by JT Sawyer
Mitch’s mind raced back to the feel of the cold as he noticed the rain letting up. He saw Lisa fold her arms and she started pacing in a circle while the cold droplets fell on them.
“Maybe this is the whole plot—for us to strangle the person in the group we detest the most.” She flung her head back, reflecting on her words. “I didn’t mean that literally. I mean, I would never actually kill someone—you must know that. I just wanted to shut that harlot up.”
Mitch raised both hands up, palms out. “Hey, you’re the one who swore that Hippocratic oath.”
“Yeah, an oath, right. Not that that matters anymore. My medical career is over. One mistake that got blown to hell during the Kruger case by reporters like Julie. If it wasn’t for her, I probably would’ve been quietly relieved of my duties at the hospital. Instead, it turned into a media show parading my face all over the national news.” She lowered her chin and pressed her fingers into her forehead. “I was a good doctor but the forces at play were determined to drag me into the ring with the Kruger trial.”
“I can tell you are a compassionate person.” He paused and looked back into the shelter at Julie. “Well, maybe not all the time.” He stepped forward and rested a hand on her shoulder. “Look, why don’t you help me gather some firewood.”
Mitch shined his headlamp out into the surrounding forest. “Where the hell is Nicholas?” Then he remembered he had left the .357 lying near the firepit. A reckless move and one he chided himself for making, chalking it up to his fatigue. He poked his head back inside but didn’t see it and remembered Nicholas was the closest to his position when he was lighting the fire.
Chapter 14
An hour after sundown, with the storm briefly abating, headlights appeared in the driveway. Dev stepped out from the guesthouse and waved at the sight of the Marshal as he emerged from his muddy Suburban. A few seconds later, a white SUV with the sheriff’s logo on it pulled up.
“Where is Mitch?” said Ed Roth, walking into the spotlight created by his vehicle’s headlights with his AR held in a low-ready. Dev understood his need for concern—getting a call at night to drive to a remote location where a homicide had been committed. She was puzzled that there weren’t more law-enforcement officers but figured it was because of the rural nature of the area.
“He’s not here, just his truck. The guy who attacked me is lying to the right of the guesthouse like I mentioned on the phone.” She motioned with her arm, inadvertently exposing the pistol in her waistband beneath her jacket that she had obtained from her attacker. Roth raised his rifle towards her chest as the sheriff, a muscular man in his mid-forties, came up alongside with his Sig-Sauer pistol drawn.
“Talk to me, Roth—what’s going on?” said the sheriff, who looked puzzled by Roth’s aggressive change in stance. “I thought you said she was a friendly.”
“That’s right. She’s the one who called me—a friend of Mitch Kearns—you know, the mighty tracker from last fall’s manhunt.”
“Yeah, so. You said there was a homicide here.”
“I’m not your problem,” said Dev, pointing to the contorted figure scrunched against the wall of the guesthouse. “That man—he’s somehow associated with Kruger.”
Roth tapped his index finger on the rifle above the trigger, his eyes shifting from the dead body back to Dev. “Yeah, Kruger, right. So you say—you wanna remove that firearm you got and drop it on the ground?”
Dev used her left hand to withdraw the pistol and lowered it onto the glistening grass.
“Now continue with your story.” Roth walked up and grabbed the weapon while keeping up his AR.
“We should clear the two buildings first,” said the sheriff, whose nameplate revealed to Dev that he went by Brenner.
“There aren’t any other hostiles.” Dev paused, reflecting on her choice of words, realizing she didn’t want to draw too much attention to her tactical background. “I swept through the house and outbuildings. He was the only one here.”
Brenner waved his arm towards the front porch of the guesthouse. “Why don’t we get out of the rain and then you can start from the top with what the hell happened here.”
Both men lowered their weapons. “I’ve got this, Brenner,” said Roth as he led the way to the porch.
As they stood equidistant from each other under the white eaves of the weathered porch, Brenner noticed the battered face of the dead man next to the woodstove. He turned towards Dev and then took a step back from her. “You did that to him—with what, a sledgehammer?”
“One of the steel rifle magazines on the table. It was a lucky blow which sent his head into the woodstove.”
Both men gave each other a look of surprise and then quickly scanned the unusual contents of the guesthouse, noticing the laptop, weapons, and maps. Dev relayed what Mitch told her about his visit to Mulhere. She didn’t mention anything about the intel she had gleaned from Petra or her own suspicions that something was amiss during her wait at the airport.
“So, you drove up here after you couldn’t get a hold of Mitch?” said Roth, who was giving her an icy stare.
“My flight had been endlessly delayed and I wasn’t about to spend the night sleeping on the terminal floor so I got a rental car and came up here hoping to find Mitch.”
“And you ran into this guy who then attacked you?” said Roth, nodding with his chin towards the body.
Dev was getting frustrated with how much critical time was being wasted but she didn’t have any choice but to finish the debriefing. She needed to redirect them to the vital information on the table so they could commence with the search.
