Rude Awakening (9 page)

Dalton's first thought was to tell the arresting officers exactly who he was, who he worked for, and beg them to call the sheriff and get him out of this mess. Then he thought of what he'd actually tell the sheriff. How he'd explain the situation. And he realized there was absolutely no way he'd tell anybody in Longbranch what had transpired over the last twenty-four hours. Talk about looking a fool!

‘Where's your ID?' asked the sergeant at the city jail desk.

‘My pants were stolen,' Dalton explained, looking at the floor, his face already red from the lies he was about to tell.

‘Uh huh,' the sergeant said, ‘and you just happened to find a pair lying around with a switchblade in the pocket?'

Dalton all but shouted, ‘I told you, I took that blade off Tanjene's pimp!'

‘Watch it, buddy,' the sergeant said, ‘unless you wanna add assaulting an officer to your charges!'

Dalton took a deep breath. ‘I'm sorry, sergeant, I didn't mean to yell at you. It's just been a real bad day.'

The sergeant laughed. ‘I'll just bet it has. Now, what do you claim your name is?'

‘Ah, I'd rather not say,' Dalton answered.

‘Excuse me?' the sergeant asked, a sneer on his face.

Blushing, Dalton repeated, ‘I'd rather not say.'

‘And where do you say you live?' the sergeant asked.

‘I'd rather not say.'

Looking at a uniformed officer walking by, the sergeant said, ‘Brooks, take this guy to lockup, will ya?'

Dalton began to panic. He'd never been to jail before and he didn't want to start now. ‘Ah . . . I get a phone call, right?' he asked. ‘One phone call?'

Looking at Officer Brooks, the sergeant nodded his head.

‘Come on,' Brooks said, grabbing Dalton's arm and pulling. ‘And make it quick, buddy. I don't have all day.'

The only person Dalton could call was the one person in his life who never judged him, never told him what to do and always seemed to listen to him when he needed to talk – his sister, Mary Ellen. It was not common knowledge among the extended family that the antidepressants Mary Ellen had been taking for several years for her chronic clinical depression had numbed her to the point where not only did she not judge other people, she was rarely aware of their existence.

He called her cell phone and, thank the good Lord, she picked up. ‘Mary Ellen!' he said. ‘I need help!'

‘Who is this?' Mary Ellen asked.

‘It's . . .' He had started to say ‘Dalton', but he saw Officer Brooks standing close enough to hear, so he just said, ‘It's your brother.'

‘Dalton?' she said.

‘Yes!' he said, relieved that she guessed the right one.

‘What's the matter?' Mary Ellen asked.

‘I'm in jail,' Dalton whispered. ‘I need you to come get me out.'

‘Let yourself out,' Mary Ellen replied. ‘Why are you in your jail? Where are the keys?'

‘No!' shouted Dalton in a muted whisper. ‘I'm in Tulsa! I'm in
their
jail!'

‘Oh,' Mary Ellen said. ‘You want me to come get you?' she asked.

‘Yes, right away! It's an emergency! Please!' Dalton begged.

‘Well, OK, I guess. I can leave in a couple of hours—' she started.

‘No!' Dalton interrupted, this time yelling in full voice. He looked around when he realized what he had done and saw everyone – cops and robbers alike – looking straight at him. ‘No,' he whispered back to his sister. ‘Please, Mary Ellen. Pick me up right away! Leave right this minute!'

On her end of the line, although Dalton couldn't see it, Mary Ellen shrugged. ‘OK,' she said. ‘I'll leave right now. What's the address?'

Rodney Knight, Mary Ellen's husband, showed up before any of the authorities, dragging with him his other two children, Rebecca, age eleven, and Rodney, Jr, age two. Mary Ellen had lucked out finding a man taller than her. Seems like a lot of real tall women end up with men shorter than them. Like, if you really measure us, I think I'm like a quarter of an inch shorter than Jean, but since she leans a little on her crutches, you hardly notice. Rodney Knight, though, was like six foot seven or eight, the kind of guy who ducked his head when entering a room. If he weighed 150 pounds, it was because he had on heavy shoes; he was that skinny. He had white-blond hair, the kind that gets a boy called ‘Cotton' in my neck of the woods. Don't know if he got called that or not when he was little. Rodney, Jr was a towheaded two-year-old. Cute as a button and full of mischief.

