Sara's Game (11 page)

“Whatever.  The tournaments?”

“Bupkis.  None scheduled until the weekend.”

That’s a game-changer. 
“What do you have on Teddy Rutherford?” he asked, then spelled out the last name for clarification.

“Hold on a sec.”

DJ heard the clacking of a keyboard as Sergeant Davis pulled up the information.  While he waited, he asked, “Barker check in yet?”

“Yep.  Said he tried your cell.  Wants you to call him ASAP.  Okay...Theodore Alan Rutherford, last known address...1848 Graystone.  Wow.  Guy must have a gold-plated toilet seat.”

“Any priors?”

“Two.  Nothing major.  One speeding ticket and one assault, six years ago.  Looks like it might’ve been a bar fight.”

“Send a car over to his house.”

“Want us to bring him in?”

The phrase match, no golf tournaments.  It was the best he had.  “If he’s there.  If not, start looking.”

He called Barker next. 

Barker answered with a perturbed, “Where the hell have you been?”

“LightPulse.  Asking around.  I think we may have something.”

“Good.  I didn’t come up with much here.  Some of the witnesses said they saw a naked woman.  Said she threw on some clothes and hightailed it down the hill.”

“On foot?”

“Like she was in a big damn hurry to get somewhere.  But hell, who wouldn’t be if they’d been standing around naked in front of a hundred strangers?”

“Right.  Sara left the school in a hybrid Sienna.  Beige, I think.  Any sign of it?”

“Damn, cowboy, you might’ve mentioned that.  Had a lady tell me she recognized the naked woman from the parking lot.  Light brown minivan, she said, but it ain’t there now.  Not where she said it was.”

"If she left on foot and didn’t come back to get it, where’d it go?”

“Better yet, who took it?”

“Get somebody on it, then meet me at 1848 Graystone.  Davis has somebody on the way, but I think you and I need to go have a look.”

“Residential?  You got a possible?”

“Heavy on the possible, but no motive yet.”

“Anything to do with the husband?”

No, Barker.  Jesus, would you give it up?

“Negative.  Teddy Rutherford, son of the LightPulse CEO.  See you in fifteen.  I’ll explain later.”

***

By the time DJ got to Teddy Rutherford’s home near Portland Heights, Barker was already waiting on him, leaning on the side of his car, admiring the house from a distance.  DJ parked behind him. 

Barker whistled as he walked up.  “What do you think?  Million five?  How do people afford this shit?”

“Spending his daddy’s dollars certainly doesn’t hurt.”  DJ looked up to the house, taking in the spectacle.  His shoebox-sized home could easily fit inside three times.  Modern design with lots of straight lines and boxy edges.  Gray exterior with white trim.  A cobblestone walkway led up to a sky blue door.  Lush, vibrant landscaping made it look like the house was hiding within a jungle rather than being a place where a person might lay his head down at night.  A huge, three-paneled picture window took up a good portion of the left side of the facing wall, and on the opposite side of the front door, a smattering of rectangular windows formed a wavelike pattern. 

Barker said, “I get dizzy looking at it.  Makes me think of those flashing cartoons that give kids seizures.  Would you live in something like this?”

“If I had
your
salary, I might.”

“My salary couldn’t rent a room in that thing, cowboy.”  He angled sideways to face DJ.  “What’s the deal here?  Uniforms left about five minutes ago.  Nobody home.”

“Damn.  It’s never easy, is it?”

“You’ll learn one of these days.”

“And I’m sure you’ll take credit for it when I do.” 

DJ recounted the details of his LightPulse visit.  The shitty meeting with Jim Rutherford.  The connection to Teddy and the note.  The golf tournament.  The
lack
of golf tournaments.  The unaccounted for assistant and her coincidental departure.  The teasing that Teddy Rutherford may or may not have taken offense to.  “The lead is there,” he said, “but I don’t feel like it’s enough for motive.”

Barker said, “What we feel and what we can reason—”

“‘
Do not sleep in the same bed together.
’  I know, Barker.  I know.”

“I wish you’d stop interrupting me.”

“I don’t need to.  Your ramblings are ground into my brain.”

“One of these days I might surprise you with something you’ve never heard before.”

“When you do, I’ll be all ears.”

