Hollow World (6 page)

Charlie stood near the front of the packed bus. He was leaning against the wall behind the driver and gripped the cool steel railing with both hands, his knuckles white with tension. His imagination ran wild with scenarios of what might be happening to Meghan and the girls. He could only imagine how terrified his family must be, having been abducted in sheer darkness and held captive by a cunning, yet unknown, man. Charlie tried to piece together a character profile on his enemy using the minimal evidence he had from the letter and their brief conversation, but since the details were so scarce, he was left to speculation and guessing to fill in the numerous gaps. He forced himself to think about something else as the trained detective within him was screaming that assumption and speculation were the mortal enemies of true detection. He knew that the majority of the time when one of his fellow officers failed to solve a case—or were simply proven wrong—it was because they went with their gut instinct; their minds subconsciously relating material evidence in order to reinforce their initial instincts. Real detective work is not like in the movies; if you follow your gut, you’ll fail. True detection involves Vulcan logic as well as detaching your personality from the case and focusing only on facts presented and how they relate to the matter at hand.

Unable to prevent his mind from speculating, Charlie banged the back of his head lightly against the wall a couple times, trying to shake things up and clear his mind. Just when he thought he’d be forced to succumb to forming theories with no evidence—simply to keep his mind off his family’s situation—a loud
bang
came from the front right side of the bus, lifting Charlie off his feet for a split second. The bus lurched and tossed those standing a few inches off the floor. Several people lost their balance and fell to the ground. After settling, the bus listed hard to the right and the driver was forced to pull over and make an emergency stop. Charlie helped a little boy’s mother to her feet; she’d lost her grip on the railing and fallen to her knees.

“Are you okay, ma’am?” Charlie asked, concerned.

“Yes, thank you,” the woman replied, dusting herself off.

Upon closer inspection, Charlie was relieved to find out that she and the child had indeed emerged unscathed. A quick look around told him that the rest of the passengers—while confused, irritated and tired—were likewise unharmed.

The bus driver stepped outside the bus to assess the damage, leaving behind a chorus of murmurs and whispers from the multitude of passengers. Instinctively, Charlie followed her to provide assistance.

Noticing a passenger attempting to exit the bus during an emergency stop, the driver held out a hand to stop him.

“Sorry, sir. I’ll have to ask you to remain on the bus for the time being,” she said politely.

“I’d like to help if I can,” Charlie offered, displaying his badge. “I’m a police officer here on vacation.”

Hesitantly, the woman looked from his face to the badge and back again before sighing.

“Follow me,” she said briskly, and quickly made her way around the front of the bus.

When Charlie reached her, she pulled him aside, around the front of the bus and out of earshot of the passengers.

“I’ll be honest—I’m glad you’re here,” she admitted. “It’s against the rules to allow passengers to assist, but this is the first time I’ve had a tire blow out—I’m pretty new—and it kind of has me frazzled. Besides, I don’t think the rulebook says anything about not accepting help from police officers.”

Charlie nodded his assent and led the driver back around the corner to inspect the damage to the tire. Upon initial inspection, it seemed as if the bus had run over something large. The tire had almost entirely shredded and was hanging loosely on the now-bare rim. Charlie kneeled down to get a closer look and the driver shined a flashlight into the wheel well to help him see.

“Wow,” she breathed. “What the heck did we run over? I swear I was paying attention, and I didn’t see anything in the road. It must have been pretty big to cause that kind of damage.”

Closer inspection revealed something very peculiar to the observant young detective but, if the cause was what he suspected, he could not allow the bus driver to find out. He decided to take advantage of the woman’s nerves and inexperience to distract her for a while.

“It looks pretty bad,” he admitted. “We can get this replaced soon enough. Do you have a jack and a spare?”

Charlie searched her face while he spoke, and found what he was looking for: absolute confusion. He’d played the right card.

“I—I don’t really know,” she said. “Like I said, I’m new at this. Let me get on the radio and see if they can provide some assistance.”

“Good idea,” Charlie agreed. “In the meanwhile, I’m going to take a closer look. I’d like to make sure that whatever we hit back there isn’t still lodged under the bus and that there’s no other damage. Do you mind if I borrow your flashlight?”

She nodded and handed it over, then quickly made her way back inside the bus. Charlie wasted no time in getting to work. He stuck his head almost entirely inside the wheel well and breathed in deeply through his nose. Earlier he had detected a faint but all-too-familiar scent when he neared the tire. Now he was absolutely positive as to the source of the odor.

Gunpowder.

The acrid, chemical aroma that subtly wafted through the air in the wheel well was unmistakable—Charlie had become intimately familiar with the scent over the course of countless hours at the firing range. There could be no misidentifying that scent. This bus hadn’t run over anything at all. The tire had been disabled by a small explosive charge. A gunpowder smell wouldn’t be present if the tire had been shot from a distance. A bullet large enough to shred such a massive tire would have passed through and caused further damage to the bus.

