Should Be Dead (The Valkyrie Smith Mystery Series Book 1)

by Jeramy Gates

  As soon as this is all over, she told herself for the hundredth time.

  She scanned Diekmann’s file and sent it to Matt, and then took a long soak in the tub. After that, she ordered room service for dinner and fell asleep early.

  Val woke the next morning to the sound of her cell phone vibrating on the nightstand. She moved, and a moan escaped her lips. Her back felt even stiffer than usual. She rose on her elbow, wincing as spasms of pain shot up and down her spine. The fingers of her left hand were tingling. She shook it, restoring the blood flow.

  By the time she had her phone in hand, the caller had hung up. It began to ring again. It was Matt. She put him on speaker.

  “Sorry about last night,” he said. “My schedule this year is killing me.”

  “That’s all right. Did you get the file I sent to you on Michael Barnes?”

  “Yes, I’m looking at his social security history right now. This is the guy you think is Loki?”

  “I’m sure of it. Do you have an address?”

  “I have more than that. Grab a pen.”

  Val did, and she proceeded to take down the address of an apartment in Santa Rosa, along with Loki’s employment information. He was a janitor at the Santa Rosa High School.

  “Thanks Matthew,” she said. “You’ve been a huge help. I take it you had no luck finding that motor home?”

  “Hah. I can point you in the direction of about two hundred of them, if you like.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That area is crawling with RV parks. There are five just between Forestville and the coast. That’s not counting the ones between Jenner and Bodega Bay, or the ones parked in driveways and backyards and motel parking lots-”

  “I get it,” Val cut him off. “I was afraid you might run into that problem.”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s not like I have a GPS signal to track. I’m looking at satellite images here. There’s no way I can pick out one single motor home without some sort of identifying information.”

  “How about a hole in the roof? Would that help?”

  “What kind of hole?”

  “When they took off, they ripped a satellite dish off the roof. That must have left some kind of damage.”

  “Val! Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “What?”

  “What brand was it?”

  “The satellite dish? I have no idea.”

  “Val, if it’s an internet capable system, that means it uses a two-way communications uplink!”

  “Great! What does that mean in English?”

  Matt groaned. “Okay, satellite television systems have been around for decades. In the old days, the dishes were huge, like eight feet across.”

  “Yes, I remember. One of our neighbors had one when I was a kid.”

  “Okay, the reason those dishes were so big was because the radio signal was coming from a satellite in space, and it was difficult to insure a strong signal. But over time, they improved the signal and the dishes got smaller.”

  “I get it. Why is that important?”

  “Even though the technology got better and the dishes got smaller, the receivers had no way to communicate back to the satellite, which is what you need if you want to use the internet. Think of it like this: when you use a computer at home, you have a two-way connection. You click on a link and the system delivers that website to your computer. Then you click on another link, and that page appears. Every time you click the mouse, you’re sending a request. You’re sending information into the internet.

  “The problem with satellite systems was that they had no way to allow you to click that link. You could receive the page, but you couldn’t request the page. They overcame this with a link through the phone line. When the user clicked a link, the request went through the phone line to the satellite company. The satellite then sent the website to the dish.”

  “That sounds slow.”

  “You have no idea. But in the last ten years, they’ve come up with something new. It’s a system that puts a high energy radio transmitter on the satellite dish, which sends a signal directly to the satellite server’s hub.”

  “And if Odin’s camper had one of these?”

  “I might be able to track that receiver. Granted, it might not be easy. Reception is spotty along the coast anyway, and with the dish missing…”

  “Just do it,” said Valkyrie.

  “I need the model and serial number from the dish. Do you have that information?”

  Valkyrie winced as she thought of the mess in the empty RV space. “I’ll get it,” she said with a sigh.

  She hung up the phone and settled onto the edge of the bed. Her back cramped up immediately. Valkyrie twisted her torso right and left, trying to loosen the muscles. Gradually, the pain diminished until she felt like she could move again. She went straight to her suitcase and dug out her bottle of prescription painkillers.

  Valkyrie didn’t like taking them. The pills were not only moderately addictive, they also dulled her senses. On most days, she chose to live with some pain rather than sacrifice her wits. Today, she didn’t have a choice. The way her back was feeling, she’d be absolutely useless without some drugs in her bloodstream. Val popped one pill and stuck the bottle in her purse, just in case. She took her time getting dressed, not wanting her back to seize up again.

  She left the hotel at nine a.m. and headed straight for Marigold RV Park. The first thing Val noticed when she pulled into the park forty minutes later was that Odin’s space had been cleaned up. The trash, the sewer line, the satellite dish… All of it was gone!

  “Hey there!” Leann said as Val crawled out of her car.

  “Leann, what happened? I thought you weren’t letting anyone touch that space.”

  “Sorry, thought you were done with it. Dad said we had to clean it up before the county sent out a health inspector.”

  “What did you do with the satellite dish? The one that fell off the roof?”

  “I suppose it’s with the rest of the trash.”

  “Please tell me you didn’t take it to the dump.”

  Leann laughed. “Not yet. The dump truck won’t come until this afternoon. Everything is in the dumpster, by the showers.”

