Chapter 15 #2
It was impossible at that time to ask him what had happened when he’d gone into the restaurant, and how in the world he’d managed to get behind that tree, and to be right where she’d need him, right when she’d needed him.
It was logical, of course, that she move ahead. Connie was almost completely out of it; Zach had lifted her and was carrying her rather than trying to drag her.
But if she led, that left him able to react if their captive made any wild attempt to escape or attack them.
Skye realized Connie hadn’t said a word since Zach had arrived. She had surely realized that she was going to live.
That she was back with the people with whom she worked.
But she was now just semiconscious. And once they got help to bring the man in for interrogation, after getting both him and Connie medical care, they could ask all the questions they wanted.
As they came closer to the road and the café, Skye heard Zach on the phone as he called in their position and situation.
They had barely cleared the last of the trees before she heard sirens. By the time they were back on the road, an ambulance and two police cars had arrived.
Gavin jumped out of one car himself, looking anxiously at them—and at Detective Berkley in Zach’s arms.
EMTs were coming forward, looking for explanations.
“I don’t know … I don’t know,” the detective said, shaking her head.
“I don’t know how, but … I can’t … The witch, the other witch …
they’re so green. They blend in with the forest. But the one, I think, can breathe fire …
that one. He was coming. I should have never thought that I had gotten far enough.
I should have just stayed hungry and thirsty …
I thought I could figure something. I don’t know … I don’t know …”
“She’s been given something,” a young EMT said. “And you don’t know what?”
“No, but she was able to scream and talk about twenty minutes ago,” Skye told him. “She took off from the café—”
“It was in the coffee! And then … then I saw him, and I knew that I shouldn’t have been in there, that I should have stayed in the trees!” Connie said.
“I’ll go with her to the hospital; Ben is driving the first patrol car. He’ll get our witch into the station—”
“He might need medical assistance, too,” Zach said. “I gave him a pretty good right on the jaw, had to get him to fall back, get his arm off Connie’s throat, and force him to drop the knife.”
“You didn’t break my jaw,” the witch said. “Take me, prosecute me, hang me!”
“Get him in the car!” Gavin said impatiently.
As he spoke, they noticed that people were coming out of the café. “Ben is in the car—have him take this guy!” Skye said, releasing her hold on the witch and looking at Zach.
“Send the officers in the second car to help!” Zach said.
Skye and Zach took off to head across the street.
“What happened when you came in here?” she asked.
“There was no one—just a waitress and the few customers who we’re seeing coming out now,” Zach said. “I asked the waitress what had happened, why a woman had gone running out. The waitress told me she had no idea—and the customers were all just as confused by what had happened.”
They reached the area around the front door of the Out of the Woods Café.
“What’s going on?” Zach asked quickly.
A middle-aged woman, with two very young children, answered, “I don’t know!
Nothing. We couldn’t find the waitress, and that man over there looked in the kitchen and there was no one there.
And that crazy lady had looked at the TV and then went running out, as if monsters were after her …
Then we heard sirens, and I felt I needed to get my grandkids home.
It was getting weird. And we all saw that press conference with the captain of the police …
I think we’re all scared, and we want to get out of here!
We were just customers in that restaurant. Please …”
“Yes, yes, but we’ll need your name and address, just in case we need to talk to you again,” Zach said. Skye noted that a young policewoman, along with her partner, an older policeman, had come out of their car and had followed her and Zach across the street—as Zach had asked.
“Of course, you can get the kids home,” Skye said to the woman, “just please give your information to the police officer.” She raised her voice and spoke to the others who were trying to move toward their cars.
“Please! Help us! Just tell these officers what you saw, or give them your contact information, and you’re free to go.
No one is under fire here; we’ll just take all the help we can get! ”
“We’ve got this!” the older officer assured them.
“Something has gone on in there!” Skye whispered to Zach.
But what?
“Okay, no one saw a witch. But Connie thought that she saw a witch,” Skye said. “And now the waitress has disappeared, but she couldn’t have been working alone.”
They paused in the café dining area, looking around at the charming wooden tables and the artistic paintings on the wall—most of them depicting cherubs and other mystical forest creatures, fairies in many, a few bumbling but charming ogres in others.
“Do you think that a painting scared her?” Skye asked.
He shook his head. “No, the paintings are all too … fun. Cute? It’s a truck stop, but an area hangout as well.”
A few of the tables remained clean and ready for guests.
Others had the remnants of meals on them—food just left there, as the customers apparently decided it wasn’t worth staying to try to eat.
“Kitchen?” Zach suggested.
“Yeah.”
They headed back into the service area. Steam flowed above the kitchen’s long grill.
Water still boiled, spilling over on a stovetop.
There was no one there.
“What the heck happened?” Skye remarked.
“There was a waitress here, a woman of about fifty, pleasant, and capable of moving fast, greeting people, never seeming to lose her cool—though she was confused as hell about the way Connie tore out of here. I came back here; the cook was reading an order the waitress had just brought in. He didn’t even know a woman had jumped up in alarm and gone running out to the street.
He was also ready to talk, to give me anything that I needed; but with no one and nothing here, I figured it was more important that I come out and see if I could find you or the detective. ”
“She’s alive because you found us,” Skye reminded him.
He nodded. “But … what the hell happened here? Where is the waitress I met? Where is the cook?”
“Not out front—we would have seen them. Out back?”
“There’s got to be a delivery entrance,” Zach said, heading toward a large freezer at the back of the kitchen. “Here!” he called.
