by Sharon Sala
Her head was spinning. Was she going to become yet another naked body tossed in with the storm debris? Still immobile, she could only watch in horror as he duct-taped her ankles together and then taped her hands behind her back, leaving her on her side and trussed like a Thanksgiving turkey. Then he got behind the wheel and drove away.
* * *
Hershel wouldn’t look at her this time until they were safely out of the city and she was completely at his mercy. Before, he’d seen the unexpected hate and challenge in her eyes, and he had no desire to see that again. And while he hadn’t seen a gun on her, he had no way of knowing for sure if one was there until he stripped her.
He drove cautiously, unwilling to call attention to himself by speeding or cutting into another lane without signaling. Traffic was heavy, but he took his time. In fact, he had all the time in the world today. There was nothing else on his agenda but making sure this woman’s death mirrored what had happened to Louise as closely as possible.
When the first drops of rain suddenly hit his windshield, he was startled. He hadn’t even noticed the sky getting dark. He quickly turned on the radio to check the weather and relaxed when he learned it was nothing but some rain moving through the area. His eyes narrowed angrily as he remembered Hurricane Katrina. He already knew he wouldn’t melt. He’d been wet before.
* * *
“Somebody text Jo and tell her we have a good lead,” Wade said as they followed the police cars through the city to the Riverside Motel.
“I already did,” Cameron said. “She didn’t answer.”
Wade frowned. “Probably still asleep,” he said, but it bothered him. Maybe she was in the shower. She would text back soon, of that he was certain.
When their motorcade reached the motel, the police cars split up, blocking both ways out of the parking lot. The cops spilled out of their cars and took a defensive stance behind their vehicles, their weapons drawn. Even though the van wasn’t there, Detective Compton and two officers approached the door to room 112 and knocked.
“St. Louis Police! Open up!”
The motel manager came out of the office on the run. “What’s going on here?” he yelled.
Wade stopped him before he got any closer. “We’re looking for the man in room 112. Do you know where he went?”
“He checked out early this morning. Didn’t say where he was going,” the manager said.
Wade didn’t bother to hide his frustration as he ran toward the others to pass on the bad news.
Compton groaned, while Tate stifled his disappointment. So close and once again the bastard had escaped.
“We’re heading back,” Compton said. “More paperwork for nothing,” he added.
Wade was still uneasy that they hadn’t heard from Jo, and it was beginning to sprinkle. He glanced up at the clouds and then headed for the SUV. As soon as he got in out of the rain he pulled up the tracking app to look for Jo’s location. Almost immediately she popped up as on the move but still within the city limits. So she was sightseeing, as he’d suggested.
Tate got in the front seat, while Cameron slid in the back.
“Heard from Jo?”
Wade shook his head. “According to the app, she’s still in the city, driving to judge by her speed. She talked about going sightseeing, but she isn’t answering, and she said she’d text me when she left.” He glanced down at the blip. Nothing alarming registered to make him think she was in danger. He sighed. “I guess I’m overreacting. I’ll check in with her again in a few minutes.”
“What’s our next step?” Cameron asked.
“The police have a BOLO out on the van and tag number, although it didn’t come up as registered to Hershel Inman. DMV says it belongs to some guy named Bill Blaine. This is his information,” Tate said.
“Want me to give him a call?” Cameron asked.
“Yes, and we’ll head back to the hotel to follow up.”
Cameron made the call, and the phone rang and rang but no one picked up.
“No answer,” he said, and hung up as Wade drove out of the parking lot and headed back to the hotel.
* * *
The rain was really coming down now. The windshield wipers were swiping as fast as they could, but Hershel’s view of the road was still fuzzy. He hated driving in the rain.
You did it again, didn’t you, Hershel? Just couldn’t leave well enough alone.
His fingers tightened around the steering wheel as the whine in Louise’s voice tore right up his spine like a zipper caught on his flesh.
“Shut up, Louise. Can’t you see I’m trying to drive here? It’s raining. You know I don’t like to drive in the rain.”
You’re hurting me. I want you to stop. You have to stop. Everything bad that you do hurts me. I loved you, Hershel, and you’re breaking my heart.
“You still love me, Louise. You know you do. We married for better or worse, remember? It’s not my fault that things got worse.”
Your fault…fault…fault…
“Louise! Why the hell do you echo?”
Because every bad thing you do pushes me farther away. If you don’t stop, one day you won’t hear me at all.
“Don’t say that!” he snapped. The fear of losing her permanently horrified him. Dead and still nagging was better than silent and gone. He kept driving through the city, slowly edging his way west.
He was losing his grip on reality. Between the rain and Louise’s threat of leaving him forever, everything was getting mixed up in his mind. Half the time, he didn’t even remember he had a hostage.
* * *
Every muscle in Jo’s body was spasming. Even though the electrodes were gone, she couldn’t shake the tremors. He’d wrapped the duct tape so tightly around her wrists that her fingers were nearly numb. She tried to speak, but her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth, and Inman was talking nonstop, as if his dead wife was right beside him. From what she could tell, Louise was berating him for what he’d done, and he was trying to justify it to her.
