The Iron Ring

by Matty Dalrymple

  “I have no desire to serve as your lackey. If I found a way out once, I can find a way out again—only this time I will be more careful.”

  Theo laughed, but there was no amusement behind it. “Louise, surely you don’t think you ever actually escaped. It was all quite carefully laid out—the ineffectively masked service door in your closet, your path through the lower level, guided by lighting and strategically placed staff, a conveniently unsecured exit door, an otherwise impregnable fence breached by a small stream. Even my approval for Maja to provide you with more suitable clothing for your adventure. In fact, if all the other arrangements failed, we would have been able to locate you by the tracking device embedded in the sole of one of your walking shoes.” He pulled out the chair and sat. “I must admit that your fortitude in the face of the physical challenges was impressive.”

  “You expected me to try to leave.”

  “I suspected you might. I was curious if you would.”

  “You can’t control everything, or control it forever.”

  Theo leaned back and steepled his fingers.

  “Did you notice anything unusual about Edmund Rinnert?” he asked.

  Louise shifted. “No.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, he was missing a thumb.”

  “Yes. He had all his digits when he got here.”

  Louise felt the blood drain from her face.

  Theo reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a long, narrow packet. He opened the packet and removed a scalpel. He turned it contemplatively. “And can you guess the circumstances in which he lost his thumb?”

  Louise slowly shook her head.

  “He tried to leave the compound.” He looked up at her, waiting for a reply.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. I wasn’t happy about his attempt to leave.”

  Louise stared at him, her eyes wide.

  “I don’t want you to think we’re barbarians. We didn’t hack off his thumb like some gang of Italian mafioso.” He paused, then continued. “No, it was all very civilized—a simple operation in our little dispensary.” He nodded toward the screen behind Louise. “He was completely anesthetized the entire time.”

  Louise felt the jagged edges of her broken nails digging into her palms. She willed herself not to faint.

  “We removed his left thumb, believing that to be a more humane option than his right. Unfortunately, we learned after the operation that he is left-handed.” He looked up at Louise. “I wouldn’t like to have to repeat the operation, but it could be easily done if necessary.”

  The silence spun out.

  Finally, he said, “Will it be necessary?”

  She licked her lips. “No.” It came out as a whisper.

  “No,” he said. He picked up the scalpel, folded it into its wrapping, and slipped it back into his jacket pocket. “I didn’t think so.”

  44

  Philip and Rey ate dinner in the same restaurant the next day, Rey having extracted a promise that if Philip needed to use the restroom, they would return to their rooms.

  Philip took his time choosing an appetizer and an entrée. When he ordered dessert, despite his stomach’s protestations, Rey glowered but didn’t countermand the order. He wanted to make sure there was plenty of time for his instructions of the previous day to be put into effect.

  When he had finished his pie and suspected that Rey wouldn’t put up with him ordering another cup of coffee, they headed back to their rooms.

  As usual, they entered through Rey’s room, and Philip passed through the communicating door to his own room. Rey swung the door shut behind him and he heard the click of the lock on her side. He pressed his ear against it.

  He heard her steps cross the room, a long silence, then the steps recross, headed toward the bathroom. Then heard a gasp, a grunt, the sounds of a brief struggle, then silence. In a moment he heard the lock turn and the door swung open.

  “If it ain’t Philip Casal in the flesh.” Wayne Watchman stepped into Philip’s room and enveloped him in a bear hug. “Good to see you, Casal.”

  Philip muffled a yelp. “Watch it—I got shot in the shoulder a week ago.”

  Wayne stepped back, looking sheepish. “You should have said.”

  Philip looked over his shoulder into Rey’s room.

  “How’d it go?”

  “Smooth as silk.”

  They crossed to where Rey’s pantsuit-clad legs protruded from the bathroom door. She was lying on her back and her jacket had fallen open, revealing an empty shoulder holster. A syringe lay on the floor next to her.

  “There you go,” said Wayne, handing Philip a gun.

