Annette Dashofy - Zoe Chambers 03 - Bridges Burned (30 page)

Thirty

A check of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation revealed Dave Evans owned a dark blue Ford F-250 pickup. Ryan Mancinelli confirmed Evans had his business name and phone number stenciled on the doors. Pete called in the updated information including license number to the Amber Alert and checked his watch. Evans had snatched Maddie over twelve hours ago. Twelve long hours.

Pete walked Ryan Mancinelli out of his house. Not even nine o’clock and the temperature was already sultry. Pete thought of those construction trailers Mancinelli had mentioned. A little girl locked in one of those wouldn’t last long on a day like this.

Baronick jogged up to them. “The search warrant will be ready by the time we get there. One of my guys will meet us at Evans’ office with it.”

“Good.” Pete crooked a finger at Kevin who hurried over to them. “Take Mr. Mancinelli down to the station and get him settled in our finest holding cell.”

“Aw, Chief,” Mancinelli started to complain.

Pete put up a hand to silence him. “You did threaten several police officers, myself included, with a firearm. But the bigger issue is Evans is still out there. He’s trying to take out everyone he considers a threat of exposing him. You definitely fit the bill.”

“What about Ashley?” Mancinelli said. “Evans threatened to go after her, too.”

Pete spotted Mancinelli’s wife and her parents standing on their porch next door. “I’ll make sure an officer sticks around to keep an eye on her.”

“Thanks, Chief.”

Pete slapped Baronick on the back. “Let’s go.”

Within fifteen minutes, Pete, Baronick, Nate, Seth, and a couple dozen other law enforcement officers descended on the offices of Dave Evans Land Developing.

As promised, a county detective sat at the entrance gate, search warrant in hand.

The grounds were hauntingly quiet for a weekday morning. A dozen or so pieces of heavy machinery—bulldozers, backhoes, mammoth dump trucks, and the like—sat idle on the gravel lot. A gray Toyota Camry was parked in front of a construction trailer, which bore a sign labeling it as the office.

Pete and Baronick climbed the portable metal steps to the door, knocked, and entered without waiting for an invitation.

A wide-eyed woman in her late twenties wearing jeans and a short-sleeved plaid shirt was already on her feet, obviously having seen the cavalry coming through the gate. “Can I help you?” she chirped.

Baronick presented her with the warrant.

“Is your boss here?” Pete asked.

The woman’s eyes flitted from the paper in her hand to Pete and Baronick. “Uh, no.”

“Any idea where we can find him?”

“N-no. He called a little while ago and said he wouldn’t be in. He said he was giving everyone the day off, but I had some paperwork to catch up on.”

“Are those trailers in the back locked?”

“Um, yeah.” She glanced toward a pegboard loaded with keys next to the office door. “But I can’t let you into them.”

Baronick pointed to the paper in her hand. “Warrant, ma’am. We need to search
everything
.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip. Then nodded toward the board. “The keys for the heavy equipment are all labeled. The trailer keys are the ones on the bottom row.”

Pete scooped up the entire row of keys with one hand. “Come on.” He paused at the door to point at the secretary. “You stay here.”

He and Baronick charged out of the trailer.

“Seth, you search the office,” Pete shouted to the waiting officers. “Everyone else, with us.”

He doled out keys as they approached the eight trailers parked near the rear of the lot, and the officers split up. Numbered tabs on the key rings matched numbered plaques riveted onto each trailer.

Pete inserted the key for number three and climbed inside.

It only took a sweeping glance to see Maddie wasn’t there. A couple of ladders hung on brackets next to coils of heavy duty extension cords and hoses. An eight-foot table and several folding chairs were secured to one wall. Shelves of tools lined another. Two large steel trunks sat at one end. Pete opened both to find them filled with tarps, ropes, and other assorted supplies. Exactly what you’d expect to find in a construction trailer.

He went back to the door and called out, “Clear!”

Six more calls of
clear
rang out up and down the row. He waited for the report from the last trailer. And waited.

After what felt like hours, Baronick’s voice rang out. “Pete. You’re gonna want to see this.”

