Not to mention he was a K-9 detective, something that was not always met with the utmost respect.
And that was before even considering what he could imagine might be a healthy dose of small-town politics and self-importance.
Keeping the flashlight blazing bright and held high, rendering Reed unable to see them or ascertain even what gender they were, the officer walked directly forward. Choosing a center lane through the alley, they didn’t bother to so much as glance to either side as they approached, the outer reach of the torch eventually making it to Reed and Billie.
Starting at their feet, it grew steadily higher, rising the length of their bodies, until the harsh glare illuminated them fully. They both squinted against the bright glow as they waited in place, Reed feeling his annoyance and his trepidation rise.
In turn, feeding off the slightest physiological shift in him, Billie pushed into Reed’s leg a bit tighter, her ribcage now flush against his calf.
Not until the officer drew more than halfway down the alley did the glow peel back enough for Reed to make out any of the officer’s features. A man not much older than Reed, he had short, fawn-colored hair that had receded more than an inch, though the front edge still ran straight across. Standing upright at an angle, the sides were shaved down. A bit of stubble covered his cheeks and jaw.
Noticing that the officer was square and trim, Reed guessed he had at one point been in the service, as any spare fat had been scraped away and his form seemed to be one of plains and angles.
Dressed in a standard black uniform, he had already transitioned to the short-sleeve shirt for the summer. He was still too far away for Reed to see the nameplate on his chest.
He said nothing until just ten yards separated them, his posture rigid. In his left hand remained the flashlight held high, his right just inches from his waist, his fingers almost twitching, like he was a gunfighter preparing for a draw.
Such a stance was not lost on Reed. And, judging by her low rumble of a growl, it wasn’t lost on Billie, either.
“You the guy that called in a 911?” the man asked, his voice betraying him as being even younger than Reed had first suspected.
“No,” Reed replied. Motioning with his chin toward the Sinclair station, he added, “I was pumping gas and heard the scream. Told the clerk to call it in.”
Shifting at the waist, the man glanced back to the station before returning to Reed. “You Rhett Mattox?”
“Reed Mattox,” knowing the man had pulled the name from a DMV listing. “Rhett’s my father. I’m here visiting. Just ran into town to get some gas for the mowers.”
Pausing, he added, “I’m a detective with the Columbus Police Department in Ohio. This is my partner, K-9 detective Billie.”
Chapter Ten
Whether it was the right call to immediately throw out that he and Billie were both detectives, Reed couldn’t be certain. He did know that it would likely come out soon enough, finding it better to be up front about why he had thought to give chase in the first place and why he was still standing to block the far end of the alley.
And he was definitely tired of having that damned flashlight pointed directly in his face.
For the better part of a minute, the officer said nothing in the wake of Reed’s confession. He merely stood and stared, his gaze flicking between Reed and Billie, before slowly lowering the light. Aiming it at the ground between them, he nodded slightly.
“Officer Todd Wyatt, Warner PD.”
Since Reed had already introduced himself and his partner, he merely nodded, ceding the floor.
“You been here since it happened?” Wyatt asked.
“Ran back to make sure the clerk called you, and I grabbed a flashlight,” Reed said. “Otherwise, we’ve been here.”
The man again shifted just slightly to the side, as if he might glance back to the station once more, before pressing his mouth into a tight line. His chin dipped slightly as he pondered things, Reed almost able to see the man processing things in real time.
Having arrived in Warner earlier in the day, Reed couldn’t say he had any familiarity with the town or its crime rates. His parents had only been around for a few days themselves, and as far as he knew, the bulk of their interactions were largely still out near the highway, as they had been surviving on fast food until they got their home into working order.
He could admit, though, that he had been in enough small towns throughout this state and the one he now called home to know that they likely didn’t see a lot of incidents like this. Given the man’s age, it was possible that the worst thing he’d ever investigated was a stolen vehicle or destroyed livestock.
Not a certainty - Reed having learned long ago that there was truly no limit to what his fellow man was capable of, regardless of the location - but a possibility.
Or even a probability.
“Herc mentioned hearing a scream,” the man said, alluding to who must have been the clerk that made the call. “Start there.”
Beginning with reiterating that he was in town getting fuel for the lawn care equipment, Reed walked the man through everything he’d encountered. He began with the scream and telling the cashier to call 911, followed by sprinting down the alley alongside Billie and seeing somebody load someone else into a van and drive away.
He finished by again stating that he’d jogged back long enough to make sure a call had been made and to grab a light before posting up at the end of the alley.
Listening in silence, Wyatt had pushed his gaze a few inches to the side. With each word Reed spoke, Wyatt’s features seemed to draw tighter, his mouth pulled taut to the point his lips almost disappeared. A divot appeared in his right cheek as if he were gnawing on the inside of it.
“You get a direct look at either of them?” Wyatt asked once Reed was finished.
