by Cliff Black
I said, “You’d better talk to someone else, Arthur. If I take the cuffs off it will be to stake you over an ant hill.”
Ezzy came to the other side of the tree and said, “New Mexico wants us to leave the four-wheeler and the trailer as undisturbed as possible. They say it’s okay to take the girl home, and they want us to take McLaughlin to Durango. Someone from Farmington, and probably the FBI, will meet us there.”
I reached in the trailer, turned off the light, stuffed the broken screen back in place and closed the trailer door. I jerked McLaughlin to his feet and said, “Okay, turkey, let’s go.” I shoved him roughly through the tree branches--rather hoping they’d scratch his eyes out.
When we got to the vehicles, Ezzy said, “I think I’ve got a better idea about how to do this, Geronimo. Put McLaughlin in your pickup and give me the keys and his .45. I’ll drive him.”
“Okay,” I said, “but you be careful with my new pickup.” I handed him the gun and the keys, took McLaughlin to my pickup and brought the girls back.
“You girls ride with Billy in this rig,” Ezzy said to Nat. “He’s young and handsome. All of you should enjoy that.”
Nat looked inside and said half under her breath, “Oh, yeah? We’ve met.”
Ezzy turned to me and said, “If you’ll go with Billy too, I’ll follow along behind with your truck and McLaughlin. I want to have a little chat with that pompous ass.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Billy was driving a Ford Bronco. I pulled the seat forward, and the girls clambered into the back. I got in front and introduced myself to Billy. I assumed he was the cop that had been “hitting on” Nat.
Ezzy came to my window. I rolled it down and he said, “Wait for me at the cop shop in Ignacio. My chopper’s gone home. I’m gonna need a ride to Cortez.”
Billy enjoyed having the girls in back of his rig. I saw him adjust the mirror and then keep glancing at it. He can’t have been able to see much in the dark. I think the girls, especially Melanie, were too shook up to appreciate a handsome driver.
When we got near the state line my cell phone came to life, so I handed it back to Melanie and said, “Call your mom.” Melanie was still on the phone when we came to half a dozen cop cars and Carter’s Cherokee parked helter-skelter on and off the road right at the border. Ezzy had disappeared from sight behind us. I suspected he'd stopped to have his little chat. As we slowed and then pulled over, I saw Carter in the back seat of one of the Ute Police cars.
“Stop here a minute,” I said to Billy. “I need to talk to that one.” I turned to Nat and said, “Let me borrow your .38.” She dug it out of her purse and handed it to me. I got out, jammed the revolver in my back pocket, and walked to the patrol car containing Carter. He was half sideways on the seat with his hands cuffed behind him.
I jerked the door open and said, “Didn’t I warn you about coming back here?”
“Try it and see what happens,” Carter said. “You’ve got nothing on me. You can’t do anything anyway. There are witnesses this time. You think you’re a hot shot, but I’ll be on the first plane out of this jerk water place tomorrow morning.”
“I think not. Kidnapping, impersonating an officer, assault, hauling a woman across state lines. Did I miss anything?”
“You’re out of your mind. I had nothing to do with any of that, and you can’t prove otherwise.”
“Don’t go away, Carter. I’ll be right back.”
I walked to where a knot of officers were talking and asked, “Who’s in charge here?”
They looked at each other and shrugged. Finally one said, “Hey, man, we’re all private citizens here. The state line’s across the road.”
“I’m Daniel Corbin,” I said. “I’d like to borrow your prisoner for a few minutes.”
“Daniel Corbin!” one of the Ute cops said. “Then you’re the guy who staked that smart ass Carter over an ant bed. That was cool, man.”
“No problem. I was happy to do it.” I wondered how they knew. I guess word gets around.
A deputy sheriff spoke up and said, “Mr. Carter didn’t learn much from that experience. Why don’t you take him behind the woodshed and teach him some manners?”
“That’s kinda what I had in mind if no one objects,” I said and turned to go.
Someone called to me as I got to the patrol car, “You got a gun?” I patted my back pocket. He said, “If he tries to escape, shoot him. We all saw him run.”
