Relentless (Elisabeth Reinhardt Book 1) (23 page)

“How did the children get along?” Marie asked, trying to ease Hattie’s discomfort and continue the conversation.

“
Oh, just like brothers they were. Always hanging around together, squabbling like brothers do, you know,” Hattie was babbling now, trying to forget about the jewelry in the little case.

“How did he get along with your girls?” Marie asked trying to sound casual.

She saw the wariness creep into Hattie’s eyes, a rabbit sensing an ambush. Hattie didn’t answer, but sat and looked out at the thick snow for a long time with a faraway look on her face. Then she said, “My girls didn’t like him much. Said he was nasty to them.”

“
Nasty?” Marie repeated.

“
Well, he was sneaky with them, you know the way boys are sometimes,” Hattie said, trying not to say too much.

“
So, did the girls complain to you about Jake?” Marie tried to move the conversation along.

“Sure, they did,” Hattie admitted,
“but you know how kids are. Always complaining about something or another. Life is hard, kids got to be tough. That’s what I told my girls. Especially the one girl, she complained the most.”

“
What did she complain about?” Marie prodded.

“
Oh, you know, boy stuff, he pushed me down, he touched me, you know stuff like that,” Hattie said half-heartedly.

“
Which daughter was that?” Marie asked.

Silence
...

Marie said,
“Betty Jo and Patty Sue have been helping the police find Jake, was it one of them who complained?” It was amazing to Marie that this mother was so detached from her lost daughter she could hardly utter her name or acknowledge her problems with Jake.

A long silence filled the room. Finally Hattie said, “It was Reggie Lee.
Mostly we called her Reggie.”

“Where is Reggie now, Mrs. Raines,
” Marie asked quietly.

“
Gone…,” Hattie sighed, “Been gone for years now. Since she was about 14... ain’t heard a word from her all these years since.”

Silence
...

After a few more follow up questions about Reggie, Marie decided not to push the matter further. She left Hattie to her thoughts and turned her attention to the jewelry in the box. After a while Hattie asked, “They important, Miss?
”

“
Yes, Ma’am, very important,” Marie answered, “Would it be okay if we took these back with us to have our lab look at them?”

“
Will I get them back?” Hattie asked, “Jake told me to keep them here for him. I promised I would. He said to keep it a secret just between the two of us. Every time he comes he likes to look at them. That’s why he bought me the box so as I could keep them all together for him.”

“
I see,” Marie nodded thinking about the possibilities. “Well, Ma’am, we’ll give you a receipt for all these things and we’ll get back to you about returning them to you. These pieces are evidence in an ongoing police investigation and I think they belonged to some of the victims we’re trying to help.”

“What? You mean you’re going to keep my trinkets?” Hattie stammered.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Marie responded, “I’m afraid we’ll have to, at least for now.”

“But that stuff is mine
,” Hattie said blankly, “and you’re the police, you can’t just take people’s things now can you?” She was confused and frightened. She was in over her head. She had told the policewoman things she shouldn’t have told her. The jewelry was a secret and now Jake would be mad at her. He would come back and demand to see his trinkets and she would have to say that the police took them away. And what about Earl, though he didn’t like Jake too much and hadn’t liked the little secrets they had shared, he might be mad at her, too.

She had told that woman about Reggie disappearing. She wondered vaguely if the police would be mad at them for not trying to find her back when she was 14. Was it a crime, or something, for parents not to report that their kid had gone missing? She remembered the papers she signed when that court lady came by so many years ago saying that Reggie was an adult. She hadn’t thought about those papers in years. She wondered if they were important now
. If the police would want to see those papers? She wondered if she should tell this woman about those papers. Give them to her? She worried about what Earl would do to her if he found out about those papers or even about all the jewelry Jake had given her that she had kept hidden. He’d beat her for sure, she thought, might probably kill her.

