The Promisor: A Suspense Thriller

by Dustin Stevens

  Flicking his gaze up to Gillian, he said, “Ms. Lawson, who, as I mentioned, worked as a public defender for a spell, and Mr. Salem, who was a junior prosecutor before returning to Gallipolis to take over his family practice.”

  Pulling his attention back down to the phone positioned directly before him, he said, “The working theory at the moment is that there must be something in their shared history that is driving this. A recently released inmate or an angry relative or even a pissed-off business owner that lost their livelihood over a judgement.

  “Anything that might serve as motive.”

  Pausing there, he glanced around the room, making sure that what he was saying made sense. A quick glance that was met with a nod from Welsh and Dianason, McKeon keeping his attention squarely on the table before him.

  A pose closely mirrored by Gillian, her focus aimed at the wall above Billie.

  “Our goal here today is two-fold,” Reed said. “To identify who those people are that might think they have reason to go after these two and their families, and to determine if there might be any other possible targets out there that need to be protected.”

  A lifetime college football fan, Reed couldn’t help but think of it as trying to play offense and defense simultaneously. A herculean task that he knew he and Billie wouldn’t be able to complete alone, that being the reason for his including as many different entities as possible.

  Groups that could act in concert, hopefully at the very least putting a stop to any new incidents while they sorted out who was behind it all.

  “An hour ago, I asked Deke to begin sifting through the overlapping case logs. Deke? What were you able to find?”

  Every head in the room turning toward the phone in the center of the table, the initial response was a clatter of keys. A sound plainly evident before falling away, replaced by Deke replying, “Ninety-three cases, covering a span of fourteen months.”

  The number a bit higher than Reed was expecting, he flicked his gaze to Gillian, looking for some sign of confirmation.

  A response she gave not to him directly, but by merely raising her brows in concession, her chin bobbing slightly in agreement.

  “Now, most of those I was able to cross off pretty quickly,” Deke said. “Traffic incidents, possession charges, things of that sort.

  “Whittling it down to anything that might rise a bit higher than that, we’re left with a list of twenty-two that may or may not be connected in some way.”

  Still a bit higher than Reed would prefer, he had to admit it was infinitely better than the previous number mentioned. Less than two dozen in total, easy enough for them to work through, drawing on the impressions of Gillian and Harrison before debating among the law enforcement personnel on the line.

  A means of separating what was legit from the less likely before putting them together in a rank order.

  A system that was far from infallible, but did at least provide the benefit of being proactive. Something Reed had been sorely missing, chasing down the Oxiles twins a few nights before the lone aberration on a week that felt as if they were perpetually trying to catch up.

  “Gillian?” Reed whispered. An unspoken question that was responded to with a nod from the woman seated across from him.

  “Harrison?” he asked, raising his voice slightly. “You okay with that?”

  Over the line came a garbled sound. A word that wasn’t fully enunciated, but Reed took to be an affirmation.

  “Okay, then. Deke, the floor is yours.”

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  “Thank you so much, Ms. Lawson,” Reed said, clasping the woman’s hand within his own. A weak shake that seemed to have wilted tremendously even in just the few hours since he first met her this morning.

  A reasonable outcome to a stretch that was nothing short of torturous, the strain of the preceding conference call etched into her features. Stress that nobody should have to go through in the wake of a tragedy like that which just befell her husband, let alone someone also in the late stages of pregnancy.

  “I cannot even begin to pretend to know how difficult this must have been,” he added.

  Pressing her lips together in a tight line, Lawson nodded. A curt gesture that hinted there was a great deal of responses she wanted to make. Barbs or remarks or additional questions resting on her tongue, aching to be unleashed.

  Words that she let go, replying with a simple, “I hope it helps.”

  More than an hour, the call had waged on. Time spent dissecting each of the twenty-two cases Deke had pulled from their shared history, it pretty clear that some of them the two did not even recall taking part in. Singular events in a stretch that included hundreds, both of their respective offices operating at max capacity for the entire time they were there.

  Instances that were easy to cross off, a total of ten more falling away in pretty short order.

  Of those that remained, the decision was made to parse them into two separate tiers. An examination of the types of acts committed and the sentences handed down and whatever small snippets Gillian or Harrison could recall forming an inexact science that managed to split them into those that could easily be seen as potential candidates, and a second bunch that seemed less likely.

  A way of concentrating resources, Welsh and Dianason already sent to speak with a couple of possibilities, a few other officers from the NPD dispatched to meet with others.

  Of the candidates that remained, Grimes was able to put in a call to the corresponding jurisdictions, making sure all would be contacted in the hours ahead.

  A process that was already well underway, Reed wanting nothing more than to be out there joining them, only reluctantly agreeing to his captain’s suggestion that the entire project would be better served with him and McKeon continuing to run point from where they were.

  In addition to the possible suspects, some time on the call was spent on what Reed thought of as the defensive portion of things. The list of other potential targets, the general consensus being that the logical progression would be to ascend to the judge presiding over the case.

