Fogbound: A Lin Hanna Mystery (41 page)

“So what are
you doing now?” Neal asked.

“Right now, I
have a group of local park volunteers who are working with Zach Taylor and me
to conduct a thorough search of all the areas Bryan marked on his map as
possible ginseng poaching sites.
 
We
have two teams and we are trying to cover the woods, trails, everything in
those areas.
 
We are looking for
possible places to hide the ladies, assuming these guys took them.
 
On the side, we are photographing any
evidence we find of poaching operations.
 
It’s taking a good bit of time and so far we haven’t found signs of Lin
or Sue—but we won’t quit now.
 
There are lots of places in those woods where you could hide a couple of
people easily; that’s why we’re trying to be thorough.”

“I appreciate
that, Mark,” Neal replied. “I’m ready and willing to help if you need more
searchers.”

“Thanks, Neal,
if we don’t find them today, we may indeed need to spread out further
tomorrow—maybe create a third team.
 
Right now, we really need more information.
 
Anything that would help us to narrow
our search options.”

“I think I’m
going to try to talk to Ted Whitley this morning, if he’s up to having visitors
that is,” Neal said.

“Good, idea,”
Mark agreed. “When I talked to him, he was still pretty well sedated and all he
really could tell me was where he and Lin had been and what had happened to him
there.
 
I didn’t ask him anything
about the investigations he and Sue had been engaged in, Lin too, of
course.
 
I know he was planning a
series of news articles on the unsolved cases.”

“If I learn
anything from him that might help, I’ll let you know,” Neal replied. “Could you
call me later and let me know how your day went.
 
It’s hard to just sit around and
wonder.”

“You got it,
Buddy, I understand.
 
I’ll talk to
you later today,” Mark ended the call leaving Neal to plan the rest of his day
on his own.

His next
problem was how to get his rental car back to Enterprise.
 
That was easily resolved when he called
the local office and learned that someone could give him a ride back home when
he dropped the car off; he didn’t need to do that right away because his one
day rental didn’t end until about ten that night.
 
That settled, he grabbed the keys and
headed out to the hospital.

When he arrived
he checked again to make sure Ted could have visitors before proceeding to the
third floor.
 
He found Ted in a
private room on the wing reserved for surgical patients.
 
He was propped up in bed with tubes and
IVs in abundance.
 
His eyes were
closed so Neal presumed he must be asleep, but when he moved a chair from the
corner so he could sit down, the scraping sound caused Ted to open his eyes.

“Hi,
there?”
 
Neal offered his hand in
greeting, “I’m Neal Smith, Lin Hanna’s fiancé and I was hoping you might feel
like talking a bit.
 
If you don’t
that’s OK, I can come back…”

“No, No, please
stay.
 
Please sit down,” Ted
responded.
 
His voice sounded
stronger than his appearance would indicate. “I’m happy to meet you, sorry
about the circumstances though.
 
I
think we were supposed to have dinner together sometime this coming
weekend.
 
At least that’s what Lin
had proposed but…” his voice trail off.
 
No need to explain the current circumstances.

“I’m hoping
that we can still have that dinner—maybe postponed until they spring you
from this place, but still.
 
When I
found out Lin and Sue were both missing I got my act together and flew in from
Arizona last night.
 
I was hoping
you might feel like talking a bit, maybe bring me up to date on all the stuff
you guys had uncovered before all this happened.
 
Mark already told me that Lin was with
you when you were shot.”

“And, if not
for her, I might’ve died.
 
The
surgeon told me I was lucky that none of my major organs sustained serious
damage, but I was pretty much ripped up by the shotgun pellets and the
splinters of wood that flew out of that barn door.
 
If she hadn’t gotten me to the hospital,
I could’ve bled out and died. I owe her my life,” Ted was choked with emotion.

Neal simply
nodded and gave Ted a friendly pat on the hand. “She’s pretty special that
way.
 
Always ready to help her
friends—no matter what the circumstances.
 
Sue’s a strong person too, she helped
Lin when she faced circumstances similar to yours last year.
 
She’s pretty special also.”

“You bet she
is,” Ted said, “I’m just finding out how special.
 
We’ve just met really, but already I
feel like I know her.
 
I find her
one of the most attractive women I’ve ever met, and not just physically,
although she’s pretty good looking.
 
Sue and I have a lot in common.
 
I just wish I knew where she was and who has her.”

Neal brought
Ted up to date on the direction the search was taking.
 
As he described what Mark Scott was
doing, he noticed that Ted was nodding his approval. “I’d say he’s on the right
track.
 
