New Man in Town

by Edward Kendrick

  Rejoining his friends, he said in a normal tone of voice, “It’s empty and looks like it has been for a while.”

  “At this time of year they all should be,” Carl replied. “It’s not hunting season. If it was, the bastard would be stupid to try to hide Emma in one and risk the owner or renter finding her.”

  Garry and Wylie nodded, they returned to the car, and moved on to their next destination.

  It was almost dark when they neared what they agreed would be the last cabin of the day. A rutted dirt track was barely visible in the car’s headlights. Garry turned them off before starting down it, relying on the final vestiges of sunlight slanting through the trees to light the way. When the cabin came into view, he pulled the car onto a wide space off to one side, shut it off, and they approached the cabin on foot. It was larger than the previous ones they’d checked out, with a porch, and windows on either side of the front door.

  “I know who owns this,” Carl said softly. “He’s a city guy who comes out here on vacation and during deer hunting season. Nice enough fella, if a bit high-and-mighty.”

  Garry went first, this time, crossing the clearing to walk around the cabin. He returned moments later, saying, “Looks like someone used bolt cutters on the backdoor padlock. It’s hanging open on the hasp.”

  “Maybe…?” Wylie replied as he started toward the rear of the cabin.

  “We’re going to find out,” Garry said.

  When they got there, Wylie removed the padlock, placing on the ground, and then tested the door, figuring it would be locked since there was a keyhole beneath the handle. Then, he saw pry marks and knew that if it had been, it wasn’t now. He eased the door open, revealing a small kitchen with an arch on the far side. Beyond it he could see what was obviously the living room. Garry and Carl were right behind him as he entered it. The wall to his right contained two more doors. He opened one and found a bathroom.

  Carl opened the second one. “We found her!” he exclaimed as he stepped into the bedroom. He crossed to the bed sitting under a window with drawn curtains. Wylie flicked the switch by the door, not terribly surprised that it did nothing.

  “The candles,” Garry said, taking a pack of matches from his jacket pocket to light the two that sat on the bedside table.

  Emma was lying on her back, her wrists and ankles lashed to the corners of the bed frame. She was naked and blindfolded—only the slow raise and fall of her chest letting them know she was alive.

  “Emma,” Wylie said, touching her shoulder. He got no response. He said her name louder, and still she didn’t react.

  “Drugged?” Garry asked.

  “I’d say so,” Wylie replied. “We need to let Kingman know we’ve found her.

  “He’s going to love that it was us,” Carl said dryly, taking out his phone to make the call.

  Carl had been correct. Kingman seemed far from happy when he and his team, as well as an ambulance, arrived at the cabin twenty minutes later. After the EMTs made certain Emma was alive, although definitely comatose, Kingman had one of his crime scene people take photos of her before cutting the restraints and removing the blindfold. At that point, the EMTs put her on a stretcher and carried her to the ambulance to take her to the hospital.

  Leaving his team to gather what evidence they could, Kingman joined the trio, who he had told to wait for him outside the cabin. “You just won’t keep your noses out of this, will you?” he berated them. “First Nelly, now Emma. If I were of a suspicious mind I might wonder how you managed to find them both. It’s a damned good thing it was the three of you each time. Somehow I don’t see all of you as complicit in their abductions, and Nelly’s death.”

  “That would be a stretch,” Wylie replied sarcastically, rating him a dark look from the sheriff.

  “That said, thank God you did find her, and alive. We can hope she knows who kidnapped her and isn’t too afraid to tell me.”

  “If it was her cousin, she might not want to,” Garry said.

  “If it was, he murdered Nelly,” Wylie said. “I can’t see her protecting him.”

  “If he blindfolded her as soon as he grabbed her, and kept it on, she probably didn’t see who it was,” Carl pointed out.

  “True,” Kingman replied, “but he must have talked to her, especially if he molested her.”

