Author's note: Advanced notice, only one more chapter after this.
Face pushed the drapes back and told B.A., "Well they haven't spotted us yet, I think we'll be safe for now anyway."
They turned away from the window and saw Hannibal sitting up on his bed with his arms crossed, his feet pressed firmly against the footboard, and a determined look on his face.
"Something wrong, Hannibal?" Face asked, knowing that something clearly was but not sure what it was.
"Yeah," Hannibal answered simply.
Face and B.A. looked at each other and shrugged mutually. It seemed Hannibal was in one of his rare moods again, and when they happened, there was never any telling what brought them about or what to do until the moment passed. So they decided it was best just to leave Hannibal to his own thoughts and wait for the moment to pass.
Hannibal sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes for a few seconds. He had to talk to Murdock, he had to get something settled with the pilot, and soon. A fine thing, he goes off about Murdock not being trustworthy, and then it hit Hannibal like a ton of bricks that he never explained his plan to the captain involving this back-from-the-dead plot against Masterson. He must've been starting to get old, he was starting to slip.
Hannibal was shocked out of his thoughts and he slightly jumped up off the mattress when the phone rang, breaking the otherwise silence in the room.
They all looked at each other, silently questioning if the person calling the room was someone they could trust. Hannibal chanced it, he picked up the receiver, "Hello?"
"Colonel, can I talk to you?" Murdock asked.
"Murdock!" Hannibal responded, a bit too excitedly, but the others got the point that it was safe and so they went about their own business while Hannibal talked.
"What's going on, Murdock? Everything okay?" Hannibal asked.
In Murdock's motel room, he looked back at Frankie and Mad Dog who were asleep on the bed. He'd slipped them both a dose of B.A.'s bedtime drink so he could be alone with his phone.
"Yeah I guess you could say that," he answered as he rubbed his chin apprehensively with his free hand, "Hey look, Hannibal, I gotta talk to you about something."
"What's up?"
"Uh…" Murdock paused before explaining, "I know that you would never lie to me, Colonel, but I get the feeling that you've been holding something back from me the last few days."
"Yeah, I guess you could say that," Hannibal slowly replied as he half rolled his eyes, "Sorry, Captain, with us playing tag with everybody else the last few days it's been hard to catch you alone to bring you up to speed on what's going on."
"Well I guess that makes us even," Murdock told him as he stepped onto the dresser in the motel room, "There's something I want to talk to you about too."
That surprised Hannibal, "What is it?"
The storm that had been building up that afternoon threatened to drop on the city at any time, but right now it was still just in the threatening stage. The wind had picked up and howled like a banshee, the sky was black with clouds except for every so often when lightning would flash and for a split second light everything up. Richard Masterson heard the storm outside but paid little mind to it. Twice today he'd had someone call him, a mysterious caller who never identified himself but kept mentioning Alice Arden, saying she was going to come for him. He stood in his living room with his hands pressed against the mantel of his fireplace and his head down as he tried to make some sense of it. How could anybody have found out? And who was it? And who had told them? Oh he could guess who had told, but who would believe?
Outside the wind howled even stronger than before, and the next thing Masterson knew, the house went dark. A few seconds later, the lights flickered back on again. The power might be going out, so he sorted through the drawers for a flashlight, but before he could find one, the lights went out again, and seemed to stay off this time. Outside the thunder crashed, but he heard something else as well. At first he couldn't tell what the sound was he was hearing, then he realized it sounded like something rattling against the house, like a damn kid strumming a stick against the metal rungs in a fence. He followed the sound over to the west side wall of the dining room and tried looking out the window. When lightning flashed again, he saw nothing, but he heard something different. It sounded like an animal scratching by the door, like a set of claws scratching into the wire screen on the back door.
Masterson turned towards the kitchen and slowly made his way over to the door to look out. Again he couldn't see anything, but when the scratching noises stopped, he heard something that sounded like someone moaning. The sounds seemed to move along the house outside, and Masterson followed the sound of the moans back to the dining room windows. Lightning struck again but this time he did see something; a woman in a long white wedding dress, but he drew back from the window screaming when he saw the woman's face. The face looked like a demon, the flesh dark and ashy, wrinkled and puckered in parts, looking like tree bark chipping off the trunk, the teeth protruded from a mouth that was closed, looking like fangs off a wild animal. The woman raised a gray and decaying hand up, balled it into a fist and beat against the window with it. Masterson inched away from the window and ran for the front door.
