“Detective Lieutenant? Am I calling at a bad time? This is Min-Jun Cho from Massachusetts First Trust.”
“Oh, hi, Mr. Cho,” Jennifer replied, adopting a gentler tone. “No, it’s okay. What can I do for you?”
“I’m calling because I thought you might like to know…Zoe Moore used her debit card last night at a restaurant in Stockbridge, a place called the Rusty Musket,” answered the pleasant Mr. Cho.
“Really?” a surprised Jennifer uttered in response. “Thank you for the information Min-Jun. I’ll check into it right away.”
After exchanging pleasant goodbyes, Jennifer consulted her phone’s contact list for the Stockbridge Police Department, ignoring the notifications on her phone highlighting the earlier text message and a waiting phone message. Finding the number, she called the department and reached Sergeant Jimmy Dixon, the duty officer.
“Good morning, Sergeant Dixon, this is Detective Lieutenant Jennifer Stevens from Mass State Police. I need your help, like pronto.”
“Um, okay. What do you need?” answered the dubious local officer. Though interdepartmental cooperation was part of the job, Sergeant Dixon was leery of being used as an errand boy.
“You know a place in town called the Rusty Musket?”
“Yeah, of course. It’s the pub at the Two Lanterns Inn. Why?”
“I need you to do me a favor. Did you guys get the photos we sent over this morning of Kyle and Margaret Corchran?” she said.
“I dunno. Let me ask around,” Dixon said as he placed Jennifer on hold. A moment later, he returned to the phone and said, “Yeah, looks like two blow-ups of their driver’s licenses?”
Jennifer excitedly responded, “Yes, that’s right. I need one of your officers to go over to the Rusty Musket and show the pictures around to the staff there. It’s almost noon, they’re open for lunch, right? I just received a call from a reliable source that said one of them, the woman, used the debit card of her alias, Zoe Moore, there last night. I need to know if anyone saw her.”
The Sergeant’s skeptical tone was clear in his reply. “With all due respect Detective, we’re kind of busy here. A house alarm call just came in and my other two officers just left to check it out. I can’t promise when we can get to it.”
“Sergeant. Listen to me. They are wanted for questioning in the deaths of two people. In fact, I would consider them armed and dangerous. Do you want someone else to end up dead in your town, on your watch, because you couldn’t ‘get to it’ in time?” Jennifer blared back as she pounded the steering wheel of the car. She didn’t have time for this BS.
While awaiting the Sergeant’s answer, Jennifer’s phone rang again. Jesus, she thought, leave me alone!
Finally, the chagrined officer spoke, “Okay, okay. Don’t get all worked up. I’ll go over there myself.”
“Thank you,” she answered. “Oh, and while you’re over there, can you check with Mrs. Neally, the manager of the Two Lanterns Inn to see if either of them stayed at the Inn, under their aliases or real names?”
“Roger that,” the officer replied. “Anything else?”
“Yeah,” Jennifer said, “if you find something out, call me back on this number immediately.”
As soon as she disconnected the call, Jennifer darted a look at the latest caller. It was Captain Gambelli. As she clicked on the displayed number to call back, Rufus slammed against the car window. Startled, Jennifer gasped and dropped her phone.
While she fished for the phone on the car seat next to her, she heard Gambelli’s deep voice echo in the car, “Stevens? Stevens? Are you there?”
Flustered, Jennifer snagged the phone and slapped it against her ear, saying, “Yes Captain, I’m here.”
“Are you still talking to Dobson’s neighbors?”
“Yes, I was just leaving Mrs. Minden. Why?”
“We just received a call from the alarm company that monitors Devlin Wilson’s house. The barn alarm just tripped. I have units on the way and Stockbridge PD is in route, but you’re closer. Could be nothing, maybe your Doctor Cully or the McCarver woman set it off accidentally.”
“On my way Cap,” Jennifer said as she turned the ignition and sped off. “Sir, I don’t think it’s a false alarm. I just learned that Zoe Moore, aka Margaret Corchran, was in Stockbridge last night. I just got off the phone with Stockbridge PD. I requested they check into it.”
“Is that so?” Gambelli mused. “Alright then, wait for the back up to arrive before you go in. Looks like your instincts were right, Detective.”
