“Who put you in charge?” I asked.
“I did.” We turned and saw George Windham, handsome and smiling, standing in the doorway.
“You!” I said.
He sat on the old log bench and leaned back against the wall. His voice grated on me as he talked.
“Of course me. Do you think I can support six goddamn kids on a teacher’s salary? I got tired of working five jobs. A couple years ago, I picked up with some old friends from college. I moved into the market. Eventually, they gave me the concession for Grover Cleveland. Actually I do all the local high schools now: Stagg, Andrew, Lincoln Way, Providence. In a year or two, I’ll get all of Joliet.”
“You’re nuts,” Scott said.
“You’re the one who’s tied up, not me,” George pointed out, then continued: “Some of us aren’t lucky enough to have the natural talent to be an athletic millionaire. Most of us are average working stiffs.”
“They’re fucking assholes,” Becky said.
“You can leave, Becky.” He said this quietly but with angry command very near the surface.
She slammed the door on her way out. He chuckled to himself briefly, then walked over to us, wearing a nasty smile. “We could bury you under the barn, or maybe fix up a lover’s quarrel.”
“You dragged Pete into this with you?”
He laughed. “No. Pete is a quite willing participant. You know those camping trips? Besides our sexual forays, they were to pick up drugs smuggled over the Canadian border. He helped deliver. He never knew I was in charge.” He laughed long and hard. “I couldn’t resist stringing him along. I didn’t want to test his gentle suburban heart with too much truth. He’s a useful, friendly nothing. He followed you, then reported to me so I could send the kids out to frighten you away. The kids weren’t good enough, unfortunately. I underestimated you two. That won’t happen again. Now you have to be put out of the way permanently.”
“Did you kill Susan?”
“For what it’s worth, I didn’t. She’d begun selling, of course. Eric was breaking her in slowly.”
“Becky told us about Eric, but she said Susan wasn’t dealing.”
“Eric’s one of my top lieutenants. I didn’t mind Becky attacking him. A little friendly competition among the help is good. Besides, kids need to be taught a lesson from time to time. This was Eric’s. He’s learned. Becky will get hers soon. As for Susan, of course she dealt.”
“Were Jeff and the others on the team dealing?” I asked.
“Not the whole team. Jeff certainly. Paul, of course.”
“Paul’s a dealer?” I asked.
He crossed the room and patted me on the head. He put his hand under my chin, lifted my head so that my neck strained. “You poor sap.” He explained about how Paul’d been part of the organization for years, that the boy’d gotten nervous since Susan’s death, afraid the whole drug operation would come out, fearful his connection to drugs would surface and, despite the protection of Pete Montini and his father’s influence, school district policy would be invoked and he’d be off the team and very probably out of a career. “We used his little fears to keep him in line,” George said. He gave a wintry smile. “The pressure’s been a little tough for Paul the perfect, but he understands who’s boss.”
I remembered Paul in tears, and I could picture George or Becky as merciless tormentor.
George continued his explanation. There’d been different kids, numerous former students whom he’d recruited over the years. From their school records, he knew which kids had had drug problems while in school. After they graduated, he’d meet and talk to selected ones. Eventually, the lure of big bucks got them on board. Not one refused. Becky had gotten Paul involved. He finished, “All this won’t make any difference to you. You’re going to be quite dead in a very short time.”
“But Becky said Jeff wasn’t dealing. Jeff said he wasn’t dealing.”
George laughed. “You have to stop being so trusting. I know every inch of this operation. Becky’s only found out in the last few days who’s really in charge. She likes to act quite important and knowledgeable. I used to find that useful and amusing. Her blindness and stupidity had their uses. She’s a very low-level staffer. Buying from her those couple times, while mildly risky, was part of my cover. Why would the drug kingpin buy from a kid? That shows stupidity, not a controlling genius.”
“Do Paul’s parents know he deals?”
