Deadliest of Sins

by Sallie Bissell

  She turned back to Sam. Her chest was heaving as she sucked in air. Mary frowned, puzzled. The girl was young, looked healthy. Why would climbing up a ridge turn her into an old woman? Because she’s been locked in a crappy room for two months, she answered her own question. That old motel wasn’t exactly a health spa. She knelt down, touched the girl’s shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” Sam said before Mary could speak. “I know I’m holding you back. I just can’t get my breath.”

  “Then let’s try a new plan.”

  “What?” the girl asked.

  “I’m going to hide you.”

  Sam looked at her as if she’d gone crazy.

  “I’m going to lead them away from you and get help.”

  “There’s nowhere to hide. Just forget about me and get out of here yourself.”

  “No—it’s an old bird trick,” Mary whispered. “Lead the predator away from the nest.” She smiled. “From now on, just pretend you’re my little chick.”

  Before Sam could say anything else, Mary turned and started back down the ridge. She knew their hunters would head for the ridge top, just as she had. If she could find some kind of hiding place for Sam below them, then the girl would probably be safe, at least for a while. She saw what she thought was a fallen log big enough for Sam to hide beneath when a flash of bright light illuminated the woods a hundred yards to her right. The first loud clatter of gunfire followed, then tree limbs cracked and crashed to the forest floor. Above her, Sam cried out.

  Mary raced back to her charge. She needed to get her quiet, fast. She found the girl crouched on the ground, her eyes huge. “I didn’t mean to yell,” she whispered. “It just scared me.”

  “Don’t worry,” Mary replied, grabbing her arm. “Come on!”

  She pulled the girl down the hill, toward the log. As more gunfire sounded from the left, Mary wedged her under the downside of the log, invisible to anyone searching from above. For extra cover, she started quietly piling leaves and pine branches over her.

  “Listen to me, Sam,” Mary whispered as she worked. “You’ve got to promise to ignore whatever happens—gunshots, screaming, people saying they’ll kill me if you don’t come out. Don’t move, don’t cry, and don’t make a sound—somebody will come and help you. It may take a while, but somebody will come. Can you do that?”

  The girl nodded.

  “Okay. You’ll probably hear gunfire from sides of this hill; the guy in the white suit may come up the middle. It’ll be scary as hell, but if you do as I say, you’ll be okay.”

  Sam nodded again, then whispered. “If they catch me, can I use my shard of glass on them?”

  “You can use it on anybody but yourself,” Mary replied. She threw a couple more branches to hide Sam’s blond hair, then she made note of a tall sycamore tree that stood about a hundred feet from Sam’s log. That will be my landmark, she decided as she moved off through the trees. If they don’t bring in dogs, if Sam can keep a tight lock on her terror, then we might have a chance.

  If any part of her fragile little plan fell through, it would all be over. She and Sam would become just the two latest victims of Highway 74.

  Thirty-Four

  Galloway screamed down the road in his green Mustang. He knew he’d gone rogue—should have followed standard procedure and checked in with Dispatch, but the chatter on the box was wildly focused on a 10-108 involving an officer on Kedron Road. The officer, he soon learned, was Crump, the lanky sergeant who’d once partnered with Gudger. Since the entire department seemed to be rushing to Crump’s aid, he figured he would not be missed. Anyway, a Russian sex-trade operation was more important than Crump’s sorry ass. More important than either of those was Mary Crow.

  He pushed the car up to ninety. Just short of the Gaston County line, he skidded into the parking lot of a convenience store and grabbed the atlas of North Carolina topo maps he’d bought after he took the job here. Though his GPS had quickly shown Hubbard Mountain as an elongated green blob just north of the South Carolina line, he needed to know the topography of the place. Flipping on his overhead light, he looked at the map. The park was mostly woods, riddled with the broken lines that indicated hiking trails. Highway 74 rimmed its northern border; local two-lanes gave easy access to route 321 to the east. Ten minutes away lay South Carolina, should you need to dump a body fast.

