If anyone looked there, she was in a lot more trouble than she imagined.
“We need to get you out of this cold,” Father Rule said. “It’s starting to rain you know.”
He was walking them away from the warehouse. That was good.
“What were you doing all the way out here in the woods?” Melissa said.
“Didn’t your parents teach you it is rude to answer a question with a question?”
“My mother is dead and my father is a—a—”
“A what,” Rule said. “A monster?”
Melissa looked up into Rule’s eyes. They were so devoid of light as to be like holes in his head. A shark’s eyes. Marbles. There was no more life to them than that.
“Who are you?” Melissa said.
“Who I am will become the most important thing in the world soon,” Rule said. “But for you? Now? I am your salvation.”
Spence Grant and the humanoid demon hid in the bushes as Detective Robert Macaulay drove by in his car.
“The warehouse is useless now,” the creature said.
“I-I’m sorry. I—”
“Shut up,” the creature said and backhanded Spence so hard his glasses flew from his head and he stumbled backwards, hit a tree branch with his Achilles’ heel, and dropped straight on his tailbone. It hurt like crazy.
“OW,” he said.
“Ow?” The creature said, mocking his tone.
Pretty soon you’re going to be about as useful to them as the warehouse, Spence thought but did not say.
“I know who you are,” Spence said, still sitting on the ground, spitting out a string of blood from a bit lip. “I know what to call you.”
“We must go to the safe-house,” the thing said. “Rule has your daughter. I can feel it. Time for the next evolution.”
“Did you hear me?” Spence said.
“I heard you.”
“I deserve to know what the fuck is going on.”
“You don’t even deserve to be alive.”
“At least I’m not a MacAulay,” Spence said.
The humanoid fell on top of him and pinned him to the forest floor, its hairless, nearly formed face not an inch from Spence’s own. “Say it then. Say it and I will kill you.”
“Jackson Macaulay,” Spence managed. He wanted to die. It might as well be then.
Nothing happened. The monster stayed there, motionless, silent, breathing its putrid breath up Spence’s nostrils.
“I don’t care if you kill me, Jax.”
“But you will care when I kill you, Spencer. Because when I kill you, I will hear you beg forgiveness for speaking my name aloud.”
“And?”
“And I won’t grant it,” Jax said.
Shackleford and Manny arrived shortly after the Forensics Team, the Violent Fugitive Unit (VTU, we called them), S.W.A.T., a bus—ambulance—and about twenty marked and unmarked police cruisers. Maybe fifty cops.
“You think we have enough firepower here,” I asked, a little embarrassed by the overreaction to my call. For the lieutenant, that is. He was the idiot who called all this in; I just wanted Manny and two other detectives.
“God knows what we’ll find in there,” Shackelford said.
“God forgive us for what we’re going to find in there,” I said. “But there aren’t going to be any warm bodies.”
“Bullshit,” my boss said.
“Due respect, L-T,” I said. “You’re wrong on this. And I have Techs working a ping trace—”
Shackleford turned to me and ground his teeth so hard his cheeks pulled on the skin of his face and made him look old and battle-scarred and he seared me so completely not just with his eyes but rather his very presence of self, and, more importantly, of rank that I had already decided to stop arguing, whatever he had to say, if anything.
The last thing I wanted was to get in an ego cage match. I needed to be kept on this case; I needed to keep after Melissa Grant, and I could not afford to have a loose cannon boss pull my ass and put me on cold cases for spite.
“My scene, my call,” was all he said with his mouth, but his countenance promised the fire of Hell to any man that stood up to him then. I’d already decided to shut up and just be Bobby Mac. No, that’s not right. Mac would’ve punched Shackleford in the face for being such a gregarious farce as a cop and for being nothing but a man in a suit and tie and a desk jockey and then would’ve gone after Melissa Grant.
As a detective and a professional I played the game by the rules this time. Better to have Shackleford on my side when I really wanted something—when I had a better idea where they’d taken Melissa.
“You’re right,” I said. “Let’s take these fuckers down.”
Shackleford actually smiled. So did I and I actually felt a twinge of “better” for the first time in a month.
If you can’t be John Wayne once in a while, where’s the fun?
The VTU used “Betty Boop” their cylindrical, iron battering ram, with a picture of the cartoon on one side and “May We Come In?” painted on the other. Shackleford ordered only members of our squad, VTU, and S.W.A.T. to enter the warehouse, two by two.
We cleared each room on the main level, one by one, painstakingly at times. The television was left on and almost every light in the place was turned off, except for one small female’s bedroom.
We found Spence’s room, too, a kitchen, bathroom—clearly the living quarters. Shackleford called in Forensics and gave them the first floor to quarantine in crime scene tape and cleared them to go to work.
“Time to hit the warehouse,” the boss said.
We lined up and repeated the same action on the door eight feet down.
There were no lights on in the warehouse. In fact the upstairs was nothing but a gargantuan room filled with shelves and what appeared to be machine parts, an office, a small toilet, and a tall door at the rear for deliveries and pickups. The whole building was fabricated and the floor was planked wood atop hard earth.
