King's Ransom Read online

  King’s Ransom

  Sharon Sala

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  CHAPTER 1

  A fetid smell, an odor of liquor, rough ugly words, and promises of what he was going to do filtered through Jesse’s exhausted sleep. She heard a deep, rasping breath and knew it was not her own. Her heart stopped.

  He knew the moment she awoke, because he clamped his hand loosely over her face, pinching her mouth and cheeks, pushed the knife point against her throat, and told her not to scream.

  It was the wrong thing to say to Jesse LeBeau. She had never liked being told what to do. Her terrified scream erupted into the menacing silence of the room and later Jesse would remember thinking, tonight I’m going to die!

  His anger was evident as he growled an ugly threat and began to face what he had unwittingly unleashed. This wasn’t the way it was meant to happen.

  Jesse fought like a woman possessed as her constant screams and fierce struggle for possession of the knife threw the intruder into a frenzy.

  He felt the girl’s fingernails catch deep into the flesh of his cheekbone and rake the entire length of his jaw. He lost control of his emotions and the situation entirely, forgetting, in his fury, why he’d ever entered her house.

  “Bitch!” he yelled, and thrust downward over and over with the knife, only to connect with air or bedclothes. He struggled, trying to gain control of her flailing fists, and blanched as her knee connected with a tender part of his anatomy. That was all she was going to do to him. He would have no more of this catwoman. He raised the knife upward once again and suddenly his hand come away empty.

  There was no time for surprise as he felt the first thrust of the knife right above his shoulder blade. His wild shriek of pain only added to the confusion going on in his head. This wasn’t the way he’d planned any of this. Now he was on the defensive and fear overrode all his other emotions. He struck out wildly with doubled fists, trying to connect with the source of those damnable screams, but the ear-splitting sound of the woman’s fear and rage, and the constant pain in his chest and back were more than he could bear. He moaned softly and slumped forward heavily.

  Unaware of his near unconscious condition, Jesse continued to stab blindly at his dead weight as it forced her deeper and deeper into her mattress.

  Suddenly she was free! Somehow she’d managed to roll his still body aside. She crawled from the bed on hands and knees, still clutching the knife, still screaming. She ran on fear, unaware her attacker was not moving, imagining she could feel his hand on her shoulder as she dashed from her home in St. Louis and into the street. Her screams had alerted the entire block of her neighborhood, and she was vaguely aware of lights coming on in one house and then another. But no one came out to help her.

  It was the scream of the siren from the police car flying around the street corner that silenced Jesse. The psychedelic whirl of red and blue lights momentarily disoriented her and she staggered as it came to a screeching halt only inches from where she stood.

  “Lady, drop the knife,” the policeman ordered, as he stood with gun drawn behind the open door of his cruiser, uncertain about what kind of situation he was facing. All he could see was a very bloody woman with an oversized butcher knife.

  “Please,” Jesse begged, and started forward, unaware of the picture she presented with blood-covered night clothes and a knife in her hand.

  The policeman took a deep breath and ordered again, in a much louder voice.

  “I said, drop the knife!”

  Jesse looked stunned. What had happened to her world? She looked at the policeman’s face, the gun in his hand, and slumped to her knees on the pavement.

  “Here,” she whispered, and laid the knife on the ground in front of her. “Now will you help me?”

  * * *

  “Jesus, Captain!” the officer said, as they carefully walked through the house where the attack had taken place. “Look at all this blood. Looks like someone was butcherin’ a hog. And here,” he continued, as he pointed toward Jesse’s bedroom window, careful not to touch anything as the crime lab crew continued their sweep of the premises. “The bastard crawled out of the bedroom window, probably when the girl ran for help.” The streaks and smeared blood on the wall and windowsill made the man’s exit point easy to read.

