[Frank Harper 01.0] A Field of Red Page 2

  But money was tight. Most of the other retired cops Frank knew picked up freelance work to make ends meet. They usually did private investigations, or worked security, or “consulting,” as it was better known. Frank didn’t have the taste for that sort of work--chasing down bail jumpers or tracking husbands stepping out on their wives. He’d taken a couple jobs for other “consultants” and hated it--taking orders from some wet-behind-the-ear kid in charge of security.

  But the money was running thin. Birmingham to Dayton had been a stretch, and the Taurus was a gas guzzler. He needed to be careful with his limited funds; the hotel, some meals, and gas money home, that’s all he had. Not the best time to splurge on a bottle of Whistle Pig Rye.

  They didn’t have any good bourbon or whiskey in this place anyway. In fact, they didn’t have any bourbon at all. Most bars at least had a wall of bottles of nice alcohol behind the counter, “aspirational bottles,” as Ben had always called them. Fancy bottles with fancy caps, sitting on little shelves like trophies. Bottles for the folks drinking cheap swill to stare at and admire and dream about. But no fancy trophy alcohol in here--all they sold in Ricky’s was beer, and only in bottles.

  Above the bar was a big sign: “Welcome to Ricky’s. Stay Classy, or You Get the Boot.” Frank smiled at the ironic use of the word “classy” and wondered where they kept the shotgun. Every bar in America had a shotgun somewhere behind the counter, but this four-sided bar would make it harder to hide.

  Suddenly, the voices in the bar got louder, shouting back and forth between the two groups Frank had noticed earlier.

  He ignored the raised voices. It sounded like these two groups of men had a history. If Frank stepped in and stopped them tonight, they just beat the crap out of each other next week or the week after or the week after that. There was no need for Frank to get involved, not anymore.

  “Hey, sit down, or I’m gonna ask you to leave,” the taller barmaid yelled, pointing at the tall guy at the counter.

  “Rosie, calm down,” the tall guy said, laughing and shaking his head. “Don’t get your panties all in a wad.”

  One of the men from the adjoining table stood and got in the tall guy’s face.

  “Derek, can it. She’s having a rough week. Her niece is the one that’s--”

  “I don’t give a shit,” Derek said, shaking his head.

  The shorter guy’s eyes went wide, and Frank knew what would come next. It was nice that the guy was defending the woman behind the counter, but it would be better if he knew how to diffuse a situation instead of throwing punches. Of course, there was always a time and a place for violence, but not in a crowded place like this, if it could be avoided.

  Rosie looked around the rest of the bar for help. Probably looking for off-duty cops or any locals who could help her.

  Her eyes settled on Frank.

  Maybe she sensed in him something, an air of muddled authority, a history in law enforcement. He was getting up there in years but still had the body for it. Sometimes, when he wasn’t deep in his cups, he could project a menacing air.

  Maybe it was his facial expression, or maybe he was the only one watching the fight--everyone else in the bar seemed to be studiously ignoring the two groups of men.

  Whatever the cause, Rosie looked directly at Frank, and they held each other’s gaze for a long moment before he looked down at his beer. After another moment, he heard her speak up.

  “Look, take it outside. Jake, thanks for sticking up for me, but I don’t need the help. And Derek--back off.”

  Derek climbed off the stool and began to fall. One of his friends grabbed him up, and between him and Jake and another guy, they got Derek through the doors and outside. Through the closing doors, Frank could hear more raised voices outside. It sounded like the fight had only been delayed or relocated.

  Frank sipped at his warm beer.

  He should’ve been angrier at himself. Instead, he just tried to remember his place. Frank looked down at his left arm and ran his fingers along the thin scar that ran from the palm to disappear under the sleeve of his jacket. Getting involved wasn’t always the smartest thing to do. Or the safest.

  A few minutes later, Rosie came over.

  She walked up to the table next to his and wiped it down, glancing over at him. She was shorter than she looked behind the bar. The floor was probably raised back there. When she was done, Rosie walked over and collected Frank’s empties.

