Savannah didn’t know how to even word her next question. And when she found the words, she could hardly speak them. “Are you thinking…imprisonment…or disposal?”
Thoughts of Maggie flooded her mind. The old citrus packing shed.
They had been too late.
Dirk put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. “I’m thinking,” he said, “that we need to go up there and check those damned cages.”
Savannah jumped up from her chair and said, “Yes, right now. Let’s get Gran home, and then the three of us have some serious hiking to do.”
Savannah didn’t mind the idea of walking a narrow path in the middle of nowhere after sunset. Darkness didn’t frighten her. The cries of coyotes in the not so far distance didn’t spook her. And she liked to think that all the rattlesnakes were curled snugly in their dens with their little ones, watching TV or eating popcorn and playing Snake Trivial Pursuit, even though she had heard facts to the contrary.
The October night air was cool with a full moon overhead, so the hike didn’t even cause her, Dirk, or Tammy to break a sweat.
The coastal foothills of San Carmelita had a romance all their own. Several varieties of sage that grew from one to ten feet high scented the air with a perfume that became even more pronounced after the sun went down and the evening dew settled.
And although the semidesert might have seemed uninhabited at first glance, the thick brush teemed with life. As they walked along, they heard the rustling of rabbits, rodents, squirrels, and birds.
Occasionally, Savannah saw a lizard slither off the path to avoid them. At least, she told herself they were lizards.
Lizards didn’t watch television or play games at night.
And under better circumstances, the moonlight bathing everything in a wash of a thousand shades of silver might have soothed her soul.
But not tonight.
Savannah was afraid of what they’d find on the other end of the hike, and she knew her companions were just as afraid because for the past five minutes, no one had said a word.
“This isn’t like Maggie,” Dirk had whispered in her ear when they had begun the trek. “This time, it’s going to be different.”
After studying the Internet map thoroughly, they had driven to the Dante estate and taken a path that led from behind the tennis courts, up the hill, and into the undeveloped foothills.
Dirk led the way with a powerful flashlight, Savannah right behind him, carrying her own torch, and Tammy in the rear.
Once in a while, he stopped to consult the series of close-up maps they had printed at the library.
“Those two trees over there,” Savannah said as they neared the area where they believed the cages were, “they’re right here on the map. Isn’t that them?”
Tammy and Dirk leaned over her shoulders as Savannah directed the beam of her light onto the map. They both studied the paper, then Dirk flashed his torch up and down the trees she was pointing to.
“Yeah,” he said. “Those are the only big trees we’ve seen so far. I think we’re about there.”
Savannah’s heart was beginning to pound, and it wasn’t from the hike. “The first cage should be up there, around that bend on the left.”
“This is so exciting!” Tammy said. “I’m so glad you let me come! Thank you!”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Savannah said softly.
She had been regretting her decision to allow Tammy to tag along almost from the moment they got into the car to come here. But since the lead had been one-hundred percent Tammy’s, it was hard to tell her no.
Savannah just hoped with all her heart that Daisy wouldn’t turn out to be Tammy’s Maggie. And if things turned terrible, Savannah knew she would never forgive herself. Tammy wasn’t as thick-skinned as she and Dirk.
And even they hadn’t gotten over Maggie.
They continued on up the path, which was getting steeper by the moment. And just as the trail was turning left, they came to a fence.
There wasn’t much left of it, only a couple of rusted barbed wires that were lying on the ground, along with some rotted posts. They were able to step right over it.
“I guess this was the enclosure the Web sites talked about, to keep the animals in,” Savannah said.
“Yeah, you gals watch yourselves,” Dirk said in his best protective, manly voice. “Don’t scratch yourselves on those wires.”
“Why, Dirko,” Tammy said. “I didn’t know you cared.”
“I don’t.” He put his hands on her waist and lifted her lightly over the fallen wires. “But you’ve both got great legs. Why risk scars?”
To Savannah, he only offered a helping hand. She took it and as she hopped over, said, “Thank you, Sir Galahad. You’re too kind.”
“People say that all the time.”
“Yeah, right.”
Dirk’s jacket began to buzz. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. Looking at the caller ID, he said, “Hey, it’s Ryan.”
Savannah glanced at her watch. It was 8:05. The clinic would be closing at nine. The last appointment would probably be arriving about now, so maybe…
She mentally crossed her fingers. What would be better than finding empty cages up here and a healthy, if pregnant, Daisy in town?
“Yeah,” Dirk said into the phone. “What’s up? Oh?” He looked puzzled. “You’re kidding. Hm-m-m. That’s not what we were expecting. Okay. Thanks, buddy.”
“Well?” Savannah asked when he hung up.
“What is it?” Tammy wanted to know, tugging on his arm. “What’s the stuff we weren’t expecting?”
“Two of our gals showed up over there,” he told them.
“Which two?”
“Tiffany and Bunny.”
“Tiffy and Bunny?” Savannah worked at getting her mind around that one. “Tiffy and Bunny? What the hell would they be doing there?”
“Picking up a handful of condoms?” Dirk said with half a chuckle. “Which one of them do you suppose is pregnant?”