As soon as he ran down the porch steps, he saw a set of spinning lights and heard a brief wail of the siren of the police car that pulled up to his curb. An older officer with gray hair got out and asked him, "Trouble, sir?"
Masterson looked back to his house and didn't see the woman, he turned to the officer and said, "I'm not sure, I…I think someone was trying to break into my house."
"Sounds serious," the officer said as he pocketed a cigar he had started to take out, "We'll go have a look."
"Over here," Masterson pointed along the side of the house.
"Hmmm," the officer said as he looked over the area, "Looks like something tried clawing through the screen in your window…don't look like a human did it though, probably a wild animal in the area." He went over to the back door and asked Masterson, "Say, did you leave your back door open?"
"No I didn't."
"Well then," the officer took out his sidearm and a flashlight and said, "We'll check it out."
Masterson looked up at the overhead lights came on again. A minute later, the cop came up from the basement calling out, "There ya go!" He came up the stairs and told Masterson, "Found your problem, had a switch thrown in the breaker box."
"Oh, I thought the storm had put the power out," Masterson said.
"Nope, just threw a breaker," the officer said as he closed the door, "Seems you've been having some problems with it lately?"
"How's that?"
"Well the panel was open on it, you been fiddling around with the breakers before?" the cop asked.
"No, I keep it closed," Masterson told him.
"Oh, well it probably just worked its way loose, Lord knows mine's done that enough times," the cop said.
"I see," Masterson replied, "Well thanks for your help, officer."
"No problem, I'll show myself out," he said.
B.A. looked up the street waiting for a sign that Hannibal was on his way back, he'd been gone longer than planned. The thunder was rumbling up in the clouds, it wasn't as loud or as constant now as it had been earlier that night, but the low rumbling lasted a lot longer than the rest had. He looked up the street again and this time saw somebody coming their way. It wasn't Hannibal though, it looked like a woman. B.A. looked again and saw that the woman was wearing a long white dress, like a wedding dress. Now who in their right mind would be getting married on a night like this?
The figure strolled down the road and came closer towards them and B.A. noticed the odd way the woman walked, slowly, almost limping, with her arms outstretched as if to keep herself balanced. The closer she came to them, the more B.A. realized that something about her didn't look quite right, but he wasn't sure what. He turned back to say something to Face but spun back around when he heard a growling, snarling noise coming from behind. The woman was only inches from him now and he was able to see her rotted, decaying face and razor sharp teeth as she inched towards him, snarling like a wild animal. B.A. drew back his fist to smash in the face of whatever that was when it started laughing at him. The decrepit hands reached up and pulled on the face and the mask came off, revealing underneath…
"Hi, B.A., did I scare you?"
"Murdock!"
"Hey Face!" Murdock called as he staggered over on sore feet in four inch heels, "What do you think? Did you like it?"
"You look very nice, Murdock," Face sarcastically replied.
"I thought so, but man I don't know how women can walk around in these," he lifted up one foot to show the bottom of the shoe to Face, "Which reminds me, how did you ever find a pair in my size?"
B.A. heard a car coming their way and saw it was the police car Hannibal had taken, he pulled it up behind the van and got out to join the others.
"Hey Hannibal," B.A. growled as he locked his hydraulic press arms around Murdock's tiny little waist and lifted the pilot off his feet and carried him over to Hannibal, with Murdock's feet swaying back and forth like a clock pendulum under the gown, "This the second time this crazy fool gone and put on a wedding dress, what's going on here?"
Now Murdock was kicking like a cat that didn't like being held and he told B.A., "Put me down!"
"Shut up, fool," B.A. replied as he dropped Murdock, "Well Hannibal?"
"It's alright, B.A., it's all part of the plan," Hannibal assured the sergeant as he peeled off his cop disguise.
"What plan?" B.A. demanded to know, "You didn't say nothing about this crazy fool being there dressed up like a zombie."
"Well I was originally going to be a skeleton," Murdock said in his own defense, "But Hannibal had other ideas."