“Deals and does drugs,” he corrected. “They probably figured it out.” As far as George knew, the Conlans at this point simply wanted to protect their precious Paul, and their standing in the community. They didn’t want their kid tainted by a drug scandal. He guessed Mr. Conlan had used his position on the school board to protect his son. “You guys were the problem, not the silly parents. Every time you stirred something up and made it look like Jeff didn’t kill her, you threatened all of us. Death and drugs don’t mix. We couldn’t risk an investigation into the group. The police get nasty in the suburbs when kids start to die.”
“Do you really think you’ll get away with this?” I asked.
He gave a winning smile. “You have to remember what we teach in school. Don’t mess with drugs. You did. You lose. Your disappearance will be investigated. Your bodies may even be found in a year or two. Who cares? For now, the press could be fed information about how gay you are. That’ll cloud the issue sufficiently.”
“I had suspicions about your dumb act,” I said.
“Yeah. The whole thing was a joke. Who’d believe a schoolteacher was the center of the drug ring at a high school? What better cover could there be?”
I tried to think of a plea convincing enough to save our lives. Nothing.
He got up, opened the door, and gave us a pitying look. “You’re alive because the damn snow has delayed everything. Be patient. You’ll be dead soon enough.” He left.
After several minutes’ silence, I said, “I vote we confess to everything and beg for mercy.”
“If that was an attempt at humor, I missed it,” Scott said.
“Sorry. I’m scared.”
“Me, too,” he said.
My eyes scanned the room desperately for something to help us. The room contained only the chairs, rope, light, bench, and us. “Can you move around so I can see the knots?” I asked.
Laboriously, he inched himself around 180 degrees. Becky’d retied him more tightly, but he managed it. I eyed the knots. “It’s doable if I get the time,” I said. I began my own 180-degree turn. It took me far longer than him. I was tied much tighter, with less movement allowed for my feet and ankles. It might have been twenty minutes, surely no less.
We inched our chairs back to back. We managed to mush my fingers painfully. We lost precious minutes before the feeling began to return.
I felt the rough edges of the rope, moved my hands to the first knots. I stared at the door, willing it to stay closed. Any interruption and we wouldn’t be left alone again.
Before the first knot parted, sweat made my fingers slick. The stiffness and soreness in my shoulders and arms from the night before made the task more arduous. While this eternity passed and I worked frantically, Scott said, “I have to take a piss.”
“Sherlock Holmes and Watson never went to the John.”
Scott said, “So they were constipated for thirty years. I gotta go.”
“If this is your attempt at humor”—I breathed hard from the tension of my exertions—“I am not amused. If you’re serious, I have only unpleasant alternatives to offer you.”
“Hey, easy.” I heard the hurt in his voice.
I paused in my work. “Sorry,” I said.
“Me, too,” he said.
By the time the second knot came undone, sweat dripped off the tip of my nose. Several drops got into my eyes, making them sting from the salt.
We heard movement outside the doorway. I froze for an instant, then worked more frantically. The noise passed. It sounded like somebody dragging something
heavy along the passage. My mind conjured up the image of a dead body being hauled off for burial. I winced at the thought and returned to the knots. I hoped whoever’d gone past didn’t decide to check in on us on their return trip.
When I’d looked, I’d seen five basic knots. The third one felt easier. The fourth knot took less than a minute. I took deep breaths to calm myself. Scott spoke a few words of comfort. The fifth knot wouldn’t budge. I tried inching to my left to get a better grip and almost tipped us over. I swore and tossed my head to get the sweat off my face.
Then I felt it give. The rest of the untying went clumsily because our muscles were numb from the almost-constant confinement. At least now we were trapped but free. I glanced at my watch. A couple minutes after three.
“Now what?” Scott murmured.
“We go out the door, back the way we came, up the stairs, to the farmhouse, grab the incriminating records that Roger had, steal a car, and drive back to Chicago in a blinding snowstorm.”
“Piece of cake,” he said, giving me a look.
