Special Agent Tom Lange Box Set

by T. J. Brearton

  He jolted back awake when he saw the black Yukon come rolling into the motel parking lot. The driver parked down at the far end and sat there idling, windows dark. After a moment Tom thought he saw the flicker of a lighter.

  The sight of the Yukon charged him up with adrenaline. He pulled out his camera and took a look though the telephoto lens. The Yukon was nose out, but the sky bounced off the glass, obscuring the driver’s face. Still, it had to be the guy from the diner in Carnestown — the one who’d reappeared on the road to Homestead — unless he was seeing things. He lowered the camera. “Who are you, buddy? You looking for Frank? Or are you on me for some other reason?”

  He could call Gomez or Mingus on the Tampa PD radio they’d given to him, have them send a black and white around. But the guy wasn’t doing anything, just sitting there. Not breaking any laws.

  Tom ran his hands through his hair. It felt greasy, like he hadn’t washed in a while. And he used to be so well kept.

  Nothing happened for twenty minutes, so he got out of the car. The second he started walking, the Yukon left.

  “Shit,” Tom said. “Where you going, buddy?”

  He started back for his truck but realized he needed to pee. He hid himself behind the tailgate and took care of it. He got back in the truck and pulled out a sandwich and a Coke. He watched the door to Room 6.

  An hour went by.

  He’d never been to war like Vance or Blythe; that was one thing he’d never had to face. An abusive father, a series of foster homes — some good, mostly bad — a lifelong chain of violence. But he felt profound respect for the men and women serving and compassion for the inequities they faced if they returned home alive. How did you make a place in society for someone who had stared death in the face, seen children hobbled by drone strikes, seen their buddies blown apart from roadside bombs? You were left scarred, sometimes on the outside, but always on the inside.

  Two more hours. The shadows kept growing, lengthening as the sun lowered. He’d thought he was someone who let the evidence lead, but apparently, he was more intuitive than that after all, like his mother, maybe, from what he remembered.

  The motel lights came on, actual string lights, like Christmas, festooned beneath the long overhang.

  “There’s the starlight,” he said.

  At about a quarter before one in the morning, a lone figure walked beneath the streetlamp at the lot’s edge, momentarily illuminated, head down. Tom looked for a burn mark or scar, but the guy’s hands were deep in the pockets of his dull green army jacket.

  Talk about spinal fluid flowing. Tom tried to stay low in the truck though his back felt like there was a steel rod going through it.

  Guttridge could be protecting himself. Trip wires on the door or something. He paused there, looked around, and keyed into the room. The door closed.

  Tom took out his phone and called Skokie, who sounded like he’d been asleep.

  “Ed, I’m on a male suspect matching the description. Starlight Motel. I’m going to call Tampa PD, but I thought you’d want to know.”

  “How sure are you?”

  “I’d say seventy percent. Right height and build, wearing a jacket seen by an eyewitness.”

  “Make the call.”

  Tom called Tampa PD on the radio and got the desk sergeant. He supplied his name and badge. The sergeant knew who he was and said he’d send in every available officer. Tom hung up and waited, listening as the call went out. He watched the light behind the drapes in the room as a figure slipped past. He considered the possibility of the Yukon coming back. The mystery driver could be monitoring the room somehow, watching from nearby. He grabbed the radio, got out of the truck and hurried across the parking lot, looking for signs. Seeing none, he knocked on the door to Room 6. Nothing. No answer. He knocked again.

  “Frank? I’m a friend of Jean Ann’s. Jeanie’s.”

  “Who?”

  “My name is Tom. Frank, you got people after you.”

  A pause. “I know.”

  “You need to talk to me. We can make a deal with the state. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Frank, in about two minutes this place is going to be overrun with cops beating a path to your door. Talk to me.”

  He heard the lock go and the door opened, chain caught in the gap. The man standing there was pale and his hair was sticking up. Dark circles under his wide, nervous eyes. But he wasn’t Frank Guttridge, either.

