Blood Angel

by Bernard Schaffer

  A cluster of flashing blue and red lights formed several blocks ahead of them. All the cops were racing right to the scene, all of them eager to get the same information and see the same thing. They were pack animals, prone to run in groups, and never needed a better reason than that someone else in the pack was running so they ran too.

  Rein picked up his binoculars and peered through the windshield. There were uniformed officers bunched around the distraught woman. They stood there looking at her. They were there because everyone else was, doing what everyone else was doing. A few of the ones toward the back were already smiling and cracking jokes to one another. They were only looking for an away game.

  He put down the binoculars. “Just take us in.”

  They parked behind one of the marked units and draped their gold badges over their necks, letting them dangle where they could be seen. Everyone stopped talking when they saw county detectives walking toward them.

  “I never knew county dicks worked past dark,” someone called out.

  Past the sea of pale blue uniform shirts, Rein saw the sobbing woman being comforted by a young Hansen Township police officer. He was trying to ask her for more information, but he was either too young or too new and doing a bad job of it.

  “Who is in charge here? Is there anyone with rank?” Rein asked, and all of the cops there stared back at him silently. “Okay, then, here’s the plan. Each of you is going to spread out from this location in a different direction. No lights, no sirens. Go slow and check for any parked vehicles matching the suspect description. If you see any cars on the back roads, stop and ID them and ask them if they saw anything suspicious.”

  No one moved.

  “Hey!” Waylon barked. “Let’s go! We’ve got a missing kid to find here! Time’s wasting!”

  The cops did what they were told, but took their time doing it. Rein watched them head toward their individual squad cars and drive off. Technically, county detectives didn’t have authority over the cops in the local municipalities, but none of them wanted to be accused of not doing their part in a big investigation. There are men who want to be involved, and men who want to appear to be involved, and as Rein watched the group of cops drive off, he could not tell how many of either he had. “Think they’ll all just drive back to their stations? It looked like it might be some of their bedtimes.”

  “As long as they look for a station wagon along the way, I can live with it,” Waylon said.

  The Hansen officer standing with the woman pulled his notepad and pen out of his pocket. “Ma’am, I need to get some details from you,” he said.

  She sank down onto the sidewalk and buried her face in her hands.

  “Ma’am?” he said. He put his hand on her back. “Do you need an ambulance?”

  “What’s your name?” Rein called out.

  “Dave Kenderdine,” the officer said.

  “Not you. Her. Ma’am!”

  The woman’s head snapped up. Her face was streaked with black tears. Ruined eyeliner streamed down her stricken face into her mouth.

  “What’s your name?”

  She started to moan again.

  Rein snatched her by the arms and shook her. “Answer me!”

  “Hey!” Kenderdine said, trying to wedge himself between Rein and the woman. “I don’t think this is—”

  Waylon pulled the kid back. “Just hang on, son. It’s all right.”

  “Look at me!” Rein said, pulling the woman close to his face. “Do you want your daughter back?”

  “Yes!” she sputtered. “Why, God? Why did this happen?”

  “Then stop acting like a child. We need to find her. What’s your name?”

  She swallowed and wiped her face. “Diane Drake.”

  Rein glanced up at Kenderdine, waiting for the information to be written down.

  Once it was written down, Rein said, “What’s your daughter’s name?”

  “Brenda.”

  “Same last name?”

  The woman muttered it was. She pressed her hands over her face and began to scream. Rein yanked her hands away and snapped his fingers at her. “Look at me, I said. Tell me everything about her. Height, weight, hair, what she’s wearing, everything. Spit it out, right now.”

  “She’s sixteen. Oh God, oh my God! Blond hair. Five foot four. I think a hundred and ten pounds. She’s in sh-sh-shorts.” She moaned and clutched her face again. “I watched him take her and I couldn’t do anything!”

  Waylon leaned over Kenderdine’s shoulder and held the notepad steady to read it. “Detective Waylon to all units,” he said into his radio. When they responded, he walked off to read them the rest of the information.

