Her Last Scream (25 page)

Harry called with the news that Rein’s fading sprinkle of electrons had originated from a cell tower north of Boulder, a last-outpost spire before the Front Range of the Rockies vaulted from the earth. Rein was alive and knew the name of her captor. Her truncated call was either shutting the phone down out of fear of discovery or the battery dying.

Harry and Sally had broken Krebbs, a phenomenal piece of work. Krebbs had implicated Bromley, whereabouts unknown, but by proximity alone ruled out from being Rein’s captor. Harry and Sally had put Bromley’s vehicle on alert-notify status, meaning if it was spotted, take no action except for notifying Harry.

Cruz and I were in Boulder at nine a.m., courtesy of Hal Lewis, a private-pilot friend of Chief Teemont, an ex-cop making a lot more money running a security firm in Branson. Lewis turned a twelve-hour drive into a four-hour flight. The light of the day was behind the plane and, had I not been so worried, it might have been a beautiful sunrise.

After touching down in Boulder, Cruz detailed events to her overseers and APBs were sent out. Within an hour we had hundreds of eyes searching for Reinetta Early. There was an officer in trouble and jurisdictional boundaries meant nothing. Cruz grabbed a new ride, a blue Crown Vic just like Harry and I had in Mobile.

“First stop is the Boulder women’s center,” Cruz said, jamming the big car into gear. “Right?”

“Past due,” I said.

“The woman who runs the place, Carol Madrone, will be there. I believe you two have met.”

“I’m sorry the place is so small,” Carol Madrone said when Cruz and I stepped inside the Women’s Crisis Center of Boulder. The sun approached the ten a.m. mark and streamed into the window. Meelia Reston was the only other person there. “We could go across the street to the Beacon. They have room to –”

“It’s fine, Carol,” I said. “officer Early mentioned being with another woman on the run. They’d crossed paths in the system. Is that common?”

“No. At any given time, we estimate three to five women in the system. That’s nationally, with perhaps eighty to a hundred safe houses and handlers.”

I leaned against the desk and nodded; slim chances indeed. “So the other woman didn’t come from here?”

“Probably not, though we did put a woman into the system four days prior.”

“Treeka?”

Madrone’s eyes went wide. “She said her name was Treeka Lane.”

I shot a hopeful glance at Cruz. “Was Lane her real last name?”

“A lot of abused women give us false names. We don’t discourage it. We’re here to help, not identify. We assign a travel name, Darleen was hers.”

“Shit,” I said. “Layer after layer of deception.”

“We’ve had people in the system killed, Detective,” Carol said gently. “Just knowing a name can –”

“I know, I’m sorry. Tell me anything you can about Treeka.”

“Treeka lived up north, I think. She came to town on the bus because her husband took her car away. She said she lived … on a sad little ranch in the country.”

I turned to Cruz. “Bus line any help?”

“If we had a photo we could show it to bus drivers, but getting them together quickly would be problematic.”

“Treeka came in on a bus the day she left?” I asked.

“In her husband’s truck,” Meelia said. “He was away and she took it and came here. Everything was ready and we –”

“The truck … did you get the license plate?”

“No. We just, uh …” Meelia looked to Madrone.

“I don’t care if you blew it up or sunk it in a river,” Cruz said. “What happened to the truck?”

“I drove it to Denver Airport,” Meelia said. “Long-term parking. Another staffer brought me back to Boulder.”

Cruz pulled her phone. “Connect me to Vehicle Theft, please.” She hung on the line and waited for the information. Cruz snapped her phone shut. “A Ford F-150 was reported stolen the day after the Treeka woman went underground. The truck was found at Denver Airport and returned to its owner.”

“Who is …?” My heart was suddenly in my throat.

“Thomas J. Flood.”

Tom.
My knees almost buckled. “Particulars?”

“You got a computer I could use?” Cruz asked Carol Madrone.

“Let me log on for you.”

Carol opened the computer. Cruz pulled up the local law-enforcement database. “Address puts Flood outside of Meeker Park, about eighteen miles north of here, near Estes Park. It would be near a regional bus line, by the way.”

“Your SWAT folks up for some action?” I asked.

Our caravan rolled down the labrynthine canyon guided by a helicopter fly-by from a distance, transmitting photos of terrain to the SWAT commander, a hulking red-faced guy named Strather. We stopped for a last-minute meeting, Strather and Cruz addressing six men and three women in armored gear, pistols strapped on thighs and assault rifles slung over shoulders.

There’d been discussion of a low-key action, but photos put the house in an open area where an unhappy guy with weaponry could do a lot of damage before being nullified. We all knew the first damage was often to the captives.