That goes along with what
Sue, Lin and I were learning.”

“Can you bring
me up to speed on that?” Neal asked. “I told Mark that if I could uncover any
helpful information I’d get it to him as soon as possible.”

A nurse entered
about that time to check Ted’s vitals.
 
As she was leaving she gave Neal a severe look. “He needs to rest so
don’t stay too long.”

“Maybe I should
go and come back later, if you’re tired…” Neal didn’t want to force Ted to talk
to him.

“I’m not that
tired,” Ted was serious, “the thing that would help me recover most quickly is
to find Sue and Lin.
 
I can’t get
out of this bed, but I can tell you all that we’ve learned.”

Neal sat back
and listened carefully as Ted recounted his own investigation into the unsolved
crimes as well as the information Sue had shared with him.
 
As he brought the story up to date, he
told Neal about the visit he and Sue paid to Olivia Lee, Bryan’s widow, and
told him about the boxes of notes and information she had allowed them to take
from her storage room. “They are in the basement at the house.
 
The three of us were going to start
going through them on Monday evening.
 
In fact, I was about to head over there when Lin called with the
information that Sue had gone missing.
 
I went out to the Cone house then, and later Lin left with me and we
went to Luke Taylor’s home looking for Sue.
 
That’s when I got shot; I think it
must’ve been the old man.
 
If I
remember correctly, Lin saw him—but that night’s pretty fuzzy for
me.
 
That was Monday though, I’m
sure of that; Sue’s been missing for more than two days.”

“And Lin for
almost that long,” Neal added. He told Ted about the interrupted phone call
when an intruder evidently broke into the house in the early hours of Tuesday
morning, shortly after Lin returned from the hospital.

Neal could see
that Ted was really tired, but he had been a fount of information.
 
Now he knew what he needed to do for the
rest of today.
 
He needed to search
those boxes Ted and Sue had obtained from Olivia Lee.
 
Maybe they would reveal more information
to add to that which Mark had found in the official files.

Neal told Ted
that was what he was going to do.
 
As he rose to leave, Ted reached for his hand. “Thanks so much for
coming, for listening to me and understanding how I feel.
 
I hate to ask but could you come back to
visit again?
 
I don’t have any
family here.
 
My editor’s been by
already and will probably come again, but I don’t have anyone else…”

“You bet,” Neal
said. “I’ll try to come back tonight.
 
You and I have a common interest here.
 
I’ll probably need your help to decipher
what I might find in Bryan’s papers.
 
Is there anything I could bring you?”

“Maybe a good
pizza or a hamburger,” Ted grinned. “You know what hospital food is like.”

Neal took his
leave and left the hospital with renewed energy for the day ahead.
 
Now he had some sense of direction.
 
He knew what he had to do.
 
He was going to return his rental car
and then go back home to do research. He just hoped those papers in the
basement contained new information—new clues as to where the women might
be found.

By the time
Neal returned from dropping off his car it was almost noon, but he wasn’t
hungry.
 
His big breakfast had been
very satisfying, and all he could think about was digging into those papers in
the basement.
 
He did decide to make
a fresh pot of coffee to accompany his efforts.
 
Earlier, he’d noticed that Sue had a
coffee maker downstairs so he ground some fresh beans and took them down with
him.
 
It was easy to locate the
boxes Ted had told him about.
 
They
were sitting on a folding table in the center of the room, but no one had yet
touched them.

Neal put the
coffee on to brew and started in on the first box.
 
It was filled with what appeared to be
miscellaneous papers and dog-eared composition books with various dates on the
cover.
 
Where do I begin?
 
Neal thought.
 
He decided to try to organize the
material in some fashion and dates seemed like a good place to start.

An hour later,
Neal had managed to separate all the material into piles.
 
All the dated material was placed in
stacks chronologically from left to right across the table.
 
Undated material had gone into another
stack and scraps of paper that seemed unrelated, including receipts and notes
about errands to run he tossed back into one of the now empty boxes—now
to get to work.
 
He located a legal
pad to make notes on and a pen on Sue’s desk and poured himself a fresh cup of
coffee.
 
Soon he was immersed in the
life and work of park ranger Bryan Lee.

He spent the
remainder of the afternoon reading and making notes about anything he thought
might be significant.
 
A lot of the
material documented locations he’d visited that appeared to have ginseng
poaching going on.
 
Neal assumed
these were the locations he’d officially reported and marked on the map Mark
and Zach were using as a search guide.
 

