Upstairs in the office, Dad paced, taking the leadership role out of simple necessity. I caught the end of a conversation involving Sheriff Brannigan.
“We can’t involve the Sheriff’s Department or the FBI, Jack,” Uncle Hank demanded. “They’ll never let us go inside. We’re civilians.”
“Go inside? We shouldn’t be involved at all at this point,” Dad countered.
“3 must return. That’s what the text message read,” Tracy said in an even modulated tone. “It’s clearly a threat. If we don’t go back in—all three of us—Claudia will die.”
That was the first time that I realized that the purveying view was that I wasn’t going with them. I opened my mouth to protest but my father’s voice cut me off.
“Is that your expert interpretation?” he snapped.
“It’s what I feel to be true,” Tracy responded.
“That’s psychic bullshit speculation,” Dad roared. “I don’t live my life by what-if’s. That’s how an inexperienced officer gets himself killed.”
“I wish this were only an educated guess, Mr. Graves, but it’s a cold truth,” she said in a quiet, mousy voice that nonetheless commanded complete and utter silence from everyone. “This girl will die if we involve any others.”
“Who’s to say that we won’t kill her ourselves? There could be all sorts of dangerous traps in there in anticipation of some police raid. All we’d do is blunder in and possibly get her killed. I couldn’t live with myself if I knew that I was responsible for that little girl’s death.”
This sort of logic versus emotion argument went on for another good ten minutes as I disappeared from everyone’s radar from my position just inside the open doorway. Then finally, Uncle Hank said something that stopped the conversation cold.
“Why don’t we just talk about what this is really about, Jack?” my uncle said to his brother in a low almost conspiratorial tone.
“What do you mean?” my father snapped, his voice only getting that much louder in direct opposition.
“Do you think you’re the only one that doesn’t want to go in there again?” A look passed between him and Tracy. She lowered her eyes to the folded hands in her lap. I considered for a moment then what a huge reservoir of strength she must have had. Out of the surviving three that had been inside the house, she seemed to have the most to fear and had reacted the least to the prospect of going back in again. In fact, she seemed to have reached some sort of peace with that fact.
“What are you saying,” my father said in a hushed yet accusatory tone. “Say it, Hank. Don’t beat around the bush.”
“For God’s sake, we’re all scared, Jack!”
My father got this look on his face and actually began to smile, but it was something that I couldn’t decipher, because there was a pinch of maliciousness and hate added to the recipe that I’d never witnessed in him. “You’ll never let it go, will you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I had a wife and son, Hank,” he snapped. “Why didn’t you go when Ronnie called, huh?”
Mom stared from my father to Hank. He turned away from my mom in something that resembled shame.
“Goddamit, I had a family, Hank. What did you think I was going to do?”
“I never brought that up, Jack. Why do you feel you need to now?” Hank rose and glanced at one of Dad’s old framed black and white pictures of grandma and grandpa. “I’m afraid. Tracy’s afraid. To not feel fear would be foolish, but try and ask yourself the same question I’ve been asking myself for the last hour: Is the source of the fear that you might not be able to save Claudia… or fear for yourself?”
The room fell silent for the first time since I had entered. I heard myself, as if from a short distance away, clearing my throat. “I just want everyone to know,” I began in a voice that sounded incredibly insecure in that room full of adults, whose eyes were swinging around and seeking me out with a sort of wide-eyed confusion that told me that they really had forgotten I was even in the room. “I’m going with you all.”
“Sorry, pal. Out of the question!” Dad shook his head and this time my mother was right in sync with him. “Your father’s right, Paul,” Mom completed his thought for him. “No way.”
I was about to raise my voice in protest but they turned away from me, showing me their backs. Even Tracy turned her attention back to the debate at hand after one final look that I couldn’t read. Something snapped in me then. A boiling rage took over, and I knew exactly in that moment what I must do to break this stalemate of inactivity, this filibuster that did nothing but waste more and more precious time.
Dad gave a grunt and turned back to Hank. “Let’s just try analyzing the facts here for once. If it’s true what she says,” he continued, pointing at Tracy, “this guy is expecting us and lying in wait. He has every advantage. I’m still not completely convinced that she isn’t in cahoots with this guy.”
Tracy’s face contorted and she finally lost her temper. “I’ve done everything humanly possible to help you!”
“And you think by giving us information after the deed’s been done, that you’ve actually helped!”
“If you think I’ve stood by all this time while innocent people died, then you’ve got a more twisted mind than…”
“Thinking like a twisted mind has kept me alive all these years, lady!”
“Distrust and paranoia isn’t helping anything,” Uncle Hank added.
“It’s only paranoia if it’s not true, Hank!”
The voices faded into the background as I made my way quietly and as stealthily as I could down the carpeted stairway into the kitchen, and out through the garage to my car, waiting in the driveway.
I was already ten minutes gone, a good deal longer than I had wagered on, driving an average of sixty, when my cell phone rang. I stared down at it and let it ring, hoping that I could at least get to highway 71 and just far enough ahead of them to remove the possibility of them catching up to me before I had reached the town of Eden.
