The Black Silent

CHAPTER 14

As tough as she was, Haley had looked worried when he placed a call to Ernie. Sam made a mental note to ask her why.

"What was Ben doing? The experiments. Aging."

Gibbons pursed his lips, as if holding them together would keep him safe. "I'm not telling you a thing, and really I don't know much, anyway."

"Just give us the rest of the documents," Haley said, "and I promise we'll leave."

"Ben really told you that I had other documents?" asked Gibbons. "Because I don't know what he's talking about."

Sam picked up the phone again.

"Wait. There were some… irrelevant things."

"Get them," Sam said. "We all need to leave this place."

"I'll get the papers." Gibbons started up the stairs.

As he did, the doorbell rang. Sam saw a large figure through the curtains. Loud knocking followed.

"Go out the back door and hide," Sam told Haley as he moved to the stairs. With his bad leg he had to avoid the temptation to try to climb them too quickly. At the top of the stairs came the second-floor landing; then the stairs continued. Gibbons was moving more rapidly than Sam.

Sam ignored the pain and the fear of reigniting his partial paralysis. He entered the attic just behind Gibbons. Everything here bore the marks of age. Mold, rough woodwork, knob-and-tube electrical wiring, and single-pane windows that would almost let the breeze blow through.

"Over here." Gibbons crouched at the far end of the room before a set of bookcases.

From one he drew a brown envelope.

Sam was taken aback at the pedestrian nature of the hiding place. Immediately he wondered if this was really everything or a trademark red herring left by Ben Anderson.

"Police," came a voice from below. "Anybody home?"

Gibbons jumped.

"I have to hand this to Haley." Gibbons indicated the envelope in his hands.

"I can hold it for you while you get rid of the officer. Then you can give it to her."

Gibbons ignored him and turned to the stairs, taking the envelope and putting it under his shirt and down the back of his pants.

Sam hurried to the top of the stairs, reached under Gibbons's shirt, and grabbed the envelope as he started down. Gibbons turned, but footsteps were already sounding on the stairs below.

"Good day there, Mr. Gibbons," came a voice from down the stairs.

Gibbons turned back to the officer on the stairs, obviously in a state of consternation.

"You know, I know most of the deputies, but I don't recognize you."

"I'm a special deputy appointed for this emergency. As you may or may not know, we're looking for Haley Walther, Ben Anderson, and a Robert Chase. Chase is also known by the first name Sam."

"Haley's out back and Chase is upstairs."

"What?"

Sam prepared himself for one all-or-nothing attack.

"Hey, I'm just kidding." Gibbons forced an almost-credible laugh. "Just a joke."

"You could get in a world of hurt with smart-ass remarks like that."

Sam knew this man was no cop.

"I try to see Ben all I can, but I haven't seen him in two weeks, Haley longer, and I don't know any Robert Chase. Ben won't admit it, but he can only stand so much of me. I'm a little intense for his taste. What did you say your name was?"

"I'm Officer Black." The fake cop's voice had subtly returned to professional-polite mode.

"Like I said, I haven't seen them and wouldn't know this Chase character if he was standing right in front of me." Now Gibbons sounded quite convincing.

"I hear he spent a lot of time in a wheelchair above the ferry on the veranda there by the doctor's office," said Black.

"Don't recollect anybody like that."

"He's walking around now," Black continued. "Big, slightly dark-looking fellow.

Probably bearded. Maybe a little Indian or Spanish. Quiet sort."

"Like I said, nobody like that."

"You call nine-one-one the minute you see any of them."

"Will do."

The footsteps started back down the stairs.

The front door opened and closed and Sam hoped Rafe had actually left. He hoped the pile of discarded clothes in the duffel didn't catch the man's attention.

In a moment Sam heard Gibbons's footfalls as he climbed the stairs.

"Just a minute, Mr. Gibbons."

Sam froze. It was Frick's voice, coming from downstairs. He had almost surely slipped in through the back door. Sam hoped he hadn't seen Haley.

Gibbons didn't respond.

"Come on down. We're gonna have a talk."

Sam could feel the demon in Frick's voice; Gibbons would sense it too and be frightened.

"What do you want?" Gibbons's voice had turned into a nervous squeak.

Sam had to do something fast.

Another door slammed open. Sounded like the back door.

"Get your hands off me!" Haley screamed.

Black grunted. "Stop fighting."

