Time.
Colleen negotiated the rocky incline carefully in relative gloom. Her eyes had adjusted; shadows were distinguishable. She stepped carefully.
Up past an outcropping sat a multi-room cabin, next to a square, windowless cinderblock hut that had a sign on the door from the Bureau of Land Management informing the public to stay out. The hut was covered with graffiti and the door had been locked for some time, judging by the layers of corrosion on the lock.
She approached the cabin from the side, staying low along the rocks, hidden in shadows. There were fresh footprints everywhere, and she noted smaller ones, sneaker prints, small enough to belong to a girl Melanie’s age. Her chest pumped with anxiety.
As she drew closer, she saw what looked to be a plastic bucket by the front door.
She heard a man snoring inside.
She stopped. Gathered herself together.
She went around the side, past a boarded-up window, to the back of the cabin. To an unbroken window. The glass was misted with condensation on the inside.
Someone was in that room.
Mustering her nerve, she slowly, slowly, slowly raised her head. Peeked in.
In the small, decrepit room she saw the outline of a wire bedframe. The moonlight allowed Colleen a view of a young girl, her hands handcuffed over her head to the metal headboard. The girl lay on her back, motionless. A blanket had been thrown over her but her bare feet stuck out. A bucket sat by the bed, along with a milk carton and a bowl with a spoon in it.
No one else in the room. The door was shut.
The bedframe creaked as the girl moved, looking up at the window, sensing someone.
Melanie Cook. Her face was dirty. Her dark pageboy was disheveled and matted, but it was the same girl. Colleen caught a glimpse of her haunted eyes before she ducked back down below the windowsill.
“Help me!” Melanie cried. “Please help me!”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Colleen’s chest pounded as she squatted under the window to Melanie’s room. Inside the girl continued to shout for help.
“Help me! Please—help me!”
Colleen’s heart went out to the poor child.
Inside the cabin, two men conversed in hurried voices. Footsteps pounded the floorboards. On the far side of the cabin, the front door screeched open.
Someone coming out to investigate. Colleen’s nerves ratcheted up.
Crouching, she drew her Bersa, turned to face the corner of the cabin. Waited.
Heavy boots came her way, thudding on the ground. The big man.
Meanwhile, she heard the door in Melanie’s room inside fly open, hit a wall.
“What the fuck are you up to now?” an Englishman growled. He had a Cockney accent. Ev. She detected the light from a handheld lantern shifting.
The boots coming along the side of the cabin toward Colleen slowed as they drew closer.
Colleen readied her pistol. Flicked the safety off. Her hand vibrated with tension. In her other hand, she gripped her flashlight.
The big man’s heavy breathing was close by.
“Who’s there?” he said.
She held her breath, ready. Her left thumb was on the flashlight switch.
Inside the room, Ev struck Melanie with a blow that made Colleen flinch. “You want the gag again, do you? You know how much you enjoyed not being able to breathe.”
Melanie cried out.
“I should just let you bloody die!” He slapped her again. Melanie screamed, making Colleen’s wrath boil over. “Shut up!” he yelled. “Shut the bloody fuck up!”
Melanie whimpered.
“Be quiet or I’ll let the wolves have you!”
Melanie fell silent.
A large shadow darkened the corner of the cabin where Colleen squatted.
She saw the outline of the sawed-off shotgun.
She brought the Bersa up fast as she flipped on the flashlight, aimed the light into the eyes of a melon-size head full of grizzled stubble. The man squinted.
She fired just before he did.
He flinched back as his shotgun went off, up close, deafening, but thankfully, off-kilter. Even so, her left arm took a good portion of the blast, sending her to the ground with a thump. The flashlight tumbled away, the shaft of light rolling off into darkness.
She righted herself, head swimming, shut one eye, kept firing.
Each subsequent snap of the .22 caliber pistol made the big man balk, one bullet hitting him in the cheek, another taking out his right eye. Screaming, he reared back, shotgun flying off into the shadows. He clawed at his face like an enraged bear and fell to the ground with a wallop.
