The Deadliest Sins

by Rick Reed

  “Want me to stay and help?” Liddell asked.

  “Roast turkey. Gravy, mashed potatoes...”

  “Okay. You had me at roast turkey,” Liddell said, and Jack got out of the car.

  Liddell went home, and Jack went to the detectives’ office and made a phone call.

  “I’m busy,” an inebriated-sounding Anna Whiteside said.

  Jack said, “The dead Missouri State Trooper’s ex-husband is a truck driver. I’ve got his information if you want to have someone run him down. It’s a waste of time. I think the guy is a cop or a federal employee.”

  “I’ll take it under advisement in the morning, Jack. Did you have a vision?” she asked sarcastically.

  Jack had a vision of a drunken ICE Queen melting in a hot bath. “Just have your people focus on that angle. I’m right. There’s one guy, and he’s on a mission or evening a score. Look harder at the dead Border Patrol guy from St. Louis. You missed something.”

  Jack heard a man in the background asking who was on the phone.

  Anna said, “Absolutely no one. I’m hanging up now, Jack. Call in the morning.” The connection ended.

  The detectives’ office was empty. It was almost shift change time, with the exception of Jack and Liddell. They could go home, but they would still be on call until this was over.

  He headed for his car and hoped Anna would concentrate the search efforts toward law enforcement or military. He’d call the ICE Queen again in the morning. Maybe she’d listen better when her BAC wasn’t over legal limits and her hormones were balanced.

  He was halfway home when his cell phone rang.

  “Is there anyone you haven’t pissed off, Jack?” Angelina Garcia asked.

  “Did Whiteside tell you to call me?” Jack asked.

  “No,” Angelina said. “She called you some names I won’t repeat, but I wanted to call and thank you for having her spoil a perfect evening for me.”

  “Glad I could help,” Jack said.

  “I guess you’re making up with Katie now that you’ve moved back home. Planning on spending some quality time together? A little cuddling in front of the fireplace? Drinks? Sex?”

  “I get your point, and I’m sorry. If it wasn’t important I wouldn’t have called the ICE Queen.”

  “Well, I might have something you’d be interested in, but I think I’ll wait until two a.m. and wake you up. I’ll set an alarm. See you.”

  “I’m sorry, Angelina,” Jack said, but she was gone. She didn’t really have anything to report, or she would have told him. Fifteen minutes later he was welcomed at his door by Cinderella. The house felt empty. “Katie, you home?” he said before he saw the note taped to the inside of the door.

  The note read: “Food is in the oven. 350 degrees for ten minutes. At Moira’s. Be home soon.”

  Moira was Katie’s younger sister, and was also a deputy prosecutor. Moira had just broken up with a young detective that had seemed to dote on her. Jack didn’t know what that was about and didn’t care to find out. Katie was probably hearing all about it from Moira. He’d drink his supper and hit the sack.

  He hung his coat on the coat tree by the door where Cinderella lay on her side, ignoring him.

  “Fetch me a Scotch, girl,” Jack said.

  Cinderella rose and padded away to her bed near the heat vent.

  “Stay out of my bed, mutt,” Jack said to her.

  Chapter 29

  When Katie came home Jack was out to the world, so she had let him sleep. When he woke in the morning, he returned the favor. Jack was back in the office early. Captain Franklin was even earlier and waiting in Jack’s office.

  “Call Anna Whiteside,” Captain Franklin said.

  “Good morning to you too, Captain,” Jack said. He saw no coffee was made yet. “I’m going to make coffee first, Captain. I’ll call her. Do you want a cup?”

  “Call Whiteside first, Jack. I’ll go to Records and get coffee.”

  “Black is okay,” Jack said.

  “I didn’t say I’d get you coffee, but I will,” Captain Franklin said and left.

  Jack sat down at his desk and pulled out a yellow legal pad and pen. He made the call thinking Anna must have something big for the captain to be in a twit.

  Whiteside picked up on the first ring. “Get something to write on,” she said.

