Another Man's Ground--A Mystery, page 15
“No talking,” the Commando barked. “Get back in position.”
Hank and Fesse reflexively obeyed and the whole group shuffled forward, following Sam as he walked along the still very obvious trail of the shooter. They came to a tiny clearing and stopped as Sam knelt down.
“This is where I lost him,” Doug said from his spot in front. The Commando growled at him.
Sam swept the small open space twice, then pointed to the left, uphill toward the ridge. As they followed him, Hank saw the barest of circular indentations from a shoe heel. The chances that he would have found that print on his own were about nonexistent. He started to feel better about having ordered Sammy into the woods.
They hiked through stands of spindly pines that were dotted with the stumps of far bigger trees. Hickory, maybe, or oak. The grooves where the trunks had been dragged off through the leafy mulch of the forest floor were still visible. Discarded branches littered the ground and made walking difficult, but no one dared grumble—first for fear of the Commando’s wrath, and later as they realized that the jostled tree limbs and broken twigs were telling Sam exactly where to go.
They pushed on for half an hour, making the same haphazard turns as the Taylor brother had on his escape up the ridge. The forest grew thicker as the logging petered out. Unharmed deciduous trees soared above them and shaded a riot of ground cover, some of which looked like the flowered stuff Hank had walked through at the Rotten Doe crime scene and some of which looked like poison ivy. He ground it all under his boots as if it were Taylor’s face.
After several switchbacks near the top of the incline, they hit a tangle of brush that stretched in front of them in an unbroken line. Sam stopped and stared at it. The Commando silently waved the rest of them into positions along the thicket, alternating whether they faced it or the trees behind them. Everyone stood on the balls of their feet with their shotguns at the ready, gripped by itchy fingers.
And Sam stood there. For a good long time. Hank finally dropped his heels back onto the ground and saw the others do the same. And still Sammy stood. Hank was just about to walk over to him when his deputy dropped into a crouch and sidled to the left along the thicket. Everyone froze. Sam moved about ten yards along without taking his eyes off the ground and then suddenly darted through what looked like an impenetrable wall. Everyone stared after him, then swung around to look at the Commando. With a blast of expletives, he raised his shotgun and plowed after him.
Hank gestured for the other three to stay put and dove into the tangle. Branches snagged on his clothing and lashed across his face as he climbed a steep few feet. And then he was through.
It was the summit of the hill they’d been climbing—a gently sloping dome that was mostly meadow, but spotted here and there with trees and more of that ground cover. It sat above all of the surrounding forest. The endless view of green ridges and rocky crags wrapped in tendrils of misty fog was beautiful. And no one cared.
“What the hell are you doing?” the Commando said to Sam in a whisper that was quite clearly intended as an angry shout. “You could have been ambushed. Shot.”
“I knew he wasn’t up here.” Sam didn’t bother with the whisper and instead went directly to the shout. “No one would be stupid enough to stay up here in the wide open. He’s long gone.”
“Yeah? And what if he’s hiding down there training his gun on us right now?” The Commando flung his arm out in the opposite direction from which they’d come. And then stopped as his gaze followed. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh,” Sam spat.
As the hilltop ran down toward the far side of the ridge, the meadow turned to stone. Cracked sheets of limestone fell steeply downward for more than a hundred feet before the forest started up again. The bald expanse had no place to hide, and no surface that would hold any sign of a person passing through.
Sam stomped over to where the rock started to drop off, drew his arm back as if he were fixing to throw a fastball, and let fly a long, thin object that glinted in the sun as it shot toward the trees far below. As it spun in the air, Hank realized it was the plastic water bottle, crushed into an angry tube that Sam hadn’t let go of the whole way up the ridge.
Sam spun around and headed back toward the thicket. The Commando started to say something, but Hank put a hand on his shoulder. Sam disappeared into the brush.
“What the hell are you letting him go for? We need to keep on with it.” The Commando again pointed down the rocks.