“There has to be more,” I said.
“Back to the house,” Shackleford barked.
We re-searched the main living quarters, this time with more of an eye toward exits that were built not to be found.
“HERE,” Manny said, his sidearm and flashlight pointed at a room next to the toilet.
A broom closet with no cleaning products but rather piles of towels that were easily lifted and replaced. Manny had removed a section of the pile and revealed a door. We eased it open, the boss likely much less sure now that we were going to run into anything with a pulse.
A long set of wooden stairs led down to a labyrinth of rooms, anterooms, and, as I feared, an execution chamber. A few of the rooms had clearly been used for housing victims. Each of those had a cot, two dog bowls for food and water, a small portable toilet, and a hangman’s noose, perfectly tied, swaying slowly in the vented building air.
Whoever had lived or operated in that place—Spence, his friends, the victims—there was nothing to suggest anyone had cleaned out a single thing from any part of the dungeon downstairs. It would be a rare glut for the Forensics team.
Margaret Duchamp might just fulfill my suspicions and pop a hard one right there.
Shackleford spent the next forty-five minutes lining out each team, giving a trove of uniforms to the special investigators to use as required. As we exited the place I said, “L-T, Manny and I should get on this abduction thing right away. The Tech guys, they still have a signal, last I spoke with them, an hour ago, they were still tracing the movements.”
“Why the hell didn’t you say that an hour ago?” Lieutenant Shackleford said.
I chewed on my Scottish temper, telling it to SIT, and I said, “You’re right. I figured ‘who knows what we find here?’ I guess.”
“When you knew they had a fix on a cell phone?”
“Sir, all due respect. You ordered me to search this warehouse. I asked to leave.”
“Next time you ask, give me a reason.”
<
br /> I had to bite my temper so hard it shrieked inside me.
“Yes, sir.”
“That was complete bullshit back there, Bobby,” Manny said. “You told him—”
“Manny you gotta know something,” I said, as we hurried to our unit. We got inside the car and I looked him in the eye in that way that says “you know enough already, I shouldn’t have to explain this to you” and told him, “I’m never quite sure with the lieutenant which side we are dealing with, Manolo.”
I sped out of the dirt lot and pressed a button on the cell.
“Tech.”
“It’s Macaulay. Talk.”
“We’ve gotten enough pings and worked the direction of travel to believe they’re headed toward the Roxborough Park area. Depending how deep or which way they go, Detective, we may not have more than that for you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Call me if anything changes. We’re going that way now, about an hour away.”
When the call had broken off Manny looked at me with the eyes of the young cop who doesn’t want to believe what he’s heard or seen. Denial. The first stage of everything.
“W-what do you mean by that, I mean, what you said about Shackleford?”
“Manny, I didn’t tell you those stories in the bar that day to unburden myself. I told you because I need a partner who understands the uncommon angles from which we are sometimes forced to attack this case.”
“Yeah, I get that.”
“Well I’m telling you that I get the feeling sometimes that our L-T is more of a hindrance than assistance in our investigation. I’m not saying why, I’m just saying it so that you’ll have your radar up, that’s all.”
“You think he’s a bad cop? I mean, bad, not poor.”
“I don’t know, Manolo. Honestly I don’t have a whole lot past my gut on this one, okay? That’s going to have to be enough for now.”
“Okay, boss,” Manny said.
“The techs are going to lose that burner soon,” I said. “The battery’s going to die and that’ll be that.”
“Yeah.”
“Nobody ever said you could be a detective without doing some goddamned actual detecting, right?”
“Nope.”
“So start thinking about where we should be looking up in Roxborough Park. I’m thinking safe-house, so let’s start with the more remote neighborhoods with acreage. You can use that Rand Guide behind the seat. Make a quick list and let’s start prioritizing on the way over, okay?”
Just then my cell rang.
“Macaulay.”
“Signal went dead,” the tech on the other end said.
“Maybe they’re in-between towers.”
“No, we were getting a weak ping off tower X-ray two five niner and then it just stopped. You move away from a tower it’s more gradual.”
“Where’s tower X259 and what kind of radius are we talking about?” I said.
“Sending you the GPS coordinates of the tower,” the tech said. “There’s too many factors, Detective. I usually say in a remote area like that, with the amount of rock outcroppings, trees, and other blockage material, the phone—especially a burner—would have to be pretty close.”
“Best guess, man,” I said.
“Less than a few square miles.”
I disconnected and pointed to the street guide.
“Two to three square miles from—” I checked the coordinates on the GPS. “Here.”
My finger touched where the X259 cell tower was positioned.
“We’re going to find this place,” I said.
Manny kept circling and crossing off subdivisions.
Melissa and Rule kept moving through the woods until they reached two vehicle tire tracks worn into the dry earth at their feet. Rule turned them left, away from the main road—away from the police and Macaulay and all the other good people who might help her.
After walking on the makeshift roadway for a mile, a pair of headlights topped the horizon ahead, coming right at them. It was Melissa’s father in the passenger seat and a hooded man driving the station wagon. Rule put Melissa in first and then climbed in the back seat with her, pushing her across the car to the other side.