  “A perfect place,” whispered Galloway. “In the woods, but close to civilization. Easy access to the interstate truck stops. And if you happen to be Russian, you’re half an hour from Charlotte International Airport.” He closed the atlas and shook his head. “That’s where I would set up shop, if it were me.”

  He keyed Hubbard’s Mountain Road into his computer, then headed back out to Highway 74. It was, he realized, a one-man search for the proverbial needle in a five-thousand-acre haystack, but he didn’t care. The needle was Mary Crow, and that was all that mattered.

  He drove east on 74, aka Jackson Highway, aka la carretera del dolor. Road of sorrows. Certainly it had proven so for Bryan Taylor and those two other girls Mary had come up with. He wondered—could Tiffani Wallace and Maria Perez have been part of this Russian sex ring? A hayseed teenage shoplifter and an illegal sweet potato picker? He shook his head as the highway lines flew by. “Inocentes,” he whispered. North Carolina, Georgia, Mexico. Predators preyed on the innocents everywhere.

  He crossed over into Gaston County. Immediately, he slowed to the speed limit and turned his radio down low. He knew he should involve the Gaston County cops now, but that would take time and a lot of explanation. They would thank him for the tip and promise to let him know if they found anything. Then, in the way of cops, it would become their case and he would never see Mary Crow again. “Go on your own,” he told himself. “Ask forgiveness instead of permission.”

  He passed through the little village of Mountain View, then turned from Highway 74 on to Sparrow Springs Road. If there was a moon out, it wasn’t much of one—all he could see were lights from houses set far back from the road. He drove for several miles, until even the lights from the houses vanished. When the sharp aroma of pine suffused his car, he knew he’d begun to skirt the eastern border of the park.

  “Okay,” he whispered. “Here’s the haystack. Now you’ve just got to find the needle.”

  Galloway slowed the Mustang to a crawl. It was hard to see in the darkness, but on a hunch he took an unmarked gravel road that veered off the main road to the right. His tires made a crunching sound as he rolled deeper into the woods, finally stopping when the road dead-ended at an old trash dumpster.

  “Shit,” he whispered in disgust as he turned the Mustang around. “Bad hunch.”

  He spent the next half-hour turning down every road he found. He’d given up approaching quietly—no more time for that—now he just barreled down all of them. Most just petered into paths the led into the forest; a couple were access roads to the park, with iron gates barring passage during the nighttime hours. None were wide enough to accommodate traffic from any kind of motel. He’d just reached a dead-end close to the southernmost point of the park when he decided that Gudger had been lying. He’d come on too strong, and the old bastard had just said the first thing that came into his head, just to get him out of his grille. Now, he’d lost Mary Crow forever.

  “Jackass!” he muttered, viciously turning his car around. “Caray!”

  He had no choice now but to call Gastonia and get them in on it. Flooring his accelerator, he headed back to the main road and a reliable cell phone signal. He’d just pulled out on to the road when a huge black car came roaring around the corner. Galloway slammed on his brakes, tires shrieking as he fish-tailed to a stop. He gripped the steering wheel, ready to receive a well-deserved finger from the driver, but no such gesture was made. The driver of the car kept going without a glance at Galloway, racing along the twisting road like a bullet in the night.

&n
bsp; “Holy fuck!” whispered Galloway, turning to get a glimpse of the vehicle. It was a big Mercedes CLS sedan. The license plate was white with black numbers and a blob of something orange in the middle—maybe Florida or Georgia. His brief glimpse of the driver had given the impression of size—a great bear of a person who was streaking along this road like his ass was on fire. Galloway sat back in his seat, his adrenalin rush leaving him shaky. Who would be out here driving a hundred-thousand-dollar car like it was the Daytona 500? At this time of night? When there’s nothing around here but a park that closes at sunset?

  He took a deep breath. Something about that car was ringing a distant bell in his memory—but what? Something he’d seen? Something somebody had said? He closed his eyes, trying to remember—then suddenly, he had it! The peach truck kid. He’d gurgled something about a gorilla in big black car that had come and taken Gudger away.

