The Finders

by Jeffrey B. Burton

  I held Becky until her unsteady swaying stopped and she was able to stand on her own two feet.

  “He can’t hurt you anymore,” I kept saying, over and over again. “You’re safe now, Becky.”

  Sue had followed me into the hidden room. He’d sat out of my way as I’d swung at the plate, emitting the periodic snarls, but now as we’d managed to free Becky, he began to growl. For all of Sue’s machismo, I suspected the situation freaked him out as much as it did me.

  Grohl’s chest shuddered, her face a streak of dirt and tears. Her eyes struggled for focus in the murkiness of the closet room, finally settling on mine.

  “You get the other one?”

  “The other one?” I said.

  Sue began to bark as I turned around.

  * * *

  A flash of shadow rushed at me; in the penlight, I saw something shiny in the dark figure’s hand before Sue leapt between us. I stumbled backward as both the other one and my dog smashed into me. I heard Sue yelp, and we all went down like bowling pins, my penlight bouncing across the cement floor. Sue gave a final squeal as he rolled off me and I came face-to-face with the other one. Greasy hair in an unwashed mullet, a torn sweatshirt and underwear. I shot a left arm up in defense as what looked like something Jim Bowie had used at the Alamo plunged toward my neck. It went sloppy, sliced open my forearm, but I managed to get a grasp on his wrist.

  In the haze of the penlight, I could make out my attacker as he began to win the battle against my feeble grip on his forearm. The tip of the knife edged downward, now an inch from my throat. I could smell his foul breath, like meat left too long in the sun, and memorized the look of hate and determination frozen on his face. And I knew I was about to be killed by someone who couldn’t be more than twelve years old. They say that, pound for pound, a chimpanzee has twice the strength of a human being. And that’s exactly what this preteen attacker felt like. As the blade began cutting into my neck, I realized I was being murdered by some savage feral-boy, some crazed juvenile delinquent from south of hell.

  Becky Grohl had squirreled around us because suddenly she was behind and above him, dropping the chain that had tethered her to the wall about his neck and yanking backward. The feral-boy screamed, his arms and legs fluttering as though they were helicopter blades. I pushed myself up. Feral-boy still clutched the massive blade, and I knew where he was going with it. Feral-boy was going to stab behind himself at Becky’s torso. I dived forward, grabbed his knife-wrist with both hands, and kept him from stabbing at the girl. A knee came from nowhere, pounding me in the groin, and a heel from his foot caught me in the eye. I lost hold of the wild boy, stumbling backward and down again, and Becky lost her grip.

  A second later, we were back where it all began. I shot both arms upward as the feral-boy leapt upon me. I clasped a piece of his sweatshirt and possibly skin with my right fist and kept jabbing at him with my left, trying to keep his knife at bay. Then something from the darkness was on my chest, and I realized Sue was still alive. There was a low howl as my German shepherd got his teeth on the feral-boy’s wrist, the wrist holding the blade. Sue didn’t have enough remaining strength to clamp hard, to make feral-boy pay for his sins, but his unexpected attack startled the murderous little shit. Feral-boy’s eyes widened and he paused long enough for Becky to wind the loop of chain about the boy’s neck again and yank outward.

  The boy flew backward, arms and legs swinging wildly, but no noise this time, the chain now cutting off his airway. The knife dropped in the commotion as Becky fell backward. I slid Sue off me, gently, and then flew on top of the wild boy. I clasped his hands, kept them from yanking at Becky’s hair or getting fingers into her eyes, which left Becky free to pull on the chain, tightening the metal noose about feral-boy’s throat, strangling him.

  Thirty seconds later, feral-boy went limp.

  A full minute after that Becky released her grip on the chain.

  I grabbed my penlight off the floor and scrambled to my dog. My glorious alpha male of a German shepherd—the dog that saved our lives twice in two short minutes—lay on his side in a pool of blood, struggling to breathe.

  I knelt down in the puddle of crimson and almost wept.

  There was so much blood; I prayed most of it was mine.

