Missouri Loves Company (Rip Lane Book 1) Read online

The four men stepped into my cell and closed the door. The lock clicked into place behind them.

  I got up from the bed and stood with my feet planted apart and my hands at my sides. I didn’t want to be sitting down if they decided to start getting rough.

  Officer Miller held a phone book in his hand. I knew what it was for. It was to beat me with. The thick phone book would leave no bruises on my body, no evidence that I had been beaten. Officer Miller was going to book me.

  Both cops moved to a corner behind me. Officer Brown stood leaning against the wall. Officer Miller stood beside him, arms folded, face scowling.

  The other two guys remained near the door.

  One of them moved a toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other and then thrust his hands into his pockets. He had a white scar maybe three inches long running along his jawline.

  The other guy reminded me of a reptile. His beady eyes blinked slowly, like a lizard watching a fly. His tongue was lizardlike too. From time to time it would dart out, swish back and forth, and then slide into his mouth again. I could picture him sitting on a warm rock.

  The four men had me surrounded.

  Nobody said anything for a while.

  Finally I decided to break the ice.

  “When’s breakfast?”

  Behind me Officer Miller grunted.

  “The caterer arrives at seven,” he said.

  “Oh good,” I said. “Can I put in my order now?”

  Lizard chuckled. He pointed a thumb at me and turned to face Scarface.

  “Guy’s a character.”

  “Ain’t he though,” Scarface said.

  I wondered what these two guys were doing with the two cops. It seemed like all four of them were working together on something, and I was somehow caught in the middle of the something.

  I had been searching for Lizard and Scarface the night before, showing their pictures to customers at the Nobody Inn, trying to find somebody who could identify them. And now here they were. It just goes to show that it pays to shake the bushes.

  “We heard you was looking for us,” Lizard told me.

  “You heard right.”

  “The fuck you doing that for?”

  “Because I don’t like it when my motor home gets burglarized.”

  Lizard blinked once. His tongue showed briefly between his lips.

  Scarface began to clean his teeth with the toothpick.

  Both men had guilty looks on their faces.

  “Where’s the locker key?” Lizard said.

  “What locker key?” I said.

  “The one you got from Anna.”

  “Who?”

  Lizard frowned.

  “Listen,” he said. “We ain’t interested in you. We ain’t interested in Anna. All we want’s the duffel bag. Tell me where you hid the locker key and we let you go.”

  “I didn’t hide it. I returned it to its locker.”

  “Then you have the duffel bag.”

  “Jesus Christ. What the hell’s wrong with you people. No, I don’t have the damn duffel bag. I never had it, I don’t know where it is, and I don’t care.”

  “Your response don’t work for me.”

  “Well it works for me.”

  “You’re fucking with the wrong people.”

  “Then tell me who the right people are,” I said. “I’ll go fuck with them instead.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Officer Miller said, stepping forward.

  “Then can I at least get some breakfast?”

  “This look like Denny’s to you?”

  “I don’t want a Grand Slam breakfast. All I want’s some oats and coffee. Some cream in my coffee. No sugar. Give me that, and I’ll tell you what I know. Fair enough?”

  There was no point in holding out on them. I had nothing to hide, nothing to gain, and nothing to lose. So I figured I might as well them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. At least it would get me some breakfast.

  “Fair enough,” Lizard said to me.

  “Good,” I said. “I like my oats with blueberries and cinnamon. A few raisins too. Chopped walnuts, if you’ve got them.”

  The four men went away and came back with my breakfast.

  I sipped the coffee. Not bad for jail coffee.

  I began to eat the oats. I didn’t sit down. I stood eating.

  “You better start talking,” Officer Miller told me. “You don’t, I’m gonna kick your ass. What do you think about that, eh?”

  My oats were pretty good, though they needed more cinnamon.

  Officer Miller’s voice got louder.

  “You think I won’t come over there and kick your ass?”

  “I think you’ll try,” I said, and spooned some oats into my mouth.

  “Listen here, asshole . . .”

  I held up my hand.

  “Okay,” I said. “Don’t get your panties in a wad. A deal’s a deal. I’m going to tell you what I know.”

  And I did.

  I told them Anna was hitchhiking when I stopped to pick her up in my motor home. My engine started to act up, so I checked into S’mores and Snores Campground for the night, and then I made an appointment to see a mechanic the next day. But Anna didn’t want to stick around. She was in a hurry to get out of town. She needed a ride to the Pottsland bus station. I took her there on my motorcycle. When we got there she put her duffel bag in a locker and kept the key. She made a show of giving me a locker key, but it was to a different locker, an empty locker—which I didn’t discover until after she had disappeared from the bus station. I returned that key to its locker. I did not keep it. The following day I went back to the bus station and watched the security video from the day before. It showed Anna returning to the bus station hours after I had left. She got the duffel bag from the locker and then exited the station.

  “Which locker she get the bag from?” Lizard said.

  I told him the locker number.

  “And which locker was your key for?”

  I told him the locker number.

  He began to nod his head as he thought about it.

  “You got any proof what you’re saying’s true?”