“Yes, sir,” Jennifer firmly proclaimed as she flipped on the siren and flashing lights.
Kyle and Margaret Corchran sat idly amid the mess they created in Devlin’s study. They’d been through everything a second time and still no sign of the statues, gold coins or the Stones. Margaret was convinced they were in the study’s safe. Kyle, on the other hand, had his doubts.
Looking at his watch, he impatiently barked, “This is ridiculous. We can’t sit here all day. We’ve looked everywhere. Let’s go try the barn. If Cully left the house open, he may have done the same with the barn.”
“And what if you’re wrong Einstein?”
“Then we bolt.”
“And where does that leave us with Navarro, little brother?” Margaret sarcastically chided.
“I’ve been thinking about that while we’ve been sitting here on our duffs. We have a copy of the map. With that, we can find more gold coins and Stones. We just tell Navarro he’ll have to wait a little longer,” explained Kyle, proud of his theory.
“Ha!” Margaret sneered. “That won’t fly with him. He wants Devlin’s Master Stone. It’s special, that’s what Uncle Dobby said. Remember?”
“Then let’s go check the barn!”
“No, we wait!”
“Screw you, Maggie. We run just as much chance of getting caught sitting here waiting for someone to show up. What if it’s the little waif that shows up, not Cully? Do you think he gave her the alarm code for the barn? Or the safe? The safe has a fingerprint reader on it for Christ’s sake,” Kyle shouted in exasperation.
Margaret leapt off the sofa and stabbed a finger before Kyle’s face, “We wait!”
Kyle jumped up and slapped away Margaret’s hand. He growled, “Get your prissy little finger out of my face. You want to wait, be my guest. I’m going over to the barn.”
He stomped away, crunching debris from their earlier pillaging beneath his steps. Margaret’s face flashed with rage. She thrust her hand inside her backpack and hauled out the Sound Stone. She called after Kyle, “So help me God, if you take one step more, I will blast your ass out on the main road. You know how good I am with this!”
Laughing, Kyle kept walking. She might be good with stationary targets, he mused, but he knew she wasn’t nearly as effective on moving objects.
When he reached the back porch door, he turned and yelled, “If you raise that rock to your mouth, you better hope your aim is true, big sister. I’m not an old man like Wilson. You won’t get a second chance.”
Margaret, full of fury, lunged over fallen furniture on her way to the kitchen. Kyle nonchalantly sauntered out on the back porch and yawned. He had reached his limit with her bossy attitude; it was high time he put her in her place.
One then might imagine Kyle’s flabbergasted expression as, without warning, he soared off the back porch and crashed onto the driveway below. Groaning as he rolled on the macadam surface, Kyle grabbed at his arm and roared back at Margaret, “You bitch! I think you broke my arm.”
“I warned you fair and square, bro! I said we wait! You’re lucky I didn’t F-ing kill you!”
Kyle staggered to his feet and stared viciously at Margaret. With bull-like force, he charged across the driveway towards her. He cleverly bobbed and weaved to avoid presenting her an easy target for the Sound Stone, but as he started up the stairs, he slowed just enough for her to focus another blast.
A mighty blast. One that released Margaret’s full
wrath.
Backwards Kyle tumbled through the air. Over the driveway and up the hill. Horror filled his eyes, convinced that his landing would be fatal.
Yet, as he impacted, it was Margaret who screamed. In her blind rage, she had inadvertently flown Kyle through the front door of the barn. The echo of her scream, however, was drowned by the loud claxon of the alarm sounding out.
Panic surged in her veins, and for the first time in a very long time, Margaret was afraid. And she ran, never looking back.
“Hey AC, what’s shaking?” Pebbles pleasantly said as she connected Anlon’s call while approaching the Great Barrington Public Library.
Anlon’s tense voice replied, “Pacal just called me. He’s kidnapped Anabel Simpson. I don’t have a lot of time to talk. I need your help.”
Pebbles froze in mid-stride. A chattering group of seniors exiting the library almost plowed into her. She replied, “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“Listen. I have to go meet him or he said he will kill her. He wants the map and the Master Stone. Says if I don’t bring them to him at the Stillwater Quarry in like the next 15 minutes, he’s killing her. I’ve tried texting Jen, tried calling her but I can’t reach her. I need you to call her, call the Stockbridge PD, call everybody you can think of and get some help!”
