Garage Sale Stalker (Garage Sale Mysteries)

by Weinert, Suzi

  “No,” she said firmly. “We need to find him now, before he disappears completely. I can save you time by substantiating everything I’ve told you and showing you what is where. I described the screwdriver and you said you found blood in his truck. Maybe he returned to his house for first aid. And what about Tina’s earring?”

  “Tina? Who’s Tina?” Jake looked confused, although Adam understood immediately.

  “Tina MacKenzie, my daughter’s friend,” Jennifer told Jake. “She went missing nearly a week ago. I found her earring in that man’s basement. It proves she’s been there. And even if she isn’t now, we might find other clues. I can take you right to the place where I found it. Look, I am okay, Adam, and I can’t go home yet. This isn’t over for me until he’s caught. Please take me across to the farm house so we can finish this. Please…” Adam and Jake conferred quietly in the front seat while Jennifer leaned back against the rear seat, closing her eyes.

  “She has important first-hand information and this is a very high profile case,” Jake pointed out.

  Adam nodded. “I get your point, but if the suspect’s at the house, she could be at risk. And look at her, what she’s been through. She’s just barely hanging on!”

  “She hasn’t had time to tell us everything she knows, and she may have information critical to the crime. The BOLO says she’s sixty years old. She’ll never remember the details better than she does tonight,” Jake countered.

  Adam glanced back at her, knowing she’d bristle at Jake’s memory comment and glad she hadn’t heard it. “Look,” he said quietly to Jake, “she’s convinced protecting her family hinges on catching this guy, and she could be right. I won’t jeopardize her safety but if other units go in first to secure the place, I agree. Let’s see what we can find out.”

  Adam contacted the cars across the street, where police had emerged from their vehicles, pistols drawn. “Found anything so far?” he asked. “No? The victim says she stuck a four-inch screwdriver into his gut so the suspect has an abdominal wound… We don’t know how serious. If he returned to his house from across the street here, he could be anywhere in any condition. K-9 is trying to sniff him out on this side as we speak. Shall I hold Rescue here in case you find him? …All right. Did you get an okay on that search warrant request? Great! So once you have the situation under control they’ll start taking pictures? Good!”

  “Ah, listen,” Adam continued into the phone, “we’re suggesting something a little unusual we think will help. The victim has important information to show us and since we’re pushing the clock, once it’s safe over there I’d like to bring her in for an eye-witness take on what she knows. Yeah, I know we usually take her statement and verify what she says on our own, but I think her participation may speed up our case and she really wants this guy caught. Okay? So let me know when you’re ready for us to bring her over… okay.”

  Twenty minutes later, Adam got the call and Jennifer’s eyes widened as they drove up the farmhouse driveway, the very one down which her frantic escape took place only an hour and a half earlier. At the top, Adam parked near the waiting Rescue ambulance.

  Adam turned to Jennifer, “You stay here for now. I’m going in first to check the situation. Be back in a few minutes. Meantime, Jake can keep you company.” Jake looked disappointed, preferring instead to be part of the action inside. They watched Adam pull out his pistol and take a quick overview of the outdoor layout before crossing the driveway and entering the house.

  Back in the locked cruiser, the phone beeped. Jake punched the button and a concerned voice crackled into the car. “This is the Supervisor. How is Mrs. Shannon?”

  Tailoring his response for Jennifer’s ears as well as his superior’s, Jake said, “Sir, she has minor injuries which Rescue has stabilized. Scared and worn out, Sir, but alive and alert.”

  “Good, I’ll advise PSCC and her family. And what else?” Jake described the crime scene so far.

  When they finished talking, she asked wearily, “What’s PSCC, Jake?”

  “Public Safety Communication Center,” he explained. “Their Special Command department contacts families in situations like this.” Then Jake sighed, “You know, Ma’am, you are one extremely lucky lady. Looks like you lead a charmed life.”

  At these words, Jennifer’s eyes opened wide as she did a double take!

  “Did you just say a charmed life?”

  “Yes, Ma’am, I sure did.”

