Jake Caldwell Thrillers

by Weaver, James

  “Klages, I think.”

  “Don’t know him. Shit! Watch the turn.”

  The rear of the truck fishtailed as Bear sprayed gravel to make a tight bend, missing a tree by the thickness of a leaf. “Her. She’s short but feisty. You’ll like her.”

  They wound the last corner and the cabin spilled before them. The living room light highlighted two bullet holes like eyes in the glass panes. Jake jumped out, plucking his pistol from his holster as he crept onto the porch, pressing into the wood between the front door and the shot-up window. Bear joined him on the opposite side of the door.

  Peering around the window frame, a pair of work boots lay on the ground behind the couch, toes pointed to the ceiling. Blood splattered the hardwood in front of the couch and streaked out of site.

  Jake winced. “One down. Blood on the floor from someone else. Jesus Christ, Bear.”

  Bear placed his hand on the doorknob. “On three. I’ll sweep left in the kitchen; you take living room and hallway.”

  Bear counted to three and they burst into the cabin. Bear aimed left and Jake turned right, pistol raised and finger on the side of the Sig, ready to fire. The crimson mess on the hardwood streaked toward the hallway. Behind the couch, Rollie laid face up, a bullet through his temple, brain matter splattering the shelves he’d been building behind him.

  Angela sprawled on the floor, arms stretched in front of her, fingers crooked as they froze in the last motion of pulling herself across hardwood, away from her attacker. Even in the shadowed hallway, blood stained the white fabric of her shirt like a tie dye experiment gone wrong. Darkness matted the back of her head, and Jake knew she was gone even before he squatted to check her pulse.

  He rose and checked the two bedrooms, which were both empty, and the back door, which was still locked. No sign of Christopher.

  “Goddamn it,” Bear muttered, shining a flashlight across the gore on the floor, trailing it to the mess in front of her head. “This last one was close range, maybe point blank.”

  “Where’s the kid?” Jake asked, panic threatening to bubble over as a squad car rolled to a stop outside, siren blasting away the serene setting.

  “I’ll check outside and talk to Klages.” Bear turned to leave before stopping. “I’m so sorry, man.”

  As Bear headed out the door, Jake swept through the bedroom, living room and kitchen, but none of them contained the kid. He joined Bear outside who talked to a woman in the beige uniform of the Sheriff’s Office. She couldn’t have been more than five-foot-three, slim waist and broad shoulders. Her long black hair pulled back in a ponytail, dark eyes scanning the lake. Bear made introductions.

  “It’s gotta be Connelly,” Jake said. “Angela said he was dangerous, but I didn’t think he’d be able to track her here. Goddamn it. I never should have gone off with you.”

  “Might be you lying there dead instead of Rollie.”

  “Or we’d have one dead bad guy and everyone’s trouble would be solved. Connelly just killed his wife and an innocent man and stole his kid away to God knows where.”

  They devised a plan to sweep the immediate area around the house for Christopher. Bear and Klages took opposite paths around the pond. Jake took the area around the cabin, including a cursory look down the path leading deeper in the woods. He scanned the muddy ground for signs of little feet but found nothing. They alternated shouting for the kid, their voices dampened by the mood and humidity. Five minutes later, they gathered back in front of the cabin. Two more squad cars rocked their way, lights flashing, but sirens muted.

  “Where the hell is he?” Bear’s eyes scanned the woods.

  “He’s gone,” Jake said. “Goddamn it, the kid is gone.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Bear and Deputy Klages worked the crime scene while Jake scoured the woods around the property for any sign of Christopher. After an hour, he stomped mud from his boots on the front porch.

  Bear strode up the driveway, his face tight and twisted. “Think he shot them from the clearing on the other side of the pond. Weeds are all matted down. We need to get this motherfucker. I called the name and address you gave me into the station to get an APB out on the dad once they pull his description from the system.”

  “He couldn’t have gone far. We’re talking ninety minutes max.”

  “You can travel a hell of a long ways in an hour and a half. Think he’s heading back to KC with the kid?”

