The Morelville Mysteries Collection

by Anne Hagan

  We were stopped a few minutes later by a team member who stepped from out of denser woods to greet us. He said we’d have to go about 600 yards on foot.

  We walked single file, several yards apart for the next 15 minutes. We were picking our way through the dense forest slowly and as quietly as possible. Shane and I both carried rifles but we would not be the ones to breech the entrance and try to take the tunnel and vault. We were carrying for our own protection and to lay down fire for the team if needed.

  I was next to the last with Shane behind me. Everyone in front of me stopped so I did too. Slowly we crept forward again and were directed left and right and cautioned to keep low and be quiet. A low rock outcropping was in front of us After several long minutes that seemed like an eternity, SRT and BCI team members approached the entrance and went through. One after another, six men went into the mouth of the cave until only the two commanders and the two of us remained.

  The SRT chief moved forward to the cave. He flattened himself against one side of the entrance and keyed his mike once, briefly. A low answering tone came back. He nodded to the rest of us to follow and he went in. The BCI chief went next and I followed him.

  We entered in total darkness but there was light coming from somewhere up ahead of us. After a couple of minutes of creeping through the dark the air changed and became warmer. We rounded a slight bend and came into the light.

  I was standing in the entrance to the largest grow room I had ever seen. Trays of plants stretched more than a football field away. Everything was irrigated and lighted for year round growing. What the hell is powering all of this?

  An SRT team member was taking photos to document what we were seeing. We were urged on by another man toward a narrow opening at the other end of the room. The original tunnel must have been widened out to form the grow room. The opening we were headed toward I assumed must be what must have remained of the tunnel that lead toward the vault.

  Four men were massed to go forward. The guy taking photographs and a guard would stay back. The first four men would enter the vault and subdue the occupants. The remaining four of us would enter behind them. If McClarnan and whoever was in there with him were flushed out, the men overhead would pick them up. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

  Things went from just slightly more than calm and ultra-silent with the toss of a disorienting flash-bang. The four men rushed forward, guns out front and barking orders.

  Shane put one hand on my shoulder. I took a deep breath and blew it out. There was a lot of shouting and noise coming from ahead of us. It was confusing and concerning and waiting was killing me.

  The SRT commander was shouting into his radio. The response back advised him to advance with caution.

  We moved forward again through a framed out doorway, a small hallway and another framed door that actually had an open steel fire door that had been breached to swing open into a cavern room of about 20x20. Sitting on the floor in the middle of the room with their hands on their heads were a very drunk Levi Jones and Ryan McClarnan. Two of the four entry team members held their guns on them.

  I couldn’t see Dana. I looked about the large room frantically. It was a well-lighted drug production lab with portable battery powered lights and oil lamps. I marveled at what it must have taken the men to haul fuel down here constantly for the lamps and to power the generators that were probably somewhere keeping the lights on in the grow room but my first priority was still Dana.

  I stepped forward and got in front of McClarnan. “Where is she?”

  He laughed.

  “I said, where is she?” I was yelling and he was still laughing.

  “How does it feel Sheriff to have something taken away that you love?” McClarnan cackled loudly. “I may be going to jail but you and your girlfriend are going to hell!” She’s on her way and you won’t get out of here alive.”

  I looked around. The team, other than myself and the two guards, were searching the room. I turned to Jones. “Is she alive? Tell me where she is!”

  Jones, in his drunkenness was more loose than belligerent. “Don’t worry, she’s had some good shit man. She isn’t feeling any pain anymore.” He wavered and toppled over.

  The BCI team chief said, “We’ll find her Sheriff. She can’t be far.” He radioed for the remaining bloodhound to be brought in. SRT cuffed the two men and removed them. McClarnan screamed about his rights the entire way out of the vault.

  I didn’t know whether to go back out myself or stay inside. Something just told me Dana was inside this dug out monstrosity.

  A hatch opened overhead. A BCI team member climbed down through what must have been the original vault entry from the cabin. He was soon followed by another and then a third. The room began to feel suffocating. I was in distress and I had to leave.

  I went into the hallway and back out into the grow room. The bloodhound handler had arrived and released his dog from the other end of the room. He started sniffing rapidly in my direction but then he diverted right and ran up a different aisle. His handler followed carrying one of Dana’s shirts. I stood and watched the dog and prayed.

  The hound went to the end of the row and then over one further. It rounded the end and alerted on what my mother would call a gardener’s box. The handler and I both converged on it quickly. It was locked with an ancient padlock. The handler began to bash it with the heel of his boot but it wouldn’t give.

  Why is it locked? I ran quickly back into the vault and looked for something to break the lock with. There was nothing. I went back out, ejected the magazine out of my rifle and used the butt to hammer away at the lock. Adrenaline coursed through me. The lock finally cracked and I ripped it away. I was too afraid to lift the lid. The BCI agent did it for me.

  Dana, broken and bruised, lay in the box. I collapsed to my knees. “Dana! Dana, talk to me! Dana!”

