HE OLD MERCURY ROARED up the interstate. Behind the wheel of the vintage car, Stacey no longer felt like a fugitive, but rather a farmer out on an errand. Traffic thinned out several miles outside of town. If his apartment was clear, he’d have time to get in, take a minute or two to gather up anything he might need to finish his investigation, and be back in Fillmore by midnight.
Christina stopped peddling at the corner, breathing hard—yet hardly breathing—waiting, her eyes darting wildly in every direction, her heart thumping at her ribs. Melvin didn’t seem to be following her. She cautiously looked back, trying to decide if it was safe to return.
Then she spied him, darting behind a tree, moving toward her in the darkness. An inferno of terror burst through her, jolting her thoughts, dulling her instincts. There she was, at Sixth and Fir, only a few blocks from where her friend Ashley had been taken. Kate’s house was located at least ten blocks in the other direction, with the figure in between, shadowing her every move. Ashley had said how strong and fast he was.
She glanced around, desperately seeking a solution. The houses along the street were dark. She thought about knocking on a door and screaming for help, but realized she didn’t have time. The figure seemed to glide silently through the blackness. The only direction that led away from danger was toward the woods, further from home. Christina peddled away as fast as she could.
Jake finished his blasting as Danny’s side of the screen turned red with blood. “I won!” He raised his arms triumphantly in the air. “Chrissy, I restored your honor,” he whooped as he looked around. No answer.
“Chrissy?” Danny yelled a bit louder.They both got up to see where she’d gone. “She said something about her bike, remember?” Danny said. “She was going to bring it in.”
They dashed for the door and climbed the steps. No Christina; no bike. “Maybe she went to our house,” Jake offered hopefully.
“No way. We didn’t tell you what happened earlier. Uncle Don was about to beat the crap out of Melvin for spying on the people that used to live here.” Danny’s mind began to race. “We better find her quick.”
Jake mounted his skateboard and started off. “You wait here and I’ll go home and see if she’s there.” Just then Kate pulled around the corner. Seeing the panicked looks on her sons’ faces and no Christina in sight, she rolled down the window and asked in a frenzied voice, “Where’s Christina?”
Danny shook his head. “We don’t know. She said she was coming out to get her bike and now she’s not here.”
Kate’s brow furrowed deeper. “How long ago?”
Danny shrugged his shoulders. “We were playing Nintendo. I think it’s been ten or fifteen minutes. Maybe she went to our house.” Kate took her cell phone from her purse and dialed. “Hurry, Alan. Hurry,” she pled as she waited for him to pick up....“Is Christina home?”
“I haven’t seen her. What’s the matter?” Alan immediately recognized the fear in her voice. It was the same tone as when one of the children couldn’t be found. It usually turned out they were asleep under the bed or at a friend’s house, but this time it was different. Some lunatic had shot and killed a local police detective; two children had been abducted, one narrowly escaping after being saved by the dog that belonged to the officer accused of the killing. Yeah, she had a right to worry. “Where are you?”
“I’m at Don’s apartment. Drive this direction while I call the police.”
“I’m on my way.” Alan raced to the garage and climbed in his car. Most of the children were asleep. He didn’t stop to explain to them where he was going.
“Central Dispatch. Is this an emergency?”
“Yes, my niece is missing.”
“Where did you see her last?” Kate gave the address. “Please stay on the line while I get an officer.” She was gone a few seconds.
“Mapleton one-twenty-one responding,” Mitchell said as he spun his vehicle around. “We’re really short here. We could use all the backup units you can find.”
“Can you give me a description of the girl?” dispatch asked as she typed in a coded response in the computer. Kate breathed in. “She’s about four-and-a-half feet tall, long dark hair, part Hispanic.”
“How old is she?”
“Twelve.” Kate could see Alan’s car rounding the corner.
“Please hold on, ma’am.”
Mitch and Olsen were the only officers on duty. Olsen was assigned stakeout at Stacey’s house. He started his engine and sped off. He hadn’t felt comfortable with the assignment anyway. Not in a million years did he believe Stacey had stolen the drugs, much less killed Deek.
