Cooler Than Blood (12 page)

CHAPTER 18

Jenny

T
he morning birds greeted Jenny with a discordant, symphonic background that sounded like the tuning of nature’s third-string piccolo section. The rooster crowed like a deranged conductor with no sense of the time signature.

She checked on her spiked bottle. Good to go. She made another notch on her wall calendar with one of the nails she’d freed from the now permanently crippled Adirondack chair. She did some sit-ups but collapsed on the mat after a dozen or so. Her muscles were fine; it was her will that was atrophying. It wisped out the cracks of the old garage like a reverse breeze. She lay on her back on the mat and stared at the bottom of the rowboat that hung over her head. A new concoction of panic and fatalism had taken up residence in her mind, and like water in her ear, she couldn’t shake it out.

She’d given up playing songs in her head; that just made her mad. She’d tossed in the towel on dreaming about the sun and the beach—look what that had gotten her. She felt herself slipping and not dreaming at all, but dreading the next day, the next hour, the very moment it took it to draw another breath.

What was that poem
, she thought,
that Shields—excuse me,
Dr.
Shields—creamed his pants over in English class?
Something about raging against the dying of the light.
She’d had no idea what he was talking about. Not then.

“Hey, Shields”—she stood up and shouted to the black air—“you out there? ‘Cause guess what? I get it, dude. I mean I get it
way
beyond what you could ever hope to lift from a page. You and your sorry English-teaching ass have
no
idea
what you were talking about.”

Like the smell of “forgotten,”
she thought,
rage against the dying of the light is a terrible thing to have to figure out on your own. And at my age? Really?

Her body shuddered, and she thought she might cry. She wanted to cry.
Might even be good for me. Okay, girl. Let’s give it a go.

Ah, shit. I can’t even cry.

She poured a bottle of water over her head. She tossed the empty bottle into the white plastic pail with the busted handle.

“I am forgotten,” she said as she watched pellets of water drop from her hair onto the concrete floor.
Like dripping off a roof, and I’m the roof.
She paced a circle and said it again, “I am forgotten.” Shouting now, “I am forgotten!”

Someone fumbled with the lock.

She went to the freezer, her mind like the ice within.

Take it in with strength.

Nasty right back.

CHAPTER 19

W
e took a cloverleaf off the interstate. A lone Mobil gas station rested at the bottom of the exit ramp and reflected dawn’s timid light like in an Edward Hopper painting. A dark sedan flashed past us going in the opposite direction. I made a note to double back to the gas pumps. Maybe it had security cameras. The five-inch, folded Boker knife was in my left inside jacket pocket, the Smith & Wesson in the shoulder holster.

A few minutes later, Garrett pulled the truck under a gnarled oak with lower branches the size of offensive linemen. Spanish moss bowed from the tree and dusted the top of a split rail fence. I checked my watch—twenty-six minutes to sunrise. I estimated a five-minute trek to reach the house, which, according to public records and Google Earth, was the only structure on the eight acres except for what appeared to be a single-car garage.

We left my truck and sprinted low through a field of ancient oaks. Fifty yards out, we went to a belly crawl. I was rooting for the dark, but it was retreating as if it had an appointment on the other side of the world and was running late. I cursed myself for not starting earlier. I was only half in this game, and that was a dangerous, tenuous position to be in. I was in no man’s land—figuratively and literally. We stopped about thirty paces from the house. Its paint was so flaked that a stiff breeze could prep it for another coat. It had a slanted porch and a tin roof.

“No vehicle,” Garrett said as we lay in the grass before our final charge.

“I think we’re playing inchworm for nothing,” I said. “Hard to believe that someone would be in the middle of nowhere with no transportation, but let’s not assume that. Could be something in the garage, and for all we know, they got Gatlings trained on us.”

“Man’s first WMD.”

“And now they’re viewed affectionately in museums.” I kept my eyes on the house, as did Garrett.

“We’re a sick species,” Garrett said.

“Dr. Gatling was actually an MD,” I said as I flicked a spider off my left hand. “He invented the machine gun to shrink army sizes and to reduce disease-related death in the army.”

“The garbage people feed themselves. Are you done?”

“I am.” I stood. “You got me?”

“Do now.” He reached over his back for his M110 SASS.

I ran low at the house. A rooster crowed once, and then again, momentarily interrupting the morning argument of birds. Garrett circled to the rear of the property but still had me in his view. I jumped onto the covered porch. I took a step back, kicked in the door, and went in with my gun raised.