This was the only way, I had decided. Something had gotten so firm a stranglehold on my father that I knew that he would continue to come up with reason after stubborn reason why they shouldn’t go in alone. Hour after precious hour would slip by until by sheer force of will he would have his way or someone would reach the conclusion that I just had: That they would have to go on without him.
Going in before him was the only way I could think of to remove that option. I still wasn’t completely sure that he would come after me. I had never seen him like this before, so I had no clue just how powerful a control this fear held over my father.
But I hoped his love for me would be stronger.
According to Tracy Tatum, it could only be my father, my uncle, and the woman they had rescued as a child who entered that house. Graham already had Ronnie Wicke’s daughter. Without the four main players in this game, the final solution--the rescue of Claudia Wicke--couldn’t happen.
So what role was I playing here?
I guess I was the wild card in this deck.
It was just after nine and I had missed rush hour traffic. I was well over thirty miles further along when my cell rang again. I picked up this time.
“Paul,” I heard my father’s voice say. “Where are you?”
“I’m on my way to Eden.”
“Son, I want you turn around right now and head on back here.”
“Sorry, Dad,” I told him. “I’ve made up my mind.”
I hung up.
I tried to think like my father, considering his various options.
First, he could keep this strictly between us and our little group and follow, hoping to catch up to me before I could find a way inside.
Second, he could follow and alert the local law enforcement that I would be trying to trespass on private property. Not an offense that I could be arrested for, but it might put up a barrier long enough for them to catch up with me. The only problem with that plan is that it would involve t
he locals, making it nearly impossible to get inside without their cooperation, which meant more red tape and more time.
If he truly needed a good excuse to avoid going inside the house, this option might work to his advantage. The only flaw in this plan would be if I were to get inside the house before the locals caught up with me. If that happened, I would truly be on my own, as he would have blown the whistle and, as a result, any advantage he might have had to go in secretly and without outside involvement would have been lost.
Knowing the thorough mind he possessed, I decided that he would choose to leave the local authorities out of the loop and choose what was behind door number one.
Traffic was a lot worse than I had expected. It was already past eleven before I had Austin in my rearview. Up to this point, the only map I was working from was the one in my head from what I had seen on the internet. Rummaging through my glove compartment, I found an old state highway map, not very detailed, but there was a tiny dot and the word Eden about fifty miles northwest of Austin.
That would get me roughly into the same neighborhood. I figured if worse came to worse, I could stop and ask directions from the locals. The town of Eden was bound to have a barbershop or feed store. There were always healthy veins of information to be mined from those places.
As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. I made every turn at each foreign intersection with no hesitation and found myself driving straight to the water tower as if returning home from a long trip.
It felt like fate was riding shotgun beside me.
Chapter 31 Friday, October 30th, (11:48am)
Just under an hour later, I sat in my car outside a brown rain-starved field, studying the water tower, a phantom from a distant dream. A big faded red apple faced the east bound lane of Farm Road 3165 entering town. I followed the skyline and saw the hills in the distance. Marching up the hill was a series of trees; apple, I was guessing.
I continued on down the farm road, passing one left turn then another, eventually driving another two miles before squealing to a stop when a bell seemed to go off in my head like a microwave timer.
Sailing by in a car, there was no way a person could have spotted it, a non-descript iron gate, so overgrown with weeds and branches from surrounding trees that it formed a natural camouflage, until your eyes were only a few feet from it.
I pulled over and climbed out. There was a gravel path barely visible leading up through the densely growing maple, then disappearing around a right hand curve.
Problem was, there was a chain on the gate.
Out of frustration, I grabbed it and gave it a hard tug. With a rattle and clang, I watched the ends of the chain drop and dangle just inside the gate. I pulled one end of the chain through and pushed the gate open.
Taking one last glance into the dirt beside the gravel road, I spotted the lock. It had been cut cleanly with bolt cutters. Pocketing the lock, I pulled my car just up the road far enough to get the gate closed again.
Just as I started to close the gate, I realized that if Dad had any chance of following me, I had to leave him a big sign or he’d pass the gate entirely. So, for starters, I left the gate wide open.
Stomping down the overgrown weeds on the shoulder of the road, I laid the long chain from the gate in an obvious arrow position pointing toward the gate. If someone were looking, they would spot it. Hopefully.
For good measure, I pulled the lock from my pocket and set it conspicuously atop the gate above the chain.
Figured I would give him a call and give him a head’s up just in case, but of course, my cell phone had no signal.
It was coming up on twelve noon, but as I drove slowly up the gravel road, the maples that crowded around me cast such dense shadows that it felt unconsciously like evening to me. This only added to my tension. Having the sun go down on me in this foreign world, only made me more anxious.
I had been holding my cell phone for the last half hour, hoping for the slightest signal, when it suddenly began to ring in my hand. The ID showed “Dad-Cell,” as I flipped it open. Pressing it up against my ear, I strained to hear a ring, but there was nothing. There was one lonely bar on the display.
