Chapter 22 - Detective Kinney On The Case.

Brian was worried that these trips to the burbs were becoming far too frequent. He’d been sitting in the parking lot at this damn strip mall for hours now and all he’d seen was the continual parade of suburban clones, housewives, corporate executives, and well-dressed teens, all coming and going while being good little consumers - thank god for them, he thought, knowing they were the primary target for his business as an advertising exec. Unfortunately, watching these ‘sheep’ all day wasn’t really all that entertaining and Brian was bored out of his mind.

He wasn’t leaving though. He’d been watching Craig Taylor all afternoon - as soon as he realized that the cops weren’t going to do anything to the fucker, Brian decided to do some detective work of his own. Since Craig Taylor was the only link he had to what happened to Justin, it was the logical step to watch him and see if he would lead to something bigger. At least that was what Brian thought when he’d left Horvath at the downtown police station. After sitting here all day, he wasn’t sure that this had been the brilliant idea it had originally appeared.  

Horvath had been true to his word, to an extent - Brian had seen the two uniformed police officers drive up about a half hour after he’d arrived. They’d spent almost an hour inside the store, questioning Taylor, he assumed. But, when they left, they weren’t escorting Taylor away in handcuffs, so Brian stayed where he was.  

About 3:00 pm, Brian had followed Taylor and the little red receptionist to a sleazy freeway motel - waiting while the two engaged in a little ‘afternoon delight’, obviously, although Brian tried hard not to think about the particulars of what they were doing for fear he’d never be able to maintain an erection again afterwards. Even considering the skewed taste of most hetero assholes, though, Brian couldn’t see what Taylor saw in the skanky redhead when he had a much more attractive blonde wife at home. Oh well, there was no accounting for taste - especially where heteros were concerned.  

Since Taylor’s little outing earlier, he hadn’t left the damn electronics store. Brian didn’t think the guy looked like the diligent business owner type, so he couldn’t figure out why the guy was still here, ostensibly working, well after 7:00 pm. Brian was stiff from sitting all day, plus he hadn’t eaten anything - he’d never gotten around to that breakfast he’d planned with Justin - and he was thinking about taking an hour or so off to go get some dinner, when he finally saw something interesting and decided to stay put.

A nondescript American-make car had just parked in front of the store, and a fairly tall, well-built teen had struggled his way out of the driver’s seat. As the boy stood, Brian noted that the reason he’d seemed to struggle getting up was because he had one of those bulky, adjustable, plastic cast contraptions on his right leg. But, what Brian found to be particularly interesting about this boy was that he recognized him - it was the boy who had attacked Justin in the parking garage of the Fairmont, Chris Hobbs.   

-What the fuck is that sleazewad doing here? . . .  It’s a little late for a trip to the mall to pick up the latest CD . . . . The way he’s looking around him - like he doesn’t want to be seen - he’s fucking up to something. . .  .

Brian watched as Hobbs approached the entrance to the store. As soon as the teen was inside, he hopped out of the Jeep, ran to the front of the building, pressing his body against the concrete wall while he craned his neck around to watch Hobbs’ movement through the plate glass window, and surreptitiously observed the boy as he hesitantly limped around near the line of cash registers. Within minutes after Hobbs made a brief comment to an employee at one of the registers, Brian was dumbfounded to see Craig Taylor come out of the back of the store, greet Hobbs, albeit unenthusiastically, and hand him a large, soft-sided leather briefcase. The two men shook hands and then Hobbs turned to leave the store. Brian quickly turned his back, pretending to be lighting a cigarette so he wouldn’t be recognized as Hobbs passed within ten feet of him.

This was definitely not right, thought Brian. Taylor and the kid who’d attacked his son, together and acting all friendly - what the fuck was that all about? Brian made a split second decision to follow Hobbs and see where the kid was going - Taylor didn’t seem to be going anywhere, maybe because the visit from the cops had put him on alert - but Brian was curious to see where the teen was headed and perhaps he could even find out what was in the briefcase. So, as soon as Hobbs was in his own car, Brian raced to the Jeep and pulled into the line of traffic at the stop light a few cars behind Chris Hobbs.

By just after 10:00 pm, Brian found himself somewhere in the middle of nowhere, heading east on Interstate 80, driving through heavily forested rolling hills. To Brian Kinney, the ultimate city-boy, this was even worse than being in the damn suburbs. Before long, Hobbs took the turnoff for I390 heading north towards Williamsport, Kinney following in his wake at a respectful distance. It wasn’t too long though before Hobbs took another turnoff, onto a two-laned highway heading northwest. Brian followed, noting the sign for the ‘Sproul State Forest’ as he turned. He slowed down to let Hobbs get a larger lead on him at this point, since there was no other traffic on this deserted road and the teen was more likely to notice Kinney following him out here in the boonies.