“Jenny!” I yelled. “Jenny Spencer.”

Nothing.

I hit a light switch. A solitary lamp lying on the floor next to an overturned wicker side table flicked to life. Place was trashed. Three open doors were off to my right. Bedrooms. A kitchen in the corner. Dirty dishes. Every drawer was open. A TV with rabbit ears sat on a table with a leaf down. Garrett blew through the back door and went to the kitchen. I cleared the bedrooms. Pillows, blankets, and clothing littered the floor. The closets were inside out.

“We’re late,” Garrett said as he opened the refrigerator and peered inside.

“I’m checking the garage out back.” I was eager to search the single outbuilding, as I still held hope that Jenny was on the property, although that light was dimming faster than dawn was brightening.

The two swinging doors to the single garage were shut, but the padlock hung open on the hardware. The doors swung out toward me, which wasn’t an ideal way to enter a potentially hostile room. I unlatched the doors, and while I stood with my back to the one door, I hooked my foot around the other door and kicked it open. I spun around the corner and found my gun aimed at a grill that was missing its propane tank. No need to injure it any further. I shouldered my gun. A rowboat hovered above my head. I gave it a swing. Light. Empty. A workout mat was on the floor with sheets neatly tucked in beneath it. I recalled how neatly Jenny’s bed had been made at Susan’s house. My foot hit something, and I cut my eyes to the floor.

I picked up a partially frozen water bottle with two nails protruding out of its side near the bottom. One had dried blood on it. A strap was tied around the end with the cap. My guess was that it was close to seventy-five degrees in there, yet the bottle had slushy ice in it. A plastic bucket held empty water bottles, and the concrete around my feet was wet, as if someone had spilled one.

The crude weapon captured my curiosity. I couldn’t ascertain the purpose of ice-ensconced nails, but it was nasty. I went around the corner and checked the outhouse. It had red shag carpet and a picture of the cast of M*A*S*H. “Good times,” I said to Hot Lips on the way out. Garrett was in the garage when I returned.

“Clues?” he asked.

“Look’s like someone might have slept in here.” I nodded toward the workout mat. “But that’s not much to go on.”

I wished Morgan were along. He had an uncanny ability to sense what I couldn’t. And the garage was screaming—I just couldn’t hear it. Instead of staring at the objects in the room, I focused on the structure. Marks on the wall caught my attention. I peered closer at them.

“‘Four, one, two, nine, one, one, one’ mean anything to you?” I asked.

Garrett peered at the wall. “No.” He had been examining a green-and-white Adirondack chair. Its busted arm rested on the floor. “Are those marks relatively new?”

“Appear to be.” Then I saw it. “That’s her number. She was here.”

“Not following.”

“It’s deer,” I said, but what I was thinking was
, She’s alive
. “Four thousand one hundred twenty-nine deer and three days in the garage.”

“And why is that our girl?” He ran a finger over the indentations in the wood.

“Her father, Larry Spencer, went down in a hunting accident years ago. The county’s final tally that year was four thousand one hundred twenty-nine deer and one man. Mary Evelyn sent me the newspaper article, a real doozy. His death was buried and comingled with a breakdown of the harvest. So many bucks, does, button bucks, oh, and one man.”

Garrett shifted his attention to me. “Bad trade. Apparently not one she’s forgiven. You think the last three marks track her days in captivity?”

“That’d be my guess.”

“McGlashan help us here?”

“Unlikely. Out of his jurisdiction, and the world sees her as a runaway.” But like a Polaroid picture creeping into focus, my conviction was gaining higher resolution. Jenny
had
been abducted—she was alive.

I picked up the bottle with the nails and handed it to Garrett. He rotated it in his hand. “One thing I can say about her,” he said. He swung the bottle by the strap twice around his head then into the wall. The nails splintered the wood.

“What’s that?”

“Our girl has spunk.”

I pulled into the Mobil station we’d passed on the way in and gassed up. There was a security camera behind the register. McGlashan was next; I left a voice mail asking him to view the tape from the security camera. It was a likely place for the Colemans to refuel. Garrett texted Mary Evelyn and told her Wesley Chapel was a hit.

I called PC.