“Turn around and get us out of here,” Rule said derisively. “Spencer, you have fucked this plan sideways. We still had work to do at that warehouse. Now we’re going to have to centralize our efforts at the safe-house.”
“I’ll kill him now,” the hooded figure said, turning the car around in the narrow space.
“You keep your mind focused on the plan,” Rule said. “We’re not finished with Spencer yet.”
It took over an hour driving over the dilapidated vehicle path through the woods and the ride was very uncomfortable, particularly with a cell phone crammed in her ass crack. Melissa concentrated on remaining in control of her faculties. Macaulay had confirmed her hopes that the cell phone signal could lead him to her once; she was certain it could do so again.
It had to.
It was the only hope that was left to her. When a child is forced to face their own parent (or parents) abandoning them, it created inside them an inherent lack of positive outlook and a consuming fear of abandonment in general. Melissa tried to remember the confidence in Macaulay’s voice—how he sounded so certain that rescuing her was not only his priority but also one hundred percent possible.
It had been so long since Melissa had felt any kind of hope or chance that freedom might really be out there for her somewhere. She’d been so isolated from everything. Other than the home schooling and the hourly check-ins to make sure she was still in her room (as if there were anywhere else for her to be), Melissa’s father showed her almost no attention and when he did, she could see the deluded, sociopathic desire in his eyes.
He meant to kill her. Or help someone else to do it.
Melissa knew there had been others—other girls—brought to the warehouse, and she suspected they had not left the place alive.
Fragments of memories had begun to jar loose inside her head, like icicles melting and then, without warning, letting loose their grasp and falling to pierce the tender flesh of Melissa’s mind with awful remembrances—scenes of brutality and killing.
The victims still remained faceless, but Melissa feared she knew the identities that belonged to the murders that were formulating as memories in her head, and that is why she stopped thinking about negative things and concentrated on Macaulay.
His voice.
His confidence.
The care in his tone—the way she felt safer just speaking with him.
She chose to think of Good rather than Evil. And if all that bought her was a few more days without the nightmares, then that was better than nothing. Because if the people she was beginning to believe were gone were actually dead, she didn’t care to go on living anymore.
Not without them.
Something had broken loose inside of Spencer Grant. He didn’t just feel like himself, he was himself. The internal passenger he’d been carrying was gone. Or disconnected. He had no idea what was going on but as they pulled up to the safe-house it was all he could do to keep from crying out in happiness, sorrow, remorse, fear, confusion, and every other emotion that could have possibly assaulted him at that moment.
The feelings he had for the murders he’d perpetrated in Idaho—his beloved wife and daughter—were beginning to consume him, to the point of nervous breakdown. He knew he did not have much time before he would explode. The mind (and heart, and soul, and conscience) could only take so much guilt. For a “normal” man like him—a man who couldn’t even buy a fishing license he used to feel so sorry for the fish—the avalanche of remorse and guilt were being held at bay only by his realization that he had this one opportunity to save his daughter and offer up one good thing before everything went to Hell.
Literally.
Jax stopped the station wagon and as the four of them got out of the car, Spence pointed to the house and said, “Police. They’ve found th
e house—there, coming from the west.”
Both Rule and Jax ran to take cover on the other side of the house.
Spencer turned to Melissa, placing his hands lightly, lovingly, as he used to, on her shoulders. His eyes were swelling with redness and sorrow but he looked straight into her brown, innocent, terrified eyes.
“I don’t know what has happened, sweetie. But it’s me. At least for the moment, it’s your dad. And there isn’t time for anything else but for you to run. Go back out the way we came. Run like the wind. I love you, that’s all you ever need to remember.”
And with that he kissed her deeply, hugged her with all his might, and pushed her toward the road.
Melissa, a stunned look having blanketed her face, knew, too, that this was the only moment. She turned and ran.
It was night and we drove in silence toward the Roxborough Park area, an absolutely gorgeous canyon-like suburb in far southwest Denver where gargantuan spires of orange rock angled and pointed and towered hundreds of feet in the air, looking as if they had simply sprouted straight out of the earth. Some jutted from the ground in groups of three or four spires, others in ridgebacks that looked like mini mountain ranges.
We couldn’t see much of anything then, of course, except the rain-soaked road in our headlights.
Manny had identified just two subdivisions that met what we considered the qualifications Rule would look for in a safe place—acreage, isolation, distance from law enforcement—and I drove down the road toward the westward one, a place with houses on ten-acre lots called Canyon Vista. There really was no plan. I had not called for backup yet—my gut said a smaller search by myself and my partner might bear more fruit and not risk scaring away the—
A quarter mile up the road, coming toward us in the headlights, was a young woman. She was running as if her very existence depended on winning the invisible race in which she was competing. I saw no pursuers, but when she was within a hundred yards, I saw it was Melissa Grant.
R.S. Guthrie - Detective Bobby Mac 03 - Reckoning Page 11