by D. L. Wood
“Can’t you go faster?” Chloe pressed.
“I don’t want to warn him we’re coming. I don’t want to spook him. That’s when people get hurt.”
Chloe swallowed thickly. “He’s got to be okay.”
“He will be.”
“What if Crutchfield’s armed?”
“He needs to worry about whether I’m armed.”
“Are you?”
“What do you think?” he asked.
This was not your family-friendly trailer park, with kids’ bikes, balls, and bats left behind in the yard. There were no cheerful pots of flowers or well-manicured lawns like you found in many such communities. Instead it felt like the kind of place a cable station would use as the set for a show about meth dealers.
Each lot was about fifty yards wide, giving the trailer occupants a decent amount of privacy for whatever nefarious activities might be going on inside. The units all seemed to be in a similar state of disrepair—rusted patches marring the stained white or cream exteriors, boards missing from the rickety wooden steps leading up to small landings at the front doors, and broken windows scattered throughout. Only one yard had been mowed anytime recently. The rest were surrounded by ankle- to knee-high crabgrass and ragweed, with paths worn down by consistent treading to the front door.
Lights gleamed dimly through dingy curtains in several units. One or two trailers were completely blacked out, looking all but abandoned. Most had at least one vehicle parked in front, a couple of them with a second vehicle stereotypically up on concrete blocks.
Jack rolled the windows down as they neared the halfway point down the street, telling Chloe to listen closely for tell-tale sounds. But the puttering of the car engine was the only noise disturbing the unsettling silence of the place. Holt had texted to tell them that Crutchfield’s place would be the last one on the right. It finally emerged from the darkness, sitting about thirty yards off the road, as forlorn as the others. A single window at the far-left end of the trailer gleamed through its covering, though no shadow moved against it. The dirt driveway led from the street right up to the front steps, where a gray Camry was parked. Jack came to a quiet stop one lot down from Crutchfield’s property.
He turned to Chloe, his face like stone. “I’m going up there. Stay here, call 911.” He handed her the keys and slipped his SIG Sauer from his waistband. “Tell them we found the place. Stay on the line till they get here. And keep your weapon out,” he told her, eyeing the handgun she had unholstered and placed on her lap during the drive there, “but don’t come out here. It’s just for your protection, got it?”
Chloe wanted to argue, because every instinct told her she should get out and search for Tyler. But Jack knew what he was doing. So she nodded and he kissed her forehead quickly before slipping from the vehicle and closing the door silently.
Chloe held 911 on the line as she watched Jack crouch low and move across the lawns to the parked sedan. She described what was happening, unable to keep the quiver out of her voice as the operator repeatedly told her Jack should return to the car, lock the doors, and wait for the dispatched officers to arrive.
“We can’t just sit here and wait,” Chloe argued. “He’s in there somewhere.”
“I understand, ma’am, but…” The operator’s voice faded into the background for Chloe as Jack made it to the sedan and crept up to the rear passenger window, keeping the car between himself and Crutchfield’s trailer. She held her breath as he rose up just enough to look inside. He scooted forward to the passenger window, peered through it then turned back to Chloe, shaking his head. Tyler wasn’t in there.
Chloe’s heart dropped. Where is he? she wondered, her pulse pounding into her ears. Inside the trailer? With Crutchfield? Or somewhere else? She caught her breath, her eyes flashing to the Pal-Pinpoint screen again. Service was so bad out here that Tyler’s dot had turned into a large circle encompassing a wide area around the trailer park and beyond. It was impossible to know exactly where he was now. If he had moved, they wouldn’t know it until it was too late.
Jack made his way around the car to the trailer, headed for its one illuminated window. Moving stealthily, he pressed against the trailer, sliding along it in order to avoid detection from anyone inside that might be looking out. Because the trailer was on risers, the base of the window was at nose-level. Slowly Jack pushed up, just far enough so that his eyes rose above the bottom of the pane. Jack hovered for a moment where a minuscule slit separated the drawn curtains, then shrank back down. He held up one finger and shook his head again. No Tyler. He paused, held up a second finger and shook his head once more. No Crutchfield, either.
