Twisted Reason (A Lucinda Pierce Mystery)

by Fanning, Diane

  Lucinda’s cell rang. She glanced at the screen, saw it was Jumbo. “Just a minute, Derek, I need to take this call.”

  “When I got Sherry Gibeck home and Mrs. Culpepper asked her where she’d been and she said, ‘Sleepy Hollow’,” Jumbo said. “We thought she was talking about the old story about the headless rider; but she said, “No. That’s what the sign said.’”

  “I’ll ask Derek about that,” Lucinda said. “Call Chief Deputy Hirschhorn and see if it means anything to him.”

  Derek raised his eyebrows and asked, “You’ll ask me about what?”

  “Sleepy Hollow. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Derek blanched but didn’t say a word.

  “It does, doesn’t it? Is that where you’re keeping those people?”

  Derek pursed his lips but still said nothing.

  “You abducted those people and took them to Sleepy Hollow, didn’t you? Where is that, Derek?”

  “You said you wouldn’t ask that again.”

  “Things have changed, Derek. If you don’t want to end up in jail, you might want to answer my question.”

  Derek’s breathing got quicker. His face began to flush.

  “What if I told you that your mother didn’t abandon you, Derek? She died. In the bedroom of the house where you grew up.”

  “No. That’s not true!”

  “We think it is, Derek. And we think your father killed her.”

  “You lie! You’re trying to trick me!”

  The door to the room burst open. Two nurses ran through the door. “Detective, you are going to have to leave,” one of them ordered.

  “No, I’m not lying, Derek. We checked that room. We found the evidence. There’s blood everywhere.”

  “No! No! No!” Derek shrieked.

  “Detective, leave now, or I’m calling security.”

  “I can show you the blood, Derek. It’s still deep in the floorboards. Your mother’s blood, Derek.”

  The nurse shouted into the intercom, “Room 335. Now! Hurry!”

  “It’s a conspiracy – you all are trying to stop my dad. He wants to save people and you just don’t like that, do you?” Derek yelled.

  One nurse put her hands on his shoulders, trying to push him back onto the mattress. “Mr. Blankenship, please, you must calm down.”

  “Get out of here, Detective,” the other nurse said as she drew a clear liquid from a bottle into a syringe and then plunged the needle into Derek’s IV line.

  “We’re going to find them, Derek. Your father, your brother, your sister – and put them all in jail for a long time.”

  Two armed guards burst through the door. Lucinda threw up her hands in a gesture of surrender. When one of them grabbed her upper arm, she shrugged him off. “Don’t you touch me.”

  He reached for her again. She pulled back and shouted out to the officer outside the door, “Officer. Officer Bennett.” She ignored the ring of her cell phone.

  Bennett was at her side in seconds, one hand on his holstered gun, the other in the security guard’s chest. “Back off. The lieutenant was just leaving. There’s no need for you here.”

  Lucinda gave Bennett a nod of appreciation and walked past him, out the door.

  Forty

  Lucinda pulled out her cell as she walked down the hall. She noted the missed call was from Jumbo Butler but before she could press redial, her phone rang again.

  “Hey, Lieutenant. Chief Deputy Hirschhorn. Calling to see if you’re coming out here.”

  “Coming out where?” she said, stopping and leaning against the hallway wall.

  “Oh, you haven’t talked to that little Jumbo fella?”

  “Sergeant Butler? No. About what?”

  “Now that you mention him, you know, you shoulda warned me that he didn’t live up to his name. We’re just country folk out here and we take things kinda literal like. I mean, when I was headin’ out to the front desk, I was fixing to introduce myself to some big guy like myself, but all that was waiting for me was a little red-headed runt.”

  Lucinda laughed. “Not an appreciator of irony, Deputy?”

  “Actually,” he said with a chuckle, “it’s the best laugh I’ve had all week. Anyway, here’s what’s goin’ on: Jumbo called me and said Miss Sherry mentioned a place called Sleepy Hollow. I told him it didn’t ring any bells for me. But when I got off the phone, something was naggin’ at the back of my mind. So I asked the dispatcher. And she said, ‘Wasn’t there a motel and camping grounds out off of Highway 60 with that name?’ Damned if there wasn’t, Lieutenant.

