by Scott Toney
“David,” Agent Stu Anderson said, opening his laptop. “Sgt. Alvarez is dead and his car is missing. Listen to me. All districts have been notified. We’ll find him.”
A wave of panic washed over David. Oh God please don’t let anything happen to Ophelia. Let it be a mistake. Find someone to help her. Anyone.
“Let me find her,” David whispered, half-rising from his chair.
“You know I can’t do that.”
The room began to spin and David couldn’t breathe. A detective too emotional to control his feelings was like a doctor operating on his own child. It just wasn’t allowed.
“A woman called in last night after watching America’s Most Wanted,” Stu said, tapping the keys of the computer with some urgency. His glasses reflected random pictures, a line-up by the look of it. “She was sure the escaped fugitive was drinking in a bar on San Mateo. She called 911 rather than the hotline number. The dispatcher sent Sgt. Alvarez. We found out later the fugitive used a piece from his eyeglasses to stab Alvarez in the neck. His body was found two hours ago in an arroyo on Pennsylvania Blvd south of Montgomery.”
David winced. Luis Alvarez was his favorite brother-in-law. He couldn’t be dead.
“The fugitive made one fatal mistake,” Stu said. “He couldn’t identify Ophelia from a group of fifty students standing by the school bus. So he went straight to the principal’s office with an ill-fitting uniform and a sob-story about a death in your family. That’s how he got her.”
Why so specific? Why his little girl? “Who’s got her?”
“Oliver Dinaris,” Stu said, taking care with his words, “the caretaker of the Tolby ranch.”
David repeated the name in his mind, savoring every last syllable. “Odin,” he whispered.
Stu nodded slowly. “Sgt. Alvarez’s car was last seen heading north on Highway 14. They think he’s further than Los Cerrillos. Looks like Dinaris is on his way here.”
Darryl Williams was on his way here. Only he was late.
Very late.
David looked at his watch. It was one-thirty in the afternoon. All he could think about was his little girl locked in the back seat of a police cruiser. At least Odin wasn’t wasting any time on the Turquoise Trail or hiding out in the brush where no one could find him.
“Why is he coming here?”
Stu stared at his laptop and scowled. “Your predecessor was the only man we had who could have identified Oliver Dinaris in a line-up. I believe you’re the second. Ophelia’s a hostage, David. He’s not going to hurt her. It’s you he wants.”
Me for her, thought David. “Get me a car. Now!”
CHAPTER 8
Somewhere in the distance Darryl heard a whisper of sounds, louder now over the sound of the engine. He couldn’t see where he was going but he sure hoped it was straight.
Lifting his head only slightly, he could hear the ping of a bullet as it bounced off the back fender and another as it crashed through the back window. Glass rained down on the seats and the car almost swerved over the center line before he steered it back. There was silence then except for the growling engine and a whimpering child.
“It’s okay Kizz,” he said. And then he remembered.
All the while along that lonely stretch of road he couldn’t stop thinking about the last time he saw Kizzy. She no longer existed behind those sightless eyes. A small head wrapped in a white towel, hair still tied in a ponytail. That was the part that made him cry.
The crime, as it was called, was an unbelievable act that had taken everything and left nothing behind. Nothing except pain that is, indescribable, heart-wrenching pain.
“Keep the wheel straight.” Ophelia’s sharp voice crashed through Darryl’s thoughts. He realized she was staring at him and the road ahead. “Might want to get some gas,” she said.
The needle on the gas gauge was on empty. That’s when Darryl began to panic. The car made it over a camber, coughing and sputtering before stopping altogether. There was nothing in the rearview mirror but a dark stretch of road beneath a purple swirling sky.
“There’s an arroyo down there,” Ophelia said, almost pressing her forehead against the passenger window. “If we push the car off the road and hide it in the brush, he won’t find us.”
Clever girl, Darryl thought, hoping he had enough strength to do what she said.
He steered the car into a clearing scattered with piñon trees and pushed it down a natural slope into the arroyo below. He heard the clunk as the front fender hit a soft pillow of sand and saltbrush, and he ran down after it with the girl at his heels. The arroyo stretched under the road, a grey bore of a tunnel and darker than a cellar.
“It’s the most obvious hiding place,” he murmured, peering into through the driver’s window.
“Not if we cover our tracks,” Ophelia said, panting behind him.
It was a chance but a very small one.
Darryl saw a familiar shape wedged behind the brake pedal and blew out a steam of relief. He unwrapped the gun from its Subway wrapper and thrust it in the waistband of his pants.
