Without a Whisper

"Then what..."

"...shut up," he interrupts, and Junior does as told. He bounds my wrists behind my back with deck line and starts my feet. "He's missing a leg you dumb fuck."

Art rubs his own leg with his non-firing hand. He forgot his cane, so he's not used to walking this much, or standing for so long without support. He was shot. Ten years ago. Katie fired one shot.

"How much did that .38 hurt?" I ask, and he looks down at his hands rubbing, then back to me with a grin.

"Burned like a piece of charcoal in your flesh," he says, then straights up. "Pulled her over, that how I like to get them. Right off the road I just found you. She must have practiced a few times because she drew that revolver like a gunslinger. Got away from me, but she didn't get far."

"Who's your partner?" I ask.

"This isn't the part where I tell you my secrets," he says, and orders Junior to open the trunk. He does as told. Junior is mighty talented at being told what to do. Art steps aside, telling me to walk.

"Shoot me, I won't go in there on my own," I say. Art closes the distance and raises the gun to strike me. Because I'm bound, he's lowered his level of caution, and telegraphs the swing too much. I duck under it, and throw myself forward, ramming the top of my head into his face. I fall forward to the ground as he wobbles backwards into the car, spitting blood.

"You're a scrappy fucker," he says while laughing. "If that leg is slowing you down, you'd be force to be reckoned with two of them," he says, and then punts the side of my head. His boot hit me straight in the ear, and I coil my chin to my shoulder in case he does it again. "Now you're just a cripple who hasn't learned his limits." My vision is blurred, I feel blood from my ear, and that ringing is making me feel sick.

"Get him up," Art says, and Junior grabs the back of my collar and the ropes to pull me to my foot. "Get him in."

Junior pushes me forward, but I use my real foot to halt the advance. I push against the rim of the trunk. Junior grunts as I resist. Even with one leg I'm still able to toss him backward.

"I really do need to do everything, don't I?" Art says. I feel his bicep around my neck. His hand grasps the other bicep. The top of his opposite hand is on my head. I try to pinch my chin down, but it's too late. I remember his wrestling trophies, so I know he won't mess this up. If a carotid choke hold is used correctly, the person in it will be unconscious in only a few sec...

--

Tuesday -- April 14, 2020: Four Days Gone

~Midge Appletree~

The parking lot for the Whisper Lake Lodge is stupidly far away from the main structure. There is no road leading straight to the lodge to even unload your bags. I roll my suitcase behind me, walking three strides behind Yvonne who is carrying an overnight bag on her shoulder.

"I don't see a boathouse," Yvonne says. I scan around the area and do not see one.

"It's here somewhere," I say, also keeping my head on a swivel.

"Am I really that out of practice?" Yvonne asks.

Yvonne looks depressed she missed such an obvious message from Stephanie. Granted she didn't know where Chase went to school, but I'm shocked she didn't notice her erratic eye movements. She was recruited by the FBI straight out of graduate school, so she was never a street cop. She's never spoken to a wife with a black eye who said she ran into a door. I have. It's how I met Gianna.

Gianna was on shift at the ER when a battered wife came in. She fell down the stairs apparently, but Gianna knew better and called the police. I took her statement, and tried to talk to the wife in private, away from her husband, but she wouldn't budge. It was frustrating, but the first step is wanting that help. She told me she saw that kind of situation too often, and I agreed. I fell in love with the redhead in blue scrubs instantly. My gaydar has always been decently accurate, and with Gianna it was pinging. She was separated from her cheating, gambling addicted husband, so was vulnerable to a talented hetero flipping lesbian.

I didn't learn she had three kids until after I got her in bed twice. That honestly terrified me. Wesley was only two when we started going out. Two years later, I couldn't live without them.

"It happens to the best of us," I say to reassure Yvonne.

"The blue blind spot?" Yvonne asks. Assuming good intentions because someone was in law enforcement.

"You're still knocking the cobwebs off," I say. I kind of like Yvonne feeling inferior for a change.

Yvonne curses out loud when she sees a stuffed bear just inside of the door. I don't understand taxidermy. Isn't it enough to kill the animal and eat it? Must we make trophies?

"That's Big Ben. I keep him there just for the laughs," a man says from the reception desk. I watch the man maneuver himself around the desk in a wheelchair. "Grimsdotter and Appletree?"

"Good guess," Yvonne says.