Christina raced through the dark on her bike. The tree house! she thought. I’ll hide in the tree house. She turned down Fir’s dark, deadend lane. Her bike was hard to control in the swampy grass. Suddenly the front wheel went out from under her. Down she went, crashing to the wet ground. Small insects buzzed around her; water seeped through her clothing. She lay still, listening, watching in the dim moonlight. She could hardly hear over the pounding of her heart. She turned her head and scanned the landscape to see if she was still being followed. There he was—just at the edge of the woods. He was wearing something on his head. It flashed in the moonlight.
Picking up the bike, she climbed back on. She knew her way to the tree house, even in the dark. She raced toward the safety she thought it could offer, her wet hands clinging to the handlebar grips, her chest about to burst.
Pulling alongside the large ash, she leaned her bike against it and looked up at the ladder-pull. She jumped to reach the cord and missed. Never having pulled it before, she didn’t realize it was so far off the ground. She jumped again, still short of the mark. She was too short.
Crouching behind the tree, she peered out into the darkness. Beads of sweat dripped down her face and stung her eyes. Was he still out there? Creeping back to her bike, Christina wheeled it beneath the pull cord. I can do this, she repeated in her mind. I can. She clenched her shaking, sweat-soaked hands. Slowly and carefully she stood up on the frame of the bike and seized the rope. The door flopped open and the ladder started to uncoil down the tree trunk, making a terrible ruckus as it fell.
The dark figure paused in his search, cocked his ear, then raced off in the direction of the noise. Christina started up the ladder, periodically glancing behind her as she scaled the wobbly rope.
The first squad car pulled to the curb only a few moments behind Alan. Alan told Officer Mitchell he hadn’t seen Christina between his house and the apartment. Danny and Jake were huddled together, trembling not so much from the chill in the air as the thought of their cousin being in trouble. They stood a few feet away as Kate explained the scenario.
“Where would you go if you were in trouble?” Jake whispered to his brother.
“I’d go to the tree house.”
“Me, too.” Jake approached the officer as a second squad car pulled up. Mitch began to explain the situation to Olsen.
“I think I know where she went,” Jake finally interrupted. Everyone stopped to listen. “We have a secret tree house in the woods. She might go there to hide. I just don’t know if she knows where the ladder rope cord is.”
“She does. I saw her peeking one day when we were letting it down,” Danny chimed in.
“Where is it?” Mitch asked.
Jake pointed. “In the woods at the end of Fir.”
Stacey was almost through the mountains. The lights of Nephi
Stacey was almost through the mountains. The lights of Nephi mph zone. Nephi police were notorious for nabbing speeders. He hadn’t seen many cars and had only passed a few slow-moving trucks on the uphill side of the mountains. He checked his gauges and mirrors.
Then, lights! He could see flashing lights in his mirror. He slowed to the speed limit, hoping beyond hope that he hadn’t gone through a trap. In no time at all the lights closed the gap, two cars pulling up behind him. Stacey applied his brakes and began to move over. He knew the old Merc was powerful, but it could never endure a highspeed chase. Grandma had only put fifteen thousand miles on it in the twelve years she’d owned it. And she’d probably never taken it up above 60.
With room to pass, the two highway patrol cars raced by him, going much faster than they should, even on a code. He decided to turn on his radio and see if he could tell what was happening.
“One twenty-one, central.”
“Go, one twenty-one.”
“We think she may be in the vicinity of Fir.” Mitch’s voice could
be heard. “Call Lieutenant Barker.”
“Ten-four. One twenty-one, we have every available unit in the
county on the way.”
“Dispatch, we have two male juveniles, cousins to the girl, that
think she may have tried to flee to a tree house in the woods.”