  “Beats the hell outta me.”

  Bear’s cell rang, and he snapped the phone to his ear and stepped away, listening. “Got it.”

  Bear handed Jake his phone. Jake studied the face of their killer from the display. Lean, high cheek bones, close-cut blonde hair, dark and recessed eyes. He wanted to pound the face until it was unrecognizable. “Andrew Connelly, thirty-eight years old, six feet tall, two hundred ten pounds. Registered to a last year model Ford Fusion, steel gray with Kansas plates.”

  “Any criminal history?”

  Bear spit on the gravel. “Nothing. Clean as a virgin’s honeypot. Got everybody and their dog out looking for him and the kid. They can’t be far. We’ll get him.”

  “I’d love ten minutes in a closed room with him.”

  “You and me both, partner. For now, I’ll settle for getting his ass off my streets and the kid somewhere safe.”

  Two more squad cars and a blue pickup kicked up the gravel leading to the cabin. Bear directed them to the grassy expanse at the side of the cabin.

  “I need to check in with Maggie and let her know what’s going on. She’s probably chewed her nails down to nubs.”

  “Good idea. Let’s hook up at the station after I get this place squared away. I gotta get a hold of Rollie’s ex-wife and give her the bad news. Not sure if she’ll be happy or sad.”

  “Jesus, really?”

  Bear raised his bushy eyebrows. “Yeah. She’s a bitter old hag. Ten to one she’s on the phone with the insurance company by the end of the day trying to find out how much money she’s getting.”

  The town doc who doubled as a coroner emerged from the truck, ropes of hair pasted across his balding, liver-spotted dome, lanky arms swinging a black bag as the group made their way toward the cabin.

  “Not quite the housewarming party we planned, is it, Bear?”

  “Let’s make sure we find this guy. He drops in my county, kills two people, and kidnaps a kid? I’ll give him a fucking housewarming party.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Jake banged on the front door to the house and announced his presence. He didn’t want Maggie blasting a hole in him with the shotgun. He embraced her and Halle and planted kisses on the tops of their heads.

  “What the hell is going on?” Maggie asked.

  “We think Angela was killed by her husband and he kidnapped Christopher. Bear has an APB out on him now.”

  “Jesus, she’s dead?”

  “Her and Rollie Boland who was doing some work on the shelves. Bear went to notify the ex-wife.”

  The muscle in Maggie’s jaw twitched. “What in the world is going on, Jake? This is the woman and kid you were hired to protect?”

  Her accusation stabbed like a knife in his gut. He’d been so worried about the kid he hadn’t stopped to think of how he monumentally failed to do the very thing Angela hired him to do.

  Maggie read the pain on his face. “Oh, Jesus, Jake. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  Jake rested against the kitchen counter. “No, you’re right. I didn’t do my job.”

  “You couldn’t have known this Connelly would be capable or willing to go that far. Oh God, if you hadn’t left with Bear, you could be dead on the floor.” She buried her head in his chest and squeezed him tight.

  “It’s going to be fine, Mags. We’re gonna get this guy.”

  She pulled back. “What do you mean, we? This is a job for Bear and his crew, not you.”

  Jake put his hands on her shoulders and stepped back. “Seriously? You think I’m going to let
this go? Someone waltzed into my cabin, blew away the woman who asked me to protect her—along with a guy I hired—and then kidnapped a six-year-old kid, and I’m supposed to do nothing?”

  Maggie shook his hands away. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. This is the kind of stuff keeping me awake at night, wondering what misadventure you’re going to get yourself sucked into. Or worse, what you’re going to suck Halle and me into. I can’t go through another deal like we did with Shane Langston. I’ve had enough kidnapping and shoot outs to last a lifetime.”

  This point of contention between them played several times before. Langston currently resided in the Jefferson City Correctional Center, serving a life sentence without the chance for parole, but he always seemed to turn up like a bad penny.

  “You and Halle won’t get sucked into anything.”