"You're my only reservation. Rooms all set, just need to confirm payment," the man says. He removes a tablet from a pocket of the chair and puts it on his lap. The girth of his arms tells me he's compensating for his legs. Men shouldn't have ponytails in my honest opinion.

"Before we settle that, I'd like a quick word about a recent guest you had," Yvonne says. The man pauses, and slowly looks up to our badges.

"Only recent guest I've had is a private investigator," he says.

"Chase Kramner?" I ask, and he nods. "What's your name?"

"Lance."

"Lance what?"

"Lance Portman," he says.

"Did he check out?" I ask.

"Not yet. I saw, he came back in on Thursday evening, left on Thursday night. Only reason I know that is just over my shoulder," he says, and points at a camera. "Want the footage?"

"If you wouldn't mind," Yvonne says. Lance touches his tablet and opens an app connected to his camera system. It archives the footage, and he lets us know it's set to auto delete it after a month to save digital storage space. He finds the footage and extends the tablet to me.

Chase entered the reception area with a backpack slung over his shoulder at around six in the afternoon on the ninth. He left at around eight in the evening with the same bag and clothes.

"Can he check out on his phone, or does he have to do it here?" I ask.

"This tablet or the computer attached to the register is the only way," Lance says. I want the rest of his footage, which he says won't be a problem.

"Did he for some reason, tell you about what he was doing here?" Yvonne asks.

"Katie Rodgers?" he asks. "Yeah, I gave him her invoice too. She stayed for a month."

"Do you remember anything about her?"

"Nothing worth sharing," Lance says.

"Let me decide whether it's worth sharing," Yvonne says.

"I don't know what you want me to tell you," Lance says.

"For now, we'd like the same room Mr. Kramner stayed in," I say, and he gives a harsh sigh while playing with his tablet. "Something wrong?"

"Technically, I can't. On paper, it's still occupied," he says. "I'll let you in at a bare minimum. Any other room. One or two rooms?"

"Two," Yvonne says. She told me she planned on having Skype sex with her boyfriend tonight. I don't need that in my room.

"Mr. Kramner stayed in room eight," Lance says, and hands me two keys. One for Chase's room, and one for myself. He hands Yvonne a key as well.

Yvonne is in room seven, I'm in room six, both on the second floor. The view is breathtaking. The sunlight glistening off the lake is gorgeous. The shadows casted by the surrounding woods envelopes the lake in an ominous halo of darkness. Private homes have small docks and boats at various points around the lake. There are several boathouses.

Yvonne tells me she needs to check in with her supervisor, which I know she doesn't. Checking in with your ASAC doesn't involved a locked room and a webcam. I tell she has ten minutes before we get back to work.

I drop my bag off and leave my room. Chase's room has been cleaned, but it looks like it was completely unoccupied. He probably only had one bag, so it's not like he could get it too messy to begin with. I leave and press my ear to Yvonne's door and listen for a moment. She's talking to her boyfriend, promising she hasn't been smoking. The sounds associated with clothes coming off, the swiping motion of fabric across skin. The ruffling sound of womanly hips shimmying their way out of pants. I need to stop listening before I get wet. We got work to do, so I hope she can finish in ten minutes.

The bed and breakfast is the kind of place I would consider bringing Gianna to. Wendy watches the kids. Worse case Shane takes Shawn. Romanic weekend with my wife, peddle boating across the lake. Sit in front of a fire in the lobby, her drinking wine while I sip whiskey. Make love with the windows open at sunset.

The hallway of the second floor has one wall that is nothing but floor to ceiling windows. The view from the rooms is the lake, but the hallway faces the trees. From the second floor I can see only the trunks of the trees, creating a strange illusion that I'm much higher than I truly am. It's scenic, and I'm instantly calm.

"Hey babe," I say when Gianna answers the phone.

"You in Pennsylvania?"

"I am," I say, and lean forward against the glass. "It's really pretty here. The kind of place you've said you'd like to go."

"You get to go with the Nordic Queen on an all-expenses paid trip," Gianna says. She trusts me around Yvonne, seeing how Yvonne is straight. Unyieldingly straight. She has a healthy love of penis.

"When I get back, maybe we should take a trip. Bribe Wendy to take the kids for a weekend," I suggest.