They brushed sand over the tire tracks with a few broken branches and Darryl looked up and down the road, eyes flicking from left to right. There was no indication of a bridge from the road, no barriers except grey pitted boulders on either side. It would be some time before the man ventured as far as the arroyo. And when he did, he would find it just as easily as they had.
Darryl wiped a snowflake from his nose and stared in the direction they had come. The road looked like an old wrinkled rug where nothing could be seen behind each somber crest and a plume of smoke rose somewhere from the eerie plains where the burnt-out Charger had been. He was reminded of a book he once read by C.S. Lewis . . . For the longest way round is the shortest way home. He figured they were three miles from the Pen and he would rather take his chances on the road.
“How far can you walk, Ophelia?” he asked.
“A mile,” she said, shrugging.
He knew she had no idea how far a mile was and his mouth became suddenly dry. The screech of a hawk drowned the moaning wind for an instant and he noticed the clouds were darker now against the Sangra de Cristo Mountains.
And then he heard a noise. Panting. Trudging.
A man running.
He pointed over Ophelia’s shoulder, heart pounded like a jackhammer. “Let’s get out of here. Now!”
They ran towards a knot of wafer-ash some fifty feet from the car on the opposite slope. It was too dense for the man to see them and the prairie was covered in thickets like them. Now the process of waiting was suddenly eerie, threatening, and the scuffing shoes against the tarmac were closer.
And then it stopped.
Darryl passed an arm around the girl and pulled her close. He could tell by her agitated breathing she wasn’t just cold.
“What’s he doing?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” Darryl tried to listen over a shriek of wind. He could see nothing for what seemed like an eternity.
“So you’re Kizzy’s dad?” Ophelia whispered as if time was running out.
The question took him by surprise and he nodded, keeping an eye on the road, keeping an eye on the time. Two forty-four in the afternoon. He should have been at the Pen by now.
“I always sit next to her in art,” Ophelia murmured.
Sat, Darryl wanted to correct, lips pressed tightly together.
“She painted a picture of a wood once. All blue and green it was. Nothing like this,” she said, pointing at the brown desert.
“It’s England,” Darryl said, eyes focused on the road. “Where the bluebells are.”
“That’s what she said.” Ophelia gave a rueful smile and winced. “I really liked her. Everyone did.”
“Thank you,” Darryl whispered, lowering his head for a moment before looking deep into a pair of dark eyes. “You’re pretty special too.”
Ophelia smiled.
Darryl sensed
movement and raised two fingers in front of her face, jutting his chin at the road. The man was standing on the hard shoulder, head turned downwards as if he was studying something. The uniform was torn at the thigh and sleeves, and there was blood on his neck. He was swarthier than Darryl hoped, taller too.
There would have been scuff marks on the tarmac from the damaged fender . . .
The man walked down the slope to the arroyo just as Darryl knew he would. He had senses like a dog, a bloodhound at that. The shout took them both by surprise. It was hideous, mocking, amplified by the tunnel under the road.
“O p h e l i a,” the voice chanted. “Come out, come out. Or I’ll hang you in the trees with the others.”
But he couldn’t have seen them. It wasn’t possible.
Darryl wasted no time. He grabbed Ophelia by the hand and ran through the brush parallel to the road. He didn’t look back. If he did, all his strength would be torn from him and he would be unable to move. The girl was fast, overtaking him with long strides that contradicted all five feet of her and Darryl was only ten inches taller and he could hardly keep up.
Gunfire exploded behind them and Darryl weaved behind Ophelia, shouting at her to do the same.
“Run!” he shouted. “Run, Kizzy,” he murmured, watching her scamper towards the road, running like a deer towards a flashing light. He caught a vision of Kizzy running like a hare only this time she got away.
He turned then and stood his ground, drawing the revolver from his back.
Please God, don’t let me miss.
He fired two shots at the man, so tall now he almost engulfed him.
But something pierced his gut, tearing shards of flesh and blood into the air. He didn’t remember falling or how his face was pressed against the cold earth. But the last thing he saw was the watch on his left hand and beyond it snowflakes settling on the naked stubs of Apache plume. He had cut the stem off one once to make an arrow shaft when he was a boy . . .
We can’t hate them, son, except what’s inside them. That’s why we forgive. They don’t know what they’re doing.
It was three o’clock just as Darryl lost consciousness.
CHAPTER 9
David found Darryl three days ago on NM14, only four miles from the Pen. He was so close. They picked up the body of Oliver Dinaris only feet from where Darryl lay. He had two gunshot wounds to his chest.
“You did the taxpayers a favor when you killed that man,” David said, steering the car along Penitentiary Road and looking at his passenger with pride. “And you saved my daughter’s life.”