  “It would be handy to have the holster, too,” said Philip.

  They got Rey into a sitting position and Wayne slipped off her jacket, then Philip unfastened and removed the shoulder holster.

  “Don’t knock her head on the floor,” he said as Wayne lowered her back onto the ground.

  Philip resized the holster, slipped it on, and holstered the gun.

  “I brought ties and tape,” said Wayne.

  “Did you get the dose from Doc?”

  “Yup.”

  “Then we don’t need to tie her up—she should be out for a couple of hours.”

  They searched the room and found about a thousand in cash, but nothing else of interest. Philip handed the cash to Wayne. “Here you go. Although I may need to ask for a loan until things get straightened out.”

  Wayne pocketed the money. “You’re a stand-up guy, Casal. Want me to put out the Do Not Disturb sign?”

  “No. She requested no room service, so no one’s going to come by. I figure when she comes around she’ll call back to the mother ship for instructions, but by that time, we’ll be long gone.”

  They took Wayne’s Pontiac Sunbird south from Flagstaff, then turned west toward Jerome, stopping along the way to pick up a burner phone for Philip and, as they neared Wayne’s trailer, a pizza and six-pack for dinner.

  Wayne normally shared his trailer with his girlfriend, but, conveniently for Philip, they had just had a falling out, and she had moved in with friends in Prescott. Unfortunately for Philip, if the trailer had ever been clean, it had been the girlfriend who had kept it that way. There was a fog of cigarette smoke in the air and dirty dishes overflowed the trailer’s small kitchen counter onto various other surfaces.

  “Jesus, Watchman, you’re a pig,” Philip said as he picked up a couple of crusty plates from the kitchen table. He glanced around the kitchen. “Do you have a sponge I can wipe the table down with?”

  “I don’t know. Use a T-shirt from the laundry.”

  “I’m not wiping the table down with one of your dirty T-shirts,” said Philip. He located a box of Brillo pads under the sink. “I wouldn’t normally use these on a kitchen table,” he said, removing one from the box, “but in this case I think it’s not a bad idea.”

  After pizza and two beers, Philip stepped out of the trailer, happy to have a break from the cigarette funk and the boxing match that Wayne had playing at top volume on his big screen TV. He pulled out his phone. He was fairly sure he remembered Lizzy’s cell number—he had had to retrieve it from his office answering machine when Mortensen’s operatives had stolen his phone and wallet back in Sedona—but when he dialed it, he got a generic voicemail message. He wasn’t sure enough that he had remembered the number correctly to leave the message he wanted to leave.

  He tapped the phone on his hand. He did have Andy’s number, which he had gotten from the phone that Viklund had given him. However, considering his current situation, he didn’t necessarily want to open a two-way communication channel. Furthermore, it didn’t seem out of the question that Viklund might be monitoring calls to Andy, or even Owen, and might be able to determine the caller’s location. If Viklund could get police cases closed and attorney general investigations cancelled, Philip wasn’t about to underestimate what data he might have access to.

  However, Philip
did want to know how Owen was doing. He called the main number at William Penn University Hospital, ready to hang up if they put him through to Owen’s room. He was relieved to learn that Owen had been discharged several days earlier.

  An hour later, he again tried the number he remembered for Lizzy, and again got voicemail. He sighed. He felt more confident of his assessment that Lizzy seemed like the kind of girl who would have a personalized voicemail message than of his having accurately remembered the number. In any case, from a practical point of view, he really had no need to talk with her—he was sure Andy would have been only too happy to convey the message to Lizzy that she was released from the promise she had made to Philip.

  45

  Lizzy sat in the back of the van, which was parked in the corner of an all-night truck stop. She didn’t want to go back to a Walmart if she could help it. She didn’t know what the rules were about parking at the truck stop, so she was trying to make the van look unoccupied. Not wanting to use the flashlight app, she groped around the back of the van when she needed to locate something: one of the gallon jugs to take a sip of water, a bruised banana from her dwindling supply of food for dinner.

