Adamant

by E. H. Reinhard

  Our homicide office had just gotten a makeover, mainly a big glass-doored entrance instead of a single-door entrance with a doorknob that resembled one on a closet. I pushed the door open and stepped in. My watch said it was a couple of minutes after nine o’clock, which was close enough to starting time. Ball, our boss, wasn’t too hung up on exact arrival and departure times as long as we did our jobs and showed up on time when we needed to. I caught him in his office off to my left. He looked to be on the phone. To my right, our tech guys, Marcus and Lewis, were in the tech center, punching away at their computers. We called them “the twins” since they looked and dressed similar. They were about the same age and shared the same last name—Phillips—further earning the moniker. I started for my desk but didn’t get past Ball’s office.

  “Rawlings.” Ball waved at me to come in.

  I stuck my head into his office. “What’s up?”

  Ball kept his phone to his ear. “Meeting room in ten. Tell Scott. Harper and Bill if you see them.”

  “All right,” I said.

  Ball’s office printer came alive, and he left his desk to attend to it.

  I left his office and walked to my desk in the main area of our department. My desk and Scott Matthews’s desk took up the back wall. Beth Harper’s and Bill Devlan’s desks, both empty, took up the wall opposite us. The office at the back of the room belonged to Tammy Meyer. She had taken over for Jim Robinson about a year prior when Jim retired. Tammy handled all our department’s travel arrangements, warrants, paperwork, and expenses. Scott was seated at his desk beside mine. Like me, Scott had a background in law enforcement—he’d worked violent crimes in Boston some years past.

  “Scott,” I said.

  “What’s up, Hank.”

  “Nothing. Same ol same.”

  “I think Ball has something for us,” Scott said. “He looked like he was getting a file together when I came in.”

  I plopped down in my desk chair, set some files on my desk, and woke up my computer. “Yeah, he just waved me in as I was passing his office and said meeting room in ten. He was on the phone with someone.”

  “And there goes the weekend plans,” Scott said. “Whatever. It’s been a while since we’ve been hot on something.”

  Hot and Cold were how our investigations were categorized. Cold meant we were doing what we did every day—researching recent crimes and homicides and investigating cold cases. Hot meant we had a confirmed active killer. Hot also meant we were hopping on a plane and going to wherever the killings were happening.

  “Seen Bill or Beth this morning?” I asked.

  “Nah. But if I had to guess, I’d say running behind due to the rain and traffic. Sixty-Six was a mess on the way in this morning.”

  “Yeah, thankfully, I don’t have to deal with it.”

  “Well, if Ball said meeting in ten, I’m going to go grab a coffee. Want something?” Scott rose from his chair. “I think I saw some bagels in the lunchroom.”

  “Nah,” I said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m good. Thanks.”

  “All right.”

  I turned toward my computer as Scott headed for the lunchroom. Karen, my wife, had said that I’d put on a few pounds, which I had, and put me on the Keto diet a couple of weeks back. It was a fact that I would be keeping to myself for as long as possible to avoid getting my chops busted about it at work. Either that or throw in the towel, because everything good in life had carbs, I’d learned.

  I logged in to my email to see if anything of importance had hit my work in-box. I’d been waiting on some messages from a few cold cases that I’d been sniffing around on—my in-box showed nothing.

  “Rawlings,” I heard.

  I looked over my shoulder to see Bill, round in the face and getting rounder in the waist with each year, plopping down at his desk. He’d just celebrated his forty-first birthday the week before.

  “Traffic was a bitch,” he said. “It’s like people forget how to drive when it rains.”

  “Try living in Florida,” I said. “The second it starts raining, everyone starts crashing into each other. Everything is flat, and every road is straight. Slow down, drive straight. How the hell do you crash?”

  “Old folks probably sawing at the wheel as soon as they hit a puddle,” Bill said.

  He was probably right.

  “Scott or Beth here?” Bill asked.

  “Scott just went for a coffee in the lunchroom. Haven’t seen Beth. Ball sounds like he has something for us. He said meeting room in ten. That was a couple minutes ago.”

