Committed

by E. H. Reinhard

  When the footage ended, I looked at Beth, standing next to me. “Feel like taking a walk?” I asked. “We need to try to follow in their footsteps and see where they went. Maybe we can pick up their trail there through the weeds and brush.”

  “I’m in,” Beth said.

  “I’ll join you,” Lieutenant Hampton said. “I have a number of years under my belt, tracking game. It might help in picking up a trail.”

  “Sure,” I said and started for the door.

  “You may want to have a change of clothes. Some low-lying areas back there—guessing we’ll hit mud,” the lieutenant said.

  “We’ll deal with it later,” I said.

  “I’d deal with it now,” Hampton said. “She isn’t going to get very far in those.” He pointed at Beth’s shoes, which were a pair of pumps with small heels. “And those shoes are going to be an issue as well.” He pointed at my square-tipped black leather dress shoes, which had completely flat bottoms without tread.

  The manager piped up. “We have shoes, clothes, whatever you need here.”

  Beth looked at me. “Sizes, quick,” she said.

  “Huh?” I asked.

  “Waist size, shoe size.”

  “Um, thirty-four and twelve.”

  “I’ll be right back.” Beth hustled from the room and returned a few minutes later to toss me a pair of jeans and hiking boots. She held more under her arm.

  The manager checked us out at the customer-service counter below, we quickly changed, and Beth took our business clothes out to the car while the lieutenant and I waited for her at the front entrance. She returned, and the manager led us to the back of the building and the door to which Nick and Molly had fled from. We walked out and to the left, toward the shipping container the pair had climbed up in order to scale the fence.

  “Keep an eye open for anything that may have been tossed,” I said and got nods from the lieutenant and Beth.

  We reached the container, and I boosted Beth up, just as Nick Frane had done for Molly McCoy in the video. She waited at the top of the container for Hampton and me to climb up. After we got up there, the top of the fence separating the back of the superstore from the field on the other side was just about at my knee level.

  “Seeing anything up here?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Beth said.

  I looked down the other side of the fence—about a ten foot drop—and then brought my line of sight back up. Directly to our right and still extending in front of us was the back parking lot of some kind of commercial business. Trailers littered the lot. Directly past it and to the south was a golf course in the distance. To our left was a tree line about a half mile away across the brush and weeds. I saw some water mixed in with the brush we’d be walking through, a handful of trees scattered about, and some areas that looked like sand or dirt.

  The lieutenant pointed off to the southeast. “What we had on video was them heading that direction. That neighborhood we spoke of is behind that tree line there. See the street on our side of that golf course?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “It would run you straight into the backside of that neighborhood if it went through,” Hampton said.

  “All right, let’s get a move on,” Beth said. She swung a leg over the top of the fence, held on to the top with an overhand grip, and put her other leg over. Then she lowered herself and dropped to the ground before either the lieutenant or I could assist her.

  We both stared down at her, impressed by her agility.

  “Are you guys coming or what?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” I swung my leg up and transferred myself over the fence in the same fashion Beth had though I was fairly certain I lacked the grace she’d displayed. My feet hit the ground with a thud and sank an inch or two into the earth. I took a few steps back to regain my balance.

  The lieutenant came over next in the same wobbly fashion. The gear on his duty belt clanked together as he hit the ground. The three of us pulled our service weapons and headed south. I took a quick look at my watch to get the time. The scrappy weeds and brush were knee high and rose to our midsections within a hundred feet. Beth and I followed Lieutenant Hampton, who appeared to know where he was going. Another twenty feet ahead, he veered a bit to his right around a small berm filled with sand. Hampton pointed down. The sand had been disturbed and looked kicked to the side by a pair of shoe prints—one print was noticeably larger than the other.

  “Prints in the sand trap,” he said

  “Sand trap?” Beth asked.

  “Where the supercenter sits right now used to be another eighteen holes of that golf course there.” Hampton jerked his head to the south. “The golf course sold it off to the developers. They only needed half of the area for the building, so this is the part of the course that got reclaimed by nature. Thus the ponds and sand traps.”

  The terrain made a bit more sense then.

  Hampton crouched to get a better look at the footprints. Then he rose and said, “This way.”

  Beth and I followed. Ahead of Lieutenant Hampton, the brush was bent and a bit spread to the sides—I imagined that was from the couple making their way through. My feet began to slip a bit and sink with each step. I looked down to see our feet sinking into the brown mud. I also saw prints in the mud out in front of Hampton.

  He stopped again. “One of them went down here.”

  Beth and I hustled to Hampton’s back for a look. A patch of brush was lying flat, bent over at the ground and covered in mud. “It looks like they started straight south from here. They were probably trying to get to the street.” He continued walking.

  Beth and I trudged through the mud and brush behind the lieutenant until we hit the street a few minutes later. We stopped at the road’s edge directly across from the golf course, which appeared empty. I glanced at my watch—seven minutes had passed.

  “Is that their muddy footprints?” Beth asked. She pointed up the street to the east.

  “Looks like it. Yeah. Come on,” Lieutenant Hampton said. He started east down the street.