About halfway
through the pile, he began to find notes that named possible persons of
interest.
 
Neal made a careful note
of any names mentioned—even if no particular evidence was cited by
Lee.
 
It seemed that most of these
names were pure speculation.
 
People
who were suspected poachers perhaps, but Neal found no evidence actually
linking these people to specific sites.

Finally, Neal
reached the stack that reflected dates within a couple of months of the time
Bryan Lee was shot.
 
The first
notebook he opened revealed the best information yet.
 
Apparently, Lee had located a man who
claimed to have purchased ginseng he believed had been harvested out of
season—perhaps on government land.
 
He was apparently in the export business and had become suspicious of
his source and decided to talk to the park service about it.
 
Lee had gotten the referral and made
contact.

Neal turned the
page to the actual notes Lee had made after talking with the source.
 
There it was—a list of names and
the very first name on the list was Hinson.
 
Apparently, Hiram and Herman Hinson had
sold ginseng to this supplier.
 
There were a couple of other names mentioned, and Neal noted these also,
but something told him that the Hinsons were in the middle of all this. Theirs
was the only name that had surfaced, other than Stefan Kovich whose connection
was of a different sort and who was now well out of the picture, during all the
problems Lin and Sue had experienced this summer.

 
Something grabbed him.
 
Neal felt certain that somehow the
Hinsons were responsible for the disappearance of the two women.
 
He grabbed his phone and tried to reach
Mark Scott—no luck.
 
He left
another message but didn’t want to mention names yet.
 
He simply told Mark he’d found something
he thought might be important and asked that he call him back as soon as
possible.
 

Neal checked
his watch.
 
It was almost five.
 
He’d promised to visit Ted again that
night and he was growing hungry.
 
There were only a few papers remaining; he pressed on seeking to
complete the task.
 

Neal was glad
that he hadn’t stopped.
 
Now that he
had some names, the next thing he needed was more information about
locations.
 
Mark and Zach had the
map and were searching, but so far they’d been unsuccessful.
 
Neal began to leaf through the remaining
notes, trying to determine what information Bryan had learned from his
informant.
 
Finally, he came upon
notes made from an interview the park ranger had had with the ginseng dealer
and there it was—what had led him to become suspicious and report his
source.
  

The informant
had reported that he’d met the people who were selling him the product at a
number of unusual areas—most often at picnic areas and overlooks along
the Parkway.
 
That had led him to
believe they might be harvesting illegally on government lands.
 
Timing was off also.
 
They claimed that they had stored some
of the product from the previous season, but it appeared to him to have been
freshly dug.
 
Finally, he mentioned
that their storage facility was quite unusual.
 
Apparently, they took him to an old
mining site where they apparently used a series of open test pits as
storehouses for the ginseng roots.
 
They explained that these places were cool and helped to prevent the
roots from drying out too much, but something didn’t ring true to him.
 
It was shortly after that he’d decided
to report these people to someone at the park service.
 

Neal placed the
last paper carefully back on the stack—he was convinced this was the
key.
 
The person who’d taken the
report was Bryan Lee.
 
Evidently,
Bryan was still in the process of checking out the information when he was
lured to his death—these notes never made it into his official
files.
 
Now, Neal gathered his own
notes and prepared to leave.
 
He was
eager to talk to Ted Whitley about what he had found.
 
Perhaps Ted would be able to relate
these notes to his own research.
 
First though, he needed to pick up some good food to take to the
hospital.

***

Lin awoke with
a start to the sound of voices approaching above; someone was coming to this
place—perhaps searchers come to their rescue?
 
More likely it was their captors
returning, Lin thought.
 
She felt
Sue stirring beside her and put out her hand, “Quiet, don’t let them know we’re
awake.”

The voices
stopped short of the pit they were in.
 
They had to be nearby though.
 
Lin could make out their voices, even though it wasn’t clear what they
were doing.
 
She heard distant
sounds of something, or someone, being thrown or shoved.
 
She could hear distant thuds of
something hitting ground.
 
Not
people, she thought no cries—of course, if it were people they could be
dead or unconscious.
 
She realized
she’d probably not cried out when she’d landed in this pit.
 
Still, she thought what she’d heard was
the sound of something else being tossed.

She’d pushed
herself up to a sitting position by this time, and she was more alert.
 
The sounds were of voices and footsteps
retreating rather than approaching the place where they were.

“You know,” she
whispered to Sue, “if they try to come back here to check on us, if they
actually try to come into the pit, they’ll have to have a ladder of some sort.”

