Jake Caldwell Thrillers

by Weaver, James

  “You scared of Shane?”

  Garvan’s jaw set tight. “I ain’t afraid of any man, but even that crazy motherfucker gives a man a moment of pause.”

  “Give me a taste and I’ll talk to Keats.”

  Garvan stroked his mustache as Metallica ended and a Def Leppard song kicked up. The bar may be a dive, but they had good taste in music. Jake figured it was a coin flip between Garvan giving them something to find Shane and telling Jake to piss off and leave. Jake tapped his foot to the beat of “Animal” while he waited, glancing at Bear who fidgeted at the end of the bar.

  Garvan lit another smoke and took a couple of drags before he spoke. “One would think Shane had a little inside help to escape.”

  “We know he did. From a guard. That he killed along with his wife.”

  “You think this guy acted alone? Some lowly guard can pull off an escape of two inmates from a maximum-security prison by himself? If so, you’re not as smart as I thought.”

  “Someone else besides the guard?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Some other guards?”

  Garvan blew another plume of smoke. “Go fish.”

  “The warden?”

  “Guy is straight as an arrow. Go fish.”

  “Someone else up in the hierarchy.” He flashed back to the meeting with Shifflett at the prison. “Like the assistant warden?”

  Garvan tilted his head back. “Follow the money, Caldwell. That’s all I got to say.”

  “That’s not much.”

  “That’s all you’re gonna get. I expect to have contact with Keats by next week. Now, get the fuck out of my bar.”

  Chapter Twenty

  As Jake emerged into the early evening, he chewed on the private meeting with Garvan. The biker gave him nothing about the girl, but the fact he offered Jake a taste of her and her destination of Kansas City was interesting. Garvan didn’t bother denying he knew Shane Langston, and Jake didn’t expect to gain anything by pressing him. The Keats meeting request caught Jake by surprise. Shane and Keats were mortal enemies. If Garvan and Shane had a business arrangement, perhaps Garvan was exploring other potential opportunities to cut Shane out or was developing contingency plans for the business in the event Shane disappeared.

  Bear managed to hold off until Jake closed the truck door before he pounced. “Well, what the hell did he want?”

  “Told me to follow the money.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Jake flipped a hand to the road. “Drive. I wanna take a shower after being in there, and I need to get my truck from your office. He said Langston didn’t get out on his own. He had help.”

  The tires squealed as Bear gunned the truck from gravel to asphalt. “No shit, Sherlock. You don’t break out of a maximum-security prison without a little help. He say who?”

  “Not specifically, but I named off a bunch of characters he passed on. When I mentioned Shifflett, he pasted on this shit-eating grin and told me to follow the money.”

  Bear’s bushy eyebrows drew close. “Thought I smelled something funny off the tub of lard.”

  “If Garvan’s telling the truth. Could be sending us on a wild goose chase, because he’s the one who helped Langston out.”

  “But why kick me to the curb to tell you that?”

  Jake rubbed his hands on his jeans. Bear wouldn’t take this well. “Because it’s not the main thing he wanted. He wants a meeting with Keats.”

  The wheels locked up, and the truck skidded to a halt in the middle of the road. “Why does that shitbag pop into every criminal discussion we ever have? What did you tell him?”

  “I didn’t tell him anything, but we kinda made a deal.”

  Bear clenched his jaw. “What kind of deal?”

  “I make the introduction to Keats; he tells me about Shifflett.”

  Bear’s ringing cell interrupted his retort, which would involve him calling Jake a dumb bastard for continuing his involvement with Keats. Bear showed the display, which read Katrina Williams. He held up his thick finger before pressing the speaker button. “To be continued. Hey, Katrina. What’s up?”

  “You have Jake with you?”

  “Unfortunately for him the second we hang up this call. What’s going on?”

  Ringing phones and voices droned in the background. “I’m at the station. Sorry about the noise, but a truckload of pigs overturned on the highway. It’s a shit show, literally. Anyway, wanted to let you know we followed up at the truck stop after your call. Showed that girl Candy pictures of Delbert’s truck, and she gave a positive ID. We also matched the tires from Delbert’s truck to tracks we found outside the trailer where we found the dead girl and Grady Harlan.”

