Tony Wolf/Tim Buckthorn - 02 - Broken Shield Read online

  Buried alive.

  The power had gone out first, a few hours after the man had left. “I’ll be back,” he said, but now she doubted it. The sounds she’d heard above her in the house had sounded like the end of the world: the whistling wind building to a shriek, then mounting incredibly, unimaginably, insanely higher, becoming the roar she’d heard described by stunned-looking survivors on the news. “Like a freight train,” they’d said, eyes wide and haunted with the memory. But to her it had sounded more like God’s own buzz saw, a high-pitched, brutally overpowering drone that took over every corner of consciousness, blotting out everything but the raw fear. Then the other sounds, the cracking, rumbling, thudding sound of the house above her collapsing, falling in on itself, crashing against the door to the cellar, blotting out the last bits of dim illumination from the one tiny, filthy window she could see from where she’d been imprisoned. She thought she might go insane then, as that final scrap of grayish half-light that was her only connection with the world outside the cellar had suddenly vanished, leaving her in the pitch blackness with what sounded like the legions of Hell ransacking the world above her.

  Leaving her buried alive.

  She shook her head. If she kept thinking like this, she would go crazy. Something in her yearned for that, wanting so much to slip into the oblivion of madness, unfeeling, unknowing, until death took her. But something stronger inside her refused to just die. Her mom needed her. Even her dad, for all that he’d been responsible for where she was, didn’t deserve what that would do to him.

  She thought about her dad. The man who took her said he’d done it because her dad owed him money. So maybe Dad would come up with it. Maybe he’d come get her. The second after she thought it, she knew it was just a fantasy. She loved her dad, always would, but he wasn’t strong. And certainly no kind of hero. The thought made her feel even more alone and helpless and small. And God, she was so thirsty.

  Come on, girl, she thought. Get your shit together. You’re fifteen, not a baby any more. A disaster like this would draw people from surrounding towns, even other states, to claw through the wreckage, searching for survivors. And the man who’d taken her wouldn’t be likely to come back with all that going on. Okay. So how do I get found? She thought about a special she’d seen on TV, about people who’d flown to Turkey or someplace like that to rescue people from an earthquake. They’d used special dogs. Cadaver dogs, a voice whispered in the back of her mind. She shoved it back brutally.

  Okay, dogs. They used their sense of smell. Well, she was thoroughly ripe after three days in a cellar, with a bucket for a toilet, so she was pretty well fixed there. Then she remembered the teams using sensitive microphones to listen for the sounds of people in the rubble. Well, that was fine, too. If she could get this damn duct tape off her mouth, she’d make enough noise to wake a graveyard. She tried to move. The rubble hemming her in on either side stopped her before the chain on her ankle did. The chain was fastened to an eyebolt driven into the cinderblock wall of the cellar. She moved towards where she thought she remembered the wall was, her hands held out in front of her. They were still chained together as well. After a moment, she collided softly with the rough block wall. She moved more slowly then, until her body was against the wall, her duct-tape covered cheek pressed against it. She began rubbing her face against the wall, wondering how long it took to wear through this many layers of duct tape. It was better than just waiting to die.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  She was standing on the porch as Buckthorn pulled the cruiser into the yard, her back as ramrod straight as always. Instinctively, Tim glanced at the dashboard clock with a little shiver of dread, then caught himself and laughed. He wasn’t going to get a dressing down for being late for class. But Mrs. Underhill had that effect on people. He’d been to school functions with his sister and nephews and seen grown men and women instinctively check their clothing to make sure shirt tails were tucked in and skirts properly arranged when the old lady passed by. She was a legend to anyone who’d passed through the sixth and seventh grades at Pine Lake Middle School—feared by her students, the fear turning to reverence after a few years when they realized how well she’d prepared them, both for further study and for life.

  He got out of the car, pulling his “Smokey Bear” hat on as he shut the door. She watched him approach up the walk, that familiar expression of skeptical appraisal on her face. He touched his finger to his hat brim as he stopped before her. “Mrs. Underhill,” he said.

  She nodded. “Timothy.” Then the cool demeanor cracked and her face split in a wide smile. “Come up here and hug my neck right now, young man.”

