Way Down There (An Allie Down Mystery Thriller Book 1)

by PJ Fernor

  In the kitchen she heard the man break what sounded like a plate.

  Jessie shut her eyes and pulled again.

  And again.

  And again.

  And… again…

  The old, wooden leg of the couch finally broke free from the couch.

  The corner hit the floor, but not before Jessie pulled her hand and stood up.

  She still had the other side of the long handcuff looking thing on her wrist, but so what? The police would cut it off of her.

  She was free!

  Jessie looked back at the kitchen.

  Then she ran to the front door.

  The fight for freedom was still far away, but she’d be safe from the man.

  Jessie opened the front door and wanted to see houses. A neighborhood. People who could help. But she already knew it was going to be woods.

  The sight of all the trees made her lose her breath for a second.

  But that was okay.

  That was-

  A hand covered her mouth.

  Another hand across the front of her body.

  “And this is why we can’t have nice things,” the man growled in her ear.

  Jessie thrashed and tried to scream.

  The man was too big and too strong.

  He kicked the door shut and ran through the house, carrying Jessie.

  Back down to the basement…

  Jessie fought like hell though. Kicking and punching, even desperate enough to bite the man’s hand.

  Nothing worked.

  In a matter of a minute, she was back in the basement, chained to the pipe again.

  And then the man did something else…

  He kicked her.

  He kicked Jessie so hard in the stomach, she couldn’t breathe.

  The man backed away, gasping for his breath.

  “You have to stop hurting the people you love,” he said. “Just… why?”

  With that said, the man went back upstairs into the kitchen to keep breaking things.

  Jessie found her breath and looked around the basement.

  The whole idea of not getting too scared?

  It was way too late for that now…

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Her name was Lucy Maurowitz.

  That’s what Mulvaney said as I walked away from him and the two men who found the body.

  I needed to see for myself.

  The sight of the small body - the young life taken too soon - made me swallow hard. Everything I had eaten and drank during the day wanted to make its return.

  She was face down in a thick patch of overgrowth.

  She looked like Jessie.

  That was for sure.

  The scene was already properly taped off with an entire crew busy at work.

  It took me a few seconds to realize most of the people there weren’t from Sandemor.

  “Sick thing to see,” a voice said from next to me.

  I turned my head and looked up to a man who looked built to play professional football. A clean cut jaw that was almost cliché square with a perfect cleft in the middle of his chin. He wore a black, long-sleeve shirt with the sleeves pushed up. He also had on old looking blue jeans and heavy, dark brown boots. Around his neck was a badge.

  “And you are?” I asked.

  He looked at me. “Detective Barby,” he said. “Over from Morris.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Because this is my case,” he said. “And that poor girl right there… I’ve been looking for her for a few months now.”

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  We faced each other, both of us wanting the same thing.

  To find out who took a little girl.

  In his case, the little girl was dead.

  In my case… I wasn’t exactly sure yet.

  “Sorry to burst your bubble,” Detective Barby said to me.

  “Is that Johnny Barby I see?” Ben’s voice asked from behind me.

  Detective Barby stepped around me and I looked back to see him and Ben shake hands and hug.

  “I was just telling your colleague here that this one is mine,” Detective Barby said.

  “This one?” I asked. “This isn’t like finding a rare coin in the sand. This is a person. A life. A family broken…”

  “You think I don’t know that?” Detective Barby asked. “You have no idea the hours I’ve put in on this case. Not to mention dealing with a stubborn family over it.”

  “Allie, Johnny and I go way back,” Ben said. “Why don’t we give them some space here and go talk this out?”

  “Great idea,” Detective Barby said. “Let these guys do their thing. I want everything searched and photographed. I want the two men who found Lucy to be drilled. And I don’t care if they’re locals or not.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of that,” I said.

  Detective Barby chuckled. “I’ll handle it.”

  He and Ben walked away, almost shoulder to shoulder.

  Yeah, I understood it.

  I was short. I was a woman. Rarely did I get caught with my emotions on my sleeve.

  But some pretty boy detective was not going to push me around.

  I looked back to the young girl’s body on the ground and my stomach did a front flip.

  She was in a dark green dress. Her messy pigtails had hair ties that matched the color of the dress.

  He said she was missing for a few months…

  I had to walk away.

  I jogged back to Mulvaney’s cruiser, where Ben and Detective Barby had convened to talk.

  Mulvaney had the two men who found the body a little bit away from the cruiser.

  “Let’s get this cleared up right now,” Ben said. “Johnny, this is Allie. Allie Down. She just transferred from the city. Came back home where she grew up. Allie, this is Johnny Barby. Call him Johnny.”

  “Detective Barby is my father’s name,” Johnny said with a million dollar smile.

  His eyes almost twinkled when he spoke.

  He offered his hand and I took it.

  “Wish we had met under better circumstances,” he said.

  “Johnny, give us all you’ve got here,” Ben said. “We’ve got a little girl missing too. And she looks pretty close to that poor girl over there.”

