The Azalea Assault (32 page)

“Annie!” Cam called, nervous now.

There was no answer.

The bedroom seemed to have been clumsily searched, and upstairs, in what had once been an attic but now served as an office and darkroom, Annie’s computer had been destroyed, as had much of her photo equipment.

“Oh no. Oh no.” Cam’s stomach knotted again as she descended and she sprinted down the short hallway, sure
she’d be sick in the sink. She managed to hold it back by splashing water on her face.

She dialed Jake.

“Yeah, Cam?”

“He took Annie!”

“What?”

“Annie’s apartment’s been trashed. Her car is here, but she’s gone!” Her sobs broke her off. She heard Jake trying to call to her, but she didn’t understand him. She’d sunk to Annie’s kitchen floor, barely aware of avoiding the broken glass, and she pulled her knees up and tucked her face between them.

S
he had no awareness of how long she was there, but Rob found her.

“Come on, baby. Let’s get you downstairs.”

She shook her head and argued incoherently. Some part of her needed to be in Annie’s space to draw her home.

“Jake will find her.”

“No!”

“You don’t want Jake to find her?”

“I do, but…” She let out a large sniff. “Jake? You think”—she gulped down a sob—“shouldn’t we?”

“Cam, you’re exhausted! You had a helluva day!”

“No! We need to figure it out.”

“Come downstairs and we’ll try, okay?”

Cam nodded; that made some sense. So she followed Rob to her own kitchen table and watched as he got out a notebook and pen.

Rob looked surprised when Cam pulled the notebook to herself and started grilling him.

“How long did you stay for the margaritas?”

“Just the one pitcher and nachos. Annie said I looked lousy and needed sleep, and I could tell she was drunk, so I drove her home—her car, obviously. I had to take a cab home, and then another one to get back here.”

“Well… that’s good. Better not to drive after that.”

“Nice convertible, by the way.”

“My need was great,” she joked, gallows humor the only thing that might numb the pain. “What time did you get home?”

“Maybe eight. I made a protein shake, brushed my teeth, and was in bed by nine.”

Cam rolled her eyes at the mention of the protein shake. Rob claimed they were healthy, but he only actually drank them when he feared a hangover.

“Then I woke up when Jake called.”

“What time is it?”

“Midnight, I guess?”

Cam tried to make sense of that. She’d thought she’d left Samantha’s at nine or ten, but time had probably morphed in the weirdness, and so it was certainly possible she hadn’t left until later. It was probably why the officer had been so nice about it.

“So how do we find Annie?”

“You’re going to be mad,” Rob said, “but first we wait. Jake swore he’d call when he knew anything. Cam, you have to get some rest, and in the morning, when they know something, I’ll help you with whatever we can piece together.”

She tried to fight the idea, but her body rebelled. She was exhausted. She lay down, still dressed, on her bed with Rob. His phone was set loud, as she made him prove three different times, and he held her while she slept.

A
s promised, Jake called Rob at about three in the morning. A search of Joseph’s apartment had revealed two toy Pomeranians, yappy and demanding, quite a rich fantasy life—though fantasy more of the swords and dragons variety than the
Penthouse
type—and five thousand dollars in cash that Jake thought meant he looked ready to leave town.

The clue Jake felt was most helpful, though, one he fortunately shared with Rob, was a stack of newspaper clippings
about interest in a property south of Roanoke. Jake didn’t know what to make of it, but Rob thought it might mean something, and so before he woke Cam, he turned on her laptop to search.

“Cam. Here. I think this is why he’s so interested in that property.”

Cam jerked herself awake, feeling oddly refreshed from her two-hour nap. Rob explained what Jake had found in Joseph’s apartment, and then she joined Rob at her laptop to look at the article he’d pulled up from the
Roanoke Tribune
’s online version. It was in the archives, which, thankfully, Rob had access to because he was a newspaper employee.

Rob pointed out that he’d saved a number of related tabs, and Cam pulled the computer to her so that she could read through them. They described a series of lawsuits in the late 1990s against tobacco companies. Many local tobacco farmers had opted to sell their land, due, the article said, to the writing on the wall. Cam knew that had made Rob cringe—a reporter shouldn’t resort to clichés.

