“What’s that?”
“We better make sure the property’s clear from pryin’ eyes before the other two get here, because there’s no way Ethan’s making it over that ditch.”
Leah didn’t answer. It wasn’t the sort of thing that required an answer.
They walked along their narrow strip of ground flanked by the woods on their left and the abyss on their right. Dan kept scratching his left upper arm. “I hate thunderwood,” he said.
Leah could see the trees starting to break. They’d made it halfway around the bend in the road. She’d been right, Noah Stork’s property line would be in sight anytime now.
“We’re almost there,” she said.
They came a little more around the curve, and Leah could suddenly make out what it was she’d been watching the harsh, white glow of the moon glittering off of for the past twenty feet. And, although she had somewhat expected it, actually seeing it here was a completely different thing. All her muscles went tense. She tasted iron in the back of her throat.
Parked along the roadside, also far enough back not to be seen from Stork’s property, was Jonathon’s silver 1982 Nissan Sentra. If not for the moonlight, it would be practically invisible in the shadows.
“Shit,” Leah said.
Dan followed her gaze, figuring out what he was looking at much faster than Leah had. “You knew it would be here.”
“I was holding out for hope.”
Dan looked at her. “On a night like this? Good luck.”
They both got down and sneaked a peek around the corner into Noah Stork’s yard. Leah was happy to see his white Hyundai still parked in the driveway.
“Have you seen the ladder yet?” Dan asked.
“What lad—” But then she did see it, although it was near on invisible between the side of the garage and the thickly trunked oaks towering toward the sky. “I see it.”
“Any guesses?” Dan whispered.
Leah thought about it. Why would there be a ladder heading to the roof of the garage? “Maybe Stork was cleaning his eaves earlier?”
“Garage has no eaves. Guess again.”
“I can’t. I can’t think of any reason.”
“What about Jonathon?”
“You think he’s on the roof? Has to be around the other side then.”
“Why would he be on the roof?” Dan asked.
“How the hell should I know? You’re the one who said—”
“I was posing the question to both of us.” He glanced at Jonathon’s silver car. “Why is he parked on the other side of the house, anyway?”
Leah shrugged. “Must’ve come a different way. Probably knows this area better than me. Wouldn’t take much. He probably had a shortcut.”
“Great. That’s all we need. Gives him even more time to fuck himself.”
Leah knew she hadn’t covered her reaction to Dan’s comment. Somehow, she’d pushed Jonathon’s danger out of her mind. Now it came back, full-swing.
Dan took a deep breath and let it out. “He’s probably okay,” he said unconvincingly. “He’s street-smart.”
Leah’s eyes narrowed. “Last time you called him book-smart. Which is he?”
“That was before you told me he could pick locks.”
The static sound of a walkie-talkie blurted from Dan’s belt. Quickly, he grabbed a knob and turned down the volume before bringing the microphone to his lips. “Hey,” he said. “You guys here?”
Ethan’s big voice came out of the speaker, sounding like he was standing in a giant tin. “Yup,” he said. “Parked right behind you. How the hell do we cross this bloody ravine?”
Dan couldn’t help but laugh a bit. “You don’t. You just follow the road the same direction you were driving. You’ll come to Stork’s property about forty feet down. His driveway bridges your ‘ravine.’ ”
“That safe?” Ethan asked.
“Doesn’t look like anyone’s watchin’ the front. I think you’ll be fine.”
“Where are you two?”
“We’ll be standing just off in the woods right beside the driveway. We’ll wait for you here.”
It didn’t take long for Ethan and Chris to make it to the driveway and then hastily step across the lawn into the shadows with Leah and Dan.
“Whose silver Sentra is that?” Chris asked.
Leah let out a big breath. “It belongs to Caroline’s insanely stupid but extremely valiant boyfriend.”
“You mean he’s gone in there to save her?” Ethan asked.
“Don’t see him out here, do you?”
“Don’t be a smart-ass.”
“Sorry, I’m just worried. And now I’m worried about two kids, not just one.”
