“Did he?” Joel says. He smiles and shakes his head.
“If it hadn’t been for Roscoe, he might still be out there. Though I don’t know why he came here, or how he knew where I live.”
“We found it,” Danny says. “Didn’t we?” He cocks his head again as if listening to someone. “We found it at sunrise.”
His last words mesh with that simmering idea in my brain and something clicks into place.
We found it at sunrise.
My mind scrambles back in time, recalling that Friday night incident that started it all when Danny said he saw the ghost. I replay what Danny did and said, what Allie did and said. What Joel did and said. That was it. Joel! He told us he’d just gotten home and that he worked at Sunrise Nursing Home. They would have my phone number on file there. In fact, they have my address on file, because I am the court-designated guardian for two patients there who don’t have any other family to make care decisions for them.
We found it at sunrise.
I try to recall all the other things Danny said about sunrise, and instead of considering it as a time of day, I think of them in terms of the nursing home. Joel is a nurse, someone who knows a lot about medications, someone who presumably has access to a lot of medications. Someone who could mess with Danny’s medications if he wanted to. And Joel wears scrubs for his job, scrubs that would make him look like any other staffer at the hospital if he wanted to slip into Marla Riley’s room without the cop on duty being any the wiser. And what had Joel said just a few minutes ago about the cops wanting to know what Danny had to do with the poisons they were making out at the farm? Those details were kept under wraps. How did Joel know what was going on out at the farm?
I mentally curse at myself for not calling the police earlier. My gut tells me I need to do it now. When I see how Joel is looking at me, I feel a twinge of fear. I need to do it now! I take out my cell phone, hoping I’m wrong, and hoping I have enough time to call for help.
Joel purses his lips and lets out an irritated sigh. “Put it away,” he says, looking at me.
“What?” I say, trying to smile, hoping to look innocently confused to give me more time. I swipe at the screen and start to jab at the appropriate icon when the phone is smacked out of my hand. “Hey!” I say, a mix of irritation and confusion. I start to bend down and pick up my phone, but Joel stomps his foot on it. “What are you doing?” I ask, trying not to sound too confrontational. But deep down I know the jig is up.
“Joel?” Allie says, sounding genuinely confused. “What are you doing?”
Apparently, Joel’s stomp wasn’t enough to ruin my phone because it starts to play a ring tone, indicating an incoming call. I glance at the shattered screen and can still see enough of the display to read that the caller is Bob Richmond. Joel sees it, too.
And then he lifts the hem of his scrub top and reaches behind him, pulling something out of the waist of his pants. “Don’t answer that,” he says, pointing a gun at my face.
Chapter 28
“Joel, what are you doing?” Allie says again, staring incredulously at him.
Danny says, “I’ll do the work. Don’t hurt Allie.”
“Oh, shut up, you moron,” Joel grumbles. “You’ve said far too much already.”
“Joel, put that gun down,” Allie says, her voice tremulous. “You’re scaring me.”
“You shut up, too,” he snaps. “All of you, on the seats.” He waves the gun in the general direction of Danny, indicating that he wants us to sit at the bar. I climb up on the stool on one side of Danny and, Allie, looking both irritated and confused, takes the one on his other side.
Joel glares at me. “You just couldn’t mind your own business for one more day, could you? My final payment comes today, and then I would have been out of here and everything could have gone back to normal. But no, you had to go sticking your damned nose into things, trying to get Danny to talk.”
“Don’t say anything,” Danny says. “Or Allie dies.”
Allie gapes at Joel. “Are you involved in this thing out at that farm?” she asks.
He doesn’t answer her. Instead he starts pacing on the other side of the island, wearing a path on my kitchen floor. Roscoe, who is still at Danny’s feet, senses there is something amiss and he whines.
“It’s okay, boy,” I say. Roscoe thumps his tail a couple of times, but his body language tells me he’s still not comfortable with the air in the room. He’s not the only one.