  “I mean this nice, even though it’s mean, but I wish I wasn’t here right now,” Johnny said. “And I wish that was your girl down there.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  “That’s not how this world works,” Johnny said.

  “Don’t lecture me on this world, Detective.”

  Johnny grinned and nodded. “You’ve got fire for being in such a small town. I like fire. It doesn’t burn me.”

  I looked at Ben.

  Was this guy flirting with me?

  “Now to talk about my case,” he said. “The Maurowitz family. Wealthy family. Very wealthy. Old money though. The old man had a business and passed it down to his oldest son, Michael. Michael is Lucy’s father. He and his wife Donna had three kids. Robbie, Sarah, and Lucy. Michael sold the family business without telling anyone which caused a lot of family issues. So initially we were looking into everything family related. Or ransom related.”

  “A family kidnapping their own niece or whatever for money?” I asked.

  “It’s messy, Allie,” Johnny said.

  He was the type of guy to learn your name and speak as though he knew it for twenty years.

  Smooth. Calm.

  He annoyed me.

  “So where were you at with the case?” Ben asked.

  “Dead end,” Johnny said. “We were tearing through years of family issues. But there was nothing there. Most of the family are dead. The living ones had nothing to do with Lucy’s disappearance. I knew all along it was outside the family. I pursued my own angles and came up short over and over.”

  “How was she kidnapped?” I asked.

  “Someone took her,” Johnny
said.

  “Johnny,” Ben said. “Come on, man. We’re up against it too.”

  “And I’m not?” Johnny asked. “I got the call and I had to come see it for myself. Your guys knew right away it wasn’t your missing girl. Different face. Now if you want to get into it, I can tell you she’s been dead for a couple days now. I don’t think I have to tell you both how the body reacts to death.”

  “No need,” I said.

  “As far as how Lucy went missing… it was just a random day. Her family lives in a wealthy development. Lucy went for a ride on her bike with her older brother. Robbie told us he let Lucy go to the common area playground. He said his parents hated that it was near the main road.”

  “What was Robbie doing?” I asked.

  “Texting a girl. Not the kind of stuff he’d want his parents or her parents to see either. I have no idea what teenagers these day have turned into based on what I read on his phone. Begging for pictures…”

  “Say no more,” Ben said.

  He looked at me, then at Johnny.

  The first thing I thought of was Lo.

  Was she… doing any of that…?

  “Someone stopped and grabbed Lucy,” Johnny said. “That’s about it. Her bike was left near a swing. The swing was still moving when Robbie realized something was wrong. The parents went into an uproar. Michael was told he needed to wait… but I heard the name and jumped on it. They wanted to keep everything quiet. Nothing in the news or social media. That made things a little bit tough to deal with. The neighborhood started buzzing though. Within a week there were ten security companies going through the neighborhood so everyone could get an upgrade. Money, right?”

  “Security cameras,” I said. “Did you check any?”

  “Allie, I know how to do my job. There was one house that had a camera out back. Sadly it had been positioned before the family planted bushes to block the view of the road. I slowed the video down and zoomed in… well, IT did. We sat for hours trying to get anything from the video.”

  “Did you get anything?” I asked. “Video of an SUV?”

  “No idea,” Johnny said. “This one was one dead end after another. And now here’s the ultimate kick in the teeth. The body being dumped over here. Why?”

  “Well, I can tell you this, Johnny,” Ben said, “We’ve had search parties out here since Jessie went missing. They’ve checked here already. More than once.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” Johnny said. “I’m going to go talk to your two locals over there.”

  His massive arms and shoulders flexed. His chest puffed out, making his badge bounce. He winked at me and walked over to Mulvaney. In a show of instant dominance and control, Johnny grabbed Mulvaney by the back of his neck. He did it so casual though that Mulvaney looked like a love stricken teenage girl at a boy band concert as Johnny told him to leave.

  I looked at Ben.

  “I know,” he said. “Johnny is tough.”

  “Tough isn’t the word I’d use. I don’t like this, Ben.”

  “Neither do I. It’s going to be a long night.”

  “A long night? It’s going to be more than a long night. Our cases are crossing similar lines here. That poor girl wasn’t there earlier… maybe even earlier today…”

  Ben looked around. “Makes no sense either. You’ve got thick forest one way, back into Sandemor another way, and then behind me… it’s a drop off. My grandfather used to tell me there were mountain lions down there. That was to keep me from being a dare devil and climbing down.”

  “You know what that means, right?”

  “What, that I’m not a dare devil?”

  “No,” I said.

  Why are these men so thick headed and dumb?

  “What does what mean, Allie Down?”

  “Everything you just said makes sense. Johnny is going to be lingering here until they move the body and clear the scene. It’s going to get even worse now.”

  “All of this I know,” Ben said.

  “But that’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “Then what are you talking about?”

  I looked down to the spot where poor young Lucy had been dumped.

  It was sick, sad, and everything in between.