"Calm down, B.A.," Hannibal said, "It was a last minute decision, it turns out that Murdock was working on a plan similar to my own, and I decided to just put the good pieces of both together for the best result."
"So how did it go?" Face asked.
Frankie and Mad Dog came running up to join the others and Frankie explained, "Looks like we've got Masterson damn near scared silly, you should've seen him running out of the house after he saw Murdock." She looked to Hannibal and added, "I don't know if he really thinks Alice is back from the dead or not, but he knows something's wrong, it's just a matter of time before the other shoe drops."
"Ought to make it one of B.A.'s," Murdock said, "Mudsucker wears size 14 clodhoppers."
"Shut up, fool," B.A. told him.
"So now what do we do, Hannibal?" Face asked.
"Hardest part's already taken care of," Hannibal told them, "By the way, Face, that was very ingenuous of you picking the lock to the cellar door so we could cut the power in the first place."
"Yeah, and then locking it again on the way out, he never had a clue," Murdock noted.
"Now," Hannibal glanced at his watch, "We'll retire for the night and resume tomorrow with another anonymous phone call to the house."
"We'll catch up," Frankie told Hannibal, "We're gonna help Murdock get out of his dress."
"Alright, but don't take too long," Hannibal said as he went back to the police car to return it to the studio lot.
They waited until Hannibal was gone and B.A. and Face had left in the van before they started to help Murdock out of the wedding gown. He lifted his arms up and Frankie grabbed the skirt of it and started to hike it up. When they had the top part of the dress up over his head, Frankie stomped on his foot.
"Yeouch!" he yelped, "What did you do that for?"
"You told them!" Frankie said, "You told them the plan, damn you!"
Murdock moaned and started hopping on one foot once the dress was off of him, "I had to, Frankie."
"What do you mean you had to?" Mad Dog asked.
"You set us up," Frankie said accusingly.
"Not exactly," Murdock told them both and explained, "Yes, in the beginning this was just our plan, but the truth of the matter is we were not going to fly solo on this."
"How can you say that?" Frankie wanted to know.
"Hannibal had his own plan for this guy, Hannibal's plans don't always work the way they're supposed to but they always work, if I undermine his plan or his authority then I am ripping at the thread that holds the Team together and makes it the success it is. So I had to let him know what we were planning, but I didn't tell him the whole story, he just thought it neatly paralleled his own idea. And for what he had planned, it worked." He addressed them both as he got dressed and told them, "I know how you both feel about this jerk, and you have every right to, I know you both would like nothing more than to see him dead, I wouldn't mind killing him myself, but that's not going to do either of you two any favors. We need him alive and sane enough to make a full confession to the police when we nail him, that's the only way you guys are ever gonna get your names cleared, you understand that?"
They looked at each other and didn't say anything. They looked like a couple of small kids who were facing punishment for breaking something and deciding how to get their stories straight. Murdock was a lot of things but he wasn't malicious, he could appreciate how trying and confusing this whole experience had been for them. He got between them and put his arms around their shoulders and told them, "Come on, let's get back to the motel, it's getting late."
Frankie didn't sleep that night, or if she did she wasn't aware of it. She lay in bed beside Mad Dog and Murdock and thought about what they were going to do next, and more importantly what she was going to do next. She must've eventually fallen asleep because she noticed at one point that it was getting light out. She wasn't sure what she was going to do, but she knew she couldn't stay here. Moving carefully and quietly, she got up from the bed without disturbing the other two and she padded over to the bathroom. First she picked up her shoes, and then went in and locked the bathroom door. She turned on the shower and left it running as she put her shoes on and went over to the window and slid it open and slipped out.
She ran fast and hard, ran like she felt she'd been running the last three years, trying to get somewhere, anywhere, but always ending up nowhere. Only this time she was going somewhere, she ran until she was back in the town she had grown up in, spent her whole life in. Everything looked the same, nothing had changed since she'd been gone. It was still early, people either weren't up yet or were already going to work, now seemed like a perfect opportunity. She followed the roads she knew so well until she came to the same block that her house stood in the middle of. It looked the same as she remembered, nothing was different. There were no cars in the driveway so she went up the sidewalk, up to the porch, and went right on in.