Leah glanced up at Ethan. “Tommy in the back of the squad car?”
“Oh yeah,” he said without looking her way.
“Good. If this goes the way I think it will, we can let him go after. No sense charging him. He’s too dumb to get it, anyway.”
Chris stood from where he was crouched watching the house and garage and turned around. “What’s the plan?” he asked. “And I assume we’ve all noticed the ladder?”
“I was just thinking that same question,” Dan said. “About the plan, I mean. We already brainstormed the ladder. We got nothin’.”
“The garage,” Leah said. “It’s gotta be the primary crime scene.”
“You said the same thing about that creepy barn,” Chris said.
“This time I’m sure. Christ, look at the place. What are our options? It’s either the garage or the house.”
“Why not the house?” Ethan asked. “Just for the sake of argument.”
Leah stared at him. “My pa used to refer to the primary scene as ‘the slaughterhouse.’ I’ve been inside Noah’s place. There ain’t no way he’s slaughtering people in there. It’s so clean you could eat off the toilet. I think we can safely add obsessive-compulsive disorder onto the growing list of mental issues I’m mentally compiling for the man. He’s clean to the point of irritation. Freaky clean.”
Ethan let out a breath. “I’m havin’ a problem with Jonathon,” he said.
“What’s that?” Leah asked.
“I don’t hear anythin’. He must’ve gotten here almost an hour ago. Wouldn’t you reckon whatever he planned to do once he got here he’d have already done?”
A cloud of fear passed over Leah’s face. “You mean, maybe he’s—”
Ethan quickly shook his head. “If Jonathon was dead, Carry’d be screaming something fierce.”
Something caught in Leah’s throat before her words tumbled out. “Well, then, what if—”
Ethan shook his head again. “Then our friend Noah Stork would be on his way to Cherry Park Forest. He’s gotta know he’s latched himself onto some pretty hot properties. My guess is that he’d want to get this over with sooner rather than later. Unless he wants to get caught. Maybe that’s it. Maybe this is his last stand.”
“God, I hope not. You’re makin’ it sound like the Battle of the Little Bighorn.”
“Yeah, except Stork ain’t no Crazy Chief.”
Dan snorted. “He ain’t even Custer. Let’s go see what’s on the other side of that—”
He stopped as the front door of Stork’s house swung open. “Everybody back up,” Dan whispered, scratching his arm.
They did and Leah watched from between two looping blackberry vines as Noah Stork walked across his porch and down the steps to his driveway. He was carrying a yellow cup in his right hand and Leah wondered what was inside it.
“Look at his boots,” Dan whispered as Stork came around the front of his car, which was backed into the driveway, the same as it had been both times Leah had paid him a visit.
Stork’s boots were black and rose about three-quarters of the way up his thighs. He got to the front of the garage, grabbed the handle, and then stopped. He was looking down at his boots, and Leah now noticed one not being tied. Setting down the yellow cup on one of the concrete path st
ones that led back to the driveway, Noah Stork tightened the laces starting from the bottom, awkwardly doing it with only his right hand. He worked all the way to the top of the boot and even managed to tie a double bow, all one-handed.
Leah and Dan shared a confused glance. “Must be something wrong with his left hand or arm or something,” Dan whispered.
Leah thought back to her encounters with Stork. That first interview, when he fixed her iced tea. Something about the way he’d gotten the iced tea, one glass at a time, had struck her odd. Now she realized he only used one arm. Even when he was on the davenport, it was always his right arm up along the top. And yet—he could type. She’d seen his manuscript. That was a lot of typing for a one-handed job.
Then she remembered the inconsistencies in the darkness of the characters. Half were significantly lighter than the others. She’d bet dollars to donuts the light ones came from his left hand.
A bunch of other things started taking on a recognizable shape. This explained why he didn’t just carry Abilene Williams through the narrow path. He simply didn’t have the ability. It also explained the drag marks they’d found between where Leah suspected he’d parked to where Samantha Hughes’s body was staked by the Anikawa.