She closed her eyes, praying Wade would wonder why she hadn’t checked in after promising to text him when she left. Surely he would check the tracking app before it was too late. She didn’t want to die.
Even when she finally regained some muscle control, she stayed as quiet as possible so he wouldn’t realize it. She knew the chances of getting free were slim. Still, she had to try.
She arched her body backward until her fingers could reach the duct tape around her ankles. For the longest time, she couldn’t find a place to start peeling the tape back, because her fingers were so numb. When she finally felt a rough edge and then something sticky, she dug at it over and over until she had an entire corner loose. Her arms were trembling, and she was willing herself not to blow this as she got a tight grip and pulled. The ripping sound nearly stopped her heart, but Hershel apparently didn’t hear it, because he was still talking to himself.
Jo needed to cover up the sound and began moaning as if she was beginning to regain her speech, and to her surprise Hershel thought it was Louise and nearly swerved off the road before he got the van back under control.
“Louise? Honey? What’s wrong? Do you hurt?”
Jo got a firmer grip on the duct tape and moaned again as she gave it a pull. Protected by the sound of the rain on the roof and Hershel’s growing mania, she began to make headway.
Hurt? Of course I hurt. You hurt my feelings. You hurt my heart.
Jo moaned and pulled.
Hershel was almost in tears. “I’m sorry. Even when I talk nasty to you, you know I don’t mean it, don’t you? You’re everything to me.”
Jo’s ability to speak was returning, but she wasn’t sure if she should try to say something or just follow Inman’s lead. When Hershel took a curve too fast and the van suddenly slid s
ideways, she took advantage of the noise to rip the rest of the tape from her ankles.
The elation of being even halfway free was heady, but the most important part was freeing her hands, otherwise she would never be able to fight.
Hershel was crying now. “Look what you did, Louise! Talking mean to me like that. I almost had a wreck. I can’t think when you’re upset, and this rain is loud…too loud…just like the night we climbed up on the roof. Do you remember that? I never knew you wouldn’t be around to climb down.”
Jo moaned again as she scooted herself into a sitting position against the wall behind his seat. Her hands were still behind her back, but she was about to turn herself into a human pretzel. The first thing she did was lean back hard against the wall and push her body up from the floor just enough to pull her hands underneath her backside. When she sat back down again, her hands were beneath her knees. She leaned forward as far as she could go so she could slide her hands under her backside, then leaned back, folded up her legs and slipped them through the loop of her arms. Her wrists were still taped, but at least they were now in front of her.
Afraid he would look up in the rearview mirror and see what she was doing, she rolled back onto her side and began using her teeth to tear the duct tape from her wrists.
Sixteen
Tate and his team were back in their suite, following up on trying to find the original owner of the van. Wade had called the number twice more and was about to give it up as a lost cause when he tried it one last time. When he heard it pick up and then a man’s voice, he almost forgot what he’d been going to say.
“Hello?” the man said.
“Hello, I’m Agent Luckett with the FBI, calling to speak to Bill Blaine.”
“This is Bill Blaine.”
“Mr. Blaine, are you the owner of a tan 2003 Chevrolet van?”
“Oh, you must mean my father. I’m Bill Blaine, Junior. My dad was Billy Blaine. He owned that van, but he died. My mother recently sold it.”
“Could you tell me the tag number, and the name of the man who bought it?”
“Yeah, sure can.” Bill rattled off the tag number, then added, “Matter of fact, we bought the guy’s truck off him. It had gone through the tornado that hit St. Louis, and so had he. He was really beat up. Had stitches in his face and everything. His name was Lee Parsons. We bought his truck, and he bought my mother’s van. I gave the truck to my son, and he’s fixing it up to drive. Please tell me it’s not stolen. The title was in his name, and everything seemed on the up-and-up. The man cleaned it out from top to bottom, and then my son took it and had it detailed.”
“No, no, that’s not why I’m calling. Would you please describe the man?”
“Middle-aged, face all messed up like I said. Wore his hair in a brown mullet, oh, and bow-legged as all get out. Don’t think I’ve ever seen legs that bowed.”
“If you see him again, call one or both of these numbers.” He gave them the number of the St. Louis police, as well as his own cell number. “His name is not Lee Parsons. He’s a serial killer by the name of Hershel Inman. They call him the Stormchaser, and he will be armed and dangerous.”
“Oh, sweet Lord!” Bill cried. “My little Mama could have got herself killed. She actually went for a ride with that man while he tried out the van.”
“Thank you for your information,” Wade said, and as soon as he disconnected, he jumped up with a grin. “We have a name! Inman’s been living under the alias Lee Parsons. Now we might be able to actually track some of his money to other aliases. I need to call Jo.”
Cameron had gone to get some ice and was coming back into the room as Wade was relaying information.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Looks like we have an alias Inman has been using.”
“That’s amazing!”
Wade was still smiling as he put in the call to Jo, but when she didn’t answer, he frowned.
