The Scorekeeper

by Dustin Stevens

  Until finally, at the bottom, he found what he was looking for.

  “Ethan Mabry,” Reed whispered.

  Staring at the name for another moment, he scrolled through his mind, through everything he’d encountered throughout the night, seeing if anything clicked.

  It didn’t, the name one he was reasonably certain he’d never seen before.

  Shoving himself up to full height, he laced his fingers atop his head. A pair of low pops slid from his back as he stretched his body upward, his spine elongating, his body ready to be going again.

  Charged with more energy than he’d felt all night, it was everything he could do to remain in one spot.

  “That’s our guy. Has to be.”

  Dropping the last bit out there, Reed had expected a reaction. He’d thought there would be some form of the energy he now felt, the sudden reveal passing through them, igniting them from within as well.

  Instead, the others around the desk merely exchanged a glance, a tinge of uneasiness settling among them.

  “What?” Reed asked.

  For a moment, there was no response, each deferring to the other, none sure quite how to broach what they were thinking.

  “What did we miss?”

  His focus still twisted toward the captain, Greene said, “We dug into Lawson and Cicotte while you were gone. Turns out they’ve been about as divergent as two people can be for the last five years, but prior to that they used to work together.”

  More pieces of information fell into place in Reed’s mind, working fast to process what he’d been told.

  “For Mabry Enterprises.”

  For an instant, Reed’s mouth sagged. He understood the reaction of the others around the table, his own mind scrambling to process what he’d just been told.

  “Mabry Enterprises,” he repeated. “As in, owned by Ethan Mabry.”

  Beside him, Grimes went back to the screen. Returning to his scrolling, he pushed further down through the documents, narrating what he found.

  “The defendant, Ethan Mabry, owner and CEO of Mabry Enterprises, hired Sheila Damien in the fall of 2007. At that time she was the only female employee, brought on as a receptionist.”

  Using the small wheel on the top of the mouse, he moved down further through the documents, continuing to recount what was written.

  “After photographs of Ms. Damien were found in the defendant’s possession, depositions were taken from coworkers. Mr. Mark Lawson went on record as stating that he had often seen Mabry leering at Ms. Damien, to the point that at one time he even commented on it.”

  Neon lights of various size and intensity began to flash in Reed’s mind. Just like the drawing on the whiteboard upstairs, lines and arrows that at first appeared haphazard began to align, individual pieces highlighted for him, connecting from one to another in perfect sequence.

  Pushing further down through the court transcript, Grimes added, “Serving as a secondary witness for the defense was Ray Cicotte, an engineer at Mabry Enterprises. He added that while Mr. Mabry was a very intelligent man, his opinion of himself was exceptionally high, to the point that he came off as condescending.

  “More than once he and Lawson had discussed such matters, having both been on the receiving end of it on multiple occasions.”

  When he was finished, Grimes turned back to the group. There was no need to go further, everything they needed having just been given to them.

  At long last, the commonality between all the diverging information had been identified. A framework for so many stray plot points had been established, making them easy to trace from one to another.

  “This guy,” Reed said, his gaze shifting out to the window above the desk, his own reflection staring back at him, “this smart, condescending prick, sat in prison for five-plus years for something that, in his mind, he didn’t do.”

  “And now he’s out, and he’s squaring debts,” Grimes added.

  “The witnesses that spoke out against him, the daughter of his accuser,” Reed said. “He even sent the guy that should have gone down for it to prison and took his thumb. Used it to leave behind a single print at every scene so we’d have no choice but to piece it all together.”

  “He took his thumb?” Gilchrist asked, his slow cadence and disbelieving tone reminding Reed that he hadn’t yet shared that part of the story with the others.

  It would have to wait.

  Instead, he focused on the various angles still at play, at everything swirling through his mind.

  “Right now, our chief concern has to be on Della,” he said. “We don’t know how much time she has. After that, we’ll worry about Mabry.”

  “Right,” Grimes agreed.

  Jerking his focus down to the screen, Reed extended a finger, pointing to the files up on screen. “What’s the last known address on Mabry? Right now, he should still be on probation. He has to have someplace on record that his parole officer can check in on him.”

  Pulling down the court records, Grimes went to work, his fingers clacking against the keyboard. Moving closer, Reed pressed the front edge of the desk tight against his thighs.

  To either side, the officers and Dr. Mehdi leaned in as well.

  “Looks like we’ve got an address on file out near West Jefferson,” Grimes said, peering down the end of his nose at the screen. Reaching for the phone, he snatched up the receiver beside him and said, “I can have the local police there in under ten minutes.”

  Reed was intimately familiar with West Jefferson, the town fifteen miles from where they were now standing, not far from the farmhouse he and Billie called home.

  Running hard with the lights and sirens, he could be there in twelve minutes flat.

  “Do it,” Reed said, already inching back from the desk. Finally having someplace to point the angst that had been pent up all afternoon, he could feel prickly heat running the length of his body, aching for him to be moving again. “Tell them to surround and secure but do not enter. We’ll be there within minutes.”

