Hard Trauma

by Franklin Horton

  Tia opened the RV door and smiled broadly as Gretchen climbed into the large vehicle. She could look friendly if she put some effort into it. “The puppies are in the back. There’s a dog crate on the floor.”

  When Gretchen didn’t see it, Tia pointed toward the door at the rear of the vehicle. She headed in that direction and Tia shut the RV door behind her, flipping the lock. She hurried to catch up with the girl.

  Gretchen stood in the back bedroom, looking confused. “Where are the puppies?”

  Tia shoved her down onto the bed and raised a hand as if to strike her. Gretchen cowered in fear and that pleased Tia. Even the threat of violence worked with this sheltered, innocent child.

  “You do not make a sound,” she hissed. “If you make noise or try to get away, I’ll kill this puppy and then I’ll kill you.” Tia slid her hand around the dog’s neck to show the girl she was serious.

  Gretchen began crying. She tried to control it but could not. Tears had no effect on Tia. She’d seen enough in her lifetime to create a lake. As she hovered over the girl a door slammed toward the front. Soon after that, Barger started the engine.

  Gretchen’s eyes widened. “Where are we going?”

  Tia did not answer her. Gretchen tried to get up and Tia kicked out, her sneaker connecting with the child’s shin.

  Gretchen fell back onto the bed and cradled her throbbing leg. “My mother will be looking for me. I can’t leave.”

  The RV turned to the left and the movement forced Tia to steady herself against the wall. She was more at ease now that they were moving, putting distance between them and the scene of the crime. She stepped out of the room and put the puppy down in the kitchen area. She removed several items from a drawer by the kitchen sink and went back to the bedroom. The terrified child had not moved.

  “Stick out your hands.”

  Gretchen hesitated, frozen with panic.

  “Do you want me to kick you again?”

  The girl obeyed this time and Tia snapped the handcuffs around her wrists. She enjoyed the way the girl looked at the cold metal bracelets. So terrified. So cowed.

  “Am I being arrested?”

  Ignoring her, Tia went back to the kitchen for a chain. Although it was thin, the kind that might be used to tie a dog out in a backyard, it was plenty strong enough that a child couldn’t break it. Tia secured one end to the handcuffs with a tiny padlock, then secured the other end to a grab bar in the cramped master bath.

  “They hurt,” Gretchen whined. “They’re pinching me.”

  “Get used to it. You have enough chain to get to the bathroom. Do you have a phone?”

  Gretchen shook her head. You never knew these days. Sometimes they had them as soon as they could walk. Tia continued to search for her and found nothing. She could see the girl’s revulsion at her touch. That was okay. She wasn’t offended.

  Tia returned to the kitchen and removed something from another drawer. She went back into the bedroom and tossed a bottle of water onto the bed. She held out a hand with two pink pills. “Take these.”

  Gretchen looked down at the pills, then back up to her. “I can’t take pills. They make me throw up.”

  “Do I have to get the puppy?” Tia snapped. “Do you want to see me to hurt it?”

  The child’s hand shot out and Tia tipped the pills into her small hand.

  “What are they?”

  “They will make you sleep. It’s the same thing you take for a bee sting.”

  Gretchen held the pill in front of her mouth, hesitating. Her eyes teared up. “I don’t want to take it.”

  Tia whipped her hand back, ready to slap the child. “I don’t care what you want, you little shit. You can take them or I’ll shove them down your throat. You will not like that.”

  Gretchen put the two pills in her mouth, uncapped the water bottle, and started gagging as she tried to swallow them. She grimaced, then choked, but managed to wash them down with the water. Her face turned bright red and her stomach heaved.

  “You throw up and you’ll clean it up,” Tia warned. She returned to the kitchen one more time, returning with a bag of chips and a candy bar. She tossed them on the bed.

  “Where are we going?” Gretchen whimpered.

  “To your new home.”

  “What about my old home? What about my mommy?”

  “You’ll never see your mommy again, kid. You might as well get used to that now.”

  Gretchen leaned over on the bed and began crying again. The medicine would kick in soon and she’d cry herself to sleep. Tia was fine with that as long as she kept the volume down. She hated sniveling, whiny children. The world was a cruel and miserable place. The sooner they learned that, the better off they’d be.

  She left the room, closed the door, and slipped a padlock into the hasp they’d added to the bedroom door. She went all the way forward to the cab and sank into the passenger seat. Barger did not look happy.

  “A little warning would be nice next time,” he said.

  “It was a target of opportunity. Santa Muerte led us here. She gave us a child.”

  Barger shook his head in disgust. While he had no place for that creepy religion and its weird practices, he knew better than to insult Tia. “There were a million people back there in that parking lot. Those places have cameras all over. That was too risky for me.”

  “That’s why you’re not in charge, Barger. You don’t have the big balls. Someone had to salvage this trip. We don’t drive four thousand miles and go home empty-handed.”

  “I think that other kid, the one from Richmond, must have got busted or something,” he mused. “Her parents must have found the messages and took her phone.”

  “Eh, she may have got cold feet.”