  She was sitting under the sheet tent, tapping listlessly on her phone. Like picking at a painful scab, she had been searching obsessively for an obituary for someone named Wilson living near the location of the Walmart back east. She was both frustrated and relieved that so far her search had not turned up any results.

  Lizzy jumped when her phone rang. It was the same unfamiliar number from which she had gotten a call earlier. The caller hadn’t left a message—she figured it must be a telemarketer. As she had done earlier, she hit Ignore.

  Switching her attention masochistically to another painful wound, Lizzy typed another search into her phone: Daisy Flowers.

  The results displayed and Lizzy sat up, her breath catching in her throat.

  Police Release Identity of Body Found in Bear Valley

  She tapped on the first result, timestamped just a few hours before, with a shaking finger.

  A homicide investigation is underway in Bear Valley following the discovery of a woman's body in a dumpster, police said.

  Officers responded to the scene at a shopping center in the 2100 block of Victorville Road at approximately 7:30 a.m.

  Police said the body was found by an employee of one of the businesses based in the shopping center.

  In a nearby ravine, police found a knapsack containing a driver’s license identifying the victim as Daisy Flowers, 21, of Levittown, Pennsylvania.

  Bear Valley Coroner Jason Worthen confirmed the cause of death was strangulation.

  Anyone with additional information that may assist the police in solving this crime are encouraged to contact …

  The picture accompanying the article must have been Daisy’s high school graduation picture—a formal shot, her chin resting on her softly closed fist. Her long blond hair was tucked behind her ears, just like when Lizzy had first seen her at the side of the road, her thumb out for a ride. Just like Lizzy used to wear hers. Just like Tobe Hanrick’s victim Sarah Pearson had no doubt worn hers when she wasn’t dressed up for her sister’s wedding.

  Lizzy switched her phone off and slipped deeper into her sleeping bag, pulling it up over her head, her cheeks wet with tears.

  It was impossible that Tobe Hanrick had been involved in Daisy’s death, and nearly impossible that his gang had been, but whoever had wrapped his hands around Daisy’s neck—whoever had squeezed the life out of her just as she had almost reached her destination—was no better than they were.

  When she got to Williams and killed Tobe Hanrick, it would not only be to avenge his murder of Philip’s prison mentor and of Sarah Pearson. He would stand in for Daisy’s murderer as well.

  And when he was dead, Lizzy might walk out of the prison and get in the van and just keep driving into the Arizona desert until the gas ran out, then get out of the van and start walking. One way or the other, it seemed as if terrible things always happened to the people whose paths crossed hers. Maybe out there in the desert, she would permanently remove that danger from the world.

  46

  Mitchell arrived at the site by helicopter.

  When he first glimpsed their destination, miles from any other sign of human habitation, it looked like a railroad model. As they descended, the details of the complex became clearer: the bulldozers, backhoes, and dump trucks parked at the borders of the large cleared area toward which the helicopter was headed. The derrick-like construction that the pilot gave a wide berth. The piles of stone around the perimeter of the enclosure, which was bounded by a razor-wire-topped chain link fence. The sprays of water shooting out of pipes, the droplets glittering prettily in the early morning sun. The corrugated metal building, in front of which a group of a half dozen men, most wearing hardhats, were gathered. Lined up on the dirt road leading into the enclosure were two big rigs towing trailers carrying cylindrical silver tanks.

  As the helicopter neared the ground, Mitchell could see what was keeping the trucks from entering the enclosure: a second group of a half dozen men, several wearing scarves across the lower half of their faces, stood in the road outside the fence. Two of them held a banner, but it snapped in the wash from the helicopter’s blade and Mitchell couldn’t read the rough lettering. A few signs that had been leaning up against the fence went skittering away across the scrub-covered ground, and one man broke away from the group to chase them down.

  The men blocking the gate and the men inside the enclosure watched the helicopter descend.