“They do,” Sue
answered. “I just remembered.
 
Shortly before they dropped you and Luke in, one of them came down
here.
 
I pretended to be asleep, but
whoever it was came close to me—as if checking whether I was dead or
alive.
 
Then he kicked me, hard—kicked
me in the head.
 
I must’ve blacked
out for a moment because I’d forgotten about that until you just mentioned
ladders.
 
I came to when they tossed
you and Luke in—the ladder was gone.

“Well, you’ve
given me an idea,” Lin said. “If someone comes back down again we’ll pretend to
be unconscious.
 
If anyone comes
close, maybe we can grab their ankles and knock them over.
 
I’ve seen some fairly large rocks down
here.
 
If we can knock someone off
their feet we might be able to hit them in the head.
 
It was a rather unlikely, risky scenario,
but Lin couldn’t think of anything else at the moment.
 
She couldn’t hear any voices at that
time so she crawled a short distance and gathered a couple of
stones—large enough to do some damage but not too large for them to pick
up.
 
She placed these in a pile
beside Sue and her; it was doubtful Sue would be able to move much, but maybe
she could still do some damage.
 
Then she sat back, listening carefully for any signs the voices were
returning.

After what must
have been a half hour of silence, Lin and Sue concluded that whomever they had
heard was not coming to check on them.
 
Evidently, they had been delivering something else to another pit in the
area.
 
It was growing late in the
day.
 
Lin could tell that the light
from above was slowly dimming.
 
It
would be dark soon.
 
She also became
aware of a tremendous sense of thirst.
 
Sue had been here at least two days by now, and she and Luke had been
deposited in pit not long afterward.
 
Luke especially would be suffering from dehydration.

The atmosphere
of this pit was dank and damp.
 
Lin
knew that these mountainous areas were full of springs.
 
Surely, there must be some source of
water around here. “I’m going to explore around on the far side of this place,
past where Luke was thrown,” she said to Sue. “We’ve got to have some water and
there might be something here.”
 
She
decided to try to put her boot on again.
 
If she could do that, she could probably walk around.
 

Fortunately,
the swelling had gone down some.
 
I
guess even the small amount of elevation I could give it helped, Lin thought as
she slipped the boot over her foot and fastened the straps.
 
She couldn’t get it as tight as it had
been at first, but she was able to make it fit firmly.
 
Cautiously she got up—first on her
knees and then, holding on to the wall behind her she stood up slowly.
 
A stab of pain shot up her leg when she
first put weight on her foot, but it did subside a bit, and she was able to
move.

“Actually, I’m
sore all over,” she commented, “the ankle has a lot of company from all my
bruises, I guess.”
 
She moved
cautiously toward the other side using the wall to steady herself.
 
When she came to Luke’s crumpled form,
she checked on his pulse and breathing.
 
He was still unconscious, but his breathing seemed no worse than it had
earlier, and he even stirred and moaned a bit when she checked his pulse.
 
He was still a bloody mess, but it
seemed dried.
 
Lin didn’t observe
any signs of fresh bleeding which was a good thing.
 
Maybe he was beginning to wake up.
 
Lin almost hoped he remained out of it.
 
If he grew restless and moved a lot the
bleeding might begin again.

She moved past
Luke toward the far side of the pit—an area she hadn’t traversed
earlier.
 
She didn’t see or hear any
signs of flowing water, but the walls were increasing wet.
 
“Water’s seeping out of these walls from
somewhere,” she commented. “The question is can we collect enough to help.”

“Check the base
of the wall,” Sue suggested.
 
Lin
thought her voice sounded noticeably weaker. “If there are any depressions in
the rocks along the walls, water may collect there.
  
Lin dropped to her knees and began
to feel her way along.
 
Finally, she
realized that her hands were getting wetter.
 
They were partially submerged in a
shallow pool maybe ten inches in diameter that seemed to be collecting
moisture.
 
It wasn’t much but it
would help some.
 
Lin brought her
hands to her mouth and licked the drops of water from them.
 
It had a slight metallic taste but
otherwise seemed fine.
 
Rock made a
good filter for water; hopefully, this stuff wouldn’t sicken them.

“I found some,
but how can I collect it?” Lin asked. “I don’t have anything with me that will
hold water.”

“Hold on a
minute,” Sue said.
 
In the
increasingly dim light, Lin could see that Sue was checking her pockets. “I had
a small plastic bag I’d taken to protect my cell phone from the rain.
 
I lost the phone but…Yeah, we’re in luck;
the bag is still in my pocket.”