Retribution: The Second Chances Trilogy Book Three (44 page)

“He left to go looking for the dog?”

“Appears so, but I don’t think that’s all there is to it. That’s why I’m asking you to go after him . . . just go, will you
please
?” She casts a meaningful glance in the direction of the revelers clustered around the refreshments table, slugging down drinks and scarfing what’s left of the hors d’oeuvres. “I’ll handle them. I’ll think of something.”

She no doubt will. Without spoiling the party.

Nate hurries to the ground floor, grabs a flashlight from the remembered supply in a mudroom cupboard and exits into the artificial daylight imposed by the mercury lights focused on the mansion. Moving at a jog in the general direction of the abandoned barn and oast houses, he encounters no one who might have seen Colin pass this way. That of itself is not alarming, the sentries are not supposed to be high profile this close to the house. Vigilance is not supposed to be obvious beyond the few CCTV installations that stick out like sore thumbs. He jogs past one now with the realization he didn’t check in with the monitoring station and he’s not wearing a florescent ID bracelet to accredit his comings and goings.

“Fuck it.” He’s not backtracking at this point, not when he sees a moving light up ahead that must be Colin picking his way over the rough terrain approaching the copse of whatever the hell kind of sprouted stumps they are that amount to a whipping ground for the unwary. Those obscene growths ought to be removed on aesthetic principals alone and probably will be when work can ever begin on the oasthouse conversion project.

Entirely dependent on the flashlight now, Nate slows down rather than break an ankle. This is not a life or death situation; this is not a replay of that endless night in Michigan—or even the short night in California when he invaded Cliff Grant’s place by flashlight. He’s simply backing up Colin’s search for a small dog, not the worst quest he’s ever been on.

He tops the rise overlooking the oast house complex. With any ambient light at all, he’d be able to make out the peaked outline in the distance. But no stars are in evidence and if there’s even a thumbnail of moon, it’s not yet risen above the tree line. He can, however, follow the course of the light beam up ahead, and in the absence of the wind and rain predicted earlier, determine that the shouts he’s beginning to hear are, in fact, coming from Colin. Recognizable as well, that Colin is calling a boy’s name, not a dog’s; it’s Anthony he’s exhorting to come home with all having been forgiven.

As he closes in on Colin’s position, Nate gives a shout, identifies himself before he can be mistaken for an errant child, and braces for a diatribe that doesn’t come. When they meet, Colin says nothing about having been followed, ostensibly to protect himself from himself. Instead—between shouting Anthony’s name at short intervals—he delivers a terse account of what’s going on.

“But you don’t know for a fact the dog didn’t come back, do you?” Nate protests. “How do you know Anthony’s not somewhere in the house—attic would be my guess—laying in wait to terrorize his brother and Chris’s little girls?”

These doubts fall on deaf ears, making it futile to remark that if a dog known for its often relentless barking were anywhere near, it would have announced itself by now and, in all likelihood, drawn Anthony out of hiding.

Colin surges ahead, shining his flashlight in ever-widening arcs that barely penetrate the dense growth either side of the narrow path. Nate follows, skepticism increasing with each step forward. Jesus, does Colin really think the kid’s evading them rather than be caught in an act of defiance? Does he really believe the kid’s unafraid of this level of darkness? Apparently so, because Colin goes on calling his name and chanting promises of full forgiveness.

“Oh why not,” Nate grumbles under his breath and takes up the chant full voice, alternating with Colin as they focus their flashlights on the structures that hold such damnable appeal to young boys and small dogs.

They enter the partially open door of the barn, where Colin volunteers to search through the welter of derelict equipment warehoused there. “You suss out the oasts,” he says and resumes calling Anthony’s name in a placating tone.

Nate investigates the kilns in order of appeal, going first to the one containing remnants of the previous owner’s stalled conversion project. He boosts himself far enough up on the scaffolding there to determine that no little boys are hiding on the subfloor above. Satisfied that none are, he redirects the flashlight beam and jumps down with a grunt, glad to move on from an already eerie atmosphere made more so by skeletal shadows cast by the scaffolding.

