Chapter 23: The Voice at the End of the Shotgun Barrel

Auburn had stared down death before—atop a refinery tank in Ponca City.  So had Frank—on numerous occasions.  Ashley wasn’t used to having guns pointed at her, though, and so she did the only thing she could think of.

She flicked on her flashlight.

Then, the kids got yet another surprise!

Ashley’s intent had been to blind the man with the gun, perhaps long enough for the kids to duck out the door.  To her surprise, the man didn’t even flinch!  That wasn’t the big surprise, though.  More unexpected was the shotgun barrel itself.  It was just a shotgun barrel—there was no trigger, hammer, or any other part of the gun attached.  The man dangled it loosely in his hand, not even quite pointing it at the kids.  Behind him, a number of other shotgun barrels had been arranged on top of an oil barrel, loosely forming the silhouette of—

A dancing robot!

Frank and Auburn switched their lights on, shining them around the room.  Next to the dancing robot stood a statue of a baseball player—built out of old oil cans, pieces of mufflers, and some pipes.  Beside that, a gas station—built out of pipes and sheets of steel from a roof.  On the other side of the man—a miniature car made entirely of scrap metal.  In fact, the whole building was full of scrap metal statues, stretching all the way up to the end on Stewart Drive!

“Well, I’ll be a son of a gun!” Frank exclaimed.  “You’re an artist!”

The man nodded.  “Krause is my name.  Rudolph Krause.”

“Krause,” said Auburn.  “You used to own the car shop, then!”

“Still do,” nodded the man.  “Had to give it up when I lost my sight, about twenty years ago—”

“You’re blind?!” Ashley exclaimed, incredulously.  “How—”

“Motorcycle accident.  I was riding without a helmet—there was a low-hanging tree branch—”

“No, I meant—how could you make all these statues, if you can’t see?  They’re quite good!”

“I made a few while I was still in business,” Krause responded.  “When I stepped away from my work, I had even more time to do stuff like this.  I may not be able to see them anymore, but I know what they’re supposed to look like.  More importantly, I know what it feels like to make them.  When you’re blind, you’ve got to use your other senses—and you don’t realize how powerful they are until you have to rely on them totally.”

“So that’s why you’re working in the dark,” Auburn said.

Krause shrugged.  “Light—dark—it’s all the same to me.  Saves money on electric bills for this place, I guess.”

“And we thought you were a car thief,” Frank said, shining the light around.  He quickly explained about the gang, as well as the clue about the Subway.

Krause shook his head.  “I may not be able to see, but I can tell you for a fact, there are no car thieves in this place.”  He pointed to a cot in the corner.  “Sometimes, if I’m not sleeping well, I’ll come here at night and work on the statues.  If anyone were driving in or out of the lot, I’d hear them.  Only guys we get are my son and his pals—they like doing doughnuts in the gravel—”

“Oh, so that’s who’s been driving in the lot,” said Frank.  “We were wondering.”

“Jim’s a good kid,” Krause said.  “Just needs to blow off some steam once in a while.  I figure he ain’t harming anyone by speeding around the parking lot.”

“Well, we’re sorry to have bothered you,” said Frank.  “Oh, by the way—those gas pumps in the middle shed.  Did you—”

“I made those too,” Krause said, “but that was back when I could still see.  Haven’t tried since the accident.  Fire’s too risky.”

“They’re quite good,” said Frank.  “Unfortunately, I accidentally broke one of them when I was searching the shed for those crooks—I’ll pay you back for it—”

“No need,” Krause said.  “I can’t look at ‘em anymore, anyway.  One less isn’t much of a difference—”

Frank, however, was adamant about the payment.  He didn’t have much money on him, but he demanded Krause’s address and promised to send fifty dollars to cover the damage.  “It’s obviously something you put a lot of time and effort into,” he said.  “I have to pay you back for it.  It’s the right thing to do.”

“These creations are pretty good,” said Ashley, looking around.  “Do you ever sell them?”

Krause shook his head.  “Too busy making ‘em,” he said.  “The business side of it just never appealed to me.  Besides, who’d want them?”

“Oh, there’s a market for that stuff,” Frank said.  “You really should!  It’d be a shame if no one ev—if no one got to see them.”

After a few more words, the kids slipped out and wandered towards the Subway.  “Boy, Zach’s going to get a laugh out of this,” Frank said.  “We go in those buildings expecting to find desperate criminals.  Instead, we get a blind artist that couldn’t hurt a flea.”

“Unless he’s just covering up,” Ashley suggested.  Auburn, however, shook her head.

“Some of those statues have been there for a while,” she noted.  “They had a lot of dust on them.  There was a lot of dust in that empty building, too.  No, we found a red herring, and we swallowed it whole.”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” Frank said.  “I prefer the Thomas Edison approach, though.”

“What’s that?” Auburn asked.

Ashley already knew the answer.  “You mean we found somewhere the cars aren’t?”

“Exactly!” Frank said triumphantly.

Auburn shook her head.  “The Oklahoma City Police have a whole list of those places.  Right now, we need to concentrate on finding the right one.”