by Wes Markin
Jake leaned forward in his chair. “Where I come from, the police try to put things right.”
Gabriel grinned. “Is that what you tried to do back in Wiltshire?”
“Meaning?”
“I did a little research on you.”
Jake tried to maintain a calm demeanor even though his chest suddenly felt full of lead. “A young girl is missing, and you spend your time investigating me?”
“Did you really go AWOL?”
Jake narrowed his eyes.
“Shit … you did, didn’t you?” Gabriel leaned back in his chair. He looked as if he were about to cheer. “Spoke to a few friends of mine over in the UK. It seems you never actually quit. You just upped and left one day. Why would anyone in their right mind do that?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Well, maybe I should make it my business.” He nodded. “After all, you seem unable to stop taking my business into your own hands.”
Jake leaned forward and pointed at the desk. “I came here, first, with a problem you haven’t attempted to solve.”
“I spoke to the family on your request.”
“They lied to you.”
“And that may be so, but, as I told you before, Mr. Pettman, a necessity for patience exists in Blue Falls. Everyone, me and you included, must tread cautiously.”
“Tread cautiously? Where I come from I’ve watched colleagues sacrifice themselves to put things right!”
“Yes, I’ve heard. Actually, I’ve heard all sorts about you, Mr. Pettman.” Gabriel paused for a mouthful of coffee from yellowed cup with Best Police Officer Ever written in fading red letters. “I believe you’ve got blood on your hands.”
Jake considered ramming the cup down smug bastard’s throat. “Everything I did was in the line of duty.”
“Killing is killing.” Gabriel put down the cup. “To be expected, I guess.” He smiled, displaying teeth as yellow as the old cup. “Considering.”
“What do you mean?”
“Bad stock … child-killing stock.”
Jake stood and gripped the edges of the desk, desperate to stop himself swinging for the prick.
“Sit down, Mr. Pettman. Admittedly, getting thrown in jail will keep you out of trouble, but it will also create paperwork. You can relax. I was discreet in my inquiries.”
Jake struggled to take the advice. His breathing was quick.
“Those you’ve run from don’t know your whereabouts.”
Yet, Jake thought and took a deep breath to try to control the surging adrenaline. “I don’t owe you anything, Jewell, so let’s steer clear of that assumption.”
Gabriel shrugged.
“Do you really think I’d be worth chasing all the way here?”
“Maybe. You’ve certainly made a real impression around here, and you’ve only just arrived. I imagine you’ve a lot of enemies. Sit down, Mr. Pettman.”
“I’ll stay standing. How about getting around to the answering the question I asked you when I got here? How can you stomach dogfighting on your patch?”
Gabriel took another mouthful of coffee.
“Not going to dodge it again are―”
“It’s a sport,” Gabriel said, avoiding eye contact.
“A blood sport. An illegal sport.”
“I agree, but this isn’t Midsomer; this is Blue Falls.”
“Midsomer isn’t a real town.”
“You get my point.” He made eye contact with Jake again. “There will always be evil in a place like Blue Falls. It comes with the territory. Many would argue that the fucking place was born from it. If you take on the evil, it gets far worse. Allowing some evil, a necessary evil, can keep everything under control.”
“Jesus, here we go again. Your balance. The ecosystem. Excuses. All of them! You’re just a weak man, Jewell.”
Gabriel slammed a palm on the table. “You confront Jotham and see what happens.”
“Oh, I intend to.” Jake leaned in nearer to Gabriel and curled his lip. “After you admit you want me to.”
“I don’t know what you―”
“Cut the bullshit, Jewell! You pointed me in the direction of the dogfighting!”
“Maybe I thought you’d just go and get yourself killed!”
“But, if you really wanted me gone, why didn’t you reveal my whereabouts when you made inquiries about me?”
Gabriel sat back in his chair.
“Listen. I know your hands are tied. To some extent, I understand your situation. You want Jotham as badly as I do. Give me something.”
“I’ve given you all I can.”
“Exactly what I thought.” Jake sneered and turned for the door.
His hand was on the handle when Gabriel said, “You need to stop sniffing around people who have everything to lose. That’s not how you get answers. Not round here.”
Jake turned. “Who am I looking for then?”
Gabriel cracked the knuckles on his left hand. “Those who have already lost to Jotham MacLeoid.”
Jake laughed. “That must be a long list.”
“Yes, it’s long, but most people on that list are dead, so that should speed things up for you.”
Jake saw Lillian as he exited the department. Not only was she avoiding eye contact with him, but she had gritted teeth and a furrowed brow.
Outside, he leaned against the wall where he’d first met Lillian, leaned over and took big gulps of air.
Shit. The bastard, Gabriel, was on to him.
He stood up straight and slapped the wall behind himself several times, desperate to relieve the frustration. How much had Gabriel revealed in his sinister phone calls to the police in the UK?
It wasn’t the police Jake was worried about, it was Article SE—an organized crime outfit that had wound its tendrils around law enforcement in Wiltshire. He too had been gripped by a tendril. And there were others—his boss, Chief Superintendent Joan Madden, included. If she got wind of where he was, she would alert those in Article SE. And they would come for him. Of that, there was no doubt.