The car window was open, and I knew Carter heard the exchange. I opened the door, reached in and grabbed him by the collar of his spiffy jacket, and dragged him out.
“Now how do you feel about your chances of being on that airplane,” I said.
“You can’t do this” Carter said. “You have no authority here. You’ll lose your license.”
“You are a slow learner, Philo. Now head up the hill into the trees.”
“No way, Corbin. You can’t make me.” He dropped to his knees in the dirt.
“If you’d rather not walk, that’s okay too,” I said.
I grabbed the back of his collar and proceeded to drag him up the hill. About the second time I drug his face across a bush he said, “Okay, okay, I’ll walk.” I let him get his feet under him then grabbed the seat of his pants and turkey walked him the rest of the way.
When we were out of earshot of the officers down by the road, I turned Philo around, picked up a sharp rock, and said, “We can do this easy, or we can make it hard. You either answer my questions, or I’ll start on your kneecaps and finish with your fingers.”
Carter stared at me there in the moonlight for a minute and then said, “I believe you’d do it.”
“You know dang well I would.”
“That rich old tyrant isn’t worth getting crippled over. What do you want to know?”
“I want to know what’s going on.”
“I don’t know what the old man’s plan was. I was hired to find the girl,” Carter said.
“And kidnap her, and deliver her out here?”
“No, er, well, yeah, he wanted me to do that too, only he never asked me to do it until after I found her.”
“You’ll do anything for money, huh?” I said.
“I didn’t do it, Corbin. I refused.”
I looked at him a minute and then said, “So who did he get to do it, Jimmy Smith?”
“You knew about him? He’s the one took her all right, but McLaughlin didn't hire him to do it. He'd only just flown in this morning.”
I had to wonder about that. “Did you meet McLaughlin at the airport?” I asked.
He didn’t answer for a minute, and the moonlight was sufficient for me to see that the question opened new possibilities to him.
“I guess I can’t be sure McLaughlin only got here this morning. I was shadowing Smith. When he grabbed the girl. I called Arthur and found out he was here. I’d already told him about the trailer and the boat Smith had set up. Arthur told me to follow Smith, and that he would try to arrange something. Then Smith turned off into a farm, so I went in after him. When he saw I wasn't a cop, he tried to tell me some cock and bull story until I told him I knew who he was and who the girl was. He'd spotted a woman in a red sports car following him, and he was spooked. About that time, McLaughlin called me again. When I told him where things were, he wanted to talk to Smith. I don't know what he told him, but when I got back on the phone he asked me if I'd bring his granddaughter to Smith's trailer. He said he’d hire a helicopter, and meet me there.”
“Carter, either you’re lying, or you’re too dumb to feed yourself. Are you sure McLaughlin didn’t tell Smith to stop at that farm building?”
“How could he? Smith didn’t have a phone.”
“Did you search him?”
Philo didn’t answer, but even by moonlight the expression on his face said it all. I asked, “How much did McLaughlin pay you?”
“I didn’t bring her out here for money. I did a favor for McLaughlin–helped him recove
r the granddaughter that was stolen from him. He said he'd flown over the trailer. He said it would be a good place to have a long talk with the girl. See if she didn't want to ditch her mom and come back to Kentucky with him.”
“Assuming Arthur didn't pay Smith to kidnap his granddaughter, why did he want you to kidnap her?”
Carter thought about that for a minute before he said, “McLaughlin said we had to do it his way to keep the girl’s mother from disappearing with her again. It sounded a little shady, but the girl was never legally adopted. McLaughlin had a right to take her. He is her grandfather, after all.”
“He had no right. The girl’s eighteen. McLaughlin has no claim on her now. How did you track her down?”
“I found Smith. I watched him set up his trailer. And I watched him stash his pickup, and the boat. I figured he was building a hideaway and an escape route. Three days ago, he led me to the girl.”
“James Wilson, right?”
“You knew? Why didn’t you grab the girl?”
“I wanted to break it to her gently, not scar her for life. How does Smith figure into this now?”
