by Brad Cooper
Neither Ryan nor Adam made a sound for a moment, uncertain of what to say. “Right. We’ve seen it on the news and all,” Adam said.
“As you can imagine we’re still looking into what all really happened. We’re just going around talking to people around here to see if maybe they heard something or seen something that night that may help us out. I don’t reckon you fellas could help us out with that could you?”
“No, I’m sorry but we didn’t even go out that night. We stayed here and hung out in the backyard for a while,” Clark responded. He watched as Lilly looked around the room for a second time, his eyes then fixed on the computer center.
“What’s all that stuff?” Lilly said with an intrigued smile.
Ryan walked to the desk and said, “That? Oh, it’s just my newest toy. DVD burner and everything else I need to convert tapes to DVDs. VHS tapes are becoming obsolete so I’m copying everything over. It’ll take me forever though.”
“That kind of crap is really something. I’m not one of those computer guys. I can barely turn the darn things on,” Lilly said.
“It’s not a big deal. Just have to learn the basics.” He walked back toward the front room and said, “Sorry we couldn’t help you out.”
Lilly was a few steps behind, scanning the room carefully one last time. “No problem, guys. If you hear anything or something, just let us know,” he said. Lilly stopped momentarily when a tape on top of the stack beside the television caught his attention. It was a VHS-C-to-VHS adapter, complete with a VHS-C cassette inside, and was exactly as it had been described to him. He hesitated and said, “Thanks guys. Y’all take care.” Adam’s eyes followed Lilly all the way to his car.
“Did that seem a little strange to you?” Ryan asked.
“What? The fact that a cop-killing cop showed up at our house, out of the blue, asking questions? No, that seemed normal enough to me.”
“Yeah. Plus the fact that he showed up two minutes after you get home. You’re gone for hours, it’s the end of the work day, and this guy just happens to come by right as you walk in the door.” Clark walked into the kitchen and picked up the phone. He dialed the number and tapped his foot impatiently as he listened to the rings. “Kara! What are you doing?” Clark said in a rush.
“Nothing right now. I just got done washing the car. Why?” she asked.
“One of the cops just stopped by to ask us if we heard or saw anything that night. He didn’t stop at anyone else’s house that we saw. No neighbors or anything. Something’s up. I want you to leave, okay?” he said with concern.
“Leave? Why? Where am I supposed to go?” she asked.
Clark spoke anxiously and at a faster tempo than normal. “I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. That’s up to you. Go to the mall, to Wal-Mart, to get something to eat, whatever. Just leave for now. Stay gone about an hour or so then come over here. I just don’t have a real good feeling about all this. Just go and come back later. Be careful.”
“Do you think he’ll come over here next or something? I don’t know why he would….”
“Please don’t argue with me, alright? If they think we know, they’ll think you know and I don’t want them anywhere near you. Okay? He left here a couple of minutes ago, so if he is going over there, you don’t have much time to leave. Trust me.” Clark hung up the phone and rushed into the living room but didn’t see Adam. He shouted his name and heard a muffled response from the basement.
Clark hurried down the stairs and saw Adam shuffling through the items cluttered on the shelf under the steps. “Where’s Lisa?” he asked.
“She’s going out to get her hair done today, I think. She had a few errands to run. Why?”
“I don’t like what’s going on. I just called Kara and told her to get out for a while and wanted to make sure Lisa wasn’t home. Call her and see if she’s got her cell with her. Tell her to call us back whenever she’s headed back to her place and we’ll meet her there. If that guy shows up over there, he’ll just have to see all of us now won’t he?”
“There’s something you’re not telling me, Ryan,” Adam said. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that they know something. They don’t just show up here at random like that. We just really need to be careful and hope that trooper that Lisa called can take care of things here soon.”
Just after 10 PM, the meeting at Lisa’s house disbanded. No local officer made an appearance. No one out of the ordinary was spotted lurking. No suspicious phone calls were made. The four of them wrote the experience off to paranoia and nothing more. They were letting their imaginations work overtime and, as a result, get the best of them. Their extra precautions turned out to be overkill.
Adam kissed Lisa goodnight, while Ryan offered only a longer than usual embrace to Kara. The fatigue of the last several days was wearing on the four of them and they all longed for the bliss of sleep, if only for a few hours.
CHAPTER
19
The rain that dominated the morning and afternoon subsided by nightfall. The ground was completely saturated with hydration. The summer heat would soon evaporate the excessive water but the beginning of that sequence was still hours away, if not more. Summer thunderstorms were frequent but the last week had shown none. The rain remained, and local television broadcasts showed solid green radar readouts during their weather segments while weathermen and weatherwomen rattled off the ultra-generic terms such as “No sign of letting up” and warned of flash flooding in low lying areas.
While continuous precipitation is frowned upon by nearly everyone, it produced near perfect conditions for what had to be done at the present. Soggy ground meant little or no sound outside of the occasional squish after a step in the wrong place. A total lack of sound meant no chance of detection, pending something completely out of the ordinary.
