King's Ransom
Authors: Sharon Sala
ONE
A fetid smell, an
odor of liquor, rough ugly words, and promises of what he was going to do
filtered through Jesse's exhausted sleep. She heard a deep, rasping breath and
knew it was not her own. Her heart stopped.
He knew the moment
she awoke, because he clamped his hand loosely over her face, pinching her
mouth and cheeks, pushed the knife point against her throat, and told her not
to scream.
It was the wrong
thing to say to Jesse LeBeau. She had never liked being told what to do. Her
terrified scream erupted into the menacing silence of the room and later Jesse
would remember thinking,
tonight I'm going to die!
His anger was
evident as he growled an ugly threat and began to face what he had unwittingly
unleashed. This wasn't the way it was meant to happen.
Jesse fought like
a woman possessed as her constant screams and fierce struggle for possession of
the knife threw the intruder into a frenzy. He felt the girl's fingernails
catch deep into the flesh of his cheekbone and rake the entire length of his
jaw. He lost control of his emotions and the situation entirely, forgetting, in
his fury, why he'd ever entered her house.
"Bitch!"
he yelled, and thrust downward over and over with the knife, only to connect
with air or bedclothes. He struggled, trying to gain control of her flailing
fists, and blanched as her knee connected with a tender part of his anatomy.
That was all she was going to do to him. He would have no more of this
cat-woman. He raised the knife upward once again and suddenly his hand come
away empty.
There was no time
for surprise as he felt the first thrust of the knife right above his shoulder
blade. His wild shriek of pain only added to the confusion going on in his
head. This wasn't the way he'd planned any of this. Now he was on the defensive
and fear overrode all his other emotions. He struck out wildly with doubled
fists, trying to connect with the source of those damnable screams, but the
ear-splitting sound of the woman's fear and rage, and the constant pain in his
chest and back were more than he could bear. He moaned softly and slumped
forward heavily.
Unaware of his
near unconscious condition, Jesse continued to stab blindly at his dead weight
as it forced her deeper and deeper into her mattress.
Suddenly she was
free! Somehow she'd managed to roll his still body aside. She crawled from the
bed on hands and knees, still clutching the knife, still screaming. She ran on
fear, unaware her attacker was not moving, imagining she could feel his hand on
her shoulder as she dashed from her home in
had alerted the entire block of her neighborhood, and she was vaguely aware of
lights coming on in one house and then another. But no one came out to help
her.
It was the scream
of the siren from the police car flying around the street corner that silenced
Jesse. The psychedelic whirl of red and blue lights momentarily disoriented her
and she staggered as it came to a screeching halt only inches from where she
stood.
"Lady, drop the
knife," the policeman ordered, as he stood with gun drawn behind the open
door of his cruiser, uncertain about what kind of situation he was facing. All
he could see was a very bloody woman with an oversized butcher knife.
"Please,"
Jesse begged, and started forward, unaware of the picture she presented with
blood-covered night clothes and a knife in her hand.
The policeman
took a deep breath and ordered again, in a much louder voice.
"I said,
drop the knife!"
Jesse looked
stunned. What had happened to her world? She looked at the policeman's face,
the gun in his hand, and slumped to her knees on the pavement.
"Here,"
she whispered, and laid the knife on the ground in front of her. "Now will
you help me?"
"Jesus,
Captain!" the officer said, as they carefully walked through the house
where the attack had taken place. "Look at all this blood. Looks like
someone was butcherin' a hog. And here," he continued, as he pointed
toward Jesse's bedroom window, careful not to touch anything as the crime lab
crew continued their sweep of the premises. "The bastard crawled out of
the bedroom window, probably when the girl ran for help."
The streaks and
smeared blood on the wall and window-sill made the man's exit point easy to
read.
Captain Shockey
was four years shy of retirement, short and overweight, a nondescript
individual with a mind like a NASA computer. He could read a crime scene like a
trucker reads a map. And it had been a long time since he'd seen anything like
this disaster. This was a decent, family-oriented neighborhood, a comfortable,
but unpretentious house. The victim was an elementary school teacher, and
obviously meticulously neat. The bedroom looked like what he'd seen in
was on the walls near the window in an obvious spray pattern. He was guessing
the girl had nicked one of the attacker's veins. The bedclothes were torn from
the bed, slash marks and pools of blood had seeped into the mattress. Bloody
footprints went in two directions. The larger ones, wearing shoes, had
staggered toward the window, the smaller, bare footprints were widely spaced,
and led toward the hallway the girl had used to get out of the house.
Shockey could
tell by the distance between the little bare prints that the girl had been moving
very fast. Hell, he would have been, too. How she had survived anything like
this was beyond his comprehension. He knew his next stop would have to be the
hospital to question the victim. He hated that part of the job because all it
did was make them relive the terror. But it was necessary if he was going to
catch the nut who'd done this.
"Is she in
any shape to talk?" he asked the officer.
"Yes;
sir," he answered, as he stepped aside to let the photographer get a
better shot of the bed and window. "I never saw anything like her. She's
not very big, can't be more than three or four inches over five feet, but she's
all fire, and until we catch this guy, I don't think her fire's goin' out. When
I was talkin' to her earlier, I felt like I was the one being questioned."
He grinned slightly at the captain's raised eyebrows and sardonic expression.
"Also, I didn't see too many deep cuts on her, except for her hands. They
looked bad. I think most of the blood on her belonged to the perpetrator.
