Vengeance Road (26 page)

He had no other relatives he could turn to. Or friends, for that matter. No one came to visit them. The Styebecks had always kept to themselves. His family's history was a mystery to him. Maybe he'd learn more if he could read his father's important papers.

The chest was heavy and jammed with envelopes and documents.

He flipped through property and tax records, the bills of sale for the truck and the tractor, a will, some health records, certificates from his mother's teaching job and his father's job at the prison.

Scraping to the bottom of the chest, Karl heard a hollow knock. Something loosened. The chest had a hidden shelf at the bottom. Carefully, he worked on jiggling the wooden base. It squeaked as he shimmed it open to find large envelopes with old papers yellowed by time.

There were news pages with stories about a family's
murder in Alberta, Canada. Who was the Rudd family? Something about a sole survivor. Then a church bulletin about a pastor and his wife returning to Texas from Canada with their son, Deke Styebeck. Old letters from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. What was this all about?

This all looked important.

Karl blinked.

Unable to make sense of all the new information, he decided to take a risk. He'd take the envelopes from the chest without telling anyone. He'd keep them until he could read them and make notes.

He put everything else back exactly the way it was.

Then he placed the papers in a bag, grabbed a spade and hurried into the woods between the fields, to bury them near where he and Orly had dragged the remains of the scarecrow.

In the darkened forest he approached the broken parts of the executed scarecrow. Standing near it, he looked around for a good place to bury the papers.

He shifted his attention when the sun glimmered on a small shiny object.

Karl bent over.

It was an earring. Just like the one the woman in the blue dress was wearing when she was bound to the chair.

Karl stepped back.

The earth here was dark.

It had been freshly overturned.

G
annon found a letter from the Office of the Attorney General for Texas in his mailbox when he returned from Wichita. He read it in the elevator to his apartment.

The letter said that Deke Styebeck was fired after a “physical confrontation provoked by an inmate.” It provided no details, concluding that much of the personal information Gannon sought remained “excepted from disclosure under sections…”

A big zilch. Damn.

His other search options with sources and mining of records had also yielded little. This story was not getting any easier and time was hammering against him. Sooner or later some reporter somewhere was going to break this story,
his story
, wide open.

He tossed the letter on his kitchen table then made a ham-and-cheese sandwich. As he ate, he tried to determine where
to go next. He needed to know more about Karl Styebeck's life to connect the dots linking him to the murders. All of the signs pointed to Styebeck being involved.

But how?

This was the mystery.

Gannon weighed everything he knew about Styebeck's links to Buffalo, Chicago, Texas, Alberta, Kansas, Connecticut.

Pieces.

That's all he had, really, pieces of information swirling in a maelstrom of unknowns. He exhaled slowly, asking himself where he was headed with this story. Seriously, who was he writing for?

No one was interested in his freelance offer. Well, he hadn't nailed it yet. He had to keep going.

Unless he was ready to quit journalism and teach English in Ethiopia?

No, that was not in the cards.

After finishing the sandwich, he made coffee, logged on to his computer and worked. Let's go back to where the trail was freshest, that's where you'll find the best leads.

So there was Jolene's locket.

How did Carrie Fulton, a woman from Hartford, come to have it in her hand when she was murdered? Gannon went online rereading stories from the
Hartford Courant
then he reread the Kansas handout.

Carrie May Fulton had vanished from the area surrounding the Settlers Valley Mall in northeast Hartford. The articles presented her as a troubled young woman. He called up online maps of the mall, and as the pages loaded, he wondered if Carrie knew Jolene.

Settlers Valley Mall was near a turnpike, which—he checked again—was near a truck stop. Jolene Peller's cell phone was used to make calls to Styebeck at a Chicago truck
stop. And Gannon could have sworn he glimpsed a truck with “sword” on the door at the Chicago shipping depot.

In Wichita, there were a lot of trucks of all types rolling in and out of that development, which was off the Kansas Turnpike. In Buffalo, the girls on Niagara had reported seeing a creep driving a rig.

