Just a Walk in the Woods – Ep1 (A Dafydd Owen Story)
Sitting on the deck, out the back of the cabin, all we could hear was wildlife and the gentle lapping of the lake water. The storm had passed, the air had that softness associated with the evening after a hot and humid day. I was wearing an old beaten-up pair of shorts and nothing else, Sarah wasn’t bothering with anything more than one of my old t-shirts, which on her slender frame made a barely decent sun-dress. For the first time in months our senses were not on edge and we didn’t have all sorts of lethal hardware either physically on our persons or otherwise within reach. What we did have within reach was each other and my two fingers of fine scotch and her martini. An astute observer would be able to tell that I take my scotch straight up and she likes her martinis mixed dirty. One paw wrapped around each other, the other on the glass. Looks just like a couple enjoying the evening silence, doesn’t it? Hell, if we’d been in a state to enjoy the evening like that we’d be back down in the Cities and still working, not sitting up here trying to get our heads back in the game. Yeah, we were sitting in the silence of the lakeshore but that wasn’t the silence we were hearing. In our heads we were hearing the silence when we finally busted into where that sick fuck had been keeping little Anne Willis, and knew that we’d got there too late. Something clicked in both our heads about the same time and we both drained our drinks, then Sarah looked at me and her voice was unusually quiet as she said “Dafydd? Let’s take a walk.” My paw found hers as we set our glasses down and slowly walked off into the woods along an old hunters trail.
It had started like every case always did. Some poor fur, frantic and at the end of their rope walking into our lives and our office, needing the kind of professional help only a couple of lowlife gumshoes can offer so he turns to us because thanks to my other career we’re a little more outwardly respectable than most in this trade. Except in this case he was a she. When Liz buzzed me that a potential client had just walked in I sent back my usual “I’ll see them in the side office in a minute” then checked the front office camera out of reflex. I saw a skinny Malamute woman, looking like she lived on the street with her clothes hanging off her bony frame. I’d hazard a guess she either had an eating disorder or if I were to roll up those sleeves I’d find needle tracks. Since she wasn’t dressed for the kind of lifestyle I’d associate with the former, I was guessing she was pretty strung out. As it turned out, she was but right now, not on the stuff you can buy on the street corner. She was strung out on fear. I watched on the camera as Liz showed her into the side room and then pulled my jacket off the hook so I looked a little more presentable, adjusted my tie and walked out to talk to Liz.
“Marie Willis, she’s a 24 year old recovering addict, and has been on and off the street for the last seven years. Her six year old daughter is missing. She won’t go to the cops because she’s a known hooker and addict and she’s scared of them. Mr. Owen, go gentle on her. She’s right on the edge.”
“Your instincts have never let me down before, Liz. Use them some more for me. Other impressions?”
“She’s scared out of her mind, Boss. I’ve no cubs of my own, yet, but any woman could feel how frantic she is about her daughter. It’s real and she honestly has no idea what happened or where her daughter is.”
“Yet? Are you and Brad planning anything?”
“Give us time, Boss. He hasn’t even got around to asking me to marry him at this point.”
“It aint just hooking ‘em, it’s reeling ‘em in.”
She giggled and then wriggled a little flirtatiously in her seat. “Watch my dust. That’s the man I’m spending my life with although we just haven’t got around to making it official yet.”
“If Sarah and I don’t get an invitation to the wedding, you’re fired.”
She laughed and pointed to the door of the side office. “Business, Mr. Owen.”
“Of course, Ms. Jackson.”
As I walked through the door, Marie jumped to her feet. I noted the tear streaks in the fur below her heterochromatic eyes as she started to almost babble.
“Mr. Owen, I’m so glad you could see me… “
I held up a paw and she stopped. “Sit down, Ms. Willis. Relax. We’re going to just take a few minutes to talk and work out exactly how I can help you, what we both need to do to make that happen. Start by telling me what you need.”
She subsided into her seat and I grabbed the one opposite her across a low table. She stared into the distance for a moment like she was gathering her courage and then opened her muzzle.
“Mr. Owen, I need you to find my daughter and bring her home to me.”
“Before I know if I can do that, I need to know everything about her, and about you. Your life, her life, what happened when she went missing, how long ago, what you’ve already done to try and find her. Start at the beginning and don’t stop until you get to now.”
“Which beginning, Mr. Owen? For me it was when my dad raped me for the first time when I was 14. I guess I got lucky and all, because he didn’t knock me up until three years later. That’s where Anne’s story starts. I got out of there, pregnant and all, found my own place and had my daughter as an 18 year old single mom. Wasn’t easy. The job I had fired me while I was recovering from the birth. In the end I found the best way to provide for the kid I had was to spread my legs for money. Yeah, I’m a whore and I’m not proud of it but it’s what I do and I’m good at it. Along the way I started using to numb the shit. Not anymore, I’ve been clean for almost a year now. Finally got myself a decent apartment, got Anne into school... and some fucker takes her away from me. I can’t go to the cops. They know I used to use, they know I’m a hooker. They can’t see past that to me also being a mom who is freaked out about my missing kid.”
