A Field of Red (28 page)

Frank’s call went to voicemail. The Chief was working the concert, and probably couldn’t even hear his phone ringing over the music.

“Hi, Chief, it’s Frank Harper,” Frank said, getting out his keys out, as he approached the cars. “I just found out Lassit—”

A massive pain bloomed in the back of his head, sudden and burning hot.

He stumbled, the phone clattering to the asphalt. Frank’s head swam, as if wracked by a sudden and massive hangover. His hands felt suddenly numb, but he reached up and felt the back of his head—it was wet. In the scant light of the parking lot, he saw his hand was covered with blood.

Frank tried to turn, to see his attacker, but only managed to fall to the ground. His mind registered the sensation of cold dampness, his face against the wet pavement.

The last thing he saw was a hand, reaching down to the ground. A gloved finger touched Frank’s cell phone, ending the phone call. And then something else hit his head again and everything went black.

 “Sure, boss.”

George was on the phone again, and she could tell that he was, yet again, displaying his complete lack of balls. To Chastity, it seemed like George always took the easy way out.

She sat at the kitchen table, listening to George on the phone. It was late Saturday night—very late—and the little Mexican girl was crying again upstairs. How much crying could one little brat have in her? Chastity stretched her arms and neck—she’d slept in the Corolla again last night, partly to be away from the constant crying, but also to be ready to leave, when, and if, George decided to nut up and bail.

“I understand,” George said.

“I understand,” she said, mocking his voice. “‘Please and thank you,’ ‘whatever you want, I’m fine with,’ ‘Yes sir.’”

George shot her a look and covered up the mouthpiece of the phone. He nodded a couple of times, listening as Chastity rolled her eyes at the absurdity.

Her mom had been right: men were stupid. And easily manipulated—it only took the right kind of bra, or a great pair of legs, or a tight little skirt.

She smiled, remembering the hilarious look on those two cops’ faces when she’d popped out of her top in front of O’Shaughnessy’s. It’s like they had never seen tits before. And while she appreciated the power she had over men, she could never understand why they reacted the way they did. It had gone just like she’d planned—she dropped her purse, fumbled with her boobs, and the cops picked up her stuff and giggled at each other like children.

Men were stupid.

George said goodbye and hung up.

“Well?” she asked.

“It’s all over,” George said, smiling. “The boss says he has our money and is coming over in the morning with it. He said he was planning on being here last night, but something came up.”

“‘Something came up’,” she said, scoffing. “Isn’t that just a peach. Two days ago, he said ‘Saturday,’ and now it’s Saturday and surprise! We have to wait around, taking care of these stupid brats for another day!”

George shook his head. “They’re not brats—they’re just scared little girls. Weren’t you ever a scared little—”

“No, I wasn’t,” Chastity said, her hands on her hips. “Momma taught me better than that. She taught me how to sew and to not put up with STUPID men. So I’m asking again. When are we leaving?”

George shook his head.

“Tomorrow. We leave tomorrow.”

She nodded. “Good. After we get paid, we’re gone.”

He looked confused. “Yesterday, you said you didn’t care about the money and just wanted to go. What do you think now?”

“That was before I knew the money was on its way,” she said, biting her lip. “If it’s only gonna be a few more hours, we wait. Or you wait, and I’ll head into town.”

George looked confused. “Why?”

She rolled her eyes and grabbed his shoulders, shaking him. “Seriously, how dumb are you?”

He looked at her, confused.

“OK,” Chastity said, speaking slowly. She always felt like she was talking to a child. “Say he doesn’t want to pay us at all—he shows up here and kills us. And the girls. No muss, no fuss. That’s part of why I wanted to go. Mom said money’s great, but not bleeding is better. So if he’s paying us, no problem. He’ll give you the money. But if he’s coming to do us harm, he won’t be able to do it, if we’re not both here. Right?”

George thought about it for a moment, and it was all she could do to not burst out laughing. He could get her coke or crack or whatever else she wanted, and money, and was OK in the bedroom—but JESUS the guy was thick.

After a minute, he figured it out.

“‘Cause we wouldn’t both be here,” he said slowly. “It’s dumb to kill one of us, when the other can tell the cops, right?”

She nodded. It was all she could do to keep from rolling her eyes.

“Excellent!” he said, so happy with himself, but then his face turned serious. “What about the girls?”

“I don’t know! And I don’t care, and neither should you,” she said, exasperated. She walked away, pacing for a second to calm down. “Look, this is almost over. With us out of town, he could just let them go. I don’t know.”