‘Is Eli really gone?' Rebecca asked, snapping gum and staring up at me. Damned if she didn't miss the Threepee gene and look like a double of her grandma Clovis! Scrawny for eleven, she had a hooked nose, wore glasses and was more assertive than Threepee and his three kids combined. Definitely Grandma Clovis's clone.

Turning to her father, Rebecca said, ‘Daddy, can I have Eli's room?'

Holding two-year-old Junior in his arms, Rodney closed his eyes, appeared to be counting, then said, ‘Becca, one more word and you'll go sit in the car.'

‘But—' Rebecca started.

‘One. More. Word.' Her father said succinctly.

Rebecca mimicked locking her lips and throwing away the key, then leaned up against the wall of our entry hall and began counting the flowers in the wallpaper by poking them sharply with a fingernail.

‘Sheriff?' Rodney Knight said, turning toward me.

I shook my head. ‘I'm so sorry, Mr Knight. He was with me and Johnny Mac out in the garage, and he just ran out to the car to get his inhaler . . . I just don't know what happened. But I've got the sheriff's department personnel and the Longbranch police personnel on their way up here, and Charlie Smith, the police chief, is staying in town to organize a citizen search party.'

‘How long has he been missing?' Eli's father asked me, the baby in his arms squirming as his hold grew tighter. I could see the man trying to relax his grip, but it just wasn't working.

‘Jean?' I called to my wife, who was in the kitchen making coffee for the hordes that would soon be descending on us. ‘Can you come here a minute?'

When Jean came into the foyer, I smiled. ‘Can you take Miss Rebecca here and her little brother up to play with Johnny Mac in the playroom?'

Jean smiled tentatively at Rodney Knight and placed a hand on the arm holding his youngest. ‘I'm so sorry this happened, Mr Knight. Please, let me take the kids upstairs.'

He nodded his head and handed over his son.

We watched as the three headed up the stairs, Rebecca taking her baby brother's arm, while my wife negotiated the stairs with one crutch and the stair rail. Rebecca was talking the entire way. ‘We can't find Mommy either. I think she ran off with another man. I saw that on TV . . .'

I gestured toward the living room. ‘In here?'

He nodded and I followed him in.

‘Have you located Mary Ellen?' I asked once we were both seated in the living room.

He shook his head. ‘Her cell phone goes directly to voicemail,' he said. ‘I don't know what's going on . . .'

His voice drifted off, as did his gaze, which left me and stared off into space.

I touched his leg, trying to bring him back. ‘Is there anyone who would take Eli without permission? I mean, if someone saw him out there without supervision . . .'

Lord, was I feeling guilty about that, but something in the question made Rodney Knight look up. ‘Clovis!' he said, standing up. ‘She'd do it in a New York minute!'

I stood up too. ‘Do you think she has him?' I asked. ‘Because if she doesn't, and we called her . . .'

Rodney sat down again. ‘I don't even want to think about it,' he said. ‘I don't know why she'd be up here, do you?' he asked. ‘I mean she doesn't know anyone up here on the mountain.'

‘I'll have one of my deputies stop by. Have 'em say they're looking for Dalton . . .'

‘Where's Dalton?' Rodney asked, his head jerking up. ‘Is he missing, too?'

I couldn't help but think, yeah, actually, he is. Dalton's missing. His nephew's missing. His sister's missing. What's the connection?

‘He's been missing since Thursday night,' I told Rodney. ‘I doubt if one has anything to do with the other. I think he's with a woman.'

A sad smiled curled Rodney's lips. ‘'Bout damn time, huh?'

I laughed lightly. ‘Yeah, you got
that
right.'

‘But Mary Ellen's missing, Dalton's missing and my boy's missing,' Rodney said. ‘It has to be connected.'

I shrugged. Three people in one family gone missing in a matter of three days? Yeah, it was suspicious all right. ‘Maybe Dalton's not with a woman.'

Rodney's eyes got big. ‘Maybe he's not,' he said softly.