  He grinned back as they embraced. He noted the slight stiffening and the quick, pained intake of breath and released the hug quickly. “You been all right, ma’am?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “A touch of the arthritis, and my sugar gets bad sometimes, but I can’t complain. Every day above ground’s a gift from the Lord.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Buckthorn said. “You said you’d found something after the storm.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Come on in. I made some ice tea.”

  The inside of the house was cramped but immaculate. They’d moved the card table inside, where it stood awkwardly between the easy chair and the old TV. Buckthorn saw that there were papers and photographs spread across the surface of the table. “So these fell from the sky?” he said.

  “Yes,” Maddie said, handing him his glass of tea. “See anything unusual?” She watched him closely as he shuffled through the pictures with his free hand, sipping at the sweet, cold tea with the other. Suddenly he stopped, the glass halfway to his lips. He picked up one of the pictures. “Holy…” he started, then caught himself.

  “It’s what I think it is, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Maybe it’s some kind of joke,” Buckthorn said.

  Mrs. Underhill’s snort told him what she thought of that idea. “That girl look like she’s joking around?”

  “Have you got a plastic bag of some…” he stopped. She was already holding out a small Ziploc bag. “I watch that CSI show,” she said. “The original one, not the one with that silly red-headed man with the sunglasses. Bag it and tag it. That’s what they say, right?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Buckthorn said, sliding the soggy photograph into the bag and putting down his tea to seal it. “Mrs. Underhill,” he said, “I need you to come down and get your fingerprints taken. Not right now, but in the next day or so.”

  She nodded. “I figured. So if there’s any prints on it, you can tell if they’re mine, right? I’ll bring my grandson Trey. He’s the one who picked it up.”

  “Thank you. I’ll need to talk to the Sheriff about this.”

  “Hmmph,” she said. “Don’t let him push this off on someone else, or some other department, Timothy. I know that man, and if there’s a way to pass the buck, he’ll find it.” She put a hand on his arm and looked him squarely in the eye. “That picture landed in my yard for a reason, Timothy. It was meant to come to you. If anyone’s going to help that girl, the Lord means for it to be you. I feel it.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Buckthorn said.

  She nodded again, as if satisfied. “I’ll let you get back to work, then. It was nice seeing you. Tell your sister I asked after her.”

  “You too, Mrs. Underhill. And I will.”

  As he walked to the car, he spotted Trey in the yard, working with the rake. A second glance told him the area where he was working was clear of debris. It didn’t need raking. Buckthorn waited by the open car door until Trey leaned the rake against a tree and walked over.

  “Trey,” Buckthorn said, “looks like you grew a couple of inches since I saw you last.”

  “Thanks,” the young man said. He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked down. Buckthorn waited patiently. Trey looked up, towards his grandmother’s door. “Ummmm…” he said.

  “Something on your mind, son?” Buckthorn said.

  “I,
uh, I just wanted to say thanks. For speaking up for me a couple months ago.”

  “No problem,” Buckthorn said. “You did a dumb thing, sure. But I didn’t see any reason to hang a felony on you.”

  The previous October, a number of mailboxes and fences in Gibson County had been destroyed by ‘works bombs’—homemade explosives made by filling a two-liter soda bottle halfway with a mixture of water and drain cleaner, then shoving in a piece of aluminum foil, quickly screwing the cap back on and shaking. The chemical reaction inside the bottle generated a large amount of hydrogen gas very quickly, causing the plastic bottle to swell and explode with a loud noise and enough force to do damage to anyone or anything nearby. Repeated irate phone calls from residents who’d had their mailboxes destroyed or who’d been awakened in the middle of the night by loud booms beneath their bedroom windows had led Buckthorn to assign two members of the county’s already understaffed Detective Division to the case.

