[Tom Reed and Walt Sydowski 04.0] No Way Back

by Rick Mofina

  Ann swallowed.

  “Your husband said he had information about my long-forgotten brushes with the law in Florida. I answered his questions, then begged him to leave me and my wife alone.” She was starting to remember.

  “Your husband refused to let up. Pounded his chest about freedom of the press. Said he had the facts and was going to write the truth about me.”

  Tears rolled down Ann’s face. It was all coming back. “Do you know what your husband did? He waited until I wasn’t around and ambushed my wife, showed her selected records, told her about the facts of my past and asked what she thought of the man she’d married.”

  Ann remembered how Tom never talked about the story. “I tried to explain the truth to my wife, but he’d done too much damage. I called a lawyer to beg your husband and his newspaper to stop his story. They ignored me.”

  It was so long ago, but Ann remembered how Tom was bothered by it. Wanted to forget about it.

  “They put the story on the front page with our pictures splashed all over it. A long article mixed with facts and police lies. Other reporters found us.”

  Ann had a vague memory of the story flaring, then fading. Then a long period of nothing on it until Tom got a call about a court case.

  “Your husband’s story destroyed the new life I’d built. My auto shop business collapsed. Debts mounted. People turned on me. I turned to drugs, I robbed banks. And I was sent back to prison. Folsom.”

  Engler stared at the moon and palm trees in the sun-faded picture.

  “Do you know what that does to a man? I’d survived a wrongful conviction on death row. Twenty hours from execution, I’d triumphed and walked away. I went to school. I started my own business. Got married. Then your husband decides he’ll write a story in a newspaper that costs twenty-five cents before people wrap fish in it or let their pets crap on it.”

  He turned and faced Ann.

  “Have you begun to understand?”

  Ann nodded.

  “Every minute of every hour of every day inside, I thought of your husband. Of what he did. Of what he took from me.” Engler studied his beer can. “At first I thought I would look for him when I got out. I plotted it, planned it, fantasized about what I’d do, and savored it. It kept me going for nearly four years. But one day, I figured, naw, John, the asshole ain’t worth it, that’s what I told the prison psychiatrist.

  “The shrink said I had deeply rooted vengeance issues.” Engler’s eyes twitched. “Imagine that, I told him. But I decided, I’ll just let it all go. And when I’d done my time, I’d get a stake to build a new life in a place where people can’t ever find me.” Engler swallowed the remainder of his beer.

  “But there’s one thing, I told the shrink, if fate ever deemed it necessary for Tom Reed’s path to cross with mine, then I’ll make certain he atones.” Engler looked upon Ann. “And here we are.”

  She blinked away her tears.

  “Please, I’m begging you, please just let me go.”

  “You still don’t understand.” Engler repositioned the coffee table, sat on it so he could lean closer to her. “A few days after the story appeared, I came home from another useless meeting with my lawyer. I wanted to talk to my wife about moving away. But I couldn’t find her in the house. I went to my garage. I saw her, standing there in the upper loft. I thought it was funny, she never went up there. I called to her. She wouldn’t answer. It was too quiet.

  “I went up the stairs. My eyes had to adjust to the way the sun came through the gaps of the wooden frame. I saw her standing there with her head down. ‘Babe,’ I said, ‘we can pull out and start over somewhere else.’ But she didn’t answer. Then I saw the rope. Taut to the beam, creaking as she swayed, the toes of her bare feet brushing the floor. A copy of the newspaper splayed out under her. The one with your husband’s article.”

  Ann looked at the floor. She didn’t know.

  “I can still hear it, that rope creaking, knocking—the sound of my world ending.” Engler pulled his face within an inch of Ann’s.

  “She was three months pregnant.”

  Ann shut her eyes.

  “Now do you understand?” Engler’s eyes became disturbingly tender as he stroked Ann’s dyed hair and smiled.

  “He took my wife; now fate has given me his. You’re mine now.”

  Engler’s eyes grew wide as he pressed duct tape over Ann’s mouth before she could scream.

  59

  Delmar Tribe devoured his chicken dinner while marching aimlessly from the motel across vast fields lit by the stars.

