Deadly Webs Omnibus

by James Hunt

  “Where’s Annie?” Grant asked, his whole body trembling. Shoot him. He deserves it. Just like Brian Dunston deserved it.

  Parker reached the door, keeping the woman pulled close. He sniffled. “My last chance was a long time ago.” Parker reached for the door handle.

  Grant squeezed the trigger. The bullet penetrated Parker’s chest, a red bloom forming over his shirt. The woman screamed, but it was drowned out by the roar of gunfire that thundered inside the back of the truck.

  Hickem screamed into the radio. “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!”

  Officers charged Parker and S.W.A.T. dragged the woman from the scene. The radio in Grant’s ear was loud now. It was Hickem. He was screaming.

  “We need medics!”

  Grant suddenly felt hollow and cold. He remained frozen in the same stance, and it wasn’t until Hickem rushed past him that he finally lowered the weapon.

  “I told everyone they had hostages!” Hickem said, running back toward their cars. “I never gave the order to shoot!”

  Grant turned toward the rear of the dump truck. The officers and agents near the truck’s back end had lowered their weapons. Two of them dropped to their knees. One vomited.

  Grant took a step forward, but an arm held him back. Mocks appeared in front of him and she shook her head. Tears formed in her eyes.

  “Don’t look, Grant,” Mocks said.

  The cold and hollowness spread through Grant’s body. He stepped around Mocks, walking forward like a zombie. He dropped his pistol in the sand on the way. His mouth went dry.

  Life was sucked from him, and he felt cold. And weak. He shivered. When he turned the corner and looked inside the back of the truck, his stomach twisted into knots and he collapsed to his knees. “No.” He shook his head, tearing up. “No, no, no.”

  Amongst the bodies of the gang members were women. Shot and killed by the very poachers that abducted them from their homes to sell them into the sex trade. But that wouldn’t happen anymore. Nothing would ever happen to them again.

  Another voice filled Grant’s head. It was Parker. The one he’d shot. What did he say? Something about rules. Yes. That was it. You couldn’t break the rules, not without consequences. Grant couldn’t imagine a worse consequence than this.

  Chapter 11

  Every single gang member that wasn’t being shoved into a body bag was on their knees with their hands cuffed behind their backs and bags over their heads. Hickem didn’t want to take any chances.

  “They’re really that vindictive?” Mocks asked.

  “Last year, one of my guys was on a sting operation down in northern California,” Hickem answered. “It was supposed to be a clean break after it was done, his last mission and then he rides off into the sunset. Everything went according to plan, and my guy entered Wit-Sec and moved to Hawaii.” He looked Mocks in the eye. “The Web found him and cut him to pieces. The coroner told me they took their time.”

  Hickem rejoined his team, and Mocks walked farther north up the beach. She avoided the back of the dump truck. They were still removing bodies. She couldn’t stomach looking inside again. She almost lost her lunch just thinking about it. But Grant…

  Mocks found him alone, sitting on the ground with his back propped up against one of the trees. He hadn’t said a word since he saw the aftermath of the shooting. He hadn’t even reacted. No tears, no anger, nothing. It was like he shut off. In their two years together, she had never seen him like this. But from what he had told her about what happened after his wife’s accident, this could have been what it was like.

  “Hickem told me they’re going to send most of the suspects to their federal office and process them there,” Mocks said. She looked back out to the ocean. “They called the Navy and Coast Guard to look for that dinghy that got away, but it’ll be tough sledding to find them out there, especially since it’s night. Hickem thinks that they may have just gone farther south and beached at another location.”

  Grant just kept his head forward. He didn’t move a muscle, didn’t react to anything she said. He was a zombie.

  “None of the victims in the back of the truck were kids,” Mocks said. “And they’re confident the boat that got away was another load of women from the islands. Our girl wasn’t here.” Mocks squatted and looked him in the eye. She grabbed his face and shook her head.