  “If that’s the case, I better go get some caffeine.” Bill pushed back from his desk. “You want something?”

  “Yeah, coffee. No cream, three sugars,” Ball said as he rounded the office corner. “Bring it to me in the conference room.”

  “You got it,” Bill said. He looked back at me for an answer.

  “Nah.” I waved him away. Bill went for the office exit.

  “Ready?” Ball asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah. What’s cooking?”

  “Come on.”

  I left my desk and followed Ball to the meeting room. He slid out a chair at the head of the table. I grabbed one nearby and sat.

  Ball opened the file folders that he held and set them out before him. He glanced up at me for just a second.

  “You’re going to Texas,” he said.

  Chapter 3

  I rocked back in my chair at the conference table. Ball’s mention of Texas made the left side of my face burn. The last time I’d worked an investigation in the state, Kerry Levy, just one member of a homicidal family, had done her best to try to kill me. Well, just about everyone in her family had tried to kill me, but she’d come the closest. After leaping off a building’s roof and landing on top of me, she stabbed me in the head with a big kitchen knife. While I’d done my best to dodge the blow, the strike just missed my left eye. The blade had entered my flesh at my eye socket and sliced my face wide open, also splitting my ear damn near in two. A pair of reconstructive surgeries and a couple of years later, I had a thin scar running from my eye to my ear and a small notch in my ear itself, constant reminders of the experience.

  Scott and Bill walked into the conference room and took their seats.

  “Here, I got you a bagel and cup of Joe, anyway.” Scott set the cup and pastry in front of me.

  I peered down at the bagel, and my stomach rumbled. I wasn’t the world’s biggest bagel fan, but damned if the thing didn’t look like the best one ever baked. I grumbled a bit and flexed my willpower. “Thanks. I’m still pretty full from breakfast, though.” A lie.

  “What’s up?” Bill asked Ball. “Where we headed?”

  “You guys are going to Louisiana,” Ball said.

  “I thought you said Texas.” I looked at Ball.

  “You and Beth, Texas. Bill and Scott, Louisiana. We need a presence in both places today.”

  “So, we’re heading right out?” Scott asked.

  “Yeah, I’ll have Tammy get you guys set,” Ball said. “See if she can get you guys out on something this afternoon. Sorry about it being spur of the moment, but it’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. You know the job. When we gotta go, we gotta go.”

  Ball was right, and while being asked to drop everything and go work an investigation on the other side of the country made it hard to plan life, the routine was starting to become normal. I slid out my phone and texted Karen, letting her know that I was going out of town on an investigation.

  Scott lifted his coffee to his lips and took a drink. “What are we dealing with?” He set his cup down.

  Ball rubbed his nose with his knuckle. “It’s a big one.”

  “How big?” I asked.

  “Top-ten-list big,” Ball said. “Our guy is Charles ‘Chuck’ Burr.”

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  “Escaped convict, murdering every damn one in sight.” Ball slid a file across the table to e
ach of us and opened another for himself. He slid another file to me for Beth. I set it on the table at the empty seat beside me.

  I flipped open the file and gave it a look. A copy of the guy’s DL was on the first page along with his priors. I glanced over the sheet as Ball spoke.

  “Burr is forty-nine,” Ball said. “Six foot, two ten. Brown hair that’s mostly gray. Blue eyes. Priors include a bunch of petty thefts, disorderlies, some drug and DUI charges. Those are all insignificant. He was three years in to a thirty-to-life stretch at the Louisiana State Pen for homicide.”

  “How did he get out?” I asked.

  “Good behavior got him on a road crew last week. He stabbed a guard in the neck with his trash pick stick within ten minutes of stepping off the prison bus. Took the guard’s gun and shot the other two guards on duty. Uncuffed himself and ran. Six other inmates fled as well. Four stayed put. Of the six who fled—”

  Beth appeared in the conference room door. Judging by the water still on her clothing, fresh from out in the rain. “Sorry. Traffic was ridiculous. I got your message about the meeting just as I was pulling into the lot. What’s up?”

