A Shadow Fell (5 page)

             
             
             
             
             
             
9

             
As I rolled north out of the suburbs of Savannah, I-95 became Route 17 and was alternately called the Hendersonville Highway. I couldn’t help but reflect on the irony of being on this particular stretch of road, looking for a madman
with the same name as the family after whom the highway had been named
.

             
By
late afternoon on
Saturday, after what felt like a thousand stops, all without a whisper of success, I was approaching
Lumberton when I noticed a police helicopter
, flying low,
to
the northwest. I pulled off the highway at a roadside diner and
called
Tom Kilborn to check in.

             
“Jack, thank God you phoned,” he said when he came on the line. “We’ve found Callie.”

             
T
he phone
nearly dropped from my hand
.
“Where?”

             
“She was found unconscious in a gas station restroom near Lumberton, South Carolina.”

             
“She’s alive?”

             
“She’s in a coma, Jack. It’s very touch and go. She was injected with enough paralytic substance to kill her. That was obviously the intention. But she was found quick enough that there’s some hope
for her
.
She’s been taken to the hospital in Fayetteville.
”

             
“I’m near Lumberton right now.
What about Tanya?”

             
“
I’m afraid s
he’s missing
, Jack
. There were no witnesses
and we have no new leads
.”

             
“Jesus.”

             
“We’ve had helicopters and a ground search going on all day in the immediate vicinity of Lumberton. Unfortunately, we’re two days behind where we should be.
There was confusion over her identity at the hospital and s
omehow we missed the fact that she
was there
until this morning. If it’s Henderson, and we have to assume at this point that it is, he could be
literally
anywhere by now.

I was t
orn
between
desperately
wanting
to see Callie and
needing
to
help
my daughter
,
but
I knew there
was
nothing I could hope to achieve
with what I had to go on
.
Trembling with frustration
I drove to the hospital in Fayetteville
. A
nurse
confirmed
my wife was still in a coma
. Al
though no visitors were allowed, she would talk to the
on duty
doctor to
see
if I could at least
look in on
her.

             
Shortly after that
a
young
guy
wearing jeans and sneakers
approached me
. He was identifiable as a doctor only by the stethoscope draped around his neck. He
asked me to show him my identification. Satisfied I was who I
claimed to be
, he
told me
to follow him. We walked
quickly
,
without talking
,
down a long hallway, through a set of double doors, and then
down another shorter hallway. I saw a uniformed police officer sitting in a chair outside the door to Room
1
14. When we approached him he stood and listened as the doctor explained who I was. He nodded and we entered the room.

             
Seeing
Callie
, pale and vulnerable, connected
to an imposing array of
wires and tubes,
moved me deeply
.
I
want
ed
to lay down beside her and
take
her in my arms
, give her comfort
.
But
all
I
could
do was
hold
her
cold and lifeless
hand in mine
and press
it to my chest
, trying
to infuse into her the will to wake up.

             
After a moment the doctor put his hand on my shoulder. “Come
with me
,” he said
gently.
“I need to tell you a few things.”

             
I followed him out of the room, down another corridor that lead to a large cafeteria. The room was empty except for
a
nurse, sipping a bowl of soup while she
thumbed through a magazine
.
The doc
tor
led me to a table
across the room from
the nurse
.

             
“Can I get you a coffee?” he asked.

             
I had put my elbows on the table, my forehead cradled by my hands. I was readying myself for more bad news.
“No.”

             
“Your wife was injected with a conotoxin,”
t
he
doctor
explained
as he sat down opposite me
. “It’s
not something we see a lot of in emergency wards but it’s not unheard of either. Occasionally someone will be stung by a cone snail. They’re all venomous and large ones can be extremely toxic. They inject
a paralytic poison
that
blocks the transmission of nerve impulses from the nerve to the muscle at the neuromuscular junction.”

             
He might as well have been talking Swahili.
I had no idea what
meaning his words held
. “
Doc, please, just talk to me in English.
Will she recover?”

             
“
I
t’s impossible to say I’m afraid.
I’m sorry,
I wish I could be more optimistic but the truth is
we
just don’t know.
There is no anti
-
venom
. In small doses most patients recover over time. In your wife’s case the dosage was
massive.
She’s in a coma. All we can do at this point is provide support by way of artificial respiration and treat the symptoms with reactive disinfectants.”

             
“So
you’re telling me
we just wait?”

             
He nodded his head somberly. “I’m afraid that’s all we can do.
”

             
“What are the most likely outcomes to this, Doc?”

             
He studied his hands as he contemplated his response, then looked up at me with a disconcerting amount of empathy. “
The best case scenario is that she successfully metabolizes the venom and comes out of the coma.
”

             
“And the worse case scenario?”

             
“Death,” he answered matter-of-factly. “Partial recovery with
some
lasting effects from the poison is also possible. I know it sounds heartless but the truth is y
our guess is as good as mine as to her
prognosis
.
”

             
I left
the hospital too worn out to do anything but grab a motel
room and crash.
But although I wanted desperately to s
leep
,
it
was n
ot a commodity I was going to come by easily.
When
I closed my eyes
Callie’s deathly visage and
Tanya’s
panic
-stricken face
filled
my mind. I kept
seeing
my wife
’s life
slipping away
while I stood watching helplessly
and
my daughter
scream
ed
in terror for me to save her
.

             
I
had witnessed first hand
the horror
of
Henderson
’s insanity
and there was no way the images of those memories would let me rest
.
My arrival
on that mountain in Virginia
three
and a half
years ago
had been
in time to prevent
Henderson from killing
one more little girl
but there was not an inch of
his victim’s
tiny
body that hadn’t been
brutal
ized
.
She was c
overed in vivid purple and black bruises
,
her face a swollen mess. It didn’t take much for my tor
mented
mind to substitute the face of
that poor child with that of
my daughter
.

