Chapter Eight: Walking right into a Trap
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“Y |
ou sure that you can’t tell me anything else, honey? Nothing else that will help us catch the creep that did this to you?” Detective Rena Knight leaned gently over the gurney of Zaniya Perkins, who’d been rushed promptly from the hotel to Great Northern Memorial Hospital, just a few short blocks away.
“I’m sorry Detective Knight, but I don’t know anything else.” Rena sighed. This was what made her job so difficult.
“Miss Knight, I’m afraid that you will have to leave now. The patient needs to be sedated and sent upstairs to a room. Doctor’s orders.”
“Just give me a couple of more minutes, please? I’m only doing my job.” The heavyset nurse frowned.
“Two minutes, that’s it.” Bitch! Rena wished that she could’ve taken a nearby wheelchair and hurled it at the woman, but that was totally irrational, and not to mention stupid. She turned her attention back to the young woman lying on the gurney in front of her. Zaniya had a huge bandage covering a cut over her left eye, and another bandage covering her hand, where she’d tried to fight off her assailant. Luckily, he’d given up before he could do more damage.
“Zaniya honey, did he say anything to you? Did he have a distinctive voice?”
“Um…wait! I remember now! He smelled real funny.”
“Like what?” Rena scribbled some notes on her pad.
“Like burn salve or something. My grandmother used to rub it on my ears before pressing my hair when I was a little kid.”
“Burn salve huh?” Rena wrote that down. She learned in her years on the job that no clue, no matter how seemingly insignificant, should not go ignored. She knew of one incident where a man was indicted for murder simply because he left a piece of chewed up gum at the scene. Burn salve though, was new territory for her.
“Your time is up, Miss Knight. Let’s go.”
“All right, all right, I am going!” Rena threw up her hands in disgust.
“Wait! Detective Knight?” Rena stopped and turned around.
“What honey?”
“Please tell Miss Ryan that I’m okay.”
“I will, sweetheart. That will make her day.” Rena then scowled at the nurse and stepped outside of the curtain. She met Joshua in the waiting room.
“Any luck with a description of the attacker?” he asked.
“Read this,” she said, thrusting her small notebook at him. Joshua scanned her notes.
“A man in a black outfit and a gauze mask that smelled like burn salve? Great. Some weirdo running around attacking young girls. Never a dull moment in this job.”
“At least he didn’t hurt her badly. The doctor just wants her to stay overnight for observation. The question is, what do we do now?”
“I’m going to stick around here awhile longer. I want to talk to her parents.”
“If it’s okay with you, I am going to head on home. This has been an exhausting night.”
“You look tired. Go on home and get some rest.”
“Oh Joshua, have you heard from Eric? I know that we left him and Rick back at the hotel looking for the creep.”
“No, I haven’t, but I’m sure that he’s okay. I’ll make sure that I stop back by there and pick them up.”
“Thanks. Tell Eric that I will see him at home.”
“Will do. Night, Rena.”
“Night.” She stepped outside the entrance to the ER and pulled her coat tightly around her. What a night! What started out as a really great party had ended in disaster. Ugh! She went out to the curb and put out her hand to hail a cab. The first three were full and passed her by, but then one slowed down and pulled over.
“55th and Hyde Park Drive please,” she told the driver.
“Yes, ma’am,” the man replied. Rena sat back in the cab and closed her eyes. She yawned. All she wanted right now was to go home, get out of her gown, take a nice long bubble bath, slip into a sexy chemise, and wait in bed for Eric to come home. She started to drift off into a dozing sleep until she felt a huge bump underneath her. The sensation jarred her enough to make her open her eyes. She looked around. They were not heading south towards Hyde Park at all. They were near the north branch of the Chicago River, where many warehouses for large companies were still in operation, and a little bit of industry still remained.
“Excuse me, where are you taking me?” The screen dividing Rena from the drive had been closed.
“Hey! Can you hear me? I’m a cop! Turn this thing around right now!” The screen opened, and the man turned around and slapped her so hard that she fell against the back window, stunned. He pulled over to a dark alley and got out. Rena fumbled in her purse for her gun.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said in a low and cold voice. She looked up and found herself staring at a long, shiny needle attached to a syringe.
“What the hell is that? What do you want from me?”
“Put the gun down, Detective Knight.” Rena raised her gun at him.
“No! You put that needle down and get your ass face down on the pavement, that’s what you’d better do!” He raised his hands above his head.
“All right, all right! I don’t want any trouble, okay? Just don’t shoot me.”
“On the ground now! Keep your hands where I can see them!” Rena got out of the cab slowly, keeping her gun pointed at the cab driver as he got on his knees.
“Put the needle down!” He lowered the syringe to the pavement.
“Who are you? What do you want? Answer me!”