Did Karl Styebeck have a connection to that truck?

And was any of this tied to Styebeck's past? Did it have anything to do with Deke, or the Styebecks' twisted family history?

A bit of Texas gothic, there, but was it a factor?

Gannon didn't know.

He couldn't understand why he was having such a hard time finding out more about Styebeck's immediate past. He gathered all of his files, spread out all of his papers on the kitchen table. Then page by page he reviewed everything he'd searched, or tried to search: warrant files, genealogical records, census records, voter lists, criminal and court records, birth records, drivers' records, sex offender registries, property records, credit records, death records, divorce actions, military records, marriage records and on and on.

Virtually none of it helped him build a profile of Karl Styebeck's life before he'd joined the Ascension Park Police Department.

In this digital age, with access to instant information, Gannon couldn't understand why all of his online-data searches into Styebeck's past had yielded nothing. Even the professional online companies he'd paid to conduct records searches had struck out.

It was like Karl Styebeck had hidden his past—or buried it.

Hold on.

Gannon saw his note on the search he'd done of the
Huntsville Item.
He'd only specified a search of reports
naming Correctional Officer Deke Styebeck for the period for 1960 to 1967.

What? No obit? There should've been an obit.

Gannon checked his notes from what the amateur historian in Angelina County, Yancy Smith, had told him.

“…Deke was part of the execution team at The Walls and word was he was a difficult man to live with before he died.”

Died. Right. So there had to be an obit.

How could that have been missed? It's not a perfect world, he thought as he called the
Huntsville Item
news library to request another search for all archived articles on Styebeck, including an obituary.

“Get back to you within the hour, Mr. Gannon,” the librarian said.

While waiting, he drank his coffee and looked at the faces of Bernice Hogan, Carrie Fulton and Jolene Peller peeking at him from the files.

Suddenly he pictured his big sister among them.

Cora is smiling at him. Her voice is crystalline. She is his protector as they go through the library and she finds adventure books for him.

You're going to be a great writer someday, lots of people are going to read your stories, Jackie. Wanna know how I know? Because you're so smart. I see it in your eyes. You don't let go. You don't give up.

The heart-deadening crash of a door.

He runs to his bed, stuffs his head under the pillow as Cora and their mother wage war over Cora “being late,” over boys, over drugs, over everything.

Why can't they stop?

Cora, please!!!!

At the cemetery, in the silence, as the conveyor lowers his father's, then his mother's, casket into the ground, he
hears the last thing his mother said to him before they drove away to find her.

She may have children, Jack. We have a right to find her.

Cora.

I see it in your eyes. You don't let go. You don't give up.

Gannon's computer trilled, alerting him to a new e-mail from the
Huntsville Item
. The obituary for Deke Styebeck had arrived, with a note.

 

Mr. Gannon, this obituary only appeared once, and we're sorry not all family members are listed. Back then, that's how they sometimes were submitted. Please let me know if I can help you further. Nell Fernandez, Library Services,
Huntsville Item

 

Gannon opened the attachment containing the scanned death notice for Karl Styebeck's father, printed it off and read the hard copy.

After reading it, Gannon read it again and underlined
two sons.

There it was.

The break he needed.

Karl Styebeck had a brother.

J
olene Peller did not move.

Death was near.

She held her breath, fumbling through the haze of her waking mind, tumbling through a galaxy of streaking images.

The door had opened.

He'd removed the tape from her mouth but never replaced it because he'd left food. Hot food. She'd devoured it and drank the water. Then she'd slept, but didn't know for how long.

Now, warnings were screaming at her.

Death was so close.

You're a hostage. He's killed Carrie. He likely killed Bernice. He's going to kill you. You have to get away. You have a plan. You've freed your hands. Keep yourself together. Work on the door.

But the truck had stopped.

The door had opened to darkness outside. A glimpse of stars, shadows. Grunting and something being hefted. Boots walking on the foul wooden floor. A body was placed next to her. The peel of duct tape.

Then several silent moments passed.