Philo looked at me and then said, “He doesn’t. He’s probably long gone. We convinced him he was out of his league. He agreed to be a decoy for the woman he said was following him and then split.”
“With a pile of McLaughlin’s bucks, I presume.”
“I suppose so.” Carter said so low I could barely hear.
There was a lot about Carter’s story that didn’t add up. I figured he’d had time to twist things, so he’d look less guilty. I doubted he was aware McLaughlin planned to kill Melanie. I said, “That wasn’t so bad now was it, Philo. Confession cleanses the soul.”
I led him down to the patrol car and stuffed him back inside.
“Be polite now, Philo,” I said. “Maybe they’ll give you a bunk with no bed bugs.”
I walked back to the officers and said, “I better head on into Ignacio and take this girl to her mom. Sheriff Miller will be along shortly. It would be nice if a couple of you would wait here for him–make sure he gets safely across the border. I’ll meet you at the police station in Ignacio and give you a report or whatever.”
We found Nat’s car undisturbed and the Indian boy still guarding it. I gave him twenty bucks.
When Nat got out of the Bronco, I said to her, “Follow us to the police station. It would be a good idea if you went with Billy when he takes Melanie home. Her mom needs to hear the whole story. Billy won’t know what to tell her. You make sure Melanie’s okay and that her mom knows she wasn’t molested. If her mom has questions you can't answer, tell her to call me tomorrow.”
“Aren’t you coming too?”
“I need to stay at the police station. I’ll probably have to make some kind of a report, and I want to be there when Ezzy comes. He needs a ride to Cortez, and I don’t want to hold him up. He’s come a long way from Dolores County to bail us out. Give me a call before you leave Melanie’s.”
Ezzy and my truck arrived at the station almost an hour later along with Carter’s Cherokee and two of the cop cars we’d met at the border. A Ute cop was driving Carter’s rig. Carter was still in the back seat of one tribal police car. McLaughlin was in back of a La Plata County Sheriff's car. Ezzy pulled in and stopped. He got out and went to talk to a cop in one of the cars. After the others left, Ezzy came inside where I was waiting.
“Did Natasha go with the girl?” Ezzy asked.
“Yes, she called me a few minutes ago to say mother and daughter were both okay, and that she was ready to go home. I told her to head on out and that I’d be along shortly.”
“That’s a relief. It ain’t often things work out this well when a girl gets abducted.”
“You got that right. How did you and Arthur get along?”
Ezzy paused for a bit and then said, “We went for a little walk, and he decided to tell me the whole story. You’ll want to hear it, but right now we better get to the sheriff’s office in Durango, tie up any loose ends there, and get me back to Cortez. I’m supposed to go on shift at midnight. I don’t think I’m gonna make it.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Ezzy climbed into my truck, and I had opened my door when Nat pulled in beside me. She leaped out of her car, and we had a good long hug. I said, “I thought you were on your way home.”
“Were your ears burning? We got talking about you. It took a while.”
“I hope you kept it low key. How was Melanie’s mom?”
“She looked like she’d been blown through a barb-wire fence, but she was sure happy to see Melanie in one piece.”
“We were lucky.”
“Maybe it was more than luck. I was praying awfully hard.”
“We need to talk about that sometime. There’s no rational reason why you were in the right place to see Carter going by, or for Ezzy deciding to rent a helicopter.”
Nat gave me another hug and then said, “I gave Melanie’s mom one of your cards. She’ll call you when she gets over the shock of all this.”
“She may not get over it anytime soon,” I said. “This will probably keep going on for a lot longer than any of us want it to. Melanie will have to make a statement. She’ll eventually have to testify too, unless these jerks decide to plead.”
Nat went to her car to put the top up. I walked over to give her a hand and said, “That was smart thinking to turn the trailer lights out. What did you do, pull off a battery cable?”
“Yeah, I noticed the battery on the tongue of the trailer when we first drove up. From where I was sitting in the truck, I could see you through the front window when you went inside the trailer. I knew right then something was wrong, so I sneaked over to the trailer and peeked in. When McLaughlin moved you over to the door I thought, ‘If I could create a diversion . . . .’ That’s when I thought about the battery. I tried the cables. One was loose enough that I could twist it a little. I kept working at it until it came off.”
