by Sue Henry
“Eric Glenn,” he said, reintroducing himself to Becker.
“I remember.”
“We heard Jessie Arnold had gone missing. Has she been found yet?”
“Not yet, but there’s a lot of people looking for her.”
“Damn. She’s a friend. If I wasn’t working, I’d go help.”
“You may be able to help about another thing,” Becker told him. “Did you throw a guy out of here through the back door night before last?”
Eric pursed his lips, trying to remember. In the busy pub, hours, days, and people tended to blur together.
“Yeah,” he said, the incident springing to mind. “I did. There’s always a couple of good-time Charlies to create a problem during the fair. I eighty-sixed him earlier that night, but he came back and tried to shove into the beer line. The front door was crowded, so I tossed him out the back. Oh—and that was the night Jessie was here. It was a hoot. Hobo Jim did his wolf howl song and her dog joined right in.”
“Is this the guy you tossed?”
Becker offered the picture of Belmont.
“Sure is. He in trouble?”
“Not now. He’s the dead guy we pulled out of the pond.”
“No shit?”
“You know anything else about him? Ever see him with anyone?”
“Saw him with Ron Wease a couple of times. Not that night, though.”
“Wease in here at all that night?”
“Not that I remember.”
“Okay, thanks, Eric. If you think of anything…”
“I’ll let you know.”
Dave Lomax walked up to join them and immediately Eric turned to go back to his job behind the bar.
“Let me hear what you find out about Jessie,” he called back over his shoulder.
“Soon as we know something,” Becker promised and watched him get back to work pouring beer for thirsty customers.
The crowd in the pub had increased significantly. “Let’s get out of here,” he suggested to Lomax. “Go somewhere we can hear ourselves talk.”
As they left through the front door, Lomax paused to check with the pub’s assigned security guard.
“Everything okay here, Ted?”
“Fine. Pretty mellow so far.”
They strolled toward the plaza at the center of the fairground, Becker enjoying the atmosphere of people having a good time. There were still lines at most of the food vendors’ booths, an especially long one for barbecued ribs—partly the result of the tempting smell of grilled meat that wafted through the air to draw in customers. Roasted turkey legs were another popular item.
In the blue half-dark that comes just after the sun has set, the fair’s multitude of colored lights took on a glow that seemed brighter than at any other time. He glanced back to see the Ferris wheel spinning high over the midway in a jeweled circle that was almost magical against the darkening sky. He wished he could be on it looking down.
“So,” Lomax inquired at his side, “what’s up?”
Reluctantly Becker set aside his momentary appreciation and brought his mind to bear on the problem at hand.
“You talking to him about that guy who got killed and dumped in the pond?” Lomax asked.
“Curtis Belmont. The night he was killed he caused a problem in The Sluice Box and got tossed out. You know him?”
“Just who he is. But I’ve seen him around—with Ron Wease a time or two.”
So witnesses had now solidly linked Wease and Belmont. Becker filed the confirmation away and changed the subject.
“Look,” he said, “we think there may be a potential robbery in the works—aimed at one day of the fair receipts.”
“Robbery? You gotta be kidding. What we take in goes out heavily guarded. Only a few people even know where it’s brought from the gates and accumulated. Belmont involved?”
“Some reason you think he might have been?”
“You were talking about him.”
“It’s possible, but we don’t know. He and Wease may both have been involved, but there have to be others we haven’t identified yet. There’s some evidence that points to robbery as a possibility.”
“What evidence?” the security director demanded.
“Pictures taken in the morning before the fair opened. They show an armored truck coming and going from the place you keep the money overnight. That red building—right there.”
They had reached the plaza, and Becker pointed across the wide space at the innocuous building that looked like nothing but a food vendor’s booth. “That is the right one, isn’t it?”
Lomax’s mouth dropped open. “How the hell?”
“Take a look.” Becker handed him one of the photos showing the parked truck and two uniformed men carrying bags of money from the building’s back door to load into the vehicle.
In the light from a cappuccino wagon, Lomax stared at it for a long moment without speaking. Then he began to swear. Softly, but vehemently, he used what must have been close to his entire repertoire of curses before handing the picture back.
“Where did you get this?”
“From Wease’s bag that kid accidentally took. Because Wease wanted it back so badly, we were suspicious and had several rolls of his exposed film developed. We looked these over late yesterday.”
“What now?”
“Now,” said Becker, “I think we’d better get together with whoever else on the management staff needs to be told and figure out how to handle this. What I need is to know who else is in on this thing. Someone who wasn’t Wease—or, obviously, Belmont, since he was already dead—chased the boy again this morning. He saw the man—can identify him. I’d like to bring him over to see if he can pick anyone out of your security staff.”
“Why my staff?”
“Because Wease was working for you, and it makes good sense. We’ve got to start somewhere.”
“Well, Wease won’t be a problem anymore, will he?”
“Why not?” Becker asked, startled, wondering how Lomax could possibly know about Wease’s murder so soon, when he and Jensen had decided to keep the information to themselves for the time being.
“Well, because—I already told you—I fired him, didn’t I?”