             
Some time during the night
exhaustion overtook me and
I
descended into unconsciousness
.
E
very few minutes I jolt
ed
awake
, Tanya’s
screams echoing in my ears, her
pleading eyes
beseeching
me to
help her.

             
Asleep or awake, it made no difference.

             
My life was a nightmare.

             
             
             
             
             
             
1
0
             
             

             
I arrived
back
at the hospital early
the next morning
. The duty nurse assured me there was nothing new to report.

             
I used a telephone book at the hospital to get the address of the Fayetteville field office of the FBI. When I arrived there I was told the Special Agent in Charge was
Neil
Bartok
-
not someone I
had ever met
. I asked the receptionist if I could see Bartok,
explaining
that I was a retired agent and the husband of the
hospitalized
woman
believed to be the latest victim of
Reuben Henderson.

             
Bartok came out to greet me as soon as he was given the information.
He was a handsome guy in his mid-forties with sandy colored hair and deep blue eyes.
“I’m
Neil
Bartok,” he said. We shook hands and he invited me into his office. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am for what you’re going through, Mr. Parmenter.”

             
“
It’s Jack
,” I said. “I’ve been staying in close contact with Tom Kilborn who’s a personal
friend and associate
from my days in the Bureau. I
’ve just come from seeing my wife
.
I wanted
to meet you and
… well,
see if there’s anything I can do to
help i
n
the search for my daughter.”

             
Bartok looked genuinely distraught.
“This is one of the biggest manhunts we’ve ever conducted, Jack.
We’re pulling out all the stops, believe me,
but so far we’ve come up empty. Henderson is either the luckiest son-of-a-bitch ever born or the smartest.”

             
“Have we got confirmation
yet
that it
was
Henderson that stabbed Callie and grabbed my daughter?”

             
“Yes. We’ve matched
prints
obtained from the syringe left at the scene
of the abduction
.
I might add that your wife was lucky in that the entire content of the syringe was not injected into her as, I’m sure, was the intention. If it had been she most definitely would not have survived the attack.
”

             
“There’s no guarantee that she
will
survive,” I told him. “She’s in a deep coma and her prognosis is very uncertain.”

             
Bartok nodded sympathetically.
Watching his face
it was plain that he regarded me as a tragedy in the making. Clearly he held out no hope that
my daughter would be found alive.
I couldn’t blame him. What were the chances that Reuben Henderson would kill his own daughter and then spare our adopted daughter?

             
“
What I can’t figure
, out,” I said, “
is h
ow the hell
Henderson
even
knew
my family was
on the road
?
How could he have located them so easily?
”

             
“
What we think,” Bartok replied, “is that
t
h
ose
three
early morning
phone calls you
received
were made
hoping you
’d
react
exactly
the way you did.
It’s possible that Henderson
paid
someone
to
make those calls for him
, we don’t know for sure
, b
ut we did find
evidence that
someone
was camped out in
a
car not far from your home.
It was most likely him.
When
your wife
and daughter left
all he had to do was follow at a distance and wait
for
the
opportunity to make his move
.
”

             
How easily we had been manipulated. If I lived to be a hundred I would never forgive myself for my stupidity. “Callie is no easy
target
. How was he able to overtake her so easily?”

             
“
When they stopped at the service station in Lumberton
and left the motor home to use the
restroom
he
waited outside and attacked them as they
came out
.
The poison he used would have rendered your wife helpless immediately.
”

             
I shook my head in wonder
. There seemed to be no end to the bastard’s ability to pull off the impossible.
“Where is the search now centered?”

             
This time Bartok’s face registered more
humiliation
than sympathy.
“We don’t
even
know at this point which way Henderson was headed when he left the Lumberton area
,” Bartok
admitted
.
“
The truth is we don’t
know if, in fact, he
did
leave. Frankly, Jack, the only thing we have is a tentative description of the car he was driving, which we got from the gas jockey at the station. It’s a light brown full-size Chevrolet, probably an ---”

             
Bartok was interrupted by an agent who rapped on his
open
door. “
Neil
, we
just
got word that the car
Henderson was driving
was located
at the Charlotte airport
.”

             
“Any sign of him or the girl?” Bartok
demanded
.

             
“Not yet.”

             
“Shit,” I moaned. “He’s boosted another car.”
We’d now have no clue what he was driving
because
the vehicle
he took
wouldn’t be reported as stolen until the travelers returned,
possibly
not for weeks.

             
While I contemplated this
distressing
development, t
he agent motioned for Bartok to
join him in
the hallway, obviously so they could speak in private. Bartok returned a few seconds later
and
looked even more distraught than before.

             
“What is it?” I said. “
Tell me.
I need to know.”

             
Bartok pursed his lips. “There was blood
in
the car
… a
lot of it.”

             
It was like a giant hand reached into my chest and squeezed my heart. Rage exploded in me. I wanted to hit something.
             

             
Henderson was out there somewhere, committing whatever sadistic acts his twisted mind drove him to, while we stood around like
mannequins
, totally incapable of  doing anything to stop him. 

             
I stood on shaky legs. “I
’ll kill that fucker
,” I s
eethed
.

             
“Jack,” Bartok said, “go look after your wife and leave Henderson to us.”

             
I
stared
into his eyes. “Have you got children?”

             
He held my
look
for several seconds, then dropped his gaze to the floor and nodded. I’m sure he was asking himself if he could accept the advice he had just given me if it was his kid
’
s blood we were talking about
.