“How did you get past that tree without making any noise?”
“Slithered under the trailer.”
“I’ll be danged. I would have never thought of that. By the way, Nat, what was that business of not giving a rat’s behind about the guy on the ground, huh?”
“It worked, didn’t it?” She grinned.
“Yeah, it did, but you were almost too convincing. I told Alfred Hill it took years of practice to be a good liar. Was I wrong?”
“I wasn’t lying. I was acting.”
“Well, you oughta get an Academy Award . You had me convinced.”
“I had to do something, Dad. It’s stupid to surrender to someone you know will kill you anyway. You see that in movies and on TV shows all the time. It’s a device they use to increase tension. Only a complete moron would do it for real.”
“Nat, you never cease to amaze me. You’d better take off. I’ll follow you to Durango. Ezzy and I will have to stop by the sheriff’s office before we go on to Cortez, so give me a call when you get to the dorm, okay? And thanks for the help. You may have saved Melanie’s life and mine too.”
As Ezzy and I drove out of Ignacio, I remembered I’d completely blown off my second evening class. Bloody Mary would auger right through the ceiling if she found out, and I had a feeling her spies watched my every move. I wondered if rescuing one of the coeds would be enough reason for my delinquency. Bloody Mary thought there was nothing in the world so important as her precious math department.
It was after midnight when we got away from the sheriff’s office. I welcomed the drive to Cortez. I was too full of adrenaline to go to sleep.
“That was a zoo,” Ezzy said as we got in my pickup. “You think there’s any chance they’ll ever figure out who’s in charge?
“It didn’t look like anyone wanted to be.”
“I can relate,” Ezzy said. “I’m glad none of this happened in my bailiwick, although I would have enjoyed stuffing those two knuckleheads in a cell. I hope La Plata County can afford th
e lawsuits they’re gonna get. I know Dolores County couldn’t.
As we left Durango, Ezzy said, “I understand you took Carter for a walk in the woods. Did you learn anything?”
“Only that he’s completely innocent. Actually, I don’t think he knew what McLaughlin’s ultimate plan was. Tell me about your chat with Arthur.”
“I hope that devious old buzzard spends the rest of his life in jail,” Ezzy said, “but he probably won’t. He’s got enough money to hire a flock of shysters who can twist things around until he’ll be the good guy and all us evil country boys ganged up on him. When you think about it, his and Carter’s skirts are almost clean. Smith did most of the dirty work.”
“So, what did you get out of McLaughlin?” I asked.
Ezzy let me hang and then said, “He told me Melanie isn’t his granddaughter.”
“He what? Did Carter finger the wrong girl?”
“What he said was, Mary–that’s our Candy Appleton–wasn’t really his daughter. His wife swears the girl was his, but Arthur told me she was born eight-and-a-half months after they were married, and he claims his sperm count is zero. He was wounded and then captured in Korea. Spent two or three years in a prison camp. He said he was wounded in the groin and didn’t get the medical attention he needed.”
“So what? He still raised her. Legally she is his daughter, and Melanie is his granddaughter.”
“That’s exactly the problem, Geronimo. McLaughlin was in the Kentucky National Guard when the Korean war broke out. His unit was activated and sent to Fort Lewis Washington for combat training before going to Korea. McLaughlin was barely eighteen years old. He’d never been away from home. Still, he managed to fall in love with a girl he met in Washington and made a baby. He was on a boat heading for Korea when the girl discovered she was a little bit pregnant.
“They wrote to each other, and McLaughlin promised the girl he’d come back and marry her, but things didn’t work out that way. McLaughlin’s regiment got overrun up by the Yalu River when the Chinese came pouring across. Some of McLaughlin’s platoon got away, but they had to leave their wounded behind. McLaughlin was listed as ‘missing in action.’ It was two and a half years before anyone found out he was still alive. Everyone, including his girl friend, figured he was dead. She married someone else and had another baby before Arthur was repatriated in a prisoner exchange. The girl’s husband had adopted Arthur’s boy by that time.”