On the pass-through to the neighboring oast, he sees Colin’s light bouncing off unidentifiable objects in the barn. “Anything?” Nate shouts without getting an answer.

No answers in the second oast either. It’s been stripped of everything but the dust of old dried hops. Even the drying platform has been removed and its remains hauled away, leaving nowhere at all to hide.

He necessarily reenters the barn in order to access the third oast and sees Colin’s light moving around on the other side of the building, over near the stairs. That has to mean he still hasn’t found anything to settle on, so Nate doesn’t bother asking for a progress report this time.

Inside the third oasthouse, Nate is immediately hit with a combination of smells that don’t belong here and the realization his is not the only light source. Drawn first to the glowing embers in the fire pit, he’s reluctant to believe he’s looking at a fire meant for cooking. But that’s what his nose is telling him to believe because the most identifiable of the smells that don’t belong here is that of roasting meat. Burning meat. What the fuck?

The next most identifiable odor is coming from the badly smoking kerosene lantern set atilt on the floor near the fire pit. It must be burning seriously stale fuel for it to smell so much like furniture polish.

He stoops down to kill the guttering flame, stops short when put in closer contact with a smell he can’t quite give name to until his flashlight beam picks out the source—a blood-soaked mat of some kind—a burlap bag like those piled on a nearby platform.

He ought to be used to this kind of thing by now—this stumbling onto massive blood spills, this needing to proceed with clenched teeth, steeled nerves, heart in throat, stomach in knots, because there’s no one else around to do it.

It’s his stomach that’s in his throat when he widens the field of illumination to reveal the unmistakable remains of Anthony Elliot’s little dog, Toby. Nate’s usual profanity fails him as he views the animal’s highly identifiable pelt, cast aside like an old garment, and it’s somewhat less identifiable carcass, half-raw, half-burnt, and spitted like something intended for the weekend barbecue.

“Just have a look at
this
shit!” Colin bellows, choosing the worst possible moment to burst onto the scene. “Something’s done away with Cyril! I’d know his fucking plumage anywhere.” Colin moves into the circle of light, where he releases a large handful of tail feathers at the site of an even worse outrage.

The dropped feathers settle onto the glowing embers of the fire. They ignite with a staggered series of flare-ups, releasing a sulfurous stench that intensifies the charnel house atmosphere, brings tears to eyes already blurred by unspeakable horror.

Colin sinks to his knees beside the remains of the Jack Russell terrier introduced by Rayce Vaughn as a Jack Daniels retriever when presented as a puppy to a five-year-old boy with no mother and no viable father.

“And to think I was havin’ a quick fuck with the wife whilst
this
was goin’ on,” Colin mutters after a long pause, shakes his head in disgust and scrambles to his feet. “With more to come,” he moans and moves to the far side of the fire pit where there’s a washtub Nate hasn’t noticed until now.

The elongated vessel is plenty large enough to accommodate a child. A man, even. “Jesus, Jesus,
Jesus
,” Nate says in advance of looking inside.

At first glance, his and Colin’s worst fears appear realized in the form of the article of clothing afloat in the water-filled tub. For a long agonizing moment neither can see past the youth-size Manchester united cap bobbing on the surface, or reach past it for whatever horror is not as buoyant.

The moment passes and they both grope for and seize onto an empty shirt. A cheap flannel shirt—an adult-size flannel shirt missing both sleeves and soiled beyond washing. Emboldened, Nate fishes deeper into the tub and comes up with a pair of jeans, also adult-size and heavily soiled. These he handles a little longer than he did the shirt. Long enough to read a faded label and establish probable origin before dropping the sodden mass back into the washtub with enough splash to reach another object overlooked earlier.

