Blood Games

by Lee Killough

  He held up his ID. “I’d like to meet with the officer on duty.”

  Five minutes later Garreth lounged against the Porsche while a white Crown Vic pulled into the adjoining parking place and Officer Eugene Younger climbed out. Younger looked in his late fifties, with an air of experience authority...possibly a former sheriff or deputy, highway trooper, or even a retired city cop looking for less excitement, hair thinning, waist thickening.

  He eyed the Porsche with the expression of someone who has now seen everything, but his brows climbed even higher as Garreth explained the reason for being here. “The middle of the night’s a funny time to be tracking suspects isn’t it?”

  “This is when they’d have come through here, so people who are up now are the ones most likely to have seen them. Did anything unusual happen here Monday night?”

  Younger’s eyes narrowed. “Someone shot the dog at Koloski’s Salvage.”

  Garreth felt himself start. “Shot!”

  Younger nodded. “At one in the morning. It sounded like a cannon. I heard the shots five blocks away.”

  “Shots, plural?”

  “Three in rapid succession. Whoever fired them had fled by the time I arrived, though. We had the vet dig the slug out of the dog next morning--only one shot hit him--and...” His expression went thoughtful. “Come on.”

  He led the way inside through the counter, and fished a plastic envelope out of a locker in the old bank’s vault. Two smaller envelopes in it held the lead portion of a bullet and three .44 magnum shell casings. “The casings were near the dog’s body. What kind of weapon again was it they stole from the officer who died?”

  “A Desert Eagle.”

  Younger hefted the envelope. “Son of a bitch. I wonder what were they doing in Koloski’s.”

  “Hunting a place to ditch the stolen pickup, I think. Do you have anyone in town who’s had a van or RV, pickup with a camper, or some similar vehicle for sale?”

  The dispatcher said, “There’s Lloyd Farrell’s delivery van. Except I don’t know how serious he is about selling it. He’s had the for sale sign taped inside the passenger window all summer but he keeps the van hidden in his garage.”

  Younger nodded. “Except Monday night I saw it at Marcotte’s. I guess he finally took the warnings about his muffler seriously.” He turned to Garreth. “It’s an Aerostar cargo van. When he sold his bakery to Neil Hochauser and his wife after they came back from the baker’s school up at Kansas State they had a new van of their own so they didn’t want the Aerostar.”

  Electricity ran down Garreth’s spine. “Let’s see if he still has it.”

  At Farrell’s Younger parked his unit in the driveway and shined his flashlight in the garage door windows. Only an Escort sat inside.

  Garreth said. “How pissed will he be if we wake him up to ask is he sold it?”

  Younger switched off his light. “Nothing compared to the neighbors, who’ll wake up before he does. Lloyd’s deaf and Claudia sleeps with ear plugs because she claims he snores so loud.”

  Garreth tried to swallow his impatience...despite the urgency hissing in him and the image of the albino with the bloody-tipped knife running through his mind.

  But something of his feelings must have shown in his face because Younger said, “I know these are cop killers, but you need to learn to relax, son, or you’ll fret yourself into an early grave. Go ahead and smile, but it’s true. Now, Lloyd’ll be up in a couple of hours--habit after all those years of baking before dawn--and we’ll talk to him then. In the meantime, why don’t we have a look around town. I don’t remember seeing the van since Monday but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still here.”

  They looked but found no white Aerostar with Sunrise Bakery painted on the sides. Passing Marcotte’s Auto Repair, Younger’s expression went thoughtful. “You know, I remember a Ford pickup with a topper here Monday night, too. Course I didn’t think anything of it because it had an Osborne County tag and your ATL was for a Dodge van.”

  Garreth sucked in his breath. Considering what happened to the dog, good thing Younger had not approached the pickup. Being proven on the right track should not come at the cost of another officer’s life.

  At four-thirty they drove by Farrell’s house again. As Younger promised, a light showed in the kitchen. He led the way up the back walk. “Five-thirty was the best time to drop by the bakery. The first batch of cinnamon rolls and bread would be just out of the oven and he’d have coffee brewed and welcome an opinion on the rolls while he put his feet up waiting on the second load in the oven and the bread to raise. Hochauser is a good baker but like you...doesn’t know how to relax.” He pushed a door bell beside the kitchen door. A light flickered inside.