  “Got it,” Grimes said, propping the phone between his ear and shoulder and beginning to dial.

  “Officers?” Reed said, shifting his focus to the two men beside him, taking another step for the door.

  “Right behind you,” Greene said, already following him in order, Gilchrist on his heels.

  Without another word they departed, the three men and Billie all running for the door.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Reed entered the address directly from his phone into the GPS mounted on the dash. Not caring how much attention he attracted, he flipped the flashers and the full sirens on while sitting out in front of the 8th, tearing away from the parking lot in a squeal of tires and a plume of smoke.

  The acrid scent of charred rubber found its way up through the vents as he pushed west, working his way through the streets of Franklinton. Opting against going east and catching the freeway, he chose to go through town, relying on the time of night and the warnings heeded by his car to clear a path so he could link up with the interstate moving west.

  Following the exact path he took home every night, Reed didn’t bother to so much as glance at the GPS screen, knowing he wouldn’t need it for at least another several minutes.

  Instead, he focused on what he did know, on what the coming half hour had in store.

  The clock on the dash said it was fast approaching four in the morning, meaning Della was dangerously close to six hours inside the box. Basic math dictated she had enough oxygen to breath comfortably for five and a half hours, meaning already things were getting tight.

  And that was before factoring in the bout of hysteria she’d endured earlier, coupling it with the tears and fear that had accompanied her first waking up.

  Not to mention however long she had been sedated before coming to.

  The thought of how much time she might have, of that poor girl lying in the dark suffocating, pushed Reed’s foot down a bit further on the gas, his own heart rate spiking in kin
d. Reaching out, he flipped open the vent on the temperature control, cool night air flooding in around them. Hitting Reed flush in the face, it barely managed to pick at the perspiration on his skin.

  And did nothing to the feel of Billie’s hot breath on his right arm.

  Ethan Mabry. Time and again, the name rolled through Reed’s mind, forcing him to try and make sense of it.

  The man was a business owner, someone that was purported to be of great smarts, so much so he either really did look down on those around him or just had a complete inability to connect to them. Someone that had taken on some level of affinity for Sheila Damien and had acted on it by resorting to stalking.

  How or why that was didn’t really matter now. Paul Bingham had mentioned the man had an odd look to him, that it appeared his features were masked by pancake makeup. Perhaps that was the reason for his nature, for his admiring Damien from afar.

  Or maybe he really did think so little of others that he couldn’t help but see them as objects, things to be garnered for his own personal enjoyment and nothing more.

  Much the way he had now done the same to Damien’s daughter.

  Checking the screen before him, content that he was still traveling the right direction, Reed pulled his cell phone over onto his thigh. Hitting just two buttons, he called up the number for Grimes before setting it to speaker and returning it to its spot in the middle console.

  An instant later it began to ring as he swung onto the freeway, the smattering of cars that were out so early drifting to the side to let him by.

  In the rearview mirror, he could see Greene and Gilchrist doing the same, blue-and-reds flashing from the bar across the roof of their cruiser.

  Ringing just once, the line was snatched up by Grimes.

  “Yeah,” he said, knowing that nobody but Reed was likely to be calling at such an hour.

  “What do we know about Sheila Damien?” Reed said.

  Thus far, they had a court record showing she had worked for Mabry and had been hit by a car. They also had proof that Mabry had been watching her and went to jail for it.

  From there, the trail went cold, nothing more than a striking semblance to Della Snow as proof that this was the person they were after.

  A ton of conjecture and circumstantial evidence, but nothing concrete as yet.

  “Looking at it as we speak,” Grimes said. “Full name Sheila Rosemary Damien, born at Riverside Hospital on May 4th, 1977.”

  Flicking his gaze from the road to the GPS, Reed saw that it was telling him to hold on the interstate for another couple of miles before jutting north just short of West Jefferson. Having been in the area for a number of years, he knew it to be largely wooded, Darby Creek running nearby.

  In total, a perfect spot for doing something like burying a coffin without anybody noticing it.

  “Gave birth to a daughter, Delilah Asbury Damien, on August 16th, 1993,” Grimes continued. “Sixteen years old, no father listed.”

  Nodding slightly, Reed did the math in his head. Della Snow was now twenty-four, per her license, which fit the timeframe.

  “Last known address was the spot in Franklinton, same for work history,” Grimes said. “After that, she seems to just disappear.”

  Not uncommon for victims of stalking, Reed had seen it happen many times. A home was the place in the world where a person felt safest. Once that bubble was pierced, it was impossible to ever achieve again.

  For some, they just got used to living with that shattered reality, taking a stance of uncertainty, never sure what might be lurking beyond the next corner. For others like Damien, they didn’t even try. They packed their things and fled, changing everything they could, determined to leave both the person that had frightened them and the person they had been behind.

  “Oregon?” Reed asked, recalling Grimes’s mention of Della having first appeared on the radar after enrolling at Oregon State.

  “Not under her own name,” Grimes replied. “And Snow is fairly common. There are dozens of women fitting the age range in Oregon.”

  To that, Reed couldn’t argue, that likely being the reason it was chosen.

