t have a backup.

  Panic climbed another notch. More deep breathing. She tried to listen to the sounds outside, but all she could hear was the frantic knock of her own heart. She focused on it, reined it in from a fast gallop to a steady trot. More deep breathing took it from a steady trot to a slow walk. The sounds outside came into focus, and she listened carefully.

  Nothing.

  She could feel the panic push its way up, but she shoved it down, refused to give in. She listened closer, held her breath. There was nothing. No cars in the far off distance. No airplanes overhead. No sound of water. Nothing … no, wait. The faint rustling of wind through treetops. The soft chatter of birds. Wherever she was, it was secluded.

  She was in the middle of nowhere, trapped inside the trunk of a car. Michael was gone. No one knew where she was. Strickland would put it together, but that would get him only so far. He had no way of finding her, no way of sending help.

  She was on her own.

  Seventy-five

  Michael picked up the wrinkled photo and flipped it over. On the back was Sabrina’s name along with the twins’ names and age. It was recent. A picture he’d never seen before. “Where’d you get this?”

  “Charlie found it crammed inside Lucy’s mouth.” He shot a look at Tom. “Take a look, Tomahawk. See anything familiar?” Carson aimed the picture at him—that callused finger pointing the way. He watched Tom’s face go blank for a moment before recognition dawned. He looked at Carson before shooting him a disbelieving look.

  “That scar … ” Tom looked at the picture again, couldn’t seem to look away.

  “It’s her, isn’t it?” Carson tapped the crumpled picture again. “That’s Melissa.”

  Michael ignored him, looked at Ben. “How far are you willing to go?”

  Ben cracked a smile made for charming coeds. “Miles and miles.” He clapped Carson on the shoulder. “My boy asked you a question, Mayberry. Where’s the woman?”

  Carson moved to shove Ben’s hand off his shoulder. “Fuck—”

  Ben grabbed his wrist and twisted, used the stool to swivel him around and his forearm to bounce his head off the counter. “Wrong answer, Mayberry.” He took the cuffs off Carson’s belt and slapped them on his wrists before he could blink. Ben lifted the gun off Carson’s hip and glanced at Tom. “Ever shoot someone before?”

  Tom shook his head.

  Ben flipped the safety off and racked back the slide. “Easy-peasy—just point and pull.”

  He looked like he was giving Tom a tutorial on how to knit a sweater. “Now you’re one of the cool kids. If he moves, shoot him. Aim for his balls—you’ll probably hit his face.” Ben handed the gun over the counter to Tom.

  Tom took the gun. “I can do that.”

  “He’s all yours,” Ben said on his way toward the back of the restaurant. “I’m going to see what’s keeping Lark—you kids play nice.”

  As soon as Ben was gone, Michael picked up the picture. The sight of her face, that rare smile, hit him low in the gut.

  He looked over the top of the photo and found Carson’s baleful glare. “I’m going to kill you—that’s a given. But if you don’t tell me where Sabrina is, I’m going to do things to you that’ll make what you put
her through look like a trip to Disneyland.”

  Waiting had always been the worst part. The part where panic found the time to build and grow into something uncontrollable and ugly. Something that could break her down. Destroy her. Yes, waiting had always been the worst part … but not this time.

  This time she used her time in the dark to remind herself that she was strong. Capable. She was no one’s victim. Not anymore.

  First order of business was to find a weapon. She wormed her way onto her side and searched the dark interior of the car. Used her hands to take stock of what was in the trunk. Not much. A plastic bag. What felt like a bottle of water. Her throat was on fire and he mouth felt like it was full of sand, but she didn’t trust it. He used to drug her food and water. She left it unopened and moved on but found nothing but empty space. Nothing that would serve as a weapon. All she had was herself. It would have to be enough.

  She began working her wrists back and forth, twisting them inside the tape. It would take some time, but if she could work them loose she’d have a chance. She was awake. He wouldn’t expect that. She’d have to strike hard—strike first.

  Another gust of wind rustled the treetops. Birds chattered softly. A rumbling … faint and far off in the distance. The sound of the engine grew louder, joined by the crunch of gravel and brush beneath tires until the vehicle drew to a stop no more than a few yards away. The rumbling engine was cut short, magnifying the silence that followed until it almost hummed in her ears.

  Boots, hard and heavy, landed on dirt as whoever was out there left their vehicle. There was the sound of a car door slamming. No. Too heavy for a car. A truck. It was a truck. The person out there wasn’t trying for stealth. They were announcing their presence.

  They began walking, footsteps growing faint, then louder and louder as they slowly circled the car, coming to rest in front of the trunk.

  “Is someone here?” a voice called out. It was one she recognized. One she trusted.

  She swallowed the sob locked in her throat. “Yes! I’m in the trunk—get me the hell out of here!”

  Seventy-six

  Michael glanced at the clock above the service window. It was just after one. Strickland said he talked to her around ten thirty. Two and a half hours. Long enough for Carson to grab her, put her somewhere, and keep her there while he played the part of concerned police chief.

  Two and a half hours was a long time.

  He looked down at the .38 in his hand, then at the 9mm in Tom’s. He tucked the .38 into his waistband and gestured for the gun in Tom’s hand. Tom turned it over without protest.

  He pressed the 9mm against Carson’s shoulder and pulled the trigger.

  The gun roared, bucked in his hand. The bullet tore through the meat of his shoulder on its way out. It traveled fast, burrowed into the red vinyl booth across the room. Carson flipped off the back of the stool, landed on his face and cried out. Fight or flight kicked in, and he tried to use his other shoulder to pull himself across the carpet.

  Michael stepped on him, flipped him over with his boot and pinned him to the floor. He pointed the gun at his other shoulder. “Nothing worse than getting shot with your own gun.”

