She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be

by J. D. Barker

  Sixteen pounds, four ounces. Rolling from front to back on own. Teething. Conscious of environment. No outwardly signs. Nothing abnormal presenting.

  —Charter Observation Team 102

  I showed it to my father. “What the hell is all this?”

  He glanced down at the note. He was still reading it when we both heard a loud rumble from the driveway. Through the large window in the foyer next to the front door, I saw a black Pontiac GTO slide to a halt in the driveway.

  My father dropped the note, drew his gun, and started for the front door.

  Jeffery Dalton, the man who I had only seen in photographs, had the driver-side door open and was climbing out the car, drawing his own gun before my father even got the front door open.

  He charged us.

  Not at a run, but a fast, determined walk, raising his own gun as he went.

  I don’t know who fired first.

  A bullet struck the doorframe less than an inch from my head, sending splintered wood off in all directions. I dropped down back inside the house.

  I heard the report of my father’s gun—three, maybe four shots in quick succession. Between those reports were shots fired from outside, from the man racing toward us. Four shots. Half a dozen. More. My father’s body jerked, and the back of his shirt exploded in two spots, one up near his left shoulder, the other in his gut. The bullets tore through him and embedded in the wall behind the staircase. He shuffled backward, then collapsed onto the tile floor of the foyer, a puddle of blood spreading out under him.

  I was screaming, not even sure when I started, but I was shrieking. I scrambled over to him on my hands and knees and pressed my palms down on the two wounds. Blood pooled out from between my fingers, soaking his shirt. His body spasmed, and he looked up at me with eyes filled with fright. When he coughed, red spittle filled the air.

  Dalton stepped into the foyer and kicked the gun away from my father’s hand.

  “You shot my dad, you fucking animal!”

  He peered into the house, sweeping his gun from left to right. “That’s not your dad.”

  The man on the floor coughed again, this one weaker than the last.

  My mind raced, trying to comprehend what he said, what had just happened.

  Stella.

  At that moment, I didn’t care who this man was. He was dying, I was certain of that, and nothing could be done to stop it. I didn’t know how much time I had.

  I got to my feet, grabbed the dying man under the arms, and started pulling him toward the living room. “Help me!”

  Dalton turned, his gun still out, sweeping the yard.

  “Help me, you fucking prick!”

  Dalton holstered his gun and grabbed the man’s legs. Together we carried him into the living room, toward the couch where Stella slept. We set him down on the floor beside her and crouched beside them.

  He had stopped coughing but was still breathing.

  “Stella! Get up!”

  I shouted her name, but she didn’t respond. Breathing, but out cold.

  Using the tail of my shirt to protect my fingers, I peeled off the glove on her right hand and tossed it aside. I guided her hand to the man’s neck.

  Stella woke, groggily realized what I was doing, and tried to pull away.

  “He’s dying, Stella! He’s going to die. We don’t have much time, you need to—”

  Her grip shot back out and tightened on the man’s neck, pinched at his skin.

  The flesh beneath her fingers turned black, a darkness spreading from her touch at his neck to his face and chest. I saw it again at the exposed skin of his arms.

  “Get back, Jack,” she said softly. “Please stay back.”

  I couldn’t move, though. My limbs were frozen.

  Through black, shriveled lips, the man gasped, a ragged mess of a breath, then went still.

  Stella held him for at least another minute. Her fingers pulsing as the last bit of life left him for her, then she finally let go. Her arm dangling limply over the side of the sofa. “Not working,” she said softly, before drifting back off to a restless sleep. “Not enough.”

  My heart sank.

  6

  Fogel glanced impatiently at her watch.

  Two minutes to nine. She’d been sitting here for nearly an hour. She groaned as “Der Hölle Rache” from Mozart’s The Magic Flute looped for the umpteenth time.

  She yawned, stood, and stretched her legs before returning to the reception desk.

  The woman with the long blond hair and green eyes looked up at her and smiled. “May I help you?”

  “I’ve been waiting an hour.”

  The woman cocked her head. “Waiting for who? Do you have an appointment?”

  Fogel frowned. “You said someone would be out to talk to me. That was an hour ago.”

  “I did?”

  Fogel pulled out her badge again. “I’m with Homicide. You said you’d find someone for me.”

  The woman’s mouth fell open. “Homicide? Has there been a murder?”

  The blood rushed to Fogel’s face as she tried to keep her temper in check. “Get your supervisor on the phone right now.”

  The woman smiled and picked up her phone. “Do you have an appointment?”

  Fogel leaned in closer. “Get your boss on the phone right now.”

  The receptionist huffed in a breath and dialed a number.

  Fogel heard the click as someone picked up.

  “There is a rather rude woman at reception claiming to be a police officer of some sort, and she’s demanding to speak to my supervisor. Should I instruct security to escort her off the premises?”

  Fogel wanted to snatch up the receiver and beat little blondie over the head with it.

  The receptionist glanced at a door toward the back of the room. A security keypad of some sort was embedded in the wall to the right. “Are you sure? She really is quite rude. A horrid dresser, too.”

