Murder Plot (A Sam Rader Thriller Book 3)

by Simon King

  Franklin Hauser was found beaten beyond recognition in the prison laundry’s old storage room. The area had been mostly abandoned, used to store nothing more than a couple of metal trolleys and a few empty barrels. With the main storage area having moved to an adjacent room with more modern facilities, the small space had been mostly forgotten, the room all but boarded up.

  The body had been discovered by a couple of officers after a search of the prison was initiated when Hauser was deemed missing from his cell. He’d been in the prison’s medical wing and footage had been retrieved showing him entering a bathroom, before miraculously disappearing into thin air.

  It wasn’t until the following morning’s wake up count that the problem came to light. The prison had its first prisoner count at precisely 8am. It was also when the night and day shift staff swapped over, those coming off work leaving the prison just before that morning count.

  It was Roy Perkins himself who fronted the media, appearing in his trademark grey suit, white shirt and a tie that resembled some sort of fruit orchard. Perhaps it was his attempt to bring a little color into the lives of those he interacted with on the inside.

  But as Sam watched the press conduct their questions, it wasn’t Perkins Sam noticed. Instead, her attention was caught by an officer standing a little behind the warden, just over his left shoulder. While Perkins sported an expression as blank as printer paper, this man had an angry scowl that screamed attitude.

  “Who’s that guy?” she whispered. Tim was finishing off his plate of food and either didn’t hear her, or chose to ignore it as he gnawed on the remnants of the t-bone. Sam picked her cell up, dialed and held it to her ear whilst keeping her attention on the angry man.

  “Mumma? Have you seen the press conference at Bolton from this afternoon? Can you find out who the man behind the warden is? Yeah, the angry one. You do? Perfect. Thanks.” She hung up, Tim still focusing on the bone. He didn’t need to ask, knowing what Sam was after. He’d worked in the field long enough to know the questions, the answers and everything in-between.

  The two of them continued to watch and listen, Perkins talking a lot without actually saying anything. He was the perfect politician, able to acknowledge reporters, before deflecting their questions with the grace of a salesman. Sam knew she didn’t like him and loathed the first time she would stand face-to-face with the man.

  “You watch yourself in there, you hear me?” she repeated, still watching the angry man. For him, the butterflies in her stomach were enough of a warning, that instinctual tap on the shoulder that always seemed to prove correct. “And if anything looks to be going pear-shaped, you don’t hesitate to call Mumma.”

  It was the first time Tim looked up, saw the concern on his partners face and understood that his own worries weren’t alone.

  “Same with you.” Sam nodded in return.

  The phone rang a few moments after the press conference ended and Sam answered it on the second ring.

  “Mumma?”

  “Alright, Sugar. I have what you asked. I’ll shoot it across via email. Angry man is right. That dude has quite a colored history. You two kids watch yourselves around him,” the voice said, echoing the concerns for a third time.

  “Thanks, Mumma. We will, I promise.” Sam hung up, reached for her laptop and flipped it open. A moment later, she was reading the contents of the email, the attachments listing a history of a man she would shortly be working under.

  When Mumma said that Lance Henderson had a colored background, she wasn’t mincing her words. The man had a thirty-year history in some of the toughest prisons in California, including twelve in San Quentin and seven at Pelican Bay. There were multiple infractions for assaulting prisoners and four for assaulting staff.

  His file read like the latest Mark Dawson thriller, filled with confrontations and violence. The man had a habit of kicking ass and taking names, generally speaking with the earlier before the latter.

  After a fiery confrontation with the warden of San Quentin, Henderson had shirt-fronted his superior and taken a swing. But another officer had intervened, probably saving the angry man from his own stint in a cell. After a short vacation, he quickly found a new position at Pelican Bay, where he continued his run of attitude and toxic aggression towards anybody who didn’t agree with him.

  But it was when he married his wife Helen and became the brother-in-law of Bolton’s own deputy warden, that Henderson found himself a permanent home. This time, there would be no question of his own authority, elevated to the rank of Captain within a few very short years. With that position under his belt, he was the highest ranked man in uniform, a rank some referred to as God.

  The violence, intimidation and aggression didn’t end, continuing on, with several official complaints raised against him. But with a brother-in-law in a very persuasive position, including a certain acquaintance with the state governor himself, Henderson had a virtual ticket to run things how he saw fit.

  After scanning the documents a second time, Sam noticed that through the pages, there was no mention of a single confrontation between the fiery captain and the warden himself. There was also no information that the pair ever crossed paths, despite working in a very close proximity to each other.

  Sam only paused when Tim decided to head home. He had sat quietly for the majority of the evening, flicking through his cell and trying to take his mind off the task ahead. Sam could see it wasn’t working too well and almost considered calling John Milton herself, maybe asking if it was possible to get Tim into an officer’s uniform instead. But she knew what the answer would be, understanding that they needed the information from the prisoner’s side as much as from the officer’s side of things.

  The pair had a brief farewell at the door, hugged a final time and Sam watched as Tim slowly made his way across the small yard, back to his own home. She remained leaning against the doorframe as his inside light switched on, then watched as he walked up the stairs to his bedroom. Only once the lights were off again and she knew he’d be restlessly trying to get some shut-eye, did she return to the laptop.