“No,” Hank said. “He’s done. We’ll have the conservation guys take over from the other side when they get here, but there’s nowhere else we can go from here. And Sammy’s done enough.” He headed for the thicket.
The Commando disagreed, loudly, for about thirty seconds. Then Hank turned around and gave him the vitriol he knew he should be directing at himself.
“Look, whatever your name is, I appreciate your help. And your expertise. You quite clearly know what you’re doing. But no one here is equipped to go down that rock face. I’m going to leave two people to guard it for now, but everyone else needs to head back and be put to better use elsewhere. Including you.”
The Commando clearly did not view Hank as a superior officer. The two men stared at each other for a minute before the older man grunted and turned back toward the trees. Hank followed. Sam was already gone.
CHAPTER
21
Ted was still in surgery. The family—his wife, three kids, all six of his siblings, and his mother—had camped out in the upstairs waiting room at Branson Valley Hospital. The highway patrol had sent one of their chaplains to sit with them. They were allowing him to stay, the duty nurse told Hank, even though the pastor from River Baptist was already there. They figured the more prayers the better.
Hank wished they would send some his way. They had, so far, not been able to find the escaped Taylor, even with a conservation agent now working the other side of the ridge. A couple of tracking dogs were on their way from up near St. Louis. Maybe they’d have better luck.
He shoved his cell, with its latest no-progress update text, back in his pocket and turned toward the mobile home. Kurt had “accidentally” busted out a couple of windows, which improved ventilation tremendously, although he and the Branson PD tech helping him still wore heavy-duty 3M respirators. They’d emptied the place of its rickety, stained furniture and were starting on the kitchen cabinets.
Alice and the other Branson tech had started with the junk in the yard and were slowly working their way over to the small shed off on the left side of the property. When they got about twenty feet away, they came staggering back.
“Oh, my God,” Alice gagged. “That is horrendous. Worse than a decomp. I don’t think we can go any closer without the full suit.”
She retched for a minute before heading for the van and the suits they used to go into meth labs. The Branson PD equipment was in transit, so B. Handlesman, the slim, athletic-looking city tech helping Alice out, put on Kurt’s voluminous gear and waddled back over toward the shed.
“We got a couple buds of pot in the kitchen,” Tech Number Two hollered from inside the mobile home. Hank walked over to the open doorway and gave him a grim nod. That would allow them to hold Spidey for a while at least. He stepped down off the cinder-block steps just as the whole damn building started rocking.
“What the hell?” he yelled as he dashed back inside and down the hallway toward the bedrooms. He found Kurt in the very back one, stomping his sizable feet all over the floor.
“You’re messing it up,” Kurt garbled through his mask. “Go back outside.” He shooed Hank away. He walked out and cleared his lungs of the inside smell and watched the tin can tremble as Kurt hopped from room to room. The shaking stopped as abruptly as it had started, and Kurt appeared in the doorway.
He climbed down the steps, grabbed a crowbar and a flashlight out of the gear bag sitting on the trunk of a nearby cruiser, and walked confidently around to the back side of the trailer. Hank followed, because, well, who wouldn’t? Kurt counted out his steps until he came to a spot about halfway between two windows. Then he went to work. Sixty seconds later, five aluminum strips of skirting were on the ground and Kurt’s Maglite was shining in the gap. He peered in cautiously and then let out a long, low whistle.
“Well, I sure wasn’t expecting that. Not with these jokers.”
He sat back on his haunches and waved Hank over. Hank took the offered flashlight and slumped down next to Kurt. The tech elbowed him forward. “Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to bite you.”
Hank leaned in and saw nothing in the beam of light but three full black garbage bags. He groaned at the thought of what disgustingness could be inside. Then off to the right, he saw the fourth bag, which had come untied at the top and spilled its contents on the packed dirt. He sat back, stunned.
