A Study in Crimson

by Chris Orcutt

  Megan and Jade scooped up their clothes and ran upstairs, leaving me with a loudly ticking grandfather clock across the room.

  The priority here was to get Sally back. If I needed to kill or severely injure Malone and Big Red to accomplish that, so be it, but revenge wasn’t the priority. Rescuing Sally was. And for that reason, I needed to be covert.

  Outside, the car stopped and the engine shut off. Glancing out the front window, I saw an oversized black SUV with tinted windows. I ran to the kitchen, slipped out through the sliding glass door, closed it, and ran around the house to a spruce tree on the corner, where I ducked down and waited. The SUV doors opened and shut, and Malone and Big Red started up the walkway. Malone was talking.

  “We have to be quick about this,” he said. “Find them, sedate them, grab them and leave.”

  “Why hasn’t Jean-Luc called?” Big Red said.

  “No reception, I’m sure,” Malone said. “Never mind him. Just find the girls. Now quiet.”

  They opened the front door, crept into the house, and shut the door. Bent double, I ran to the SUV, memorized the license plate, and walked alongside it peering in the windows. It was too dark to see inside.

  I darted around the SUV trying the doors, but they were all locked. I was holding the fire poker. If it came to it, I could smash a window to get Sally out, but the noise would alert Malone and Big Red.

  Ducking down on the side of the SUV opposite the house, I rapped on the window and spoke into the door crack.

  “Sally? Sally, listen to me. It’s Dakota. You’ve been drugged. Honey, I need you to wake up and open the door. Hurry, Sally.” I rapped on the window some more. “Sally? Please, honey.”

  Inside the SUV, something bumped against the door. There was a moan. I heard fumbling against the latch, and then the door unlocked. I yanked it open and Sally spilled out, her hands bound behind her back. Her eyes flickered open.

  “Dakota,” she said.

  “I’ve got you, sweetheart.”

  I picked her up in my arms, shut the car door with my hip, and ran as fast as I could with her for the shed. Fortunately it was unlocked. When I got Sally inside, I laid her gently on a chaise lounge cushion, took out my knife and cut the zip-tie around her wrists.

  “Be very quiet. Okay, honey?” I stroked her hair. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  I covered her from head to toe with a rumpled tarp, so if anyone peered in the window from outside, she would just look like a covered-over pile of junk. Before leaving the shed, I scanned the yard out the window. All clear around the house. I slipped out. Closing the shed door behind me, I sprinted across the lawn to the shrubbery by the front door.

  Lining both sides of the front walkway was a thick evergreen hedge, about three feet high. Given that I only had a fire poker for a weapon, my best play was to disable Big Red with it, retreat, and then ambush Malone in close quarters when he was alone. Holding the brass poker at the ready like a baseball bat, I crouched down behind the hedge and waited.

  I just hoped the girls had called the police like I’d told them to. I wasn’t sure how long I could hold out with just my wits and a Chinese-made fireplace tool.

  The wait was interminable.

  After who knows how many minutes, there was shouting from upstairs in the house, and then I heard footsteps banging loudly down the stairs.

  My limbs were shaking. Sweat pooled on my lower back. I breathed slowly through my nose to keep myself steady. I’d only get one shot at this.

  The door squeaked open, and Malone walked out. For an instant I debated whether I should club him first, but I stopped myself: Big Red was the real physical threat.

  “Come on!” Malone said, passing just above me. “They called the police!”

  A foot stepped over the threshold and the door squeaked closed. I jumped out of a squat into a batter’s stance and swung the poker at Big Red’s skull.

  But at the last second, he lurched backwards.

  Instead of connecting squarely with his skull, the poker hook ripped through his cheek and shattered several of his teeth. Blood sprayed across the white siding. Big Red let out a long, pathetic whimper that sounded more like a wounded animal than a human being. Cradling his mangled jaw in place, he stumbled down the walkway toward the car, where Malone stood aiming a gun at me.

  Malone stared at me for a good ten seconds, unconsciously flexing his hand on the gun handle, as if debating whether or not to shoot me.