"Maybe this summer. Pick a place, start planning it now," Gianna recommends. I do have the leave time. We haven't been able to put much money away since Shawn, but we have enough for a nice weekend. I think we need it. Our marriage needs it.

"I was just checking in. A lot of work to do here," I say.

"Me too," she says. I hear the PA system of the hospital behind her, so I know she's at work. "Call me at when you're done for the day. Love you."

"I love you too," I say.

After the phone call I take the time to explore the second floor. I see a small service elevator hidden off to the side. It's likely how they move heavy luggage, and how Lance gets his wheelchair upstairs. Four rooms are upstairs, and four are below. It's a simple, scenic lake side lodge in the woods. I grew up in small town America, and it's not often I miss part of it. I don't miss pray the gay away. I sometimes miss the quiet.

While Yvonne is likely finger banging herself in perfect rhythm with her boyfriend's strokes, I descend to the first floor. The stairs are under the balcony of the second floor. Just off the stairs is a large stone fireplace with cushioned leather chairs surrounding tables. A shelf has stacks of board games and puzzles to entertain families. There are brochures and signs advertising local activities. The lodge didn't own any of the additional activities, it just advertised them. Maps for hiking. Canoeing. Speed boating.

"I know you're here for work, but anything you want to do while you're here?" Lance asks. I turn from the brochures to see him in his chair rolling up from the reception area.

"Water cold this time of year?" I ask.

"A little brisk, but bearable if that's your thing," he replies. "You should check out Callie's Cliff. Landmark around here. Just follow the trail north." Heights, no thank you.

"Swimming, not so much. Wouldn't mind getting on the water though," I say. Best way to find a boathouse is to find a boat.

"Unfortunately, most of that stuff is seasonal. They don't open until May," Lance says. "We have our own boat, but it's dry docked right now. Otherwise, my mother could have taken you. Though, she's not all there all the time."

"Cognitively?" I ask, and he nods.

"It comes and goes. She forgets things she just did. Sometimes she thinks I'm my dad who died fifteen years ago. Stuff like that," Lance says. "Part of why I came back to work here. Her health declined ten years ago, and it's only gotten worse."

"What were you doing before?" I ask.

"I was a cop. Sheriff's Deputy," he says, and I guess he noticed me looking at his legs. "It actually happened after I left. Fell off a ladder of all things."

"Were you a cop when Katie was here?" I ask, and he shrugs.

"My transition occurred while she was here. I took over the books, and mom had been running the place into the ground since my dad died. She let Katie stay for free, and we must have gone a hundred rounds over that."

"You and your mother?"

"Yeah, but how do you argue with someone who forgets the conversation every time you have it?" Lance asks, and I nod in understanding. "I just had to let it go."

"Did you interact with Katie when she was here?" I ask. Yvonne is too abrasive. Sometimes the best way to interview people, is to not interview, and just talk to them.

"Not much. Part of her deal was she cleaned her own room and changed her own sheets. Maybe we rubbed shoulders once or twice, but certainly never a conversation. I know she worked for Evie while she was here, but that's all I know," he says.

"Mind if I walk the grounds? Poke around?" I ask.

"Feel free. If it's not locked, go ahead. I'd join you, but, you know," he says, and politely rolls away from me.

I return upstairs to get Yvonne so we can get back to work. I knock on her door, but only hear a soft buzzing sound. I slam the underside of my fist against the door hard.

"Times up, get your panties on," I say. The buzzing stops, and I hear steps approaching the door. It cracks open, and Yvonne's eyes peer out. "Let's go."

"Five minutes..." she starts, and I push my way past her. I get a full view of her boyfriend's hand gripping his cock on her computer screen.

"Sorry Greg, you gotta finish without her," I say, and slap her computer shut. "Let's go." I turn around and Yvonne is not wearing her pants. She had the decency to put her panties on, or maybe never even took them off. "You tell me there is a time and place to smoke. There is a time and place to Skype sex your man."

Yvonne quickly tugs her pants up her legs and we exit her room. I get her caught up on what Lance told me, and how he's okay with us walking the grounds. We exit the hotel and I light a cigarette. I offer one to Yvonne who declines.

"Don't need it. Didn't get to finish."

I always remember how tall Yvonne is when I need to walk side by side with her. Her walk is my trot, and I tell her to slow down. She doesn't, likely spurring me because I interrupted her fun.

