Accused

by Michael Kerr

  Nathan made a call on his cell, and within less than sixty seconds the Mercedes was back outside the front of the hotel to pick him up. He told the driver, Clem Lomas, to take him home. As he was driven he made another call and arranged for Tim and Don to pick Jansen up. All he could do now was mark time and wait for the hitman to contact him.

  Ed went to his suite, counted the money and then read the two pages of notes on what had gone down to date. Finding Logan would be tricky, but definitely not impossible. People were, to a degree, predictable. As a veteran of the NYPD, Logan would know that he would have to keep a low profile to avoid being found by the police or Nathan. So what would he have done after leaving the Pilgrims’ Rest Motel in the Ford F-150 that had belonged to the deceased owner? He would have ditched it as quickly as possible or changed plates and got as far away from New Orleans as he could. But due to his recent actions, Logan hadn’t run. He would have most likely left the woman in what he thought was a safe place and gone to LaSalle’s apartment on his own. Ergo, find the woman and use her as bait.

  Using a laptop to go online and bring up Google Maps, Ed zoomed in on the area around the motel. The choice that Logan had was to head into the city or drive south. Cities were good places to hide in plain sight, but he let his instinct guide him, deciding that the drifter would prefer a secluded location, and would have dumped the vehicle and walked to somewhere in the nearby Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve that he could use as a base of operations. The area was mainly wetland, but there would be trails and isolated properties in the forested areas.

  Memorizing the pertinent information on the sheets of paper, Ed set fire to them in the bathroom and flushed them down the pan.

  Tim and Don were waiting in the Ford Escape when Ed left the hotel’s rear entrance.

  “Mr. Harrison?” Tim said, having been given the man’s alias and description by Nathan.

  “And you are?” Ed said as he approached the vehicle.

  “I’m Tim and this is Don,” Tim said as Ed handed him a duffel bag, which he took and opened the rear door to place it on the seat.

  “Take me out past the motel where Logan was last seen,” Ed said tersely as he climbed in the SUV.

  Tim didn’t like the guy’s overbearing attitude. He didn’t think he looked anything special; was maybe five-nine, stocky, with ultra short gray hair and muddy eyes behind rimless glasses. He seemed to look through Tim not at him, as if he was of no significance. He didn’t look like a hitman. He wore a lightweight jacket over a denim shirt, and blue jeans and sturdy walking boots.

  They drove past the Pilgrims’ Rest and kept heading south. A couple of miles later Ed told Tim to stop at a rustic looking country store, and to wait in the car.

  The interior was gloomy. The large store was a single forty-foot long room with a wood counter the full length of the left side of it. Ed could smell bacon, leather and many other aromas, including gun oil, which all blended to produce a pleasing down-home tang.

  “Get you something?” Clint Fuller said from where he stood behind the counter, next to an antique brass cash register that had been ringing up sales since his grandfather opened the store way back in the early forties.

  “Just a can of root beer,” Ed said. “And a little information. Did a really tall guy call in for provisions two nights ago, late? He may have been driving a plum-colored F-150, and been in the company of a blonde woman in her forties.”

  “You a cop?” Clint said. “Because State Troopers have already been here asking me the selfsame question.”

  “I’m Detective Jonas Keller,” Ed said. “Sometimes the left hand doesn’t know what the right’s doing. This is a follow up on all sightings reported of the man that I’m enquiring about.”

  “A guy about six-four and built like a quarterback came in late and bought a couple of sandwiches and bottles of water. He was alone. I don’t know what vehicle he was driving or whether he had anyone waiting outside.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  Clint shook his head. “He just paid for what he’d picked up and left.”

  “What was his demeanor?”

  “Uh?”

  “Did he seem uptight or anxious?”

  “No. He came across as being relaxed and easygoing. In no hurry or anything that made me think he was a person of interest to the police.”

  Ed paid for the can of soda, thanked the man and left and got back in the Ford.

