Random Acts

by Franklin Horton

  “AMANDA!” he screamed. “AMANDA!”

  Suddenly, there was the sound of vehicles skidding to a stop and flashing emergency lights in several different colors. Cole holstered his gun. Men with lights and guns streamed down the embankment. Other men wielded handheld floodlights from the overpass, illuminating the scene.

  Officers shouted commands at Cole until one of them, a man with whom Cole had shot guns many times at Larry’s house, recognized him. His name was Thomas. Trooper Thomas.

  “It’s the girl’s father!” the officer shouted. “He’s not our suspect.”

  The cops rushed Cole, unleashing a barrage of questions for which Cole had no answers.

  “She’s not here,” he kept repeating. “The bastard took her.”

  “We’re on this,” Thomas said. “The kid snapped a picture of the guy’s vehicle at the store that day. We’ve got a tag number and an address on his home. We’ve got units on the way there now.”

  Cole was trying to calm down, trying to push back the shakes from the repeated adrenaline surges. They asked him a lot of questions about his daughter and whether he had any idea who the man who took her might be. Cole mentioned the strange call Fox had gotten that prompted him to call Amanda and warn her.

  “Who’s Fox?” Thomas asked.

  “My daughter’s stepfather,” Cole said.

  They asked Cole for a full name and contact info for Fox, which he provided.

  “The crime scene folks will be here most of the night looking for clues,” Trooper Thomas said. “You might as well go home. We’ll call you immediately if we find something.”

  Cole dismissed that. Like he could go home and wait? That wasn’t happening. Then it hit him that he had his own set of problems.

  “I may need units at my house.”

  “Excuse me?” Thomas said. “Do you think you need protection from whoever this is?”

  “Not hardly,” Cole said. “Just before I got the call about Amanda, I confronted two guys at my house. They were sneaking around looking in windows. I thought they were trying to rob me. One of them drew on me and I put him down.”

  “You shot him?” Thomas asked.

  Cole nodded. “Killed him.”

  “Why didn’t you call it in?”

  Cole shrugged and gestured around him. “I was getting ready to. Then the call came about this. My daughter’s boss called me.”

  Thomas sighed. “Get in the damn car. We’re going to your house.”

  “I need to look for my daughter,” Cole said.

  “There’s nothing you can do. We got this.”

  “What about my ATV? I can’t leave it here. Someone will steal it.”

  “Then get on it and meet me at your house. Go straight there and do not get off that thing until I get there. Do not touch a thing. Do you still have the weapon on you?”

  Cole nodded.

  “Hand it over,” Thomas said. “It’s evidence.”

  Cole sighed and did as he was told.

  “Go straight home,” Thomas reminded him. “Right now. I’ll meet you there.”

  Cole went to his ATV and cranked it up. For a moment he considered ignoring the cop’s warning and racing into town but how would that help? He didn’t know where to go or what to do. As much as he hated to admit he had no control in the matter, he had to let the cops handle this.

  After a much slower drive back up the trail, Cole reached his house nearly at the same time as Trooper Thomas. There were two cars already pulled into his driveway behind the trooper. One was from the local sheriff’s department, the other was an unmarked cop car with local tags. Thomas was out of his car, still talking on his radio. Two deputies were scrambling up the drive, lights out and pistols drawn.

  “That picture the boy took of the license tag led us to an address in Charlotte,” Thomas said, anticipating Cole’s question. “We issued an amber alert for your daughter and that vehicle. We don’t think there’s any way the suspect could have covered that many miles yet but I have a team closing in on the house. If he returns there, we’re going to pounce on him. They’re working on a warrant now. If we can get the warrant, we’ll get people on the inside.”

  “What if that’s not where he’s headed?” Cole asked.

  Thomas shrugged awkwardly, not wanting to give consideration to that option. “That’s even more reason to get people on the inside. We’ll see what we can dig up about this guy. But we don’t give up hope and we don’t quit looking.”

  “I should be out there looking for her,” Cole said.

  The trooper shook his head and held up a hand toward Cole. “If you shot someone then we have business here. Now calm down and walk me through what happened.”

  Cole paced around, trying to calm down.

  “Start at the beginning. Where were you?”

  “On the porch,” Cole said. “I was having a beer.”

  “You’ve been drinking?”

  “One fucking beer,” Cole spat. “On my front porch. Didn’t expect I’d be killing anyone tonight.”

  “Keep going.”

  “I heard feet on gravel. At first I was pissed, thinking it was my daughter.”

  “Why would that piss you off?” Thomas asked.

  “She wanted to ride her bike home but I didn’t want her out there after dark. Ben, the kid she works with at the bike shop, was supposed to give her a ride home. But when I heard those steps, I thought she may have ridden home anyway.”

  “Was she prone to doing things like that?” the trooper asked.

  Cole shrugged. “No, but we’re still feeling each other out. Her mother died and she’s only been here with me a couple of weeks. We’re still sorting out our boundaries.”

  The trooper nodded, but didn’t appear completely satisfied with the answer. “So what happened next?”

  “I realized there was more than one person from the sound of the steps. I hadn’t seen a vehicle and I didn’t hear anyone rolling a bike so I figured it wasn’t her.”

