by L. T. Ryan
Chapter Fifty
Sam stomped on the brakes. A truck trying to exit the parking lot laid on his horn. “Where the hell did that come from?”
“912 area code. That’s Savannah.” I tapped the phone number to place a call to it. The operator’s voice piped through the speaker. It wasn’t legit. Someone had spoofed the number specifically for the purpose of threatening me. Rather, threatening Cassie through me.
Sam had eased the car back into the parking spot. The driver of the truck decided to pull up behind us to block our exit and kept honking. “You think it’s one of those asshole detectives down there?”
I glanced over my shoulder, making sure no one had stepped out of the other vehicle. “Shouldn’t we deal with that?”
Sam held up his hand. “In a minute. Why would one of them send that to you?”
“They’d have to be involved in some way. I don’t get that. I mean, they seem like decent cops. Sure, they’re giving me a ration of shit, but it’s no different from how we’d treat them if they were on our turf.”
“This Novak guy, think he got Cassie to talk?”
The thought sent shivers down my spine, quickly interrupted by the sound of two doors opening then slamming shut. “Shit. Now we gotta deal with that.”
I guess the car hid our frames well enough, because there’s no way in hell the two short guys standing at the rear of the vehicle would ever knowingly pick a fight with Sam and me. We towered over them. One opened his mouth to say something.
“Shut your damn mouth,” Sam said. “I’m half-tempted to not even tell you I’m a cop and just whoop your asses instead.” He pulled his badge from under his shirt. It was attached to a necklace. “See this? That gives me the right to royally screw up your night if the both of you aren’t back in that shitty truck and out of this parking lot in five seconds.”
Sam started counting in a deep, menacing voice. The guys were back in the truck before he hit three.
“The hell is wrong with people?” he said.
I had no answer for him.
We didn’t linger in the parking lot. It was best to not keep Sartini waiting. We could work on the text message on the way.
“Back to what I was saying,” Sam said, once again behind the wheel. “It’s possible he had been stalking you or the detectives. Maybe he had an idea who they were, but you were a mystery. So he broke her down and made her talk.”
“We were in the paper.” I recalled the photo that had been snapped of us outside the crime scene.
“Worthless media.” He accelerated to twenty over the speed limit. “Always getting in the way of our jobs.”
“No kidding. It was like setting up a billboard telling a psycho one of his victims was alive and well and here’s where she’s been hanging out.”
Sam shifted in his seat and pulled his cell out of his pocket. He punched in a number then waited a few seconds. “Hey, Mac. How you doing? Yeah, yeah, it’s Sam. Hey look, I need a favor.” He looked over at me and covered the mouthpiece with his thumb. “What’s that number, Mitch?”
I read off the number the text had been sent from. Sam repeated it into his phone.
“Sure thing, Mac. As soon as you can. If it’s tomorrow, then it’s tomorrow. I’ll be around.”
“Who was that?” I asked after he ended the call.
“You aren’t the only one with contacts, man.”
“Yeah, I get that. Now who was it?”
“Old friend of mine. Works for the NSA.”
“Wait a minute. What old friends do you have that I don’t know?”
“We weren’t always together. I know more people than you think I do.”
“You think he can do something with a fake phone number?”
Sam shrugged. “Hell if I know. But if anyone can, it’s Mac.”
Five minutes later we pulled up to a small house on the outskirts of the city. I tried not to think of Cassie, but that was impossible. If I wasn’t talking about something else, she was on my mind. What was she doing at that moment? Was Novak always there with her, or did she have respite from him? Eventually, my mind always drifted to the place I didn’t want it to go. Images of Novak finishing what he started years ago played on the big screen in my brain.
The porch light flickered on. The front door swung open and a balding man with a pot belly and skinny legs covered partly by jean shorts stepped out. Sartini had retired five years earlier at the age of sixty. They’d forced him out. If it had been up to him, he would’ve stayed on the job forever. He had no wife or kids, no relatives, and only a few friends. Truth be told, I was surprised he hadn’t succumbed to a heart attack or some other fatal ailment by this point. He had nothing to keep him going.
I waved as I started up the walkway to the house. “How’s it going, Sartini?”
He shrugged and shook his hands in front of his distended stomach. “Can’t complain too much.”
We followed him inside. There were stacks of boxes lining both walls of the already too narrow hallway. The boxes scraped the ceiling in some spots and were covered in dust. I glanced into the first room we passed. Had to be a dozen black trash bags in the middle. Newspapers were piled along the back wall.
“You feeling all right, Sartini?” I asked.
“Sure, why not?” he said.
“Just making sure.” I prepared myself for the next room. Who knew what waited for us there. Would we be sitting on trash while watching the tape?
Sartini slid a pocket door back into the wall and flipped a light switch. I was definitely surprised by what I saw. The light-colored carpet was pristine. The walls were white and bare. A long L-shaped desk took over two walls at one end. The surface was empty. A couch wrapped in plastic was positioned at the other end of the room.
“It’s my sanctuary,” he said. “Could care less about the rest of the house. This is where I spend my time.”
“Fair enough. We’re not judging,” Sam said. “I see you still got the gear.”