  “This wasn’t your fault,” Mocks said. “Do you hear me? Those women didn’t die because you pulled the trigger. They died because a sick group of animals plucked them from their home and shipped them overseas to be sold as slaves.” She pointed back to the cluster of workers that had gathered on the beach. “Do you know how many we saved tonight? Thirteen. That’s what you did, Grant. That’s what we did.”

  Even though Grant looked at her eyes, Mocks wasn’t sure if he saw her. The darkness gave his eyes a hazy, blind look. Mocks let go of his face and dropped to her knees.

  “Grant, you can’t put yourself through this,” Mocks said. “These were extraordinary circumstances. Do not go down that rabbit hole.”

  And then Grant finally saw her, and a chill ran down Mocks’s spine. As an addict, she had been around enough people who were out of their mind to know when someone had gone too far, when they reached that point when reason was no longer an option, when chasing the satisfaction was all that mattered.

  “I won’t be a detective for much longer,” Grant said. “It’s over for me, Mocks.” His voice was stoic, calm, and he glanced over to the crime scene. “You should start separating yourself from me. I’ll do what I can, but you’ll get a lot of the heat regardless.”

  Before she could speak, he was up and disappearing down the beach, away from the scene, away from the bodies, away from his partner. Mocks lingered on her knees, hoping he would turn back, but he didn’t.

  Mocks rejoined the rest of the officers, and Hickem asked where Grant was. “I don’t know,” she said, and then nodded to the gangbangers being loaded into one of the S.W.A.T. vans. “Think I could get a ride back into town?” Mocks asked.

  “Sure,” Hickem answered. “We leave in two.”

  Mocks ended up in the back of one of the S.W.A.T. vans crammed with officers. She was the only woman in the bunch, not something that she wasn’t used to, but the fact that Grant wasn’t by her side irked her. She knew he was right though. No matter what happened moving forward, he couldn’t turn back the clock. The women were dead, and that was as final as it got.

  Hickem dropped Mocks off a few blocks from her apartment, and she flipped the collar of her jacket up to block the wind funneling through the streets of downtown. Even after almost four years in Seattle, the weather still chilled her bones.

  The homeless man outside the Starbucks in front of her building was bundled up under blankets and newspapers. She couldn’t see his face to tell whether he was sleeping or not, but she slid a dollar next to his head.

  Mocks’s phone buzzed when she stepped inside the elevator. She knew who it was. The captain wanted an update, and more importantly, he wanted to know where the hell Grant was. She ignored it. Enough shit had been dealt with for one day.

  The heat of the building made her sleepy and by the time she reached the tenth floor, she could barely keep her eyes open. She stumbled down the hall in a daze and fished the keys out of her pocket. She yawned and singled out her apartment key to unlock the door, but stopped.

  The front door was ajar, the lock broken. The fatigue lifted from Mocks’s mind and she dropped the keys and retrieved her pistol, aiming at the crack in the door. She looked up and down the hallway, but she was alone. Her heart rate spiked, and she slowly opened the door.

  “Rick?” Mocks asked.

  The living room was trashed. Cushions had been ripped. Lamps were overturned, casting ominous shadows over the walls. Glass from picture frames littered the carpet along with stuffing from the couches. But what was more disturbing was the silence. No one was home.

  Mocks walked quietly, her arms extended, the
pistol guiding her movements through the rooms. Her boots pressed slowly and methodically into the carpet as she scanned the apartment in a grid.

  She turned the corner of the hallway and saw the bedroom door open. Her hand became unsteady as she drew closer, passing the spare bedroom, which was also open and empty. And then the bathroom. Empty.

  Every step forward on the carpet cracked what resolve she had left. She couldn’t stop thinking about what Hickem had said about one of his former agents being cut into pieces. This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t real.

  Mocks paused at the entrance to her bedroom, her hands trembling now as she lowered the weapon, and it dropped to the floor with a muted thud from the carpet.

