The Rented Mule (36 page)

“I can’t remember the verse! Just tell me where she’s at!”

“Come on, think,” Maynard replied casually, toying with Cooper. “The verse says what
you
need to do.”

Cooper racked his memory… it had been too long since he killed that duck. His mind was spinning. He finally blurted, “Have faith in me!” Cooper was breathing hard and continued, “Okay, you’ve got my attention. You couldn’t have known that without seeing her.”

“That’s right. Now, you can have faith in what I’m about
to tell ya. There’s one guy with her, and he’s pretty screwed up. You oughta be able to figure out a way to get her out. She’s been drugged, but she can probably walk by now.”

“Drugged? Is she okay?”

“Yeah, she’s fine. You got some paper? I’ll give you directions.”

“Tell me!” Cooper answered excitedly as he reached for a pen and paper.

Maynard explained in great detail how to get to the house and exactly where Kelly was being held. He also suggested where Cooper should park to avoid detection. Cooper tried to ask questions but was stonewalled on most of them.

“If you gotta pistol, you better take it with you and let me stress this: Do. Not. Call. The. Cops. Things will go to shit real quick if this dude’s confronted by the police. He won’t be expectin’
you
, believe me. Get the drop on him, shoot that sonofabitch in the head like the rabid dog he is, and get your wife back.”

“Who is he?”

“Don’t matter. Now, listen to me. You can surprise him if you do exactly what I said.”

Maynard explained, watching a wide smile develop on Clarence’s face.

“Who are you?” Cooper finally asked.

“Can’t say. Do exactly what I said, and it will all work out,” Cooper heard a muffled voice in the background.

“Look, I’m not some kind of superhero. Why can’t I just call the police and then they can send in SWAT or someone who knows what the hell they’re doin’? I don’t know shit about this kinda stuff,” Cooper begged in frustration.

“Because… it’s complicated.” Maynard replied, noticing Clarence was shaking his head vehemently.

“No pigs!” yelled Clarence, using his Mad Dog persona,
and continued, “or every last one of ya dies. We be watchin’ you
and
them kids of yours. Ain’t nobody we can’t get to… when we want to!”

Clarence knew that it was unrealistic to think that Cooper wouldn’t eventually get the police involved, but he also knew that instilling this level of fear in Cooper would buy them enough time to get out of the area.

“Who was that? Who are y’all?!” Cooper asked, losing his patience.

Maynard eyed Clarence suspiciously and then grinned at the bluff and said, “You’re wastin’ time. Look, if you don’t want her back, then that’s cool with us. We can sell her.”

“No! No! No! No! Wait! Of course I want her back!”

“Good. Then shut the hell up and pay attention. I’m only gonna say this one more time. Do. Not. Call. The. Police,” Maynard stressed.

“Shit! What’s all this about?” Cooper exhaled.

“Are you retarded? You’re wasting your wife’s time to live… again.”

“This is beyond crazy!”

“Just shut up and pay attention! I’m gonna talk real slow, so maybe it sinks in to that thick head of yours. Here’s the deal, first, you…” Maynard carefully explained again in detail what Cooper should do and then without waiting for a reply hit End, terminating the call.

“Wait!” Cooper yelled into the phone. “Shit!” Staring at his BlackBerry and knowing it probably had just betrayed his location, Cooper immediately turned it off. The call had floored him. Knowledge of the duck band proved to him that the caller was for real.

He punched the accelerator and headed for the Browns’ house. He tried to remember what all he had in his truck that could be useful.

Cooper grabbed his BlackBerry to call Detective Obermeyer but paused. His rational mind was screaming “call the police,” but the words of the kidnappers haunted him. As he drove, he kept glancing at the phone in his hand.

As Maynard put his cell on the console, Clarence smiled with satisfaction and said, “That’ll teach that crazy cracker.”

Maynard replied, “That was kinda fun, and it sure felt good to turn Cooper loose on the Client. Man, he reminded me of some dudes in prison that you knew just weren’t right in the head and that guy
definitely
ain’t right. He’s about to cross over some boundary line to the dark side… iffin he ain’t already there. And he had some wicked drugs in the frig, too, according to what Jesse Ray learned from searchin’ the Net.”

