Red Web

by Ninie Hammon

  Bailey visibly flinched, looked around like there might be something crawling on the floor near her. She saw T.J. notice.

  "I did a certifiably dumb thing this morning; woke up before sunrise, couldn't go back to sleep, and got to thinking about Bambi. So I googled tarantulas."

  "And …?" Dobbs said, as he dusted off the big book and opened it.

  "I guess it was 'horrified fascination' that sent me down Google rabbit trails I never should have let myself travel. You know what I mean: 'the ten most aggressive spiders in the world,' or the 'five deadliest spiders in North America.' That kind of thing."

  She gave a full-body shudder.

  "They's a whole lot of things in life you's better off not knowin'."

  "I don't know that I agree with that," Dobbs said. He opened the book he'd set on the table and gestured to the other. "You take January to July. I'll take July to December. Obviously, the wreck didn't happen in the wintertime. You saw green outside the windows in the vision." He continued his thought as he began to page through the book. "What did you find out about spiders that you didn't already know?"

  "Nightmare material!" Bailey took a breath and began to rattle off facts rapid-fire. "The jumping spider can jump like fifty times its own body length, the bite from a Sydney funnel-web spider kills in minutes — and it'll come after you and keep biting, the wolf spider doesn't have a web, it goes out hunting prey and leaves puncture wounds …" She took a breath. "Okay, I did find out that a tarantula is not the meanest dog in the junkyard, but they'll all bite you if you get in their space." She looked around on the floor. "Can we stop talking about this?"

  She stepped up next to Dobbs and watched as he began to page through the book.

  T.J. opened the first book to the January 3, 1997, issue. He flipped through it to January 10, then to January 17, scanning the pages. The newspapers weren't big, usually an A and B section, about twenty pages each. Though he knew the wreck happened during warm weather, and though the receptionist had said the story would be on the front page, he paged through every month and every page of every issue.

  They had been looking for only a few minutes when he paged past the last of the B section on June 18 and saw the front page of June 25. The lead story was about a school board meeting in which the superintendent had obviously been fired. The story below that was about a wreck on US 68 in which two people had been killed.

  It wasn't a triple fatality, still …

  "Here's something," he said. "Not exactly what we're looking for, but …"

  He read the story aloud.

  "A squirrel hunter came upon a grisly scene on Friday when he discovered a car that had obviously run off the road and crashed into the woods. Hidden from view, the wreck had gone undetected for some time."

  Bailey and Dobbs abandoned what they were doing and came to stand beside him. T.J.'s stomach cinched into a knot as he continued to read.

  "There were two people dead in the vehicle and a small camper lay upside down farther up the hillside." He needed a little sip of air to continue. "A little girl was found in the overturned camper — alive."

  Chapter Fifteen

  Seated at a table in the command center beneath the accusing clock on the wall, Nakamura was peering into the screen of a laptop.

  When he saw Brice, there was no greeting and he simply said, "Don't suppose you've got a monitor around somewhere, do you? A bigger screen?"

  Brice shook his head.

  Nakamura gestured toward the small screen.

  "After a while, this print all runs together."

  Brice made a mental note to dispatch a deputy to the library to borrow one of their monitors — two, no, three of them. Then Nakamura stood and the other agents stopped what they were doing and turned toward him. Elijah Gascoyne and Nikki Trimboli were stationed at the Campbells’ house to operate the recording/tracing equipment in the less and less likely event of a ransom call. Gomez and Arya were working at computers and Hardesty was posting on the bulletin board the pictures of missing children from the area. Excluding Pittsburgh, there were fewer than half a dozen missing children for a hundred miles around Shadow Rock in every direction. All those children had been missing for a long time; none of them was from Kavanaugh County.

  Riley Campbell had the distinction of being the first kidnapped child in Shadow Rock's two-hundred-year history.

