The dog gave a playful snort, but at least didn’t growl or bark. Could she reach the key with the coat hanger while the towel still distracted the dog? Crouching to peer through the crack, she spotted the key and inched the coat hanger toward it. Miraculously, the hanger’s length reached just far enough so that after several efforts she managed to hook the shepherd’s crook through the key’s loop and draw it slowly toward her.
Just as the key was almost to the door, the dog put his paw heavily upon it, giving a satisfied grunt. With one hand she kept the wire hooked in the key’s loop and with the other hand she put a second piece of meatloaf at the edge of the crack and shot it into the room as one might flick a marble. As the dog dashed after the meat, she quickly pulled in the key.
Before unlocking the door, she had to be sure the dog’s activity hadn’t drawn the man’s attention. She crouched, watching down the hall through the crack beneath the door. She waited. Nothing. Standing up, she put the key into the lock, turned it very slowly, pushed gently on the door and felt tears of relief prick her eyes as it slowly swung open.
The dog frisked near her, eager to continue the game. With no idea what signals he was trained to recognize, she put her finger to her lips and whispered, “Shhh.” This seemed to sober him as he followed her across the kitchen. She lifted the window and held her next-to-the-last-piece of meatloaf in his direction.
If she got outside without the dog and shut the window in his face, he’d surely bark wildly. Crazy as it was, with no other choice she could think of, the dog would have to come with her!
She let him smell the meat but didn’t give it to him. “Good dog,” she whispered, climbing out through the window. “Come on. Good dog.”
The animal hesitated, a warning rumble sounding in his throat, but when she held out the meat for him, he bounded through the window to get it. Closing the window, she gave him the snack, patted his head, said “come” and started running across the gravel toward the driveway.
She hadn’t taken ten steps when the parking area abruptly flooded with light.
CHAPTER 48
Arriving at headquarters, Adam called his police dispatcher contact, Akeesha Williams. Upbeat and alert, she was an excellent choice for her particular job. Nothing flapped her and she was rumored to own a photographic memory, because her recall amazed everyone.
On her shift, she typed many CAD bulletins and messages that appeared on each cruiser’s computer screen. The soft cadence of her distinctive voice gave clear information to patrolling police cruisers when a situation called for voice communication.
“Hello, Akeesha,” Adam said into his cell phone. “Got anything new on the Shannon case?”
“We have one unit following up on a woman in a white Cadillac SUV seen buying gas in Woodbridge. Tipster said she matched the description and looked just like the picture on TV, but they didn’t catch her tag number. They said there was a man in the passenger seat, too. We ought to hear back from them any minute. That’s it for now.”
“Thanks. I’ll be in my office.”
He just sat down at his desk when his phone rang. “Iverson.”
“Detective Iverson,” Akeesha spoke, “We just got another traffic report. Woman in a white Cadillac SUV hit a tree down on Georgetown Pike.”
“Any identification?”
“Not yet, but there’s just one thing….”
“What?”
“She’s dead.”
Adam’s heart sank. This terrible development meant crushing news for some family, hopefully, not the Shannons. If it were Jennifer, he should be the one to tell them, however much he dreaded the task. “Can you put me through to them?”
“Sure.”
He imagined the despair such news would wring from Hannah. Wanting to protect her, he yearned instead to bring her news that her mother was safe. Was that even probable as the trail grew colder with every passing minute and Jennifer’s disappearance—he consulted his watch and did the math—thirty-one hours ago?
A voice crackled into the phone at his ear, “Unit 21.”
“Iverson, here,” he identified himself. “Got an ID on the passenger in the white van?”
“Yeah, it’s,” more static, “Matilda Wong and this scene is a mess. Need anything else?”
“No, that’s it. Thanks.”
He hung up the phone and eased back into his desk chair. He heard coughing echo down the hall even before Jake Torres reached Adam’s door.