  “It sounded like you had her hooked.”

  Tia did have her hooked and she wasn’t sure why the whole thing went south. She had an eye for finding those troubled kids on social media because she’d been a troubled kid long before the internet came along. It wasn’t hard to recognize them. Those postings they made and pictures they shared, their complaints, the kind of music they listened to. All those things helped her single out her targets.

  She’d reach out to them and portray herself as the cool grandmotherly type. She’d offer advice, hint at smoking weed and partying. At some point, because she chose them so well, they’d all make that same comment.

  “You’re so cool. I wish you were my grandmother.”

  She’d tell them she could make that happen if they’d promise not to tell anyone. She’d groom them until she was certain they were committed, then she’d go pick them up and bring them to live with her. Despite their dreams of freedom, Tia’s home wasn’t the end of the road for those kids. It was only the beginning.

  “This one’s a little young, isn’t she?” Barger asked.

  “No. Not at all.”

  Barger let it go and kept his eyes on the road. It wasn’t his job to ask questions. He was just the driver. This was her show. In twenty miles, he’d be in Tennessee, but it would take a lot more miles before he would be able to relax.

  16

  Ty wasn’t sure what to do with himself. He’d lost his job and brought a lot of stress down on his sister. He’d come to this town solely for the purpose of helping her, but he was a doing a poor job of it. Trying to help find this missing girl was the most alive he’d been since being deployed. It carried the same life or death urgency, the same sense of purpose he’d experienced when fighting for his country. While it was a different kind of mission, it was still a mission. The question was whether he was willing to give it up or not.

  Another part of his brain told him that the police had this under control. They didn’t want his help, and there was no place for him in what they were doing. He wasn’t so sure they were on the right track, though. They had their theories and he had his own. They were cops, trained for this, but he had an instinct that had served him well in his previous career. That instinct told him that the g
irl had gone outside because she’d seen that puppy.

  That was only a suspicion. Also, it was based on Aiden and not Gretchen, the missing girl. He needed to call Gretchen’s mother and confirm his theory. He could be wrong. Hell, it could be that she was obsessed with cats.

  He dreaded calling the mother. She was probably being bombarded by people wanting to interview her or insert themselves into her life because of this tragedy. There would be crackpots calling and offering their theories on what happened. People like him. Even if he might be one of those crackpots that was not how he wanted to come across.

  There were times in his military career when he’d been back in the U.S. on leave and had gone to visit the families of fallen brothers. It was not something he did out of his own need but because of promises made in the nervous build-up to a mission. They all assured each other that they would check in on a man’s family if he didn’t make it. Ty took that vow seriously. It was never easy, though. Opening the door into a family’s grief was like opening the door of a blast furnace, nearly scorching your flesh from your bones.

  He could always see that question in their eyes. Why had they lost their loved one when he was still alive? Although it was a natural question, it was never an easy one to be on the other side of. Ty wished he had the words to comfort those families, but he never did. While he hoped he might continue to be part of their lives, he was never certain how to do that. The loss of a loved one was not simply a position that a buddy could step in and fill on a part-time basis.

  In the end, he felt like he probably did more damage than good. Those families didn’t deserve to have him stirring around in their emotions. He needed to leave them alone and let them heal. He didn’t know how to save them any more than he knew how to save himself.

  Yet knowing all this, he picked up his phone and scrolled back through the text messages. He found the one from the unfamiliar number he’d received in the Petro Panda parking lot that day. It was the text he’d gotten from Heather when she sent him her daughter’s picture to show around the parking lot. Before he could talk himself out of it, he tapped on the phone number and dialed it.

  It rang twice before a groggy, slightly confused voice answered. “Hello?”

  Ty immediately knew it was her, recognizing the strained voice from that day at the Petro Panda. “Hello, Heather, I’m sorry to bother you. My name is Tyler Stone and I’m the security guard who was on duty when your daughter went missing. I just wanted to follow up and see how you were doing.”

  Tyler knew it was a stupid line and he twisted uncomfortably as it came out of his mouth. How else would she be doing? Miserable. Suicidal. Terrified. Hopeless. All of those things.

  He was such an idiot sometimes.

  “Hello, Mr. Stone,” she replied. Her tone was apprehensive and cautious, as if it were totally unexpected and inappropriate for him to be calling her.

  That was pretty much how he felt too, but he couldn’t stop himself. “I know things have to be pretty bad right now. How are you holding up?”

  “Not very well. They tried to give me medication to help me sleep but I don’t want to be messed up if they find Gretchen.” Heather lowered her voice. “They can’t find my ex-husband right now and they’re starting to think he might have had something to do with this. There’s no sign that he was in this part of the country though. No credit card charges for gas, hotels, or food.”

  A voice somewhere in the background spoke to Heather, perhaps chastising her for giving away so much information to someone outside of the investigation. Ty should have realized there would be cops or the FBI there with her. It could be that they were expecting a ransom call, or some other attempt at contact, and here he was tying the line up.

  “I’m sorry, they’re telling me I need to get off the phone in case she tries to call. Thank you for calling.”