  “Go ahead,” Jack said.

  “Take down these numbers.” She gave him two phone numbers. One was an overseas number.

  “Where does that last number...?”

  “Ireland,” she interrupted. “Your ancestry has been declared enemies of the state. Forget that number. I didn’t mean to give you that one. Just shut up and listen. You were on my last nerve last night, but Angelina worked most of the night and found several persons of interest. You’re close to Mt. Vernon, Indiana, right? One of these people lives in Mt. Vernon.”

  “Okay. Give me what you have on him. I don’t want to call and warn them I’m coming. I’ll check it out as soon as my partner gets here,” Jack said.

  “It’s a woman, Jack. You think a woman can’t be a suspect? Her name is Karen Stenger.” Anna gave him the address. “The first address is her home. She’s lives outside city limits on a tract of land she’s turned into a militia training camp.”

  “Why her?” Jack asked.

  “Angelina said this Karen Stenger was very vocal about illegal immigration. Facebook, LinkedIn, all the online stuff. She was the subject of a newspaper article a couple of years ago when her son was murdered by a Costa Rican illegal that had fled his own country after he committed a couple of murders. This guy was deported instead of imprisoned for the boy’s murder.”

  “Sounds like she has good reason to hate illegal immigrants,” Jack said.

  “Yeah. Well, when he didn’t go to prison she withdrew from public life and began recruiting for her little militia. Next thing you know, the Costa Rican met his death in Mexico. Two witnesses claimed he tried to rob them, ran, fell off a chain-link fence, and impaled himself on—guess what?”

  Jack said, “A bayonet.”

  “Not exactly the same type of bayonet as we have on our murders, but her members train with all kinds of weapons, including bayonets.”

  “Are you going to re-interview the witnesses?” Jack asked.

  “That will be hard because they gave the Mexican police false IDs.”

  “You said several persons of interest. Who are the other two?” Jack asked.

  “We’re still doing the workups, but one of them stood out.”

  Anna didn’t continue. Jack didn’t interrupt her silence. He didn’t like being controlled. Or hung up on.

  Anna said, “The ex-Border Patrol driver from Sanchez’s case has an interesting history.”

  “You mean besides having a master’s degree in business and criminal justice and a couple years of experience working for Border Patrol? We already have that.”

  “Angelina dug deeper. While he was with Border Patrol he and his partner were accused of murdering an illegal alien. The victim was murdered at a border control crossing point. The investigators weren’t sure which side of the border the murder took place on, but the body was found on US soil. The investigation ended when he and his partner resigned. The case was deep-sixed along with all record of it, but Angelina somehow got the whole file. That girl had better be careful digging around in Homeland Security computer systems. Anyway, guess what weapon was used?”

  “A bayonet,” Jack said.

  “Okay. Guess what happened to the two Border Patrol agents?”

  “Just tell me, Anna. It’s early and I haven’t had coffee,” Jack said.

  “Well, as you know, one of them was Hank Brown, who ended up working for the other side and got himself killed in St. Louis. But his partner just dropped off the grid after resigning. We, and I m
ean Angelina and all the king’s horses and men, can’t find anything after that date. No tax records, driver’s license, voter’s registration, library cards, Starbucks card, nothing.”

  “You’re going to tell me the name any time now,” Jack said.

  “Cody Samuel Coté,” she said. “White male, age sixty-two, five-five. Angelina checked military records and his personal history prior to his resignation, and bingo. The guy is ex-military. He served five tours in Vietnam from ’71 all the way to the end of the conflict in late ’74. He was wounded and sent stateside. He is a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star recipient. According to his personnel file, he spent several months at Walter Reed Army Hospital. He was recruited by Border Patrol shortly after. Outstanding background.”

  “Up until he resigned instead of facing federal indictment,” Jack said.