  After another forty-or-so minutes, Sam finally closed the computer and sat on the couch, simply staring into the void beyond the television screen. The volume was down and it was the visions playing out in her mind that kept her attention. Prison. The word itself held a kind of hypnotic focus over her.

  She suddenly remembered the diary Jim had given to her during that final meeting, a final gift to the world from the monster now safely residing inside her mind. That little black book held the thoughts and feelings of a man who was angry enough with the world, that he made it pay for his troubles, murdering relentlessly with little remorse.

  After retrieving the diary from her jacket pocket, Sam returned to the living room, switched off the lights on the bottom floor of the dwelling, then made her way upstairs after grabbing her ritualistic can of Coke. She always kept one close on her nightstand, in case she awoke in the night with the craving.

  It was the craving that frightened her above all, remembering the only time she ever gave into it before she worked with Pogrom. It had been a long time ago, back during her childhood, tasting the flesh of a bully that had tormented her for months. It was that very event that had led to her father taking over all schooling, and leading his child through the process that would turn her into the woman she would eventually become.

  Once Sam was comfortably lying in bed with the book open in her lap, she began to read, a story as grotesque and confronting as any case notes she’d ever encountered. But while those case notes may have been just as gruesome, they didn’t hold one key point: the book in Sam’s hands had been written by her great-grandfather, a man known as Lucifer to the locals and dubbed the Daylesford Devil by the press.

  He had been a serial killer, one of the worst in the history of the country he terrorized, a place Sam had just returned from. The man had the honor of not just one killing spree, but two, the second made possible by a string
of mistakes that Jim had highlighted in his own writings, called “The Lawson Chronicles”.

  While the introduction to the diary began simple enough, the usual parental abuse, with an over-zealous father who shaped the killer his son would become, it was an event early in life that really grabbed Sam by the throat.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, holding one hand over her mouth as her eyes raced across the page, the words crashing into her brain like mental bricks.

  Harry Lightman, the boy who would eventually grow to become the infamous serial killer known as Lucifer, had been bullied at school, relentlessly tormented by both students and teachers alike. He eventually snapped, releasing his wrath on a boy who’d made the mistake of pushing him too far.

  It was a story that sounded familiar to Sam. But as she read the vivid description of how a young Harry had grabbed the unfamiliar kid and first tasted flesh by biting his ear clean off, that she finally felt the chills race through her body.

  She paused, open-mouthed with sweat running down her face. Her racing heart hadn’t been noticed until she finally looked up from the book, her hand shaking enough to make reading almost impossible.

  Sam looked down at the page, the words barely legible. Those words, the very writing, they had been put there by Harry himself. The killer had held this very book in his hands and now it was in hers, like a family heirloom, passed down through the generations like an unwanted guide to the family business.

  It wasn’t until she closed the book that the taste in her mouth really stood out. Before she had a chance to think about it, the can of Coke was snapped open and Sam was taking huge mouthfuls, desperate for the awful taste to disappear. If the phone hadn’t rung at that very moment, she was sure a second can would have been needed.

  “Hey, Daddy,” Sam said after hitting the button on her cell.

  “Hey, kiddo. How’s things? How was the land down under?”

  “Fantastic. It really was.” She tried hard to calm herself enough for him not to notice.

  “See any kangaroos?”

  “Plenty. Most mornings they were sitting right in the front yard of where we were staying. Dozens of them.”

  “Glad to hear you had a good time. So, when’s my little girl coming home to see her old man?” She hesitated to answer just long enough for Samuel Rader to sense something wrong. “Kiddo? You OK?”

  “Jim Lawson handed me Harry Lightman’s diary, Daddy. I just began reading it. There’s…” She paused again, wondering whether to share the details of her recent discovery.

  “You read about the kid and the ear, huh?”

  “You knew?” The surprise shocked her more than she expected. Initially she felt betrayed, but after reconsidering for a few moments, realized it was silly.

  “Jim told me about it as soon as he heard what happened to you. He was part of the reason I acted so quick when it came to pulling you out of school. He felt it was better controlling this thing with you from as early as possible.”

  “It was almost exactly the same.” Now it was Samuel’s turn to go quiet. “Daddy?”

  “Yah, Hun?”

  “I can control it. The monster inside, the one you and Mum always knew was there somewhere. I control him.”

  “I know you do. That’s your mum’s strength, kiddo.” She paused again, just long enough for Samuel to know she wanted to tell him something; something that worried her. He waited, giving Sam the time she needed, until her words finally came through.

  “Daddy, I have to go away for a while.”

  “Away? To another country again?”

  “No. I…can’t say. Not yet. Just know that I love you.” She felt the nerves in her chest rise again, just enough to make their presence known.

  “I love you too, sweetheart. Just promise me you’ll be safe.”

  She wanted to tell him more, tell him everything, so he could make things better, the way he always had. But she knew that was impossible. Pogrom had a strict rule of nothing going out before a hunt. Until the offender was caught and ended, everything remained a secret.

