Black Jack: A nail biting, hair-raising thriller (Jack Ryder Book 4) (11 page)

M
ay
2016

I chewed on her last sentence for quite some time wondering if there was any other way to interpret this than that the doctor was going to kill her. Was he going to kill the other kids as well? Had he killed this Rachel? Would he kill Tyler?

“How do you even become a ghost?” I asked my voice trembling slightly by the thought of Tyler in that house with that man. I pushed it back. “I always wondered about that.”

“Rachel told me she was killed with a knife,” Betsy Sue said. “But the boy at your house died of a fever.”

“Yellow fever? Did he tell you that?” I asked thinking about what our tour guide had told us about the several outbreaks of yellow fever in the town in the eighteen hundreds that killed thousands of people. How did Betsy Sue know about this being locked up the past five years? Had the doctor taught her?

“No, he doesn’t talk. I recognized the yellow color to his skin. I have seen it before. We had one girl in our attic that had died of the same. His name is Billy by the way. The least you could do is learn his name now that he is so fond of you.”

“All right,” I said chuckling. I liked her imagination. It was quite impressive, but I guessed that it had to be, to keep her alive these many years trapped inside that house with the doctor. Could it really be that he had thirteen girls there with him? Or was that part of her imagination too? It was hard to tell. I sincerely hoped it was just her making up stories. “I’ll try and remember that.”

“Good. Ghosts like it when you remember their names.”

“But you said you didn’t want to become a ghost. Why were you afraid of that?” I asked.

“Because it was my turn.”

“Your turn? What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “It just was. When the doctor brings you this dress and brushes your hair and sings this song for you, that’s when you know that you’re going in the chair.”

“What chair is that?” I asked.

“The chair on the top floor. Hit or stand?”

“So the doctor makes you sit in a chair? How is that dangerous?”

“Hit or stand?” Betsy Sue said.

“Stand,” I said. “The dress that he brings you, is that the one you’re wearing right now?”

Betsy Sue didn’t answer. I guessed it was. “Do you think you could find the house again, if I drove you around town?” I asked.

Betsy Sue didn’t look at me and didn’t answer either.

“We could do it just the two of us, if your mom and dad will let us.”

Still no answer.

“We can bring Shannon? I am sure she would love to come.” I said playing on the fact that Betsy Sue loved Shannon and her music.

But she still didn’t answer me.

“You see I really need to find him.” I grabbed her arm and tried to make her look up, but she kept staring at the cards in her hands.

“He has taken Tyler.”

She gave herself another card. Then she finally looked up at me. Her eyes sparkled in the light from the window. I thought I saw tears in them, but I wasn’t sure.

“Player wins.”

N
ovember
1990

The blood was everywhere. In her mouth, on her cheeks and even in her nostrils. Kimberly whined and wiped her face with a towel, then continued to wipe Rosa as well who was also covered all over her face and dress.

“What is that, mommy, what is it?” she whined.

“It looks like blood,” Kimberly said.

“Why? Why did blood come out of the sink, mommy, why?”

“I don’t know, Rosa. Stand still.”

Joseph who had heard the screams came up from the basement a cigar in the side of his mouth. “What the heck are you doing up here?” He asked chewing on the cigar. “What’s with all the noise?”

“There was blood coming out of the sink, daddy,” Rosa wailed. “It sprayed all over us.”

Kimberly had the taste still in her mouth and spat in the sink, then grabbed some water and tried to wash her mouth out, but it still remained. Blood had sprayed on all the cabinets as well.

Joseph approached them looking at them with terror to his eyes. “What on earth…?”

Kimberly’s hands were still shivering as she pointed at the sink with the garbage disposal.

“We ran it and seconds later we were covered in it.”

The cigar changed position in Joseph’s mouth. Now it was hanging from the other side. “I’ll be…”

He walked to the disposal and looked down. Blood was all over the sink as well and the stench coming from it was unbearable. Joseph took off his suit jacket, rolled up the sleeve of his white shirt and put his hand into the hole. The hand moved around for a bit before he finally pulled it back out holding the remains of a rat. It was completely shredded to pieces.

