Chapter 32
J ohn steered into the cul-de-sac and took his foot off the accelerator, reducing his speed to a crawl. Since it was well after eleven o’clock, most of the houses were dark.
“All quiet,” Mitch said.
“But they’re here,” John said, noting the car parked alongside his SUV in front of the bungalow.
He drove the length of the lane and rolled to a stop in the darkest spot beneath the low branches of one of the oldest and most stalwart oak trees. He parked facing its trunk, cut the engine, and killed the headlights.
From the driver’s-seat window, he had an unobstructed view of the bungalow’s cheerless facade. Which meant that whoever was inside could also see him broadside. He stayed as he was, motionless except for his right hand, which curled around the pistol in his lap, and his eyes, which skittered across the front windows of the house, looking for movement.
All the blinds had been closed, but in the slits between louvers there was faint light. The end table lamp, most likely, he thought. The overhead light would have been brighter.
Where was Molly? Was she bound? Gagged? Unconscious? Injured? Would they use her as a human shield?
The questions revolved inside his head like a carousel spinning out of control. His heart was thudding. His ears buzzed with anxiety. His entire being felt supercharged by adrenaline. Each tick of his watch seemed louder than the one before it.
He looked over at Mitch, who turned his head and looked back at him. They’d already said what needed to be said, and now Mitch tipped his head in a silent but cogent communication.
John turned back to the driver’s window and stared at the house as he tucked his pistol into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back. Then he lifted the handle and pushed the door open.
He had taken the precaution of dimming the interior car lights as far down as they would go, so he wouldn’t be such an easy target for the ogre, if not to kill, at least to maim and render useless.
But even without the lights, he was definitely vulnerable as he got out and stepped away from the car with his hands raised. With one shot, he could be dead in less than a second.
But he didn’t think that Barker would have him killed right away. Barker wanted to see him humbled and pleading, suffering as the ogre did his worst before finishing him off. Barker would want to stage a memorable scene in this live drama with himself cast in the lead role. At least, that was what John was banking on.
Curtain up , he thought as he called out, “Barker!”
The front door opened a crack. Through it, Barker chortled, “Glad you could make it, John. Hope you don’t mind that Frank and me made ourselves at home.”
That cocky opening line could have been scripted. Barker was playing it exactly as John had expected. “Send Molly out.”
“Who’d you bring with you?”
“Haskell.”
“Figures.” Then, “Get out of the car, Mr. DEA. Real slow.”
John angled his head back and said, “No, Mitch. Not until they send Molly out.”
Barker said, “She stays with us until you surrender yourself.”
John raised his hands higher. “I already have.”
“Do you think I’m stupid?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
“You wouldn’t come unarmed.”
“I wouldn’t risk Molly’s safety.”
“Right, right. Let’s see under your jacket. Easy like. And, uh, regarding Molly’s safety, Frank’s got the bore of his pistol tucked up tight under her chin. If you or your crony so much as fart, her head is red mist.”
John wanted to barge toward the house, leap over the front steps, grab Barker by the throat, and squeeze until his eyeballs burst. His desire to do that was so extreme, he actually swayed forward and back.
Barker laughed. “I can tell you’re just itching to do something valorous, but what good would it do you? You and the girl would be dead. Neither of you would be around to bask in the glow of your heroism.” He sighed. “So what would be the point, huh?”
“How do I know you haven’t already killed her?”
“You don’t trust me?” Barker asked in a mocking voice.
“Let me see her.”
“She’s alive.”
“I want a guarantee.”
“The only guarantee you’re getting from me is that if you’re trying to buy time, drag this out with all this chatter, we’ll end it now. Frank kills her, I kill you. What’s it going to be?”
“I’m not going to do anything that would jeopardize Molly’s life. Mitch’s either.”
“See how easy that was?” Barker said. “We understand each other; we’re all playing by the same rules. Now, lift your jacket.”
“What?”
“I’m not going to ask again.”
John raised his jacket, revealing nothing except his belt buckle.
“Now the back.” When John hesitated, Barker said in a measured and malicious tone. “Turn around and lift your jacket.”
Reluctantly, John did as told.
