Murder Mountain (32 page)

The man driving our rental car pulled off to the side of Interstate 79 near Tariff, with the other car following it. He removed the keys from the ignition, lit a cigarette, and looked into the back seat at Michael, chuckling to himself.

The boss showed them, didn’t he?
the man thought to himself as he got out of the car, hurling the keys over the guardrail into the woods below. He still wondered why they weren’t allowed to kill the fed. A hard knock on the head wasn’t good enough as far as this man was concerned, but the boss was adamant about not having the feds rain down on Ovapa. He was sure there would problems, but nothing they couldn’t fix. They couldn’t fix a dead FBI agent. They already knew they could get away with a dead cop, but not FBI. The man took a small object from inside one of the car’s tire wells, got into the car that followed him, and rode quietly away.

Not more than fifteen miles away, Coop, Kincaid, and Eric were at the rest area where Michael and I were to meet the state police. Michael had left Coop a message telling him so. However, neither the state police, nor Michael, nor I, were there.

“Eric, try CeeCee’s cell phone, again.” Coop felt as if he were nagging, but didn’t care.

“I just did, there’s no answer. What about Michael?”

“Nope. Just tried that, too. I think we should head for the place Michael said they were last going to.”

“No,” Kincaid ordered. “We need to wait for the state police and go from there. None of us are going off half-cocked before we really know what’s going on.”

“Fuck the state police,” Eric snapped. “They already said they’re tied up on that chemical spill, and they didn’t sound too overly eager to help, anyway. I’ve got a bad feeling right now, and I’m with Coop, we’re going to that house.”

“I guess I’m outnumbered, aren’t I?” Kincaid said agreeably, shaking her head as she got into the car.

On the interstate, Michael was waking up at the same time as the others were leaving the rest area. His head was throbbing with pain and it took him a few minutes to see where he was and then remember the events at Big Al’s house. Oh, God! CeeCee!, he thought, climbing to the front of the car and reaching for keys that weren’t there. In a panic, he began patting the pockets of his pants, praying his cell phone was still there. It was. His first call was to the state police, who said they would be there as quickly as possible. The next one was to Coop, who was waiting for it.

“Coop!” Michael yelled as Coop answered.

“Michael, where the hell are you guys? We’ve been trying to call you for an hour. We’re all down here looking for you....”

“You’re here!” Michael interrupted. “Coop, listen, they’ve got CeeCee. I’m on the interstate just outside of Tariff. They knocked me out and left me here. They took CeeCee!” He spoke breathlessly, his head still pounding.

“Oh my God! I fucking knew it! When did they take her?” Coop exclaimed before Eric ripped the phone out of his hand.

“Michael! It’s Eric! We are on the way. Look for us. Do you know how to get back to that place you guys were just at?” He was losing his composure.

“I-I think so,” Michael replied. “I got a pretty good knock on the head, but I think I can find it. I’ll look for you.”

“God damn you for letting this happen!” Eric exploded. “If anything happens to her, I’m holding you responsible,” and he turned the phone off.

Kincaid and Coop sat quietly in the car while Eric broke the sound barrier driving to Michael’s location. Both knew Eric was close to losing it, and they thought it best to not say anything, and especially not, “slow down.”

Kincaid rubbed her eyes and wondered if it had been such a good decision to allow Eric to come along, but how could she have said no? CeeCee was his wife and he would’ve come anyway.

Once Eric was on the interstate, he slowed down considerably, telling Coop to look out for Michael.

After a couple of minutes Coop yelled out, “There he is!” pointing to Michael standing by the rental car on the opposite side of the highway. Eric drove across and through the median and pulled behind Michael’s car. He put the car in park so fast that the three of them were thrown forward hard in their seats. Eric was outside instantly, before Coop or Kincaid could protest his driving techniques. Michael, who anticipated where Eric would be coming from, braced himself.

“What happened? Where the fuck were you when they took her?” Eric screamed, walking up to Michael and getting nose to nose with him.

“Eric, listen-I’m sorry...”

“I don’t want to hear ‘I’m sorry’! What kind of a fucking cop are you that you let this happen!” Eric poked Michael in the chest as he said this.

“Eric! That’s enough!” Kincaid yelled from behind him. “We need to find CeeCee first, and deal with the rest later! All of you get in the car. Michael, you tell us where we need to go.”

