The Tears of Odessa (An Atlas Hargrove Thriller Book 1)

by Ryan Schow

  “Heading south on Madison Avenue,” Officer Holloway said.

  “Be advised, there’s a school nearby,” the dispatcher warned. “Foxboro Elementary.”

  “Copy that,” Holloway said.

  Atlas’s daughter, Alabama, had gone to Foxboro Elementary before she’d been taken. Images of her flooded his mind. He could see her now—long sandy-blond hair, big blue eyes, a petite body small enough to be considered delicate.

  Thinking of this out-of-control situation, he felt an intensifying dread unraveling within him. There were so many things wrong with this scene, his behavior, this insane outburst. Then again, this was why he’d been put on psych leave in the first place. This and the effect Alabama’s disappearance had had on him. He hadn’t been the same, not since that day.

  Staying on the gas, he tore up Peabody, kicked out the ass end of the Challenger and burst onto Morning Glory Drive like a hellion. Laying on the horn and swerving hard, he barely avoided a group of kids bolting for the sidewalk.

  With no other kids in sight, he smashed the gas, getting back on it. If he could outpace the Mustang, maybe even cut him off before he reached Foxboro Elementary, he might have a chance at stopping this thing before anyone got hurt. At least, that was what he’d hoped for before realizing school had let out already. There were kids everywhere.

  “No, no, no, no, no,” he heard himself saying, frantic.

  By now his heart was slamming into his chest, the adrenaline rush so ferocious, he wondered if a heart attack was imminent. And the voice of reason? Yeah, that voice was bullhorning the insides of his head, demanding he pull over, turn around, leave it be.

  He drifted left onto Madison, ready to block the Mustang’s path to the school. He might have to martyr his car to do so, but at that point, saving the kids from potential harm felt critical, the consequences be damned.

  “Oh God, no,” he groaned as the scene unfurled before him.

  Up ahead, he saw Unit 12A nudging the Mustang off the street and into Pheasant Country Park. Atlas understood the strategy, but they were going way too fast and the angle was all wrong. Even worse, there were kids crossing the road, heading for the park. Atlas’s eyes shot open and he rode the brakes hard. His grip on the steering wheel tightened, loosened, then tightened again.

  “You moron!” Atlas exploded.

  Holloway’s partner should’ve backed way off; instead, Unit 12A bumped the Mustang’s rear end too hard, shoving the muscle car into a slide. The back wheels broke loose, causing the Mustang to drift right into the kids in the street. Holloway’s unit locked its brakes, came to a sliding stop in the gutter.

  A horrified cry left Atlas’s mouth as he watched the kids get mowed down. What he saw was the proverbial bowling ball striking the pins. After mangling all those delicate little bodies, the Mustang slammed into a parked car. The scene came to a violent, poignant halt. All Atlas saw was the trail of bodies left behind.

  The former cop in him was enraged; the father in him was heartbroken.

  He drove up next to the Mustang, shut off the car and set the parking brake. Climbing out of the Challenger, he made a beeline for the kids. Did they need CPR, a medic, or body bags? He didn’t know. What he saw, however, stopped him in his tracks. Blood and ruined bodies were everywhere. The sound of kids crying, and kids dying, was pure torture on his ears, an assault on his mental well-being.

  He somehow managed to tear his eyes off the grisly scene. Farther down the street, Unit 12A’s doors flew open and the pursuing officers hustled toward the kids. Like Atlas, Holloway saw the carnage and froze. Then she looked up and saw him. He recognized her immediately, just as she recognized him.

  “Secure the Mustang!” she yelled, clearly out of sorts.

  Nodding, he turned back to the Mustang and saw the driver’s head resting on the seat back. He was not visibly injured. For some strange reason, though, he seemed to be smiling. Something in Atlas cracked. One second he was ten feet away from the car, the next second he was ripping open the front door.

  “Yo,” the driver said, sounding like he was in some faraway place.

  This twenty-something mutt was looking up at Atlas with pupils the size of dinner plates. He had sticky white goo in the corners of his mouth, his skin was mottled and pimply, and his hair was unkempt. Looking down, the tips of his fingers looked burned, picked raw around his nail beds. Briefly tearing his eyes off the driver, he eyeballed the two passengers, felt they posed less of a threat than the man before him.