Hell," he said, then swallowed hard as he looked away from the sharp gaze
of Captain Shockey. "She took that knife away with her bare hands. I don't
know if I'd have had the guts to do something like that."
Shockey patted
the young officer on the back—a rough, locker room pat—and answered.
"You never
know what you're capable of, boy, until you face the wall. Check and see if
there're any family or next-of-kin to notify. She's going to need all the moral
support she can get. Come on, get cracking," he urged. "We've got us
a real bad one to catch this time. Maybe we'll get lucky and find him dead.
From the looks of this place, it's possible."
"Yes,
sir," the officer answered, and watched Shockey rumble between the lab
crew, side-stepping them like he was dodging fresh cow patties. If anyone could
find the perpetrator, Shockey was the man for the job.
The sharp,
persistent ring finally penetrated King McCandless's deep sleep, and he rolled
over in bed, taking a wad of bedclothes with him, as he fumbled for the clock.
Then he realized it wasn't the alarm after all; it was the phone. A deep,
pulling sensation in the pit of his stomach brought him fully awake as he
turned on the lamp and saw the green digital numbers on his clock. Nearly four
in the morning. Not the time for good news. Rolling over to a sitting position,
he let his long, pajama-clad legs brace him as he grabbed the phone in the
middle of another ring. Taking a long, slow breath, he let his deep, raspy
voice break the silence.
"Hello?"
As he heard the male voice and the authority behind it, he shuddered
unconsciously. It reminded him of the call he'd received when his father,
Andrew McCandless, had died. "Yes, this is King McCandless."
He didn't see his
bedroom door open, or see the worried expression on the face of his
housekeeper, Maggie West, as she shakily tied her robe around her plump
stomach. Her long, gray braid hung over her shoulder and she pulled at it
nervously as she watched King take the call.
Maggie's heart
caught in her throat. She saw the blood drain from King's face. It
was
bad news! She
knew it. No good ever came of a phone ringing this time of the morning. She
watched him nod, and repeat an address back to the person at the other end of
the call.
King slowly laid
the phone in its cradle and buried his head in his hands, unaware of Maggie's
presence.
"What?"
she asked, assured of her right to know by her almost twenty years of service
to the McCandless family. Her frantic tone of voice startled King.
He turned, saw
Maggie's worried face, and had to swallow twice before he could speak aloud the
horror he'd just absorbed.
"It's
Jesse," he whispered, and then had to clear his throat before he could
continue. "Someone tried to kill her."
"Merciful
God in heaven. Is she . . . is she hurt bad?"
Maggie couldn't
stop the free flow of tears that sprang to her eyes. She'd put in ten years
raising that child, too, even if she wasn't a McCandless.
Mike LeBeau and
Andrew McCandless had been partners in the early 1960s and 1970s during an
Mike had been killed on a drilling rig during an ice storm, Andrew had become
Jesse's guardian. She had only been twelve. Jesse was absorbed into the
McCandless clan like she'd been born into it and she'd stayed happily, until
two years after Andrew McCandless's death. Then, for reasons known only to
Jesse, she had quietly taken a job in
Louis
never come back. They still kept in touch, but she'd gently refused all their
invitations to visit.
In answer to
Maggie's question regarding Jesse's condition, King had to consider his words
before he spoke. She couldn't be in the hospital and be okay, but he didn't
know any details.
"I just
don't know, Maggie," King said, as he yanked the bedclothes away from his
long legs with a jerk. "But I'm damn sure going to find out. Help me pack,
will you? Don't skimp on clothes. I don't know how long I'll stay. I just know
I won't be back without her."
Maggie's nod of
approval went unnoticed as King grabbed the nearest pair of jeans from his
closet and headed for the dressing area of his bathroom.
Relieved that
there was something positive she could do, Maggie began emptying drawers of
freshly laundered underwear, shirts, and socks into an oversized suitcase that
King pulled from a hall closet. Between the two of them, King was dressed,
packed, and on his way to
next flight.
Steam was rising from
the pavement as he pulled his car into a parking garage at the airport. It was
already above 85 degrees and no relief from the mid-July temperatures in
"Gonna be
another hot one," the parking attendant said, as he would to everyone he
waited on that day. "Gonna park her long?" he asked, eyeing the
opulence of the shiny black
"I have no
idea." King fixed a hard, dark stare on the attendant. "But I expect
it to be here when I get back."
"No problem.
No problem with that at all, just so's you have the parkin' stub. Know what I
mean? Can't be givin' these babies away to just anybody. No sirree!"
King was
distracted. He could have cared less about the car and allowed the attendant's
spiel to flow over him unheard.
A trickle of
perspiration ran slowly down his back as he raced to the ticket counter just in
time to get his boarding pass. He wondered if the sweat was from the heat or
from fear. Damn it all to hell and back, he hated to fly. He grimaced, took his
assigned seat, and knew that only Jesse's predicament could have persuaded him
to use this method of travel. All he was concerned with was getting to her as
quickly as possible.
An anonymous blue
van was parked under the overhanging branches of a huge sugar maple. The motor
was quiet, but no one would have noticed it anyway. Nearly every house in the
area was shut tightly against the heat, with air conditioners going full blast.
It was always hot this time of year, even at night, and no one was ready to
lose sleep for a few dollars' worth of electricity. Maybe later when they
received their costly utility bills, but not yet. This was the reason no one
saw a man staggering through the shrubbery, trying to make his way toward the
van. And the houses were far enough away from Jesse's that they wouldn't have
heard her screams for help.