They each target a primitive wooden stool with their flashlights and silently regard the pair of items displayed on its surface. The small red leather book with a locking strap cannot be other than the diary Laurel thought she had misplaced. The companion piece, the black leather single fold wallet cannot be other than the one that disappeared from Colin’s L.A. hotel room—the photo wallet containing the inflammatory address card.

Of one mind, they leave this evidence undisturbed along with the gruesome indicators of Jakeway’s resident savagery and push their way through the congested barn, barking shins, stubbing toes, bruising elbows in the hurry to go for help.

They’re nearing the stone wall when they hear the whine of a golf cart coming at full speed. It’s fast approaching on the service road that’s little more than a dirt track at these far reaches. They turn back to intercept whoever it is and are momentarily blinded and deafened by high intensity lights and Bemus’s amplified demand to know what in hell they’re doing out here in the dark with a storm brewing.

Bemus stops the cart near what appears to be a recent repair to a washout beneath the perimeter fence. Without waiting for their eyes to adjust to the bright light or cranking down the volume of his complaint, he brandishes a handheld transceiver at them and bemoans how many times this afternoon and evening it’s heralded a false alarm of one kind or another.

“You know . . .” Bemus steps out of the cart to confront Colin directly. “I was hopin’ you’d put a stop to the kid duckin’ under the radar anytime he felt like it and lookee here at the example
you’re
settin’. At least your missus bothers to give notice when she strays outside the—”

“Shut the fuck up and give me that thing,” Colin snarls and grabs for the transceiver.

The longsuffering security chief complies and is left to listen with unconcealed alarm as Colin radios for help, stating why and what to be on the lookout for.

Bemus’s immediate reaction is to remove Colin from the scene. “Take him back to the mansion,” Bemus says to Nate while attempting to manhandle Colin into the golf cart. “An interior room on an upper floor and keep him there until—”

“The hell you say!” Colin wrestles away from Bemus and casts a warning eye at Nate. “I’ll
not
be riding this out from the comfort of home. Don’t you fucking get it? My
child
is missing. Likely taken hostage. He’ll need to hear
my
voice in the many. He’ll need to know
I’m
coming for him.”

The argument against Colin lending himself to the search has nowhere to go once reinforcements arrive. Once Colin is surrounded by former Royal Marines and other certified responders, with local police massing beyond the fence to ward off a possible Jakeway escape, there is no argument—there is no way to convince Colin to return to the comparative safety of the mansion.

And there’s no good reason for Nate not to return to the mansion. Someone has to be the bearer of bad tidings and he’s the logical choice for having had the most practice.

Hoop never counted on this. He never counted on being burdened this way. Wasn’t that the whole point of leaving nearly all his possessions lashed to a tree limb? Wasn’t he supposed to be free in movement and light of foot when the time came?

He shifts the dead weight strapped onto his back, blunders into still another unseen obstacle in the pitch dark. The flashlight won in the struggle with the boy is useless out here where the smallest flicker would serve notice to the swarm of bush beaters now closing in on the barn and its coned attachments.

As long as he can see their lights, they can see his; as long as he can hear their hollering and the crackle of their walkie-talkies, it makes sense to believe they could pick up on his heavy-footed stumbling through this field of tree stumps the owner’s been too lazy to pull or trim of the shoots coming off them thick as fishing poles and wicked as horse whips. Reason enough to stop for a minute or two and take a reading, as they say. And while he’s at it, he’d better make sure the boy’s gag hasn’t slipped out of place and his bindings haven’t come loose.

Hoop releases the straps hurriedly cut from horse harness on the way out of the barn and lets the boy slide off his back onto the ground. By touch, he checks the gag and the bindings cut from the sleeves of the shirt left soaking in the washtub. A good thing he checked because the cloth strips have started to dry and they’re not tightening up the way rawhide would. He makes the adjustments, then gropes around for the boy’s nose and checks for signs of regular breathing by holding his hand in front of it, the third or fourth time he’s done this since the scare back there by the fire when it looked like he’d grabbed the boy’s neck too hard.