  Finally, as though he’d reached a decision, he gave me a smug look and slipped on his sunglasses. He was less than twenty feet away, so there was little doubt that he’d hit me. I braced myself for the gunshot.

  Then he got into the SUV and slammed the door. As soon as Big Red got in, Malone started the engine and roared away.

  I studied the bloody poker, still clutched in my shaking hands. Tossing it on the lawn, I ran back to the shed and yanked the tarp off Sally. She stirred.

  Her eyes flickered open. She smiled at me.

  As I caressed her cheeks, tears rolled down mine.

  29

  My Willpower Was Down To Fumes

  From the moment the Concord Town Police showed up, I tried to explain the situation but gave up when the pair of young cops ignored me and flirted with Megan and Jade instead. Recalling how I’d found the girls earlier—making out in their underwear—I knew the cops’ efforts were in vain. The girls and I smirked at each other while the cops played macho hero.

  As soon as the cops left, I called Director Reeves, but Mrs. Greer said he was unavailable. I left a message explaining that Dr. Malone had attempted to kidnap Sally Standish and two other girls, and I pleaded with Mrs. Greer to have the Director call me back immediately. Next I called Jen Suzuki’s office number, got her voicemail, and left her the same message I’d given Mrs. Greer. Then Megan’s mother, the patrician and horse-faced Mrs. Archambault, arrived. I told her the entire story, too, only for her to behave even more skeptically toward me than the cops had. Although Megan corroborated everything I said, I was too overwrought and exhausted to project my usual self-confidence. Leaving my business card with Mrs. Archambault, I asked her to call me sometime the next day. Finally, when the paramedics finished patching up Sally and me, I had them drop us at my car in the Walden Pond parking lot.

  From there, operating on autopilot I started to drive Sally home to Connecticut. When I reached I-495, however, I noticed she was dead asleep in the passenger seat. Then I caught a glimpse of myself in the rear-view mirror and actually shuddered at the sight: matted hair, blood, dirt, bruises, and a torn shirt. Even though the paramedics had taped my ribs, the pain of sitting up in a car, folded in half, was overwhelming.

  I pulled off the highway at the next exit, washed my face and hands in a gas station rest room, and went into the first decent motel I saw: Country Slumbers. The motel was across the road from a small shopping plaza with a couple of restaurants, so we wouldn’t have to drive anywhere else today.

  I checked us into a room with two double beds in the rear of the motel, where my easily recognized Mercedes wouldn’t be visible from the road. I carried Sally into the room, laid her on one of the beds, turned on the A/C, and closed the heavy drapes on the windows. Then, steeling myself with a deep breath, and while staring at the Currier and Ives print wallpaper, I removed all her clothes but her underwear and tucked her under the covers. Sally murmured something and fell back asleep.

  I brought in our luggage, including a case that contained a Remington 870 12-gauge pump shotgun. I kept the shotgun in the car trunk for emergency situations like this. Once it was loaded with double-ought buckshot, I laid it on the floor under my bed. In the bathroom, I gazed at myself in the mirror, and, thinking I might have missed messages earlier, checked my beeper.

  Neither Director Reeves nor Jen Suzuki had called.

  In fact, nobody had called.r />
  I couldn’t believe it.

  When he’d summoned me to D.C., the Director had assured me if I discovered evidence that suggested a federal crime, then the Bureau would get involved. Well, I’d found fourteen test tubes of blood and photos of fourteen abducted girls; I’d seen evidence gathered by Kevin Teller (since deceased); and I’d just foiled the attempted kidnapping of three more girls, one of whom was the client’s daughter.

  What more did Director Reeves need?

  Standing there in the harsh, flickering fluorescent lighting, I could feel my blood getting hotter, my pulse increasing, my breath growing shallower and more rapid. I was incensed. The Director probably thought if he ignored me, I’d go away.

  Well, was he in for a surprise.