  Without hesitation, Atlas punched the driver in the jaw so hard, he sagged where he sat. A cheap pistol slid off the seat, clattering on the asphalt at Atlas’s feet. He kicked it under the car. For a long second, he studied the man. He knew he should walk away while he could, but…the kids. The kids! Grinding his molars, yielding to his primal instincts, he grabbed a fistful of hair and jerked the punk out of the seat. He landed on the ground with a thud. Atlas then propped his unconscious body against the Mustang’s back wheel. When he looked up at the two idiots still inside the car, he felt his eyes narrow.

  “Are either of you two jackasses armed?” he barked.

  Both boys shook their heads; one looked like he was high as a kite, while the other leveled him with a sly grin. Like this was all some big joke. The ambivalent one looked past him, to the dead and dying children. Atlas turned and followed his gaze.

  Several adults were now on the scene, one or more of them calling 911. One young girl in particular caught his eye. A student. She was blond, delicate like Alabama. The face of a cherub. Sniffling, her eyes dripping with tears, she held her cell phone out, using the camera feature to film the scene. For a brief second, the girl looked exactly like his daughter. But then he blinked and she didn’t. This child was maybe ten years old. If Alabama was still alive, she would be thirteen in a few days.

  On the ground before him, the Mustang’s driver regained consciousness. Atlas drove a kick right into his face. The impact of his head against the car left a decent-sized dent in the Mustang’s panel.

  “Get away from them, Atlas!” Officer Holloway shouted. She was with the kids, but apparently she’d returned to her senses, realizing he was no longer with Vacaville PD.

  Atlas ignored her completely. Turning back around, he roared at the other two men in the Mustang. “Get out!”

  The pair was wholly unmoved, which further enraged him.

  “Seems cozier in here,” the grinning kid said. Lazy eyes, mottled skin, chewed fingers, scabs on his arms—some scratched off, some tall and rough looking.

  Freaking meth heads.

  “If I have to come in there,” Atlas snarled, “one of you is coming out dead.” Neither moved so much as a muscle. “Get out, NOW!”

  “Atlas Hargrove!” Holloway yelled again. It sounded like she was coming after him, but he chose to ignore her.

  The first kid climbed out of the cramped back seat. His dirtbag friend in the passenger seat was slow to respond, that sour, taunting look firmly in place.

  “I’m about to kick that grin off your stupid face,” he growled.

  “Go for it,” the kid said, sneering.

  To the kid who got out, Atlas said, “On your knees, face the car.” He complied. The other kid, not so much.

  “Atlas,” Holloway called out again. “Dammit, Atlas! You shouldn’t be here. You can’t be here!”

  He reached in and dragged the second moron out by his shirtsleeve, shoved him to the ground and kicked him twice in the kidneys before slamming the Mustang’s door shut.

  “Smash your faces up against the paint. Both of you!” Finally compliant, the two men did as they were told. “Hands behind your backs now. Don’t move a muscle.”

  “This isn’t your job, Atlas,” Holloway said, now at his side.

  Below him, at knee level, the driver was regaining consciousness. Atlas sat him up, leaned him against the car and slapped him so hard he lost feeling in his hand for a second. The man’s chin dropped on his chest and a line
of pink-tinted slobber drizzled from his mouth.

  Pointing to the other two, he said, “Stay!”

  He finally turned and acknowledged Officer Holloway. One look and he knew she was both pissed off at him and way out of her depth. He wouldn’t be surprised if she turned in her badge when she got back to the precinct. Looking past her, seeing bodies scattered everywhere, he felt a deep-seated pain mixing with acres of hostility. How was he supposed to process all this? You just can’t be a normal human being and not get blindsided by the sight of dead children.

  Before Holloway could demand once more that he leave the scene, Atlas asked, “Are there any survivors?”

  “A couple of kids, yeah,” she said, glaring at the three unsubs. “How am I supposed to pretend you didn’t just beat the crap out of all three of them?”

  “How many of these kids didn’t make it?” he asked, making eye contact.