  “Hey,” she said, looking down at him.

  He nodded.

  “I could’ve used your help back there,” she said, smiling. “I know those guys. They’re going to get into it tonight, at some point. It was just good luck that Derek had had one too many.”

  Frank looked up at her.

  “Sorry, but it’s not my problem,” he said quietly. “I don’t know them, and I don’t know you.”

  She looked at him for a second, taken aback.

  “Oh, really?” she asked.

  Frank nodded again, looking at the TV.

  “I don’t get involved in that kind of stuff. Not anymore.”

  He gave her no further explanation, resisting that human need to fill the empty, awkward space hanging between them. He knew how hard it was to just let the silence linger. Dead air. Frank had done it before, a thousand times. Suspects and witnesses alike rushed in to fill that space with something. More information, a confession, whatever. Anything to fill that pregnant pause. He could tell she wanted more information.

  Instead, Frank looked at her, held her eyes, and said nothing.

  After another long moment of awkward silence, the woman shook her head and walked away.

  Chapter 2

  Kyle Park was an expansive stretch of grass and baseball diamonds and soccer fields on the eastern edge of Cooper’s Mill. One of several parks and green spaces operated by the town’s parks department, the massive park was built in the extensive floodplain east of town in the 1980s. In contrast, the old downtown City Park, located on north Third Street, was small, almost claustrophobic. It was filled with large, thick trees, playground equipment, two tennis courts, and the famous Roundhouse building. It was the perfect park for a picnic or a small get-together, but there wasn’t enough open space to hold even a pick-up softball game.

  But Kyle Park stretched as far as the eye could see, from the remnants of the old canal that paralleled south First Street all the way to the line of dark trees that lined the Great Miami River two miles away to the east. Most of the area east of the old canal was a floodplain--flat, muddy, and fertile--and it made for great soccer fields and rich, dark baseball fields.

  It was a perfect use of the space, as the floodplain belonged to the Ohio Conservancy and most types of construction was prohibited anyway. In 1913, the Miami River had flooded, wiping out everything in Cooper’s Mill east of the canal and destroying parts of Dayton, ten miles to the south. After the floods, construction east of the canal had been outlawed.

  Glenda Martin wasn’t thinking about construction restrictions in Kyle Park, or the fact that where she was sitting had been twenty feet underwater a hundred years ago. She was thinking about Charlie, her daughter, and a conversation they’d had last week.

  Charlie had wanted to come to Kyle Park, but Glenda had demurred, saying it was too cold. It hadn’t really been that cold--early October was a weird time. Unpredictable weather. But Glenda hadn’t felt like coming to Kyle and had told Charlie no.

  Now it was cold. And Glenda knew that Charlie could be out somewhere in it, alone. Or with Maya. No one knew anything, it seemed.

  Glenda Martin was a beautiful woman, but her face was strained and unhappy, lately drawn into a semi-permanent scowl. The gusting breeze whipped her long brown hair around her face. She pulled the sweater tighter around her.

  Six days since that horrible morning, October 3rd. She would never forget that date, no matter what happened. No calls, no ransom demands. Nothing from any kidnappers. The cops weren’t even sure there were kidnappe
rs.

  Glenda thought the cops were working from a much darker assumption; the girls had been abducted and were out of the area completely. Three Amber alerts had gone out over the past six days, but nothing had come of them.

  Yesterday, Glenda had heard a subtle change in the way the police spoke to her and to each other: they were starting to assume harm had come to the girls, either by accident or at the hands of someone.

  She sat on a park bench in Kyle Park, next to the baseball fields, waiting. It was early on Sunday morning and chilly.

  Glenda heard voices and looked up. The group of volunteers was straggling back in. They were returning from searching the southern side of Kyle, an area of the park made up of wetlands and large stands of poplars and other trees that separated Kyle Park from the farmland to the south. The volunteers had covered the low areas and fields now stripped of their crops, the old corn lying in twisted, irregular patterns on the ground. It could be easy for a kid, or kids, to get lost in the fields where the dead corn hadn’t been plowed under.