  Locking the door and exiting quietly, I walked around the motel and across the road to a liquor store in the shopping plaza. I bought a bottle of Maker’s Mark Kentucky Straight Bourbon, and went into a phone booth outside with a clear view across the road of the motel entrance. This way, I’d be able to see if anybody pulled in there.

  Tearing off the bottle’s red wax seal, I unscrewed the cap and had a long chug of the bourbon. Ah…I could feel the stresses melting away. With the liquor still pleasantly warm in my throat, I dialed the operator and called the Director’s office again—collect this time. Mrs. Greer accepted the charges, telling me this time that the Director had left for the day.

  “Put him on the phone, Mrs. Greer,” I said sharply. “Now!”

  “Very well,” she said, and placed me on hold.

  During the uncomfortable silence—a silence during which it occurred to me that this might very well be the end of my career—I had another swig of the bourbon. When he clicked on the line, he took a couple breaths before speaking.

  “Stevens,” he said, “I’ve had enough of this. This case is over. Have you returned Sally to Mr. and Mrs. Standish yet?”

  “No, sir, I haven’t.”

  “And why not?”

  “Didn’t you get my message?” I said. “Because Malone and his men almost kidnapped her. Actually, they almost kidnapped Sally and two of her friends from school. Sir, the Bureau needs to put out an APB for all of the border crossings in the Northeast. It’s a black Ford Expedition with tinted windows.” I gave him the SUV’s license plate information. “This all happened a couple of hours ago, so if you hurry—”

  “Stevens!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sally—is she safe now?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And the other girls?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very good,” he said. “There was an attempted kidnapping, but you thwarted it. Seems your experience and training with the Bureau saved the day, Stevens. Good work. There’s no immediate danger now, correct?”

  “Well…yes, but—”

  “But nothing,” he said. “As of this moment, I’m ordering you to drop this case. Return Sally to her parents A-sap and—”

  I had another slug of the bourbon and said, “Pardon me, Director, but you told me if I discovered evidence of a federal crime, then you could get involved. Sir, in addition to the evidence I mentioned to you the other day, I now know where the fourteen abducted girls are being held in Canada, and where they’re being smuggled to—Dubai, sir. Malone has been working as the roper for a human trafficking, forced prostitution ring for a member of the Saudi royal family.”

  There was a long inhale and exhale on the other end of the line.

  “Even if what you’re saying is accurate,” the Director said, “because it’s taking place in other countries, it’s out of our jurisdiction. Put it in a report and I’ll forward it to the appropriate people at Interpol.”

  “A report?!” I said. “Sir, in a few days the girls are being smuggled to Dubai in a container ship!”

  “That’s the best I can do, Stevens. Now I’m ordering you to drop this. Take Sally back to her parents, send me a report about today’s events, and do not call me anymore. Goodbye.”

  He hung up. I was about to pound the phone handset against the switch hook when I stopped myself and gently replaced the receiver. Hooking my bottle of bourbon, I returned to the motel. There, I dug Sally’s cell phone out of her purse, went outside and called her parents. I got an answering machine. Not wanting to worry them, I simply left a message that my plans had changed, that I would have Sally home midday tomorrow, and hung up.

  Back inside, Sally was sleeping soundly. I quietly closed the door and wedged the desk chair under the doorknob. Once I’d put her phone back in her purse, I rummaged through my suitcase in the dim room, located my toiletry kit and carried the kit and the bottle of bourbon into the bathroom. I shaved between swigs of bourbon, and then I got in the shower.

  I probably spent forty minutes under the hot water, trying to wash away the stresses of the case and my worries about those abducted girls. What was going to become of them? If I sent a report to the Director, would it reach the Interpol authorities in time, or would it just end up in bureaucratic limbo, passed around between agencies forever while the girls suffered alone and without hope?

  As I was rinsing the shampoo out of my hair, the shower door rolled open. Startled, I squinted my eyes open before all the shampoo was gone. It stung like hell. Someone stepped inside the shower stall, and the door slid shut. I now was able to see clearly.

  Before me was Sally Standish, smiling and swiveling her hips. Every inch of her was lusciously nude. I gasped in some water at the sight of her, and when I finished coughing I pretended to be outraged.