Next to the desk was Sartini’s setup, an advanced tape player that digitized the feed and connected to his desktop computer.
“I’ve upgraded a few things since I last saw you guys.”
Sartini had lent his experience to us a few times since leaving the department. He was better than anyone they had tried to replace him with. The last case he helped on was about a rich woman killed by her pool boy and the maid. Sartini’s work on the security footage nailed the case shut.
“Probably not much need for this these days, huh?” Sam said.
“More than you might think,” Sartini said. “I get a call every week or two. I’m the lead expert for some of the local robbery detectives. The old school cops, too. A lot of FBI work lately.”
“Anything we might’ve heard about?” Sam asked.
“Probably.” Sartini eased into his Herman Miller chair. At a thousand bucks on a cop’s pension, he must get quite a bit of use out of it to justify the price tag. “So, what do you have for me?”
I handed the tape over to him. “Pretty bad feed of a gas station and convenience store. We got a potential suspect and a license plate. Both are grainy. License plate is worse than the face.”
“Different feeds?” He wheeled over to the tape player. He stopped short of inserting it. “You got a copy of this?”
“That’s the only one,” I said.
He thought for a moment. “I can duplicate it real quick.”
I shrugged. “Can’t you just make a digital copy?”
“Might not stand up if I do. All depends on where it’s going to be tried.”
There would be no trial. I had no intentions of letting Novak live after we caught up to him.
“I think it’ll be all right,” I said. “That feed’s in such bad shape, it won’t hold up. The work you’re going to do is what’ll make the case.”
“I get paid either way,” he said.
“Paid?” Sam laughed. “I got a case of Pabst with your name all over it.”
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br /> “That’ll work. Just make sure you have a few with me.” Sartini slid the tape into the machine, pressed a couple buttons, then wheeled back over to his command station. He opened up three different programs, one of which looked like something an audio producer might use to mix tracks. A few moments later the feed took over one of his twenty-seven-inch monitors.
“Shit, Mitch,” Sam said. “This is bad.”
“Don’t I know it,” I said.
“Got a time stamp?” Sartini asked. After I told him the exact moment the van arrived, he forwarded to it. “What’s the first thing I’m looking for?”
I pointed at the store feed. “When he’s in there, right before he leaves.”
He sped the tape up and froze it at a spot where Novak’s face was completely visible. “All right, give me a moment.”
And a moment was all it took for the magic to begin. Keystroke by keystroke, the image became more enhanced. Once Novak’s mug was fully realized, Sartini pushed back from the desk.
“What is it?” I said.
Sartini looked up at me, the last bit of color draining from his pale face. “I know that son of a bitch.”
Chapter Fifty-One
The figure hovering over Cassie and blocking out the dim light was one she had seen numerous times. The black shadow was a harbinger of sorts. The message was always the same. Someone was about to die. Of course, the shadow wouldn’t tell her who. It could be anyone she had been in contact with. Someone she’d passed on the street. A tourist from Moscow sitting in one of the squares while Cassie walked by could have left a minor psychic imprint on her and now Cassie was being warned of their demise.
But maybe this time the harbinger was there to inform her that her own passing would be happening soon. Considering the events that had transpired earlier, she knew her chances of being freed were less than zero.
“Hello, Detective.”
Novak’s words played over and over as though they were stuck on repeat. The figure in the doorway had seemed familiar. Though that was likely the drugs thinking for her. She couldn’t discern a single feature other than the height. And even that memory couldn’t be trusted. Space and time had been distorted in a major way since Novak had come back into her life.
Cassie moved to get up but found her arms and legs were bound to the bedposts. What had those bastards done while she was knocked out?
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and scanned her body for pain or signs that she had been violated. Her legs and arms burned, perhaps from thrashing against the restraints. Did she lose consciousness when things went black? Or did the drug only affect her memory? It was reasonable to assume Novak injected her with something which turned her into the walking dead, able to perform acts without any idea she was doing them.
Two people now knew her location. Judging by Novak’s greeting to the other man, she assumed he was a cop. Both men had plenty of motive to keep Cassie confined, or push for her outright demise. Novak surely had no intention of going back to jail. And prison was probably a place the detective had no desire to ever reside.
Chills sliced through her body. She knew every detective from Savannah to Charleston, South Carolina. She’d worked with them all. And several others around the country. Chances were this was someone she knew. How close was she to the man?
Her thoughts centered on the last two men she had been in contact with. Pennington and Cervantes had worked with her more than anyone in the area. They’d been with her from the beginning as the detectives who’d put Novak away. No way one of them could be mixed up in this.
She focused her attention on the fleeting memories in the moments before the drugs took her out. Novak’s final words repeated again. The detective stood in the doorway. She stared at the now closed door, imagining the guy there.
The figure hovering over her faded a little, allowing some of the light to shine through.
“Why don’t you be useful for once?” Cassie chastised the spirit. “Help me figure out who was down here.”
The shadow disappeared.
“Must be a man,” she muttered. “Always disappearing when I need them most.”