  “Used to be a prosperous place before they built the interstate. Didn’t have so much business after that. Then, the old couple that ran it died about thirty years back and it’s been sitting empty. The sign’s just been fadin’ and rustin’ ever since, but it’s still standin’. I drove out and the gate’s padlocked but there’s a lot of fresh tire tracks in and outta there. Thought it was worth checkin’ out.

  “Anyway, I figured we oughta play it safe. I’m gatherin’ up some deputies and the state’s sendin’ over some troopers. Jumbo should be on his way – he thinks some folks called the Blankenships might be holed up out there. Thought you might want to come along, too.”

  Lucinda pulled away from the wall, walking fast down the hall. “Tell me how to find it and I’ll be there.” She bolted through the hospital doors and ran across the carport, memorizing the directions as she rushed to her car.

  Driving out of town, her mind was a jumble of thoughts trying to pull together everything she knew to forge it into a solid clear picture. No matter how she tried, though, nothing was as tidy as she liked. She refused, at this point, to entertain the idea that she was now engaged in a wild goose chase and that all she’d find out in the country was disappointment.

  She couldn’t miss the closed service station Hirschhorn had picked for the gathering spot if she tried. Even if she’d been the first one to arrive, she thought she’d have recognized the deteriorating building with its caved-in roof and crooked sign advertising gas for 129.9 a gallon. As it was now, the normally vacant corner lot was packed with vehicles: state troopers in pick-up trucks, six brown, marked, Sheriff’s Department cars, a couple of unmarked and emergency medical vehicles from two different volunteer fire departments. In between and around them, people bustled, checked guns, loaded up with ammunition, prepared for the worst.

  Lucinda slid out of the car. Hirschhorn approached her and said, “Listen, I know this is my jurisdiction and not yours. But I’ve been talkin’ a bit more to Jumbo and it looks like this might all be a part of a bigger investigation with your name on it. So I’d like the two of us to lead this operation together.”

  “The state guys okay with that?” Lucinda asked.

  “Yeah. They keep telling me, they’re just here to provide support. State ain’t as bad as the Feds but I still don’t trust them all that much.”

  “I hear ya, Chief. I’m under orders to get the Feebs involved in this case before the day is over.”

  Hirschhorn looked at his watch and grinned. “Business day’s almost over, Lieutenant.”

  “Yeah. I’m real worried,” she said with a yawn and a roll of her eyes.

  Hirschhorn snorted. “I can tell. Okay. What do you think we ought to do? My boys are itchin’ to bust through the gate and bust some heads. But considering the possibility that we might have more old folks in there . . .”

  “I think probably thirteen of them, Deputy.”

  “That many?” Hirschhorn asked. “How many bad guys?”

  “I suspect Gary Blankenship and two of his adult children are in there. But I don’t know if there is anyone else and I’m not sure if they’re armed.”

  “You thinking we need to do a little spyin’ first – maybe just the two of us?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Lucinda agreed.

  Hirschhorn stepped up on the concrete platform that once held gas pumps. Swinging his arm in the air, he shouted, “Hey, y’all
.”

  Bodies formed a circle around him. “The Lieutenant and I are going to slip inside the gates and get a feel for the lay of the land.”

  The mostly male crowd shuffled in place, mumbling where they stood.

  “I know, I know. Y’all are all juiced up and ready to go but we have a possibility of thirteen hostages in there and we need to figure it out before we go bustin’ in and get some of them killed.” He stepped down and walked to Lucinda. With a jerk of his head, he said, “My car’s over there.”

  “Oh no, I’m driving,” she said turning on her heel and walking towards her car.

  “But . . .” Hirschhorn started and then thought better of it. He retrieved his shotgun and shells from his car and got into the passenger’s seat in Lucinda’s vehicle. After they’d gone a mile, the chief deputy pointed across the road to a gated drive. “That’s it.”