  “Proof’s on the security video at the bus station,” I said. “Why don’t you guys go there and watch it for yourselves.”

  Lizard nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said. “We’re gonna go check it out now. Turns out you’re telling the truth, we’ll let you go free.”

  Officer Miller stood toe to toe with me.

  “You better be telling the truth,” he said. “Otherwise I’m gonna stomp your ass when we get back here.”

  “In the meantime,” I said, “you might want to practice falling down.”

  CHAPTER 21

  THEY RETURNED TO my cell a few hours later.

  “The security video was erased,” Lizard told me.

  I shrugged, palms up.

  “Ain’t you got nothing to say about it?”

  “Somebody erased it,” I said. “What can I do about it?”

  “You can tell us where you hid the fucking key.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Beside me I sensed a sudden movement.

  Darkness took me.

  I don’t know how long I was unconscious. It could have been five minutes or three weeks. It felt as if I had slept for a month.

  My head pounded, everything else throbbed, and the trunk of the car smelled like mothballs.

  They had ganged up on me, given me a beating. I’ve taken some beatings before. But this time it felt like they had used heavy sledgehammers. I was a broken marble statue.

  Entombed in the hot trunk, I could hear my own breathing. It seemed loud in the confined space. I knew that trunks were not built airtight, so there was little chance of suffocation. That knowledge made me breathe a little easier, so to speak.

  The tires ticked with a steady rhythm over seams in the pavement. I figured we were going maybe sixty miles an hour.

  My ha
nds were tied behind my back, my feet bound, my mouth taped. If my nose started to itch, things would get ugly.

  The darkness was not complete. Pale daylight seeped in at the edges of the trunk lid. Not enough to read by, but enough to get my bearings.

  The shock absorbers were shot. Every little pebble in the road felt like a speed bump. Just my luck to be abducted by cheapskates.

  They had locked me inside a car trunk.

  It didn’t mean I had to like it.

  There are several ways to escape from a trunk. One is to escape through the back seat. If you are trapped in a car that has back seats that fold down to allow access to the trunk, you can search the trunk for a release to these seats. There may not be one. No problem. You can still try to push the seats down. Or kick them down.

  Escaping through the back seat was not going to be an option for me, because two of my four abductors were likely sitting back there.

  My best option was to find an emergency trunk release.

  Trunks are made to keep criminals out, not to keep car owners in. Engineers have better things to do than design trunk lids that could keep Houdini locked in forever. Well, most engineers.

  Nowadays cars manufactured in America are required to come equipped with an emergency trunk release. It may be a knob or a lever, a button or a handle, a cord or a toggle switch. It’s usually located near the trunk latch.

  Emergency trunk releases are supposed to be easy enough for a three-year-old to find and operate. But it is of course more difficult to do if your hands are tied behind your back.

  At least I wasn’t blindfolded. Finding an emergency release is much easier by sight than by touch. Usually they glow in the dark.

  Problem was, I needed to turn around. I was facing the wrong way. So I started to twist my body around to face the rear of the car.

  I wriggled and shifted, crumpling into a pretzel. The tight space in the cramped trunk made it difficult to maneuver with any graceful athleticism. I was glad nobody was watching me.

  It took me less than a minute to twist my body around.

  My eyes scanned the half darkness of the trunk. Nothing glowed in the dark. I could see nothing that resembled an emergency release.

  I twisted my body around to face the front of the car again, scooted back as far as I could, and ran my bound hands over the smooth steel of the trunk’s interior. I could feel nothing at all that resembled an emergency release.

  Maybe the car didn’t have one. A lot of older cars do not. Wise abductors would use such a car.

  CHAPTER 22

  IF PLAN A fails, move on to Plan B.

  My next option was to find the trunk release cable. It connects the trunk lock to a trunk release located near the driver’s seat. Tugging on the cable could pop open the trunk.

  I hoped the car was equipped with one.

  What I needed were pliers. They could grip cable better than bare hands. There were probably pliers in the compartment under the trunk floor. But I was lying on top of the compartment, so there was no way to get it open. Unless I levitated like Yoda. I tried. The force was not with me.

  On the driver’s side of the trunk I began to feel around for the trunk release cable. I pulled up carpet, popped off cardboard panels. Snaking from the hinge area was a tangle of cables and wires. I tugged on them. The trunk did not pop open.

  Next I searched the area where the center of the trunk lid meets the lock assembly. I did not find the trunk release cable.

  Options were running out.

  Time was running out.

  Fat drops of sweat ran down my face, stinging my eyes, blurring my vision. It was the least of my concerns.

  Of more importance was my escape plan. What should I do once I got the trunk open? I knew that my first reaction would be to jump out of the speeding vehicle. But then I would roll into the oncoming traffic and probably get pancaked by a Mack truck. Nevertheless my adrenaline would tell me to jump. And so would my ex-wife. Which was why I never listened to either.

  I decided that the best escape plan would require my patience. If I actually got the trunk open, I would not jump out right away. I would wait for the car to slow down. Which it would do at a stop signal, or in a school zone, or through a residential neighborhood.