Marie was
on her iPod, typing a meticulous list detailing each item in the box and taking pictures when Lou’s cell phone went off followed a moment later by hers. In the distance, they could hear spirited howling and barking from far up the mountain.  Chester’s voice could be barely heard above the sound of the howling wind and general canine and human commotion and his phone kept cutting out.  “….found a cabin up here … like a slaughter house ….blood and weapons…our primary... Think there’s at least…..more of them… probably … help up here …… a CSI team … pronto.”

Earl, looking old and tired, wandered into the kitchen. He and Hattie stood looking out the window watching as the police and FBI agents began slogging through knee deep thickly falling snow up the steep mountain.  The scene seemed unreal. Suddenly their quiet, empty home was swarming with uniformed strangers, cars, trucks and all manner of hi tech equipment. They were being overrun and the Raines Family Farm was giving up its secrets.

“I’m going stir crazy,” Jake complained for the umpteenth time.
“We’ve got to get out of here. We’re like G-d damn sardines in a can for Christ’s sake.” He was sprawled on his couch by the window licking peanut butter off his fingers.

Cringing at the sound of his voice, Custer said, “Okay, Jake. What do you want to do about it? There’s a ton of snow out there. No one’s around for like hundreds of miles, they don’t know where we are, what do you want to do?”

“I think we should pack up and go,” said Jake irritable and jumpy. “What the hell’s wrong with that?”

“Nothin
,” Custer muttered, “except that we’re safe up here at least as long as there’s this much snow on the ground. That snow covered up all our tracks and no one on earth knows we’re up here. Down there police and everyone are waiting to shoot us.”

“Slim,” Jake called out trying to sound like the wise group leader, “what do you think? Are you getting stir crazy yet? Do you want to brave it out there?”

Slim raised his filthy head from his bed on the floor and groaned, “Cus is right, Jake, it’s safe up here as long as that snow is on the ground.”

“But I’m fuckin’ stir crazy up here,”
Jake shouted, “and I’m sick of this stinking peanut butter,” and threw the half empty jar across the room. Slim and Custer exchanged silent looks. ‘He’s getting edgy,’ they thought, ‘needs to have one of his little ‘fixes’.’ They knew that he would escalate now and the next thing he’d throw across the room would be one of them. During the last several days, Custer and Slim had agreed that they had to kill Jake, it was him or them. They communicated mostly through looks and signals, but they were clear. This could not go on much longer. He was getting sicker and they were getting more and more scared. The problem was they didn’t have a plan. Should they just shoot him and bury him in the snow like he did some of those girls? Should they wait til they were in town and set him up to get shot by the cops? They were so far from the world up here they really didn’t know what the cops were up to. They didn’t know how close the cops might be to finding them. Really, how safe they would be at the foot of this mountain was anyone’s guess. Custer was a realist. He assumed the cops knew a lot about them by now. That they had tons of evidence and that they were combing the country for them. He also knew that Jake was not a realist. He believed what he wanted to believe. And right now, Jake wanted to believe it was safe to leave their hideout and go ‘hunting’ again.

“Okay, you chicken shits,” Jake
called out in that menacing tone of his, “I’ll make a deal with you. We go down the mountain and check things out. If things seem safe we’ll go on our merry way. If things don’t seem safe we’ll grab some more grub and head back up here.” They all thought about this for a minute. Slim and Custer knew it was a terrible, stupid plan. Why show your faces somewhere that you might get them shot off. And once they were down there and spotted, running back here to their little hideaway would be stupid. They would leave tracks in the snow that even a rookie cop could follow.

“Okay?” Jake menaced again
.

Wordlessly, Slim got up off his mattress, leaned against the wall and put on his boots. Custer started gathering up their stuff. Things they would need once they were back on the road again. They moved in slow motion, no one looking at anyone else.

“Good! We’re all in agreement!” Jake exclaimed and slammed out of the cabin to scrape the snow off the car.

Keeping their eyes averted,
Custer and Slim talked while they worked. They were grateful that Jake had left them alone for a bit, but still wary, they kept an eye on Jake through the front window. “What are we going to do?” Slim asked.

“
I’m not sure,” Custer answered.

“
I want to get rid of him,” Slim muttered.