  Valkyrie was too stiff to walk the two hundred yards to the showers, so she climbed back into her car and drove. Once there, she found the dumpster pushed into a brick-walled cubicle behind the building. She nearly gagged from the stench as she approached the thing. Val removed her jacket and put it over her face to filter the smell. It helped, a little.

  She leaned over the top of the dumpster and saw a dozen large white trash bags and a lot of loose debris. With one hand, she began rummaging through the refuse. It took her a few minutes to clear one side of the dumpster to the halfway point, and that was where she came across a TV cable. She pulled on it, and realized that the dish was located under the rest of the trash at the opposite end of the dumpster. With a groan, Val began moving all the trash back to the other side. Thankfully, her meds were kicking in by then. Otherwise, she would have been in excruciating pain.

  At last, Valkyrie located the dish. It was badly bent, like an old-fashioned saucer sled whose unfortunate rider had crashed into a tree. The receiver was a small metal box with a plastic cylinder sticking out of one side. The frame that held the box in place was twisted off to the side, hanging precariously by one screw. Val went to her car, located a multi-tool in the glove box, and returned to remove the screw. When she had it disassembled, she carried the contraption to a nearby picnic table and performed her detective work there.

  With the receiver detached from the satellite, Val turned it over to view the identifying numbers stamped onto a metal plate on the back. The plate had rusted, making the numbers difficult to read. She cleaned the plate a little with the edge of her knife. Once she could make out the serial number, Valkyrie used her cell phone to photograph the plate. She mailed the picture to Matthew and tossed the receiver box in the trunk in c
ase she needed it later.

  Val’s next stop was the Sheriff’s Department. She had decided to share what she had learned about Michael Barnes with Sheriff Diekmann. Even as she walked down the hall towards his office, she still wasn’t sure she was doing the right thing. Val knew the smart thing would have been to play her cards closer to the vest; to use the precious information Matthew had given her to get ahead of Diekmann’s investigation, and then only reveal it to him if it became absolutely necessary.

  That was how she’d always worked in the past. But now things had become complicated. Odin had complicated the situation by joining up with Loki, and Diekmann had made it even worse with his old-fashioned cowboy attitude. Every time she thought about the man, she felt guilty.

  This was going to wipe the slate clean, she decided. No more guilt, no more conscience eating up at her. She was going to tell him everything. Well… not everything.

  “Come on in,” Diekmann said as she appeared. “Did you get one of the donuts in the break room?”

  “Thanks anyway,” Val said. “I have some information that might interest you.”

  Diekmann tilted his head to the side. “What kind of information?”

  “Michael Barnes’ address,” she said, handing Diekmann the note she’d written down. “And his last employment.”

  Diekmann accepted the slip of paper and glanced back and forth between her and the writing. “How did you get this so fast?”

  “I have sources,” Val said. “Shall we go take a look?”

  “Give me twenty minutes to get a warrant.”

  Chapter 15

  The bleeding had stopped. Maddie looked down the bridge of her nose and noticed that it seemed crooked. It was likely broken. That wasn’t the worst of her injuries, but so far nothing was permanent. So far, she had been lucky.

  Lucky! she thought. Is that what I call being physically tortured and sexually violated? Lucky?

  She didn’t feel lucky. She felt broken, as if she’d never be the same again. As if none of this could be real, and she still couldn’t quite grasp the fact that it was. She thought of Frank lying somewhere in the shadows of the barn floor where Loki had dragged his body. At least he wasn’t in pain, she told herself. At least Frank’s death had been quick. Probably painless.

  Her chest tightened, and she struggled unsuccessfully to hold back the tears. At least Frank hadn’t been there to see Loki raping her. If Frank had witnessed that, it would have destroyed him. It would have been worse than death.

  Death, Maddie had been telling herself, is just a stepping-stone to the next life. A better life.

  She wanted to believe that. She needed to believe it, because if she didn’t, she would lose her mind.

  One of the killers shifted in the other room, and Maddie flinched. She was bound to a chair in the kitchen, completely nude, blood dripping down the front of her body. Zip ties secured her ankles to the chair legs, and her wrists behind the chair back. Loki and Odin had gagged her with a kitchen towel tied around her face. At the time, Maddie had believed that they were tying her up for one last torture session before finally killing her. Instead, the two maniacs had tied her up and then made some sandwiches and went into the living room to watch TV, leaving her there to suffer alone in silence.

  That was where they had been all night, and into the morning. Every time they moved, her blood froze. Every noise they made, she was sure they were coming back to finish her off. Strangely, the two seemed to have lost interest. Maddie couldn’t be sure why that was. Perhaps it was because she’d refused to scream.

  Loki had tried over and over to make her scream, but Maddie wouldn’t do it. It was the one thing she had left. They could strip her of her dignity, desecrate her body, even crush her spirit, but no matter what they did to her, Maddie refused to scream. That was what they seemed to want. By holding it back, she held power over them. That power was the one thing she had left in the entire world.