  She’d last heard that phrase from an old man presumably now in a house in a California vineyard. To her surprise, an exceptionally clear image of him popped into her mind. She saw him, smiling at her from his rocker on the veranda of a quaint cottage. Behind it, rows of grape vines climbed a hill. Before it, his grandchildren played on the porch steps. Was this some crazy ESP? Was this even what Gilbert Snowden meant? Was she at last losing her mind?

  On impulse, she asked, “Jake, what day is this?”

  “July 15th.”

  One month exactly since she and the Professor agreed to remember each other in thirty days! Weird, spooky! She remembered his last words to her, “Be careful, very careful.”

  Somehow he knew? No, impossible! Yet, against all odds, here she was. Still!

  CHAPTER 53

  Adam reappeared, unlocked the cruiser door and got in. “Jake, they need you inside.”

  Glad to enter the fray, Jake trotted over to join the others inside the house. Adam holstered his own pistol before re-locking the vehicle’s doors.

  Turning to look at Jennifer, he said, “You can’t even imagine how glad I am that you’re okay!”

  Leaning forward from the back seat she hugged his shoulder and cried, “Does my family know?”

  “Yes, Jake says the Supervisor just called them and PSCC is in contact. I’ve been to your house half-a-dozen times since you disappeared. Your family really misses you!”

  “Thanks, Adam. I guess they’ve… they’ve been confused and worried.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Adam chuckled so contagiously that for the first time in thirty-six terrifying hours, she laughed too, wondering if she sounded as deranged as she felt.

  “I guess I’ll be seeing them soon, Adam. How do I look?” she asked. “Tell me the truth.”

  Adam studied her. Rescue’s medical team bandaged the puncture marks on her arm, treated the zipper-shaped bramble scratches across her face and hands, the asphalt scrapes on her arms, nose and cheek and cleaned up the smudges on her haggard face. But antiseptic and bandages did not change her dirty clothes, leaf-matted hair, dirt-caked fingernails or her tear-streaked cheeks. “You look mighty good to me.” He smiled. He meant every word.

  A scurry of feverish activity erupted outside their cruiser, as a policeman loped toward them from the sheds, knocking hard on the Rescue ambulance window and shouting at the medics to open their door. The techs immediately jumped from their vehicle carrying medical bags and ran after the cop toward one of the sheds.

  Thank god, Jennifer thought with relief. They caught him; they caught that awful man. At last I can stop worrying.

  The cruiser door opened as Jake said, “We’re ready for you now, Mrs. Shannon, if you’re up to it.” Looking toward the shed, she steeled herself for a last glimpse of her captor but saw only a cluster of police and medics.

  Limping slightly, she held onto Adam’s arm for moral support as much as physical. They went in the back door, moved through the sickeningly familiar laundry room, where she half-expected to see the dog guarding the door, through the kitchen and to the basement entrance.

  “Can you make it down the stairs with that sore ankle?”

  She nodded and winced, not at the pain but the irony. She’d vowed if she ever escaped this sinister house, nothing could bring her back. Instead she insisted on returning, forced to relive her nightmare after barely wakening from it. Was it a mistake to revisit this place she ached to forget?

  Jake trotted down the steps first. Leaning heavily on the rail,
she took a deep breath and descended slowly, Adam following behind. At the bottom, several cops awaited them.

  “Would you tell us what happened here?” one of them began, and noticing her tense expression, added quickly, “take your time… anything you think will help us.”

  She pointed a trembling finger and said very quietly, “That’s the room. ‘The confinement box’, they call it, where the man locked me up the first day.” She described the dog’s attack, being moved while unconscious and waking up in the box fearing she’d been buried alive. The uniforms each looked inside, making faces at the covered bucket’s distinct odor. Jennifer stayed near the stairs, avoiding closeness to her former prison as she told of finding the night light and then Tina’s earring. She pulled the bent metal object from her blouse pocket and a police woman bagged it as evidence. Adam reminded the group of Tina’s missing person status.

  “To know what it’s like with the door closed and the light off, maybe one of you would like to go inside?” she said.