  She could see that several of the volunteers had gotten muddy and dusty, and now they walked past her, back to their cars. A few stopped to say something comforting to her, or to take her hand for a moment, but most of them simply walked past her without making any kind of eye contact.

  They probably felt bad.

  Part of her was glad they hadn’t found the missing girls. These searches were strange. She wanted them to find something, evidence of what had happened, so at least they would know something. But, on another level, she tried not to think about what they might find. Her mind resisted even going there.

  Little Charlie had been born too early, her skin so pink and wrinkled. The nurse had brusquely shown her to an exhausted Glenda and then raced the little girl away to another part of the maternity ward. Glenda remembered watching as the preemie doctor and nurses worked to keep her alive. And finally, weeks after the little girl’s birthday, the doctors decided to take Charlie off the tiny ventilator and let her try to breathe on her own.

  And that moment, that wonderful moment, when the doctor had looked up and smiled behind his mask and Glenda had relaxed for the first time in months.

  The young cop approached, his face grim. She remembered his name was Peters, Deputy Peters--all the cop’s names and faces were starting to blur together in her mind. Glenda knew every cop in town was working the case, nights and weekends, and she was grateful for the help. Seeing the grim look on his face, her insides erupted with a sudden, intense fire that made her feel like she was about to explode.

  He’s got bad news, she thought suddenly. And only a few of the volunteers had looked at her.

  “Oh, God, did you find something?” she said, pleading, her hand clenched in a fist at her chest. “Please tell me you--”

  The deputy shook his head.

  “Nothing, Mrs. Martin,” Deputy Peters said, shaking his head. He’d taken his hat off and was scrunching it up in his hands. “We didn’t find anything.”

  She felt herself relax. Like in the hospital, in that magical, heart-stopping instant after the preemie doctor had smiled. After she’d known Charlie would pull through.

  “We’re setting up another search of City Park in a little while,” the deputy said, not looking at her. He was looking away at the parking lot, nodding at the group of volunteers who waited by their cars. “The volunteers are heading over now. And another group is going to cover the soccer fields again,” he said, gesturing to the massive open stretch of grass to the north that ran nearly all the way to Route 571. “Hopefully, we’ll find something.”

  She looked up at him, and he shook his head and mumbled quietly under his breath.

  “Something good, I mean,” he said, grimacing. He walked away and nearly tripped over the curb before climbing into a Cooper’s Mill squad car and driving away.

  Glenda nodded to herself and pulled the sweater tighter around her. The weather was turning colder, and rain was expected tonight. That was one reason the volunteers were searching all day, before the bad weather hit tonight.

  Her little girl wasn’t here at Kyle--that much was obvious. At least they hadn’t found her somewhere, hurt. Or worse.

  Her cell phone rang, making her jump.

  That would be Nick, checking in. She didn’t even need to look at the number on her phone. Glenda wished her husband had stayed with her for today’s searches, but he was giving yet another police statement and helping the FBI and CMPD go over the family finances again. Glenda just wished there was someone here to take her by the shoulder and tell her that things were going to be all right. She didn’t care if it was a lie.

  It was the not knowing that was the worst part.

  Nick had told her to stay busy, to get out there and search. She wished he would stop trying to distract her. She didn’t need to be distracted; she needed to feel like she wasn’t in this all alone.

  She held the phone up to her ear.

  “Nick?”

  There was a weird clicking on the line. For a moment, Glenda thought the call had dropped.

  “Mrs. Martin? Mrs. Glenda Martin?”

  Her eyes went wide. Her stomach did a sudden, nauseating loop. She pulled away from the phone and saw that the number was blocked before putting it back to her ear.

  It was a voice she did not recognize.

  “Yes?”

  Another long pause.

  “We have your daughter,” the voice on the other end of the line said--it was odd, metallic. Glenda felt her world shrink down to just her and the phone and the cold bench she was sitting on. Nothing else mattered. Her hands went cold. She glanced up in the direction of the police car, but it was long gone.

