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‘Meaning any evidence had been cleaned up already?’

  ‘That was the impression I got. The guard was kind of smug about it, as if Eldon had gotten away with murder … and I mean that literally.’

  ‘It tells us somethin’ about our friendly neighborhood law enforcement officers, right? If they’re being kept in the dark about this missing guy, it’s fair to assume they ain’t dancing to Eldon Moorcock’s fiddle like I first thought.’

  ‘For the record, I never suspected the cops here were corrupt. That was all down to you and Pinky.’

  ‘I still think we should keep them outta things till we know more. It’s like you said, I’ve still no proof that Elspeth or Jacob are here, and I’d like another go at rescuing them before we involve the cops.’

  Tess turned away from the window and collected the washbowl and cloths. ‘Come over here and sit down. Let me get you cleaned up.’

  Po took another lingering look out of the window, but by now the police cruiser was a distant memory. ‘Didn’t you say you tied those guys to their own truck?’

  ‘Yeah. It was the best we could do under the circumstances.’

  ‘That’s maybe who the cops have gone out to. Perhaps somebody unconnected with the commune found them trussed up and called the police.’

  ‘I hear you, Po. If those guards describe Pinky and me, the cops will know exactly where to come looking for us. I’m not concerned: I’ll fully explain what we are doing here, and demand that they take action to confirm that Elspeth and Jacob are safe. If I have to, I’ll have Emma Clancy get her boss to pull some strings with the local district attorney’s office and have an entire task force mobilized.’

  She was overstating her authority, but she’d at least try to galvanize positive action out of the police if they did get involved.

  ‘Is that the entire police force that Muller Falls can muster?’ Po wondered. ‘Two guys?’

  ‘It’s a small town; they’re probably fortunate to have any policing budget whatsoever. There’s probably a county sheriff’s office, and imagine that if anything major happens here they call in assistance from them or a larger neighboring PD, or probably from the state cops.’

  ‘Or there are other cops here we are unaware of yet?’ he proposed. ‘Two guys can’t be expected to cover three shifts, three hundred and sixty-five days of the year.’

  Po left her with a damp cloth in her hand. He walked to the adjoining wall to Pinky’s room and gave it a solid thump with the ball of his fist. ‘Yo, Pinky!’

  Earlier Pinky quipped to the police about the hotel walls being thin, and he hadn’t been fully joking. ‘Yo?’

  ‘Want to come in here, bra?’ Po said.

  ‘Give me a moment, you.’ Pinky’s voice was barely muffled by the wall.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Tess asked.

  Po ignored her momentarily while he went over and opened the door to the shared landing. As he returned he said, ‘I think it’s time we got outta here. If they’re all the resource the town has access to, I just had a horrible thought why those cops might’ve been summonsed outta town …’

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Tess, also realizing that trouble was potentially heading directly at them. She set aside the damp cloth, and instead began pulling together her few belongings she’d unpacked and spread throughout the room.

  Pinky stuck his head around the open door. ‘Whassup?’

  ‘It’s time to get the hell outta Dodge,’ Po told him, ‘and hole up somewhere a posse can’t find us.’

  ‘Give me a second and I’ll be good to go, me.’ Without explanation, he spun about and ducked back inside his room. He had brought a small knapsack containing his overnight essentials in from the GMC; his spare clothing was in a suitcase still in the trunk. He need only grab the bag; it was highly likely his pistol was already secreted about his body. Tess had placed its twin in her tote bag.

  ‘Leave some stuff lying around,’ Po suggested to her. ‘We shouldn’t officially book out, just go out without saying a thing. If anyone checks our rooms let them think we’re going to come back.’

  How would they know where to look? Tess didn’t voice her thought: Muller Falls wasn’t overflowing with hotels, motels or B&Bs, so a search party sent to town by the Moorcocks wouldn’t take long to check them all. Judging by the lack of tourists here, she’d bet that any local questioned about where ‘the strangers’ were staying could point directly at this hotel. Po had a point. If they were expected to return here, their hunters might waste time staking out the hotel rather than trying to pick up their trail. She tossed some non-essentials back on the bed and left the snacks they’d purchased earlier scattered on a counter top. The washbowl and cloths were a good addition, which she placed on the stand next to the double bed. Po had pulled back into his leather jacket by the time she was ready to leave. Her gaze went to the teeth marks in the sleeve, then tracked down to his left heel where his jeans were tattered and his boot scuffed: she couldn’t believe he’d gotten away from the attack dogs without major injury. She was thankful he had though. He seemed to be walking stiffer than before.

