by L. T. Ryan
McCree looked between the two of us, but said nothing. I shifted my gaze from the man to the wall behind him. A framed Jack Vettriano painting hung there. I always wondered why the artist never let you see the lady in red’s face.
“This is going to be easier if you cooperate,” Sam said.
“Eat shit,” McCree said.
Sam lunged toward him. I noticed in time and managed to get my hands on his shoulders. I wrangled him through the bedroom door and out into the hallway.
“Keep an eye on him, Jennings,” I said. Then I pulled Sam into the great room. “What the hell are you doing?”
Sam looked away and said nothing.
“C’mon, man. It’s normally you keeping me in check. I know you’re pissed. I am too. Believe me, I want nothing more than to put the barrel of my Glock to his head and pull the trigger. But that ain’t gonna do those kids no good. We need to get some answers out of this guy. Breaking his jaw isn’t going to help.”
Sam still said nothing, but he made eye contact. His nostrils flared wide with each inhalation. I let a few more seconds pass and he seemed to come down a notch.
“You got it? You ready to go?”
He turned his head toward the dim hallway and nodded. “Let’s go back. I’m fine now.”
I stepped into the hallway first. Officer Wiggins stood in the doorway of one of the other bedrooms. She held up her hand and gestured for me to speak with her as we approached.
“What is it?” I asked.
“According to the woman, her name is Laura Weaver, they’ve been here since late last night. They never left. Got drunk, slept in. Got up around seven-thirty. Made love. Napped. They were at it again when you two barged in.”
“Who is she?” I asked.
“She’s a student teacher at the school.”
“Interesting.” I nodded and saw Sam do the same.
“And they’ve been here all night?” Sam said.
Wiggins nodded. “That’s what she says.”
“Nobody move,” I said, nodding at Sam. “Come with me.”
“Where’re we going?” He asked as we stepped through the great room toward the kitchen.
“Garage.”
“His truck?”
“Yeah.”
The first door I pulled open led to the pantry. It was stocked with sugary cereal, bags of chips, and four cases of soda. How the hell did that guy stay so thin?
Sam pulled the other door open. “In here, Mitch.”
The smell of motor oil and gas reached me before I turned around. I expected to see the single car garage filled with a truck. Instead, it was empty. I stepped into the room and looked around. First thing I noticed was a thick pool of oil in the center of the floor. There were posters along the walls, girls in bikinis on the hoods of cars or straddling motorcycles. A pegboard mounted to the interior wall held his hand tools. It appeared they were organized by size and purpose. Beneath the pegboard was a custom workbench with a solid steel top and plenty of drawers. I started looking through them, but found nothing of importance.
“What you think?” Sam asked.
“I think we need to ask McCree about his pickup truck.”
Chapter 20
The smoothness of the road had given way to bumps and bouncing. They must be on a dirt road or gravel driveway. Debby didn’t dare open her eyes to verify. The ping sounds she heard beneath her led her to believe it was gravel. Although, dirt with rocks was a close second. She and Beans had been told to keep their eyes and mouths shut. One peep out of them, and they’d have hoods over their heads. That wouldn’t stop her from listening, though. She’d seen a cop show or two on TV. Right now was about the clues. And the clues would come from the men. Unfortunately, the men didn’t speak at all aside from the occasional direction of turn right or turn left.
They didn’t stay in the van for long. She wasn’t sure where it happened, because there were no windows in the back of that van, but they had pulled off the road. When they opened the door, the bright sunlight blinded her. She stepped out and saw tall bushes and trees surrounding them. There were empty beer cans and cigarette butts on the ground. A couple dirty magazines sat atop a bench made from a fallen tree. She thought it might be the kind of place teenagers came to hang out. Maybe her brother had frequented the area.
The men had led her and Beans to a big truck. The entire passenger side of the cab opened up wide like a whale ready to devour her. It was like a car in there, with a full backseat. Nothing like the trucks she had seen before. One of the men picked her up and placed her on the floor, then put Beans next to her. They were to remain there for the rest of the trip.