“I think it’s safe to say that Joel is very involved with the business at the farm,” I say to Allie. “Are you a member of a local militia?” I ask him.
Before he can answer, Danny says, “W... M . . . C... go badgers! M... M... C... go wolverines!”
“Does this have something to do with sports?” Allie asks, still hopelessly confused and befuddled by everything. “What is going on?”
“No sports,” Danny says. “Michigan militia corps . . . Wisconsin militia corp. We are brothers.” He says this as if he’s reciting something he has heard elsewhere.
Things start to click in to place. “They tracked your ISP,” I tell Joel. “They thought the email address with WMC in it stood for Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. But it stands for what Danny said, doesn’t it? You’re part of a militia group.”
Joel keeps pacing, his brow furrowed. He shoots me a perturbed look but says nothing.
“What is your group planning to do with all that poison?” I ask Joel. “Are you planning a terrorist event?”
“What poison?” Allie says, clearly confused and frightened.
“We aren’t terrorists,” Joel snaps. “We believe in personal liberties and the right to choose how we live. We support national sovereignty and a new world order that doesn’t include inferiors. We oppose the burden of government control and taxes. They want to limit our rights, take away our guns, take away our right to live the way we want to.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say. “Standard white supremacist stuff. I’ve heard it all before.”
“We are not white supremacists,” Joel says angrily. “It’s a simple fact that some people are inferior to others.”
“Well, I imagine your plans are on hold for now, since all of your plants were confiscated and your little lab out there at the farm has been shut down.”
A decidedly creepy smile spreads slowly across Joel’s face. “You don’t seriously think that’s the only farm we have, do you?”
“Oh my God,” Allie says, staring disbelievingly at Joel. “Who are you? And what the hell is going on?”
Joel looks at her with a mix of pity and disgust. “Sorry, sweetheart, but I needed your brother’s talents and your knowledge.”
“My knowledge,” Allie says, sounding confused. “What are you talking about?”
My phone rings again, and Joel’s lips thin to a narrow white line. “You,” he says, reaching into his pocket and tossing a set of keys at me. “Drive. We’ll take my car. Allie, you ride in front with her. Danny, you’re in the back with me. Let’s go.”
I slide down off my stool and head for the front door. I hear the others following along behind me, but don’t look back at them. My mind is scrambling, trying to think of a way to stop this, to alert someone, to get that gun away from Joel. But it’s too dangerous. Opening the front door, I see Allie’s SUV parked at the curb, and another car, a sedan, that I assume is Joel’s. A quick look around doesn’t offer any solutions to my dilemma. It’s late in the evening and everyone is tucked inside their houses, prepping for the day to come. My closest neighbors other than P.J. and her parents are a young couple who both have jobs entailing evening hours—he’s a bartender and she’s a waitress—and they’ll both be at work. No way do I want to get P.J. involved in this.
Unable to see any reasonable route of escape, I walk around Joel’s car and get in behind the wheel. Allie gets in beside me, her color ashen, her expression one of shock. I reach down to find the button to move the driver’s seat up to a position app
ropriate for my height, watching in the rearview mirror as Danny and Joel slide into the back seat.
Once I manage to get the seat where I want it, I stick the key in the ignition and start the engine. “Where to?” I ask Joel.
“The cemetery,” he says.
That surprises me, but then I start to think that if he plans to kill us, the cemetery is probably a great place to hide the bodies. I pull out, driving slowly.
Allie, in a weak, ponderous voice, says, “Was everything fake? Was any of it real? Did you plan to marry me?”
Joel says nothing.
“I think it’s safe to say he was using you,” I tell Allie. “Sorry. He needed your brother’s chemistry knowledge and abilities to process the stuff they were making out at the farm.”
“You used my brother to process marijuana?” she says, looking over her shoulder at him.
“Oh, it was more than marijuana,” I tell her. “They were growing the kind of plants that are used to create poisons, bioterrorism kind of stuff. Things like ricin and strychnine.”