Sam had to act immediately or not at all. After stuffing the envelope under his belt, he went to the third-floor window, opened it, and contemplated the drop. His bad leg could be completely ruined by this drop-ruined beyond even the surgical repair that he planned. His spine could be reinjured. At the very least the pain would be excruciating.

He heard footsteps on the inside stairwell, slid through the window, hung, and dropped.

It was about a twelve-foot fall from the third-story window to the porch roof below and a little over four feet from Sam's soles when he let go.

Using the roof to break his fall, he didn't try to land and remain. Instead, he hit feet first, came down, tried not to overbend the knee, and rolled. With his shoulders and arms burning from abrasions, from the shingles, he rolled off the edge and dropped another twelve feet or so during which he managed to get his feet mostly beneath him so that they could break his fall before another roll, this time in the soft grass. His body hit the ground with a tooth-jarring thud and a terrible pain raged from knee to thigh on the bad leg. Almost as critical, the blow knocked the wind out of him. For a second he could not rise. It felt like asphyxiating. Finally he could suck in some air.

Although stunned, he struggled up and had the presence of mind to dive into some bushes and crawl to the concrete footing of the house. He caught himself groaning from the agony in his knee. The back door opened and Frick came out.

"He hit the roof," Rafe Black called out from inside.

"Sure he did, but he didn't stop there," Frick said.

Frick looked around and, in the dark, evidently couldn't see the impressions in the grass.

Sam could hear him moving across the yard, through the shrubbery, probably pulling himself up to peer over the six-foot fence.

Frick cursed. "I need a flashlight."

"I'll get one from the house," called Black.

Sam lay on the ground, his face pressed into the earth, his body still on fire with pain.

He was pretty sure nothing was broken. Sam knew how to fall and had dropped from much greater distances when he wasn't busted up.

He caught the sound of Frick pulling aside the bushes.

"Oh hell…" Frick cursed a stream of expletives that would have done the Devil proud.

The door slammed again.

Sam heard Rafe yelling about a flashlight. Forcing himself, he crawled out of the bushes, went around the corner of the house, and saw what looked to be a stump that he could use to climb over the fence. Using his hands, he felt the vague shadow in the darkness confirming what his eyes could barely detect. Before he stepped on the stump, he drove the heel of his shoe deep into the ground and then ripped up the grass so that even a city boy wouldn't miss it. Over the fence he landed in a neighbor's backyard, heavy with brush. He retreated from the fence several paces, then hobbled down toward the street. Once he got to the street, he went as fast as he could and climbed the stairs to the front door of Gibbons's house. Inside, Frick stood on the stairs with a large flashlight. He had apparently already been upstairs, surveying the roof. He was trying to determine his next move.

Rafe Black, the heavily muscled somewhat fat black man with a wide face and a large flat nose, had his arm around Haley's neck and was fondling her, obviously enjoying his job while Frick did the work. By concentrating on her, Rafe was taking his brain away from his job. He'd be relatively easy to dispatch, given the opportunity. Sam had a slow burn going for the man, ever since he'd accosted the coffee lady earlier in the day, but he knew that at this point keeping Haley alive outweighed the rest of it.

"Quit playing with her and get your worthless ass out in the yard and help me find this guy," Frick said, holding out handcuffs. "He already had bad legs; with a fall off that roof he won't go far. Cuff her to the stair railing."

Sam could hear the loud talking and realized one of the living-room windows must have been open. Staying low, he went across the porch and was not surprised to find the first window open a crack. He put his ear to it.

"I wouldn't leave her by herself or him either." "Do as I say, damn it." Sam peered through the window. Frick had Gibbons by the neck. "You stay glued to this spot or I will come back and cut your nuts off before I kill you. You understand?"

Still muttering his disagreement about leaving them, Rafe handcuffed Haley to the handrail. It was stout; Frick had judged correctly that she wouldn't be able to pull free.

They both walked out the back door, leaving it open. Sam waited a minute for them to get around to the side yard and find his shoe print by the stump in the light of the flashlight. Sam opened the front door a crack. In the moment that he hesitated, Frick reappeared, his flashlight casting about as he walked in through the back door.

"Oh God," Gibbons breathed at the return of what must have seemed to him like the Devil incarnate.

"Take him outside, Rafe," Frick ordered.

"I wanna watch this," Rafe said.

"You're trying my patience." Frick turned to Rafe and sucker punched him in the solar plexus. Then he grabbed his little finger and bent it back as if to break it.

