Four-Footed Angels
Page 18
Amanda reached out quickly and pulled it from his grip. She wiped his mini-drool off the plastic, which appeared to be some sort of identification card. She looked at the picture and handed it to Tyler. “Hmmm…nice looking…for an older fella…says his name is Tim Breydan…is this one of the men you’re supposed to meet?”
Tyler took the card from her and said, “Yeah, it is…I’ve never met him, but Mr. Breydan is a friend of my father’s.” He looked more closely at the picture of the investigator. He moved closer to the lamp, sat down on one of the beds, and held the picture under the lamp’s light for a closer look.
Amanda pulled the second suitcase away from the wall and found another identification card. She brought it over to the bed and sat down beside her future husband. She wiggled against him and grinned, “Well, this is cozy, isn’t it?”
Tyler looked over at her briefly before scooting over enough to force a few inches between them. “We’re not here to get cozy…” he said before returning his full attention to the picture of Tim Breydan. “You know…I’ve never met Mr. Breydan before, but…I swear…he looks really familiar to me…”
Amanda closed the short distance between them until their hips and shoulders touched again. She grinned at Tyler’s obvious discomfort at being so close to her. “Well, they say everyone has a double, right? Here’s another one.” She handed him the second identification card. “Says his name is Ross Taylor…now, he really is a nice-looking man!”
Tyler looked at Ross’s card and shook his head. “No…no way…”
Amanda leaned her head against Tyler’s left arm for a closer look at the pictures. “What?”
Tyler tried to ignore how good it felt to have Amanda pressed so close to him, but she was making it hard for him to concentrate. He gently prodded her away from him. “Amanda…can I have some space…please?”
“Oh, I get it…I get you all hot and flustered, don’t I? Make it hard for you to focus on whatever it is you’re trying to focus on, right? Yep…I’m thinking we probably need to have a really short engagement. I mean, the quicker we get married, the quicker your brain returns from mush, huh?”
“You really are crazy, you know that, don’t you?” Tyler replied. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “Seriously, Amanda…I think you’re right…something doesn’t feel right about all this…” He held the two identification cards out to her. “Remember that I told you I’ve never met these men before?”
Amanda took the cards and looked at them again. “Yeah?”
Tyler stood up and looked nervously around the room. “We’ve got to clear this room of everything that belongs to these two men.”
Amanda sighed. “Well…we’re already guilty of breaking and entering…why not throw in a little theft to seal the deal. I’m game, but do you mind telling me why we need to do this?”
Tyler was already going through drawers and removing any evidence that Tim Breydan and Ross Taylor had ever occupied the room. He stopped for a moment and looked back at her. “I have met these men before…earlier tonight as a matter of fact…”
Buster sat on top of one of the suitcases that Tyler had zipped up and placed by the room’s door. He didn’t really understand what was going on, but he did sense an adventure. “Oh, this is fun! I think I’m gonna like being a cop dog!”
Amanda was clearing out the men’s few toiletries from the bathroom and poked her head around the corner. “Okay…slow down for just a minute…explain yourself, please!”
Tyler exhaled deeply and a worried frown creased the space between his brows. “Little John captured two trespassers earlier today. That’s why I’m here…to hide their rental car and find out what I can about them. I’m supposed to report back to him before seven o’clock tomorrow night.” He looked at Amanda and shrugged. “Those trespassers are Tim Breydan and Ross Taylor. They’ve been severely beaten, Amanda. Little John has them locked in a cabin on his ranch. He took me to see them tonight before I came here. One of them…Tim…said that he and Ross were cousins. I’m guessing that he knows who I am.”
Buster emitted a low growl. “Let me at them, Amanda…I’ll bite them real hard and make them let those men go. I can do it, Amanda! I can save them!”
Amanda looked over at Buster and held her finger to her lip. “Shhh…Buster…no dogs are allowed in here. We don’t want to draw any attention to ourselves, so be a good dog and keep quiet…” She stared at Tyler while a determined look spread across her face. “Oh, my God…Tyler…we’ve got to do something. What can I do to help?”