“I can’t believe I killed him,” Darryl murmured, wincing from the sling. I actually killed a man? It was what he wanted but somehow it felt all wrong.
“In self-defense,” David corrected, looking at a man haunted with grief. There was something else behind those dark eyes, a peace, that wasn’t there seven months ago.
David placed the little red notebook on Darryl’s lap and he heard the gentle sob. There was nothing more he could say except to tell the truth before Darryl heard it from another source. “We found the bodies high up in the trees. The dogs failed to capture the scent over the smell of paint and turpentine, thanks to what you remembered.”
I’ll hang you in the trees with the others. The voice was only a faint memory now.
“How did he do it?” Darryl whispered.
“We found a twenty foot extension ladder in the barn and plenty of rope. Eriksen said the gods could see the victims better if they were higher up.” David knew how flippant it all sounded. He parked the car and turned off the ignition. “We never saw them in the summer because of the leaves and they were wrapped in burlap, well camouflaged against the bark.”
“Did Eriksen kill the girls?” Darryl asked.
“He kidnapped them.”
“But did he kill them?”
“No.”
Darryl took of his seat belt and sighed loudly. “Will he die?”
“He’s an accessory.” David opened his door and looked up at a barbwire fence and the stark grey face of the Pen. “He’ll fry if I have anything to do with it.”
“I promised Razz I would go back to church again. Only this time it’s going to be different. This time I’m going to be free.”
David had no idea what he meant but he nodded all the same. “I hardly ever go. Just don’t see the point.”
“Well that’s the thing. Now I do see the point,” Darryl said.
David couldn’t understand why Darryl wanted to waste his time with such a nutcase. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Darryl nodded. “I want to understand. I want to know why.”
“There’s nothing to understand. A killer is a killer, a creature of incredible appetite. He blends in so you would never know. Alone, he isolates himself from humanity and all the while he lives in a valium-filled trance, pretending he is more than he is, a conqueror. But they all have one thing in common. They’re unable to control their inner-monster. Dinaris employed Eriksen to bring him eight girls for the purpose of a ritual killing. That makes him sadistically violent in my opinion. Eriksen’s different. He assumes no character other than his own and he’s merely a pawn in another man’s charade. The only similarity is an abusive childhood where he wanted to kill himself. Only he preyed on the innocent instead.”
“For someone else.”
“For someone else,” David agreed. “He was paid thirty thousand dollars to fulfill Dinaris’ fantasy. He did it willingly. No one forced him.”
“Why did they keep the heads?”
“Souvenirs . . . it serves to refuel the fantasy. So they would never forget.”
David took Darryl to the observation room and sat him down. “Just so you know,” he said, “Eriksen has a bruise around his neck. He tried to hang himself with a prison issue towel last night and was found bug-eyed and slumped on the floor. I guess the sixteen penny nail in the ceiling wasn’t strong enough.”
“He tried to kill himself?”
“The doctor called it a sting of conscience but men like that don’t have a conscience. So he’ll waste away in a jail cell until he dies alone. Then he’ll know what it’s like to be afraid.”
“No man should ever have to die alone.”
Eriksen was brought in to the interview room and Darryl stared through the glass as if he were studying a priceless painting. “So this is the man that kidnapped my little girl.”
“Yes.” It’s not every day David brought a parent to experience vicariously the horror of a murder. He was a little afraid if he was honest.
Darryl took a few deep breaths. “He doesn’t look like a killer.”
Morgan Eriksen looked like all the others as far as David was concerned. Worse even. He could probably charm the socks off a homeless person. “He thinks he’s a champion but he’s the scum of the earth.”
“He could be a champion.”
David had no answer to that. “I’ll go and talk to him now. Is there anything you want me to ask him?”
Darryl smiled. “Ask him if he would like to hear the cheers in a football stadium. Ask him if he wants to know what it takes to be a real champion.”
*About the Author*
CMT Stibbe is the daughter and sister of two published authors. She writes books that explore flawed characters and is best known for her lyrical prose and detailed research. With her love of world travel from the UK to the Middle East, the Holy Land and the Far East, Claire makes her home in New Mexico, USA with her husband and son.
Her first novel, Chasing Pharaohs, is a book of ancient Egypt and tells a loose tale of Pharaoh Thutmose II. Chasing Pharaohs is set for release in September, 2013. Stibbe’s second book, The Snare of the Fowler, also set in the 18th Dynasty, is still in the editing and writing process. It was selected as Wednesday’s One to Watch by Harper Collins in December, 2012.
For more information about Stibbe and her current and upcoming works visit the link below to her au
thor website.
https://cmtstibbe.weebly.com/index.html
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