Crickets.

Fresh air.

The open door beckoned but Jolene's impulse to flee was reined in by a new reality.

He has another hostage.

He was right beside her fixing tape around the other woman.

That means—Jolene was next to die!

She feigned sleep.

Suddenly her face was crushed by a huge strong hand that seized it. Keeping her eyes closed, she groaned under an intense light. Was he inspecting her?

After a few seconds, the light was extinguished.

Boots on the floor. He grunted and jumped to the ground.

The door closed.

The mechanical grind, hiss and growl of the rig.

They were on the move again.

 

Now Jolene woke fully to controlled panic.

Calm down. Think. Breathe.

They were moving fast.

While they were moving she was safe to work on her escape plan. In the darkness, Jolene went to the woman next to her.

“Are you awake? Nod if you can hear me.”

Jolene felt the woman move her head.

“My name is Jolene. I'm your friend. My hands are free. I'm going to help you. It's going to hurt but I'll take the tape off your face.”

It took several long minutes for Jolene to loosen all the duct tape. To avert excruciating pain, she had to leave strips adhered to the woman's hair as the woman gasped and sobbed.

“Easy, take it easy,” Jolene soothed her. “Tell me your name.”

“Lee. Lee Lake. Oh Christ, he's crazy! What's he going to do?”

“Listen, calm down. Listen to me, Lee. We're going to escape. I have a plan. Did he hurt you? Are you strong enough to help me?”

“I think I can help. Oh Christ, all I wanted was a ride. I was stupid.”

“Lee, listen. I have to remove your bindings from your hands and legs. It's going to be difficult because he's got so much tape on you. Do you have anything in your pockets? Anything sharp?”

“A metal nail file in my back right pocket.”

The woman shifted, Jolene got the file. Again, long minutes passed as she used it to slice through the tape around Lee.

“Okay, listen, Lee. I've got a tiny light, but the batteries are weak so I'm saving them. There's a door that opens inward. I've removed half the bolts from the hinges. We need to get out the rest so we can remove the door.”

“But there's another door that opens out. I saw it.”

“I know. I've got a plan. Just work with me to hold the light. We have to hurry. We have to do this now, before he stops the truck again.”

Working in the dim light, Jolene glimpsed Lee's face, wondering if the fear she saw in it was a reflection of her own.

“Jolene, there are letters on your forehead. It says GUILTY. Did he do that to you?”

“Yes. It's what he does.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means we have to work faster.” Another bolt squeaked loose. “Oh, thank God, this nail file is better than the key. We're almost done.”

Gritting her teeth, Jolene worked through the aches
shooting through her fingers, wrists and arms. She barely comprehended the true horror they were facing, as if rejecting reality in a futile attempt to convince herself that this was one long nightmare.

But it was no dream. They were fighting for their lives.

Adrenaline shot through Jolene when she removed the last bolt.

Her joy soon died.

The heavy door was like a slab of granite and did not move. Jolene pried the hinges away from the wall and pulled with every ounce of strength, shifting the door, pulling it ajar but only slightly.

Lee tried, barely budging the door.

Jolene worked on the side opposite the hinges, finding knots in the wood that allowed her to hook three fingers against the door's lip, managing to feel the massive door shift as the truck hit a rough patch.

Jolene withdrew her fingers in time before they would have been crushed.

Construction zone.

“Come on, Lee, pull the hinge. The bumpy road is shifting the door!”

Jolene seized the upper hinges and both women pulled while the trailer shifted. The door began slipping from its frame, exposing the thick heavily insulated hinged side of their prison.

“Get out of the way!”

Jolene shoved with her palms then wedged her shoulder into the crack, forcing the door out of its holding. A loud bang reverberated as it crashed to the floor. The hum of the freeway filled their prison with hope. It streamed in with the light leaking from the frame of the outside door.

The women cheered and hugged.

Then Jolene took stock of the outside door, their door to escape.

“We're only going to get one chance to save ourselves. Now, this is what we're going to do….”