  CHAPTER 9

  I heard the blaring of sirens as I carried a rasping Sue up the steps with a trembling Becky Grohl in tow, her hands clenching the back of my belt as we made our way up and out of Nicky Champine’s House of Horror. Once in the yard Becky slid gently to the lawn and lay down as though taking a nap. I sank to my knees, turned sideways and vomited. Light washed over us as two squad cars and an ambulance screeched to a halt, officers poured out, guns pointed at yours truly.

  An unmarked car skidded onto the dead grass and a door flew open.

  “Stand down!” Detective Hanson screamed at the officers as he marched toward me. “Stand down!”

  Paramedics poured from the medical van and rushed to Becky Grohl.

  I looked up at Hanson. “My dog needs help.”

  “Jesus, Reid—you need help.” Hanson waved over the nearest pair of officers. “What the hell happened?”

  “Champine wasn’t in this alone,” I said, struggling to stand. “Check the basement.”

  The detective grimaced and helped me to my feet. “After you left, we did more digging. Champine drove a school bus last year in a district where one of the missing girls was from. We found his car—a beat-to-shit Pontiac—and he had laundry cord and plastic sheeting in the trunk.”

  Hanson ordered the officers to find the nearest pet hospital and get my dog there yesterday.

  I squeezed Sue’s fur to keep more blood from trickling out from the deepest of his knife wounds. My fist was scarlet, drenched and slippery, and I somehow managed to stumble to the rear of the police car where a cop waited in the back seat. I made damn sure he knew where to apply pressure to Sue’s side before the squad car squealed out in search of the nearest veterinary facility.

  As they pulled away, I dropped to my ass on Champine’s crabgrass. Both Hanson and a paramedic jogged over.

  “I broke in,” I confessed, looking up at the detective, unsure of what would happen next.

  “We got a warrant,” he spoke slowly. “I’ll make it right in the report.” Hanson looked toward the Champine house and then back at me. “You look like hell, son.”

  “The bastards had her chained down there.”

  CHAPTER 10

  A figure in black stood silently, motionlessly, veiled in the thickets at the far edge of Eunice Champine’s property. He’d been there minutes before the initial wave of squad cars and ambulances had arrived.

  And he cursed himself for being late.

  The figure remained a statue among the trees and brush and watched as cars from Bridgeport PD joined the CPD squads, as neighbors from up the street, having heard the commotion, came out from their homes and milled about in little islands to witness the night’s goings-on, as crime scene vans appeared and a team of CSI agents rushed inside the Champine house with their kits and cases and cameras. The figure took in the official activity—the flashing of police lights, the buzz of radios, officers and plainclothes like bees about a hive. He watched as a barricade was swiftly set in place to keep incoming news vans and other media at bay.

  An hour later the figure watched as two men in CPD windbreakers carried a body bag on a stretcher into what he believed to be a medical examiner’s van.

  And he knew exactly what that meant.

  The figure in black dropped hard to his knees.

  He was in anything but prayer.

  Five minutes later the figure faded backward into the darkness.

  It was as though Everyman had never been there at all.

  CHAPTER 11

  Both Becky Grohl and I were rushed to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where I received four stitches in the skin at the base of my throat. I looked as though I’d really gummed up a morning’s shave. I r
eceived seventeen more stitches and four staples in my left forearm, which looked torn and ratty and was beginning to itch. Detective Hanson and his partner, a short guy named Marr, took my statement in a conference room at the hospital. Marr promised to drive me back to my truck at the Champine house, but things came up, and the detectives kept getting called away. I sacked out on the sofa in a waiting room of somber faces and awaited further notice from Hanson or Marr. I called Paul Lewis a few times to keep him up to date, then called Dick Weech, my neighbor down the street, apologized like crazy about the hour, told him where I hid a key to my trailer, and begged him to let Delta and Maggie out so they could do their business.

  The cops had rushed Sue to a nearby veterinary facility in Bridgeport. I drove the clinic staff batshit with phone calls every half hour—mostly begging for updates and letting them know Sue’s home veterinarian was on her way there to help—and got the play-by-play as Sue underwent emergency surgery for a ruptured spleen, three broken ribs, and a foot or two of stitches from feral-boy’s knife. Finally, with Doc Rawson’s assistance, they got Sue into stable condition. My poor dog had to have a blood transfusion, which likely saved his life. And he’d probably be spending the foreseeable future at Rawson’s place.