  “It’s not that hard to change your voice, if you want to keep your identity secret,” Wylie said. “About four years ago we were hired to find out who was stalking a young woman. Whenever he called her, he lowered his voice and added an accent to keep her from recognizing him. It turned out it was a man she worked with who had fixated on her and was upset when she got engaged.”

  Kingman’s mouth tightened in anger. “Anything is possible. I guess I’m going to find out when I speak with her. For now, go home, and…” He paused. “Thanks for finding her.”

  “No problem,” Garry replied. “You and your deputies would have once you broadened your search.”

  The sheriff nodded before returning to the cabin.

  “What search?” Wylie asked as he, Garry, and Carl returned to the car.

  “The one he would have instigated, eventually, after he set up surveillance on the women on our list.”

  “He should have sent out search parties yesterday, or this morning,” Wylie said angrily. “The way he did for Nelly.”

  Carl patted his back. “Give him a break. He was dealing with Nelly’s murder and hassling you because of the SOB who sent him to your place.”

  By then, they were in the car. Once Garry got it turned around and had started back to the main road, he said, “Carl has a point. Besides, if Kingman hadn’t come by to search your house, Wylie, you wouldn’t have been pissed enough to come cry on my shoulder and we wouldn’t have done our own search.”

  “Cry on your shoulder?” Wylie gave him a dirty look.

  “Figure of speech. Whatever you want to call it, it got us moving and we found Emma before he could murder her, too.”

  “And maybe move on to another victim,” Carl said.

  “He’s going to anyway, once he knows she’s been found,” Wylie replied.

  “Unless we stop him, first,” Garry said.

  “How, when we don’t know who it is?”

  “That’s your field of expertise,” Garry replied, patting Wylie’s leg.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Wylie leaned his head back, staring blindly into space as he tried to come up with a plan that would draw the killer out.

  As if honoring his need for silence so that he could think, Garry and Carl remained quiet for much of the ride back town. Then, as they drove down Market, past Noble Art, Carl said, “The gallery looks sad, like it misses Emma.”

  Garry glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “Anthropomorphizing?”

  Carl shrugged. “Maybe, but I swear it does.”

  “We’re going to change that,” Wylie declared. “It’s going to take the three of us, but we will.”

  “You’ve come up with a plan?” Garry asked. “Are we going to like it?”

  “‘Like it’ is debatable,” Wylie replied with a flicker of a smile. “I’m not ready to tell you, though, until I work out the details, so if you don’t mind, drop me off at home.”

  “I do mind,” Garry said. “But I’m not going to argue. I’ve got the feeling I’d lose.”

  “Right now, yes. I promise as soon as I’ve got it all figured out you and Carl will be the first to know. After that, we’ll decide whether to bring Kingman in on it.”

  “Oh, boy,” Carl muttered.

  A couple of minutes later, Garry pulled up in front of Wylie’s house. “If you get hungry,” he said hopefully as Wylie opened the car door.

  “I’ve got food,” Wylie pointed out. He hesitated before leaning over the console to give Garry a kiss. “I’ll call in the morning, I promise.”

  “Better,” Garry replied, returning the kiss.

  “Do I get one, too?” Carl asked, smirking.r />
  “A call? Yes.” Wylie told him. “A kiss? As if.”

  They all laughed, and then Wylie got out and headed up the drive to the steps leading to his front porch. He saw Garry parking two doors down in front of his house and waved. Then, unlocking the door, he went inside, making certain to lock it behind him.

  Chapter 13

  As soon as he was up and moving Tuesday morning, and had eaten breakfast, Wylie poured a second cup of coffee and then phoned Garry and Carl. It took a bit of juggling—because Carl had a job to do and wouldn’t be available until noon—but in the end they both agreed to come by the house at twelve-thirty. He called the sheriff as soon as that had been settled to ask if he’d be available sometime between one to one-thirty.

  “Barring an emergency,” Kingman replied, “I should be. Why?”

  “I’ll tell you when we get there.”

  “The three amigos?” There was a trace of amusement in Kingman’s question, which Wylie hoped boded well for what he had planned. He agreed it would be the three of them and then asked, “Have you been able to get anything from Emma about who kidnapped her?”