Twenty minutes later we were in position, the troopers moving like dancers while bristling with firepower. Even crossing jagged terrain the noise level never overrode the breeze in the pines. When everyone was ready, Strather, crouching behind a boulder the size of a bulldozer, lifted his bullhorn.

“Thomas Flood! This is the Colorado State Police. Come out with your hands high, no weapons.”

Nothing.

“We know you have prisoners, Flood. Come out now and no one gets hurt.”

A flash of motion behind a window. Then a voice from the cabin.

“She’s MINE! Get the fuck away.”

“Come on, Flood,” Strather called. “Make it easy on yourself.”

“Traitor! Eunuch! What did they do to your balls?”

“Come out, Flood. Don’t make us have to come in and get you.”

“Go away or I’ll KILL the bitch.”

“Give up, Flood.”

“Come closer and she’s DEAD!”

Cruz and I were a hundred feet from Strather, tucked behind another boulder, peering around its edge. Flood was using the singular, scaring the hell out of me. And I’d heard that kind of voice before – at the outer edge – when the last strands of wiring melted away and perpetrators began considering martyrdom preferable to their shabby little lives.

“Flood …”

“I’LL KILL HER IF YOU DON’T LEAVE!”

I looked toward Strather, saw him lowering the bullhorn while considering his next move. I poked my head around the rock.

“Who fucking cares, Flood?” I yelled.

Strather spun my way, did the throat-chop motion:
Shut up!

“Who gives a shit, Flood?” I continued, riffing on themes Harry relayed from Krebbs. “She’s just a woman. Boy, you sure can pick ’em, can’t you?”

“Who the FUCK are YOU?” Flood called.

Strather was glaring daggers until he saw Cruz pointing at me, mouthing
Let him talk.

“You’re gonna die over some whore?” I yelled. “You call that a fair exchange: Thomas J. Flood equals one woman? What the hell’s wrong with you, boy – you crazy? You got a whole band of brothers waiting to help you. What’s one more damned bitch in the scheme of things?”

Nothing. It was like time froze. “Tom!” I prompted. “Yo, Tom?”

“
What?
”

“Is the slut alive?”

A beat. “Kind of.”

I looked at Cruz, breathed out. Took another breath. “Look at it, Tom. Take a long look at the woman. Are you looking, Tom?”

“Yes.”

“Look at her carefully.”

“I AM!”

“Do the fucking math! Is she –
it
– worth the life of a man?”

Seconds ticked by, the only sound the breeze in the trees. I saw the door open a crack. A white rag shook in Flood’s hand, surrender.

“I’m coming out,” he yelled. “I want a good lawyer.”

Flood stepped outside with hands on his head and was immediately trussed like a turkey, screaming about knowing his rights. Team members rushed the cabin, Cruz and I on their heels. We saw only one woman on the floor, eyes swollen shut and her mouth a purple bruise. Her blouse was shredded and her torso was beaten and bruised. But it was rising and falling with ragged breaths.

“Treeka?” I said, kneeling beside the woman.

The purple mouth whispered, “Who a-are …?”

“The police,” I said, taking her hand. “There was a woman with you, right?”

“R-rei-Rein. Sh-she got t-taken away last night.”

“Last night?”

“T-Tommy dragged her outside and came back ten minutes later. We n-never saw who got her, only heard him drive up a few minutes later and yell. He sounded real happy.”

“What did he say?” A medic rushed in with a gurney. Cruz waved him back, mouthed
Hang on.

Treeka opened one eye to a slit, her hand tightening on mine. “Rein was going to b-be his best example, his … I don’t know, he said something weird.”

“What?”

“Rein was going to be his PA’s restaurants. Something like that.”

I frowned in thought. “
Pièce d’résistance
?” I said, inflecting the accent.

She nodded. “Please help her.”

Reinetta Early’s eyes opened again. They had opened before but her head screamed in pain and she closed them, drifting back into unconsciousness. But the ache had dissipated and she saw shapes of black and yellow and gray, smelled dirt and damp. Her memory was returning: Tommy getting a phone call, eyes on Rein as he spoke, the towel – a makeshift hood – wrapped around Rein’s face as Treeka stared in horror. Tommy leading her into the chilly outside as she stumbled for two hundred and five steps as if the counting had mattered.

She’d been tied to a tree, wrists behind the trunk. Tommy’s laughter melted away with his footsteps. It had been cold and she’d been gripped with pre-menstrual cramps.

She’d heard the sound of a vehicle creeping close, stopping. Footsteps. A long period of … what, appraisal? A freezing cold cloth over her nose and mouth –
chloroform?

And now …

A world of shapes and shadows. Rein took a dozen deep breaths and pushed to sitting, her arms free, her legs still bound. A wave of nausea overtook her and she vomited. The process helped to clear the toxin from her body and she surveyed her surroundings.