  Beth and I followed him up onto the old road, which bowed up in the center. The concrete had patches of blacktop filling potholes. I stamped my feet to free the wet muck from the soles of my boots. The mud had spattered my new jeans almost to my knees.

  I looked off to my right. “Did you have any cars check with the golf course or golfers?” I asked Lieutenant Hampton.

  “I sent a car over, yeah. No sightings of them.”

  I looked forward, to the east, down the road we were following. The muddy footprints from the couple disappeared. The street turned to gravel, almost as if it became a driveway fifty yards ahead. The gravel ended at the tree line. After another few steps, I spotted the green roof of a big farmhouse and confirmed that the road did in fact turn into a driveway for the home, tucked into the trees.

  “Has someone checked this place?” I asked.

  “This was the first place we looked as soon as we saw the direction they headed. The homeowners said they’d been home all day but didn’t see or hear anyone back here,” Hampton said. “Just after the end of this gravel driveway here and through that patch of woods is the neighborhood.”

  I glanced back over my shoulder, no longer hearing the crunching of Beth’s feet on the gravel behind me. She wasn’t there. I stopped, turned around, and then spotted her half into the bushes along the right side of the gravel driveway.

  Beth popped back out with what looked like a gray hooded sweatshirt in her hand. “Well, this is where they went. This looks like the sweatshirt Nick Frane was wearing in the video.” Beth turned the sweatshirt in her hands. “Fresh mud all over the right side of it.” Beth ran her hand through the front pocket of the sweatshirt and then tossed it down. “Nothing in the pocket.” She went back into the bushes and reached down toward the ground. She popped back out with a carton of cigarettes and held them up.

  “That’s theirs all right. We have him on video walking with them
from the gas station out front of the store,” Hampton said.

  Beth tossed them down next to the sweatshirt and walked back to the lieutenant and me. “Do you just want to have someone from your department collect that?” Beth asked.

  Hampton nodded.

  We continued up the driveway until it turned left directly in front of the house. I glanced over. The home looked the better part of a hundred years old. The big white farmhouse was two stories with a small front porch. A few children’s toys were scattered on the grass. A tire swing hung from a single large tree at the front. Back behind the house was a small shed that looked equally as old. A man stood at the back of an exceptionally nice nineteen-seventies orange-and-white pickup truck backed up near the house. The truck was lifted on big tires, but not so big as to look out of proportion. I imagined the man had put some serious time into the restoration.

  He looked over at us and tossed us a wave. “Help you?”

  The three of us walked over. He sat down on the open tailgate on the tonneau covered bed of his truck.

  “Afternoon,” Lieutenant Hampton said.

  He gave us a nod. “Still looking, I assume,” he said. The man wore a blue hooded sweatshirt and jeans. A mesh-backed baseball cap sat on his head with a bit of brown hair curling out from around the cap’s sides.

  “We are,” the lieutenant said.

  Beth and I introduced ourselves to the man as FBI. The guy said his name was Jim Rieger.

  “Yeah, a couple of officers came through here a half hour or so ago. They said they were looking for a man and a woman. I let the guys have a look around the property, but I’ll tell you, just like I told them, I’ve been outside here all day and haven’t seen anyone. My wife told them she heard some dogs barking coming from the subdivision through the trees there.” The man pointed to the east.

  “Is she here?” I asked.

  “Babe!” the man yelled. “Catherine!” he yelled again.

  A moment later, a woman appeared from the front screen door of the house and stood on the porch. The door clanked shut at her back. She stared down at us. Her dark-brown hair hung down along the sides of her thin face.

  “Tell them what you told the other officers,” the man said.

  The woman cleared her throat, and her first couple of words crackled. “I just said that I heard some dogs barking earlier, maybe about forty-five minutes to an hour ago, I guess. I didn’t think much of it. I think it was coming from maybe the second house down. I couldn’t really tell.”

  “And the sound was coming from the other neighborhood back there, you said?” Beth asked.

  The woman cleared her throat again and nodded.

  “There’s actually a little path that goes right through,” the man said. “I see some of the subdivision kids come through every now and then. They cut through and then head on down the road. Probably going to one of the restaurants or stores or something out on the main street.”

  “Show us,” the lieutenant said.

  The man walked from the back of the truck and led the way to where his driveway ended. He pointed through the trees, down a one-foot-wide path that stretched out about fifty feet back. A street was visible on the other end.

  “If they came down my drive, they must have been running and dipped through there while my back was turned or something.”

  “They definitely came up your driveway,” Beth said. “We found some articles of clothing of theirs in the bushes right back there.” Beth turned and pointed toward where she’d found the sweatshirt.

  “The other officers thought the same and then went to check the golf course. Who knows, maybe they saw me outside and hightailed it through the woods into the subdivision.”

  “This is probably too close to where they knew we’d immediately look,” the lieutenant said.

  “What’s the deal with these two that you’re looking for? I mean, is this something my wife and I should be worried about?”

  I wanted to tell the guy how lucky he was that two wanted murderers had passed over his property but remained quiet.