  “And how are you going to guarantee it, Jake? When you said you were going to train with Jack Logan, you promised you weren’t going to get involved in anything dangerous, especially things that could drag our daughter in.”

  Jake emitted a slow sigh, as if he needed to expel every molecule of air in his lungs to control his climbing blood pressure. “She’s not dragged into anything.”

  “Really? You’re going to stand there and tell me that now?” Maggie stabbed her finger at their daughter who now held the shotgun in the hallway. Jake had spent hours training Halle on firearms, and the girl was proficient in their use, but seeing her standing there with the weapon in her hands, given the context of what just happened, was unsettling.

  Jake clenched his fists, his stomach knotting as he tried to come up with a reply. The truth was he didn’t have one. Maggie was one-hundred percent right. His dark fears swirled—he wasn’t good enough for her, he would put them in danger, he wouldn’t be able to bury his past because it was too substantial a part of him to bury.

  “Jake?” Maggie asked, her voice softening. “I know this is hard and a horrible time to bring it up. I don’t want to be the bitch I sound like right now, but I don’t know if Halle and I can keep doing this. At the same time, I love you so much I know I can’t live without you. You promised no more drama.”

  Jake stepped forward, kissed her on her forehead and pulled her close. Maggie’s strong arms wrapped tight around him. He’d made such a promise multiple times, but something would come up to make him break it.

  He swept her hair behind her ears. “I have to help Bear on this, Mags. I owe it to Christopher.”

  “I know you do.”

  He swallowed dryly as something flittered in those mesmerizing pale green eyes, something he’d never seen before. Doubt. For the first time, a chink in the impenetrable armor of their love for each other appeared. For the first time, it felt real, not his imagination running wild.

  “We’ll get through this,” he said. “Our first job is to find Christopher.”

  She placed her hands on his chest and stepped back. “Okay, you get the guy who did this and find the boy, because until you do, we can’t have a real conversation about anything.”

  “Will you be waiting after I get him?”

  Her nostrils flared with a sharp intake of air. “I think so.”

  She turned and moved quietly into the office, tugging Halle along with her and shutting the door behind them. Jake stood abandoned in the hallway, Maggie’s lingering scent taunting him, wishing he’d ignored the initial phone call from Angela Connelly.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Jake caught up with Klages on the way to Warsaw’s downtown, the top of her head barely visible above the head rest and pulled into the lot behind the police station. Hard as it was, he pushed away the thoughts of Maggie and the doubt she revealed at the house. He needed to focus on finding Christopher. Jake slid his truck into a space out front and considered what they were up against.

  They didn’t know a damn thing about Connelly and what he was capable of, or why he killed his wife and a complete stranger. The shots he fired from the hill demonstrated a measure of weapons proficiency. A clean headshot from three hundred yards away wasn’t anything to write home about if you were a sniper but was more than the average schmuck could pull off.

  Klages approached the truck from the sidewalk leading from the police lot, talking on her cell phone. She waved Jake out of the truck and jabbed the screen on her cell before shoving it in the pocket of her beige uniform, her face crunched in obvious agitation.

  “Problem?” Jake asked.

  “My friend’s pissed because we’re supposed to see Journey and Asia at Starlight tonight. I let her know I couldn’t come.”

  Jake smirked. Starlight was an outdoor theatre in Kansas City in Swope Park near the Kansas City Zoo. The theatre hosted plays and concerts since in the 1950s and was a great place for a show.

  “Aren’t you a little young for eighties music?”

  Her almond eyes squinted above a button nose. “I’m twenty-eight. I couldn’t name a song Asia sings, but who doesn’t like Journey?”

  “Good point. I saw them in Iowa a couple of months ago. I’ll lie and tell you the show sucked.”

  She scowled. “Thanks.”

  Bear hit the station minutes later as the sun kissed the skyline behind the brick buildings of Warsaw’s Main Street. Klages and Jake followed Bear inside his office and closed the door, silencing the cops working in the busy bullpen area outside. They huddled around Bear’s desk; Jake too amped to sit.