  “Sally, you can’t be in here!”

  “Gimme a second. Please? I need a shower.”

  Squinting without her glasses, covering her chest with her forearms, she maneuvered into the spray beside me. Then she noticed the open bottle of bourbon on the tub shelf. She picked it up in both hands and sniffed from the opening. Her nose crinkled up.

  “What’s this?”

  “Maker’s Mark Kentucky Straight Bourbon,” I said. “Not for underage girls.”

  She took a sip. “Yuck.”

  She handed me the bottle, wrapped her arms around my ribs and squeezed. I winced. She let go and stepped back from me.

  “Oh, did I hurt you? Why all the tape?”

  “It’s my ribs. The redhead broke some of them.”

  “In the woods?” she said. “When you were rescuing me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m really sorry, Dakota,” she said. “About everything.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  I had a swill of bourbon and put the bottle on the tub shelf, away from the shower spray. When I turned around again, I got a long, unimpeded look at Sally’s sublime body—the tiny frame and smooth legs, the compact backside and flat stomach, and the one part of her anatomy slightly incongruous with her otherwise dainty physique, the part of her anatomy only truly appreciable now that it was laid gloriously bare—her breasts. Full yet gravity-defying, they were like ripe fruit on a sturdy sapling. With a thickness in my throat that made breathing difficult in the steamy air, I felt my lust for her rising in my body like flood water behind a dam. In seconds, the struggle between my amygdala and my frontal lobe was so intense, my entire body trembled.

  “Sally…you shouldn’t be in here, honey.”

  “Please, Dakota?” She gazed up at me with puppy-dog eyes and that succulent lower lips of hers beading water from the shower spray. “I was scared out there all alone.”

  “Sally, we—”

  She rested her head against my chest and tenderly placed her hands on my waist. Tracing the ridges of my abdominal muscles with her thumbs, she shivered a little.

  “Whoa. Seriously, Dakota…you’re, like, crazy built.”

  “Thanks. I work out a lot.”

  “It shows,” she said. “Would you�
��wash my hair?”

  “I think I should get out of here and let you do it,” I said.

  She caressed my arms. “Stay with me. Please?”

  “All right.”

  I angled her head backward into the spray, and she closed her eyes while I worked shampoo into her hair. Her eyes were still closed when she squeezed my waist.

  “You saved me today,” she said. “Geoff almost abducted me.”

  “But you’re safe now,” I said.

  “Yes, thanks to you.”

  As I rinsed the shampoo out of her hair, I had to make a conscious effort not to watch it ooze and dribble over her breasts. I stared over her shoulder at a crack in the shower tile. I felt her breasts compress against my stomach. She kissed my chest.

  “I…I want you to know...how grateful I am,” she said, “and how much you mean to me. I want—”

  “You don’t have to do anything,” I said. “Sally, please…get out of here before we do something we regret.”

  “I know I don’t have to do anything,” she said. “I want to. And believe me, Dakota, I won’t regret it. Actually, I’ll regret it if I don’t do this.”

  Smiling up at me, she took hold of my wrists and guided my hands to her breasts. Reflexively, my hands began to massage them. I gritted my teeth. My groin throbbed against her stomach. Kissing my chest, Sally looked into my eyes and said, “I want you, Dakota. I need you.”

  With that, my prefrontal lobe shut down. Abruptly cranking off the faucet and yanking the door open, I grabbed the bottle of bourbon and picked up Sally by the waist. She let out a kittenish squeal and waggled her feet. I planted her outside the shower and climbed out next to her on the bathmat. Sally wriggled in place and nibbled her lower lip as I dried her off. Water droplets misted her face, giving her a dewy look; I left them.

  Then she dried me off, staring into my eyes the entire time, and when she was finished, she blindly flung the wet towel over her shoulder into the bedroom. Still nude, she picked up her eyeglasses from the sink counter. Slipping them on, she struck a cheesecake pose by bending her knees and sticking out her chest and butt.