by Ricky Fry
TWENTY-TWO
“Looking for this?” The voice came from behind me.
I spun around just in time to see Travis standing in the doorway. He swung the wrench at my head, and I ducked, grabbing his arm and pulling him down the stairs.
He tumbled to the bottom in a mess of arms and legs. “You bitch! I’ll fucking kill you!”
And so I ran, my heart beating wildly in my chest, out of the front door and into the cool night air.
He’s right behind me. Think, Spencer. Think.
I tried the door of his truck, but it was locked. I spun in all directions, hoping to see something, anything. There was a shed to one side of the cabin. I thought maybe there might be something inside I could use as a weapon. I ran toward it as fast as my feet could carry me.
He emerged from the cabin just as soon as I reached the shed. It wouldn’t be long before he closed the distance. I held my breath as I grabbed the door handle and turned.
It was unlocked, and the door swung open.
The inside was dark. My hands fumbled around in the darkness until I found a light switch and flicked it on. Rows of garden tools lined one wall—rusty hoes and hedge trimmers and shovels.
A large meat freezer lined the opposite wall. I dug my heels in as I pushed it in front of the door only seconds before he tried forcing his way in.
It won’t hold him long.
He slammed his weight against the door, and the lid of the meat freezer flipped open. Henrietta’s mangled and frozen face stared back at me, her body twisted up with her legs on either side of her head.
That’s when I remembered what she had told the sheriff moments before she killed him.
“We have a shotgun,” she had said. But if it was true, my search of the cabin had turned up empty.
Travis slammed his weight against the door again. It would only be another minute or two until he finally forced his way inside.
Whether by some unknown instinct or miracle, I looked up and saw an old, double-barreled shotgun on a rack above the doorway. I shut the lid of the freezer and climbed on top, took the shotgun in my hands. The wooden stock felt smooth, no doubt worn down by many hands throughout the years.
Shells. I need shotgun shells.
A year before I met Matt, I’d gone on a few dates with a soldier recently returned from a tour in Iraq, whose idea of a romantic time was a trip to the gun range. I thought it was silly then, but as I cradled the shotgun in my hands, I was grateful I’d learned to use one, even if I hadn’t ever been much of a good shot.
My thumb found the lever on top and the side-by-side barrels pivoted away from the stock. There were two shells, one in each barrel, though I wondered how long they had been there and if they would even fire.
No time. It’s the best I’ve got.
I backed myself into the corner of the shed just as the door finally swung open.
Point and squeeze.
The barrel exploded in a flash of light. Travis staggered backward, still clutching the wrench in his hand.
I’ll never forget the look in his eyes as he fell to the ground. It was surprise—the same look on his mother’s face when he swung the hammer into her head.
Then everything was silent, except for the chirping of crickets and the hooting of the owl in the distance.
The road wound its way down a canyon. I’d found his truck keys on a hook in the kitchen and left him there, blood oozing from his chest, as I fired up the engine and started down the long gravel drive.
My hands still shook as I navigated the truck around the twists and bends of the road. It wasn’t until I reached I-70, more than eighty miles from where I’d left Travis to die, that my muscles relaxed, and I began to breathe normally.
In another thirty minutes, I crossed the state border.
A sign read: LEAVING COLORFUL COLORADO. COME BACK SOON.
Colorado. All this time, I was in Colorado.
I could have stopped at any of the small towns along the way and found the local police station. I could have told them my story, about what had happened with Travis in the cabin deep in the Colorado mountains. But I was still a wanted fugitive. I wondered if they’d even believe me or simply stuff me in the back of another transport van. That was a place I never wanted to find myself again. So I pushed on. I had unfinished business in Oregon—unfinished business with Matt.
I followed I-70 west to Green River, where the unnamed girl had cried and pissed herself in the seat. At the time, I’d felt sorry for her, considering the threats Travis had made.
Good girls live. Bad girls die.
But she had been the lucky one.
At Green River, I followed the signs and US-191 north toward Salt Lake City. I drove through the night, stopping only once to pee on the side of the road.
I passed a ghost town and the abandoned gas station at Woodside and had just cleared Wellington when the engine sputtered, and the truck ran out of gas.
The sun was breaking over the horizon as I stuck out my thumb and hoped for a ride. There wasn’t much traffic, but it wasn’t long before a semi-truck pulled over, and the driver motioned for me to get in.
“Where you headed?”
“Portland.”
“Ain’t going to Portland,” he said. “But I can get you as far as Boise.”
All I knew was that he seemed friendly, and Boise was a long way from the cabin in Colorado.
He eyed me suspiciously as I climbed into the cab. “You just gonna leave your pickup?”
“It’s not mine,” I said.
“Well, alright then. Ain’t none of my business anyway. Say, you okay?”
“Better now. Thank you.”
He caught me staring at a photo of him taped to the dashboard. His arm was around a woman about his age, and between them stood a young girl in a t-shirt.