  Ahead, the exit he was looking for came closer.

  “It wouldn’t matter anyway,” a voice inserted, the sound unexpected.

  Taking Reed a moment to place it, he realized Dr. Mehdi was still sitting there, having jumped into the conversation.

  “Come again?” he asked, easing up slightly on the gas to make the turn.

  “It wouldn’t matter,” Mehdi repeated, “because I’m pretty sure she’s dead.”

  Feeling his eyes bulge, Reed chose to remain silent. He flipped his gaze down to the phone, waiting for her to continue, the whining of his siren the only sound.

  “Based on what Della’s been saying, on the phraseology employed, the continued use of the past tense,” Mehdi explained, “I’m pretty sure she’s gone.”

  Of everything that had happened in the last couple of hours, few had completely stunned Reed. Many had seemed at odds, not quite fitting with the situation at hand, but none had completely come from left field.

  Before this.

  “You’re certain?” Grimes asked.

  “Fairly,” Mehdi replied. “I think that’s why she keeps apologizing, there’s a layer of guilt that the trauma of this situation is just managing to scratch into.”

  Drifting to the side of the road, Reed exited. Taking the short ramp at fifty miles an hour, he jogged left before straightening out.

  The road was a standard two-lane country affair, a thick double-line painted down the middle with the first few inches of corn stalks popping up on either side.

  Accelerating hard again, he considered the news.

  “I mean, it would explain why he’s targeting Della,” Reed said. “Everybody else – Klauss, Lawson, Cicotte – they were all original players, but-“

  “He couldn’t have the main attraction because she was no longer around,” Grimes finished.

  Nodding, Reed continued processing. The bulk of the story was already fleshed out. Only a few details remained, final pieces that needed to be hammered into place, making for a complete motive.

  “Girl probably figured after her mom died that there wasn’t any cause for concern anymore,” Reed said. “Might be safe to come back.”

  “And don’t forget,” Mehdi added, “she was uprooted when she was eighteen, a most formative age. Most of her friends were here, her high school was here. It would have been quite traumatic.”

  Reed nodded in agreement. “Only natural for her to want to come back here and try to rebuild. Under a new name, no less.”

  In his mind, he could remember the words of her landlord sighting how Della had been a bit reclusive, staying close to home.

  Clearly, some of what her mother had been through had stuck with her.

  The conversation fell away, both sides of the line retreating to again consider everything that had been shared. Driving through the darkness, Reed pressed on, his destination just a couple of miles away and closing fast.

  “Anything else?” Grimes asked. “ETA?”

  “Two minutes,” Reed said, answering without really processing the question. Instead, he focused on what had just been shared, still feeling like there was something missing.

  A tiny hole that needed filling.

  “Did Delilah have a driver’s license?”

  “Say again?” Grimes asked.

  “Delilah Damien,” Reed said. “Did she have a driver’s license?”

  A clatter of keys could be heard as Grimes went to the computer, digging through the records.

  By now, the license would be expired, as all did on a person’s twenty-first birthday. Going by a different name, there would be no reason to renew it, especially given that she was in Oregon at the time.

  But it would have a picture.

  The faint glow of red and blue lights could be seen as Reed turned off the country two-lane. With trees pushing in tight on either s
ide of the smaller road, he could just make out the smear of illumination ahead, the competing colors moving like shadows across the sky.

  West Jefferson Police had already arrived, and they had brought a veritable army with them.

  Reed’s mouth pulled back into a tight line as he stared at it, the engine letting out a low whine as he leaned harder on the gas, willing them forward.

  The cool air from the vents did nothing to stem the sweat coming to his features.

  “Yes,” Grimes finally said, his voice a bit detached. “She did.”

  Another burst of keys could be heard, presumably as he pulled up the image of Della Snow’s license beside it and compared the two.

  Not waiting to be prompted, Reed asked, “Is she Della Snow?”

  “No doubt about it.”

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  The home of Ethan Mabry was toward the end of a country lane that was wide enough to let traffic pass in both directions, but not so much as to render needing a line down the center of it. Grass grew up right to the edge of the blacktop, already ankle tall. A few feet behind it was a wire fence, rotting posts every eight feet holding back woods on either side.

  Just as Reed had thought earlier. If ever there was a place to bury someone without it being noticed, this was it.

  Rolling forward, the smear of red and blue grew progressively brighter, strong enough by the time he drew close that he was forced to lower his visor before him. His eyes scrunched up against the onslaught of color, he nudged the passenger side tires over just even with the grass before turning the engine off.

  “Not exactly subtle, are they?” Reed muttered, leaning down into the passenger footwell and taking up the plastic evidence bag from Della Snow’s apartment.

  Grasping it in hand, he climbed out, letting Billie follow him over the front seat. Not bothering with either of the leads, he paused for just a moment as Greene and Gilchrist pulled up tight behind them and jumped out to join.

  Standing in Grimes’s office, Reed had thought he could make it in twelve minutes. Turned out to be more like fourteen.

  “Thanks for not leaving me behind on the freeway,” Greene said. “I don’t that we’d have found this place on our own.”