“Yeah,” Kurt said. “I know. That’s a lot of cash.”
Bills, in what looked like all different denominations, poured from the bag. Many of them were crumpled and bent, like they’d just been pulled out of somebody’s jeans pockets and dumped on the dresser after a night out. Hank stuck his head in the gap again and played the light over the other bags.
“Holler for someone to bring your camera,” Hank said. Kurt began to stand up. “No. Stay here.” Kurt shrugged and started shouting. They waited until Gabler hustled around the corner of the trailer with the equipment.
“I want every dollar documented and witnessed by all three of us,” Hank told them.
Gabler shook his head and pointed toward the other end of the property and the small shed. “They need you over there.”
Hank nodded and said he’d send someone else over to witness the collection. Then he took a deep breath of the comparatively clean air and headed off toward olfactory hell.
Where Alice was smiling. He thought. It was hard to tell with the full face mask on. She met him about twenty feet from the shed and went through a series of gestures he didn’t understand in the slightest. He frowned at her.
“I’m breathing in this stink. You can too. Take off the damn respirator.”
She pulled it off and grinned at him.
“They might be smarter than we think,” she said. “They are definitely as nasty as we think, but I gotta say, as far as a defensive plan goes, it’s pretty good.”
Hank’s scowl deepened. He was not in the mood. She quickly adjusted, clearing her throat in serious fashion as she pointed to the sides of the shed.
“See that trench? It goes all the way around. About a foot and a half deep. That’s a guess, though. I haven’t measured it yet, because, well … it’s full of shit.”
Hank was so surprised his jaw dropped. Alice never swore. She saw the changed look on his face.
“I don’t know how else to say it, really. Human, dog, probably cat. And goodness knows what other kinds. It’s a feces fence.”
At one point, she continued, it also served to mask the odors of meth manufacturing. But that didn’t appear to have been done in there for quite a while. She handed him a regular ventilator and led him to a piece of plywood that lay over the shit moat like a drawbridge. The door to the shed was wide open, and B. Handlesman looked up as they entered. He pointed out the empty tubs and containers. The place might have had the old-cat-piss smell characteristic of meth manufacture, but it was hard to filter out the exterior stench to be sure. Dust and pollen had settled on the wooden workbench, and motes caught in the light from the single window as they drifted through the air.
“We’re taking samples to see how contaminated the soil is. It’s possible the whole site needs remediation. But there’s no immediate danger.”
Hank nodded and left as quickly as he could. He got in his own squad car, turned the AC on high, and stuck his head in front of a vent. As the canned air gradually diluted the foulness in his lungs, he tried to clear his mind as well. At least there was one positive to report. He’d get to tell Sammy that his meth suspicions were right on. He hoped—fervently—that it would make a difference.
The poor kid had been driven home by Earl Crumblit, who had gotten off his jail shift and called in to see what he could do to help. Hank told him to stay with Sam and make sure the kid showered and ate something. He had a feeling that if nobody was there to insist on it, Sam would just sit his bloodstained self in a chair on his back porch and not move for days.
Hank did not have that luxury. He had a huge mess to clean up. A mess of his own making. He never should have allowed the two of them to run into the woods after that thug. He never should have brought only three men for the initial raid. He never should have—
His cell beeped with Maggie’s special tone. He ripped the phone out of his pocket and looked at the text.
Out of surgery. Still touch and go. Can’t talk now. Will call later.
He never should have taken this damn job.
CHAPTER
22
Sheila had been tied to the office all day. Hank knew she was aching to get out and join the search, but someone had to be the point person for the multi-agency response that was flooding southern Missouri with law enforcement. When he staggered in at nine o’clock that evening, she was still working the phone and the computer simultaneously. She had a whiteboard marker jabbed into her no-longer-tidy French-twist hairdo and more worry lines etched in her face than he had seen before.
She hung up the phone and turned to him. “Why the hell has your cell been off?”