  Lucinda drove a few yards beyond it, made a U-turn and parked in the grass shoulder on the same side of the road. She got a rifle and ammunition from the trunk of the car and they walked to the gate. “Up and over?” she asked.

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Lucinda handed her Winchester to Hirschhorn, scaled the fence. Once back on the ground, she reached through the small gap where the gate met a post. He passed her rifle to her and then handed her his shotgun. As soon as he was into the property, Lucinda pointed to a trail leading through the woods.

  When they reached the end of the path, they stood behind and a little above a brick bungalow, the last one in a horseshoe string wrapping to their left around a large pond. Lucinda didn’t think the motel looked all that bad at all considering the amount of time the property had been abandoned and neglected. From her elevated vantage point, she saw an obvious sign of repair on the cheap: green shingle patches stood out from the originally black roofs.

  She realized the barge-like boat in the water was moving slowly around the edge but she found it difficult to believe what she was seeing. A donkey or mule – she wasn’t sure which – walked along a dirt path running around the circumference of the pond. It was attached to the boat by an apparatus that reminded Lucinda of a photograph of the Erie Canal she’d seen in her high school history book.

  To her far right, she spotted a hill with eight crosses just as Derek had described. Closer up was what appeared to be a small wooden Ferris wheel with four seats. A large black rubber belt connected the base of the contraption to a horizontal wagon-wheel-like hub with a harness built into the end of one of its spokes.

  Next to that strange amusement ride was something even odder: a short, wooden pole, dark with creosote was connected to a much taller pole with a double line of cable – like an old, tenement clothesline strung between two buildings. Hanging from the cable was a seat, just like the ones on the Ferris wheel. A crank attached to the shorter pole appeared to be a mechanism to move the seat back and forth between the poles.

  “What the hell is this?” Hirschhorn exclaimed.

  “Appears to be a poor man’s Disneyland to me,” Lucinda said. “Look over there!” She pointed to the front of the larger, center building where a lone figure emerged. It walked up to the pond, out onto a small, low dock and waved. About a dozen hands poked out from under the boat’s roof, waving back. “I wonder how many more people are inside that building.”

  “I wonder exactly who is on that boat,” the deputy added.

  “We can’t answer my question without going in.”

  “And we can’t answer mine until they all disembark, but we have no idea of knowin’ how many times they’ll circle that pond. And dusk will be here in an hour or so.”

  “We need to get everyone down here, then,” Lucinda said. “Get them to gear up and come on foot. Unusual traffic sounds might drift down into the valley and warn them that we’re coming.”

  Hirschhorn called the officer he left in charge of the group and issued orders, while he and Lucinda retraced their steps back to the gate. Five minutes after they reached the fence, they heard the rhythmic footsteps of the unit on the move in their direction. Soon, the uniforms were there, scaling the fence.

  One state trooper stood with his back to the gate on the inside of the compound. He held a rifle across his chest and wore a Buckingham Palace guard expression on his face. A sniper from the sheriff’s department planted himself behind a large tree, ready to pick off anyone who threatened the trooper – on foot or in a vehicle.

  Two men remained with Hirschhorn, Lucinda and Jumbo. The rest spread out behind the motel from one end to the other. After a discussion long enough to rub Lucinda’s small portion of patience down to a nub, they reached a decision. The two people who looked the least threatening – Lucinda and Jumbo – would walk down the drive. The remaining three would watch their backs.

  As the two approached the buildings, Lucinda said, “Smile, Jumbo, as if your life depended on it ’cause it very well might.” With every step, it grew more difficult for her to maintain a casual pace. She itched to draw her weapon and order everyone to the ground.

  They walked closer to the pond, passing the end bungalow, entering the horseshoe. A shout echoed from the water, the words indistinct but the panic evident. A woman emerged from the center building. Stopped. Moved towards them. Lucinda raised an arm and waved in her direction.

  The woman hesitated, then, returned the gesture. She continued towards Lucinda and Jumbo. When she got within shouting distance, she yelled, “May I help you?”