  The bedroom had been untouched. The bed was made. All of the pictures still hung on the walls, and there was no one inside. But what caused Mocks to scream and drop to her knees was a picture of Rick. She recognized it immediately. It was from their honeymoon, because he was so sunburnt. Drawn over the photo was a picture in black marker. It was a spider web.

  ***

  Grant wasn’t sure how far he’d walked when he finally stopped, but he couldn’t see the lights of the crime scene anymore. By now most of the people had packed up, and everyone was gone save for a few forensic techs.

  He turned into the woods. His shoes crunched on dead leaves and branches, and he nearly twisted his ankle on a rock through the dark path. His eyes had adjusted to the lack of light a little and it was still hard to see everything, but he just needed to move.

  Grant distracted himself with memories of his wife, and he was thankful she couldn’t see him like this. If she knew about the things he’d done, how much blood was on his hands after she had passed, he wasn’t sure if she’d even stick around.

  Why did the girl’s name have to be Annie? Out of all his cases, not one of them shared his daughter’s name. Why this one?

  The phone in his pocket buzzed, but he ignored it. It was probably the captain, or the chief of police, or the senator asking him what the hell happened. Tomorrow morning’s news would have his picture plastered over every television and computer screen in the northwest, along with a caption that read, ‘Rogue Detective’s Actions Leave Dozens Dead.’

  The acid crawled up from his stomach and Grant stopped, hunched over, and vomited. He nearly hit his shoes, but he managed to miss them at the last second. Hot bile lingered on his tongue and just when he went to wipe his mouth, another round spewed up like a geyser.

  When his stomach emptied, Grant’s insides burned and cramped, and the stink of the puke made him gag. He spit to try and get rid of the taste, but it still lingered.

  The phone vibrated, over and over and over, and finally Grant reached for it. He was about to throw it when he saw the name plastered on the screen. It was Mocks.

  “I can’t—”

  “They took Rick,” Mocks said, her voice panicked and quick. “He’s fucking gone, Grant.”

  Grant paused, his mind trying to catch up with the information. “What are you talking about?”

  “I just got home, and the door was broken down and the place is torn up.” Mocks spoke quickly, her words running over themselves. She was scared. “And there was a picture taped to our bedroom mirror. It was a spider web, Grant. They have him. I don’t know what to do.”

  With his insides still aching from the vomit, Grant broke out into a jog toward the car, fumbling in his pocket for his keys. His mind shifted gears, back into work mode, the switch easier to flip than he thought. “Call Hickem. He’s more likely to take your call than mine. Find out what happened to Parker Gallient.”

  “Why?” Mocks asked, sounding like she was fighting back tears. “What the hell would he know?”

  “If he’s still alive, I think he’ll talk,” Grant said, starting the engine. “He was the only non-Filipino in the group, which means he wasn’t born into it. And after today, he might feel differently about his loyalty to the gang.”

  “Do you think Rick is still alive?” Mocks asked. “And don’t bullshit me, Grant.”

  He hesitated. The first instinct was to blurt out that he thought Rick was dead. But he forced himself to pause, to think it over. There was no guarantee that was true. Especially if they took him recently. They probably wanted to question him, see what he knew about Mocks and himself. That could take time, especially if they took him to a remote location.

  “If he is, he won’t be for long,” Grant said, doing his best to not sound completely hopeless. “Call Hickem and find out where Parker is. I still think he’s our best bet. The moment you know, call me and I’ll meet you there.”

  “Where are you now?” Mocks asked.

  “I’m still at the park,” Grant answered. “Just got into my car.”

  Mocks paused for a second. “I need you, Grant. All of you. And that means putting behind whatever shit you’re going through and helping me get this done. You know we don’t have a large window to get him back alive. I need the old you. Please, Grant.”

  Grant held the phone with this right hand and he glanced down at the gold wedding band. He kept it as a reminder of a past and pain that drove him to find kids and return them to their parents. He attributed his success to that pain, and he now had a new well of pain to draw from. He closed his fingers and formed a fist.