“I have what I want, Detective Knight.” Just then, four men rushed at her from behind the dumpsters. She aimed her gun, ready to shoot, when suddenly, one of them came at her from the back and tightened a rope around her neck. Rena dropped her gun as she tried to clear her own airway. Then another man rushed at her and sprayed something in her face that blinded her, and then knocked her out. She fell limply to the ground.
“Nice work, fellas,” the cab driver said.
“Yeah, the Dark Knight and Mr. Vanzyl should be happy. We’ve got all of the girls now.”
“Tie her up quickly, before she wakes up!” One of the men picked up Rena’s limp body and threw her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
“This is one cop who’s just solved her last case,” he chuckled as he pulled out the ropes and cloth.
* * * * * * *
“Try it again! Hit it harder!”
“Ouch!” Eric sucked his knuckles as they throbbed with pain.
“Sorry about that, brother. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but I think that every minute we spend in here, that’s one more minute that our girlfriends could be in serious trouble.”
“Your girlfriend and my sister. Rena’s at the hospital with Josh. Nothing could happen to her.”
“Hand me that pipe. That’s just what I need.” Rick looked down and picked up the heavy lead pipe and handed it to Eric. Eric took it, and with all of his force, pounded at the escape hatch. Four hits got him nothing. Then on the fifth hit, the door finally cracked and opened slightly.
“I’ve got it! It’s open!” Eric pushed up with his hands and the door opened into what looked like an air duct. He pushed the pipe in front of him to use as a weapon, and then he pulled his body through the escape hatch.
“It’s a way out! Come on man, give me your hand!” Eric reached down and Rick climbed off the metal ladder and into the air duct.
“Now, which way?” he asked.
“We just crawl until we see some light, and that should lead to an exit. Don’t worry, I’ve got this in case we run into some stuck vents.” Eric crawled along, with Rick at his heels. The duct was very warm, but they hardly had room to turn around and take off their tuxedo jackets.
“Rick! I see light!” Eric took the pipe and banged at the nearest vent. It only took one bang before the vent came loose. He stuck his head out.
“We’re in luck. We’re in the side of a wall next to the floor.” Eric climbed out. Rick followed him. They were standing in the lobby of the hotel.
“Eric, you’re a genius!”
“And not a minute too soon! Joshua! Joshua, over here!”
“Hey, what happened to you two? You’re a mess!”
“Man, it’s a long story. We were chasing some creep dressed in black who had Autumn, and he locked us in the boiler room,” Rick explained.
“Dressed in black? Did he have on a white gauze mask?”
“Yeah, that’s him,” Eric said.
“Oh shit! That’s the man that Zaniya said attacked her.”
“And he’s got Autumn!” Rick said.
“Did you all see where he went?”
“He just left us locked in that boiler room, that’s all we know,” Eric said.
“I’ve got to call for backup. He might still be in here.”
“Fat chance of that,” Rick said. “He’s probably too smart to be sticking around.”
“Joshua, where is Rena? Why isn’t she with you?”
“She went home. She said that she was exhausted, why?”
“I’m just worried. Have you heard from Caitlin or her mother since they took Zaniya to the hospital?”
“No, I told Caiti that I would call her once this mess was over for the night. She’s probably at your mom’s,” he said to Rick. Eric stepped away to dial his apartment on his cell phone. He got the voice mail.
“Rena’s not home yet. What time did she leave the hospital?” Joshua looked at his watch.
“Jeez, gotta be over an hour by now.”
“It would only take her twenty minutes, thirty tops, to get home from here.”
“Could be traffic, could be that she’s in the bathtub, and I don’t believe a word I just said.”
“Fellas, all right, let’s not panic here. Rick, are you absolutely sure that you saw some man run off with Autumn?”
“Here’s her shoe,” Rick said, pulling the lost shoe from inside his jacket.
“All right, we’ve got an APB out on this man, whomever he is. He couldn’t have gotten far in this little amount of time.”
“I’m calling my moms. I just want to make sure that she and Caiti are all right.” Rick dialed his mother. He got her answering machine. He called her cell phone and again, got no answer.
“My moms isn’t answering the phone!”
“Call Caitlin. Maybe they went to her apartment,” Eric suggested. Rick did. There was no answer.
“I don’t like this at all,” Joshua said in a concerned voice. “We can’t get in touch with any of the ladies, and some idiot is running around here loose.”
“Did anybody around here see anything at all?” Rick asked.
“I’ve already asked,” Joshua said. “Nobody saw anything unusual except you two rushing down a service entrance stairwell.”
“Wait a minute! We didn’t cover every inch of that boiler room. Maybe the girls could be down there somewhere.”
“Come on man! We called and called and we didn’t get an answer,” Rick said.
“How could they answer with gags in their mouths?” Eric retorted.
“All right fellas, come with me. We’re going to find our girlfriends if it takes all night.”
Joshua led his charge down the same service entrance that had led Eric and Rick to their puzzling fate just hours earlier.