by Jeff Gunhus
Movement at the far end of the hall. A pair of hands pushed through the bars and there was a flash of hair as she leaned her face against the bars.
“I told her I was done talking to you people,” she said. She didn’t say it loud, but the sound carried well enough. Her tone gave Harris hope that she hadn’t cooperated with the other two yet.
“Sorry, I didn’t want to startle you is all,” Harris said, checking each cell as he walked to the back. “You’re here alone, huh?”
No response. He wondered if something of his intention had slipped into his voice. He didn’t think so, but he was starting to realize he wasn’t the best judge of those kinds of things lately.
“In any case, just got word from DC that I’m to bring you in,” he said. Things were always easier when people came willingly. It wasn’t necessary in this case, but it was still preferable to clubbing her on the head and dragging her out to the street. Although once she saw the mess he’d made of Deputy Cal in the front room he would probably have to subdue her anyway. “Just for questioning, you understand. Nothing more.”
“There’s no way I’m going to DC,” Natalie said. “I told you people I don’t know anything.”
Harris looked through the keys, selecting C-4 and sliding it into the lock. “Just a day and back. As long as you cooperate.”
Natalie looked past Harris’s shoulder. “Where’s Sheriff Frank? Or Cal?”
Harris opened the door, pulling the handcuffs from his pocket. “Not available right now. Hands out, Ms. Bain.” He tried to look apologetic. “Just policy. You understand, right?”
“Frank! Cal! Get back here!” she called out. “I’m not going anywhere with this asshole.”
“Shhh,” Harris said. “I already told you, this is my operation now. They can’t do anything for you.”
“Sheriff! I want to––uuggghhh.”
The Taser hit her in the chest, the voltage crackling in the air. Harris didn’t mind using the weapon, but it usually meant his persuasive skills had failed somehow so it was also an admission of failure. He watched as the girl fell to the floor, jerking from the electricity, spit drooling from her mouth. It was clear she was going to be a pain in the ass to deal with and he didn’t have time for pain in the asses. All he needed was the sheriff to come back from the fire and find the murdered deputy, all while he was stuck in the cellblock with no way out. It was time to go.
He stopped the Taser and knelt down next to Natalie, who blinked hard as the world came back into focus. He snapped the cuffs on her, hands behind her back so she couldn’t scratch his face.
“W—who are you?” Natalie whispered.
“Just someone who wants something you have.”
“You’re not with the FBI, are you?”
Harris yanked her to her feet. “What do you think?”
Natalie threw her head back and clocked Harris right on the bridge of his nose and it exploded in a sunburst of blood. She ran out of the cell, pushed against the door with her shoulder and slammed it shut.
Harris reached out at the last second and inserted his hand between the door and the jamb. The bones in his right hand crunched as the door slammed into it. He yowled in pain, but the sound ended with an animal growl of anger.
He pushed the door back open and ran into the hallway in time to see Natalie already halfway to the door.
Harris tried to pull his gun but his mangled left hand was too damaged and it was impossible to pull the gun from his shoulder holster. Besides, he didn’t trust himself shooting righty. If he killed the girl by accident then he’d be empty-handed.
He ran after her. In most jails, the door would need to be key-opened to go out, but this one didn’t. She already had it open.
“Stop or I’ll shoot you in the back,” he said, bluffing.
She didn’t bite. She was through the door and he was still a few steps behind.
He tore open the door just in time to see Natalie slip on the blood slick oozing from Deputy Cal’s body. Handcuffed, she hit hard on her shoulder and the side of her head took a bounce off the concrete floor. She tried to scramble back to her feet, but she succeeded only in sliding around in the blood, smearing it all over herself.
Harris managed to get his gun out from his holster by hooking it with his left thumb and then transferring it to his right hand. Natalie froze, covered in Deputy Cal’s blood, terror in her eyes.
Harris tasted salt in his mouth. He reached up and felt his nose. It was cockeyed to one side, clearly broken, and his hand came back covered with blood. He shook his head at Natalie.
“This was going to be so simple,” he said. “Short and sweet. You give me the information I need, and I give you a painless death.” He pointed to his nose and held up his mangled hand. “Plans have changed.”
39
Allison hung up the phone after getting the sheriff’s voicemail a second time.
“Any luck at the jail?” she asked, taking a corner too fast.
“No answer,” Mike said. “The sheriff?”
“Same,” Allison said. “Busy with the fire. This might be nothing, but…”
“…but seems too convenient,” Mike said. “And I don’t believe in coincidences. That house was the most logical place for Natalie to have a computer set up or store a hard drive. It goes up in flames right when everyone is looking for it. I find that hard to believe.”
Allison was thinking the same thing. Her eyes were still draining from the smoke and she smelled like a campfire, but her mind was churning. It was the old feeling, the one she inevitably got on every case, where only three or four more pieces were left to complete a five hundred piece puzzle, only she couldn’t quite yet see where the pieces fit.
She saw she had a phone message from Mason. It was from over an hour ago. She pressed the button and held it to her ear.