Zoe tried to push up from the cold, hard-packed dirt floor. She’d hit hard. Landed on her left side. Everything hurt like hell. As she maneuvered onto her hands and knees, pain tore through her left shoulder forcing her back on her knees. Only something sharp as a dagger cut into one of them.

She rolled to one hip, but that wasn’t any better. Finally she staggered to her feet, swaying.

Her eyes acclimated to the low light enough to see the mess she’d fallen into. Except for the top treads, the entire staircase had been destroyed. Bashed. With what? The splintered remains of the heavy planks littered the basement floor. And she’d landed smack in the middle of it.

At least she could stand. Her legs weren’t broken. But her left shoulder? She wasn’t so sure. Any movement of that arm was met with searing pain. She undid one button of her uniform shirt just above her belt and tucked her hand and forearm inside to immobilize the shoulder a bit.

With her pain momentarily in check, she again became aware of the whimper she’d heard from the top of the stairs. The muted cries had escalated into full-blown sobbing along with what sounded like shushing sounds.

“Who’s down here?” she called out while swiping cobwebs from her face with her functional right hand.

“Zoe?” That was Mrs. Kroll. Her voice sounded…odd.

“Yeah.” Zoe took one staggering step toward the voice. Her left leg felt as if it had been torn from the hip, and she nearly ended up back on the cold earthen floor. Gasping, she regained her balance, keeping her weight off the offending leg. Through clenched teeth she said, “Where are you?”

“We’re in here.
Hurry
.” The tiny weepy voice wasn’t Mrs. Kroll.

“Maddie?”

“Help us!”

“Hang on.” Zoe glanced around, searching for something to use as a crutch or a cane and found nothing. Not even a broom handle. Gritting her teeth, she hobbled through the dark cave of the basement. Without electricity, the only light filtered in through two small windows, protected on the outside by wooden slats and set high in the foundation walls—one on the far side of the basement and the other in the room ahead of her housing the water heater, fuel oil tanks, and electrical panel. “Where are you?” Zoe asked again.

A small familiar figure stepped out of the room. “In here,” Maddie said. “Hurry. Mrs. Kroll is sick.”

Doing her best to ignore the pain in her hip and shoulder, Zoe hopped one-legged to Maddie. “Are you okay?”

“I guess. But Mrs. Kroll isn’t.” The girl looked at Zoe. “And neither are you.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

Maddie slipped an arm around Zoe. “Let me help.”

The kid might be the next generation paramedic. Zoe leaned on her and limped into the room. She found her landlady dressed in a nightgown seated on the cold floor next to the water heater, leaning back against the stone foundation. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

Mrs. Kroll managed a weak smile. “I’ll be fine. I’m just upset. That awful man.”

“Ryan Mancinelli?” Zoe glanced at Maddie.

“No.” Mrs. Kroll groaned. “The man who wants to buy the farm.”

“Dave Evans?”

“Yes. Horrible man. I was a fool to have showed him around the house, including this cellar, on Sunday.”

Zoe eased to her knees beside the older woman. Even in the low light, she recognized there was more wrong with her landlady than she let on. “Tell me what happened.”

Mrs. Kroll massaged her left arm and looked at Maddie.

Zoe gently took her landlady’s hand. A simple act of comfort. Except Zoe’s middle and ring fingers rested lightly on Mrs. Kroll’s radial pulse. Zoe shot a quick look at the girl before resting her gaze on the sweep second hand of her watch. “Go ahead, Maddie.”

The girl hugged herself, her shoulders hiked. “Mr. Evans came by the park last night when I was there with my friends. He said my dad had been hurt and had sent him to get me. I was scared, but he showed me he had Dad’s phone, so I went. I guess I shouldn’t have.”

No, you shouldn’t.
But now wasn’t the time for a scolding. “He brought you here?”

“Not at first. We rode around a while. He was acting really weird. I wondered where we were going. Where my dad was. When I asked, he got mean and yelled at me to be quiet. I guess I started crying. Anyway, he brought me here. I thought
good
. Dad had come back to the farm. But he hadn’t.”

“He brought you here last night?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Kroll said, her voice weaker than usual. “He pounded on my door late. Must have been close to eleven o’clock.”