  Lucinda took long strides in her direction. Jumbo struggled to keep up with her. The moment Lucinda felt she could speak in a normal voice and still be heard, she said, “Donna? Donna Blankenship?”

  Donna stopped, turned and ran back inside. Lucinda broke into a run and followed her. More shouts rang out from the boat. Lucinda heard a splash in the water as she reached the door. She pulled on it but it was locked.

  Hearing footsteps on the wooden dock, she turned. A young man in dripping clothes ran up the hill towards her. Jumbo turned back to confront him. A shot rang out. Jumbo crumpled to the ground.

  Lucinda pulled her weapon and went down in a crouch running for the cover of a park bench in front of the bungalows. Another shot sent dirt flying yards in front of her. She ducked behind the bench and called out on the radio, “Officer down. Repeat. Officer down.”

  Before she finished speaking, the team was already in motion, converging on her location. Hirschhorn and the trooper and deputy with him, took up positions and aimed their weapons at the covered barge. They held their fire as the shouting from the water was replaced by sobbing and whimpering.

  Lucinda heard a crash and the grind of metal and worried about the source of the sound until she heard a siren approaching down the hill. She mumbled a prayer for Jumbo and turned her focus back to the wet man; she thought it was Don, making his way towards her. He didn’t appear to have a weapon. When he reached a point that placed him between her and the boat, she rose to her feet, her gun pointing straight at him. “Put your hands on top of your head. Lace your fingers together. And drop to your knees.”

  He paused looking to his left and right then dropped in front of her, hands in the air.

  Two deputies hurried in to pull Jumbo out of harm. Bullets hit the dirt around them as they moved the injured officer back up the drive and out of sight. The emergency vehicles filled the air with their desperate wails as they responded to the scene from their bivouac a mile up the road.

  Lucinda shouted, “Don? Don Blankenship?” at the man on the ground.

  He nodded.

  “Hands on top of your head.”

  He complied and Lucinda stepped behind, grabbing one arm at a time, pulling it down and snapping on handcuffs. A loud crash made them both jerk in the direction of the center building where two deputies breeched the front door. Lucinda heard muffled shouting from inside. Then she heard a bullet sing as it passed her ear.

  She grabbed the cuffs, jerked Don to his feet and dragged him behind the bench and forced him back
onto the ground. Pinned in place, she boiled with anger. She pulled back on the cuffs, causing Don to yelp. “Who’s on the boat, Don?”

  “The guests.”

  “Who else, Don?” she said tugging again.

  “My dad.”

  “Gary Blankenship?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many hostages does your dad have?”

  “They’re not hostages, they’re—”

  “I don’t give a damn what you call them, Don. Your dad is shooting at us. He could shoot his passengers. I want to rescue those people before they end up dead.”

  “I don’t want them to die. We rescued them so that their brains wouldn’t die.”

  “Don’t want to hear it, Don. And we don’t want to shoot your father but we will if we have to.”

  “No, don’t. He won’t kill those people.”

  “Oh, really, Don. Did you know he killed your mother?”

  “No, no, she left us.”

  “No, she didn’t, Don. Where did he bury her body? You were ten years old. You must remember.”

  “I can’t. I can’t.”

  “Look,” she said pointing towards the center building where two uniformed officers emerged on either side of a handcuffed woman. “Is that your sister Donna?”

  Don nodded and whimpered, “Yes.”

  “We’ve already got Derek in custody.”

  Don looked at her with wide eyes.

  “Now. How are we going to get your dad off that boat without anyone dying?”

  “Harvey won’t stop till he gets to the dock.”

  “Harvey?”

  “The mule. We trained him. We wanted to make sure if anyone hooked him up to the boat and took off, Harvey’d always bring them back safely.”

  “Can your father make Harvey keep going?”

  “Not from inside the boat. You have to actually grab the harness and pull on him to get him going again.”

  “How can we get your dad off of that boat?”

  “I can talk to him. Me and Donna can talk to him. We can get out on the dock when he pulls up. We can tell him to give up, the dream’s over.”