by JT Sawyer
He studied the tracks of the others again. He determined based upon the crisp edges and outline of the tread pattern that they were made within the last two hours. Did they abandon me here thinking I was a goner or are they coming back for me—to kill me or what? Hell, they could’ve done that all along or just dumped me over the cliff for that matter. What’s going on? His head was still throbbing from whatever paralysis gas was used in the house and he rubbed his temples for a minute, trying to gather his thoughts.
Before he could deduce anything further, he heard the scream of a woman coming from a cluster of boulders a hundred yards to his right. Mitch moved into a partial squat, making sure not to poke his head above the fallen log. His eyes roamed around him, searching for a makeshift weapon. He hastily grabbed a large branch then crouch-ran towards the sound. His breath was pulsing out in rivulets of steam like a locomotive as he maneuvered along the faint deer trail. With his military training returning, his eyes darted along the ground in front of him to check for foot-snares or booby-traps. The screaming grew in intensity as he rounded the bend in the trail and came upon a woman backpedaling away from the bloodied corpse of Barbara Mulhere. The older woman was propped like a broken doll against a pile of elephant-gray rocks.
The screaming brunette nearly slammed into Mitch as he entered the boulder-strewn amphitheater. The whites of her eyes seemed to occupy her entire face as she stared in shock at Mitch. She sidestepped, trying to shove past his shoulder but he grasped the fabric of her blue jacket and gently pushed her against a tree.
“Stop—I’m not gonna harm you. I heard you screaming and came running.”
She violently thrashed her arm, trying to break his grip, and raised one hand up to his cheek in a clawing motion.
Mitch parried the move and raised the hefty wooden club. “I like my face the way it is so just calm down.”
She pressed back into the tree, her chest heaving with each flustered breath while tears began forming in her eyes. “Look, I don’t know who the fuck you are but take your hands off me, now.” She balled her fingers into a fist and pulled her arm back.
Mitch slowly lowered the branch and released his grip on her jacket, noticing how clean it was. He stepped back and glanced at her from head to toe, the former FBI agent in him coming to the forefront. She was in her mid-thirties with almond-colored eyes and brown hair that hung off her shoulders along with a hint of makeup. She was wearing fancy western jeans with a single rhinestone around the corners of each pocket along with a silver-and-turquoise belt buckle which shone out from under her short jacket. Her chafed fingertips indicated someone who worked with her hands for a living—gardener, maybe, or carpenter. Her cowboy boots looked pretty well-worn and had crusted dirt entrenched between the stamped floral designs.
Mitch stepped back a few feet, keeping his club at a low-ready and scanning the canyon to either side for any movement. He felt the sting of pain between his shoulder blades again and winced, noticing the young woman doing the same. She looked vaguely familiar but he couldn’t seem to conjure up the memory of where he knew her from.
He pointed to the left with his club. “I woke up over there just a few minutes before I heard you screaming. Looks like two people carried me over there and laid me down, probably about within the last few hours.”
She blew a loose strand of hair off her nose, stepping forward to glance to where he indicated then staring back at him. “How can you be so sure? Maybe you drugged me and Barbara and brought us both out here to enact some bizarre serial killer fantasy of yours.”
Mitch frowned, walking over to the rigid figure of the dead woman. “She was killed at her house, probably last night or the day before based upon her wounds and rigor mortis.” He glanced around her body, noticing that there was only one set of footprints—the ones with the larger Vibram soles.
He could see the frightened woman crouching slightly to pick up a rock on the ground. “Look, I’m pretty good with swinging a stick so if you go for that rock, you’re gonna have a helluva headache.”
She leaned forward, thrusting her chin out as she spat out her words in a frenzy. “Then tell me what the hell is going on. You seem to be quite the frickin’ detective—why did I wake up out here next to Barb and where are we?”
Mitch stood up, moving towards her. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
The woman winced again, trying to reach her hand back between her shoulder blades. “Barbara’s son, Tom Mulhere and I went to high school in Durango together. I was the attending physician at the hospital the night he suffered a gunshot wound and later died. Barbara had asked me up to her home to go over some details on a memorial for Tom. I was walking up the porch to her house and heard a sound coming from the kitchen—people laughing.” She lowered her arm in frustration and just started wriggling her shoulders. “Shit, I must have gotten a splinter lodged in my back or something—this really hurts.”
Mitch noticed the discomfort coming from his own upper back and shoved away the sensation. “What else?”
“What do you mean, what else? That’s all I remember. I walked inside, thinking Barb was there, and then woke up against these boulders.” She rolled her tongue around her cheeks. “The taste in my mouth reminds me of some derivative of chloroform along with the increased palpitations in my heart rate, so I must have been drugged.”
He gave her a surprised look. “I’m a physician. Hardly anyone uses chloroform anymore due to cardiac issues.”
