Jake Caldwell Thrillers
Page 81
“He escaped with his cellmate, Grady Harlan. Complete dirt bag serving a life sentence for a double murder.”
“Who’d he kill?”
Shifflett shifted in his seat. “Caught his wife in bed with their neighbor. Killed them both with an axe, chopped them into pieces and fed them into the neighbor’s woodchipper along with the guy’s dog. He’s crazy as a shithouse rat. Even tattooed the letters of his wife’s name on his fingers after he killed her so he wouldn’t forget her. Rose.”
Bear jotted notes in his pad. “Sounds like a model citizen. Can we check out the guard’s house while we’re up here?”
Shifflett rocked a couple of times, gaining enough momentum to heft his weight from the chair. “Not sure what good it’d do, but I suppose it could be arranged. Feds are probably still over there. I’ll give them a shout and let them know you’re coming. Sorry I can’t say more, but the lawyers are keeping us tight-lipped.”
Bear followed Shifflett to the office door. “I understand. Don’t sweat it.”
“But I feel like a jerk for doing it.” He handed Bear and Jake his business card. “If I can help, let me know. I’ll do what I can.”
Shifflett walked them to the front door, and Bear offered a parting wave to Starr. As they emerged into the early afternoon gray, Jake turned back to the assistant warden. “I’m curious. Why did Harlan kill the dog?”
Shifflett shrugged. “Guess he didn’t want any witnesses.”
* * *
Assistant Warden Clayton Shifflett tugged at his starched white collar, feeling it shrink around his fleshy neck, threatening to cut off the air supply. His sausage fingers parted the blinds covering the window to his office as he watched Parley and Caldwell get into a truck and pull out of the lot.
After they left, he flopped in the chair behind his desk, the ancient springs groaning in protest, and took a cloth and bottle of Maker’s Mark from the bottom drawer. He used the cloth to wipe the sweat from his brow and swallowed his rising anxiety with a healthy swig of whiskey straight from the bottle. The liquor burned as it disappeared down his gullet. He put the bottle back in the drawer and drummed his fingers on the desktop.
Caldwell reminded him of an older version of his son Gerald, though he hadn’t laid eyes on his own flesh and blood in three years. The two men bore similar features but didn’t carry themselves the same way. Candy-ass Gerald now lived in Tennessee under the poisoned thumb of a sanctimonious wife. Caldwell looked like a man who could wreck your world in a hurry. A fly in the ointment. Shifflett didn’t deal well with flies.
After a moment, he punched a number into his cell. “We’ve got trouble.”
Chapter Six
Barney Combs lived in a two-story dollhouse, eighteen miles southwest of the prison in Russellville, Missouri. Jake and Bear cruised through the town of eight hundred in less than sixty seconds and followed the Suburban’s navigation to a stretch of gravel, canopied by trees lining the path.
Jake hopped from the Suburban. “Nice place. Secluded.”
The door to a Cole County Sheriff patrol car opened, and a slight black man with a thin goatee and a close-cropped widow’s peak climbed out.
“You the boys from Warsaw?” His deep voice resonated with a backwood’s twang. “I’m Deputy Kirkland.”
Bear grasped the man’s hand. “Earl, right? Think we met a few years ago during an active shooter training in Sedalia.”
Kirkland displayed his gopher teeth. “Oh yeah. You knocked me on my ass and almost gave me a concussion.”
Bear glanced to Jake. “Earl here drew the short straw to play the shooter in a school. How you doing?”
Kirkland moved toward the house. “Better than the poor bastards who lived here. Everybody and their dog have been through here, but you better glove up before we go in just in case. Don’t touch anything if you can help it.”
First Starr at the prison and now Kirkland. Jake elbowed Bear in the side. “Is there anyone in this state you don’t know or haven’t worked with?”
Bear waggled his eyebrows. “What can I say? I’m a popular guy.”