Eyes and mouths shut.
What could she have seen from down there?
Now, Beans cried softly. She reached out her hand and found his. His whimpers stopped. She heard him wheezing. He needed to take a puff on his inhaler soon. She had to speak up and tell the men, or Beans might die.
“He needs his inhaler,” she said quickly.
“Shut up,” one of the men said.
“He has asthma. He’ll die if he doesn’t get his inhaler.”
“I’m gonna beat you,” the other man said.
Debby started to cry. “Please. Just let him use his inhaler. He’s having trouble breathing.”
The man driving the car slammed on the brakes. There was a soft skidding sound. Definitely dirt, she thought. Her momentum shifted as the car stopped abruptly. She rolled one way, then whipped back the other. A pain traveled through her shoulder.
One of the front doors opened. She pressed her eyelids together even tighter. A burst of air swirled around her as her door opened. She felt hands on her legs, pulling her from the truck. Next thing she knew, she was placed against the frame of the vehicle. She felt tiny knives penetrate her eyes through shut lids. She figured she faced the sun. Her feet dangled in the air.
“Look at me!” the man shouted.
She opened her eyes. After she got past the sun-blindness, she realized that she sort of recognized the man. It wasn’t the guy who’d taken Beans from the recess yard. She figured this guy had been the one driving. He’d had on a ski mask when she first saw him. But now without the mask and in the light, he looked familiar, although she couldn’t place him. She noticed a dull ache behind her eyes and on her head around the spot where she had hit the other man’s hip earlier that day. The edge of her vision felt watery.
Focus, Debby.
The guy said, “When I say keep your mouth shut, I mean keep your damn mouth shut.”
She struggled to talk. “He has asthma.”
The guy slapped her across the face. “Shut up!”
Debby began to cry. The tear tracks felt cold as the wind pelted her face. She struggled to turn her head to the left. The other guy sat in the passenger seat. He watched her in the side mirror. Their stares connected. He narrowed his eyes then looked away. She noticed a tattoo that started behind his right ear and ran down his neck. A weird, spiky design.
“You and I reached an understanding?” the man holding her said.
She turned her head, nodded and didn’t say a word.
He let go, and she fell to the ground. “Okay, then. Get your butt back inside. We’re almost there.”
The door swung open and missed her head by inches. She pulled herself up using the running boards and then slipped inside, taking her place on the floor, head to head with Beans. The vehicle didn’t start moving, though. The men were speaking to one another. Their voices were so low that she had trouble making out what they were saying. A minute later the front doors opened, then the rear ones. She felt hands on her body, pulling her out. Beans gasped. She opened her eyes and saw him being pulled from the cab.
“What are you doing?” she cried.
The guy said nothing. He slipped a black bag over her head and tied it loosely around her neck. Then he said, “If you struggle, that’s going to cinch tighter and you’ll strangle to death. You got that?”
; Debby said nothing. She didn’t even nod out of fear that the string would draw tighter and she would suffocate. She had no idea where they were going or why they were going there. She didn’t want to think about where this was leading. She’d seen similar events on TV shows. Rarely did they work out for the people that were kidnapped. The only thing she knew at that moment was that she had no intention of dying in the back of the white truck.
Chapter 21
We reentered McCree’s bedroom. The man sat on the edge of the bed in a pair of shorts. His shoulders were slumped over. He draped his left forearm across his knees. In his right hand he held a lit cigarette.
“Where’s your truck, McCree?” I asked.
He looked up at me, then at Sam. He took a deep drag on his cigarette. Exhaled through the corner of his mouth, away from us. The smoke drifted toward the window, which was cracked open a couple inches. I found myself appreciating the gesture. I hadn’t smoked in ten years, but the urge came around every once in a while. This wasn’t one of those times.
