Part 3

Chapter 11: Thursday June 12 11:00 AM

It was almost eleven o'clock when I woke up the following morning. After a long shower I took the advice of the motel clerk and went back down to route 6 to the Eighteen Wheeler Restaurant to eat. The food was good and there was plenty of it. While I was eating I was able relaxed for the first time since this all started. This gave me the opportunity to clearly consider my options. I could try to turn myself into the police but I didn't know who on the Riverton Police Force I could trust. I thought about possibly turning myself into the Missouri State Police, but if I couldn't get them to believe my story they would just turn me over to the Riverton Police. The main reason for deciding not to go to the police was that I needed to find a way to protect Holly and I couldn't do that if I was dead or in jail.

I finally concluded that my only hope to clear my name and save Holly was to find a way to connect Big Tony and his gang to Holly's shooting and the attempt on Detective Olson's life. The idea came to me while I was thinking about what I had overheard the previous night at the farmhouse. The solution to my problem was the Sony ICD voice recorder I had purchased for work a few months earlier. If I could have recorded Big Tony and his men talking about what they had done or were planning to do, I would have had all of the proof I needed.

The recorder was small enough to fit in my pocket and powerful enough that when I set it on my conference room table I could record everything that was said during my staff meetings. It's capability of recording continuously for 280 hours made it ideal for what I was planning. The problem was that the recorder was in my briefcase, which was sitting in my house. Porky and Slim might still be watching the house and there was the possibility that the police might also be watching. My hope was that the police had been alerted to my banking and credit card activity down in Hannibal and would believe that I had left town. That should make them lose interest in my house. I was pretty sure that if the police thought that I had left town Big Tony would find that out from his sources in the police department.

I hung around Taylor until about three o'clock in the afternoon before starting back toward Riverton. I took my time on the ride and arrived in Riverton shortly after four o'clock. Once I got to town I turned west on Fifth Street Road and drove until I reached the Union Pacific railroad tracks. From there I drove slowly alongside the tracks until I was directly behind my house. I was about to do something that I had done many times when I was in high school. I used to sneak out of the house at night to meet up with my friends and then I would have to sneak back in when I went home. I was always afraid that my father would be waiting for me when I got home but I had never been as scared as I was at that moment. Between the tracks and the house was a large field overgrown with weeds and brush. Just like when I was in high school, I was going to crawl up through the field and sneak into my house. I was pretty sure I could get to the house without being seen but I wasn't sure what I might find waiting for me once I got inside.

I drove the bike up off the tracks into the field about twenty yards and laid it down. The house was still more than a hundred yards away but I sat down behind a clump of bushes and watched the house. When, after twenty minutes I saw no sign of activity I started moving up through the tall weeds and brush stopping occasionally to look for any sign that I was being watched. At the end of the field, twenty-five yards short of the house, I squatted down behind a large Forsythia bush and thought about my next move. From my hiding place I could see the police tape on the back door that leads into the kitchen. It was just inside that door that Holly had been lying in a pool of her own blood. I wasn't about to cut through the police tape and go in that way and I couldn't risk being seen going around to the front of the house and using the front door. I was left with only one option and that was to enter through the basement.

Most of the houses in my neighborhood were built in the mid-fifties and were constructed on concrete slabs. My house however, was the only house in the neighborhood with a basement. The man who built the house had an over whelming fear of two things; nuclear war and tornados so he built a basement that was a combination fallout shelter and storm cellar under the house. When my father bought the house he converted the basement into a game room complete with television and a pool table.

There are only two ways into and out of the basement. There is a door hidden inside the kitchen pantry that opens to a flight of stairs going down to steel door that opens into the basement and then there is an outside entrance on the north side of the house. There is a storm door that you have to lift up to get access to the stairs leading down to the entrance. The basement is completely below ground level and except for the door that covers the stairs to the side entrance, it can't be seen from outside the house.

After one last look around I ran the last twenty five yards to the house and retrieved the keys to the storm door and the basement door from their hiding place behind the left shutter on the living room window. After removing the padlock I lifted the heavy steel storm door and lowered it again behind me as I descended the stairs. With the storm door closed I was in complete darkness and had to feel my way down the last three steps and over to the basement door. With no light in the cellar way to help me locate the door lock it took me several minutes to insert the key into the lock and open the door.

Still in complete darkness, I moved slowly into the room until I bumped into the pool table. Visualizing the layout of the room and using the edge of the pool table as a guild I moved around the pool table until I was roughly opposite from where I had started. I moved away from the table, shuffling my feel and using my hands to feel for obstructions until I reached the wall. Moving along the wall to my right, using my hands to guide me I found the light switch. I turned the lights on and then flipped the switch on the intercom.

With the lights on I was able to relax for a moment. I sat down on the sofa in front of the television and took a few deep breaths. I knew that I was secure in this room. If anyone was upstairs they would not have been able to hear me moving around in the basement but with the intercom turned on I would be able to hear anyone moving around upstairs. I spent the next ten minutes sitting quietly and listening for any sounds from the intercom that would indicate that someone was upstairs.