"Ah, shit, don't." Rafe could barely talk.

"I'll break all five of 'em. You understand?"

Rafe was grunting.

"Do you understand?"

"Yes." It came out in a gasp.

Frick let go and addressed Haley. "You've got ten seconds; then I'm really gonna hurt you. I want to know where those papers are that you took from the whale. And I want to know why you came here. What were you looking for and what did you and your friend find?"

Rafe struggled to his feet, held his gut with one hand, and grabbed Gibbons's elbow with the other. When he had taken the older man out in back, Frick put his lips close to Haley's ear as he seemed to like to do but spoke at normal volume.

"I know your kind. You give yourself to every guy that comes through. You're a worthless whore. Do you understand what I could do to you?"

Haley was silent. Sam couldn't tell whether Frick was playing a deliberate mind game or truly deranged. Or both.

With his gun to her abdomen, Frick grabbed her hair, jerking her head back.

"Do you know what we do with pigs like you?" She didn't answer.

"Do you?" He pulled her head back again. Sam got ready to break through the window, all the time staring at the gun pressed into her belly. Frick's finger was on the trigger. It was too great a risk.

"No."

"We hang them up and we bleed them slow into a barrel. Do you want that?"

"No."

"Your boyfriend is keeping me from my work. Can you call him on a cell phone?"

Haley didn't answer.

"Then you deserve what I'm gonna give you. Right here. Right now."

Haley's eyes were wide, but she kept her wits. "And if I tell you, then you'll kill me, anyway. 'Cause after what I've seen you do, you'd rot in jail."

"Rafe," Frick yelled. The man returned with Gibbons. "You can have her now for a while. I'll be back in a half hour to an hour, as fast as I can, for the real work. See if you can get her talking. What you do to loosen her tongue is your business, but I don't want any mute psychos."

"Wait," Haley said.

"What? You wanna talk now?"

"What do you want?"

"Where are the papers from the whale?"

"Sam has them."

"Call your boyfriend. I wanna talk to him about your health."

"Take off the cuffs." "Tell me the number first."

She gave it to him. Sam already had his phone on silent and let it ring.

"The prick doesn't answer. That really pisses me off." Frick shoved the phone in his pocket. "Where's Ben Anderson?"

"I don't know," she said.

"Where'd your boyfriend go?"

"Somewhere nearby. We're on an island, remember?"

Frick gave her a backhanded slap so hard, her knees sagged.

Sam forced himself to wait.

"Where would he go?" Frick asked.

"I don't know."

Frick's cell rang.

"Yeah?" Pause. "Yeah. Be right there. We got Haley Walther." Pause. "I'm taking care of it. I gotta go."

Sam tensed up, knowing he could surprise Frick as he came through the front door.

Instead, Frick turned on his heel and headed for the back door.

Sam groaned inwardly. Frick was going to take one last look around the yard.

"This is gonna be real good," Rafe was saying as he cuffed Gibbons to the stair railing and released Haley so that he had her, hands cuffed behind her back.

"Upstairs. We're gonna need a bed and a lighter. I ain't got any condoms, so I guess we'll just do without."

Sam went to the side of the house, looking for signs of Frick. He didn't want Frick behind him with a gun. On the far side of the fence, he heard someone walking through the brush, then saw flickers of light through the boards. At the end of the fence was the street and Frick's car.

Haley was probably near the top of the stairs by now. Soon Rafe would start. Sam fought the impulse to go inside. Quickly he made his way down toward the end of the fence. Suddenly Frick sped up and began crashing through the brush and then onto the road. He jumped in his car. Sam waited for Frick to start the engine. Seconds went by like slow thuds in his head. Start the car. Start the car,… Frick must have been on his cell phone again.

Sam went ahead, deciding to forget Frick. What was Rafe doing? He tried not to let his imagination start. A desperate sadness came over him. Just what he'd wanted to avoid… another fellow traveler. Sam wondered if he was in love with Haley and then put the thought away like a jewel in its case.

He slowly moved up the hill under the cover of darkness, wanting to get to the porch so that he could get to Haley. As he neared the porch, another car pulled up, a man got out and spoke to Frick. As they talked, Sam slipped up on the porch and went through the front door.

At last the car started and Frick peeled out. The second man was no doubt coming to the house.

One more problem.

Gibbons looked at Sam and nodded upstairs.

With a painful effort Sam yanked off his shoes. He had seconds at best.