Barker tapped a cigarette out of his soft pack.  Lit it with a one-handed
click
and strike of his Zippo, then took a long drag, slowly exhaling, letting the billowing smoke get lost in the breeze.  “What now, cowboy?  We’ve got a missing woman, her missing children, a missing husband, a missing suspect, a missing assistant.”

“Don’t forget the missing babysitter.  The Bluesong woman.”

“Seems to me like we’re doing the exact opposite of our jobs.  Losing people instead of finding them.  I’m not sure I’ve ever gone this far in the wrong direction.”

DJ decided against reminding his partner of all the time they’d wasted that morning chasing puffs of smoke that dissipated faster than the filth coming out of his lungs.  “We’re here.  We might as well take a look around.”

Barker stood quietly, smoking his cigarette, staring at the house.

“Well?” DJ said.

“Hold your horses.  I’m pondering.”

“Pondering what, Barker?  We have to do—”  DJ stopped mid-sentence as the front door swung open. 

The young woman that stumbled out of the doorway and lurched toward them was naked from the waist down, with one strap of white cloth around her left wrist and one on her right ankle.  Ripped purple t-shirt.  What looked to be a ball gag dangled like a sadistic necklace.   Her legs were covered in cuts and bruises that were so prominent, DJ could see them and her black eye from fifteen yards away.

Barker choked on his cigarette smoke, coughed hard.

DJ said, “Holy shit.”  He sprinted toward her, shouting back, “Call 9-1-1, Barker.  Now!”

“Help me,” she said, and then collapsed on the walkway.

CHAPTER 12

SARA

Sara opened the small box again as the driver headed east in the direction of Gresham and Powell Valley.  She had to be sure that what she saw wasn’t a trick of her imagination.  Could it be the exhaustion?  Was she hallucinating?  It was possible.  She was empty.  Physically to the point of collapsing.  Mentally to the point of seeing things that just couldn’t be. 

The object inside was a relic of history come to life.  It was a memory that had manifested itself into a tangible form.  It was the dead rising.

Sara peered inside and immediately regretted looking.  It sat motionless, right where it was thirty seconds earlier, daring her to pick it up and
feel
what was really there.

Brian’s wedding ring.  It’s not possible.

She reached into the box and pinched the ring, pulled it out and examined it in the light.  The thick band of hammered tungsten felt cool on her fingertips.  The tinted windows made it harder to see, but it
looked
like Brian’s.  She held it by the outside, tilting it this way and that until she was able to get a better glimpse of the interior.  She didn’t want it to be true, but it was.

The inscription read:

Forever Yours – SLW

A storm surge of emotions—anger and frustration and hope—rushed over her body, plowing their way through like a ten-foot-high wall of water over shoreline streets.  It tore what remained of her stability to splinters, ripping it from the foundation, grinding it into shards of unrecognizable flotsam before it retreated and dragged her sanity with it.

She inhaled as deep as her constricted lungs would allow and let loose a banshee scream toward the front of the car.  The driver ducked and swerved.  She pounded the metal grating between them with her fists, rattling the cage.  She wrapped her fingers through the holes and shook and shook and shook, pulling and pulling, trying to rip it free so she could claw at the driver’s eyes, wrap her fingers around his neck until he couldn’t breathe, or reach inside his chest and rip out his beating heart.

When he didn’t turn around, when he didn’t acknowledge her, when he did nothing more than click on his blinker to make a left turn, it unleashed a level of fury so deep that Sara began to feel cramps forming in the arches of her feet.  She screamed.  She raged.  She pounded the metal grating until her knuckles bled.  She shouted, “Who are you?  Why are you doing this?  Where did you get my husband’s ring?”

On and on she went, screaming every question she could think of, every question that had plagued her since early that morning.  She knew her temper tantrum that had escalated into a full-bore Hiroshima explosion was against whatever rules Teddy had dreamed up, but she was past containing herself.  All the emotions she’d swallowed and hidden away for the past two years, all the anxiety and stress and fear that she’d kept buried so the kids wouldn’t see, everything, all of it, detonated there in that car, leveling the walls she’d built around her psyche.

Sara screamed until her throat was raw and her vocal chords burned.  Every muscle in her body ached from the vehement expulsion of her wrath and she went limp, flopping back onto the seat when no more words would come. 