  “There is that,” Anna admitted. “Hank and Cody had arrested the man they were accused of killing for gun violations, burglary, rape, you name it. The last arrest they made was for the rape of an eleven-year-old girl he’d taken from a library. The guy got a public defender and, because both the agents were accused regularly of excessive use of force, the rapist was deported. Their supervisors must have overlooked the use of force issues because they were making a lot of arrests, until they couldn’t ignore it anymore.”

  “I take it there’s more,” Jack said.

  “There is,” Anna said. “The El Salvador guy didn’t stay gone. He came back and killed Coté’s wife and daughter. Raped them first, dismembered the daughter, and wrote a word on the wall of Coté’s bedroom in blood. ‘Coyote.’”

  “Coyote?” Jack said. “I thought that was a moniker for guys that bring illegals into the US? Was he leaving a signature at the scene?”

  “How would I know? Anyway, the accusation was that Coté and Brown retaliated by finding this guy in Mexico and killing him. The body was found in the US, but he’d been killed somewhere else and dumped on the US side of the border.”

  “If the Border Patrol or whoever knew all of this, why weren’t they both put in prison for murder?” Jack asked.

  “Angelina’s still doing research on Coté’s background.”

  “You think he’s our guy?” Jack asked.

  “We have to find him to ask him,” Anna said. “We’ve got enough to pick him up for questioning, but the Department of Justice will never let us get a warrant based on just this.”

  Welcome to Fed-land.

  Liddell came in carrying two mugs of coffee. He mouthed “From the captain,” and sat down to listen.

  “Anna, Liddell just got here. We’ll go talk to this woman in Mt. Vernon, but have Angelina send me what she can dig up on this other guy.”

  Chapter 30

  Coyote had called Claudine Setera’s cameraman, Bart Hiller, but he didn’t really expect the eager young cameraman-wannabe-reporter to get very far with his inquiries on the whereabouts of the boy. He was sure the woman reporter had already covered all the bases searching for the kid and come up blank.

  But Bart hadn’t been a complete disappointment. Even what Bart didn’t find out told Coyote something. The fact that ICE didn’t have custody of the kid meant Murphy had stashed him somewhere. Child Protective Services refused to contact the police and knew nothing about the boy, so they didn’t have him. The police department gave no comment.

  He lay back on the hard bed and stared at the ceiling until it became blurry. The shrink said he should write his feelings in his journal, but she also said he should go home, visit his wife and daughter, talk to them. Maybe she was right. He hadn’t been home for years. How could he? He had started down this path. He would continue.

  He had always been in some kind of conflict, whether it was in Vietnam or patrolling the border or doing what he was doing now. Except for marrying and having a daughter, his life would have been more of the same. He had fallen in love with Emma, and when they married he’d promised to put his anger behind him. He’d really tried. It seemed like he could overcome it by throwing himself into his work, and then his daughter was born. Olivia. She’d changed everything. Made him see what his life could be like.

  But that was all a pipe dream. On some level, he’d always known it. He wasn’t meant to be a husband or a father. He hadn’t even been a good son. He was good at one thing. Violence.

  His shrink said he’d inherited his temper from his father, but he knew better. Every man makes their own choices. After what was done to Emma and Olivia, he’d made his.

  He didn’t feel like he’d been a bad husband, a bad father. He worked. He put a roof over their heads. He tried to make them happy. They should have known everything he did was to protect them. To build a future. One where no one would have to pay for the mistakes made by a government that had neutered law enforcement, disbanded most of the military, hamstrung any other agency that dared to try to stop the invasion by outsiders. But that wasn’t going to happen by wishing it so. It wouldn’t even happen by changing government leaders. It would happen when people like him stood up on their own feet and did what was right.

  He came to a decision. When this leg of the mission was over, he’d go home. Visit Emma and Olivia. He’d been gone too long. He’d stayed away because it was too painful and he didn’t want to feel anything. But they needed to know that he still remembered them. That he was doing all of this for them. They deserved that much.

