by Alex Grecian
“I’m very close,” Rudy said. “I feel as if my life’s work is finally . . . Well, I’m making progress, and you’ve helped show me the way. I really think that.”
Ransom lowered his bottle and stared at it.
“I have someone new on my table,” Rudy said. “A girl. She’s got mixed blood. I wonder which race is stronger in her. Later, I’ll bring you back down to my laboratory and let you watch as I work. It’s sort of a tradition. You may recall I let Kenny sit in on your transformation.” He shook his head. “Poor Kenny. He didn’t turn out as well as you have.”
“Where?” Ransom said.
“Where’s Kenny? Oh, you might say he’s gone for a swim. One day soon Deputy Puckett will take you out to see him.” Rudy took another sip of beer. “You know, I think I’ll miss you, Mr. Roan. But we must always move forward, never look back. This little mixed girl they found for me, she seems strong. She’ll last me quite a while, I think.” He raised his bottle to Ransom in a toast. “To the next generation, my friend.”
Ransom tried to raise his arm, but lost control of his fingers. He dropped his bottle and it exploded against the floor, foamy beer dripping away through cracks in the plywood.
“Look what you’ve done,” Rudy said.
Ransom saw his opportunity, the only opportunity he was ever likely to get, and focused every ounce of thought and energy into standing. He pushed himself up from the chair and used the rocking motion to help propel him forward. He took one agonizing step forward, and then Rudy stuck his cane out and tripped him. Ransom fell, putting out his arms and grabbing the shelf. It came free and he smacked the side of his head and right shoulder against the wall as he fell. Books spilled down on top of him.
Rudy braced himself and rose. “I’ll send someone along to clean this up.”
He stepped over Ransom and opened the door hard, banging it into Ransom’s arm. He looked up at the sky, then stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him.
Ransom listened to his captor’s footsteps until they faded away, then he rolled over and began the long process of pushing himself up. He got his knees under him and unclasped his fist, stared at the keys he had grabbed from the shelf. Then he got back to work. The first step was to stand up, then he would concentrate on getting out of the shed and walking around the empty swimming pool to the parking lot.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1
Skottie watched out the windshield over the plane’s nose. Every once in a while she saw a pair of headlights below, but traffic was sparse. The Cessna’s shadow moved across the fog beneath them at what looked like a walking pace, and Skottie had to will herself to sit still and be patient. She knew they were traveling much faster than any truck could, but patience wasn’t her strong suit, even in the best of circumstances.
Travis leaned forward, and Skottie turned to look at him. He was in the seat behind Dr. Iversen, and next to him was a big stack of towels and blankets from Emmaline’s hall closet. He reached out and gave her shoulder a squeeze.
“We will find her,” he said. The steady roar of the Cessna’s engine made it hard to hear his low rasping voice. “Finding people is what I do.”
Skottie nodded in response, unable to put her fear into words.
“I’m guessing they’ve probably crossed into Oklahoma by now,” Dr. Iversen said. “Or pretty close to it.”
“How long until we get there?”
“Not long,” Dr. Iversen said. “Just hang tight. They’ll be going the speed limit. Won’t want to get pulled over with what they’re carrying. We’ll be on top of them soon enough.”
The coroner had met them at Hays Regional Airport, his Cessna 172 gassed and ready to go. Skottie wasn’t sure if he’d been asleep when she called him, but he was alert and eager to help as soon as he learned about the situation. Travis had loosely estimated the truck’s lead time based on when the first call had come from Donnie, and they had determined there was no way to catch up to it on the ground. After hanging up with Dr. Iversen, Skottie had called Ryan Kufahl again. The trooper had still been awake and, based solely on Sheriff Goodman’s guess that Maddy and her father were on that truck, he had begun coordinating a ground search, pulling in state troopers across southern Kansas and Oklahoma. They were gambling that the truck would indeed head south. If they were wrong, Maddy could be anywhere to the north, east, or west of Hays. She might never be found.