  “I’ve got a pulse but it’s pretty weak. Sheriff, we have to get her out of here.” It was the BCI agent talking, drawing me out of my shock. We both called out for help and when it came, we lifted Dana free of what was meant to be her tomb.

  Chapter 34 – Denouement

  Sunday Evening, June 8th, 2014

  Dana was back at Genesis again but sitting up in bed and smiling. She was battered and bruised but she was alive and happy to be that way. She’d been heavily drugged and left in that box for dead.

  “I’m happy to be alive but I’m real tired of this hospital.”

  “I know babe. We’ll have you out of here as soon as possible. I just feel so bad. I should have never left you alone yesterday.”

  “Mel, I don’t seem to be very lucky hanging around Morelville but those two kidnapping me is not your fault. I don’t know what they were thinking.”

  “Let’s not even go there.”

  “How did they know about me? What tipped them?”

  “I can answer that. It wasn’t what but whom.” Shane Harding walked into the room carrying the Sunday Edition of the Columbus Dispatch. “Here, check out the Engagement Announcements.”

  Halfway down the first column was an announcement of the engagement of Noland Troutman III, the outside candidate for Sheriff, to former Muskingum County Sheriff’s Detective Kelly Rice.

  Dana’s Dilemma

  The Morelville Mysteries – Book 3

  Anne Hagan

  To the Village Idiot for always making me laugh

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Jug Run Press, USA

  Copyright © 2015

  https://annehaganauthor.com/

  All rights reserved: No part of this publication may be replicated, redistributed or given away in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without prior written consent of the author or the publisher except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages for review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are actual places used in an enti
rely fictitious manner and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations, or persons, living or deceased, is entirely coincidental.

  Prologue

  Mel kissed me goodbye softly before she crept out of the house in the pre-dawn hours. She didn’t know I was awake...I couldn’t sleep. I was worried about her going all the way down to the Big Sandy Federal Penitentiary to talk to a lifer on a long shot to get the information she needed to find his own son, Ryan McClarnan, and arrest him for his crimes. I’ve been in supermax prisons before – not a place you want to make a habit of visiting. She’d never been inside any jail but the Muskingum County jail that she operates as the County Sheriff. Supermax penitentiaries are a beast. The first time I’d ever interviewed a convict in one, it was perspective changing.

  No one else was home. Kris, Mel’s twin sister, had stayed the night with her boyfriend and Kris’s teenagers, Beth and Cole, were staying out at the family farm with their grandparents.

  I got up and wandered into the family room on my crutches. I flipped channels on the TV for a while but nothing stuck. I’m not much of a TV person anyway and at 4:00 AM on a Saturday, long winded infomercials seemed to rule the airwaves. I turned the box off after a frustrating half hour.

  I went back into Mel’s den. She’d so graciously turned it into my bedroom while I was recuperating from the shooting incident that messed up my leg and botched up my life for a while on my last assignment. She’d said I could use her laptop and I decided to take her up on it. It was a bit of a trick to maneuver on crutches behind the desk she’d had to move to allow the sofa bed to be pulled out but, once I was back there, I planted myself for a while. I surfed the news sites and read all of the articles that caught my fancy.

  While I sat and read, the room started to brighten. The sun was coming up in the shaded window behind me. I pulled the blind slats apart and gazed outside. It was shaping up to be a beautiful day.

  As I stretched, I contemplated trying to sleep for just a bit since it was still early but I was pretty keyed up. Instead, I opted to partake of a nice, warm shower to get the day started off and then to get outside and enjoy the early hours and the beautiful sunshine on the deck. That would be my last pleasant memory of the morning.

  Some time while I was in the shower, Ryan McClarnan and his sidekick Levi ‘Sticks’ Jones started working to gain entry to the house. From the bathroom, I heard them at the kitchen window while I was stepping gingerly out of the shower stall, trying not to put any weight on my injured leg. Trouble had come calling and I was defenseless against it.

  After nudging the bathroom door mostly closed, as quickly as I could, I pulled on the underpants and the sweats that I’d brought in with me. As dripping wet as I was, I knew there wasn’t time to wrestle with getting a bra on. I’d no sooner looped my arms through my sweatshirt than the two men were in the den, opening the bathroom door and confronting me.

  McClarnan, still high or drunk or both after a night of partying and carousing, reeked of filth, sweat and alcohol. ‘Sticks’ Jones wasn’t in much better shape.

  Jones reached out and grabbed me by the hand and pulled me out of the bathroom. My bad leg collapsed and I tumbled to the floor and out of his grip. The last thing I remember, before waking up in this God forsaken hospital again, was McClarnan’s foot coming at my face.

  Chapter 1 – Manic Monday

  Monday Morning, June 9th, 2014

  “Dana, I’m sorry but it just isn’t good. You have severe muscle and nerve damage from the shooting. I expected the muscle damage to heal over time and it has been these past few weeks but the nerve stuff is a different animal. Do you remember what we talked about?”