Barker laughed. “See? Told you so. You wouldn’t come unarmed. Pinch the hilt between your thumb and finger, take the gun out slowly, and toss it. Don’t cheat on the distance, either. Keep in mind that Frank has a twitchy trigger finger, and, to tell the truth, that girl’s whimpering is getting on my nerves.”
Swearing, John did as asked. He tossed the pistol far out of his reach.
“Now,” Barker said, “if you and your sidekick continue to behave, we can make this swap peaceably. He leaves with the girl. I arrest you.”
“That’s bullshit, Barker,” John said. “You’re not going to arrest me. There’s no way in hell you’re going to let me leave here alive. But I want to see Molly driving away with Mitch.”
“Aww, that’s touching. You’re a saint. I don’t know that I would sacrifice myself for one of my kids.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” John said. “But you and I struck a deal. Molly for me.”
“You’re not exactly in a position to bargain, are you?”
“Those were your terms, Barker. That’s what I agreed to.”
Barker took his time answering, and John could hear a mumbled exchange between him and the ogre; then he said, “Okay. We’ll let her go when you get to the porch.”
John nodded. Motioning, he said, “Come on, Mitch.”
“No, he waits in the car,” Barker said.
“You told him to get out.”
“I changed my mind.”
John taunted, “You’re scared of him.”
“He waits in the car!” Barker said, sounding like he was unraveling.
“All right, all right, but what about Molly?” John asked.
“What about her?”
“She’ll need help.”
“Help? No, she won’t. She can walk out on her own. Or, she’ll be able to unless Haskell shows off his derring-do. If he tries to rush to your rescue, Frank will kill the girl, and I’ll stop Haskell with this.” He poked a rifle barrel through the crack in the door. “Phttt, phttt, phttt. You get the picture. Your former partner is bye-bye.”
John hesitated, then looked over his shoulder and said, “It’s tempting, I know, but do what he says, Mitch. Stay in the car. I’m trusting you to get Molly out safely.”
Then he came back around and started walking toward the house. Barker instructed him to stack his hands on the top of his head, and he did. He climbed the steps in a measured, deliberate tread, his gaze never wavering from the opening between the door and its jamb. It was too narrow for him to see into the room. He didn’t know the ogre’s position. He couldn’t see Molly.
When he reached the edge of the porch, Barker ordered him to stop. “Where’s Molly?”
“In the bedroom.”
“Get her.”
“She’s—”
“ Get her! ” John yelled.
At that moment, a terrible racket erupted from behind the house, followed by a shout. “John! Back here!”
Barker whipped his head around. “What the fuck, Frank? Go see!”
The ogre barreled across the room, through the kitchen, out the back door, and began to aimlessly fire his pistol into the darkness.
In the nanosecond that Barker was distracted, John kicked the front door open. It slammed into Barker, propelling him backward several stumbling steps. With the ferocity of an avenging angel, John kicked him in the crotch, the steel-reinforced toe of his boot solidly connecting with Barker’s scrotum.
He screamed, fell to his knees, and dropped the rifle to clutch himself in agony. John picked up the rifle and swung the stock of it against the side of Barker’s head.
He toppled to the floor, out cold.
“Molly!” John rushed toward the bedroom.
Mitch had opened the passenger door of the car at the same moment John had opened the one on the driver’s side. Then, as fluid and soundless as mercury, he had slid out while John was diverting the men inside the house by presenting himself, hands raised.
Because of the risk of being seen visiting a cop’s house, Mitch had always parked a distance away and had come and gone through the surrounding woods in the dark to reach John’s house. He knew his way around.
Tonight, while John had kept Barker and the ogre distracted, he had moved through the woods like a wraith, disturbing nothing, not making a sound on his way to the shed behind the house.
He’d held a low-wattage flashlight in his mouth and dialed in the combination on the well-oiled padlock. As soon as it opened, he’d switched off the light. Inside the shed, the darkness had been stygian, but John had told him where he would find the items he needed.
His eyes had soon adjusted well enough to make out shapes. What he couldn’t detect by sight, he’d located by feel, following the directions John had given him. With the timer in his head counting down the seconds, he’d worked quickly and within ninety seconds had found everything he required.
He’d carried it all outside and set to work. He moved rapidly but efficiently, his ears constantly attuned to what was going on in front of the house. Task finished, he’d hunkered at the base of a live oak, John’s shotgun across his lap.