“Paul!” the sound that exploded from the phone, caused me to hit the brakes involuntarily. It’s a good thing that I did, too, because I must have found the only good signal for miles by sheer accident in this exact spot.
“Dad, I’m here!”
There was a dropout before I heard. “…on our way!”
“Listen, Dad, I don’t have much time,” I exclaimed. “I need to tell you how to find to the road to the house. About a quarter of a mile from the water tower down Farm Road 3165, there’s a gate on the left. You got that?”
I could hear a patchy voice. “… headed there…” then a moment later, “…water tower…”
Suddenly, a blood-chilling shriek came through the phone, a sound so crystal clear that it sounded like whatever had produced it was inside the car with me. I dropped the phone to the seat and stared at in it shock. When I got the courage to pick it up again, there was not one signal bar and after repeated attempts at calling Dad back, I finally gave up.
The three hours I had spent driving had only given me time to think about what I would do when I actually found this place. If our suspicions were correct and Graham was here, I would have to defend myself and the gun Dad had given me for that purpose was probably sitting in the evidence locker at the Sheriff’s Department.
The closest thing I had to a weapon now was a simple utility knife that I kept in my glove compartment. It was similar to a Swiss army knife in that it had tools such as a screwdriver, a serrated blade, and a set of pliers. Although quite sharp, I had the distinct impression I was bringing this particular knife to a gun fight where it would do little good. Despite, feeling a little naked, I still had its blade unsheathed and lying on the seat next to my right hand, just in case.
After about twenty minutes, the ride became a little rougher as I felt an occasional large bump and heard a few popping sounds beneath my tires. Looking around, I realized that the maples had been supplanted by apple trees, and I was leaving sauce in my car’s wake.
The apple orchard.
I was close now.
Could he hear my engine?
I killed it and rolled my window down. Taking a look up the darkened trail, I could see only as far as the next bank in the road about a hundred feet ahead.
I looked back and realized that I could be making a mistake by leaving the car blocking the road this way, but unfortunately, there was no room to pull aside or even turn around. It was either forward or backward at this point.
Hesitantly, I grabbed my keys, snatched the knife off the seat, and climbed out. Walking around to the trunk, I glanced inside at the contents: a dirty beach towel, a red rag streaked with motor oil, a bottled water, a can of window cleaner, a couple of water-swollen composition books, a yellowing Asimov paperback, a couple of empty CD cases, and a roadside emergency kit that I had entirely forgotten that I had owned.
Unzipping the kit, my eye fell on a mini first aid kit, a roll of black electrical tap, and flashlight inside. Tucking the tape into my pocket, I grabbed the flashlight and flicked the switch expectantly. Nothing. I shook it and tried it again. Nada.
I unscrewed the bottom and dropped the two “C” cells into my palm, one that had started to corrode. Ah, there’s the problem. I scrubbed the acid and white crust from the battery and the contact points within the plastic tube and popped them back inside. Saying a quick prayer, I tried the switch again.
A dim light shown from its bulb.
Paranoid of the little life that must be left I snapped it off and dropped it back into the kit. I zipped the bottled water into the emergency kit and tucked the kit beneath my arm. Thinking: “You never know,” I threw the dirty towel over my shoulder and tucked the oily rag in my back pocket.
I closed the trunk and started forward. As an afterthought, I turned back and put the key
s back into the ignition. Better that whoever came after me had the means to move the car out of the way and get through to me.
I walked slowly up the road straining my ears to hear something, anything at all. For all intents and purposes, it was a typical Hill Country day in Texas. Birds chirped and flittered about from tree to tree. Occasionally, a bold one would dive bomb my head, and once I heard a high-pitched squeal and realized that not all of these tiny airborne shapes were birds. I knew there were a good many bats out in this area, though typically they didn’t start coming out until after dark, unless they had been disturbed by something. Though, the answer to what might disturb a normally nocturnal creature lay somewhere up ahead, further along this road.
About ten minutes later, the gravel road cleared the tree-line. I stopped and stood in the shady border, staring at a dilapidated barn sitting in a field of knee-high wild grass. The road ended there at that structure. Beyond that I could see nothing more than trees. The barn itself looked abandoned.
A barn, I thought? I never saw a barn in any of my dreams.
I stood there for a few minutes waiting for insight, keeping an eye out for any activity. There was none.
I tried my cell phone again, hoping that now that I was out in the open, I might be able to sneak in a little quality time with my father.
No signal.
I’m really alone now, I thought with trepidation. There will be no one to back me up if I run into trouble.
It’s just a gardener’s barn, I told myself. At some point, someone must have cared for the orchard and that’s where they probably stored the tools. From the look of it, though, a few years had passed since there had been anything approaching care taken with the place. Casting one last look over my shoulder, I strode forward to the barn.
I pulled open the door, the rusted hinges giving a scream of protest, causing my blood to run cold. The sunlight cut through the dust clouds to expose a white truck inside, lines of sunlight streaming through the spaces between the planks of the back wall and creating a striped pattern on the aluminum cover over its bed.
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