Neither of the two men outside of Ryan Clark’s house had ever tried anything remotely similar to what they were preparing to do. Many years prior, Frank Amick and Carl Lilly both raised their right hands and did solemnly swear to uphold the law to the best of their ability and that included stopping and arresting those who attempted to carry out the amateurish operations such as the one they were minutes from embarking on themselves.
Amick and Lilly stood in the wooded area in the backyard of the Clark house, clad head-to-toe in black. Everything from their cotton knit hood to their all-terrain boots was the darkest color possible. Their objective, as far as appearance was concerned, was achieved. In the utter darkness that surrounded them at 2:30 AM, without a substantial artificial light source, they were completely concealed.
Each man carried a handgun tucked into the back of their pants but not their police issue firearm. Amick carried a snub-nosed revolver that held six rounds and was a gun he had fired no more than five times in as many years but it was thoroughly cleaned and reliable to operate. Lilly carried a similar gun but had no desire to use it. In actuality, the revolver was not even his first option to defend himself. A black leather sheath on his belt contained a Ka-Bar Marine knife. The knife was standard issue for every United States Marine but Lilly was not one of the few or the proud. The knife was purchased from a surplus store over the internet but was dangerous nonetheless. Even in untrained hands the Ka-Bar was one of the most versatile weapons known to man.
For half an hour they knelt at the edge of the woods and remained virtually motionless. Even their breathing was cautious. The first problem they’d planned for turned out to be nonexistent. As it turned out, the young men living in the house were among the few in the town who did not have a household pet. Their concern had to deal with a dog, either startling it, fighting it off, or both, which would probably mean alerting those present inside the house.
Speaking for the first time in almost an hour, Amick looked at Lilly, then around the immediate area, and said, “We look like we’re in a really bad movie.” He scoffed and shook his head in disbelief. “You ready?” he asked Lilly.
“Good to go,” he said in his raspy Southern-accented voice. Even in a near whisper, his voice created extra volume. “Ready as I’m gonna be. How we doing this?”
“It’s summer so they’re bound to have a window open without a fan or a screen and the whole house is on one floor. They might have a basement or something but no upstairs,” said Frank. “If I remember right, that is. It’s been twenty-some-odd years since I been in that house. Maybe longer.”
“We start climbing through windows they’re bound to hear us. What are we s’posed to do about that?” Lilly asked.
“Handle it. For God’s sake, don’t hurt them but if you gotta rough one of them up a little to buy some time, then do it. If you wake up one, you’ll wake them both so watch it.” Amick thought for a moment and added, “I’ll get the big guy. You know, the blonde kid, the workout guy. You watch the other one. You say you seen the tape on the top of a pile beside the TV in the front room?”
“Yup,” Lilly confirmed with a nod. “Unless they moved it.”
“Good. We’ll check the front first. We won’t try the side of the house unless we have to. Let’s go.”
They started in the direction of the house, moving slowly in a crouch. Though the house was a mere fifty yards away, it took them fifteen minutes to reach their agreed upon starting point. Amick felt for the small flashlight he placed in the pocket of his black hooded sweatshirt before leaving but had no plans of using it until he was inside. Drawing undue suspicion was not part of the plan. He continued around the left side of the house, as they perceived it, with Lilly only one step behind. Simultaneously they dropped to their hands and knees and crawled underneath the windows on the side of the house to avoid any chance of being seen by the inhabitants.
Raising himself back to a crouch, Amick accelerated his pace and reached the front of the house, which faced the main throughway road of the town, and studied both of the windows in front of them. What in the world am I doing, he thought but didn’t ask aloud. Instead, he closed his eyes and sighed before moving again.
The window to the right of the front door was open but a plastic dual window fan filled the open space, pulling cool air into the house in lieu of the more expensive central air conditioning. To the left of the entrance, the window was closed.
Amick weighed the options and whispered, “Carl! Come here.” He pointed to the window on the left and said, “Go push on the top part of the bottom section of the window and see if it’ll slide open. Hopefully it’s unlocked. If it is, we’ll go in here but we’ll have to be quiet as a church mouse.”
Lilly walked to the window and began pushing upward on the wooden frame. After several unsuccessful seconds he applied additional pressure. The added leverage forced the frame to give way and slide upward. The paint on both sides of the frame crackled as it came apart from the wood but not sufficiently enough to draw attention. He turned to Amick, who was still studying the window in front of him, and emphatically whispered, “I got it! Come on!”
Amick trotted over and said, “Nice. Help me up.” Frank held on to the windowpane, which was six feet off of the ground, and slowly pulled himself upward. Lilly gently pushed his partner the rest of the way inside and prepared to attempt the same maneuver. Amick pulled Lilly through the window and eased himself onto the ground. Their objective was a scant ten feet away, provided they could locate it with relative ease.
Amick reached for the flashlight in his pocket. Pulling it out, while already looking in the direction of the television, the flashlight slipped out of his hand and crashed onto the floor. For Frank Amick, time stopped.