Skottie didn’t want to think about what her daughter was going through or what would happen if they caught up to the truck and Maddy wasn’t on it.
Lightning flickered and faded somewhere behind them. The plane crossed over several acres of featureless farmland, following the invisible thread of US-183 south, then leapt back up above a wooded area, the trees mired in swirling mist in a way that reminded Skottie of the dead bleached trees that reached up to break the surface of Kirwin Lake. She wondered what was beneath the water back at the nature preserve, what had been dumped there over the decades, how many tortured bodies with strange scars.
The Foundation’s file on Rudolph Bormann didn’t mention bodies in the lake or human trafficking, it had contained no clues to Maddy’s whereabouts, but Skottie had read it through twice already, hoping to find something that might lead her to her daughter.
Bormann had arrived in Kansas sometime in the fifties or sixties, carrying false identification. There was no record anymore of where he had come from, how he had escaped Germany after the war, who had given him his papers, but at some point he had acquired four thousand acres of pastureland in Burden County and had dubbed it the Third R Ranch. Skottie assumed the name was a reference to the Third Reich, and it astonished her that he would be so bold, so open about who he was and where he came from. But apparently no one had ever connected the dots. Kansas was a long way from Mauthausen-Gusen.
In 1971, Rudy had bought an abandoned church in Paradise Flats and had moved into town with his family. The church still owned the ranch property. Skottie made a mental note that the land should be checked for buried bodies. How long would it take to inspect four thousand acres?
And where had Rudy’s money come from? Even in the 1960s and ’70s, that much land wouldn’t have been cheap.
Skottie hoped she would have a chance to ask Rudy in person.
However he had purchased it, once the church was established, young women and girls began disappearing from the area. Not too many, not enough to cause a panic, but there was a pattern, and the Roans had eventually pieced much of it together from decades’ worth of local newspapers on the Internet and microfiche files.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Goodman had been pursuing a parallel line of investigation. Rudy had tried using his son’s position to help cover his tracks, but when Kurt Goodman began to realize the extent of his father’s crimes, he had left the church and severed ties. It had not been easy for him to reconcile the man he thought he knew—a prophet, a preacher, a magician in every sense of the word, but a largely absent and unavailable father—with the monster who began to emerge when Goodman started tracing missing person cases back to Purity First. Reluctant to jump to conclusions, the sheriff had spread his inquiries out farther, to eastern Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Texas. Missing children, grown women, and men all seemed to funnel through the church and disappear. The pattern later established by the Roan Foundation had already begun to take over a file cabinet in Sheriff Goodman’s spare bedroom. But Goodman hadn’t known what to do about it, hadn’t been able to put together enough legal evidence to act.
Until Ruth Elder had spotted Rudy Goodman in a diner in Phillipsburg and made that half-remembered connection between an old monster and a new saint.
But the monster didn’t know he’d been seen until Ransom Roan came to Kansas. Skottie wondered whether Roan had directly approached Rudy or had simply asked the wrong question of the wrong person. In whatever way Rudy discovered Ransom
’s presence, the former Nazi had acted quickly. And then Rudy, or someone working for him, had panicked. The smooth and efficient machinery by which Purity First had abducted dozens, maybe hundreds of people, had broken down. Maybe Ruth Elder had died of natural causes; maybe she had been murdered in such a way that it looked natural. She was an old lady, and no one had looked closely at the cause of death. But she had told others about Rudy Goodman, and those others had been silenced, too.
From beyond the grave, Ruth Elder had pointed her finger at the saint of wolves and butchers. Rudy and his people were lashing out blindly. They had grown complacent after a half century of peace and safety, and their plans were out-of-date. They had thought they could control Skottie by sending lawyers after her, by breaking into her home, by kidnapping her daughter.
Skottie balled her fists up in her lap. First she would find Maddy, then she would end the danger of Rudy Goodman, no matter what it took.