Except—from what she remembered, there were no weird anomalies in the case from fifteen years ago. Could this be a new injury, or was she wrong about thinking this Stickman was the same guy from fifteen years ago? Suddenly her pa’s theory about Harry Stork started looking okay again.
She wanted to point all this out to Dan, but now was definitely not the time.
Stork turned slightly to grab the garage door handle, and Leah immediately recognized the bulge in the back of his black dress shorts, covered by the white button-down shirt he hadn’t tucked in. The bulge became less conspicuous as he stood, pulling the garage door up with his right hand as he did so.
“He’s packing,” Dan said, again in a whisper.
When he bent back down to get the water still on the stone, the gun in his pants once again revealed itself. A sour sickness filled Leah’s stomach. She suddenly felt as though she might get sick.
The garage door stayed open as he went over to the shadow of something lying on the floor. Leah tried to wrap her head around the fact that the shadow she was seeing was probably her daughter. He held her head up and helped her drink whatever was in the yellow cup. The thought made Leah shiver.
Leah quickly glanced around the rest of the garage, most of which was in darkness. A bright fluorescent light fixture running across the front of the ceiling threw everything else in shadows. She did see a window and a standard door on the back wall.
“I bet Jonathon’s outside that back door,” she whispered to Dan just as Stork came back and pulled the big metal door down with a clang.
“If he is, I hope he knows Stork just came inside.”
“I suggest we break into two teams,” Leah said to all of them. “Dan and I will go around to the back side of the garage. Ethan—”
The sound of someone screaming from inside the garage not only cut Leah off short, but she almost jumped out of her skin. It was so loud she had no problem making out the words.
“Where did you get this!” screamed the voice.
“Is that Stork?” Dan whispered to Leah, but she shushed him. She’d only heard Stork speak in his normal, quiet, almost pensive tones. She wasn’t sure whether it was him or not. Leah started to relax, thinking that was all they were going to get, when right then more loud words erupted from behind the garage door.
“I asked you a question!” Yeah, Leah figured, that could very well be Stork.
The hollering went on. “Who did this? You couldn’t have! There’s no way! Who helped you?”
It was Noah Stork. Leah was pretty much sure of it. Besides, who else could it be? They’d just seen everything in that garage. If another man had been skulking around, she’d have spotted him.
Leah looked to Dan. Did that mean Jonathon was in there? Did that mean he was still alive? It could mean any—
Another scream stopped her thoughts: “Who? Who got this ax and tried cutting you free? Where is he?”
Dan looked at Leah and whispered, “He said ‘ax,’ right? We all heard ‘ax’?” He looked from face to face but nobody paid him any attention.
They waited another couple of minutes, but no more words were said loud enough to hear them this vantage point behind the corner of the forest.
“This change our plan at all?” Dan asked Leah.
“No, I think it just expedites it.” She glanced to Ethan. “Dan and I take the rear. You guys have the front. That’s pretty much the plan. Oh, and if you get the chance, go for a head shot. I’ll stand up in any court and testify you were going for his arm but overcompensated.”
“And got him in the head?” Chris asked. “That’s a lot of overcompensating.”
Leah didn’t look at him. “Yeah, well, that sorta shows you how I’m feeling right about now.”
CHAPTER 69
Leah and Dan crept around to the back of the garage, both walking around the ladder instead of under it like Leah had expected Dan to do. The back of the garage was just how Leah thought it would be, with the closed white door and the almost-square window. What she didn’t see was any sign of Jonathon.
“Wait,” Dan whispered. “Spoke too soon.” Reaching down, he picked up a gray T-shirt that had been balled on the grass. He shook it out and held it in front of him. “Jonathon’s?” he asked Leah.
She nodded, trying to think things through. Why was Jonathon’s T-shirt outside instead of on him, wherever he happened to be?
“Maybe he thought he would come off more valiant if he rescued her naked from the waist up?”