Wounded arm buzzing, Colleen scrambled to her feet. Her head reeled from the blast. The big man lay facedown, motionless in mortal surrender. She looked over in horror at her left arm. The leather sleeve of her bomber jacket was torn away. Blood soaked through. Her arm was warm and numb.
She sucked in steady gasps, reclaiming her sense of equilibrium.
She had to get Melanie out of there.
“Stop right there!” the Cockney voice said.
She turned, saw a tall skinny man with cropped blond hair, shirtless, wearing leather pants, barefoot. Maybe in his thirties. The same guy who had been at Steve’s flat that night. With Lynda.
Ev Cole.
He was holding a very large revolver, aimed directly at her. His bicep was wrapped in a sloppy, amateur bandage where Lynda must have shot him. It didn’t seem to slow him down.
He gave a sneer.
“Lose the bloody pop gun.” He motioned at the Bersa in her hand. “Now.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Heart thrashing, Colleen dropped the Bersa. A puff of dust erupted at her feet. She still had the knife taped to her ankle.
Inside the cabin, she heard Melanie crying anew.
“Hands up,” Ev said, gesturing with his gun.
It wasn’t easy getting her left arm up. She managed it halfway. It throbbed with a deep ache. Warm blood sopped inside the padded lining.
Ev came over, looked at the big man on the ground, stone still.
“You fucking killed him.” He turned to Colleen, seemingly incredulous, before his mouth twisted into an ugly grimace, and he swiped the pistol at her. She got her left arm up, which took the brunt of the blow, but he still managed to catch her ear. It stung. She went back down, curled up in a half-crouch, covering her head with her numbing hand as he swung at her again. Now she felt a warm trickle run down her chin. Her ear buzzed.
“You’re that bloody bitch!” he shouted. “The one working with Steve.”
“People know where I am,” she panted. “Let Melanie Cook go. Let her go and you’ve got a chance to avoid the death penalty.” California had just reinstated the death penalty that year.
“And what makes you think you’re going to bloody live?”
He lashed out at her with the gun, catching her head one more time, despite her hand curled over her skull. A jolt of pain shot down one side. She thought she might lose consciousness.
He started kicking her with his bare feet.
She rolled into a ball as he kicked and grasped her right ankle. The side of his foot connected with her back. The pain soaked into her, making her shout out uncontrollably.
Pulling up the leg of her jeans, she grabbed the plastic handle of the steak knife, yanking the knife free from the adhesive tape while he swooped in again with the gun, striking her on the shoulder.
“You cunt!”
Rolled up in a ball, she gripped the knife in both hands between her knees while he beat and kicked, discreetly pulling the protective layer of napkin off the blade. She felt the blade slice her finger like a razor.
He came in with his foot again, aiming for her head.
She dodged the kick, rotated around his foot in the dirt, quick, coming up like a cobra, the steak knife in both hands.
She brought the knife down on top of his bare foot.
A stomach-turnin
g crunch of bone and gristle culminated in an air-piecing scream as she put all her weight down into the blade, twisting, pinning his foot to the ground.
He dropped the gun, howling, trying to pull his foot free from the dirt.
She scrambled for the gun, a big revolver, heavy, got hold of it.
Hopping up, she jumped back, disoriented with pain, her fragmented equilibrium rocking her vision from side to side. She was warm with blood. It dripped off her gun hand.
Ev finally yanked his foot free from the hard ground. The blade stuck out of the sole as he hopped, blood flying in an arc, splattering her. He turned, limping away on one good leg, the toes of his pierced foot like a demented ballet dancer. His grunts kept a gruesome cadence to his hobbled movements.
She pulled the hammer back with her thumb, aimed with both hands, squinted, gritted her teeth before she shot him in the back of his good leg. The boom of the big pistol reverberated off the nearby rocks, across the mountain pass, then faded.
Ev went down, screaming. He clutched his wounded leg.
She stood up, head spinning, went over. She’d blown out the back of the knee. She aimed the gun at his other knee.
“No!” he screamed. “Please! Please!”
