Ding Dong!! Is She Dead? (9 page)

Chapter 8

After, another uneventful night, Allie took Sally back up to the hospital to spend the day. Officer Grayson took Sally over to see the baby that had been born the night before to give Megan some time to catch Allie up on the search for Mike.

The entire police department and the state troopers had been searching for Mike for almost a week and there was no sign of him. This really worried Allie and Megan since that could only meant that he was planning something to get even with them for all the trouble that they had caused him.

“They are looking into who he was close friends with and where his favorite camping sites were. I told them that he never was gone overnight because he didn’t want to leave me at home by myself. There were a few of the guys that he would spend a Saturday or Sunday evening with on the occasional poker night, but so far they haven’t found anything to lead them to him.”

Megan was able to talk quietly now that her throat was healing, but you could still hear the damage to her vocal cords from the week before.

Allie hated to ask this question. She knew that since Mike had obviously gone farther than they had thought possible there might be something that Megan had not wanted to consider before.

“Did Mike have a woman that he was seeing on the side? I know that you don’t think so, but I know that there were nights when he was working ‘overtime’.” Allie made the air quotes on the word.

”He could have been with someone and you wouldn’t have noticed because you weren’t going to check up on him.”

Megan grimaced, “At this point anything is possible, but the guys that he hung out with haven’t come forward with any information so there is no telling if he did or not.”

Mentally starting to berate herself, she almost missed the sly smile on Allie’s face when she asked, “So what is up with Mr. Davy Jones? Is he rescuing you from your thoughts again tonight?”

“For your information, he is coming over. I really think that he feels guilty that he didn’t keep me safe. I know that there is no way it was his fault. I guess since Mike was able to get out on bail, he feels responsible that he wasn’t able to keep him in jail.”

Megan looked embarrassed that Allie had brought up the subject so Allie decided to change the subject, but was saved by the door opening.

Sally and Officer Grayson returned just then and they were able to get her started on her homework. Since this would be Megan’s last night in the hospital, Allie went ahead and called her other job at the bar. She let them know that she would be able to work this Friday since Megan would be watching Sally.

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Allie was headed out to pick up the deliveries from her apartment. It was a smaller order this week since it was between pay checks.

Kevin had assured Allie by phone that there had been no one in or around her apartment. It was looking like it might be safe to return by the end of the week if Mike continued to make himself scarce.

She started a load of clothes at the apartment laundry room planning to change it out between deliveries. When she returned, she noticed that her clothes had already been moved over to the dryer. This was not unusual because of the small amount of washers and dryers available. While helpful, now all of her whites were a lovely shade of red.

Looking a little closer, she noticed that there was red liquid streaking down the dryer door. She knew that one red item would not have dripped the color red. She called Kevin to come and investigate because she had a suspicion that it was blood.

Yes, it was blood that had been poured on her clothes. There was also a dead rabbit thrown into the dryer. All the blood drained out of it. The blood had been sprinkled on top of the white clothes and they had started the dryer. He had only switched out one load and in the tops of all the other loads he had put different parts of the rabbit with blood poured on top.

Allie took pictures with her phone so that she could file with her insurance. She then asked Kevin to take care of disposing of all of her clothes once the police were done with them. Thankfully she had only done a few loads, but some clothes were also Sally and Megan’s clothes as well.

They called the police so that they could come and investigate it.

Mike had left a disturbing message. He hadn’t forgotten his family; he was just waiting patiently until they let their guard down.

Allie gathered a few extra things that she thought that they might need and went straight back to the hospital. There was no point in trying to get anything else done work wise for the day.

Allie wouldn’t be able to concentrate on what would need to be done for work. It was still early afternoon and there wasn’t any reason to head to the hotel yet, so it looked like she would be spending a few hours with Sally in Megan’s room waiting for it to get dark enough so that they could leave.

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On the other side of town out on a rural road that was dirt covered, a ford truck was making its way to the tree line. Kicking up quite a cloud of dust since there had been little rain so far that spring, the man driving the truck kept on when the road ran out. There were only two ruts in the dirt to follow the seldom used path. The truck continued another mile until it was hard to see where the path turned. The trees started to close in, making the path become so narrow that the truck barely fit. Pulling up to a cabin the man got out and approached cautiously, announcing his presence by calling out.

“Mike, I’m here. Don’t shoot.” He collected a few bags of groceries and a case of beer from the truck bed and started toward the cabin. There was no electricity or power line running to the cabin, but in the dusk of the forest a light showed inside when the door opened and Mike stepped out.

“Well, did they get my little gift?” Mike asked the guy carrying all the groceries.

“Yes, they did and you should have seen how scared they were that you were going to pop out and try to take them out. I got the pictures that you asked for. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be in a position to get them, but this morning she left the hospital and started moving around so it was really easy to see where she was going. It was simple to take pictures when she went to take her clothes out of the washers. She found the gift I left while she was at her meeting. She was terrified when she found the rabbit, but she didn’t call out or anything. The first thing that the girl did was to call the police and boy, did they come running.”

“Did they wonder how I got in to put those in there?” Mike had grabbed the beer from him and started putting the other items in an older refrigerator. Opening a beer, Mike headed back out to the porch with his errand boy following like a little puppy.