  Officer Holloway was a striking young woman, but something about her had changed since he’d last seen her. Atlas imagined the change was occurring in that very moment. He noted the shine of barely restrained tears in her eyes. He recognized that look. He felt it.

  “If this is the merry-go-round,” the driver mumbled, flippantly, as he regained consciousness, “I think I want a refund.” He started laughing, like he was high and not sure where he was.

  “Shut up!” Atlas barked.

  “Are you the guy who’s gonna give me my money back?” he asked, undeterred. Lifting his hand, palm up, he said, “Pretty please yes, because I feel kinda sick.”

  Holloway’s partner stalked over, an arrogant-looking rookie who seemed oblivious to the mess he’d created. Atlas recognized him but drew a blank when it came to his name. It was sitting on the tip of his tongue.

  “Get the hell out of here, Atlas,” he growled. “You washed out forever ago, and now you’re tampering with a crime scene. You being here…it’s bad optics for all of us.”

  “I’m about to leave,” Atlas said, chewing on his anger.

  “See that you do.”

  The kid’s name badge said Petty. Lucas Petty. Atlas remembered not liking him. Glaring at Officer Petty, he wanted to set fire to his soul. But Petty was right. Atlas was too wound up, too close to the edge, and no longer an LEO. Looking past him, he saw a young boy with bean-pole arms and open, unblinking eyes. Still on the child’s back was a blue backpack. A small stuffed animal had spilled out of the pouch, face-down on the asphalt. The animal looked worn, like it might have been his first stuffed animal, and he couldn’t bear to part with it. Beside the child’s lifeless face was a pair of prescription eyeglasses, one lens shattered, the frame twisted.

  Farther down, he saw a blond-haired boy with blood oozing from his scalp. The small size of him made the aching in Atlas’s heart worse. He’d been pitched into the gutter, where he lay on his side in the fetal position. Was he even alive? Atlas didn’t think so.

  Farther still was the limp body of a brown-haired girl, her back cranked all the way around, her spine clearly broken. There was no way she was alive.

  He couldn’t look at them anymore. Was this his fate? Would he be haunted not only by Alabama’s disappearance, but by the deaths of these children, too? Was this an omen? The thin veneer holding him together after Alabama’s abduction snapped. He couldn’t stop thinking about his stolen daughter, the job he torpedoed, and now Jade—his seemingly unfaithful wife.

  Instead of vacating the scene as ardently instructed, he went to the trunk of his car, grabbed his Remington shotgun—the 870 Express Super Magnum—and racked a load. He was only vaguely aware of choppers in the air, an audience of bystanders, or really anything else for that matter.

  He’d officially gone to that place.

  An older woman saw the matte black shotgun. She drew a sharp breath, but said nothing. There was a vacancy to Atlas’s eyes that someone would later describe as “a calm before the storm.” Atlas went straight for the Mustang. Before either officer saw him, he nudged Holloway out of the way and fired the shotgun. The first load pulped the back of the ambivalent kid’s head.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Petty go for his weapon; Atlas drove the Remington’s buttstock into his solar plexus. Petty bent over, gasping for breath. Atlas racked a fresh load, shot the second kid in the side of the head as he scrambled to his feet. That shitty little grin would never ugly up his hideous face again.

  Holloway grabbed Atlas by the arm, tried to restrain him. He shook free of her hand, then turned and screamed, “NO!” She drew her arm back, eyes wide and horrified, as if Atlas was the hot stove she’d just burned herself upon.

  Racking a third load, he glared down at the last man, the driver. Atlas’s heart was jackhammering away in his chest, fueled by an unremitting surge of adrenaline. He felt his cheek twitching, knew he was at the point of no return, that done was done, and he was cooked. 5150 all the way.

  “Put the weapon down,” Petty managed to say behind him, still winded from Atlas’s assault. He heard Petty rack his slide as a warning. But the action was slow, the officer still catching his breath. Atlas was beyond veiled threats. He was now looking down the barrel at a dead man.

  “Put it down, Hargrove, or we’ll put you down!” Holloway stepped back and yelled, false strength in her voice. He could barely hear her over the rush of blood in his ears.