“The word is out that you’re working this case. You should have told me the details about the death at the morgue. I’m taking you off this. You’re compromised. I want you to immediately––”
Allison pressed the delete button and slid the phone back into her pocket.
“What was that?” Mike asked.
“Just an old friend lending me his support,” she said.
“Mason?”
“Nice try,” she said.
Mike shrugged. “Habit.”
They came to a hard brake outside the jail. The lights were on and it looked the same as when they left it.
“Maybe I was wrong,” Allison said.
“Let’s hope so.”
They got out. Allison pulled her gun and held it low to her side. Even though things looked all right, her intuition told her another story. Over the years, she’d learned to trust what the little voice in her head told her.
Even before opening the door, she knew there was a problem. She spotted the splatter of red on the wall. Hundreds of hours of splatter analysis meant she knew exactly what it was. She waved Mike back and raised her gun.
“What is it?” Mike whispered.
She ignored him. Craning her neck left and right, she saw the puddle of blood next to the desk and one of Deputy Cal’s legs sticking out. There were footprints leading from the blood, growing fainter as they neared the door. They were small, the shape of running shoes, exactly what Natalie had been wearing.
“Oh shit,” Allison said.
She pushed the door open, covering the room’s corners with her gun. It looked like whoever had come had taken Natalie away, but she had to be sure. And she didn’t know whether someone had been left behind to clean up any loose ends. The concern in Mason’s voice took on new meaning now. Whoever these people were, they likely killed Maurice, set fire to a house of sleeping women and children and killed Deputy Cal. An FBI agent unofficially investigating a case wouldn’t give them any pause.
Mike came in behind her. Stepping carefully around the blood, he crossed over to Deputy Cal. He recoiled when he passed behind the desk and finally saw the deputy’s head. All
ison went around the other direction in the room, gun trained on the door that led to the cells. Once she reached the door, she looked back and saw the ash-white face of Deputy Cal staring right back at her, a single bullet wound right between the eyes.
Allison knew logically from the amount of blood that the deputy was dead, but seeing the entrance wound and the man’s death stare made her shudder.
She chanced a quick look through the window that led to the cellblock, her mind warning her that she just might get a shotgun blast in the face for the effort. But in the one second look, she saw that the hallway wasn’t filled with assassins and hit men. It was empty.
She slowly stood up and took a longer look, moving her head to try to see into the nearest cell, but she couldn’t see much. But at the end of the short cellblock she did see that Natalie’s cell door hung open.
Carefully, she entered the cellblock, gun raised, and made short work of checking out the cells. Nothing in the first three. In the last, she spotted drops of blood on the floor. Not good.
“You think it was whoever killed Tracy?” Mike asked, standing at the cell door.
Allison nodded, beating herself up for leaving Natalie unprotected when she suspected the killer might be following the same bread crumbs they were to the videos. But how had he managed to catch up to them? Even if he had killed Maurice, and if Maurice had told the killer about the tattoo, they’d left almost immediately and found out Catherine Fews’s real name while on the road. The killer could have flown out, but it meant that he’d pieced together Catherine’s identity on the way too. And without the help of the FBI’s resources and Jordi…
She stopped her train of thought, not liking where it was going. Clinically, she recognized the rising sense of paranoia clutching her chest, but knowing that didn’t help. What if Jordi was sharing information? Or maybe Mason had more than one off-the-books operative looking for the videos, someone without the scruples he knew Allison to have. She looked at Mike, waiting outside the cell for her. Wasn’t it too convenient that he’d shown up at the morgue when he did? Could he be on Mason’s payroll as an operative?
The last thought about Mike got pushback from her logic. She knew why Mike had shown up when he did. He’d bribed Maurice to let him know who showed an interest in the Catherine Fews/Tracy Bain corpse. It fit in with his job. Ironically, the stranger she’d met the day before was the one person she felt she could trust right then.
“What do we do now?” Mike asked.
Allison pulled out her phone, the one Mason had given her. It was her communication link to one of the most powerful law enforcement agencies in the world, but at that moment, it was just a tracking device telling Mason and God knew who else exactly where she was and what she was doing. She slid off the back casing and pulled out the battery. She slammed the phone on the corner of the metal bed frame and busted it in half.
“So, I guess calling in the cavalry isn’t an option,” Mike said.
“Actually, that’s exactly what I’m doing,” she said. “We need all the help we can get.”
“Then why’d you break your phone?”
“I’m not sure the person on the end of that line can be trusted anymore.” She raised her other phone. “I’ll call with this.”
The phone rang in her hand, surprising her. She looked at the number. Blocked call. She smirked and answered it.
“So you were tracking the phone,” she said.
But it wasn’t Mason on the line. It was a very scared, very desperate Natalie Bain.
“Help me,” she cried. “Oh God, please help.”
40
Harris took the phone from Natalie’s hand but didn’t hang it up. He laid it on a rough work table, not much more than a piece of plywood balanced on two saw horses, right next to Natalie’s outstretched hand.