Eric and Michael stood glaring at each other for a few seconds more before Eric turned and walked back to the car.

“Michael,” Coop suggested, “why don’t you sit in back with the Captain, and she can take a look at your head,” obviously meaning that the more distance between him and Eric, the better.

“I’ll be fine,” Michael said, angrily. “Coop, this wasn’t my fault! I was hit from behind before I could do anything. God damn it! Don’t you think I’m upset about this, too! I understand Eric’s upset, but if something happens to CeeCee I don’t think I’ll be able to...”

“Michael,” Coop interrupted, “we are all upset right now—Eric understandably. That is his wife Michael, his wife! Get in the car; we need to get going.”

Eric was in the driver’s seat and had heard the entire conversation. He didn’t look at Michael as he walked past his window and got inside the car. Eric felt more responsible than anyone else.
I should’ve done more to keep her at home,
he thought. He had only been bluffing when he’d told me to move out if I came to West Virginia (just as I’d hoped he was), he was hoping I would stay, but he underestimated me. Now he felt that he might have lost me for good—if not by me being killed, then to Michael—and that scared him.

Michael told Eric to turn the car around and go the other direction while Kincaid conducted a minor inspection of the knot on his head. Probably a minor concussion, she told him, and went on to ask him why they hadn’t killed him. Michael shared his conclusion that their mentality was not to mess with anyone federal, and went to tell them all of what had transpired after he’d received the phone call with Big Al’s address, ending with when he saw me climbing up the trellis to look in the window, which was the last thing he remembered.

“They must’ve been watching you the entire time,” Coop reasoned. “That’s why the dog ran into the woods—he heard them. They probably made noise on purpose so you didn’t shoot it. People are funny about their dogs.”

“Could be, but I don’t remember any noise at all,” Michael said quietly.

“So you don’t know if CeeCee saw anything in the window,” Kincaid mused. “I wonder if you guys happened to be there at the wrong time, or if they were expecting you.”

“They were expecting us,” Michael said. “They’ve been a step ahead of us for the last two days. I just don’t know how. Turn here, Eric.”

Eric turned from the interstate onto a dirt road and began driving uphill, slowly so Michael could look for landmarks. After turning on road after road, and having to backtrack twice, they made their way down the road to Big Al’s. Seeing the lights ahead, Eric pulled off in almost the same spot Michael and I had parked several hours earlier.

“Do you think anyone’s still here?” Kincaid asked, checking the ammunition in her gun’s magazine.

“I doubt it,” Michael said. “They wouldn’t come back here, especially after leaving me alive.”

Coop and Eric got out of the car and started walking towards the house, foregoing the coverage of the woods. Eric could have cared less if anyone saw him then. He was ready. When they came upon the edge of the front yard, Coop saw movement inside the house.

“Someone’s there!” Coop whispered loudly.

“Go to the front door and knock,” Eric ordered, and began to walk towards the back of the house.

Coop stepped onto the front porch, followed by Kincaid and Michael, and loudly knocked. Receiving no response, Coop knocked louder and received a shock when the door opened and Eric stood there holding the arm of a tall, blonde woman who was obviously terrified.

“Eric, what are you doing?” Kincaid yelled.

“I went around back and saw her hiding in the kitchen while you were knocking. I figure she’ll have some answers. Why don’t we all come in and have a talk.” Eric led the woman to the front room and seated her on an old, ragged Lazy-Boy. Coop, Michael, and Kincaid followed.

“Eric! I don’t think we should...” Kincaid began.

“Be quiet, Naomi! This is the way it’s going to be, from here on out, until we find CeeCee. If you don’t like it, go wait in the fucking car!” Eric’s face was red with emotion.

Kincaid, clearly defeated, as neither Coop nor Michael disagreed with Eric, stood with her back against the wall. Coop and Michael stood on opposite sides of the woman, while Eric faced her.

“What is your name?” Eric demanded of the woman.

“Lau-Laurie Kaylor,” the woman replied, shaking.

“She’s Allen Davis’s—that’s Big Al’s—girlfriend,” Michael put in.

