by Robert Rand
The phone went dead. "Thank you" she whispered to the dial tone.
Chapter 4
Spanky hung up the phone. Kidnapped. The thought that someone would hurt his sister and niece was almost incomprehensible for the burly, leather clad biker. Picking up the phone again he made a call to the Iron Horsemen Clubhouse. Frank "Spanky" Zigan had been a member of that outlaw motorcycle club for twenty-two years. Help he needed - help they would provide.
"Yeah?" the voice on the other end answered.
"It's Spanky. Who's there and when can you all be ready to ride?"
"It's me, Spanky, Fat Jack. Twin, and Nolan are here." After a moments hesitation he asked, "A, B or C, Bro?"
"C. We are riding for Vegas. Meet me at the top of the Cajon Pass at the I-fifteen and Highway one thirty-eight."
"C" meant that all weapons needed to be brought by car. The car would be driven by one of the women. The guys would be on their Harleys, the club colors - the logo patch that identified them to be Iron Horsemen - would be worn under their jackets to draw less scrutiny from the law. It was an easy code. As far as they knew it had never been fully figured out by anyone.
Spanky next called the law offices of Ralph Vasquez, Esq.. The secretary informed him of Sullivan's arrest and the fact that Vasquez and Scott Hudspeth had already left for Las Vegas.
With the calls completed, Spanky pulled on his denim cut - the sleeveless Levi jacket that the club colors were sewn to - followed by a heavy leather jacket, gloves and a small helmet that covered only the crown of his head and just barely complied with California's helmet law.
Spanky stared up at the collection of photographs that adorned the west wall of his living room. Centered among the more than two-dozen framed photos of motorcycles, leather wearing biker men and tit-flashing biker women, was a portrait taken at the Olan Mills Studio two years earlier. Granny Zigan held little Lisa on her lap, April stood to Granny's right, her husband, Sullivan, directly behind and himself to the left. So much had changed since that picture had been taken. Granny was gone, passed quietly in her sleep. Sullivan in jail, April, pretty April with her long red hair and springtime green eyes, in a hospital while the baby, named after Spanky's biological sister and April's childhood friend who had died as a teenager from an overdose, kidnapped.
"I'll find her, Granny, or end up on my way to see you trying." He spoke to the spirit of the woman who had brought a battered and bruised runaway girl home and made them all a family. April was that girl, and family meant everything to this giant of a man with the wiry red beard that was long and full. He pulled out his keys, locked the door behind him and went to his bike, which was parked there on the front porch. The new full-dress Electra Glide was the Rolls Royce of road bikes. It had a full faring, solid saddlebags and a trunk, all painted to match the silver trimmed gloss black on the tank. The faring contained a CD/radio, CB, radar detector, cigar lighter and GPS unit. With the turn of the key and a push of a button the big hog was brought to life. The deep throated roar of the V-Twin motor telling the world that this was a Harley Davidson - so move over.
Chapter 5
Sullivan Rourk didn't look up when the door to the interview room opened. He was too exhausted. His head hung down, eyes fixed on his clasped hands resting on the steel table before him. The table was bolted to the floor. The wooden hardback chair he sat in was not. Neither was the one across from him. The door closed. The empty chair made a screeching sound as its feet were drug back across the tile.
"I'm not telling you again - I want a lawyer, a phone call and a bondsman,” Rourk said without looking up.
"Well, you got the first wish" Vasquez replied.
Sullivan’s head shot up. A surge of renewed vitality reanimated the man who had so recently appeared lost in a pit of despair. “Esquire!” His voice conveyed his dismay at seeing his long time attorney here – especially since the cops hadn’t allowed him near a phone since his arrest nearly 5 hours earlier. “How…?”
“Chief De la Cruz called” the attorney answered, “But that’s not important.” Vasquez went on to explain the possibility of him getting out as long as he answered some questions. “I didn’t stick around to find out what questions he had. Scott Hudspeth is getting that information. The way I see it, if you had something to say you would let me know yourself. Am I right?”