“Danny wouldn’t do something like that,” Allie says. She turns to look at her brother. “You didn’t do that, Danny, did you?”
“Do it or we’ll kill Allie,” Danny says.
Allie turns back to the front and stares out the window, her mouth hanging open. I feel sorry for her. Her world as she knew it has just imploded. Suddenly she whirls around and slaps Joel on the leg, making me duck. “You bastard!” she seethes. “I can’t believe you used my brother to do that.”
“Back off, bitch!” Joel sneers. I half expect him to shoot her, but thankfully he restrains himself.
“Allie, please,” I say.
She seems to sense that it isn’t smart to provoke Joel and she turns back to face front, her arms folded over her chest, her lower lip stuck out in petulant anger.
I pull up near the entrance to the cemetery and park the car in the closest spot, which is only a half block away. I give Joel a questioning glance in the rearview mirror and the coldness I see in his eyes fills me with dread.
“Get out and walk into the cemetery,” Joel says. “And remember that I have the gun trained on all of you. One funny move and I shoot Danny in the head.”
One thing I’ll say for Joel; he’s no dummy. He picked the one person that would control the group the best since both Allie and I would do almost anything to protect Danny. Threatening to shoot Allie would give Joel control over Danny, but Danny is an automaton right now, malleable and pliable. And threatening to shoot me risks either Danny or Allie trying something, though Danny’s frame of mind is so fuzzy I’m not sure he fully understands what’s going on. It’s an odd state for him, not a typical schizophrenic presentation. I’m certain now that Joel has been messing with Danny’s meds.
We dutifully follow Joel’s instructions and walk single file into the cemetery. The lack of any moon makes it hard going as most of the interior of the cemetery is a dark, eerie abyss. Many of the headstones are faintly visible, but after the warmth of the sun heated the ground all day, the cool night air has created a faint cloud of fog hovering just above the ground. The overall effect is spine-chillingly creepy.
“Head over the hill to the back area,” Joel says.
I follow the path, which I can barely see between the dark and the fog, walking slowly. My mind is racing, hoping to figure a way out of this. I could scream, but I doubt anyone would hear it, and if they did, who’s going to come running into a dark, foggy cemetery at night because of some screaming. To stall for time, I decide to try to get Joel talking. If I survive this night, maybe I can find out some tidbit of information that will prove useful in shutting down the militia group he’s involved with, or maybe I can find out the location of their other “farms.” Even better, maybe I can find out how they plan to use their cache of poisons.
“You’ve been changing up Danny’s meds, haven’t you?” I say to Joel. “He said something earlier about the pills being wrong, and I thought he was complaining about them not being the right medications to handle his symptoms, but it was a lot more than that, wasn’t it? You’ve managed to get him into a highly suggestive state, not so doped up that he can’t function because you needed him to be able to do his chemistry stuff, but docile, cooperative, and highly suggestible.”
I pause, but there is no comment from Joel, so I decide to add a little praise and ego-stroking to the mix. “Whatever you’ve been giving him, it has worked extremely well. I’m honestly impressed. He’s aware enough to know that he can’t say anything that might give the game away, and to know what’s at risk if he does. And presumably he has been able to function for you in the lab. Yet he acts like he’s really stoned and confused all the time. Was it just marijuana that you used? Or were you smart enough to figure out what drugs you could swap for his regular ones that would give you what you need? I imagine you had access to plenty of drugs there at the Sunrise Nursing Home. That put you in the driver’s seat, didn’t it? Clever fellow.”
A glance at Joel’s face reveals the start of a smile at the edges of his mouth, so I continue with the flattery.
“I have to say, you’ve played your part really well in this, Joel. I imagine a lot of people underestimate you and your intelligence.”
