by Tracy Sharp
“He’s been stopping women on the highway. He waits until he sees one that he likes and stops them for speeding. He makes them leave their car and come with him, then he takes them some place and…”
Jack and I waited, both our mouths had dropped open. We knew what she was about to say.
“He rapes them in his police car.” Her words dropped off to a whisper.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
“Jesus,” Jack said. “And the women are too afraid to tell anyone because he’s a State Trooper.”
Amanda nodded. “Tonight he said he could do anything he wants and get away with it. He said if he wanted to kill someone, nobody would ever find out. Then he looked at me, really strangely, and said that maybe he already had.”
“He thinks he’s above the law,” I said.
“He is,” Amanda said. “There are cops who will cover for him no matter what because it’s a boy’s club. They’re not all bad and lots of them wouldn’t want to believe that he’s doing these things. There may be a way.” She reached down her leg and moved her hand under the leg of her jeans into her sock. With a shaky hand, she handed me a small black book.
It looked like a little address book but it had only lined pages, like a journal would. The first several pages were filled with names. I flipped through the pages of names printed in small, block letters. “What is this? His list of girlfriends?”
“No,” Amanda said. “It’s a list of the women he stopped on the highway.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Jack’s voice incredulous. We were in the hospital parking lot and he held the little black book in his large hands. “There’s got to be over a hundred names on the list!”
Amanda nodded. “I didn’t believe him at first. I thought he was just trying to scare me. Now I think it’s true.”
“What changed your mind?” I asked her.
“Because a couple of the names on the list belong to women who’ve gone missing,” she said. “Did you hear about them on the news? One went missing in April. The other in June. Their cars were found on the highway, on the side of the road.”
I nodded, my stomach flip-flopping. “Oh my God.” The implications were chilling. How many hadn’t been reported missing and hadn’t yet been found?
Jack’s jaw was set. “What else do you know?”
“I know he’s got your brother,” she said to me.
I stopped breathing for a moment. “Where?” I wanted to shake her until she told me.
“I don’t know that. I know it’s a shack somewhere. He doesn’t have much time.”
“Where is Finn?” Jack asked her.
“He’s been suspended. He’s out with Woodard somewhere.” Fresh tears sprang from her eyes and she took a shuddering breath. “I know they killed your friend tonight. I think they did it at that same shack. If not, then out in the woods behind it.”
I felt sick. “How do you know this?”
She wiped her eyes with both hands. “I heard them talking. Daniel said he wouldn’t be poking around in anyone’s business again. You’d better hurry and find your brother.”
Images of Finn and Woodard hurting my little brother flooded my mind and I bit my lip to stop myself from screaming. “Damn it! How are we going to do that?”
“Daniel’s in his other car. The BMW. He’s got a tracking system on it in case it ever got stolen. We can find him.”
My heart leapt. “Thank God.”
Jack smiled. “Amanda, you’re a doll.”
She tried to smile back but her lips were too swollen and sore.
“Come on, let’s get you into the hospital,” Jack said.
We helped Amanda out of the car, each of us sliding an arm around her.
“Can you walk?” I asked her.
She nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”
Jack kept his voice level. “Finn was hoping you’d come to a bad end on Cherry Street, wasn’t he? That’s why he dumped you off there.”
“Yeah. He said he’d be amazed if I lasted an hour, and that if I made it out of there and he found out, he’d come and kill me.”
“He’s not going to get to you now,” I told her.
“Count on that,” Jack said.
Suddenly, Amanda’s breath seemed to leave her all at once. She sagged forward, her knees buckling.
“Amanda?” I looked down at her, trying to lift her up.
We both held on to her but it was like holding dead weight. We let her down softly. Jack saw it first.
“No!” he yelled. “NO!”
Then I saw it.
The red flower blooming on her chest. She was dead before she’d even touched the ground.
* * *
The cops questioned us. We told them it had been Finn who’d messed up Amanda’s face and that he’d threatened to kill her several times. We told them about him dumping her off on Cherry Street and telling her that if she survived the night he’d find her and kill her. We told them all of that. The problem was they knew Finn. He was a cop. He was one of them. It was like trying to convince a family member that good old grandpa is a pervert who likes touching little kids. They don’t want to hear it.
They’d check it out, they said. There had been a lot of drive-by shootings in the area. It wasn’t exactly a safe place to be. Bad part of town and all that.
I kept the little black book stashed in the pocket of my jacket.
We were on our own.
So we went back to Jack’s to regroup. Will was there. He sat at the table with Callahan, Sharon and Patrick. The three guys sipped from bottles of beer while Sharon sat with her small hands wrapped around an over-sized mug. They were looking toward the door, waiting for Amanda to come through it. When she didn’t, all eyes were on Jack and me.
Cal spoke first. “You couldn’t find her? She wasn’t there?”
“Yeah, she was there. Finn had given her the once over.” Jack paused, looking up at the ceiling and taking a deep breath. “We drove her to the hospital. They shot her in the back as we were helping her across the parking lot.”
Nobody said a word for a long moment. Patrick raked his hands through his white blond hair. Will shook his head, his eyes disbelieving.