  Rage and adrenaline throbbed through his body from fighting with Engler. Sweat and grease put a sheen on his skin and goatee, creating the aura of something dangerous. Something hunting in the night.

  Gnawing the last bones clean of meat, he shot a glance over his shoulder at the motel, now tiny on the horizon as he moved farther away. He had been achingly close to having her until Engler ruined the moment. That sick puppy was probably in there with her right now. Man, who could resist a woman like that? It was a wonder either of them had lasted this long. Tribe spat. Hell. It don’t matter. One way or another he would have his turn. Then he would kill her, which they should’ve done the first night.

  Tribe squinted at the grove of trees about three hundred yards ahead. A series of outbuildings and tents, a large campfire, a couple dozen cars, vans, pickups. Sounded like singing. Tribe tossed his trash aside, popped open one of his beers, downed half, then released a thunderous belch.

  He stopped. Undid his zipper and urinated while assessing the encampment. Might as well check it out. He had time and no fear of being left behind. Engler had dropped the truck’s keys when they fought in the motel. They were now in Tribe’s pocket. He belched again and moved on.

  In the darkness, no one at the Heavenly Inspiration Girls’ Bible Camp saw Tribe lurking at the edge. He was invisible, standing beyond the firelight, finishing yet another beer.

  Girls who looked to be twelve to late teens were ringed around the blaze singing under the stars. Maybe thirty of them, Tribe figured. He scanned the herd. All female. Not a man in sight. Praise the Lord.

  The singing stopped, pages with lyrics flapped; then the singing resumed with an old folk song. Tribe heard “If I had a hammer...” before his nostrils flared at the sight of a loner. Looked like a leader. Off by herself near a tent that the light barely reached. Looked like she was sewing something.

  He began moving in her direction, careful to stay in the darkness. He crept up to within ten yards of her without making a sound.

  She was in her late twenties. Tanned. Brunette. Kinda pretty. Good shape. Sewing a button, or something. Alone near a tent behind a car. Perfect. She would do.

  Tribe moved like a cat behind her. Six yards, four, three, two. In a heartbeat his powerful hand cupped her mouth and nose. She kicked at the air, but she was light and the singing was loud. He liked how she smelled, sweet like flowers, as he forced her into the empty tent and onto her back. He pressed down with his full weight and strength. Her eyes bulged, nearly popping from their sockets, her chest was heaving.

  “Don’t make a sound and you’ll live,” Tribe whispered in her ear. “Okay?”

  She nodded.

  Tribe moved his hand to undo her jeans, but in an instant she shifted and he was the one screaming, for in the darkness he’d failed to see she’d been gripping small scissors which she’d plunged into his face, paralyzing every fiber of his body with electrifying pain.

  The woman fled from the tent, screeching warnings to the others.

  The handles stuck out from Tribe’s skull two inches under his left eye, the blades piercing his face, embedding in his upper gum until they ground against the roots of his upper left teeth.

  Tribe staggered from the tent toward the fire, growling. Blood gushed from his face as he clawed at the scissors. Touching them magnified his pain. Gripping his head, Tribe found his bearings for the motel. Before anyone knew what had happened
or which way he went, Tribe disappeared back into the darkness.

  In the chaos of the camp, orders were shouted as the singing turned into a chorus of panicked shrieking. “Stranger! Attacker! Get the girls in the cars now!” Doors slammed, locks locked, horns sounded, engines were started. “Get the sheriff! Betty’s got a cell phone. Marge’s got a CB!”

  60

  Tribe lurched into the motel room, his shirt crimson, his face a horrible mask with the small scissors still protruding.

  Engler, who’d consumed a few cans of beer, started to laugh. “You idiot, this a joke?”

  Ann’s screams were muffled by the duct tape.

  Tribe struggled to speak, shoving his slurred words painfully through his clenched teeth. “She stabbed me. Christ almighty, you got to help me, John!” Tribe scrambled to collect things while holding his face.

  “What the hell are you talking about, Del? What’re you doing?”

  “The camp behind us.” Tribe thrust his hand into his pocket, tossing the keys to Engler. “Goddammit! It hurts. John, I went to the camp, the bitch stabbed me. Oh Jesus! Get something from the truck! God, it hurts!”