“Geez, I just can’t shake this cold,” Jake spoke in a nasal voice as he ambled up to Adam’s desk. “No, I won’t infect you, but let me stay long enough to find my last cough drops. I know I have a couple left here somewhere.” He patted and then emptied several of his pockets onto the corner of Adam’s desk. Out came a handful of change, a comb, some paper clips, three wadded up cough drop wrappers, a bolt with a washer and nut attached, a pocket pack of Kleenex tissues, a crumpled piece of paper and a box of breath freshener mints. Jake patted more pockets, stifled another cough, and at last triumphantly produced the two elusive cough drops.
Adam splayed his hands open and drummed his fingertips impatiently on his desk top.
“Hey, buddy,” Jake looked at Adam’s hands. “I never did ask you what happened to your hand.”
Adam glanced down. “It’s a birth defect. I never notice it since it’s been like this since the day I was born.”
“Didn’t affect your getting into the police academy?”
“No. See, my writing hand is my shooting hand. The left hand just goes underneath to steady the gun hand.” He demonstrated this familiar position, simulating the pistol barrel with his right index finger.
Adam started to reach into his desk drawer for something when the phone rang and instead, he answered. “Iverson here!”
Akeesha’s voice came over the line, “The Woodbridge tip didn’t check out for your case,” she said. “Some husband and wife in a tan Cadillac van, not a white one. Sorry.”
“Thanks for the input, Akeesha.” Adam hung up and leaned forward. “Quite a cache of stuff you carry around with you, Jake-Boy. What’s the bolt for?”
Jake talked around the cough drop in his mouth, “Oh, it’s for a drawer at home. Got to match the size and threads next trip to the hardware store.”
“Is this a silver dollar?” Adam examined one of Jake’s coins with interest.
“Yeah, it was my grandfather’s. Check the date: 1928! I carry it for luck.”
“And what’s this, a love note?” Adam smoothed the wrinkled paper out flat and looked at the writing. Suddenly he jumped to his feet.
“Where’d you get this?” he shouted.
Jake held out his hand for the paper, examined it and tossed it back down on the desk. “It’s nothing. That old guy, Whitehead, the one who pesters us with those driver reports, he started to call that in this morning and had a heart attack instead. The big one! It’s just another of his bad driver reports, you know, the address, the tag number.”
Electrified, Adam moved around the desk. “Not just any tag number. This is Jennifer Shannon’s tag number. You got this information this morning?”
“Well, yeah,” more coughing from Jake until the lozenge took effect. “The medics took him away and we went over to check the house as a possible crime scene and then secure the place because EMS broke the door open to get to him. It was kind of weird, actually. I mean, he basically died calling in this report and I saw it there on his clipboard and I don’t know why, I just copied it down on impulse and then forgot about it.”
Adam snatched up the phone and dialed, “Akeesha?”
“One and the same,” she purred.
“That guy, Whitehead, who calls us a lot.”
“Called us a lot,” she corrected.
“Ah... right. Can you remember a pattern? Did he call in those violations the day they happened or a week later or what?”
Pause. “Very timely, usually right after his encounter but always within a few hours, as
I recall.”
Adam brightened. “Okay, were you on when he made that last call?”
“I was and I sent him the rescue bus.”
Adam knew a record was made of any type incoming call and asked, “Would you look up what time that call came in?” He heard her clicking computer keys.
“This morning at 10:45.”
“And did he give the tag number or say when and where the incident happened?”
“That’s a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’? He gave only the first two digits of the license plate before he needed emergency assistance, but he said it happened yesterday around 4:00 and the address was 3508 Winding Trail Road.” She studied her computer screen, “And that partial plate number he gave…actually they weren’t numbers, they were letters: YR.”
As he listened to Akeesha, Adam’s eyes followed the identical address information in Jake’s handwriting on the note before him, except Jake had copied down the entire tag number.
“Thanks, Akeesha. You’re the greatest.”
“That’s true,” she allowed with a mischievous chuckle.
