R.S. Guthrie - Detective Bobby Mac 03 - Reckoning (17 page)

His confidence.

The care in his tone—the way she felt safer just speaking with him.

She chose to think of Good rather than Evil. And if all that bought her was a few more days without the nightmares, then that was better than nothing. Because if the people she was beginning to believe were gone
were
actually dead, she didn’t care to go on living anymore.

Not without them.

Something had broken loose inside of Spencer Grant. He didn’t just feel like himself, he
was
himself. The internal passenger he’d been carrying was gone. Or disconnected. He had no idea what was going on but as they pulled up to the safe-house it was all he could do to keep from crying out in happiness, sorrow, remorse, fear, confusion, and every other emotion that could have possibly assaulted him at that moment.

The feelings he had for the murders he’d perpetrated in Idaho—his beloved wife and daughter—were beginning to consume him, to the point of nervous breakdown. He knew he did not have much time before he would explode. The mind (and heart, and soul, and conscience) could only take so much guilt. For a “normal” man like him—a man who couldn’t even buy a fishing license he used to feel so sorry for the fish—the avalanche of remorse and guilt were being held at bay only by his realization that he had this one opportunity to save his daughter and offer up one good thing before everything went to Hell.

Literally.

Jax stopped the station wagon and as the four of them got out of the car, Spence pointed to the house and said, “Police. They’ve found the house—there, coming from the west.”

Both Rule and Jax ran to take cover on the other side of the house.

Spencer turned to Melissa, placing his hands lightly, lovingly, as he used to, on her shoulders. His eyes were swelling with redness and sorrow but he looked straight into her brown, innocent, terrified eyes.

“I don’t know what has happened, sweetie. But it’s me. At least for the moment, it’s your dad. And there isn’t time for anything else but for you to run. Go back out the way we came. Run like the wind. I love you, that’s all you ever need to remember.”

And with that he kissed her deeply, hugged her with all his might, and pushed her toward the road.

Melissa, a stunned look having blanketed her face, knew, too, that this was the only moment. She turned and ran.

It was night and we drove in silence toward the Roxborough Park area, an absolutely gorgeous canyon-like suburb in far southwest Denver where gargantuan spires of orange rock angled and pointed and towered hundreds of feet in the air, looking as if they had simply sprouted straight out of the earth. Some jutted from the ground in groups of three or four spires, others in ridgebacks that looked like mini mountain ranges.

We couldn’t see much of anything then, of course, except the rain-soaked road in our headlights.

Manny had identified just two subdivisions that met what we considered the qualifications Rule would look for in a safe place—acreage, isolation, distance from law enforcement—and I drove down the road toward the westward one, a place with houses on ten-acre lots called Canyon Vista. There really was no plan. I had not called for backup yet—my gut said a smaller search by myself and my partner might bear more fruit and not risk scaring away the—

A quarter mile up the road, coming toward us in the headlights, was a young woman. She was running as if her very existence depended on winning the invisible race in which she was competing. I saw no pursuers, but when she was within a hundred yards, I saw it was Melissa Grant.

And still no pursuers.

Not yet.

I blinked hard and looked at Manny, who was grinning white teeth from one side to the other.

“Madre de Dios,” he said.

“Amen.”

I pulled up next to her and the poor, terrified girl ran right past us, never slowing for a second. I don’t think she even saw us, so entranced she was—so intent on putting distance between her and the bad people.

I got out of the car and called to her, “MELISSA.”

She stopped immediately without turning around.

“Macaulay?”

She turned around slowly and then, when she realized we were police, that I was ‘Macaulay’, and that she was finally, after all these years, safe, she ran into my open arms.

Father Rule and Jax came back to where Spence stood. Spence could not meet their gaze and stared at the ground.

“What. Have. You. Done?” Rule was spitting his words, confounded. It was clearly a feeling he didn’t appreciate nor one with which he had any familiarity.

Spence Grant did look up then. He looked up with rage stretching his skin taut and his teeth grinding and his eyes on fire. He did not know how he’d been freed, though he knew it had something to do with Jax because Jax was his puppeteer—a part of him. If Jax hadn’t let go, then what else explained him being himself again?

All Spence knew for certain any longer was that his little girl was free, if only for now; that he would never again allow himself to be controlled by these monsters; and, that he had absolutely no chance of surviving the rest of the night.

“I let my baby girl go,” Spence said directly to Rule. “Is that something you’re incapable of understanding?”

Rule stepped forward and jammed his monstrous fingers and hand into Spence Grant’s chest, splintering his breastplate as if made of balsa wood, and in one quick, effortless move, pulled from Spencer a mangled, bloody, dead heart. He did it so quickly that Spence was left standing there for perhaps an entire second, silent, a happy smile turning ever so slightly on his mouth, then his oxygen bereft brain caused him to crumple into a heap of lifeless flesh and bone.