“Possibly the woman,” Reed said. “I was unloading gas cans when a young girl walked by. Roughly mid-twenties, little bit taller than average, five-eight or so. Dark hair, tan complexion, like she might have been Hispanic, maybe Native American.”
Jerking his gaze to Reed, a single muscle twitched in Wyatt’s jaw. His nostrils flared slightly as he drew in a deep breath.
“She say anything?”
“No,” Reed replied. “She had headphones in, seemed to be in a hurry. Didn’t even glance over as she went.”
Pausing, he thought on it a moment, before adding, “Hell, to be honest, I’m not even sure where she came from. Only saw her for a second.”
If not for the fact that she had passed directly beneath the light on the corner of the Sinclair parking lot, Reed probably wouldn’t have even known she was there. The sole reason he’d gotten even this description of her was that she had surprised him, making his gaze linger a moment longer than usual.
And because she certainly wasn’t unattractive, if a little young.
“She seem to be in a hurry? Like she was scared or anything?” Wyatt asked.
A single pulse of annoyance spiked within Reed. If the girl had seemed in danger in any way, he would have noticed more than her hair and skin tone. He definitely wouldn’t have waited until she screamed to realize something was wrong.
And for certain would have intervened before she was picked up and carted off into the night.
As fast as the thought arrived, Reed slowly pushed it aside. He exhaled a long burst through his nose, letting some of the animosity he felt go with it.
Never before had he been on the opposite side of a witness interview. What he viewed as almost a personal slight wasn’t an unreasonable question, especially from someone like Wyatt, who likely hadn’t done a great deal of this in the past.
“Definitely not scared,” Reed said. “She was moving a little quick, but more like someone trying to get home than someone running away.”
Not one thing he had said thus far did the man bother writing down. Likely more of an initial assessment than a formal interview, Reed knew all of that would come soon enough.
Resources were thin, meaning the main goal now was triage. From there, it would be up to Wyatt to determine how much wider to take things.
“After you heard the scream, take me through that.”
Flicking his glance down, Reed again touched his palm to the thick hair between Billie’s ears. Sliding them forward, he felt the soft bristles rise between his fingers.
“We heard it at the same time,” Reed said. “And it was clear it wasn’t someone being surprised or calling out in joy. It was a cry of terror, the kind you know instantly.”
If Wyatt did know, he gave no indication, his features remaining placid as he stared at Reed.
“I dropped the gas nozzle the instant I heard it. Barely made it a step before Billie was over the backseat, the two of us off and running.”
Raising the darkened flashlight, Reed pointed the tip toward the opposite end of the alley. “We came around the bend up there maybe ten, twelve seconds after we heard it.”
Turning, he gestured along the curb, swinging the flashlight in a half-arc beside his hip. “A van was parked sideways here, just like your cruiser down there, blocking the alley.”
“Get a look at the driver?” Wyatt asked.
“No,” Reed said, giving a quick shake of his head. “The driver was already out and dragging someone else over to the van by the time we got here. With the head and taillights on, all we could see were silhouettes.”
Of the cases Reed had worked over the years, abductions comprised a relatively small percentage. Still, it wasn’t difficult for him to put together a sequence in his mind, almost able to watch what had happened in the moments before he arrived like a silent film.
The girl walking through the alley, head down, music up loud, barely watching where she was going. The van pulling up in front of her, the driver out before she even noticed.
She had been able to get out only a single scream, the driver incapacitating her – given the short passage of time, Reed would bet that this had been done by a blow of some form rather than a chemical like chloroform – before beginning to pull her toward the van.
Even though it seemed so vivid in his mind, Reed kept it to himself. While he might be able to envision it clearly, he didn’t want to implant his own suppositions into Wyatt’s head and confuse fact with what was still just educated guessing.
An act that wasn’t completely natural, battling against every professional instinct he had.
“Dragging?” Wyatt asked, his eyes narrowing slightly.
“Yeah,” Reed said. “Looked kind of like a right triangle. The driver had his hands cupped under the armpits, her feet trailing out behind.”
Again, Wyatt’s eyes drifted to the side. He looked at the swath of ground Reed had just pointed out, appearing that he, too, was starting to put together a progression in his mind.
“You get a look at the vehicle?”
“Looked like a standard panel van,” Reed said. “Boxy frame. Dark color, black or gray or something. Had a big sliding door on the side that he slammed shut before climbing in and driving away.
“Didn’t see a license plate?”
Whether there even was a plate on the back, Reed couldn’t be sure. The man had cut the lights as soon as he pulled away, the dark vehicle becoming almost invisible by the time Reed arrived.
Taking this in, Wyatt continued to process the circumstance. Bit by bit, the enormity of the situation seemed to be settling over him, his weight shifting slightly from one foot to the other.
“Anybody say anything?” he asked.
“I called for the man to stop a couple of times,” Reed said. “Even said I was police, just to try and slow him down. Didn’t matter.”
Wyatt’s gaze shifted back to Reed. For a moment, it appeared that a bit of distaste passed over his features, his mouth twisting up slightly, before it passed.