  Jake clucked his tongue. “We have Delbert by the balls.”

  “We have his balls and he’s hanging from them. We ran the truck through our channels and traced it back to Heartstone Trucking out of Kansas City. Ring a bell?”

  Jake and Bear exchanged blank stares. “That’s a no for both of us. You have an address in KC?”

  “Why? You taking a trip there?”

  Jake scratched his five o’clock shadow and dipped his eyes away from his partner. “Looks like I need to have a meeting with someone there anyway. I’ll check out Heartstone when I’m there and try to dig up something on Delbert.”

  “I’ll text you the address. Anything breaking on your end?”

  Bear growled. “Nothing breaking yet, but something’s going to. Talk to you later.” He dropped the phone to the seat and glared at Jake. “I don’t know why you find it necessary to keep sticking your head in the lion’s mouth. One of these days you’re gonna push Keats too far, and he’s going to put a bullet between your pretty brown eyes.”

  Jake batted his lashes. “You really think my eyes are pretty?”

  “Fuck you, Caldwell.” Bear jerked the truck in gear and peeled up the road toward town.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Clayton Shifflett wore a track in the carpet around his desk, a burner cell phone glued to his doughy face while waiting for his man Royce to pick up. The designated call time came and went an hour ago. With each annoying tick of the second hand on his desk clock, Shifflett’s sphincter puckered shut a bit more. Did he get busted? Was there a problem?

  One last score. One more and he was out. On his subsequent lap around the desk, he snagged the bottle of Maalox from his top drawer and took a swig as he continued his trek. If the inmates in his prison didn’t kill him, the stomach ulcer might. It used to be controllable, but ever since he started dancing on the wrong side of the crooked line, it blossomed like a flare gun with each successive shipment. One more. Another one after this might kill him.

  He punched redial and it rang four times before kicking to voicemail. Goddamn it. Did this have something to do with Langston? Or did Sheriff Parley discover something at bumbling Barney Combs’s house? Each unanswered question caused his toes to curl in his polished wingtips. He forced his racing brain to focus on the money.

  The cell rang and he snatched it up without checking the display, barking a hello. His shoulders sagged. His know-it-all, goody-two-shoes, Bible-thumping older sister who lived in Springfield, prattling in nauseating detail about her grade school class. Shifflett listened for a minute before he interrupted and made an excuse to jump off, afraid he’d miss the call from Royce, and before she could make the plea for him to come to Springfield and find Jesus.

  He hit redial for the twenty-fifth time in the last hour.

  A baritone voice barked from the other end. “Jesus Christ, what?”

  Shifflett fumbled the phone in surprise. “I’ve been calling.”

  “No shit. When I didn’t answer the first twenty times, it shoulda been a clue to you that maybe I’m a little busy. What do you want, Clay?”

  “Just checking on the merchandise given the looming timeline. Everything good?”

  “Did I call and tell you there’s a problem?”

  “Ummm…no. But—�
��

  “Then there’s no problem. Suck on a bottle of whatever you drink to calm your nervous stomach, take a shot, get blown by one of your prisoners in a dress. Whatever you do to fucking relax. Everything’s cool.”

  Shifflett ran a hand across his tawny, lacquered hair. “Can you answer when I call? This is a big one. We can’t afford to screw it up.”

  “We won’t. Can I go back to work now? Got a lot to do before tomorrow tonight.”

  “Sure. Talk to you after.”

  Royce clicked off without another word, and Shifflett dropped to his chair, calculating his timeline. He could call in sick tomorrow, clean out most of the bank account, drive to Kansas City to collect his money from Royce, and be on a plane to the Bahamas before his nagging cow-of-a-wife knew what happened. After thirty-two years of marriage, he’d had enough. He loved her, he supposed, but if forced to spend another night listening to the battle ax berate him, he’d either kill her or eat his gun. He’d tell her he was going to a conference.