“That’s right. He’s got a high-end satellite dish and communication system not to mention a puzzling list of names, one of which is Mitch and the other Barbara Mulhere.” Dev walked inside and pointed to the document.
Brenner and Roth followed, encircling the table and scanning the items spread around the laptop. Brenner picked up the topographic map and studied the contour lines. “This is a pretty steep-walled canyon.”
“Do you know what area that map is for?” said Dev.
“Not sure; the edges are cut off but this place sure looks familiar,” said Brenner, who had snapped off a photo with his phone. “I’ll send this on to the geologic survey crew in town. They should be able to overlay it onto their existing maps.”
Roth read off the names of people on the list, sighing at the end while pressing his balled knuckles onto the edge of the table. “Every person listed is connected with the Kruger case alright. What the hell is going on here?” He seemed to muffle out the last sentence then cleared his throat and stood upright.
“I’m gonna step out to my vehicle and contact my crime-scene techs,” said Brenner. “There’s a lot here to pore over, not to mention anything else we might find in the main house or on the grounds.”
Roth shuffled over, partly blocking the doorway. “Just hold tight here. We can survey the rest of the place ourselves first. Follow my lead on this one.”
“This isn’t a federal matter, Ed, and you know it.”
“Not yet, anyway. If all this checks out and this dead guy is connected with Kruger then your jurisdiction ends at the pavement back there. You know how things work.”
Dev was surprised by the exchange. They had been there ten minutes and the two men still hadn’t learned much about what had unfolded. Her brief conversation with Roth on her phone before she lost the signal revealed only that there was a man of European descent who attacked her and that there was evidence of foul play in the main house. Now, Roth seemed confident that his swagger was enough to fathom the situation. Dev wasn’t able to read him at all during their brief encounter in the diner the day before but now she was really concerned about his laissez faire attitude. This isn’t the law-enforcement approach I’ve come to know in this country. Is this how they do things in small towns out here? No wonder Mitch was so disgusted when he talked about how the Kruger case was mishandled last year.
> “You want to pull rank then do it when you have some clear-cut line that shows you’re in the right,” said Brenner, sliding his hand against Roth’s arm, motioning for him to move away from the door. “I’m calling this in.”
Brenner walked onto the porch and then stopped, turning to look back at Dev. “Miss, I’m going to have to ask you to wait in the back of my vehicle until one of my deputies can get a formal statement from you.”
Roth didn’t budge as she neared the exit, forcing Dev to squeeze by his large frame. On the walk across the rear lawn, Brenner strode alongside her down to his SUV then unlocked the rear side doors. Dev climbed inside the prisoner containment area and reluctantly slid onto the bench while staring through the metal grate separating the front and rear compartments. As Brenner sat in the driver’s seat, radioing in his orders, Dev folded her arms and stared off into the inky forest, wondering what had become of Mitch and how she might have to go further outside of the law to locate him.
Chapter 15
Mitch and Lisa walked out a few feet from the log shelter and scanned the forest with their headlamps for any signs of Nicholas. After ten minutes of hasty searching, Mitch moved up next to Lisa so he didn’t have to shout in the hard-driving rain.
She had pulled out her space blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders like a shawl, the pelting raindrops resounding off of it like it was a tin roof.
“I don’t want to risk pushing out any further looking for him. We need to get back to the shelter because I don’t think this is gonna let up,” he said, holding one hand over his eyes like a visor.
Before she could respond, they heard Brian yelling in the distance. He was calling Lisa’s name and telling her to hurry back to their makeshift camp.
They picked up their pace, trying to stay upright along the slick trail that had turned to black soup from the runoff pouring off the boulders. As they neared the shelter, they saw Brian near the entrance, his body backlit by the campfire.
“Come fast—it’s Daryl. He can’t breathe.”
Lisa tore off her reflective blanket as she ducked into the archway of logs and knelt alongside Daryl, who was sitting propped against the back wall. His face was ashen and he was clutching his throat while emitting a raspy sound from his mouth. Julie was sitting next to him, her eyes wide with terror as she tried to console him.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” Brian said. “He drank some of my water that I’d just treated and then collapsed.”
Lisa opened his mouth and examined his airway while Mitch grabbed the bottle of water, unscrewing the lid. He waved the opening around under his nose, his eyes squinting at the familiar scent.
“What did you add to this?” he said to Brian.
“Those purification tablets that were in the pack. I had already drunk a bunch of treated water. Why—you think those were poison?”
Mitch looked over at the barely conscious Daryl, whose lips were now purple. “Only if you’re allergic to shellfish. This smells like iodine. I didn’t see any writings on the package to indicate that—they just looked like standard purification tabs.”
“Iodine—shit,” said Brian, staring at the water bottle in Mitch’s hand then down at Daryl.
Lisa reached into her pocket and removed the Epi-Pen from earlier. She popped off the lid and slid out the injector. “So, that’s why this was in the pack,” she said. “Clearly this was planned out with this outcome in mind.”
