by Tim Ellis
“It’s all circumstantial at the moment, but I might persuade her to pass it to the detectives at St. Augustine.”
“That’d be the wise thing to do, tell her.”
“Don’t worry, I will.”
Eddie Plaziuk passed him a folded piece of paper from the back of his notebook. “The lady who phoned in got the license plate, but you didn’t hear it from me.”
“All I got from you, Eddie, was a load of hassle and attitude, just like it should be.”
“Ain’t that the truth. You need a lift back to Holly Hill?”
“Don’t look as though they’re going to give me back my Dodge.”
“You should be thankful. I heard those Nitros were the pits.”
They both laughed.
He glanced at the piece of paper Eddie had given him: ‘14’ was the code for Marion County, which was some distance from St. Augustine. He stuffed the paper in his pocket.
“A lift would be great. I’ll get the girl.”
He walked towards Rae, who was acting all coy with three firefighters crowding around her.
“Let’s go,” he said. “We’re getting a lift back to Holly Hill.”
“I’ll get a lift with these lovely firefighters,” she said smiling at them.
He glanced at the men. “You do know she killed a man the other day. I’m transporting her to Gadsden Correctional Facility to await trial for first-degree murder.”
The laughter died, and the firefighters moved away from her.
Rae looked at them and grinned. “Take no notice. He’s joking.”
“Feel free to ignore my warning,” he said as he turned and headed towards the police car. “She particularly likes killing firefighters.”
She caught up with him. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“You’re lucky I didn’t tell them about your panties, or at least the lack of them.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I’ll do whatever’s necessary to keep you safe.”
“Oh!”
***
After reaching Holly Hill they said goodbye to Eddie Plaziuk outside the police department building and walked along the road to the town.
“If we’re staying here tonight I need to do some shopping, and don’t think you’re gonna get me into a cheap motel again.”
“I’m going to rent a car and drive back.”
She grinned. “That’ll work even better.”
It didn’t take them long to find a Hertz car rental. A very stern-looking woman wearing a grey suit served them. She had short, dyed-blonde hair; a German accent; large, black-rimmed glasses; and a grey name badge with Kellie Hudson etched on it in black. She definitely wasn’t going to win any customer friendliness award.
If it had been up to him, he would have taken the Peugot 308, but Rae said he was a boring old fossil and should pay the little extra for the Pontiac Firebird convertible.
The “little extra” amounted to another seventy-five bucks a day. While he signed the contract, paid by card, and arranged for the car to be picked up from the hotel in a week’s time, Rae went shopping for a dry pair of panties.
“Now this is what you call a car,” she said, as they were dawdling along LPGA Boulevard toward I-95 again. “You do know what an accelerator pedal is, don’t you?”
“I also know what a speeding ticket is.”
“If you get any more boring, I’ll have to lie down on the backseat and go to sleep.”
“Did you find some panties then?”
Gripping the top of the windscreen, she stood on the seat, lifted the back of her dress, and wiggled her butt. “What do you think?” she asked, showing off a pair of black booty shorts with Iron Maiden written across the back.
There were honks, shouts, and whistles from the occupants of other cars as they sped past.
“What the hell are you doing? You’re determined to get us arrested, aren’t you? Sit the hell down.”
“If I’m on my way to Gadsden Correctional Facility to await trial for first-degree murder, then I want to have some fun before I get there.”
“Okay, maybe I went a bit over the top.”
She flopped back down onto the red leather seat. “A bit?”
“A lot then, but you were flaunting yourself.”
“I’m a grown woman.”
“Barely.”
“And you’re not responsible for me.”
He opened his mouth to say, “I am”, but closed it again before he did. Carrie had made him responsible for her, but it wasn’t just that – he actually liked her. She hadn’t really had a father much to speak of, and he needed to redeem himself in that department. It wasn’t often that people got second chances, or in his case, a third chance.
She switched on her tablet. “We got mail,” Rae said.
“It’s still working then?”
“Yeah, they’re built to last. The trouble is, they upgrade them every couple of months, so it doesn’t matter whether they last or not. As soon as the new one comes out, you have to buy it or join the dinosaurs.”
“Like me?”
“Exactly like you. You should be held up as a shining example of a dinosaur.”
“Thanks. What’s the email say?”
She didn’t answer immediately because she was reading the email herself. “It’s from the English maths student. He says that the code is a ‘homophonic substitution cipher,’ more commonly known as a ‘book cipher,’ which means that each individual letter in the plain text message has been replaced by the position of that letter in a book – page number, line number, letter number. Here . . .” She held the tablet up, so that he could see the code again. “I told him that the first two numbers are probably who the message is to, and the last seven, who it’s from.”
15:3394104112131192425071113311976431373418025011409101940128371102:0194754
“He’s not made very much progress, has he? Which book?”
“Ah!”
“He doesn’t know which book has been used, does he?”