  Glenda was alone.

  “Charlie and the other girl are safe, for now,” the voice continued. “They are being taken care of. We will call this number tomorrow at noon with instructions. Comply with our demands, or the girls will die.”

  The line went dead.

  Chapter 3

  The water was rising. Frank was floating on top of it, with nowhere to go.

  The white ceiling tiles were only inches above the top of the brackish, rising water. Frank could tell from the rising water that he didn’t have much time. All around him, in the water and on the surface, floated the detritus of the flooded hospital--IV bags, surgical gowns, medicine bottles, and trash. He splashed around in the water, trying to stay on the surface, but the gunshot wound in his shoulder made it hard to swim. He felt with his feet, deep under the water, trying to find a surface to push on, or submerged furniture or something, but all he could feel was empty, sloshing water. Frank grabbed at the ceiling with his left arm, catching a loose hold on a piece of the ceiling. He tried to pull himself up, but something sharp and metallic--an exposed shard of the metal grid that held up the ruined ceiling--ripped at the skin. He felt it tear but tried to hold on. But his hand was wet and kept slipping, and he felt weak. He was losing a lot of blood.

  He wasn’t going to make it out.

  And there was no backup. The National Guard had moved on, and he’d stayed to clear St. Barts, but that was before the gang bangers. And the floating patients, with their dead eyes. More dark water splashed in his mouth. It tasted like swamp water. Brackish, gritty, full of dirt. Like the bayous of his youth. Frank struggled to keep his head above the black water and suddenly realized, deep in the heart of him, that he was trapped in this abandoned hospital, where the patients had been left in their beds to die, surrounded by rising black water. And, like them, Frank was trapped. He was going to die.

  He sat up.

  Frank was in his hotel room, not back at St. Bartholomew’s.

  He looked around--he’d fallen asleep on the bed watching TV. Frank relaxed a little and shook his head, setting down the empty glass in his hand and checking his cell phone. No calls or texts from Laura. No calls from anyone else, for that matter.

  Frank glanced back up at the TV. He hadn’t been paying attention to the sh
ow--it was something to do with animals--and had dozed off.

  He tried to stand, but his legs were shaky. It was Sunday evening, and he was hungry and needed to go back out again but didn’t feel like it.

  He’d needed a little hair of the dog, after last night and Ricky’s, so Frank had gone out early Sunday morning and found a local grocery and stocked up. He’d driven past the only wine and spirits store listed in the phone book in Cooper’s Mill, but it was closed on Sundays.

  Frank wondered if all the package stores in Ohio were closed on Sundays, another throwback to the old “Blue Law” days. It was the same in Alabama--the government limited alcohol sales on Sundays. Sometimes, Frank wondered if laws like that stayed on the books out of some kind of forward momentum--the law had always been there, and no one had gotten around to changing it.

  He’d ventured inside the grocery store and found an extensive beer and wine area, along with a few harder liquors. The whiskey and bourbon had been out of his price range--even the cheaper stuff--so he’d switched over to vodka. After two excruciating minutes dealing with an overly-happy clerk who wanted to ask him all kinds of questions about his Louisiana driver’s license, Frank had carried two bottles of vodka out to his car.

  Now, one bottle was half gone, the other waiting its turn. The buzzing in his head was solid and pleasant and familiar. The whole of Sunday had been a blur.

  The curtains stood wide open. It was getting dark outside. He suddenly wondered if Laura would call and cancel the Tuesday lunch meeting. Frankly, he was surprised she hadn’t already begged off their family reunion. She probably knew it was doomed to failure anyway. Frank wasn’t good for anyone anymore. He only had one hobby left, and, although he was very good at it, he couldn’t make it pay. Being a drunkard never helped anyone, and it certainly hadn’t helped Laura, or Trudy, for that matter. Once she got one look at Frank, she probably wouldn’t want him around little Jackson.