When he heard Barker order John to stack his hands on the top of his head and had visualized John walking toward the porch, he’d crossed himself, murmured a Hail Mary, and waited for John’s signal.
It had been a short wait.
“Get her!” John yelled.
Now! Mitch began banging the hand spade against the empty metal pail and shouted, “John! Back here!”
Within seconds, the ogre burst out the back door, rapidly firing at a target he hadn’t yet identified and couldn’t see.
Nor did he see the trip wire.
Mitch had stretched it taut between two trees twenty feet beyond the back steps. The ogre fell like a block of lead, landing face-first on the ground. He lost his grip on the pistol. It landed yards away.
Before Frank recovered his wind or his wits, Mitch was on him, grabbing his hands and pulling them behind his back, securing them with a zip tie, all within a matter of seconds.
Mitch snapped up the shotgun, aimed it at Frank’s head, and ground his booted foot against the back of his thick neck. “My choice whether I break it or not.”
“Fuck you,” Frank grunted.
For once, his size worked against him. His breaths were gusting from his mouth. He spat out a wad of chewing gum. He couldn’t throw Mitch off, though he tried.
Mitch said conversationally, “Or I may save myself the trouble and just use the shotgun.” He tapped the double barrel against the ogre’s head. He stopped struggling.
“Mitch!” John came running from the back of the house.
“Is she okay?”
“She’s not here.”
Mitch swiveled his head toward John. “What?”
“Molly isn’t in the house, not in their car.”
“What about Barker?”
“Unconscious and disarmed.”
John, looking diabolical, kicked the ogre in the vicinity of his kidney. Then he went down on one knee, bent over him, drew the knife from his boot, and placed the tip of it in the man’s ear. “Is my daughter dead? Did you kill her?”
“No,” Frank sputtered into the dirt. “I swear. No!”
“You’ve got two seconds, two , to tell me where she is, or I sink this knife into your brain.”
“Fuck you, Bowie. You’re so smart, you find her.”
Mitch increased the pressure on his neck. “It’s as meaty as a ham, John, but I can make his neck bones snap like twigs. Just give me the word.”
“Thanks, but I’ve got this.” Calmly, quietly, John whispered to Frank, “You want to live? Tell me where she is. Two seconds.”
The ogre remained silent.
“Okay.” As he tickled the ogre’s ear canal with the sharp tip of the knife, he began his countdown. “Two.”
“I—”
“One.”
The ogre, the terror, the bully screamed, “Wait! I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you.”
Mitch and John looked at each other; John bobbed his chin. Mitch let up on the man’s neck but worked his boot beneath the ogre’s shoulder and pushed him onto his back. He was drooling. His eyes were wild with fear. They darted between the barrels of the shotgun, the wicked knife, and John and Mitch, both of whom were glaring down at him with evangelical intent.
He blubbered. He sobbed. “After school let out, she gave me the slip. Barker went apeshit. Ranting and raving. He called me in to account. You,” he said, meeting John’s fierce gaze, “you called, accusing Barker of taking her. He… he—with me sitting right there—pretended that we had her. It was a hoax. A… a… a ruse. To… to… you know, to draw you out.”
As though John had officially assigned Mutt to guard her, he trailed Beth from window to window, chair to chair, bedroom to bedroom to kitchen as she roamed the cabin, too keyed up to light anywhere.
Her anguish over the severance from the TV show paled in significance to the unthinkable torment John was experiencing now. She also was sick at the thought of Molly being at the hands of the ogre and Tom Barker. She didn’t hazard to speculate what it would do to John if his daughter was harmed, or what he would do to the men who’d harmed her.
She hadn’t been fooled by his and Mitch’s need for privacy to check their guns. They’d been devising a plan. While she was slightly resentful that she hadn’t been included, she was also relieved that she didn’t know the details. Knowing what they intended to do might have made this waiting worse. As it was, worry was eating her alive.
Restless and needing something to distract her, she wandered over to the table and sat down in front of her computer. The professor had agreed to look over their list of social media handles, but she hadn’t heard back from him yet. She doubted she would until tomorrow.
Suddenly she was struck cold with the realization that it was already tomorrow. Yes, there on her computer screen: 12:02 March 13 .
