The Promisor: A Suspense Thriller

by Dustin Stevens

  The one with the arched marble top that he spoke to every single time he stopped by, and the one that he hadn’t been able to bring himself to look at in the three months since.

  A vow to the only two people that were ever worthy of such a pledge, solemnly promising that he would get retribution for what happened. Each person that was responsible for causing him to break his third promise. The one made while sitting by his wife’s bedside, repeating back her dying wish.

  The request that he promise to protect their son forevermore, looking out for him after she was gone.

  Rooted in place that chilly spring morning, The Promisor had stood with icy water dripping over his features and offered that final promise. The solemn pledge that those who played a role in their son’s passing would pay, not with their own lives, but with something far worse.

  He would take the people most important to them, subjecting them to a lifetime of pain and solitude.

  The same fate The Promisor had now been forced into.

  Standing alone on that hallowed ground long after the clergyman and the handful of guests that were there had departed, The Promisor had drawn a small folding knife from his pocket. Turning out the blade, he had recited the words to both his wife and his son, making sure to impart the conviction they carried, before making a series of cuts into either palm.

  Shallow gouges that caused bright red blood to bubble up, mixing with the cold water falling from above. Watercolor paints that he had stepped forth and pressed into the top of either stone, imprinting his promise onto each of them.

  Words that had been his entire focus every moment since. The reason he took early retirement from his job and spent months scouting. Untold trips to Gallipolis and Newark and the small housing community just inside the Columbus outer belt.

  A trio of people who all contributed to what happened to his son. Individuals who had allowed their ego or their self-interest or even just the rigor of their routine to get to them, seeing an easy victory and choosing to go right after it.

  A young man who made a mistake, having a few too many one night and getting behind the wheel, ultimately taking another person’s life.

  A series of terrible decisions he had owned up to, submitting himself to the system, never once imagining the punishment it would impose upon him. A maximum sentence in a full-security facility, giving no mind to his sparkling background and clean record.

  A lesson The Promisor had taken to heart, allowing no concessions for whatever admirable traits his targets possessed, his entire focus on making good on his promise.

  Something that was now so close, just one final item to be finished before he was done.

  Perched behind the steering wheel of his truck, The Promisor could feel adrenaline pulsating through his system. One time after another, he replayed the events of less than an hour before through his mind. He watched as the Mercedes SUV rolled into the front drive and Terrance Benedict stepped out.

  The husband of The Honorable Cynthia Benedict, who had sat on her perch at the front of the courtroom and seemed almost gleeful as she handed down her sentence.

  Slowing the events down in his mind, The Promisor saw as the man stepped out of his vehicle. Waving his arms about, he had tried to shoo away the officers sent to protect him, providing the narrow opening that was needed.

  Enough that The Promisor was able to squeeze off the shot, the bullet’s path ending with a spray of bright red blood against the tinted window of the SUV.

  A final image that rested at the front of The Promisor’s mind as he flicked his gaze from the road to both of the side mirrors before moving to the rearview. A three-part sequence he’d gone through many times over, each time expecting there to be flashing lights appearing in his wake. Blue and red strobes seated atop a cruiser coming to flag him down, somebody having seen him slipping away from the lakeside.

  One last error far greater than the faux pas with the camouflage pants, causing him to come up just short of completing his mission.

  A second broken promise in the last few months.

  A mark on his eternal record that could never be expunged.

  Seeing nothing beyond the usual throng of early afternoon traffic clogging the roadways, The Promisor continued to push north. His final destination fixed in his mind, he went as fast as prudence would allow, making his way across the city.

  Had things gone absolutely perfectly, these last two would have been no different than the first two. Spaced a day or so apart, he would have had time to return home. Share a meal with Kratos and Bia. Feed the details about Benedict into the fire before cleaning the Mossberg, bedding down, and getting ready for the last piece.

  Visit his wife and inform her of what he had accomplished before moving on to the last piece.

  The one final act that would offset his broken promise.

  Given the officers who had spent the day at the sprawling home by the lake, there was no way such a thing was possible, though. Coupled with the sensors at his house being tripped, not only were authorities aware of who he was, they knew what he was after.

  His only hope now was that the fourth target was far enough outside their scope they hadn’t considered it yet. A slight deviation that would allow him to get into position before they were fully prepared, just as he had with Benedict.

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Never before had Reed ridden shotgun in the sedan. Even going back to his time working with Riley, always he was the one behind the wheel. A nod to her general disdain for driving that continued once he moved into the K-9 division and was partnered with Billie, for obvious reasons.

  Seated in the passenger seat, he couldn’t help but notice how different things felt. Everything from the point of view from the opposite side of the vehicle to the padding in the seat that was still fresh and new, the springs still buoyant from years of going largely unused. The extra space afforded from not having the steering wheel in front of him.

  The odd placement of the radio just inches from his knees.

  To his left rested Officer Jacobs. A concession both to the fact that given his recent blow to the head it might not be the best for him to be operating a vehicle, and to his need to be making phone calls. A handful of check-ins with various people, even as they raced from Rushville toward Columbus.

