Sorrel's Long Journey to Love Ch. 10

Fletcher took the phone, "Here let me try." He punched the numbers, but got the same result.

Mary asked, "You saw your brother. Would he know anything?"

"I doubt it," answered Fletcher, "but let's give him a try." He punched in his brother's phone number. No answer. He tried Sorrel's number again, still no answer.

He looked at Mary.

She looked at him.

Fletcher said, "Think I'll drive over to the Wal-Mart. You keep trying her number. I'm sure its nothing." Honestly, he wasn't sure of anything.

By then the children had come in. Little Sorrel asked, "Where's Mom?"

Mary answered, "Your father's going to get her now."

Marion asked, "Can I come?"

Fletcher answered, "Why don't all you kids go play or something. I won't be long."

The children all believed him. They scampered off. Mary tried the phone again.

Fletcher told himself as he got in Sorrel's car, "There's nothing wrong. She probably got tied up in traffic, or she was driving and won't use the phone; afraid to get a ticket." He drove off to the Wal-Mart.

Mildred Informs Warren of Her Actions:

Mildred reached home, and went inside to convey the good news, "Hey Warren, our troubles are over."

Warren answered sarcastically, "Oh really?"

"Yes," responded a slightly out of breath Mildred, "The stupid bitch Sorrel has just been picked up; she'll soon be completely out of circulation, and she'll be out of the country in a few days, a few weeks at the most."

Warren was flabbergasted, dumbstruck to say the least, "What?"

"Yes," Mildred explained again, "I had Sorrel picked up by some of our special friends. She's on her way to that CIA place; I can't remember the name, you know the one in Western Maryland. That place near Camp David. She'll be held there till arrangements are complete for her rendition to one of our government's Middle Eastern disposal facilities."

Warren was stunned. He couldn't find the words. He simply stood there, in front of his wife, open mouthed awe-struck."

Mildred felt good, "I can't imagine what they'll do to her. I bet in a couple months she won't know her own name; that is if she's even alive."

Warren finally recovered his aplomb, "You dumb shit! You dumb fucking shit!"

It was Mildred's turn to be confounded, "What's with you? Isn't that what we wanted?"

"No you stupid cow, not now!"

Mildred was confused, baffled, "I don't get it."

"I'll tell you my stupid wife. Our sweet little stupid girl Florence took Sorrel to get a polygraph. No actually two polygraphs. The twit was innocent."

Mildred countered, "So what, nobody knows."

"The hell you say. Florence gave Sorrel and Fletcher copies. The damned dinner party the other night was for her benefit. Now everyone knows she had nothing to do with the shortages."

Mildred had to sit down, "What do we do now?"

Warren answered, "Nothing about Sorrel. She's dead. The problem is Florence."

"Where's she," asked Mildred?

"I have her tucked away in the back. Fletcher was here earlier. I gave him a cock and bull story about Florence confessing, and me giving her a head start. The fool believed it."

Mildred perked up, "We have to get rid of Florence."

"Right," answered Warren, "you have any good ideas?"

Mildred pursed her lips, pressed the fingers of her hands together in front of her face, "Yes."

"Well," asked Warren?

"Florence commits suicide."

Warren laughed at his asshole of a wife, "Florence would never do that."

Now it was Mildred's turn to laugh, "Of course not. You couldn't be as stupid as my father said you were."

Mildred stood back up and walked across the room. Looking out the window she added, "While she's still drugged we take her back to that little toilet she calls an apartment. We get her inside, and then we poison her."

Warren really was just as stupid as Mildred's father had warned; "Now how do we do that?"

"Shit, like always, I have to figure out everything. We press a few pills down her throat, or better, we push a tube down her throat and pour something in. She types a note on her computer. She apologizes for all her misdeeds, and our problems are solved."

Warren was stupid, "What kind of poison?"

Mildred curtly answered, "Shit who cares, anything that will kill her. Damn, we'll fill her stomach up with liquid cleaner for all I care. By the time anyone finds her she'll be dead."

"Will liquid cleaner work?" Warren wasn't thinking.

"Hell," answered Mildred, "Remember that liquid cleaner 'Sun Up' or whatever it was people thought was lemonade back a few years ago. It killed a dozen people."