When I decided that the silence on the main floor of the house was just as deafening as the silence in the basement I headed upstairs. I hesitated in the pantry for a minute before stepping out into the kitchen. There was slight metallic or coppery smell and the pool of Holly's congealed blood on the floor made my stomach turn. I wasn't sure I would be able make it out of the kitchen without vomiting. I turned my head away from the sickening sight and put my hand over my mouth and nose. Then, holding my breath I move quickly to my left and around the corner and out into the living room.

I wanted to sit and let my stomach settle down for a minute but I forced myself to keep moving. I went to my study, which was in the front of the house just inside the front door. I peeked carefully through the curtains and to my relief I saw no cars within two hundred yards of the house. Turning from the windows I notice that my briefcase wasn't where it should have been. I always put my briefcase on the floor on the right side of my desk when I got home from work but it wasn't there. It felt as if an icy fist was squeezing my spine as panic began to take control of my thinking. Where was my briefcase? Had the police taken it? I tried to think but I couldn't seem to concentrate.

Finally, sitting at my desk, I took a few deep breaths and managed to calm myself. I reviewed everything that happened on Tuesday from the time I left work until I found Holly on the floor in the kitchen. Then it came to me. I hadn't brought my briefcase into the study. I dropped it and the bag from JC Penney's on the sofa in the living room before I went into the kitchen and found Holly.

I sprang from the chair and ran to the living room but the briefcase wasn't there. The bag from Penney's was also missing. The panic I was feeling a couple of minutes earlier was back. Now I was sure the police had the briefcase. I started walking around the house with no real objective in mind when I saw it. My briefcase was sitting opened on the dining room table. I was almost afraid to look inside because I wasn't sure if I could handle it if my recorder wasn't in the briefcase. It was.

Over the next half hour I fixed myself a cheese sandwich and got a bottle of diet Pepsi from the refrigerator. I ate it in my study while watching out the window for police cars or any other cars that didn't belong in the neighborhood. After eating I put a new battery in my recorder and then slipped it into my pocket. I also grabbed a small flashlight from my desk drawer before returning to the basement, leaving the house the way I had entered and locking the doors behind me.

Chapter 12: Thursday June 12, 5:30 PM

I retrieved the bike and rode back along the tracks to Fifth Street Road and then headed toward town. I turned on Industrial Drive and then onto Commerce Road and eventually ended up on Rayburn Road. When I found the fence gate where I had exited the Cheswick property the night before, I stopped and walked the bike through the partially opened gate. I rolled the bike up behind some bushes where it wouldn't be seen from any cars that might come along on Rayburn Road and then I stashed the helmet and riding leathers with the bike and started walking toward the Cheswick house.

When the house was in sight I could see that there were no cars in the driveway. I moved off the farm road so that the barn was between the house and me. When I got to the barn I peeked in the window and saw that my Mustang was the only car in the barn. I was reasonably certain that no one was in the house but I tied to say out of sight as much as possible as I approached the house. When I got to the back of the house I hide behind the propane tank for a minute while I listened for any sound that would indicate that someone was in the house. Hearing nothing I moved over to the door for the old coal chute and lowered myself into the cellar the way I had the previous night. Again I listened for any sounds in the house but heard only the sound of my own breathing.

Using the flashlight I was able to find my way out of the coal bin and up the cellar stairs in less than a minute. I paused again at the kitchen door and listened to the empty house. Hearing nothing, I pushed the kitchen door open slowly and peek inside. The room was empty. Well not actually empty. There were no people in the room but the sink was full of dirty dishes and the table was covered with empty beer bottles and full ashtrays. Once inside kitchen I started looking for a good place to hide my recorder. I had to be sure that I wouldn't miss any of their conversations. I found the perfect place above the kitchen window. The window had venetian blinds and curtains. Standing on a chair I was able to place the recorder on top of the venetian blinds and hide it behind the ruffle on the top of the curtains. With the recorder in place and turned on I walked around the room talking and then listened to what I had recorded. It was perfect. The recorder picked up everything. I erased what I had recorded and then set the recorder for voice activation and placed it back on top of the blinds. After checking once more to make sure it couldn't be seen I headed for the back door.

My plan up to that point was working. My problem was that I didn't know how I was going to be able to retrieve the recorder. I had decided that I would watch the house from behind the barn until Big Tony and his guys showed up at the farm house and then I would have to look for an opportunity to go back into the house to get the recorder. Worst case, I would call Detective Olson and try to convince him over the phone that he should go to the farm house and question Big Tony and his men. I figured I could trust Olson because if he was one of the cops Big Tony was paying something would have been said about it after Porky shot him.

As weak as my plan was it never had a chance. I was just about to open the back door when a black Lincoln Town Car came down the driveway followed by the red Camry and a white Ford Torus. I ran across the kitchen to the cellar door. I think I actually only touched two steps on my way down the stairs to the cellar. Once again I took my position under the cellar stairs so I could hear what was going on upstairs.

In the silence before they entered the house I could hear my own heart beating in my chest. Moments later I heard several people coming into the house but no one was talking. It wasn't until after I heard the door close that anyone spoke.

"So what do we do now Boss?" This was a voice that I hadn't heard the last time I was in the cellar. "The cops don't know where he is, so how we gonna find him?"