  “They’re extremely dangerous,” Beth said.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “You better hope your husband puts on an Academy Award–winning performance down there and gets rid of them, or both you and this little shit’s brains are going to be all over that wall,” Molly said. She held the sniffling boy directly in front of herself, her hand over the boy’s mouth to keep his sobbing quiet. “What’s it looking like out there, baby?” she asked.

  Nick held the woman in front of him with the barrel of his gun pressed into her side. The woman didn’t cry—she’d been silent and dry-eyed since a few minutes after the pair had arrived at the house an hour prior. He pulled the woman to the window and quickly looked down at the group talking near the porch. “He’s talking to the cops.” Nick put his mouth near the woman’s ear and walked backward from the window, dragging her along. “He better get rid of them soon. I actually think my girl there is looking for a reason to kill your son.” He jammed the gun into her ribs harder. He felt the woman jerk.

  “Babe!” a voice shouted. “Catherine!” the man called again.

  “If I don’t go down, those cops are going to come inside,” the woman said, the first words she’d spoken since Molly had ordered her to quit crying and shut up if she didn’t want her son strangled to death in front of her.

  Nick pushed her away. “Get rid of them. Same story you gave the other cops. Anything cute, and little Ricky here gets it.”

  “His name is Mark,” she said.

  “His name is going to be Dead if you don’t get down there and get rid of those cops.” Nick waved her from the room with the barrel of his gun. She walked toward her son and reached out for him.

  “Bitch, I will shoot you in the face if you touch him,” Molly said, taking the gun from the sniveling kid’s temple and pointing it directly at the woman.

  The woman mouthed I’ll be right back to her son, turned, and walked out.

  “That bitch is going to talk,” Molly said. “Let’s just take the group out from up here before it’s too late. We have the upper hand here.”

  Nick remained quiet, in thought. He heard the screen door downstairs clank against its frame.

  “Baby, come on. There’s only three of them.” Molly positioned herself to the side of the window. “They won’t even shoot back. Not if there’s a kid in here. Look”—she pointed the barrel of her gun at the window and down—“boom, boom, and boom. They’re dead, we take the guy’s truck, and we leave.”

  “No,” Nick said. “They’ve been following instructions. I told them if they played it cool, we’d leave them unharmed.”

  “You weren’t actually serious about that, were you? Let’s just kill them, kill the cops, and go.”

  “No, Molly. We’re doing this my way. These two won’t risk us hurting their kid.”

  “This little rat? Look at this kid. He pissed his pants. He’s been whining like a little girl since we got here.”

  Molly removed her hand from the kid’s mouth, and he began crying and taking huge gulps of air. The boy started a sustained wail that was gradually growing in volume.

  “Shut him up,” Nick said with a clenched jaw.

  Molly replaced her hand over the kid’s mouth, silencing him. “I’m just saying. I think we should just kill everyone and leave.”

  “Yeah, I heard you each time you said that. And that’s not what we’re doing. We start shooting, and the noise will draw more cops.”

  “So we kill them too,” Molly said.

  “Enough, Molly. Just do what I say.”

  Nick went to the window and looked out. The homeowner pushed himself from the tailgate of his truck and led the cops toward the end of the driveway. The screen door clanked against the frame again, followed by footsteps headed upstairs. Nick lifted his weapon and pointed it at the doorway. The woman walked through. “He’s leading them away. I told them the same thing I told the other cops—I
heard dogs barking in the other subdivision. They don’t suspect anything.”

  “You better damn well hope they don’t,” Molly said.

  Nick took a few steps toward the woman, grabbed her by the arm, and yanked her to him. He wrapped his left arm around her chest, pulled her back into him, and stuck his gun against her side. Nick walked her back to the edge of the window and watched her husband and the cops looking into the tree line at the back corner of the property.

  Molly stared at Nick. Nick returned her stare. Molly’s nose twitched, and her eyes narrowed.

  “What?” Nick asked.

  “Nothing,” Molly said.

  “Don’t tell me nothing. I can see it on your face.”

  “You don’t value my opinion. Just do what I say? What kind of way is that for you to talk to me? We could have killed those pigs and been out of here already.”

  “Baby, let’s just handle this my way.”

  “Yeah, exactly. Do things your way, and what I think doesn’t matter.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Sounds exactly like that to me.”

  “Don’t make a thing out of this, Molly,” Nick said.

  “More orders? Yes, sir.” She mumbled the word prick under her breath.

  He shook his head. “Did you just call me a prick?”

  Molly shrugged. “I call it like I see it.”

  “Really? Yeah, you’re a real genius when it comes with staying under the radar. Maybe we should light the house on fire so everyone knows exactly where we are?”

  Molly let out a puff of air through her nose. “Go to hell.”

  “Come on. This isn’t the time for this shit,” Nick said. “Get it together.”

  “Get it together? Meaning I don’t have it together?”

  “Quit, Molly.”

  “Whatever. You’re in charge. Let’s just sit here. I’m sure you’re enjoying having that bitch all pressed up against you.”

  Nick snapped his head away from the window and looked at Molly. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m just making an observation. I think it looks like you’re enjoying having her that close to you,” Molly said. “Probably turning you on.”