  "Here's where we stand," Nakamura said and gave a rundown on the developments in the investigation — brief, because they'd spent the past two days eliminating possibilities, hoping to seine out suspects and instead had ended up with a handful of nothing. The FBI, Brice's deputies, the state police and the municipal Shadow Rock police had run background checks through NCIC, the National Crime Information Center, on everyone who had been on the school property at any time in the week before the boy disappeared. Because of the festival setup and the carnival, that list totaled more than 150 people.

  The FBI had also run a TLO check on all the names. TLO, a technology for locating, researching and finding the connections between people, had flagged two names.

  "One is a carney, his name is …" Nakamura leaned closer to the computer screen. "Edgar Ray Garrison, forty-one. The address on his driver's license is in Cincinnati. He has a rap sheet, but nothing serious. Petty crimes, kiting checks, several misdemeanor theft charges that were plea-bargained from burglary charges. Only violence is one domestic abuse report but the victim refused to testify."

  "What was he doing at the school?" Hardesty asked.

  "One of the two operators of the Tilt-A-Whirl ride at the carnival." Nakamura sat back and rubbed his eyes and Brice thought to wonder if the senior agent had slept at all since he'd arrived in Shadow Rock. "A carnival came to our neighborhood in San Francisco every summer when I was a kid and I always rode the Tilt-A-Whirl. Made me throw up every single time, but I always went back for more."

  That was the first bit of personal information the agent had shared since Brice had met him.

  "The other name is Sylvia Marie Douglas, thirty-five, a.k.a. Wanda June Adams, a.k.a. Alisha Marie Williams, last known permanent address is in Buffalo, New York. She runs the arcade booth. She has been arrested for prostitution half a dozen times in as many cities, and for possessing with the intent to sell weed, crack, meth, bennies, roofies … Tidy Bowl."

  "A woman?" Arya asked, shoving his Gandhi glasses up on his nose.

  "Doesn't fit the standard profile, but right now we don't have enough evidence to come up with a specific one."

  Nakamura pushed his chair back from the table and looked at Brice.

  "You and Gomez go have a talk with Garrison. Hardesty and I will pay Miss Douglas/Adams/Williams a visit."

  Even after the boy's disappearance, the activities of the Cottonwood Festival had rocked on as scheduled, with what appeared to Brice to be something like an insectile frenzy of cheeriness. But in an effort to distance the festival from any hint of suspicion, organizers had banished the carnival, and the Wasuski Brothers had been forced to move the enterprise and set up the equipment and rides on a vacant lot a few blocks from the boat dock on Whispering Mountain Lake. It was nothing like as lucrative a location as a festival, and when Brice and Agent Gomez arrived, everything was shut up tight. No one was outside the equipment trailers or the campers used by the employees.

  "Somebody skipped," Brice told Gomez as he pulled up beside the carnival office in the largest of the camper trailers. "I counted five campers when the carnival was set up next to the school." Now, there were only four.

  "Let's find out who bailed and why," she said.

  Of all the agents, Gomez alone appeared to Brice to have an emotional stake in the case. He'd caught her looking at the accusing clock, saw her face tighten when the other agents dispassionately discussed the boy's dwindling chances for survival. She was too old for this to be her first kidnapping, but he sensed it had somehow become personal. Maybe she had a kid Riley's age.

  Gomez stepped up on the portabl
e porch unit on the front of the trailer and banged on the door.

  "This is the FBI, open up."

  Nothing.

  She banged harder. "I said, open—"

  A disheveled man in a dirty wife-beater t-shirt appeared, a cigarette dangling from his lower lip in Humphrey Bogart style. The reek of tobacco and maybe some other burning weed wafted out when he opened the door and immediately launched into a rant.

  "You can't keep us here, you know that. We got a right to move on. We ain't making no money with parents scared to let their kids out of their sight. We're moving out!"

  "Mister …?" Gomez prompted.

  "Bosky, Leland Bosky.

  "Mr. Bosky, you're moving out when we say you're moving out," Brice said.

  A sly look found fox features in the man's face, highlighted them almost as if he were undergoing a moon-driven transformation.

  "I got friends in high places, you know, Sheriff. One word from me, just one word and you could lose your badge over this."