  Captain Shockey was four years shy of retirement, short and overweight, a nondescript individual with a mind like a NASA computer. He could read a crime scene like a trucker reads a map. And it had been a long time since he’d seen anything like this disaster. This was a decent, family-oriented neighborhood, a comfortable, but unpretentious house. The victim was an elementary school teacher, and obviously meticulously neat. The bedroom looked like what he’d seen in Vietnam. Blood was on the walls near the window in an obvious spray pattern. He was guessing the girl had nicked one of the attacker’s veins. The bedclothes were torn from the bed, slash marks and pools of blood had seeped into the mattress. Bloody footprints went in two directions. The larger ones, wearing shoes, had staggered toward the window, the smaller, bare footprints were widely spaced, and led toward the hallway the girl had used to get out of the house.

  Shockey could tell by the distance between the little bare prints that the girl had been moving very fast. Hell, he would have been, too. How she had survived anything like this was beyond his comprehension. He knew his next stop would have to be the hospital to question the victim. He hated that part of the job because all it did was make them relive the terror. But it was necessary if he was going to catch the nut who’d done this.

  “Is she in any shape to talk?” he asked the officer.

  “Yes, sir,” he answered, as he stepped aside to let the photographer get a better shot of the bed and window. “I never saw anything like her. She’s not very big, can’t be more than three or four inches over five feet, but she’s all fire, and until we catch this guy, I don’t think her fire’s goin’ out. When I was talkin’ to her earlier, I felt like I was the one being questioned.” He grinned slightly at the captain’s raised eyebrows and sardonic expression. “Also, I didn’t see too many deep cuts on her, except for her hands. They looked bad. I think most of the blood on her belonged to the perpetrator. Hell,” he said, then swallowed hard as he looked away from the sharp gaze of Captain Shockey. “She took that knife away with her bare hands. I don’t know if I’d have had the guts to do something like that.”

  Shockey patted the young officer on the back—a rough, locker room pat—and answered.

  “You never know what you’re capable of, boy, until you face the wall. Check and see if there’re any family or next-of-kin to notify. She’s going to need all the moral support she can get. Come on, get cracking,” he urged. “We’ve got us a real bad one to catch this time. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find him dead. From the looks of this place, it’s possible.”

  “Yes, sir,” the officer answered, and watched Shockey rumble between the lab crew, side-stepping them like he was dodging fresh cow patties. If anyone could find the perpetrator, Shockey was the man for the job.

  * * *

  The sharp, persistent ring finally penetrated King McCandless’s deep sleep, and he rolled over in bed, taking a wad of bedclothes with him, as he fumbled for the clock. Then he realized it wasn’t the alarm after all; it was the phone. A deep, pulling sensation in the pit of his stomach brought him fully awake as he turned on the lamp and saw the green digital numbers on his clock. Nearly four in the morning
. Not the time for good news. Rolling over to a sitting position, he let his long, pajama-clad legs brace him as he grabbed the phone in the middle of another ring. Taking a long, slow breath, he let his deep, raspy voice break the silence.

  “Hello?” As he heard the male voice and the authority behind it, he shuddered unconsciously. It reminded him of the call he’d received when his father, Andrew McCandless, had died. “Yes, this is King McCandless.”

  He didn’t see his bedroom door open, or see the worried expression on the face of his housekeeper, Maggie West, as she shakily tied her robe around her plump stomach. Her long, gray braid hung over her shoulder and she pulled at it nervously as she watched King take the call.

  Maggie’s heart caught in her throat. She saw the blood drain from King’s face. It was bad news! She knew it. No good ever came of a phone ringing this time of the morning. She watched him nod, and repeat and address back to the person at the other end of the call.

  King slowly laid the phone in its cradle and buried his head in his hands, unaware of Maggie’s presence.

  “What?” she asked, assured of her right to know by her almost twenty years of service to the McCandless family. Her frantic tone of voice startled King.

  He turned, saw Maggie’s worried face, and had to swallow twice before he could speak aloud the horror he’d just absorbed.

  “It’s Jesse,” he whispered, and then had to clear his throat before he could continue. “Someone tried to kill her.”