  When it touched down, the other passenger, Brad Fortin, said to Mitchell through the headset, “Stay here for a minute.” Fortin, a stocky, dark-haired man sporting an impressive handlebar mustache, pulled off his headset and jumped to the ground. He strode to the group of men standing next to the building and spoke to them for a minute. With a few last glances toward the helicopter, they disappeared into the building.

  Fortin jogged back to the helicopter and waved Mitchell out, then gave a thumbs up to the pilot. Mitchell followed Fortin to the building and heard and felt the thwack of the blades as the helicopter rose behind them. They stepped into the building, closing the door against the swirling dust.

  Mitchell expected to see the men in the building—a cavernous space filled with equipment—but it was deserted as far as he could see.

  “They’re in a room in back,” said Fortin. “Viklund said to keep them out of the way, unless there was trouble and we needed their help.”

  “Do you work for Theo?” asked Mitchell. Fortin’s appearance didn’t fit the mold of most of Theo’s staff, and he had never heard anyone in Theo’s employ refer to him so informally.

  “No, I work for the owner of the mine,” said Fortin. “Viklund’s a friend of his. Or wants to be.” He pulled a small earpiece from his pocket and handed it to Mitchell. “This is paired with your cell phone. Just press one and you’ll be connected to Viklund. We’ll send the drone up as soon as the turbulence from the ’copter dies down, and that will provide a video feed. We’ll be able to see if you need any help.”

  Mitchell could tell by his look that Fortin thought it quite possible that Mitchell would need help.

  “I’ll be in back with the guys,” Fortin continued. “You have everything you need?”

  “Like what?” asked Mitchell, a thread of panic creeping into his voice.

  “I don’t know,” said Fortin impatiently. “Viklund said you’d bring what you needed with you.”

  “Oh. Yes, I have what I need,” replied Mitchell.

  “Okay. Let’s make sure the hook-up’s working.”

  Mitchell fitted the earpiece over his ear, then got out the mobile phone that Theo had provided and pressed one.

  “Hello, Mitchell,” he heard. “Arrived safely, I see.”

  Mitchell nodded to Fortin, who gave him a thumbs up and then turned and strode off toward the back of the building.

  �
��Yes. Can you hear me?” Mitchell asked.

  “Yes, I can hear you. Did you enjoy Bennett Valley?” asked Theo.

  Mitchell had spent the previous day at Theo’s West Coast base—a rambling hacienda overlooking vineyards in Sonoma County—catered to by an old Swedish couple who evidently spoke no English. Among the many attractions of the location was its balmy weather—a good thirty degrees warmer than here in northeastern Arizona.

  “It was very nice. Thank you.”

  “And I trust the caretakers did nothing that would have tempted you to subject them to the crush?” Theo asked, a smile in his voice.

  “No, they were very accommodating.”

  “We’ll send you back there when we’re done here, and I can guarantee you plenty of time to recover. When you’re feeling rested, you might want to make a visit to my home in Switzerland.”

  A movement in the sky caught Mitchell’s eye, and he looked up to see a drone appear from over the building and then hover fifty feet above the dirt yard. The men at the gate turned to look at the drone, then drew together in consultation, glancing nervously back at the machine. The door of the first of the two trucks outside the gate opened and the driver stepped out onto the running board, his gaze more curious than concerned. Mitchell could see Non-Potable Water stenciled on the side of the tank on the trailer.

  “The drone is in position and I can see the site,” said Theo. “Can you see the targets from where you are?”

  “Yes. I’m at a window at the front of the building.” He hesitated. “I think one of them is a woman.”

  “Perhaps,” said Viklund, “but it doesn’t mean she’s any less culpable—or any less dangerous—because of her gender. Give yourself the injection now.”

  Mitchell shrugged out of his coat and shirt, then removed the packet containing the vial and syringe from a jacket pocket. The quantity of liquid in the vial looked like less than what he had injected in the Washington restaurant. Perhaps the after-effects would be less, as well.