  "I got friends, too, Mr. Bosky. At the county health department, the state gaming commission, the West Virginia Department of Amusement Rides. One word from me … well, actually two words — "surprise inspection" — and you could lose your business license—"

  "Okay, okay, we'll stick. What do you want?"

  "For starters, who left?" Gomez asked.

  "Left?"

  "One of the trailers that was at the school isn't here. Whose is it, why'd they leave and where'd they go?"

  "Oh, that. It's just the Dentons, Marge and Harry. They run the ring toss. I got up this morning and they was gone. I own all the rest of the trailers but they own theirs, so it ain't up to me where they go."

  "What can you tell us about them?"

  "I got a file. We require licenses and releases on all—"

  "Let's have a look at that file," she said.

  "I'll have to find it …" The man looked put out.

  "Edgar Garrison," Brice said. "Where's he?"

  The man gestured toward the last trailer in the line.

  "That's the trailer Ed uses. Don't see his truck, though, so he ain't there right now."

  "I'll get the Denton file," Gomez said.

  Brice took the handoff. "And I'll go check on Mr. Garrison."

  Crossing behind the merry-go-round, Brice went down to the end of the line of trailers. The last one was parked near the edge of the lot next to a fence that gave way to a line of bushes. Beyond the bushes was a warehouse.

  Brice knocked on the door, thought he heard movement inside, but no one answered. He knocked again.

  "Edgar Garrison, this is Kavanaugh County Sheriff Brice McGreggor. Open the door."

  He definitely heard a sound this time — the door on the other side of the trailer banging open.

  Jumping off the metal porch, Brice ran around the trailer. He drew his Glock, paused at the end of the trailer, peeked out around it and saw no one, but a battered Chevy pickup truck was parked out of sight there.

  Brice took off toward the bushes after Garrison. He had no way to contact Agent Gomez, so he spoke into his shoulder microphone, panting, as he ran.

  "Need backup at the carnival by the dock. Suspect fled the scene. Unit Two, proceed to Taylor Avenue and approach the Bufford Gate Company Warehouse from that side. Unit Five, take up a position at the intersection of Halstead Street and Taylor Avenue. I'm following on foot."

  Brice raced around the bushes and still saw no one. Running along the fence line, he came out into an alley. This was the old part of Shadow Rock where streets and alleys had been paved with cobblestones. Weeds grew up between the stones here, though, had dislodged some, making the surface lumpy and treacherous. Following the alley, looking right to left, Brice came to the north side of the warehouse. He ran along the building to the corner and then took a quick peek around it. Again, he saw no one, but there was a door there. Looking up and down the alley, Brice could see nowhere else the man could have gone.

  Approaching along the wall to the door on the knob side, he pulled his gun back toward his body. The door swung outward and he intended to shove it open, then back away and shine his flashlight into the dark interior of the warehouse before entering.

  But apparently Garrison was waiting just inside the door because as soon as Brice grasped the knob and turned it, the door burst open. Garrison exploded out of it — probably six feet tall, pudgy, with a scraggly blond beard and mustache and a bald head. He held a pipe in his left hand, swinging it with all his strength at Brice's head. A pipe wielded like a baseball bat was a lethal weapon.

  Brice dodged backward, but the pipe still scraped his radio mic off his shoulder and slammed into the back of his hand with such force his fingers went numb and the gun flew out, hit the side of the building and clunked to the ground. The mic dangled behind Brice on its elastic cord.

  Garrison drew the pipe back for a second blow, but before he could strike, Brice got inside the swing, slammed his left shoulder into the pudgy man's body and with his back to Garrison wrapped his left arm around Garrison's pipe-swinging arm, hugged it tight to his chest. Now Garrison had no leverage. When he tried to free his arm by lurching forward, Brice used the momentum of the movement to swing the man full circle, slam his back against the side of the building and pin him up against it.

  Grabbing Garrison's wrist with his right hand, Brice hammered the side of the man's head with the back of his left elbow, two staggering blows, then wrapped both hands around Garrison's wrist. Shoving upward on the back side of the hand holding the pipe, Brice forced the fingers to open.