  “It’s the gorilla!” whispered Galloway. “I gotta be close, and they must be scared about something. Nobody nearly gets T-boned without slowing down unless some serious shit is hitting the fan.”

  He turned his car to the right, continuing his circuit of the park. With an eye out for any more cars roaring past in the opposite direction, he searched for a road big enough to handle a moderate amount of traffic. He passed another trash dumpster, scaring a family of hunch-backed raccoons, then at a wide spot in the road that looked like a turn-around, he saw a birdshot sign clinging to an old tree. Tocher Hunting Camp. Private.

  He turned, rolled forward, his headlights flashing across the sign. To the left of it was a narrow road that coiled up into the woods. Though it wasn’t paved, it looked freshly graveled and graded against any water runoff. Still, unless someone was looking for it, they’d never know it was there.

  “Okay,” he said softly. “It’s not the Tick Tock Motel, but it’s close enough.”

  He put his car in Reverse and doubled back to the last trash dumpster. He wanted to go back to the hunting camp on foot. No point in getting blocked in by the giant in that Mercedes. He grabbed his cell phone and a pair of cuffs, and slipped an extra ammo clip in the pocket of his jeans. That, he thought, will give me thirty-two rounds of .40-caliber bullets. Surely I can stop the gorilla with that. As an added precaution, he left his squawk box on. If the gorilla took him down, Campbell County could get a fix on his radio. At least they’d have that much on his last-known whereabouts.

  He locked his car and ran back toward the hunting camp sign. The night air was humid and smelled of cedar. A few fireflies blinked among the trees, but only his footsteps broke the silence of the woods. He reached the Tocher camp sign quickly, and started up the heavily graveled road. It didn’t climb like true mountain roads, but twisted like a corkscrew into the forest. With the thick trees and the moonless night, he felt like a blind man, navigating by feel and instinct.

  He went on, listening for the sound of a car, watching for headlights slashing through the trees. None came. He decided that whatever fire the gorilla was driving to had not yet been put out.

  He’d walked a good twenty minutes into the woods when he noticed a slight glow through the trees ahead. Not a real light—just a rise in the road that looked a shade lighter than dark-as-pitch.

  He went on, but more slowly, now walking through the weeds instead of the noisier gravel. Knee-high thorn bushes tore at his pant legs; a tiny animal squeaked and rustled away in the grass. He reached the crest of the rise and there it was, nestled against acres of thick trees. Tocher Hunting Camp.

  He flattened himself in the grass to get a better look. The place looked ancient—built of asbestos-shingled wings, joined in the middle by an office. The windows of the rooms were boarded up and he saw only two doors—one for the office, another at the end of the wing to his left. He would have thought the place was deserted, a prime candidate for the county demolition squad, except for the two white Mercedes sports cars parked in front and a ribbon of light that shone from the bottom of the office door.

  “Bingo,” he whispered.

  He lay in the weeds, waiting to see if anybody was going to come out or if the gorilla was going to return to his friends. After a few minutes of seeing nothing but an opossum sniff around the edge of the parking lot, he drew his pistol. Now was the time to find out what the hell was going on inside the Tocher Hunting Camp.

  He got to his feet. For a moment he considered going fast and straight to the office. But the gravel was noisy and he didn’t want to alert whoever was inside. Instead, he crossed the driveway and walked through the weeds to the far end of the building. On a hunch, he tried the door, but the thing was locked tight. Pointing his weapon upward, he crept along the front of the boarded-up windows. Not a glimmer of light shown from any of them—all the action, whatever it might be, was going on in the office.

  Mindful that the gorilla could return any moment, he hurried forward. Two more windows, then one, then he was on the little stoop that served as a porch. Carefully, he tried the front door; it was locked just as tightly as the other.

  Moving past it, he inched up to the window of the office. Brownish-

  looking drapes covered most of it, but he found an inch-wide gap along one edge of the window. Bending down, Galloway looked inside; he saw a short man with oily dark hair pacing as he talked on a cell phone, crossing in front of a stunned-looking man who sat spraddle-

  legged in a chair, naked from the waist down. Galloway released the safety on his pistol and turned his ear to the slit in the drapes.