“Okay, on it! But hold on. You can’t really be thinking of going Anlon!”
“I don’t have a choice. I’m not going to let him kill Anabel,” he firmly stated.
“But...”
“We’re wasting time Pebbles. Just do what I asked, please. I’ll try to stall him until the police get there,” Anlon barked back as he hung up.
Still stunned, Pebbles wavered for a moment, unsure what to do. She stood looking down at her phone, mouth open, trying to shake loose her mind and act. Then the anger started to build inside her. She spat, “Bastard! Pacal! I knew he was behind it!”
She took off down the street, searching her phone for Jennifer’s number while she ran. The phone rang, no answer. Pebbles reached the Land Rover and tried Jen’s number again. Straight to voice mail this time.
“Damn it!” she cried out. She glanced across the street. The police officers were still there. Without looking, Pebbles raced across the four lane main street of Great Barrington. Screeching cars caused Dan Nickerson to look up and spot Pebbles running towards him at full speed, arms flailing to get his attention.
“Help!” she cried.
Nickerson, taken aback by Pebbles’ sudden charge, held his hands up and said, “Hold on. Slow down. What’s the problem?”
Out of breath, Pebbles leaned on a nearby police car and sputtered, “Pacal…kidnapped Anabel…wants Anlon to meet him…says he’s going to kill Anabel…Anlon can’t reach Jen…please, help!”
“Okay, okay. Slow down. Take a deep breath,” Nickerson said, trying to calm her down.
Pebbles was having none of it. She shouted back, “You take a deep breath! I need help! Anlon needs help! Now!”
“I’m trying to help you,” Nickerson pleaded, “but you aren’t coherent. You say Pacal Flores has kidnapped a woman, right? And your friend Anlon has gone to meet him? Where is this going down?”
“I…I…oh damn it! I don’t remember. Some quarry,” Pebbles blurted, tears starting to well in her eyes.
Nickerson’s shoulders slumped. There were at least five quarries within an hour’s drive of Great Barrington. He tried again to calm her. “Look, Eleanor, that’s your name right? Please try to calm down. We’ll get help okay, but I need you to focus for me. Can you do that?”
She angrily wiped tears from her face and kicked at the police car’s tire. This was taking too long. Anlon was on his way already, and he was in danger. She knew it. She could feel it. Pebbles stared up at Nickerson, and shook her head back and forth. And then she bolted for the Land Rover.
Halfway across the road, the name of the quarry flashed into her mind. She spun, narrowly dodging a car turning from a side street, and screamed back at Nickerson, “Stillwater!”
When Jennifer arrived at Devlin Wilson’s house, the Stockbridge Police were already there. She screeched to a standstill in the driveway and sprang out of the car. Her phone began to ring again.
Ignoring the call, she approached one of the officers and presented her badge. “Jennifer Stevens, Mass PD, what’s the situation?”
The boyish looking patrolman answered, “We have a man down in the barn over there. He’s alive. Barely. Ambulance is on its way.
“The house, well, the house is a wreck. Looks like someone tore it apart from rafter to foundation looking for something. By the looks of it, I don’t think they found what they were searching for.”
Jennifer started for the barn door, alarmed the fallen man might be Anlon. From the open cruiser door, Jennifer heard the dispatcher’s voice announce her call number. Torn between which to pursue first, Jennifer cursed under her breath. Again the dispatcher called for her.
She sped back to the car, yanked the portable radio out and shouted as she ran towards the barn, “Dispatch, this is Echo Niner.”
“Echo Niner, please stand by. Patching through Echo One Three.”
A brief pause on the radio was followed by Dan Nickerson’s voice amid a wail of sirens in the background.
As Jennifer reached the barn door and spied Kyle Corchran sprawled unconscious in the doorway, Nickerson shouted, “Jen, it’s Dan. Just ran into your friend Eleanor. Said Pacal Flores is holding a woman named Anabel hostage at the Stillwater Quarry. Said Pacal lured Anlon Cully there. Said Cully tried to call you. We are in route with multiple units.”
