Lines in Shadow: Walking in the Rain Read online

  In addition to the table, Mark’s detail had also delivered a toolbox full of implements for Scott to employ, though honestly most had been selected for their sheer fear factor. He’d never use the short chainsaw, for instance, but the device sure got a squeal from the gagged man as me made a production of removing it from the squat metal box. The blowtorch, on the other hand, was likely to get a workout today.

  Scott hated interrogating prisoners. From his career as a wildlife enforcement officer with the state, he’d had plenty of experience questioning suspected poachers, pot growers and meth cooks. He’d been routinely lied to, spit at, and on two memorable occasions, physically attacked by suspects while making his inquiries. This experience taught him how to control his temper and continue with the job despite provocation.

  Truly, Scott didn’t care what people chose to do to themselves, as long as they did it somewhere other than on state land. That wasn’t why he’d become a game warden. Protecting the natural resources and beauty of his home state had been a big part of his motivation, back when it mattered, and even pot farmers could be overlooked if they kept it small scale and didn’t tear up the woods entering or exiting their hidden plots. After his own experiences, Scott had little use for the “War of Drugs” crowd anyway, but no one outside the family knew the reason, and damn few of them. His attitude was either fight a war to win it or don’t bother.

  “You ready to get to work?” Sarah asked, approaching the table with her rifle in hand. She reminded Scott of a Marine boot, keeping the rifle within reach at all times and seldom ever slinging it.

  “Yeah, let’s see how loud we can make him scream, first,” Scott replied at full volume and with theatrical vigor, reaching for the bolt cutters leaning next to the table as he gave the restrained form a cursory glance.

  Even freshly cleaned, the man made for a pitiful sight. Wearing only a pair of white trousers cutoff at mid-calf, the bare chest of the prisoner looked shrunken and his papery-thin looking flesh showed a crisscrossed pattern of cuts and scars. Scabs dotted his arms and legs, and what looked like a half-healed stab wound could be seen on his lower right side. He looked to be in his fifties but given the abuse, he could have been ten or more years younger. That old saying about “it’s not the years, it’s the miles” suddenly sprang up in Scott’s mind as he regarded the prisoner.

  As bad as the body looked in the light of day, there was something about the face that made Scott’s skin crawl. The white halo of cotton candy-like hair had been roughly clipped off, and the wrinkled white skull of the man seemed too small even for his wasted body. Jaundiced yellow eyes, bloodshot and piss brown, regarded the pair of them with an indifference that slid towards madness. The head, like the rest of the body, trembled faintly, like an engine idling. Cass hadn’t been sure if it was the DTs, Delirium Tremens, or something else, and she’d pointedly announced she wasn’t “wasting any more time on this piece of trash anyway”, so Scott let it go.

  Using the big clippers, Scott cut away the gag and used the curved blade to roughly clear the twisted piece of cloth away from the prisoner’s mouth. Spitting and cursing, the bony caricature of a man twisted and tugged fruitlessly at his bonds as the two watched with pitiless eyes.

  “You got a name?” Sarah asked simply.

  “Fuck you” the wrinkled old man rasped.

  “Feisty, aren’t you?” Sarah responded, her voice almost a singsong. “I like that. It gives me an excuse.”

  Stepping over to the work bench, the woman picked up a pair of helmets with clear plastic face shields. Handing one to Scott, she donned her own and turned back to the prisoner.

  “This keeps the blood out of my eyes, you know? I really hate that when I’m busy torturing people.”

  The prisoner, still cursing up until then, seemed to freeze at that moment. Those sick, brown eyes seemed to bulge even more as the import of her words sank into his addled brain. Sarah, though, didn’t react in any way and continued, her voice now taking on a more child-like cadence as she spoke and leaned in close over her intended victim.

  “Scott, over there, he doesn’t mind the blood, but he’s a big tough Marine and he’s just here to get some information from you. Me? I’m doing this because I like it. Before we are done with you, I guarantee you will be begging to answer Scott’s questions. Hopefully, you’ll still have your tongue.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Hopefully, you’ll still have your tongue? What made you think to say that?” Scott said as they walked away from Walter Persky, Attorney at Law. He’d had some interesting things to say indeed, and between the two of them, the interrogators worked for hours to get his story.