“
Me too,” Custer responded, “Question is: how? Jake is quick and mean as a rattler. We have to be smart about this.”

“
You have your gun?” Slim asked. “Sure, you?” Custer answered. They were about to make a move for their weapons when they glanced up and saw Jake staring at them through the window.  He had come up on the porch and was standing there studying them. It was freaky. Custer raised his hand in a little wave and called out, “Want the sleeping bags?”

Jake entered the cabin dripping snow droplets all over the place and stared at them.  Hand on his gun, he said, in that demonic voice of his,
“What you two talking about?”

“
Nothin’ Jake,” Slim said, “just what stuff to take and like that.”

Getting the snow off the car, however, proved to be the least of their problems. There was
at least 4 feet of drifting snow deepening to 6 feet along on the zigzagging gravel path leading down from the cabin and, except for the trees they really had no clue where the path actually was. This was a mountain path through a park not a super highway. Using whatever tools they could find, they shoveled and pushed their most recently stolen 4 wheel drive vehicle several hundred feet down the mountain before realizing the task was futile. They were NOT driving down from this mountain. Standing knee deep in snow they stared at each other.

“Okay, plan B,” said Jake,
“we carry only our personal stuff, guns ammunition and cash and we walk down the fuckin’ mountain. We can get everything we need once we get down there. I saw a couple of liquor stores and 7/11’s down there we can hit. We’ll steal us a car something good in the snow and get the hell out of dodge. What d’ya say?” They were looking at miles and miles of thickly treed forest, but arguing with him was impossible. Gathering up their few possessions and loading up their backpacks they started off.

Six hours later,
coated with hard caked snow and nearly frozen to death, they stumbled out of the parkland onto a highway. It was 2AM and the town was closed up tight on this winter night.  Not even a drive-thru was open. They stood teeth chattering in the middle of a Kentucky highway and waited for opportunity to arrive. It did, in the form of a 16 wheeler hauling fuel. They stuck out their thumbs. “Where you guys headed?” the driver called to them.

“Anyplace warm,” Jake laughed. “Well, it’s too damn cold to leave you guys out there on a night like this, climb on board.”

They were grateful for the warmth of the truck and chatted with the driver as they sped along the highway headed toward Ohio. Slim and Custer could tell that Jake was in a good mood now that he was off the mountain and warm inside the truck. They could only hope that he didn’t decide to kill the driver. He seemed like a nice guy and he was doing them a favor, after all. Besides it would bring the cops down on them like flies on shit. When the trucker pulled into a truck stop along Rte. 75 just outside of Lexington to fill up; the three of them thanked him and headed into the restaurant for breakfast. They were all starving. 

Custer and Slim let out sighs of relief that Jake didn’t explode on the
driver and slit his throat. Their moods were lifting when they settled down in a booth near the window. They were chowing down on eggs, pancakes and bacon, guzzling their coffee and staring at the TV mounted on the wall in front of them. Slim was the first to see it, their pictures on the screen.

“H
oly shit,” he hissed, “we’re on TV!”

On the TV the words BREAKING NEWS flashed across the screen. In shocked silence they stared as a young blonde man sat calmly at a table in the lower part of the screen while their carefully labeled mug shots jumped out at them from the top half of the screen. The TV was on mute, but the reporter’s words marched across the screen in bold black print. ‘…three men Jake
William Gennett, 39, Arnold Richard Custer, 36, and Vincent Ray Anastan, 38, all of Hurricane, West Virginia are wanted in connection with the Parkland Killings and a number of other related crimes.’ A female reporter wearing a thick winter coat stood on the steps in front of the Hurricane police station. She went on to describe some of the crimes for which the gang was being sought and detailed the police investigation. The feed cut to a snowy scene near a wooded area where dozens of people, uniformed officers and people wearing FBI vests were climbing up a mountain. In the background two black SUV’s and several official vehicles including CSI vans and a medical examiners truck were parked next to dozens of TV vans. Lights were strewn around the area and reporters were scattered about talking with officials. The camera panned to a snow covered red barn and an old white farmhouse pausing to zoom in on a wooden swing suspended from the ceiling of a covered porch. Without notice the camera swung back and focused on two men who appeared about to speak.