“He calls it a ‘key,’ which I suppose it is. Without the key, he says he can’t unlock the code – the messages are indecipherable, which is made more difficult because the three parts that form each letter have not been separated by commas. He wants to know if we have any idea what the key could be. He tried the common ones, such as the Bible and various dictionaries, without the message making any sense, but he says it could be any book in the world.”
“Terrific. Have you got any idea?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t read books, so you’d have a better idea than me.”
“You don’t use technology, and you don’t read books. You must be a legend in dinosaur history.”
“Well, if nobody has any idea then that’s another dead end.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Because?”
“He’s asked me to tell him what the message might be in connection with, and that if we have any more messages, can he have them please. What do you think?”
He shrugged. “I don’t see a problem with giving him all the messages and telling him what they might contain.”
“Which is what?”
That was a very good question. What would the messages contain? He hadn’t wanted to think about why the children were going missing before, but now he had to confront the terrible possibilities. Even if the children had wandered off and become lost, sooner or later someone would have found them – either alive or dead – but none of these children had ever been found. That suggested they were being abducted.
Mercy Hebb had found something, but what? Osip Lemontov and the other killer had followed Gretchen Hebb to his hotel – why? Who were they working for? He had the feeling that there was a sophisticated operation underpinning the abduction of these children. And if Katherine Everett’s disappearance could be linked to the later ones, then that operation had been in existence for at least eleven years. How had they kept it secret for so long?
If wh
at they’d found over the last few days was relevant to the investigation, then there were large sums of money involved. People didn’t keep coded accounts for the sale and purchase of paintings. And maybe that was it: maybe the whole operation was being run through the Antonio De Natali Gallery and maybe what was really being bought and sold were children. What were the camp beds and children’s clothing doing in that room in the basement? What was Katherine Everett’s pink backpack and diary doing there from 2001? There were still so many unanswered questions.
“And the answer is?”
“Oh sorry,” he said. “I was miles away. The answer is – children.”
“Children!”
“I think Oscar Gilbert is in the middle of a pedophile ring that is trafficking in children. How big that ring is – well, your guess is as good as mine, but we can speculate that there could be a core group of around twenty men running the operation, and God knows how many customers based on the numbers contained in Gilbert’s coded emails.”
Rae whistled. “That’s a lot of people.”
“And I think we’re talking about a lot of children as well. We’re only investigating twenty children who have gone missing in the Florida area in the last five years, but what if . . . what if this involves children from all over the country.”
“Holy –”
“Exactly. Now, if we start connecting up the dots, then we could also speculate, based on that page ripped from a book of accounts, that a lot of money is changing hands. We might also suppose – from the accumulation of $17 million – that this operation has been a going concern for at least eleven years.”
She twisted on the seat and stared at him. Her back was against the door, and her hair had been whipped up by the wind. “I’m scared. This is what Mercy Hebb found out, isn’t it? Maybe it’s time to give what we have to your friend in the police.”
If the world were round, he’d have gone to see Mona. He’d have told her what his suspicions were, given her everything they’d discovered so far, but the world wasn’t round – it was flat with some humps here and there. She’d have locked him up and swallowed the key. Pretending to be a PI when you didn’t have a state license was a serious offence. Within just a few days, he’d shifted from being a retired, upstanding citizen to a hardened criminal at the top of the “most wanted” list.
“She’d lock us both up. You seem to forget about all the state and federal laws we’ve broken to reach this point. Also, I made a promise to Mercy’s mother, and my wife has told me I have to find the children.”
“Your wife’s dead . . . Oh! You’ve seen her?”
“We can’t walk away from this now, even if we wanted to, Rae.”
“Ya do know that they’re gonna kill us. They’ve given us two warnings so far. I think the next time won’t be a warning.”
“Then we have to make sure we get them before they get us.”
***
Rae spent the rest of the journey typing in Oscar Gilbert’s coded messages and sending them to the English maths student, who wasn’t a male at all, but a female by the name of Lilian Taylor. Apparently, from what she told Rae, people felt more confident dealing with males than females.
“Do you believe that?”
“A dinosaur is not the right person to ask.”
“You’re probably right.”
They arrived back at the hotel at quarter past four. The bush telegraph was fully operational. By the time they’d walked up to the room, Allegre appeared at the door with Rattlesnake fussing around her feet.
“Well, if’n it ain’t Mister more-off-site-than-on-site-security-leaving-Allegre-Gabbamonde-high-‘n’-dry Gabriel with his high-class trollop in tow.”
Rae was in the utility room, but she heard what Allegre said. “I’m not even gonna respond to that, bitch,” she shouted. “But you oughta know that I’m gonna shoot you in the head and use the hole to keep my pencils in the very first chance I get.”
Allegre ignored her.
“So, where you been that you couldn’t keep Allegre and Rattlesnake safe?” At the mention of its name, the dog gave a bark.
“Holly Hill, and you’ve obviously seen the new car I bought.”
