Richard Montanari - The Echo Man

At the rear bumper Jessica stopped, raised her left hand, made it into a fist. Bontrager stopped. Jessica put her ear to the back doors, listened. Silence from within.

Jessica held up five fingers. Bontrager nodded.

Jessica crept up to the driver door, counted down silently from five. There were no lights in the van, so the side mirror did not reflect the inside. She held her weapon in her left hand, trained on the door, slid her right hand along the panel.

On four she opened the door, stepped to the left in attack stance, weapon leveled. The driver's seat was empty, as was the seat on the passenger side. Keys in the ignition.

Bontrager opened the passenger door on five, pointed his flashlight inside the van. Behind the driver's seat were a pair of side racks. Strapped into them were David Albrecht's equipment — tripods, equipment cases, lights, microphone stands, a short ladder.

Jessica flipped on the van's interior light.

There was no one inside.

Near the back doors they could see the video camera on its side.

The camera was on, the blue rectangle of the flip-out LCD screen glowed. Jessica took a single latex glove out of her pocket, snapped it on. She crossed to the back of the van, opened a door. Reaching in, she tilted the camera back onto its side. There had to be two dozen buttons.

'Do you know how to operate one of these?'

'Sort of,' Bontrager said. 'I took the video of my cousin's wedding last year.'

'There's video at an Amish wedding?'

'My cousin left the church. She married English.'

Bontrager put on a glove, looked closely at the camera for a few moments. He hit a button. They heard a whirring sound, then a click. The side of the camera opened.

'There's no tape,' Bontrager said.

Jessica scanned the back of the van, looking for a tape. Then she went back to the front of the vehicle, searched through the console and the glove compartment. Empty.

'Sometimes there's a memory card,' Bontrager said. He clicked a few more buttons. Different menus flicked by on the LCD screen. 'Yeah, the card's still in there.'

Bontrager thumbed a few more buttons, the screens ticked by. He hit a button. A video copied to the memory card began to play.

There were only twenty seconds or so of video and audio, but it was chilling. The video showed someone walking up to the camera along a dark lane. The camera was shaky, showed the figure from the shoulders down.

'It's you,' a voice whispered. Was it Albrecht speaking? Impossible to tell.

Without another word, the door of Albrecht's van was yanked open. The video spun into a collage of images: trees, night sky, the side of the van.

The image then became a stationary shot along the ground, showing Sawmill Road stretching out into the darkness. This continued for a few moments before the screen went black.

Bontrager stepped a few paces away from the van, pointing his flashlight at the ground. 'Jess.'

Jessica walked over. On the trunk of a fallen tree was a small pool of blood. A few more drops on the grass led deeper into the woods, over trampled branches.

Weapons in hand, the two detectives stepped into the forest.

Lucy couldn't move. She was lying on a cold stone floor. A draft was coming from somewhere. She had been yanked roughly out of the van, walked down some stairs, and deposited on the floor. Then she heard a door slam and a lock turn.

Then, nothing.

The good news was that her captor had not tightened the plastic band around her wrists. She still had a little slack. She rolled over and began to work on the band, flexing and relaxing her wrists. After a few minutes her lower arms began to feel numb. She stopped for a while, started again. After ten minutes or so it felt as if she might be able to begin to work her hand free.

When she had been dropped on the floor she'd felt a small puddle of water. She rolled over and over until she was on top of it. She angled her body so that her hands got wet. The water was freezing. She had never done well in science classes, but she figured that this might be a good thing, if it helped her hands contract and not the band.

She took a deep breath, bracing against the pain she knew was coming, and started to twist her wrists out of the plastic band. No dice. She wet her hands a second time. They were growing numb again, but she couldn't stop.

The third time she tried, she felt the band slip over the base of her thumbs. With great effort she pulled her right hand out of the plastic band.

Lucy stood up, a little shaky, pulled the tape from her mouth. She gulped the cold air.

There was virtually no light in the room. With her hands out front, she felt along the wall. It was a small room, a cellar of some sort. Stone walls. There was a bench, a couple of old chairs. Everything had a deep layer of dust on it. She felt her way over to the door, listened for a while. Silence. As gently as possible, she tried to turn the knob.

Locked.

The trail of blood stopped about twenty yards into the woods, where the forest became thick and tangled before dropping into a steep gorge.

Jessica and Bontrager shone their flashlights into the ravine, but the beams were instantly swallowed by darkness.

'Albrecht is hurt pretty bad,' Bontrager said.

'If this is Albrecht's blood.'

Bontrager looked at Jessica, then back at the blood trail, which was quickly being washed away in the drizzling rain. 'You're right. We don't know if this is Albrecht's.'

'We have to call it in, Josh.'

Bontrager hesitated a second, no longer. He ran back to the road, called PPD dispatch, identified himself and their position. Dispatch would contact the closest emergency services agency and police K-9 units.

Jessica returned to the road. They stood on the shoulder.

'I'll stay here,' Bontrager said. 'I'll wait for the search team.'

'It's over, Josh. Even if Mike Drummond keeps his word, they're going to put all this together.'

Bontrager took a few steps away, thinking, turned back.

'Okay. Here's what happened. I was following a lead. I saw the vehicle, pulled over, discovered the blood. I called it in. Before I could get back to my car I was ambushed. This is why I'm a little unclear on the details after that.'

'No one is going to buy that.'

'Maybe yes, maybe no. We'll worry about that later.'

Jessica considered the scenario. 'Are you sure?'

'Yeah,' Bontrager said, planting his feet apart. 'Make it look good.'

Jessica took a step back. 'Josh…'

'I know you box, so try not to kill me.'

Jessica put on one of her wool gloves, hesitated. This was getting deeper and deeper. 'Are you sure sure?'

'You're talking me out of it.'

Jessica reared back and threw the punch, pulling it a little. It caught Bontrager on the right side of his jaw. Bontrager reeled back, nearly toppling over.

'Wow.'

She had bloodied his lip.

'Jesus Christ. Are you okay?'

Long pause. 'I'm fine. I may never sing with the opera again, but I'm fine.' He reached down, gathered some dirt from the side of the road, scuffed up his suit coat.

Jessica looked from the van, back to Josh, then up Sawmill Road. According to the map she was about a mile away.

She wanted to tell Josh to call or text her, keeping her in the loop, but it was not a good idea. That would put everything on the record. 'You sure you're all right?'

Bontrager rubbed his jaw, which was already starting to swell. 'Go.' Jessica checked the action on her Glock, snapped it back into her holster, and started down the road.

The smell of just-turned earth fills my senses. Each shovelful brings with it a plaintive voice: a plea of innocence, a shout of unrepentant pride, a wail of sorrow. I hear them all.