The series, though, made it clear the landowners who’d sold before the court decision had mostly gotten fair money for their land. The sellers who had waited, however, had gotten only dimes on the dollar, nowhere near the true value for their land.

Joseph Sadler-Neff had been interviewed, one of a handful of landowners unwilling to part with family land for such a pittance.

“His elderly mother owns it. It’s the reason my search didn’t catch it.”

“What search?”

“I ran a background search on everybody who was even a little suspicious. It’s just part of the job,” Rob went on, as though that shouldn’t be news to Cam. “While he couldn’t afford to farm it with all the increased financial burdens, he’d leased part of it to a man who raised sunflowers, and decided to just let the rest sit idle.”

“That’s where they are,” Cam insisted.

Rob nodded. He’d drawn the same conclusion.

“Why does Joseph have it in for Annie?” Cam asked.

Rob opened a tab Cam hadn’t gotten to yet.

“That doesn’t sound like him—I mean according to Annie’s grumbles. But what does it mean?” Cam asked Rob.

“Tobacco largely ruins the land for other crops. It has to sit a few years, recovery crops—that kind of thing. The state considered a parachute for tobacco farmers. Normally Schulz was all over stuff like that, but he voted against it, and took a couple other senators with him. It changed the outcome.”

“Oh, geez. How fast can we get there?”

Rob looked up the address on a map.

“Fifteen minutes, maybe?”

“Let’s go.”

“In what, babe? My Jeep is still in holding as evidence.”

“Annie’s car. The Mercedes probably shouldn’t go on a rescue run, but the Bug is an old pro.”

He grinned and followed her outside.

T
hey weren’t a bad team with Cam driving and Rob navigating—far better, Cam thought, than if the roles were reversed. Rob didn’t trust her navigating, so refused to take her directions, and then offered being lost as proof she couldn’t read a map. She knew, though, that the inability to ask for directions was a trait solidly bound to the Y chromosome.

This time they managed beautifully, up until they found
themselves on a gravel road in the middle of nowhere. They parked and decided to walk the rest of the way so they didn’t alert anyone to their presence.

Cam was starting to spook herself, and Rob found this amusing enough that he kept pointing out things to keep her on edge.

“Will you stop that? I’m scared!”

“You are not. Cam, this is just an old farmhouse with about three outbuildings—that satellite view showed nearly nothing out here.”

She frowned irritably. She knew he was trying to calm her with his humor, and she, half hoped he was right, though she was also half waiting to shove his face in it if he was wrong, even if she didn’t want to confront whatever would make him wrong.

The farmhouse, when they reached it, appeared to be abandoned, as did the shadowy buildings off to the side, though in the little bit of moonlight, the slatted design of the tobacco-drying barn made the structure look like something out of a horror movie. The spaces between the slats emitted only blackness.

“Look!” she whispered.

To the side, in the shadow of the tobacco barn, was an edge of white that Cam felt certain was the boxy corner of Joseph’s Volvo. She was very glad he thought of himself as a white knight. A black car never would have been visible, and they might not have gotten closer.

Rob pushed a button on his cell phone.

“Jake? I’m pretty sure we found Joseph. The address you gave me south of town used to be his family’s tobacco farm.” He held up his phone toward the part of the Volvo they could see, transmitting a picture to Jake. When he hung up, Cam looked at him intently.

“Rob, I don’t think we should wait. What if he’s torturing Annie or something?”

“Torturing? Do you have any reason to think he would?”

“He killed somebody just to frame her.”

“Allegedly, but good point. What should we do?”

“We need to get her out of there! I guess I don’t know how we do that, but we could sure plan it a lot better if we could see what was going on.”

Rob seemed skeptical, but he nodded, resigned to getting closer. “Seems like we probably want to come at it from the back, don’t you think?”

Cam nodded and took Rob’s hand so he could lead her around the edge of the property.

A
s the moon passed behind a cloud, they lost their only light source, making walking more difficult, but soon enough, they were near the barn. Approaching quietly from the rear, they could hear noises coming from within. It sounded like the scraping and the moving of something across boards.