She looked down at Brian’s ring in her open palm.  The aftershocks of pain sent tremors vibrating through her hand and she could feel her pulse throbbing through the fluid in her swollen knuckles.

What did you do to him?

She tried one last time with the driver, this stoic courier delivering his pathetic, distraught package.  “Where did Teddy find this?”

Nothing.

So many questions.  No answers.  Did the ring mean that Brian was still alive?  Or worse, did it mean the opposite?  What possible link could there be between Teddy and Brian?

Her chauffeur, the stone statue in the front seat, pulled over to the side.  Sara sat up straight, tried to figure out where they were, but didn’t recognize the area.  Somewhere east of Portland proper, but not quite to Gresham yet.  The driver reached up and worked a green strip of cloth through one of the openings in the grate.

“What’s that for?”

His one word response was, “Blindfold.”

Indignant, she said, “I’m not wearing that.”

“Blindfold.”

“No.”

“Blindfold.”

She clenched her jaws.  “I said no.” 

The driver reached down, grabbed something from the seat beside him.  He held up what was left of Jacob’s Tyrannosaurus Rex t-shirt, the one he’d worn to school that morning.  The one he’d worn so much the color had begun to fade.  “Blindfold.”

“If you hurt him—”

“Blindfold.”

She ripped the green strip of fabric from its metal grasp.  “If you’ve done something to him or my girls...if I get out of this goddamn game alive, and if I ever,
ever
find out who you are, you better pray to God there’s another wall between us, because I’ll be coming for you.  Do you understand me?”

“Blindfold.”

Sara wrapped the cloth around her head, covering her eyes, turning out the lights on a world that was already dark.  She shifted the material around until she found a thinning spot on the old t-shirt, allowing her just enough sight to make out shapes in the sunlight. 

What good will it do me?
  “Done,” she said. 

She heard him shuffling around, heard the familiar clicking of fingers on a keypad.  Silence.  More clicking.

“What’re you doing?  Did you hear me?  I said I’m done.”

The car began to move again.  The driver turned on the radio.  Classical music blared from the speakers, drowning out every other sound.

I can’t hear where we’re going, asshole.  The blindfold is enough.

But with limited sight, her other senses took over, amplified themselves.  She felt the rough material of the car’s seat on the back of her legs.  The throbbing in her swollen hands.  The weight of the key in one, and the ring in the other.  She felt the vibration of the tires rolling across decaying roads.  Every pothole felt like they were falling.  Every incline, a roller coaster climbing toward its apex.  Tasted the remnants of vomit.  She remembered the apple and bottle of water.

Save it.  Might be all you’ll get.

I hope they’re feeding the kids.  They didn’t eat much this morning.  Oh God, why didn’t I make them finish their breakfast? 

Breathe...breathe...breathe...

Everything will be fine.

Sara repeated the mantra in her mind, even said it aloud a number of times, but it didn’t help.  No matter how much she tried to convince herself that the ending of the game would be a happy one, no matter how many alternate ending scenarios that she came up with, the feeling that something bad would happen wouldn’t go away. 

Sliding into depression was an understatement.  She careened downward, headlong, toward the awaiting and inevitable bottom.  Thought about how rare truly happy endings were out in the real world.  You got handed the results and you had to acknowledge them and move on, regardless of the outcome or circumstances.

***

She had no idea how long they’d been driving.  Twenty minutes?  Half an hour?  Surely they were out of the city, but for all she knew, they could’ve doubled back.  It was too hard to make out where they’d gone with the fleeting glimpses through the material, but it wasn’t worth risking a peek.  If the driver saw her do it, one call to Teddy might result in more pain for her children. 

As the car rattled and bounced along, Sara got the feeling that they were no longer on a paved road.  The vibrations were different.  More rugged and unforgiving.  Wherever he was taking her, and however long it had been, it was far from where she wanted to be. 

Which was on her porch, in her rocking chair, watching the kids play a game of freeze tag in their postage stamp of a backyard.  Or in their living room, putting together a puzzle after dinner.  Lying between the twins, reading them a bedtime story as her little boy dozed across the hall, mouth open, slobbering on his favorite pillow.