R.S. Guthrie - Detective Bobby Mac 03 - Reckoning (16 page)

The VTU used “Betty Boop” their cylindrical, iron battering ram, with a picture of the cartoon on one side and “May We Come In?” painted on the other. Shackleford ordered only members of our squad, VTU, and S.W.A.T. to enter the warehouse, two by two.

We cleared each room on the main level, one by one, painstakingly at times. The television was left on and almost every light in the place was turned off, except for one small female’s bedroom.

We found Spence’s room, too, a kitchen, bathroom—clearly the living quarters. Shackleford called in Forensics and gave them the first floor to quarantine in crime scene tape and cleared them to go to work.

“Time to hit the warehouse,” the boss said.

We lined up and repeated the same action on the door eight feet down.

There were no lights on in the warehouse. In fact the upstairs was nothing but a gargantuan room filled with shelves and what appeared to be machine parts, an office, a small toilet, and a tall door at the rear for deliveries and pickups. The whole building was fabricated and the floor was planked wood atop hard earth.

“There has to be more,” I said.

“Back to the house,” Shackleford barked.

We re-searched the main living quarters, this time with more of an eye toward exits that were built not to be found.

“HERE,” Manny said, his sidearm and flashlight pointed at a room next to the toilet.

A broom closet with no cleaning products but rather piles of towels that were easily lifted and replaced. Manny had removed a section of the pile and revealed a door. We eased it open, the boss likely much less sure now that we were going to run into anything with a pulse.

A long set of wooden stairs led down to a labyrinth of rooms, anterooms, and, as I feared, an execution chamber. A few of the rooms had clearly been used for housing victims. Each of those had a cot, two dog bowls for food and water, a small portable toilet, and a hangman’s noose, perfectly tied, swaying slowly in the vented building air.

Whoever had lived or operated in that place—Spence, his friends, the victims—there was nothing to suggest anyone had cleaned out a single thing from any part of the dungeon downstairs. It would be a rare glut for the Forensics team.

Margaret Duchamp might just fulfill my suspicions and pop a hard one right there.

Shackleford spent the next forty-five minutes lining out each team, giving a trove of uniforms to the special investigators to use as required. As we exited the place I said, “L-T, Manny and I should get on this abduction thing right away. The Tech guys, they still have a signal, last I spoke with them, an hour ago, they were still tracing the movements.”

“Why the hell didn’t you say that an hour ago?” Lieutenant Shackleford said.

I chewed on my Scottish temper, telling it to SIT, and I said, “You’re right. I figured ‘who knows what we find here?’ I guess.”

“When you knew they had a fix on a cell phone?”

“Sir, all due respect. You ordered me to search this warehouse. I asked to leave.”

“Next time you ask, give me a reason.”

I had to bite my temper so hard it shrieked inside me.

“Yes, sir.”

“That was complete bullshit back there, Bobby,” Manny said. “You told him—”

“Manny you gotta know something,” I said, as we hurried to our unit. We got inside the car and I looked him in the eye in that way that says “you know enough already, I shouldn’t have to explain this to you” and told him, “I’m never quite sure with the lieutenant which side we are dealing with, Manolo.”

I sped out of the dirt lot and pressed a button on the cell.

“Tech.”

“It’s Macaulay. Talk.”

“We’ve gotten enough pings and worked the direction of travel to believe they’re headed toward the Roxborough Park area. Depending how deep or which way they go, Detective, we may not have more than that for you.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Call me if anything changes. We’re going that way now, about an hour away.”

When the call had broken off Manny looked at me with the eyes of the young cop who doesn’t want to believe what he’s heard or seen. Denial. The first stage of everything.

“W-what do you mean by that, I mean, what you said about Shackleford?”

“Manny, I didn’t tell you those stories in the bar that day to unburden myself. I told you because I need a partner who understands the uncommon angles from which we are sometimes forced to attack this case.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

“Well I’m telling you that I get the feeling sometimes that our L-T is more of a hindrance than assistance in our investigation. I’m not saying why, I’m just saying it so that you’ll have your radar up, that’s all.”