Christina, inside the playhouse, struggled to pull the ladder up the tree. She’d seen the boys do it so easily and didn’t realize its weight. Using every ounce of strength she had, she grasped onto the top rung, pulled and reached for the second. Soon the third rung was within reach. She stretched down and grabbed onto it, locking it in the joint of her arm. Tugging upward, Christina felt a sudden jerk. Pulled off balance, she tumbled headfirst out the trapdoor, scraping her right side from her elbow to her ankle. With her arm tangled in the rope above the third rung, her weight jerked her to a stop, leaving her suspended nearly 30 feet above the ground. Then she felt the ladder vibrate, as someone from below began pulling themselves upward. Her arm throbbed, her side burned with pain, and she felt dazed and confused from the fall. Screaming, she scrambled to find the ladder with her feet. The wrenching movements of the approaching figure below her again threw her off balance, but finally she recovered.
Just then she felt a hand wrap around her ankle. She wrestled to pull free of the vise-like grip, but it was no use. She could feel him using her leg for support, pulling himself up. Braced with both arms, the shooting pains almost unbearable, she inched her left foot off the step and kicked as hard as she could. Her foot connected. The grip released. Something bounced off the tree’s branches and hit the ground.
Christina pulled herself up onto the floor of the hut and slammed the trap door. It bounced with a dull thud, striking her attacker as it closed. A grunt and a faint moan was heard. She turned the lock. The powerful banging on the door motivated her to move upward. She dragged herself to the window and, using her left arm, pulled herself up onto the roof. The banging intensified.
Danny and Jake had climbed in the front seat of Mitch’s police car to point the way. Alan and Kate followed close behind Olsen, who raced up Fir’s dusty, rutted surface. To Mitch it felt like he was caught up in a rerun of a very bad play. But this time it was worse than ever because the star had failed to show. They needed Sig.
The late news report had thrown the County Attorney’s office into chaos. The captain stood in front of Demick, pleading his case for a warrant, unaware that another child was missing. And the judge, in turn, was none too happy to have been summoned to his chambers at 11 o’clock at night. He was harder than ever on the attorney.
“If you’re wrong, I’ll wrap you up and ship you off to Sanpete County,” he threatened the attorney. “And Captain, if you’re wrong, I’ll recommend a disciplinary hearing in front of the Board of Justice. I don’t take lightly accusing a distinguished officer of these kinds of crimes. It speaks poorly of our enforcement system. Either we honored him wrongly the first time or we’re slandering him now. You better get to the bottom of this right away.”
Christina knew that if the door latch broke, it would only take a minute for her assailant to reach her. She decided her only escape was the rappelling rope. Already terrified, the thought of leaping from the roof holding onto nothing but a rope was more than she could bear. Sirens whined in the distance. The boys would know where she was. But, at present, things were far from safe.
She frantically groped for the harness. Her hands trembled; her arm still throbbed with pain. The banging ended with a ripping thud. She could hear him feeling around in the darkness of the hut.
The rope lay coiled on the corner of the roof. Finding it in the shadows, she threw it off the roof. It whipped and banged against the side of the hut as it dropped to the ground. She picked it up to secure it to her harness.
Something was missing. Figure eight, she remembered. She didn’t have a figure eight on her harness. She bent back down and felt for Danny’s harness. Where was it? Then she felt it. Jerking it toward her, she continued to glance feverishly toward the window end of the roof. The reflection of the slender moonlight could be seen on the river. She fumbled with the carabiner, holding the figure eight. Suddenly his head appeared above the roofline. Madly she grappled to release the ring from Danny’s harness. It snapped loose, and she clipped the figure eight to her biner. She needed to put the rope through first.
Holding her breath, she glanced back. The attacker was halfway up. She unsnapped the eight and threaded the rope. “Be right!” she prayed as she clipped it on. She struggled to her feet, the braking rope in her left hand. He was so close she could smell his foul breath. He grabbed at her shirt. Her eyes closed, she stepped back allowing herself to fall from the roof. Fully expecting a free-fall, suddenly she came jerking to a stop, sending her body slamming into the side of the hut. She opened her eyes to see his head and arm hung out over the roof. He’d snatched her in mid-air.
