The Night Stalker_ A Novel of Suspense - James Swain [14]
The grove was surrounded by a seven-foot chain-link fence, with razor wire running across the top. I ran my flashlight over the chain link and looked for an opening. There wasn’t one. Another dead end. I started to leave, but Buster remained by the fence, pawing feverishly at the ground. He wanted to go through. I knelt beside him.
“Is that where they went, boy? In there?”
His tail wagged furiously, and his tongue hung out of his mouth. Of course they did, you idiot, he seemed to be saying. I put my hands on the chain link and pushed. To my surprise, it gave several inches. Someone had tampered with it.
I ran my flashlight up the metal poles the fence was attached to. On the pole to my right, a piece of wire caught my eye.
I pressed my face to the pole. So did my dog.
It was a twist tie, attached to the pole at waist height. There was another at the bottom, a third near the top. The twist ties held the fence together, which had been cut the length of the pole. It was a masterful job, right down to the ends being snipped to avoid detection.
I have carried a pocketknife since I was a kid. Pulling it out, I cut away the twist ties, and started to pull back the fence. I stopped myself. The grove was part of the crime scene, and had not yet been searched by the police. I needed to alert Cheeks, and tell him what I’d found. If I didn’t, he could have me arrested for tampering with evidence.
I took out my cell phone, and dialed the sheriff’s department’s main number. The call went through, and an operator picked up.
“Broward County Sheriff’s Department.”
I killed the call.
Cheeks had botched this investigation from the start. He had locked onto Jed Grimes, and had refused to broaden his investigation. As a result, Sampson had spent three days with his kidnapper when he might have been safely at home with his mother.
I slipped my cell phone into my pocket. I needed to search the grove and draw my own conclusions. Then I’d call Cheeks and tell him what I’d found.
And not a moment before.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Leashing my dog, I pulled back the cut fence and entered the grove.
The trees had been planted in rows approximately fifteen feet apart. I shined my flashlight on the ground covered in sugar sand. Two sets of footprints appeared before my eyes. One belonged to a man, the other to a small, barefoot boy. I followed the footprints into the grove, careful not to disturb them.
I heard rustling. There were animals nesting in those trees, snakes and raccoons and birds. I imagined the sounds scaring the daylights out of Sampson three nights ago, and I wondered what his kidnapper had said to keep him quiet. Maybe he’d told Sampson to cover his ears, or perhaps he’d briefly picked the boy up in his arms.
Fifty feet into the grove, I came to a clearing. Orange trees have a short life span, and the clearing was filled with dead trees, their brittle trunks piled up to be burned. Buster stiffened by my leg, and began to whine.
“What’s wrong, boy?”
Then I smelled it. Strong, like a skunk.
Something dead.
I let my flashlight roam. In the center of the clearing was a campfire ringed with blackened stones, in its center several empty cans. Next to the campfire, a sleeping bag lay on the ground, behind it a shopping cart filled with old clothes and plastic bags.
A vagrant had set up house in the grove. Perhaps he’d done it on the sly. Maybe he had an agreement with the grove’s owner to keep the orange trees maintained in exchange for squatter’s rights. That wasn’t uncommon.
Buster continued to whine, and I made him lie down. Then I heard something that I hadn’t heard before: a sharp buzzing sound, like an electric saw.
Flies.
I found the swarm with my flashlight. Several hundred hovered around a tree on the other side of the clearing, their fluttering wings making them look almost supernatural in the darkness.
I searched the tree with my flashlight’s beam. A pair of brown men’s shoes were the first thing I saw, toes pointed