by Alex Grecian
“If you had not, she would have killed me.”
“I know.”
“Skottie needs my help.”
“Go find her,” Quincy said. “I got this.”
“I will be right back.”
The door was standing open and Travis went through in a hurry. He stepped out into empty air and almost fell down a staircase in the dark. He put a hand against the wall and moved down slowly, feeling ahead for each new step until he reached the bottom. His footfalls echoed, giving him the impression he was in a large unoccupied room with no furniture.
“Bear?”
A moment later, Travis heard the soft click of Bear’s nails and felt the moist snuffling of a muzzle on the palm of his hand.
Skottie’s voice floated out of the darkness. “Travis, move to your left. There’s a partition and three steps. Be careful. I fell down them and just about broke my arm.”
Travis grabbed Bear’s mane to orient himself and followed Skottie’s directions. Once he had descended the steps, he entered a larger area that had a series of small windows up near the ceiling that let a bit of light in. He could see Skottie outlined against the far wall.
“Heinrich has disappeared,” Travis said.
“He didn’t come this way,” she said. “Unless he snuck past me in the dark. There’s a kitchen over here. And a closet down there at the other end of what seems like a meeting hall. It’s hard to tell, but I think it’s just full of folding chairs and tables and Christmas pageant stuff. I can’t find Maddy. But there’s a door here. There’s more steps and another door at the bottom. It’s metal and I can’t open it.”
Travis reached for his lock picks.
12
“We got your weapons,” Sheriff Goodman said. “All them guns you had stashed away? We took ’em.” This was not technically true, since he and Travis had left the guns where they were on church property, but Goodman felt that having seen them was good enough. They were supposed to be a secret and were probably less valuable the more people knew about them.
He looked around at the men surrounding the truck. He was holding his gun loose in his hands, not aiming it at anyone, but ready to use it if he had to. Most of the crowd had obeyed him and dropped their weapons, and even those who hadn’t seemed to have lost the will to fight. He was the son of Reverend Rudy, and even though he had been excommunicated, it was clear that no one knew how to treat him. They were confused and leaderless.
Behind them, the church wall was still settling in around the remains of the bright green van, but Goodman had seen Travis take someone out of the cab. Quincy had followed him inside the church, and Goodman knew he needed to buy them some time.
“We took your truck, too,” he said. “The other one with all the people in it. Yeah, those folks are gonna tell everybody in the world what you been up to.” He smacked the stock of the Kalashnikov with his palm for emphasis. “But there’s a couple people missing. Maybe more than a couple. You got a little black girl somewheres. And an old guy. There’s a nice lady, too, name of Rachel Bloom. Hell, just bring out everybody you got stashed here.”
There was a low murmur at the back of the throng as people moved aside to make way for a huge man. His dirty brown shirt was too tight and rode high on his belly, the buttons straining to remain fastened. He had a single bushy eyebrow that hid his eyes and a heavy shadow on his jaw from five o’clock some previous day. He had a machete in one hand and a pistol in the other.
“Stanley Mayhew,” Goodman said.
“You remember me?”
“You’re kinda hard to forget, Stanley.”
“I missed you round here,” Stanley said. “You was always good to me.”
“I’d sure hate to have to fight you, Stanley.”
Stanley snorted.
A bony little man shook his fist. “Get him, Stan!”
“Stanley, I got snipers all around the fence there,” Goodman said.
“I ain’t gonna fight you, Kurt.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Goodman said. “I had a bad feeling about that.”
“But they didn’t have to kill Lou-Ellen.”
Goodman glanced at the feet of the dead lady near the church doors. They were all he could see of the body. The rest of her had fallen into the hedge.
“That was Lou-Ellen? The years have not been kind.”
“Me and her had a thing,” Stanley said.
“Oh, sorry.”
Stanley shrugged. “You’re lookin’ for the lady?”
Goodman nodded. “You got her?”
“Yeah, they had me put her stuff in one house and her in the house next door.” He pointed to a back door at the other end of the pool. “I been watching her most nights.”
“What about the others?”
“Only girls I seen are the ones they bring through end of every month. Wasn’t no black kid with ’em.”
“Every month? You know what kinda jail time you folks are lookin’ at? Human trafficking is about as serious as it gets.”
“Yeah, I don’t know. I just do my job. Make sure things stay peaceful. Only one left here’s the lady.”
“You wouldn’t be kiddin’ me, would you, Stanley?”
“Man, who cares? I’m outta here. This place is done.”
He shrugged again, then turned, loped away through the silent crowd toward the gate. Goodman raised his gun and pointed it at the giant’s back. Then he shook his head and lowered it. Arresting Stanley was a problem for another day. Rachel Bloom wasn’t a resident of Paradise Flats, but Goodman was still responsible for her safety, and she needed immediate help.
“Serve and protect,” he said to himself. “Who knew it would come to this?”