She reached up and looked into the blackness of his empty eyes, then clawed at his face as he held her shirt, now pulled up partly over her face. Her fingers sank deep into the soft tissue of his eye, clutching and stabbing as she dug into his socket. There was a scream and he pulled back, leaving the black knit mask in her hand. Then, having turned loose of the rope to defend herself, Christina began to plunge downward, his profile providing a silhouette against the moon as she fell. She reacted in a fraction of a second to the rope grinding past her leg. Reaching behind, she grabbed the rope. It dug into her hand, burning the flesh as she came to a sudden stop. Legs bucking, she landed on the ground, squarely on her butt. She could hardly breathe, the impact having hammered the wind out of her lungs. Groaning with pain, she strained to stand up. She caught sight of the bike; it seemed a mile away. She wasn’t sure she could ride it even if she reached it in time.
“ Christina!” It was Danny’s voice. It was a distant hope, a muffled faith. He was calling her; he was coming!
“Danny!” She tried to answer. Her voice cracked. She struggled to refill her lungs with precious air. Glancing up and back over her shoulder, she saw the black figure slide down the rope. She careened toward Danny’s voice. Then came other voices. And finally, through the trees, there came lights! Flashlight beams filtering through the brush. On rubbery legs, she made her way toward the lights.
Stacey intently monitored the radio as he drove. He cringed at the thought of losing another girl. He felt so helpless, so alienated from it all. Several other agencies were joining in the search. Each reported into the County Central Dispatch.
“Mitch have you seen anything?” he heard Olsen ask.
“No, we’re headed northeast toward the river. The boys say the tree house is only a couple hundred yards more.” Stacey could hear his voice fluctuate as he ran.
Come on guys, hurry! he said to himself as he listened to the calls.
Judge Demick thrust the warrant forward. “I want to hear what you find as soon as you finish. Call me at home.”
“Yes sir,” the attorney said.
“I don’t think you’ll be disappointed, your Honor,” the captain said confidently.
“You’re wrong! I’ll be disappointed either way.” The judge stood and motioned them out the door.
Christina stumbled through the brush and fell to the ground, exhausted. Mitch’s light spotlighted the disheveled figure that slumped before them, spots of blood seeping through her tattered clothes up and down her side.
“We’ve got her! She’s alive,” he shouted over the radio. “Yes!” yelled Stacey as he slammed his hands against the Merc’s steering wheel. He made the turn north at Spanish Fork and gazed out across the valley to the lights, where he knew the chase was taking place. He could drive there in ten minutes if he wanted to, but it was out of the question.
“Is she okay?” asked Olsen.
Danny was first at her side. “Chrissy, what happened?”
“Melvin almost got me,” she labored to say.
“She seems beat up a bit but I think she’s okay,” Mitch announced as he shined his light up and down the frazzled girl’s body.
Stacey breathed a sigh of relief as he pulled off the freeway. How many times is this guy going to get away? Who is he? This was the first time he’d attacked in the same vicinity. Maybe that would help in the search. His radio beeped—the signal his battery was running low. He glanced at the screen. The two bars remaining signaled its diminishing capacity. He hoped it would at least get him through the night.
Kate held Christina in her arms, rocking back and forth. “It’s okay now. It’s okay,” she whispered as she swayed.
“Where’s my dad?”
“He went to see your grandpa.”
Mitchell knelt by the trembling girl. “Christina, you said Melvin almost got you. Who’s Melvin?”
Christina raised her head from the protective bosom of her aunt, but Danny answered first. “He’s the pervert landlord where she lives. I’m gonna finish the job Uncle Don was gonna do.”
“Hold on now, young man. Tell me what happened,” Mitch warned.
Danny began to relate the incredibly bizarre events of the past few weeks.
Stacey cautiously drove around the block past his house. He knew the entire force was on the other assignment, but he didn’t want to take any chances. After his initial pass, he went three blocks south. The streets were quiet, dark. Few street lights were ever installed in the older part of town. An occasional house light was left on for security. He parked the Merc and walked down the street toward home.