  His eyes grew moist, and an odd feeling constricted his chest and throat, a feeling he hadn’t experienced since he’d been boots down on Vietnamese soil for the first time. It wasn’t exactly fear. More of a feeling of hopelessness, sadness, anger, despair. A feeling that he was fighting an elephant with his bare hands even while knowing the eventual outcome. But he had fought monsters before. You went at it with all you had. If you didn’t have a weapon, you used your fists, a rock, your teeth, whatever it took.

  He let a tear trickle down his cheek, glad for it, knowing it meant he was still human. Life hadn’t defeated him. Humanity was what separated him from his prey. He was a patriot. People would see that. Even if they didn’t appreciate what he was doing now, what it was costing him, they would eventually see that he was protecting them. Keeping America safe from the outsiders that threatened to ruin his way of life. It was either kill or be killed. He wouldn’t lose anyone else. He would keep killing until he was dead.

  He finally fell into a fitful sleep, felt ghost pain in his chest and neck where the bayonet had skewered him, and woke up several times clamping his mouth shut against a scream.

  Coyote woke at sunup, took a scalding hot shower, and shaved. He felt better than he’d felt in months. He would get this done and go home. He dressed in dirty jeans, a faded red sweatshirt, and combat boots. He’d bought an army fatigue jacket with sergeant stripes last night from a derelict outside the homeless shelter down the street. The guy claimed he was a veteran. Coyote didn’t believe him, but he’d given the guy four crisp twenty-dollar bills to buy another jacket. More likely the money was used to buy liquor.

  He rummaged in his bag and took out a Saints baseball cap and a pair of cheap reading glasses. He put all this on and affected a slight limp. He needed two things. To find the boy and end this. It was time for a different approach.

  Chapter 31

  “Shit!” Liddell said as they drove past Bristol-Myers, heading west out of the city.

  “What? You don’t like the way I drive?” At the speed Jack was driving, they would make the thirty-five-minute trip from downtown Evansville to Mt. Vernon in fifteen minutes.

  Liddell said, “I think you just passed a State Police car.”

  “That’s their problem,” Jack said. He hadn’t seen a police car.

  “I think I heard a sonic boom,” Liddell persisted.

  “That was your stomach, Bigfoot. Relax. We’ll get there in one piece.”

  “That’s why I’m worried, pod’na
. The whole car and us being in one piece. Smashed into a Rubik’s Cube. Can you slow down to subsonic? You’re going to get us killed.”

  “Maybe you should quit front-seat driving and load the shotguns,” Jack said sarcastically. “Get back in the game. A distracted yeti is a dead yeti.”

  “I’m not a dead yeti, and I intend to stay that way. You expecting to shoot it out?” Liddell asked. They had taken Remington twelve-gauge shotguns from the weapons locker in the detectives’ office. These were now propped up between Liddell’s knees. Four boxes of twelve-gauge shotgun shells were in Liddell’s lap, and he was loading shells into the breaches.

  The Remington 870 shotguns had a pistol grip instead of the shoulder stock and were capable of holding seven shells in the feeder and one in the chamber. Liddell had loaded the shotguns, alternating deer slugs and double-aught buckshot.

  “I don’t know anything about this militia group, Bigfoot. They might be pro-police or paranoid,” Jack said.

  “Maybe we should show our Evansville badges. Most of these kinds of people distrust the Feds. They might not worry about us if we don’t tell them we’re part of a task force. You think?”

  “Excellent idea, Bigfoot. This Karen Stenger might welcome us with open arms. Bake you a pie even. Give you a free membership.”

  “No matter how she tempts me, I won’t join them,” Liddell said.

  Jack laughed, but in truth was he was nervous about dealing with a militia. Those groups didn’t have a reputation for cooperation or giving hugs. He didn’t disagree with their right to create a survival group, but many of these groups were extremely anti-government. They didn’t want to pay taxes. Didn’t think they owed society anything even though they used the same roads and grocery stores and clothing stores as the average law-abiding citizen. They were autonomous as long as their supplies lasted.

  Jack heard a siren bleep twice behind them, and in his rearview mirror he saw a Posey County Sheriff cruiser come up fast behind them.