“You mean you’ve been down here all night?”

“Yes. And it’s none too comfortable, my old bones sitting on this cold floor, I can tell you.”

Zoe slid her hand up to rest on Mrs. Kroll’s forearm. Her skin was clammy even in the coolness of the basement. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.”

“No, she isn’t,” Maddie said. “She was dizzy and said her tummy was upset.”

Zoe raised an eyebrow at her landlady. “Is that true?”

“Well…a little. But that awful man upset me so.”

Zoe looked around. She didn’t want to add to Mrs. Kroll’s anxiety with the news the older woman was very likely having a heart attack.

“We need to get you out of here,” she said, keeping her voice calm.

Mrs. Kroll gave a mildly hysterical laugh. “If only we could.”

Maddie rocked from one foot to the other. “After Mr. Evans brought us down here, he took a sledge hammer to the stairs so we can’t get back up.”

Mrs. Kroll winced. “And he did something to the breaker box to kill the power. He went out the basement doors and latched them from the outside. We’re trapped in here. When Maddie and I heard you at the top of the steps, we thought it was him coming back. If I’d known it was you, I’d have yelled to you to stay up there and get help.”

Zoe braced one hand against the foundation and struggled to her feet, clamping her mouth shut to keep from crying out. Leaning on the wall for support, she hobbled to the electrical box. If Evans had simply flipped the main switch…but no. An empty hole glared back at her from where the main breaker should be.

“Do you have your cell phone?” Maddie asked.

Zoe put a hand on her pocket. Crap. She’d left her phone and her keys on the table upstairs. “Afraid not.” She balanced precariously on one foot and scanned the room. A worn out broom leaned in one corner, enveloped in dusty spider webs.

She considered asking Maddie to fetch it, but doubted the girl would be willing to wrangle with arachnids to retrieve the makeshift cane. Zoe wasn’t thrilled about the idea herself. She hopped across the room, each jolt sending pain up her spine to her shoulder, her neck, and her brain.

“Where are you going?” Maddie demanded.

Zoe paused, gritting her teeth. She pointed. “I need a crutch, but that will do.”

“I’ll get it.” The ten-year-old scurried to the corner, reached through the web, and grabbed the broom, brushing it off as she brought it to Zoe.

“You’re not afraid of spiders?”

“Nope. I’ve been bugging Dad to get me a pet tarantula.”

Zoe eyed her. “
Bugging
him?”

Maddie didn’t appear to catch her own pun. “He always said Mom would have a fit, but I think he’s the one who’s scared of them.” The girl turned sullen at the mention of her mom.

“Well, you’re braver than I am,” Zoe said, hoping the praise would encourage continued bravery. She tested the broom handle to make sure it wasn’t going to snap the moment she leaned on it. It held. But the wood surface was rough from age. She’d probably end up with a handful of splinters.

Then again, splinters were the least of her concern at the moment.

“Now where are you going?” Maddie asked as Zoe hobbled toward the door.

“We may not be as stuck as Mrs. Kroll thinks.” Those outer basement doors, latched only with an old screwdriver through a hasp, were rickety and rotted. “You just stay here and rest,” she told her landlady.

“Zoe?” Maddie’s voice trembled.

“What, baby?”

“My dad? Where is he?”

Zoe swallowed. Put on the best poker face she could manage. “He has been hurt, but he’s in the hospital, and they’re taking really good care of him.” She gave the girl a tight smile, turned, and limped out into the cavernous part of the basement before Maddie could question her further.

The oil furnace sat in a large pit in the center of the dark cave. Apparently when it or an earlier furnace had been installed, the beast had been too tall for the low clearance, and someone had dug out a two-foot deep, ten-foot wide crater to make room. Not keen on the idea of another fall, Zoe picked her way around the hole.

The inner door stood open, either left that way when Evans departed or opened by Maddie or Mrs. Kroll. The sloped bulkhead doors remained closed, rays of sunshine sneaking through the cracks between the boards.

Zoe put her good shoulder against the split where the two doors met, hoping the screws holding the hasp would pop loose with some pressure. She pushed, expecting some jiggle or give. There was none. She turned and braced her back against the doors, her feet on the first stone step, squeezing into the wedge of space.