Rule said not one word. He tossed the heart aside into the scrub brush like a piece of unwanted trash.

“Don’t test me,” he said to Jax.

“We’ll get her back.”

“Oh,
we’ll
do nothing of the sort,” Rule said. “You will get her back. You know how much depends upon it. But understand this: if I have to do this all myself, I will.”

“I know you will,” Jax said, and sprinted off into the night.

THE DISTANCE seemed longer with the indelible silence. I don’t think any of us knew just what to say yet. Melissa sat in the passenger seat, next to me, and Manny rode lookout in the back. I suppose there wasn’t a lot
to
say right then. The action that had unfolded told the tale.

We had her.

That was the thought that raced through my mind as if looped on reel-to-reel.

The issue was that I didn’t know whether to feel good or terrified. It wasn’t as if we’d saved the day. It wasn’t an old Western where you scooped the girl up on to your horse and rode into the sunset. In our world the sunset (and every other direction) held danger.

But
like
an old Western, every posse in Rule’s command would be after us. Melissa—a sweet, somehow untainted young woman—was
the prize
. And no one would leave us alone until they had it back.

Manny broke the silence when I went west on I-70 instead of east, which would have taken us back to the precinct. “Where are we going, boss?”

He trusted me. I could hear it in the lack of challenge in his voice and demeanor. He never stopped watching our six.

“We need to come up with a solid plan,” I said. “And I don’t know about you and Melissa here, but I could use a little breathing room and some time to decompress.”

“Amen to that,” Manny said.

Melissa smiled ever so slightly.

“Bum Garvey has a place up here in Idaho Springs.”

“Idaho?” Melissa said, then all ears, her face happy and anticipatory.

“Sorry, honey,” I said. “It’s just the name of a town. But my friend has a place there where we can have a few hours to get some rest and to figure out what to do next. I promise you, you’ll be safe there. In fact you aren’t going away from me ever again, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, and leaned against the window, perhaps looking out toward the Idaho in her mind—one with a mother and sister to go home to.

I had no idea how much she even knew. It was clear she’d been completely isolated  all this time she’d been in Denver.

Ten years.

I’d seen P.O.W.s that had spent six months in isolation that would never be the same again. There was a deadness to the eyes; an absence of information. I couldn’t possibly know how she was treated although from what I’d seen back at the warehouse, there had been at least a semblance of “home”. Her room had looked more or less like any teenage girl’s room.

“Macaulay?” she said.

“Melissa, I’d be so happy if you’d feel comfortable calling me Bobby. Or Mac. My friends call me those and I plan on being the best friend you ever have. Not just now, okay? Forever friends.”

She moved across the seat and threw her arms around me and a torrent of tears burst from somewhere deep in her soul. I kept one hand on the wheel and hugged her with the other. “I’m so sorry for everything that has happened to you, sweetie. I am not letting you face anything like that again.”

“Thank you, Macaulay. I mean—Mac—I like that.” And she giggled just a bit through the sniffling and tears.

“I like hearing you say it,” I told her.

She kissed me on the cheek before sliding back into her seat.

“Mac,” she said to no one in particular.

I looked in the rearview and Manny was wiping the water from his own eyes.

We pulled off the interstate at an exit just past the tiny mountain burg of Idaho Springs and then took to a dirt road that climbed into the trees, gaining elevation as we went. After about five miles, the road forked and to the right a sign told us there was no outlet. I went right. We continued to climb until we reached the top of a small mountain and the road dead-ended at a gate and twelve-foot fence that would have made the kooks at the Branch Dividian compound in Waco, Texas, jealous.

“Holy shit,” Manny let loose. “Oops. Sorry.”

Melissa turned around and smiled brightly. “It’s okay, Manny. Shit is hardly a bad word anymore.”

“I’m still sorry, little miss. Mac’s always telling me to watch my mouth. I’ll watch mine and you watch his, okay? He swears like a drunken sailor.”

I got out of the car and approached the elaborate control center where there was a speaker, a keypad, and a large lever. The lever, I knew, would disable the electricity that ran through the fence—but only after I entered the code.

Once I punched in the sixteen-digit cipher and turned down the lever, the gate slowly slid to the right. I got back into the car and drove through. Sensors registered our passing, the gate closed, and the lever moved back into place.

“Don’t ever touch the fence, not anywhere on the property,” I said to them.

“I can see why you decided to come here,” Manny said. “Holy smokes.”

“Holy shit,” said Melissa and we all laughed. It felt good to release the tension.