  Moments later the light over the stoop switched on and a craggy face peered between the curtains on the door. Farrell opened the door. The rest of him looked just as craggy as his face. Garreth would have expected more flesh on a baker. As the scents of coffee and yeast flooded out past him, Farrell shook his head, grinning. “YOU’RE TOO EARLY, GENE. THE DOUGH’S STILL RISING.”

  The blast of sound drove Garreth backward, catching his breath in pain.

  Quickly, Younger held his hand horizontal in front of Farrell’s face and brought it toward the ground. “Sorry about that. He can’t tell how loud he is.”

  Garreth nodded. “It’s all right. He just caught me by surprise.”

  “Sorry about that!” Farrell said. His voice dropped to a mere boom. “I can’t tell how loud I am! Come on in!” He opened the door wide.

  “I understand.” Garreth fought the urge to raise his voice to match. Instead he concentrated on forming his words precisely. Presumably Farrell read lips.

  Younger, though, matched Farrell’s voice, as they moved past him. “I didn’t come for cinnamon rolls today!” In a lower tone, he said, “I guess I didn’t mention that he still bakes those every morning. He and Claudia love them with their breakfast. Lloyd!” The voice went up again. “This is Officer Garreth Mikaelian from the Bellamy County Sheriff’s Office! We need to ask you about your van!”

  Farrell strolled to a cupboard and took down two coffee cups. “I sold it!” He filled the cups from the carafe in a coffee maker and brought them to a kitchen island where he plopped them front of Younger and Garreth. Then he picked up a third cup already sitting on the island amid baking ingredients and utensils.

  Younger nodded. “Who did you sell it to!”

  Garreth wished he had Mrs. Farrell’s ear plugs. This shouting across him would give even someone with normal hearing a headache.

  “Fellow name of Jim Strawberry! Told me he and his wife run a greenhouse in Eunice!” Farrell sipped his coffee. “Why’d you want to know!”

  “There’s some people from down in his county who could be looking to buy a van like yours so they can get rid of a vehicle they stole!”

  Farrell’s brows rose. “Well, that might explain the mystery! He was supposed to come back that afternoon to pick up the title and have his wife drive the van home, but he never showed up here and Marcotte called me in the morning saying the van was gone! My wife called the number Strawberry gave us but it isn’t in service!”

  Younger raised his brows. “What did he look like!”

  Farrell frowned into his coffee cup. “Hippy looking...poor posture, gut hanging over his belt, reddish hair he wore in a ponytail, sunglasses even though the sun was hardly up yet, and a tie-dye shirt!”

  Younger glanced at Garreth. “That doesn’t sound much like your suspect.”

  Garreth shrugged that away. “My suspect is into disguises. Mr. Farrell!” He stopped the shout, waved to catch Farrell’s eye, and resumed in a normal tone. “Sir, how did he explain knowing your van was for sale?”

  Farrell shrugged. “Said he was passing through Monday evening on his way south to Natoma and saw the van at Marcotte’s! He said since no one was around and he noticed the van was unlocked, he took a peek at the registration in the glove box to get m
y name and address because he’s been thinking about buying another vehicle for hauling plants! He knocked on my back door about six Tuesday morning! Said he was on his way back home--driving early while it was cool...better for the plants he was hauling--and swung by in the hope I was an early riser so he could ask about buying the van! We drove over to Marcotte’s in his pickup...”

  Yes! Garreth interrupted with a wave. “What kind of pickup?”

  “A Ford F-150!”

  “With a topper!” Younger asked.

  Farrell nodded. “He looked at the van, said he wanted it, and paid me a thousand in cash then and there! I wrote him out a bill of sale, we Xeroxed it at the Jiffy Trip, and he brought me home! Do you think he’s the person you’re looking for!”

  Garreth nodded. “Maybe. Will you please find that bill of sale?”