The room was filled with sharp shadows cast by two battery-powered commercial lamps, the kind with metal cages around the fluorescent bulbs. He’d brought these himself, figuring that the power to the old factory would have been long cut off. The advance work he’d done online had paid off and the abandoned quarry just outside of town had proven to be a perfect place to hole up. It was enormous with dozens of places to hide and multiple escape routes if that turned out to be necessary. Most importantly, it was totally abandoned so there was no one around to get in his way.
He turned the phone just slightly on the table so that the microphone was right next to Natalie’s fingers, then he grabbed her pinkie and snapped it sideways. The crack of the bone was drowned out by the scream that followed it. Harris picked the phone back up and held it up to Natalie so that Allison the FBI agent could hear her whimpering in pain.
“Are you still there?” he asked.
“Leave her alone,” came the reply. Strong and in control. He didn’t much care for that. He’d hoped the female agent would be a little more emotional.
“If we keep this local, then I will,” he said. He couldn’t be certain the rest of the FBI hadn’t already been notified, but he was playing a hunch. “Start making calls and I take her apart, piece by piece, then dump her body where you’ll never find it.”
“Just like you did to her sister?”
“Special Agent McNeil, I’m disappointed. Still trying to solve your case even when you should be focused on other things.” Harris grabbed Natalie’s mangled hand and squeezed it, eliciting another scream.
“OK, I’m here,” came the reply. “Just don’t hurt her.” More emotion this time. Harris relaxed a little. That was more like it.
“I need to have a chat with you and your reporter friend. In person. If you call in support, if you bring anyone with you, I kill young Natalie here. She fought back a little too much, so I’m not going to make it easy on her either.”
He described where to meet him and what they should do once they got to the meeting spot, then hung up.
Natalie held her right hand to her chest, crying softly while managing to look pissed off at the same time. Her right eye was swollen shut where he’d had to clock her one for not paying attention, and three toes on her left foot weren’t quite as long as they’d been before. It was amazing how the tips off a few toes was usually all it took to get even the toughest prisoners talking. And this girl was no easy mark. Usually the first toe was enough. Or just the threat of it. But she’d endured three before telling him everything.
She finally admitted to Harris that she’d lied to the FBI agent. Her sister had been in contact about a year earlier. They were in a fight for some reason Harris didn’t give a shit about, but her sister said she needed her help with something. Something big. Enough to set both of them up. Maybe move together to California. Her sister said she didn’t even have to do anything, just maintain a computer and a backup. She would do the rest. The only caveat was that if anyone came looking for the computer, anyone at all, she had to hide it.
Harris held up a small, flat silver rectangle, about the size of a hardcover book. It had a USB cable dangling from one edge. They’d made a quick stop at Billy Ray’s Saloon to pick it up.
“So this is the backup off the laptop that burned down in the house?”
Natalie nodded.
“Why did you have it at the bar? There’s no way you just carry it around with you.”
“Once the FBI woman called, I went home and grabbed it,” Natalie explained. “I thought they were coming to take it.”
At least the girl wasn’t a total idiot. She was right that they’d been coming to take it. The only thing still in dispute was whether Mike Carrel had gotten his hands on the girl’s laptop before the fire started. He thought it was likely, and that he’d started the fire as a cover-up that he’d taken it. It was the play Harris would have made if the roles were reversed. He was just surprised the reporter had the cajones to pull it off.
Regardless, he had to close the loop one way or the other. It wouldn’t work for there to be additional copies of the videos out in the world. He had to be certain. He checked his w
atch. Looked like he’d know in another fifteen or twenty minutes.
He opened the Mac PowerBook he’d brought. It was an air gap computer, no internal modem and it’d never been connected to the Internet via a wired connection either. He plugged in the USB and waited, humming out snippets of an old melody.
The external drive appeared in Finder and he accessed it. An encryption prompt appeared asking for a password. He looked over to his prisoner.
“I don’t know it,” Natalie said. “I swear to God. I’ve tried to get into them, but I’ve never been able to.”
Harris turned his back to her. He had a few toys on his computer. This wasn’t the first password-protected file he’d faced. He opened a decryption program, a sophisticated one thanks to his buddies over at NSA. The five-character password slowly filled in one at a time and then his computer chirped like an appliance telling him his toast was done.
He was in.
Harris opened the files. There were thumbnails of dozens of videos. He clicked on one at random. It was inside of Tracy Bain’s bedroom where she lived her life as Catherine Fews. A grey-haired man walked into the frame, someone Harris recognized from congress. A representative from the great state of Kentucky, if he wasn’t mistaken. Tracy walked in behind him, hands on his shoulders, then arms, taking off his coat. Harris turned the monitor toward Natalie.
“Want to watch?” he asked.
Natalie shook her head in disbelief. Whatever her sister had told her, Harris figured it hadn’t included the truth about what she was actually doing with her time in DC.
“Yeah, me neither,” Harris said, closing the window.
He changed the settings to enlarge the thumbnails, but still couldn’t find what he was looking for.
“Is this everything?” he asked, spinning to look at Natalie.
“Yes, I swear,” she said.
He turned back around and went through the thumbnails again. Halfway through, he noticed a subfolder with an odd label that looked like a random series of numbers and letters, like a computer-generated backup file. He clicked it and found a second subfile labeled VIP. He clicked it.