  “He was here,” Ed said to Tim. “Keep on this road. Let’s find somewhere remote where he may have stopped.”

  They passed a large subdivision on the left and shortly thereafter came to a sign for a canoe launch point on the right.

  “Let’s check it out,” Ed said.

  Tim took the lane that led to an office and boat shed and parked on the graveled area in front of the buildings. A couple was just climbing into their small RV. Ed waited until they’d driven off before going into the office.

  “Hi there,” the manager, Jim Cameron, said.

  Ed nodded. “My friend and his wife said to meet them here”, he said. “I guess they rented a canoe yesterday morning and camped out overnight.”

  Jim shook his head and said, “Have only had a couple of guys spend a night out fishing. Most folk just rent for a couple of hours or half a day.”

  “He’s a big guy, six-four, and his wife is a blonde.”

  “Then I’d remember them,” Jim said. “And I don’t. Maybe they came out of hours and took a canoe. I’m missing one. Thought it must be teenagers stole it.”

  “You got a map of the area?” Ed said.

  “Sure,” Jim said, taking a sheet of paper off a pile on the counter. It featured the canals and nearby Lake Salvador.

  “Thanks,” Ed said and went back out to the car.

  Tim drove off, but after only twenty yards Ed told him to stop at the side of the track, to get out and study a large meadow of long, thick grass. There was the slight depression of a vehicle’s tires that left almost indistinct double lines that led to a thick stand of bushes backed by trees.

  Ed followed the tracks and came to a break in the bushes, went through and saw the big pickup almost invisible in the shrubbery. It was the plum-colored Ford that had belonged to the owner of the motel. He grinned. Logan had dumped the vehicle and stolen a canoe to get away. The guy was smart. He’d known that it wouldn’t have been long before there was a search for the stolen F-150.

  Back at the car, Ed told Tim and Don that he believed Logan had found somewhere not too distant to stash the woman, before he had headed back to town alone to visit LaSalle and interrogate him.

  “So where do you suppose he took her?” Tim said.

  Ed studied the map, closed his eyes and attempted to put himself in the mind of the ex-cop. Heading out to a large lake would not be something he would consider. The canal at the launch point went west straight as an arrow, with a junction that offered a choice to go left or right. Right would be heading back in the direction of the motel, so he would turn left. And then what? Keep an eye out for somewhere habitable but reasonably remote. The highway ran parallel with the canal, although screened from it by woodland.

  “Reverse back to the office,” Ed said. “We need to hire canoes.”

  “Do I look as if I’m dressed to paddle a fuckin’ boat?” Don said.

  “You’re wearing what looks to me like an Italian styled suit that cost no more than two hundred bucks from Walmart,” Ed said. “This isn’t a day out in the country, we’re hunting an armed and dangerous man, so shut the fuck up and do what you’re told.”

  Don wanted to draw his gun and shoot the hitman who called himself Steve Harrison. But his boss had told him and Tim to cooperate fully, so he kept his mouth shut and his gun in its shoulder rig. He was angry, mainly because he’d had the suit made in the French Quarter and it had cost him triple the amount that Harrison had implied it was worth.

  They hired two canoes. Ed sat in the back of one with Tim i
n the front. Don followed on in another. It was hot, and the humidity was high. As Tim paddled, Ed took an iPad from his duffel bag, switched it on and acquired Google Earth and zoomed in on the preserve and the canal system and surrounding locale.

  There were very few properties within sight of the canal. A half hour later they stopped at one, pulling the canoes up a pot-holed slipway. The house was abandoned, with nature reclaiming it as termites, flora and the seasons took their toll. It was the second dwelling that they came across that heightened Ed’s sense of preparedness.

  They moored in thick reeds and approach the chalet-style house, which appeared to be lived in.

  “Go around the back,” Ed said to Don as they advanced from a stand of trees. “And if the woman is here, don’t kill her. I need her alive.”

