Black Jack: A nail biting, hair-raising thriller (Jack Ryder Book 4) (9 page)

M
ay
2016

“What’s going on?”

It was Emily. I looked up at her.

“What happened to Shannon?” she asked. “The kids are really scared. Can they come out?”

The kids had stayed inside because I told them to when running out here. “Yes, I said and rose to my feet. “Maybe they can help us search for him.”

Emily went inside and came out followed by Abigail, Austin and Angela, our three A’s. They all looked terrified. Abigail was the only one with courage enough to speak.

“What happened dad? Did something happen to Tyler?”

“We can’t find him,” I said. “Maybe if we all looked around the area? Could you guys help us with that?”

The three young ones nodded. “Maybe you could go with them, Emily?” I asked. “Just basically look everywhere.”

The kids took off into the parking lot and I watched them for a little while, before I helped Shannon to sit down on an old bench by the front door. A couple walked past us. The man grabbed the handle, when his wife urged him to stop. She approached us.

“What’s wrong, dear?”

She sounded like she was from up north but I had never been very good with accents.

“I…we can’t find our baby,” I said. “He’s in a car seat, you know the ones you can carry by the handle.”

The lady nodded. “Yes.”

“Well my… our baby boy, Tyler was in one, sleeping. My wife put him down for just a second and when she reached for him, he was gone.”

“Oh my. That’s terrible,” the lady said. “Where did it happen?”

“Right here,” Shannon said. “In front of the door.”

“Say aren’t you that singer?” the lady asked and suddenly I could see the many headlines in all the newspapers tomorrow.

Shannon shook her head and looked away.

“Thank you. We’ll take care of it,” I said and helped them get inside. “Don’t worry.”

I realized my hands were shaking as I closed the door behind the couple. Shannon had gone into complete shock and I could make no sense of what she was saying. I walked back into the restaurant and alerted the hostess, asked her to look for a baby in a small car seat. But I also told her to please be discrete about it to protect my wife.

“Let me call my manager right away,” she said. “We’ll have everyone looking for her.”

The words kidnapped and abduction were staring to roam in my mind, as I returned to Shannon, but I didn’t want to succumb to them, I didn’t want to say them out loud or even let them get root in my head.

Tyler has to be here somewhere, right? He simply has to be. Just stay calm now Jack. You have to keep your cool.

“He’s gone, isn’t he?” Shannon suddenly said looking up at me. Our eyes met and I felt the anxiety she was going through.

“Don’t say that,” I said. “I am sure there is some explanation for all this.”

Shannon was rocking back and forth, biting her nails. “Do you think that’s what the Hawthornes told each other when their daughter went missing five years ago?”

“No! Don’t talk like that!” I yelled. But I had no right to be angry. She was just saying what I was afraid to even think.

It did however make me realize we had to do something more drastic. I grabbed my phone and called detective Bellini.

“Bellini. Ryder here. I need your help. We…” I looked at Shannon who was shaking her head in panic, crying heavily between sobs. She got up and started searching in the bushes next to the restaurant. I fought my urge to cry. Saying the words out loud made it so much more real, so much harder to cope with. But I had to. I needed all the help I could get now.

“Tyler is missing.”

“Tyler as in your newborn?” she asked with great urgency.

“Yes. “I swallowed the lump in my throat and closed my eyes. “Our three month old baby is gone. He disappeared outside the Pirate’s House. We’re in front of the house now searching the parking lot, but there aren’t so many places he can have gone. I fear he might have been taken. Please help us.”

“Be right there.”

“But Bellini?”

“Yes?”

“I need you to be very discrete about this. We can’t have this hit the front pages tomorrow morning.”

“Of course not. I’ll see what I can do.”

M
ay
2016

“I have a surprise for you girls!”

The Doctor turned off the lights and all the girls in the house started to scream. Mostly in excitement. They knew something was coming. The Doctor had placed them in a circle. Meanwhile the Doctor carried the surprise into the middle of the circle, went back to the wall and flipped on the lights again.

“Ta-da!”