  Engler rushed outside to the back of the motel. Several hundred yards across the fields he saw headlights going in every direction, heard the echo of honking horns, revving engines, faint shrieking. What had transpired was crystal clear: Tribe had gone hunting for a woman.

  “Did anyone see you or follow you back here?” Engler gathered things, thinking quickly while Tribe moaned on the bed.

  “I don’t know. It was fast. Christ, John, help me now. It hurts!”

  “You’ll live. We’ve got to go.”

  “John, help me.”

  “Hang on.”

  Engler loaded the SUV while Tribe groaned.

  “Jesus, please, John, do something now, goddammit!” Tribe slurred, spraying blood-laced spittle.

  On alert for sirens or flashing lights, Engler got the small bottle of whiskey he’d kept hidden with the jack in the truck. He also got a pair of pliers, a screwdriver, and a small first-aid kit from Carrie Addison’s bag.

  “Lie down on the floor and let me help you now, or sure as hell you’re gonna die, because I should leave you here.” Ann’s attention went to the motel door. It was unlocked. She was handcuffed to the heavy wooden chair. Neither of them was watching her. If she stood she could work her way to the door...

  Engler had taken CPR and emergency medical courses inside Folsom. He wasn’t sure what to do, but reasoned he should do something right now, right here to tend to Tribe’s wound. If it was wrong, or it hurt him, too bad. He brought this on himself.

  “Here.” Engler gave Tribe the whiskey after he was on the floor. “Take a big drink,” he said, tearing the bedsheet into strips. “Hurry up! Drink. Now bite down on the screwdriver. Hard.”

  Engler got on his knees, poured some of the whiskey on the point where the scissors pierced Tribe’s face, the pain arched his back. “They’re small scissors. It’s not that bad. Hold still and don’t you dare scream.”

  The activity made the door open a crack. Ann stood and shifted the chair two feet. Engler clamped the pliers on the handles, his muscles glistening as slowly he extracted the scissors in a small eruption of blood, skin, and tissue. Tribe’s teeth nearly bent the screwdriver, his body writhed, his throat warbled in a guttural hum. Engler splashed whiskey into the wound. It was a small hole, not a tear. No stitches. Not too bad.

  “Hold still, damn it!” Engler put a square bandage on it, gave Tribe a cotton ball to tuck between his cheek and gum, then tied a bedsheet strip around Tribe’s head to keep pressure on it. He looked like a soldier wounded in a Civil War battle.

  By now Ann had moved closer to the door. If she could smash the chair against something it might break. She could run.

  Engler finished working on Tribe’s face, passing him the rest of the bottle. Ann stood just as Engler pointed his handgun at her and pulled back the hammer.

  “We’ve killed three people already. Four won’t matter now.”

  Tribe climbed into the rear end of the truck and moaned. Engler handcuffed Ann in the SUV’s seat directly behind the front passenger seat, just as before. Her right wrist to the handgrip under the window. Her right ankle to the bottom frame of the front passenger seat.

  They sped away into the night.

  In the rearview mirror, Engler saw one police car, its lights flashing as it turned down the dirt road that led to the encampment behind the motel. If they were lucky there’d be few cars on shift at this hour. It would take time to rouse more deputies. If they were lucky. Engler eyed the rearview mirror and drove the speed limit before he began pounding his fist on the dash.

  “You stupid, stupid, stupid goddamn idiot!”

  “Fuck you! “ Tribe groaned from the rear, his pain driving his rage. “If you’d just let me have my way with her none of this would’ve happened.”

  Ann gazed into the darkness.

  “Shut up!” Engler screamed. “Shut the fuck up!”

  “No witnesses. Remember? No goddamn witnesses! What’s that I see sitting behind you? A witness? Or your little fantasy wife?”

  “Keep talking.” Engler’s eyes blazed in the rearview mirror.

  “You got some sick freaky shit happening in your head, John. Sick.”

  Ann worked the duct tape off her mouth to breathe just as a second police car went by them in the opposite direction. She was beyond praying, beyond hoping. She was trapped in a nightmare. If Engler and Tribe didn’t kill each other first, one of them would kill her.