  “Got a body up here!” squawked a voice from Thomas’s radio.

  “No shit,” Cole said. “I thought I already mentioned that part.”

  The trooper gave Cole a hard look. “This will go faster if you aren’t a dick about it. The faster we get done here, the sooner we can all be out there looking for your daughter.”

  Cole took a deep breath and forced it out slowly.

  The trooper leaned toward the mike clipped to his collar. “Gunshot wound?”

  “Looks like three,” the deputy replied. “There’s a handgun laying by the body too.”

  The trooper didn’t take his eyes from Cole the entire time, gauging his reaction to the deputy’s information. “Roger that. Let’s get a line up around the scene and start looking for casings.”

  The trooper released his mike and looked at Cole. “How many rounds did you fire?”

  “Three rounds, three hits.”

  “Where did you get your gun from?”

  “It’s my concealed carry.”

  “Do you always carry it?”

  “It doesn’t provide much protection if it’s sitting on the dresser,” Cole said.

  The trooper gave Cole a warning look. “Did he get off a shot at you?”

  Cole thought. “I think so. It was kind of chaotic. He drew on me and the training kicked in. I double-tapped him but he didn’t drop and didn’t release the weapon. I felt he still presented a threat to me. I fired again and it caught him in the upper chest.”

  “Training?”

  “I take regular firearms training and I shoot frequently. You know that.”

  “What about the second suspect?”

  “I lost him in the confusion. He bolted as soon as the other guy drew a weapon. I heard him running away but I didn’t see a weapon on that guy.”

  “When exactly did the dead guy draw on you?”

  “I was on the porch. I stayed behind the edge of the house and watched them. They were feeling the hoods on the vehicles an
d looking in windows. When I saw that, I hit them with the strobe on my tac light. The guy drew immediately and I had no choice. I was afraid for my life.”

  Cole was saying all the right things. They may question him extensively but Cole had no concerns that he’d end up in jail over this. Not in this part of the state. Not when the events surrounding the shooting were so clear cut and the intruder was armed.

  “Trooper Thomas?”

  It was the radio again.

  “Go ahead,” the trooper replied into his mike.

  “I think we might need to give the FBI a heads up on this.”

  “FBI?” the trooper asked. “On what grounds?”

  “Investigator Johnson was checking for identification. He found a document holder around this guy’s waist. There was cash, two driver’s licenses, and two passports. Same picture, different names. There’s also a backup gun.”

  “What are the names?” the trooper asked, wondering if it might have been someone he crossed paths with before. “Anyone familiar?”

  “Nothing I can pronounce. Looks like he’s from Syria.”

  Cole came alert. “Syrian? I thought he looked Hispanic or something.”

  “Are you sure?” the trooper asked into his radio.

  “I ain’t sure of a damn thing,” the deputy said. “But the investigator says this might be an FBI matter so I’m going to call it in.”

  “10-4,” the trooper confirmed, releasing the mike button. “What the hell would a Syrian be doing at your house, Cole?”

  “Fuck if I know,” Cole said. “Can you check with the Charlotte cops and see if there’s any developments? This is killing me.”

  “You can sit in the passenger side of my cruiser if you need to sit down,” Trooper Thomas offered.

  “I appreciate that but sitting is the last thing I want to do right now. I’m a nervous wreck.”

  “We’re doing everything we can, Cole. We know who has her and we’re going to bring her home.”

  Cole started losing it. He was crashing. He half-sat, half-collapsed onto the seat of his ATV. “You don’t understand. She’s been living with her mother. I lost her for five years and I just got her back. I can’t lose her again. I just can’t.”

  Despite Cole’s murderous rage at the man who abducted his daughter, despite his desire to search the ends of the Earth for her, despite everything, a sense of utter hopelessness and futility settled over him. There was nothing he could do. Just when they were on the verge of learning to trust each other again, she was yanked away from him. Only this time, he didn’t know where she was and had no idea how to bring her home to him.

  54

  Stunned by the blow to her head, Amanda was in and out of consciousness. Her thinking was cloudy but there were disassociated sensations she was aware of but couldn’t react to. She was aware of her limbs being grabbed and tugged while she was heaved onto a man’s shoulders. He lumbered up the steep embankment and her awkward position made breathing difficult, his shoulder compressing her stomach. Several times, he lost his grip and dropped her. There were brutal jolts and her face hit the dirt.

  At the top of the overpass she was dumped onto the ground. Duct tape was wrapped around her mouth and hands, then she was unceremoniously heaved into the trunk of a waiting car. The trunk lid was slammed in her face and the car started. She felt it making a U-turn, then accelerating away from the scene of her abduction.

  She felt the car winding its way back into town, the G-forces tugging her back and forth in the trunk. Between the curvy roads, her inability to see anything, and the blow to her head, she struggled with waves of nausea. That brought its own surge of panic. With her mouth taped shut it was likely she would suffocate to death if she vomited. She lost consciousness again, only waking up when she felt the familiar sensation of the vehicle ascending an onramp.