All the girls stared at the little pink lump in the car seat in front of them. The Doctor stormed back and took him out. All eyes were fixated on the baby, but no one spoke. Not until Daisy opened her mouth as the first. Typically Daisy to be the first to complain. Always her.

“But…” she started but got a look form the Doctor that made her stop. She opened her mouth once again, but then held it back.

“That’s not…” Miss Liz said.

“That’s a boy!” Millie said. “That’s not Betsy Sue!”

The Doctor gave Millie a look. It made her stop whining immediately and look away. Her arm was doing better but was still in a sling. The Doctor had put it back in place but Millie still complained about the pain. She wasn’t going to risk another incident. She wasn’t that stupid.

“I know it is a boy,” the Doctor said caressing the cheek of the baby. “Isn’t he a beauty?”

Lacy Macey made a grimace. “Yuck, I think he is ugly.”

The Doctor turned to look at the little girl with the brown curly hair. Her long eyelashes were blinking as she realized she had crossed the border for what the Doctor found acceptable. The Doctor approached her, lifted her chin up with a finger underneath it and made her look into the Doctor’s eyes. Next the Doctor slapped her across the face causing her head to turn forcefully to the side. It didn’t return to face the Doctor before the Doctor grabbed it and turned it back.

“Now,” the Doctor said with a sniffle. “What do you say to poor little…Rikki Rick?”

Lacy Macey’s eyes hit the wooden floors.

“Look at him,” the Doctor said. “Look at him when you say it.”

The girl looked up. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“I am sorry, what?”

“I’m sorry
Rikki Rick.”

The Doctor smiled and sighed. “That’s my girl.”

The Doctor lifted the baby into the air like Simba was lifted up in the Lion King to meet his future subjects. The boy wasn’t happy and started to cry. The Doctor ignored the crying.

“This is Rikki Rick, everyone. He will stay with us from now on. Be good to him and treat him like a king. Teach him everything he needs to know.”

All the girls looked up, especially little Miss Muffit. But she didn’t look at him with excitement or joy as the others. She didn’t dance joyfully because they now had a brother among them. She didn’t partake in the welcoming party for the boy. Instead she sat in a corner, tears pouring down her cheeks.

B
ecause she knew
that since Betsy Sue didn’t seem to be coming back, the countdown to her own demise had begun.

N
ovember
1990

Thanksgiving was Kimberly’s favorite time of year. It was the one holiday where people gathered just to be together, just to be thankful for each other and what they had, and not wondered what they were going to get.

Plus she loved turkey.

Things had been calm in the old house for several months now and she was getting to a point where she was as close to call herself settled in as she could get in this place.

She still woke up at night hearing strange scratching sounds and she still felt a chill run down her back when she walked into the living room. She had learned to live with the roaches in the toilet bowl from time to time and the strange smell in the kitchen from the garbage disposal. And she had accepted the ravens as long as they stayed in the attic. She had also learned that there was a lamp in the hallway that had been here when they moved in, that never turned off. Even if it didn’t have a bulb in it, it was simply always lit.

She knew it and had come to terms with it. It was as Joseph had said earlier, it was an old house and they never knew what to expect from it.

“When are we eating?” Rosa said when she came out in the kitchen that was already enclosed in the sweet smell of roasted turkey.

Kimberly laughed lightly of her daughter’s impatience. “There is still a couple of hours left.”

“Awe. What am I to do while I wait?”

“How about you go outside and play for a little bit?” Kimberly asked.

Rosa hadn’t made any friends since they moved here and that worried her. Maybe it was after all a bad idea to homeschool the girl, she often pondered.

“There is nothing to do out there,” Rosa said.

“Don’t you think you can find something to do?”

Rosa shook her head, grabbed a chair and sat down. Kimberly found a coloring book from one of the cabinets and handed it to her along with some crayons. Rosa started coloring.

“What is your dad up to?” Kimberly asked wondering if he was writing a song again. He and Rosa had surprised Kimberly with it last year after the dinner singing it together.

“He’s in the basement,” Rosa said with a shrug.