  He opened the bottom drawer and pulled out the Maker’s Mark, skipping the glass and sucking straight from the bottle. He kept his eyes locked on the ceiling as he swallowed, unwilling to acknowledge how fast the amber liquid disappeared. One more.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  On the way back to the station, Bear made a call to some guy he knew at the Department of Transportation, while Jake checked in with Maggie and Halle. Other than Halle getting antsy, the ladies seemed to be getting along fine with Toby and Mac.

  “Mac can flat out cook,” Maggie said. “I’ve been trying to convince him to open up a food truck.”

  “What kind of stuff does he make?”

  “You name it. Pastas, barbecue, fried chicken. I’m going to be fat as a cow before we get out of here. When do you think that might be?”

  Jake scratched his head. “Don’t know yet. We’re making progress and putting the pieces together, but not close to catching Shane yet. We’re dealing with something deeper than a prison break.”

  “Like what?”

  “Can’t say yet. Look, I have to come to Kansas City to follow a lead. Maybe I can sneak over there and spend a little time with you guys. I’ll text you.”

  They talked for a few minutes before Bear pulled in front of the office. Jake followed Bear inside, where they found Klages on the phone.

  She waved Bear over and held out the receiver. “Some guy named Beau wants to talk to you.”

  “My DOT contact,” Bear said as they clipped to Klages’ desk. “Hey, Beau, how’s your wife and my kids?”

  Klages yawned. “I need some serious sleep. My head’s fuzzy as hell.”

  Bear signaled for a pen, and Jake tossed him one from the desk. “You can blame Dwayne Tilly for being such an incompetent jack-ass, or you could catch some z’s.”

  “Reason number five hundred to kick the guy in the balls.”

  Bear hung up and ripped the sheet off the pad, eyes sparkling. “While you were playing footsies with Maggie on the phone, I called my buddy Beau who works at the DOT. They did an audit of the driver logs at Heartstone last month.”

  “What for?”

  “To make sure they follow the DOT mandated rest periods for the drivers. Looks like one of Heartstone’s trucks started making trips to Dallas and Los Angeles several months ago. After those trips, the truck heads back to the Midwest.”

  “What’s unusual about that?”

  “Heartstone is pretty much a local shipper. They don’t stray more than a few hundred miles from home base. But this truck did.”

  Jake’s limbs tingled. “I don’t suppose Delbert Dunn drove this particular truck?”

  “You bet your ass he did. Also happens Delbert makes the same run every three weeks or so.”

  Jake followed Bear into his office. “Makes you wonder how Delbert can make these long runs, yet still manage to hold down a job at Xtreme.”

  “I thought the same thing. Maybe this Fancy guy isn’t as forthright and innocent as we thought. I’m going to call Katrina and fill her in. Bet she can follow up on her end and save us a trip back there.”

  “I’ll call Cat and have him hack into Heartstone and Xtreme. Maybe there’s a relationship between the two.”

  Bear grunted and picked up the phone. “Knew I should’ve followed my gut.”

  “About what?”

  “You can’t trust a guy with a name like Fancy.”

  * * *

  Jake pulled to the end of the homestead driveway and wrestled paper from the overstuffed mailbox. With Maggie and Halle gone, he forgot to check it. He thumbed through the four-inch pile, kept two bills and threw the rest of the junk in the trash bin near the garage.

  A musty smell bit his nose as he walked through the front door, the lack of movement inside allowing the age to seep from the old walls. The hairs on his arms tingled. Something didn’t feel quite right. He slid his pistol from its holster and swept his eyes across the kitchen and living room. Nothing. Creeping down the hall, he held the Sig Sauer in the down ready position, checking the bedrooms and bathrooms. All empty. He stopped in the hall, nose toward the ceiling.

  Something smelled off. Like a litter box.

  He shut and locked the front door and returned to the bedroom to throw a change of clothes in a travel bag. He lingered in the closet and pressed his face into Maggie’s hung clothes, inhaling her scent. Man, he missed her.