"We sit tight. Maybe those numb nuts cops will find him. Either way that bitch dies tonight. Tomorrow Bean, you and Pug will take Blanchard's car down to St. Louis and dump it somewhere."

"How ya gonna do her widout them come lookin for us?" Sounded like Porky.

"We got a guy, a nurse, on night shift at the hospital. He's gonna pay her a little visit around three o'clock in the morning and give her a shot of insulin. Nobody will notice because she is already in a coma. She'll be dead before morning and it will look like she died from her injuries."

The feeling of panic was back. Suddenly, my only option was to call Olson before they had a chance to kill Holly but there was no way I could get out of the house during daylight with all of them sitting upstairs. I was going to have to wait until dark before I could do anything. So I just sat and listened, hoping that my recorder was getting everything they said.

"What if they do one of them autopsy things on her?' I think it was Slim talking. "Won't they find out about the insulin?"

"Maybe, but we'll be long away from here before that happens," Digger said. Our friend in the hospital is going to drop Blanchard's cell phone under her bed. Make it look like Blanchard paid her a visit. If they discover the insulin in her system the coppers will think Blanchard went to the hospital to finish the job."

"Oh, right. Good plan." Porky said.

"I am so glad you approve since it's your fault we're still here. If you and Bean hadn't fucked things up in the first place we would be back home by now," Big Tony said.

"Bean?"

"Yeah Boss."

"I want you to go into town and get some Chinese food," Big Tony said.

"Can't we have it delivered?"

"What, are you fuckin brain dead? Nobody knows we're here and I want to keep it that way."

Once Slim left to get their food the conversation changed to subjects not important to me so I tuned them out while I tried to plan my escape. With the gang chatting away upstairs I felt safe to explore the cellar. Using the flash light I brought from my house I searched to see if there was an easy way to get out. After a quick look around it was obvious that there were only two ways to get out of the cellar. Go upstairs through the kitchen, which would be suicide or climb back out through the coal chute door.

The coal chute presented its own problems for me. The bottom edge of the chute was a little over two feet above my head, which meant that I couldn't just open the door and crawl out. The chute door opened inward so even if I could pull myself up onto the ledge I wouldn't be able to open the door. I needed to stand on something so that I could reach the chute door.

I began another search of the cellar. In the far corner on the opposite side of the cellar I found an old wooden crate that looked as though it would suit my purpose. I brought the crate over to the coal bin and set it on the floor below the coal chute. I carefully put one foot on the crate and slowly lifted my weight onto it to make sure it would not break when I attempted to climb out of the cellar. The crate was strong enough to support me and I was able to reach the chute door.

When I was standing on the crate I noticed another problem. There were two pipes that ran parallel to the coal chute and were hanging from the floor joists about a foot out from the opening. One was a one inch galvanized pipe and the other was a one inch flexible pipe. I figured the galvanized pipe was the water supply and that the flexible pipe was probably a conduit for the electrical wires. The pipes hadn't been in my way the two times I came in through the coal chute but I thought that they might be a problem on my way out. I would have to be careful not to bump or kick the pipes because the noise would probably be heard upstairs.

I had my escape plan, now all I had to do was wait until dark. It was almost six o'clock so I had about another three and a half hours before it would be dark enough outside for me to attempt my escape.

Chapter 13: Thursday June 12, 9:35 PM

For more than three hours I sat on the cellar floor under the stairs and listened to Big Tony and the other scum bags talk. Bean had returned with the food and I could smell it in the cellar. If my recorder was doing its job I would not only have proof of my innocence but proof of other crimes Big Tony had committed. I heard Digger tell a story of how he and Big Tony shot two guys from another mob gang and dumped their bodies in a swamp a few miles south of the Meadowlands Sports Complex in New Jersey. If I lived long enough to get the recording to the police, Big Tony and his boys would be in a world of shit.

I spent a good bit of my time in the cellar trying to figure out why these assholes wanted Holly and me dead. I had never heard of Big Tony or any of the others before so what possible reason could they have to kill us? In all of the conversations I overheard, not once did I hear anything that would explain their murderous intentions toward us.

At 9:35 PM I decided it was time to make my move. I knew it wouldn't be as dark as I would like, but with the lights on in the house it should be dark enough outside that they wouldn't be able to see me running through the back yard. I hoped.

When I stepped onto the wooden create my heart was pounding so hard I was sure it could be heard by the criminal brain trust sitting in the room above me. I tried to calm my nerves by taking several deep breaths but only succeeded in making myself dizzy and I nearly feel off the crate. When the dizzy spell passed I lifted the chute door with my left hand and held it opened far enough so that I could get my head and shoulders under the door. I had to let the door drop down onto my back so that I could pull myself through the opening. I had managed to pull myself halfway out of the chute when my forward progress was stopped. The chute door had closed down against the back of my legs and the more I tried to move forward the more it cut into my legs. It was like being stuck in a Chinese finger trap. I began to panic when I thought that I heard someone open the back door and an image of Big Tony and the boys standing over me as I lay trapped halfway out of the chute opening flashed through my mind. I held my breath and waited but no one came out of the house.