Devil's Pasture

by Richard Bannister

  The officers approached the elderly man standing on the sidewalk with a cane and a red setter sitting obediently by his side.

  "Are you the person who called us?" Smith asked.

  The man leaned more heavily on his cane and said, "Yes, Pete DeLuca at your service. It's in the far bedroom. Jasper ran in there, and I had to drag him back out. He wouldn't stop barking."

  "I'll need some details from you, sir, so hang tight while we check it out." Out of earshot, Smith said to McAdams, "Probably nothing, but can you watch him while I take a look?"

  "You get all the fun jobs," McAdams replied. She knew how disgusting the house interior would be.

  Smith shielded his eyes from the midday sun and made his way through the tall weeds blocking his path to the entrance. The house's clapboard siding was almost bare of paint, and roof shingles lay where they had fallen. The deck boards on the front porch had given way, so he stepped carefully around the edge to avoid falling through. The plywood panel used to board up the front doorway was cracked open. Smith donned gloves and pulled it to make the opening wide enough for his bulky frame. He stepped into what was once a living room. Smith had seen the layout before—the kitchen was straight ahead; a hallway to the right led to a couple of bedrooms and a bath.

  There was drug paraphernalia everywhere and used hypodermics crunched under Smith's heavy boots. With a handkerchief over his nose and mouth to assuage the overpowering stench of human waste, he shined his flashlight around the room but saw nothing other than two La-Z-Boy recliners which were more holes than fabric. A tipped-over table lay next to them.

  Great—another crank call-out.

  He moved through the hallway to the first bedroom. From the fallen wall posters and the once-pink bedspread adorned with cartoon characters, he could see the room had belonged to a child. But more recently, the bed had plainly been used for sex, and the few remaining toys on the floor mingled with used condoms and wrappers. He extended his nightstick and prodded the filthy covers but didn't see what the man had reported.

  The stench was even worse in the bathroom. Smith gripped his makeshift mask more tightly and gave the room no more than a cursory look. The toilet, tub-shower, and washbasin were covered with garbage and human waste, barely leaving any place to stand. Smith reasoned that a body would be hard to miss.

  He moved into the second bedroom. The scene on the bed was similar, but here the floor was covered in decaying leaves which must have blown in before the window was boarded up. This room was larger, darker, and took some time to search with his flashlight and nightstick. When he poked a pile of leaves by the window, he felt resistance.

  Snugging his gloves, he brushed the debris aside. His efforts revealed the body of an adult male, covered in dried blood. One of his hands was exposed, and from the missing fingers, Smith figured the victim could have been tortured. The man's skin was ashen, but not the color of a corpse. The burly officer moved his head closer to listen for breath sounds and placed a finger on the man's neck to feel for a pulse.

  My God, the kid's alive.

  Smith pulled out his phone and dialed 911. "Officer Michael Smith, badge 693. Ambulance to 357 Pine. One unconscious male in the abandoned drug house on the corner with Fifth. Hurry, he's barely alive."

  After disconnecting, Smith thumbed through his pictures and held his phone near the man's bloody face to compare.

  It was Matt Baker.

  I HURRIED THROUGH the entrance to the Emergency Room at Abbey Mount Hospital and badged my way past the receptionist. A nurse directed me to one of the side rooms where Baker lay, barely covered on a bed. He was almost unrecognizable with his bandaged head, and the ventilator tube in his mouth. I checked a picture Smith snapped at the abandoned house to double-check this was indeed Matt Baker.

  It was the kidnapped man.

  His mutilated hands were heavily wrapped. Tubes snaked from his torso to an array of instruments. Prentiss was already there, and we watched the rise and fall of his body. I broke the silence:

  "Have they said whether he's going to make it?"

  Prentiss said, "The doctors won't know for a day or two."

  "Have you secured his clothes?"

  "They cut them off, but no one knows what happened to them after that. Ananda was a member of the team which worked on Baker when he came in, and she told me there was a male nurse, whom she'd never seen before, hovering nearby."

