Garage Sale Stalker (Garage Sale Mysteries) (11 page)

CHAPTER 19

T
he February wind
rattled
with increasing ferocity against the farm house as Ruger Yates sat up abruptly mid-dream. He breathed heavily, the nightmare of the cellar cage profound in his mind. He stared around the farmhouse bedroom and listened to the wind whistling just beyond its walls. Although the dream had ended, a cascade of unwanted memories burst through repression’s protective gate and flooded across his mind.

When the man and little girl stopped coming to their basement prison, Ruger remembered the woman descending the basement stairs. She unlocked their cage, dragged the filthy, cringing boys upstairs and rushed them down the hall to a room with tightly drawn window shades. There she prodded them up a ladder into a small, poorly-lit attic space before forcing a flashlight into the frightened older boy’s hand and showing him how a button turned it on and off.

“You’re out of that cage and you’ll have enough food and water up here now but you must be absolutely quiet,” she said. “If you make any noise, I’ll take it all away and leave you hungry in the dark. Find the food with the flashlight, but then turn the light off or it will stop working. Do you understand?” In response to their terrified silence, she shouted, “Do you understand me?”

Apparently she accepted their muffled grunts as agreement because seconds later their space turned black as she stood on the ladder and pushed the door shut above her. They heard the scratch of a lock and the scrape of the ladder being dragged away.

With no concept of time, the boys awaited the woman bringing food and water often enough to relieve the earlier desperation for nourishment endured in the cage. And when one flashlight died, she gave them another.

After what
seemed
a long time in the attic, one day the trapdoor opened and they were jerked out and dragged down the ladder. Terrified and spooked, like the semi-feral children they’d become, they winced at the dazzling, unfamiliar brightness of daylight in the room. Their mouths gaped open as the woman propelled them through all-but-forgotten parts of the house, its scenes streaking past their disbelieving eyes as she whisked them down the corridor to their next destination.

“After your time out in the sheds and three months in that cellar cage before they took your father away, you were quiet for the month in the attic while the detectives searched,” she said. “Now you’re going to have another chance.”

“Detective” had n
o meaning for them nor did the
y understand “months.
” Their imprisonments spanned their
entire conscious memories.
They’d heard “another chance” before, but another chance at what? Something worse?

They stared, dumbstruck, as their mother turned a knob to fill the tub and they shrank against the wall at the noisy splash of water against porcelain. They balked at climbing into the bath until she raised threatening fists. As they cowered in the warm water, fearful of new heinous twists at any moment, she roughly demonstrated the use of soap and washcloth, warned them not to splash any water onto the floor and instructed them to clean themselves.

Despite their anxiety at these unknowns, wonder filled the boys with this remarkable unveiling of these parts of the house. Afterward, their mouths hung open in awe when she brought them home-sewn clothes of incorrect but wearable sizes, showed them how to dress themselves and ushered them into a room with twin beds, a shared night table, a lamp and a dresser on which lay a brush and comb. She demonstrated how to use them.

“You’ll stay here now. Keep your clothes there.” She opened and closed the bureau drawers. “You dress yourselves each day in here and you sleep in these beds at night. You stay in this room except when you do chores, eat or study. In the bathroom, you wash up and use the toilet.”

No longer potty
trained, the brothers exc
hanged such puzzled looks that
she angrily described
to “two very stupid boys
” the toilet’s exact pu
rpose and threatened punishment for any accidents.

“Now, about the rules…”

“Rules?” Mathis stumbled over the unknown word.

“Yes, rules! You do exactly what I tell you. You get food if you do. You get punished if you don’t. Those are the rules. Now, come to the kitchen for lunch.”

When she dragged the wary but clean and dressed boys to the kitchen table and slammed half-full plates in front of them, they fell upon the food with both hands.

“Oh, no you don’t. You use these or you get nothing to eat.” They stared uncomprehendingly at the silverware she pushed toward them. “Watch me,” she said, using her fork, then her spoon.

Ravenous from the food aromas, the hungry boys picked up the awkward utensils and tried to imitate what they saw. They spilled at first but started to get the hang of it. Mercifully, she focused on her own meal, ignoring their initial clumsy efforts. They also imitated the way she drank from a glass, but when she turned her back they licked their plates clean.

“We start school tomorrow. I am your teacher. You’ll learn your numbers and letters and to read and write.”

She might as well speak Chinese. They stared at her, hoping “school” wouldn’t hurt.