He had to find this missing girl and move on before it was too late. He pulled his phone from his Barbour jacket and sighed. He had no choice. Without help, he could get nowhere.
“Lillian, I’m outside.”
“What happened to steering clear of you?”
“I noticed you didn’t look best pleased about that. Look. I was wrong. I’m sorry. I need you.”
“Go on.”
“We need to get a list together of those who have already lost.”
“As usual, you’re making little sense.”
“Come and smoke one of your cigarettes, and I’ll explain.”
13
BLAKE THOMPSON LOOKED into the eyes of the man who’d murdered his daughter and pleaded for the body. Behind him, a dog was barking and yanking on a chain, desperate to reach some tied-up rabbits.
Jotham broke eye contact and looked off into the distance.
Blake knew it wasn’t shame that made this bastard avoid eye contact. No. A man like this possessed no such emotion. He did it because Blake was an inconvenience—an unwelcomed distraction.
Eventually, Jotham regarded Blake again with his hunter’s eyes. He opened his mouth to speak but waited for one of the rabbits to stop squealing. “What purpose will it serve you to crawl into my pit for your daughter’s body?”
Blake forced back the tears. He wanted to remain dignified. “Allow us closure. She should be buried.”
Jotham snorted and looked away. “For your God?”
“For us, Jo.” Blake kept his hands behind his back, fearful he might impulsively close them around the killer’s neck.
“Do you think I owe you something, Blake?”
“No.” Blake rubbed a tear from the corner of his eye before it had chance to run down his face. “It’s her mother. She’s innocent in all of this. Please place my daughter somewhere so she may be found and laid to rest.”
“So, you don’t
just want her body, you would like to put on some kind of show? Stage the manner of her death?”
“Yes … for her mother.”
“Marissa doesn’t know?”
“The truth would kill her.”
“Oh.” Jotham nodded and looked across his land again. “So, lay her under a cliff, that sort of thing?”
“Whatever works.”
“Whatever works in order to lie to your wife?”
“Yes, Jo.” Blake tackled another tear while Jotham focused elsewhere.
Jotham rubbed his long beard deep in thought. A show. It was always a fucking show with this man. “No, I don’t think so.”
Blake gulped. “But …”
“No.”
“Why?” His body quivered.
“I don’t have to give you an answer. Go home and tell your wife the truth. Move on with your life. I’m offering a good future to your family.”
“But you don’t understand. She won’t accept it. Her mind, her reasoning, she isn’t the person she once was. She won’t be able to lie. She’ll expose the truth.”
Jotham looked back up at Blake. He smiled, and his tongue darted over his top front teeth. “Then silence her, Blake.”
“What?”
“Silence her. After all, isn’t it the job of every man to purge the weak? Human nature.”
“I can’t do that.” He made no effort to stop the tears streaking his face now.
“Yet, if the truth comes out, one of your other children will go into the pit. Did I not make that clear the other night?”
Blake felt his insides melting. He so wanted to tear this psychopath apart with his bare hands. “Jo, I’m pleading with you―”
“Enough!” Jotham summoned Ayden with a wave. “See our guest off the property.”
Blake looked at Ayden then back at Jotham, who was no longer acknowledging him. “Please, Jo.”
Ayden took his arm. “Come on, Mr. Thompson.”
Blake snatched away his arm. “Get your fucking hands off me. Don’t you touch me. It cannot be this way. This isn’t right. None of this is right.”
“Ayden,” Jotham said, “let Bo off her chain.”
“Dad? Are you sure―”
“Now.”
Ayden wandered toward Bo.
Jotham studied Blake and raised an eyebrow. “Your call, Blake.”
Blake heard the chain rattle behind him as Ayden undid it.
“Okay, Jo. I’m going.”
Jotham nodded.
“I’ll see myself out.” He staggered off.
“You tried, Blake!” Jotham called after him. “It was all you could do. Now you must tell your wife.”
Blake considered turning back, shouting abuse and daring them to set their wild animal on him. Being savaged to death was preferable to telling his wife the cold truth—that his daughter had been thrown into a pit and killed by something down there.
But suicide was not an option. Leaving his wife alone and without the truth was abhorrent. No, the truth she would have. And afterward, when she said she couldn’t live with it, he would offer her silence. And after she’d accepted, he would share in it too.
It took Lillian a few hours to compile a list of all the people Jotham had treated badly in the past. The surviving members of that exclusive club of “those who had already lost” was far longer than Gabriel had suggested. Fortunately, Lillian had already formed some reasonable conclusions.
Jake smiled. Lillian was both competent and good-hearted. His experience of Blue Falls so far suggested these traits were in short supply.
Lillian had whittled down the list to ex-employees. All had been residents of Blue Falls at the time of working, and all of them had been female. She’d also bulleted ahead and contacted some of them.
“They really didn’t want to talk to me,” she said.
“In fear of their lives, no doubt.”
“No, not so much that. It was as if they were grateful to him.”
“For being sacked?”
“They accepted their fate. They thought they deserved it. One admitted to stealing some of the product for personal use. Another said she was late all the time.”
