The third degree, p.7
The Third Degree, page 7
“How did you know?” asked Roberta.
“He call me. He say not to have my friends make trouble. I tell him, he start the trouble. Thank you for trying. I see you girls are fighters, too.”
Then Mrs. Santos drew in her breath and slapped her knees. “It is time for me to sleep,” she said, getting up again. “Buenas noches.”
She went into the house. Through the screen Mollie heard her speak to Johnny briefly in Spanish.
Soon Johnny returned to the porch. In his hands were three bottles of insulin. “I hope this isn’t all he brought with him,” Johnny said.
Roberta looked at Mollie. “We’d better pray it’s not,” she said. “Otherwise Jaime is in big, big trouble.”
CHAPTER 11
“Hello, operator,” Mollie said. “I’d like to make a collect call.” Earlier that morning she’d checked the messages on the answering machine at her home.
There had been a call from Sherman asking if they’d discovered anything and one from Meredith wanting to know the same. And her parents had called six times. Four times it was her mother. The last two times were her father.
“Mollie dear, your mother is becoming concerned because we can’t reach you. Please call the number we left and let us know you’re all right. That’s not a request, it’s an order. Talk to you soon.”
Mollie held the phone to her shoulder while she waited for the hotel operator to ring her parents’ hotel room. “No sense telling them where I really am. They’ll just worry, and it’ll ruin their vacation,” she said to Johnny and Roberta, who were eating at the kitchen table. Mrs. Santos had left them a note saying to help themselves to breakfast; a friend had picked her up for a daybreak visit to the spaghetti sign.
“Mom, hi!” Mollie spoke into the phone. “Everything’s great. Sorry I keep missing your calls. Hang on a minute, Mrs. Dempsey is at the door.…” Mollie walked across the kitchen to the screen door, which led into the yard. She opened the door and waited a minute before letting it slam. Then she walked back to the phone. “She wants to borrow the hose. Is that okay?” she asked her mother. “It’s okay, Mrs. Dempsey,” she shouted toward the door. “Hang on again, there’s some … Pirate, no! Pirate just knocked over your peonies on the porch. I’ll fix ’em. I promise.… You won’t be able to tell.… I’ve got to go. I hope you’re having fun. Bye.”
Johnny laughed as Mollie hung up the phone. “You lie like a rug! I mean that as a compliment.”
“Thanks, I think,” Mollie said. “The truth is, I did all that so I wouldn’t have to answer too many questions and tell too many lies.”
“Johnny’s right,” Roberta said. “That was an awesome performance. Remind me never to believe a word you say again.”
“Give me a break.” Mollie sat down at the table. “It was for their own good. And for mine, it’s true. If I told them the truth, they’d either tell me to go home, or they’d come and get me themselves. And I can’t quit this until we find Jaime. At least that.”
“Admit it,” Roberta said. “You want to bust the Teraults and get those bikers off Mrs. Santos’s land.”
“I guess,” Mollie admitted. “Jaime is the important thing, though. I called Sherman and Meredith before you guys got up. They said they’d be glad to dig up whatever info they can find.”
After breakfast Roberta took Fathead and headed out for the Lost Camp Nursing Home. Mollie tied Pirate up with a long rope and set out dishes of food and water for him. Then she and Johnny got on his motorcycle and rode toward Hierro Canyon.
When they came to the locked gate, Johnny pulled off the road. He walked his bike into a patch of thick bushes.
“Are we being surreptitious?” Mollie teased.
“No, this is just plain old sneaky,” Johnny replied, smiling.
“Oh,” said Mollie. “Just checking.”
They walked back to the no-trespassing sign, when suddenly Mollie saw a man step out from a bank of trees ahead of them. Johnny saw him at the same time. Without conferring, they both dived behind a medium-size boulder nearby.
Another man and two women followed the first man out of the trees. Each of them carried a large butterfly net. “They don’t exactly look dangerous,” Johnny observed as the foursome ambled happily along.
“They’re not,” Mollie said. “I forgot to tell you one detail of the story last night. So if we run into anyone, our official excuse is that we’re trying to find the wallaby.”