  I had been unable to find either an emergency trunk release or a trunk release cable. My next option was to pry open the trunk latch.

  First I had to find it. Which I managed to do despite darkness and bound hands. I fiddled with the trunk latch. Pulled it from side to side. Pressed my thumb on it while simultaneously pressing up on the trunk lid. Nothing worked. I could not pry it open. I stopped trying.

  I decided to push out one of the brake lights. My plan was to signal motorists for help by sticking my hand out through the hole. But pushing out the light proved to be much more difficult than I had anticipated. Kicking it out would probably work, but it would be close to impossible to maneuver myself into a kicking position. And so what I did was rip out the wires. I figured maybe a state trooper would stop the car for having a faulty brake light.

  Minutes passed.

  No state trooper came to my rescue.

  But I felt the car slowing.

  It made a turn.

  Tires crunched on gravel.

  The car radio came on. Full blast. An AC/DC song told me I was on the highway to hell. Which I already knew.

  The car did not stop. It kept on going. Hell was apparently down the road a bit.

  The shock absorbers were no match for the gravel. I bounced in the trunk like popcorn in a popper.

  Finally the car stopped.

  There was movement from inside.

  Car doors slammed.

  The car radio was loud. It drowned out all other sounds. I wanted to hear my abductors talking. I wanted to hear their footsteps. All I could hear was AC/DC singing about dirty deeds.

  The trunk lid opened.

  Harsh sunlight blinded me. I blinked and squinted.

  Hands seized my limbs and yanked me from the trunk. My face landed in the dirt and my world went sideways. Boots hammered my back, my side, my chest. It sounded like a buffalo stampede. It got louder when they beat me with baseball bats.

  Then it got quiet for a moment.

  Car doors slammed.

  Tires crunched on gravel.

  They left me for dead.

  CHAPTER 23

  “WHERE AM I?”

  “You’re in the hospital, Rip.”

  It was Sally Moran, the woman who lived in the rusty travel trailer that was parked beside my motor home at S’mores and Snores Campground. Sally was standing at my bedside, looking down on me. Her husband, the lawyer, was nowhere in sight.

  “Where’s Harry?”

  “Back at the campground. He’s organizing his papers. He thinks you might want to file a lawsuit against your attackers.”

  “I don’t plan to sue them.,” I said. “I plan to pursue them.”

  “What happened to you? Do you remember?”

  “Like it was yesterday.”

  “It was yesterday.”

  “Oh. How long have I been unconscious?”

  “Doctor says twelve hours or so.”

  “Last thing I remember’s getting beat up. How’d I get here?”

  “According to the paramedics you crawled all the way through a cornfield until you reached a road. A passing car stopped to help. The driver called for an ambulance.”

  “A good Samaritan?”

  “A good Samaritan.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Nobody knows. She was gone when the paramedics arrived. I guess she didn’t want to be involved any further.”

  “I know how that goes.”

  “Yeah, you’re lucky to be alive.”

  “How do I look, Sally?”

  She frowned.

  “That bad, huh?”

  A nurse came into the room. He checked the IV taped to my hand. He checked my chart. He looked at me without expression, the way
a medical student looks at a cadaver.

  “How are you feeling, Mr. Lane.”

  “Like I was kicked and beaten by four guys.”

  He patted my arm, nodded sympathetically, and left the room.

  Through the open doorway I could see a doctor in blue scrubs. Four years of medical school and you get to wear pajamas to work. Seems worth it.

  “How’d you know I was in the hospital, Sally?”

  “Harry told me. He was soliciting clients at the hospital when your ambulance arrived. He saw them wheeling you into the emergency room.”

  “Harry get any new clients?”

  “He was hoping you were one.”

  I nodded. It made my neck hurt.

  “Thanks for coming, Sally. It’s nice having a visitor.”

  She tossed her hair, parted her lips.

  “Wild horses couldn’t keep me away,” she said.

  My face felt flushed. It was probably pink with embarrassment, and brown with facial stubble, and black and blue with bruises. As multicolored as oil on wet pavement.

  I didn’t expect to have any other hospital visitors—except maybe Harry. I considered contacting my parents to let them know what had happened to me, but then thought better of it. No point in having them worry. They had done enough of that during the twenty-five years I worked as a marshal. And besides it wasn’t like I had been shot, stabbed, or killed.

  Sally touched my arm.

  “Rip, I almost forgot to tell you. You know that mechanic works at the campground?”

  “You mean Bob?”

  “Bob, yeah, that’s the guy. He found your motorcycle parked on the side of the road. Your taillight was busted out. So Bob hauled your motorcycle back to the campground and fixed the taillight.”

  “Two good Samaritans in one day? How could I get any luckier?”

  “I can think of a way,” Sally said, and winked at me.

  I was in no condition to flirt back with her. Just to wink would have been painful.

  Sally stayed and talked to me for a while. Mostly she talked and I listened. It was nice. But then I started to have trouble keeping my eyes open. My energy was low.

  “You look tired,” Sally said, putting her hand on my shoulder. “I’m going to leave now so you can get some rest.”