Warren was slow but it had finally clicked, "So we haul Florence to her apartment, load her stomach with cleanser, and then what?"

Mildred answered, "You and me get the hell out of town."

"What do you mean," asked Warren?

Mildred just shook her head, "We fly to Key Biscayne and wait. If things don't shape up like we want, then we get the hell out of the country."

"We run?"

Mildred yelled at her stupid husband, "No stupid, we fly. Think it over. The suicide plan is thin as a sheet of ice in April. Someone will certainly get wise. Not your dumb assed brother; he's as stupid as you are. Sorrel might have, but she won't be around. Pearce or Steve might smell something though."

Mildred had just about had it with her husband. First he'd lost a ton of money investing in some hair brained banking scheme. When that collapsed he started selling government secrets to make up the difference, but instead of bailing out of the failed bank deal he just poured in more money. To cover that he ended up altering the company's books, that's when Florence had started to sniff around and she and Warren had to concoct the crazy plan to implicate Sorrel.

Warren was tired of thinking, "We better get Florence moved. Come on she's in the back."

"Not me stupid. You do it.," answered Mildred.

Warren whined, "I can't carry her. She's too heavy."

"Well get your lame ass butler to help you. He knows as much about all this as you do. He's in just as deep as we are."

Warren didn't argue, and he had no more questions. He disappeared down the corridor to find his butler.

A few minutes later Warren and the butler had the limp Florence in the car; it made sense to Warren. By the time they'd get to Florence's she'd be alert enough to get in her own apartment with his and Mildred's help. Then they'd poison her, and head for Florida. The police would find Florence's corpse, the computer confession, and that would be that.

It made him feel a little sad about Sorrel, but she was the original sacrificial lamb anyway. If she disappeared and died as first planned, it didn't really make that much difference.

Sorrel Awakens:

Sorrel looked up groggily from the floor of the van, "Where am I?"

A husky woman's voice from the front asked, "Is she coming around?"

An equally husky sounding male voice responded, "Yeah."

The voice in the front continued, "Let her wake up, she needs to know what's happening to her."

Sorrel, still half dazed from the chloroform, asked, "Where are we? Why am I here?"

The two people in the van had no idea who she really was. They'd been given instructions to pick this woman up. She was to be considered only passively aggressive, not a threat to fight, but a real threat to national security. She was one of several such 'security subjects' they'd hustled out of the country over the last several years. Her final destination meant little to them. They only knew she was a traitor and should be treated as such.

They weren't to physically harm her. It was believed she might have information that would be helpful in the war on terror, but it was information that couldn't be gotten through normal channels. Her case, like so many others, was going to require 'special interrogation techniques'; techniques that could only be accomplished in some third world country; a place where the leaders weren't so squeamish about human rights.

The man in the back answered her, "You're on your way to a hospital, a very special hospital."

Sorrel was rapidly coming around. She remembered the shopping trip, the SUV, the packages, and then there were the arms grabbing her. Oh no! She realized someone had decided to take her away. Someone, one of the people at the party, or maybe Florence, had gone ahead with the plan to have her imprisoned someplace.

Sorrel tried to sit up, "You've made a mistake."

The man took two fingers and flicked them across her cheek. The mild slap didn't hurt, but it surprised and scared her. He said, "Shut up."

Sorrel, frightened, but increasingly alert responded, "No, listen!" This is a mistake. I'm not what you think..."

The man put his hand over her mouth. He wasn't supposed to hit her, "I said shut up."

Sorrel was too scared to fight, but also too scared to stay quiet, "I'm telling you this is a mistake. I'm not the one you want. Call Fletcher Hanson. He'll..."

She was brusquely pushed down to the floor of the van. The woman in the front asked, "Who's this Fletcher Hanson?"

The man answered, "Beats me. I never heard of him."

Sorrel, terrified, tried again, "Listen to me. I'm not what you think. This is all a big mistake. Please call Mr. Hanson." She tried to hand the man her cell phone, but couldn't find it.

The man asked, "You looking for this?" He held up her phone.

"Oh please. His number is on my contact list." Sorrel was desperate. This couldn't be happening. What of her children, of Fletcher, of Fletcher's children? Just a little while ago everything was so right.

She pleaded, "Please just call him. He'll tell you."