Tyler closed all the drawers and smoothed the beds. “You’re not going anywhere close to the Abbott ranch, Amanda. Little John is one crazy son-of-a-bitch, and if you think for one minute that he wouldn’t hurt you because you’re a woman, then you are dead wrong. It would not faze him one bit, and if he found out you were a cop…well, then he would take extreme pleasure in bringing you pain. The man is a psychopath. I can tell you…if he finds out who these two men really are, he will not hesitate to kill them.”
Amanda’s shocked expression covered her face. “I…I knew he was a bad person…fighting the dogs and all, but, wow…I guess I never thought he was a killer…”
“From what I’ve heard around the ranch, this wouldn’t be the first time that trespassers have disappeared. I’ve got to find a way to buy some time for them…I’ve got to…
“CALL YOUR DAD!” Amanda beamed. “He’ll know what to do, who to notify…from what you’ve said about Little John Abbot, there really is a good chance that those men won’t survive long enough for the authorities to be notified and brought in.”
“You’re right about that,” Tyler agreed. “I actually thought about going to the local police and telling them everything, but…that might have sealed the investigators’ fate. Little John has a good portion of the local police in his back pocket; they look the other way because he keeps their pockets greased. He keeps the ones who can’t be bribed in line by threatening to hurt their families. The man is insane. No…I have to think about this. I need Dad’s help…I could never live with myself if my actions resulted in those men’s deaths…”
“That’s not going to happen, Tyler. Come on, let’s get out of here…call your Dad…then we’ll figure out our next move.”
Buster was running around in circles. “Oh, boy…oh, boy…my first real adventure! I can’t wait!”
25. Sam’s Healing Powers
Two truckers were exiting the café when Tyler, Amanda, and Buster reached the front door. They stopped in their tracks when they heard one of the truckers say, “Sure hope the old fella makes it; he didn’t look too good when the ambulance drove off.”
Amanda held onto Buster with one arm and grabbed the trucker with her free hand. “Hey! What did you say? What old man? What ambulance?” She looked behind her at the parking lot that held only a half-dozen vehicles. “What are you talking about? Tell me!”
“Whoa there, little lady! Take it easy, now…” George Hickson answered back as he grabbed the tiny hand that clutched at his bicep.
Buster growled and wiggled in Amanda’s arms.
George removed Amanda’s firm grip and reached out for the pittie-pup. “Well…what do we have here…” He stopped in mid-sentence when the pup lunged and snapped at him. A scowl quickly appeared on George’s acne-scarred face.
Doug’s towering form quickly appeared in the doorway, and George felt the man’s hand wrap firmly around the same bicep that the young woman had just released. His first instinct was to turn and swing at Doug, but that thought dissipated as quickly as it had first formed. Instead, he took a deep breath and felt a tremendous feeling of calmness surge through his body. He felt the physical tension and frustration of the past week evaporate through the skin that the waiter still held firmly onto.
“I see you’ve met Buster,” Doug smiled down into George’s bewildered face. “Here…let me have him, Amanda. Why don’t you go inside? Bertie is in the kitchen…”
Doug released his grip on George’s arm and said, “You fellas have a safe trip…make sure you stop and see us again on your way back home.”
George rubbed his arm and stared into emerald-green eyes that seemed to burn into his very soul. “I…I wasn’t gonna hurt the pup,” he said. He looked down and moved to leave, but turned back around to look at Doug. “What…what did you do to me?”
Tyler stood in the same spot he had been in for the last few minutes. He had felt compelled to watch the scene unfold before him, but had not felt the need to come to Amanda’s rescue. He, somehow, knew that no harm would come to any of them as long as Doug was there. He had sensed the sudden change in the trucker’s demeanor the moment Doug had clasped the man’s arm.
Doug smiled but never took his eyes off George. “I didn’t do anything, George…you did it all yourself. Go on now…you fellas have a safe trip…” Doug watched until the truckers drove out of the parking lot.