“Outstanding,” Eric responded. “Now, here is how this is going to work tonight. You are going to tell me where my wife is, and tell me. We’re a great combination for covering up a murder—your murder—if you don’t start talking!”

“I’m telling y’all the truth!”

Michael, who had remained silent up to this point, took his gun out of its holster, leaned over Laurie, and told her to open her mouth. This came as a major shock to Eric, Coop, and Kincaid, but no one made any attempt to stop him. Laurie, who’d started to cry, opened her mouth. Michael stuck the barrel of his gun in it.

“I’m not fucking around with you, sweetheart! You’ve got exactly thirty seconds to tell us where Detective Gallagher is, or I’ll blow your brains out all over the fucking wall,” he said calmly.

“Oh my god...” Kincaid mumbled, putting her hands over her mouth.

Laurie started furiously shaking her head up and down, and Michael slowly pulled the gun out of her mouth as Eric took his gun out and put it to Laurie’s head.

“Let’s hear it,” Eric ordered.

“Okay! Okay!” Laurie began. “I was here when they knocked ya out and took her and the other one!”

“What other one?” Michael asked.

“That Andrea gal that they’s been keepin’ upstairs in the spare bedroom. They took her with ‘em too, after they drugged ‘em and tied ‘em up.”

“Where did they go?” Eric demanded.

“To the clearin’—y’all’ll be too late. She’s already dead. They know y’all be lookin’ fer ‘em, and I doubt if they ever come back here again—unless it’s to kill me, which I know they will now!”

“Do you know how to get to this clearing?”

“I kin’t go with y’all! They’ll kill me. They already took ker of Gina today because she talked to y’all, and Lord knows, ain’t nobody ever gonna find her body!”

Eric and Coop looked at Michael confused, and Michael briefly filled them in on Gina Reynolds’s visit to our room yesterday. I suppose I was right when I thought she would die the minute she left our room. Eric was losing patience with Laurie, and time was running out.

“You are going with us, and you are going to show us where this clearing is,” Eric said, flipping the safety off his gun.

“Laurie, I can offer you federal protection until this is wrapped up,” Michael told her, “but you have to cooperate and testify. No one will ever find you if you agree.”

Laurie took a few seconds to mull the offer over, and finally, as if she had any other choice, agreed. Kincaid handcuffed her and started walking her to the car, with Coop following, leaving Eric and Michael standing on the front porch alone. Michael started walking towards the others, but Eric grabbed his arm and stopped him.

“Michael—I need to know...” He paused. “Did you sleep with my wife?” Eric demanded.

“Eric, no, I didn’t. This isn’t the time.”

“Are you in love with her?”

“She loves you, Eric, not me. Now, we need to get going.”

“That’s not what I asked you. Are you in love with her?”

Michael turned his back to Eric, staring at the woods, facing the question Eric asked and knowing all along what the answer was.

“Yes,” he whispered.

Eric looked at the ground for several minutes, his heart heavy, before he started off the porch. He’d never thought it was possible that he could lose me to someone else, but the possibility had just slapped him in the face. He needed to find me and make sure I was alive, that was his first priority, he decided, and he’d deal with the rest later. I love her more than anything in the world, he thought, and God willing I get the chance, I’ll spend the rest of our lives proving it.

Michael watched Eric walk away, and wondered whether he’d been right to been honest with his answer. What bothered him more was that he’d acknowledged his feelings to my husband, of all people, instead of to me. He wished he would’ve had the chance to tell me before I was taken, so that I knew how he felt, and that maybe this would’ve made a difference in my feelings.

He thought back to Laurie Kaylor saying I was probably dead, and his stomach turned. He’d been through a lot in his life, but he didn’t think he would be able to take this. Michael decided then, that if I were alive and went back to Eric, that would be okay. He just didn’t want to find me dead. He took his place in the back seat of the car, and the five of them started the silent drive towards the clearing on Murder Mountain.

And there it was—how the four of them came to save my life that day. I absorbed everything that had been told to me as I heard the siren of the second ambulance close in. We watched as a West Virginia State Police cruiser, rather than an ambulance, made its way into the clearing, followed by two others. I had a slight kick in adrenaline anticipating a small confrontation with the troopers. The first cruiser that came in was driven by a lieutenant who was out of the car before it came to a complete stop, gaping at the blood bath that surrounded him.