  “Tell me about the man,” Rein said.

  “He was young,” she said, rocking violently back and forth. “Her age, I think. Taller. It looked like they knew each other.”

  “What makes you say that? Have you ever seen him before?”

  “No. I was in the store,” she said. “And I could see her talking to him. I could see him! They were standing in front of his car. Everything seemed fine. When I came walking out, I saw him dragging her into the car and driving off. What’s he doing to my baby girl?”

  Rein turned around, still kneeling and pointed at the street corner in front of the Walgreens. “Did it happen right there?” he asked.

  When she nodded, Waylon said, “I’m on it.” He headed off to check the surrounding buildings for any security cameras or ATM’s that might be in the area.

  “Tell me about him,” Rein said, returning to the woman. “Taller than her, you said. Taller than me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Skinny, strong, fat? What was he wearing?”

  “I-I’m not sure.”

  “Focus!”

  “I don’t know!” she screamed. “Stop asking me all these fucking questions and go look for her!”

  “What about the car?” Rein said. “It was a station wagon?”

  “Right,” Diane said, wrapping her arms around herself. “It was white, with brown sides. It had those wood panels.”

  “All right,” Rein said. “Did you see anything else? Did the man have anything in his hands?”

  “Like what?” Diane asked.

  “A weapon. A gun or a knife or anything?”

  “No,” Diane said, shaking her head violently. She clutched the sides of her face and moaned for them to go find her.

  Rein put his hand on Kenderdine’s shoulder. “Stay with her. If she remembers anything else, put it out over the air.” He headed for the street corner in front of Walgreens, circling wide around it to take his time moving inward to make sure he didn’t miss anything. There was nothing to miss. Garbage along the side of the road. A storm drain. An elevated sidewalk, with hedges running alongside it, and beyond that, the Walgreens.

  The employees inside were pressed up against the side windows, trying to see what was happening. If any of them knew anything, they’d have come out already, he thought. Still, they needed to be asked. He’d have to get all the names of the people inside the store, including the customers, even if they said they hadn’t seen anything. In this kind of case, a person doesn’t always know what they know, not until it’s all over. This was the kind of shit any uniformed officer could have done, but instead, their incompetence forced him to abandon his surveillance post to come handle it.

  Anger rose within him. At the mother’s ridiculous whimpering. At the cops’ attitudes when he told them what to do. At Waylon for taking them away from such a perfect vantage point at Krissing’s house and likely ruining it for future use. At himself for being out in the night, standing in front of the Hansen Walgreens wasting his time when he needed to be working his real case.

  The sound of someone running up the street shouting his name made him turn.

  “Rein!” Waylon cried, flapping his arms. “Come on! Let’s go! Move!”

  Rein started running with him, both of them racing across the street to get back to th
eir car. “What is it?” Rein said, throwing his door open.

  “They found the station wagon,” Waylon said.

  The radio crackled with an incoming transmission. “White station wagon . . . brown . . . side panels.” He left the mic open as he exited the police car and ran toward the car. They could hear his keys jingling on his duty belt. Adrenaline had taken the man’s voice and breath, until he could hardly draw in enough air to say, “It’s clear. I don’t see anyone.”

  Multiple units announced they were en route, a dozen officers coming from all directions. Waylon snatched the microphone and said, “Clear the air except for the car on scene. Stay with that vehicle until we get there.”

  “Don’t touch anything,” Rein reminded him.

  Waylon put the microphone back to his mouth and added, “And don’t touch anything!” He set it down and put both hands on the steering wheel, flooring the gas pedal until the engine whined. The lights of Hansen vanished behind woodland trees as the car skirted over loose gravel, fishtailing at each turn with Waylon gripping the wheel, turning into the skid each time, keeping them upright and going straight.

  “You all right?” Waylon asked, spinning the wheel hand over hand.

  “What do you mean?” Rein said.

  “You went a little hard on that mom back there.”

  “She was in shock. She needed to be shocked out of it.”