It was true, Becker remembered. He had.
CHAPTER 26
Jensen stared blankly at the wooden door of the cabin he had found, apprehensive about opening it for a second or two, unsure of what might be inside. Listening intently, he heard nothing but the sigh of the breeze as it rustled birch leaves at the edges of the clearing and the harsh complaint of a raven from somewhere in the surrounding forest.
Instead of a wooden or metal handle, this door had a cast iron latch with a curved bar that lifted to disengage the simple mechanism that held it closed. Hoping the hinges on this door would not give way, Jensen took firm hold of the latch bar with the fingers of one hand and lifted it. The door swung inward as he leaned against it, but the iron hinges shrieked in resistance. There were immediate scrambling sounds inside, and a dog barked once.
“No. Stay,” a voice he almost didn’t recognize commanded desperately.
Jensen stepped through the door into the cabin, but it was so dark that at first he could see nothing but a pale square of dying daylight that fell through a small window on one wall, empty except for a shard or two of broken glass.
“No-o-o,” the ragged voice howled from the far side of the room. Something hit the floor with a thump, and from eye level and to the left a black shadow came hurtling out of the dark directly at Jensen.
Throwing up his arms in defense, he was startled when the attacking form seemed to stop abruptly in midair. It fell in an arc just short of him and swung back and forth, struggling and making constricted animal sounds, suspended a few feet from where he stood.
“No. Oh, please, no. Don’t let him die.” The plea in the voice was now wild with frustration and pain. “Please. Help him.”
He could hear another struggle going on across t
he room. What sounded like a chain rattled on wood overhead, and he could just make out a human figure straining with both arms toward the ceiling against a restraint that held it there, trying at the same time to fling itself toward the dangling form.
“Jessie?”
The voice grew more frantic in its appeal. “Help him, dammit. Do something.”
As Jensen’s sight finally adjusted to what dim light the window afforded, he realized with horror that the struggling form that hung struggling by its neck from an overhead beam was a dog. Tank.
“Oh God—oh God. Please—no,” Jessie wailed.
Stepping swiftly forward, he caught up the animal with one arm and raised a hand to loosen the constricting cord around its neck. Barely conscious, the dog lay limp in his arms. He gave it a sharp hug and its body convulsed in a deep gasp. Still sucking air back into his lungs, Tank was otherwise quiet when Jensen laid him gently on the plank floor in front of him.
“It’s okay,” he told Jessie, relieved. “He’ll be all right.”
Still panting, Tank raised his head toward the familiar voice of the man he idolized, had recognized, and had attempted to reach with one joyous but deadly leap.
Jensen laid a hand on the dog’s head to reassure him, but his concern now was all for the woman across the room. He could hear her weeping where she hung by the arms from a chain that held her in a reaching position under another beam.
In two huge strides, he was across the room and supporting her in the circle of one arm while he reached to release her, as he had Tank. But this time it was not so simple. A small but strong padlock held the tight links of chain around her wrists.
“Alex?” Jessie asked hoarsely, leaning back to see his face. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“Idaho,” he answered, concentration elsewhere.
To his astonishment, she giggled through her tears.
“I can’t get this off,” he growled, annoyed.
“I know,” she agreed quietly. “You’ll have to let me go and get the chain loose from the board Tank was lying on. Then we can pull it across the beams and get it off me later.”
“What board?”
She nodded across the room, where the rectangle of plywood had fallen when Tank made his affectionate leap.
As he assessed the situation and with her help figured out how the two had been confined, Jensen’s wrath intensified.
“Who did this?” he demanded, furious and working hard with the back edge of the hunting knife he had carried on his belt to bend the nails and release the chain from the plywood.
“I don’t know. He made sure I never saw his face.”
The chain came loose. He tossed it over one beam, then pulled it over the other, allowing Jessie to lower her arms and collapse onto the floor with his assistance.
“Please—tell me you have water.”
Jensen pulled the water bottle from his pocket and helped her to drink a few swallows.
She sighed with relief. “Tank, too.”
The dog had regained his feet and come padding across the room to sit close beside his mistress. Lacking a container, Jensen poured water into the cup of one palm again and again, until the dog had had a good drink. Then he gave the rest to Jessie.
Though her wrists were still bound, with no tension to maintain on the chain her hands were painfully coming back to life. Ignoring that, she raised them over Tank’s head and pulled him onto her lap, where she hugged and cuddled him like the puppy he had once been.
“You were such a good dog,” she told him, rubbing her face against his cheek. “I love you, good boy. Oh, Alex, it’s been such a long time, and I was so afraid he would jump down, or I’d let him fall off that thing.”
One arm providing support around her, he felt her whole body begin to shake with residual anxiety and stress.
“You didn’t,” he reassured her. “You’re both safe, and we can discuss it all later. Now we need to get out of here and get you taken care of.”
“Yes—okay.”
“There’s food in your truck,” Jensen told her.
“Good, we’re starving. You found my truck?”
“Yes, but it’s a long way, over a mile. Can you walk?”