  Sarah shrugged at the almost playful question before she answered.

  “From all the cussing, I took him to be a talker. And he was, once we got his mind in the proper state. I figured he’d hate losing his tongue as much as his eyes, or his pecker.”

  “Well, you pegged it. I was halfway hoping he was making that stuff up, but I think he was telling what he knew.”

  “Yeah, I think so, too. That was brilliant, by the way.”

  “What, waterboarding him ‘til he couldn’t see straight, then making him repeat his story?” Scott asked, his exhaustion bleeding into his words. He’d been going balls out for days now, ever since Kat Warren had showed up with her tale of woe, and Scott was still limping a bit from the strain he’d sustained earlier in his legs.

  When they reached the ATV, Sarah finally answered.

  “No, by figuring out he was a drunk, then then making him repeat the story again as you doled out the alcohol. That convinced me more than anything else, crazy as it sounds.”

  Scott nodded as he crawled into the little bench seat of the side-by-side ATV.

  “Honestly, I wanted to use the tin snips on him,” Scott said.

  “Well, he is a lawyer. We can still go back and do that, if you want. I mean, we are going to execute him anyway, right?” Sarah said, and Scott knew she wasn’t joking.

  “Nah, not all lawyers are evil, you know? The one I had in my divorce, he was a stand-up guy. Charged a lot, but he worked his ass off for me. Got me full custody and kept the ex out of my retirement. She got the house, but I didn’t care about that.”

  “Wow. A cop defending lawyers? Wonders never cease,” Sarah said and this time, Scott could hear the humor in her voice. “And you know, I never knew you were divorced. I guess I just thought you were a widower. Bella never talks about her Mom, and you’ve never said anything.”

  “That’s because Isabella never really knew her. She was never a part of her life after Bella was about two-years-old.” Scott paused, thinking about dark days in his life that had nothing to do with the lights going out.

  “Sorry,” Sarah went on, “I didn’t know, and I can tell it’s a touchy subject for you.”

  Scott laughed darkly, and gave the woman a thumbs-up sign.

  “Like it’s any big drama. I met Megan after I graduated from college, and we dated for a while. I thought I really knew her, but she had a secret I didn’t know about, not even after we got married. You see, Megan was an addict. Alcohol was her drug of choice at the time, or so I thought, but it was really just whatever she could get her hands on.”

  “Shoot, that had to have been rough.”

  “She was pretty good at hiding her problems from me, and with my job and the hours I worked those first few years with the State, I just didn’t see it. Or want to see.”

  Sarah was silent for a few minutes as she guided the ATV past a small stand of blackberry bushes, now nothing more than a wild tangle of thorns. Scott remembered earlier in the summer when he’d led a small team of pickers as they’d raided that particular stand, and how much Bella had liked eating the juicy fruit right off the plants.

  “So, something must have happened, to upset the applecart?”

  “We’d been trying to have a kid for a long time after we got married, but no luck for years. We went to the doctors, but the
y couldn’t find anything wrong. Then, boom, one day the little stick turns blue. She actually came to me, after she found out she was pregnant, and finally admitted she was addicted to the booze. Worried about fetal alcohol syndrome or something, I guess. That was the first time she went to rehab, and stupid me, I thought it would be the last.”

  “But it wasn’t?”

  Scott shook his head.

  “No, but she managed to hold it together until after the baby was born. Then, like she was making up for lost time, she went wild. Went back to drinking, then using, and now it was the hard stuff. She added heroin to bring her down off the speed, I guess. I found out a little at a time, and at first I couldn’t believe it. Then she got arrested. Buying meth from an undercover cop. But it gets better, since she had Bella in the car with her at the time. She wasn’t even a year old.”

  “Oh, my god,” Sarah exclaimed. “What did you do?”