  Ball jerked his chin at the chair next to me, and Beth came in and sat. She put her hand through her hair, finger-styled it, then popped open the file in front of her.

  I was still getting used to Beth’s new short-haired look. Not that it was bad, just different from what she’d had since the day I met her.

  Ball brought Beth up to speed on what she’d missed and continued as he looked through his copy of the file.

  I flipped through photos of the downed prison guards along the side of the road. The next few pages in the file were inmate booking photos.

  “Six fled along with Burr,” Ball said. “Four were picked up in the last three days. Another two were found dead yesterday inside of a home belonging to a Steve Howard. Mr. Howard, midseventies, lived about three miles from where the road crew had been working. His adult son came for a visit, found his father and two inmates dead inside the house. Coroner said the inmates had been dead for over twenty-four hours when he got to them. The old man a bit longer. Mr. Howard’s car was missing.”

  The next couple of pages in my file showed photos from inside Steve Howard’s home, along with a photo of the vehicle in question.

  “Find the car?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Ball said. “Next page.”

  I flipped to see a photo of the vehicle in the parking lot of what looked like a truck stop.

  “The car was found yesterday in a truck stop parking lot near Lafayette. There’s security video of Burr carjacking a man we believe to be an Albert Rhyne. That was confirmed this morning to be true. A BOLO had been issued for Mr. Rhyne’s vehicle, and they had been splashing Burr’s face all over the news. They found both this morning at a little diner out in the country between Houston and Austin. Mr. Rhyne’s body was found in the trunk of his own vehicle. Single GSW to the head.”

  I flipped another page in the file to see a couple of downed uniformed officers outside of a diner. “What the hell is this?”

  “That accompanied finding the car this morning. Seems he stopped in at a diner for breakfast. A waitress identified him and Rhyne’s car from the television coverage. She’d called 911 before he ever stepped foot in the diner. The local sheriff’s office showed, but I guess Burr got the drop on the guys somehow. Burr killed both sheriff’s deputies before killing an unknown woman and making off with her minivan. We’re working on getting an ID on her as we speak. We’re trying to get a good make and model on the vehicle so we can spread it around.”

  I looked over the photos from the diner—they were the last in the file.

  “So, this guy is just running. Killing whoever gets in his way,” Bill said.

  “That’s pretty accurate. While this is a bit more manhunt then we normally deal with, this guy has taken ten lives in the last week. He’s one hundred percent a serial killer and will most certainly kill more. It’s our job to bring him in.”

  “Right,” Scott said. “Are we just going through his wake in Louisiana? Or do we think he is circling back that way?”

  “We don’t know where he’s going,” Ball said. “But maybe we can get a lead by working the prison, working where we know that he’s been. That starts in Louisiana.”

  “So, this guy has been free for days and has only gone, what, a couple hundred miles west? What’s the holdup?” Bill asked.

  “He was probably lying low at the first place he was hiding out at until the heat died down enough to move,” I said. “At the older man’s house where the other inmates were found.”

  “Could have been exactly what he was doing,” Ball said.

  “So how are we doing this?” Beth asked.

  “You and Hank. You guys get into Houston, meet with the local field office, and get up to this diner. I’d like you guys to put eyes on it today if possible.”

  I did a little mental math. If we got a flight out before two o’clock, it was a possibility.

  “Scott and Bill, you’ll go into New Orleans and make your way up to the prison in Angola. You’ll meet with the warden there. We need to know everyone he’s talked to and everyone who has visited him. Talk to the people he was friendly with inside. See what you can find out. When you’re done with that, start working Steve Howard’s house. Find us something to go off of. The second you guys are done in Louisiana, we’ll get you over to Texas or wherever we get another hit.”

  “All right. Did we try to get phone records from the house?” Scott asked. “Or cell phone records for this Steve Howard?”

  “It’s not in our file here, so take that as a no,” Ball said.