  The pipe clattered to the cobblestones.

  Still clutching the man's wrist in his left hand, Brice slid his right hand under Garrison's forearm and grabbed his own forearm, creating a vice. All he had to do now was lift Garrison’s arm upward, push his wrist downward and the man's elbow would snap — pop outward like a twig.

  It would be a devastating injury. Half a dozen repair surgeries and he still might not be able to scratch his own nose. And Brice had every right to deliver it. The man had tried to kill him; Brice was justified in using deadly force to subdue him.

  But if he broke Garrison's arm, it would be hours, maybe days before they'd be able to question him. Riley Campbell didn't have that kind of time.

  Instead of snapping the man's elbow, Brice stretched out his left leg and used it as a lever to toss Garrison to the ground on his back. He twisted Garrison's hand sideways, causing him to reflexively roll to his stomach, then dropped one knee into the middle of his back. Pulling his left wrist back and then his right, Brice cuffed him, then lifted his cuffed hands off his back to check for weapons in his waistband.

  Rising to his feet, Brice stood still, breathing hard, more from the adrenaline dump into his bloodstream than from exertion. The whole altercation had lasted less than thirty seconds. Half-hour-long fight sequences in movies were pure fantasy.

  His mic still dangled uselessly behind him on its extending cord, bouncing up and down. Brice grabbed at it, missed, grabbed again, realizing how ridiculous he must look before he finally snagged the cord and pulled the mic to his lips.

  "Suspect in custody. Repeat, suspect in custody."

  Dispatch acknowledged his transmission and he checked out the back of his right hand where Garrison had hit it with the pipe. It was still mostly numb, but the mother of all bruises was coming up there, the skin turning purple and swelling. Since he could flex all his fingers, he'd apparently suffered no serious damage, though.

  Taking two steps to where his gun lay on the ground, he picked it up and holstered it. He reached down and pulled Garrison to his feet by his cuffed hands as two deputies screeched cruisers from opposite directions to a stop in the alley. Agent Gomez approached, trailing the carnival manager behind her like the tail on a kite.

  "You alright, Sheriff?" Fletch asked as he got out of his cruiser.

  Brice nodded.

  Reeling off a string of colorful expletives, Garri
son disparaged not only Brice's heritage, but the profession of his mother and the proclivities of his siblings. Brice shoved the man at Fletcher.

  "Attempted murder of a police officer. Resisting arrest. He's all yours."

  Fletcher began intoning Garrison's rights as he dragged him by an elbow the man was lucky still functioned to the cruiser. Gomez reached out, took Brice's hand, turned it over and looked a question at him.

  "Pipe."

  She cringed.

  "Ouch. That's ugly."

  Two more cruisers arrived and one of them carried Haruto Nakamura. Brice nodded toward the man Fletch was loading into the back seat of his cruiser.

  "He very much did not want to talk to me."

  "Wonder why not," Nakamura said. Brice turned to the carnival manager.

  "You own these trailers — that's what you said. Do we have your permission to search this one?"

  "Of course you can search it. Throw all his stuff out on the ground for all I care. Bringing the law down on me like he done, I hope you find a dead body under his pillow."

  There was no mouldering corpse anywhere on the premises, but the contents of a shoebox in the bottom drawer of his dresser explained Garrison's reticence to talk to the police.

  Brice edged the lid back with his fingertip, then called out to Nakamura, who was searching the living room while Gomez tackled the kitchen. "Appears the guy has a good-sized collection of kiddie porn."

  Gomez entered from the kitchen carrying a plastic sandwich bag full of ice and handed it to Brice.

  "Put this on that hand. Too late to stop the worst of the swelling, but it's better than nothing."

  Nakamura appeared in the doorway holding a CD in his gloved hand.

  "This was in his computer. I didn't watch much of it but I can tell you it isn't A Charlie Brown Christmas."

  Chapter Sixteen

  Bailey gasped.