  He tossed the travel bag toward the door but when he went to the kitchen to grab a bottle of water and road snack, he spotted it—a picture on the island. The hope of seeing Maggie fell like an anchor, and iron rage boiled in his gut, rolling its way up his neck. Yanking his gun, he darted through the house, re-checking each room, nook, and cranny. Bursting out the back door, he swung the weapon along the tree line, hoping someone special would be there, but knowing he was long gone. He returned to the kitchen, seething.

  A shot of Jake, Maggie, and Halle taken by the lake, arms lashed around each other, clad in jeans, boots and white button-down shirts. Jake had balked at the corniness of identical outfits, but Maggie, as usual, was right. By far his favorite picture in the world, and he didn’t even have to guess who desecrated it. The bastard slashed out Jake’s eyes and drove steak knives through the faces of both Maggie and Halle, the knives buried deep into the cutting board on the counter. Langston had scrawled “See you soon. XOXOXO. S.L.” across the picture, the ink smudged a bit and the picture wrinkled. When the ammonia odor overcame his fury, Jake realized Shane had pissed over the picture and the island.

  He stepped back against the stove, the anger turning to a shaky relief. If he hadn’t taken the girls away, they could have been lying on the floor with the knives in their faces instead of a picture. The fact Shane walked through their house, sucking in the air they breathed with the explicit desire to kill and destroy cranked his temperature to high again.

  He wanted to do nothing more than clean the mess but knew it could be evidence if Shane was lucky enough to escape a bullet from Jake, so he called Bear. After an expletive-filled tirade, Bear agreed to send some deputies to bag the evidence. Rather than hang out in his piss-scented kitchen, Jake clomped to the porch to wait for the techs. See you soon. No way would he tell Maggie about this. She’d have a justifiable conniption.

  By the time the deputies came, took a statement, and bagged the offending material, Jake’s blood pressure dropped to something resembling normal. He returned to the station and just made it through the door to Bear’s office, when Cat, a hacker Jake turned to who could find information nobody else could, called back with information on Heartstone Trucking.

  Jake put him on speakerphone with Bear. “Whatcha got, Cat? Give me some good news.”

  Cat’s heavy gasps crackled the speaker. The guy was one staircase away from a massive coronary. “I have news on Heartstone and Xtreme, but not sure it qualifies as good. It wasn’t too hard to find the simple stuff, though there have been some attempts to mask the ownership through a series
of shell companies. I have more to do, but thought I’d give you an update.”

  “Tell me what you have so far.”

  “In the simplest terms, Heartstone Trucking is owned by an outfit called Enyart Property Management. It’s an LLC with a home address in St. Joseph, Missouri. Established five years ago and bought out Heartstone two years ago. Paperwork appears on the up and up. Branch offices for Heartstone are set up in Dallas, Texas, and Los Angeles. Had one in some town called Lansdale, Texas, but they moved it up to Dallas.”

  “When was that?”

  “Six months ago.”

  Bear leaned toward the phone. “Who’s Enyart?”

  “Don’t know because that’s where the paperwork gets harder to come by. They do own something called Jang Holdings, which owns a bunch of Centra convenience stores, a billboard signage company, and a real estate outfit which looks legit. Still digging on them.”

  “What about Xtreme?”

  “Xtreme Entertainment is owned by PMA Management, which is an outfit with a Jefferson City address. Have barely scratched the surface on them.”

  Jake recalled his conversation with Garvan at the Asylum. “While you’ve got your digging shovel out, maybe you can unearth some dirt on a guy named Clayton Shifflett. He’s the assistant warden at the Jeff City Correctional Center.”

  Silence filled the line for a moment. “Why do you wanna know about him?”

  “You know the guy?”

  “He put a buddy of mine in solitary for a month. Had one of the guards kick the shit out of him because he came up short on money for contraband.”

  Jake exchanged a raised brow with Bear. “So Shifflett’s bent?”

  “Guy’s as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.”

  “What kind of contraband?”

  “Shit, anything but weapons, but I bet he’d sell you a Ginsu knife for the right price.”

  Jake’s hand rasped along his five o’clock shadow. “Interesting. Give us something we can use, and I’ll make it worth your while.”