Anywhere but Here Page 12

  ****

  “Hi,” Etta said nervously, standing in the hallway near her bedroom door.

  She was mentally going over every move she’d made in Brian’s room and hoped she’d not left any dresser drawer open or moved anything out of place.

  He stopped at the end of the hallway when he saw her. “Did you sleep well?”

  “I don’t remember getting undressed and going to bed,” she said.

  “Maybe a little too much whiskey?”

  “I only had one,” she said.

  He stared at her for a moment and then smiled.

  Chapter 26

  Dan and Deegan went back up the tunnel and out of the chamber. Dan called Chloe and told her to send the coroner and Bixby to the scene. He told Deegan to wait at the cruiser so he could show them to the location when they arrived. Then he went back to the cave chamber to take photos and make notes while searching for further evidence.

  Hauling Lester Gutierrez’s three-hundred-pound body up through the passageway was not an easy task, but they finally got him loaded into the coroner’s van. Dan, Bix and a Forensic Investigator from the county had spent hours processing the crime scene. It was a tedious, and all precautions were taken in the collection of what little physical evidence there had been. He paid particular attention to the floor of the cavern. He found some prints of bare feet and a place that looked like someone had been dragged across the dirt. But other than the hypodermic needle and the stub of a cigar that Lester had probably dropped from his mouth when he was shot, there was very little else.

  When they had finished and were taking the evidence back to the station, Deegan said, “I guess I got to watch a typical CSI for real.”

  Dan shook his head. “Deeg, there is no typical crime scene—no typical body of evidence or investigative approach. Every one of them is different. This one was difficult.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s hard to pull fingerprints from rock. There were no shoe prints other than what appeared to be the victim’s. Of course, whoever was in there with Lester could have wiped out their footprints with whatever it was they dragged across the floor of the cavern. There did seem to be a couple of barefoot prints. They were in several places like they were running around. They were small. Could have been kids in there before all this happened.”

  “We took some blood samples. Looks like blood was dripped all the way to the tunnel. The only other evidence we found down were some hairs on his clothes. Kind of strange. Short black hair with blond roots. We’ll have the lab check it out.”

  Dan put the evidence bag in the back of the cruiser. As Deegan was getting in the passenger side, Dan asked who lived out there on the other side of the trees.

  “Out here? No one that I know of,” Deegan said.

  “Then where’s that smoke coming from?”

  Deegan looked over the trees. It was beginning to get dark, but there was enough light that he could see the trail of smoke drifting up.

  “You know, there used to be an old cabin over there. The folks that owned it split up when the kids were still pretty young. The wife left and the guy moved out there with the kids, I heard the boy got into some trouble. He was sent off to reform school, jeez, must have been before the kid turned ten or so. I can’t remember his name, but the little girl grew up to be Crazy Mary.”

  “Mary Kettle?”

  “Yeah. That’s her married name. I can’t remember what her maiden name was. We all just called her old man the crazy cabin guy. Mary was about ten years younger than me. Her brother was younger than that. I never knew their mama, but their daddy was a weird duck—became somewhat of a survivalist. He died years ago. Quite a long time after Mary ran off and got married. Someone killed him. I don’t think they ever found out who did it. That old cabin though… spooky place. We used to dare each other to go inside it when we’d get a snootful as teenagers. A dare is as far as it got. I don’t think any of us ever went in.”

  “Mary Kettle. I’ll be damned.”

  “Yeah. No wonder she grew up a little off.”

  “It looks like somebody’s living there again now.”

  “It was a pretty rustic place, no electricity or running water. I haven’t thought of that place in years. Maybe someone’s living there now, but I can’t imagine who’d want to.”

  “Mary Kettle. Hmph.”

  “Yeah, jeez, hard to believe anyone would want that for a wife.”

  “I don’t remember her ever being any different. Pretty sad life,” Dan said.

  “Whatever happened to her husband?”

  “No idea.”

  ****

  The next day, Dan and Deegan went back to the cave and walked through every tunnel and cavern. They ended up in the main cave. The tide was out. They walked out onto the rocks and looked around. On the south side of the cave stone steps had put in place to make a stairway to the top of the bluff. They found three cigar butts lying around, which confirmed to Dan that it was the cave where Schemke had put Etta. Lester Gutierrez was definitely a link to her disappearance—his cigars, his body in the cavern.

  As Dan was examining the cave walls, Deegan asked, “You think maybe Schemke killed Lester Gutierrez?”

  “Could be, but we sure didn’t see any other footprints… other than those barefoot prints.”

  Dan thought for a moment. “I think she’s still alive. Look at this.”

  While examining the wall of the cave, they found the hole where the eyebolt had been.

  “This is where he had her chained. I’d bet anything,” Dan said.

  Deegan looked at it. “Yeah and look how it’s crumbled around the edges.”

  They looked around the rocks and found a wicker basket half buried in sand. An apple core was lodged between some rocks along with an empty water bottle that looked half melted.

  “He kept her alive, waiting for the king tide,” Dan said.

  “If he had her chained to a bolt like we saw those other women in those pictures, then maybe she got loose. Maybe she found her way back to the caverns and tunnels,” Deegan said.