“Maybe one of them is just going for a gynecological exam,” Tammy said. “The clinic deals with all sorts of women’s health issues.”
“I don’t know,” Savannah said, “and at the moment, I don’t care. We have to get to those cages.”
She headed on up the path with them close behind. In the moonlight, she could see something ahead, something too shiny to be natural. It was a structure made of wood and corrugated tin.
As she drew closer, she could see the front of the building…and metal bars. Further down the path were two more similar structures.
In her mind’s eye, Savannah saw another old, dilapidated building, deserted, dirty, rusty, and falling down. An abandoned citrus processing plant. And inside, a teenager who had barely even begun her life, dead. Still warm when Savannah had gathered her into her arms, but gone forever.
“Not like Maggie,” she whispered as she raced forward, her flashlight illuminating only a few square feet at a time.
She reached the first cage and swept the light back and forth inside, trying to figure out what her eyes were seeing. Strange shapes. A large metal tub. Chains and leather harnesses hanging from the walls. Piles of moldering, mostly rotted hay on the floor.
She was only vaguely aware of Tammy and Dirk on either side of her until Dirk shone his brighter light into the space and lit up the dreary interior.
“How awful,” Tammy said. “Can you imagine putting an innocent animal in here?”
Savannah didn’t reply. She hurried on to the next cage, which was filled with similarly dismal trappings.
When Dirk joined her and flashed his light into that enclosure, a pile of straw on the left rustled, and Tammy screamed.
An enormous rat scurried out of the mound and ran through the bars, past them, and into some nearby brush.
“Are you all right, kiddo?” Dirk asked her.
“Yes,” was the meek, shaky reply.
Savannah was already on her way to the third
cage. And a feeling that she recognized as a deep-seated premonition told her this one would be different.
“Daisy?” she began to call out even before she reached it. “Daisy! Honey, are you in there?”
She saw something inside, to the right, over in the corner. She shone her light on it, and what she saw made her knees nearly buckle beneath her.
“She’s here!” she cried out. But Dirk was already beside her.
His light showed what they had been hoping they would find…and fearing they would.
Daisy was lying on some sort of wooden bench on her side, her face away from them. She was motionless.
“Daisy! Daisy!” they all three shouted. But there was no response.
Savannah was jerking at the door, trying to open it. But it was held closed by a chain and a padlock. She grabbed the padlock and yanked at it, trying to somehow rip it off the chains.
In some detached, far less emotional part of her mind, Savannah recorded the fact that the padlock was new, shiny in sharp contrast to the rusted metal of the bars. That part of her mind also told her that no matter how hard she tried, she wasn’t going to get this door open with her bare hands.
Later, she would look at her bruised and cut hands and realize how foolish and futile her actions had been.
She would also remember that she had been sobbing while she was doing it.
“It’s locked, Savannah,” Tammy was saying. “You can’t open it that way. Dirk, shoot the lock with your gun and open it!”
“That’s only in cowboy movies, kiddo,” Dirk told her, a grim, sad tone to his voice.
He reached over and grabbed Savannah’s hands, pulling them off the lock. “Wait a minute, honey,” he told her. “Find me something to pry it off with.”
As she had been forced to do many times before, Savannah willed a stronger, calmer self to surface. She looked around, casting her flashlight beam over the ground in front of and beside the cage. Near the back, she found something—a short metal bar maybe six inches long.
She grabbed it and ran back to Dirk. “This won’t give you much leverage, but—”
“It’ll do,” he said. “That’s not much of a lock.”
He was right. In less than five seconds, he had inserted the rod into the lock and twisted it off. Three seconds later, he had the door open.
Savannah pushed ahead of him to get inside, to get to Daisy.
She ran to the bench and grabbed the girl’s body, turning it over.
Don’t touch the body without gloves, a quiet, professional voice whispered inside her head. This is a crime scene. Don’t disturb the evidence.
“Daisy!” she said. “Daisy!”
Dirk lifted his flashlight and shone it down on the girl’s face.
Savannah expected to see open, vacant dead eyes staring up at her. But Daisy’s eyes were closed.
“She’s warm,” Savannah said. Not that it matters.
Savannah pressed her fingertips to the girl’s jugular vein and felt a pulse. It was weak but regular, and she could see the gentle rise and fall of her chest.
“She’s alive,” Dirk said. “She’s alive, Van.”
A wash of relief poured over Savannah from her head to her feet. And when it hit her knees, she went down. The next thing she knew, she was sitting on the dirty floor, holding Daisy’s limp hand against her cheek, rocking back and forth and sobbing.
As though from far away, she could hear Dirk on the phone saying, “Yeah, we’re going to need a medevac for an unconscious female. No visible signs of injury, but possible dehydration or…”
She rose to her knees and leaned over Daisy. Lifting one of the girl’s eyelids gently with her finger, she shone the flashlight into her eye and watched as the iris contracted. The teenager stirred ever so faintly.
“You’re okay, honey,” she told her. “You’re going to be all right. We’ve got you now. We’ve got you.”
Daisy groaned just a little, but it was one of the sweetest sounds Savannah had ever heard.