  They closed the doors to their rooms and went down the stairs. The hotel was a family run affair, by people who had lives beyond serving their guests. The pleasant couple that had checked them in on arrival, and later showed them to their rooms, was nowhere to be seen. A TV on low volume, and the accompanying laughter of a couple of teenage boys, hinted that the family had retired to their private rooms at the rear of the hotel, and were relaxing before retiring to bed. Po let them out through the exit door and pulled it shut behind him. They immediately got in the GMC, all taking their designated seats without question or complaint. Tess again had the back seat to herself, and Po was the elected driver. It made sense; he was the most skilled when it came to defensive driving tactics. Immediately he showed the most sensible tactic. He took a right turn out of the hotel, and drove towards the north end of town, the opposite direction from where an angry mob from the commune might approach.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The skin at the back of Caleb Moorcock’s neck prickled. Unconsciously he rubbed a calloused palm up and down the back of his head as he listened to the whining excuses of the bridge guards. Already they’d both stressed, several times, how it was not their fault that they had been outflanked and taken hostage at gunpoint.

  ‘Forget about that. Describe the woman to me again,’ Caleb said.

  The guard who had been knocked out massaged his jaw. ‘She was blond, nice looking, maybe yay high.’ He held his hand level with his bruised chin, then immediately looked abashed that he’d allowed a small woman to take him captive. ‘She took me by surprise and stuck a pistol under my ear.’

  ‘And the dude was a big odd-looking black guy with thickset legs?’

  ‘Yeah. He had a funny way of talking too.’

  ‘Weird, like he was referring to everyone in the third person?’

  The guard blinked at him, unsure what he meant. It didn’t matter. Caleb had already concluded he knew who had captured the guards. The instant that he’d learned of the trespasser, his reaction to the description of a tall, rangy built man was to picture Po’boy Villere. It was no coincidence that the other two sounded like his partner, Teresa Grey, and his pal Pinky.

  Caleb shivered as he peered out across the bridge. The barricade and sawhorses were still pushed aside, since the guards had only recently returned to their posts after freeing themselves. His neck prickled again, and he rubbed at it. Partly he was excited that he might yet get to take out his anger on Villere, but he was also partly anxious. His father had not been amused when he thought Caleb’s actions might have attracted the attention of a private investigator: he didn’t want any kind of law enforcement officer – private or otherwise – sniffing around his business. But here they were: Villere had trailed Elspeth back here, and his partner had followed. He was unsure how Eldon would take the news, but there being an investigator in the area wasn’t something he could keep to himself.
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  The second guard, the one spared a punch in the jaw from Pinky, stood to one side, his eyebrows arching towards the top of his head. He rubbed at the raw wounds the belt had cut into his wrists before he’d been able to free them both. Caleb eyed him dispassionately. The guy expected punishment for his failure and by God it would come, but Caleb decided now was not the time; he’d allow both guards to stew in their own juices a while longer. Besides, he needed them on side for now.

  There was a noisy group of around two dozen men behind him, as well as three trucks besides the one the guards had brought back across the river. Two German shepherd dogs strained at their leashes, as eager as Caleb was to pick up Villere’s trail. The other hounds had been taken along the riverbank to where Villere had entered the Moorcock land with the smallest hope that he hadn’t made it back to the river yet and was hunkered down in the woods. Caleb thought it was probably a wasted exercise, because by now Tess and Pinky had skedaddled, and most likely because Villere had returned to them. He turned to them with one hand raised in the air. The talking and speculating halted and all eyes focused on him.