  Shit.

  “Who are you?” Tom blurted out.

  “I’m just a guy, I’m just a friend.”

  “You’re staying here?”

  “Yeah, yeah, just staying here.”

  “You’re friends with Frank Guttridge?”

  “Who?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Bill. My friends call me Biggie.”

  “You need to let me in.”

  Bill closed the door to remove the chain. He opened up and stepped back out of the way, his body shaking. Tom kept the Beretta holstered for now. He plucked the radio from his belt and pressed the button. “Tampa PD on my frequency, it isn’t our guy. Hang back and set up a perimeter while I talk to him.”

  There was a crackle of static. “Copy that. We’re about a minute out.”

  Tom turned to Bill. “Where is Frank?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He just gave you the keys? When? Bill, you look pretty strung out to me.”

  “I’m cleaning up. I got two days. I’m in here cleaning up.”

  Tom looked around at the mess of the room. Strewn clothing, food boxes, lots of empty juice containers. The reek was almost unbearable.

  “Where is he?”

  “I said I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

  “When did he give you the room key?”

  “Y-yesterday. Yesterday.”

  “Yesterday. And said he was going where?”

  “North. Just north.”

  “What’s north? Family? Friends.”

  “He saw himself on TV. He didn’t tell me where. Just somewhere to hide out.”

  “He know there’s another hurricane coming?”

  Bill didn’t answer. He looked like he was about to urinate himself. Like a strong wind could blow him over. If he wasn’t using currently, he had been recently. Snorting or shooting meth was what Nick called “getting small.” Awake for days, you don’t eat. You waste away.

  “Hey,” Tom said. “Why don’t we get away from the door and the window.” He had a worrying hunch the Yukon might come back.

  “He didn’t hurt the kid.”

  “He talked to you about it?”

  “I know Frank. He didn’t hurt her.”

  “I know he didn’t.”

  “And he didn’t kill those people. Those rich people.”

  “I know that too. But he pissed off some other people when he ran. He’s not just hiding from us.”

  Bill was still standing near the front of the room, exposed.

  “Bill, do me a favor—”

  The windows exploded. Tom instinctively hit the deck. There had been no reports, no cracks of exploding gunpowder or broken sound barriers. The door splintered and sent shards of wood flying.

  Bill dropped, whether hit or not, Tom didn’t know. He covered his head and stayed down until the hail of gunfire ended.

  He got his Beretta out and moved on his knees and elbows toward Bill.

  “Stay down, stay down!”

  But the homeless man ran into the bathroom, keeping crouched, leaving a trail of blood. Tom heard movement outside, a screech of tires, then running footsteps. Tampa PD? They hadn’t arrived yet. The door was kicked open. Someone sprayed bullets into the room. Another screech of tires and then a loud crash. The shooter crossed the motel room, heading for the bathroom. Tom saw the alligator boots. The shooter stopped in the door, raised his semiautomatic rifle. Tom sprang up and shot at him, got him in the arm. The stranger stumbled back and then aimed to return fire. Not a stranger — a hit man. Tom dove for
the ground again and crawled away. Then the hit man ran out of the room.

  Tom got up, checked on Bill. He’d fallen back into the bathtub. His pulse was weak but there.

  Tampa on the radio: “He’s on foot! East on McLean Ave!”

  Tom left Bill and ran out. The front end of a Tampa PD car was crumpled against the Yukon, pinning it to a concrete barrier. In the distance, toward the downtown lights, the hit man was running.

  The truck tires squawked as Tom turned out of the parking lot and hit the gas. Tampa PD were talking to one another on the radio and the police sirens started wailing. He spotted his guy between some buildings, running toward the Hillsborough River. Tom turned down the alley, but it was too narrow for the truck. He hit the brakes and backed out enough to jump from the truck and continue on foot.

  His heart thundered in his chest as he ran toward the water, the yellow columns of light rippling across the surface. He stopped at the boardwalk and looked both ways, thought he saw someone running way down, near the restaurants, and ran after them, still listening to the radio. Tampa PD had seen no sign of the shooter. It sounded like two officers were now pursuing on foot along with Tom.