“We’re what?”
“Trust me.”
Mollie and Johnny crept out of their hiding place and continued down the road. Two women in housedresses, one with her hair in pink curlers, the other a teased bleached blonde, walked toward them. “Hello there. We’re just looking for the wallaby,” Johnny chirped cheerily.
“Good luck,” said the woman in curlers.
“We’ve been out since dawn,” said the bleached blonde. “Haven’t seen a sign of the little guy.”
“Amazing,” Johnny said.
“See, I told you to trust me.” Mollie told him all about Jocko and the reward money.
“This story keeps getting weirder by the minute,” Johnny commented.
“You noticed that too, huh?” Mollie said.
“You know what else I noticed? Nobody seems too concerned about that no-trespassing sign.”
Mollie considered this a moment. “Maybe they didn’t come in that way. Charlie and Amel told us that there are lots of different ways into the canyon. Also they told us that there never used to be a sign there—or a gate. If these people are locals, they’re probably used to taking this road.”
“Then how come that catnip creep isn’t out here chasing them away?”
“It could have just been bad timing on our part,” Mollie speculated. “Maybe he happened to be driving up the road right then.”
“I guess we’ll find out,” Johnny said.
The two of them walked until they heard the sound of rushing water. “Let’s check it out,” Mollie suggested. “Since Jaime was fishing, we might as well look for him near water.”
They spotted a narrow, overgrown dirt path that seemed to lead in the direction of the noise. Climbing down a rocky slope, they soon came to a fairly wide creek.
Four large signs, printed by hand in dripping red ink, decorated the shore. DANGER! NO TRESPASSING BEYOND THIS POINT! WE ARE SERIOUS! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Mollie.
“Are you thinking that the town of Lost Camp should hire some new sign painters? What a mess!”
“No!” Mollie said. “I’m thinking that Jaime would take these signs as a challenge. Even if he hadn’t intended to fish here originally, he’d do it just because these signs annoyed him. He’d consider it an insult to be kept off his own family’s land.”
“Oh. Yeah,” Johnny replied. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
“You were not.”
“How do you know? What are you now, a mind reader?”
“Come on,” Mollie said, shaking her head and moving up along the creek. “I’d be afraid to read your mind. Too weird.”
“That’s right. And don’t forget it,” Johnny said, following her. About ten yards up the creek, he knelt and picked up a broken fishing pole. “Think this is Jaime’s?”
Mollie felt herself go pale. “Why is it broken? And why did he leave it behind?”
“Just chill a minute.” Johnny put his arm around her. “Let’s think.”
“I am thinking. That’s why I’m so scared for Jaime. If his pole broke by accident, he might have left it behind, but he’d have taken the reel with him. Those things are expensive.”
Johnny detached the reel and put it into his jacket pocket. “Well, we’ll take the reel for him now. Don’t worry. Jaime’s okay. We’ll find him.”
They continued along the path until it ended in a patch of brambles about a hundred yards from where they’d first come upon the creek. Squinting into the sun, they saw that the path seemed to pick up again along the right-hand side of the creek.
“Take off your pants,” Mollie ordered.
Johnny’s eyes went wide. “Mollie, I was hoping that someday this moment might come. But here? Now?”
She knew Johnny was teasing, but Mollie blushed nonetheless. “That’s not what I mean, Chelios, and you know it! We have to wade across the creek if we want to get to the other side. I’m wearing shorts, but … I don’t care. Get your jeans soaked.”
His eyes bright with laughter, Johnny unzipped his pants.
“Oh, my gosh!” Mollie cried.
“Impressive, eh?” Johnny said. Under his jeans Johnny had on dark-blue boxer shorts with a bright yellow-and-red diamond pattern.
“I’d have never thought you were the boxer-shorts type, not in a million years.”
“I’m flattered that you’ve given my underwear that much thought,” Johnny said as he kicked off his sneakers and stepped out of his jeans. “But, hey, I can read J. Crew catalogs, too. I know what’s stylish. And you never can tell what a day may bring. A guy’s got to look good under any circumstance.” He tossed his jacket to the ground and then gestured toward the creek. “Shall we?”
