“Holy moly!” Larson exclaimed as he trained his light at his feet and saw a .44 Magnum revolver. It was huge. “This is our big break, Shug. Ollie’s gonna be thrilled. We might even get another K-9 officer for this find. Good boy, Shug!”
Hearing himself praised, Shug trotted back to Larson.
“Quit lickin’ the gun!” he scolded Shug, who ignored the command.
Larson pulled Shug away and wondered what he could use to pick up the weapon. He finally stuck his pen through the trigger guard and carefully lifted it. He held it up to the car lights. It was a Ruger Blackhawk, a very powerful handgun. He smelled the end of the barrel like they do on TV.
“It’s been fired!” Larson exclaimed; then he placed it in the Burger King bag he had on his front seat and hurried to radio the sheriff.
Larson’s hands shook as he grabbed the mic. “Unit Five to Unit One!” Larson used his best radio voice. He was dying to tell someone.
“Go ahead.”
“Sheriff, you’ll never believe what I…what Shug found over here!” he said as fast as he could.
“Hang on. I’ll be right there,” Ollie said matter-of-factly, hoping Larson understood what he was doing. In case the Beasleys were still at his office, Ollie didn’t want Elizabeth’s parents hearing an excited deputy describing what might be their daughter. He was thinking the worst.
“You don’t want me to tell you?” Larson was disappointed.
“No. I’m on the way.” Ollie looked for a place to turn around.
Twenty-five miles away at the sheriff’s office, Mrs. Martha O’Brien was on the edge of her seat. Her intuition kept her from saying anything.
Ollie had hit the brakes immediately upon hearing Larson’s report. He backed up thirty feet, found a wide spot in the Dummy Line to turn around, then headed to the camp.
Just past the reach of the Expedition’s headlights when Ollie stopped, in the center of the road, lay a black fleece jacket that was ripped almost in half. It smelled of perfume. Sheriff Ollie Landrum never saw it.
Mick slowly pulled into the Bama Jama Night Club parking lot. He recognized a few of the redneck locals’ trucks. Those same guys always patronized this fine establishment. They were mainstays in the late-night pool hall scene. Mick didn’t see Jake’s truck, so he decided to ride through once more, looking for any Mississippi tags. Maybe he has a new truck. This is stupid. Jake’s not here. He doesn’t play high-stakes poker, and he certainly wouldn’t call me for money. A car flew by at eighty-five miles an hour just as Mick started to pull out onto the road. “Jeez um! That was close!” Mick yelled at the idiot driver.
“This is crazy,” he said, then let out a deep breath. “Nothin’ makes sense.”
Mick carefully looked both ways, pulled onto the road, and headed home. He wanted to sit down, clear his head. His wife could help sort it out.
What had he heard? The words he remembered were Mick, Jake, club, and kill. He thought he had heard emergency. Maybe he had imagined that. The telephone connection had been awful, and he hadn’t been fully awake. Could it have been a hunting accident? Not that late at night. Mick smiled as he thought that, to Jake and any die-hard turkey hunter, killing a gobbler was an emergency.
It was beginning to get foggy in the low areas. Mick noticed that the sky was clear and the stars were out as he pulled into his driveway and parked. He lowered the tailgate and allowed Beau to jump down.
“Night, Beauregard, I’ll see ya in the mornin’.”
Beau wagged his tail as he watched Mick go inside. He then went to the corner of the porch, circled three times, and lay down on his monogrammed camo dog bed.
Mick’s wife was waiting up. Their two kids were sound asleep. She was flipping the stations between CNN and the Weather Channel. She got up when she heard the door open.
“Well…what’s going on?” she asked.
Mick hung up his coat and answered, “Nothing. Ollie thinks it was nothing, and he wants to wait till about eight in the mornin’ to call Jake’s house and check it all out.”
Mick sat on a kitchen chair and ran his hands through his hair.
“I don’t know…I don’t really know what I heard.”
“What about the blood?”
“Ollie thought it could be turkey blood.”
“Yeah? I didn’t think about that,” his wife responded. Clearly she’d been worrying about it.
“You huntin’ in the mornin’?” she asked, folding a quilt she had been using.
“Yeah…I better get some sleep. Maybe I can get an hour or so,” he said, again running his hands through his hair.
“Are you OK?” she asked, placing the quilt on the end of the couch.
“Yeah, I just can’t get it all straight in my head. The camp lights were on…even the heater was on…but no Jake. That doesn’t make sense.”
“Did Ollie take it serious?”
“I think so…I mean he and R.C. drove all the way out there and looked around. I suppose they know what they’re doing.”
“They don’t know Jake.”
Mick looked at her. She’s right. But what could I do? All I can do is go to sleep and hope for answers in the morning.
“I’m too exhausted for all this. I’m goin’ back to sleep.”
“It’s gonna be clear and cool in the morning, and it’s going to rain Monday. The president is vacationing at Camp David, and the stock market isn’t looking very promising.” Mick’s wife babbled like a TV news reporter.
Mick stopped, looked back at her, smiled, and said, “Come on, let’s go to bed, honey.”
Zach Beasley was a wreck. Lately there had been several abductions in the news, and the outcome was never positive. He tried to block that out of his mind and think of what he should do. How could he be proactive? Zach liked Ollie but wasn’t convinced Ollie was sheriff material. He’d give Ollie an hour, and then he was going to start calling people that he knew could make things happen. He checked to make sure the phone was working and sat down at the kitchen table to make his call list.
Zach decided to first call the chief of police in Livingston. He was a close friend. They belonged to the same Rotary club and both served on the school board. Yes sir, that will be my first call in fifty-two more minutes. Then I’ll call the district attorney of Tuscaloosa County. He knew he had a fraternity brother who was in law enforcement somewhere, but he couldn’t remember exactly where. If only he could think clearly. Zach took a deep breath, stared at the clock on the wall, and swallowed hard.
The silence in the house was killing him. Zach went upstairs to Elizabeth’s room, passing numerous photos of her along the way. He stopped at the picture of the family skiing in Steamboat Springs. His eyes misted thinking of how much fun they’d had. Replacing the photo, he trudged up the stairs. Walking into Elizabeth’s room made him break down and cry-her schoolbooks, her stuffed animals, and the hundreds of photos of her with her friends. He opened her closet door and breathed in deeply. She was his baby girl. His life. His greatest love. He had to find her. He sat down on the bed and sobbed into one of her sweaters.
Wiping his eyes with the neck of his shirt, Zach stood and went downstairs to start making phone calls. Elizabeth was way too important to him to play any political correctness game. Ollie would just have to get over it. Elizabeth had to be found at any cost.
Olivia Beasley sat in her car in the ER parking lot. She stared at the hospital. Tanner was in bad shape. She looked out at the stars and thought, God only knows where Elizabeth could be right now. “Please protect her,” she prayed as tears rolled down her cheeks. Elizabeth had been born in this hospital. Now Olivia was here hoping for some information that might help them find her. She took several deep breaths, attempting to calm herself. She made a plan to call a select few family member and friends to start a prayer chain. Her Prayer Warriors.