  Fogel’s brow furrowed as she involuntarily looked down at her brown leather jacket, gray sweater, and jeans.

  The receptionist hung up the phone. “Someone will be with you shortly. Please take a seat. Help yourself to coffee or pastries. The baklava is simply delightful.” She smiled, revealing perfectly white teeth.

  “You’ve got one minute to get someone out here, or I’m blowing a hole through that door back there and letting myself in.”

  The receptionist glanced down at her nails, then smiled up at Fogel. “May I help you?”

  7

  “What does she mean, not enough? What’s happening to her?”

  With my hand still wrapped in the tail of my shirt, I carefully placed Stella’s arm across her chest. I felt utterly defeated.

  “You’re Jeffery Dalton.” I forced myself to draw in a breath, long and deep. I couldn’t look at him.

  “Preacher. Nobody calls me Dalton.” He was staring at the dead man between us.

  “If this isn’t my father, who is he?”

  I heard a woman scream, then.

  Loud.

  Outside.

  “Shit, that’s Cammie,” Preacher said, scrambling to his feet.

  “Cammie Brotherton is here?”

  “I picked her and her daughter up in California,” he shouted back at me, racing for the door, his gun out again.

  I quickly glanced around before chasing after him—Dewey Hobson was no longer in the house.

  “Dewey, no!” I shouted, barreling out the front door.

  He didn’t hear me. His fist pistoned through the passenger window of the GTO, shattering the glass. He grabbed the woman sitting there by collar of her denim jacket and pulled her toward him, blood running from his split knuckles.

  Preacher got to him first.

  Hobson had the woman I could only assume was Cammie Brotherton halfway out the window, when Preacher slammed into him with the force of a truck, sending both men to the pavement. Hobson’s head cracked against the concrete. This should have knocked him out, but only dazed
him for a moment—he slammed the palms of his hands into Preacher’s ears, then brought his knee up into Preacher’s groin. The angle was all wrong and the blow glanced off, catching Preacher in the thigh instead.

  Hobson twisted, somehow managed to plant both his feet on the ground, and pushed up. Preacher had been about to deliver a punch, but the movement threw off his balance. Hobson used the momentum to roll, taking Preacher with him, somehow ending up on top. Hobson’s hands were around Preacher’s neck in an instant, squeezing the life from him.

  I grabbed Hobson around the waist and tried to pull him back, but he wouldn’t release his grip. His arms were like lead.

  In the middle of all this, Cammie had scrambled out of the car with a pump action shotgun. She chambered a shell and pointed the barrel at Hobson’s head.

  Hobson’s head swiveled, following the sound. When he saw Cammie holding the shotgun, he released his grip on Preacher’s neck, shrugged me off, and lunged at her. If I hadn’t grabbed his leg, he surely would have reached her, but instead he lost his balance and cracked into the concrete.

  “What am I doing here, Preacher?” Cammie took two steps back, the barrel again pointing at Hobson’s head.

  “Shoot him!” Preacher tried to shout this out, but the words came in a gravelly whisper, his throat still fighting for air.

  I pulled Hobson back, grabbed his other leg. “He doesn’t understand! David did something to him!”

  I had no idea if Cammie knew David Pickford, but she did know Dewey Hobson, and I think that was the only thing that prevented her from pulling the trigger. She spun the shotgun around and brought the butt of the stock down hard on the side of the man’s head—two hits, fast and hard. He collapsed, unconscious.

  Preacher sat up, out of breath and beat. He rubbed at his sore neck. “Get him inside. We gotta tie him up.”

  From the back seat of the GTO, a little girl poked her head up—all long blond hair and blue eyes.

  8

  Fogel shook her head and stomped across the large white room to the door at the back. She found it to be locked. She beat on it with the back of her fist. “Open this door immediately!”

  Back at the reception desk, the blonde was on her phone again. Crouched over the desk, half standing, speaking to someone.

  Fogel began keying random numbers into the security pad.

  A red LED came on, and the panel buzzed.

  She beat on the door until the LED turned off, then entered more numbers.

  When the panel buzzed for the fourth time, she cursed under her breath and went back to the reception desk.

  The blonde woman looked up at her and smiled. “May I help you?”

  “I don’t know what bullshit kind of game you’re playing, but you’re interfering with a ongoing homicide investigation, and you’re dangerously close to getting arrested for obstruction of justice.”

  The receptionist cocked her head to the side and frowned. “Did somebody die?”

  Fogel had enough. She rounded the desk and pulled her handcuffs out from her back pocket. “Stand up and turn around. You’re under arrest.”

  On the opposite end of the large white room, the door opened and a man in his mid-fifties dressed in a stark white three-piece suit stepped into the waiting room. “Detective? Please come with me.”

  9

  I found rope in the garage.

  I also found a white Chevy Suburban.

  When I told Preacher about the SUV, he glanced back at the dead man on the floor next to Stella’s sleeping body. Cammie followed his gaze from the man on the floor to the sofa, the shotgun still trained on Hobson. “That her?”

  “Yep. And her boyfriend here is Jack Thatch.”

  “Eddie and Katy’s kid?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  I finished the last knot on Hobson’s ankles and stood. The frustration building. “Where the hell is my father?”