  The power not to scream, she thought miserably, laughing quietly to herself. Tears streamed down her cheeks, mingling with the dried blood on her chin. Maddie tugged at the zip ties on her wrists. She winced as the sharp plastic burned into her wounds; wounds that she had created over hours of trying to stretch and twist the plastic, all to no avail. Maddie thought she might have made some headway, but it was impossible to be sure. She was nowhere near escape, that was for certain. Even if she did eventually managed to wriggle out of the bonds, she’d still have to undo her feet and then somehow get out of the house without being caught. And then what? She was naked and covered in blood. She had minor injuries, or at least she hoped that was all they were. What would she do? Run screaming naked into the fog, barefoot across the dry, barren ground?

  Yes, that was exactly what she would do. Better to die out there of hypothermia than in her own kitchen at the hands of those monsters. Better to have a thousand thorns driven into the soles of her feet than whatever Loki and Odin had planned.

  Maddie almost believed escape might be possible. If she somehow managed to slip away, to make a run for the tree line at the top of the hill, she could hide away in the woods and they’d never find her. She might even make it to the campground on the north slope of the mountain. Maybe she’d even find someone there who could help her. Someone with a phone.

  Maddie knew those woods like the back of her hand. She used to go camping up there with Frank, where the property butted up to the Sequoia Coast State Park. She had wonderful memories of watching the sun set over the ocean, roasting marshmallows, making love to Frank under the redwoods.

  The world is broken, she thought. Without Frank, nothing would ever be the same again. Not the house, not the ocean… everything had changed.

  An awful, guttural snarl came rumbling out of the living room and Maddie gasped. She turned, craning her neck, trying to get a glimpse through the half-open door. The sound came again and she realized what it was: Odin was snoring. That god-awful noise was the sound of Frank’s killer sleeping on her dead husband’s La-Z-Boy.

  Something in the corner of Maddie’s eye caught her attention. Something shiny, resting at the edge of the table. She turned, craning her neck in the opposite direction. She could just barely make out the shape of tiny vines engraved onto the silver handle of her good silver butter knife.

  It’s not sharp, she thought. Even if she could somehow worm her way around the edge of the table and get her hands high enough to reach that knife, she doubted it would cut through her bonds. Then again, it didn’t necessarily need to. With enough time, she was sure she could scrape through the plastic enough to weaken it.

  But how? How could she move so far without attracting their attention? She almost dismissed the idea outright. Then again, she had been sitting in that chair for hours without either one of them so much as sticking his head through the doorway. Maybe she still had time…

  Maddie considered the possibilities. With her feet bound the way they were, she couldn’t walk, but with enough strength, she might be able to move the chair sideways. She would have to alternate between the front and back legs, or side-to-side if necessary. In this manner, she might be able to move the few feet necessary to bring the knife within reach. Above all, she must maintain absolute silence.

  Maddie decided to try it. She had nothing to lose. If she woke them, they would come in and kill her. If she didn’t wake them, the psychos would eventually get around to killing her anyway. If Maddie had any hope of surviving to see her grandchildren again, this was it. She rocked forward slightly in the chair, testing her balance. She felt her weight pull the rear legs upward, tipping towards the front. She quickly settled back in the chair for fear of lifting the legs too high and making a noise.

  Maddie waited, eyes rolling nervously, chest heaving as she struggled to breathe through her broken nose. She waited, but nothing happened. Odin snored on. No one moved. This imbued Maddie with the courage to try again. She exhaled and bent forward, wincing as the back of the chair pulled her arms wide. T
he zip ties cut into her wrists. Slowly, cautiously, she allowed her weight to pull the chair forward. The sound of Odin’s snoring came drifting in through the doorway, and from this new vantage, she could see the soles of his socks resting on the recliner’s footrest. Loki was nowhere to be seen.

  Maddie felt the legs rise as the balance of her weight shifted precariously forward onto the balls of her feet. She twisted, swinging the back of the chair an inch, and then moved her weight back ever so gently. The back legs settled onto the tiles and Maddie straightened up, panting. She could already feel beads of perspiration forming on her chest and forehead.

  Maddie tensed up and waited, straining to hear every sound coming out of the living room. When a minute passed and nothing had happened, she tried again. This time Maddie rocked backwards, lifting the front of the chair with her toes, pushing herself sideways another inch before letting it settle gently to the floor. Another success!

  Her heart pounded like a drum, her blood-streaked breasts rising and falling with her rapid breathing. Maddie leaned to the side, trying to get a view of her captors through the doorway. Odin’s socks hadn’t moved. She still couldn’t see Loki, but she presumed he was on the sofa next to the fireplace.

  With the confidence of her previous successes, Maddie went to work faster. She shifted her weight forward, then back again, until she had moved at least a foot towards the corner of the table. By this time, beads of sweat were rolling down her forehead, stinging her eyes, burning the open wounds on her face. She couldn’t see it, but the perspiration on her chest had mixed with the drying blood, and was now running down her torso and thighs in shiny pink rivulets.

  Maddie leaned forward again, working hard to bring the rear of the chair around to the corner of the table. This part was going to prove most difficult. Maddie had no choice, but to move the entire chair around the corner. She would never reach the knife any other way. But as she swung the chair around, something went wrong.