Had Holt been wrong? If they had raced off to the wrong location…
Jack tapped his chest and thumbed towards the far corner of the trailer. He was going around. Though he couldn’t see her, she nodded her understanding, and watched as he disappeared around the side. There was no telling what he was walking into. For the hundredth time in the last hour, Chloe prayed that God would keep him safe. Would keep Tyler safe. Would show them where he was.
The seconds dragged by, the 911 operator doing her best to assure Chloe that help was on the way. She waited, pulling nervously on a stray curl as the blackness of the night seemed to close in on her, the light from the trailer window its only challenger.
And then, something cut through the vacuum of light and sound. Movement out of the corner of her eye. A flicker of something, illuminated by the moon. Movement…at the back of the car.
The trunk was opening.
SEVENTY
The trunk opened just a crack, and two tiny fingers groped outward, like some kind of bad horror movie where a doll trapped in a coffin tries to escape.
“Tyler!” she gasped and, forgetting Jack’s instructions and the woman on the phone, Chloe darted quietly out her door and charged towards the sedan, holstering her weapon and hunching over as best she could while running at full speed.
She crossed the distance in less than five seconds. When she reached the trunk, she threw it open. Tyler lay inside, his mouth duct-taped shut, feet and hands bound with zip ties, his arms outstretched towards the opening.
“Tyler!” she cried softly, reaching in and grabbing him. She pulled hard, lifting him into a sitting position. “Are you okay?”
Tyler nodded. Other than the wet tear streaks across his face from when he had been lying down, he looked all right.
“We have to go, quickly. Come on,” Chloe said, taking him beneath his arms and hoisting him up and out of the trunk. He landed, wobbling unsteadily on his bound feet. “Okay. It’s okay,” Chloe assured him, bending over to sweep him into a cradle position. “I’ll carry you.”
“No, you won’t.” The icy growl came from directly behind Chloe. She screamed, spinning around to find a hulking Goliath in a dingy plaid shirt and baggy jeans, menacingly standing just a breath away. A dark, heavy beard covered most of his face, with sideburns reaching up to black eyes that bore through her.
He shoved her aside so hard that she crashed to the ground while he picked Tyler up, dropped him back in the trunk, and, over Tyler’s muffled screaming, slammed the lid shut. Before Chloe could scramble to her feet again, he was on her, and she was crab-walking backwards, trying to remain out of his reach.
“Stop! Stop!” Chloe screeched, kicking at his thick hands as they grabbed for her. She made contact with his shin and he roared. Diving down, he snatched her up by the shoulder and threw her against the trunk, where she spun to face him.
The barrel of his gun was so close to her face that Chloe could barely focus on it. He glared at her, the corner of his mouth turned up in a snarl. Chloe’s eyes flashed fleetingly to the trailer and back.
“Looking for your friend?” he grunted ominously. “The one sneakin’ around the backside of my house? He ain’t comin’. He’s taking a siesta, courtesy of yours truly. Now you’re gonna listen and do what I tell you, or you’ll be joinin’ him. Got it?”
; “Look,” Chloe said, holding her hands up in surrender. “We just want Tyler back. Give us Tyler and drive away. The police are on their way. You can be gone. We won’t stop—”
Crutchfield pressed the gun barrel into Chloe’s forehead. “So you’re not gonna listen?”
She caught her breath, the metal cold against her skin. “Yes, I mean…no, I am…I will…listen.”
“You’re gonna walk into the trailer, sit down, and shut up,” he ordered. “You’re gonna be still while I fix you up with zip-ties and that’s it.”
“What about Ty—”
“The boy’s no concern of yours. Now, you do one stupid thing and I’ll—”
A loud crack filled the air as a swift flash of a metal bat collided with Crutchfield’s head, sending him stumbling to the right, falling one foot over the other. Crutchfield writhed on the ground, disoriented, as Jack snatched up his weapon and stepped a few feet back, the bat slung over one shoulder and Crutchfield’s gun outstretched in the opposite hand. Though clearly in command, Jack wobbled a bit as he leaned heavily on his good leg, and something about his gaze seemed slightly unfocused.