In one fluid movement, Adam hung up the phone, snatched something from his open desk drawer and threw it to Jake, who grabbed it in a one-handed catch before identifying it as an unopened bag of cough drops.
Accepting Adam’s gift, a grateful Jake said, “Geez, just what I need! Thanks, good buddy!”
“You’re welcome!” Except for the note, Adam pushed Jake’s pocket contents back across the desk to him. “Now gather up your stuff. We’re going for a ride!”
CHAPTER 49
Illuminating the stretch between the farm house and out-buildings, the motion-activated flood lights blinded Jennifer as she ran across the parking area toward the driveway. She hated the loud gravel crunch beneath her every footfall which broadcast her location to anyone listening, but the unforgiving tangle of prickly bushes on both sides of the driveway prevented any quieter choice.
Instead of barking or pinning her down, the dog surprised Jennifer by bounding along beside her, perhaps thinking this more of the game. Distancing themselves from the harsh, bright backyard light, they raced into the driveway’s shadows and toward the dark street at the end.
This part of Fairfax County actually prided itself on few, if any, street lights; a misguided attempt at preserving the one-time “country” atmosphere. If she reached the street on this moonless night, she might hide in the underbrush. Unused to sprinting, she felt a pain in her side grow with every pounding step. How long was this damnable driveway? Huffing vigorously now, at last she felt the gravel give way to firm asphalt underfoot.
She’d reached the road, but which way to turn? Uphill would double her physical exertion. She turned downhill and ran full out when she heard the man’s pickup truck roar to life back by the house, tires skidding in the gravel as he barreled the vehicle toward the driveway.
Why couldn’t she run faster? The pain in her side sharpened! Was she slowing down? Where was that legendary secondwind? Rushing onward as best she could on the dark, deserted road, she realized the dog kept pace beside her. Was this a desperate freedom run for them both?
Reaching the street, the truck’s headlights pierced the night at the foot of the driveway and hesitated. Jennifer flung herself deep into the thick bushes along the side of the road and burrowed in just before the vehicle also turned downhill. “Come!” she’d commanded the dog, her earlier gentle approach replaced with the raw urgency of a sharp order. If the dog failed to follow and instead stayed visible beside the road, he’d instantly compromise her location. To come this far only to be recaptured tore at her heart. So did her terror of the man’s unthinkable retaliation after!
She felt amazement and relief as the dog eagerly followed her deep into the wild bushes, hunkering down, out of sight, right beside her. More game for him? Was his eagerness to play a welcome contrast from cruel treatment at the hands of his sadistic master, treatment reflected in the animal’s scars and hunger?
Panting, she held onto the dog—stunned that he allowed it and just as stunned she could do it—partly to quiet him and partly to share this hysterical experience with any companion, however unlikely. Lying against her, he seemed impervious to the brambles that scratched mercilessly at her exposed arms and face.
“Shhh! she whispered to him, as they pressed deeper into the underbrush-covered ditch alongside the road. Realizing that without this animal’s unexpected cooperation she could never have made it this far, Jennifer whispered “Good, good dog.” Putting her cheek against his fur, she meant every word.
The truck crept around the curve of the empty road. They watched transfixed as the pickup’s headlights rolled an illuminating arc across the trees. The vehicle moved toward them slowly and paused for a terrifying moment right in front of them. She held her breath. At last it passed by, moved down the road and around another curve.
Just before the truck disappeared at the bend, its headlights high-lighted an opening in the bushes that looked like a driveway about 40 feet further downhill and on the other side of the road. A place to get help? Would the owners even answer the door to a stranger after midnight? Did they have their own patrolling dogs to rip her and this animal to shreds?
The driveway appeared to angle up into the woods, but no house lights shone through the trees; maybe not a house there at all, but the road into an unimproved wooded lot. In those split seconds of truck-light illumination, had she seen a black mailbox or imagined one?