When we reached the large cabin with a full wrap-around deck, I knew Manny then appreciated the true advantage to what Bum had built up there in the wilderness. There was nothing higher than the deck of the cabin for five miles in any direction and no trees obstructing the view, three hundred and sixty degrees.

“You could defend this position against a platoon. A whole company, even,” Manny said, mesmerized.

“Wait until you see the arsenal.”

At the door were two keypads. I entered a different sixteen-digit code into the first pad and nothing happened.

“Wrong code?” Manny said.

“See that green light down in the corner,” I asked him.

“Yep.”

“I just alarmed the interior fenceless perimeter. It parallels the fence out there, halfway between the house and it, all the way around the property.”

“What does
that
do,” Melissa asked. She had the look of a student in school, soaking it all in and completely in wonder.

“The ground is planted with Xenon gas. A hybrid of levels and kind used in state-of-the-art hospitals. Developed by one of the agencies as—believe it or not—an environmental-friendly, twenty-first century knockout, or, KO gas. Instant, completely debilitating, and not only illegal for personal use, sort of Top Secret. So no stories. Bum has friends in high places, but even still, not cheap.”

“Jesus,” Manny said. “Is this guy—Bum—is he stable? No offense intended.”

“I’d trust the man with my own little girls,” I said. “To include you, Melissa.”

“My friends used to call me Em.”

“When I say ‘my little girls’,” I said to her, “I have triplet daughters at home that are ten-years-old. I want you to know I now have a fourth, Em.”

I entered the second code that dis-alarmed the front door only. After we walked inside and I closed the door, it re-alarmed automatically.

“Normally Bum wouldn’t use half this high-tech protection. But it’s a bit of a conundrum, him working for the CBI,” I said. “He’s a firm believer in the Second Amendment and the civilian’s right to defend against any militia, even homegrown, if absolutely necessary. Beyond that, I’ve never known a more patriotic soul.”

“What’s CBI?” Melissa said.

“Colorado Bureau of Investigations,” I told her. “Sort of like a state version of the FBI.”

She nodded her head and continued into the house.

“Everything inside is safe,” I told them.

“Thought you were going to say the furniture was electrified,” Manny said.

“Funny guy.”

“I thought so, too, Manny,” Melissa said.

I had to admit, the first time I visited, that was pretty much my reaction.

Daylight was long upon him but Jax didn’t stop running until he’d crossed interstate C-470, miles through the scrub and arroyos where he’d tattered his jeans and bloodied his legs, and went to a strip mall to find a clothing store. He turned the latch on the front door and flipped the Open sign to Closed. There were three employees—Jax subdued, gagged, and tied them, and put them in a rear storage room.

He then walked throughout the store, picking three nondescript t-shirts, a pair of jeans, a pack of underwear, and some good lightweight all-purpose boots. He went back into the room where he had stored his captives.

“I’m going to remove your gags for the moment. If you make a sound at all, even a question, I’ll tear out your throat. Are we on the same page now?”

All three women, two of whom were streaming tears, nodded. Jax removed the gags.

“The way this works is I ask the questions. You answer. If you’re good at following directions and telling the truth, all this ends fine. You lose a couple hundred bucks of clothing and get to go home to your loved ones. Starting with you,” he said, pointing at the woman on the left, “and in order, tell me what kind of car you have here at the store.”

Total silence.

“This isn’t Simon Says,” Jax told them. “Just answer the question.”

“I-I have a 2006 Ford Explorer,” said the first captive.

Jax nodded and looked at the lady in the middle. “A 1999 Dodge Intrepid,” she said.

The third woman had a 2011 Escalade.

“You are the owner,” Jax asked and the woman burst into tears. “I did tell one lie, but it’s not worth crying over.”

“W-what?”

“I’m going to need cash. Not a lot. Just some pocket money. How much is in the register?”

“Maybe a hundred and a half.”

“Is there a safe?”

The woman nodded and pointed to an office in the back of the storage room they were in. Jax untied her and pulled her toward the office. When they reached the safe, the woman knelt and began working the combination lock. Inside was a nice take for anyone whose goal was a robbery. Jax took around a thousand dollars in tens and twenties.

He walked her back to the other two who hadn’t moved an inch in his absence. He gently pushed the owner down to the floor again but didn’t tie her.

“You, with the Explorer. Where are your keys?”

“In my purse. It’s the Coach bag and the keys are on a chain with a skunk on it.”

“A skunk?”

“It’s the character from Bambi. My daughter got it for me. A birthday present her father let her pick.”

“Here’s the thing,” Jax said, putting a gag back in each of their mouths but still leaving the owner untied. “I could tell you not to report this, but we all know once I’m gone, you’re going to anyway. I’m not concerned about the robbery, or the kidnapping, but I can’t have every cop in the state looking for your 2006 Explorer.”