Crutchfield moved to press himself up, and Jack tensed. “Stay down!” he yelled. “Do not test me on this.”
Chloe turned, knocking on the trunk. “Tyler! Open it—open it! It’s okay now!”
The lid cracked again, and Chloe ripped it open the rest of the way, nearly diving inside as she wrapped Tyler up in her arms.
SEVENTY-ONE
“Hey there,” Chloe said, as Reese slipped through the backdoor onto the porch where she sat, watching Tyler and Jack toss a football around. The soft mid-afternoon light peeked through the tree line, casting a golden glow on the still-green fescue and the man and boy tromping through it. “You get a good nap?”
“Enough,” Reese said, gently lowering himself into a chair at the patio table. “It feels like I’ve done nothing but sleep the last week and a half.” He watched Tyler catch a long pass and smiled. “He looks better.”
Chloe nodded. “No nightmares last night.” Saturday night after finding Tyler, the boy had been unable to sleep well, wrestling with bad dreams until dawn. But last night, he had surprisingly slept like a rock.
“That’s good. Really good. I’m glad we kept him out of school today, but maybe tomorrow he can start back? Get back to normal?”
“Probably a good idea.”
“I’ve already set up something with a therapist. Emma too. Just to be sure.”
“They’ll be okay.”
“I know, but still.” He groaned softly, lifting his injured leg to incline it in the chair beside him. “How about you?”
“I’m fine. It’s Jack you should be asking about. Crutchfield whacked him pretty hard with that bat.”
“Not hard enough,” Jack muttered, just loud enough for them to hear, before tossing the ball back to Tyler in a perfect spiral. “Should have done better than a side-swipe.”
“He didn’t know how hard-headed you are,” Chloe called out, chuckling.
“His mistake. Along with taking my gun, but leaving the bat.” Jack grinned at her, then jogged towards Tyler. Despite the twenty-four-hour headache and a full night of Chloe waking him every two hours to monitor the concussion, Jack’s spirit seemed lighter than it had been in months. Even though he would never admit it, Chloe knew that stopping Trip and swooping in to handle Crutchfield was a big part of that. It was proof that Jack could still do the thing he loved doing the most—be a protector. The limp was still there—she could see it now as he chased after Tyler—but it wasn’t derailing him. She smiled, thinking of how they had met like this, him playing football with a friend and ‘accidentally’ hitting her with the ball. Her heart warmed at the thought and, as she watched him, nervous flutters raced through her, as discombobulating as ever.
“Have you talked to Holt?” Reese asked, snapping her back to him.
“Um, yeah,” she answered. “He stopped by while you were out.”
“Any updates?”
“He said the D.A.’s office dropped the charges against Kurt this morning. He’s out. But now, child services is investigating, so he’ll probably be back in court soon. Jacob is set up to stay at his aunt’s indefinitely. That was working really well already, so apparently the powers that be saw no reason to change it.”
“How’s Jacob holding up?”
“Emma’s been with him a lot. She’s over there now, actually. I told her she’s got to go back to school tomorrow, but today it was good for her to be with him. She says he’s all right, even seems maybe a little relieved that he’s out of Kurt’s house. But he’s worried about his dad. He never planned on telling anyone what was going on with Kurt. I think he was just planning on getting out of there when he turned eighteen.” Chloe shook her head sympathetically. “There’s more, but Holt can tell you when he comes by later. He said he’ll be busy sorting Trip out the rest of the afternoon, but he’ll stop by after that.”
Confusion flitted across Reese’s face. “But we’re conflicted out of Trip’s situation after everything that’s happened. What’s his involvement?”
“He’s not representing Trip. Cecilia Tucker hired some other lawyer for Trip, but apparently she wants Holt around, at least initially. She thinks he might be able to add something, have some sort of insight. He says she’s crushed. Trip did what he did because of the affair. The guilt is killing her.”
Reese nodded. “I can only imagine.”
“He says they’re charging him as a juvenile, so, hopefully that’ll make things a little easier. Maybe he can start over eventually. It’s really sad. They’ve got him on suicide watch.”