Daryl’s chest was hardly moving and his eyes shut as Lisa thrust the Epi-Pen into his left quadriceps muscle, past the pants fabric. Instantly, he opened his eyes and arched his back, grabbing her shirt sleeve. His entire body started spasming and his mouth grew contorted as his voiceless screams tried to drive out past his lips but only resulted in him thrashing his lower jaw. White foam began oozing out from the sides of his lips followed a second later by blood.
Lisa leaned over him, grabbing both his arms. “Help me turn him on his side,” she yelled.
“What’s happening to him?” said Julie, who lifted his legs as both women rolled him partway towards them.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen this happen before after giving Epi.”
Mitch and Brian moved closer, trying to contain Daryl’s violent twisting. A rivulet of blood began leaking from his nose then his convulsions stopped and his ribs sank. Daryl slumped into Lisa’s side as his grip loosened on her shirt.
“No!” said Lisa, running her finger over his carotid. “No, this can’t be happening.” She leaned him on his back and tore open his jacket and button-down shirt then began giving chest compressions. “Goddammit, don’t die on me.” She started pressing her interlocked hands onto his ribcage. “This isn’t supposed to be happening.”
Mitch pulled back and grabbed the discarded Epi-Pen from the ground, rolling the cylinder around between his fingers while examining it. He saw that one corner of the label was slightly upturned and he peeled it back. The sticker came off easily and revealed the handwritten word Cyanide.
Brian moved in to replace Julie after she recoiled back from the sight. She remained huddled against the log wall with her hand over her mouth. Brian grabbed Lisa’s wrists. “Let me try.”
“It’s no use—the syringe was poisoned,” said Mitch. He turned the exposed label towards them as they both sat back on their heels. Lisa acted as if she didn’t hear him and flung herself back into position, working her compressions again.
Mitch squatted down to her right and pulled her off the body. “He’s gone, Lisa. This was set up for someone to die when they got the injection.”
“For me to kill him—is that it! That was no way to die—no way.” She started sobbing as she fell into Mitch’s side. “What kind of sick bastard would do this?”
As the dimming firelight flickered along the bark-covered rafters, her anguish filled every inch of the interior while the others sat in horror. Their primitive abode had become a refuge from the elements but not from the grisly machinations of the twisted mind who was bearing down on them.
Chapter 16
At two in the morning, Brenner came over to the car where Dev had been instructed to wait. He offered her a cup of coffee and politely asked her to join him under the awning of the incident command post tent on the main lawn beside the parking area.
“It took a while but we confirmed your identity with the state department and your company back in Tel Aviv. Sorry for the long wait in the car.”
She nodded. “I’d like to help somehow. I know Mitch and have a pretty good understanding of how the world of kidnapping and ransom works.”
“You’re still a person of interest in this case but because of your ties to Mitch I’m cutting you some slack. Plus, I could use some information about anything more you care to share regarding what he told you about his meeting up here.”
They walked into the large rectangular tent that was illuminated with spotlights strung up off the corner rafters. It was a hastily assembled canopy of canvas and aluminum that was used for remote field settings. Underneath it were a half-dozen folding tables littered with forensic examination instruments, cameras, laptops, and close to sixty clear baggies with potential evidence waiting to be catalogued by the six-man team of deputies hovering around the property.
Roth was nowhere in sight and Dev felt her shoulders relax. “How have you managed to keep the reporters out of here?” she said. “Based upon what Mitch told me about the Kruger case, this seems like it would be a ripe story for them to feed upon.”
“Roth took care of that. Not sure how he quarantined off the area exactly.” Brenner took a sip on his coffee then set it down on the table. “So, you said earlier when you spoke with one of my guys that you knew Mitch well. From what I recall from last year’s manhunt, he’s a good dude. I didn’t catch your connection to him though.”
Dev had had plenty of time to rehearse her lines to make sure she didn’t divulge too much about her company and her unusual occupation. “We met in Arizona
last year. He was a friend of my father’s and we found we shared a lot of the same interests—he had been former military and I served in the Israeli Army for two years.”
“You listed that you work in corporate safety and consulting to prevent abductions abroad—can you explain that a little more?”
“I provide an analysis of a company’s weak spots in terms of their staff safety in third world countries and then come up with solutions to keep them from being in harm’s way if there’s ever civil unrest or security risks.”
“Whew—that sounds like an intense job. Is that how you learned to take care of yourself? I mean, that guy you dropped wasn’t exactly a weekend warrior.”
“I got in a timely strike, like I said. He had slipped, probably because his boots were wet, and I was in the right place.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, giving her a perfunctory nod. “Well, good thing for you then that we got all this damn rain.”
“Do you have any leads on Mitch or what’s going on here?”
“We’ve confirmed that the blood sample on the dining room carpet belonged to Barbara Mulhere based upon samples they had at the Durango hospital but that’s all we know. The other cars belonged to Mulhere and to Lisa Forgey. She’s a local from Durango and was a doctor at one time not too long ago. In fact, she treated Anton Kruger when he arrived at the ER after his car wreck. Forgey’s fiancé called her in as missing earlier in the evening after she didn’t show for dinner.”