“You think he’s a bad cop? I mean, bad, not poor.”

“I don’t know, Manolo. Honestly I don’t have a whole lot past my gut on this one, okay? That’s going to have to be enough for now.”

“Okay, boss,” Manny said.

“The techs are going to lose that burner soon,” I said. “The battery’s going to die and that’ll be that.”

“Yeah.”

“Nobody ever said you could be a detective without doing some goddamned actual detecting, right?”

“Nope.”

“So start thinking about where we should be looking up in Roxborough Park. I’m thinking safe-house, so let’s start with the more remote neighborhoods with acreage. You can use that Rand Guide behind the seat. Make a quick list and let’s start prioritizing on the way over, okay?”

Just then my cell rang.

“Macaulay.”

“Signal went dead,” the tech on the other end said.

“Maybe they’re in-between towers.”

“No, we were getting a weak ping off tower X-ray two five niner and then it just stopped. You move away from a tower it’s more gradual.”

“Where’s tower X259 and what kind of radius are we talking about?” I said.

“Sending you the GPS coordinates of the tower,” the tech said. “There’s too many factors, Detective. I usually say in a remote area like that, with the amount of rock outcroppings, trees, and other blockage material, the phone—especially a burner—would have to be pretty close.”

“Best guess, man,” I said.

“Less than a few square miles.”

I disconnected and pointed to the street guide.

“Two to three square miles from—” I checked the coordinates on the GPS. “Here.”

My finger touched where the X259 cell tower was positioned.

“We’re going to find this place,” I said.

Manny kept circling and crossing off subdivisions.

Melissa and Rule kept moving through the woods until they reached two vehicle tire tracks worn into the dry earth at their feet. Rule turned them left, away from the main road—away from the police and Macaulay and all the other good people who might help her.

After walking on the makeshift roadway for a mile, a pair of headlights topped the horizon ahead, coming right at them. It was Melissa’s father in the passenger seat and a hooded man driving the station wagon. Rule put Melissa in first and then climbed in the back seat with her, pushing her across the car to the other side.

“Turn around and get us out of here,” Rule said derisively. “Spencer, you have fucked this plan sideways. We still had work to do at that warehouse. Now we’re going to have to centralize our efforts at the safe-house.”

“I’ll kill him now,” the hooded figure said, turning the car around in the narrow space.

“You keep your mind focused on the plan,” Rule said. “We’re not finished with Spencer yet.”

It took over an hour driving over the dilapidated vehicle path through the woods and the ride was very uncomfortable, particularly with a cell phone crammed in her ass crack. Melissa concentrated on remaining in control of her faculties. Macaulay had confirmed her hopes that the cell phone signal could lead him to her once; she was certain it could do so again.

It had to.

It was the only hope that was left to her. When a child is forced to face their own parent (or parents) abandoning them, it created inside them an inherent lack of positive outlook and a consuming fear of abandonment in general. Melissa tried to remember the confidence in Macaulay’s voice—how he sounded so certain that rescuing her was not only his priority but also one hundred percent possible.

It had been so long since Melissa had felt any kind of hope or chance that freedom might really be out there for her somewhere. She’d been so isolated from everything. Other than the home schooling and the hourly check-ins to make sure she was still in her room (as if there were anywhere else for her to be), Melissa’s father showed her almost no attention and when he did, she could see the deluded, sociopathic desire in his eyes.

He meant to kill her. Or help someone else to do it.

Melissa knew there had been others—other girls—brought to the warehouse, and she suspected they had not left the place alive.

Fragments of memories had begun to jar loose inside her head, like icicles melting and then, without warning, letting loose their grasp and falling to pierce the tender flesh of Melissa’s mind with awful remembrances—scenes of brutality and killing.

The victims still remained faceless, but Melissa feared she knew the identities that belonged to the murders that were formulating as memories in her head, and that is why she stopped thinking about negative things and concentrated on Macaulay.

His voice.