Holding the gun with both hands, she squinted.
“Where are the keys to the handcuffs?” she growled. “The ones holding Melanie to that bed?”
“In my … pocket,” he wheezed.
“Get them out. Anything funny, you’re crippled for life. Got that?”
He shook his head in a thousand yesses as he struggled to get a hand into his pocket. He fumbled the key out. She took it, slimy with blood.
Throbbing with pain, she stumbled over to the dead man, hunted around his motionless corpse until she found her Bersa. She slipped it in her back pocket. She located her flashlight, turned it on. Eventually, she recovered the sawed-off shotgun. She tossed it off into the rocks, where Ev couldn’t get to it. She went back to Ev, moaning as he clutched his leg. Blood had pooled in the dirt underneath his knee, glinting in the moonlight.
He wasn’t going anywhere.
“Make a move and I’ll come back and take the other knee,” she said. “You’ll never walk again.”
“Got it!” he gulped, clutching himself. “Got it!”
She turned, dizzied, staggered to the house. Sleeping bags were rumpled on the sofa, and on a blow-up mattress on the floor. Cans and bottles were scattered everywhere. A hash pipe sat in an ashtray. Colleen stuck the big gun down the front of her jeans. It was heavy and awkward and warm.
She could hear Melanie whimpering in the back, amidst the hissing of a lantern. She followed the lantern light into the back room.
Melanie looked up at her like a frightened animal.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Colleen said, hobbling over to the bed, setting the flashlight down. “It’s okay now.”
She unlocked the girl’s trembling wrists from the restraints and Melanie immediately curled into her arms, rocking. Colleen immediately recalled Pamela, her own daughter, the day she found her after her ex had abused her.
The day she had killed him.
This day felt similar. But this day would be different. Melanie would recover. She would make sure.
“It’s okay, now,” Colleen said, stroking the girl’s greasy, limp hair, kissing her sticky forehead. “It’s okay.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
“There’s your father, sweetheart,” Colleen said.
It had been a little over a day since Sheep Hole.
She and Melanie stood with a social worker who had a long gleaming black braided ponytail hanging over the back of a blue jacket that read SF COUNTY CHILD CARE AND FAMILY SERVICES, at the top of the steps on the wide entranceway to 850 Bryant. It was after 11:00 a.m. and the sun was fighting to get through the clouds.
Steve had just emerged through the doors, fresh from jail. He wore the same jeans and T-shirt they had arrested him in and a week’s worth of beard. But a broad smile punched through it when he saw Melanie.
He came striding over to where she stood between the social worker and Colleen.
“Hello, Mel!” he said, bending down in an attempt to meet her gaze. Melanie turned her face to the cement. She wore turned-up denims and a large gray-hooded sweatshirt with a big front pocket, an outfit courtesy of the City. She was still pale and emaciated from her days of confinement. The cuts on her wrists from the handcuffs were bandaged.
“Don’t you want to say hello to your father, Melanie?” Colleen said, earning a glare from the social worker.
Melanie stared at the ground. “Hi,” she whispered.
“Hello, love,” Steve said. “It’s bloody good to see you.” He ruffled her hair.
The social worker shot Steve a hard stare.
“Sorry,” he said, pulling his hand back.
“She’s been through an incredible ordeal,” the woman said.
“I know.” Steve’s hands went up in a motion of appeasement. “But she is my daughter, yeah?”
The social worker frowned at Steve. “We can leave whenever you want, Melanie,” she said, keeping her eye on Steve. “There’s no pressure.”
“Okay,” Melanie said.
“Do you want to leave?” the social worker said.
Colleen wanted to punch the woman’s lights out. Steve was being treated as a pariah because of his time in jail, and his perceived failure that led to Melanie’s kidnap. But arguing the point here and now would not help Steve and Melanie’s situation. And her wrist and hand throbbed with pain from protecting herself from the pistol-whipping. Her left arm was heavily bandaged under a denim jacket, her old beloved bomber jacket bloody and beyond repair from the shotgun blast that—thankfully—had not shattered bone. Her bruised face was bandaged along the left side of her jaw and mottled with cuts and abrasions. A lump on the side of her head pulsated. But she was alive. More than. As the song went, she wasn’t looking too good but feeling real well.