  "And you accuse me of wild conspiracy theories. Have you notified Andrews to come and see if he can get any DNA off Baker?"

  "A doctor is blocking us on the DNA collection."

  "What? Where is he?"

  "Right behind you." I turned to see a tall man with receding hair wearing a white coat. A stethoscope was tucked in his chest pocket. He continued, "We take patient privacy very seriously, especially when they are unable to speak for themselves."

  "And you are?" I asked.

  "Doctor William Christiansen, Department Head of the ER."

  "This man was tortured and left for dead. DNA collection gives us the best chance of finding the people responsible. I would have thought you would want the perpetrators caught as much as anyone."

  "It's not a question of my feelings or my opinions. The privacy laws are clear on this point."

  "I want to speak to someone from the hospital management now."

  "I'll see what I can do." Christiansen left the room, shaking his head.

  I cursed the doctor's stupidity. After fifteen minutes, my request was fulfilled in the form of a fiftyish man with a shaved head and stubble beard. He introduced himself:

  "Kent Brickman, Head of Hospital Security. How can I help you?"

  "Mr. Brickman, this man is the victim of a heinous crime. We need to swab him for contact DNA. It will give us the best chance of identifying who did this to him," I said.

  "The privacy laws are unambiguous and protect patients like this one who can't speak for themselves. I have no way of knowing what befell him before his arrival here."

  "You understand that he didn't cut all his fingers off both hands or try to strangle himself. In addition to DNA, we can get measurements of the perpetrator's hands from the red marks around his neck."

  "That may be the case, but the privacy laws are clear."

  "There are exceptions when a crime has been committed, and you well know it. We need his clothes for the same reason, but no one seems to know their whereabouts."

  "I spoke to a nurse a moment ago. He regrets that the patient's clothes were accidentally sent to the incinerator. I checked there, and they're gone."

  "This hospital is deliberately obstructing my investigation."

  "Detective, I'm going to pretend you said that in the heat of the moment, and not complain to your superiors this time. We're not going to bend our privacy rules for every half-assed cop. I bid you a good day." He turned on his heels and left the room.

  "Helpful guy," I snapped to Prentiss, "Unless Andrews turns up something in the house where Matt Baker was dumped, you've got a kidnapping and attempted murder without any physical evidence. The same story as your home invasion."

  "The bad guys are getting too smart for us," Prentiss said.

  I was about to leave when the monitoring equipment sounded a loud alarm. Moments later, a team rushed in with a crash cart and swept us aside.

  "We may get to swab him for DNA sooner than you think," Prentiss whispered.

  It was sobering to watch the crash team at work doing their job quickly and efficiently. The second shock from the defibrillator restored Baker's heartbeat. After they had left, Prentiss and I looked at each other and exhaled. Ananda came into the room, and said what we both were thinking:

  "It's going to be touch and go whether he makes it through the night."

  "Did you discover whether Baker has any relatives?" I asked Prentiss, who was giving Ananda knowing looks. It didn't appear she was on the night shift anymore.

  "Just a mother in hospice care in LA," Prentiss said. "I call
ed, and they said she's too out of it to understand anything about her son."

  It triggered my brain, and I glanced at my watch. I was due at the nursing home in twenty minutes. In response to my message the previous evening, Mrs. Fisher had arranged for me to sign papers for my mother.

  THE BELLEVIEW NURSING HOME is a modern three-story building in extensive grounds. My grandfather on my Mom's side had been comfortably off, and on his death left everything to her. It allowed her to spend her final years at one of the best care homes in the area. I followed the sweeping driveway through an overhead portico to a thirty-minute lot, hoping my mission today would take no longer.

  Once through the oversized glass doors, I signed the visitor's log at the reception counter. Disinfectant camouflaging nastier odors, stung my nostrils, though the Belleview was better in that regard than many of the places I got called to as a cop.

  "I'm Mrs. Riley's daughter, here to see her," I announced to the receptionist. She started to direct me, but I told her I knew the way. I didn't visit my mother as often as I should because she rarely recognized me anymore.