  “No. She’s still unconscious. The doctor ran a blood test and determined she’d been given some drug I’ve never heard of. Something called Phenazepam. He said it was developed in the Soviet Union to treat insomnia, among other things. It’s not a controlled substance here in the States, and is sometimes sold as a recreational drug. It has what he called a half-life of up to sixty hours, meaning she could be out of it for quite a while, depending on the dosage she was given.”

  “Why the hell give her something that knocks her out for that long?” Wylie asked.

  “It could have been a lighter dose, meant to keep her unconscious while he was gone,” Kingman replied.

  “When she comes to will she remember who he is?”

  Kingman sighed. “One of the side effects can be amnesia, so maybe not.”

  “Damn it!”

  “Yeah,” Kingman agreed, at which point he ended the conversation saying he had other things he needed to take care of.

  Wylie spent the rest of the morning cleaning house to stay occupied and keep from worrying if what he had in mind was completely insane.

  While he ate a fast lunch, he ran over his plan one more time, decided it would work—It has to. I can’t see any other way to draw the bastard out of the woodwork. He made a fresh pot of coffee, pacing the floor until it was finished, and was pouring a cup when the doorbell rang. Answering it, he found Garry standing on the porch.

  “Did you stop by the restaurant to let your crew in?” he teased.

  “I think that’s a ‘duh’ question,” Garry replied. “I let them know I probably wouldn’t be back until around dinner time, since I didn’t know how long this was going to take.”

  Carl pulled up in front of the house so they waited for him to join them before going inside.

  “Okay,” Garry said when the three of them were seated in the main room with their coffees. “How bad are we going to hate this?”

  Wylie spread his hands. “That depends. What I’ve got in mind will happen tonight, at the restaurant.” He looked between them. “I’ll need your help to pull it off.”

  Carl nodded. “How so?”

  “Before I get into that, I have an update on Emma.” Wylie relayed what Kingman had told him.

  “Damn. Poor woman,” Garry said when he finished. “I wonder if the bastard used it on Nelly, too. Something to ask next time we see Kingman.”

  “How would someone get their hands on this Phena whatever?” Carl asked.

  “How do they do that with any recreational drug?” Wylie replied. “You just have to know where to look. Often it’s at clubs and there’s a couple of decent sized cities not too far from here. All he would need was a reason to visit one of them, and then pay a visit to a club while he was there. There are always people at them who are willing to deal under the table for the right price.”

  Garry shot him a questioning look, saying, “You know this for a fact?”

  “Not personally, damn it. I spent seven years as a private detective, as you well know. It’s surprising what I learned in the process.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply…” Garry gave him a quick hug. “Honestly, I didn’t.”

  Wylie returned the hug. “I know. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.”

  “Guys, can we save the make-out session for later and get back to Wylie’s plan that we’re not going to like,” Carl said with a grin.

  “Yeah, what is it?” Garry asked, pulling out of their embrace.

  “Carl and I will come by the restaurant tonight so the three of us can celebrate the fact we saved Emma,” Wylie replied. “I’m going to make it seem as if I’ve had too much to drink and brag about how I found something at the cabin that could lead to the man who took her.”

  “No fucking way!” Garry spat out. “That’ll put you dead in his sights the second he hears about it.”

  Wylie nodded. “That’s the idea.”

  “I mean it, Wylie. You’re not going to do it. I like you alive, not dead.”

  Wylie smiled dryly. “I’m partial to that, too, but if this works it’ll keep him from taking and possibly killing another woman. As far as I’m concerned that’s what matters. I’m fairly capable when it comes to defending myself.”

  “Fairly? That doesn’t exactly make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.”

  “Somehow I don’t think he’ll come after me guns blazing…if this works.”

  “No shit. But—” Garry pointed a finger at him, “—he broke into your house once. What’s to stop him from doing it again while you’re sleeping and do what he thinks is necessary to get this ‘evidence’ you’ll be bragging about, before he kills you?”