She stopped, giggled and then bunched her paws by her ears simulating the classical cinnamon-bun hairstyle and says “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope!”
I just about busted a gut laughing. That’s when I knew we’d be taking this case. In retrospect I wish we hadn’t.
Walking up through the woods, Sarah started talking. “Do you wish we’d never taken this one?”
“Not exactly, because if not us then who? I do wish it had never walked in our door though.”
“I do. I wish she’d gone to somebody else or you’d found something squirrely about her and refused the case, because then I wouldn’t feel like this.”
“We can’t win ‘em all, Sarah”
“Fuck that! Yes we can, we only take the ones we think we can win!”
“And this time we were wrong.”
“Looking at Marie, when we had to tell her that her daughter was gone... that look on her face, Dafydd. Am I going soft if I say I don’t want to see that ever again?”
“No. You’re not. Or at least if you are, so am I. I feel that every single time, Sarah. It’s been three times only since I started in this line of work and every one feels like a punch in the gut.”
She stopped walking and lifted the old t-shirt to show her scars. “I’ve never regretted this, never obsessed about how the kits I can’t have any more would look. I was doing what I signed up to do and took the risk that any soldier takes. Just… right now I wish there was a little bundle of furred insanity rolling around that cabin and calling me mommy. Not very liberated, huh?”
There was only one thing any man could do in this situation. I took my mate in my arms and held her as she sobbed on my shoulder. About 15 minutes later we carried on walking, out towards the point that jutted into the lake.
It was a bad case to begin with. Anne had just vanished – there was no indications it was going to happen, she’d just failed to turn up at home on her way back from school. The apartment that Marie had was too close to the school for the district to assign a bus, with only 4 blocks to walk the kids were expected to do that. A six year old was hardly a prime candidate to be a runaway so we had to assume somebody had snatched her. Sarah and I went through Marie’s client list just on general principles but none of them even came close to lighting off our radar on an interest in kids. We had a missing kid and no connection to anyone known, and it had already been a day. It was time to call in a few favors.
All the disadvantages Marie had talked about didn’t apply to us. Sarah and I had enough contacts in the various cop shops around the Cities that if we said “this one’s real” folks started paying attention. Marie and Anne lived in the Phillips neighborhood, in one of the little backwaters all these places had, backed up against the wall that separated housing from interstate, with a flood of commuters going past their front door twice a day without ever looking, let alone seeing the people that lived there. A couple of hours after she had left my office, Sarah and I were knocking on Marie’s door accompanied by a friend from the Minneapolis PD. I’d warned her we’d have to do this and she was obviously stressing about it because all three of us could smell the weed from outside her front door. I looked over at Janet Carlson, the detective that had accompanied us and shrugged. Janet was a setter, red furred and red haired and with a long muzzle that had probably smelled the weed half a block away.
“You going to make an issue of it? Do we need to leave?”
“Fuck, no! Dafydd, her kid is missing. I’m not going to bust her for needing some stress reduction. Let’s get this done, ok? Get me what I need so I can put the word out?”
The conversation that followed ended up about how you’d guess. Sarah and I had jack shit to work with but at least Janet had a description, a photo and details of what Anne was wearing that day so she could get the Amber Alert out.
As we walked slowly towards the point I knew Sarah was recalling the feeling of dread as we learned the details of the case. I’d felt it along with her. Most kids snatched like this didn’t live very long. You could get as harsh a sentence for kidnapping as you could for murder pretty much anywhere in the country so the bastards that did this shit reckoned they had nothing to lose by making the principal witness disappear as permanently as possible. For a given value of “permanent” of course. About half the time they were eventually found, some while they were still recognizable. I wrapped my arm around Sarah’s shoulders.
“I feel it too, Babe.”
“You just feel so fucking helpless. Are we losing our touch, Dafydd? Was there anything in there we missed?”
“Don’t think so, lover. I’ve been over it and over it probably as much as you have and I haven’t seen a damn thing.”
“I’ll never have kids but that look in Marie’s eyes… She knew it as well as we did what the odds were.”
“Yeah, love. She did. I just wish we hadn’t given her false hope. I know we believed it at the time but we should have kept our muzzles shut until we found her.”
The cops were going after every known kiddy-fucker in the state, hauling them in, questioning them and verifying that they were nowhere near where Anne would have been walking home from school. They were striking out bigtime. Sarah and I had a sleazeball they didn’t know about to talk to.
“So, this is his new place, huh?”
“Yep. He keeps moving but he knows he can’t hide from me.”
“So we just walk in there?”