She hoped that George would just forget about the girls, but she knew he had a soft spot for them. If the boss came to kill the girls, George would make trouble. Chastity was sure of it. If that happened, she’d need a plan. And worrying about the brats wasn’t her deal—she had enough to worry about.

“No sign of him?” Chief King asked, concerned.

It was Sunday morning, and the entire group of officers was dragging around the station after a busy night.

 Deputy Peters shook his head, then closed the office door behind him and sat down in the empty chair across from King’s desk.

 “No one has seen him, and he hasn’t been in yet,” Peters said, glancing up at the clock in King’s office, which read just after 7 a.m.

The HarvestFest event had gone well enough—only a few arrests for open containers, as people tried to wander off with their plastic cups of beer. Peters had caught one man urinating in someone’s front yard, and there had been another minor fight in front of Ricky’s. And then, after the downtown party, King’s men had been busy making sure everyone got home safe, or at least on to their next destination.

Chief King had gotten a call from Frank but hadn’t noticed it for a little over a half-hour. The message was weird, cut off, and no one answered when King called back.

“What did they say at the hotel?” King asked.

“No one has seen him, and his bed wasn’t slept in,” Peters said. “The manager let me into his room. And his car is missing.”

“Can we track him, somehow?” King knew that all of his patrol cars were tracked on GPS, and some of the troops carried phones that could be tracked as well.

“He’s got an iPhone,” Peters said, shrugging. “So we could try calling that in, but that would take a court order. And he mentioned one time that his Taurus was ex-government and has an inactive GPS in it, though I have no idea how you would activate that, or if you even could.”

King nodded, thinking about it.

“Well, I wouldn’t get too worried,” King said. “Frank has shown time and time again that he can take care of himself,” the Chief said. “Just to be safe, go ahead and check with dispatch, see if anyone’s seen him. Put out a BOLO on his car. He probably just tied one on and is somewhere, sleeping it off.”

Frank awoke to a cloudy sky.

He was groggy—his head was killing him. He tried to reach up and feel the back of his head, but his hand wouldn’t move.

Black smoked moved across the sky in thick clouds. The sky above looked huge, edged by what looked like tall grass in each direction. Grasses and weeds, so it wasn’t a cornfield. A cornfield would run in rows, topped with corn. This was scrub—he was in an empty field or some type of abandoned lot.

Frank realized he was cold and felt woozy, detached from the world. He remembered someone, or something, had hit him in the back of the head, in the parking lot. Was it the next day?  Where was he now?

Frank shook his head to clear it and tried to sit up. He could not.

His hands were caught on something. Tugging, he realized they were tied together, behind his back.

He looked down and saw his ankles were bound as well. Frank could see a thin plastic zip tie around the tops of his boots, two plastic strips tied together to interlock his legs. Those were black zip ties, like the ones cops used to restrain prisoners.

For the first time, he caught a whiff of something burning.

Frank couldn’t sit up or stand, so he tried to roll over. After a struggle, he managed to get up onto one side. He couldn’t see anything except tall grasses and weeds in every direction. He felt around with his hand and found they were zip tied as well—those plastic cuffs were impossible to break like traditional rope. That was why many police departments around the country used them
instead of handcuffs—no amount of picking at the lock or twisting and fraying would get him free.

Frank wasn’t sure what to do next.

Smoke, dark and thick, blew over his head. He coughed and realized he wasn’t in a clearing—he’d simply been dumped in a field of tall grass. The weight of his body was making a temporary depression by holding down the grasses beneath him.

Smoke, and the smell of the fire, gave it away. And the distant sound of unconcerned voices. He was in a field that was on fire. Frank’s mind clicked—it was probably Sunday morning.

Frank had been bound and left in Freeman’s Prairie, where they were doing the prescribed yearly burn.

He’d been bound and left for dead.

 “Hey!” he yelled, but no one answered. The voices sounded distant. The only people around, besides Frank, were probably the local firefighters setting the fire and monitoring the burn. The people who had jumped him were surely gone by now.

“Hey, can anyone hear me?” he shouted, but his voice didn’t carry. He was too low to the ground and surrounded by tall grasses. It didn’t stop him, though. Frank continued yelling for a few long minutes, but no one came. The smoke got thicker, white and blowing through the tall grass. For the first time, he felt distant heat. And the sound of the fire was getting louder. It sounded like a huge, approaching campfire. The smell was similar, heavy and metallic.

Frank turned his face in the dirt, blowing the grass away from his mouth and shouted again. It sounded loud—his face was an inch from the ground—but not loud enough for anyone to hear over the crackling fire.

Frank pulled his legs up as high as he could and wiggled to get his hands down to his boots. Straining, he held his hands flat and slid them under the soles of his boots. Working them around the soles of his boots, he finally pulled his hand under and around to the front, letting out a sigh of relief. The new position was much more comfortable, and now he could move.