“Yeah.” Rourk looked down at his hands again. A moment later, he looked his lawyer in the eye and told him “They kidnapped my daughter. Get me a bail and get me out of here.”
“And you want to be your child’s ‘Knight in Shining Armor’, leaving the police out of it. Am I close?”
“You know I don’t work with the cops, Esquire.”
The attorney leaned forward, resting his weight on the palms of his hands and said in a harsh whisper, “You are a fool!”
Just then, the door swung open. Scott Hudspeth walked in, a uniformed officer pulling the door shut behind him. “Hi ya, Sullivan.” He offered his hand as he spoke.
“Scott.”
“Listen. April is in the hospital.”
Sullivan shot out of his chair, tipping it over in the process. He grabbed Hudspeth by the shoulders, “My God! Is she okay? How could I forget about April? The note!” Sullivan sank to his knees. “The note said they hurt Mom…”
Putting his hand on his friend’s shoulder, Scott tried to soften the details, “Sullivan, she’ll be okay, but they broke both of her legs.”
The men were both shocked at this news, Sullivan getting back to his feet and turning to Vasquez, begged, “Get me out of here!”
“What else, Scott?” the attorney asked, ignoring his clients’ plea.
“They want a sworn complaint about the kidnapping so they can investigate it more fully.
“Bucko here won’t cooperate,” chided Vasquez.
The investigator continued, “Do you blame him? The law rarely translates into justice, Ralph. You know that as well as anyone. If not better.”
“I’ll arrange bail while Scott goes to check on your better half” announced the lawyer as he stood to leave.
“Thanks, Esquire,” Rourk said in a sincere voice.
“If I’m to defend you, you will need to fill me in on the details later. I’ll get the police reports faxed to my office. Scott,” turning to the P.I., “Work this one exclusively to its conclusion.”
With that said, the suave legal-eagle turned and rapped his knuckles on the door. He and Hudspeth left Rourk standing alone in the small, windowless room.
Once in the elevator that would take the two men back to the lobby, Scott commented, “You sure didn’t stick around long with ol’ Lieutenant Bobby D.”
The lawyer looked over at his associate and said, “You were in law enforcement for a dozen years. In that time did you ever give a defense attorney ANY information that couldn’t be gleaned from the reports that wasn’t a lie?”
Hudspeth laughed and answered, “Nope. Your point is made and taken.”
They stopped at the counter again once they were in the lobby. The same attractive blond officer was there. After providing Vasquez with the bail information - $100,000 – she slid a police department business card across the white Formica. “Any more questions and ya’ll can reach me at home,” she whispered, while smiling sexily at the handsome, immaculately tailored Vasquez.
“I’ll most definitely have more questions,” he said as he pocketed the card.
Once outside, walking across the courtyard toward the visitor parking, Scott told his employer, “Not bad.”
Vasquez replied, “I would have bed that woman solely on her looks. For the added bonus of having someone on the inside of this hostile bureaucracy, I might even take the time to learn her name.”
Hudspeth chuckled. “Drop me at the hospital.”
Chapter 6
“Look, April, we are working on Sullivan’s bail right now.” Scott tried to console her after breaking the news of her husbands arrest for murdering the scum who had
brought the note from their daughter, but April was inconsolable. The abduction of her child, the savage beating and now, the man she needed most was in police custody for killing a man. It was too much, too much for her to accept all at once. She desperately wanted to pull her knees to her chest and curl into a ball. Withdraw into herself by the act of making herself as small as possible. She damned the braces that held her legs straight out in front of her and cried in frustration.
“April.” Scott had to take her chin in his hand and force her to look at him. “We will find her. Do you hear me?”
Slowly she nodded her understanding and fought to gain some composure.
“Good girl.” The investigator was firm, gentle and condescending all at the same time. “Now you need to tell me everything that you can remember.”