“You havin’ a midlife crisis, ain’t you? It’s that trollop turnin’ your head. You tryin’ to be twenty years younger. Well, let me tell you, Mister over-the-hill-geriatric Gabriel. You makin’ a damned fool of yo’self with that harlot. Being a private investigator is for young men, which you ain’t. Drivin’ a car where you have to sit on the floor to drive it is what teenagers do, and you can be sure you ain’t one of them, and movin’ a floozy into your apartment is the stupidest thing I ever done heard of. You need to get back into your rockin’ chair, Mister feeble-minded-senile Gabriel, and thank the Lord you ain’t got the rheumatiz like poor, old Allegre Gabbamonde.”
“I’m just about to make a coffee,” he said, holding onto the door. “Do you want to come in and have a drink with me? I’ll tell you what’s been going on.”
Allegre stepped inside. “That’ll make a change, Mister keeping-secrets-from-old-Allegre- and-treating-her-like-she-don’t-matter-none Gabriel.” She shuffled into the room, sat down on the sofa, and put Rattlesnake on her lap..
He set about grounding the beans, taking a snort of the aroma up his nostrils, and filling up the filter. The machine soon began its familiar spurting, spitting, and bubbling.
“I’ll be in the shower until the bitch has gone,” Rae called as she headed towards the bathroom.
He filled two mugs, passed one to Allegre, and sat down in his chair.
“Well, get to it. Allegre’s busy, you know. Ain’t got all day to sit around and socialize, and ain’t that the truth?”
After taking another mouthful of steaming coffee, he began his story at the point Gretchen Hebb knocked on his door. He told Allegre everything. He’d known her for many years and knew he could trust her. He also felt a certain comfort in sharing what he knew with someone other than Rae.
Rae came out of the bathroom in a cotton dressing gown, made herself a coffee, and sat at the kitchen countertop, listening.
“You got yo’self into a mess of trouble, Mister stick-your-nose-into-other-people’s- business Gabriel. You should’ve left well enough alone.”
“And the children?”
“They gone, and there ain’t no bringin’ ‘em back.”
“You don’t believe that,” he said. “And even if it were true, the men responsible must be brought to justice.”
“And we gotta stop other children being taken,” Rae chipped in. “If we do nothing, the children will just keep going missing. What if it was your child?”
Allegre looked at Tom. “All I know is, you better give me the phone numbers of your two daughters. I want to know who I’m gonna ring to come and collect your stuff when you don’t never come back. Same goes for you,” she threw over her shoulder at Rae. “Better tell me your daddy’s number. I don’t want to be left holding a bag of condoms, all colors, shapes and sizes.”
Rae stood up and put her balled fists on her hips. “Are you gonna let that ugly bitch talk to me like that?”
Tom laughed. “She’s teasing you.”
Allegre cackled. “Bites every time, don’t she?”
“So, that’s where we are at the moment,” he said. “Tomorrow, we’re going to crank things up a bit. We’re done collecting scraps of information. It’s time to start joining the dots up now.”
Chapter Sixteen
Sally Stackhouse was a tomboy – everybody said so. Her teacher, Miss. Janet Green, had said to her one day, “Sally Stackhouse! I’m going to have to make a new hat for you. Instead of ‘D for Dunce,’ yours will have ‘T for Tomboy’ on it. When you’re being a naughty little tomboy, you can wear the ‘T for Tomboy’ hat and stand in the opposite corner to that Lizzy Hopkin, who has a ‘D for Dunce’ hat all of her very own.”
“Yes, Miss Green,” she’d said, because Sally was nothing if not polite.
> She didn’t really know what a tomboy was, but if it involved fighting with the boys, climbing trees, running until her breath ran out, and exploring unknown places until she was exhausted, then Sally was a tomboy through and through. She liked nothing better than wrestling with the boys until they cried, going home covered in dirt, and getting into all kinds of trouble. In fact, she often wondered why she hadn’t been born a boy.
What the man, who’d said to call him Henry, had done to her since she’d been thrown in the hole below the basement didn’t come as a surprise. Oh, it had hurt terribly and was the most disgusting thing she could ever imagine having done to her, but it wasn’t a surprise.
A few times, she’d barged into the house and seen the different men she called “Uncle” doing the same thing to her mum, and the way that her mum had hollered and blasphemed – it didn’t look to Sally as though her mum had been liking it much either.
Sally had decided what she was going to do the next time Henry came down those wooden stairs again. She was going to escape, and she knew exactly how she was going to do it.
Her mum would probably be worried about her by now. Rebekah Snellenberger and Jimmy Seraphin would be wondering what had happened to her as well. She had to escape. She had to make her way back home to where she belonged.
It wouldn’t be long now. Her mum had always said, “Sally, you’re like a clock.” She’d go out in the morning with the instruction to “be back by six,” and she was always back by six. If Sally knew anything, she knew about being home on time.
She heard footsteps, switched the small light off that Henry had provided for her, and hid beneath the steps.
“Sally, are you awake?” Henry called as he made his way down the steps in his cotton dressing gown. She saw his bare, hairy legs.
Oh yes, she was awake all right.
Henry reached the bottom of the steps.
Using the handrail, she swung herself up onto the fifth step, ran up towards the light, and burst through the opening into the basement proper.