The Guardian by D.E. Hall Page A

followed up with the staff. The ones that were still there, and the ones who had left we had to track down. Basically other than specific counseling sessions, you know HIPPA shit, the rest was given as we asked.”
    Halloway wanted to know, “Any chance of contacting the mother, brothers or even the dad?”
    “We tried that. The whereabouts of the siblings is an unknown at this point. The mother died of unknown causes about ten years ago. The old man was killed in a drunken driving accident. He was on life support for about two to three weeks, suffered a lot I guess. He had a lot of internal damage.” She said sounding a little too pleased.
    “The bastard probably beat her to death and that far back; up in hillbilly heaven nobody asked any questions.”
    “Do you want us to track the siblings down or do you think we have enough?” Laura asked.
    “Well, see if you can locate them, just so we have a contact point. We won’t bother them unless this thing leads us directly to them. I think you’ve got enough here for now. We don’t want to drag any of their skeletons out of the closets for them. All we need to do is to let them know where he is.
    “I don’t suppose there was any evidence at the site?”
    “Nothing, zip, nadda. No surprise though. It didn’t help that it rained all night either.”
    “I didn’t really expect to find anything. Whoever did this is too smart to leave shit around. Only the sick ones who want to be caught do that. They want to be found. I have a feeling that this guy wants to stay in business for awhile and the last thing he needs is to be caught.”
    “Ya,” Laura said, “But, they always make a mistake somewhere and we find it and then their ass is cooked.”
    “Well, let’s just hope it happens pretty soon.”
    Halloway looked at her, “Can we get an address and go by Radcliff’s house, get a warrant, look at what’s there, maybe get some leads.”
    “I’ll get right on it.” Laura agreed.
    Griffin left and headed for her office. She was going to get the warrant, dig up the brothers, see what she could find out, go to the house, and see what surprises lie in wait.
    Halloway stared at the pages in front of him. God Dam it, this was going to be one of those cases that you just hated to deal with. Everything about this was wrong, it was just all wrong.
    Chapter 12
    It had taken the Guardian almost two hours to get to where he was going. There was a small, isolated building out of town, just inside a little drink water place called Chloride. There was nothing there; the population was so small the roads weren’t even paved.
    The building was very sparsely equipped and had just the minimal necessities. The building was going to be eliminated anyway so it didn’t really matter what was there. It was a very short term lease if you will.
    It had a small area in which he could pull Charlie’s car in out of sight and would not draw any attention. The residents of Chloride just did not drive fancy little sporty models.
    He killed the lights as he came up to the building. After stopping in front of the two large, double doors, he got out, removed the lock that was on the outside. He swung the doors open, and quickly and quietly pulled the car inside. Once inside, he closed the doors he secured it with the lock from outside. He put a large wooden beam across the braces mounted to the inside of each door. It was probably over kill but he wasn’t taking any chances. He was very careful about covering his tracks and would be very surprised if he had been followed.
    After securing the car, he went inside the main part of the building and lit an oil lamp that was sitting on a small wooden table in the middle of the room.
    He went back out to the car, grabbed Charles, and dragged him into the building throwing him to the floor.
    “Ughhh” Charles groaned as he hit the floor.
    Charles was a bit groggy from the shot he had gotten but was still quite aware of what was happening to him. His