She was in a cave. No, a mine … dusty beams supporting the ceiling. It was a tight area, little more than a tunnel. The moving shapes were shadows thrown by a lantern in the corner, glass globe in a metal frame. She could suddenly smell its acrid fumes, as if her senses were rekindling one at a time.

There was an animal in the corner, a small one, like a rat. Not moving. She blinked twice and refocused on the dark shape. Not an animal, a pile of hair.

Her hair. She’d been shaved bald. What did Dr Kavanaugh called it … defeminized? Rein fought her pounding heart and listened into the dark beyond the slender range of the lantern light.

Heard footsteps approaching.

Cruz and I studied shreds of rope at the base of a fir tree. “Flood staked Rein here until someone came and cut her loose,” I said, seeing impressions in the dirt: Rein’s footprints. “Took her.”

“We’ve got tire tracks,” Cruz said, trying for glass-half-full. “Maybe more. The state’s best forensics people are coming.”

I stared into the sky, achingly blue. “That and another month might lead somewhere. We have to move to the next lead … the password leak from the center.”

We arrived at the center an hour later, Carol Madrone out front on her cell. “I’ve called an emergency staffers meeting,” she said. “Like you asked.”

“Who’s coming?”

“Five volunteer staffers and all five active directors; six, if you include one who’s more of an in-absentia advisor and never attends meetings.”

“Five volunteers for the whole center?”

“
Staff
volunteers. We have nineteen phone volunteers who mainly answer the hotline and write call reports. If the caller fits the profile of abuse, we try to get her to talk with a trained staffer or director. Find some way to communicate safely. Our upper-level folks – volunteer staff and directors – are trained in all aspects of domestic abuse, including domestic-violence advocacy in the legal system.”

“You’re saying hotline volunteers don’t know the password?”

She shook her head. “There’s no need for them to see files on our clients. Or access the escape system.”

“The staffers and directors all know the passwords?”

“As a matter of protocol, yes. But most aren’t involved in day-to-day operations. Most are high-profile community leaders who advise and help secure donations.”

“Do they have anything to do with the system?” I asked. “The directors?”

“Do I really have to –”

“You have to answer,” Cruz said. “We need to know everything. And we’ll do our best to protect any information.”

Carol nodded. “When a woman seems to be a prospect for, uh, relocation, all the directors are consulted. Everyone has to be in agreement that it’s the only step left. Why do you need them here?”

“It seems one of them leaked the password,” I said. “Or sold it. Or –”

Carol shook her head. “We change the password once a month at our directors’ meeting. Plus it’s not a systemwide password, it’s –”

“It’s an entry point for a hacker,” I said. “In this case a very talented fellow who used the foothold to pry open the hood and get at the engine.”

Carol looked about to weep.

“When will your people arrive?” I asked.

“In a few minutes. They’re all local.”

I studied the tiny house. “You can get them all in the center?”

She pointed across the street. “Our meetings are held in a side room in the Beacon. The owner lets neighborhood organizations meet for free. We have planning and training get-togethers there.”

“Excuse me?” said a voice at my back. “Are you in charge?”

I turned to a slender woman with blonde hair and intelligent eyes, a blue backpack over one shoulder. I gave her a raised eyebrow,
What?
Cruz turned to listen, sensing something in the young woman’s nervous voice.

“I’m Liza Krupnik. I volunteer here, on the staff. Meelia called us, something about attacks on the center?”

“Do you know anything?” Cruz asked.

The woman looked away, her pale face reddening with embarrassment. “I, uh, can’t be sure. I’m still trying to process …”

“We’re in a hurry here.”

“I, uh, found a hidden article, angry and full of slurs against women. Ugly, really. I never thought –”

“You have this thing?” Cruz asked.

The woman slung off her backpack and pulled out a sheaf of clipped-together pages. “I made a copy … I’m not sure if I should have it.”

Cruz began reading aloud. “…
Analyze the hierarchy of femicentric organizations and one invariably discovers moronic followers led by a few ‘intellectual’ lesbians for whom the control of the robo-slut masses fills the void of the missing penis
…”

“One of the more rational passages,” Krupnik said.

Cruz flipped a page. “…
women are by nature id-driven proto-humans clinging to men for food, clothing, shelter, protection (and any baubles they can wring from their bread-winner) in one breath, using the next breath to decry their ‘victimization’ at the hands of men. This anti-male movement has systematically castrated an entire gender, leaving them wallowing in the shit of self-pity and begging their whore overlords for mercy
…”

“My boss hid it in a book in his office,” Krupnik said, crimson with embarrassment. “He was acting so strange and I was curious and –”

“What’s his name?” Cruz interrupted. “Your boss.”