  “And maybe that’s where Gutierrez was waiting to make sure she didn’t escape.”

  Deegan grinned. “Guess she showed him.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe Schemke was up there waiting for her, too.”

  Late that afternoon, Dan went back to the cottage where Etta had been living. He gathered some of her personal items that had been left in the bedroom, including a hairbrush. If it was Etta who had killed Lester Gutierrez, hair from her brush and the ones found on the man would at least prove that he was around her.

  Dan called in a favor at the county forensic lab and got the tests back from the blood and hair samples by late the next afternoon. The tests showed two different blood types from the cavern. The hair follicles were from a female and they matched the ones from Etta’s hairbrush.

  Then he drove to the County Assessor’s office in the next town. As he flipped pages in the book and ran down the names of parcel owners, he stopped at the one for the property that the cabin was on.

  “I’ll be damned.”

  Chapter 27

  Brian was watching her as he chopped vegetables for a salad. She’d offered to make it, but he told her to sit down at the table. He set a cup of tea in front of her, but she didn’t touch it, feeling that he may have drugged her before.

  “You seem different tonight, Etta. Something wrong?” he asked.

  His voice was subdued, and she thought she heard a quiver in it. Had he suspected she’d been in his room?

  “Nothing’s wrong, Brian. I’m tired.”

  He nodded and sighed. “Are you happy here, Etta? I want you to be happy here.”

  “Happy? Brian, I appreciate what you did for me, bringing me here, taking care of me, but I need to leave. I need to call my sister.”

  He turned and faced her with the knife in his hand and took a step toward her. Her hands began to tremble, so she placed them around the cup.

&
nbsp; What did you put in it this time, she wondered.

  “Etta, my dear, you know you can’t leave. You know he’s still out there. He’ll find you and hurt you. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.” He put the point of the knife in the table and twisted it, gouging a hole in the surface.

  She looked up into his eyes as he stood over her. His eyes had been so kind and appeared to be filled with compassion. But that’s what got her into trouble in the first place… trusting appearances… trusting empty words. Now, he only looked menacing and dangerous.

  She glanced around the kitchen for something, anything that she could grab to use as a weapon.

  “I’ve been less than honest with you, Etta.”

  “What do you mean, Brian?” she swallowed, her breath catching in her throat as he reached down and pulled her up out of the chair.

  “You said you want to call your sister. Come with me.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  She looked down at his hand wrapped around her arm and she remembered. She had heard a gunshot after the big man had stuck a needle in her arm. The ring was the last thing she saw in the cave—that hand reaching down to pull her up.

  ****

  “How did you connect the dots, Sheriff?” Ethan Levi asked as they sat at the conference table, Dan, Bix, and three FBI agents.

  “At first I didn’t,” Dan said. “Something John Deegan said kind of rang a bell. You know how kids hang onto stories, especially if they have a little intrigue. The man they called the crazy cabin guy—I remember stories about him when I was a kid. He had a son and daughter. The son got in some trouble and was sent to a correctional boys’ camp north of here. I never saw the daughter, at least not until the last few years. The girl ended up being the woman who was murdered last week.”

  “Crazy Mary?” Bix asked.

  “Yeah, Mary Kettle, but that’s not her maiden name. When we found the cave and Lester Gutierrez’s body, there wasn’t a whole lot of evidence. What we did have were some bare footprints, hair follicles and a hypodermic needle. The DNA from the hair matched that from a hairbrush I got from Etta’s house.”

  “She killed him?” Bix asked.

  “I don’t think so, but she was there. Gutierrez was at her house the night she disappeared and it matched the ones we found outside of that cave. The hypodermic needle had traces of carisoprodol. I think he was waiting in that back chamber of the cave as a backup, just in case she escaped. It was the only chamber in the network of caves that was high enough not to be filled when the king tide rolled in.

  “I believe Etta got out of that cave or was taken out. It’s the same place one of Schemke’s other victims was found several years ago, and it matched one of his trophy photos. That eyebolt had probably rusted so much that when he chained Etta to it, it worked free from the rock. With the tides coming in, she must have started searching for another way out. She ran into Gutierrez instead. It looked like maybe she surprised him. Maybe he chased her and got a needle into her, giving her a knockout drug.

  I also think someone else was in the tunnel waiting for her. I think that person shot Gutierrez.

  “You think it was Schemke?” Bix asked.

  “Deputy, let him talk,” Levi warned.

  Bix looked chastised. He didn’t like Levi and felt the man looked down on him.

  “No, Bix. I don’t think Schemke had a clue that Etta had escaped. I think he’s already moved on. Someone else had been watching her, but not without help. He was associated with Schemke and, in fact, took a perverse pleasure in witnessing some of Schemke’s kills.”

  Dan shoved a plastic bag with a black battery-operated wifi surveillance camera inside. “I was curious about how this guy could know Etta was alive. I went back to the cave at low tide last night. I found this mounted to the ceiling over the area where she was chained. He’d been watching her the entire time. He saw every move she made. Thanks to technology, I was able to see what happened up to the point when Schemke swam away in with his scuba gear and Etta erupted from the water gasping for air and holding the chain that had pulled from the rock. When she left that chamber and started looking for a way out, that’s when the camera was shut off.”