  He dodged around a group of people after yelling at them to get out of the way. More people shrank from the sight of his gun than the sound of his heavy footfalls. The boardwalk ended in a parking lot at Joe’s Crab Shack. Cars were everywhere. Music played on the deck where people sat eating. Everything slowed down — Tom didn’t know which way to go. He checked the restaurant. Held out his badge to the college-aged hostess with the Joe’s t-shirt on and checked the bathrooms, calling out, “Police!” He checked the dining area and bar, and then left.

  Outside, he spoke into the radio and gave his position. “I lost him.”

  The sirens continued to scream in the night, bouncing off the downtown buildings. He kept going until he wound up back near Gaslight Park, five blocks from the motel, maybe six. He went through the park at a light jog, followed the walkway in an S-curve out to the other side.

  Nobody had the guy. He was gone.

  * * *

  They looked all night, but the weather was starting to change. The first rains of hurricane Isabelle spattered the streets, driving people off the exposed decks of the riverside restaurants and inside the bars on Franklin Street. Tom turned on the truck wipers and checked in with Tampa. The search was widening out, but hope was in short supply. The tags came back on the Yukon, pointing to Janice Hawkes again. But Janice Hawkes wasn’t a real person. She was fabricated. It was a black-market registration.

  Just before dawn, somewhere in Tampa Heights, he pulled over to rest. He turned on the radio and found the classical station. Starting to nod off, he found his way back to the hotel he was staying at, keyed into the room and hit the bed.

  His phone rang what seemed like a second later, but when he checked the time it was just before eight in the morning. Blythe calling.

  “Lange, we got something.”

  He sat up, pawing at his face, looking out of the room window with blurry eyes. The rain was still coming down. “What?”

  “First, we still have no ID on the driver of the Yukon. We’ve impounded the car and we’re going through it. Could be he’s working for the Vasquez people. We’ll find out. But listen . . . well, we got two things. One, we did have a trucker call in who saw Guttridge’s pic on TV. Said he gave the guy a ride from Cape Coral a week ago and dropped him in Tampa. He was there, Tom — you were right. Then we got another call. Someone saw a man matching Guttridge’s description at a state park just west of Tallahassee.”

  Moving north. Now he was fully awake.

  “The witness is a park ranger,” Blythe said. “Saw a guy in the park just after dawn and called out to him. The guy disappeared. People are getting set to evacuate, so the ranger was doing his patrol. The park gets a few homeless.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Skokie is handling it, working with the feds on it. Lange, we’re getting set to sequester. I need you back here.”

  The rain splattered against the window with a gust of wind.

  “You did everything you could. Let the FBI take it from here. Lange? You there?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY: CAVES

  Marianna, Florida. Florida Caverns State Park. About an hour west of Tallahassee, in the panhandle. What Rhodes would call “practically Texas.”

  He ignored his ringing phone. It was not yet 11 a.m. when he pulled up to the ranger at the gate and showed his badge. The ranger told him where the feds were based.

  A tent they’d erected had already blown over. Hard-driving rain had turned the ground to mush. Malone stepped out of a building and beckoned Tom over. Inside, he dried off, and Malone handed him a rolled-up poncho.

  “Jackson County Sheriff’s are already in there,” Malone said. “Been going through for about an hour.”

  Tom unfurled the poncho and put it on. “What’s the story on this place?”

  “It’s a big park — 1,300 acres.”

  Animal faces were leering at him. Fake animals. Snakes and birds and small woodland creatures presented themselves in glass cases around the spacious visitor center: bats, salamanders, something called the blind crayfish, barred owls, snapping turtles, alligators. A sculpted model of the caves was the big attraction.

  A half-dozen men and women were suiting up in the middle of the room. A map had been spread out over a large table.

  A park ranger offered his hand to Tom. “Olson.”