  “Tried to get her help. Back into rehab, then she was on probation for a year. That was a mess, too. We did couples counseling, but I’ve got to be honest. By this time, I was just about at the end of my rope and couldn’t see any light at the end. Then she moved out, took up with some drug slinging boyfriend, and wanted full custody of Isabella on top of everything else. She was going to soak me for support and get a chunk of my retirement. I guess it all seems so silly now. So petty. Fat lot of good my retirement is going to do me now, right?”

  Sarah laughed along with Scott, but she could hear the bitterness in his voice.

  “Scott, you just wanted to do right by your little girl. And you have. Bella is a precious little thing, and she loves her daddy so much.”

  “Thank you, but I have to give a lot of credit to my sister-in-law, Hazel. She helped me a ton, and didn’t mind watching the munchkin for me when I couldn’t get a sitter. Between her and Ruth, she’s had plenty of good female influences.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. She is smart as a whip, too.” Sarah agreed.

  She paused again, this time waiting until they were nearly back to the community before speaking. “Thank you for the way you’ve been with Shay and Delilah, Scott. With what happened and all, I don’t know if they’ll ever really get over what happened. But they see you with Bella, how sweet you are to her, and how gentle you are with them, too. They know there are still good people, good men, out there to watch out for them. To protect them.

  “I have a hard time not blaming Sean for what happened, you know. You tried to get him to listen, and to cooperate, but Sean was the same as always. Got to be the man in charge. He ignored what you and your nephew, Nick tried to tell him and then, when things went so terribly wrong, he gave us up to those…those things.”

  Scott listened, realizing his decision to open up about his past had given Sarah an opportunity to release some of the venom she still carried around as well. He hadn’t known Sean Trimble, except to say hi to the man, so he hadn’t formed an opinion about the man before his gruesome death.

  “Sarah, he would have done anything to protect his family. He just didn’t know what they had planned. How could he? I’m not defending what he did or didn’t do, except to say that…well, I don’t know what to say, really. If you loved Sean, then remember that, and if he loved the girls, remind them as well.”

  “Would you have given up, Scott? Would you have trusted in the mercy of men who came to take food from your children?”

  Sarah’s tone was hard now, and Scott couldn’t fault her anger. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, but by everything Scott had seen and heard, Sean hadn’t exactly covered himself in glory the day his family was captured. The man never got a shot off, and then his wife and daughters were taken captive by a gang of monsters. Scott knew Sean regretted his decision, and had suffered for making that call. Suffered in ways that still gave Scott nightmares, since he’d been one of the men who’d buried Sean Trimble’s savagely butchered corpse. Wisely, Scott kept his mouth shut and didn’t offer his opinion, but his silence said enough.

  In comparison to what Sean had endured, Scott mused, their torture of Walter seemed a joke. No, simulated drowning was torture, too, but Scott never used the blowtorch or the razor blades in his toolbox, either.

  As they pulled up to the parking spot designated for the ATVs, Scott worried that someday he would have to do something similar. Copy what was done to Sean Trimble, in order to break a man. Use those infernal tools to dismantle a man for the secrets he held. His fear wasn’t that he would be unable to perform the task. No, his fear was that he would be able to do it without hesitating.

  Scott knew Sarah could do it. She playacted well enough when they threw the ‘mean cop’ versus ‘crazy cop’ act out there for Walter, but Scott saw the truth. When Walter started talking, telling his tale of woe and all the horrors he’d witnessed, always as a helpless bystander, of course, Scott saw the truth in Sarah’s eyes.

  Here was a woman who’d thrown off the old ways, and the old concepts of acceptable behavior. She’d been raped, repeatedly and over several days, by some of the same men who’d violated her daughters in her presence. In fact, did so in order to make Sarah suffer even more.

  The ones responsible were all dead, either killed in the two actions near Saw Creek or later executed by Sarah’s own hand. But, the country was full of others just like that, and Sarah was determined to protect her girls from ever facing a similar threat.