  ‘We can’t stand by and allow outsiders to come and go on our land as they please,’ he announced. ‘Otherwise it will soon be a free-for-all, and before we know it we’ll have strangers hiking all over the place, and getting in our way and treating it as their own. My father bought this land, but your families settled it: it’s your home and you need to defend it now. Tonight a man stole onto our land and hurt some of our kin … old Royston Mitchel still hasn’t shaken off the knock he took. And these guys here’ – he indicated the guards – ‘they were threatened and beaten by others. Are we going to allow that to happen without challenge?’

  Zealous voices answered him, hooting, hollering and cursing, but not everyone living under the thrall of the Moorcock family were of the same psychotic nature: some of them shuffled their feet, stayed to the back of the mob and hoped they wouldn’t be forced into whatever madness Caleb had in mind.

  ‘I want some volunteers.’ Caleb stared at several of the younger more easily coerced men in turn, giving them no option except to volunteer, then ranged his gaze wider. Several men stepped forward unbidden, mainly those that’d already answered his first summons to arms. The less eager he noted as they kept their heads down and tried to stay in the shadows. He wanted nothing from those cowards. He smiled and nodded at each of his volunteers, and within a short time had them loaded in or on the pickup trucks. He’d have liked to take the dogs with him, but they took up too much space. He put their handler to use though, assigning him to watch the bridge, seeing as the original guards had proven unfit for the job. He told the two demoted guards to squeeze in the cab of their own truck, while he took the driver’s seat and led the small convoy of rowdies over the river.

  Usually the inhabitants of the commune steered clear of Muller Falls. Very occasionally they visited to partake of the town’s services but in general the commune was self-sufficient. Sometimes some of the youths from the commune would sneak into the town in search of alcohol or members of the opposite sex, and it had not been unknown for some of the older men to act similarly when the opportunity arose, but mostly the townspeople and those from the commune stayed apart. There was an unhealthy distrust between some of the older folks on both sides. There had been a previous time when a similar convoy as this one had struck out for town, but that was in the very early days of the community and had been led there by Eldon. It had followed an incident where some rowdy townsfolk had ambushed a couple from the commune and beaten them up. Eldon had responded to violence with violence, under the decree that they were obliged to protect their community from outside aggression. They had wrecked a bar, broken several shop front windows and also set fire to a community hall before retreating again behind the fences. The incident had shaken the town, and the woeful police department of the day was loath to respond, and instead of the justice being pursued, it had been allowed to slide. Things could have been worse, it had been reasoned: Eldon’s posse could have found the men responsible for assaulting his people and hanged them like he’d first sworn to do. Rather than harbor Villere and his friends, the townsfolk would quickly give them up to avoid a repeat of the last time they tried to hide the offenders.

  Initially Caleb would have preferred it if his brothers had accompanied him to town. It was one thing having your buddies backing you up, quite another when it came to blood kin: brothers would die in defense of each other. He checked around and saw that his volunteers could barely be called his buddies; at best they were neighbors, at worst his thralls. He couldn’t rely on any of these men the way he could with Darrell or Randy, but he shouldn’t worry. He was all about proving his manhood, rather than guys who would fight back-to-back with him, he required an audience, witnesses. Besides, the way that Darrell had challenged his decisions about the way he’d grabbed Elspeth and Jacob over in Maine, he could do without listening to his brother’s misgivings about what he planned now. Caleb was the eldest; he didn’t need guidance from any kid brother, especially when it came to handling his business.

  Before he had taken the truck a mile along the road towards Muller Falls the CB radio kicked to life. Caleb recognized Randy’s voice despite it being raised several octaves and his words spilling out in his urgency.

  Caleb grabbed the handset and keyed it. ‘OK, calm down, Randy, and speak slower. I can’t make out a damn word you’re saying.’

  ‘Pa wants you back here right this minute, Caleb,’ Randy said in a rush.

  ‘Tell Pa I’ve got something to do first.’

  ‘Something more important than finding your wife and kid?’ asked Randy. ‘Something more important than finding the son of a bitch that just beat our mother unconscious?’