The man pretended to punch in the contact, "No, there's no answer," He laughed.

Sorrel started to cry, "No please. You don't understand."

The van continued down the highway. They passed the side street that would have led them to her home. They drove on southward, toward the Interstate, the Interstate that would lead to her new domicile; a government interrogation center disguised a maximum security mental facility.

Sorrel lay crushed on the floor of the van, half crouched, half sprawled, her face pushed into the carpeting, a strong unfriendly hand pressing against her back, keeping her helpless and supine.

The man holding her in place noticed the necklace, "Hey look here."

"What," asked the woman in front?

"Someone's attached a necklace to her neck, and guess what."

"What," asked the woman?

"It's a transmitter, a fucking transmitter." He reached into his pocket and extracted a small pen knife. With one swift swipe the necklace fell to the floor.

Sorrel tried to put up some resistance, but all she did was reveal her pinkie ring.

In another second he had the ring off, "Look at this will you? Two little transmitters; we've got a live here."

Sorrel realized Fletcher's tiny electronic devices, intended to protect her, had only confirmed these two people's suspicions. No amount of pleading would help now. She started weeping; 'why now, why now, after everything had become so right?'

Fletcher Finds the SUV:

Fletcher drove the circuit around the Super-Wal-Mart. He found the SUV. He jumped from Sorrel's small car, and rushed to open the door. The first thing that accosted him was the smell of fried chicken; then he saw her pocket book and keys on the front seat. He saw the plastic bags in the back. Oh no, he thought. Oh Jesus no. What's happened here? Whatever it was had happened so fast she never got a chance to react. He reached for his cell phone and dialed 911; he gave them the information they needed, and told them he'd wait at the site. He had to argue with them to even come. They half believed it was no big deal; as though some scattered brained woman had simply up and run off. Then he called Mary and told her he'd found the SUV.

He called his brother, but got no answer. Fletcher definitely knew something was up. It hadn't been that long since he'd left his brother's. Where was Mildred? Where was Florence? Where in the hell was Sorrel? His stomach was twisted in a million knots. He threw up.

This wasn't just a confused mistake. Fletcher knew something was up; something far more terrible than some wildcat kidnapping coupled with some half ass ransom proposal. Something had gone wrong, terribly wrong. He had to reach his brother. There was no answer. 'OK,' he thought. 'He'd wait for the police; and then make straight for Warren's.' He bet he knew what had happened. His brother was behind this. He'd sensed it earlier. His brother knew far more than he'd been letting on.

Mildred and Warren:

Mildred and Warren drove to Florence's and together they struggled to get the weak and still partly comatose Florence into her apartment. Using a thin tube and small funnel they'd procured at a CVS store on the way they inched the tube down her throat into her stomach. Using the funnel and tube they managed to get her to ingest a fair amount of dishwashing cleanser mixed with a prescription cough syrup they'd found in her medicine cabinet. The bottle had indicated the substance should not be taken internally, and added with the cough syrup, they felt comfortable they'd found the right ingredients.

Warren, with a pair of rubber gloves normally used for dish washing covered any trace of fingerprints as he typed in a forlorn message of regret on the older woman's computer. He left it up on the screen for everyone to see. Mildred quietly went about making certain anyone venturing in would find the cleaning substance and the empty bottle of cough syrup.

All that was left was to insure Florence remained sufficiently docile until the poisonous substances did their work. They made her as comfortable as possible in her bed, placing a large pillow very close to her mouth and nose thinking that might encourage some level of added somnolence, maybe even suffocation. Last they turned up the heat in the apartment to well above eighty degrees in the belief that might hinder any potential for undesired wakefulness.

With what they hoped was a convincing work of suicide, they cleaned the entire apartment of any possible trace of their fingerprints. They congratulated each other on what they expected would be considered an open and shut case of self destruction. They closed out the apartment, and left for the airport.

Warren, though they certainly had the resources, had eschewed the purchase of a private plane for the company. He publicly attributed it to his natural disinclination to fly. However, on this occasion he and Mildred decided to overcome any such reluctance. They went ahead, bought tickets with cash, planning to fly coach to Florida where they would await events.