  Ed and Tim stepped up onto the porch that ran along the front of the house, and Ed knocked at the door. The man that opened it looked surprised, but not alarmed at having visitors. He didn’t say anything, just waited for Ed to speak.

  “Hi,” Ed said. “We’re looking for my sister and her husband. They were on a trip out here looking to purchase property in the area. They own a company that pays top dollar for homes that they think can be renovated to put on the market as rentals.”

  The man frowned: “Ain’t anyone knocked at my door to take this shithole off my hands and make me rich. You be sure to point them in my direction when you come across them.”

  “I’ll do that. And I’ll leave you my cell number in case they call by. My sister’s a blonde lady, and her hubby is built like a mountain.”

  “You want a coffee while you’re here?”

  “We’re fine,” Ed said. “We don’t want to bother you and your family.”

  “I’m a widower,” Dennis Compton said, hitching up the baggy pants that the frayed red suspenders he wore had lost the elasticity to keep up. “And my no-good only son lives in Gallup, New Mexico, or did, last time he bothered to give me a call and ask if I’d wire him some money.”

  Ed had lost interest. The man was not harboring Logan and the woman. He was just a lonely old fart living out his days in a house as rickety as he was. Writing his number on the back of a card that identified him as Leonard Beale, an electrical contractor from Pittsburgh, he handed it to the guy and bid him farewell.

  Back in the canoes, they kept heading south. It was Don that shouted for them to stop. He’d seen something glinting in the sun and paddled over to where an abundance of tall reeds grew next to the bank, to nose the sleek craft into them and discover a battered looking aluminum canoe with faded writing stenciled on the side of it that read, Cameron Canoe Rentals, with a phone number underneath.

  Ed smiled as Tim followed Don into the reeds and the abandoned canoe came into view. He could have guessed wrong and headed north. It had paid off to go with his gut feeling of what he had believed Logan would do.

  Leaving the canoes in the reeds, carrying his duffel, Ed led the way along a narrow trodden down path in the grass to the nearby tree line, and then followed a winding trail, to stop when he reached a clearing with life-sized wood sculptures of animals dotted around it in front of a log cabin.

  “We’ll split up and approach it from both sides and the front,” Ed said. “I think we just hit pay dirt. And don’t forget that Logan is armed. If he’s here with the woman he’ll be as wary as a treed cougar. I’ll go to the door and say I’ve broken down on the highway and don’t have a cell to call for assistance. Remember that he’s no good to us dead. We need to get the phone with the video on it before we kill him.”

  Inside the cabin, Henry got up from where he had been dozing with his head resting on his crossed paws. He growled once, looked towards the closed door, and then up at Mike.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  AT the same time as Logan was eating his meal in The Burger Express, a dark blue Toyota Camry pulled up just fifty yards from Brad Dicky’s house on Destrehan Avenue in Woodmere.

  Dicky was sitting in a wheelchair watching one of the early Die Hard movies on his forty-eight inch curved screen TV. He was nursing his fourth large Scotch, and had just washed down two more painkillers when the doorbell rang.

  “Get that, willya,” Dicky shouted to his wife, Alma, who was in the kitchen making them both BLT sandwiches for supper.

  Alma plodded through the living room in her Kimono and Mary je slipper socks. There was a cigarette hanging from the corner of her thin-lipped mouth, and her gray hair was cut short to save on having it styled.

  When the woman opened the door, he used the palm of his gloved left hand to shove her back into the hallway. She went down hard. The cigarette shot from her mouth, and before she could scream or call out for help he had elbowed the door closed and used a silenced .22 to put a bullet through her forehead.

  “Who the hell is it?” Dicky called out as he spun the wheelchair round, to be faced by a man that he knew standing in the doorway and pointing a gun at him.

  “Nathan asked me to call round and tell you that he’s decided to let your debt die with you,” the man said.

  “But―”

  Two bullets hit Dicky in the chest. He suffered paralyzing pain, and then died as his heart ceased to beat.