  If someone really needed carving up in the future, then Sarah could do the deed with no hesitation. She’d wash the blood off and go on about her business without a backward glance.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Please tell me you’re joking, Scott. Sarah? Please…”

  Conners words aside, he knew this was no joke. The lieutenant had firmly held beliefs about both of his civilian subordinates. Scott was a straight arrow, and Sarah was so earnest and driven, she made the young lieutenant tired just watching her workout. Plus, she wouldn’t hesitate to cut off body parts to get the answers needed.

  “Sorry, LT. No joke. Five thousand fighters, maybe more. Walter’s not sure what they have at the other camp. He hasn’t seen them since the split. There’s at least two thousand at this camp. So he claims, anyway.”

  “And what did you have to do to get this information?” Conners asked softly, careful to not allow any hint of condemnation into his voice. After losing men in Gentry, likely by the same band of cannibalistic vermin, Conners knew he would gladly have cut the prisoner’s heart out with an ice cream scoop.

  Sarah grinned and for once, it wasn’t that scary, animalistic rictus that promised dire consequences. No, this was a real, honest-to-goodness expression of humor.

  “Well, after we waterboarded his ass for a couple of hours, Scott realized poor Walter had a medical condition we could exploit. And we did.”

  Conners glanced back and forth between the two older warriors and gave a shrug.

  “Okay, I’ll bite.”

  “He’s a drunk, sir,” Scott finally supplied. “Another thing we discovered. Somehow their leadership has been keeping many of them dosed with booze and drugs along the way. One way to keep the cannon fodder in line. But after we picked him up the other day, he started going through withdrawals. Cass was the first to spot it, when she was trying to get him cleaned up. So she told me.”

  Scott paused, then took a sip of water from the tumbler sitting on the rough wooden table in front of him.

  “We had a bottle of that moonshine Sid helped brew up, for medical purposes, and once we got Walter sufficiently woke up to pay attention, he pointed on that bottle like a trained hunting dog. So…I fed him just enough to keep him talking. His story stayed consistent, sir. There’s not a lot of loyalty in that bunch. They are all just hungry, and following them that will get them their next meal.”

  “Fuck, Scott, we’re all hungry. That doesn’t excuse…” Conners began to rant, but stopped when he saw the indulgent looks on the faces of the other two. Yes, he realized, he didn’t need to explain it to them.<
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  Lieutenant Conners wasn’t dumb, nor was he inexperienced. In fact, one of the reasons he’d been fast-tracked for a commission was his combat record on multiple tours. Captain Devayne had also taken note of his proven ability to plan ahead when he’d submitted the then-sergeant’s name to Colonel Hotchkins. Being a recent college graduate didn’t hurt either, even if his degree was in secondary education, with a minor in chemistry. Which meant Conners knew how to brew up some really wicked napalm, amongst other things.

  So, Conners didn’t need to be managed by his men and women, like he’d been forced to do with some officers during his own career. And they shouldn’t have to tiptoe around the truth with him. Scott wasn’t making excuses, just giving his report. Scott would write it all up in due course, but Conners needed to know now.

  “So, what else?”

  “They are currently operating out of an industrial park the other side of Lowell. Got more buses than the prisoner could accurately count, as well as a few scrounged military vehicles. Five tons, thing like that, but no armor to speak of. Some gun trucks, technicals, with welded-on armor and medium machine guns.”

  “So what’s their ultimate goal? Why come raiding here if they are twenty miles away?”

  This time, Sarah answered.

  “Walter says the bosses want to get closer to the coast, and further south for winter. They’re shooting for Fayetteville for the short term. Just gathering their forces up to make a move on the city. Or what’s left of it.

  “The nucleus of this bunch was a street gang out of Jefferson City. They rolled over some grocery stores and gun shops early on, and tried to set up their own little fiefdom in town. They tangled with the Missouri National Guard, intent on guarding the state capitol and got run out of town. From there, the gang headed to Springfield to regroup. That’s where Walter met up with them as a new recruit. You know, the old ‘join us or die’ sales pitch. He took option number one, and claims he’s regretted it ever since.”