I listened intently at the door. I heard nothing. I turned the handle. It wasn’t locked. I inched it open. Darkness seeped down the stairs five feet ahead of us. I saw no one. I inched the door farther open. The light was dimmer than in our room but sufficient. I risked a look. A passage to the left with no one visible in it led off to a total blackness. A couple inches to the right, a cinder-block wall extended five feet, then squared to turn under the stairs.
I opened the door wide. Scott took a place beside me. We observed carefully. Nothing moved. We heard the hum of electricity.
“Which way?” Scott asked.
“I thought I heard Becky and George go that way.” I pointed up the stairs. “That passage looks like a dead end.”
I guessed the root cellar was part of a larger basement complex. Piles of half-sawn boards, along with hammers and nails scattered about, spoke of recent attempts at renovation. Silence reverberated from the opening on our left. We crept up the stairs. Two solid oak doors, both with glass panes in them, met us at the top. One led outside, the other to what looked like a tiny kitchen.
“Are we in the farmhouse?” Scott whispered.
“I don’t think so. This basement is too big for a house.” Peering through the windowpane to the outside was little help, even though it was daylight. Since we’d been captive, the storm had struck in full fury. The wind howled and the snow blew almost vertically, making it difficult to see. The door shook as powerful gusts struck it. I thought I could see the vague shapes of cars off to our left. The angle was wrong, but I thought I detected the outline of the house off to our right.
Scott put his nose against the glass and peered to our left. “I don’t see anybody,” he said. “We can come back at our leisure for the records, say sometime in July 1998.”
I nodded. I eased the door open. The wind whipped it out of my hand. It crashed against the wall and swung wildly back. My left shoulder took a solid thunk. I held the door firmly as we slipped through and ran like hell. I tried to see to the right for a glimpse of the house, but the wind swirled and whipped stinging snow into my eyes. I turned to the left. Standing upright was difficult at times as we fought the wind and moved toward the car. Worse, we didn’t have overcoats, hats, or gloves. In the relatively short distance, the bitter cold ripped through our winter clothes. Numbness spread over my face and hands. Closer now, we could see two cars and a semi-truck. We passed a cop car and jumped into a Range Rover with the engine still warm and clicking. We sat in the front seat blowing on our gloveless hands. After a couple seconds of this, we ransacked the glove compartment, under the seats, behind the sun visor. No keys.
“Now what?” Scott said.
“You hot-wire the car and we escape.”
“I do what?”
10
I stared at him. “Don’t say what I know you’re going to say.”
“I can’t hot-wire a car.”
“I told you not to say that.” I glared at him. “You’re supposed to be the butch macho mechanic in dirty overalls in this relationship! You told me you could fix anything.”
“I can, but I can’t hot-wire cars. I was a good little kid. I never did that stuff. I could put a new engine in for you.”
“Not tonight.” I stared out the window. I knew we wouldn’t be running or walking to safety. Besides our not having winter outerwear, our tracks would make it easy for them to follow us in the snow. Even if the highways remained open, I doubted if anybody’d be on the road. If we tried it cross-country through the woods and even if they didn’t follow us and if we managed to walk in a direct line to help, we’d never make it. The woods probably extended only a mile or so; but in this kind of storm, keeping aware of direction could be extremely difficult. It would be far more likely that we’d die hopelessly lost in the middle of a snow-drenched expanse of nowhere.
Between gusts of wind, I could barely make out all the buildings through the windshield. We sat twenty feet beyond the barn, on the far side of the house. The immense barn stretched behind and to the left of us. Ahead and slightly to the right was the farmhouse. Today, it blazed with light that penetrated even through the storm. A lone bulb shone from the barn.
Scott grabbed my arm. “Someone’s coming.” He pointed toward the house. A hunched-over figure hurried toward us through the storm. We ducked down. “Grab him if he opens the door,” I whispered.
Moments passed. A car door slammed, an engine revved, and tires complained as they tried to grip their way through the drifts. The sounds of the other car moved away. We eased back up. The wind roared and nobody moved outside.