  “Fair enough,” Waylon said. “Just try and remember, she’s a victim too. Her daughter just got snatched in front of her eyes.”

  “Are you questioning my methods, Bill?”

  “No, come on.”

  “Good. Because you asked to work with me, remember? You asked for me, I didn’t ask for you.”

  “Hey, calm down,” Waylon said. “What the hell’s gotten into you?”

  Rein pounded the dashboard with his fist. “Patrol had this under control! There was no need for us to break position on our surveillance! You took off like a bat out of hell without even asking me.”

  “What in the fuck is your main malfunction, Rein? We just caught the biggest break of our lives with this case and you’re acting like somebody pissed in your Cheerios! A surveillance detail? Are you high? We’ve got a description, a vehicle, and an active lead on the asshole we’ve been looking for!”

  Rein took a deep breath and ran his hands through his hair before he answered. He didn’t want to tell Bill Waylon what a goddamn moron he was, but it was hard to speak without clenching his teeth. “One, this victim is too old. Two, our suspect doesn’t snatch women off the street, Bill,” he grimaced. “He grooms them and lures them.”

  “You know what? You walk around like you’re some high and mighty bullshit, but maybe this one time, just this one time, you’re wrong.”

  “I’m not wrong.”

  “How can you be so sure!”

  “Because we don’t have any other fucking reports of abductions, Bill! Jesus, our kids are a lot younger and they just go missing. How in the hell can you be this dense?”

  Waylon stomped on the brake, tires spitting gravel into the air. He jammed the car into park and leapt out, slamming the door shut before Rein could unbuckle his seat belt.

  The station wagon was parked a hundred feet ahead of them, off the side of the road, hidden in the shadows. Five cop cars surrounded it, but mercifully, Rein saw none of them were using their flashlights. They hovered around the car, quiet, with one hand on their pistols. All around them, the woods were alive with bugs and frogs and things that crept through the brush close enough to smell them, then scurry away.

  Rein pressed the back of his hand on the station wagon’s hood, feeling it was still warm. It hadn’t been there long. “You and you,” he whispered, pointing at the two nearest officers, “stay with the car in case he comes back. Everyone else, split up in different directions. Let’s find this girl.”

  “Look for tracks. Stop and listen. Use those hunting skills, boys,” Waylon added. “Sneak up and get the drop on him if you can, then raise hell so the rest of us come running.”

  The group dissolved into the woods. They crouched low, rolling the soles of their boots over the soft earth instead of crashing through them.

  “That’s one good thing about working in an area filled with redneck cops,” Waylon said, watching the men disappear. “They know the woods.”

  Rein eyed the path leading through the trees beyond the station wagon’s passenger side door. “I’m going this way,” Rein said, tilting his head.

  “Sounds good. I’m coming with you.”

  “We’ll cover more ground if you go a different way.”

  Waylon raised a handful of thorny branches out of the way so Rein could duck beneath them. “You don’t leave your wingman,” Waylon said. “Dumbass.”

  “Fine. Just don’t complain about how I do it.”

  “Let me tell you something,” Waylon said. “Being your partner sucks. Most guys come to work and complain to their partner about their relationship with their wives, but guess what? I go home to my wife and complain about my relationship with you. Think about that for a second.”

  “And yet here you are.”

  “Because I know if I can put up with your bullshit for long enough, we’re probably going to catch the bad guy.”

  The darkness all around them took shape and form as their eyes adjusted, revealing the outlines of trees with thick foliage that shimmered in the moonlight. Waylon waved for Rein to follow him around a thicket of burrs and long, thin vines covered in vicious little thorns. Rein stopped and lowered to his haunches, sniffing the air. “What is that?” he whispered.

  Waylon stopped and sniffed too. “Something dead nearby?”

  “No,” Rein said, inhaling deeply. “It’s gas.” He shot to his feet and spun around, searching for the right direction.

  “Shit, I smell it too,” Waylon said. He pointed east, farther into the woods, “This way, come on.”