  “A security system?” Wylie replied. “A silent one that alerts Kingman, which is why we’re going to talk to him as soon as you’re done ranting.”

  “I am not ranting,” Garry sputtered. He cocked his head. “You have one?”

  “No, but it’s on the way. I called my ex-partner in crime last night and it should get here this afternoon.”

  “That had better be the guy who owned the detective agency with you,” Garry muttered.

  Carl cackled. “Jealous?”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Garry shrugged. “Okay, probably. I like this guy—” he rested one hand on Wylie’s thigh, “—even if he is being idiotic right now.”

  Covering Garry’s hand with his own, Wylie asked, “Do you have a better idea?”

  “I wish to hell I did. Even with Kingman’s setting up watches on the homes of all the killer’s potential victims, all the bastard has to do is grab one of them when they have to go to work, or shopping, or whatever. By the time someone reports them missing it’ll be too late.”

  “Exactly. What I’m planning should refocus him on me. He’s not going to take the chance that the whole thing isn’t drunken bravado because I’m looking for attention.”

  “He has a point, Garry,” Carl said. “I have a question, though. How does this silent alarm thing work?”

  “When an entrance is breached, the system will send a message to whatever phones I’ve programmed into it,” Wylie replied. “In this case it’ll be mine and Kingman’s.”

  “And mine,” Garry said emphatically. “Kingman will be who the hell knows where. I’m only two doors away.”

  “All right. I’m okay with that.”

  “Won’t he hear your phone when it rings?” Carl asked.

  “He’ll come in on the first floor, probably through the back door like last time. I’ll be upstairs, and keep my phone on vibrate. Unless he’s crazy, he won’t try until late at night, maybe even tonight when he thinks I’m passed out in bed.” Wylie paused, then nodded. “Carl, you’ll bring me home because I’m too drunk to drive.”

  “Of course, if he’s not at the restaurant he won’t hear about your rant until tomorrow,” Garry pointed out.

  �
�True, but either way, if he’s smart, he’s not going to break in during the day when someone might see him in the neighborhood.”

  “In Frank’s case, that wouldn’t be a problem. He lives close by,” Garry said.

  “Good point. Still, would you attack someone in broad daylight, in town, even in their own home? Before you say he might have grabbed Nelly or Emma during the day, they lived well away from any neighbors so that would have been fairly easy.”

  “The killer’s crazy, so who knows what he’ll do, especially if he’s desperate,” Garry replied.

  “I’ll be ready, either way.”

  Garry sighed deeply. “I’m not going to be able to change your mind, am I?”

  “No, you’re not,” Carl said with a brief smile before Wylie could reply.

  Wylie nodded in agreement as he got up. “Now all I have to do is convince Kingman to go along with this, with your help.”

  * * * *

  “Are you out of your fucking mind, Mr. Lewis?” Sheriff Kingman exclaimed, anger and disbelief warring for ascendancy in his expression.

  Garry glanced at Wylie, smirking, before saying, “He is, but it’s still a good plan.”

  “It is, and I’m not,” Wylie said, looking dead at Kingman. “It will work, with your help.”

  “If I refuse?” Kingman asked. “Never mind, I know what you’ll say. You’re going to do it anyway.”

  “Yes. It would work better for everyone if you agree to be my back-up by allowing me to add your number to the security system.”

  “You realize by the time I get there it could be too late,” Kingman said.

  Wylie resisted smiling as he realized Kingman was going to go along with the plan. “If it is, hopefully you’ll catch the SOB before he gets away.”

  Kingman nodded. “I’d prefer you alive to testify against him. That said, count me in.” He wrote down his personal phone number, handing it Wylie. “You think it will happen tonight.”

  Wylie crossed his fingers. “I hope so. I’m not sure my nerves could handle waiting another twenty-four hours if it doesn’t. It makes sense that he’ll strike tonight, before I sober up, or so he’ll think, and bring what I supposedly found to you.”