Leah glared at him. “Okay, you know what?” she whispered. “There are times when I don’t mind your funny little quips, but now is not one of them. Please don’t test me on this. Understood?”
Dan’s lips formed a tight line. He nodded.
“Good.” Leah went over to the window and snuck a glance inside, her first instinct to look at the walls and test her primary crime scene theory. Test came back gruesomely positive. “I think I’m goin’ to be sick,” she said. The dark splatter stains covered and, in places, smeared along the walls and floor.
Dan came up and shushed her. “This glass is only single-pane thick,” he whispered. “He’ll easily hear us if we’re not extremely quiet.” Dan looked back at the flower garden lit by the half moon.
“Seems strange that a psychopathic killer can make such beautiful things. Maybe underneath all them mental illnesses, he’s just a fragile—”
Leah’s glare snapped toward him. “Do not say anythin’ good about this man to me. I’m serious, Dan. I plan on killin’ him, and I don’t need anythin’ about that dragging my conscience down.”
Even though she’d whispered, he shushed her again. “What if we get a chance to take him alive?”
She opened the clip on her holster. “There’s only one way I’m takin’ this son of a bitch,” she said. “And I’m doing it for me, for my pa, and for Caroline. Shit, even for Jonathon. If I reckoned I could get a proper shot off through this window, I’d take it right now.”
“Think about what you just said before you do anything rash,” Dan whispered. “It’s not our duty to kill unless it’s our only option.”
“I give two shits about my goddamn duty, Dan. This man deserves death.”
Quietly, Dan asked, “Like Harry Stork did?”
Leah felt her face explode to red. “Do not do that to me, Dan. Do not! You have no right!”
“Okay,” he whispered, raising his palm. “Just quiet down, or it won’t matter anyhow.”
“Where the hell’s Jonathon?” Leah asked, going back to the window.
Dan shrugged. “Maybe inside?”
“We saw inside. He wasn’t there. Try the door. See if it’s locked.”
Gingerly, Dan put his hand on the knob and gave it a slow turn. It
didn’t stop. “It’s unlocked.”
“God damn it!” Leah whispered through her teeth. “Then he is in there. But where?”
Ethan’s voice cut through the walkie-talkie static. Dan quickly lowered the volume and stepped around to the side of the garage where the ladder still stood. Leah followed. “What’s goin’ on?” Ethan asked.
“We found Jonathon’s shirt and the back door’s unlocked. We figure that’s his handiwork, but there’s no sign of him. We reckon he must already be inside.”
“I didn’t see him when that door was open.”
“Yeah, us either. But it’s really all we can think of.”
“What do you mean, you found the boy’s shirt?”
“Exactly that. It was lying in a ball on the grass.”
“Why would he take his shirt off?” Ethan asked.
“You ponder that,” Dan said. “We’ll get back to you once we decide our move.” He clipped the walkie-talkie back to his belt. “Okay,” he said to Leah. “We don’t have lots of options. I suggest we take the door and go in with guns up. He won’t expect the door to be unlocked, we’ll have the element of surprise.”
Leah thought this over, then shook her head. “He’s too close to Caroline and she’s supine and motionless. She’d be a sitting duck.”
Dan sighed. “Okay, I’m actually not against your idea of shooting through the window.”
“What time is it?” Leah asked Dan.
Dan checked his watch. “Eleven-oh-five.”
“Shit, that means he has twenty-five minutes to kill her, let her bleed out, put her in his car, drive her to Cherry Park Forest, and drag her somewhere to stake. He’s gotta be thinkin’ about leavin’ anytime now. I’d say we have five minutes, on the outside.”
“It’s gonna have to be the window shot.”
Leah took another peek. Noah Stork was now kneeling beside Caroline, his back to the window. All Leah could see was the top of his head above the narrow table blocking the view.
“He’s way too close to her now, and I don’t have a direct shot anyway.”
Dan came up beside her just as Noah briefly stood, pulling a Glock 19 from the back of his pants.
Sticks and Stones Page 53