  Karen Fisher was waiting at the nurse's station on my mother's floor.

  "I'm sorry that I'm late. The traffic was terrible," I fibbed.

  "It doesn't matter, dear. We're not going to be able to sign the papers today." Fisher was African American like my mother, and tall, elegant.

  "Are the notary and my mother's attorney not here?"

  "They are, but your mother isn't here. It's late in the day, and she's sundowning. You're going to have to come earlier in the morning next time."

  "You don't understand. I have a demanding job. Let me speak to her."

  Mrs. Fisher led me to a room full of comfortable-looking chairs, where my Mom was seated, her face more expressionless than usual. I nodded to her attorney, who stood by the window, chatting with the notary. As there was nowhere near to sit, I squatted so as not to tower over my mother as I spoke to her:

  "Hello, Mom. I'm here with your attorney and the notary."

  "What do you people want with me?" Mother's blank expression didn't match the sharpness of her tone.

  "It's me, Megan." I smiled. "We're going to sign some papers today. You need to focus."

  "I have to go out and deliver the mail. It's piling up everywhere. I hope it's not raining. I hate the rain when I have to go around my route." Mother was a mail carrier when she met my father some forty years earlier.

  Mrs. Fisher fixed her eyes on me. "You're going to have to come back another day. In the morning, next time."

  I looked alternately at Fisher and the attorney and said, "We should have done this a long time ago. Before she got this bad."

  Mom looked around and said, "They don't treat niggers well here. People are always shouting at me."

  "That's not true." Mrs. Fisher looked mortally offended. "Your mother gets excellent care, just like all the other residents. She must be aware of what she's signing. It just won't work today."

  Gene Decker has been Mother's attorney for as long as I can remember. He was wearing a suit and wire-rimmed glasses. I turned to him and said:

  "Why have you put this off until now? Doesn't it strike you as negligent?" I turned to look at Mrs. Fisher. "I have a responsible job. I can't just leave any time of the day I want. What the hell is wrong with you people?"

  The room had fallen silent. Everyone stared at me except for my mother, who looked off into the distance, absent.

  I said, "Goodbye Mom," and retraced my steps out of the building.

  CHAPTER 31

  KAYLA WAS ANXIOUS for more details of Matt's condition and had reluctantly agreed to meet Ananda at the Bluebird Café for lunch. Memories of her last meal there with Matt had soured the place for her. As an added insult, the café was packed with the Saturday lunchtime crowd, and they'd been forced to sit at the same table as she had with Matt on the morning he was kidnapped.

  Kayla had battled obsessive thoughts and behaviors most of her life. They began when she was a child, with frightening thoughts that wouldn't seem to go away. Counting had been a way to lessen their impact. The behaviors started when Kayla was a teenager, after the death of her mother. Soon she couldn't leave the house without touching the door handle twenty-three times. But by the time Kayla went to college, her rational mind was able to reject many of her thoughts and behaviors. However, the stress she was feeling now had brought them back, and the only way she'd been able to enter the café was to count the number of patrons three times.

  Ananda was seated across from her, wearing skinny blue jeans and a neutral vest. "Someone severely beat Matt, and tried to strangle him, probably after he'd been tortured."

  Kayla stared at her chicken salad sandwich, thinking she had to try to eat something. "What kind of animals did this?"

  "Matt's injuries shocked the doctors and nurses in the ER. Even with gang violence, we rarely see that level of cruelty. He is showing some signs of stirring, so they are cautiously optimistic he'll awaken from the coma."

  "He was reckless when he hacked people's computers, but he didn't deserve this." Kayla took a tiny bite of her sandwich.

  Ananda looked puzzled. "How did his attackers know it was Matt who'd hacked them."

  "He was thinking he could get money from people, in return for not revealing their dirty secrets, but I don't know that he ever did."

  "That's blackmail. He could have gone to jail, had anyone found out. Do you know what he discovered?"