She and John had been fed so much information in the last two days. It was such a small amount of time to digest it all. What had they missed? What had they missed? What? What?
Had the professor referenced in passing something that they hadn’t picked up on, hadn’t yet explored? She recalled him saying of the trends “waxing and waning.” Alliteratively, “witchcraft and werewolves.”
Wolves howled at the moon.
She woke up her laptop and opened it to that virtual meeting with the professor, which, fortunately, she’d recorded. As he explained the nature of his lectures, her attention lapsed and her gaze wandered from him to the overstocked shelves behind him.
In addition to the interesting and unusual artifacts on display, he had an extensive library. Had he read and absorbed everything in those books? Is that how he could give knowledgeable lectures on such a variety of subjects and yet stay within the realm of the supernatural?
She paused the video in order to examine the book titles and noticed that, although the shelves appeared messy and haphazardly arranged, the books were actually grouped by subject matter.
She saw only three books on werewolves, but one entire shelf was given over to books on witchcraft and its dozens of subdivisions. Two shelves were lined with books about the moon and related astrological subjects, both scientific and mythological. Fact side by side with myth.
There was a section on numerology, which she found curious. He’d told John he wasn’t an expert, but she supposed that having a collection of books on the subject didn’t make him one.
Still… the professor didn’t come across to her as being that modest. Indeed, he enjoyed expounding on a topic.
She got up suddenly and stumbled over Mutt in her haste to get to her bedroom. She took her suitcase out of the closet where she’d stowed it and placed it on the bed. The zipper stuck several times in her rush to open it.
She tossed aside her hair dryer, a bag of toiletries, and a pair of sneakers, then plowed both hands through folded articles of clothing until she reached the bottom, where she’d placed Professor Victor Wallace’s book.
His article had piqued her interest, so she’d ordered his book. It had been delivered mere hours before she’d left for her flight from LaGuardia to New Orleans. She’d read the first two chapters on the plane but had found it tedious reading and hadn’t opened it since.
Now she sat down on the bed and flipped through the opening pages until she reached the table of contents. She ran her index finger down the chapter titles.
Numerology . Chapter seven.
She slammed the book shut as though it were a Pandora’s box from which she wanted nothing sinister to escape. She held it flat against her chest, against her thumping heart.
The professor took such pride in his work; why had he qualified his knowledge of numerology as inexpert when he’d written a chapter on it? Why hadn’t he suggested that John read that chapter if he sought a better understanding of the system?
On weak knees, she returned to the main room. The freeze frame of him in his office was still on her monitor. Leaning into it so closely her nose almost touched the screen, she surveyed the shelves of his bookcase.
Though she was desperate to dispel the thought that was pounding in her brain, she forced herself to be thorough, to read every book title she could distinguish, to look at each object, to go slowly and not be in so much of a hurry that she might miss something. It was maddening to wonder what the professor himself was blocking from her view.
Then it leaped out at her, so unmistakably identifiable it stopped her heart.
That instant, her phone rang. She nearly jumped out of her skin, panicked at the thought that it was the professor calling her back.
But then she recognized the number in the readout and answered with shaky hands. “John?”
“Beth, is Molly there at the cabin?”
“Here? No. What—”
“Barker didn’t have her. Never had her. It was a ploy he knew would get me there.”
Beth tried to unscramble her brain and make sense of what he was telling her. “Then where is she?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know. Mitch is on the phone with Roslyn. She hasn’t had contact with her since she left the restaurant alone. I’m thinking… Jesus, Beth, I think she’s run away again.”
“Oh, John. Where are you now?”
“Mitch and I are on our way back to the cabin. His truck’s in the camo garage. He’s volunteered to scout around the places where Molly went before. As soon as I hang up from you, I’ll start calling around, ask those few police officers I trust to help in the search.”
“What about Barker, the ogre?”
“I’ll tell you when I get there. Shit, Roslyn is demanding to talk to me and won’t take no for an answer. I’ll be there soon. We’re only a few miles away.”
“All right, but hurry. There’s something you need to see.”
“About Molly?”
“No, the professor.”
“Wallace? He found someone on the list of handles?”
“No.” She took a quick breath. “He has a do-it-yourself tattoo kit on his bookshelf.”