Mitch swirled his tongue around, noticing the acrid taste in his mouth and silently concurring with her. “Crude way to immobilize someone anyway. Plenty of other drugs out there that are far more effective.”
He nodded at her. “Former FBI agent—not serial killer.”
She relaxed her shoulders and exhaled deeply. Her eyes darted along the treetops. “God, we have to get out of here.”
Mitch pressed the side of his fist against a boulder, examining the deer trail again. “Only question is which way? The route to the right is sealed off with a huge concrete embankment that looks like a dam and whoever left us here is probably not too far off.”
She folded her arms and moved alongside him to peer down the trail.
“What’s your name?” he said, not taking his eyes off his surroundings and still keeping her in his peripheral vision.
“Lisa—Doctor Lisa Forgey—at least I used to be a doctor. Now, I’m in between careers.”
He narrowed his eyes, the name jarring a memory he couldn’t access in his post-drug stupor. “Forgey, eh?”
“Yeah, I worked out of Durango for years, in the ER, why?”
“Can’t remember but I think I may have seen you before on a job I was working in southwest Colorado once.”
“You from Durango?”
“No, I’m not from anywhere at this point in my life.”
“Said the serial killer.”
He smirked. “Name’s Mitch, Mitch Kearns. Formerly from Arizona. I was up here on a spring elk hunt.” He looked back at Mulhere’s dead body. “Was supposed to meet up with Barbara this morning at her home.” He paused, shaking his head. “Think it was this morning. Walked into the house same as you—lured by the laughter—and saw her on the couch, lying there with a bullet in her head then…”
Before he could finish his sentence, they both turned their heads to the left as the sound of footsteps crunching over pine needles emerged from the thick swath of vegetation fifty yards away.
Chapter 6
Mitch squatted down beside a large stump, gripping his club firmly while Lisa moved to the left between two boulders, gathering up several fist-sized rocks.
Throwing sticks and stone weapons—never thought I’d ever be in a predicament like this without my pistol or blades! He glanced back at Lisa, who was poised in a low crouch like a catcher at home base waiting to lob the ball out to the pitcher. She seems tough enough. He glanced down at her leathery hands again, which didn’t seem to fit with her occupation.
“Easy, fella,” Mitch shouted.
The man turned and immediately did a linebacker’s rush, his shoulders pitched forward. Mitch barely had time to sidestep as the man’s right hand clipped him on the forearm. Mitch spun to the right, nearly tripping backwards on a log and losing the momentum he had in his club hand. The hulking figure screeched to a halt and turned abruptly, like he was a bull enraged at the antics of the matador. He rushed forward, swinging his left fist at Mitch’s face. Mitch parried the blow using the club in lieu of his forearm and swung the arm down then put his entire weight behind the weapon and shoved it into the side of the man’s neck, causing him to slam against a tree. Mitch jumped back a few feet and began circling him with his weapon hand extended as if he had a fencing blade. “Take it easy, man. I’m not your enemy.”
The man lowered his center of gravity, leaning slightly to break off a dead spruce branch from a tree to his left. “You must have woken up today and thought you’d fuck with someone—only you picked the wrong guy.” He swung the thick branch in a figure-eight pattern, the air swishing as he moved towards Mitch.
“Stop,” yelled Lisa. She had emerged from her rocky retreat and came out in the middle between the two fighters, both of them coming to a halt. “Look at me,” she said, swiveling her head towards the angry man whose chest was pumping furiously. “We just woke up out here, drugged by someone and dumped on the ground. Is that what happened to you?”
He slowly averted his fierce gaze from Mitch towards her, his nostrils still flaring.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Lisa said.
The man raised his chin up, his eyes scanning the ground in recollection. “I had just finished working at the Denver Pen and was driving home. I remember pulling up in my garage after and then…” He paused, standing up and slightly lowering his crude weapon. “Then some kind of sugary odor started pouring in through the vents of my car. Next thing I know, I wake up out here with a fucking squirrel staring at me and a stabbing pain in my back.” He waved his stick over his shoulder.
“That sounds familiar,” Mitch said, lowering his club and standing with his feet side by side. “You said ‘pen’—you mean the prison up in Florence, near Denver?”
“Yeah, that’s right. I’m the warden there.”
Mitch stole a glance at Lisa then at the bulky figure beyond her. “This is sizing up to be a regular game of CLUE, only I sure as shit ain’t gonna wait around for the next dice roll.”
“Whoever put us here had some reason,” said Lisa, placing one hand on her hip while fingering the rock in her other. She glanced down at his name badge. “Brian—you got anything in your pockets? Any tools or weapons or something they might have missed?”
“No, that was the first thing I checked. That and trying to figure out how to get at whatever splinter is stuck in my back.” He arched his neck back. “Feels like a damn tick burrowed into my skin.”