  A much shorter list, Gillian and Harrison appearing together before just three different overseers in their stint working across from one another.

  Of those, one took retirement six months prior. A judge Reed had never encountered named Schlegel, the takeaway being that he must have had his home already sold by the time his last gavel fell, the man wasting no time in promptly relocating to California.

  A choice in location all agreed placed him well beyond the probable scope of what was currently occurring.

  The two remaining judges were a man named Roger Pedwell and a woman named Cynthia Benedict. Both just past the age of fifty, they were still young and quite active on the bench, with the promise of more than a decade of service still ahead of them.

  Prime targets that Grimes had moved instantly on, stating that he would get protective details to their homes immediately.

  “It will,” Reed replied, releasing Gillian’s grip.

  An abundance of things that he wanted to add, he chose to end his reply with the two simple words. Promises that he would catch the man responsible for her husband’s death. Condolences for what took place. Assurances that none of what happened was her fault.

  Platitudes and pithy expressions that were the expected norm. Things he himself had heard a thousand times in the wake of Riley’s passing. Offerings from people that meant well, but were ultimately trying to assuage their own guilt or grief or concerns more than his own.

  A path he refused to go down, especially given the state of the woman before him.

  “We’ll be in touch soon.”

  Nodding her farewell, Gillian allowed McKeon to lead her from the room and out into the hallway. An escort who would accompany her to her vehicle, Reed watching them as far as the front foyer before having his attention pulled away by his phone coming to life in his rear pocket.

  Another burst of vibrations, this time touching on the h
ost of nerves pulled taut, sending a ripple of palpitations up through him. Coupled with the anticipation already starting to crest in the aftermath of the meeting, he pulled it out, expecting to see one of a handful of names across it.

  Well on down the list being the one that actually appeared before him.

  “Hey,” Reed said, a divot appearing between his brows as he pressed it to his cheek. “Find something else?”

  “I did,” Deke replied, skipping any sort of greeting, let alone his usual opening. “Well, maybe. Something I at least wanted to run by you, since we’ve already got people bouncing all over the area.”

  Slapping at the leg of his jeans, Reed called Billie back into the conference room. Waiting until she was safely past the threshold, he pulled the door shut in her wake before flipping the phone to speaker.

  “For sure. What’s up?”

  “Do you remember when we were going through the cases that we thought might actually be something, and we started talking about that vehicular homicide case from a few years ago?”

  “Yeah,” Reed replied. Skipping back through the long list of cases that the group had just discussed, he searched for the details of the one Deke was referencing. One that hadn’t been talked about for long before being dismissed, the case so low in threat that it barely made the second tier.

  And even then, only because there was a loss of life and jail time attached.

  “The one with the drunken college student hitting someone on his way home, right?”

  “Yes,” Deke said, “that one. Do you remember when Harrison was talking about it, and he mentioned that it was one of the easier cases he ever prosecuted?”

  “Sure,” Reed replied. “Said the kid completely owned up to it, something about actions and consequences.”

  “Exactly!” Deke said, almost snapping the word out there. Excitement that was building, to a degree Reed had only heard a couple of times in their myriad prior cases working together. “For some reason, that really stuck with me, so I went back and took a look out of curiosity, and I found there was more to it.”

  In the background, Reed could hear the sound of the wheels on Deke’s desk chair rolling across the hard plastic mat in his basement. A few seconds with it ringing out clearly, Reed almost able to track his progress across the floor, before it ended abruptly with the shuffling of papers.

  A short trek across the back of the room, moving from his workstation to the printer tucked up tight next to the servers.

  “Kid’s name was Adley Reese,” Deke said. “Twenty-one years old, college baseball player at Otterbein, sentenced to the maximum five years at Franklin Correctional.”

  Running the math, Reed said, “Okay, but based on when Gillian and Harrison were there, that’d still put him at almost a year from release.”

  “It would,” Deke said, “but three months ago, a fight broke out in the cafeteria. Reese tried to break it up and was stabbed in the neck with a fork. Bled out on the floor before the guards could break things up and get to him.”

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Detective McKeon had agreed that what Deke uncovered needed to be checked out. The death of Adley Reese was an outcome that none of them could have foreseen merely by looking at the case file. A matter that changed the entire framing of the case, instantly jumping it up into the first tier.

  What he had been far less acquiescent about was Reed and Billie leaving their post with him at the Newark Police Department to go speak with the young man’s father. A short drive down to an unincorporated area a half hour south known as Rushville, resting in the largely rural gap between Newark and Lancaster.

  A stance that Reed wasn’t sure stemmed from the detective not believing the case was strong enough to warrant their personal attention or merely not wanting to be left there alone.

  Either way a debate Reed was not willing to have, he had gone through the perfunctory few minutes of banter before pointing out that the total time investment would be barely more than an hour. A very small commitment that could either provide them with their first firm heading or help scratch another name off the list of possibilities.