“If you help me, I can hobble, but I’ve done something bad to this knee again trying to get us loose. I’ll make it. I’m not staying here, for sure—wherever here is.”
“You don’t know?”
“Have no idea. I got hit and woke up here—like you found me.”
They wound up the chain they couldn’t remove from Jessie’s wrists so it could be carried. Then, before they closed the cabin door behind them, Jensen cut down the length of yellow nylon cord that had strangled Tank and tucked it in his pocket.
It took a long time to go back along the ragged trail and was full dark by the time they reached the end of the track and could make out the truck parked on the other side of the creek.
Jensen glanced at the shape of the four-wheeler as they passed it. “He must have used that to take you in there.”
Ignoring the bridge of birch trunks, Jensen scooped Jessie up and carried her across the creek. Tank splashed through beside them.
They found a flashlight and a pair of bolt cutters in the supply of tools that Jessie always carried in a lockbox in the bed of her pickup, so Jensen was able to sever a link of the chain and free her arms. The beam of the light exposed extensive abrasions and deep purple bruises encircling her wrists, infuriating him all over again. But he bit his tongue and said nothing as he applied first aid from the kit that was also in the lockbox. For now anger could wait. Her injuries needed treatment, as did the more serious problem of her knee. But he was determined that whoever was responsible would not wait long.
There were other things—things between the two of them—that required attention. Those things would have to wait as well. For the time being he was satisfied to have found her, and Tank, alive and relatively unscathed.
“Where did you get that bandana?” Jessie asked, catching sight of the bright orange fabric that still hung around his jacket sleeve.
“It fell out of a bush on the other side of the creek,” he told her. “Made me think Tank, at least, might be in there.”
While he drove, Jessie ravenously ate bread and cheese washed down with water as if it were caviar and champagne, sharing equal amounts with Tank. An apple quickly followed, and half a bag of potato chips.
The food hit her empty stomach like a sleep-inducing drug. By the time they passed Houston on the way to Palmer, she was asleep, with Tank lying awake and on guard at her feet and her head against Jensen’s shoulder. Before she faded completely, she laid one numb hand gently on his knee to attract his attention. He glanced over to see the reflection of the truck’s headlights in her wide gray eyes and had a sudden memory of the first time he had met her, years before, in Rainy Pass during an Iditarod race. There had been a bonfire by a frozen lake, and he recalled seeing tiny reflections of its glow in her eyes then, too.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
“You’re welcome,” he returned, looking back to the road ahead.
She smiled, closed her eyes, and was gone.
I was so tired.” Jessie smiled. “It was like falling into deep water. I don’t remember a single thought crossing my mind before I crashed. I was just glad to be safe. It was as if somebody turned out the lights, then turned them back on again when we got to the hospital in Palmer.”
“You barely woke up then,” Jensen told her. “Do you remember being carried into emergency?”
“Vaguely. But I certainly woke right up when they started pouring disinfectant on my hands and arms.”
She glanced down at her wrists, where a few scabs over healing abrasions and a fading yellowish bruise or two still showed.
“How’s your knee, Jessie?” Timmons asked.
“Better, thanks.”
CHAPTER 27
Paged from the fairground, where he had been meeting
with management to decide how to guard against a robbery on very little information, Becker came into the Palmer hospital’s emergency room at a jog to find Jensen sitting in the waiting area, elbows on knees, face cradled in the palms of his hands. Tank sat at his feet, alertly watching what went on around them.
“You found her! Where? How is she?”
Taking a chair next to the two, he reached to rub Tank’s ears. “Tank okay?”
Jensen sat up and blinked for a minute without answering, pulling his thoughts back to focus on his partner’s question. “They were both in a cabin about a mile farther up the road—similar to the one we found empty earlier.”
“You let Ehlers know, so they can stop looking?”
Jensen shook his head, frowning. “Came straight in. She’s pretty banged up, but nothing too serious. Tore up her knee again and has some bad scrapes and bruises from the chain the bastard used on her wrists.”
“I’ll call him. So she was snatched. Who was it?”
“She doesn’t know—didn’t get a look at him.”
“Damn.” Becker scowled in irritation. “What did she tell you?”
“Not much more than that, and it can wait till tomorrow. She’s physically and mentally exhausted, Phil—hadn’t eaten since she went missing until I fed her what I had in the truck. She slept all the way here. We’ll have a few words when the doctor’s through in there.” He waved a hand at the hospital’s interior. “He wants her overnight, and I want an officer outside her door.”
“Fine,” Becker agreed. “I’ll take care of it. You going to stay here?”
“No. As soon as she’s settled, I’m taking Tank back to her place. She wasn’t happy not to have him with her, but they won’t allow it. So she wants me to take him home, where I can keep him inside for the night and take him to the vet in the morning.”
“What had this guy—whoever it was—done to her? You said chained?”
Jensen related all he could remember about what he had found, and as he talked, Becker could see how justifiably angry he was at the treatment Jessie had endured. Pounding one fist on his knee in bitter frustration, he ended the account, gave Becker a glance, and fell coldly silent for a moment.