  “I promise.”

  There was little else to say and after a few more non-specific words were exchanged between them, Sam wished her father a good night and hung up, cancelling the call with a flick of her fingertip.

  The empty soda can was still sitting on the night table beside her and Sam stared at it for a moment, sensing the taste lingering in her mouth. The craving had disappeared, that God-awful hunger for blood temporarily boxed away again. She wondered how long it would be before it re-appeared again, then flicked the thought away like an unwanted house fly.

  Sam set her cell beside the can, then the book on top, before switching the lamp off and laying back. As the darkness filled the room, she hoped that this time, Harry wouldn’t invade her dreams, hopefully giving her a reprieve for the night. But as sleep began to entangle her and the familiar chuckle reached out through the subconscious curtain, Sam knew it wasn’t to be. Harry Lightman was ready to play.

  5

  Sheriff Roger Augustine was already waiting for him in the abandoned warehouse when Tim turned up. He’d caught the early flight, landed in San Diego a little after 7 and caught a cab to the closest Burger King. As he sat and ate the final meal of his choosing for an unknown amount of time to come, he finally began to relax, reminding himself of why he was going to prison in the first place.

  Tim finished the final few fries, slurped the rest of his Coke and rejoined the cab he’d asked to wait for him. The driver was finishing a cigarette as he leaned against the hood of his cab and gave Tim a wave as he dropped the butt to the ground. After squashing it with his heel, he jumped back into the driver’s seat and the pair headed for the rendezvous point.

  Not wanting any witnesses, Tim had the cab driver drop him a couple of blocks from the meeting point, paid the driver with a crisp hundred dollar note and told the beaming man to keep the change.

  “Sank you, Sir, Sank you,” the driver repeated again and again with his strong accent and Tim had to finally wave him off to make sure he’d go. He stood his ground until the cab disappeared around the corner before walking towards the warehouse.

  He didn’t carry any luggage, just a pack of cigarettes in his pocket, his wallet and a cheap cell he’d purchased the day before. He couldn’t risk anyone accessing his real cell and thus left it back home. For the job ahead, the only tools he needed were already on him and those he’d have for ever.

  “Glad you made it,” the sheriff said as he saw Tim enter the warehouse. “Anyone follow you?” Tim shook his head, turned to check a final time, then walked towards his ride.

  “Guess it’s time,” was all he could bring himself to say and simply held his hands out. To his surprise, the sheriff didn’t slap the handcuffs on, instead leaning in through his patrol vehicle’s window and briefly disappearing. When he came back out, there were the familiar colors of correctional clothing.

  “Have to get you to put these on first.” The man held out the bright orange jumpsuit and waited for Tim to take it. This time, Tim didn’t hesitate, reverting to his trademark confidence that always seemed to get him through some of the darkest situations. He grabbed the jumpsuit, dropped it onto the hood of the cruiser and stripped down to his underwear.

  Augustine stood and watched, a vacant expression on his face, a clear indication that the sequence was something he’d witnessed many times over. Once Tim was standing before him like a typical California correctional inmate, he stepped forward, grabbed his latest prisoner’s belongings and bagged them up.

  “You can grab them back off me directly once you’re done.” Tim nodded, then held his hands out for the second time. Augustine reached around the side of his belt, grabbed the bracelets and cuffed Tim’s wrists in front of him. The game had officially begun.

  The drive to the prison took a little over twenty minutes and Augustine used the time wisely to fill Tim in on all the little details he’d need to know.

  �
��I’m not gonna give you too much. You’ll just end up screwing the information up and the inmates’ll figure you out quicker than a ham sandwich. Go in fresh, act fresh and don’t try and pretend too much. You’re in for an attempted car jacking and possession of a firearm.”

  “Car jacking? Why would I try and steal someone’s car?”

  “You got drunk with some friends, saw a vehicle that grabbed your attention and thought you’d take it for a drive. Only problem was, the driver was inside and you got into a scuffle. The police came onsite and found the handgun in your possession.”

  The cruiser stopped at a set of red lights and Augustine turned around to face Tim, looking at him properly for the first time.

  “This place you’re about to enter. Do not underestimate it for a second. There are some fucked-up people inside, people that will kill you as quick as look at you. Now I don’t know what it is that you and your boss get up to and frankly, I don’t want to know. I was told to fake a record and get you inside to investigate a bunch of deaths. If that’s true…”

  WAAAAAAHHHHH! The vehicle behind them honked long and hard as the lights changed to green.

  “Son of a bitch,” Augustine muttered, then turned back and hit a switch on his dash. Tim could see the lights begin to flash all around him as the sheriff turned back to him. Just as he began to talk, the disgruntled driver behind them finally passed, gave a farewell honk and flipped the bird out the window. Augustine didn’t seem to notice, continuing on with his previous speech.

  “Technically, no one knows you’re inside under a false sentence. That is except me, your boss and Dyson Montgomery. Dyson filled me in on just enough of what you’re up to and to be honest, I’m not quite sure why. But I respect the man and that means I’m happy to oblige. Don’t fuck this up. The man has earned his retirement and I’d like to see him continue to enjoy it.”