AN: I'm so glad you enjoyed the last chapter! Here's the next installment. Anything familiar belongs to JE, and any mistakes belong to me.
Whenever I decide how long I'm going to be on a stakeout, it's always half an hour longer than I really mean. The reason I do this is pretty simple. See if I say 9:30 then I can talk myself into leaving fifteen minutes to half an hour early, and then I leave at 9:00 and not 9:30. But if I say 10:00 out loud, trying to take off at 9:00 makes me feel like a lazy quitter.
It was 9:27 and I was counting down the seconds to until I could leave when Dickerson showed up in a rental car. We had his credit cards flagged so how he managed to rent it, was a mystery for another day.
Abby came to the door before he had a chance to get up the steps, and they had a hurried conversation, and Connie rooted around in the backpack for something and came up with a parabolic mic. "You couldn't have set that up like hours ago?" I asked.
"I forgot I had it," Connie whispered.
"Why are you whispering? He can't hear us."
She considered that for a minute, gave me the finger, and started recording Dickerson.
"But what about Sadie?" Abby said, "You didn't want to think about her in all of this? If she's implicated, they will go after her next."
"Bernie is in the hospital. I saw the ambulance come for her today and I don't know if it's because of an episode or if it's because they got to her. They've been following her for weeks now, and they made contact with her on the weekend. They are going to kill her."
"What about these friends?" Abby asked. "Can't you go to them?"
"They can't help," he said, "It's too late. If something happens to me while I fix this…"
"I'll take care of Bernie," Abby said, "I promise. Go to Glen's house."
She hugged him and handed him a set of keys, and then he ran to his car, looked around the street, and then drove off. We had to wait until Abby went inside before we started the car. We didn't want to risk her seeing us leave, so Connie went into the file we had on Abby. "Glen is her cousin who lives in Iowa."
"He's not going to Iowa," I said, and started the car. "Do a title search on Glen and see if he has any properties nearby."
"He has a place in Asbury Park," Connie said. I waited until Abby was inside, and then I started the car and headed towards the Garden State Parkway.
We caught up to him twenty minutes later and overtook him. Connie watched him to make sure he was doing what we were expecting him to do. Once we were on NJ-18 South, I got off of the highway, and immediately got back on again, staying well behind Dickerson, not catching up until he was near Exit 10A headed towards Asbury Park on 66.
He turned onto Seaview Avenue and parked on the street in front of a pretty, baby blue Saltbox house that had it not been packed in with a bunch of other houses, would have had a view across the street of Wesley lake. We drove past the house, turned left on Central Avenue, and then left onto Atlantic and parked the car on the corner of Atlantic and Beach. We got out of the car and walked back to Sea View Avenue.
"Did Lester give you any GPS thingies?" I asked.
She nodded and dug around in the black knapsack and handed me a little black plastic box with the trackers, and I jogged up to Dickerson's rental and put the tracking dot on it. I made sure it was working properly and then jogged back to Connie.
Ranger chose that minute to call me.
"Hey," I said, "I'm in Asbury Park."
"I know," he said, "I can see that."
I instinctively looked around and then remembered he was probably looking at me through the screens in his office. It had been a long day in the car. I should have probably quit hours before. "Are you coming out here to get me?"
"Yes, and I'm bringing relief," he said, "If Dickerson leaves, follow him. I see the tracker you set up, but if he ditches the car, I don't want you to lose him."
"Okay," I said and disconnected.
Connie looked at me, "We should put a dot on him."
"And how the hell are we going to do that?"
Connie thought about it for a minute and then her eyes lit up with inspiration. "I've got an idea."
She had me hold her phone for her while she fixed her heat fried hair, and put on some hooker red lipstick.
"Are you going to take the gel packs out from your bra?" I asked.
"Yeah, but not too soon; I want the girls at full attention," she said and plumped them a bit for good measure.
"Gotcha," I said.
Personally, I didn't think they needed to be at full attention; parade rest would have been fine too. Connie finished doing her hair and makeup, and she got up and slung her purse over her shoulder. "Gimme the thing."
I handed her the dot, and she stumbled up to the door and tried to put her house key in the lock. It wouldn't go, obviously, and she jiggled it a bunch of times. Dickerson wrenched the door open.