The water was icy, but they slogged along the rocky bottom for about fifty yards. Johnny was just a foot ahead of Mollie, when suddenly he held his hand up for her to stop. Creeping up just behind him, she put her hand on his shoulder and looked over it.
Tied to a tree on the shore by a long running line was a short, squat dog asleep in the sun. “There’s another pit bull on a line just behind him, too. See?” Mollie said quietly.
“What’s that stuff behind the dogs?” Johnny asked.
“Corn,” Mollie replied immediately. “Trust me—I’m from Iowa. But I don’t get it. Corn is a valuable crop, but not so valuable that you set pit bulls out to guard it. And anyway, it should have been detasseled by now.”
“Man. You are such a hick.”
“I’ll bet you anything Jaime is over there,” she said, ignoring Johnny’s remark. “He could be hurt.”
“Or maybe he just met up with the bikers and they hit it off. Dudes like that are different around guys from what they are around chicks … um, girls … women, whatever. Jaime might just be chilling out with them.”
“I doubt it.”
“Aren’t you the one who says not to leap to conclusions?”
Mollie did recall saying that on a number of occasions. “This is different. My woman’s intuition tells me he’s there.”
Turning to her, Johnny slipped his arm around her back. “Okay, woman, we’ll listen to you.” He ran his hand along her cheek and lifted her face up to his. In a moment they were kissing, softly, gently. Then, not so gently. There was something about the sunlight beating on her. The rushing water.
Suddenly Mollie tensed and her eyes snapped open. “What was that?”
“Get down,” Johnny said.
Mollie stood a moment, listening. She heard the sound again. This time it was nearer.
“I said, get down.” Johnny pulled her into the freezing water. “Are you nuts? Those are gunshots!”
CHAPTER 12
“There,” Mollie said, pointing toward the Lost Camp Nursing Home from the back of Johnny’s motorcycle. “We’ll call the sheriff from inside.”
Johnny had been right about the gunshots. One of them had whistled past Mollie’s ear just as Johnny pulled her down into the creek. Keeping low, they’d made there way back to shore and then hurried back to Johnny’s bike.
Now they were zooming toward the first pay phone they could find.
Mollie hopped off the motorcycle as soon as Johnny pulled into a spot. Without waiting for him, she ran toward the front door. Johnny was right behind as the electronic door whooshed open.
“Oh, God! What is that?” Johnny grimaced, holding his ears as he looked at the ceiling.
“Muzak.” Mollie cocked her head. “The Thousand Strings doing ‘Yellow Submarine,’ by the Beatles.”
“Man. You know the strangest things,” Johnny said, following Mollie down the hall. As they headed toward the pay phone by the drinking fountain, they spotted Roberta coming toward them. She was wearing a white lab coat.
“You got the job, I see,” Mollie said.
“Sure did,” Roberta replied. “What’s wrong?”
Mollie explained about the fishing rod and the pit bulls, and the gunshots. “The sheriff has got to act now. Besides, Jaime has been missing for more than forty-eight hours,” she said, dialing the sheriff’s number.
“I don’t like the sound of this at all,” Roberta said anxiously.
When the sheriff’s department answered, Mollie asked to talk to Sheriff Ruiz. She was put on hold, and then a familiar, nasal voice came on the line. It was Sykes. Mollie explained the situation. She was surprised when Deputy Sykes agreed to take a drive up to the canyon to look around. “I wouldn’t be too concerned about the gunshots, miss,” he assured her. “Folks is always shooting at coyotes and varmints.”
“Well, someone mistook me for a varmint!” Mollie shouted into the phone. “I could have been killed.”
“You was trespassing, miss,” Sykes reminded her.
“Is that a capital crime now?” Mollie asked. “I didn’t know you could be executed on sight for that. If you don’t act on this, I’m calling the county police. And then I’m calling the county supervisor, maybe even the governor and—”
“I’m leaving right now,” Sykes said. “Just calm down.”