  “Wait, can I ask you one question? I know it may sound totally irrelevant, but did your daughter like puppies?”

  The sound of Heather’s voice changed, an almost cheerful tone emerging as memories flooded forth. “Why yes. She was completely obsessed and I promised her a puppy when we got settled into a house with a yard. They’re all she can think about...” Her voice trailed off, deflating as the warm memory was replaced with cold absence.

  “Okay, I was just wondering. I’ll be thinking of you. If there’s anything I can do, just let me know.”

  “No!” Heather snapped. “Why would you wonder that? Why would you ask me that? You weren’t just wondering.”

  Ty considered what to do. He’d inserted himself into the investigation and into this poor woman’s misery. He couldn’t simply ask her a question like that and not follow up. He decided to be completely honest with her.

  “It’s because of the look on her face as she was going out the door—the picture the security cameras caught. It’s the same look my niece has when she sees a puppy. It just made me start thinking, that’s all.”

  The line fell silent on the other end, that thought sending Heather down an unpleasant spiral. “The police say the expression in that picture is an indication that she saw someone familiar. Someone she recognized. They think it might have been my husband.”

  There was uncertainty in her voice now. Ty had introduced that uncertainty. He was responsible for that.

  “Did she ever look at your husband that way before?”

  “Not really,” Heather replied. “I tried to tell the police that she blames him for the separation. She probably wouldn’t have gone with him.”

  “Stay strong,” Ty said. “Keep thinking positively. They’ll find her.” It was on the tip of his tongue to say we’ll find her but he caught himself.

  She hung up without replying and Ty put his phone on the desk. He opened his web browser and went to the Wasteland page, needing that sense of community.

  He was making his way through the list of his notifications when he was startled by his ringing phone. He studied the display and recognized it was Lieutenant Whitt calling him. No doubt she’d somehow found out about him calling Heather. The last thing he was in the mood for was a drill instructor’s ass chewing. He chose not to answer it. He was done with people for the day, perhaps even longer than that. He hadn’t decided yet.

  Ty tried to concentrate on his social media notifications. He’d been busy the last day and had missed a lot. Being part of the Wasteland group was the only thing in his life that made him feel like he was actually helping people these days. As screwed up as his own life was, he’d done some good in the group. He’d talked people off the ledge when the demons were winning. He’d chatted with folks online who just wanted someone to listen. He’d tracked down vets who’d gone dark when they thought they had nothing left.

  Yet as important as that community was to him, his mind kept returning to those pictures. From the corner of his eye he could see Gretchen’s smiling face in that printed photo. He couldn’t ignore it. He picked it up, holding it to the side of his laptop screen, and again opening the familiar picture of the woman with the puppy.

  The tag number on the RV was clearly visible. Even though the way the woman leaned against it made him think it was hers he couldn’t just call up the police and ask them to run the tag on his suspicions. Even if he provided them with his information, their investigation was headed in an entirely different direction. They were looking at the dad, not a stranger with a puppy. His suspicions would be recorded and would languish on someone’s desk until it was too late. Ty turned his laptop off and pushed away from his desk.

  He went to the couch and collapsed onto it, staring at the blank television. The dark screen opened like a mouth to swallow him and he suddenly experienced the sensation of sinking into a pool of cold black oil. He was being swallowed into a joyless and unfeeling world that always felt permanent, inescapable. His return to civilian life was an utter failure. He’d been unable to succeed at even the most elementary task.

  He’d brought suffering onto the only two people in
the world who cared about him, Deena and Aiden. He’d put his sister in the position of having to defend him in a situation that was not defensible in their isolated little world. It was only going to get worse for him. He imagined there’d be a point where Deena no longer allowed him around his niece. Aiden would be hurt by that and the responsibility for that pain would come back to him. He should never have inserted himself into their lives.

  There was probably only one answer.

  He thought of going into the Wasteland and reaching out to his friends. It might be his turn to be talked off the ledge. It took a tremendous effort to pull himself up from the couch. It held him like a pit, the walls high and slippery. His limbs had doubled in weight. He went to his desk and retrieved the Glock, confirmed there was a round in the chamber, and carried it to his bedroom.

  He sat on his bed for a long time, staring at that pistol. When he got up, he placed it on the bed and retrieved two duffel bags from the spare bedroom. One was the OD green one he’d been discharged with and the other was a long yellow one that could probably hold a body, though that was not a theory he’d tested. He crammed the green one with clothing, boots, and a jacket. The yellow one he packed with a sleeping bag, camping gear, and several different holster configurations.

  He selected a soft gun case from the pile leaning against the wall in his living room. The case was padded nylon with long magazine pockets on the outside. He opened it to confirm that it contained his Tavor X95 in .300 Blackout. In his bedroom, he found the suppressor for the weapon, spare magazines, and subsonic rounds in the correct caliber. He slid a pair of binoculars into the yellow bag and packed away several boxes of 9mm ammunition for his Glock. He preferred custom loads from Maker Bullets that opened like spinning, razor-sharp stars but would not over-penetrate.