Her thoughts turned to Mitch. He was out there, somewhere, doing what he could to find her. He was as relentless as a pit bull and wouldn’t give up on her. Even if it were only her remains that could be recovered, Mitch would be the one to do it.
“Can you hear me?” she said softly. “Mitch, I’m trying to let you know where I am.”
Chances are it wouldn’t work. The dead were so much easier to work with. The living had too much going on around them to tune into the frequencies the majority of the universe communicated on. But she had to keep trying. Perhaps she could reach him in a moment of downtime, when his thoughts weren’t tied up with what was happening to her, to his daughter, and wondering where his son and estranged wife were.
A fire burned and welled up inside of Cassie. She had unfinished business. She had to help Mitch find Robbie. The process had already begun. It was a matter of finding the right helper at this point. The call had gone out. The helper would respond. Eventually, at least.
“I have to survive,” she whispered.
Cassie silenced the chatter in her mind and went to work freeing herself. The bedposts weren’t the strongest thing in the room. Not by a mile. She tugged with her left arm, then her right. The left corner was loosest. She drew herself as close as she could, fighting against the rope burning into her right wrist as she stretched it as far as it would go. Rhythmically, she pulled her left wrist down to her stomach, then out as far as it would go. She repeated it over and over, loosening the bed post further.
Ten minutes later, it broke free.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Sam and I stared open-mouthed at Sartini. What was he talking about, he knew the guy? The man pointed at the frozen image of Novak’s face.
“You guys don’t recognize him?” Sartini said.
I leaned in closer, sliding my hand along the cool desktop. “Who do you think that is?”
Sam straightened up and folded his arms over his chest. The look on his face told me he was searching his mind for something long forgotten.
Sartini puffed out a long breath, flapping his lips. “Guess this goes back more than fifteen years now.”
Novak was older than he looked. The guy had a boyishness about him. Still, fifteen years would put him at about twenty-five or so. And some five years or so before his attack on Cassie.
“What’s his name?” Sam asked.
Sartini leaned back in his thousand-dollar chair, tipping his head over the backrest. He stared up at the plaster-swirled ceiling. “O’Connor, I think.”
“O’Connor?” I said. “What was—”
“No, that’s not it.” Sartini did a one-eighty and hopped up from his chair. There was no old-man moan or pushing off of the arms to get there. He just hopped up like he was twenty years younger. “O’Connell. Mark O’Connell. You guys were a couple of rookies back then, I guess.”
“I was still in the Army,” Sam said. “Mitch had around five years in at that point.”
Sartini offered a contemplative nod, though it didn’t seem he cared about the information. “O’Connell was under investigation for a string of incidents surrounding teenage girls. Lots of coincidences, like he’d be linked to an area, and someone would go missing at the same time he was there. We could never get anything to stick, though.”
“How long was he being watched?” I asked.
“Eighteen months?” Sartini made for the door. “Wait here.”
“You ever hear anything about this?” Sam said after Sartini left the room.
I shook my head. “I’ve heard a lot over the years. Back in those days, I focused on my job mostly. I didn’t think about all that was going on outside of that. If I wasn’t directly involved, there was little chance I paid attention. It was the only way to stay sane.”
“I hear you,” Sam said. “I’d go crazy if I tried to
follow every evil deed that happened around here.”
Sartini re-entered the room carrying a white and blue banker’s box. He set the heavy-duty cardboard box on the desk and lifted the lid. There were a dozen or so red folders inside. He rifled through them and pulled out a stack.
Sam shot me a grim look. They were murder investigations. Sartini must have kept copies over the years of the various cases he had worked or helped out on.
“Each one of these,” he said, “we had O’Connell pegged as a suspect.”
“And with all of those nothing ever stuck?” Sam leaned over the stack, blocking the overhead light.
“We were cinching the noose. Almost had it tight enough he’d hang. And then Stacy Darlington happened.”
A memory rammed through my mind like a falling boulder. “Now that I remember.”
“It was a big deal.” Sartini held out the file.
Sam cocked his head. He had never heard of this.
“Yeah it was,” I said. “Her father was running for governor at the time, right? Ended up becoming a senator.”
Sartini snapped and pointed at me. “Correct. The spotlight was huge on this one.”
“So, what happened?” Sam was fidgeting with a pencil, spinning it one second, drumming it on the desk the next.
“She vanished.” Sartini looked apologetic. “She was inside a clothing store. The last image recorded of her showed her taking a pile of clothes toward the dressing room. And a second later, we get the guy. Him.” He aimed a stubby finger at the image of Novak on the monitor. “O’Connell.”
“She was never found,” I said.
“And he was never caught. They both disappeared that day. And not too long afterward, there was a fire in the storehouse where O’Connell’s file was. All the physical evidence disappeared right there. Not as widely known is his prints were lost from the database, too.” He limped over to the bar and pulled down a handle of Maker’s and three glasses. “Ain’t got no ice, so you’ll have to shoot it straight.”
That was it. No asking. And at that moment I was fine with it. Processing the reality of how this had all played out was messing with my mind. Cassie had not once, but twice now, been accosted by Novak because people couldn’t do their damn jobs. They had this guy. Knew he was guilty. And he slipped away.