Headlights flickered again far down the road. A vehicle coming. Were these the man’s headlights or those of someone to help her? Nighttime headlights looked alike, bright and blinding. Unable to distinguish his beams from a rescuer’s, she couldn’t risk a mistake. The engine sounded like a truck, but she wasn’t sure.
Desperate for help from any stranger happening along this road, should she jump out to flag down this driver before her only chance disappeared? She hesitated, her heart pounding. Sensing her agitation, the dog shifted position. She held on to him, agonizing about what to do.
A pair of headlights rounded the turn as the vehicle slowed and shined a spotlight slowly along each side of the road. It was his truck! Thank god she stayed put.
“Shhhh,” she whispered again to the dog, her fingers pressing a warning against his side as they lay motionless deep in the bushes. The spotlight moved first along the other side of the road, then moved to their side of the road, inching along the edge of the bushes. Suddenly the light stopped. Moving only her eyes, she saw the glint of a metal soda can in the brambles only about ten feet away from where they huddled. The truck door opened as the man focused the spotlight there and stepped around the front of the truck for a closer look. The dog trembled but held.
Scanning the bushes left and right of the soda can, the man’s eyes seemed to linger directly on them but finally moved on. Shuffling back to the truck, he turned the spotlight ahead, shifted into drive and worked his spotlight search of the roadside on up the hill to the curve, then slowly around it and out of sight.
As the sound of the truck’s motor receded, she jerked herself out of the thorns, leaped from the ditch and raced downhill toward the new driveway. The dog followed, matching her stride.
Reaching the entrance illuminated minutes earlier by the truck’s lights, she realized she had seen a mailbox by the opening. She and the dog hurtled past it and up this new driveway in the dark. Unable to see more than a few feet in front of her and running fast, she barely avoided tripping over a large branch fallen across the asphalt. To her surprise, the dog took the lead up the long, winding stretch. She followed the sound of his jingling tags more than his scarcely visible shape.
The curling driveway ended in a clearing atop a hill, where a huge house rose majestically against the stars in the dark night sky. A light burned above the center of four garage doors, but no lights at all showed in the windows of the house. At midnight they’d be asleep!
Moving quickly from the driveway to the sid
ewalk, she struggled up the tiers of terraced stone steps to the front door, the dog bounding along beside her. She found the doorbell, rang it twice and pounded on the door. No response. Stepping back, she looked for lights to appear in the windows. None. More ringing, more pounding. The doorbell’s musical notes sounding in the foyer were audible outside, so she knew it worked. Oh please! She rang the bell again.
And then she heard something ominous.
CHAPTER 50
From the distance came the now unmistakable rasp of the truck grinding back along the road. Unable to rouse anyone inside, Jennifer stood anxiously on the mansion’s front porch before reaching down to reassure the dog and herself as she struggled to think what to do next. Suddenly, the animal froze and stared fixedly toward the road, body alert, eyes focused. For the first time since their sojourn began, he whined. He took a step forward but stopped, turned and looked back at her. “Would you like to be my dog?” she asked softly. At her touch, his ears momentarily relaxed, he lifted his face and nuzzled her hand. But rather than pliant as he’d been earlier, the dog again acted edgy and distracted. “Good dog,” she soothed, crouching to give him a confidence-restoring hug.
He pressed against her in response but then, for no apparent reason, reverted again, standing stiffly, staring rigidly down the hill before whimpering in obvious distress. “Good dog,” she repeated, petting the top of his head to soothe his plaintive sounds. His ears pointed tensely forward, his muscles tight, his focus on the road as he emitted a low growl.
The man must be calling the dog, probably with a high-pitched whistle, because she heard nothing. How cruelly had he trained this animal for it to react this fearfully to that sound?
The dog looked up at her, then jumped off the porch, moved toward the driveway, ears forward, and whined again. It turned toward her one last time, as if apologizing for a decision made, and then rocketed away down the driveway toward the road.
Garage Sale Stalker (Garage Sale Mysteries) Page 22