  * * *

  Brenda Drake came to and opened her eyes at the first splash of gasoline across her shirt. Tucker had not stripped her naked, like he’d first intended. He’d realized if he soaked her clothes, they would burn faster against her skin. He splashed gas on her across the face and hair and soaked her good from her shoes and socks all the way back up her bare legs to her short-shorts and wetted down her tank top until it was see-through. He sprayed until the can was empty, and set it on the ground next to the fire extinguisher.

  She struggled against the duct tape binding her wrists to the branch over her head, kicking wildly, but it was useless. The tape covering her mouth muffled everything, but her eyes said enough. They were open so wide he could see white all around the bright blue disks there.

  He wondered how long he could let her burn before he had to put her out. It was going to be tricky.

  Tucker picked up a towel from his duffel bag and wiped his hands clean, then raised his Bible ceremoniously and opened it to the third and final section. “The purified flesh,” he said, reading the words written there.

  Brenda thrashed against the tree limb when she saw him raise the lighter in his hand. He flicked the button to ignite it. “I now burn away your impurities and consecrate you.”

  He bent down to light the trail of wet earth between them. Just as he was about to touch the flame to the gas, two men came crashing through the woods, running right at him.

  Jacob Rein cut left, lowering his shoulder like a linebacker and launching into the air, square at Tucker’s midsection to knock him to the ground.

  Bill Waylon went for the girl. He grabbed her wrists, trying to wrench her free of the tape but couldn’t, then ripped at the tape, trying to tear it away but couldn’t, and finally just grabbed the entire branch and tried to snap it from the trunk, but all the goddamn thing would do was bend.

  Behind him, Tucker and Rein were fighting. Tucker had wrapped both of his arms around the back of Rein’s neck, squeezing as hard as he could. Rein was trying to punch his way free, driving his fists
into Tucker’s ribs, but clutched in such a way he couldn’t get his arms back far enough to gain any momentum. To Waylon’s horror, he saw the lighter was still in Tucker’s hand, and he was trying to get it to light.

  Gas saturated the ground all around them. Puddles of it lay at the girl’s feet. It was smeared all over Waylon’s hands and clothes now too. The fumes surrounding them all would ignite first, consuming them in a ball of fire that would send them running blindly into the darkness as they burned.

  Flick. Tucker’s thumb rotated the lighter’s dial, flick-flick-flick, and Waylon gave up trying to free the girl, ignoring her muffled screams to come back. He raced for the first thing he could find, a red fire extinguisher just a few feet from where Tucker and Rein lay flailing.

  Flick. A spark.

  Waylon yanked the extinguisher’s pin free and drove the nozzle between Rein’s and Tucker’s faces and pulled the trigger.

  The chemical foam blasted Rein in the eyes and filled his mouth and nostrils. He retched and reeled back, straining to breathe over the powdery chemical cloud that seized his lungs. His eyes burned as he swiped the foam away with his shirt. Hot, stinging tears spilled out of his eyes as he bent forward and coughed, trying to bring up the foam from inside his chest.

  The woods all around were alive with the sound of crashing. Cops ran toward them, shouting, “Over here!”

  Rein saw that Waylon had Tucker Pennington pinned to the ground, one knee in the side of the young man’s neck, and one in the small of his back, using the leverage to crank Tucker’s arm. Tucker’s face was covered in foam, and he’d vomited across his chest, screaming he was blind.

  Thick branches all around them shook and cracked as the rest of the uniformed officers rushed in. They shoved Waylon out of the way to get to Tucker. The away game had begun. They piled on top of him and beat him until the woods were filled with his pleas for them to stop.

  2

  Tucker Pennington stared at Bill Waylon through the darkened glass of the window and didn’t blink once. Waylon was standing in the hallway outside of the interview room and Tucker could see him clear as day. Real police departments have two-way mirrors, where suspects can do nothing but stare at themselves. Where they had no idea who was watching on the opposite side of the glass. In all the local stations in their county, it was rarely anything more than a cheap tinted sticker slapped on by the local public works department.