Frank felt a gust of heat as another large pall of black smoke rolled over the field.

Rolling onto his back, he sat up and tried to get his bearings, but couldn’t see over the grasses. Frank turned to climb up onto his knees and saw, through the grasses, white square shapes about ten feet away from him, behind a thick stand of grass.

At first, he didn’t recognize them. He hopped toward them and saw more. The smoke parted for a moment, and he suddenly knew what he was looking at—papers, scattered in the field.

He hopped closer. His feet were still bound together. He fell once, and again, but followed the papers, until they led to three cardboard boxes on the ground, papers and file folders spilling out of them. One of the file folders was splashed with red.

The boxes from his trunk.

He saw three boxes, two with files and papers and a third box, empty. That had been the money from the second ransom, now gone. Papers blew around the open boxes, files with his notes written in the margins, driven by the rising heat and the smoke and wind of the burn. He could see “Police Files—Confidential” scrawled on the side of one box in Deputy Peters’ handwriting. Whoever had hit him over the head had not only taken him but also the money and case files. They had kept the money, presumably—the box was empty—and dropped him and the files here in the middle of the field to burn.

Burn with him.

Frank flopped down and started wiggling toward the boxes, pressing down the sharp grasses with his arm and leg and face. He crawled closer to the boxes and finally reached the first one—it was the money box. He pushed it out of the way. It fell over, and one corner hit him in the face. Cursing loudly, he moved his shoulder and head, butting the box out of the way, and continued struggling toward the other boxes. Smoke stinged his eyes. Frank scrabbled over spilt manila folders and papers, and some part of his mind noticed the labels on the folders—all files about people involved in the case, written in Deputy Peters’ handwriting. Filled with Frank’s notes.

Peters. Frank remembered his talking about zip ties, and how much he approved of them. Could it have been Peters who jumped him? The man was always around, keeping an eye on Frank. But yesterday, Frank had eliminated him as a suspect. If someone wanted Frank out of the way, you could do worse than volunteer to be a helper on the case, all the while looking for an opportunity.

Or maybe it was Chief King. Maybe he’d assigned Peters to keep tabs on Frank, to monitor whatever Frank discovered in the investigation process.

Frank slowly crawled to the next box. It was on its side, spilling out papers and folders. Black smoke blew through the tall grass. Frank grabbed the top of the box and flipped it over, but only more papers came out. He pushed it away and started pushing with his legs, crawling to the last box.

Black smoke and heat rolled over him. The smoke made it hard to breathe. It smelled angry, unrepentant. The gusting wind carried burnt pieces of plant material and burning embers across his vision, and he looked to see some of the flying ember land on dry stalks nearby and begin to smolder. If Frank didn’t get out of here soon, he would be roasted alive.

A draft of heat picked some of the papers up into the air. Frank felt the temperature rise in his small clearing and knew that the fire was quickly approaching. Mud caked his shoes and pants and shoulders and hair, and he wondered if the cool mud and dirt would protect him from the fire, when it overtook him, for an extra moment or two.

He found the last box and pulled it to him. It was still closed up. Frank slapped at it and the top of the box popped open. Out spilled more folders, stacks of papers, pens.

And the scissors.

He grabbed at them, turning them in his hands and sawing against the plastic tie that bound his wrists. After a moment, the metal edge sliced through the plastic, and his hands were free.

Frank sat up and started cutting at the plastic binding around his boots. Whoever had tied him up had used several ties, chained together, to reach around his feet. After a moment, he cut the ties and felt the tension on his feet suddenly let go.

Frank stood up, looking around.

He was in Freeman’s Prairie. It looked like the whole field was ablaze. Black smoke and flames surrounded him on all sides. He could see the road to his south, with several fire trucks parked along the edge of the field, and the town beyond, blocked by clouds of black smoke. Much of the fire was between him and the road. The field was burning in this direction, and he saw several firefighters in heavy gear, guiding the fire. They had those fire-starting lamps that dripped burning gasoline.

He waved his arms, shouting, but they were too far away through the black smoke to see him. Even if they could see him, there was nothing they could to do help. They couldn’t get to him or stop the fire—it was too late for that.

Frank turned around, frantic, looking for a way out. Behind him, Frank saw he was close to the river. The taller trees that lined the bank were much closer than the road. He turned to run and then stopped.

Zip ties.

Frank dropped back down on the ground, searching the grasses and papers, finally found the ones that had been around his feet and wrists. He grabbed two of the file folders as well—they were smeared with mud—and the scissors, and began making his way to the riverbank.