“Is that it?”
Dr. Iversen was pointing out the window on Skottie’s side. They had outraced the fog, broken into flat grassland, and she could see the pale rectangular roof of a semitrailer truck moving along the highway below them.
“Travis,” Skottie said, “is that the truck you saw in the church parking lot?”
He was looking out his window behind them. “I have no idea. There were no markings on it.”
“Chances are good that’s it,” Dr. Iversen said. “It’s right about where it should be, given when we think it left and how fast it must have been going. There’s not a lot of traffic down there.”
“But there are other trucks,” Skottie said. “Pretty much all the traffic this time of night is gonna be trucks.”
“Yeah,” Iversen said. “It’s a gamble.”
“I’m calling it in,” Skottie said. “How does this radio work?”
“Dodge City Regional’s probably the closest,” Iversen said. “But the tower closed at ten and it won’t open until six. There’s nobody there to take a call right now. Just use your cell. It’ll work.”
Because of the cease and desist, they had decided an APB should come from Ryan Kufahl rather than Skottie. She called him and, after consulting with Dr. Iversen, gave the trooper the approximate location of the white truck. After ending the call, she stared out the window at the truck below, trying to sense whether her daughter was in there, caged in the dark, helpless and frightened.
“Hang on, baby,” she whispered. “I’m coming.”
“I’m circling around,” Iversen said.
The plane dipped and banked in a long curve over the denuded trees, and Skottie lost sight of the truck. Minutes later they were lined up again with US-183 and cruised back over the length of highway.
“It’s gone,” Skottie said. “Where’s the truck?”
“Perhaps it sped up,” Travis said.
They waited for the white roof to come back into view, but there was nothing below them except the long straight stretch of empty pavement.
“He saw us,” Skottie said. “The driver saw us or he heard us up here and he got spooked.”
“Damn,” Iversen said. “Hang on.”
Skottie’s stomach lurched as Dr. Iversen pushed his Cessna into a dive and angled westward. Scattered trees multiplied and clustered until they were above a wooded area that hadn’t yet shed its colorful leaves. It felt like they were skimming the tops of the uppermost branches, and Skottie unconsciously pulled her feet up off the floor of the little plane. Tributary roads split off from the highway and disappeared under the leafy canopy. Mile after mile disappeared behind them, but there was no sign of the truck. Iversen shifted direction again, taking the plane back to the highway and crossing over it. Ten minutes later, Skottie exclaimed and pointed down at a splinter of darkness, a two-lane gravel path built for farm machinery. The truck was speeding along, a blur of white that wove in and out of the cover of the trees.
“That’s got to be it,” Skottie said.
“It is too big for that road,” Travis said.
Iversen picked up the radio and held it close to his lips. “DDC FBO . . . DDC FBO . . . N 123 LH, you copy me? N 123 LH, calling Dodge City with a priority request. Over.” He looked at Skottie and said, “It’s worth a shot. They’re officially closed, but they may have someone up—”
There was a squawk of static over the speaker and a woman’s voice. “N 123 LH, this is DDC. State your request. Over.”
“This is N 123 LH. Does the Highway Patrol have a plane in the air right now? Over.”
“Negative, N 123 LH. Over.”
Iversen looked at Skottie. He raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “Well, this is gonna sound a little bit crazy, DDC. I’m just south of Coldwater, about sixty miles south of you. Gonna try landing in a field here. Over.”
“N 123 LH, are you experiencing difficulties? Over.”
“You might say that. What’s your name, DDC?”
“Samantha.”
“Samantha, this is Lyle Iversen. I have a situation here and I need the local authorities to ping my GPS and respond ASAP. We might need some ambulances.”
“Did you say ambulances? Like, more than one?”
“As many as they’ve got, Samantha.”
“Will do. Please stay on the line. And good luck.”