FIVE

‘
I
'm here to pick up my brother,' Mary Ellen Pettigrew Knight told the man at the front desk.

‘Yeah? Who's your brother?' the man asked.

‘Dalton Pettigrew,' she answered.

The man looked at a list in front of him and shook his head. ‘We don't have anyone by that name here.'

Mary Ellen stared at the man for a moment, then walked back out the front door.

Things aren't going as planned, Emil thought. Who could plan for breaking equipment and a kid with asthma? Nothing he'd found on the Internet about Jean MacDonnell and her family indicated that her son had asthma. As for the broken equipment, he should have looked further than his first interview when he hired an assistant for this gig. Holly Humphries wasn't exactly working out.

‘OK, now look into the camera,' he told her. ‘Hold up today's newspaper. Tell them how much the ransom is.'

‘Wouldn't she cover her face?' Holly asked. ‘I mean, she plans to get out of this, right? Why would she let anyone who watched this videotape know her identity?'

He was beginning to hate this girl almost as much as he hated Jean MacDonnell. Glancing down at his feet, he saw the feed sack with the holes cut out for eyes that he had worn when taking the child. He kicked it toward Holly. ‘Here,' he said. ‘Use this.'

Holly slipped the bag over her head, then immediately tore it off. ‘Yuck!' she said. ‘This thing stinks!'

No, Emil thought, maybe I hate her a little bit
more
than Jean MacDonnell! ‘Are you an actress or just a wuss?' he demanded.

Holly Humphries stiffened.
She
was an actress. One hundred per cent actress. She reached down to where the feed sack had fallen, picked it up and placed it on her head. With as much dignity as was possible for a young woman wearing a feed sack on her head, Holly said, ‘I'm ready when you are, Mr Smith.'

It seemed like he'd been in the jail for hours. When he asked Tiny, the oversized man in thong underwear and a wristwatch, what time it was, Dalton discovered he
had
been there for hours. Three, to be exact. So where was Mary Ellen? She should have been there two hours ago.

It took quite a while to get a guard's attention, at least the way Dalton attempted to do it. Finally, Tiny took over, yelling, ‘Hey, asshole! Guy needs to talk at'ja!' Which not only got the guard's attention, but his wrath as well.

‘What do
you
want?' the little man in the guard's uniform said, looking up at Dalton. ‘Trouble? Is trouble what you want? 'Cause I got your trouble right here, pardner!' he said, whacking his left palm with his right hand, which held a billy club.

‘No, Sir, not at all.' Dalton attempted a smile. ‘I'm just trying to find out—'

‘What you smiling at, boy?' the guard said, hitting the bar with the club. ‘You coming on to me? You think I'm one a you, asshole? Uh uh, boy. I'm no sissy-pants . . .'

‘Leon, what are you doing?' said a tired voice as the head guard came over.

The smaller guard backed away as the older man took his place. The older man sighed. ‘You want something, Mr No-Name?'

‘I've been waiting for my sister to come get me,' Dalton said. ‘Has she been here yet?'

The older guard just stared at him for a minute. Finally, he asked, ‘How is your sister going to find you? We don't have a name for you, stupid.'

As comprehension spread through Dalton's being, tears sprang to his eyes. The realization of exactly what creek he was up finally dawned on him.

It was the wee hours of the morning and Mary Ellen Pettigrew Knight sat in an all-night coffee shop eating her third piece of pie. This one was pecan. She'd had cherry, chess and now pecan. Mary Ellen Pettigrew Knight had a smile on her face, the first unforced one in three years. She was free – if only for a couple of hours – but she was free. No one knew where she was. No one could get her. No one could make her go home. No children, no husband, no mother.

She was free.

She finished the piece of pie and looked up at the waitress, ‘I'm thinking salty. How about some fries?' She was smiling.

We'd been up all night, all us professionals. I'd finally talked Jean into going to bed around two a.m., but here it was six, and I was still up, searching the creek banks below the falls for the body of Eli Knight. It had been so long now that I knew we were probably looking for a body, not a little boy. Unless a ransom call came in – if the boy was lost, he was probably 100 per cent lost. As in dead.