"You're not Dave. Dave gave me this key and said to come here." Connie's voice was slurred as she teetered on her heels like she was drunk.
"Who are you?" He demanded.
"Tammy," Connie said. "I'm Tammy, and Dave gave me this key to this house."
"Why do you have ice packs under your boobs?" Dickerson asked.
I smacked myself on the forehead.
"It was super hot on the beach," she said. She stumbled and fell into Dickerson, presumably taking the opportunity to put the dot in his pocket and stood upright. "Where's my phone? I'm gonna Uber."
"No way. I don't like Uber; I'm not going to let you get into a car with some stranger; not in your condition. Come inside and let me make you a coffee."
"I'm not going inside a strange man's house," she said.
"We can wait on the porch then, for a proper taxi."
Connie wasn't going to get out of this easily. Shit, I was going to have to do something. I went back along the street, crossed the road and started calling, "Tammy! Where the hell are you?"
It took Connie a beat to remember her name was Tammy, but then she turned and waved enthusiastically, "I'm here Lula," she said.
I rolled my eyes, "Come on, your brother Dave is waiting for you at his house. You went the wrong way, idiot."
"Oopsies!" Connie said, and she stumbled down the porch and across the street to me.
"Lula? Really?" I hissed.
"The first name that popped into my head," Connie said.
She finger waved at Mr. Dickerson, and I helped her down the sidewalk until we were out of his line of sight. Then we crossed back over and scurried back up the street to our stuff, and resumed our surveillance.
I was getting hungry, and tired, and I was hot and cranky and jealous of Connie's frozen ta-tas. I was starting to wish I had Ranger's screens on my phone so I could follow his progress to us, so at least I could count down the minutes until I could get some food.
I was about to text Hector to ask him if he would do that, when Dickerson came running out of the house, and rather than get into his rental, he went to the garage and got into a little blue VW Golf. Good thing Connie got the tracker on him.
We ran back to Connie's car and came up short. I pulled my phone out of my pocket again.
"What the fuck?" Connie said.
"You're riding with me. This is the shit that happens to me. Text Tank; he'll take care of it," I said. She grumbled under her breath as she texted. Someone had put her car up on blocks. It wasn't going anywhere.
"What are you doing?" Connie asked.
"We don't want to miss what's got him in such a hurry," I said, and I ordered an Uber. We waited five minutes for a minivan driven by a woman wearing a pair of plaid flannel shorts, and a loose t-shirt that said 'Sweet Dreams' on the front. She was wearing slippers, and her hair was in a ponytail.
"Where too?"
"Follow this dot," I said and put my phone on her dash. She looked at me like I'd lost my mind.
"What is this?" she asked.
"Cheating husband; we're PI's trying to catch him in the act," I said. It was mostly true.
"Where's your car?"
"Someone stole the wheels," I said.
"I hate when that happens," she said.
I climbed into the front seat and Connie wedged herself between car seats in the back. "Are these Goldfish crackers fresh?" she asked once we started rolling.
"The ones in the little bowl things are, help yourself. I wouldn't trust the ones in the kid seats. If you're feeling brave, there are probably M&M's in the car seat too," our driver said.
"I'll stick to the crackers," Connie said.
"There are juice boxes in the storage compartment under the floor."
"Oooh and wet ones!" Connie said. Connie handed me a wet wipe, a handful of Goldfish and a box of grape-apple juice like product.
"So are those ice packs under your jugs?" our driver asked Connie.
"They are," Connie said.
"Take them out, and I'll put on the AC. If you leave them there, I'm afraid you're going to poke someone's eye out."
"So what's your name?" Connie asked as she fished around in her cleavage.
"Noreen," she said.
"Nice to meet you, Noreen," Connie said.
Here's the thing, this was no high-speed car chase. Dickerson was driving a reasonable speed, and he was clearly headed back to Trenton, so it wasn't exactly super exciting. Noreen was a chatty sort of person, and we learned that she was a mom of four under the age of six, and she took up Uber driving as a way to have adult interaction in the evenings without having to worry about little kids climbing all over her.