Her legs—at least one of them—was strong.

She heaved, but the doors didn’t give even a fraction of an inch. She gritted her teeth. Dug in hard as she could. Groaned against the stabbing pain in her hip and her quivering, protesting quads. The wood didn’t so much as creak.

“I don’t think that’s gonna work,” Maddie said.

Zoe hadn’t realized the little girl had tagged along. “I’m not giving up yet. Maybe there’s something here I can use to pry them open.”

“I don’t think so,” Maddie repeated. “Mr. Evans went out that way and I heard him out there hammering. I think he nailed some boards across the outside.”

Which would explain why there was no give to the rickety old doors. Zoe squinted at the gaps where the sun shone through. Maddie was right. Three boards blocked the striped pattern of light. “Okay.” Zoe repositioned her left arm in its makeshift sling and stared into the darkness. “Time for Plan B.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Zoe?” Mrs. Kroll’s weak voice called out.

“Coming.” Zoe tipped her head at Maddie and led the girl back to where they’d left the older woman.

Mrs. Kroll was still sitting on the floor, but she was clutching the front of her bathrobe.

Zoe knelt beside her. “Are you in pain?”

“Some,” Mrs. Kroll whispered as if trying to keep Maddie from hearing. “But the thing is…I can’t…breathe.”

The metal steps had been removed from the trailer marked with the number six, so Pete had to hoist himself into the doorway. Inside, Baronick, wearing Latex gloves and holding a crowbar, had a look on his face that tied Pete’s stomach into a knot. “What have you got?”

Baronick showed the heavy chunk of steel to Pete and pointed at a mark on it. “What’s this look like to you?”

Pete pulled out his reading glasses. The stain was hard to see even with the magnification, but the bit of short brownish hair stuck to it was pretty clear. “The girl has long blond hair.”

“I know. If I’m not mistaken, this doesn’t look fresh.” Baronick used the crowbar to point at a spot on the floor. “Neither does that.”

Pete got down on one knee.

Definitely blood. Dried. And a lot of it. He looked over his shoulder at the officers standing outside the door. “Nate. Get the crime scene guys out here.”

Nate gave a nod and backed away.

“Did you check the rest of the trailer?” Pete asked Baronick.

“Yeah. No sign of the girl. But look at this.”

Pete stood and followed Baronick to a set of shelves built into one wall.

Tools and building supplies lined them in neat order. Except for a roll of black plastic trash bags, which appeared to have been yanked off the shelf and tossed back haphazardly.

Next to the bags, a roll of duct tape sat alone on the edge of the shelf while five similar rolls were stacked precisely aligned. “Someone with OCD organized these shelves.”

“And someone in a big hurry or someone with no such compulsion borrowed some tape and a trash bag.”

“Or two.” Pete exchanged a look with the detective.

“Want to hear what I’m thinking?” Baronick said.

“Probably the same thing I am. Go ahead.”

“Stephen Tierney came here to confront Evans. Maybe to complain about losing the house he wanted. Maybe he was fed up with Evans’ scare tactics and threats. Either way, they had it out.” Baronick held up the crowbar. “Evans whacks Tierney. Leaves him here in this trailer for a couple of days. Then decides he can kill the proverbial two birds with one crowbar. He bundles Tierney up in a couple of these heavy duty trash bags. Duct tapes them together to seal in all the body fluids that might leak out in his truck.”

“Duct tape would explain the marks Franklin Marshall found during the autopsy. And the plastic would make it easier to slide a dead body.” Pete turned toward the door and the missing steps. “Back the pickup right to the door and in you go.”

“Drive the body to the farm where Holt Farabee’s living and transfer it into the basement with the help of a convenient old wheelbarrow. But the plastic tears. Some body fluid leaks onto the wheelbarrow, and we find a scrap of the trash bag inside the basement. Evans, however, doesn’t notice and thinks he’s gotten rid of one troublemaker and framed the other one for murder.”

Pete had to admit, it made more sense than anything else had lately. “Which is all well and good. One problem, though. It doesn’t put us any closer to finding Maddie.”