They snapped on thin nitrile gloves and followed Kirkland through the door. Once inside, they slipped plastic covers over their shoes and made their way into the living room. The house was tidy and clean, decorated circa 1970. A hint of vanilla lingered from diffuser reeds in an ornate blue bottle on a coffee table. An obscene number of knickknacks lined a fireplace mantel, and family photos blanketed the wall above a flat screen television on a stand. Beyond the living room, a cozy kitchen hunkered in the dark. A plush carpeted stairway split the rooms in two, one track leading up and the other down to a basement.
“We found the bodies upstairs in the back bedroom,” Kirkland said, sweeping an arm toward the stairway. “Langston and Harlan beat the man to death or strangled him with a thick cord. Your guess which one happened first is as good as mine. The wife was tied up, raped and shot twice in the head. Unfortunately, we’re also unsure in which order that happened.”
“They take anything?” Jake asked. “Place looks pretty clean.”
“Whole place is neat. We think Barney told them where any valuables were stashed before they killed him. They took Lenora’s Accord, which we found abandoned this morning in the Walmart parking lot in Clinton. Got some grainy, long distance video of two guys getting into a dark sedan but can’t tell much from it.”
Jake mapped Shane’s moves in his head. Jefferson City was in the middle of the state. Shane took out the guard and his wife and then drove nearly a hundred miles west to Clinton. It made Jake feel a little better that Shane had moved past Warsaw. Unless he needed something in Clinton and already traveled the thirty miles back east to Warsaw. Damn. Whatever Shane’s next move might be, Jake was sure Shane would eventually wind up back at his doorstep in Warsaw.
Bear scanned the room. “You know the victims?”
Kirkland blew out his cheeks. “Ayuh. Lenora was a little too high brow for small town USA, but Barney seemed like a good man.”
“He into anything bad?”
“Not that I know of. But I didn’t know him well. Met a few times at football games and sat near him when the dude from the Benghazi movie came through and did a talk. What was his name?”
“Mark Geist,” Bear offered. “Oz?”
Kirkland snapped his fingers. “That’s the dude. He was good.”
He led them up the creaking stairs and along a narrow hallway covered with more photographs, some old, some new. A lifetime beginning with black and whites of a young couple, over-contrasted photos of kids from the 1970s to more recent shots of grandkids. Bedrooms banked either side of the hall with nothing but daybeds and dressers. The master sat at the end of the hall, the door closed.
Kirkland hesitated with his hand on the door. “They didn’t deserve this. Nobody does.” He pushed the door open and stepped to the side, allowing Jake and Bear to squeeze past.
Dry, crusted blood coated the bronzed, textured, cut carpet and the cream pillow at the head of the bed. Frayed ropes dangled from both the headboard and footboard posts where they tied up the woman. Someone had flipped over an easy chair in the corner in front of a bookshelf holding more framed photos. A vacuum cleaner lay on its side, the black cord snaked toward the easy chair.
Though sad two people lost their lives in this very room, Jake always felt a bump of adrenaline at crime scenes. Clues to find that nobody else did, a puzzle to solve. Maybe he was a cop in a former life.
Kirkland pointed at the vacuum. “There’s your murder weapon.”
Jake cocked his head. “That’s weird.”
“What?” Bear asked.
“He was strangled by a freaking vacuum cleaner cord?”
Bear chewed on the idea. “Implement of convenience. Bet his wife never put it away. Does Maggie?”
“Hell, no. The vacuum cleaner would sit in the middle of the floor ’til the Rapture came if I didn’t put it away.”
“Got good prints mat
ching both Langston and Harlan,” Kirkwood said, his voice soft and low. “Left both their prison jumpsuits balled up on the floor. Like they didn’t even try to hide what they were doing.” His lip flipped to a snarl. “Would love to get my hands on those two.”
“Stand in line,” Bear said, tiptoeing over the bloodspots staining the carpet like landmines. He pulled open the doors to an armoire and moved clothes around.
Jake took the other side of the room and stepped into a closet—considered a walk-in by the weakest terms. Clothes draped on hangers: boy’s on the right side and girl’s on the left. Piles of shoes in boxes lined the bottom of the closet. A jewelry box on Lenora’s side had been dumped on its end with cheap earrings and bracelets scattered across the carpet like unwanted refugees.