  “Not until the forensic team works on it so we don’t disturb fingerprints or other evidence,” Adam explained, “but I can imagine it’s unpleasant.”

  Unpleasant, Jennifer thought, hardly covered it!

  Pointing out the three hat boxes under the stairs, she described their contents, including the severed finger. “Letters, pictures and other things in there tell about the man and his brother being brutalized as children and, before that, a whole family history of abuse.”

  “I don’t know what’s in these other cardboard boxes because I didn’t have time to look inside them all....” Her voice drifted away as the police stared at her.

  Moving back up the stairs, some cops went ahead, others behind, keeping her protectively in the center. Once upstairs, they guided her down the hall to the first bedroom.

  “From cleaning the house, I know my way around some rooms.” She showed them the military uniform in the gym closet and the name on the pocket. She showed them the two books he read while exercising. “And I wondered about that place in the closet ceiling—maybe access to attic storage? I have some of those in my own house, but see the hook-and-eye lock on the panel? Strange, as if they thought someone might break in from the attic.”

  A cop dispatched to bring a step ladder arrived and, activating his flashlight, Jake climbed up to take a look. “Whew! What an odor: smells like a latrine up here,” he reported, aiming his flashlight beam around. “It’s a small room about 5’ x 7’, wallboard sides and ceiling, and there’s been activity here,” he called down to the others. “Dirt, food wrappers, a dish, a cup, a lot of something dried up… looks like vomit or excrement. Wait, something written on the wall in... in something that dripped. It’s kind of scrawled but I think I can make it out. Looks like it says,” he twisted awkwardly, his ample waist nearly filling the ceiling opening, and focused his flashlight against the far wallboard. “Looks like it spells: ‘H-E-L-P’.” Jake cleared his throat, “And there’s... ” his voice faltered, “... and there’s a child’s hand print with…” Jake’s eyes glistened as he climbed heavily back down the ladder and faced the other policemen, “...with only four fingers.”

  The other cops averted their eyes and one blew his nose loudly.

  As Jake descended the ladder, a photographer climbed up to film what he’d described.

  As they filed out of the bedroom, Jake said, “You know, I have an attic space like that and my wife makes me go up too often for something stored there. It’s insufferable in the hot summer and freezing in the winter. How could anyone...?” His voice trailed away.

  Back in the hallway, Jennifer entered another room. “I think this is his bedroom. It’s where he told me to put the clean laundry and a man’s clothes are in the dresser and closet, but everything’s very basic. No personal touches here or in the bathroom… with one exception.” She showed them the framed photo in the nightstand and explained about the distinguishing hands and the bench nick that pinpointed the picture’s location.

  Once again in the hallway, Jennifer said, “I don’t know what’s in that last room because I didn’t clean it, but I’m mighty curious to find out. With the rest of the house so sparse, that must be where he keeps anything personal and does his work.” Her hand reached for the doorknob before Jake gently steered her back.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Shannon, but that room is sealed off, waiting for forensics and computer guys, so we can’t go in right now. But we thank you for all your valuable information. Now, wouldn’t you like to go home to your waiting family?”

  “Oh, yes... yes, I really would,” she answered with a widening smile.

  As they walked back down the hall, through the kitchen and out the laundry room door, she shuddered. She wanted to erase all memory of this house. But she knew its haunting grip would never entirely free her.

  As harrowing experiences brand a soldier during battle, so too would she be forever marked by this grisly war zone in which she could have been tortured to death.

  They stepped outside, where Rescue personnel huddled over their gurney, administering medical care while police and EMS radio speakers blared loud messages into the summer night.

  “Where did you find the man?” Jennifer asked Jake. “ Was he in the barn? Will he recover from my screwdriver wound or is he…”

  “Not exactly, Ma’am.”

  Jennifer focused on the stretcher, “Then...?”

  “A female was locked in that schoolhouse shed. Alive but barely. They’re working on her now.”

  Jennifer limped toward the ambulance. “Sorry, Ma’am, we need to move out now to get this patient to the hospital.”