“Yes, they do,” he says, finally biting at my bait. “A little bit of research, some experimentation, and it was relatively easy to come up with the right mix of drugs for Danny, though it was a close call back a few months ago when you had to stick your nose into things and get Danny hospitalized so his doctor could change his medications. You nearly messed up the whole operation. We should have found a way to put a stop to you back then.”
“You’ve been messing with Danny’s medications?” Allie says. She sounds appalled, angry, hurt, and bewildered.
“I’ve simply made some substitutions,” Joel says. “You made it easy when you started using that medication planner box. All I had to do was open the slot for each day and swap the pills you put in there for the ones I needed him to take.”
“I can’t believe you did this,” Allie says, her voice catching in her throat as she fights back tears. “I hate you!”
“Yeah, well, it’s all for the greater good. You’ll see. In the end the world will be a better place because of our efforts. And you can be proud of the fact that you had a part in it.”
Allie gives in to her sobs now, and the sound of them carries over the night air.
“I also came up with the idea of using the cemetery for our exchanges, and thanks to Allie here, it’s gone off without a hitch, at least until dufus here claimed he saw a ghost.”
“Thanks to me?” Allie says. “How?”
“You know those conversations we’ve had about the people who are buried in this cemetery who have no family? No one to come and visit their graves?”
“Yes,” Allie says, sounding puzzled. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“It’s quite easy to give those names to the people who want to pick up the items we made for them and then they can leave cash in return. Since no one goes to those graves, it’s a simple matter of disguising the items in vases and memento boxes. Your brother has done an excellent job of handling the exchanges.” Joel pauses and sighs wearily. “If only that Fletcher guy hadn’t developed a conscience, we’d still be raking in the dough.”
I have led our sad little group deep into the cemetery and the back fence is only fifty feet away when Joel says, “Take that path to the left.”
I do as I’m told and after a few feet I see something up ahead that makes my gut go cold. There is a large mound covered in green cloth and beside it there is a dark void.
“Stop here,” Joel says.
I stop a few feet from the edge of an open grave, one I fear is about to become my own.
Chapter 29
“It’s handy to have this here ready to go,” Joel says, eyeing the open grave. “I figure I can fit all three of you in there without too much trouble. If I cov
er you up with a layer of dirt, maybe no one will notice. Then all three of you can spend eternity together with Mrs. Culpeper. I do believe that’s whose funeral and burial you told me is scheduled for tomorrow, isn’t it dear?” He looks at Allie when he says this, and she fires flaming arrows at him with the look she gives back.
“You’re going to shoot all three of us?” I say. “That’s going to make a lot of noise. It’s bound to attract some attention. There are a lot of homes around this cemetery.”
“I suppose it’s a good thing I brought the silencer then,” Joel says, pulling something from his jacket pocket and screwing it onto the end of the gun he has. “You said it yourself, Hildy. Don’t underestimate me.”
With the silencer firmly in place, he aims the gun at me, and I brace myself for what’s coming. I’ve run out of ideas at this point, but I grasp at one thought, one I’m not sure is even true, but I saw it on a forensic show on TV once. “You know, the silencer only works on the first shot,” I tell him. “After that the shots will be just as loud as if you didn’t have the silencer.”
Joel frowns at this, his brow furrowed. I can tell he’s trying to decide if I’m lying to him. “Tell you what,” he says finally. “All three of you can save me some time and trouble by getting down into that hole before I shoot you. It will speed up my getaway and it will help muffle the sound of the shots.”
Dang. I hadn’t thought of that. My heart is already pounding in my chest and the thought of climbing down into that grave to be shot makes it pound faster and harder. I can see my bosom bouncing with each beat.
“Joel, you don’t have to kill anyone,” I say, grasping at straws now. “You didn’t kill Fletcher, did you?” I’m thoroughly convinced that he did, but I figure if I instill the idea of doubt in him here, it might make him think he can convince others of the same. “The militia will take the fall for Fletcher’s death, so why make things more difficult for yourself by killing us now? Just leave. Run while you have the chance.”
Night Shift Page 25