Fletcher:

It seemed like ages to Fletcher, but finally a patrol car reached him at the Wal-Mart parking lot. They checked out the SUV, listened to Fletcher's hyper-tense and confused explanation, and took the information down in a report. However, they explained, though things looked suspicious, their hands were essentially tied until more time had elapsed or until Fletcher or someone else near the missing woman was contacted by someone with a ransom demand. They advised him to go home, calm down, and wait; exactly the last things Fletcher wanted to hear.

He thanked the policemen, assured them if they didn't take this more seriously their careers were in the toilet, got back in Sorrel's little car, and sped off toward his brother's. On the way he called Mary.

"Mary," he spoke, as he drove along the highway.

"This is she," answered Mary.

"I've been with the police. They're no help. I'm headed to my brother's. I think that's the best place to start. I'm convinced he knows a hell of a lot more than he let on this morning," He paused, half scared he continued, "How are the children?"

Mary answered, "They are worried, but they don't know anything yet. What do you think I should say?"

Fletcher hesitated but then said, "You have to tell them something. Tell them I've gone to fetch her, that she had am minor mishap, nothing serious, but she's not immediately available."

Mary listened to Fletcher with dread. She was left with the kids, and she was the one who had to invent some crazy story, "OK, I'll tell them something. Don't you lose control!"

Fletcher responded, "I'm all right. I'll call you when I get to Warren's."

The drive to Warren's didn't take long at all. He reached the front door and rang the bell. After several seconds he tried the door. It was locked. He walked around to the back and tried the rear entrance. It was locked too. Not hesitating he took a fair sized chunk of wood and smashed in one of the rear windows. That set off the burglar alarm, but he didn't care. He climbed in the rear window, careful not to cut himself on the broken glass.

As he got through the window he was greeted by the butler. Fletcher asked, "Why didn't you answer the fucking door?"

The butler gave him a smarmy smile, "Mr. and Mrs. Hanson are not at home."

Fletcher wasn't in any mood to swap barbs with his brother's overbearing butler, "I know that. Where did they go?"

The butler dissembled, "They didn't tell me." He paused, "Sir."

Fletcher knew damn well the son of a bitch was lying. He never liked the bastard anyway. He grabbed him by his shirt collar and threw him against the wall, "Yes you know. So tell me."

The butler, in feigned outrage answered, "If you don't let me go, I'll have to notify the police."

That was all Fletcher needed; first came a knee to the groin, followed by a powerful fist directed at the man's solar-plexus. As the butler collapsed to the floor, Fletcher's fists followed. Furious beyond measure he rained a hail of hammer like blows on the man's face and upper body. Fletcher heard the man's jaw crack, and he watched as his nose flattened between his cheeks, "You better start saying something! That is if you want to live!"

The butler was gagging on his own blood and sputum. Still he managed to garble out, "They've taken Ms. Henderson to her apartment."

Fletcher, still slamming his fists in the man's increasingly pulpy face yelled, "Why?"

The bloodied butler replied, "They're going to kill her and make it look like a suicide. Then they're leaving for Florida."

Fletcher threw the bleeding, bludgeoned man to the floor. He turned to go.

As Fletcher made to leave the butler hollered out, "You're too late. She's already dead and the Sullivan woman is going to be dead soon too!"

He heard the butler, but made no effort to turn back and renew his punishment. The man had confirmed his worst fears. He had to get to Florence's and save her. Saving her would lead him to Sorrel. He hadn't been this scared since he was in high school. His heart was in his throat! This couldn't be happening! Not again! He knew he wouldn't be able to face another day, not without her, not without Sorrel!

Mary and the Kids:

Mary called the children into the living room, "Children I have some news about your father and your mother." She didn't try to rephrase her description of Fletcher and Sorrel to the children. It was time they fully accepted what they already knew.

The children, all five of them sat down, some on the sofa some on the floor.

Mary looked at five sets of eyes, trusting eyes, innocent eyes. She went on, "Someone's taken Sorrel." She saw the looks of fright and with Little Sorrel outright terror. "Don't worry. Our Dad's on it. He'll have her back here safe and sound in no time."

Mary watched; she didn't know what to expect. How would they handle what she said? She was counting on Marion to be her rock. The boys, well she just didn't know. It was Little Sorrel who worried her the most.

To Mary's surprise it was Marion who panicked.