Within a week, “two very stupid
boys” morphed into
surprising
ly normal-appearing c
hildren. Their mother tamed
their scruffy, shoulder-length hair using an inverted bowl as a cutting guide. Though still clumsy with silverware, they drank from glasses and ate three regular meals a day. They had no idea how they’d learned to talk.

From household chores indoors, they graduated to simple outdoor tasks such as feeding chickens, gathering eggs and picking vegetables from the garden. Their mother warned, “When you’re outdoors you never, ever talk to strangers. Strangers want to
kill
little boys and
eat
them. They’re always hunting for a tasty meal. They might
pretend
to be friendly, waiting for their chance to grab you and sink their teeth into you. Always run and hide if you see a stranger.” Then she played her trump card. “And if you ever speak to a stranger, I’ll know about it…and it’s back to the cellar forever.”

Any back-to-the-cellar threat resulted in instant obedience.

After awhile, the boys realized their hated father was no longer around, but neither was their small sister who’d often shown them kindness, at her own peril. Despite the risk of consequences, one day Mathis dared to ask his mother, “The man… and the little girl?”

Her composure vanished. An angry voice hissed from her clenched teeth. “Your father’s in an insane asylum where that evil fiend always belonged.” But then, before their eyes, her face transformed into tragedy. She moaned in a high-pitched wail, “But my little girl… my sweet little Miriam is gone forever. Oh, Miriam, why did he do it?” she sobbed pitifully. “Why did he squeeze you until you couldn’t breathe?”

The boys understood tears, for they’d cried together in pain and despair, but didn’t know adults could do it, too. Ruger shyly put his hand on her shoulder the way Mathis had comforted him so many times. At his touch she leaped to her feet and shrieked, “Don’t you put your hands on me –
ever!
”
She shrank back, her hands groping along the wall behind her and her eyes staring wildly at her sons before she rushed from the kitchen, ran down the hall and slammed her bedroom door behind her.

The boys exchanged panicky looks and Ruger clutched his brother’s arm. Although she inflicted pain, she also provided food and saved them from the ravenous strangers outdoors. “She’ll be all right, won’t she?” He searched his older brother’s confused face and his voice lifted several octaves as his anxiety increased. He grasped his brother’s arm even harder.
“Won’t she?”

“Yes…” Mathis calmed his brother, but he had no idea what to expect next or how much longer they could survive with or without her. “Yes,” he repeated until Ruger’s fingers, gouging deep into his arm, finally relaxed.

CHAPTER 20

E
ach day Ruge
r and
Mathis feared their mother’s whims, which controlled their lives and their food. Despite her indifference, the little boys craved any scrap of kindness or positive recognition of their efforts to please her. But as weeks passed, her unpredictability escalated. Neurotic and periodically teetering on the edge of sanity, her increasingly irrational tirades found the boys ready targets for her verbal and physical abuse.

Although her schooling wakened the boys’ sleeping minds, her harsh punishments for academic mistakes underscored performing well or paying dearly. In their efforts to learn, they made inevitable mistakes. Reprisals hinged on the nearest object transformed into a disciplinary tool: the stinging broom handle, the prodding meat fork or the hot iron skillet.

But the scariest incident happened at the kitchen table when their raving mother shouted to Mathis, “Snake. S-n-a-k-e. I showed it to you, I spelled it for you, I made you repeat it and
still
you wrote it wrong. When you make a mistake you know you must be punished. Why do you make me do this to you?” She cast about for any instrument to drive home the lesson and, grabbing a nearby meat cleaver, she bent back all of the boy’s fingers except one which lay flat on the table. Paralyzed with fear, the boys stared at the finger, powerless to defend themselves even if they’d known what came next. “You’ll never forget how to spell snake again,” she cried and, with a vicious stroke, chopped off Mathis’ little finger.

Following the grizzly finger amputation, Mathis disappeared for enough days that Ruger’s heart sank, fearing him gone forever. The specter of enduring his mother’s madness
alone
frightened Ruger almost as much as losing the brother who was his only companion.

However, no treatment at their mother’s hands compared to the bitter nighttime horror two weeks later when a power outage silenced alarms after bed call at the mental institution where Tobias Yates was committed. Taking advantage of this unlikely event for a crazed escape, he hitch-hiked and walked to the farm, where he brutalized his wife and sons for an hour before forcing them outside the house, grabbing a shovel and bludgeoning Mathis to the ground before their eyes.