  Ben touched my shoulder and I jumped.

  “What?”

  “I’m asking you something,” he said. “What are you talking about?”

  “Everything you said is true.”

  “I know that,” Ben said. “Anything else?”

  I took a deep breath.

  “Whoever took and killed Lucy and took Jessie is closer than we think.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Something I wanted to teach Lo in life before she experienced it on her own… when someone said ‘I don’t want to be rude here…’ they more than likely meant to be rude. They were setting the scene to be rude.

  Simple as that.

  And that’s exactly what Johnny decided to do after grilling into the two locals for a good fifteen minutes. One of the men - Ben told me his name was Hank Wreston - wept like a baby. Holding his face, sobbing and blubbering. Pushed into a corner with Johnny towering over him, I almost feared Hank would have admitted to anything to get Johnny away from him.

  When Johnny was done, that’s when he told Ben and I ‘I don’t want to be rude here…’ and the conversation ended with him saying he’d let Ben know when he was done with the scene. By morning we’d have our chance to assess what was left over.

  Which was going to be a big problem.

  I had no problem going toe to toe with Johnny.

  But Ben did.

  And so did Laura.

  As they began to talk about logistics and legalities, I slipped away and went around the other side of Mulvaney’s car and back down to the crime scene.

  I didn’t get close enough to step on any toes.

  Johnny walked the scene, his large hands balled into fists. He circled Lucy over and over, his face clean cut yet twisted. At one point he paused and looked right at me.

  Then he went back to work.

  His mind probably raced the same way mine did.

  Only he was dealing with a dead body.

  I wasn’t sure what I was dealing with just yet.

  I looked around and knew nightfall was working hard against us.

  Everything was too dark.

  Johnny crouched down and ran his hand across the tops of some thick brush. His eyes didn’t leave the poor little girl’s body. He moved his chin left to right, right to left…

  “Allie,” a voice said as a hand touched my shoulder.

  I jumped and turned.

  “Ben,” I said.

  “Thought you ran away.”

  “I’m not interested in that kind of talk,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, we have to play nice here,” Ben said. “Laura is working with the department over in Morris. This is very tricky right now. And there’s nothing much we can do at the moment.”

  “Oh, there’s plenty, Ben.”

  “Listen to me,” he said. “I have a patrol car outside Connor’s house and Cat’s apartment. Like I said I would do. So far there has been no movement.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “Connor…”

  “What?” Ben asked. “That’s not his daughter over there.”

  “I know that,” I said.

  My initial theory felt as though it were unraveling.

  I snapped my fingers. “Wait a second. “What if he took Lucy to replace his daughter? Maybe Cat did something to him. You know? Maybe through her PI or something else she threatened to take Jessie…”

  “Possibly,” Ben said. “We have the area secured. With our department. All the surroundings… we’re good here. Morris will come for the body. Johnny will do what he needs to do with the scene.”

  “This isn’t going to end there,” I said. “They’re not going to go away and leave us alone.”

  “But we control our town,” Ben said. “Let Laura do her
job, Allie. Let Johnny do his.”

  “You’re trying to convince me to go home right now, aren’t you?”

  “I’m trying to be honest with you,” he said. “Anything done here we will have access to. We can see more when the sun is up.”

  “I know how light works, Ben,” I said.

  I walked away from him.

  Of course he was my ride home.

  As I walked toward Ben’s car, I spotted Laura on her phone. She looked animated.

  I saw the two locals and poor Hank still looked rattled from Johnny’s verbal attack.

  Mulvaney leaned against his cruiser, scrolling on his phone.

  A part of me wondered if a town like Sandemor could really take on something like this. A local girl goes missing and now a body is dumped in a spot where search parties had looked. And the body dumped isn’t the missing girl. It’s another missing girl from another case, town, and county.

  Lucy wasn’t our case.

  All we could do was back off and let Johnny do his thing and ask for the reports later.

  Which is what Ben reminded me on the ride back to the apartment.

  If I couldn’t stay at the scene, that didn’t mean I wasn’t working.

  “So you have a rich girl getting kidnapped months ago,” I said. “And then she turns up dead.”

  “With some small marks on her wrists,” Ben said. “She was held captive. But nothing that would kill her.”

  “Meaning she died by accident?” I asked.

  Ben and I looked at each other but we both didn’t answer.

  When we got back to the apartment, Ben walked me to the door.

  I looked at him as I slipped the key into the lock.

  He looked as tired and pissed as I felt.

  “You’re not going to sleep much tonight, are you?” he asked me.

  “No,” I said.

  “Neither am I.”

  “Why don’t you crash here?” I asked. “I mean, on the couch. No use in driving all the way home, right? It’s been a long night. If something else happens… if Laura calls… maybe you can give Johnny a friendly call…”

  Ben nodded. “I can do that. Is your couch full of twisted and rusted springs?”

  “It’s the worst couch ever,” I said.

  “My favorite kind.”

  Ben winked at me and I entered the apartment.