“One ten, one twenty-eight.”
“One twenty-eight. Go ahead, captain,” Olsen answered. “I have a warrant. Proceed to enter,” Bingham ordered. “Captain, I don’t know if you’ve been monitoring, but we have a
serious situation here. We had a missing girl at Fir. We just found her and we’re working on a sweep of the area for the perp.” “Who’s on Stacey’s place?”
“No one, sir. Barker, Mitch and I are here where we found the
girl,” he said triumphantly. “She’s alive!”
“Dammit, Olsen! I told you to stay on that house!” he barked. Olsen was shocked, along with everyone else who monitored the
call. “I’m sorry, sir. Mitch and I were the only ones on duty when the call came in.”
“Who do you have now?”
“We’ve been backed up by County, UHP, and Spanish Fork.”
“Grab whoever you can find and meet me at Stacey’s place,” Bingham ordered.
Stacey started on a dead run toward his apartment. He knew they were only six or seven minutes away. It took him two minutes to reach the garage door. When he opened it, Sig barreled past him. “Sit!” Stacey gave the command in a whisper. “We don’t have time for games.” Sig obeyed his master, but had a hard time holding still. Stacey crept to the back door and unlocked it with his key. Why was the captain so anxious to search his place? He thought he knew the answer. “Seek in silence!” he whispered to Sig.
Sig bolted from his sitting position and flew through the open door. He started in the kitchen, immediately stopping at the cupboard. The house was almost pitch black. Stacey took a small flashlight from the kitchen drawer and turned it on. He checked the time. Less than four minutes. Sig quietly put his front paws up on the counter top, panting enthusiastically. Stacey carefully opened the door, checking for attachments. His beam fell on the plastic container. He slowly removed the container from the shelf and opened the lid. Just as he’d expected. “Seek in silence.” Stacey whispered again.
Sig stood in front of Stacey. He knew he’d found what they were searching for, and jumped up, excitedly nipping at the container, knocking it out of Stacey’s hand. Stacey stepped off balance and dropped the light. Its beam flashed across the ceiling as it hit the floor, the small bulb sputtering out as Stacey fell. His body hit the ground with a thud and a groan as he caught the dish, just inches from the floor.
Stacey jumped to his feet. “Seek in silence,” he commanded again, this time pointing to the living room. Sig began his routine sweep, moving from room to room with the same exactness he’d done hundreds of times before.
The glow of the clock in the bedroom served as Stacey’s beacon. He grabbed a dark jacket and a gym bag from the closet and stuffed a few things into the bag. The charger to his radio sat on his dresser. He quickly unplugged it and dropped it in. Sig entered the bathroom, stopped at the toilet and began to whine. Stacey checked his watch. One minute. He peeked out the side of the curtain to the front, then moved to the bathroom to see what Sig had found. It was too dark to see.
“One ten, one twenty-eight. I need backup. What’s your twenty?” the captain’s voice blasted out over the radio. Stacey’s radio beeped twice and shut down. Once more he peeked outside. The captain’s car was parked in front. Olsen pulled up behind him, followed by a county rig. He could hear the captain’s muted voice. “One of you take the rear and the other come with me.”
The sheriff started toward the back, Olsen followed Bingham up the walk. Stacey called urgently for Sig. “Come!” He slid open the bedroom window; Sig still sat whining in the bathroom. “Come, boy!” he said as loudly as he dared. The captain and Olsen were at the front door. Stacey slithered over the sill and stood in the side yard.
“ Wham!” The front door flew open with a crash. Sig bolted through the hall to the bedroom and hurled himself out the window to join his master. Stacey waited until he heard the back door crash open to slide the window shut so as not to call attention to himself. Lights went on in the house. Stacey crawled over the fence as he heard the house being torn apart.
“Come boy,” he coaxed. “You can do it.” Sig took a few steps back, then broke into a run, ending in a graceful leap. His front legs cleared the top and his back legs dug in as he pulled himself up and over the rattling fence. The two of them eased into the night.