“Well, we might have to convince a doorman or two, but once we’re in his office, we’re quite safe.”
“Fine.” I heard Sarah cocking her gun. I did the same with mine and we walked into the old warehouse. I was expecting we’d be challenged pretty quickly and I wasn’t disappointed.
“This is private property folks, appreciate it if you’d move along.” A shadow detached itself from the wall and became a big bovine guy, one that had obviously been juicing as well as working out. May as well try the gentle approach first.
“Tell Terry that Dafydd wants to talk to him. He knows me, he’ll want to hear what I got to say.”
“Terry told me he didn’t want to see nobody tonight.”
“Listen ‘roid-boy. I’ve taken down bigger and nastier than you and so has my delightful companion here. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll take us to his office and announce me. Or do I put a round in your knee and then kick your nuts into your throat when you hit the deck?”
He roared and lunged at me. Ok, so much for the gentle approach. As it happens, he lost both kneecaps. I shot out his left and Sarah took his right. Under the circumstances I thought that a kick in the fork would be a little gratuitous so we left him writhing on the ground and kept walking. Sarah spared him a glance as we stepped past him.
“Just can’t get the help these days, I guess.”
“Nope. Either that or Terry likes employing idiots.”
As we started up the stairs, the door at the top opened a crack. I called up to whoever was behind it, making a guess at their identity.
“Whatever it is, put it down, Terry. I’m only here to talk, but your goon at the door had other ideas.” The door opened a little wider.
“Dafydd?”
“Yeah, so you know what’s going to happen if I see anything I don’t like when I open that door.” I heard paws scraping on the floor and then he called back.
“Come on up. You won’t.”
The door opened on a small makeshift apartment, constructed in the old office. Behind a desk sat Terry, a scrawny-looking black rat, in the act of closing the desk drawer. Lounging in the bed that stood in the corner of the room was a weasel girl with spaced-out eyes. I cast a glance in her direction, which Terry noticed.
“Donna, go and find Jack, then help him get Brian off the warehouse floor, patch him up and then let doc Harris know we need his special services tonight. Stay with Brian and keep an eye on him. OK?” She didn’t say a word, just climbed out of the bed and walked out of the room without even bothering to put on a robe.
“So what brings you out to visit me, Dafydd? It surely isn’t to introduce me to your lovely mate. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Ms. Marshall.”
“You won’t be if I have to renew it.”
“I see you found a lady very much after your own heart, Dafydd. You have business with me or you wouldn’t be here. What business?”
“Anne Willis.”
“The one they are all looking for? You know I don’t handle or deal in anyone that young.”
“Bullshit, Terry. You keep your own paws clean and don’t mess with that side of the business but you damn well act as broker for those that do.”
“If that’s the case then why haven’t you turned me in?”
“Because I still owe you one for saving my hide three years ago and you’re occasionally useful. But listen, you fucking plague rat, you’d better keep being useful. If that ever stops or I ever catch you involved in something like Anne Willis I won’t turn you in. I’ll burn this place to the ground with you in it.”
“As eloquent in your arguments as ever, I see. Point well made. I won’t be able to do much to help you Dafydd. If it was an ordinary snatch I’ll never get to hear about it. Even if it wasn’t the folks who do that kind of thing are secretive, even with furs in my line of work. I’ll only find out about it if the word passes that somebody needs a broker.”
“If that word passes, let me know.” He nodded and Sarah and I turned and left.
As we were leaving the warehouse, a car pulled up – a relatively new Mercedes, so whoever was driving it wasn’t short on coin. Sarah and I had instinctively flattened ourselves into the shadows. My eyebrows went up as the driver got out and pulled what was obviously medical supplies from the trunk. After he had gone out of sight, Sarah and I finished making our exit.
“So, that’s ‘doc Harris’?”
“Looks like it. Not very imaginative with his pseudonyms, is he?” His name wasn’t Harris. We’d both recognized a prominent local surgeon, Harry Swanson. Whatever had got Dr. Swanson onto the payroll of a sleazebag like Terry, who was so deeply involved in the fur-trafficking business, would wait but we would make a point of finding out, just in case we ever needed to lean on the good doctor in the future.
For that night, however, all we wanted to do was go home and wash the physical and figurative stink of this place off each other.
Sarah and I stood on the point just watching the waves break over the rocks below us for a while. We still had a lot to turn over in our heads about the case but for tonight we’d done enough.
Coming from you, that's a compliment and a half. It's going to have some intense twists (if I can write 'em well enough that I don't just delete 'em and gloss over those scenes) in both of the parallel stories that are happening here and at least one of the two threads is going to go into some very dark places. Right now I have milestone events and the ending(s) set in stone.. what goes between them will be a function of my fevered mind and exactly how much absinthe has been available to me in the hours before I start writing :)
Coming from you, that's a compliment and a half. It's going to have some intense twists (if I can w