  In that moment, the world around him slipped out of focus, save for a single, clear point: the driver’s face. This absolute waste of space glanced over at his two dead friends. Something in his expression changed. When he turned his attention to Petty and Holloway, the left side of his mouth twitched again, transforming it into a slow, lopsided grin. He returned his attention to Atlas. The weight of that evil gaze registered in him as something repulsive, something odious and inhuman, something that needed to be erased from all of human history.

  “Look at you, Chuck Manson, going all gangster with your little shotgun,” the driver chided. The corner of his front tooth was chipped.

  “C’mon, Atlas!” Holloway warned, frantic, gun obviously drawn on him. “There are a thousand eyes on you. Please, put the shotgun down. He’s not worth it.”

  Breathless, teetering on the edge of something bold and warranted, Atlas felt the tremors hit his trigger finger. The second he squeezed the trigger, the second he watched the meth head’s face disappear in a wet blast, he knew he’d punched his own ticket. In quick confirmation, two bullets slammed into his back, putting him down.

  As he lay crumpled on the asphalt, bleeding, stricken with pain, he wondered what had hit him so damn hard. Were they shooting nines or forty-fives? In the end it didn’t matter. The pain would chase him from this life, the damage the bullets did making sure he never found his way back into polite society again.

  He lowered his head onto the asphalt street, the heat of the day and grit pressing into his cheek. Blood drizzled out of the corner of his mouth, the pain sharp, his breathing labored. The light on the edges of the world began to dim, something hypnotic beckoning him, its embrace familiar, soothing. For some reason he felt assured, sheltered, like this mysterious force was unconcerned with his life, his many failures, all the irreversible consequences of his actions.

  Even as he heard the distant sounds of Officer Julie Holloway kneeling over him, crying, he heard Petty yelling, “Shut that damn camera off!” to someone nearby. Was he speaking to the girl who looked like his daughter? Maybe it was someone else altogether.

  “Atlas?” Holloway asked. Something wet dripped on him—her tears he suspected.

  “It’s okay,” Atlas whispered. The two words blended together on a single garbled exhale: ishokay.

  In that moment, he thought about the life he was giving up, the lives he’d leave behind, the countless unanswered questions surrounding Alabama. There was nothing left for him. He was done with this life.

  Finally, deliberately, he closed his eyes and let out that last shallow sigh.

  Chapter Two

  HALDEN B
ARNES

  Now. Halden Barnes knew he shouldn’t have gone to the party. His wife, Astrid, was recently deceased, taken too early by an aneurysm. The last two years had passed at a snail’s pace in some regards; in other ways, they’d slipped by too quickly. Now his daughter, Kaylee, wanted him to get out and have a good time. As if that were possible.

  “It’s been two years since Mom passed and all you’ve done is work and sulk around here. I understand why, because I feel the hole she left behind, but she’s never coming back. And even if she was, she’d probably look at you and tell you to pull yourself together.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “So go out and stop thinking about me, Mom, work…just have a good time!”

  Kaylee was fifteen years old and clearly better at grieving than he was. How was that possible? How was she this strong? Looking at her, he couldn’t help but marvel at the woman she was becoming.

  Two years ago, at thirteen, Kaylee had watched her mother die. The second Astrid had collapsed, Kaylee had called 911. After that, she’d called Halden. For months after the funeral, Kaylee had cried, just as he’d cried. They’d had each other for a long time. But then she’d started to pull out of the dark, all-encompassing grief, and he couldn’t. Now, she was relatively normal, but he was lodged in the past, still sucked down in the bog of this terrible tragedy, and the memories of everything he’d lost.

  That didn’t mean he’d stopped trying to put his life back together. Going to this party was proof he was still fighting. Rather it was proof that he cared for his daughter. The last thing he needed was Kaylee losing faith in him. He’d all but lost faith in himself.

  When he’d finished dressing for the evening, he appraised himself in the mirror. Frowning, he wondered if his look was too formal. He wished Astrid was there to advise him, or at the very least fix the knot in his tie. This knot! he thought, trying to shape his tie just right. If there was one thing he was lousy at, it was the double Windsor. Even when he tried his best, the knot was always off-balance. Eventually, he gave up seeking perfection, walked downstairs and said a hesitant good-bye to his daughter.