He’d stopped by the hospital to see the Pimental family. They hadn’t been allowed into the recovery room yet, and everyone was getting more and more upset. Ted’s prognosis was not good.
They sat still for a second, Hank thinking about Ted’s three kids and Sheila muttering about the war on cops. Then the computer dinged with an email notification, pulling them both out of their ruminations. Sheila turned toward Hank and her worry lines eased.
“I do know which one we’re looking for.”
Hank almost leapt out of his seat.
“What? How? Which one is it?”
“You don’t have to be yelling about it,” she said, looking like a cat who’d just polished off a bucket of cream. “I just had a little chat with Lloyd Taylor. I thought I should take advantage of his isolation, before he hears what’s been going on today.”
Hank’s own grin spread slowly across his face. “What’d you get out of him, Sheila?”
She was about to respond with the phone rang. She glanced over and swore.
“That’s the marshals. I got to take this. I’ve been waiting for them to get back to me all damn night.” She reached for the receiver with one hand and pointed toward Hank’s office with the other. “Go call up Interview Room B. I videoed the whole thing.”
Hank hustled into his office as Sheila answered the phone with her best sweet-talk-the-feds voice. He called up the digital recording on his computer, sat back, and hit play.
* * *
“Who’re you?” Lloyd slouched lower in his plastic chair, oozing contempt and sweat in equal measure. Probably sat like that in school—however much of it he actually attended.
“My name is Deputy Turley.” She sat down across the table.
“You don’t look like no deputy.” He rattled the shackle around his ankle. “You look like a cashier at Kmart.”
Sheila didn’t bat an eye, merely made a notation on the pad of paper she’d brought in with her. Lloyd shook the shackle again and poked at the Styrofoam cup half full of cold coffee on the table. He’d been gnawing on the rim.
“What? What you writing? About how long I been in here? Hours. That’s cruel and unusual, man. And I already talked to somebody. That tall dude. No reason for me to be in here again.”
“There is, actually,” she said. “We went out and took a look around your land.”
Lloyd’s posture stiffened and the jangling stopped. “What?”
Sheila made another note. Lloyd lunged forward. She didn’t flinch, just stared coolly at him.
“You can’t do that. You gotta have a warrant.” He tried to get up, but got nowhere with his ankle bolted to the floor. He fell back into his chair. “That’s private property, you bitch.”
Sheila pulled a sheet of paper from underneath her notepad and slid it across so he could see it.
“Signed by a judge. Access to every inch of your land.” She drew the paper back under the notepad. No need for him to see the particulars.
His pointed chin jutted forward. “I want a lawyer. We want a lawyer. Where are my brothers?”
“Well, I can answer that for you, but that means that I’m going to have to keep talking to you. Do I have your permission to do that, keep on talking—you and me—without a lawyer?”
Just like that, smooth as Ozark honey.
“Yeah. Answer my damn question.” The metal around his ankle began to rattle again, slightly. He was trying not to shake.“Where are my brothers?”
“Of course,” Sheila said, and smiled. “Leroy was there when we searched. We brought him down to the station, just to talk. Normal procedure, you know.”
She stopped and jotted another note. Lloyd looked like he wanted to ram the pen down her throat.
“What about Jackson and Boone?” he yelled.
“Well, they weren’t there,” she said. Lloyd lunged again.
“Where are they?”
He was worried. This was going quite well. She laid her palms flat on the laminate table and tried to sound concerned.
“Now, Lloyd, you sound upset. Are your brothers in danger? Do we need to help them?”
He froze.
“Nah. They’re fine. It’s cool.” He forced himself into a slouch again, but he wasn’t able to stop his hands from trembling.
Sheila started writing again. Without looking up from the paper, she casually asked, “When was the last time you saw Jackson and Boone?”
“I see all my brothers all the time,” he snapped.
“Oh, okay,” she said soothingly. “I guess I didn’t realize you all were that close.”