I had used him and his sidekick, Boyd, for surveillance in the past. They were high-school dropouts, and PC housed an oversized IQ that made formal education a ruse. He balked at my request that he and Boyd camp out for a few days and keep an eye on the Colemans’ property. Garrett eyed me. I’d told him I had plans to have the Colemans’ place watched, and he obviously incorrectly assumed I’d worked out those details beforehand. I wasn’t worried. I told PC to bring Savielly Tartakower’s
My Best Games of Chess 1905–1954
, that I’d purchased for him. PC and I had spent sweltering hours at the end of my dock, each of us with obsessive focus on floating the other’s king. We used wine corks for kings, and when he lost, I tossed his king—his cork—into the bay. He was a quick learner and soon became a worthy opponent. Tartakower was, due to his wit as much as his ability, my favorite chess player. PC relented and said Boyd could play
Angry Birds
for days. I described how to get to the vantage point Garrett and I used and told him I’d text him pictures of Randall and Zach Coleman.

The phone calls, however, only treated the symptom. I had come up empty. Even though I was doing eighty on the interstate, I was going nowhere and getting there fast. Nothing but random motion. “Never mistake motion for action,” Hemingway once said. I believe he was quoting Benjamin Franklin, who’d said, “Never
confuse
motion for action.” Either way, motion is no substitute for action, although for my money, Hemingway chose the better word.

My phone rang. It was McGlashan.

I said, “I think we missed her by an hour.” I explained the past two hours. He couldn’t offer any assistance.

“I made you a copy of the interview, if you want to hear it,” he said. “I listened twice. Nothing there. Straightforward, like Rutledge said.” At least it wasn’t “Detective Rutledge” anymore. “Next time you’re down, drop by the station and—”

“Be there in three.” I pressed the pedal. “Make that two and a half. Do you need to be there?”

“No, and probably won’t be. Rutledge might be, though. If not, just identify yourself.”

“And the Mobil station?” I asked.

“Right. I’ll see what I can do.”

He disconnected. I always got that feeling that I took him to the limit—as if he was an accommodating accomplice at the start of our conversations and a reluctant participant by the end. I set the cruise to eighty-five and swung over to the left lane behind a jacked-up brown pickup truck with a Confederate flag in the back window. The driver pulled away from me.

This was Florida, not Ohio.

CHAPTER 20

R
utledge thrust out his left hand, and I extended mine. Most southpaws shake with their right, but not Rutledge. His ash-gray hair was brushed straight up off his forehead, like a male bird seeking a mate. It was trimmed around the ears, as if he’d just left the barber’s chair. Some guys look like that all the time. As a general rule, I avoid those people.

“McGlashan wanted me to meet with you.” He glanced at Garrett then back to me. “I’ve got the interview tape, but I’m afraid it won’t help you much. I think that Je—Ms. Spencer just ran.” His eyes were dull, as if he’d seen more than he cared for, or perhaps he never cared. “She was pretty calm the night I interviewed her, especially considering what she’d been through. It occurred to me later that, even at that moment, she might have been planning to slip out. I understand you paid a visit to the Colemans?”

We were in a square conference room. Rutledge and I sat across from each other around a maple table that no one had ever bothered to place a coaster on. Garrett stood against the wall. Outside a window, a solitary palm branch pressed against the glass as if it yearned to join us. One of the three overhead fluorescent bulbs was out. It fluttered on then off. Rutledge reached into his pocket and slid his business card across the table. It stopped just short of the edge. Another inch and he would have scored. I placed mine in the middle of the table.

I said, “I believe we just missed them.”

“That’s what McGlashan told me. You find anything?” He sat back in his chair and drummed the fingers of his left hand on the table. He scratched his chin with his right hand. No wedding ring.

I explained the garage, as well as the numbers on the wall and their significance. I kept the spiked ice bottle to myself.

“So you found nothing, other than you think she was there?” Rutledge asked, as if he wanted to check that box off before moving on.

“That’s correct. I asked Detective McGlashan to see if we could get a visual from a gas station that’s the lone fuel source at the exit.”

“And we’ll let you know if that leads to anything.” He tilted forward and blinked hard. If he caught my respectful use of a title, which he didn’t use, to preface his partner’s name, he didn’t let on.

“Those numbers, four thousand and whatever—”

“Four thousand one hundred twenty-nine.”

“Right. You firm on that?” Still coming at me.

“No doubt.”

“You think she was there?” He seemed to sense his forward momentum and backed off.

“We do.”

“I’m sure”—he settled into the back of his chair—“that
Detective
McGlashan explained that Ms. Spencer has every right to slip out, but the circumstances do make her disappearance suspect.”