“My pride and joy,” he said. “That’s my wife, Linda. And the girl you see in the middle is my daughter. Of course, I don’t see them as much as I’d like, on account of being out on the road. But everything I do is for them.”
“They look nice.”
“Sure are. Hey, I didn’t get your name.”
“It’s Spencer,” I said.
“Well, Spencer, my name is Jim, but just about everyone calls me Jimbo. You can do the same if you like.”
I almost didn’t hear what he’d said. I was too absorbed by the picture of him and his family. They looked so happy and normal, so far away from the hell I’d lived through in the past two weeks.
I’d resolved to keep my guard up, but there in the cab of Jimbo’s truck, as we hurtled down the road at seventy miles an hour, I finally broke down and cried.
“Go on,” he said. “Don’t hold back. You look like you could use a good cry.”
“Thank you,” I said through tears.
“Ain’t no need for thanks. You rest now, Spencer. Let ol’ Jimbo take care of everything.”
And so I slept—a deep, dreamless sleep. When I woke, he was touching me gently on the shoulder. A sign outside the window announced our arrival in Boise.
Despite the size of his semi-truck, Jimbo insisted on taking me all the way to the bus station in the center of town. “You got money?”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll figure something out.”
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet, handed me two crisp, hundred dollar bills. “That oughta get you to Portland.”
“I can’t, Jim.”
“Now, don’t you say no. It ain’t charity, and I know you ain’t asking. Just consider it a little help, from one friend to another.”
I took the money and thanked him.
“Say, Spencer?”
“Yes?”
“I know it ain’t none of my business, but if anyone did to my daughter what it looks like someone did to you, I’d kill them with my own two hands.”
“You’re a good man,” I said. “She’s lucky to have you.”
Even though I’d slept most of th
e day in the cab of Jimbo’s truck, I fell asleep as soon as the bus crossed the Oregon state line.
We arrived in Portland at eleven o’clock at night. I hailed a cab from the bus station and gave the driver Matt’s address—my address too, not so long ago.
The driveway was empty. I went around to the side of the garage and peered in through a window. The garage was empty too. Maybe it was because his Audi was still totaled in an impound lot in Topeka. But I knew Matt, and I was sure he would have already bought a new one. He wasn’t the type to take public transportation.
He was probably out with friends, celebrating another big real estate deal and laughing about his crazy ex-girlfriend rotting away in a jail cell somewhere.
The key was under a plastic rock by the front porch, the same place he always left it. And the code for the security system hadn’t changed: 0413—his birthday.
I took a seat on the living room sofa and waited for him in the dark. It was two hours past midnight when I finally heard the garage door roll open.
TWENTY-THREE
“Spencer?” He dropped the styrofoam takeout container he’d been carrying when he flicked on the light and found me sitting on the couch. “What are you doing here?”
“Take a seat,” I said. “We need to talk.”
“I’m calling the police. They’re looking for you, something about a transport van going missing and two bodies found in separate states. A detective came by the house and asked me a bunch of questions.”
Two bodies? So they’d found Ruby too.
“Put down the phone, Matt. You’re going to sit and listen to what I have to say.”
I was prepared to knock the phone out of his hands, but he returned it to his pocket and took a seat opposite me on a cushioned leather chair.
“Did you kill them?”
“No, I didn’t kill them. It was the driver of the van. He kidnapped me and held me for two weeks in the basement of his cabin. He killed his own mother too.”
“Jesus.” He rubbed at his temples. It was hard for someone with Matt’s limited imagination to process what I was telling him. “Did you call the police?”
“I’ll tell them everything in the morning. And you will too, Matt. You’re going to tell them everything.”
“Me? What do I have to say?”
“Let’s start with the car. You’re going to tell them it was all a mistake. Your mistake. And you’re going to insist they drop the charges.”
“Gee, Spencer. It’s a little more complicated than that.”
I ignored him. “Then you’re going to tell them I never tried to kill you. I’d only acted in self-defense.”
“Now hold on a minute. Self-defense? But I never did anything other than care for you.”
“Matt, you held my face under the water in the bathtub and told me you’d kill me if I didn’t stop going out with my friends. And then, when I tried to leave, you grabbed me around the neck. After the things I’ve seen and done, believe me, smashing a model home over your head hardly adds up to attempted murder.”
“I won’t do it.”
“You will, first thing in the morning.”
“But they’ll arrest me, Spencer. It’ll ruin my career. I’m sure we can work something else out. Do you want money? I’ll give you money, and you can go away. We can forget about everything. Please, I don’t want to go to jail. I can’t go to jail.”
As I watched him plead with me, I thought about the person I used to be only a few short weeks ago. I would have caved to his demands. I would have let him bully me into going along with whatever he wanted, convinced it was best for both of us.
But now he was nothing more than a desperate little boy, still believing he could avoid the consequences of what he’d done. The fear I’d felt that night as I took his car and fled across five states was gone. I’d survived much worse than Matt, the real estate agent.
“I don’t care,” I said. “I don’t care about your career or the money. I want my life back, and I’m going to take it.”