  “Volk should be back with more guys any minute,” the man was saying. “But you know—we don’t need this kind of shit. I told Boyko that girl cop was bad news …”

  That was all Galloway needed to hear. He backed up a step, looked away from the window, and fired. The window shattered, turning into a shower of glass chips that rained down upon him, the window ledge, the building itself. They were still hitting the ground as Galloway hoisted himself up and through what was left of the glass. The man on the phone stood there with his mouth hanging open, while the man who’d collapsed in the chair began to cry.

  Galloway crossed the room, slammed the single office door shut, then pushed the phone caller into the wall, nestling his Smith & Wesson inside the man’s right ear. “What girl cop?”

  “I d-don’t know what you’re t-talking about.” The man stammered, as the slightly metallic odor of urine wafted up from his trousers.

  “One more chance,” said Galloway. “Or you’re gonna have a new .40-caliber ear canal right through your brain. What girl cop?”

  “I don’t know her name … she had dark hair, looked classy. B-Boyko thought we could make some money on her.”

  Galloway pushed the muzzle of the pistol harder against the man’s ear. “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know! She got loose. She went into the woods and took the blond kid with her. Boyko and his pals are hunting them now.”

  “Outside here?”

  The man nodded.

  “How many pals exactly?”

  “Two with Boyko, now.”

  “But the ape’s gone for reinforcements?”

  Swallowing hard, the man nodded, sweat beading on his forehead as if he were standing in a sauna.

  “Good boy,” Galloway whispered. “You just saved your bare-assed buddy here the job of cleaning your brains up off this floor.”

  Galloway found a giant-sized role of duct tape in the bottom drawer of the desk and quickly subdued his detainees, taping wrists, ankles, eyes, and mouths shut. He confiscated the phone caller’s keys and locked him in an empty motel room and the half-naked guy in a broom closet. After that, he called the Gaston County Cops.

  “I’m not sure what the hell’s going on here,” he told the dispatcher. “Maybe a prostitution ring, maybe sex trafficking. I’ve got two suspects secured inside an old motel called the Tocher Hunting Camp. I understand that at least t
hree more suspects are out hunting two escaped females somewhere on Hubbard Mountain.”

  “We’ve got a 11-80 that’s got both lanes of Highway 74 shut down. It might take us a while to get there.”

  “Sugar, the governor’s special prosecutor is one of the possible victims here, so I think it would be in your best interest to send every officer you’ve got ASAP!”

  He clicked off the radio, disgusted. He knew he didn’t cut any ice with the Gaston County PD, but if he didn’t hear sirens in five minutes, he’d call in his own people, or even the SBI.

  He rolled out the broken office window, his feet crunching the shattered glass on the ground. Outside, there was still no sign of the monster in the black Mercedes.

  “Maybe he wised up and got the hell out of Dodge,” whispered Galloway. It didn’t matter. He would deal with the monster when and if he showed back up. Right now, he just wanted to find Mary Crow.

  Suddenly, from the woods behind the motel, he heard shots—high-pitched, rapid-fire bursts that sounded like an old AK-47. He ran, keeping to the shadows, until he reached the back of the motel. Hugging the wall, he inched forward until he could look around the corner. He saw a man running across a trash-strewn parking lot, automatic rifle clutched in both hands, his eyes focused on some distant spot in the woods. He had the giddy look of a feral dog, about to fall upon some helpless prey. Without thinking, Galloway stepped from the shadows and called, “Hey!”

  The man stopped, surprised. Before he could utter a word, Galloway pointed his gun at his heart. “Drop the gun now.”

  For an instant the man looked almost amused, then he started to swivel in Galloway’s direction. Galloway did not wait. He aimed and clustered three rounds in the middle of the man’s chest. The machine gun fell to the ground, as silent and useless as the man who’d just fired it.