The Bear

by Dustin Stevens

Again, Martin took a minute to process.

  Two days ago, Darcy Thornton was nothing more than a case fast growing cold to him. One of the largest to hit the area in a while, he’d been able to keep a pretty close tab on what was happening, though it hadn’t been his to work.

  Just yesterday, he’d watched as her body was found and things again moved into a frenzy.

  Reed could only speculate what it must be like to now somehow be at the center of that madness, simultaneously trying to pull himself up to speed and honor whatever office politics existed on the matter.

  Especially as he himself stared down situations with two different departments across the country.

  Working things out in his mind, the seatback on the passenger seat strained audibly as Martin pressed his girth back into it. Rolling himself over onto a hip, he wrestled his phone out, holding it before him.

  “When I talked to Martinelli earlier, clearing the way for us to come up here, he said they’d been out canvassing most of the day. If they aren’t done yet, I’m sure they’d like a break.”

  Dropping the blinker, Reed moved out around a semi-trailer with ‘Wal-Mart’ stamped along the side of it. Leaning a bit harder on the gas, he swung wide before settling back into the right lane, the cruise control set nine miles above the speed limit.

  Sending the Muskogee team down to Longtown would be good. That would give them the three most recent cases, as well as potentially freeing him up to speak to a fourth.

  Three instances of victims going to the same place would be too much for a coincidence.

  Four would be a guarantee.

  The interior of the car lit up as Martin called his phone to life. Scrolling through the menu, he found the contact he needed and hit send, pressing it to his face and glancing towards Reed.

  “Looks like we’re finally getting some momentum here.”

  Barely registering the comment, Reed continued to think. Again, the image of the map folded in the backseat came to mind, red circles splashed across it in a random spatter.

  Right now, Martin was calling about Longtown.

  That still left more than a handful for them to work with.

  “Tell me,” Reed said, his gaze never leaving the road before them, “you happen to have any contacts in McClain or Oktaha?”

  Chapter Sixty

  The towns of McClain and Oktaha weren’t large enough to have their own police departments. The former was covered by the county sheriff, the latter an outpost of the Checotah Police Department.

  Each numbering in the hundreds in terms of total population, Reed wasn’t surprised to find neither having a full-time dedicated force, the two combined paling in comparison to Warner, neither one being an optimal target.

  Going by sheer numbers, the town of Summit was much the same. Totaling in the triple digits, they too didn’t have a standalone law enforcement agency to check in with, though they did have one key difference that played directly into Reed and Martin’s hands.

  Situated less than ten miles from the outskirts of Muskogee, it fell under the jurisdiction of the MPD.

  Recalling the list of names in his mind, there was no way for Reed to know exactly where each was located or how they were patrolled. Lucky merely to recall the girls associated with each town and how long ago they’d disappeared, he hadn’t been able to make an exact connection.

  A problem Martin hadn’t shared, taking only a single glance after retrieving the map from the backseat before ordering Reed to head directly back to where they’d started.

  Now a mere twenty minutes later, Reed could see the blazing neon of the same diner he’d already visited twice on the day. Out front was the same thin smattering of cars, Martin’s sedan parked on the end, looking exactly as it had the last time they’d been by.

  Seated in the passenger seat, Martin released his seatbelt a block early. Leaning forward, he rubbed his hands together, anticipation pulsating from him. His own internal functions registering the same, Reed could feel his adrenaline rising, the wheel gripped in both hands.

  Feeding off the combined energy of the two, Billie was on her feet in the backseat, pacing from one side of the SUV to the other.

  Almost to the minute, just two days had passed since Serena Gipson had walked past them, but already it felt like so much longer. Nearly forty-eight hours of going through the paces, putting up with unwanted bureaucracy, superimposing what had been done to Darcy Thornton onto the young and vibrant woman they’d seen ducking into the alley.

  The window for finding her was closing, the time before she, too, seemed to disappear into the ether, relegated to a fate of being found by mistake - if ever at all - evaporating quickly.

  “Alright,” Martin said, reaching into the footwell and snatching up the sack of dinner trash from his feet. “Dunne and Martinelli should be well on their way to Longtown by now. I’ll grab my car here and head over to the station.”

  The plan was for Reed to head down to Summit while Martin stayed in town. The local detective would look into who worked the case and circle back with them, his suspicion being that it was headed by a team that retired three years prior.

  Still friends, he didn’t think getting a few minutes with them would be a problem, the only issue being how far they were into their usual Friday night revelries at the bowling alley.

  Reed hadn’t exactly pressed what that entailed, though it didn’t take a lot of imagination to fill in the blanks.

  At the same time, Martin would pull up whoever was listed as the girl’s next of kin and relay it to Reed, allowing them to divide and conquer.

  With any luck, both of them – as well as Dunne and Martinelli – would all wrap around the same time, giving them a solid handful of data points to start connecting.

  Not that Reed necessarily believed in the power of luck.

  If that sort of thing really existed, he and Billie would have been ten steps quicker a couple nights before, bypassing the need for any of this.