Callahan banged his fist on the table. “Those bastards! They’re going to die!” he screamed. His face was red and his eyes were wild. I almost took a step back. I’d never seen him lose control.
“Go easy, bud,” Jack said, walking over to Cal and patting his shoulder. “We’ll get him. We need to keep our heads about us.”
“How?” Cal said. “These bastards have gotten away with everything, including murder, and nobody’s been able to stop them. How are we supposed to do it?”
Jack held his hand out to me and I handed him the black book. He dropped it in front of Callahan. “There’s some proof of what Finn’s been doing while he’s playing good old State Trooper Finn on the highway. There’s over a hundred names in that book. He’s raped every one of those women and two of them have gone missing. Their cars were abandoned on the highway. Let’s all take a guess at who was there handing out tickets on those nights?”
“We didn’t feel that placing this book in the hands of the police was wise just yet,” I said.
“Good move,” Will commented.
Suddenly there seemed to be a new energy in the room. A sense of determination that buzzed in the air around us.
I stepped toward the table and stood over them, looking into their anxious faces, wondering what I ever did to deserve such amazing friends. “Before she died, Amanda told us that Finn and Woodard have Jesse at some shack somewhere.”
“So what’s the plan? How are we going to get him back?” Will said.
Jack told them about the tracking device Finn had on his BMW.
Will nodded. “How are we going to crack the code to activate the tracking device?”
“Yeah,” Patrick said. “And how are we going to track it?”
“It can be tracked either by phone or by
using the Internet. This is where we could have really used Jesse’s skills. He could hack this easily,” I said. “Do any of you know anyone with any hacking abilities? Not just good computer skills. We need a hacker.” I could hear desperation seeping into my voice.
Jack and Patrick looked at Sharon and smiled.
“You said you wanted to help,” Jack said. “You’re on, babe.”
She placed her mug on the table and looked up at me with large, dark eyes. “I can do it.”
Finally. A stroke of good luck. Sometimes when everything seems completely lost, a guardian angel or God, or whatever you believe is out there looking out for you, will smile down on you and hand you exactly what you need at that very moment. These small miracles are few and far between. You want to hope that you won’t need many of them in your lifetime.
As it turns out, Sharon is a closet hacker. The only ones who knew this were those closest to her. Only Jack, Patrick and a few hacker friends knew her by her hacker name, which she didn’t feel comfortable divulging. This was fine by us. We were just happy to have her around.
This little lady was a powerhouse of computer and Internet knowledge. She didn’t explain to us what she was doing and her fingers flew across her keyboard so fast it was impossible for any of us to follow her. Nobody was about to ask her to explain it to us. We didn’t want to distract her and waste time. Also, it seemed private. Like she had an intimate relationship with the computer.
I’d seen Jesse like this many times. I envied his ability to shut everything out except what he was concentrating on at that very moment. Sharon was the same way. The deep focus she had on the computer screen was amazing. It was as if none of us were there in the room with her. As long as she could get the job done, I didn’t care. For the second time that night, I was happy to step back and let somebody else take the wheel.
“Got it,” she said after a few minutes, her voice excited and triumphant.
“Sharon, you rock.” I moved in to see the screen. It was a map of the capital region, and a tiny red dot was pulsating in the right hand corner of the map. She pointed to the dot with a delicate finger. “There, see? They’re in Hudson.”
“Can you get an address?”
Her fingers danced across the keys again. She shook her head. “No address, but the place is ten miles from here to there and there’s nothing out in Hudson. It’s the boonies.” She pulled her eyes from the screen and looked up into my face. “It shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
“You’re right.” I hugged her small shoulders tightly. “Thank you so much. I don’t think we’d have a chance in hell of finding him if it weren’t for you.”
When I pulled away from her she was beaming. “It was nothing. Anytime I can help.”
“Thanks.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “Let’s roll.”
We headed out in two separate cars. Jack and I took the Jeep with Buddy riding in the backseat. Although Buddy hadn’t chewed off any of Callahan’s limbs, Cal decided that he’d ride with Will, Patrick and Sharon. Jack was antsy about Sharon coming with us but it wasn’t safe for her to be alone in the shop. We considered leaving Buddy to watch over her, but I felt that we needed as much help as we could get. Buddy is a fierce opponent. And I had an idea brewing in the back of my mind of how he could fit into our plans.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It seemed to take forever to get to the place. Chances were good that Woodard was there with Finn. I tried not to think of what they were up to way out there in the middle of nowhere. Whatever it was, it wasn’t going to be nice. I kept the faith that Jesse would be unharmed. I had to keep reminding myself that he was a smart kid and a survivor. If anyone could stay alive when the odds were stacked against him, it would be Jesse.
We came to a fork in the road. We could either continue going straight or we could turn off to the right onto a dirt road which led into the woods.
“We’ve gone about ten miles,” I said to Jack. “I think we should see where this dirt road leads us.”
He nodded. “If there’s going to be a shack anywhere around here, I’d say it’d be on that road somewhere.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.” I turned onto the dirt road.