She and Connie hit it off, and by the time we were back in Trenton, they'd decided to hook up for drinks the following week. When we got back to Trenton an hour later, Dickerson's car was in the parking lot of a deserted warehouse, and Dickerson himself was inside.
Noreen hung in there for about ten minutes before declaring the warehouse creepy. She gave us some granola bars she found in her purse and deposited us in an abandoned bus shelter after we all agreed that it counted as a building, so Dracula couldn't get in unless we invited him. We waved goodbye, and two minutes later Ranger called.
"I was going to call you and ask you why your tracker was in Trenton, while Connie and Dickerson appeared to be in Asbury Park, and then I got your Uber receipt. You took an Uber?"
"I didn't want to lose Dickerson," I said.
"Is Connie with you?"
"Yes," I said.
"We're half an hour away. Can you hang in there that long, or should I pull someone else and send them to you?"
"I'm good," I said. "We're just standing in a parking lot bus shelter, waiting for Dickerson to come out of a warehouse."
"Watch your back," Ranger said.
I nodded to the phone, remembered he couldn't see me, and said goodbye before turning to Connie, "He's coming to pick us up."
"He's just trying to steal our thunder. We were the ones who put in the hard work."
"I wouldn't exactly call it hard work; we sat in a sauna eating popsicles," I said.
"So are we going in there to scope it out?"
"No," I said, "I have no idea what kind of Factory that is."
"I thought the whole point behind taking the Uber in the first place was because we wanted to find out what he was running off to deal with?"
"Well, it was," I said. "But it's been a long day, and that place looks like something out of a horror movie."
I wasn't joking either. It was big, boxy, with broken windows, a faded sign and it was really dark, except for one corner of the place that had a light shining in a window. I was willing to bet we had to go through the nine circles of Hell to get to that light and I wasn't feeling up to it unless it was absolutely necessary. We hung out for about ten minutes in the stale air of the bus shelter, debating whether or not we should brave the relatively fresh air outside when the building suddenly flooded with light. It would have been okay, except there was an electrical issue and the light had an intermittent flicker. I think I preferred it dark.
"That's it. I'm done," Connie said. "Call another Uber."
"It's just a bad tube in one of the fluorescent light fixtures," I said. "It means the building is old, and you probably shouldn't go in there if you're prone to migraines."
I wasn't allowing myself to be creeped out by this. I already felt like an ass from the Dracula incident; I wasn't going to let myself believe that a faulty light socket was a bad omen.
Then I felt like Ray from Ghostbusters, when he accidentally thought about the Stay Puft marshmallow man, because I thought, 'Bad Omen,' and we heard rapid gunfire. Connie went to bolt away from the building and me, being an idiot, I grabbed her wrist and dragged her towards the entrance.
We got inside, and Connie handed me her gun. It was loaded and everything. She was probably a better shot than I was, so I wasn't sure why she gave me the weapon, but I was grateful because this place was creepier on the inside than it looked from the outside.
We were in a room full of dust covered crates, and spiderwebs, and dark shadows. I walked over to one of the more dilapidated boxes and kicked it, breaking it and praying it didn't contain the Ark of the Covenant. Connie bent down with the flashlight from her phone to check to see what we were looking at.
"Oh Lovely," she said.
"What?"
She pulled a shiny blue cardboard box with glow in the dark, spooky writing, and showed me a realistic, rubber, severed head. A sticker promised a realistic arterial bleed.
"Like this place needed to be creepier," she said.
Uh huh. Connie opened the box and pulled the head out and shoved it in the bag of stuff from Lester. "What are you doing?"
"You never know, it might come in handy," she said. "Ohh look, a severed hand. You take that one."
"No!" I hissed. "You take it; you have the backpack, and I need to hold the gun."
"Won't fit. I think the head's enough, right?"
We kept walking through the rooms, and we went out on to a production floor. We stopped short as the PA system crackled into life, playing a familiar song.
"What is that?" Connie asked, "Is that from Grease?"
It sounded like we were listening to We Go Together, but it was wrong. The lyrics were all distorted and muffled, but I suddenly felt like I was eight years old.
"No," I said. "I think it's from a cartoon."