  Stepping closer as Dicky slumped forward to tumble out of the chair, the assassin stretched his arm out and fired again, to put a third slug through the back of his victim’s head. Being a .22 it didn’t go through and through, just ricocheted around Dicky’s cranium, forging bloody pathways in an already dying brain.

  In all probability Dicky would have kept his mouth shut, but better safe than sorry. Nathan had decided that it would be better if he was silenced, and so had sent someone to do the job.

  As the shooter left the house, a white cat almost tripped him up as it streaked between his legs and ran off.

  Ambling back to the car with his hands in his pants’ pockets, he whistled an out of tune rendition of a prehistoric Billy Joel song; Just The Way You Are. It had been a long day, and it wasn’t over yet. That he had just murdered a couple in their home was of no consequence to him. Life was here one minute and gone the next. Everybody had a date with death. He had just brought Brad and Alma Dicky’s forward by an unknown amount of time. If nothing else, life had taught him not to expect too much from it, but to take what you could when you could from good people or bad. There was no such thing as dirty money, just money. What he did had put his daughter through college, and paid for a lot more besides. He was just looking out for number one; living the American dream.

  Logan left the Take 5 Motel just after dawn broke, grabbed a bite to eat and a cup of coffee at a nearby diner and decided to call in at a couple of places that LaSalle had given him addresses for. The first was a warehouse on River Road; a depot for much of the dried food, canned goods and barrels of cooking oil that were destined to be delivered to the kitchens of Cassidy’s restaurants in the Greater New Orleans area.

  Climbing out of a cab at a marine supply company next to a dock that had a barge the length of a football field moored up to it, Logan walked a quarter mile next to the muddy Mississippi, until he came to the depot.

  All the trucks were out making deliveries, and Charlie Johnson was alone in the office at the front of the building, working a computer, ordering stock as he listened to WWOZ; the New Orleans Jazz and heritage station.

  Logan walked in and just stood staring at Charlie.

  “Can I help you?” Charlie said as he turned in his swivel chair to face a very tall man with a rucksack hanging from his shoulder.

  “Where is everybody?” Logan said.

  “I’m everybody,” Charlie said. “The guys load their own trucks. I just do the bookwork. What was it you wanted?”

  “To give your boss a message.”

  “So why not use the phone? He doesn’t come here.”

  “I don’t need to talk to him. Give me a guided tour of this place while I explain what’s going down.”

  “I think you’d best just turn
around and head on back wherever you came from,” Charlie said as he stood up to face Logan.

  Charlie Johnson was five inches shorter than Logan, but as broad in the shoulder and a decade younger. He kept fit and had done a lot of boxing till he suffered a detached retina from a punch and walked away from the game aged thirty-five with nothing much to show for it but scar tissue and the odd dizzy spell from taking too many blows to the head over the years. But he was nobody’s fool. He’d taken a course in accountancy and got a diploma. Nathan Cassidy had hired him as muscle, then discovered how good he was at bookkeeping and put him in charge of the depot.

  Logan acknowledged the expression of total confidence on the ebony face of the man that had now clenched his fists. He had no wish to get in a brawl, so pulled back the flap of the rucksack, took the Glock out and aimed it at the clerk’s left thigh.

  “One wrong move and I’ll be forced to shoot you,” Logan said. “Your choice.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Charlie said.

  “My name’s Logan. The asshole that you work for wants me dead. I need to let him know that he’s playing with fire.”

  “Where do I fit in this?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Charlie Johnson.”

  “Okay, Charlie. You do what I tell you to for the next few minutes and you get to wake up tomorrow without a scratch. The alternative is a slab in the morgue. I expect you to do something stupid, but hope you’ve got more sense than to die for Cassidy.”

  Charlie relaxed his hands. He was far from stupid. The man calling himself Logan didn’t come across as someone that was making idle threats. It was always the eyes that showed someone’s true colors. He’d faced many opponents in the ring and known just from the look in their eyes whether they had what it took to give him any trouble.