“Well, they have everything so staked out that it would be hard for you to do, but I was able to put that marker on her car so that I would know if she moved while I was taking care of her clothes. Evidently, she was at McDonald’s for about 3 hours so that left plenty of time for me to go take it out and come back on watch.”

He was watching Mike to make sure that he approved of the methods that he had used.

“Were you able to see Sally? Was she with that woman?” Mike asked.

His friend fidgeted while he tried to explain, “No, Mike. Man, I’m sorry, but when she left the hospital there was no sight of Sally. I listened at the briefing this morning and they said that Sally wouldn’t be returning to school until this had been resolved. I don’t know what they think you were going to do to your own daughter. I mean really, if Megan hadn’t tried to escape what she had coming to her then you wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Listening to him ramble on, Mike realized that this was the very reason that the local and state police hadn’t caught him yet. They were just too incompetent to deal with someone that had real police training. He knew that since his little visit to Megan’s hospital room, they had been chasing their tails trying to find out where he was.

“Do you have anything else that you want me to do tomorrow, Mike? I could plant a bomb in the woman’s car so that it takes her out for being so meddlesome?”

He looked so hopeful that Mike would give him permission to hurt Allie.

“Not yet, dude. You have done such a great job that I don’t want you to get caught or you might have to come hide out here with me. You know if we do too much too soon, then they could figure out what we are up to. I don’t want to cause any trouble man. Let’s see what they do tomorrow about it. I would love to see those pictures though, so put this new SD card in the camera and I will look at those later.”

Mike wanted to keep his friend happy, but not give him more information than he really needed. Mike got up to walk him back to the truck.

“You head on home. Otherwise your wife will be wondering where you are. I know that you are getting lots of overtime, but we don’t want to give her any reason to check up on you right, man?”

Mumbling he climbed into the truck and promised to text Mike if anything new developed.

Mike was so relieved when he left. He knew that the odds that he would be able to get his family back together were almost nil. Instead, he planned to punish Megan until he could get Sally away from her. There were always places for a man with his kind of connections to go.

There were places that were off the grid, but he didn’t want that horrible woman to have his daughter any longer than necessary. As for that bitch that was helping his wife, he had plans for her, but it would take some planning to get her away from all of the police protection that was surrounding her at the moment. Since his friend had managed to scare them, it would allow them to chase their tails looking for him on cameras and trying to find him when he hadn’t been closer than 10 miles from that woman all day.

Mike sat back on the porch and grabbed another beer to help him clear his head to better plan how to get back what was right fully his.

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Allie hung out at the hospital for the rest of the day and then they snuck out later that night to go back to the hotel. Since Megan was going to be released tomorrow, they would go shopping to get anything that she would need while she recuperated.

They were not going to remove the lockdown security from the hospital so that Mike would not be able to tell when Megan left. Hopefully he would be looking for her there instead of immediately searching the area.

They were hoping that would it give her a few more days to get on her feet without having to worry about when she might be attacked again.

Sally was super excited that her mother was going to be hanging out because she had really missed her. They cleaned up the hotel room and packed up all of the stuff because they would be moving to an extended stay hotel.

Karen was with them and they were becoming good friends as they got to hang out and get to know each other. They went to the store for groceries that could be microwaved or meals that could be easily fixed, like sandwiches.

There was no way to get Megan’s clothes from the storage unit so Allie bought her some comfy pjs and t-shirts. She wouldn’t have to worry about how she looked while she was recuperating. Sally was helping pick out the outfits so poor Megan had Minnie Mouse on one set and Tinkerbell on another. They got her some plain shorts and then found lots of T-shirts to choose from, but Allie made sure that all the sayings were kid friendly. If Megan hated them then they could always return them or let Sally have an extra night shirt.

They grabbed some lunch while they were out and then Karen went to check into the new place while they waited in the car.

Once she had the room keys, they unloaded the car. It took several trips since they were all staying together so that neither Sally nor Allie were left unprotected.

There were two adjoining suites so that Karen and Allie would be in one room and Sally and her mom would be in the other. Knowing how much Sally had missed her mom, she would be cuddled up in bed with her once she got settled.

They were going to sneak her out through the ER like they had before. They were going take her to one of the nursing homes first and then take her out the back in a regular car so that he wouldn’t be able to watch the whole building at one time.

All of the extra precautions that the police were taking seemed a little excessive, but with all of the crazies that had taken guns and started shooting up places they did not want a repeat of those types of incidents in their town. Especially since, Mike had been one of the lead officers in the Sheriff’s office it would allow him to put on his old uniform. People wouldn’t think twice by allowing him in to a crime scene. Most people respected the uniform and didn’t think to look at the person’s identification. Mike’s I.D. was still current so even that wouldn’t help catch him.

It was late Wednesday afternoon before the car showed up with Megan. Officer Karen went down to help her from the car to the lobby and up to their rooms that way the other car did not linger for very long. Megan looked exhausted from the trip up the elevator, so they helped her straight into bed. The hospital had given her scrubs since her original clothes had blood on them, and had been cut off when she arrived.