Lisa moved closer to him. “Turn around and let me have a look.”
“That shit ain’t happenin’. Why don’t you check out your hiking buddy over there first?”
Lisa frowned and bit her lower lip. She pivoted and moved back towards Mitch.
“Yeah, I am a little short on trust today, so I’ll pass too.”
She walked up to him and then turned sideways, palming the rock. “If you two alpha dogs won’t let me examine your backs then you’ll have to palpate mine.”
“So you’re dropping the whole ‘you’re a serial killer’ thing all of a sudden.”
“We all have two things in common: we woke up here, clearly drugged and abducted, and we all have an identifiable location on our backs for possible trauma.”
Lisa tried arching her hand back but couldn’t reach the spot between her shoulder blades. “Just run your fingers along my upper thoracic and tell me what it feels like.”
Mitch glanced over at Brian, who was standing like a statue, still clutching his timber bludgeon. Mitch exhaled and stepped up, moving Lisa’s long hair aside and running his index finger over her shirt between her scapulas. He paused at a pea-sized lump in her skin, tracing it with a finger, which caused her to grind her teeth.
“Something just under the surface—it’s round and just a little smaller than a pea.”
“Is there any blood on my shirt near the area?”
“Yeah, but not much, less than a pinhead, but—” He paused, moving closer to examine the fabric. “There’s a little prick in the fabric.”
She took a step forward, shrugging off his hand. “Turn around, let me examine yours. Doctor’s orders.”
Mitch was curious to know if she would discover the same thing and he was starting to feel a little more secure that she wouldn’t try to split open his head with the rock. “If you toss the cavewoman tool of yours there first.”
She rolled her eyes and flung the oblong rock on the ground, just missing his feet. Mitch turned around and stared directly down the trail at Brian, who was scanning the forest in between nervous glances at him.
“Some kind of sub-dermal implant that was injected into the rhomboids.” She removed her fingers from his upper back and began pacing back and forth. “I’m guessing you have the same type of implant in you, Brian.”
“Sounds like it’s a transponder or tracking device,” said Mitch.
“Or poison,” said Brian. “What if it’s some kind of vial that can go off at any time?”
“Or an explosive device near the nervous system,” said Lisa.
“Not likely. That kind of thing only exists in the realm of science fiction. This strikes me more like the kind of electronic devices that Secret Service agents and the president have in place to track their whereabouts.”
“Mitch, I’m beginning to think you really were FBI,” said Lisa.
Brian moved closer and looked at Mitch. “You work the Phoenix branch at one time?”
Mitch’s eyebrows scrunched together. “That’s right. How did you know?”
“We had a murder at the prison last summer. Had a lot of guys from the FBI and US Marshals investigating, asking a lot of questions. The paperwork referenced an FBI agent out of Phoenix who worked the case of the convict. I remember his name was Mike or Mitch…”
“Mitch Kearns?”
“Sounds right.”
“You know anything about a Barbara Mulhere out of Durango?” said Lisa.
Brian shook his head in the negative. “Should I?”
“She was a dear old friend whose body is now lying over there in the boulders.”
“So this prisoner,” said Mitch. “Did he…”
“Jesus,” gasped Lisa, pointing to a figure strung upside down from a tree fifty yards away like a cocooned insect trapped in a spider web. His formerly motionless body was now moving as he tried to free his bound hands. Twenty feet below him was a jagged expanse of rock scree. The thin rope lashed around his ankles was frayed and with each motion of his legs, it began unraveling.
Mitch rushed past Lisa and hopped over a fallen moss-encrusted log as he made his way to the now thrashing figure who began shouting for help.
>
Chapter 7
After leaving the Durango airport in a rental car, Dev had driven to the outskirts of the city to the gas station where Petra indicated Mitch had last used his credit card.
“Yeah, that’s him,” said the heavyset woman behind the counter as she squinted at the photo on Dev’s phone. “Said he was heading up somewhere near Trew Creek Road in his truck.”
“Can you show me where that’s at?”
The woman pointed to a foldout map that was secured under the counter glass, her chubby index finger outlining the route. “It’s about an hour’s drive north of Bayfield then you got to turn off on a dirt road maintained by the county. There are only a couple of homes out there—rich folks in their McMansions, you know.”
“Do you know where the Mulhere place is at?”
She pressed her finger into her doughy chin. “Oh, Lord, yes, she was the poor mother of Tom Mulhere, the sheriff who was gunned down in the hospital by that psycho.”
“You know the Mulhere family?”
“Not personally, but, my dear, everyone remembers that awful weekend. Nobody likes to bring it up much but these damn treasure hunters keep comin’ around here, poking around in the canyon where that Kruger fellow crashed.”
“What do you mean—what for?”