  “What a sick bastard,” Bix said.

  “We think the man living in that cabin has Etta,” Levi said. “We have a team on the way. They’ll meet us there.”

  “I have the search warrant,” Dan said. It hadn’t taken much to get the judge to sign the warrant after he heard who Dan thought it was.

  “Is he the guy Schemke was working for in all that drug and trafficking business?” Bix asked.

  “No, but I know who is,” Dan said, “and you’re not going to believe it.”

  Chapter 28

  Schemke looked out the window of his motel room toward the ocean. It was one of those seedy places where the rooms could be rented by the month or the hour—a place where men took the wives of other men, making promises they never intend to keep. He’d been there four days. It was bad enough that he’d not gotten satisfaction from his last kill, but to have to stay in a place like that, listening through paper thin walls to the sins of the worst reprobates… it was demeaning to someone like him who was used to five-star hotels.

  The boss was unhappy, saying that Schemke had screwed this one up because of his pride. He’d put the whole operation in danger because he couldn’t keep his ego in check. He didn’t like being told what to do. When he got his money for the Miami shipment, he was going to get out. He’d have a new identity. Schemke had visions of grandeur about heading up his own organization.

  “She didn’t deserve to live,” he said to himself. The only pleasure he’d taken from it was seeing the fear on her face when she knew she was going to die. But he’d hated having to do it himself. It brought up the look on his mother’s face when she was drowning, and he fought to remember the peace on her face after the pain was gone.

  Something was wrong. He’d never had to wait so long. He was tempted to get in his car and leave, but he was addicted to the game. It fed him. He’d worked for years getting to his level in the organization. Now one little bitch had threatened to destroy him.

  His phone finally rang, and he saw that it was the boss. He answered it and waited for his instructions. Finally, after he hung up, he sighed. He was to meet the doctor who would give him a new identity and, after healing for a week or so, he’d be on his way to Florida. He thought perhaps one of the girls from the new shipment would be perfect for him. He’d always chosen them that way, and they’d always let him have one of them, all except for Etta. The one time he’d done it differently had cost him.

  Why can’t they just be happy? They always become nags, he thought to himself.

  He had thought Etta would be different. She’d been so needy, so unsure of herself, even though she’d been a beauty. She had worshipped him. He knew he’d been careless leaving evidence in his desk. He’d never be careless again.

  After talking to the boss, he left the sleazy motel and headed to the house to meet the doctor. He couldn’t wait to get out of Fort Landers and put this all behind him.

  ****

  As the swat team and FBI agents surrounded the cabin, Dan and Levi stood on either side of the door. They’d left the vehicles on the other side of the stand of cypress trees near the barn. Bix and one of the agents searched the barn and, after an all clear, went to the back of the house in case Brian tried to get out through a window.

  Dan knocked on the door. He couldn’t hear anything from inside. Levi knocked again, announcing their presence, then turned the doorknob. It was locked as expected. He told Dan to stand back and he kicked the door in. They went in with their guns drawn.

  They cautiously looked through each room, but there was no one there. Levi called in the other agents and Bix and gave them each an assignment. He searched the kitchen while Dan searched the living room, taking every book from the shelves, looking under the rug and the cushions on the rustic sofa. />
  “Sheriff, I think you need to come back here,” he heard Bix say from the bedroom in the back of the house.

  When Dan entered the room, he saw Bix looking at the photos on the mirror.

  “I guess this is our man,” Dan said.

  He looked in the drawers, the nightstand and under the bed. Everything was almost too neat and organized. He opened the closet door and saw all of the clothes organized light to dark, short sleeve to long sleeve, work clothes to dress clothes.

  “Why would someone who lives in a place like this have a tuxedo?”

  “I don’t know, but move those clothes aside,” Bix said.

  Dan saw what Bix was looking at. There were shelves inset into the wall of the closet and there was a minuscule space between the wall and the shelves. Bix pushed it, and it opened into a short passageway. At the end of that short hall was a door.

  “Where do you think it leads?” Bix asked.

  “Turn out the light,” Dan whispered.

  Bix turned out the bedroom light, and Dan carefully opened the door, surprised that it was unlocked. He could see a very dim light coming from the bottom of a long, steep stairwell. Taking careful steps, he and Bix walked down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, Dan shone his flashlight around the room. It appeared there was no one in there. He found a light switch and turned on overhead fluorescent lights.

  Bix said, “Holy cow. He’s got a whole entertainment center down here.”

  Computers, printers, phones, two big screen televisions, and shelves of books and CDs lined every wall. In front of one of the TVs was a leather sofa. A refrigerator stood in one corner.

  “So much for rustic cabin,” Bix said.

  “Shhh! Listen,” Dan said turning his ear to the far wall where another door was located.

  He motioned for Bix to stand on one side of the door and he stood on the other. His hand was on the doorknob when he heard someone coming down the stairs. Seeing Levi coming down, he put his finger to his lips. Levi stepped to the side and stood behind a cabinet with his gun pointed at the door.