  Sharon Rawson was the veterinarian Paul had recommended a decade back. She’s a genius when it comes to animal care and runs the pet hospital I take all the kids to. Nobody’s better. Last year, Rawson had guided me every step of the way in the treatment of Amie’s renal failure. We both sat in her office and shed tears when it got to the point where nothing more could be done for my sweet, little springer … and a decision had to be made. Doc Rawson’s a little south of seventy, gray-haired, more librarian than pet doctor, and I live in utter terror of her sitting me down one day soon and telling me she’s calling it quits—going to sit in a rocking chair, drink gin and tonics, and gaze at sunsets.

  I’m sure I made Sharon’s night. And I know I woke her as the phone rang a dozen times before she picked up while the ambulance rushed Becky and me to Northwestern Memorial, but good old Doc Rawson grabbed her bag, jumped in her car, and sped off to Bridgeport.

  Eventually, I drifted off to sleep thinking about Vira, thinking back on how her education had kicked into overdrive after I’d caught her miming my commands at the newbie class in Schaumburg. Soon after that eye-opening experience, Vira had become part of the training team and I mixed her in with the others whenever I led orientation classes. And soon after that we began the hard work—playing hide-and-seek with the scented tennis balls.

  Vira took everything I could toss at her and, in her own manner, begged for more.

  The first time Hanson woke me, I learned that Nicky Champine started fessing up once he was informed of the evening’s events at his home in Bridgeport. Champine took the news hard, weeping from his remaining eye as he led the detectives through his statement. The feral-boy was his son, born of his beloved sister who had died—twelve years earlier—while giving birth in the tub in the bathroom of their rambler home. The incestuous lovers had been ashamed, and refused to let anyone know, thinking they could pull the birth off themselves by boiling water and using clean towels like they do on TV shows.

  It turned out, after all, that Nicky Champine’s sister had never left the family dwelling; in reality, she had only traveled about fifty yards from her Bridgeport home as she was buried in some makeshift coffin of plywood and 2x4s in the woodlands that shrouded half the Champine property.

  Nicky Champine claimed he never wanted to kill any of the girls he’d taken, but none of them proved a worthy replacement for his sister-slash-paramour.

  “Jesus,” I said to Hanson.

  “Exactly,” he replied.

  “Wait a minute.” Something troubled me. “I went through that house room by room. Where the hell was the kid hiding?”

  “They’ve got a small attic—mostly joists and insulation—and Champine made a space up there where his kid could hide in case anyone came knocking when he wasn’t home. Basically, Champine nailed down some plywood and tossed a doggie bed up there for his son to sit on,” Hanson said. “Champine said the kid loved it up there, as though it was some kind of fort.”

  “Was the access hatch in the hallway ceiling?”

  Hanson nodded and I realized the indentations in the walls came from the heels and pads of feral-boy’s feet—thumping against the Sheetrock—as he pulled himself up into the attic opening.

  A chill swept over me. Feral-boy was a couple of feet above my head, listening as I bumbled about the hallway looking at drywall divots and high school pictures. If he’d removed the hatch cover, he could have reached down and stabbed me in the neck with that knife of his.

  The second time the detective woke me it was nearly five in the morning when he and Marr were finally able to return me to my pickup. On the ride back to Bridgeport, Hanson said that Champine’s grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s and had, in fact, died in the house six years earlier. Champine didn’t notify the authorities out of fear of losing the house, of losing his son, and it also kept Granny’s social security checks continuing to be direct deposited into her checking account, to which he had joint access.

  * * *

  “I’ve got Vira registered in the system as having been put down,” Paul whispered though no one else was around. “That way there won’t be any bullshit from the cops or the court.”

  I couldn’t sleep when I finally made it home, and Paul had been kind enough to bring Vira back later that morning. I opened the front door and she flew into my arms, knocking me backward, and licking and re-licking at my face. After five minutes of play, I filled Vira’s feed dish with Milk-Bones, bacon bits, and a healthy slab of peanut butter.