The road they were driving on became even narrower and wound through the trees and around rocky outcrops, forcing Brian to slow his speed drastically after only a few miles. There were numerous dirt tracks leading off the main road, none of which had street names, only forest service road numbers, and only a few, mostly uninhabited, cabins around. When the pavement ran out and turned into a rutted dirt track, and Hobbs’ car was no longer anywhere to be seen, Brian pounded his fist against the steering wheel, angry at himself for losing the damn kid. He decided to turn back and recover his trail, trying to figure out where Hobbs had gone.  

When Brian was almost all the way back to the Interstate, still without any clue where the Hobbs kid had disappeared to, he pulled off the road and took out his cell phone. Time to call in the experts, he thought.  

“Good evening, Theodore,” Brian said into the phone when the familiar voice came on the other end of the line. “I need my little computer genius’ help, so get your butt over to your laptop.”  

Brian gave Ted the lowdown on where he was at and why. He asked Ted to get online and see if he could somehow figure out where to look next - Brian thought maybe Ted could look at online maps to see if there was a town nearby or some other possible destination that might have drawn Hobbs out here to the middle of a forest in the middle of the night. Ted, however, had a much better idea. He quickly pulled up the property tax records for Clinton County and searched the records for the name Hobbs. When he had no luck with that search, he tried ‘Taylor’.

“Bingo, Brian!” Ted enthused. “I think I found something. There’s a property tax record under the name Taylor for some land and maybe a cabin or small house in Clinton County not too far away from where you are now. It’s under the name, Edward Taylor, not Craig, but there aren’t any other hits for either Taylor or Hobbs, so it’s worth a try.”

“Remind me to give you a raise when I get back, Theodore,” said Brian, hanging up as soon as his friend gave him the correct forest service road number and directions to the property.  

With the correct road number and adequate directions, Brian found the property fairly easily after that. As he drove by the deeply rutted driveway leading off the forest road, he noted with satisfaction the lights on inside the small, clapboard sided cabin. He drove on a ways down the road, until the cabin was hidden from sight by another twist in the road, then pulled his Jeep off the road and parked. Thinking to himself that he was so not dressed for a night of traipsing through bear shit in the woods, but determined not to give up, Brian pulled on his jacket and started walking back down the road towards the lonely cabin.

Brian trudged cross-country through the bracken and underbrush until he was about 100 meters from the cabin. He could see movement through the brightly lit windows but couldn’t really tell who was moving around or what the occupants were doing. He decided to park himself nearby, watch the place for a while and try to figure out a plan, before doing anything rash. Looking around, he finally settled on a slightly damp tree stump as being the best available seating, but silently cursed what the dirty, wet wood would do to his brand new Armani dress slacks, which he’d never had the time to change out of. Pulling his too-thin jacket around him tightly, Brian settled in to watch the cabin.

++++++++++++++++++

Saturday morning saw Jennifer and Daphne back on Liberty Avenue, sitting in a small coffee shop on the corner of Liberty and Fuller. Jennifer thought they would give it one more try to find Justin down here, even though their last trip hadn’t turned up anything. As the pleasant young barista set their drinks down on the small cafe table, Jennifer pulled a copy of Justin’s yearbook photo out of her bag.

“Excuse me,” Jenn said before the young man could leave. “I was hoping you wouldn’t mind looking at a photo I have of my son - he’s been missing for several weeks now - and tell me if you might have seen him around here. We think he might be living nearby.” She offered the photo to the man, even though he was already trying to back away. The woman looked like she was about to cry, though, so the barista relented and took a look at the photo after all.

The young man in the photo looked kind of familiar to the barista, but he wasn’t sure. He quickly waved his co-worker over, thinking maybe the other man would know better than he.

“Sorry, I don’t recognize him. But, I’m kinda new around here,” the first man said “Tony here has lived in the neighborhood a lot longer, though. Maybe he can help you. Tone - you ever seen this guy?”

“Oh yeah, I recognize this kid. He comes in here sometimes with Kinney,” Tony added helpfully.  

Jennifer and Daphne were thrilled - this was the first real clue they’d found that might lead them to Justin.

“Do you know where he lives or where we can find him?” Daphne interjected.

“I got no idea where the guy lives, babe. Sorry. But, since it’s Saturday, if he’s hanging out with Kinney you’ll probably find him at Woody’s tonight. Either there or at Babylon.”