“I’m Lou Fairmont, from the Behavioral Analysis Unit of
the FBI, and this is Chester Rugger, Chief of Police of the Hurricane Police Department. We have an announcement to make. We have identified three men who we believe to be the Parkland Killers and are asking the public’s help in locating them….”

The report went on to identify each of them and to detail the crimes for which they were being sought. Further they shared some of the evidence that had been uncovered so far leading to the
se identifications.

The killers sat immobilized staring up at their pictures and reading the black text marching across the bottom of the screen. They were in shock. They had never seen themselves on TV before. They had no idea that the police knew exactly who they were. In a trance, they stared at the screen.
Coming to their senses they scanned the nearly empty restaurant. A young guy in a leather coat was chatting up the waitress. Another older guy was doing a crossword puzzle, while he popped French fries in his mouth.  At another table a well-dressed couple argued with each other. That was it. Aside from whoever was in the kitchen the place was empty. No one was watching the TV news broadcast.

“Kill ‘em?” Jake asked.

“No,” Slim and Custer hissed in unison, “let’s just get out of here. We probably don’t look like ourselves anyway. We ain’t shaved for weeks and we’re all bundled up with hats and shit.”

“
Let’s get the fuck out of here, get a car and go!” Custer pleaded.

Jake paused for a moment, considering his options, then nodded assent and threw some bills down on the table, more than enough to cover their bill.
Standing the Parkland Killers walked out of the restaurant.

In the back of the truck stop three cars
sat under a blanket of snow. Only one, an old Volvo wagon, had ‘all-wheel drive’. They figured it would be easy to take and would manage the roads, so they scraped off the snow and hot-wired it. “These old Swedish cars, Man, they were made for the snow,” Jake crowed as he slid behind the wheel. “It’s cold as shit over there. Those people have snow all the damn time so these cars are built for snow!”

They drove along toward Rt. 64 in silence. All of them scared and trying to think about what to do next. “We’ve got to hole up somewhere,” Slim said, “too dangerous to be out here driving around like this. I got to take a shower, Man, and get cleaned up a little.
We need disguises. They got our faces on the damn TV for Christ sakes.”

“
What about a hotel, Jake,” Custer offered. “We could get cleaned up see what the TV says, get some newspapers, you know, figure things out.”

Oddly enough, Jake agreed. They pulled off the road just after Mt. Sterling and followed some signs for a few country miles to an out of the way motel. Custer pushed his hair up under his hat, went in to get a room. He registered under a false name, paid in cash. The clerk didn’t ask him for an ID.

It was about 8AM when they stumbled in to their room. A fleabag to be sure, but it had four walls, a couple of beds, a bathroom and a TV. Flopping on the beds they took turns using the facilities and flipping through channels. Local channels had the best coverage, but CNN and Fox also carried their stories. Jake was intent on the TV coverage and kept talking about plans. He thought they should go back to Hurricane and see what they could find out about the investigation. Hurricane, he said was where it was all happening. They recognized the Raines Family Farm on the news. Jake felt that in order to make a good plan for themselves they needed to know what was going on; know what the cops knew about them. He had an old friend there the brother of a former cellmate from Juvie who worked in the courthouse as a janitor. He decided that guy was the key. That friend would tell them what was going on. They might even be able to sneak into the police station and get a look at some of the stuff they had on them.

That was what he put forward in hopes of talking his crew into working with him on this idea. Underlying, however, was the issue of Reggie Lee. He felt that since everyone was all stirred up about them and talking about the good old days, there would be a better chance of finding someone who knew where Reggie was. He’d been thinking about it a lot lately. Had lots of time up in that cabin and
realized she had to have had help getting away. No little kid could have disappeared like she did without help. They hadn’t killed her, so she’d run somewhere to someone. Who could that someone have been?

Jake now said,
“I’m not dumb. If I can figure out who helped Reggie get away. I can find out where she is. Let’s think about all the people she knew and spent time with.”