  The little girl had followed all of us into the house but hadn’t said a word. She was behind her mother, her arms wrapped around her leg. She shrunk back when I spoke. I didn’t care. “If the two of you know what’s going on, you need to tell me.”

  Preacher raised both palms. “What happened when you got here?”

  I told them.

  For the next thirty minutes, I explained everything that had happened since finding Stella in the club in Fallon. I even told them about Leo Signorelli and the man I killed at the hotel. I didn’t leave anything out. I didn’t care anymore.

  Dalton said they spoke to my father less than three hours ago.

  “So he’s here?”

  “He was,” Cammie said.

  The man on the floor killed him.

  That’s why he’s here.

  “We need to search the property. He could be hurt somewhere, dying,” I said.

  Preacher and Cammie exchanged a look, and I knew exactly what they were thinking. These people had no desire to hurt my father. They only wanted him dead.

  I shook my head and started for the door. “I’m looking.”

  “We all look,” Preacher said. “It will be faster. Cammie, you take this house. I’ll check the guest house. Jack, you get the outbuildings.”

  I found my father tied up in the back of the woodshed.

  Not dead.

  Not yet.

  10

  Fogel followed the man in the white three-piece suit through the door into a long hallway—white walls, white ceiling, white marble floor. Everything was so white, it was damn near blinding. They passed three doors (all closed, all white) before the man ushered her into the only open door on the left side.

  “Please, take a seat. Would you like a cup of coffee, or perhaps something to eat?” the man said, closing the door behind them.

  The office was also white.

  Ceiling. Walls. No windows.

  The only color came from a framed photograph on the desk—a young man wearing a blue graduation gown, pointing at a diploma.

  The man in white smiled when he noticed her looking at the picture. “That’s my boy, William. He graduated from Penn State last month, and I’m proud to say he will be joining us here as part of the Charter family next week. Graduated top of his class. Quite an overachiever, that one.”

  He pointed at one of the two empty chairs in front of the white desk. “Please, sit.”

  Rounding the desk, he lowered himself into a plush white leather chair. “I’m Robert Trudeau. How can I help you?”

  Something seemed off about the man’s eyes. He made eye contact, but rather than look at her, he seemed to look through her. As if focused on some distant object in the room behind her.

  Fogel turned and looked at the wall. There was a white credenza with another of those white paintings hanging above, nothing else. She turned back. “Mr. Trudeau, what exactly do you do here?”

  “Robert, please.”

  “Robert.”

  “Yes?”

  “What exactly do you do here,” she repeated.

  “Pharmaceutical research.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He waved a hand through the air. “We have a number of government-related contracts. I’m afraid you don’t have the proper clearances to discuss what we do here.”

  “How do you know?”

  Trudeau smiled. “I know.”

  A white MacBook sat on his desk. He glanced at the screen, clicked a few keys, then returned his attention to her. The smile on his face appeared fixed, as if painted on. “Ms. Toomey said you were here to investigate a murder. Can you elaborate on that?”

  “Multiple homicides, actually.”

  The man leaned forward. “Really? Who died?”

  “I’m afraid you don’t have the proper clearances to discuss who died,” Fogel said.

  “Pity. I do like a good mystery.”

  A muted trill rang out from somewhere behind the desk. Trudeau’s smiled f
aded, and for a moment he appeared puzzled. He pulled open the drawer on his top left and took out a Nokia cell phone not unlike the one Stack and gotten her. “Please excuse me, I need to take this.”

  He pressed a button on the keypad and raised the phone to his ear.

  Fogel strained to hear whoever was speaking but couldn’t make out the words.

  Trudeau nodded several times, said, “That is excellent news,” and disconnected the call. He set down the Nokia and picked up the receiver on his desk phone.

  He held up a finger. “I’m sorry, this will only take me a minute.”

  Trudeau dialed a number. While the line rang, he picked up a white ballpoint pen and twirled it between his fingers, the smile still plastered on his face. When someone picked up on the other side, Trudeau didn’t identify himself or offer a greeting, he simply said, “We have confirmation. Both the boy and the Nettleton girl are on Whidbey, the remaining adults, too.”

  Trudeau twirled the pen faster as he listened, weaving it in and out of his fingers. “Of course,” he said. “Perhaps after I wrap up this meeting.”

  Fogel wondered what color ink was in the pen. Any color seemed blasphemous here. She couldn’t tell if the voice on the other end of the call was male or female.

  “A police detective. Homicide, no less,” Trudeau said, the pen picking up speed. “I completely understand. You truly are a beautiful man.”

  Trudeau hung up the phone, placed the tip of the ballpoint pen in his ear, and slammed the palm of his hand against the back with enough force to send the pen down his ear canal, through his inner ear, and past the vestibular nerve into his brain. He slumped over in his chair, the smile never leaving his face.

  11

  My father had been horribly beaten. Both his eyes were puffy and blackening, the left swollen shut completely. He had a nasty cut on his forehead. His head lolled to the side, swiveling loosely on his neck. His hands and feet were both tied with heavy-duty orange extension cords.