The throng of parishioners had already begun to drift away. Their perimeter had been breached, their church had been ruined, and the scariest guy any of them knew had just turned tail and fled. A lot had changed in a short amount of time, and the realization that they were facing prison sentences had shattered their notions of superiority. Some were following Stanley out to the fence; others were wandering aimlessly. Robbed of their self-righteous anger, they seemed pathetic. Brown had been a poor choice of uniform color. They looked like scouts without a map. At some point they would gather their belongings and leave, but Goodman knew he would eventually have to find them all, starting with Stanley.
The house Stanley had pointed out was next to the one Goodman and Travis had come through to gain entrance to the churchyard. Goodman tried the knob and it turned. The door swung open, and he stepped into a kitchen identical to the one next door. He flicked a switch on the wall above the sink before remembering that the electricity was dead. There was enough ambient light through the windows that he was able to pick out shapes and shadows. He crept silently through to the living room, wishing he had Travis’s big dog with him. There was a television against the wall and a couch opposite it, but no other furnishings. A pile of empty beer cans and a greasy pizza box littered the floor beside the couch. Goodman went to the bottom of the staircase and listened. There was no sound, but there was an undefinable sense of heaviness in the air, someone else breathing somewhere. He gripped his gun tight and took the steps two at a time, watching the landing above for movement.
There were four doors on the second floor. One was open and led to a bathroom. The other three were closed. Goodman moved down the hall, stopping outside each door to listen. Behind the last door he heard a soft noise, fabric shifting, tendons creaking, and he reached out, turned the knob, then pushed the door open and flattened himself against the wall beside it.
Nothing happened.
He counted to ten, braced the machine gun against his shoulder, and entered the room in a running crouch. The walls were painted flat white and were bare of decoration. New indoor/outdoor carpeting covered the floor. Three sets of metal bunk beds filled the spa
ce, one each against the side walls and the third in the center, leaving a double walkway between them. A pasteboard chest of drawers was shoved under a window on the wall across from him.
A woman lay on the bottom middle bunk, her wrists handcuffed to a chain that ran to the rail above her head. Her dark hair was bedraggled, her face pale, and her red sweater torn and dirty. A strip of duct tape covered her mouth, and she breathed loudly through her nose.
“Mrs. Bloom?”
She didn’t react.
He knelt beside the bed, placed the gun on the floor next to him, reached out, and gently shook her.
“Rachel?”
There was still no response. He carefully peeled the tape off her face and stuck it to the side of the bed.
He sat back on his heels and watched Rachel’s face, wondering who had drugged her. Stanley or Heinrich? Maybe Rudy himself? On the most basic level, there was no escaping the knowledge that his family was responsible for this. How many girls had been shipped through the compound every month? Taken through the middle of Burden County right under his nose? He thought of his friend’s missing daughter, the case he had never solved and that now seemed unsolvable. He thought of his daughter, his mother, his sister who had never had the chance to know Magda, of all the women who were important to him—who had shaped him—any of whom might have taken Rachel Bloom’s place, chained to a bed, or packed into a truck like cattle. He remembered that Heinrich had never married, never had children, and he realized what a blessing that was. How many times had Uncle Heinrich visited them when Angela was a child? What wriggling wormlike visions had gone through Heinrich’s head at the dinner table? Goodman’s stomach turned. He had never been comfortable with emotions other than anger, and now he felt himself translating his shame and confusion to something more easily understood, something he could act on.
He rattled the chain and cursed himself for his lack of foresight. He had left his bolt cutters in the garage after finding the EMP device. A trip back to the garage would take too long. He considered kicking the bed rails apart to free the chain, but he was afraid Rachel might be hurt in the process. His best hope was that her captor had stashed the key to the cuffs somewhere nearby.
A rolling suitcase sat next to an overstuffed black duffel bag beside the door. He had passed them on the way into the room without paying much attention. Now he unzipped the bag and saw toiletries, folded T-shirts, socks balled up in pairs. Nothing of interest. But the suitcase was packed with hundred-dollar bills. Goodman didn’t even try to estimate how much money it might add up to.
He stood and went to the dresser, opened the top drawer. Inside was clutter, like a shoe box in a flea market or the souvenir collection of a madman: a tiny stuffed bear with a red heart sewn on its chest, a locket on a silver chain, a mood ring that wouldn’t have fit his pinky finger, a pair of glasses with rose-tinted lenses and a broken temple bar, a satin ballet slipper, a pink plastic coin purse with a cartoon cat on the side . . . A jumble of heartbreaking keepsakes.
Goodman picked up the coin purse and unfastened the clasp. It held a tube of bubble gum–flavored lip gloss, a house key, and a photo strip from a carnival booth: three pictures showing a pair of little girls mugging for the camera.
A voice from the doorway startled him and he dropped the purse. “If you’re looking for the key to the handcuffs, it’s not in there.”
“Already figured that.” Goodman took a step backward.
“Leave your gun where it is, brother.”
Goodman sighed and turned around. “I shoulda kept a better eye on you, Heinrich.”
13
When Skottie pulled the door open, there was nothing on the other side. No light, no sound, a complete vacuum.
“I have matches here somewhere,” Travis said.
A voice drifted out of the darkness. “Is that the hunter there? Did you bring your negress or have you come alone?”
“Rudolph Bormann,” Travis said.
“Yes, Dr. Roan, I’m right here.”
