Day One
July 21, 1952
Monday Morning
The graveyard of rusty hulks had an eerie patina even in the daylight. Everything was ancient-thirty, forty maybe even fifty years old. There was no evidence that anyone had visited the place in a long time. There were no pop cans or cigarette butts or empty rifle shells. It would be a great place for target practice or bonfires or to scare the high school girls after dark with ghost stories. If anything like that had happened in the last decade there was no evidence of it.
There were a couple of good options.
One was an old combine.
River almost decided on it until something farther back caught his eye.
It turned out to be an old wrecked truck of some kind. The hood was gone and the engine compartment was gutted all the way to the firewall. The wheels and tires were gone; the undercarriage sat squat on the ground. The interesting part was the cargo box, about half the size of an eighteen-wheeler, with closed double doors at the back.
The handle was rusted in place.
River worked at it with a rock and a rusty metal bar for fifteen minutes before it got enough motion to open. The door hinges were tight but not enough to keep the door from opening.
The inside was empty.
Eight or ten drainage holes in the floor would allow enough air for breathing. There might be a better place somewhere in the universe to hold a person captive but River couldn’t imagine where.
From the graveyard he headed to the target’s house on Clarkson, parking three blocks away and walking past it on foot, then down the dirt alley that ran behind it.
That’s where the cars got parked.
A few houses had small garages.
Some had overhangs.
Alexa Blank’s house had neither.
A dirt path was beaten through scraggly brown grass between the rear door and the alley.
This is how he’d enter, from the back, right up that path.
The house had two stories.
The bedroom would be upstairs.
He didn’t spend any time.
All he did was walk past, barely glancing at it. Two doors down he spotted an extension ladder on the ground near the house. Three houses farther down was a German Shepherd on a ten-foot rope.
It barked as River walked past.
Damn dogs.
The world didn’t need them.
Every one of them should be dead.
He’d take the woman tonight, sometime between one and two. That would give him plenty of time to get her to the graveyard in the thick of the night.
He’d be home before dawn.
He headed home, opened the padlock on the storage boxcar and stepped inside. From the inventory he assembled the goodies he needed-three lengths of chain, an ankle iron, handcuffs, rope, padlocks, a blindfold, two flashlights, and an assortment of miscellaneous items.
Everything went into an army backpack.
He relocked the boxcar with the backpack inside, then headed down to the grocery store. There he purchased enough non-perishable food to keep someone alive for a week-beans, tuna, spaghetti, cookies, crackers, bread, peanut butter, jelly, toilet paper, toothpaste, aspirin, soap, hairbrush, water, pop and the like.
Back home, all the grocery items went into the backpack.
Then he headed back to the graveyard, using the car this time. He parked on the shoulder two hundred yards down from the old abandoned road.
Wearing the backpack, he walked straight into the terrain until he was out of sight, then cut left until he intersected the dirt road.
The graveyard was just as he had left it.
He got everything situated, then sat down in the shade and went through tonight in his mind, playing out everything that could go wrong and outlining the best responses.