“Yeah, well, he’s gonna be disappointed when he goes lookin’ for ’em, cuz I got ’em,” Clarence said.

“What are you gonna do with ’em?”

“I don’t know. Nothing, probably. I just didn’t want him to have ’em,” Clarence replied.

“I’m sure the Client’s gonna hurt that woman. Probably kill her when he’s done with her. May do it anyway, if her husband screws up,” Maynard added, sucking his teeth.

“We’d go back and help Cooper if I knew that it wouldn’t get our asses thrown in jail. I’m allergic to prison,” Clarence said.

Maynard said, “If he’s any kind of decent hunter… he knows how to be sneaky.”

Clarence hoped Maynard was right about Cooper. Now that Clarence had full payment, he tried to think of this as just another completed job, but it didn’t feel finished.

Maynard had helped Clarence scrutinize the decision to call Cooper and how to play it out with him. Thinking about
that, Clarence looked over at Maynard and said, “You know, Larry, you’re all right.”

“Call me Tim,” Maynard replied, inserting a whitening strip. “Jenny really likes Tim McGraw.”

H
uddled in the Situation Room at the police headquarters, twenty different officers from various departments argued about what to do next. It was organized chaos—their way of fleshing through ideas and scenarios. For the uninitiated, it looked as though they were fighting, but most law enforcement officers would recognize it as a typical exchange.

“He didn’t buy it,” Obermeyer said. “But as much as I like him for this, it doesn’t mean he did it.”

“What the hell are you thinkin’, O? If he thought there was even a chance that we found his wife, he shoulda broke the sound barrier getting his ass down here,” a cocky young detective remarked.

Obermeyer disagreed, and his face turned red. His spastic colon was about to go into overdrive. He said, “Y’all can think what you want, but it doesn’t prove his guilt. Think it through. You’ll see the logic.”

“Okay, everybody, let me have your attention. We are about halfway through the list of his friends and associates.
I’m authorizing overtime. See what every one of these folks knows. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find him hidin’ in somebody’s tree house,” the weary commander said. “Let’s tighten up.”

Suddenly, the door flew open and a young officer waved her hands at Obermeyer and then looked at the commander. She said, “We just pinged him. He’s movin’ and two different towers juggled his call. We triangulated him; he was movin’ out Wares Ferry Road. Way out on Wares Ferry Road. In the boonies, before he turned it off.”

Obermeyer jumped up to grab the sheet of paper with the details. This was the break they needed.

“So we have his location?” the commander asked, not wanting to continue the chasing of moving pings.

“Well, at least we know what part of the county he’s in. If we could get him one more time, it would help. But he could move miles before he turns his phone on again. He’s been so sporadic. Anyway, I thought y’all would want to know. This is the longest his phone has been on since we flagged it.”

“Thank you. Let us know the moment you have anything else,” the commander politely ordered; then she turned to another officer and said, “Put out a radio alert for his twenty. Watch all roads in and out of that area. Stop every white male even close to his description. Don’t focus on the vehicle. Go! The rest of you, just stay the course. Let’s find this guy.”

“Stand by,” Obermeyer said as if in a trance. He was staring at a television monitor in the corner. Gates’s interview was being replayed by CNN. The camera cut to Gates sooner than he expected, catching him drinking a small bottled Coca-Cola with an odd-looking label. The shot was gone just as fast as it happened. Obermeyer tried to comprehend what he had just seen.
Where have I seen one of those bottles,
he thought, while listening to Gates ramble.

D
riving his pickup as fast as he dared, Cooper thought about the Jack Miner Migratory Bird Foundation band. It was from his first banded duck. At the time, he didn’t know the significance of this particular band. And now, that band had greater importance—it was conclusive proof that the caller had been with Kelly. Whether or not she was still alive was another question.
I just gotta have faith!

Prior to leaving Millie Brown’s house in his truck, he rapidly inventoried his resources. In the truck’s console he had a Browning Hi-Power 9 mm, semiautomatic pistol with a full magazine and one in the chamber. He also had a Browning .22 semiautomatic rifle with plenty of cartridges.