Sleep rarely came easily for Adam Walton. Partly due to stress and partly due to genetics, Adam’s sleep patterns were irregular at best. For most nights, five hours was quite an accomplishment and eight hours typically meant activity to the point of exhaustion during the day. Sleep was precious for that reason alone. The majority of the time, what little sleep he got was restless and being roused from his unconscious state was easily done. A deep, restful sleep only came as a byproduct of a sleep aid cocktail or some other type of synthetic chemical.
The sharp sound from outside his room, but inside the house, was more than enough to awaken him. Adam sat up in his bed and held his breath for a moment, straining to hear any further noise from whatever source was lurking. Hearing nothing, he momentarily laid his head back onto the pillow but the curiosity combined with suspicion and fear and prompted him to get out of bed.
Adam slowly opened the door and peered down the short hallway. In the darkness, he could see nothing but the outlines of objects that sat in the living room. With three killers on the loose in his town, uninvited guests were not welcome in his home.
Amick gasped when the flashlight hit the floor. He rushed to pick it up but did not turn it on. Instead, he listened for any activity in the house that did not include Lilly’s movements or his own. Convinced that no one was stirring, he motioned to Lilly to get his attention.
“Remember, if they come out here or something, you got the kid with the glasses. I’ll deal with the big one. Just get the tape and get out,” Amick whispered.
“What if he’s not wearing glasses?” Lilly asked.
Amick ignored him.
Moving slowly and showing care not to lift their feet too far from the ground, both men began navigating the room. In and out as quickly as possible. That was the game plan.
Adam started to close the door and make another attempt at sleep when a moving silhouette caught his eye. It was not Ryan. The frame was not of Ryan’s height and held at least sixty more pounds. Adam’s eyes opened wide as he tried to assess the situation in a matter of seconds. Break-ins were a rarity in Spring Creek and the home of two young adult males did not make for an ideal target.
After slowly opening his door sufficiently enough to make an exit, he walked tiptoed down the hall to the room opposite his and slowly turned the knob. Ryan was asleep, lying on his side, with classical music softly emanating from the CD player beside his bed.
Adam touched Ryan’s shoulder and gently shook him enough to wake him. Ryan shook as he came out of his sleep and quickly turned to see Adam standing over him, staring, shirtless and wearing only a gray pair of boxer-briefs, his standard bedtime apparel.
Before Ryan could speak Adam whispered, “Somebody’s in here. I don’t know who it is.”
Still groggy, Ryan said, “How many?”, and rubbed his eyes.
“I just saw one guy.”
“Come on. Watch for any movement,” Clark said. He slid off of his bed and slowly stood up, sliding on his glasses. Adam picked up an extra pair of Clark’s basketball shorts from a nearby chair and slid them on.
Ryan started down the hall with Adam close behind. At the end of the hall, he stopped and peered around the corner. Moonlight provided the only illumination in the room, allowing him to see two figures prowling around the room and silently pillaging through piles of various items. He turned to Adam and held up two fingers, signifying seeing two people in the room. Adam nodded in acknowledgement.
“When I get to the other wall, hit the lights and knock one of them down. Got it?” Clark said in a whisper that was barely audible.
Again, Adam nodded.
After six steps, Clark was to the other side of the room, directly across from the hall between the living room and kitchen, his back flat against the wall. The light coming in from the window beside him revealed just enough of his figure to allow Adam to see him. He moved two steps to his left, in the direction of the unknown persons in his home, and nodded to Adam.
“It’s not here!” Amick said in a whisper meant only for his ears, unaware that he and his partner were no longer alone. He’d slowly pilfered through several items in the dark without success. “Where’d I stick that flashlight?”
Suddenly, the room was flooded with light as the lamp attached to the ceiling fan above him was turned on. Amick spun around to see the house’s two inhabitants rushing in his direction.
Adam knocked the large man down and landed a blow to his face. He attempted to strike him a second time but the blow landed on the man’s crossed arms in front of his face. The intruder, who in reality was Frank Amick, used his right hand to cover Adam’s face and push him off. Adam rolled away as Amick rose to his feet, his mouth bleeding under the cotton mask.
With a running start, Clark dove toward his target’s feet. With one swipe of his arm, he locked on to Lilly’s leg and knocked him to the ground. Lilly fell onto his back, the breath knocked out of him as he landed. Clark landed two blows to Lilly’s face before Lilly retaliated, knocking Clark onto his back. Blood trickled from a small cut on Clark’s right cheekbone.
Lilly rolled to his knees and started to push himself to his feet. Before he could stand, Clark leapt to his feet and kicked Lilly in his ribcage. Lilly slumped to the ground a second time. As Clark moved closer, Lilly drew the Ka-Bar knife from the sheath attached to his belt and slashed deeply into Clark’s right arm. Ryan grabbed his right arm with his left hand and stumbled backward. He applied pressure to the wound, mentally trying to reduce the pain and physically trying to stop the bleeding.
“Ryan!” Adam screamed upon seeing Clark stagger back, still engaged in his struggle with Amick.
Adam drove his knee into Amick’s testicles and crashed his elbow into Amick’s face. Momentarily stunned, Amick fell to the floor giving Adam the chance to rush across the room to Ryan’s aid.