She followed him. He opened double doors to a delivery area, where trucks could easily come in and out. Trash cans and recycle bins were lined up against the wall of the place, and Zach walked to them, frowning.
“Here!” he shouted. “Skye, keep the officers and get more ambulances!”
“Right—”
“I found the cook and the waitress.”
He slammed a couple of the cans out of the way, hunkering down. “At least, the waitress has a pulse! We need help. Fast!”
Skye didn’t go back in through the kitchen; she tore around the building to reach the front, where the police officers were still speaking with a number of the patrons who had fled from the café.
“Ambulance! Help, now, please!”
The young policewoman was on her phone immediately. The older officer nodded at Skye, asking, “Where? What?”
“Around here!” she said, showing the way, heading back to where Zach was working with the victims.
He was by the cook then, desperately performing CPR.
“Let me! I was a paramedic before I joined the force,” the officer told him.
Zach nodded and moved.
Skye saw he had lifted the unconscious waitress and had moved her onto a little stretch of grass at the side of the bins.
There was a dumpster, too, at the end of the row of plastic recycling and garbage bins; she didn’t want to look.
But she did.
To her relief, there were no bodies in it.
It seemed like the EMTs and an ambulance arrived in just seconds.
Zach was explaining that the waitress had received a stab wound.
He’d been able to staunch the flow of her blood; and she had a pulse, a weak one.
The officer had gotten the cook’s heart pumping again; but this victim, too, had suffered a stab wound in the thigh.
The officer glanced at Zach. “Luckily for this gentleman, our special agent friend knows how to tie a tourniquet.”
The injured cook and waitress were quickly and carefully transferred to stretchers and the EMTs took off.
Zach looked at Skye.
“Hospital, I guess.”
“Divide and conquer?” she asked. “Someone needs to get in there and talk to our witch from the woods,” she reminded him.
“All right, wait—these two aren’t going to talk for a while. And Connie may take some time getting her head clear. You’re right. Let’s go to the station. Let’s go talk to our witch.”
Zach turned to the police officer. “You guys finished up here? Forensic detail to check out the kitchen area?”
The older officer smiled and came over and shook Zach’s hand.
“You know your stuff. That guy may well live.”
“Ah,” Zach said, “but I’m sure you far surpass my expertise with CPR.”
“We both did good!” the officer said. “And get out of here, do what you need to do. I’m not sure what the heck we can get; but yeah, we’ll have forensics come out.”
“Thanks,” Zach said.
Skye gave him a smile and a nod, and the two of them headed for their car. The young policewoman finished up with the last of the customers and walked toward them as they came around the building.
“Got them all,” she told them. “Names and addresses, just in case we need them.”
“Thank you,” Skye told the female officer, handing the young woman her business card. “If you can—”
“I will get them emailed to you right away,” she said.
They both thanked her and walked across the road to the car.
It was dark, Skye realized.
They’d run all morning, starting with the roads, heading to the costume shop. By the time they’d gotten to the station and talked to Gavin and his captain, the afternoon had come on.
The much-needed press conference had been given.
They’d come out to the café and found Connie and the witch.
They’d discovered the half-dead waitress and cook.
And, of course, it was now night.
She glanced at Zach and realized he had bloodstains on his clothing.
“We’re so lucky!” she whispered.
He looked at her, arching a brow as if she were crazier than a loon.
“Lucky?”
“They’re alive! Two people are alive because you know how to move quickly!” she told him.
He smiled, but his smile faded. “I’m grateful, yes.
But there are more than just two people involved in this.
The main person—or persons—target people in trouble with addiction or mental problems, or people who are desperate to keep kids alive.
Whatever is on their agenda, it’s coming soon.
Skye, I think this was happening a while before the witch came to take Jeremy Bolton—and to kill Mike.
Again, I’m not sure why Mike was killed, and I sure don’t understand how no one saw anything but Connie—and someone decided they still needed to kill the waitress and the cook. ”
“All right,” Skye said, theorizing with him, “so they were bringing people in before, maybe weeks before the Bolton murder and kidnapping. And they could have stuck with addicts and the homeless, or people they could easily control with drugs and brainwashing. But then they went to the Bolton house and the Howell costume shop. They did things that were guaranteed to bring attention to them. Of course, the witch costume might be part of the brainwashing, or it’s just a way to do things without giving away their faces.
Prosthetics do a major number on recognition, even in the best facial-recognition program. ”
“So, when they got to those measures, they weren’t worried about the fact the police would get in on it?” Zach theorized.
“Because whatever they’re planning is imminent,” Skye murmured, “as you said and believe.”
“Exactly.”
“But what?”
“We’ll try calling back to headquarters again,” Zach said. “See if they’ve found any possibilities.”
Skye nodded. Frowning, she looked down at her phone as it buzzed.
“What?” Zach asked.
“That was from the female cop we just met. Her name’s Officer Lucy Carmichael. She forgot to mention one thing. There was an advertisement on the television above the counter in the restaurant. One of the local networks is going to be showing The Wizard of Oz several times next week.”
“So, somehow, they drugged Connie; then she saw the TV …”
“And freaked out,” Skye said. “Freaked out at the sight of Margaret Hamilton acting in the movie in green makeup and …”
“Ran across the road and right into one of Salem’s contemporary wicked witches!
” Zach said. But he glanced at Skye briefly before asking, “How in the hell did she go on the run? Just walk into that café—and wind up drugged enough to run from the sight of an actress on the screen and right into a real would-be killer?”