  “Fuck you, O’Shea,” Carson said through clenched teeth. “You think you’re gonna get away with this? Zeke and Wade are on their way here right now. You just shot a cop.” He was sweating and bleeding everywhere, snot and tears running down his face.

  He looked around the empty diner and shrugged. “No Wade. No Zeke.” He reached across the counter and grabbed the towel off Tom’s shoulder. “No one is coming for you. No one cares,” he said and shook his head. He tossed the towel onto Carson’s shoulder and stepped on it to control the bleeding. Carson screamed, looked like he was about to pass out. He stepped harder. “No, you don’t—you wake the fuck up. Where is she?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Right, just like you don’t know what happened to my sister,” he said dispassionately.

  “I didn’t kill your fucking sister!”

  He turned to Tom, who was watching the whole thing with a look that said he wasn’t sure he wanted to run with the cool kids anymore. “Hey.” He waited for Tom to look at him. “You with me?” he said.

  Tom hesitated, looked down at Carson then back at him. He nodded.

  “Good.” He looked back down at the man under his boot. “Got a corkscrew in that kitchen?”

  “Yeah. Got a few.”

  He smiled. “Fabulous. Go get ’em.” He stepped harder on Carson’s shoulder. “I’m also gonna need an ice pick, a paring knife, and something that’ll separate joints.”

  “Got a cleaver,” Tom said.

  Michael smiled down at the man beneath his boot. “That’ll work.”

  Carson started to jerk around like he was in the middle of a full-blown seizure. “No, no—don’t. I’m telling you the truth. I didn’t kill Frankie, I swear to God,” he said, frantically bouncing a look of sheer terror between him and Tom. “I loved Melissa. I couldn’t have hurt her. I’d have died for her.”

  Michael looked down and didn’t like what he saw. A man telling the truth.

  “Where’s Sabrina?”

  “Okay … okay.” Carson swallowed hard. “Last I saw, she was hauling ass out of the parking lot at Charlie’s. I called her this morning to ask her if she wanted to sit in on Lucy’s autopsy. We hadn’t been there five minutes before she got a call and left,” he said, shaking his head. “Haven’t seen or heard from her since, I swear.”

  “That was a call from her partner, telling her the car that dumped her murder victim in San Francisco was a match to one owned by Pete Conners,” he said.

  “Pete Conners?”

  “Yeah. Wade told her this morning he wrote Pete a ticket, driving a car that—surprise, surprise—matches the car involved in Billy Bauer’s murder.” He shook his head. “Only trouble is, no one’s seen or heard from Pete Conners in nearly twenty years.”

  “That can’t be right.” Carson said, dividing a confused look between him and Tom. “Are you sure?”

  Something cold rattled down his spine. He used his boot to put pressure on Carson’s wound. “What do you mean?”

  Carson yelped. “Conners is dead. Melissa killed him. He tried to rape her—she nearly took his head off with a bat. Afterward she showed up at the station, looking for Billy, freaking out. He took care of everything, covered it all up.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Billy—Billy did. Right before Wade and I helped him bury the body.”

  Seventy-seven

  “Hold tight miss, I’m coming,” he said, circling his way around the front of the car. The sound of his work boots made a scuffling sound as he hurried through the dirt. Sabrina could hear him testing doors, could feel the jerk of him pulling on the handles. “Doors are locked. I have to break the window,” he said.

  Seconds later she heard the shattering of glass. A moment later the trunk popped open, the blinding light of day reaching through the crack to stab her eyes. A wave of nausea, brought on by the light, hit her but passed quickly.

  The trunk opened, revealing the shape of her savior, his features thrown into deep shadows by the sun that sat high in the sky behind him. “Inspector Vaughn?” he said incredulously, staring down at her for a moment as if he couldn’t quite grasp what he was seeing.

  “Last time I checked,” she said, her hands shielding her narrowed eyes. She pulled herself into a sitting position, the sudden movement causing the dregs of the narcotics she’d been hit with to take a drunken spin through her system. She swung her legs over the edge of the trunk despite the roll of her gut and closed her eyes for a moment. Something slipped through the tape around her wrists, cutting her free. “Thanks. Where are we?” she said, pulling the rest of the tape off and dropped it into the trunk.

  Looking around, she note
d the dense line of trees that hemmed them in on three sides. A rundown cabin stood at her back. He’d left her in the trunk, not expecting her system to fight off the effects of the drugs so quickly.

  But he’d be back.

  “Not sure really. Private land, looks like someone’s hunting cabin. Did you see who put you in the trunk?” he said, his face taking a wary cast as he scanned the trees and cabin for potential threats.

  “Pete Conners … I think. What’re you doing here?” she said, scoping the area for clues as to where she was and who’d brought her here.

  “Got a call from a trooper on the BOLO we put out on Lucy’s car. Said he saw it taking a rural turn-off on I-80. I was in the area, so I told him I’d come check it out.” He looked down. “This is it. This is Lucy’s car.”

  She wasn’t surprised. It was probably under the tarp in Kelly’s garage. She looked at him. “Wait, we’re in Texas?” she said. His eyes narrowed on her face, a wary kind of concern crawled along his features.

  “What the hell is going on here, Inspector?” he said, his eyes darting around the clearing.

  “We need to get out of here, now.” She pushed herself away from the car. The sudden movement was like a blow to the back of her knees, and they buckled slightly. She threw out a hand to steady herself and he caught it, holding her up.

  “You don’t look so good. Do you need some water? Here—” He reached past her and into the trunk to pull out the water. “Drink this. You look like you could use it.” He tried to press the bottle in to her hand.

  She pushed it away. “No, I’m not drinking that. He drugged it.”

  “What?” He looked down at the container in his hand. “How do you know?”