She closed the door behind her and pinned herself against it as if to make sure nobody got in. The early sun was already shining brightly in through every window in the house, making it look very cheerful and lively, but all she felt was cold running down her spine.
She called out to make sure she was alone, "Mom? …Dad?" no answer. She moved away from the front door and walked straight into the kitchen. She went over to the cupboards under the sink, opened a drawer that the silverware was kept in and sorted through the contents until she found what she was looking for.
It wasn't quite what she was looking for. She was hoping to find the stainless steel wedding cake cutter her parents had from when they first got married, those after all she had found were most comparable to a garden trowel, nice and sharp. Instead she could only find a metal pie server, it was of roughly the same build and shape, except this was a smoothed, rounded blade at the tip, like a butter knife, not very sharp at all. But Frankie decided it would have to do, she put it in her pocket, closed the drawer, and exited the house she had spent 20 years at through the back door, and ran back to the motel before anybody could discover she was missing.
As she neared the motel she had slowed down to a walk, and now a lot more things were going through Frankie's mind, one of which, how the hell was she going to get this thing sharp enough to actually use? She thought she found her answer when she saw a large rock garden in the yard outside the motel. She knelt down and felt some of the bigger rocks and found one that seemed hard and durable enough to use. Of course she knew one of these was a poor excuse for a sharpening stone, but it was the best she could do on short notice. She picked the rock up, shoved it into her other pocket, and then climbed back in through the bathroom window. Closing the window, she went over to the door, unlocked it and opened it a crack to see Murdock and Mad Dog were still in bed. She had pulled it off, she let out a sigh of relief. Well, one part anyway, now came the harder part.
"Well Masterson, did you have a good time with your guest last night?" Hannibal asked when he called the man the next morning.
It was obvious that Masterson hadn't forgotten the events from last night, Hannibal could hear his voice shaking as he demanded to know, "Who the hell are you? What do you want?"
"I'm in a market for something very precious, Mr. Masterson," Hannibal explained, "The truth, it's a funny thing to run a business on but I've always been very particular to it. Alice is very upset that you ran out on her last night, she was so hoping to see more of you. But I wouldn't worry, I'm sure she'll be able to come and pay you another visit tonight."
Face had his hand clamped over his mouth so he wouldn't be heard laughing, he went over to B.A. and whispered to the sergeant, "Hannibal sure seems to have a knack for this stuff, don't you think?"
"Man's crazier than Murdock," B.A. replied, clearly unimpressed.
"Well yeah, there's that too," Face said.
"I'm afraid, Masterson, that we really have very little to discuss, but if I decide otherwise, I'll get in touch with you again," Hannibal concluded as he hung up the phone.
"Hey Hannibal, don't tell me that crazy fool Murdock's gonna be wearing that dress again," B.A. said.
"He may not have to," Hannibal answered, "I'm banking on us getting him out of that house by this afternoon so we can go in and retrieve the knife."
"Hannibal," Face interjected, "Even if it turns out that that is the murder weapon…it's been three years, any blood that was on it is going to be long gone."
"Not necessarily," Hannibal replied, "The more advanced police forensics come, the more they find out that you never really get rid of all the blood on anything. There may be one teeny tiny drop somewhere wedged between the blade and the handle, if it's there, the police are going to find it, that, with his confession, is going to get him a life sentence, I'll guarantee it. If the police could find a drop of blood on Lizzie Borden's dress a hundred years ago, they can find a trace of blood on that knife now."
"It's just too bad we couldn't find out if he really did have something to do with the prosecutor from Mad Dog's case being killed, that would definitely cement the case," Face noted.
"Maybe we can get that confession out of him as a bonus," Hannibal thought. He looked at the time and said, "I'm going to call over to the other motel and see how things are going on Murdock's side."
"Well we're all doing fine here, Colonel," Murdock told Hannibal as he walked back and forth across the motel room with the phone in hand, "Yeah we got through the night okay…uh…besides me? Well then the only thing weird going on around here is Frankie seems to be a little…introverted this morning…she keeps ducking either into the bathroom or into the closet to be left alone…I don't know why she's doing it but it seems a little weird even by my standards."
As Murdock talked to Hannibal, Mad Dog had his ear to the closet door trying to hear what was going on, but he wasn't hearing anything over the pilot's jabbering. He knocked on the door and said softly, "Come on Frankie, come out of there and let's talk about this."
