“Don’t ruin the moment,” said Hannah. “Don’t give in to the static.”
“It’s Sue, it’s important” he replied. “Raft up with my boat.”
Ray answered and listened as they floated on the still water. He pulled his GPS from the deck and illuminated the screen.
“We’re about two miles south. I see the fire. It’ll take us about 20 minutes. Get all the resources in place. When I’m in position, I’ll text you. Come down the beach fast, lights and sirens, on. That should create enough of a diversion for me to make a move.”
“What’s going on?”
“Something bizarre. There was an apparent kidnapping, a possible hostage situation. We’re going toward that bonfire. Get my gun.” He leaned over Hannah’s boat, holding onto her deck lines, steadying the two kayaks, so she could pull open his back hatch cover. She passed him the dry bag and re-covered the hatch. Ray pulled the pistol from the bag and stuffed it in the top of his PFD. “We need to paddle fast. We’ll land where a stream dumps into the lake. We’ve been there before. Sue’s going to create a diversion, and I’ll see if I can get to the hostage. Stay with the kayaks until I yell.”
Ray and Hannah paddled furiously along the shoreline, 30 or 40 yards from the edge of the beach. As they neared the area of the bonfire, shots rang out. Ray paused, grabbed the phone, and hit Sue’s number. “Now Sue. Shots fired. Now.”
He paddled toward shore, releasing the spray skirt, grabbing his pistol as he tumbled from the boat and scrambled up the embankment, cautious at first, then fully standing up to survey the carnage. “Hannah,” he shouted. He held a flashlight for her as she quickly did a triage on the three gunshot victims.
“The guy in the trench is dead. That one,” she motioned, “may be salvageable. This one,” she said, soon after she began checking the woman on the ground, “has a sucking chest wound, and was severely beaten. I need your hand here.” Hannah pointed to the torn flesh with a flashlight. “Enough pressure to keep air from escaping. I’ll be back.”
Ray stayed in position, his hand covering the warm, slick flesh until Hannah and an EMT returned, took over and dressed the gaping wound. They loaded the woman onto a basket stretcher and trotted toward one of a collection of four-wheel drive vehicles waiting on the beach. The other shooting victim, clinging to life, was also quickly carried from the scene. Ray stood on a bluff above the dwindling bonfire, watching the receding lights.
Sue came to his side.
“What just happened?” asked Ray.
“It’s going to take some time to sort all this out. I don’t even know where to start. Probably there,” she said, shining the beam of her flashlight on the body in the trench. She half circled the body from above. Two eyes, unaffected by the glare, stared up at her.
It was almost light again when Ray caught up with Hannah Jeffers in green scrubs and a dark blue surgical skullcap.
“You were amazing,” he said, putting his arms around her. He felt her puddle against his body. They clung to each other for several moments, and then she pulled away.
“How’s my boat?” she asked.
“On your car. In my garage. How are…?”
“The woman, gunshot wound to the chest, broken rib from the bullet, tissue damage to the breast. But lucky as hell. The bullet was on a non-lethal trajectory. I can’t say about her eye yet. We’ll know a lot more when we wake her up. What do you know about her?”
“Very little at this point. How about the man?”
“Four wounds, two in the left shoulder, one to the gut, one to the groin.”
“Will he live?”
“Probably. The gut shot is the most problematic. He’s been in surgery for hours.” She hugged him again. “We’re both in desperate need of a shower.”
48
The noon rush was long over and the room was near empty when Ray and Sue sat down at a table far in a corner of the hospital cafeteria with Ken Lee Park.
“Thank you for believing me,” he said, half standing to shake their hands. “That was my first fear.”
“As soon as our dispatcher put you through to me, you sounded credible. And then when I checked the address you provided, the car with the broken window, blood all over the interior….”
“Did you have to force your way into the house?” asked Ken Lee.
“No, the garage door was standing open. Her assailant was in too much of a hurry or just careless.”
“How did you know she was in trouble?” asked Ray.
“She was wearing a satellite communicator on a lavaliere. It allowed me to keep track of her. It also had an emergency communicator on it. The device suddenly went dead. First I called, then I viewed her security cameras.”
“How did you know about the Hollingsford estate?” asked Sue.
“The people she had been watching; it’s a complicated story.”
“So start at the beginning,” said Ray. “Tell us about your friend. Why was she here?”
Over the next 50 minutes Ken Lee Park talked. He provided a carefully crafted tale of why Mackenzie Mason, née Caitlyn Hallen, had returned to Cedar County. He left out actions on his part or Mackenzie’s that probably violated state or federal law.
“So what did she intend to do to these men?” asked Ray, after Ken Lee had finished.
“That was probably the weakness in the plan. She didn’t know what to do. She wanted justice rather than revenge. She wanted them to go to jail, but didn’t think there was anyway they would ever be prosecuted. By yesterday she was ready to give up on the whole idea and fly back to California.”
“The cell phone, the one she left at Jim Moarse’s place….”
“The original intent of that device was to make sure that she could get the attention of local law enforcement if she was in trouble. As it turns out, it worked perfectly when she wanted you to find that crime scene.”
“How do you know about this stuff?” asked Ray.
“Corporate security and intelligence. This is what I do.”
“And Ms. Mason?” asked Sue.
“She works as a project manager for tech companies.”
“What’s the nature of your relationship with her?” Sue pursued.
“Good friends. She often employed my company in recent years. But our involvement was more than casual.”
“Why now?” asked Sue. “It’s been decades.”
Ken Lee ran his hands over the stubble on his face and head. “The death of her brother…I don’t how to explain it…the festering wound…which sounds too clichéd. But it was always there. She told me about his death soon after I got to know her. Every so often she would search for Sabotny. Finally finding him was the key to…well, the key to something. One day his name popped up. There he is back in Cedar County, living very openly. She needed to come back here. Try to figure out how to get some kind of retribution. I tried to talk her out of it. But that was what she needed to do, so I did my best to support her.” He looked from Ray to Sue and back to Ray. “What happens now?” he asked.
Ray shook his head. “I don’t know what the prosecutor will do with all of this,” he said. “In the end, circumstances suggest that Mason was acting in self-defense. As for Sabotny, if he lives, he’ll be charged with two murders, kidnapping, and a host of other things.”
“How about the death of Terry Hallen?”
Ray looked at Sue and back at Ken Lee.
“I guess I know that’s impossible,” he said, shrugging. “Sabotny managed to take out all the guys involved. The truth will probably never be known.” He paused briefly. “Having him in jail; I think that will be enough. She will be able to get some kind of closure.”
“Sabotny—did you do any background work on him?”
“You hear things along the way. On the plane last night I was thinking about that, thinking someone might be interested in him. I put a few things together. It’s just the surface, public info, gathered legally. But I think some of it might be of interest to all sorts of folks.” He reached into his shirt pocket and held out a thumb drive. “Is there anything else, Sheriff?”