“And how did he treat them?”
“Two of the three I spoke to actually used the word gentleman.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Lillian had yet to talk to other ex-employers on the list. She showed it to Jake then pointed to a name she’d circled. “Marion Springs. She actually made a report to the police.”
Jake’s eyes widened. “Go on.”
“Someone had deleted the files in the folder.”
“Shit.” Jake considered this. “And yet left the folder there? Sloppy. Let me guess who authored the folder. Chief Jewell by chance?”
Lillian nodded.
“Imbecile. Well, I’m not heading back to try to get more blood from that stone. Let’s go straight to the source.”
Marion Springs entertained Jake and Lillian on the porch while smoking like a chimney. She was a well-built middle-aged woman who looked strong and healthy despite her filthy habit and the lines of experience etched into her face. “My boy has only just turned twelve. I don’t want him breathing in this crap.”
Jake smiled. “If only all parents were as conscientious.”
“Yes, well,” Marion said through a plume of smoke, “some are and some aren’t. I know a whole load of both.”
“So, you said you were happy to talk to us about Jotham?”
“Happy is not the right word. Willing, yes.”
“You don’t sound like his biggest fan,” Lillian said. “Other ex-employees have referred to him as a gentleman.”
Marion snorted so hard that she coughed on her latest lungful of smoke. “Have you met him?”
“Yes,” Jake said. “And my reaction on first hearing him referred to in that way was similar to yours.”
Marion fired up a third cigarette. “But then you can see their point. He offered them work where none existed and paid them very well. Yes, it was outside the law, but who cares about that when you’re practically living on fresh air? I know I certainly didn’t at the time.”
“So, what’s so different about you then?” Jake said. “Why aren’t you singing his praises like his other ex-employers?”
“Because I tell it how it is. The other girls had a different view of what is acceptable. Or, to put it another way, that old brute really isn’t my type, and I wasn’t inclined to do what was required of me.”
“I don’t follow,” Jake said.
“At any time, Jotham would have a favorite.” She paused to take a long inhalation from her cigarette then stared off into the distance and seemed to lose her train of thought.
Jake and Lillian exchanged glances.
“Mrs. Springs, you were saying something about favorites?” Jake said.
“Oh, yes. Sorry. He only ever had one favorite at a time. And it seems he didn’t get bored too easily. I worked there for four years, and in that time, he only had four favorites.”
“What happens if you’re the favorite?” Lillian said.
“I was hoping you could use your imagination on that one, dear, but being police, I guess you want all the grisly details. It basically meant he’d come into the laboratory on most days, take you to his room and, you know, fuck you.”
Lillian cursed under her breath.
“I know.” Marion blew out a cloud of smoke. “The perfect gentleman.”
“Is that why you went to the police?” Lillian asked.
“Haven’t you read the report?”
Jake and Lillian exchanged glances again.
“The file was corrupted,” Lillian said.
Marion snorted again. “Ha! I knew on the day I made my report that nothing would happen. But then, what did I expect? I assume you know who Jotham MacLeoid is or you wouldn’t be standing here on my doorstep!”
“What happened, Ms. Springs?”
Marion threw her cigarette
butt on the floor and stamped on it. “Well, fourth year lucky for me, he selected me to be his favorite!”
“I’m sorry,” Lillian said, not looking up.
She shrugged. “Only myself to blame. You put yourself in those situations, you can’t go off crying when it backfires.”
“No, Marion, you were desperate. This type of man preys on that.”
“I was, yes,” Marion said, looking up, “but not that desperate. As I told you before, he wasn’t my knight in shining armor! In fact, he wasn’t anyone’s, the old bastard. The others were just scared. Poor girls. But I’m different than them. Most of those girls had been bullied, whether by an abusive father or a trash-talking husband. I was lucky. My daddy wanted me to be a fighter, and he raised me to stand my ground. So I told Jotham I wasn’t interested.”
“Good for you, Marion,” Lillian said.
The color drained from her face. “He sacked me.”
“No loss. You were the winner in this. There is no doubt about―”
“No, I wasn’t, ma’am.” She rolled up her blouse sleeve. “He raped me.” She showed Lillian and Jake the white scar on her arm. “Branded me with his zippo. He then gave me my final pay packet, and his son drove me home.”
“Jesus,” Lillian said.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Jake said.
Marion nodded. “That’s exactly what your colleague, Gabriel Jewell, said. He promised to get justice, and I know for a fact he went to see Jotham, because the other girls saw him on the property and told me. But all he was doing was tidying up the mess. Several days later, Jotham sent one of his men with a bundle of cash—a generous severance package! How nice of Mr. Jewell to negotiate that for me, eh? This man also warned me that the matter was closed and if I continued to make trouble for Mr. MacLeoid, they would cut off my son’s balls.”
Jake shook his head.
“My son was four at the time, so yes, I took the money, and I let that matter drop. Never spent that money though. Burnt every last dollar. Fuck him. Me and my boy even went hungry that Thanksgiving, but I’m proud I never spent a single penny. If I’d taken that money, I’d have turned it into a transaction rather than what it was—rape.”