“Now I’m rid of you at last, you damn parasite,” he screamed as the shovel thudded against the boy again and again.

While Ruger and his mother gaped in terror, Tobias forced them both to dig a hole three feet deep, enough for a simple grave. He dumped the child’s still body into the yawning trough, where the small inert shape curled piteously at the bottom.

As Tobias flung the first shovelfuls of dirt onto the child’s body, the sound of faraway sirens momentarily wrested the madman from his murderous rage. Either they were coming for him or soon would if he didn’t return. He stood up, peering through the dark night toward the sound, knowing he had to leave quickly.

He threw down the shovel and turned menacingly toward his two wretched, unwitting accomplices. “Vow to me that you will
never
reveal to
anyone
what happened here tonight or I will return to tear you both into a hundred bloody pieces,” the insane man thundered at his terrified wife and son. So acute was their fear that neither Ruger nor his mother ever spoke of this night the rest of their lives.

“You get back into the damn house right now, but tomorrow you come out here and fill in this garbage hole.” He gestured toward Mathis’ grave.

Scrambling to obey, Ruger and his mother made a desperate dash for the doorway, moving too purposefully to notice their tormentor disappear into the black night.

Tobias Yates reversed the hitch-hike process, returning undetected to his bed at the institution. While aware this confluence of events would never happen again, he took twisted satisfaction in knowing that the two left at the farm would live in perpetual terror of his unexpected return to deliver the promised savage revenge.

***

Now years later, the adult Ruger awoke shaking from this vivid nightmare reliving his childhood memory of Mathis’ murder. He stumbled from bed, ran down the hall, out the kitchen door and into the frosty night air. He stared toward the very spot beside the house where the horror unfolded so many years before. Was he losing his mind or did that atrocity really happen?

Stars filled the cold winter night sky and a tree-top high full moon spilled light across the dark gravel driveway. Its pale glow illuminated the small mound near the side of the house, atop which Ruger’s mother had plunged a crudely-made cross she crafted the day after the murder. Tonight that cross cast an eerie elongated shadow over the moonlit grave, confirming the reality of Ruger’s haunting memory.

Choking and panting for breath, he stood outside in the raw February night while the icy temperature numbed his trembling body.

He’d underestimated the impact of returning to this house. These childhood memories had ignited smoldering embers, fanning a primal urge for the explosive release of
action
, a fiery wave powerful enough to pulse his violent side squarely into the driver’s seat.

By the time he reentered the kitchen, the numbness from the outdoor’s frosty temperature was replaced by raw rage.

CHAPTER 21

The Present

J
ennifer and
Jason dozed
in bed, half-watching TV, when the bedside telephone’s ring jolted them fully awake.

Jason grappled for the handset and mumbled sleepily into the mouthpiece, “Hello.”

“This is Denise MacKenzie, Tina’s Mom. I’m sorry to bother you this late, Jason, but is... is Tina still over at your house?”

“Hello, Denise. Gee, I don’t know. Let me find out. Hang on.” He handed the phone to Jennifer, climbed out of bed and padded down the hall toward Becca’s room.

Covering the mouthpiece, Jennifer called to her husband, “Ask Becca if she feels any better and she’s stopped upchucking.” Then into the phone, she said, “Denise? What’s doing?”

“Tina isn’t home yet and it’s late and I’m a little worried.”

“Oh?” Jennifer hoped to calm her friend despite vivid memories of her own hand-wringing sessions when a “missing” child of her own was quickly found.

“This isn’t like Tina,” Denise continued. “Since Scott passed away, we…Tina and I agreed that if we’re not home by 10 p.m. weeknights or midnight on weekends we’d phone each other to check in. We’ve shared a lot of worries lately and that seemed a reasonable way to avoid more. “She’s been really good about it, but she is only nineteen. I guess she
could
forget, although she never has. Maybe there has to be a first time?”

“She may still be with Becca, who’s got some awful flu bug. Tina kept her company this evening, like the good friend she is. Jason’s checking right now.” Jennifer studied the bedside clock. “So, it’s only 45 minutes since she should have phoned at ten?”

“Yes. That may not seem like much, but Tina’s so dependable. This just isn’t like her.”

Jason shuffled into the bed
room, yawned and took the p
hone from Jennifer. “She
’s not here, Denise. Becca says
she left around 9:30.
That’s…” he checked the clock, “…just a bit over an hour ago.”

“But it only takes ten minutes to drive here from your house. Even if she stopped for an errand on the way home, what could take so long?”