Mollie was red-faced as she hung up the phone.
“The governor?” Johnny said, smiling.
“I will, too.” Mollie spit out the words. “I’m about out of patience.”
“Speaking of patients,” said Roberta. “I’ve discovered a few things about the patients here.”
Roberta led them to the front desk. Behind it was an office. “Mrs. Johnson is out for the rest of the day,” Roberta explained. “She’s the head nurse. The minute she left, I went right into her office and did some snooping.”
Roberta pulled a manila folder from a file drawer and opened it onto the desk. It was full of newspaper clippings. “All these clippings are about the home being investigated for overmedicating and using excessive restraints on the patients. That’s why they started using those bracelets Cesar was wearing.”
“No offense, Roberta,” Johnny said. “But this doesn’t really have anything to do with us.”
“It does,” Roberta disagreed. “Because there’s more.” Roberta flipped on the computer on Mrs. Johnson’s desk. “I was able to break into the nursing home’s computer records.”
“Queen of the hackers strikes again,” Mollie said admiringly.
“Guess who owns this place?” Roberta asked.
Johnny and Mollie peered at the screen. “Dwayne Bascom!” Mollie read aloud.
“Yep,” Roberta said. “Good old Dwayne and some partner company named LandNet properties.”
“Wait a sec. Isn’t that the company Dayton Hughes owns?” Mollie asked, referring to Meredith’s sleazy but powerful uncle.
Roberta frowned. “I don’t remember.”
“I’m pretty sure it is,” Mollie said. “Anyway, go on.”
“The nursing home claims that they’ve reduced their tranquilizer dosages, but I checked, and they haven’t,” Roberta continued. “Some patients have even had their dosages increased.”
“What’s the connection?” Johnny asked. “Bascom owns this joint. People are getting too much medication. So?”
Roberta punched a code into the computer. “I didn’t get it at first either,” she admitted. “But I just kept hacking around until I found this.” The screen lit with a list of names and phone numbers. “This is a listing of all the outgoing phone calls made by patients here. It lists the phone numbers and the places to which the calls were made.”
“Yeah? And?” Johnny prodded.
“Okay,” Roberta said. “I printed out this list and circled the calls to the mayor’s office, the Better Business Bureau, the sheriff’s, and any county agencies. Then I pulled up a file on medication histories. I circled the names of people who had high or increased doses of medication.”
Roberta handed Johnny one paper with red circles around the phone calls. She handed the medication printout to Mollie. Johnny and Mollie put their heads together and studied both papers. “See a correlation?” Roberta asked.
“Oh, my gosh,” Mollie muttered. “The people who made the most calls to government agencies are the people with the highest medication.”
“That’s right,” Roberta confirmed.
“Man! This is diabolical,” said Johnny.
“I’ve been talking to people around here, too,” Roberta said. “They told me that in the last four years, local property taxes have soared. The bank reassessed every house in town, making everyone’s taxes go up. Senior citizens on fixed incomes couldn’t afford the increases. They were forced out of their homes. Lots of the old people had nowhere to go, and they landed right here.”
“That’s horrible,” Mollie said. “It’s as if they were kicked out of their homes, and now they’re being drugged and held prisoner.”
“Somebody wants to shut these people up. And they’re succeeding, too,” Johnny said. He looked toward the ceiling. Heavenly voices were singing an almost unrecognizable version of “Stairway to Heaven.” Johnny cringed. “This music must be part of the torture plot.”
“Tell me about it,” Roberta agreed. “I think I’ve lost a whole lobe of my brain since I got here.”
“Have you been able to talk to Cesar?” Mollie asked.
“Not yet, he’s been asleep all day.” Roberta snapped off the computer. “I did talk to one old guy, though. Come on, you should meet him.”
Johnny and Mollie followed Roberta out of the office and down the hall. She brought them to a room where a small, very old man sat gazing out the window. “Mr. McKusker,” Roberta said gently. “I’ve brought my friends to see you. Could you tell them what you told me?”