  While Farrell went after it, Garreth reflected that the albino could have stashed the girls in the back of the pickup, or left them somewhere temporarily, to keep the male-accompanied-by-juvenile-females combination from setting off alarms for any local law enforcement encountered while hanging around to buy the van. Then what...they drove away in both vehicles? And disposed of the pickup where?

  Farrell came back with the photocopied bill of sale. Garreth noticed it read: as is. “Does this mean the muffler wasn’t fixed yet?”

  Farrell grinned. “Marcotte was going to put it on that day! Saved me a few bucks!”

  “Sir, may I borrow this to photocopy?”

  Farrell grinned. “Sure! Gene will make sure it gets back! He knows I’ll be putting the cinnamon rolls in the oven pretty soon! You’re welcome to have one, too, son!”

  Garreth nodded, but back at the PD office with a photocopy of the bill of sale stashed in his computer case, he said, “Thank Mr. Farrell for me and tell him I’m sorry to miss the cinnamon rolls. I have to keep moving.”

  “Good luck,” Younger said. “Though you’re making a big mistake being in such a hurry. Taking the time for bits of Heaven on earth like Lloyd’s baking is what makes life worth living.”

  The words brought a rush of guilt. Time...like that he had not given Maggie. He made himself smile. “It’s something to think about. Thanks for all your help.” Backing the Porsche out of its parking space, he gave Younger a salute and headed back north.

  Chapter Twenty.

  For several miles he drove on automatic pilot, then shook himself. Get a grip, Mikaelian. Yes, he had screwed up with Maggie, but all the guilt in the world could not change that. So he just had to make sure he did not fail her now.

  He pulled in at a pasture gate, peeled the emblems off his doors, and called the Sheriff’s office.

  Kit Bauer, the Graveyard dispatcher, answered. “Well, well...the prodigal.”

  “Prodigal?” Garreth filled his voice with astonished innocence. “Why do you say that?”

  “Oh, an impression I got from Cheryl at shift change. She says when she passed on your message about following the suspects north, Reichert wasn’t happy. He tried repeatedly to call you.”

  “Oh, sorry. I had the phone off to save the batteries.”

  “Whatever.” Skepticism filled the word. “Reichert told Cheryl that when we heard from you he wants you to call hi--”

  “What? You’re breaking up. I think I’m coming into a dead zone.”

  On the other end of the phone, Bauer snapped, “Come off it, Mikaelian. I’m not falling for that.”

  “What? Who fell?”

  “Stop playing games! Reichert wants--”

  “I’m sorry!” Garreth raised his voice. “I can’t hear you at all now! I hope you can hear me!” Lloyd Farrell could have heard him at this volume. “As of Tuesday morning the suspects were driving a 1988 Aerostar delivery van, white, with a bad muffler and the name Sunrise Bakery on the sides! I’m now trying to find where they ditched the pickup! I’ll call...” But instead of finishing the sentence, he turned off the phone.

  As he laid it in the passenger seat, he wished he could forget the pickup and stay on the suspects’ trail. But the pickup might have fingerprints.

  Garreth spread his road atlas across the steering wheel. Okay...where did he leave you? In the albino’s place, he would like to make the pickup disappear completely, to keep the law hunting it if they had not learned about the Aerostar. A tall order around towns so small that every outsider and vehicle might as well have a neon sign announcing their presence. Still, there must be a few places to lose a vehicle.

  As the thought formed, he found his eye caught by a patch of blue on the map. Kirwin Reservoir.

  Seeing it Garreth knew, with the same certainty that he had known the albino would duck off I-70, the pickup now rested on the lake bottom. The question was how to find it with miles of shoreline and countless little inlets to search. Or maybe not. The map designated the reservoir as a national wildlife refuge, so not all of it would be accessible by car.

  Connecting his phone to his laptop to log onto the Internet, he pulled up a map of the reservoir. Its shape resembled a frog’s torso with kicking hind legs. Roads ran along the northern shoreline from the dam to the “knee” and along the southern shoreline from dam to the top of the “thigh.” That cut his search area by two thirds.

  Limiting his search to shoreline with road access still left him plenty of area to cover and he preferred doing as much possible before the sun and fishermen rose. The southern side seemed the place to start since the town of Kirwin–full of possible witnesses–lay across access to the northern shore and below that end of the dam.