“Copy that Echo One Three. On my way,” Jennifer called into the radio. Turning to the Stockbridge officer, she said, “Gotta go. You got this?”
“Copy that,” replied the freckled young man.
Peeling wheels across the lawn, Jennifer shot back onto the driveway just before she arrived at the main road. Picking up her phone, she now saw the notifications of the repeated phone calls from Anlon and Pebbles.
Jumping back on the radio, Jennifer called the Dispatcher and requested she patch a call through to Anlon’s number. No answer. She then requested the dispatcher try Pebbles’ number. On the second ring, a clearly distraught Pebbles angrily answered, “About F-ing time!”
“Sorry, no excuse. Where are you?”
“Where do you think? I’m going to the quarry!”
“Don’t do that Pebbles. We got this. Plenty of help on the way. I’m close, I’ll be there in like five minutes,” Jennifer reassured her.
“I’m closer. I’ll be there in two minutes,” Pebbles snapped back.
“Pebbles, seriously. This is the real deal. Wait for me, okay?”
“Hurry!” Pebbles implored, her voice cracking as she disconnected.
XXIV
BITTER JUSTICE
Anlon arrived at the abandoned quarry and noticed a solitary minivan in the makeshift gravel parking lot. While he sat in the Chevy working up the courage to step out of the SUV, he scanned the area but didn’t see anyone about.
On the drive to the quarry, Anlon contemplated his strategy. First line of defense, he thought, stall until the police arrive. While Pacal had been clear not to call the police, Anlon had no intention of facing a killer all by himself.
As a second line of defense, Anlon left the map and Master Stone at the house. He had no intention of handing any of it over to Pacal. He even removed the map and Stones from the safe before he left the house and hid them all in the kitchen freezer under a few bags of frozen vegetables in case Pacal purposely lured him away from the house to have Thatcher swoop in and steal the relics.
Well, all but one Stone, the Port Stone. That was his last line of defense. It surely was a leap of faith, but Anlon believed it might protect him against the Sound Stone. Recalling his earlier experiment, Anlon thought it might be possible to disrupt the Sound Stone’s waves by holding the Port Stone in front of him if and when Pacal tried to use
it against him.
It was too much to hope that Pacal would get close enough for the Port Stone’s repulsive face to tear the Sound Stone from his clutch but, at a distance, it might weaken or deflect an attack. Or so Anlon hoped. He marked a large X on the stone’s repulsive side with a sharpie before shoving it in his jeans pocket on his way out of the house.
Realizing he was out of time, Anlon stepped out of the rental car and cautiously walked towards the other vehicle, his hand in his right front jeans pocket, gripping the Port Stone.
Reaching the minivan, Anlon peered inside. It was empty.
Further ahead, Anlon heard Pacal’s voice call out, “Up here Dr. Anlon.”
Following the sound, Anlon spotted a trail leading up the terraced wall of the quarry. He hadn’t seen it at first, as the trail was hidden by a stand of scrubby, gnarled trees. And though Pacal seemed to know he had arrived, Anlon couldn’t see Pacal from where he stood.
Pacing slowly towards the trail, Anlon silently prayed that Pebbles had reached Jennifer. His footsteps crunched the rocky trail, the sound echoing against the quarry wall. A hundred yards up the path, Anlon arrived at a rock-enclosed clearing.
There stood Pacal Flores, a menacing sneer on his face and Sound Stone in one hand. Behind him, Anabel Simpson rested against the rock wall. Her arms were taped behind her back and her eyes were wild with terror.
“You are late Dr. Anlon. Where is the map and Stones?” Pacal bitterly challenged.
Ignoring Pacal, Anlon focused his attention on Anabel. “Are you okay, Anabel?”
Her mouth quivered and she nodded. She was too scared to speak.
“Forget about the woman Dr. Anlon. Where are my Stones and the map?!”
Anlon approached closer to Pacal. Though the proud Peruvian was deadly with a Sound Stone, he was smaller and much older than Anlon. If he could stay close to Pacal, Anlon hoped he might tackle him before he could use the weapon.
Pacal shouted, “That’s close enough. Answer my question!”
Shadows of the Stone Benders (The Anlon Cully Chronicles Book 1) Page 30