  “Any leads yet?” Jake asked.

  Klages rested her forearms on the back of one of the chairs. “Best we can tell, Rollie and the Connelly woman were both shot with a high-powered rifle from the hill across the road. We found slugs imbedded in the wall behind Rollie and in the wood trim leading to the bedrooms. The close-range shot to the back of the woman’s head is probably from a .45. We searched the wooded area on the other side of the pond where we saw the shooter come from on the deer cameras but didn’t find any shell casings or other evidence other than a flat area where he laid for the shot. Found a boot print in some soft earth at the bottom of the hill, size eleven, wide tread like a hiking boot. We’re trying to match the pattern with a manufacturer.”

  “In other words, we didn’t find much of anything from the hill,” Bear said. “The guy policed his area pretty well.”

  “And nothing inside the house either other than a partial tread print in the blood matches what we found outside by the hill. If we can link the boot to Connelly, it’ll help nail him.”

  “Along with the eyewitness statement of his son,” Jake said.

  “If we find him and if this even goes to trial. But you know as well as I do a six-year-old makes for an unreliable witness, and there’s no way we’d want to put him on the stand and make him relive it. Jake, what did Angela tell you?”

  Jake replayed their conversation from the night before, trying to remember the pertinent facts. “Christopher was definitely afraid Connelly would find them. Angela was vague at best. The kid also said his dad spoke on the phone in some weird language.”

  “Did he know what it was?” Bear asked.

  “This kid is smart, but he’s not a linguist.”

  “Right, dumb question.”

  “Anyway, both the kid and the mom mentioned Connelly had a secret stash in his basement. Christopher didn’t see what was in it, but Angela did. A book written in another language, a gun, and pictures causing Angela to pack their bags and get out of Dodge.”

  Klages asked, “What was in the pictures?”

  “She didn’t say. Enough to bring tears to her eyes and scare the hell out of her. You add to the fact we think Connelly is using the identity of a kid who died thirty-eight years ago in Illinois and things get really interesting.”

  Bear joined Klages at the table and rubbed his face in his hands. He smoothed his beard as the wheels in his head spun. “Jake, you should get your ass to Kansas City. Call Snell on the way.”

  “What for?”

  “Get Snell to obtain a warrant for Co
nnelly’s house. With the murders, guns, and foreign languages spoken, she could swing it. I want to know what’s in those pictures.”

  “Call the local cops and have them get the warrant.”

  “Nope. After Ares and the shootout at the warehouse, I have zero pull there and even less trust of those guys. We can trust Snell.”

  Jake nodded, and Bear followed him out to his truck.

  “I stopped by your house on the way to town and talked to Maggie. I’ve never seen her like this,” Bear said.

  “Like what?”

  “Pissed off at you.”

  “She’s worried, not pissed.”

  Bear arched his bushy eyebrows. “Dude, I’ve been married for twenty years. I can tell the difference between worried and pissed. She’s pissed. Go get me something to find this guy and the kid, and you can get back to planning your wedding.”

  Jake opened the truck door, pausing before climbing in. “Assuming there is one.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Wolf’s back ached from sitting in the car for so long, and he needed to take a piss again. Judging from the sharp odor emanating from his pits, he could also use a shower and some deodorant. Sokolov hadn’t shown up at the hotel yet, though the Wolf did manage to ascertain the owner of the seedy motel also rented out rooms by the hour. He’d seen the same set of prostitutes rotating in and out of the room below Sokolov’s. One was black with too much junk in her trunk for his tastes and the other a red head, skinny enough to hula hoop using a Cheerio.

  A few hours ago, he managed to squeeze into the room while the maid serviced it. He acted like it was his room, and the woman barely gave him a second glance. The only thing that didn’t come with the room was a small, black suitcase which, at first glance, contained nothing but clothes and toiletries. The only thing of interest was an off-white business card with a phone number containing a Nebraska area code and the name Fisher handwritten across the top. Disappointed the card was his only lead, the Wolf stuck it in his back pocket and returned to his car across the parking lot.