“What are they charging him with?”
She shrugged, waving an uncertain hand. “I’m not sure. You’ll have to ask Holt. But he’s admitted to almost everything—the bomb, you on the stairs, the assault on Emma in the alley—so, I guess, whatever stems from all that. He’s also been talking non-stop. Explaining a lot of things.”
“Like what?”
“Like how he managed it all. Apparently he got the idea to actually frame Kurt when he found the stuff on his shoes. Before that he figured they would suspect Kurt, but with the concrete, he realized he could really seal the deal. The night Donner was shot, Trip hung out at Jacob’s house till Kurt passed out. Kurt’s been passing out most nights, so Trip was counting on it happening eventually. When he finally did, Trip used Kurt’s cell to call Donner and convince him to meet at the overlook. He said Kurt didn’t even budge when he used his thumb to unlock Kurt’s phone.”
“I’ve told Kurt a dozen times that his drinking was going to ruin him,” Reese said sadly.
“Yeah, well, you weren’t wrong. So, Trip called Donner, muffled his voice with some kind of harsh whisper and pretended to be Kurt. He told Donner that if he wanted to end the suit he needed to meet him at the overlook. It had to have sounded sketchy. I’m surprised Donner went. Still, he must’ve been pretty surprised when it was Trip that showed up.”
“I’ll bet.”
“But Trip still claims he didn’t kill him. He says he went out there meaning to. He even wore Kurt’s boots and took Kurt’s gun, planning to frame him, but he says he lost his nerve, dropped the gun, and ran. He says Donner pulled a gun on him, actually.”
“What?”
“Yeah, it’s confusing.”
“When did Trip plant everything?”
“He says that after the overlook he went back to Jacob’s and told him some story about wanting to spend the night. That things were too tense at home. While Jacob and Kurt were asleep he got up, hid the bomb supplies and put the boots back, and scattered the concrete bits he had saved in Kurt’s closet. That’s when he wedged some in the treads of the boots.”
“Does the D.A. believe him? About not killing Donner?”
“Well they haven’t charged Trip with Donner’s murder yet, but Holt thinks it’s just a matter of time. They found Kurt’s missing gun in Trip’s
trunk when they searched his car. The gun he had at the overlook Saturday night was a different gun—one he took from his dad. Holt hasn’t heard about the forensics yet, but he says that finding Kurt’s gun hidden in Trip’s trunk isn’t good. He thinks that the way things are going, they’ll probably add the murder charge by tomorrow at the latest.”
“But there’s still loose ends that don’t make sense—the corpse in the drum and Holt getting beaten up—that wasn’t Trip. Does he know how the D.A.’s office is treating it?”
Chloe shook her head. “They aren’t saying. He thinks they’re trying to be thorough, flesh it out before they charge Trip.”
“What about Vettner-Drake and Banyon and all that? Is the D.A. looking at them?”
Chloe shrugged. “Holt told the police about our dealings with them, but beyond that it was all just conjecture. There’s no proof that they were involved in anything. Just hints that suggested they could have been. And if they were involved, he says they’re too careful to leave any useful trail behind. Holt doubts the police will get much further connecting those dots than he did.”
“And if they don’t clear up the corpse question?”
“Holt doesn’t think it will keep them from charging Trip with Donner’s murder. He says him having the murder weapon will trump the uncertainty. The prosecution will just argue the other unexplained incidents are unrelated. He says Trip’s attorney can still argue that it’s evidence that points to someone else being Donner’s murderer, and try to generate some reasonable doubt, but that may be about it.”
Somewhere not too far away, someone was burning leaves, the peaty aroma drifting into Reese’s yard, reminding Chloe of campfires and roasted marshmallows. Their conversation halted momentarily as they watched Jack tackling Tyler as he tried to dodge him.
“Tyler liked going to church with you yesterday,” Reese said, interrupting the silence. “Said it made him feel better.”
“I get that. It makes me feel better too.” She eyed Reese encouragingly. “Finding your place in the big scheme of things will do that.”