"You and Greg good?" I ask just to inject some sound into the quiet. All we can hear is the wind and rustling of the trees. Yvonne takes a long sigh.

"Last week, he proposed again," Yvonne says, and I wait for her to say more. That marks the third occasion he's asked for her hand. "I don't know." That could make a woman smoke.

"You two have only been together for seventeen years. Slow down," I say lightheartedly.

"How long were you and Gianna together before you two got married?"

"Two years. Speed demons. I knew. I knew on the first date. The kids slowed me down," I say.

"You weren't just marrying her," she says, and I nod. "Do you have her name, or does she have yours?"

"We took the man's name," I say, and she laughs. "We kept our names. Wasn't important. Still isn't. Shawn has Shane's last name."

"You let him get away with that?" she asks.

"That mattered to him, and it didn't matter to me. Who cares? Shawn Appletree? Kid is already going to have enough problems at school with lesbian parents," I say. "You guys gave your boys hyphens. Grimsdotter-Bowerstone. What the fuck were you thinking?"

"Marriage feels like submitting to something," she says. She stops walking, finally allowing me to catch up. "What I've never understood about lesbians, is why the hell are you guys so gung-ho about getting married. Isn't marriage part of the patriarchy?"

"Don't lump me in with the gays at the Fulsome Street Fair," I say. That confuses her because she doesn't know what that is. "They shut down a few city blocks in San Francisco and the population engages in a weekend of leather fetishism and homosexual anarchy."

"So, a pride parade?" she asks.

"If a pride parade was butt fucking another pride parade," I say, and she laughs. Call me conservative but, it's too much.

"My logic is, I can't get divorced if I don't get married," she says. It's a weak excuse, but I understand her hesitation. She views it as an unnecessary jinx. Why fix what isn't broke?

"Anyway, boathouse," I say, and point down the shoreline of the lake. I can't even see the lodge from here. The shore is rocky with flat stones making footing difficult to manage without rolling an ankle. We adjust to walk along it, but at the place where the stones meet the dirt.

It's a large boathouse with a dock extending twenty feet off the shore. No boat is currently docked. The house itself has two large doors that open outward. It's not locked, but the heavy wood of the handles has been eaten away by the grinding of chains. That chain is coiled up neatly next to the side, with a large padlock on it. Sergeant and Greenleaf, the same kind used by federal agencies and the military to secure sensitive equipment. Yvonne recognizes it as well.

"GSA certified," she says. General Service Administration. A federal agency that in part streamlines federal regulatory requirements. What kind of buildings federal agencies can use, security regulation for safes and security, things like that.

"These locks are a bitch to open, too," I say. I was in intelligence in the Coast Guard, so I am familiar with the mechanism. You needed to spin the dial a certain way. Three input codes, but the number of full rotations between digits wasn't the same. Three full revolutions right, two full revolutions left, one full revolution right, open. Overkill. You'd typically find these locks on the access ports to classified networks. Here was one, locking a boathouse in rural Pennsylvania.

I pull the one of the doors until it's open enough for the wind to catch it. It crashes into the exterior wall. I saw it happen and I still jumped a little.

"Damn wind," I mutter.

"This is borderline breaking and entering," Yvonne says cautiously. This isn't a TV show where the detectives just barge in and find the evidence to lock the culprit away. These are the kinds of fourth amendment violations that help criminals. Often, police get this far, then create the reason for the warrant in hindsight. I see mine.

"Broken window," I say and point to it. Part of the window is broken, and the glass is on the inside. Meaning someone possibly broke it from the outside. I was responding to a possible break in and needed to enter to search for further evidence of a crime. Time was of the essence because a man is missing. I've seen detectives skate by on less.

"Really pushing it," Yvonne says, but still enters the boathouse before me. I follow her inside.

Nothing out of the ordinary. Everything I figured would be in a boathouse is here. Kayaks, ropes, nets, etc. The floorboards are warped and uneven yet appear newer than the rest of the construction material. Like the floor was replaced by someone not qualified for the work.

There is enough natural light, so I don't need a flashlight. The first thing I confirm is the glass on the floor. Definitely from the window, and recent. No dust has collected on the glass, and no one has cleaned up the mess.

"Is this?" I ask and open the binder. I find the photo Chase took through a window and look behind me. It's hard to make out, and I wouldn't submit for evidence in a trial, but it's enough for me. This is where Chase took that photo.