The temperature seemed to have dropped several degrees, yet I was sweating and trembling just the same. I knew that Woodard and Finn’s shack was on this road. I could feel it. In my mind, I was preparing for the worst. My body was reacting to the fact that I might be about to enter into a battle from which I might not come out alive. My brother was in that shack. There was no way I wasn’t going in there.
The further down the road we went, the narrower the road became, and the thicker the trees flanking the road seemed. Tall old maples hung their branches over us creating a canopy and blocking out the sky. It was so dark that without the headlights of the Jeep it would be pitch black.
“Christ, this is spooky,” Jackson said.
Squinting into the darkness, I wondered what creatures crouched behind the trees watching us. “You’ve got that right.” My fingers were almost numb on the steering wheel. I had the creepy sensation we were being watched. “Frick me.”
“You know, Leah, you’re running out of ‘F’ word substitutes.”
I sighed. “Fail.”
“How the hell are we supposed to find this place in this darkness?” Jackson peered through the windshield. “You can’t see shit out here.”
“I don’t know. There’s got to be lights on in that shack if Woodard and Finn are in there.”
We came to another fork in the road where it branched off to the left, becoming narrower and more treacherous. From what we could see in the beams cast by the headlights, the terrain was rocky, uneven and full of huge potholes. I felt more than I could see that the edges of the woods dropped off sharply. It’s weird how you sometimes just know things. If the wheels went too far off the road, we were going down.
“Great. Do you want door number one or two?” Jack said.
“This is a Jeep. Hell, it’s a Rubicon. It can handle this road without a problem.” This was true, but I was still nervous about taking that road.
“I hope to hell you’re right.”
Will, Patrick and Sharon were behind us, their headlights bright in my rearview mirror. I got out of the Jeep and walked over to them.
“We’re taking the road that forks off. You guys keep going on this road. One of us will come to the shack. Whoever comes to it will call the other. Okay?” I looked at Callahan. “You got your cell on you?”
He nodded once and patted his coat pocket. “Got it.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bouncing into the collar of his shirt.
“Good,” I said. “Okay, talk to you soon.”
He nodded again, his eyes sharp and a little wild. “Be careful.”
“Aren’t I always?”
He gave a crazy, high-pitched little laugh. “Right.”
I grinned at him and headed back toward the Jeep.
I did drive slowly, the needle barely hitting twenty miles an hour. I watched the road carefully. I didn’t need a deer or raccoon darting in front of the Jeep and startling me.
But something did. A pale shape came running at the Jeep, wild and shrieking. I slammed on the brakes and the Jeep skidded, almost hitting her.
She waved her arms, screaming and crying. She wore no clothes and her skin was covered with cuts and bruises. Her black hair was tangled and dirty.
Jack and I both jumped out of the Jeep and went to her. Her nose was bloody and a long stream of spit and blood hung from her mouth. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand and sobbed. “Please help. Please. Help.”
We got her into the back of the Jeep. There wasn’t much room with Buddy back there but she was so tiny and she’d obviously been starved, her ribs were outlined clearly against her pale skin. Jack took off his coat and covered her with it.
“It’s okay,” I said to her. “You got away. Where are the other women?”
; She pointed toward the road. “Back.”
“It’s down that road,” Jack said. “Keep going.”
“He’s killing them,” the woman cried. “Choking … shooting.”
I got on my cell and called Callahan. “It’s down this road,” I said. “It’s a slaughterhouse. Move it!”
Buddy licked her face.
We could barely see the shack from the old dirt road, but we could make out the small squares of light which that the windows. Jack and I both had our pistols ready before we even got out of the Jeep. I told the woman to stay in there.
“Watch over her,” I told Buddy.
He may not have understood the words but dogs have a keen sixth sense and I knew that he understood. Again, he licked the woman’s face and she wrapped her arms around him and held on to him tightly, Jack’s coat shaking around her.
Will, Cal, Patrick and Sharon had already gotten out of her car. Sharon carried a .38 caliber. It looked large in her tiny hand. She was such a small woman, but looking at her standing there with that gun and a dark look of determination on her face, it was clear that she had strength in her which isn’t obvious when you first meet her.
She headed toward the Jeep. “I’ll stay with her.”
I thanked her. “Buddy’s fierce, but he doesn’t have a gun. You know?”
She nodded and opened the driver’s side door, hanging on to the wheel and hoisting herself onto the seat.
“If it looks really bad, you just go,” I told her. “Don’t hesitate. Just get the hell out of here, okay?”
“I know. I will. Don’t worry. They’re safe with me. I’m tougher than I look.” She grinned. “You know. Full of surprises.”
“Apparently.” I smiled back at her. “Thanks.”
“Christ, I don’t even know how to work this thing.” Will was looking at the gun in his hand as if it would bite him. “I’ve never even done target practice. I don’t even remember how to shoot a water pistol.” His voice was panicked.
“Point and shoot,” Jack said to him. “It’s not rocket science, man. You’re just a back-up anyway. Don’t use it unless someone’s coming at you or you see someone coming at one of us, got it?”