“But—”
“No more talking. Go upstairs and get some rest. You’re going to need it in the morning.”
He looked at me like he was seeing me for the very first time. The pleasing girl he’d controlled for six months was gone, replaced by something harder and stronger.
Then I saw something flash in his eyes I now recognized easily. It was surprise and fear.
He stood and headed for the stairs, his shoulders slumped in defeat. “What are you going to do?”
“Me? I’m going to stay right here and drink some of the gourmet coffee you have in the kitchen. I don't want you getting cold feet and running off.”
“Whatever.”
“I’ll see you in the morning, Matt. Sweat dreams.”
It was nine o’clock sharp when Matt followed the detectives into a briefing room at the central Portland police station. I watched him go, and sipped cheap coffee with a stale danish from the vending machine.
Two hours later, the detectives came for me. I sat across from them in a paneled room, much the same as I’d sat across from the lawyer in Topeka. In between us, on the center of the table, was a recording device. One of the detectives leaned forward and switched it on.
“Ms. Madison, I’m Detective Jeffries, and my partner here is Sergeant Kowalski. Can we get you anything? More coffee? A soda, maybe?”
I shook my head.
“Well,” he said. “It seems there have been some new developments in the attempted murder case. Your fiancé admitted to threatening your life. We’ll be making a formal recommendation to the district attorney’s office to drop all of the charges against you. As for your fiancé, he’s been taken into custody on charges of domestic violence, verbal threats, and filing a false police report. And if you’d like, we can provide a victim’s advocate who will assist you with filing a restraining order and obtaining any assets you held jointly with Matt.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Matt had already agreed to hand over half the money in our bank account on the way to the police station.
The detective shifted in his chair. “Now, there’s still the matter of what happened in that van. There’s an FBI agent waiting outside to take your statement. Are you sure you don’t want anything? We might be here a while.”
“I’m fine.”
“Well, alright then.” He left the room and came back a moment later with the agent. “Ms. Madison, this is Special Agent Rodriguez with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
She held out her hand. “Please, call me Isabel. Do you mind if I call you Spencer?”
“I would prefer it.”
She smiled as she placed her own recording device on the table. “Great. Now, why don’t you tell me everything that happened out there?”
“Where do I start?”
“At the beginning,” she said. “Start at the beginning.”
So I told her about the long trip in the van, about the stupid milkshake and the strange phone calls and Monica disappearing in the middle of the night. I told her about waking up in his basement. The violence. The psychological torture. I told her about the sheriff, and Henrietta, and how Travis had killed her too. I told her about the photos in the closet and gave her the bloody tooth. And I told her about my escape.
She listened intently, never interrupting or asking a single question. She only looked away to scratch notes in her pad.
When it was finished, I took a long breath and sunk back into my seat. “Detective Jeffries, could I please have that soda now?”
“After that story, you can have anything you want.”
Isabel waited until I’d had a drink and a quick bathroom break before continuing the interview. “So, Travis is dead?”
“I shot him in the chest with a shotgun, if that’s what you mean. He looked dead.”
“And this hunting cabin, he mentioned it belonged to his uncle?”
“That’s what he told me, but I don’t know if it’s true.”
“Thank you, Spencer. This has all been very helpful. I’ll get in touch with the Colorado field office, and we’ll have agents out there by nightfall. If what you said about the box of photos is true, it may help us connect Travis to several other missing women. On a personal note, I’d just like to say you’ve been incredibly brave.”
Detective Jeffries escorted me out of the station. “Here’s my card,” he said. “If you need anything, don’t hesitate to call me. Day or night, it doesn’t matter.”
Six hours after I’d walked into the police station with Matt, it was over. He was in custody. Soon they’d find Travis and his mother. The things I’d seen and experienced would never go away. But I was a survivor, prepared for wherever the future would take me.
TWENTY-FOUR
“So, he just buried them behind the cabin?” Felicity sipped a cappuccino as she sat across from me in a little seaside coffee house.
We’d reconnected in the months since I’d been back in Portland and had driven out together to our favorite spot on the Pacific Coast.
I pulled my black hoodie around my shoulders. “Yeah, that’s what Isabel said.”
A forensic team had found a total of six bodies buried in the woods behind the cabin, all young women who had been reported missing, plus Henrietta still folded up in the meat freezer. But most importantly, Travis had died from a shotgun wound exactly where I’d left him.
“I’m sorry, Spencer. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s okay. I think it’s better. Talking about it helps me get it off my chest.”
“Speaking of talking about it?”
“The book deal?”
“Yes, the book deal. Are you going to take it? It’s a lot of money, Spencer. And Marianne Dixon is such a wonderful author. I’m sure she’d do your story justice.”
It was a lot of money. The publisher had offered half a million dollars for the rights to my story, enough money to start a new life. But I didn’t need it. When word hit the press about what had happened to me, Correctional Transport Company of America had been quick to offer a multi-million dollar settlement.