“You think she slipped
into a garage three hours away?”

Rutledge let that cook for a few seconds, his fingers dancing on the table. “I’ll remind you that you’re here at our invitation. Don’t forget that. Scratch marks on a wall—you don’t build a case on that. We have no firm proof, just suspicion on yet another missing teen. If you find her—or them—call me. We won’t tolerate vigilante actions. I’m the lead, so call me first. Don’t let that slip your mind.”

“Loud and clear, Detective,” I said in response to his rambling statement, although I was confused as to what I wasn’t supposed to let slip my mind—that he was the lead or that vigilantes weren’t allowed. It didn’t matter; I’d say anything to keep him on our side—and then do what I damn well pleased when the time came. He slid a minicassette tape across the table.

I asked, “You don’t have digital?” The light flicked again.

“We don’t even have light bulbs, Mr. Travis.”

“Any leads on the car?”

“Car?”

“Billy Ray’s Honda.”

“No.”

I waited. The light flicked. The AC came on. I said, “You must have something.”

“No.”

I started to stay in that lane, but switched. “And the Colemans’ property in Ohio?”

“Their car’s gone. We assume someone told them about the raid. I doubt they’ll return. Why they would break into their brother’s car, though—even if it
was
them—is anyone’s guess. You know the deal with funding for toxic cleanups, don’t you?”

“It’s been cut.”

“As in virtually eliminated. These brothers are medium producers with big-time ambitions. I doubt Ms. Spencer’s disappearance has anything to do with them, but it’s your time you’re burning. Meanwhile, we don’t have the dollars to track them. That’s why we’re helping you help us.”

I couldn’t keep his signals straight. I let it go and returned to the subject of the car. “Any idea what was in the Honda that was more valuable than the Alpine GPS and speakers?”

Rutledge gave that a second and shrugged. “Probably nothing. Likely just kids, and when they started to lift the system, they got spooked. We can hypothesize—”

“Why tear apart the insides?”

“What?”

“The interior. Why trash it if the Alpine system is staring you in the face?”

“Who the hell knows? We—”

“Did the stereo system even look as if someone had gone after it?” I didn’t recall McGlashan saying the stereo system looked the least bit tampered with.

He shifted his upper body over the table, his elbows on the armrest. “As I was saying before you interrupted me, we don’t have the resources to hypothesize all day as to what might have occurred. You aren’t here to question how we allocate our time. You want to see my calendar? I got a Viet vet at Kelly’s Green that bashes his wife every night and a hit-and-run that left a German tourist with only one leg. The
Reichstag
’s all over me on that one. I got a perennial drunk who claims he passed out, and when he woke up, his wife had crammed a cucumber up his ass. Claims she’d had it with thirty years of his whining that her vegetables tasted like shit. He wants to discreetly press—”

“I realize—”

“You don’t
realize
dick squat.” Rutledge planted his elbows on the table and interlocked his hands in front of him like a tent. “Here’s my
real
world, boys: I got a root canal at four today because Dr. Toothfuck did the wrong damn molar a month ago, and to top it off, I haven’t taken a dump in three days.” He pushed off the table and stood up. “We’re done here.”

“No one touched the stereo,” Garrett said quietly. His arms were folded, and he hadn’t moved since we’d entered. “And you didn’t find any prints around the trunk.”

Rutledge eyed him, hesitated a beat, and said, “You evidently didn’t catch the drift of my previous comment.” He walked out the door.

Garrett said, “He’s lazy.”

“We know this: no prints. Someone wiped the trunk area clean. Ripped the seats but left the stereo.”

“They know something went down on that car, but it’s not a crime scene. They’ve folded and moved on. But kids don’t randomly trash a used car or take a crowbar to the trunk—”

“Then slow down and wipe the scene clean.”

I pocketed the tape and Rutledge’s business card; my card was still in the middle of the table. Garrett and I left the room. I didn’t see Rutledge in either direction in the hall. We strolled out the front door, and the heat walloped me like a heavyweight fighter who’d been waiting for the perfect opening. The predawn hours had held hope of finding Jenny, but the day had sputtered and left me with nothing more than I’d had the previous night. Perhaps less. Hope and hard wishes have a way of becoming real, even tangible, if we don’t treat them as the frivolous imposters they are. But I did have one thing.

Jenny’s voice was in my pocket.