Charlie had no doubt that it was an explosive charge, but to confirm his hypothesis, he pulled the shredded remains of the tire free from the rim and inspected it closely. He noted the smooth slice where the wheel had cleaved through the dense rubber after it had been dislodged, but finally the flashlight beam came across a ragged hole with melted rubber along its edge. Charlie ran his fingers around the hole and rolled the residue between his finger and thumb. Observing the black substance, he noted that it was an extremely fine, almost oily powder, similar to graphite shavings from a pencil. The residue was too fine to be rubber, though—it was certainly not a byproduct of the tire. No, this was the exact residue that Charlie had cleaned out of the barrels of his pistols after a long afternoon at the shooting range.

What was the point of this?
he thought.
First he tells me to go to my hotel and rest for the night, then he blows out a tire on the bus that’s taking me there?

Charlie, with all of his talents, still couldn’t make head or tail of this man. It was obvious that he was careful, and that he was extremely intelligent. He’d known the precise amount of explosive needed to disable the tire, while leaving no traces that the average person could detect. For all intents and purposes, this looked identical to any average tire blowout on any multi-axle, high-weight vehicle. Charlie ran his hand around the rim of the wheel, but he found no residue and could spot no burn marks anywhere. The amount of explosives this man used was beyond close—it was
exact.
Had Charlie not been a police officer, he would have never been able to detect the smell of the explosive agent over the heavy fumes of exhaust and the bitter tang of hot tire rubber.

This unknown enemy knew that Charlie would realize the tire had met with an explosive end. He had known that the detective was too sharp to miss the evidence, however small. Why? What end could this man hope to achieve by allowing Charlie to discover the method? One thing was clear: this man
meant
for Charlie to discover the explosive.

Charlie’s mind was left reeling, trying in vain to discover the man’s motive. As it stood, it seemed as if there was no motive at all. The entire thing exuded the details of a motiveless act committed by the insane, simply because they knew no better. All of the material evidence lent itself to a crime of passion; something that was done without thinking—without premeditation. Even as he thought this, Charlie knew it was absurd. This man clearly had a goal in mind, and the planning that had gone into this endeavor was extensive to say the least—this was clearly premeditated.

Charlie felt disoriented. His training was kicking in, and because the situation was so painfully anomalous, it seemed as if the two halves of his brain were warring against each other. On one side stood the rational detective: stoic, calm and favoring reason over emotion. On the other was the everyman: passionate, emotional and reasonably confused. The two sides battled relentlessly for supremacy, warring for dominance over the detective’s thoughts. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was somehow connected to this man, but he could recall no person he’d ever encountered who fit the bill—who exuded this amount of insanity and ingenuity.

Charlie stood, intending to check on the bus driver and see what progress she’d made when he noticed his surroundings. They had not made it far from the Magic Kingdom before they had lost the tire, and Charlie recognized where they were. To one side stood a small copse of trees with water on the other side, and to the other lay a field through which the monorail track ran. They were on a stretch of World Drive, approximately a hundred yards from the corner of West Wilderness Road, the road that led directly to the Wilderness Lodge. Charlie decided that his best bet would be to make his way to the Lodge, in the hope that he could avoid speaking to anyone who came along to repair the bus or to transport the stranded guests. He stepped inside the bus.

Spying the bus driver’s name tag, he spoke to her: “Um, Cathy?”

“Yes?” she asked. Charlie noticed people staring at them, straining to listen in, and it made him uncomfortable.

“The bus should be fine. Whatever we hit must still be back there somewhere. There’s no other damage to the bus; luckily it was just the tire. Any news on the jack?” he asked, returning Cathy’s flashlight.

“They’re sending someone out to repair the tire, along with another bus to get everyone back to the resort. They should be here in about a half-hour.”

“If it’s alright with you, I’d like to head over to the Wilderness Lodge to call my wife,” he lied. “I don’t have my phone on me and I’ve been gone longer than I told her I would be. I’ll bet she’s worried sick.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “It will be much safer to wait for the replacement bus and I’m certain someone here would let you borrow their phone.”

“You don’t know my wife,” he joked, playing a different character. “It would be safer to swim across Bay Lake than it would be to show up late.”

She laughed and nodded.

“Can I at least give you directions?” she asked.

“No need,” he shot back, smiling. “I know this place like the back of my hand.”

With a few words of gratitude from Cathy, Charlie made his way off the bus, relieved to have been able to get away from the bus without being questioned. Although night had fully fallen, the sky was clear, with a nearly full moon, so Charlie had plenty of light to see where he was headed. Within ten minutes, he had come within eyesight of the great Wilderness Lodge. Powerful fluorescent floodlights illuminated everything within a couple hundred yards of the great log-cabin style structure. Charlie made his way past the parking lot and eventually ended up at the main entrance to the building.

Stepping inside, he smelled the delicious aroma of the fantastic food at the Whispering Canyon Cafe—the restaurant only recently having stopped serving for the night. His mind tried to relax—and it almost succeeded before he remembered that his family was missing, and that at least one brilliant psychopath was playing cruel games at his expense. His mind returned to the present and his shoulders slumped. For the first time since this ordeal began, Charlie realized how exhausted he really was. His eyes hurt, his head was pounding and his muscles ached, even though he hadn’t done anything physically exerting in days. On top of everything else, he still had to catch a bus to one of the parks to get another back to the Caribbean Beach Resort.

Charlie Walker was a mess.