  “Merciful God in heaven. Is she…is she hurt bad?”

  Maggie couldn’t stop the free flow of tears that sprang to her eyes. She’d put in ten years raising that child, too, even if she wasn’t a McCandless.

  Mike LeBeau and Andrew McCandless had been partners in the early 1960s and 1970s during an Oklahoma oil boom. When Mike had been killed on a drilling rig during an ice storm, Andrew had become Jesse’s guardian. She had only been twelve. Jesse was absorbed into the McCandless clan like she’d been born into it and she’d stayed happily, until two years after Andrew McCandless’s death. Then, for reasons known only to Jesse, she had quietly taken a job in St. Louis, Missouri, and never come back. They still kept in touch, but she’d gently refused all their invitations to visit.

  In answer to Maggie’s question regarding Jesse’s condition, King had to consider his words before he spoke. She couldn’t be in the hospital and be okay, but he didn’t know any details.

  “I just don’t know, Maggie,” King said, as he yanked the bedclothes away from his long legs with a jerk. “But I’m damn sure going to find out. Help me pack, will you? Don’t skimp on clothes. I don’t know how long I’ll stay. I just know I won’t be back without her.”

  Maggie’s nod of approval went unnoticed as King grabbed the nearest pair of jeans from his closet and headed for the dressing area of his bathroom.

  Relieved that there was something positive she could do, Maggie began emptying drawers of freshly laundered underwear, shirts, and socks into an oversized suitcase that King pulled from a hall closet. Between the two of them, King was dressed, packed, and on his way to Tulsa and the airport within the hour. If he was lucky, he should just about make the next flight.

  Steam was rising from the pavement as he pulled his car into a parking garage at the airport. It was already above 85 degrees and no relief from the mid-July temperatures in Oklahoma was expected.

  “Gonna be another hot one,” the parking attendant said, as he would to everyone he waited on that day. “Gonna park her long?” he asked, eyeing the opulence of the shiny black Lincoln.

  “I have no idea.” King fixed a hard, dark stare on the attendant. “But I expect it to be here when I get back.”

  “No problem. No problem with that at all, just so’s you have the parkin’ stub. Know what I mean? Can’t be givin’ these babies away to just anybody. No sirree!”

  King was distracted. He could have cared less about the car and allowed the attendant’s spiel to flow over him unheard.

  A trickle of perspiration ran slowly down his back as he raced to the ticket counter just in time to get his boarding pass. He wondered if the sweat was from the heat or from fear. Damn it all to hell and back, he hated to fly. He grimaced, took his assigned seat, and knew that only Jesse’s predicament could have persuaded him to use this method of travel. All he was concerned with was getting to her as quickly as possible.

  * * *

  An anonymous blue van was parked under the overhanging branches of a huge sugar maple. The motor was quiet, but no one would have noticed it anyway. Nearly every house in the area was shut tightly against the heat, with air conditioners going full blast. It was always hot this time of year, even at night, and no one was ready to lose sleep for a few dollars’ worth of electricity. Maybe later when they received their costly utility bills, but not yet. This was the reason no one saw a man staggering through the shrubbery, trying to make his way toward the van. And the houses were far enough away from Jesse’s that they wouldn’t have heard her screams for help.

  The man in the bushes was following the sound of the van’s running motor. He was so blinded by the pain in his chest and back he could barely focus. The clumsy duffle bag he was dragging behind him kept getting hung in the thick bushes.

  The driver fidgeted, glanced several times at the luminous dial on his watch, and knew it was taking far too long. How much time could it possibly take to subdue one very small woman, tie and blindfold her, and carry her less than a block through the alley?

  Just as he had started to exit the van to investigate, a police siren broke the silence of the night, and he nearly fell from the van door. When he caught himself, he also thought he could hear a woman screaming for help. Jesus Christ! he thought. I should have known that fool couldn’t pull this off. Instinct told him to leave, but he knew if the idiot was caught, he would be implicated in an instant.