  Completing the group was Billie in the backseat. Still donning her Kevlar vest, she paced from one side to the other. An enormous shadow passing in and out of Reed’s periphery, feeding off the anticipation and anxiety inside the vehicle.

  “In one mile, merge onto I-70 West,” the automated voice on Jacobs’s phone announced from the middle console.

  Without a light bar across the top of the sedan, the flashers were housed in the front headlamps. Flickering lights that alerted other drivers they were nearby, clearing a path for them to run at speeds approaching eighty miles an hour.

  A pattern of halogen glow passing from one side to the other, the onset of evening making it just visible on the pavement before them.

  “McMichaels still with us?” Reed asked, gaze fixed on the screen of his phone.

  Using the rearview mirror, the officer checked their tail. “Yup. One car length back.”

  Grunting softly, Reed continued scrolling through a list of recent calls. Finding what he was looking for, he hit send, leaving it on speakerphone.

  Balanced on his left thigh, he turned volume up loud enough to make sure Jacobs could hear all that was about to be shared.

  “McKeon,” the detective answered after a single ring.

  “Anybody call you yet?” Reed asked.

  “No, why? You find Reese?”

  “No,” Reed answered, “but he found Cynthia Benedict’s husband.”

  For a moment, there was no response. No sound save a slow exhalation, followed by, “Oh, shit.”

  “Yeah,” Reed agreed, flicking a glance over to Jacobs. “I guess he didn’t hit the man, but got one of the officers that was there to bring him in. He’s aliv
e, but it’s dicey.”

  “Dammit,” McKeon muttered. “Dammit, dammit, dammit.”

  The exact thought – if a little more muted – that Reed had while standing in the basement earlier, the time since doing nothing to abate it. A simmering vitriol that he didn’t think could rise any higher after the incident at the gate and waking to find Billie awash in blood that was somehow now exponentially worse.

  Never before had he met Brooks Reese, or even seen a photo of the man, yet he could still barely imagine hating an individual more. A despising that first formed standing on the front walk of the Salem house, rising in steady increments ever since.

  “Were they able to nab him at least?” McKeon asked.

  “Nope,” Reed said. “I guess the judge lives in this little lakeside community outside of Westerville. Kind of private, so after Reese fired and had the cops onsite scrambling, he was able to slip away.

  “All they found was some staged fishing gear and a lawn chair. The spot in the trees nearby where he shot from.”

  Again, McKeon muttered, “Dammit.” A single word that was punctuated by a loud banging, sounding like he was pounding on a table as he said it.

  Saying nothing, Reed watched as Jacobs followed the muted instructions of the phone navigation system. Aided by a line of cars nudging to the side of the road, they made a looping curve, exiting from the two-lane state route they’d been on to the freeway shooting directly into the heart of the city.

  Barely easing up on the gas to make the turn, the instant they were back on the straightaway, the officer mashed down on the gas again, hurtling them forward.

  “You headed there now?” McKeon asked.

  “Just got on 70, running fast,” Reed replied. “Still about twenty minutes out.”

  “Okay,” McKeon replied. Falling silent a moment, he seemed to consider what was just shared, processing the new information, before asking, “I mean Salem was the prosecuting attorney, Lawson the public defender, Benedict the presiding judge. That has to be it, right? Who else would Reese go after? The damn arresting officer?”

  Opening his mouth to reply, Reed pulled up short of any sound passing his lips. In the quarter hour since Grimes first called, his entire focus had been on getting the officers loaded up so they could all get across town. The four of them tearing across central Ohio to reach the latest crime scene.

  A site that was probably going to resemble the last two, allowing them to see the place Reese shot from and the damage he caused and not a lot else.

  Confirmation of everything they already knew, from the scent Billie would pick up to the man’s favored methodology, but not a damned thing new. Nothing to let them get out ahead of the man, putting a stop to what he was doing.

  A plan that Reed couldn’t help but feel wasn’t complete yet, his accelerated timetable on the heels of them breaching his home almost assuredly not a coincidence.

  “Detective, that’s a damn fine point,” Reed said. Without waiting for a reply, he snatched his phone up from his leg and added, “I’ll call you back.”

  Ending it there, he paused just long enough for the call to clear before diving right back into his log. Scrolling down only a couple of entries, he found what he needed and hit send.

  A moment later, he had Deke on the line.

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  The comment from Detective McKeon called to mind a line that Harrison Salem said earlier in the day. A throwaway that he used when they were going through the list of cases he and Gillian Lawson had squared off in, meant to illustrate why the matter of Adley Reese – despite it being a vehicular homicide – was of an extremely low priority.

  More of an audible thought than anything, it had caught Deke’s attention enough to make him go back and take a second look, enabling him to discover what had happened to the younger Reese a few months earlier.

  The very thing that put them onto his father, every officer in the greater Columbus area now searching for Brooks Reese.