“They’re above us,” Rob whispered. “I’m going up.”

He indicated the pattern of siding at the back and a large window up above that indeed made the building look climbable.

Cam thought about arguing but knew she’d only hold Rob up—upper body strength wasn’t her strong suit. “What do I do?”

“Show Jake where we are.”

“Oh no!”

“Shhh.”

He was right. It was not the time to make her case, but neither was it time to sit and wait for the cops. She wasn’t sure what to do, but walking away from the barn where both her best friend and boyfriend might end up in trouble was not an option. She looked at her watch. They had called Jake ten minutes earlier, and he should be there soon, provided he’d left Roanoke immediately. She thought he probably had. That meant if she could somehow buy ten minutes, everything would be fine.

Rob wouldn’t be at all happy with her plan, but she wasn’t thrilled with his either, so she decided to go for it, creeping
slowly toward the front of the building, and walking close to the Volvo as she did so.

There was a roll of duct tape on the seat, and gardening twine—visible because the driver’s door hadn’t been shut all the way, so the light was on. There was also a small gardening clipper, probably to cut the twine with. It was the sort that was sharp on the blade, to cut vines and small branches, but dull at the point—unlike the shears used to stab Jean-Jacques. If nothing else, she thought the clipper would be useful for cutting at any fingers trying to get too close, so she opened the door a little wider and grabbed it.

As she moved toward the front of the barn, she tried to listen more closely. She thought she heard Annie yelling, but muffled—she had something in or over her mouth. Joseph was talking calmly to her, though he was too far away for Cam to make out his words.

Cam edged around the front, peeking into the larger opening. The air coming from within smelled of dried tobacco, and she could make out some leaves still strung to the rows of clips that had at one time held up entire harvests to dry in the late summer heat.

The beam from a flashlight shone above her head, but it was angled in such a way that she couldn’t tell what it was illuminating.

She judged Rob had reached the level where Annie was right now, and what she needed to do was draw Joseph down so Rob could free Annie. She stepped into the doorway.

“Joseph!”

It took a moment, but then she heard scuffling.

“Miss Harris. You shouldn’t be here. What do you need?”

“Just to talk to you. Can you come down?”

“I’m afraid I can’t. I’m in the middle of something.”

“Then I’ll need to call the police.” She pulled out her cell phone and started to dial.

“No! No need for that. Just give me a minute.”

“I can’t do that. I’m afraid you’re going to hurt my best friend.”

“Oh, Cam, this isn’t personal.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Joseph. This is very personal. Annie and I have been best friends for twenty years.”

He paused a moment. “Annie? What does Annie have to do with this?”

Cam didn’t believe him. “Come down and talk to me and I’ll tell you.”

He sighed loudly, unhappy with this development, but he seemed resigned to having to talk to her. Cam did a little internal cheer, hoping her plan might work.

Joseph climbed down the ladder and walked toward her. She caught the glint of something shiny in his hand, and she realized he had a knife of some sort. He stuck it in a back pocket and pulled out a small box, though she couldn’t make out what it contained.

“Now, Miss Harris. Why is it you think your friend is here?”

“She’s disappeared, and I could tell there’d been a struggle at her apartment.”

“Surely you’ve noticed she’s not a reliable girl.”

“She wouldn’t disappear without her car, and she wouldn’t go without telling me.”

Joseph made a quick motion, and only then did Cam realize the small box was matches. He threw the tiny orange fireball behind him, and old straw and tobacco leaves blazed as though they’d had an accelerant poured on them.

“No!”

“It’s okay, Cam. It’s my own property.”

“But Annie!”

“I assure you, Annie’s not here.”

“Rob!” Cam shouted. “Catch!” She tossed the clipper she’d grabbed onto the loft and heard Rob scramble.

“Got ’em!”

“What?” Joseph looked angry and perplexed, pulling his knife again and heading toward the ladder.

Cam dived and grabbed his ankles, tripping him, but he turned with the knife. She scrambled backward out of
Joseph’s reach. He again headed toward the ladder and got partway up before Cam reached it, pulling with all her might. It didn’t dislodge, but it shook enough to throw Joseph off.