  Fortunately for them, one of the young men involved, a wannabe thug named Gerrome Tyree, had been bragging about what he and two others had done. Buckthorn wasn’t surprised to hear that Tyree was involved, nor was he surprised to learn that one of his compatriots was another delinquent named Walter Bean. Those two had already made a few appearances on juvenile court dockets, and Buckthorn expected to have a professional relationship with them into the foreseeable future. But the involvement of Trey Underhill startled him. He’d known the family as solid citizens for years. The District Attorney had wanted to slam the young men hard with felony charges. Buckthorn had gone to bat for Trey and managed to persuade the D.A. to allow him to plead to a misdemeanor and receive a deferred prosecution. If he performed community service, paid for the property damage, and avoided further charges for a year, the case against him would be dismissed and his record wiped clean.

  “So how’s it been working out?” Buckthorn asked. “The DPA, I mean.”

  “Good. Got the community service done. Washing fire trucks down at the station in Fox Springs.”

  “Not a lot of fun.”

  Trey shrugged. “It was all right. The cool part was getting to hang around and talk to the firemen.”

  “Think you might want to do that some day?”

  Trey nodded and smiled. “That’d be sweet.”

  “Come see me when you get to be seventeen,” Buckthorn said. “I’ll put in a word.”

  The smile widened. “Really?”

  “Sure. But you have to stay out of trouble. And away from guys like Tyree and Bean.”

  The smile slipped a bit. “Not a problem.”

  Buckthorn saw something in his eyes. “They hassling you?”

  Trey looked away. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  Buckthorn made a mental note to check on that. “Okay. You need any help, Trey, let me know.”

  The young man nodded, then looked back at Tim. “I will. And thanks.”

  “Not a problem,” Buckthorn said as he got back in the car. Before starting the car, he looked at the picture in the plastic bag again. The girl bound to the chair, her eyes wide and pleading, couldn’t be much older than Trey. There was something familiar about her that he couldn’t place. Something in the eyes that called to him. He shook his head. She needed help. And he swore he’d get that help to her.

  __________

  As it was in most things, Maddie Underhill’s assessment of Sheriff Henderson Stark’s character was spot on. He looked at the photograph lying on his desk, still sealed in the Ziploc bag, as if it was a squalling bastard child dropped down in front of him, one he had no intention of claiming.

  “What the hell are we supposed to do with this, Tim?” he said.

  Buckthorn repressed a sigh. Stark was good at two things: getting elected and saving the county money. He was usually smart enough to leave the actual law enforcement work to his Chief Deputy. Usually. Buckthorn was getting the sinking feeling that this wasn’t one of those times. He briefly wondered whether he’d done the right thing by bringing the photo to Stark’s attention, but there really wasn’t any way he could think of not to.

  “I think it’s a proof of life,” Buckthorn said. “Something a kidnapper sends to show the target that the victim’s still alive.” He pointed at the newspaper held by an out-of-frame hand directly beneath the chin of the bound, terrified girl in the picture. “See? Atlanta Journal -Constitution. From two days ago. Right before the storms hit. So she was alive then.”

  “Well, if she was in the path of that storm, and it hit wherever she was hard enough to take this photograph and a bunch of other papers up in the sky and deposit them here, she may not be alive now.”

  “Maybe not,” Buckthorn said. “But we can’t assume that. Not if there’s a chance.”

  “We’re not assuming anything at all, Tim,” Stark said. He gestured at the photograph. “The paper’s from Atlanta. So it’s a Georgia case.”

  “Or South Carolina,” Buckthorn said.

  “Or Alabama, or Mississippi, or wherever. You said these systems can carry things for hundreds of miles.”

  Buckthorn nodded. “That’s what I read.”

  “Point is, it’s interstate, and it’s kidnapping. Or worse. It’s above our pay grade.”

  Buckthorn thought of Maddie Underhill’s words: It was meant to come to you. But Stark went on. “As soon as I heard the word kidnapping,” he said, “I called the FBI office in Charlotte. They’re sending someone down.”

  Buckthorn wanted to shout at the man. But he realized that, for all his laziness and buck-passing expertise, the Sheriff was right. This was an FBI case. It didn’t mean he had to like it. It may have been absurd, but he felt oddly responsible for this girl he’d never met.

  “Okay,” he said. “But there’s a couple of things I’d like to try while we wait for the Feds to show.”