  “I’ll call the New Orleans office and get someone working on it.” Bill closed his folder. “Maybe they can have it for us by the time we get there.”

  “He was originally incarcerated for?” Beth flipped through her file back to the first page.

  “Homicide. Killed his girlfriend,” Ball said. “Then he chopped up her body and burned it before he buried her out back behind his trailer in a couple different holes. Upon the search of his property and the grounds around it, they found another human femur. But without anything further, there wasn’t anything they could do on that.”

  “I assume they tried getting a DNA sample from it?” I asked.

  “No matches,” Ball said. “But with a femur to spare, and how this guy has been leaving bodies behind him since he got himself free, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to think his girlfriend probably wasn’t the first he’d killed.”

  “Where is he originally from?” Beth asked.

  “Mississippi but had been living near Crowley, Louisiana, for his entire adult life. That was where the girlfriend’s homicide occurred.”

  “Does he have any ties to Texas?” she asked. “Or anything around there? Family?”

  “We have what’s in the file at this point,” Ball said.

  “I’ll try to dig into it while we’re getting our travel set,” she said.

  “Speaking of. You guys go see Tammy and see what she can put together as far as getting you guys out of here. Rental cars, hotels, etcetera. Then get home, pack, and get to the airport. Call the local field offices and make a contact. Tell them when you’ll be in. Call me with whatever you get.”

  Ball got confirmations from everyone.

  “Do we have a hotline?” Beth asked.

  “It’s getting set up as we speak,” Ball said. “And this office will be fielding the calls that come in. We’ll get the number out to everyone to be included with the news coverage. A top-ten-list fugitive is a big reward, so I imagine there will be a lot of calls. We’ll get the local field offices and local police departments to investigate the calls as necessary. If something of merit comes through, we’ll make sure we get the news out to you guys right away.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Sounds good.” Scott nodded.

  Ball clapped his hands tog
ether. “That’s it. Get to work. Go find this guy and bring his ass in.”

  The team broke from the conference room.

  Chapter 4

  Chuck passed a sign reading Calvert. The population of the small Texas town was under two thousand. As Chuck drove through the town center, he realized he’d found the exact place he needed. The entire town looked to be only about six blocks long. Chuck drove to the end then looped around for another pass through.

  Old buildings, some probably around for a hundred years or more, lined both sides of the town’s main strip. Scattered cars parked on the street in front of the storefronts. His eyes went from one business to the next—a café, a tavern, a candy shop, an antique store. Chuck glanced at the businesses on the other side of the road and locked on an appliance repair store with a lit-up neon Open sign hanging in the front door. He drove around back and cut through the alley behind the business. A few cars were parked in a lot that had to be for store employees. Chuck left the minivan and walked around the block to the appliance store. He entered to the sound of a mechanical chime.

  Chuck stepped foot in the store and looked around. Some washers and dryers sat for sale on his right. Refrigerators and microwaves sat to his left. There were some vacuums and a couple of dishwashers sprinkled in. He imagined all the items had been repaired and offered for sale since nothing looked remotely new. Chuck brought his knuckle up and rubbed his nose—the place smelled musty.

  “In the back,” someone hollered.

  “Perfect,” Chuck said under his breath. He glanced over his shoulder, looking through the glass door before turning the lock and pulling the chain on the Open sign to turn off the light.

  “Looking for a deal on a fridge,” Chuck said as he wandered deeper into the store.

  “Give me a second, and I’ll show you what we got,” a voice called back.

  “Sure.” Chuck saw the man behind the front counter leaning over into a washing machine. A tool belt hung from the overweight man’s waist. The crack of the man’s rear end was on display.

  Chuck adjusted the pistol in his waistline and continued to look around, pretending he was interested in the secondhand junk. The store couldn’t have been a better choice—it wasn’t the kind of place that got much foot traffic, and he didn’t imagine anyone would think twice if the place was closed midday. Chuck looked toward the front doors and glass facing the street—no one in sight. He glanced toward the man and the back of the store, but he didn’t see anyone else working and figured it was a solo operation.