  Which, as much as they all hated to admit it, was essentially what they were doing. Sending teams of officers across the region to protect judges and speak with possible suspects, all in hopes of preventing a third heinous attack.

  A point of view that McKeon had no choice but to capitulate to, Reed and Billie piling into their sedan and heading south within minutes of getting the call from Deke.

  Programmed into the map function on Reed’s phone was the address for Adley Reese’s father. His mother having passed to cancer barely a year after his birth, his father had taken a family hardship discharge from active duty in the army to return home and run the local recruitment office while raising his son.

  A post he had promptly left three months prior, opting for early retirement at the age of just fifty-two.

  Tucked up behind the steering wheel of his sedan, Reed alternated his gaze between his phone tucked into the middle console and the road ahead. A meandering route cutting through terrain that wasn’t quite as rugged as the area surrounding Gallipolis, but wasn’t far off. A landscape that was flatter on the whole, but just as heavily forested, the two-lane they were on feeling like it was walled in on either side.

  Canopies of mottled green rising vertically along the road, blocking anything else from view.

  “In one mile, turn left.”

  For as much as the Reese case was cast to the rear of the list of possibilities when the group was going through them earlier, the more Reed thought on it, the more a couple of key details stood out. Things that made it look increasingly enticing, continued scrutiny bringing them into sharper relief.

  Particulars that would have never surfaced if not for a throwaway line from Harrison and the foresight to follow up on it by Deke.

  Something that, in due time, Reed would likely add to the litany of missteps he’d made this week, but for now was content to push aside.

  The most glaring aspect of the Reese situation was the man’s father. Someone that was formerly in the military, certainly having had formal training with a weapon. Even beyond that, based on the location Reed was currently driving through, he likely had years of hunting familiarity to buttress it.

  Someone that – as Jim Bob had mentioned days before – had plenty of experience handling a weapon that would employ a .300 Winchester Magnum round.

  Running a close second was the fact that the man hadn’t been adjudicated by Harrison or Gillian directly. Rather, he was a family member. Somebody one step removed from the process, just as Cara Salem and Avery Lawson both were.

  A parallel that could easily be Reed looking too much into things, but could also be quite telling.

  “Turn left,” the automated voice on his phone instructed. “In one quarter mile, your destination will be on the right.”

  Pressing on the gas just enough to keep the sedan moving forward, Reed pushed his gaze to the right side of the road. A solid mash of tree trunks and dense foliage, a simple wire fence providing a feeble effort to keep it at bay.

  Overhead, much of the early afternoon sun was blotted from view, the temperature inside the vehicle dropping several degrees.

  His focus fixed along the side of the road, Reed spotted what he assumed to be what he was looking for up ahead. A small break in the thick grass abutting the pavement, a lane mixed of equal parts mud and gravel reaching out from the depths of the forest.

  A path that was almost completely hidden until he was within just ten yards of it, not even a mailbox present to denote the presence of a dwelling nearby.

  “You have reached your destination.”

  Shooting out a hand, Reed snatched up his phone. Mashing on the volume buttons along the side, he silenced the harsh intrusion of the automated voice, his focus still tracing over the scene before him.

  A sight that caused his chest to tighten, pinpricks roiling through his core
.

  Bringing the vehicle to a stop in the center of the road, Reed flicked his gaze down to the phone in his hand. Using a single thumb to navigate through his recent call log, he found the most recent listing and hit send.

  Shifting his gaze to the rearview mirror, Reed saw the outline of Billie’s head filling the reflection. Ears pointed toward the roof, she stared straight back, her dark eyes just barely visible against the inky backdrop of her fur.

  A stare that seemed to be mixed of her own adrenaline and his, Billie feeding off both in equal measure.

  “Hey, dude,” Deke answered after just a single ring. “Nothing doing at the Reese place?”

  “Just got here,” Reed replied. “If you don’t hear back from me in the next ten minutes, call Grimes. Tell him where we are and to send backup.”

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Reed wasn’t sure what made him stop and make the call to Deke. Possibly it was the setting, the area heavily wooded, the last car he had seen more than ten minutes earlier. Maybe it was the close semblance to the scene in Gallipolis, the lane seemingly carved directly out of the forest, much as the Salem homestead had been.

  Perhaps even it was the thoughts Reed had been entertaining on the drive over, convincing himself that Brooks Reese was a threat.

  Most likely a combination of the three, the choice was one Reed felt no qualms about. Just as he experienced no remorse with having put the sedan in park and opening up the trunk, strapping on his and Billie’s protective body armor before making the turn and pulling forward.

  A journey that took them no more than thirty yards or so before being stopped by a metal gate standing across the lane. Just far enough that any trace of the road behind them was blotted from view, swallowed up by the trees crowding in from the sides and meeting high overhead, blocking any residual daylight from penetrating, plunging them into darkness.

  Flipping on the front lamps of the sedan, Reed made no effort to exit just yet. Instead, his gaze traced over the gate before them, illuminated by the glow of his headlights.