  She had to escape. Or die trying.

  61

  Kimberly Sue Gamer’s wedding diamond sparkled as she twined and untwined her fingers under the dome light of the Carter County Sheriff’s Department’s car.

  “I think he would’ve killed me.”

  Deputy Josh Throll nodded and passed her a fresh tissue.

  “I never stabbed anyone in my life, he just grabbed me and told me to keep quiet if I wanted to live.”

  Throll reviewed the notes he took during his twenty-minute interview with Gamer. She was a twenty-eight-year-old Sunday school teacher from Lone Grove. According to her, a white male had grabbed her from behind, forced her into the tent where he attempted to sexually assault her before she plunged her small blue-handled sewing scissors into his face. The pair her aunt Bell with the bad arthritis had given her. That was all Gamer could tell Throll. Thirty-one witnesses, most of them young girls, saw the suspect flee into the night. No one was certain which direction, or had a usable description.

  But Throll was undaunted.

  He had put in eleven years with the St. Louis Police Department, the last four as a homicide detective, before honoring his ailing mother’s wish and returning to Ardmore, Oklahoma, and the farm where he was raised. He touched Gamer’s hands to assure her. “Kimberly Sue, I want you to think. Are there any more details you can remember, anything, no matter how trivial? It might help.”

  “He stunk. Like beer and BO.”

  Throll noted it.

  “Did you call my husband at the tire plant?”

  “He’s on his way,” Throll said, thanking Gamer for her help. “I think we’re done for now. Please wait here. Joleen, the counselor from the county services, is on her way to talk to you, tell you what we need.”

  Gamer nodded, twisted her ring, and stared into the night. Throll’s flashing police lights lit up the encampment, along with those of the other cars that had responded.

  An Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper had been first on the scene, followed by a night-shift officer from Healdton PD who’d caught wind of the call and came to assist. Two other Carter County deputies were stretching yellow crime scene tape around the tent. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation had paged on-call forensic agents.

  Throll’s skills as an investigator were respected by the younger lawmen. When they saw he’d finished with the victim and was searching the ground with his flashl
ight at the edge of the camp, they approached him.

  “What’s your read, Josh?”

  “Stop where you are, guys.” Throll’s request halted them. “Did any of the girls here, or any witnesses, say they saw our guy drive off?”

  “Nothing like that, Josh.”

  “I think he came on foot.” Throll’s flashlight lit on a beer can. “I don’t expect that belongs to anyone at this Bible camp.”

  “Hey, that’s a lead,” one of them said.

  “Chester, seal this spot. Get your car-wreck camera and take pictures of the can. I want OSBI to see if they can print that. And call Fred Reems again to get his dog out here.”

  “Josh, where’re you headed?” one of the officers called.

  “The motel. Bobby, come with me. Hang back a bit, watch my rear in case he’s out there. You other boys stay put. Protect the scene.”

  Moonlit Dreams was a ramshackle fleabag motel situated off a quiet stretch of State Road 76 between Healdton and Fox. Seeing as there was not much else nearby, it seemed a logical place to start looking. Throll made a direct line to it while raking his flashlight across the rolling oil-rich plain. After a short distance, he’d realized something and reached for his radio.

  “Chester, can you drive round to the motel, and grab every plate there, ask the night clerk for all registration information?”

  “Ten-four, Josh.”

  Throll stopped, so did Bobby, who was fifteen yards behind him also sweeping the field with his flashlight. Throll watched the camp as he talked on his radio. “Chester, be quiet about it. No lights or sirens. Try not to let anyone leave the motel.”

  “Ten-four.”

  Satisfied upon seeing a sheriff’s car leave the camp for the road to the motel, Throll, with Bobby behind him, resumed his trek. He searched for several more minutes, until his light picked up something that looked like trash.

  What’s this? Looks fresh. Take-out food box, fry tray, slaw tub, lid, foil wrapping. A grease-stained brown bag from Red-Jack BBQ, that chicken place down the road. He pulled out his pen, prodded the bag until he saw gold. A computerized receipt from Red-Jack with the date and purchase time.