“Mr. Bormann, I’m placing you under arrest,” Skottie said.
“Mom!”
“Maddy?” Skottie took a step forward over the threshold, her Glock held down at her side, trying to locate where Maddy’s voice had come from. She had no idea how big the room ahead of her was or where Rudy was located.
“Please stay where you are,” Rudy said. “My saw has stopped working, along with the lights, but I am holding a scalpel against your child’s throat, Mrs. Foster.”
“Maddy, has he hurt you?”
“Mom, I’m scared. I can’t move.”
“Let her go, Bormann.”
“Why would I do that?”
The scritch of a match being dragged across a rough surface, the smell of sulfur, and Skottie could suddenly see Travis next to her in a small circle of flickering light, a furry shadow beside him. Ahead of her the room was visible for a short distance, fading into black at the edges. She could see vague shapes at the fringe of visibility, Rudy leaning on a cane, standing over a still form on a metal table. They were roughly four feet away from her. She took a step forward and raised her gun.
“Mrs. Foster, if you knew what I’ve done in the past, you would believe me when I tell you I will spill this girl’s blood. There’s a drain in my floor here that’s very thirsty.”
Skottie stopped where she was. Travis exclaimed as the match burned down to his fingertips and he dropped it. They were plunged back into darkness. But now Skottie knew where her target was.
“Put your gun away,” Rudy said. He had moved, his voice coming from a point two feet away from where he had been a moment earlier. “Do it now or she dies.”
Skottie holstered her Glock. “Maddy, stay calm, okay? I’m right here.”
“He hasn’t done anything to me, Mom. He just talks and talks.”
“I think you must have used my son’s device,” Rudy said. “The machine that kills electricity.”
“It shut everything down,” Travis said. “Your church is in chaos.”
“I’m surprised, I’ll admit that,” Rudy said. “Very surprised. If everything else has stopped working, why am I still standing?”
“We have your weapons, your people, we have your device. You will not be able to sell it to Joseph Odek now.”
“The machine was never intended for Odek. That device was always for me. My grand exit.”
“I do not understand.”
“I’m very old, Dr. Roan. And I’m tired. But the lightning won’t let me rest. I know it’s looking for me again. So what choice did I have, really? I need to kill the lightning if I ever want to escape. I can’t control the weather, but I can shut off whatever’s left inside me. I can stop it here and force it to find someone else.”
“I still fail to understand,” Travis said. “You thought an EMP generator would stop the electrical field within your body?”
“Imagine my disappointment right now.”
“Enough of this,” Skottie said. “Bormann, get down on the ground and put your hands behind your back.”
“I don’t think so, Mrs. Foster. Say good-bye to—”
“Bear,” Maddy said. “Bear, ataku!”
There was a sudden sound of clattering metal, objects falling to the floor. Rudy began to scream.
Skottie ran forward, her hands out in front of her, until she reached the table. She ran her fingers gently along the edge until she encountered warm fabric. She could feel her daughter breathing, feel a heartbeat under her thin T-shirt.
“Mom?”
“Maddy?”
“There’s straps, Mom. On my wrists and ankles. They have buckles.”
Skottie found Maddy’s right arm, her wrist, a thick leather cuff.
“Bear,” Travis said. “Haltu.”
Rudy continued to howl in pain, but Skottie felt Bear’s s
oft mane brush against her as she worked at the buckle on Maddy’s wrist. The dog’s tongue lapped at Maddy’s hand and made the cuff slick with drool.
“Hi, boy,” Maddy said. Her voice sounded chipper, but then she drew in a series of short panting breaths and Skottie could tell the adrenaline rush of being rescued had worn off. Maddy was close to hyperventilating.
“I have her feet,” Travis said. “Maddy, my name is Travis. I am a friend of your mother’s.”
“Please, just get me out of here.”
“Stay calm, baby,” Skottie said. “You’re almost free.”
“Maddy,” Travis said, “did you know that a flock of starlings is called a murmuration?”
There was a long silence before Maddy spoke. “Is that true?”
“Yes. I only recently found it out. Thank you for watching Bear for me, Maddy.”
“You’re . . . He’s a good dog.”
“He does not usually take commands from strangers. He must like you very much.”
Maddy’s breathing slowed a bit, and Skottie put her hand on her daughter’s chest for a few seconds to help reassure her, then attacked the straps again. They were ancient and stiff. She finished with one buckle and moved on to Maddy’s left wrist. She could hear Travis at the other end of the table. They worked together, freeing Maddy as Rudy’s moans began to subside. At last, Maddy came loose and Skottie scooped her up, carried her away in the direction of the door. Up the stairs, into the big room with its tiny windows, just light enough that she could see the way ahead. Below her, she could hear the Nazi groan, then the scuffle of shoes on the concrete floor. With the metal door standing open, Rudy’s subbasement room had lost its soundproof quality, and they could hear Travis talking to the Nazi.
“I hope you are able to walk, but I will carry you if necessary.”
“Where’s my cane? Your dog bit me. He’ll be put down, you know.”
“Mom! They can’t!”
“Hush, baby. Nobody’s gonna hurt Bear.”