“You’ll get Sullivan out?” she sniffled back the snot that was attempting to run out her nose. “No cops.” She was vehement about keeping the police out of it.
“That’s the plan” he assured her without making any promises. He would try like hell to keep the cops out, but they were already in too deep to turn them out now.
April went over every detail twice with the investigator and was half way through the third time when the bedside phone rang. Scott picked it up. Sullivan was calling from Vasquez’s cell phone. Hudspeth held the phone for April.
The moment she heard his voice her heart broke again as her anguish welled anew.
“They took her!” was all she could get out before the sobs took away her ability to speak.
Hudspeth got back on the line. “Sullivan, we don’t have a lot of time to waste.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Can she be taken home? Private nurses, whatever it takes.”
“Probably. I’ll check into it.” The phone clicked off before he could say any more.
The reunion between April and Sullivan was emotionally charged and would have remained so if Hudspeth and the lawyer hadn’t stepped in and focused the two bedraggled, overwrought parents of the missing Lisa Rourk.
April’s doctor had agreed to discharge her the next morning, as long as a private nurse was engaged. She would need continued intravenous fluids and the occasional administration of controlled pain medication.
“I’ve gotta go.” Sullivan kissed his wife on her forehead. “I’ll find her,” he promised, as he and the other two men left.
Chapter 7
Moonlight seeped through the cracks between the boards that covered the single window in the otherwise darkened room. Dust motes floated in the silvery shafts looking like white laser beams to the terrified child curled into a protective ball on the floor as far from the light as she could get.
Lisa Rourk trembled with a combination of fear and chill. The room was void of any furniture. There used to be carpeting, she knew from the sharp tack strips along the edge of the walls on the hardwood floor. She had pricked her hands several times as she searched the room on hands and knees. She looked first for a light. The switch didn't work. Next, she sought a way out. There was only one door - and those horrible fuckers (as she called them, delighting in her secret use of the expletive) could be heard on the other side. The boards covering the window proved to be too solidly secured to the wall for her limited strength to budge. Finally, she scoured the dusty floor for something to use as a weapon. All she could find was the tack strip, which was nailed to the floor. After a close inspection with fingers that were becoming numb from the effort of prying at every few inches of board, she found a section that was a little loose. A nail screeched as it started to come free. The sound seemed to be amplified in the empty space of the room. Lisa froze, her heart beating like thunder in her chest, as fear that her captors had heard and would come rushing in at any moment paralyzed her.
When no one came in after several minutes that crawled by with a painful slowness, Lisa crawled to the door and listened.
"We need more beer, Shotgun" one voice was saying.
"What the fuck do I look like, Shaggy, a Goddamn liquor store?" said a second voice.
"Eat shit, Shotgun. I'm goin' after another eighteen pack,” said the first one.
"Get that kid somethin' to eat if you're goin' out" the second one said. "Shotgun" and "Shaggy,” they called one another. 'Stupid names', Lisa thought, as she made her way back to the loose board.
After another few minutes, filled with fear at being caught, Lisa had a three-foot section of the tack strip in her hands. She was exhausted from the combined events of the day and now curled into her protective ball.
The one called Shaggy had left. The car sounded loud, not like the quiet limo that they had brought her here in. A radio went on somewhere beyond the door. Some hard rock guitars screeching, then static as the dial was turned, finally resting on a country station. Lisa knew the song well and would have called it ironic if she had known what ironic meant. Toby Keith and Willy Nelson were singing about fighting evil forces then meeting up at the saloon so they could get whiskey for the men and beer for the horses. A smile spread across her dirty, tear-stained face as she remembered sneaking a bottle of her daddy's Coors Light and pouring it into her tea set so she could serve it to her stuffed horse after hearing the song for the first time. She had been ten.
The deadbolt turning in the door brought her back to the present and the present stole the smile from her face.