If there was one thing at which Jake was proficient, it was finding things people wanted to hide. While collecting for Keats, he’d become adept at sniffing out the obvious and not so obvious hiding spots for drugs and cash—under toilet lids, in crawl spaces, above ceiling tiles and obvious places like shoe boxes. Jake squatted and opened a few of Lenora’s shoe boxes, finding nothing but scuffed high heels, receipts and photos. Industrious people like himself got a little more creative, and it appeared Barney was no different. He duck-walked to the corner, tugging on a corner of carpet rising above the trim board. The carpet ripped up revealing the hardwoods with a cover cut out. Like the one from Jake’s cabin.
“Hey, Earl?” Jake called, waiting for the deputy’s head to pop in the closet. “Your guys catch this?”
Kirkland’s brow puckered as Bear slipped up behind him, peering over his shoulder. “What is it?”
Jake dipped his finger into a notch and removed a board. Rubber banded bunches of bills sat in the crevice along with a .38 revolver and a book of matches.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Kirkland said, tipping his hat back. “Missed that little stash. How much cash?”
Jake removed the bills with his gloved hand and performed a little mental calculation. “Probably five grand. Gun’s loaded. Matchbook is from Xtreme Amusement in Branson. Know the place?”
Kirkland waggled his head. “Took my kids there this summer. They have go-karts, batting cages, arcade games and putt putt. Ain’t the nicest place in the world, but we got a coupon in the mail.”
Jake flipped open the matchbook cover. A phone number was written on the inside. 417 area code. Branson. He jotted the name and number in a notebook he kept in his jacket pocket. Kirkland did the same before disappearing down the hall to make a call.
“Good find, partner,” Bear said, clapping Jake on the shoulder.
“Even a blind squirrel finds a nut on occasion. If Barney would’ve pushed the carpet down another quarter inch, I would’ve missed it. What now?”
“Now we check the basement for any other buried treasures. Barring some miraculous discovery, we’ll head back to Warsaw and roust Bennett Skaggs. I’ll touch base with my crew to track this number from the matchbook, but I think a trip to Branson and this Xtreme place may be in our future.”
Jake groaned. “I hate Branson. The traffic sucks goat balls.”
“Come on. I’ll buy you dinner at Lambert’s Café and let them throw some dinner rolls at you.”
Jake considered his growling stomach. “Deal.”
Chapter Seven
Shane Langston sprawled on a couch with cushions thinner than the shitty mattress in his prison cell, his narrowed eyes locked on Grady while a hundred different ways of killing the man ran through his mind. The Grady problem grew with each passing moment, like that first tickle of a cold in the back of your throat that you knew would evolve into an unavoidable sickness to fuck up your week.
The trailer sat in the woods outside Branson, smelling like old smoke and rancid farts. In the plus column, it stood empty and too far off the beaten path for anyone to find them. In the minus column was basically everything else, including Grady. His cellmate slouched in a moldy recliner across from a broken television. In between bumps of cocaine, Grady butchered “Smoke on the Water” on an out-of-tune acoustic guitar left behind by the previous occupants.
“Jesus, Grady,” Shane groaned. “Can you try another fucking song?”
Grady took another hit from the eight ball, which shrank like a snowman in July. “I almost got it.”
“No, you don’t.”
The exchange triggered a memory of Shane’s older brother Danny. Shane was maybe eight, Danny thirteen. Their two older brothers were doing a stretch in juvenile detention for trying to rob the convenience store down the street. Their mom was passed out in the living room, as usual, with a cigarette burned to the filter in one hand and an empty vodka bottle in the other. At least she made it long enough to feed them neon orange Mac & Cheese from the box that night.
Danny strummed on a guitar left by some guy their mom shacked up with for a couple of weeks. His brother had tried to play Mary Had a Little Lamb off a book he shoplifted from Meyers Music in downtown Chicago while Shane had kept the lone store employee busy. Danny had the two dollars for the book but was a firm believer in not paying for what you could steal. If a Langston family crest existed, that would be the motto.