  But, like Wyatt had said standing on his driveway the day before, he would take whatever help he could get at this point.

  “Sounds good,” Reed said, maneuvering off the street and into the parking lot. Stopping along the rear of Martin’s sedan, he didn’t bother pulling into a spot, merely waiting with his foot on the brake.

  Cracking the door open, Martin paused just briefly, his garbage balanced on a thigh, opposite hand on the frame of the door. “I’ll see you guys soon.”

  “You got it.”

  The car rocked under Martin’s weight as he swung out from the SUV, flinging the door shut behind him. Moving in quick shuffle steps, he looped around the front grille, making it almost to his own vehicle before a thought occurred to Reed.

  Buzzing down his window, he rested his elbow on the sill, leaning out through the opening.

  “Hey!” he called, causing Martin to slow just slightly, jerking his attention to the side. “Any way I can ask another favor before we go?”

  Chapter Sixty-One

  A dozen thoughts ran through Reed’s mind in response to his cellphone springing to life as he traveled south out of Muskogee toward Summit. Throwing a bright blue light into the interior of the SUV as it vibrated against the hard plastic of the console, it pulled his attention immediately downward, Billie letting out a single sound from the back seat.

  Propping his left wrist atop the steering wheel, Reed shot a hand out for it, his stomach clenching tight.

  Three times already, Eleanor Brandt had called from Columbus. One he had legitimately missed, the other he had ignored, sending them straight to voicemail, no doubt heightening whatever animosity she already harbored for him and the situation.

  To say the two were on the best of terms even two months ago would have been a stretch.

  To say they were even on speaking terms a week before, equally as unlikely.

  Attempting to forecast where it sat now, Reed hadn’t a clue, the fact that he even had to consider such a thing with all that was going
on with Serena Gipson causing his own hatred to rise as well.

  There were plenty of things in the country already ruled by internal politics. Law enforcement didn’t need to be on that list as well, dragging in, and even punishing, people like him and his partner to serve their own purposes.

  The second thought that rose to the surface immediately thereafter was that it was Captain Grimes, Brandt having gone his direction after being unable to get Reed on the phone, calling to relay just how deep the shit they were all now in was.

  From there, the list of possibilities continued to entail Martin, the pair of detectives in Longtown, even Deke, the number of people pouring over this case seeming to grow by the hour.

  Everybody but the chief of the town the victim actually lived in.

  Feeling the full weight of all the various connected actors, Reed clenched slightly as he checked the screen.

  And to his surprise, he found that the name flashing before him belonged to none of them.

  Letting out a sigh, he released some of the tension he felt, accepting the call and balancing the phone on his thigh.

  “Hey, Mama,” Reed said, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the road passing beneath their tires.

  “Hey, buddy,” Cheryl replied, a slight echo to her voice. “Where are ya?”

  At the sound of her piping into the vehicle, Billie pushed forward from the backseat, her muzzle pressing against Reed’s arm.

  “Headed to Summit as we speak,” Reed said. “About to speak to a witness down there from one of the previous cases.”

  A moment passed, his mother contemplating the information, before saying, “Oh. So, you won’t be home for dinner?”

  Even with the scent of Martin’s cheeseburger still permeating the air, Reed hadn’t thought much about food. With his adrenaline and anticipation both redlined, he wasn’t sure his body could handle any even if he tried.

  “You guys go on ahead,” Reed said. “We’ve had some stuff break loose here, might be a while yet.”

  Both were extreme understatements – or at least he hoped as much – though as his father had pointed out the previous morning, it was sometimes better to shield such matters from his mother.

  She did tend to be a bit of a worrier.

  “Oh,” his mother repeated, hints of disappointment and concern both present. “Well, I made steaks tonight. I’ll be sure to wrap yours up and keep it in the microwave for whenever you get home.”

  A faint smile crossed Reed’s lips, the first he’d had in well over a day. Even in moments like this, his mother could still find a way to slip in whatever she’d made, a move as quintessentially her as existed.

  “That sounds great.”

  “Might even be a couple of b-o-n-e-s for Billie too,” his mother said, forcing a bit of mirth into her tone as she spelled out the word.

  This time, Reed was unable to stop the small chuckle that rolled out, the sound causing his partner to creep further forward, her shoulders pressed tight against the back of the seats to either side.

  “That sounds even better.”

  Resting atop his leg, the faceplate on Reed’s phone lit up again. Flicking his gaze down to it, he saw the screen flash an incoming call, this one also saved to a name and not merely a string of digits.

  “Hey, I don’t mean to run off, but Officer Wyatt is calling me,” Reed said. “Let me fill him in right quick. I’ll see you guys later.”

  “Okay,” his mother replied, her tone again returning to neutral. “You both be careful!”

  Knowing better than to respond, that any attempt to placate her, to assure her they would do just that, would fall on deaf ears, Reed ended the call. Alternating his gaze between the phone and the road, the bright glow of the screen decimating his night vision, he managed to get the lines switched, catching the incoming line just a moment before it cut off.

  “Officer,” Reed said, his voice still raised slightly.