Dr. Iversen put the handset in its cradle and nodded at Skottie. “We’re gonna have a lot of company in a few minutes. Hope we’re right about this.”
He brought the plane down low, almost scraping the treetops.
“Tell me you can actually land this here,” Skottie said.
“Landed worse places than this. Most of the landing strips around here are just grass. Not a problem, long as they keep it mowed short enough.”
Ahead the gravel road widened into four lanes to provide a turnaround, and Iversen aimed for that. He coasted over the top of the truck and put the Cessna down with a jolt that made Skottie feel like her head had popped off. They taxied forward, the air brakes squealing and gravel flying, and stopped six feet short of a strand of sickly looking elms.
Skottie jumped out, leaving Iversen to communicate the successful landing to Samantha in the tower. Her ankle twisted when she hit the gravel, but she barely noticed. She pulled out her Glock and angled sideways toward the ditch at the side of the road nearest her. Travis was just behind her and he ran the other way, covering the opposite side of the narrow throughway.
A minute later, the truck barreled out at them from the dark tunnel of trees. The Cessna completely blocked the way forward, and through the windshield Skottie could see the driver shouting at himself in the cab while he turned the wheel. His neck was as wide as Skottie’s torso, and he had a long white beard. The set of his shoulders made it clear he was stomping as hard as he could on the brake. The truck came to a screeching halt beside her and Skottie leapt up, favoring her injured ankle, and grabbed the door handle on the passenger side. The driver leaned across, but was too late to lock the door. Behind him, Travis swung open the door on his side and pointed his Eclipse at the driver. The man sat back in his seat and put his hands in the air.
2
The driver didn’t resist. He followed Travis’s prompting and stepped down from the truck’s high cab. Travis handcuffed him and forced him against the side of the truck. Skottie checked under his seat and found a sawed-off shotgun. She took the keys from the truck’s ignition and went around, careful of her twisted ankle, and threw the heavy latch.
When she opened the doors, a Hispanic woman launched herself at Skottie, screaming and clawing. Skottie stepped sideways and caught the woman under her armpits, got her hands behind the woman’s head, and immobilized her until she stopped struggling.
“Do you speak English?”
“Little,” the woman said.
“I’m police,” Skottie said. “You’re okay. I’m here to help you.�
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“Policía?”
“Not to arrest you. Help. Help you.” She tried to remember her high school Spanish. “Ayud? I mean, yudar, ayudar.”
The woman nodded and Skottie let her go, hobbled backward. The woman turned around and regarded her apprehensively. Skottie ignored her and pulled herself up onto the rear bumper. She peered into the dark trailer, unable to see beyond the first few feet, but she could hear movement back in the dark.
She turned back to the Hispanic woman. “Ask them if there’s a little girl named Maddy in there. Hurry!”
She didn’t wait, but pulled out her phone and used the light on it to lead her in. Young women moved past her toward the exit, shrinking away from her as she went farther in. She could hear the first woman asking about Maddy. Small girls lay against the hard slats at the sides of the trailer, and she checked them to make sure they were breathing, to make sure they weren’t her daughter. She kept going. All the way in, lying with his head propped up against the wall behind the truck’s cab, Skottie found Brandon. His eyes were swollen nearly shut, but there was a glint of light when the phone’s lamp hit them and he murmured something in a damaged voice. Skottie squatted next to him. Even at his worst Brandon had been strong and vital; to see him broken caused a swell of grief and pity in her.
“Brandon? Where’s Maddy?”
“Not here,” he said.
Skottie’s legs failed her and she fell backward. Brandon reached out to her, tried to raise himself up with his other hand and gasped in pain. His head banged against the wall of the truck and he closed his eyes.
“They separated us,” he said. “Give me a second and I’ll—”
“No,” Skottie said. “You can barely even move.”
He shook his head and gasped again. “You have to find her, Skottie.” He felt for her hand and squeezed it once, hard, then his hand fell limp at his side.