“Sinclair. Doctor Thalius Sinclair. I teach undergrad classes for him, know his work. It’s his style, but … the words are so ugly.”

“Where could we find Sinclair?” I asked.

“He might be in his office, but he doesn’t keep a regular schedule and …” I saw her eyes move from my face to behind me.

“There he is,” she said, eyes wide in amazement, pointing across the street. “Professor Sinclair.”

Moving at double-time into the bar was the scowling man whose table I had usurped when Harry did his act and I’d needed to surveil the center.

Had Sinclair been doing the same?

Rein heard a sound at her back, swung her head. A tunnel entering the cavern held the outline of a man, slender. He wore a cowboy hat over his eyes and she saw a holster at his belt, slung low, like in old movies. The other side of his belt held a knife. He wore a flannel shirt and jeans, hiking boots at bottom.

I hear his breathing
, Rein registered, her heart pounding.
Fast and shallow: Fear? Anger? Arousal?
“Who are you?” she asked as he walked within a dozen feet, stopped.

“You will never, ever, ask me a question,” the man replied. “The next question will be met with pain. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Rein said quietly.

“Ask me a question.”

“You just said I couldn’t –”

“Please. Ask me a question.”

“Where am –”

He crossed the room in a heartbeat, slapping her. “Ask me a question,” he repeated.

“I don’t want to,” Rein whispered, hand to her stinging cheek.

“See how it works?” he said.

Rein nodded and started to sit up.

“No,” he said. “Lay flat on the floor. Look up at the ceiling, not at me. If you look at me I’ll have to discipline you.”

Rein did as ordered. Her captor produced three lanterns from the wooden cabinet, lighting them. He sat on the chair and she felt him staring at her for several minutes.

“When will you ripen?” he finally asked. “Soon, right?”

“I don’t understand.”

He bent and spoke slowly, like Reinetta was a five-year-old. “When … will … you … ripen?”

“I don’t understand the question. I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, turning and walking away. “I’ll smell it.”

I unsnapped the restraint strap on my under-jacket weapon as we entered the Beacon’s meeting room. Carol was assembling directors and upper-level staff, a half-dozen women and one man in attendance. Carol was gesturing toward the man.

“… Doctor Thalius Sinclair is with us today. Most won’t know him, since he’s not directly affiliated with the center – a very busy man – but he’s instrumental in our work. Ms Balfours asked that he be included in today’s …”

Sinclair was big and powerful looking, wearing a light jacket loose enough to conceal an armory. He was studying the floor and scowling. I caught Cruz’s eye and nodded toward Sinclair. We slipped to the man’s side. Cruz produced the gold badge and tapped his shoulder, provoking a glare.

“Come with us, Professor,” she said. “We need to talk.”

He glowered at Cruz, not recognizing me. “What’s going on here?”

“Get out of that chair, please,” Cruz said. “Hands away from your body.”

The room went silent. A handsome sixtyish woman in a red dress was standing in a corner with arms crossed, watching. “Excuse me,” she said. “What do you think Professor Sinclair has done?”

“Get up, Sinclair,” I said. “Hands out.”

Sinclair stayed seated, hands wide to his sides. The woman crossed the room to stand before us. “I repeat,” she said. “What has Dr Sinclair done?”

“Who are you?” I asked, maybe not as politely as I might.

“My name is Dorothy Balfours. I’m a director of the center. And who are you?”

I heard Cruz’s whisper at my ear, so close I could feel its warmth. “Miz Balfours has big money and big friends, Carson. Be nice.”

“I’m Detective Carson Ryder, Ms Balfours,” I said, switching to a more civil tone. “We’re here because it seems the professor has very ugly thoughts about women.”

“Bullshit,” Balfours said. “I’ve known Dr Sinclair for over thirty years. He’s the driving force behind the creation of the women’s center: his idea, my money.”

I removed the pages supplied by Krupnik from my briefcase and held them toward her. Sinclair saw the screed against women. “Oh shit,” he said, slumping. “That thing.”

Balfours donned reading glasses, took the sheaf and studied for a three-count before handing it back.

“I know this work,” she said. “I edited it.”

“What?” Cruz said.

“It was my small way of helping Dr Sinclair with his magnum opus.”

It seemed the world had gone mad. “Magnum opus?” I croaked.

Sinclair sighed from his chair, crossed one leg over the other. “I’m currently researching and writing a history of misogyny.”

“This?” I said, waving the sheaf of hateful pages.

“Of course not that,” Sinclair said, rolling his eyes. “What you’re holding is bait.”

“Can someone help me understand what’s going on?” Cruz said.

“I’d like that, too,” Sinclair echoed.

The loft of an elegant eyebrow said Ms Balfours would be appreciative of same.

We studied one another like visitors from different planets.