"There's nothing to talk about, Mad Dog," she replied from inside the closet, "Now go away and leave me alone."
But he didn't move one inch away from the door, he tried making some sense out of what was going on but was coming up empty. He leaned against the door and sank down to the floor and quietly asked himself, "What's going on?"
Frankie listened and when everything became quiet outside, she got up from her cramped spot against the closet wall and turned the doorknob and stepped out. Now that she had a little light to see by, she took a look at her handiwork that she'd been working on all morning. Her hand had a narrow red indention clear across it from the grip she'd kept on the server's handle while she tried sharpening it on the rock. The rock itself was starting to look like something that had seen better days, the blade on the server was crooked and uneven but it was getting sharp enough to actually cut something with, but it still needed some more work to be complete.
There was no sign of Murdock or Mad Dog anywhere, it didn't really bother her too much but she looked around just to make sure that they were gone. She found a note left for her on the dresser, it said that they'd gone to pick up lunch and would be back soon, and if there was any trouble there was the number to Hannibal's motel room a few blocks over. Well, she'd bought herself a little time to work by the daylight, she sat down on the bed and proceeded grinding the sides of the pie cutter against the stone, though for all the trouble it had taken already to make as much progress as she had, she would've rather been sawing down a tree piece by piece and all by hand.
After a while, Frankie heard somebody coming back so she took her tools and went into the bathroom, locked herself in and turned the shower on to cover the noise.
"Well," Murdock said when he heard the water running, "She's out of the closet, that's a start anyway." He turned to Mad Dog and asked him, "But didn't she take a shower this morning?"
"Beats me, I was asleep," M.D. told him.
Murdock shrugged and commented only, "Boy she's a clean girl." He went over to the door, knocked on it and called in, "Hey Frankie, we picked up some sandwiches for lunch!"
Inside the bathroom, Frankie was seated on the edge of the bathtub, the stone gripped in one hand and the steel server gripped in the other. Furiously she sawed against the stone and watched as bit by bit the blade became sharper on the side and the tip. It was like she was trying to saw down a redwood by hand before the whistle blew for the day, the closer she saw she was coming to her intended goal, the faster she worked and the less attention she paid to everything else. The work combined with the heat from the water had her perspiring and sweat was running down into her eyes, she only blinked it away, never pulling back from her work for a second. And then finally, she held the server up to the light and saw it was as sharp as a newly made butcher's knife, perfect.
A few minutes later, Frankie emerged from the bathroom with large parts of her skin shining from the water still, her hair was wet and her face was flushed from the heat.
"Hey cous, you feeling alright?" Murdock asked.
"Never better," she replied as she went over to the table and picked up one of the sandwiches. For no more than the 10 minutes she'd spent actually in the shower she was confident she'd scrubbed every inch of her body till it was as clean as polished silver.
"So," she said after taking a swig of her soda, "What's the next part of Hannibal's plan?"
"He's been making a few calls to Masterson since this morning, he's trying to get him out of the house so we can get in and look for the knife."
"Won't work," Frankie told him, "I'm the only one who knows what it looks like, he should have me go in and get it."
Murdock got an uncomfortable look on his face as he told her, "All due respect, Frankie, I don't think that'd be a good idea."
"Why not?" she asked, "You worried I'm going to start getting reckless now?"
"It's not that," Murdock started to say.
"Murdock, this guy's got blood on his hands, a lot of it," Frankie told him, "I may not know how many women he actually murdered, but there were a lot of girls when I was growing up who weren't as lucky to get away from him as I was, and you know what happened to a lot of them? They killed themselves, because they couldn't stand what he'd done to them and they knew that there wasn't anybody who was going to believe them or fight for them. Whatever it takes to make sure he never sees daylight again, I'm not going to screw it up."
Murdock smiled at her, "I know you're not, Frankie."
"Dammit," Hannibal said as he put down his binoculars, "Decker must have ESP, there's been an MP car parked on the block by Masterson's house for half an hour now."
"You don't think he figured out who we were, do you?" Face asked.
"He's not smart enough to do something like that," Hannibal said, "Somebody had to have recognized us from somewhere and called it in."
"So now what do we do, Hannibal?" B.A. asked.