“I almost got it, little brother,” Danny said, plucking those thick steel strings until his fingers bled.
Danny never came close to playing anything and gave up the guitar after a few days. Not surprising because Danny amassed frequent flier miles on the path of least resistance. Throw a pebble in his path and he’d stumble. Try to avoid doing anything stupid, and Danny would find a way to get caught. If you looked up the word loser in the dictionary, there would be a picture of Danny. Still, he was his brother, and the fact Shane stuck the letter opener in his throat stung at that moment.
The guitar thunked to the floor as Grady tossed it. “Where the fuck is your buddy? Gettin’ sick of sitting here.” He grabbed a rolled-up dollar bill and applied it over a line of white powder on a cable spool serving as a coffee table.
Shane studied the water-stained ceiling, focusing on the shapes to avoid strangling Grady with the guitar strings. “Should be any minute.”
“Well, when is that? Spent enough of my goddamned life in a tiny cell. Didn’t get out to waste more time in another.”
Shane’s eyes tracked the water stain, noticing it was shaped like Australia. He always wanted to visit the land down under. “Patience, Grady. Shouldn’t be long now. He’s bringing a special surprise for us.”
“What is it?”
“Good things come to those who wait.”
The rolled-up bill trembled between Grady’s fingers. “I ain’t big on waiting. There ain’t even any TV in this shithole.”
A giant motor rumbled outside, and headlights spilled through the cracks of trailer’s cheap blinds. Grady shot to his feet with his gun in hand. Shane peeked through the blinds and waved Grady off. “Stay here. That’s my guy.”
Shane hopped over the broken trailer step to the gravel and strode to the rumbling semi cab. The Ozark darkness swallowed him as he stepped out of the blaring headlights to the driver’s door. A rail-thin man with greasy hair overflowing from a green trucker’s hat dropped to meet him, a nylon duffel bag in hand.
“Good to be out?” the man asked.
“Bet your ass. You bring what I asked for?”
The man handed over the bag. Shane unzipped the top and pawed through three handguns, magazines, a few boxes of ammo and two rolled wads of cash. “Sorry that’s all I got, but you caught us between shipments. Can get you more later.”
“Should be fine for what I need to do. You bring me another present?”
The man winked and whistled toward the truck. A figure moved from the cab to the ground, the passenger door clicking shut behind it. Footsteps crunched toward them across the gravel, the shadow biting back the glare from the headlights. A moment later, the shadow formed itself into a raven-haired beauty.
Shane whistled. “You’ve outdone yourself.”
“You approve?” the man asked.
“I do. They all like this?” Shane breathed.
“Not this good, but good ’nough. She’s yours for the night. I gotta get to work, but I’ll come back and check on you in the morning. Be good to her. She got places to be tomorrow.”
The man jumped back in the cab and reversed down the narrow dirt lane splitting the heavy trees. Shane’s eye locked on the girl’s shapely legs as the trailer door banged open.
“Well, fuck me sideways,” Grady hooted. “That my present?”
Shane placed a tight grip on the inside of the woman’s elbow. She jerked but followed his direction toward the trailer. He pushed Grady back with his free hand. “My present first. Stand guard out here. I’ll let you know when I’m done.”
* * *
An hour after Shane’s turn, Grady emerged from the back room zipping up the fly to his jeans before pulling a pit-stained t-shirt over his head. Three red scratches marred his gaunt face. “Forgot how much I missed a woman’s touch. She was a fighter.”
Shane lit a cigarette and blew out a plume of smoke, eyeballing the scratches. “Too passive for me. Too scared to be a fighter.”
Grady plopped on the threadbare couch. “You didn’t do it right. Gotta give ’em the proper motivation to fight. When’s your boy coming back?”
“Tomorrow morning. Then we can roll outta here.”
Grady vacuumed a white line from the coffee table and jerked up, eyes rolled back in his head. “Fuck that. I’ll be outta coke before tomorrow.”