“Have either of you heard from Jo today?”
Tate shook his head. Cameron followed suit.
Wade’s heart sank. “Something’s wrong.”
Just as he said it, there was a knock on the door.
“That’s her!” he said, and ran to answer, but it wasn’t. It was Detective Compton, and the look on his face was grim.
“Is Agent Jolene Luckett here, by any chance?”
Wade felt the floor shift beneath his feet. “No, why?”
Compton held up a purse in one hand and a phone in the other.
“Her purse was on the street beside the open door of a black SUV, and this phone was on the seat.”
“No, no, no,” Wade mumbled as he grabbed his phone and quickly pulled up the locator app. “Oh, God… Oh, no… She’s not in the city anymore. Wait! Where did you find the SUV?”
“Close to the Arch.”
Wade said, “Tate. Get the keys. According to this, she’s close to thirty miles outside of the city. He’s got her. Inman’s got her.”
Compton frowned. “Are you saying your serial killer has her?”
“He said she didn’t belong,” Wade said, rushing to grab his jacket and weapon. “Hurry up, damn it. We’ve got to get moving!”
Compton looked at the phone. “You mean you can track her with this?”
Tate asked Compton another question instead of answering. “Can you tell where they are?”
Compton frowned. “Looks like that blip is somewhere in Robertsville State Park. Parts of it are pretty rough. You need to know where you’re going or you’ll get yourself lost pretty fast.”
“Call the state police. Give them my name and phone number, and have them meet us there.”
Compton handed them Jo’s things and pulled out his phone as he left.
Wade tossed Jo’s belongings on a chair and ran out the door, with Tate and Cameron right behind him.
Seventeen
Hershel was lost. He’d missed the turn to the location he’d found yesterday and was driving aimlessly, momentarily oblivious to why he was even in the park or the fact that Jolene Luckett was in the van.
All of a sudden a man shot out of the trees on an ATV and sped across the road in front of him. Hershel slammed on the brakes and in the process hit his head on the steering wheel. The pain seemed to bring the world back in focus as he grabbed his forehead, cursing every other breath.
“Stupid-ass four-wheeler shouldn’t even be allowed. Nobody paying a damn bit of attention and—”
He glanced up in the mirror, saw Jolene’s half-naked body all curled up with her back to the seat and grunted. It startled him to realize he’d completely forgotten he had her.
And just like that, he was back on task. He looked around at where he was, vaguely remembered the dead tree up on the right and knew he’d driven too far. But the road was narrow and the shoulders all mud, so there was no place to turn around. The last thing he wanted to do was get stuck, so he took his foot off the brake and started driving, looking again for a place where he could drive far enough off the road to dump a body.
* * *
Jo knew his focus had shifted. He was all business again, no talking to himself or conversations with Louise. She had been pulling at the duct tape around her wrists in desperation, but now the sounds could alert him to what she was doing. There was only one layer of tape left, and she didn’t know if she was strong enough to pull it apart with her wrists, but she was about to find out.
She was almost ready to try when the van swerved off the blacktop, and began slipping and sliding down an unpaved road. Panicked that he was going to stop at any second, she began straining as hard as she could, trying to pull her hands apart.
Hershel caught her moving in the rearview mirror and hit the brakes. He was in the back and straddling her when she rolled over onto her back
and kicked him hard in the groin.
Hershel screamed, then dropped to his knees with his hands on his balls, afraid if he let go they would fall off in his hands.
“I’m gonna kill you for that!” he shrieked.
Jo was still trying to get her wrists free. She was tearing at the tape with her teeth and pulling as hard as she could. Hershel opened the sliding door, and even as she was kicking, grabbed her by the foot and dragged her out into the rain.
Her head hit the side of the van as she fell out and hit the ground. Hershel’s curses were lost in the downpour as he tried to grab her arm, but she swung her hands upward and caught him under the chin with both fists.
He staggered backward, grunting in sudden pain. It was obvious he couldn’t best her without a weapon, so he realized he had to get back to the van for the Taser. Just as he turned her loose and leaped, the duct tape on her wrists came free. Jolene was on her feet when he turned and aimed.
“Oh, hell no, not again!” she cried, and bolted. Her legs didn’t want to work right, but she ran anyway and was soon out of range.
Hershel raged as he threw the Taser back in the van and got the rifle out instead. He slammed the door shut, pocketed his keys and took off running, following her muddy footprints through the trees.
* * *
Wade drove because he wouldn’t have been able to sit quietly. About ten blocks from the hotel Tate got a call. When he hung up, his mouth was grim.
“Watch for the first cop car. They’re running hot to help get us out of the city faster.”
Despite the rain, Cameron had the window down to listen for the first siren. “There!” he shouted, pointing at the patrol car that shot out into the intersection and then turned sharply so it was now in front.
Wade accelerated, riding the cop car’s bumper. A few blocks farther up another white St. Louis police car cut in ahead of the first, and one by one more cars joined them, continuing to clear the way until there was a caravan of St. Louis patrol cars leading the agents out of the city.