  There was a moment of clarity where she realized she’d been kidnapped and the driver was merging onto the interstate. He was taking her somewhere. He was taking her away from her dad and her job. He was taking her away from the place where she was known. She might never be seen again. She’d seen stories like this on the news. It happened all the time. A girl went into a trunk and was never seen again. She did not want to be another of those girls.

  The car was older and small, the trunk loud and minimally insulated. Her hands were trapped behind her back in a painfully awkward position. She rolled onto her belly and blindly groped around with her bound hands, trying to find some protruding piece of metal on which she could start the duct tape tearing, and after that the rest would go easily.

  Her fingers found a curved extrusion of metal, what she thought might have been a piece of the trunk lid hinge. She painfully forced her arms upward. It was difficult and took maneuvering her entire body—legs, hips, and arms—to get the tape in a position where she could begin abrading it. It took several attempts and her shoulders felt like they were pulling out of the joints from the effort.

  Finally, she was rewarded with the familiar tearing sound, the tape gave way, and she was able to splay her wrists apart. Her hands free, she immediately stripped the tape from her mouth. With that gone, with the restriction of that barrier lifted, the urge to vomit was suddenly again on her full force and her stomach turned loose. In the tight quarters of the trunk, there was nowhere to go. She could not escape the vile puddle she created beneath herself as her guts emptied.

  She could not let that distract her. She felt around, having seen on television that newer cars had releases inside the trunk to allow an abducted person to open them from the inside. If this car was new enough to have such a release, she could not find it. She searched, exploring every square inch. Maybe the car was too old and it pre-dated that requirement.

  Her next effort was to see if she could take a taillight lens out. She'd seen a story on the news once of a kidnapped girl who was able to knock out a taillight, stick her arm out the opening, and wave down a passing vehicle. Though she was able to successfully remove the bulb from the taillight, she could find no way to remove the lens itself.

  Her frustration, her sense of desperation, increased and she panicked. She thought of everything that happened to her. Her mom's death, the funeral, coming to live with her father, and the misunderstanding that tainted their relationship. She had to survive if for no other reason than to correct all of the fucked up things in her life.

  Thinking of her father reminded her of the knife he'd given her to wear around her neck. While she was not old enough to carry a gun, he'd assured her she was old enough to carry this knife around her neck when she was bicycling the woods by herself. She reached beneath her shirt and found it hanging there, right at stomach level.

  She drew it and gripped it in both hands, desperately afraid she might drop it. She clutched it so hard the handle impressed itself into the soft flesh of her fingers. She tried to imagine how she would wield the knife. She’d seen people fight with knives in the movies but it was never anything she'd ever imagined herself doing. She didn't know where she would strike, but she was certain she would strike. She could do it.

  Her dad said to her on more than one occasion he would not raise her to be a victim, he would raise her to be a fighter. And with no obvious path of escape, fight she would.

  Amanda waited in the dark confines of the trunk, the knife clenched in her sweaty and cramping fingers. The odor of her own sickness was nearly intolerable as it clung to her skin and dampened her clothes. She had no idea how long she’d been in there. Like most of her generation, she did not wear a watch and was unable to measure the passage of time without her phone. Though she couldn't get an arm out of the taillight hole she eventually managed to disable both taillights, hoping it would get them pulled over, but it hadn’t. The effort distracted her from her fear until the car veered off an exit ramp and decelerated. Her fear overtook her again like a tide rising in the swamp.

  They seemed to be on surface streets after that, the car moving, then stopping due to tra
ffic lights or stop signs. She had no idea where she was. They had been on the road for hours. They could be anywhere. They could be in a different state.

  She prayed the disabled taillights would catch the eye of a cop needing to fill his ticket quota but it didn’t happen. The vehicle continued its journey without so much as a hiccup. With each successive turn the speed limit dropped, the vehicle moving slower and slower until it turned into a driveway and stopped.

  Her panic established a new threshold. It filled her body and overflowed. Her nausea returned and she had to choke down the desire to vomit again. If she was throwing up, she couldn’t fight.

  All of the things she'd imagined on the ride had come to this. It was the culmination of all of her violent imaginings. This was where she saved herself or where she failed. This is where she lived or where she died.

  When her dad gave her the knife, he promised he’d teach her how to use it effectively but they’d been busy and not gotten to it. She would have to improvise. She gripped it tightly, hoping she could use it effectively. She didn’t care if she killed him. She just wanted to distract him and buy herself some time. If she could hit him somewhere important and distract him, maybe she could hop out of the trunk and run away screaming. If they were in any sort of neighborhood at all, surely the neighbors would hear and call the police. They would save her.

  When the car stopped, her attacker killed the engine. All that separated her from the passenger compartment was the back seat. She could clearly hear the ratcheting of the parking brake being set. A latch was pulled inside the vehicle and hinges groaned as the door was shoved open. The driver’s seat creaked and strained. She imagined the large man fighting his way from behind the wheel, pulling himself out of the vehicle.

  The loud slam of the driver’s door startled her. She jumped, her breath coming so rapidly she didn't feel like she was getting enough air. She made an involuntary squeal of fear. There was the scuff of footsteps on a hard surface. Those steps came to the rear quarter panel of the car then to the trunk.