“How are you holding up, Mel?” Steve said to Melanie.
“Okay,” she said to the gray cement.
“I’m proud of you, yeah? For getting through that nightmare. It’s going to get better from here on. Everything’s going to be fine. You’ll see.”
Melanie did not look up.
An awkward silence was broken by the constant rush of traffic on Bryant. An ambulance screamed.
“I think that’s enough for today,” the social worker said.
“What?” Steve said. “I was hoping we could grab a bite.”
“I don’t think so,” the social worker said.
Steve sighed. “When do I get to see her again?”
“We have to schedule it.”
“Can we have a bit more time next time?” Steve said. “Perhaps go to lunch?”
“We’ll see.”
“Make sure you allocate plenty of time,” Steve said. “Mel eats quite a bit.”
Melanie looked up with a glower, then gave a weak smile.
Steve winked at her. “Thanks for coming to get your old man out of the nick, Mel.”
She stared at the ground again. “Yeah. Sure.”
The social worker led Melanie down the stairs.
Steve cupped his hands around his mouth. “Love you, Mel!”
The two stepped down and into a white Crown Victoria that read SF CITY AND COUNTY on the door.
They drove off.
“Fuck it,” Steve said, frowning.
“She’s just a kid, Steve,” Colleen said. “She’s feeling sheepish about what she did to you.” Colleen hoped she was, anyway. “She probably feels partially responsible for her mother’s death, too.”
Steve nodded. His eyes were glistening. “Got any smokes?”
Colleen dug out an unopened pack of Lucky Strikes, handed it to him. “I didn’t think you could handle Virginia Slims. Your prison buddies might see you.”
“Ta, love.” He ripped the pack open, pulled a cig into his mouth, tore a match
, lit up. “Thanks for organizing Mel’s visit.”
“Sorry it only lasted about thirty seconds.”
“As the bishop said to the actress.”
Colleen laughed, checked her watch. “It’s 5:00 p.m. somewhere. Want to get a drink? Or two?”
“I’ve been in the nick for days,” Steve said. “What do you bloody think?”
“That I should have sold my Budweiser stock? But then I remembered, I don’t own any stock.”
“There’s only one problem,” Steve said. “I’m skint. Flat broke.”
“No, you’re not,” Colleen said.
“How do you figure that, then?”
“I found a gray gym bag in Ev’s cabin,” Colleen said, smiling.
Steve’s eyes rounded in surprise. “My twenty K?”
“Most of it,” she said. “Nineteen thousand, three hundred and forty dollars.” She gave a crafty smile. “I forgot to mention it when I made my statement. I’ve got it safely stashed away. Now you don’t owe Octavien nearly so much.”
“You, madam, are a bloody miracle.”
“Ah,” Steve said, setting an empty pint glass down on the bar. He eyed Colleen, stirring her double gin and tonic with a plastic swizzle stick. “Ready for another?”
“I only got this one about ninety seconds ago,” she said. She took a sip. Ice cold, loaded up with Gordon’s. Perfect. She savored the pain-killing effect.
Noon. The Pitt was still near empty. Gray light filtered in and neon beer signs prevailed for ambiance. The jukebox played “Hot Blooded.”
“You might need another, love,” Steve said, sipping from a fresh pint as he gave her a sympathetic smile over the top of his glass. “You look a bit torn and frayed.”
“You should see the other guy,” she said. “Guys.”
Ev was barely walking, his knee shattered, as he recovered down at the Arrowhead Medical Center under 24-hour guard. And Ben James, the big man who had been his accomplice at Sheep Hole, Duffle Coat, was flat out in the morgue.
And then there was the little guy, who lost out to an SF Muni bus.
Lynda Cook was the fourth victim.
“I don’t know how you did it, Colleen,” Steve said. “But you did. I’m forever in your debt. You saved my daughter. Even if she never speaks to me again.”
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