  "He gave me a USB flash drive to use in case anything happened to him. Some of the files are encoded, so I can't access them without a password." Kayla looked across the outside seating area to a man in a dark jacket, sitting alone at a table. It reminded her of another man, bald, with a stubble beard who'd sat there on the morning Matt was taken. She pictured him standing as she and Matt left the cafe.

  It was the same man as she'd seen at the Spotted Owl when she stopped there for a drink before retrieving the flash drive.

  Was he following her? Did he know about the files Matt gave her? A chill ran down her spine, as she realized she could be in the same danger as her friends. Did he abduct Matt and steal his computers, ransack his apartment?

  "Are you okay? You look as if someone walked over your grave," Ananda said between bites of her Chicken Caesar.

  "Maybe they did. I'm sorry the whole thing with Beth and Ashley, and now Matt has got me on edge. I'm frightened people may be following me."

  "I'm not surprised you're feeling jumpy if you're telling me you have the very same information which put Matt in a coma at the hospital. You must take it to the police. I've told you before about my boyfriend Scott Prentiss who is working on the case. He's a good guy. Why won't you speak to him?" Ananda's question brought Kayla back to the present.

  "I'm not ready to do that just yet—I have a duty to tell my readers what's going on in their town. I know you and Scott are close, but please don't tell him what I have."

  "I won't, but I think you're in grave danger. It's not worth risking your life for a misguided sense of duty to your readers."

  "Ananda, I only told you in confidence. Remember, my life depends on no one finding out what I have. The police are not to be trusted. Some of Matt's information tells me that."

  "Your secret is safe, but you have to start trusting someone. I know Detective Prentiss will get justice for Matt, so why not for you?"

  "One of the files Matt gave me is the police report from Jack Bennett's death. Anyone who reads it would conclude he was murdered, but the coroner ruled it a suicide. I'm convinced there was a coverup, and who better to do that than the cops?"

  "You have police files? My friend, you're playing a dangerous game."

  "I think the meat of what Matt gave me is in those encrypted files. He wanted me to have them, so it can't be a difficult password, but nothing I try works."

  "You're better off not knowing, after what just happened to Matt. Have you thought of hiding somewhere until the cops ca
pture the people responsible?"

  "I'm considering it. I won't say where, so you won't have to lie if you're asked."

  As she munched the last of her Chicken Caesar, Ananda saw that Kayla had scarcely touched her sandwich.

  THAT AFTERNOON, KAYLA felt drained as she stepped out of her RAV4 in The Examiner's staff lot. Her morning exercise routine had been to meet Beth and Ashley at Core Fitness Gym. But since their deaths, she hadn't felt motivated to go there on her own. Now Matt was in the hospital in a coma. She reflected how life had changed in the last week, as she climbed the stairs to the newsroom.

  Ananda had told her that the cop guarding Matt's room wasn't letting anyone in to see him. Kayla had to find a way. She punched in the code at the newsroom door. Once inside, she dropped her briefcase on her chair.

  The place was empty of reporters—where was everyone?

  The sight of Matt's desk covered in computer parts and printouts brought tears to her eyes. Thinking that the password might be there, she rummaged through his piles of paperwork and fast food wrappers but found nothing beyond a half-eaten bagel which she deposited in his bin.

  Seated at her desk, Kayla plugged the USB drive into her computer and began re-reading the documents she could open. A half hour later, she concluded she had enough material for several articles without bothering about the encoded files for now. Jack Bennett's name appeared in several documents, so Kayla Googled him and pulled up an Examiner article from when he died.

  It said the construction business he ran with Joey Sands was a tour-de-force in the community which would be missed. No one knew who would pick up the contract to build the new DMV building they were bidding on at the time of Bennett's death. She saw the article was written by her editor, Max Dixon, whose pieces often fawned on the local business community. It concluded by saying Jack Bennett was survived by wife Angela and daughter Emily. In the police report, which as far as she knew had not been made public, Kayla had read conflicting statements from Angie and made a mental note to speak with her. She remembered Mrs. Bennett fondly as her high school English teacher.