  Caleb stood almost upright on the brake pedal and the truck fishtailed to a stop. The men on the back all crushed together, thrown in a heap of arms and legs against the cab. The pickup following close behind almost rear-ended the truck. Behind it the latter two trucks had time to stop, but the convoy was left parked at odd angles in the road. Some of the men jumped off the flatbeds, expecting imminent trouble.

  ‘What do you mean, somebody has hurt Ma?’

  ‘They knocked her out, Caleb, like she was nothing to them,’ Randy’s voice was almost manic, ‘and when I get my hands on them, I’ll rip out their guts and stamp on them. You hear me? I’m going to tear them apart. Pa wants you here so you can do the same, so you’d better get on back here.’

  ‘Who hurt Ma?’ Caleb demanded. He was trying to get things clear in his head: had the trespasser – Po’boy Villere, who else could it be? – given the dogs the slip and then returned to the commune to continue whatever deviltry he had in mind? If Villere was responsible for hurting his mother he’d … well, Randy had said it best. He’d gut the son of a bitch and stamp on his innards.

  ‘We don’t know, she hasn’t fully come around yet. But it has to be the same one that hurt the others, right?’

  ‘How’d he get at Ma, I’d have thought she was safe with Pa and you?’

  ‘Ma wasn’t home. After dinner she left to go check on how things were going between you and Elspeth. She was found unconscious in their cell and your wife and son are gone. At first Pa was concerned that you’d been hurt too, but Darrell checked and learned you’d headed to town with half our menfolk. You need to get back here with them now, Caleb, cause by all accounts we’ve still got somebody roaming around here, and most likely Elspeth and Jacob are with them.’

  ‘How long has Ma been out?’

  ‘How do I know?’

  ‘How bad is she, Randy?’

  ‘For Christ’s sakes we’re talking about our mother, Caleb! She’s bad enough and somebody has to pay for hurting her.’

  Caleb was uncertain what to do. He stared once beyond the windshield; he was certain that Villere had fled the scene and returned to his friends and they had holed up in the nearby town. But if Randy was right and Villere was still
in the commune, and his wife and son accompanied him, then Caleb should … wait a minute!

  ‘Elspeth wasn’t in the cell with Jacob,’ he stated. ‘I took her to another room so’s I could deal with her alone.’

  ‘We know, Bertram told us.’

  Alec Bertram was the one who’d initially hailed Caleb when the alarm about the trespasser was first raised. Bertram had run with him back to the loading dock where two of the younger men had been captured and locked in the van.

  ‘Somebody needs to check on her,’ Caleb said.

  ‘We did. Weren’t you listening just now? I told you, you need to get back here to help find them, your wife and son are both missing.’

  ‘That goddamn bitch! Don’t you get it, Randy? It wasn’t the guy we’re looking for that hurt Ma, it had to have been Elspeth! She got out of her cell and went to fetch Jacob and found Ma there instead.’

  ‘If that’s the case, you’d best forget any feelings you had for that whore,’ Randy swore, ‘’cause I meant what I said. I’ll kill her if I get my hands on her first. Otherwise, you should do it for what she did to Ma.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that, bro. Nobody, and I mean nobody, hurts our mother and gets away with it. If you catch her, don’t hurt Elspeth, bring her to me, and I’ll see her punishment fits her crime.’ Caleb slammed the handset down so hard that it bounced out of its holder and hung by the extendable cord between the knees of the older of the guards. Both men had kept silent while Caleb had spoken with Randy. Caleb snapped a glare on the older man.

  ‘If you had done your damn jobs none of this would have happened. Now my mother has been hurt and you useless fuckers are responsible.’

  ‘No, Caleb, that’s unfair—’

  Before the excuse had fully tumbled out of the inept guard, Caleb backhanded him across the nose. Every ounce of rage he felt towards Elspeth, and to Villere, was behind the blow. His knuckles smashed the cartilage, and the man slumped forward, groaning in dismay as blood flooded into his cupped palms. The younger guard looked ready to throw open the door and run for it, but Caleb didn’t give him the chance. He slammed the truck into a series of tight maneuvers, until he had it facing the opposite direction on the narrow road. He drew up alongside the foremost of the other trucks. He wound down his window and called to those staring at him from the cab.