  Steering along the twisting shoreline road a short while later, Garreth saw that the landscape gave the albino an easy way to dispose of the pickup. Limestone layering and erosion had carved the area hills into layers like stairs. Send the pickup off one of the lowest “treads” with the accelerator jammed to the floor and momentum would carry it well out from the shore before gravity pulled it down. The albino might even ride it into the water. Garreth did not expect the ground, hardened by the summer heat, to bear any marks, but would the parched grass still show tire prints? None of the inviting dropoffs he passed so far showed any.

  “All right, Grandma. If you’re hovering at my shoulder playing guardian angel, I could use a push in the right direction.”

  But no sense of pushing came. As the sky lightened, he tried not to hurry. Hurrying might miss something vital.

  Then he spotted a sign reading: boat ramp. Something in him came on point. What could be easier than just driving the pickup into the lake?

  To check it out, he parked in the lot above the ramp, stripped to his boxers, and waded down into the water. Giving thanks cold did not bother him. Hot as the summer was, it had not noticeably warmed the lake. Diving around the island of the lake in Baumen’s Pioneer Park for tossed evidence had already shown him how much longer he could stay under than ordinary humans. So taking a deep breath, he submerged and swam out from the ramp, straining to see. Not even vampire sight helped with this silty water. He could well pass mere yards from the pickup and miss it.

  So he swam close to the bottom in a slow zigzag. Trash appeared in the murk, jutting from the mud: beer cans, a wheel rim, a broken fishing rod. No pickup. Twenty-five feet out the bottom abruptly fell away. Dropping twenty or thirty feet, judging by the increasing darkness and pressure in his ears as he descended. Did he have any chance of spotting the pickup in these conditions?

  Unless he could Feel his way to it?

  After a trip to the surface for another breath, he dived again, this time with his eyes closed, trying to sense a pull some direction. But felt nothing. He concentrated harder. Still nothing. He tried relaxing, leaving his thoughts unfocused.

  Still nothing.

  Then, as his lungs began to complain, something at the edge of perception...tugged. He let it pull. Not a Feeling, he realized. Blood. The very faintest hint of blood calling to blood. The bodies of the females?

  After surfacing for more air, he followed the tug downw
ard.

  His shin hit something. Reaching down to it, he found the trailer hitch of a vehicle standing on its nose with the passenger side turned toward shore. No one had mentioned a hitch in the vehicle’s description, but being practically standard equipment on pickups and vans, it could easily have been forgotten. Trailing the back of his fingers up the tail gate to avoid leaving fingerprints found the handle and plastic rear window of the topper. And when he worked his way down to the passenger door, still exploring with the backs of his hands and fingers, a deep dent deformed it and it had no side mirror.

  But were the bodies of the females inside? Peeling off his boxers gave him something to wipe silt from the windows but the interior remained too dark to see anything inside. That left him no choice but to go inside. The damage had probably left this door stuck shut so he swam around to the driver side and, hand wrapped in the boxers, opened that door.

  It took just moment reaching inside to determine the cab was empty...except for the sensation that the tug he followed originated from here.

  The salvage yard dog bit someone, he remembered. That victim left blood in the truck. Thank you, dog.

  Just to check everything, he closed the door and swam up to the topper door. But the back of the pickup proved empty, too.

  So the bb’s appeared to be still alive. Because the albino did not consider them a liability? Or maybe he needed his audience to appreciate his cleverness.

  After using the boxers to wipe the hitch, Garreth swam back to shore. Changing into dry clothes, he debated his next move. Law enforcement training told him to stick around for the pickup’s recovery and see what evidence it gave them. Anger felt a clock ticking and the albino gaining miles on him. The vision of the blindfolded man played again in his head.

  That decided him. That and the rising sun. If he had to suffer daylight, let it be somewhere other than in its full glare on a treeless lake shore.

  Besides, he had already by-passed procedure by search the lake on his own instead of communicating his suspicions to the local authorities and letting them handle it. The trick was to avoid them discovering that fact as he set the wheels in motion for an official search.