Tyler never took his eyes off Doug.
Once the fading tail lights left the parking lot, Doug exhaled softly. He knew that Tyler was watching him. He turned to look at the young man and reached out to touch him.
Tyler drew back quickly. “Oh, no, you don’t…”
Doug threw back his head full of jet-black hair and laughed softly. “You don’t have to be afraid of me, Tyler.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” Tyler said, keeping his back to the door and never taking his eyes off Doug. “What did you do to that man? Because…something just happened…that man looked like he wanted to hurt Buster, and maybe Amanda, too, but…you touched him, and, he…changed…”
Doug continued to smile at Tyler. He liked this young man and he had a good feeling about what might happen between him and Amanda. “I didn’t do anything to him, Tyler…really, I didn’t. Sometimes, the calm approach works with people who normally react rashly to things. I just tried to calm him down a bit, that’s all.”
Tyler shook his head. “No…no, you did something else…you calmed him down alright, but, it wasn’t by anything you said to him. It was in your touch…you could see the change come over him the second you touched him…”
Doug took a step toward Tyler and placed a firm hand upon the young man’s shoulder. “You mean…like this…”
Tyler was about to jerk away when that same feeling of calmness that overcame the trucker immediately settled within him, too. His anxiety about what he had seen vanished. He shook his head. So much had happened in the past twenty-four hours. The day had started out with him witnessing the resurrection of a dead dog, discovering the truth about the trespassers, and now…well…he wasn’t sure exactly what he had just witnessed between Doug and the trucker, but, he knew it was something beyond mere mortal explanation. Tyler exhaled deeply, closed his eyes, and surrendered briefly to the most intense peace and calm he had ever felt. When he opened his eyes, Doug was smiling at him.
“Come on, let’s go inside. You could probably use a cup of coffee right about now.” Doug removed his hand from Tyler’s shoulder, turned, and walked back inside the café.
Tyler watched the gentle giant re-enter the café. He shook his head and thought, “Truth be told, I could use something a lot stronger than coffee right about now…”
Three hours later…Amos Brown’s heart stopped beating, and he died on the operating table.
_____
Complete darkness surrounded the small cabin that stood a hundred feet from the burning pit on the Abbott ranch. A lone screech owl hooted from one of the massive oak trees surrounding the cabin, and an orchestra of tree frogs croaked in solidarity while searching for their evening meal of gut-loaded crickets, tadpoles, guppies, spiders and worms. The small, mosquito-infested pond in back of the cabin provided a smorgasbord for these tiny, green members of the Bufonidae family.
Two golden eyes glowed from the tall hedges that grew along one side of the burning pit. Sam was just about to step into the clearing when he heard the rumbling of an engine coming slowly toward the cabin. He back-stepped into the bushes, and hunkered quietly down on all fours. Spartacus had wanted to come with him to check on the two strangers, but he had convinced him to stay behind and keep the other dogs quiet. If they barked too much, the crew never hesitated to beat them into submissiveness.
The pick-up truck rolled to a slow stop and the engine shut off. The driver’s door opened and Clint Meacham stepped out. Sam watched intently as the foreman grabbed two guns from inside the truck. One was a tranquilizer gun that was frequently used on uncooperative animals; the other was a Smith &Wesson-357 Magnum that Clint always carried with him. He holstered both guns and moved to the back of the truck.
Sam’s ears became erect when he heard a slight whimpering coming from the bed of the pick-up, but he never took his eyes off Clint.
Clint dropped the tailgate and retrieved a shovel he had thrown into the bed. “Damn idiots,” he mumbled. “I’m stuck doing manual labor while those damn idiots are in town getting laid and wasted…” He spoke out loud as a way to vent his anger. Little John was treating him more and more, lately, like the minimum-wage losers they hired to handle and dispose of the dogs. He didn’t know what he had done to earn the man’s ire, but he was quickly getting tired of being treated like a general flunky, especially, when he had been a loyal employee to Big John Abbott for so many years.