Rosa screamed. Kimberly turned around and threw up in the sink next to it.

“That’s it,” she said when she was done.

Joseph was still holding the animal in his hand and she felt sick to her stomach just by watching it.

“I want out of this house.”

Joseph took a baffled look at her. “What? Because of a rat that crawled into the garbage disposal and died there?”

Kimberly opened the faucet and let the water run so she could wash her mouth again. She gurgled and spat, then gurgled again. “It’s not just the rat. It’s everything, Joseph. I don’t like it here.”

Joseph rolled his eyes while the cigar changed position in the mouth again. He took it out and held it in the hand that wasn’t holding the rat. Smoke emerged from his mouth when he spoke.

“Not that again? I love it here. So does Rosa, right Rosa?”

The girl didn’t answer.

“You can’t seriously tell me you want to move out of this wonderful house because of a stupid rat?”

“This house hates me!” Kimberly yelled. “Everything has been going wrong since we moved in here. All these bad things keep happening and then there is you. You have changed, Joseph. You have changed a lot.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Since when do you wear a suit? Since when do you smoke cigar or play cards? Who do you even play with down there?”

Joseph shook his head. “What are you talking about? If anyone has changed since we got here, it’s you. You keep walking around in the kitchen talking to yourself or to the birds or whoever it is you talk to, and you tell me you hear all these things at night that I don’t. Now you say that the house doesn’t want us here? What does that even mean? Since when does houses have emotions or opinions? I say you’re the one who is changing. For your information I love it here. This house is awesome and I am staying. I think Rosa is with me, right Rosie?”

The girl nodded. “I like it here, mom. There are so many hiding places and always something to do. I love to play with the birds in the attic. They bring me things if I feed them.”

“Guess that settles it, then,” Joseph said and placed the cigar back in the side of the mouth. “Now if you’ll excuse me I have a rat to get rid of.”

M
ay
2016

“Betsy Sue has agreed to go for a drive with me around town to see if she can recognize any of the houses and maybe we can figure out where she was kept.”

I looked at Heather and Ron in the living room of their immaculate home. Betsy Sue had followed me downstairs to talk to them.

Heather’s eyes stared terrified at me.

“No,” she said with an air of finality. “She can’t do that. It’ll be too much for her.”

“This could be of a great help in the investigation,” I said. “We need to find this guy. According to Betsy Sue, he has other children there. Other children who have parents that miss them and want them back. It is vital we find them before they’re hurt. You of all people should understand.”

“Listen,” Heather said. “We know about your son. We understand why you would think our daughter could help you, but it’s not okay for you to come here and…”

“How do you know about Tyler?” I asked.

Heather looked at Ron. He cleared his throat. “It was on the radio just now.”

My heart dropped. Shannon. Our cover had been broken. They knew we were here. And even worse. They knew about Tyler.

“I know it must be hard for you, believe me, I do, probably more than most people,” Ron said. “And I understand that you might think that Betsy Sue can somehow help you, but there is no proof that it is the same person who took your little boy as had Adelai…Betsy Sue for all those years. It might as well be some crazed fan or someone wanting a ransom.”

“Betsy Sue promised me she would go for a drive, please…” I said.

“How do we even know she has agreed to it? She hasn’t spoken one single word to us, or to you while we’re present. How do we know you’re not just making all this up?” Heather asked.

“She speaks to me. She really does,” I said.

“Say something, then Betsy Sue,” Ron said. “Talk to detective Ryder.”

The girl stared at them, but no words came out.

“There you have it,” Ron said definitively. “She doesn’t speak. Not to you or anyone else.”

I felt like exploding in rage. But the fact was they could deny me the right to ever see her again, so I had to hold it back. I had to keep my cool.

Ron put his hand on my shoulder. “I think you should go back to your fiancé. I have a feeling she needs you right now.”

“Please…” I said.