  “I’m here, Mocks,” Grant said. “Call me when you know something.”

  “I will.”

  The call ended and Grant shifted into drive. He pulled out of the parking lot and back onto the highway that cut through the park. The road markers lit up as he drove, and more than once, Grant looked down to the wedding band.

  When Grant was a boy, his parents used to take him to church on Sundays, and then afterward they’d go out to lunch with the rest of the family. He always had so much fun; not from the sermon and church, but the time spent with family. But toward the end of those days, Grant always felt something haunting him. It was like an unseen doom, a fear of the unknown that accompanied the next day.

  Maybe it was because Monday was back to school, and Sunday night meant the end of the weekend and fun. But Grant felt that again. Except this time there was no family, no lunch, no church. The doom was real, and the consequences of the unknown would be damning. He just hoped that those consequences would only fall on him and not what remained of the people he cared about. If they did, he might not make it out of this alive.

  Chapter 12

  With Hickem’s unit just a few blocks from Mocks’s apartment, it didn’t take her long to find out where Parker Gallient had been taken. Mocks phoned Grant and told him to meet her at Seattle General.

  Everything felt like a dream. Her movements were slow and lethargic, like she wasn’t in control of her own body. But it was real. Rick was gone. The Web took him. And if they didn’t find him quickly, he could die.

  Traffic was light due to the late hour, and when Mocks pulled up to the ER, she parked the car in the drop off lane.

  “Excuse me,” a nurse on a smoke break outside called out to Mocks. “Ma’am, you can’t park your car there.”

  Mocks flashed her badge and jogged inside without a word. She checked in with the nurse at the front desk, where she impatiently tapped her toe. The waiting area was empty, and the gift shop across the hall was closed. They were the only two on the floor.

  “The patient is in room two-fourteen,” the nurse said. “It looks like he’s being prepped for surgery though, I’m not sure you’ll be able to see him.”

  Mocks snatched the visitor’s badge from her grip and sprinted toward the elevator and up to the second floor. She reached for her phone and called Grant. “Hey, how far out are you?”

  “Five minutes,” Grant answered. “I just got into downtown.”

  “They’re prepping him for surgery,” Mocks said as the door slid open. “I’m going to try and get in before they put him under.”

  “All right,” Grant said. “I’ll see you soon.”

  Mocks pocketed the p
hone and immediately spotted the officer outside the door of the room where their suspect was located. The officer was young, tall, and lanky. When he held up his hand, his fingers were bone thin.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t let you in there,” he said. “Orders from the Chief of Police himself.”

  “Listen, I don’t have time to do the run-around with you, but if you don’t let me inside and talk to that man, more people will die,” Mocks said.

  The officer glanced down at her hip and she frowned in confusion. It wasn’t until she looked down herself that she realized her hand was on the butt of her service pistol. She let go and stepped back.

  “You have to let me in,” Mocks said. “Call anyone you need to, but I’m going in that room.”

  The officer squinted. “Wait. I know you. You’re Detective Grant’s partner.”

  “I am,” Mocks answered.

  “Sad to hear about what happened with that reporter. Grant’s a good man.” The officer looked down both ends of the hall and then back into the room. He leaned in close and dropped his volume to a whisper. “Listen, I’m really not supposed to let anyone in. But I can give you five minutes, and then you have to bolt. Understand?”

  Mocks patted him on the shoulder on her way past, but she stopped when he grabbed her arm.

  “And, hey, next time you see your partner, tell him that Officer Sturgeon says thank you.” The young cop gave a half smile. “He’ll know what it’s for.”

  “He’ll be here soon,” Mocks said. “And thank you.” She shut the door behind her, and Parker Gallient jolted in his bed. A large bandage was over his chest and shoulder where Grant had shot him, and a few red lumps were on his face where the cops had hit him when he resisted. Both hands were cuffed to the railing of the bed, and he was hooked up to a few machines. He wore the same clothes from a few hours ago.