  “I can’t thank you enough, Paul.” I shook his hand for about the seventh time.

  “Don’t worry about it, but if anyone asks, you’re the dog guy; tell everyone she’s just another golden retriever you happen to have. Call her Angie after the Stones’ song.”

  “I love that song.”

  Paul took a long look at Vira. “Do you think she smelled that poor woman on him? Kari Jo Brockman?”

  “Some breeds have three hundred million scent receptors. Humans have only five million. For the most part, that’s how dogs like Vira decipher the world.”

  “So you think she smelled it on him?”

  “Maybe.” I shrugged, now exhausted. “I really don’t know what the hell to think.”

  CHAPTER 12

  I sat next to where I buried Amie’s ashes the year before, on a slight incline about twenty yards off my back deck. Plenty of sunshine, and my English springer could be close to everything that was near and dear to her. I missed Sue, who was recuperating at Doc Rawson’s place. I couldn’t wait to get my German shepherd back home, where he could continue to hold court over all us commoners.

  I’ve got a three-bedroom manufactured house—a glorified trailer home without wheels—located on a nearly two-acre wooded lot in Lansing, a suburb about seven miles south of Chicago’s city limits. I’d bought the place the year before Mickie and I were married. One of the happiest days of my life was the day I carried Mickie over the threshold. One of the saddest was the day I helped her move out.

  Mickie and I had been high school sweethearts. They say those relationships never last, but that’s not what destroyed our marriage. I love Mickie, probably always will, and though she brought a laundry list of my maddening quirks and idiosyncrasies to our marriage counselor, I came armed with only one.

  Mickie liked dogs.

  Sure, that sounds weird considering what I do, both for a living and with most of my free time, so let me rephrase that. Mickie only liked dogs. There’s a Grand Canyon–sized chasm between those who like dogs and those who love dogs. Hell, most everybody likes dogs—that is until you have to deal with the poop and the piddle and the teething—where they gnaw to death your favorite belongings—and the recurrent barking, the vomit messes, the squeeze of the vete
rinarian bills, late-night toilet trips, you name it.

  If I learned anything, anything at all, it’s that on the off chance I ever remarried … I’d need to find someone who truly loves dogs.

  Speaking of getting remarried, I’d heard a month back from a mutual friend about Mickie’s engagement and upcoming nuptials. Of course I drank a bit too much that evening—I’m a guy, we’re wired that way—and, of course, I found myself dialing her number in the wee hours of the morning. Although I knew in my gut there’d been no hanky-panky during the course of our marriage—that wasn’t Mickie’s style—I was locked and loaded and full of piss, vinegar, and a year’s worth of profanity. It may have been the hour, or perhaps she’d seen who it was on her caller ID, as the phone appeared to ring forever. I figured it was about to flip over to her answering machine when Mickie finally picked up.

  “Hello, Mace,” she said, in a voice more tired than angry.

  “I hope you have better luck this go-round,” I said after a moment and clicked off.

  We’ve not spoken since.

  It’s been four days since the incident at the Bridgeport rambler. My statement, with Detective Hanson’s lending of a hand, was short and sweet: I got there first. The house looked empty, but when I cupped an ear against the window, I thought I heard a moaning sound, as though someone were in great pain. I thought it stemmed from Becky Grohl or, perhaps, Eunice Champine—and, knowing backup was on the way, I made the decision to go in. I followed the moaning sound to the hidden room in the basement and was in the process of freeing Becky Grohl when we were attacked.

  I’m not sure if Nicky Champine—killer and kidnapper that he is—will ever get around to suing me over Vira’s attack, as the man now has other pressing legal issues of his own. And though I strive to feel sympathy for Champine’s son—the feral-boy who’d never had a chance in life except to get sucked into the vortex of his parents’ madness—whenever I think about what he did to Sue with that blade of his, I can’t find it in me to feel sorry for the little shit. Becky Grohl is now back home with her parents; and though the press is giving the family the privacy they need, she’s become a bit of a media sensation considering the way in which she dispatched one of her two captors. Becky gave me a big hug when I saw her last at the hospital.