He grabbed a pair of thick work gloves and put them on; dark stains covered every inch of the gloves. He pulled on the first pair of legs he came too and dragged the dead shepherd off the truck; it landed with a hard plop on the ground. Clint bent down and began rolling the dog toward the open pit. Top soil and quicklime pellets had been dumped on top of the last truckload of deposited animals in order to speed decomposition of any remaining, unburned body parts, and to deter any wildlife scavenging efforts. More and more lately, the crew were adding extra dirt and quicklime to the pit, rather than burning off the evidence, because the smell of burning flesh and fur tended to linger longer than they liked.
It was only a few feet to the pit’s edge, but Clint was no longer the young twenty-year old who had come to work for Big John Abbot in the mid 90’s. He took a deep breath and used his boot to push the shepherd the last few inches, into the pit. He thought he heard a rustling in the bushes on the other side of the pit and looked up quickly. He backed up to the truck and grabbed a flash light from the small toolbox he kept in the bed. He waved the light back and forth across the bushes, but did not see anything, so he placed the flash light on the ground and continued hauling the bodies of bait dogs into the pit. Three of them were not completely dead and he knew he should complete that task before disposing of their bodies, but he decided they would be dead by morning, anyway…so, why waste a perfectly good bullet on them.
It took him thirty minutes to dispose of all the dogs. There might have been a time in his life, a very long time ago, when it would have bothered his conscience to hear the final, whimpering pleas that the still-alive dogs were making; he knew it was inhumane to leave them to die in a pit with the remains of their dead, mangled counterparts. Instead, when he kicked the last body into the pit, he followed it with a large spit of the chewed tobacco that was a permanent part of the inside of his left cheek.
He went back to the truck and pulled a large paper sack and a lantern from the front seat. He kept the bloodied gloves on and unlocked the door to the cabin. The oil from the lantern was almost gone, so the light was dim. His eyes adjusted quickly to the semi-darkness of the room; the dark never seemed to bother him like it did some people. One of the trespassers was attempting to stand up; the other one was still on the floor and attempting to assist his friend.
“Well, what are you two fellas up
to?” Clint mocked as he took the almost-empty kerosene lantern off the hook and replaced it with the refilled one. “What? You need to take a piss…is that it? Kinda hard to do with your hands and feet all tied up, ain’t it?” He stepped closer to them and spat another wad of juice at their feet. “In case you ain’t already discovered it, there’s a hole in the far corner over there,” he nodded to his right. “I expect you can figure out a way to help each other get your zippers undone…smart fellas that y’all are. Oh…what the hell…I’m feeling generous tonight…” He moved behind them and flipped open the pocket knife he always kept in his back pocket. It was extremely sharp for such a small knife, and it made quick work of cutting loose the rope that secured the men’s hands behind them. He walked back in front of them, and spat a wad of tobacco juice at their feet. “I’ll send someone by later to re-tie your hands and feet, so enjoy the freedom while you can.” He opened the bag and threw two bologna sandwiches, in plastic sandwich bags, on the floor in front of them. The bloody glove left streaks of evidence across the plastic. “Oh, hey…will you look here…the cook even threw in a bag of chips for y’all to share.” He tossed the small bag of chips alongside the sandwiches, followed by two plastic bottles of water. “Don’t get to use to this service, fellas…you might even want to savor this meal, cause…it just might be your last…”
He placed his hand on top of the revolver he had stuck in his waistband. “Yep…only a few more hours to go before the boss decides what to do with you two…sweet dreams, fellas…” Clint turned, grabbed the empty lantern, exited the cabin, and secured the padlock on the outer door.
Tim managed to push himself up and stood erect, while Ross crawled over to the food and water. He picked up one of the sandwich bags and saw the red streaks across them. “What the hell…” he said, as he held the bag up to his nose. “Oh, God…that’s blood…” he moaned just before turning and dry-heaving the watery contents of his stomach alongside the wad of spit tobacco.