“Well?” Sam said, taking a step forward.
McCree took another drag and said nothing.
I lunged toward the guy, knocking the cigarette from his hand, and grabbing his arms. “You listen to me you piece of crap. We need to know where that truck is, and we need to know five minutes ago.”
McCree looked over at the cigarette burning through his satin sheets. “These are five hundred dollar sheets.” He said it so matter-of-factly that I forgot he worked in a school.
“They can burn and so can you.” I let him go and took a step back.
A red-ringed circle spread out along the blue sheets. McCree knocked the cigarette to the floor and used his palm to put out the embers. Once they were extinguished, he looked at the palm of his hand and brushed away the gray and black ash. “I loaned my truck to my brother.”
“Roy Miller,” I said.
“What?”
“Is he your brother?”
“Who the hell is Roy Miller? My brother is Brad McCree. His truck’s in the shop. He’s in construction. Can’t work without a truck. He needed mine for a job, so I lent it to him.”
“What kind of job?”
“Whatever kind of job guys in construction need a truck for, man. I don’t know. I’m not his boss. He needed my truck, and I had a ride available if I wanted it.” He jutted his chin toward the open doorway and I imagined the half-dressed woman with Officer Wiggins.
“And the name Roy Miller?” Sam asked. “What does that mean to you?”
McCree shrugged and held out his arms. “Never heard that name in my life. Can I light up again?”
“No,” I said. “What about Michael Lipsky?”
McCree looked toward the window. He clenched his jaw. The muscles at the corner of his face rippled. After a moment, he said, “What about him?”
“You hired him to be a janitor at the school. Correct?”
He nodded.
“They told us that you two were childhood friends. Is that correct?”
He nodded again.
“Did you ever meet his wife?”
This time he turned his head toward us. He looked confused. “Wife? He told me he was single. Said she left him some time back.”
“Are you sure you never heard the name Roy Miller?” Sam asked.
“Jesus Christ,” McCree said. “I told you, I have never heard that name.”
“Not even on the news?”
“I don’t watch that crap. It’s depressing.”
“Looks like you’ve got a nice antidepressant in the other room,” I said.
He smiled and his face lit up. “Fresh faces every year. I even let some come back around time to time.”
Sam cleared his throat, stepped forward and leaned over so he was face to face with the guy. “Roy Miller is believed to have killed his wife, Dusty Anne Miller, this past Friday night.”
McCree reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. He flipped it between his fingers. “Sucks for her. But I have no idea what that has to do with me.”
“Had you kept in regular touch with Lipsky?” I asked.
McCree shook his head. “Nah, not since high school. He called me up out of the blue. Said he’d been through the ringer since his old lady bailed. He asked me for a favor. I pulled some strings, got a few things waived and brought him in as a janitor at the school. Didn’t think it’d be a permanent position, just something to get the guy back on track. Told me he lost his programming job a few years back and been out of work since. He’d taken to living in shelters and on friends’ couches and stuff like that. I thought if he could get an apartment, some decent clothes, a regular shower…who knows, you know? Maybe he could get a job with one of the companies downtown.”
“What kind of things did you get waived?” Sam asked.
“Background check, credit check, things like that. They make the process take forever, and I didn’t want the guy on my couch disrupting my…extracurricular activities. Besides, I knew him from way back. Decent guy.”
“Like you, huh?” I took a moment. “So, aside from the fact that you were friends as kids, you know nothing about the guy?”
McCree shrugged. “He’s a good guy. What’s to know?”
Sam dropped the picture he had taken from the school’s administrative office on the bed. It landed face up. “That’s Lipsky?”
McCree nodded.
Sam shook his head. “We have reason to believe that Lipsky is Roy Miller.”
Chapter 22
McCree straightened and looked Sam in the eye. “Say again?”
“You heard me. He bolted from custody early Sunday morning at the hospital. We got a tip this morning that he held up a gas station about thirty miles away. He was with another man. They drove off in a white Ford F-250. What do you drive?”