  “Detective,” Wyatt said.

  “You still stuck there at the station?”

  “Oh yeah,” Wyatt said, no small amount of disdain threading through the words. “Bastard and his son have both stopped by a time or three just to keep me company, too.”

  Sliding his left hand down so it fully gripped the steering wheel, Reed squeezed tight. Just as he’d been thinking a minute before with regards to Brandt, he couldn’t help but believe the Ecklunds were another example of how misguided so many of the people he shared a profession with had become. So focused on their own tiny foothold in the world, so obsessed with their image and their particular station, they had lost sight of the things that mattered.

  Things such as the fact that if Wyatt was to be forced in to work, it should be so he could help scour the area in search of Serena Gipson.

  Not so they could keep a thumb on him.

  “Awful sweet of them,” Reed muttered.

  “Yeah, no shit,” Wyatt replied, the bitterness he felt an exact match. “How’d it go with Laub this afternoon?”

  Starting with the meeting at Connors State, Reed ran Wyatt through the events of the afternoon. He detailed giving Martin a call and heading up to Tulsa, following it with the handful of folks now fanned across the area.

  By the time he was done, the energy he was feeling had somehow grown a bit stronger, his physiological responses climbing to match.

  Something was about to break. Too many times he and Billie had been down this path, pounding away at a brick wall. In the beginning, it was usually much the way they’d experienced here, trying disparate things, seeing what shook loose.

  Once they had a couple of random dots, they started searching out the connective threads that tied them together.

  Now they were to the point where it started to feel like they were on a downhill slope, where things were funneling inward.

  They just needed a final few things to winnow it down the last little bit.

  After he’d finished, Wyatt sat in silence for more than a minute. Committing each thing to memory, he seemed to work through them in silence before finally saying, “And my ass is stuck sitting here.”

  Reed knew the feeling, the last five weeks having played out much the same for him.

  Rather than say as much, he remained silent, continuing to move south at sixty-five miles an hour, listening to the man mutter a string of self-flagellations.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Serena Gipson hadn’t been kept a prisoner long enough for the man to have done anything that resembled a pattern. With just two nights behind her, his behaviors were still erratic, mired in trying to ensure his dominance over her, each action part of a scripted sequence and nothing more.

  The initial introduction. The slow allotment of food. The branding.

  The back-and-forth of striking her and feigning kindness.

  All of it lifted directly from a first-year college psychology class, lessons in how to break someone mentally.

  Without so much as even a window in the place, the sole thing she had to work with were the lights above. While they were on, it bore to reason that it was still daytime outside. When they were off, the world was tucked in asleep.

  Not once since she’d arrived had the man shown himself with the lights off. There was no way to know where she was, but her best guess given her chambers was that it was underground.

  The walls were made of solid block. The temperature inside was perpetually cool. There were no windows. Not a single sound could be heard or even a stray shaft of light seen whenever the door was opened.

  Taken together, it bore to reason that while this was to be her permanent home, it wasn’t his.

  And that if the sequence she was working out in her mind was going to work, it had to commence while he was present. She had to know that she could lure him in, the items she needed to make it happen only available in the moment.

  How long that meant she still had, it was impossible to know. The lights had been burning strong for what felt like hours on end. The l
ast time he had brought her food, he had made a point of saying it was dinner.

  If ever she was going to take a stab at this, it had to be soon.

  Standing in front of the dresser in the corner of the room, it had taken more energy than Serena cared to admit to make the short crossing. No more than a dozen choppy strides in total, the act of walking from one corner to the other wasn’t the problem so much as the intense pain that rifled through her body with each step.

  Enough to make her reconsider her plan each time the ball of her foot touched the ground, by the time she reached her final destination, she was practically panting. Sweat burned her eyes, her unwashed hair hanging damp and lank to either side of her face.

  The clothes she wore stuck to her back, the thin cotton no match for the perspiration pouring from her skin.

  And in the air still hung the putrid scent of her own burnt flesh, the addition of his choice in dinner doing nothing for the effect it was having on her stomach.

  Fingers curled around the top edge of the dresser, Serena again balanced most of her weight onto her left foot. With her right rising just above the floor, not a single pound of her weight upon it, she drank in air, willing her heartbeat to slow.

  Every indicator her body had told her to ease up, to wait another day, but she couldn’t do that. Not without knowing what the next visit might hold for her, and the one after that, each an exercise in abuse that could extend into eternity.

  The plan was rough, but it would have to do.

  Lifting her focus from the bare floorboards beneath her, Serena ran her gaze across the books lined atop the dresser. All looking to have been produced decades before, they were free of outer paper covers, nothing but the original binding remaining, gold lettering stamped into canvas spines.

  Classics that Serena had seen dozens of times as a child, she passed along the stack, registering the names as she moved from one side to the other.

  Moby Dick. Lawrence of Arabia. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

  One at a time, she feigned interest, pausing long enough at each one to give the appearance of consideration, the title she chose far from being important. Each more than an inch thick, all would work for what she needed, her focus continuing to pass from left to right across the expanse.