  “Lange. What’s the deal with the caves?”

  “This park has the only air-filled cave system currently open to the public.”

  “They’re all open to the public?”

  “No, not at all. We closed some down to let them recharge and there’s some the Conservation Corps never enlarged. Never expanded the passageways.”

  “How many?”

  “Caves?” The ranger glanced around at the others then his gaze came back to Tom. “Doesn’t really work like that. These are limestone caverns. They’re interconnected, highly fragile. A typical guided tour takes about forty minutes, starts sixty feet below the ground. The percent of caverns and passageways the average tourist gets to see? About twenty percent. Some of the caverns are blocked off exclusively for scientific research.”

  “So, if someone wanted to dig in and hide—”

  “He’d have a lot to choose from.”

  The ranger was connecting his belt as he moved toward the map. “So how it works is some of these features we give names to . . . Bacon Rock, the South America Pool, the Wedding Cake. There used to be a fish hatchery — see right here — that was drained. You got to be careful down there. This is all karst topography.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means caves and it means sinkholes. Basically, this whole area was formed as the soluble rocks dissolved. Gypsum, limestone, dolomite. So it’s porous — you take a wrong step, you could drop eighty feet. Stick to the established pathways as much as you can. I’d say entirely.”

  “Where was our suspect spotted?”

  “Right here.” The ranger tapped his finger near the section labeled Bacon Rock. “That’s where your . . . that’s where Jackson County has started looking, and some of the federal investigators and our state rangers.”

  Tom looked at Malone. “We go down into the caves?”

  Malone racked the slide on his pistol and holstered it. “That’s the game plan.”

  * * *

  The wind shrieked down into the cavern passageway. Tom looked back as the circle of daylight grew smaller. The stairway and railing descending into the earth was unexpected. So far, the place was unimpressive, with too much signage and too many plaques explaining what everything was. Then they reached the low point and it shut his mind up.

  It was like another world. The air was much cooler. Water dripped and echoed. Stalactites jutted from the cavern roof like the frozen hairs of a wooly mammoth, tinged an eerie blue. A little further
along, the lights turned the stalactites and stalagmites beneath amber and russet brown. Tom imagined the centuries of calcium deposits dripping down, forming the upper teeth, the accumulation below accreting into the lower teeth of this giant maw.

  The group spread out, staying in twos. Tom was with the ranger named Olson. Tom feared any small, confined space, but the caverns were well lit, the paths broad enough to permit small groups of tourists. He breathed through the claustrophobia.

  They needed to get deeper and access the caves closed to the public. Deeper down, the paths were narrower, the lights fewer and farther between, until there was nothing to show them the way but their waterproof headlamps. The walls were wet and slimy to the touch, and everything reeked of earth, mold, and sulfur. Olson’s radio crackled, the transmission patchy in the depths.

  Olson put the radio to his mouth. “Say again?”

  “--- in the Chipola.”

  Tom hovered close as Olson pressed the transmit button. “Someone in the Chipola?” He turned and started walking in the reverse direction. Tom followed, grateful to be heading out of the cloying, confined space.

  “--- a sighted --- that someone is in the river . . .” the searcher called over the radio.

  Olson started trotting then running. Before long they were ascending and came out on a nature trail that rode the edge of a bluff along a river floodplain. The wind was like a physical force pushing against them and the rain stung their eyes.

  “That’s the Chipola,” the ranger shouted, pointing to the water in the near distance. Despite the turbulent weather, the river was calm. Impressively tall trees grew on the other side — tall probably because they’d been left alone since the 1930s.

  They jogged abreast and Tom spotted a group of searchers gathering up ahead, plus more on the opposite side of the river, moving along in the same direction.

  “Where’s it go?”

  “We’re upstream. The Chipola flows underground at a river sink and reappears several hundred feet later.”

  The nature trail led them to a natural land bridge where the river disappeared as Olson described. Having picked up speed, the Chipola rushed to a narrowing point beneath the bridge and fell into darkness.