Joseph had spent a lot of time in the basement lately. Kimberly didn’t really know what he was doing down there for hours on end. Until now she had let him have his own space down there, but she did worry that his instruments were all gathering dust in the music room upstairs. It had been ages since he last picked one up and played. In the ten years they had been married she had never been able to pull him away from his instruments or make him stop singing all day long. Not a tune left his mouth these days. Not even a humming or whistling did she hear from him.

Kimberly threw the potatoes in the sink. This was the worst part of the dinner, she believed. The peeling of the potatoes. Kimberly sighed when she looked at the stack. They were just going to be the three of them this year since all their families lived upstate and couldn’t afford to travel down there. Still she thought it was a big job to peel all these potatoes. She needed to do the cranberry sauce and the gravy as well.

Kimberly looked at her daughter who was coloring, but didn’t seem to enjoy it very much.

“Rosa?”

She looked up. “Yes?”

“Would you mind peeling the potatoes for me?”

“Sure.”

Rosa stood up and approached the sink. Kimberly helped her put on an apron and roll up her sleeves. Rosa had peeled potatoes a few times before and was actually quite fast. Best of all she actually liked it.

“So what do you think your dad does down in the basement?” Kimberly asked when her daughter picked up the first potato.

In the old times what they now considered the basement was used to quarter the help. One of the rooms had since been made into a laundry room but there were several other rooms that had been left unused, that they had just used as storage rooms when they moved in. Joseph had once day closed the door to the biggest one in the back and she had heard him rummage around while doing her laundry, wondering what he was up to.

“I don’t know,” Rosa said. “He never lets me in there.”

“You think he might be building something? Maybe a new music room or a studio to record his music?” Kimberly asked.

“He doesn’t play anymore, mom,” Rosa said and put the finished potato in the pot of water Kimberly had placed next to her.

She knew the girl was right but it still hurt to hear. Somewhere deep down inside she had hoped that Joseph was still playing, that she just hadn’t heard him.

“I know,” Kimberly said.

“Doesn’t dad like music anymore?” Rosa asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe he just needed a little break. He does teach it at the school, so maybe it became a little too much, you know?”

“He never used to get tired of music,” Rosa said pensively while looking out the window into the yard. It was beautiful how the sun fell on the brown leaves.

“Well people change,” Kimberly said while secretly hoping Joseph hadn’t. She missed him the way he used to be. Now he was all about reading business magazines and wore a shirt and tie even when they were just at home in the weekends. Where he used to annoy her by strumming his guitar from morning to nighttime or play the drums late at night, now he was so quiet, she hardly felt he was there anymore. And he was constantly talking about bourbon. Oh the bourbon. He would buy some bottle with a name Kimberly never had heard of and talk about it for so long, how it was made on what type of wood and it gave it this character and that color and whatnot. She would let her thoughts drift off just to stay awake.

“I think he likes to play cards now,” Rosa said.

“He does what?”

“He plays card games.”

Drinking bourbon and playing card games? What was that? Joseph never used to like any of these things. Joseph was a beer-man and he hated playing any type of games, whether it was board games or card, because he always lost.

“Who does he play with?” Kimberly asked slightly nervously.

Their daughter shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Kimberly shook her head wondering if she even knew her husband at all. This side to him, she didn’t recognize at all.

“I’m done,” Rosa said.

“Good job,” Kimberly said. She leaned over the sink, wiped some flies away, picked up most of the peelings and let the rest fall into the garbage disposal.

“Cover your nose,” she said to Rosa.

The disposal smelled the worst when they ran it.

“Here comes the smell.”

Kimberly squeezed her own nose and pushed the button. The disposal grinded and roared, then ran smoothly before it started making a very strange noise.

KRA-KUNK! KRA-KUNK! KRA-KUNK!

Kimberly sighed annoyed. She was so sick and tired of this disposal and this kitchen in general. Now it was acting up again and the smell worse than ever.

“Eeeewww,” Rosa exclaimed.

Kimberly leaned over to stop it. Her finger never reached the button before the disposal made a new loud sound -SPLUSH! - and she was covered in something wet. It went in her hair, in her face and worst of all in her mouth. It also covered all of Rosa’s face and when she finally stopped the disposal and looked at her, Kimberly realized they were both covered in blood.