  She stared at the unmoving blanket-swathed figure on the stretcher, IV tubes running from a plastic bag on a pole to an arm tucked under the covers. Jolted by an idea, Jennifer cried urgently, “Wait! I… I might know her. Wouldn’t it help you if I did?”

  “Make it fast, Ma’am.” The medic stepped aside impatiently to allow Jennifer a quick look.

  The outdoor floodlights in the middle of the night cast an ashen glow over the scene as she neared the gurney. She flinched at the patient’s grotesquely swollen face, cut lips and disheveled hair. This wasn’t anyone she recognized!

  A bandage covered the left half of the face. Leaning closer, Jennifer pushed aside the matted hair to reveal the right side of the victim’s face showing deep cheek scratches under a puffy black eye. Ripped nearly in half and caked with dried blood she saw the remnant of an earlobe and clinging precariously to the torn skin… a familiar earring!

  CHAPTER 54

  “Tina!” Jennifer cried out before consciously changing her tone from the anguish she felt to the healing voice Tina needed to hear. “Tina, its Mrs. Shannon. The man who hurt you is gone. Police are here to keep you safe and doctors will help you get well. Caring people are all around you. You’re going to the hospital, where your mom is waiting for you and where Becca and all the rest of us will see you very soon.” She touched her shoulder. “You’re going to be fine. Hang on! You can do it! We all love you, Tina.”

  Useless as her words might seem, Jennifer had read that some anesthetized surgery patients later described entire conversations heard during their procedures. Encouragement didn’t hurt and the words gave Jennifer the illusion of offering Tina something positive in this gruesome situation.

  When no flicker of response showed from the corpse-like form lying on the stretcher, Jennifer’s heart sank.

  Gently pushing Jennifer aside, a medic said, “We’re shoving the gurney in and closing the doors now, ma’am. Out of the way, please.” The EMT collapsed the cart’s shiny aluminum legs and slid his deathly-still patient into the vehicle.

  “Should I come along? We’re like her second family; she practically lives at our house. She’s my daughter’s closest friend. Could I comfort her if she wakes up in the ambulance?”

  “We’re the ones who can help her best right now, Ma’am. But if she gets through this day, she’ll need a lot of help
from all her family and friends.”

  Jennifer shouted after him, “At least you should know… her name is Tina MacKenzie.”

  Climbing into the ambulance cab, the medic shouted back, “Tell these cops to call that in. We’re taking her to Fairfax ER. Her parents can meet us there.”

  The tech slammed his passenger door as the vehicle, already underway, rolled down the driveway. Reaching the road, the ambulance’s tires screeched, peeling onto the asphalt, its ear-splitting siren shrieking into the night. As it hurtled away, the siren’s haunting whine faded and finally disappeared completely, as if it had never existed at all. Jennifer stared after it, agonizing for Tina... and for Becca. Tina’s ordeal would dramatically affect her best friend, whatever the outcome.

  Feeling a tug at her sleeve, Jennifer turned toward Jake. “Should we send that information to the hospital and call her parents now?”

  Jennifer told him what she knew about Tina and her mother, and as Jake relayed it onto the CAD, her mind filled with a stark vision of the cruel maniac who tortured Tina.

  Suddenly her hand flew to her throat. If her captor wasn’t the injured person in the ambulance, then where was he?

  ***

  When unexpected headlights appeared earlier at the foot of his neighbor’s driveway, Ruger Yates immediately abandoned his pursuit of Jennifer Shannon. He jumped from his truck at the top of the deserted mansion’s driveway, rushed into the dark woods and plummeted down the sloping, forested hill. Dodging trees, fallen trunks and underbrush as he ran, he used the receding glow filtering from the headlight-illuminated driveway at the empty mansion to thinly light his way in the blackness.

  He and his dog damn near caught that woman. They were inches away from disposing of her once and for all. Who intruded to botch her final punishment? The mansion’s owner? Curious neighbors? Cops?

  Whoever they were, their intervention created a major problem for Ruger. The Shannon woman would spill what little she knew, but it was enough. And when they discovered the other girl’s dead body in the shed, he couldn’t defend against such evidence.