“A white Ford F-250,” McCree said after forcing himself to swallow.
“And where is that truck right now?”
“I told you, I loaned it to my brother.”
“And how well did your brother know Miller, or Lipsky?”
“They were the same age. The two of them were best friends. He was over a lot, that’s how we became friends.”
“You and your brother were friends as kids?” Sam asked.
McCree shrugged.
“What’s your brother like, McCree?” I asked.
McCree shook his head.
“Telling me that you don’t know?”
McCree locked eyes with me. “You should have access to his record.”
“His record? You mean he’s a felon?” Sam asked.
“Yeah.”
I took a step back, turned and left the room. Sam followed me out. We stopped in the middle of the hallway. There were several more cops combing through the house.
“What do you think?” Sam asked.
“I don’t know what to think,” I said. “We’ve got a murder suspect with two names. A vice principal with an ex-con for a brother, who also happened to borrow the man’s truck. A truck spotted thirty miles away carrying our suspect and maybe the ex-con. And now two kids missing, presumably taken by the suspect who was hired a few weeks ago by the ex-con’s brother.”
I assume Sam followed along judging by the way he nodded.
“Let’s get these two down to the station and get this house processed. I don’t think those kids were brought through here, but we might find Miller a.k.a. Lipsky’s prints in here. McCree might not have been down at the school, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved. We treat him and the woman as a suspect for now.”
Sam started toward the room. Officer Wiggins stepped into the hallway to cut him off.
“What do you want me to do with her?” she asked.
“Get her dressed and bring her back to the station,” Sam said. “We want to get her isolated and ask her some questions.”
Sam went into McCree’s bedroom. I turned and walked into the great room. I looked at everything in a different light.
This had come about so quickly that I hadn’t had time to ask the most important question. Why? Why had this happened? Why those two kids? Thinking back on what that blond haired teacher told me, Miller a.k.a. Lipsky had been carrying the boy toward the van. The girl ran after them. Attacked the man, as the teacher had put it. Had she been defending the boy? I needed the kids’ names, addresses and parental information. I had to find Huff and find out if anyone had notified the parents yet. If not, I wanted to do it personally. The boy had been targeted, and I had to find out why.
As I looked around the kitchen, I heard McCree shouting from the bedroom. Bad idea to shout at Sam. If McCree didn’t shut his mouth soon, he’d find that out firsthand. From the kitchen, I went back into the garage. I recalled seeing the crawl access in there. It had been closed then. Someone had already opened it. I squatted and rocked forward. I placed my hands on the dirty concrete floor and peered into the opening. Beams from flashlights lit up sections of the crawlspace. I saw lots of spider webs.
“What’ve you got in there?” I called out.
“Nothing,” a voice called back. “It’s empty other than a couple snake skins and some spiders.”
I fought off a quick bout of the shakes. I hated both snakes and spiders. Crooks I could deal with. My 9mm gave me the upper hand there. A black widow or a brown recluse didn’t care about what kind of gun I carried. Neither did a cottonmouth or a rattlesnake. I hoped I’d never encounter any of them. I rose, walked back inside, through the kitchen, to the opened sliding glass door. Horace and Fairchild hung out on the back porch, smoking.
“You two find anything out here?” I asked, trying to remain as polite as I could.
They shrugged and said nothing to me.
“Guys, we’ve got two kids who need our help. This isn’t the time to act on our grudges.”
“Get lost, Tanner,” Fairchild said. “We were told to hang back and stay out here unless ordered inside. We can’t do nothing to help out here.”
“Guys, look, I don’t mean—”
“Oh, crap! Look, Tanner,” Horace said, hopping up and down and pointing to the corner of the fence. “See those bricks over there? I bet that’s a clue.” He jogged to the edge of the yard. “I’m gonna get these processed ASAP.”