"No that's Grease."
We both paused to listen as the song came to an end and started over again.
Muppet Babies, We make our dreams come true!
Muppet Babies, we'll do the same for you…
"I fucking love, the Muppet Babies," Connie said.
"Right now they are creeping me the fuck out," I said.
The power flickered again, and the music slowed.
When the world looks kind of weird and you wish that you weren't there…
Kermit had gone from cute and babyish to child of Satan. I wanted the fuck out of there. I was about ready to skedaddle when we heard a man start to scream. Again, instead of running away, we ran towards the bad sounds. Connie reluctantly, and me like an enthusiastic moron.
We ran up a rickety metal staircase and saw Waldo Dickerson tied down to a ventilated platform with a big sheet of heated plastic stretched a few feet above him, and it was coming down over him.
We sprinted to the machine to try and turn it off, but it needed a key, and it had been broken off in the controls. Dickerson did not look in good shape. He'd been whacked over the head with something, and he'd been stabbed a few times in the gut.
"Help me," he gasped. I started trying to cut Dickerson's restraints with Connie's car keys, while Connie looked for a way to cut power to the machine. There was the loud rapid report of gunfire, and Dickerson jerked and went still. I turned and Connie and I stared in horror as a seven foot, baby Animal muppet, wearing a bonnet and diaper and holding an uzi started running for us.
We took off for the nearest place to hide, and Animal started firing in our direction. We dove behind a machine and put our backs to it. We could see Animal coming towards us in the reflection of a plate glass window above us.
We were trapped, we couldn't get out without breaking cover, and the nearest door was twenty feet away. Animal could only sustain fire for about ten seconds before he would have to re-load and we'd have a couple of seconds at most to do something.
"Give me the bag," I said to Connie.
"What are you going to do? Take his fucking picture?"
"I'm going to distract him and then I'm going to cover you while you run for that door. I'll be two steps behind you."
"Are you sure this is going to work?"
"No," I said. I pulled the head out of the bag and saw a big plastic pin on the bottom like you'd see on a grenade. Pretty sure this wasn't a bomb, but that would be one helluva distraction if it were.
I grabbed the rubber head by the hair and waited until the firing stopped before I pulled the pin and heaved the severed head at Animal. It hit the floor with a disgusting thump-squish, and blood from inside the 'artery' splotched on the floor before the head rolled to a stop at Animal's feet. Animal let out a scream that was muffled by his suit, and Connie sprinted for the door. I started firing towards Animal and made for Connie's doorway.
Animal covered his eyes with one hand, reaching all the way up to the top of his costume, instead of shielding the eye hole in the mask head's mouth, and turned his head away, firing blindly towards us. We hit the deck and slammed the door behind us.
The room appeared to be a janitor's office. There were no windows, but there was a solid steel door and a chair we were able to wedge under the door handle. I fumbled for my phone and called Ranger.
"Yo," I said, "Are you close?"
"In a manner of speaking?" he said, and I heard gunfire on his end of the phone.
"What do you mean in a manner of speaking?"
"I'm on the ground floor; I'm pinned down by Kermit the Frog and Rowlf the Dog, and they are wearing diapers."
"What the actual fuck?"
"Where are you?"
"In an office upstairs, and we're out of severed heads and bullets."
"Give me a few," he said. It was moments like these that I felt like I needed to examine my life choices. He should have at least been a little phased by the fact that we were out of severed heads. Then again Ranger handled moments of crisis in stride. He got off on it. I handled chaos like an exhausted circus performer trying to get through a highwire act by mainlining Redbull.
It felt like forever before Ranger banged on the door, and I moved the chair away, and we walked out.
"What happened to the Muppets?" I asked.
"Gone," Ranger said. "I think I winged Miss Piggy, but they got whatever they wanted, and left."
"There's a sentence you'll never hear again," Connie said.
"What about Dickerson?" I asked.
"Didn't see him," Ranger said. Connie and I ran to the machine he was in and stopped. Dickerson was gone, but there was a perfect, clear plastic, vacuum formed mold of Dickerson body. I was reasonably sure that even if he wasn't dead from the bullet or stab wounds, he was probably dead from being vacuumed.