Slowly the door swung open. Silhouetted in the doorway was one of the 'fuckers'. The light spilled in, causing Lisa to blink and squint as her eyes tried to adjust. She did her best to conceal the tack strip, but it was too long and too sharp.
"Whatcha got there, brat?" asked the 'fucker'.
Lisa scrambled to her feet and held the tack strip like a baseball bat. She was a thin, coltish child who was just beginning to pass into the bloom of womanhood, nearly twelve and athletic, but hardly a match for the six foot tall, two-hundred and twenty pound man that stood across from her.
He laughed; it was a loud, braying sound that reminded her of the donkeys they had ridden when her parents had taken her to the Grand Canyon. He was the one who had first attacked them. He had hurt her mom, and now he was laughing at her.
Lisa hated being laughed at.
She crossed the room in three long strides, swinging the stick as she neared her captor. He reached out to catch the stick with his right hand, not noticing the dozens of sharp steel tacks sticking through it.
"Aw, shit!" he cried as the points cut into his palm. Automatically he pushed the stick away and grabbed his injured hand with the other hand.
Lisa drew back again and swung with every ounce of strength her anger and fear could muster. "FUCKER!!!" she screamed, as she started forward.
He looked up just in time to see the board as it raked his face. Blood spurted from the furrows that now spread in a haphazard diagonal, streaking from the left side of his brow to the right side of his mouth. The tacks had sliced through the left eye. Its clear fluid dripped down his cheek. "You fucking little cunt!" he screamed at her, while intermittently trying to grab her with his good hand and trying to apply pressure to his bleeding face.
Lisa continued hitting her abductor. Over and over, she hit the burly man. Each slap of the stick against his flesh brought more blood. "FUCKER! YOU FUCKING FUCKER!" She was hysterical. That hysteria showed itself to be an effective equalizer against this bigger, stronger opponent.
The hysteria and the tack strip.
It was his turn to curl up. He dropped to the floor, covering his head with his arms and pulling his knees to his chest, trying to leave as little area as possible exposed to the vicious onslaught this little girl had brought.
Lisa tore his arms and back to shreds while he cried out for her to stop, "Please! No more! Come on you fucking bitch, stop!"
Working her way around the pitiful, bleeding man, she kicked him low in the ass, catching him in the balls. His groan of pain brought her a lot of pleasure - so she kicked him there again.
He was beyond being
able to protect himself. He was bordering on unconsciousness when she finally stopped.
Her breathing was ragged. Sweat stained the back and armpits of her shirt. Her blond hair hung in damp strings that were flecked with his blood. "Look at me!" she demanded.
Slowly he spread his elbows, still holding the crown of his head, and exposed a sliver of his face.
"My daddy told me to never call a man a punk or a bitch," Her voice echoed an age far greater than the eleven-plus years she had lived, "but I think he won't mind in this case you Punk Bitch FUCKER!"
With that, she swung once more, catching him on the arm before fleeing through the door.
On the table were a gun, a dozen or more empty cans of Budweiser and a Motorola cellular phone. Lisa grabbed the phone and pushed 9-1-1. The phone beeped a strange beep and a deep voice came over the tiny speaker, "Yeah?"
Lisa screamed in surprise at the voice of the one called 'Shaggy'.
"Shotgun! What the fuck's goin' on there?" Shaggy was panicked.
She dropped the phone, knocking over several cans. Grabbing the phone once more, she pushed the off button then the on button. She was relieved to hear a dial tone. 9-1-1 didn't work last time. Lisa punched in her home phone number and pressed send.
As the phone on the other end began to ring, Lisa heard movement to her left. A quick turn of her head revealed Shotgun standing in the doorway, holding the frame for support.
Startled, Lisa cried out and dropped the phone once more. What looked at her through a single, rage-filled eye was a monster. Blood, torn flesh and a puckered blind eye. He looked like he should be dead.
"I'm going to beat you to death, you little cunt-bitch" he growled menacingly.
"No you won't" Lisa said in a soft, even tone, just before grabbing the gun from the table.