“You’re all right, Maggie,” she whispered. “This time was different. This time we found you…before…”
Behind her, she could hear Tammy ask Dirk, “Is Savannah okay? I just heard her call Daisy ‘Maggie.’ Is she all right?”
“She’s okay,” was Dirk’s soft reply. “Don’t worry about her, kiddo. Right now, Savannah is very, very okay.”
Chapter 20
“You were largely responsible for this, so I wanted you to see it,” Savannah told Gran as she led her down the hallways of San Carmelita Community General Hospital.
They rounded a corner and saw the large double doors of the Intensive Care Unit. Through the pane of safety glass in each door, they could see the flurry of activity, the medical personnel in their pale blue scrubs rushing around, attending to the most severely sick and wounded of San Carmelita. The ICU was maybe two notches less harried than the Emergency Room. But since this was the only major hospital in the county, there was no area of San Carmelita Community General that could be considered laid back.
The semichaos worked to Savannah’s advantage. In spite of their “only two visitors at a time” rule, she had come and gone from Daisy’s ICU cubicle several times in the past two hours without anyone questioning her.
So she had sent Tammy to get Gran.
Gran needed this life-affirming moment.
They entered the large central room with its desks and counters in the middle, and around the hub were the individual glassed-in cubicles with the critically and seriously ill patients.
“Over here,” Savannah said, leading her grandmother to their left. “She’s the one there, with all the pretty red hair. And that’s her mother.”
They stood at the opening to the cubicle and said nothing as they watched Pam O’Neil leaning over her daughter, stroking her hair, and speaking lovingly to her.
Just before they had found Daisy, Pam had told Savannah that she thought she had finally run out of tears to cry for her lost daughter.
Apparently, she had found more. But at least these were happy, healing tears running down her face.
Daisy was conscious, the IV supplying much needed fluids for her badly dehydrated body. She was gripping her mother’s hand and telling her not to cry, that everything would be all right.
Savannah glanced at Gran and saw tears welling up in her eyes, too. “That’s a precious sight,” Gran whispered. “It is, indeed.”
Pam noticed them standing there and hurried over to greet Granny. She grabbed the older woman in a warm embrace and held her for a long time before finally releasing her. “Thank you,” she said. “Savannah told me that if it weren’t for you thinking of going to the library and checking the computers there, we never would have found my Daisy.”
Granny shrugged and looked embarrassed. “Well, I don’t know about that. I’m just honored that the good Lord gave me that word of wisdom there. And if He hadn’t given it to me, I’m sure He would have given it to somebody else. Obviously, He wanted you to have your little girl back.”
Gran walked over to Daisy’s bedside. “Now, let’s see this young’un who’s been causing all this ruckus.” She took Daisy’s hand between both of hers. “Hi, sugar pie,” she said. “What a pretty thing you are! Your momma has been beside herself for the past few days, worried sick about you. You’re gonna have to be a perfect kid for the next thirty years to make it up to her.”
Daisy smiled a weak, but lovely, smile. “I will,” she said.
“What I want to know,” Gran said, “is how you got yourself in that pickle in the first place? What in blazes were you doing up there in that cage to begin with?”
Savannah started to reach for Gran, to gently pull her back from the bed and stop the conversation before it began. She and Dirk had discussed that while he was still up on the hill examining the cage where Daisy had been imprisoned and finding all he could there, she would question Daisy at the hospital.
And now, it seemed Gran was starting the
interrogation herself.
The detective and former cop in Savannah insisted that she do the job herself. After all, who could get information out of a teenager better than a trained professional?
A grandmother who raised several children of her own and nine grandchildren besides, that’s who, she thought. Go, Granny, go.
“I went up there because I wanted to show the girls the cages I’d found, the ones used for the hunts,” Daisy told Granny.
“Which girls?”
“Tiffy and Bunny. They told me to drive up there into one of those canyons, and they’d meet me there. We got sort of lost, but eventually, we found each other, and then I took them up there to show them.”
“Well, how did you get locked inside like that?”
Daisy started to sob, but no tears formed. The IV hadn’t fully done its job yet. “We were all inside that one cage looking around. Then they slipped out, and before I knew it, they’d locked me in,” she said.
“Why would they do a fool thing like that?”
“Tiffy told me it was an ‘intervention.’ That it was for my own good.”
Pam reached over and grabbed Savannah’s arm, her fingertips digging into Savannah’s flesh. “It’s okay,” Savannah whispered to her. “We have to know what happened. Let them talk.”
“What do you mean, ‘an intervention’?” Gran asked.
“They said I’m fat and I need to lose weight. They said they were tired of being embarrassed whenever they went anywhere with me because I’m a fat pig.”
Pam’s nails dug deeper into Savannah’s arm, and Savannah could feel her own rage rising.
Gran reached up and laid her palm against Daisy’s cheek. “I’m sorry they said those hateful things to you, darlin’,” she told her. “You’re a beautiful child of God, and nobody on this earth has a right to hurt you with words like that.”
Daisy sobbed quietly, but she turned her face into Gran’s hand and closed her eyes for a moment, savoring the contact.
“So, they locked you inside that awful cage,” Gran said. “And said those terrible things. Then what happened?”
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