Suddenly, Scott opened his door. Snow and wind rammed into the compartment. He rushed to the other vehicles. He opened doors on each one and searched inside. He leaped back into the Range Rover and slammed the door.
“No keys,” he said.
“Shit.” I gave him a narrow look. Snow melted in his hair. The blue of his eyes and shadows on his face shown starkly, emphasizing his ruggedly handsome looks.
“I don’t like that cop car being here,” I said.
He leaned against the door, arms clutched around his chest, attempting to keep warm. “Maybe they’re investigating and could save us?”
That was too much to hope for, I thought. The snow lay deep on the cop car. It’d been there for hours. They probably owned the local cops. I would, if I had an operation like this.
“We could use the cops’ radio to call the state police,” Scott said.
“If we’re in range. Besides, where would we wait for them to rescue us? Sooner or later, they’ll discover we’re gone. It could take hours or days for them to rescue us in this weather. Plus, they could be in on the drug operation.”
I gazed into the deepening snow. Suddenly, I grinned. “The keys are in the house, right?”
“Probably.”
“So all we need to do is get inside and get the keys, right?”
“Right.” He paused. “How do we do that?”
I blew on my hands. “We create a diversion.”
“Right. A diversion. How?”
“We burn the barn down.”
“Uh-huh. The cold has gotten to your brain.”
“It’s old. It’s wooden. They’ve reinforced it, but I bet it would go easily.
“What if the guys with the keys all run to the barn with the keys in their pockets?”
“I don’t know. I think my scheme is worth a try. I’m open to other suggestions.”
He looked at the barn, the house, the other cars, the swirling snow, and to me. Our breath began to steam up the inside of the windows.
“Isn’t the barn their factory, probably the storehouse? If we burn it, won’t that ruin all the evidence?” Scott asked.
“Do you think I care about that if we can get away?”
“Maybe the guy who left will come back. We can jump him and get his keys.”
“Maybe he’ll never come back,” I said. “We co
uld freeze waiting for him. If we do burn it but then they catch us, we at least know we cost them a bundle.”
Scott squinted out the window.
“The main door to the barn is closer than the door they took us to. We’ll try that first,” I said.
“What if it’s locked?”
“Why should they lock up? They’re the bad guys. Probably mob-connected. Nobody robs them. Besides, this is rural Illinois, home of the pristine good guys. Nobody locks up.”
“Well, they should,” Scott said.
We rushed to the barn door. I glanced through a filthy window set in weather-scarred wood. No lights shone here. We pushed gently at the sliding door. It wouldn’t budge. “Push hard,” I commanded. The door squeaked horribly, but the wind tossed the noise away. We slipped inside. The door groaned as we shut it.
“They could oil the damn thing,” Scott said.
I shivered in the coolness of the barn. It’d never be a sauna, but the warmth felt fantastic after the bitter outdoors. I let my eyes adjust to the dimness. Bales of hay towered to the ceiling two stories above us. Three desks, two filing cabinets, and four swivel chairs sat off to our left in a mini-office arrangement. A path led between the bales. We followed it. The barn had to be over one hundred fifty feet long, but the bales of hay ended halfway. A solid wall, obviously of new vintage, greeted us. We inched along it until we came to a door. We peered through the glass into a workroom that must have covered a large portion of the rest of the barn. We clicked open the connecting door and inched inside. Computers sat next to piles of brown plastic envelopes.
In the middle of one table sat a gym bag. I checked inside. Mechanic’s clothes along with clear plastic bags with white powder sat inside. I read Eric’s name on a crumpled I.D. tag attached to the side with string. If I was inclined to doubt George and Becky, I now had visual confirmation.
No time to be pissed off about that. On the far side of the room, Scott opened a plastic bag. “This is ‘black tar,’” he said.
I raised an eyebrow.
“The league in its antidrug program made us sit through these classes two hours every day for a week during spring training last year. This is ‘black tar,’ a high-grade form of Mexican heroin worth five thousand dollars an ounce.”
Why Isn't Becky Twitchell Dead? Page 16