In his hunting pack, he had a small LED flashlight, a fifty-foot pull-up rope made from Dynex Dux 75 that he had gotten from a sailing buddy in Fairhope, and the typical accessories a hunter normally carried.

Behind the backseat were a couple of spring-operated beaver traps. He tossed them into his pack without much
consideration as his mind raced to think what else he had that might be helpful.

Cooper grew excited when he remembered that he had stowed his scoped Thompson Center .243 under the backseat. He slid it back into its case when he realized that he didn’t have any ammo for it.

Looking at his pack, he knew that his main assets were the pistol and the element of surprise.

Cooper knew the general area of where he was going. It shared a property line with the land that he was trying to buy. He didn’t know who the owners were specifically, only that the estate never allowed any trespassing. The land was rolling hardwoods, with a few pine plantations, and very remote. The caller’s instructions would place him where he could sneak through the woods to the house and survey the situation.

Millie had fussed at him for leaving without any explanation as to where he was going and why he was in such a hurry and for not taking Haywood with him.

Cooper heard Millie holler, “Be careful!” from her front porch as he drove past.

If she only knew,
he thought, doing a quick visual check of his 9 mm pistol to ensure that a round was in fact chambered.

T
he Client was walking around the outside of the house, remembering his ugly past when he saw Grayson running toward the barn. He felt in his pocket for the shock collar remote. It wasn’t there. Hurrying to the car, he grabbed the remote and then jogged toward the barn to discipline his defiant little hostage.

Through clenched teeth, he said as he neared the barn, “Grayson. Grayson! Get your ass out here!”

Grayson’s silence mocked him, making him furious. “Grayson, I swear to God, I’m gonna hurt you if you don’t come out. I’m countin’ to three. Do you hear me? One, two… I mean it!”

The Client paused for effect, placed his finger over the red button, and smiled as he punched the shock button and whispered, “Three.”

Instantly Grayson screamed in agony at the top of his lungs and then started crying. Brooke was shrieking obscenities at him while beating and kicking the inside of the trunk.

The Client grinned and hit the button again, causing the desired response from both mother and son.

The evil man stood, feet spread shoulder-width apart, arms folded across his chest. “Okay, Grayson. Come out here this instant or I’ll shock the shit out of you again!” He felt in total control of everything.

“No! Please. It hurts. I’m comin’!”

When Grayson walked out sobbing, the man held up the remote and warned the boy, “I brought you here to teach you a few things. The first is to respect me. I don’t expect you to understand everything that’s goin’ on just yet, but I do expect you to obey—”

“You’re hurtin’ me,” Grayson interrupted, pulling at the zip ties preventing the collar from being unbuckled.

“I’m helping you… not hurting you. You’ve got to learn to embrace pain in order to grow. With time, you’ll like it, and then one day you’ll enjoy inflictin’ pain. I can’t wait for you to experience
that
for the first time! There’s an art to inflicting pain. I’m trying to teach you. It’s in your genes. You can’t resist the pull of your blood heritage. I know.”

“Please, Dad, take this off me,” Grayson begged while struggling with the collar.

“Quit whinin’ and pay attention. You and your mom will soon understand me, fear me, respect me, and love me,” he explained calmly as he walked toward his car.

Brooke’s screaming and pounding had not waned. He briefly considered letting her out, but was too anxious to check on his prize in the cellar. He quietly walked up to the trunk of his car and without warning slammed down his fist on the top yelling, “Shut the hell up, you crazy bitch!”

D
etective Obermeyer was exhausted from interviewing Gates Ballenger. All that it had accomplished was to make the detective more confused and frustrated. Gates could not tell the same story twice. Obermeyer quickly figured him for a pathological liar.

The detective knew that Gates had called Kelly on her cell phone two days before she disappeared and that was troubling to him. Obermeyer was trying to unravel the truth, and Gates didn’t seem to have it in him. Neither the FBI nor the Alabama Bureau of Investigation had any luck either. The question swirling around the investigation was whether Gates was really bright or a complete idiot.

And this was not Mitchell Holmes’s first rodeo. He was cool as ice and took the Fifth when questioned, until they mentioned Kelly’s kidnapping. At that point, he cooperated fully and offered more information than was required to make certain that they believed he wasn’t involved.