“You’re sure it was a man?”
Opening his mouth to respond for a moment, Reed pulled up. He again played the few seconds through his mind, recalling everything he could, before saying, “Well, he did have one hell of a beard.”
Chapter Eleven
The girl’s head flopped to the side as The Bear carried her into the room. Lulling back and forth, her hair hung down in a dark curtain, slapping against the exposed skin of his forearms.
Each time it did, The Bear could feel another pulse of electricity rise within him, the promise of things to come so palpable he could almost grasp them.
Turning sideways to maneuver through the narrow space, The Bear laid her flat atop the bed. Placing her on her back, he positioned her arms to either side, her head in the center of the pillow.
Once she was in place, he extended a hand, brushing the hair back from her forehead before rising to full height.
The girl wasn’t exactly what he remembered, but they never were. Her cheekbones were a bit sharper than he would have preferred, her skin tone a touch lighter, but she would do. With time, and a bit of luck, he might even come to overlook them, the small imperfections melting away.
Of course, that option rested largely on the girl and how receptive she was, subservience going a long way to smooth away any deficiencies she might have.
The bigger concern at the moment was the angry knot that was already beginning to protrude from her temple. Not so much the presence of it, but what it represented.
The first strike was often an occasion. It was experienced at the moment planned to have the greatest impact, delivered when he could enjoy both the initial contact and the look on her face as she absorbed it.
Doing things the way he’d been forced to in the alley had changed that. Unavoidable as it might have been, it had tilted the sequence dramatically, perhaps irrevocably altering their course moving forward.
A course that, again, would hinge on the girl and how she reacted.
The Bear could still taste the girl’s blood on his tongue as he stared down at her wound. All residue had been wiped away, though blood was already beginning to collect in the area, staining the surface a deep blue.
By this time tomorrow, it would be black and purple, the first thing she felt upon waking.
So be it.
The blueprint The Bear had used up to this point had garnered mixed levels of success. Maybe it was time to change his approach. Perhaps this would be the start of a new interaction, setting things more to his liking moving forward.
Standing over her, The Bear allowed a smile to pull at the corners of his lips. Imagining what the future might hold, everything that he and the girl would experience together, a feeling bordering on euphoria leaked into his system.
Seeming to buoy him from within, he reveled in it for only a moment before raising both hands in unison. Slapping his palms hard against either side of his face, he felt the sting despite the thick carpet of hair covering the bottom half of it.
“You know the rules,” he whispered again, firing a second round at himself, the sound of skin-on-skin contact echoing through the small room. “Mistakes must be punished.”
Staring down at the angry knot on the girl’s face, he swatted himself a third time. Much harder than even the previous two, his vision blurred for a moment, his cheeks warming beneath the blood collecting there.
What had happened was unfortunate, but it was what he deserved. He had gotten sloppy, complacent, and he had stopped paying attention.
The very thing that had started all this, changing his life irrevocably all those years before.
The only difference was that now he wouldn’t be the only one forced to live with the consequences.
Good, and bad.
Setting his jaw, The Bear gave the girl one last look. He forced his breathing to slow, lingering in the burning tingle of the shots to his skin, before turning away.
After pulling out of Warner, h
e had stopped briefly to inject the girl with a sedative. Enough to keep her under until morning, he still had more than eight hours before she would be awake, exactly enough time to get to everything he needed to.
But that meant he had to start now.
And it absolutely meant he didn’t have a second to waste contemplating the future, knowing that how things went from here was more on her than him.
Chapter Twelve
Just a few hours after finally falling asleep for the night, Reed was awoken by the sound of his cellphone buzzing on the nightstand beside him. Dull and persistent, it went through a half-dozen steady pulses before falling silent, remaining that way for just a few moments until erupting for a second round.
Lying on his right shoulder, Reed only barely registered the first outburst. Cracking an eye open long enough to see the glow of his screen on the ceiling, he let out a low groan, rolling flat to his back. Raising a hand to his face, he pinched his thumb and forefingers down over his eyes, holding them until small spots of light began to dance behind his eyelids.
Only then did he pull his hand away, opening his eyes a second time to see just the first faint gasps of dawn peeking through the window beside his bed.
“This better be important,” he muttered, extending his hand and snatching up the device. As he squinted against the bright light of the screen only long enough to check the caller ID, a quick jolt passed through his core.
In the past weeks, he had dialed the name staring back at him at least once a day, pressing for an update.
As best he could remember, this was the first time such a call had been made in the opposite direction.
“Captain,” Reed said, accepting the call and pressing the phone to his ear. Armed with a bit of adrenaline that came with seeing the name before him, his voice sounded more alert than he actually felt.
“Mattox,” Wallace Grimes replied. Speaking in his standard graveled timbre, there seemed to be a bit of extra weight in his tone, his voice lower than usual. “Sorry for calling so early.”
The Bear Page 4