  A man that seemed far more interested in completing what he set out to do rather than his own safety, self-preservation dismissed to such a degree he was willing to fire into a clump of officers to take out his target.

  “What was it Harrison said this morning that caught your ear?” Reed asked. His own chance to think out loud, putting his thoughts in order on the fly. Handfuls of snippets arriving thick and furious, spurred by the conversation with McKeon. “When he mentioned that Adley Reese hadn’t denied his guilt?”

  “Right,” Deke replied over the line. “He said Reese told him he’d been raised to believe actions had consequences, and he’d accept his.”

  “Actions have consequences,” Reed repeated. Flicking his gaze over to Jacobs still working to get them back into the city, he said, “He was raised to believe that, by a man who has now gone after the prosecutor, the public defender, and the judge. The people he feels are responsible for putting his son away for so long.”

  Mumbling something too low to be made out, Jacobs nodded in agreement from the front seat.

  His mind racing, Reed continued shoving snippets of information into place. Things that were coming back to him in droves, all fighting through the framework of what he’d just put together and the barely lingering buzzing in his ears.

  “Based on the first two murders,” he said, “there’s no way Reese takes that shot at Benedict’s if I hadn’t tripped the sensor on his gate. He knew we were getting close and he didn’t have much time remaining.”

  Seated behind the steering wheel, Jacobs flicked a glance over to the side. “You thinking he might go after somebody else already?”

  Whether or not this was a manhunt or a further attempt to prevent any more bloodshed, Reed couldn’t be certain. A scenario in which he’d much rather error on the side of being abundantly cautious than to sit back and allow Reese to kill again.

  “Maybe,” Reed shot back to Jacobs before adding, “Deke, you have access to the full file. Is there anyone else he might have left to target?”

  Replying with nothing more than a burst of keystrokes, Deke stayed silent for several moments. Time spent with Reed clutching the phone before him, his elbow propped on his hip, keeping the device just inches from his face.

  Beside him, Billie pushed her nose up between the front seats. Black fur still matted from the cleaning the veterinarians gave her, the strong scent of medicinal salves lingered on her.

  A smell that was just one more in a host of sensory assaults on the both of them.

  “Okay,” Deke said, his voice slightly detached, reading from the screen before him. “Arresting officer was a guy named Daubenmire, from the 18th Precinct.”

  The same thing McKeon had mentioned earlier, Reed shook his head. “Possible, but I doubt it. Sounds like the son and the father both admitted his guilt, so I can’t imagine him going after the guy that brought him in.”

  “True,” Deke conceded, “but the only other witness I’ve got here is the wife of the deceased. Can’t see that being his next target either.”

  In Reed’s periphery, he saw as Jacobs shook his head. Emphatic agreement with the point Deke just made.

  One that Reed was also aligned with, the resulting widow even less likely than the arresting officer.

  His gaze narrowing slightly, Reed lifted his gaze to stare out through the front windshield, signs of urban life becoming thicker with each passing mile. Buildings climbing higher and businesses of various sizes just starting to turn on their signage in preparation for the impending evening rush.

  Allowing his vision to glaze over, the bright glow to his right and the headlights of traffic on the far side of the median all blurred into fuzzy orbs. Crystalline splashes of light against a backdrop still an hour or more from darkness.

  “Maybe it’s not on the front end,” he said.

  More a thought than a statement, he continued to roll around the notion, examining it from various angles.

  The younger Reese was in custody at the time of
his death. After his father took out the people he blamed for putting his son there, the next step in the progression would be to go after those that should have been looking out for him.

  The guards on shift. Or the supervisor overseeing whatever cell block he was assigned to.

  Or, perhaps, even someone higher up than that.

  “Deke,” Reed said, blinking several times in order to pull himself back into the moment. “Where did you say Adley was serving his sentence?”

  “Uh...FCCC,” Deke replied, referring to the Franklin County Correction Center.

  “1 or 2?” Reed asked.

  “1.”

  The first of the two such facilities built in the greater Columbus area, the FCCC1 was a hulking monstrosity of concrete and iron located along the riverfront, not far from the CPD Headquarters. A place Reed had been to numerous times, most recently a few months earlier when he and Billie went to speak with an inmate.

  A part of the case that put them where they now were, the public nature of it serving as the catalyst for the governor conscripting their services.

  A state of employment Reed could do nothing about at the moment, his focus only on finding the elder Reese before he went after anybody else.

  “Who’s in charge over there?”

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  A preliminary pass through the neighborhood showed that while the authorities might have figured out The Promisor’s plans enough to send officers to the house of Judge Cynthia Benedict, they hadn’t yet deciphered the final piece in the sequence. The progression of Cara Salem and Avery Lawson had provided a sufficient pattern to lead them all the way to his own doorstep, but the final aspect still eluded them.

  A state The Promisor hoped lasted just a little bit longer. A few extra minutes allowing him to do what he needed, completing the promise that was made.

  A definitive ending to a successful mission, after which he would be able to finally look at his entire family again.

  A man who had kept his word.