“She’ll probably be home any minute or phone you to say where she is. Call us tonight when she gets back and try not to worry in the meantime.” He hung up the phone and climbed wearily back into bed.

“Is Becca feeling any better?” Jennifer asked.

“No,” he mumbled, “but maybe a night ’s sleep will make the difference…” His sentence ended in a shallow snore.

***

They were
sleeping soundly when the phone rang next,
shattering the bedroom’s nighttime quiet. Looking at the clock as he fumbled for the receiver, Jason read midnight. Tina must be home.

“Hello,” he said.

“It’s Denise,” she said, her voice so ragged that even before she spoke, Jason sensed bad news.

“I’m so sorry to bother you again, especially this late, but she isn’t back yet and she’s never done this before. I’m so worried! I’ve called her cell phone dozens of times but nobody answers. I’ve left message after message on voicemail. If Scott were here he’d know what to do next. Should I call hospitals? Should I call the police?”

Jason
sat up, wide awake now. “Have
you called her other friends?”

“She doesn’t have a lot of friends; you know she’s kind of shy. But yes, I’ve called several… without results.”

“There’s probably a good explanation, Denise, but naturally you’re upset until you find it. Look, we know somebody at the police department. I’ll run this past him and call you right back. Do you know her car’s license plate number?” Denise did.

As Jason hung up the phone, Jennifer mumbled into her pillow, “Tina’s not back yet?”

“No, and Denise is a basket case. Do you have Adam’s phone number?” She sat up, “Yes, downstairs. Should we ask Becca again what Tina planned when she left?”

“I hate to wake her up a second time this late when she’s sick unless it’s really necessary, and I asked her that earlier when Denise first called. Becca said Tina headed home at 9:30.”

Jennifer climbed out of bed. “Okay, I’ll get the Rolodex. Poor Denise!” She hustled toward the stairs.

Phoning Adam at home a few minutes later, Jason apologized
for the hour and bothering him
off-duty before outlining the
situation and giving him Tina’s license number.

“I’ll find out if she’s listed as a traffic accident or if her car’s stolen. We need a missing person report to put out a BOLO on her vehicle and we’ll want to talk with whoever saw her last.”

“Thank you, Adam,” Jason said, “Understandably, her mother is
extremely
upset. And as you know, she’s Becca’s best friend, so we’re involved in this by default.”

“I understand, Sir. Back to you soon!”

Seven minutes later, Jason snatched up the ringing phone. Adam said, “Sir, our contacts are pretty good so I tapped into recent traffic and emergency medical situations. Tina’s name shows on none of them. These situations usually seem worse than they are once we learn what actually happened. She could even be asleep in her car. Believe me, that ’s not uncommon!”

“So, what’s next?”

“Tina’s mother can report her daughter missing. If so, we like a recent photo and need to get other facts. That way, besides giving us the information, the mother feels like part of the solution. And we can try to find her daughter’s car. What’s her name and address?”

Jason read off everything on the Rolodex card Jennifer handed him. “I want to remind you that the mother’s already pretty fragile. Her husband died a couple of months ago, and now she’s frantic about losing her daughter, too. We’re ready to go over there to be with her if necessary.”

“There are two ways to do this,” Adam explained. “We can send a patrolman to her house to get the information we need or she can go to the Balls Hill Road sub-station to do the same thing. Which is better?”

After conferring with Jennifer, Jason answered, “She should make that choice. We’ll find out and call you right back.”

He handed the phone to Jennifer, “Your turn,” he said. She dialed Denise.

“The good news is that she’s not in an accident or a hospital,” Jennifer began before explaining the other choices.

Hearing them, Denise said promptly, “I’d rather go there. Our house is a safe harbor now, our comfort zone, our neutral zone. I’ll go there.”

“Okay then, why don’t we come by for you and all go to the station together?”

“Oh, yes, if you don’t mind, I’d... I’d really appreciate that. I can be ready in ten minutes.”

“Make that twenty because we’re still in our pajamas. Can you bring a recent photo of Tina?”

“Yes, but does that mean they think she’s in trouble?”

“They just need to see who they’re looking for.”

“Okay, and Jennifer... thanks,” Denise finished.

Next Jason phoned Adam, relaying this latest. “Sorry to call you at home again. Will we see you at the station or are you off duty.”

“I’m off, but I’m a phone call away if you need me. I’ll let them know you’re coming and who you are. You’ll have a good reception, even at this hour.”