  Stark dismissed him with a lackadaisical wave of his hand. “Whatever. As long as it doesn’t cost anything and you turn it over to the FBI guys as soon as they get here. Then we’re out of it. Got that?”

  “Yes, sir,” Buckthorn said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “I swear to God, boy,” Lamp Monroe said, “you could find a way to fuck up a wet dream.”

  “Hey,” Lofton shot back, “I didn’t plan for a goddamn tornado to come and level the house.”

  “I tole you to get me my money,” Monroe said, the last word ending in a choked wheeze. There was a pause. Lofton could almost see the old man trying to get his breath, struggling to draw air enough to speak again through the slim tubes that ran into his nose from the ever-present oxygen tank that rode in a silver cart by the side of his wheelchair. After a strangled cough, muffled no doubt by his gnarled claw held over the phone’s mouthpiece, Monroe went on. “I din’t tell you to kidnap nobody. Nor lose ‘em, neither.”

  “You said get it back,” Lofton said. “You said you didn’t care how.”

  “I meant show Preston some consequences. I meant break a finger. A leg, even. Kidnappin’s a federal crime, boy. An’ now, it might be murder.”

  “We ought not to be talking about this on the phone, Granddaddy,” Lofton said.

  “Just fix this shit, goddamn it,” Monroe said, then broke the connection.

  Lofton stared at the phone, fighting the urge to toss it across the room. Monroe had been running the family as long as anyone could remember. The legend of his ferocity still kept most of his children, grandchildren, nephews, and assorted hangers-on in line. The fact that they all made money—good money—off the businesses he’d founded back in the glory days of the Dixie Mafia helped as well. But, Lofton mused, maybe it was time for a change. Maybe it was time for Granddaddy Lamp to step down. Or get stepped down.

  __________

  “He wants to be like you,” Patience said. She stood behind the old man and put her hands on his shoulders. She began massaging them, gently, but firmly, her motions practiced. She’d done many jobs in her life, including massage—both therapeutic and the other kind. Monroe
closed his eyes and made a creaking sound of pleasure deep in his throat. “That’s good, gal,” he whispered. Then he opened his eyes. “That’s the trouble,” he said. “These young idjits think it’s all about how bad you can be. No damn sense at all. No judgment.”

  “Mmm-hmmm,” she said. “Maybe you’ve brought Lofton along too fast,” she said. “Maybe he’s gotten in over his head.”

  He patted her hand fondly. “You let me worry about that, gal. I’ll see how he gets hisself out of this. Then I’ll decide what to do about him.” He squeezed the hand harder. “Right now, I’m cold.”

  “Well let me warm you up, then, hon,” she said with the slow, lazy smile that was the only thing left that he could always count on to stir the blood in his old veins. He smiled back at her, his eyes taking in her lush curves. He’d told Patience more than once that she looked like a woman ought to look, not like these skinny girls the TV told him he should be wanting. Still smiling, Patience helped him up out of the wheelchair and guided him to the huge four poster bed. It was an antique, like everything in the old antebellum-style house. Like Lamp Monroe himself, she thought wryly.

  She pulled back the covers and gently laid him down, still fully clothed. Sliding in next to him, she pulled the thick handmade quilts over them both and wrapped her arms around his skinny frame. He gave another happy little sound, like a baby’s coo, and buried his face between her ample breasts. She kissed the top of his bald head and gently traced the lobes of his ears with her fingertips. In moments, he was asleep.

  When she was sure he was completely out, she slipped silently out of the bed. He made a grunt of protest, for all the world like a restless infant, then rolled over on his side and curled up. She looked down at him for a moment. She was fond of the old bastard, she had to admit, and of all the powerful men she’d been next to, his age made him the least demanding. And, if she did this right, he’d be the one who ensured she never had to be any man’s plaything again. She walked out of the bedroom and down a long hallway to where she couldn’t be heard if the old man woke up. Some of the rooms of the old house had been emptied of furniture. The antiques in other rooms were covered by white sheets to keep the dust off. Lampton Monroe’s world had shrunk to a few rooms in the great, rambling old house. His empire had shrunk as well, but there was still enough of it worth having.