+++++++++++++++++++

It was fucking cold out here, thought Brian Kinney, who had no experience with camping and therefore had no idea how much colder it got at night in the woods, even when the days were still relatively warm. He had only his thin suit jacket to keep him warm and hadn’t eaten in more than twenty-four hours. He was pissed off and exhausted and cold and he just wanted to get Justin and get out of here. He’d been pacing around his tree stump for quite a while now, trying to stay awake and keep warm in the process, but when he heard noise coming from up at the cabin, he quickly darted behind his stump and hunkered down out of sight.  

The cabin door opened revealing Chris Hobbs once again. The boy paused a moment on the front porch steps, stretched and yawned, then headed over to his car. Finally, thought Kinney, as Hobbs drove down the driveway and the car finally disappeared around the far bend.  

Brian edged up closer to the cabin, thinking that he could take this opportunity, with Hobbs gone, to look around and see what he could find in the Cabin. He didn’t know for sure if Justin was inside, but the fact that the property was apparently owned by that fucker Craig and that he’d watched Hobbs meeting with Craig right before the little asswipe had driven out here, made Brian hopeful that his Sunshine was inside. If so, Brian planned to get Justin and get out of here as fast as they could and he would call the cops later, once Justin was safe.

Brian silently crept up the porch stairs and reached for the door handle, happy to note that the door apparently wasn’t locked. He peeked through the window next to the door briefly and confirmed that there wasn’t anyone in sight inside. Then, as slowly as he could, Brian twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open, wincing slightly at the unavoidable creaking noise from the rusty door hinges. But, since the creaking didn’t seem to bring anyone out to investigate, Brian slipped quietly in through the cabin door.

The room he was in was small. There was a tiny kitchenette set up in the corner on his right and a couch and small formica topped table with three chairs to the left. Directly in front of him, positioned in the very center of the cabin was a large stone fireplace, with smoldering embers still visible in the grate. The whole room couldn’t be more than ten meters wide and five meters long. There were two doors opening off this main room, one on each side of the fireplace. The one on the right side, Kinney noted, had a deadbolt lock on this side. If Justin was being kept here against his will, this was the obvious place to look.

Brian strode over to the right hand door, and flipped the deadbolt open, pushing the heavy, solid core door away from him. There was no light in the room - it had no windows - so Brian couldn’t immediately see anything inside other than that there was a full-sized bed shoved into the back right corner. As his eyes adjusted, he could see that there was no one in the bed, and he felt his heart sink, thinking he had been wrong and Justin wasn’t here after all.  

Brian was just about to turn around and head back out when he detected movement out of the corner of his eye and heard a suppressed moan from the darkness in the corner between the bed and the wall.  Brian skirted the end of the bed, which took up almost all the floor space in the crackerbox sized room, and bent over to see into the small space between the bed and a rickety nightstand. There was definitely something there.  

He sidled closer and heard the whimpers and moans growing louder the closer he got. Brian’s heart was thumping hard against the inside of his ribcage. He closed in on the source of the noises and carefully pulled the nightstand away from the wall so he could see behind it. And there he was.

“Justin!” Brian said in a loud voice, which seemed to startle the boy, causing him to scoot back even further behind the shield of the small piece of furniture.

Brian picked up the nightstand and threw it across the room where it hit the wall and landed on its side on the end of the bed. Then he squatted down next to the scared boy and pulled the struggling, trembling young man into his arms. Whispering incoherent soothing words as he held and rocked his boy, Brian let his free hand stroke the silky blond locks, reassuring himself at the touch of his lover. At the sound of Brian’s calming voice and the feel of his familiar touch, Justin was beginning to calm down and had finally stopped whimpering, but Brian could still feel the slender shoulders shaking under his hands.  

“Come on, Justin,” Brian coaxed. “I need to get you out of here. Can you walk? We need to move. I don’t know when that fucker Hobbs will come back.”  

Brian tried to pull the smaller man up to his feet, walking backwards and urging him towards the door as he spoke. Justin was struggling against him, though, pulling back as if trying to return to his safe little corner. Brian could see the fear and panic in the young man’s eyes, which were staring over his right shoulder at something behind him. Brian released Justin’s hands, allowing the boy to sink back to the floor, and deliberately turned around.

The overweight, middle-aged, balding man standing in the doorway glaring at him was chuckling under his breath at the surprise on Kinney’s face. He figured in a fair fight, Kinney could probably take him - for a fag he looked pretty strong and was obviously in much better shape. That’s why Carter was mentally patting himself on the back for remembering to bring along his gun, which he was currently pointing at the glowering handsome brunet man. Carter calmly reached for the door, pulling it closed, and turned the deadbolt lock, sealing the two men in the small room without a single word being said.