The Scarecrow

“Stand up and turn around.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I said, stand up and turn around. Never mind what I’m going to do.”

He reluctantly did what he was told. If he could have turned his head a hundred eighty degrees to keep his eyes on Rachel, he would have. As it was, he must have been close to one twenty.

“I told you everything I know,” he offered desperately.

Rachel came up close behind him and spoke directly into his ear.

“If I find out differently, I’m going to come back for you,” she said. Holding him by the cable tie she pulled him around the wall into the workstation. She took a pair of scissors off the shelf and cut the binding from his wrists.

“Get out of here and don’t tell anybody what happened,” she said. “If you do, we’ll know.”

“I won’t. I promise I won’t.”

“Go!”

He almost slipped on the polished concrete when he turned to head toward the door. It was a long walk and his pride deserted him when he was ten feet from freedom. He ran those final steps, slid the door open and slammed it home behind him. Within five seconds we heard the motorcycle kick to life.

“I liked that move, throwing him down on the bed like that,” I said. “I think I’ve seen that before.”

Rachel offered a very thin smile in return and then got down to business.

“I don’t know if he’s going to go running to the cops or not, but let’s not take too much more time here.”

“Let’s get the hell out now.”

“No, not yet. Look around, see what you can find out about this guy. Ten minutes and then we’re out of here. Don’t leave your fingerprints.”

“Great. How do I do that?”

“You’re a newspaper reporter. You have your trusty pen?”

“Sure.”

“Use that. Ten minutes.”

But we didn’t need ten minutes. It quickly became clear that the place had been stripped of anything remotely personal about Freddy Stone. Using my pen to open cabinets and drawers, I found them empty or containing only generic kitchen tools and food packages. The refrigerator was almost empty. The freezer contained a couple of frozen pizzas and an empty ice tray. I checked in and under the dresser. Empty. I looked under the bed and between the mattress and box spring. There was nothing. Even the trash cans were empty.

“Let’s go,” Rachel said.

I looked up from checking under the bed and saw she was already to the door. Under her arm she was carrying the box that Mizzou had just dropped off. I remembered seeing the flash drives in there. Maybe the drives would hold information we needed. I hurried after her, but when I went through the open door, she was not at the car. I turned and caught a glimpse of her rounding the corner of the building and entering the alley.

“Hey!”

I trotted over to the alley and made the turn. She was walking with purpose down the center of the alley.

“Rachel, where are you going?”

“There were three trash cans in there,” she called back over her shoulder. “All of them were empty.”

It was then that I realized she was heading toward the first of two industrial-size Dumpsters that were pushed into alcoves on opposite sides of the alley. Just as I caught up with her she handed me Freddy Stone’s box.

“Hold this.”

She flung the heavy steel lid up and it banged loudly against the wall behind it. I glanced down into Freddy’s box and saw that somebody, probably Mizzou, had taken his cigarettes. I doubted he would miss them.

“You checked the kitchen cabinets, right?” Rachel asked.

“Yeah.”

“Were there any trash can liners?”

It took me a moment to understand.

“Uh, yeah, yeah, a box under the sink.”

“Black or white?”

“Uh…”

I closed my eyes to try to visualize what I had seen in the cabinet under the sink.

“… black. Black with the red drawstring.”

“Good. That narrows it down.”

She was reaching into the Dumpster, moving things around. It was half full and smelled awful. Most of the detritus was not in bags but had been dumped in directly from waste containers. Most of it was construction debris from a repair or renovation project. The rest was rotting garbage.

“Let’s try the other.”

We crossed the alley to the other alcove. I put the box down on the ground and threw open the heavy lid of the Dumpster. The odor was even more stunning and at first I thought we had found Freddy Stone. I stepped back and turned away, blowing air through my mouth and nose to keep the stench away.

“Don’t worry, it’s not him,” Rachel said.

“How do you know?”

“Because I know what a rotting body smells like, and it’s worse.”

I moved back to the Dumpster. There were several plastic trash bags in this container, many of them black and many of them torn and spilling putrid garbage.

“Your arms are longer,” Rachel said. “Pull out the black bags.”

“I just bought this shirt,” I said in protest as I reached in.

I pulled out every black bag that wasn’t already torn and revealing its contents and dropped them on the ground. Rachel started opening them by tearing the plastic in such a way that the contents stayed in place inside. Like performing an autopsy on a garbage bag.

“Do it like this and don’t mix contents from different bags,” she said.