  His meandering panic was interrupted. His heart thudded to an abrupt halt as he saw the stooped figure stumbling about in the hedge bordering the alleyway. He dashed toward him, thinking he would help carry the girl.

  “Oh hell! Oh hell!” the man moaned, as he fell into the driver’s outstretched arms. “Get me out of here.”

  “Where’s the girl?” the driver snarled, and grabbed hard at the man’s arm.

  “Aieee,” he shrieked, and then staggered backwards in pain. “I didn’t get her. But she hurt me. She hurt me bad. You’ve got to get me out of here and get me some help. I’m bleeding to death.”

  A long string of curses erupted from the driver’s mouth as he saw the blood. It was everywhere. The fool was covered in it, and even worse, had gotten it on him, too. Enraged, he shoved the wounded man toward the van, slid the side door open and shoved him and the duffle bag roughly toward the gaping hole. He slammed the door shut, not caring whether the man was completely clear of the door’s force. Hurrying to the driver’s side, he quickly concealed himself from any curious eyes. For two cents he’d finish the job the girl started and leave the fool for the street sweepers. But he didn’t. He was a careful man and decided to dispose of this garbage in his own way.

  “What in hell happened?” the driver snarled, as he turned up the opposite alley, driving as quickly as possible without alerting the neighborhood. It was only after he’d gone several blocks and turned onto a main thoroughfare that he’d turned on his headlights. “Can’t you do anything right, Lynch? You owed me, and this botched episode does not cancel anything. Do you hear me?”

  “Jesus, I’m hurt bad. You got to get me to a doctor. And it ain’t my fault things didn’t go right. You didn’t tell me what she was like. Dammit, man, I could have stuffed a tiger in a gunny sack easier than this. Hell,” he groaned, slumping lower into the seat he’d pulled himself into, “she shouldn’t have fought me. She made me mad.”

  “What do you mean?” the driver asked in a menacing whisper. “You didn’t hurt her did you? This blood all better be yours. You weren’t supposed to kill her, just kidna
p her. Answer me! Is she hurt?”

  “To hell with her,” he whined. “Just look at me. I’ll have scars for life, if I don’t bleed to death.”

  “You tell me now,” the driver snarled, and slammed the van to a screeching halt in the middle of a deserted street, “or I swear to God, I’ll finish what she started.”

  It was obvious to the injured man that his condition was less than important. He should have known not to get mixed up in something like this anyway.

  “She ain’t hurt hardly at all. Just a few scratches. I wasn’t trying to kill her,” he whined, and felt himself losing a grip on reality. “She just made me mad, that’s all. Now please, get me some help!”

  For a few moments, the van remained motionless. Then it accelerated slowly, as if the driver couldn’t quite decide what he was going to do. Finally it picked up speed and disappeared into the darkness.

  * * *

  Jesse had adamantly refused any kind of anesthetic that would render her unconscious. She wasn’t about to be put to sleep. The last time she slept, someone tried to kill her. She wasn’t going through that again.

  She welcomed the roughness of the warm, wet washcloth on her face. She knew the nurse was being as gentle as she could as she washed away the ugly traces of her ordeal.

  As the bloodstains disappeared, the fragile beauty of the young woman appeared—a heart-shaped face, thick, dark wavy hair just below shoulder length, and wide, sky-blue eyes above a near perfect nose with just the tiniest inclination to tilt. But there was no happiness to pull her soft, generous mouth into its usual smile. Jesse LeBeau was trying hard not to lose her mind and the only way she knew for certain she could do that was to avoid being put back to sleep.

  “Okay, little lady,” the doctor said, acquiescing to Jesse’s demands for only local pain-killers. “There isn’t that much to put back together. I think you can take it. After all, you’re a real toughie, aren’t you?” He kept up his banter, trying to take Jesse’s mind off the actual act of minor surgery that he was going to perform on her hands. “And, I do understand…okay?”