“I don’t want her going through all this,” Heather said. “She’s been through enough. Right now we’re trying to forget the past around here and figuring out how to be a family again. She doesn’t need to keep ripping up in the past like that. Besides the doctor said she can’t have too much sunlight. Her eyes and skin needs to get used to it. We let you talk to her, didn’t we?”

I knew I had lost. I kneeled in front of Betsy Sue and looked into her light eyes. “Do you remember anything about the house you were kept in?” I asked. “Anything that could lead me to Tyler? Please?”

“Mr. Ryder!” Ron said. “I need you to leave now.”

“Please?”

The girl stared at me like she was deciding what to do. I sensed she wanted to help me, but that she didn’t want to speak when her parents were in the room. I wondered why that was. She had told me she spoke to me because she trusted me. Did that mean she didn’t trust them?

Betsy Sue leaned over very close to my ear, then whispered:

“The girl scream at night.”

M
ay
2016

So far I had little to go by. I knew he was a doctor, I knew he was holding thirteen girls at his house that I suspected he had kidnapped even if I found it quite incredible to be able to kidnap that many girls and not be found by the police. I knew he lived and kept the girls in a house here in Savannah, that he had killed some of them, that he played Black Jack – oh yeah - and that he liked country music and that one of the girls were screaming at night.

It sure wasn’t much.

I drove around in down town Savannah looking at every house I passed wondering if this could be it, if my dear baby Tyler was somewhere behind these walls. I worried that this doctor had him and at the same time I worried that he didn’t. That I was following the wrong lead and that Tyler had in fact been taken by some crazed fan or for a ransom, like Mr. Hawthorne suggested. I couldn’t help thinking that the doctor had only taken girls before, never a boy. Why would he take Tyler?

I called Shannon when I left the Hawthornes’ house and told her what I knew. She tried hard not to get hysterical. I could tell she was struggling to hold back by the tone of her voice.

“It’s all over the news, Jack,” she told me. “I don’t know how they found out, but they did.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “We knew it might happen, right? We’ll get through this too. Together.”

I worried that Shannon would start drinking again. She was so fragile and this was tearing at her severely. I couldn’t lose her to the bottle once again. I simply couldn’t.

“They’re saying I have a history of alcohol abuse and debating whether I am fit to be a mother or not,” she said sounding a lot calmer than I expected her to be in this situation. “They’re talking about how it happened with Angela too. But Angela wasn’t even with me when she was kidnapped.”

“It was completely different back then,” I said. “Don’t listen to them.”

“They don’t care. They just want me to look like I can’t handle being a mother. Now they’re talking about Joe, calling him my abusive ex-husband and how I was accused of murder once, ugh, they’re bringing up everything, Jack. My entire story. Everything.”

“Turn off the TV, will you?” I said.

“They’re setting up outside the house now,” she continued. “I see cameras being set up. I don’t want to have to go through this once again, Jack. I hate this. Maybe we should just elope to some island far away and then I promise to never sing again.”

I laughed. Not because it was funny. There was nothing funny about this situation. More to comfort her and because this entire situation had become completely ludicrous. Here we were just trying to get married without too much maracas about it, and look at us now?

“Let them tell their stories,” I said. “Meanwhile we focus on getting Tyler back. That’s our main focus right now. How are the kids?”

“They are all right. Sarah is with them in the yard. They’re scared, Jack. I try to calm them down, to tell them we’ll find Tyler, but I get the feeling they don’t really believe me much. I try though. I really do. Thank God for Sarah.”

We hung up. I was looking out the window of my rental car, studying another row of old houses, built the typical Southern Savannah-style. How did you hide thirteen girls? According to Betsy Sue they didn’t even go into the yard. She had been deprived of sunlight for years and years.

“The girl screams at night,” I mumbled angrily. What kind of a hint was that? How was that supposed to help me?

My phone rang. I picked it up. It was detective Bellini. “I have the list of doctors living in the area for you that you asked for. I am sending it in an email.”