"We don't have any choice, we have to go back to the motel for now and wait until that car leaves," Hannibal said, "And make sure that there aren't any backup cars to take its place."
"Maybe you could try phoning in another false alarm," Face suggested.
Hannibal shook his head as he bit down on his cigar, "No good, as much as we can go a week without the army finding us, there can't be too many reports about us coming in so close together, otherwise they're going to start figuring out something's up."
"Still, too bad we couldn't find some way to get them chasing their tails so we could move in," Face said.
Hannibal looked up to the sky, it suddenly got dark out and he saw large dark clouds moving in again. Perhaps the storm that had threatened to but never fell last night would do so tonight instead.
"I got us some drinks," Frankie said as she carried three plastic glasses into the bed section of the motel room where Murdock and Mad Dog were.
Mad Dog took his first and drank it down. Then she went over to Murdock who was standing by the window looking out, he took his and said, "Thanks, cous."
"See anything?" Frankie asked as she took hers and went back towards the bed.
"Looks like a storm's coming up, could be a real beauty," Murdock told her, "You ever been in a tornado, Frankie?"
"Once, I was too little to remember it though," she answered.
"You know how they always come out of those great big wall clouds?" Murdock asked, "Those great big clouds that just go on and on and on as far as the eye can see? That's what that looks like out there."
"Think there's a tornado in it?" she asked.
"Unlikely, the weather conditions aren't right for a tornado," Murdock said, "Though they do look a little green…so we probably get hail." He snorted and said, "The way the weather's been lately we could sure take some of that when it melts." He swallowed his drink and added, "Hannibal said that they got held up back in town…looks like somebody dropped a dime to the MPs about us, they've been watching the block so they can't get in."
"I see," Frankie replied neutrally.
She looked out the window as well and saw the sky, it looked like she felt.
A short while later Murdock moved away from the window to stretch and yawn, and he saw Mad Dog had fallen asleep, and Frankie was leaning over him stroking his head and softly murmuring to him. Murdock had to strain his ear to hear the last of it as she told M.D., "I love you, Murdoch, I hope you remember that."
"Don't worry, Frankie, in a little while this is all gonna be over," Murdock told her.
Frankie looked up at him and said almost nonchalantly, "You have no idea."
The sky had gotten much darker and looked like dead of night even though it was a couple of hours before it would reach that point. Frankie trudged through the dirt under her feet and went over to the phone booth. She closed the door behind her, put a quarter in and dialed and said to the person on the other end of the line, "I'd like the number for the Federal Building in Los Angeles. Thank you…" After getting that, she hung up, put in another quarter and dialed again, and waited, then someone answered. "Hello? I'd like to report a sighting of the A-Team…they just went into the Catholic church on Baker Street, yes, in Bakersfield, please hurry, I don't know what they're doing or how long they'll be there."
She hung up and thought about what had to be done now. She bought a little time, it would only take a few minutes for all available cars to get over to the other town but it was all the time she needed for what she had planned. It would have to be enough time.
Frankie had just made it back to the motel room a few minutes before the thunder and lightning started. It wasn't raining yet, probably wouldn't again, not that it mattered to her either way. A few minutes later there was a knock at the door. She answered and saw that it was Hannibal.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"The MPs just left, we can move in now, B.A. and Face are keeping an eye out incase somebody would happen to circle back, but that's unlikely, where's Murdock?" Hannibal asked.
"He's in here," Frankie said as she nodded towards the bed.
Hannibal stepped into the room and saw Murdock and Mad Dog both asleep on the bed.
"Murdock, what are you…"
THUD
That was all Hannibal got out before something hit him over the back of the head and he sank down to his knees and collapsed on the floor like a ton of bricks. He was instantaneously out like a light, Frankie stood hovered over him.
"Sorry, Hannibal," she said to the unconscious older man on the floor, "I really did like you guys…but this isn't your call to make anymore, it's mine."
She tossed the bottle of sleeping pills that she'd used to drug the two Murdocks with into the wastebasket, then she picked up the customized server and walked out. She closed the door behind her, locked it and took off into the night and into the ominous weather, right now it was a perfect comparison to how she felt. She stormed off into the darkness and made her way back the path she had already gone once today, this time she knew there would be no coming back.
