by Nic Saint
The response was short and powerful, and Gordo put down his phone.
“Well? What did he say?”
“We have to catch them.”
“But we just went and done that!”
“I know. So now we should go and do it again.”
“No way!” said Marco, and stomped on his ball cap some more. Only this time a piece of glass had found itself underfoot, and it sneakily sliced into his big toe. And as he was dancing on one leg, he suddenly noticed a woman running in the direction of the house.
It was that nosy reporter. The one who wrote for the Hampton Cove Gazette. And when he looked beyond her, he saw she wasn’t alone. That damn cop was with her.
Chapter 29
The moment Odelia saw a swarm of cats spread out across the road, she halted in her tracks. They’d just walked out of the August house and she’d glanced at the neighboring house, wondering why her intuition suddenly told her to take a closer look, when she suddenly recognized Max, Dooley, Harriet and Brutus!
“It’s them!” she yelled. “Chase, Gran! It’s the cats!”
And then she was running along the road. The moment she reached her darlings, they jumped into her arms, and buried their faces into her neck.
“Finally,” she said. “Finally I found you.”
“Or we found you!” Dooley said, and he was right, of course.
Gran had also run up, and Chase, and they all stared at the old house.
“We were held in there,” said Max. “In an underground room.”
“And Uncle Alec is also in there,” Dooley added.
“He’s being held in a cage,” Max said.
Odelia cut a quick glance to Chase, and he nodded, a grim set to his face. He took out his phone and called it in. And as he was talking to Dolores, giving her instructions, a white van suddenly emerged from the back of the house, and burst through the rickety old fence, then shot out onto the road. It quickly righted itself, then sped right past them. As it did, Odelia saw two men staring back at her: a bearded one, and a scraggly one.
“That’s them!” said Max. “That’s the men that abducted us!”
“I’m on it,” said Chase, and hurried back to his pickup. He wasted no time firing up the engine and then he was roaring away, in hot pursuit of the suspicious van.
“Let’s take a look inside the house,” said Odelia. And along with Gran, and her cats, she set foot for the dilapidated old structure.
Max and Dooley led the way, and as they stepped over a bunch of rubble and decaying carpet, then down some slippery stone steps into the basement, it didn’t take them long to find the cell where Uncle Alec was locked up, along with two more men.
“Oh, thank God,” said Alec. “Once I saw Max and Dooley zipping past, I had a feeling it wouldn’t be long before you got here.”
“Where are the keys?” asked Odelia.
“No idea. Probably upstairs somewhere. Where’s the guard? The bearded giant?”
“Fled,” said Odelia curtly. “Chase is chasing him.”
“Oh, and he’ll get him,” said Alec. “Chase always gets his guy.”
“And so do we,” said Odelia, as she gave her uncle’s hand a squeeze through the bars of his cell.
“Really, Alec?” said Gran. “Couldn’t you keep out of trouble just this once?”
“Nice to see you, too, ma,” said Alec.
“Next time you decide to get yourself kidnapped you should think first.”
“Hey, it’s not as I chose to get nabbed, ma.”
“I’m old, Alec, and my ticker ain’t what it used to be. Did you stop to think what all this stress would do to your poor old mother? Huh?”
“I’m sorry, ma,” said Alec dutifully. “I’m sorry for allowing myself to get snatched.”
“Now go and get me those keys,” Gran told Odelia. “So I can give my son a hug, for Christ’s sakes.”
“Please get my keys, too!” a young man shouted. He had a big zit on the tip of his nose.
“And mine, please, miss!” yelled a bespectacled man in a rumpled brown suit and Burlington socks.
Odelia scaled those stairs as quick as she could, and searched around upstairs. She soon found herself in an old kitchen, the only place that seemed to display recent signs of life, and saw a bunch of rusty old keys lying on the table, next to an ashtray, and a pile of car magazines. She grabbed the keys from the table and hurried back down the stairs, then fumbled with them until she found the right one, and was able to spring her uncle from his prison.
She quickly repeated the procedure with the other two prisoners. One introduced himself as Elon Pope, the lottery winner, and the other as Bertie Balk, the insurance broker with the wife trouble. Both men were over the moon. The story they all told them was the same: they’d found themselves in the vicinity of the Buschmann place, and had been knocked out by a blow to the occipital bone, at which point they must have been dragged downstairs and locked up. To what purpose, they did not know.
“Let’s find out if there are more prisoners,” said Alec, giving his mother a big hug.
And much to Odelia’s surprise, Gran actually got all teary-eyed. “Thank Odelia, and thank those cats!” she said with a shaky voice when Alec started to thank her. “I was just along for the ride!”
“Thanks, honey,” said Alec as he gratefully hugged his niece.
“You’re welcome,” she said, extremely gratified at how everything had turned out.
“Over here, Odelia!’ cried Max, and they all hurried over. Max and the others were in front of a locked door. Behind it, they could hear muffled shouts and pounding.
“It could be more of the bad guys,” said Gran as they deliberated their next move.
“So?” said Alec. “I’m more than ready to tackle them if they try any funny business.”