  I stared at Dr. Welle, my orthopedic surgeon, and shuddered at what she was implying. “You said I might never regain all feeling and muscle control.”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “There was only a slim chance that you’d come out of your original injury with total unhindered mobility. I expected then, at best, that you would be unable to fully flex your knee and that you might walk with a slight limp. This newest incident has done so much more damage...”

  She popped more images from the latest MRI of my leg up on the light box and began pointing out things that concerned her. I zoned out and flashed back to Saturday, the day that was very likely going to ruin the rest of my career with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service.

  My mind went back to Saturday morning.

  ... Jones reached out and grabbed me by the hand and pulled me out of the bathroom. My bad leg collapsed and I tumbled to the floor and out of his grip. The last thing I remember, before waking up in this God forsaken hospital again, was McClarnan’s foot coming at my face.

  “Earth to Dana!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry doc! You were saying?”

  “I’m saying that you can be released today but that you’re going to need to keep weight off of this leg for the next eight to twelve weeks, at a minimum. You can keep your crutches if you promise to always use them or I can put you in a wheelchair; your choice. Those muscles have to have time to recover.”

  “Two or three months?” I was in shock.

  “Minimum; and frankly, the nerve damage is so extensive now that I’m sorry to say that your mobility is always going to be hindered. It isn’t a question of maybe or possibly anymore. I don’t like to be the bearer of bad news, but there it is.”

  I nodded my understanding...another career for me shot to hell, literally.

  “I’m putting you off work for the rest of this week and no rehab. In fact, no rehab work for at least the next couple of weeks and you’ll need to schedule a follow-up with me for next Monday.”

  Yep, shot to hell.

  ###

  “Do you want to stop somewhere for lunch before we head out of town?” Mel waited for my response. She was driving my own car since it was easier for me to maneuver in and out of it with a bum leg and crutches than it was for me to get in and out of her pickup truck.

  I couldn’t seem to form a coherent sentence. I was still trying to get my head wrapped around what my injuries would likely mean for my career and what, if anything, I’d want to do or even be able to do next.

  “Dana?”

  “Hmm?” I looked at her.

  “Look, I know you’ve got a lot on your mind. If you want to talk, I’m here for you – no pressure. Right now, while you’re trying to think things through, you have to take care of yourself. For one thing, you need to eat. I know you probably skipped the hospital breakfast...”

  “Yeah, you’re right. I did. I’m just not hungry right now.”

  “Well I am and I know just the place that might help you to change your mind.”

  “Mel, I look a fright. I really don’t want to be out in public right now.” She glanced over at me and I saw the tenderness in her eyes.

  “Relax. This place will work out just fine.”

  A few minutes later we pulled up near a low, non-descript building situated on a river bank. “What’s this place?”

  “It’s Muddy Misers, a Zanesville landmark. We’re early yet, we should be able to get one of the tables behind the building, outside along the river, where we can just relax and soak in a little sun.” I nodded. That didn’t sound too bad.

  We trooped behind a college aged server named Bree through a darkened tavern style restaurant to a small patio. Mel chose the table for us that was furthest from the door and then ordered two locally made brews before I could even lean my crutches against the railing and take a seat.

  “I probably shouldn’t be drinking with the pain meds...”

  “Did you actually take them?”

  “Well, no...”

  “Then a beer will probably do you some good. It’ll help you relax.”

  “We’ve known each other less than two months but you already know what buttons to push!”

  “I’m a cop, a trained observer.” She grinned with that smile that wowed me the first time I met
her, what seemed like eons ago.

  “As am I, but I really don’t seem to know a lot about you.”

  “You know more than you think...”

  We were interrupted by Bree, the little slip of a blonde server, who was already back with our drinks. “Are you ready to order?”

  I hadn’t even picked up the menu. I looked at Mel, “Since you’re so smart, just order me what you think I’ll like.” I was being a smartass but she wasn’t fazed. She placed an order for some sort of house specialty and then the blonde girl was gone leaving us to each other.

  “The place isn’t much to look at but the food is good and the beer is cold.”

  I took a sip. “Mmm, it’s not only cold it’s actually pretty good too.”

  “They brew it right here with water from the Muskingum.” She jerked her head sideways toward the river.

  I sputtered and coughed. Mel’s eyes shone with laughter.

  “That isn’t funny!”

  “Two can play your little game Ms. Dana!”

  I shook my head at her, “Touché.” I wasn’t done with her. I reached out and pulled her beer toward me. “I get this one too. You’re driving!” It was my turn to grin.

  She pulled it right back. “I’m only having one and I’m eating. If you think I’m impaired after we eat what we’re about to consume, then you go ahead and make a citizen’s arrest!”

  I laughed, “Don’t tempt me!” I leaned back and gazed out at the river. It was a deep shade of tan and running pretty fast. “Why do they call this place Muddy Misers? Is it because the river is so muddy looking?”

  “Naw.” Mel shook her head and laughed. “It was actually named after a long ago local who was called that. The river’s muddy now but that’s just from all the spring runoff. You were laid up in the hospital for most of the rainy season here. The water will clear up as we get further into June.” She stared at me with an odd expression but said nothing else.