“Besides,” said Odelia. “Would bad guys lock other bad guys up?”
“Doubtful,” Gran agreed.
“Oh, just open the door already!” cried Elon, who couldn’t stand the tension.
Odelia tried several keys until one fit, and as the door swung open she was surprised to find herself staring into the faces of… two young boys.
Nicky and Jay.
Chapter 30
I was so glad to see my human again that I’d almost forgotten about Uncle Alec. Locked downstairs in that dark, dank cell. Luckily Odelia was so clever to find the right key to let him out, and then two other men, and when they found those two kids, I was starting to see this was all part of some bigger thing. After all, who would want to lock up grown men, little kids, and a bunch of cats in the basement of an abandoned house?
There was definitely something nefarious going on, and I couldn’t wait to find out what it was.
And so when Odelia went in search of more potential victims, while Gran and Alec took the two boys upstairs, along with the two other prisoners, Dooley, Harriet, Brutus and I decided to join her as she went door to door, looking for a solution to this mystery.
Unfortunately—though I should probably say fortunately—we didn’t find more prisoners. What we did find was another staircase, leading even deeper underground.
“I don’t know if I want to go down there,” said Harriet as we stared into the darkness.
“It does look very spooky,” Odelia agreed.
“Maybe we should wait until Chase is back,” said Harriet. “He’ll know what to do.”
“That could take a long time,” said Brutus. “Those bad guys could be halfway to Canada by now.”
“Chase will catch them,” I said. “Didn’t you hear what Uncle Alec said? Chase always gets his man.”
“Maybe we should wait until the police arrive,” said Odelia, then flicked on the Torch app on her phone and let the light play across the wall and those mysterious stairs.
“And what if there are more kids locked up downstairs?” I asked. “Or cats?”
That decided Odelia. She steeled herself, then put her foot on the first step. “I
’m going in, you guys. Who’s with me?”
“We’re right behind you, Odelia,” I said, and also took a step down.
“I’m not going,” said Harriet. “I’ll bet there are rats down there. Big rats. Not nice ones like you see in the movies. I’ll bet the rats down there are huge. And really mean.”
“I’ll protect you, sweetie pie,” said Brutus, bravely pushing out his chest.
“Thanks, but no thanks. I’m staying right here. But go if you must.”
But since Brutus didn’t want to leave his lady love to fend for herself in case there were big nasty rats on this level as well, it was just me and Dooley and Odelia who finally made our way down into the bowels of the earth. Or, as Harriet had pointed out, a potential rat’s nest.
We’d reached the last step when the light from Odelia’s phone hit a steel door. Next to it was a switch, and when she flipped it, light flooded the stairwell.
“That’s much better,” I said. “I hate the dark.”
Odelia laughed. “But you’re a cat, Max. You’re supposed to love the dark.”
“Well, I don’t. Besides, it’s a myth that cats can see in the dark. We can’t.”
“We can see more than humans do, though,” said Dooley.
“That doesn’t mean I have to love the dark.”
His face fell. “You mean… there might be monsters?”
Dooley has a thing about monsters. When he was younger he was always afraid that monsters might be hiding under the bed, and always took a running leap whenever he wanted to jump up on the bed. He also instructed me to stand near the bed when he jumped, in case a monster reached out a tentacle and tried to make a grab for him.
Never once did I see a tentacle, though, or a monster’s claw. Still, as I indicated before, I’m not a big fan of the dark either. You never know what’s lurking there, right?
Odelia tried several keys, but none of them proved a fit. Then I noticed a little red button right next to the light switch, and directed her attention to it. She pushed it, and the door swung open with a click. The moment we stepped through, lights switched on in the space that lay beyond, and much to my surprise we found ourselves standing inside a very large and industrial-looking room, with all kinds of gleaming machines.
“It looks like… a factory,” I said.
“It does,” Odelia agreed. And as she walked towards the machine closest to us, she picked up what looked like a stack of plastic casings. She held one up. It was long and transparent. “Oh, my God,” said Odelia, her eyes widening. “I think I know what this is!”
We walked further into the room, and she crouched down next to a box standing near another big machine. She picked out an object and triumphantly showed it to us.
“Is that a sausage?” asked Dooley.
“No, it’s not,” said Odelia with a smile. “It’s a saucisse.” She gestured to the state-of-the-art equipment. “If I’m not mistaken, this is a meat-processing plant.” She walked over to a machine that stretched out along the wall. “See, this is where the meat goes into the machine, and over there is where it’s stuffed inside these casings. And at the end of the whole process is a packaging machine, where the finished product is boxed up.”
And to prove her point, suddenly a man came walking up to us. He had a small object in his hand. The object was a gun, I now saw, and it was aimed straight at Odelia’s chest!
Chapter 31
“Miss Poole,” said the man, whom Odelia recognized as Chris Duffer. “My brother told me you’ve been snooping around.”
“It’s over, Mr. Duffer,” she said. “The police are on their way. So you better drop that gun and come with me.”
“Thank you for the kind invitation, but I’ll take my chances.” He gestured to the installation. “What a sight, right? This is where the next-generation Duffer was supposed to go into production. In fact this plant should have been up and running already, spitting out thousands of Duffers, but last-minute hitches kept cropping up, baffling my technicians and pushing back the launch. And now, I presume, the whole thing is off.”
“So why did you lock up my uncle? And those two little boys? Did they see something they were not supposed to? Did they catch a glimpse of your family’s secret formula?”
He gave her a look of incredulity. “You haven’t figured it out yet? Shame on you, Miss Poole. I thought you were smarter. But now if you’ll excuse me, I better be going.”
And before she could stop him, he’d walked off, and quickly disappeared from view, his footsteps echoing on the concrete floor.
“Stop!” she yelled, and broke into a run. But of course he knew his way around the place a lot better than she did. A door was slammed shut, and when she raced in the direction of the sound, she quickly reached a steel door on the other side of the large space. She yanked open the door and found herself in an underground garage, just in time to see a gray Mercedes drive off, then up a concrete ramp, and vanish from view.
There were several trucks parked down there in what she assumed was a loading dock for the meat processing factory.
Max and Dooley came bursting through the door. “Odelia!” said Max. “You have to see this!”
She followed them back inside, up a few steps into a control room that overlooked the factory floor. There were several consoles from where the production could be monitored, and screens that showed the various stages of the process, from raw meat to finished boxed-up sausage. Everything looked state-of-the-art and brand-new.
Max and Dooley had moved to the far corner, to a small wall safe.
“What do you think is inside?” asked Max. “Money? Jewels? Gold?”
“Something far more valuable,” she said, crouching down, and as she put her hand to the safe door handle, she discovered that it was open. Chris Duffer’s technicians, whoever they were, must have left it open. She reached inside and took out a small leather-bound notebook. It was old and well-thumbed, and as she leafed through it, saw that it contained notes on how to produce the perfect Duffer, notes probably going back decades, to the first Duffer ever to produce a Duffer. Part of the notes was written in a language she didn’t know, but translations had been provided, in the form of a folded document. She unfolded it, and when she read through its contents, gasped in shock.
It contained a list of ingredients for the Duffer:
- Beef 40%
- Pork 30%
- Chicken 20%
- Feline 5%
- Human 1%
- ‘Proprietary Duffer Mix’ 4%
“Oh, my God,” said Odelia, bringing a shocked hand to her face. She reeled, and had to grab the steel door of the small safe to steady herself.
“What is it, Odelia?” asked Dooley.
“The secret ingredients of the Duffer,” she said. “One percent human flesh, and five percent cat meat.”
Both Max and Dooley gulped. “Oh, my,” said Max softly.
In the distance, she heard sirens, and she knew that soon the entire police force of Hampton Cove would descend on the Buschmann house. The Duffers’ secret was out…
“Do you think this is a new concept?” asked Max. “Or have they been adding human and cat meat to their famous sausages all this time?”
“I don’t know, Max,” said Odelia, who couldn’t imagine anyone would do such a thing. And to think Gran had feasted from these Duffers, and so had her mom and dad. And then she remembered she’d taken a bite herself, and was suddenly sick to the stomach.
“Oh, look,” said Dooley. “The ingredient list for the Proprietary Duffer Mix.”
He was pointing to the bottom of the document she’d dropped to the floor.
She nodded absently, still fighting to keep down the contents of her stomach.
“What is MDMA, Max?” asked Dooley, reading from the list.
“What?!” cried Odelia, picking up the document again. And there it was, at the bottom of a long list of harmless ingredients like onion, garlic, wine, vinegar, pepper and salt: MDMA. A
lso known as XTC.
“So that’s why everyone loves those Duffers so much,” she muttered.
Against the back wall of the control room a glass-door display fridge had been placed, and when she saw the box of Duffers inside she got up and opened the door with shaking hands, taking one out of the box. She turned it over in her hands. No mention of human or cat meat, of course, or MDMA. How had the Duffers gotten away with this for so long?
She needed fresh air. So she staggered down the few steps from the control room, then into the loading dock and up the ramp. She took out her phone and called Chase.
He picked up at the first ring.
“You’ll never know what I just discovered,” she said.
“Yes, I caught those guys, thanks for asking,” said Chase, sounding energized. Nothing like a good car chase to put the pep in a police officer.
“Do you want to know the secret ingredient of the Duffer?”
“The Duffer? You mean the sausage?”
“Colin and Chris Duffer had a meat processing plant constructed right underneath the Buschmann house, probably figuring no one would ever look there. And do you know why they kidnapped all those cats?”
There was silence at the other end while Chase processed this, then said, in a low voice. “No way…”
“Five percent cat meat and one percent human meat.”
“Human meat!”
“And a few scoops of MDMA.”
“XTC? For real?”
“You better get over here. Oh, and Chris Duffer just made a run for it in a gray Mercedes, so you’ll have to track him down, too.”
“I’ll get on it right away,” he promised. “And I’ll tell the coroner to get out there, too. If they used human meat, we need to find out who those victims were, and where their remains are buried.” He paused. “If there are any remains left, of course.”
“This is worse than I imagined, Chase.”