Black Point

by Sam Cade

  First movement. It was 9:17 a.m. One of the guards walked out onto the pool deck in running shorts, Nikes, and a sleeveless sweatshirt. After stretching he took off jogging with moderate pace around the house and onto the gravel road drive that went to the highway. Lucky watched him turn north on the highway. He quickly was out of sight.

  Lucky had an inkling this could be the day. He was prone, comfortable behind the gun which became a natural extension of his body. He leaned to his right so he could watch the area with binoculars. The runner returned an hour later.

  Clemmons came out to the pool deck from a sliding glass door at 11:20. He had his book in his hand, wore baggy golf shorts and a pink polo shirt. Five minutes later a bodyguard came outside, coffee cup in hand and laptop under his arm. He set up at the table with the umbrella, flipped the screen up.

  Perfect except for one thing. Where’s the second man?

  The laser rangefinder indicated 647 yards. This info was synced into the Kestrel. Wind 2.7 miles per hour, almost still. The Kestrel held ballistic information for the rifle and the bullet characteristics for the .338 magnum. The angle of the shot was calculated. From Lucky’s position, Peter John had his left posterior head facing the barrel of the rifle. His head was canted downward as he read.

  Commotion. That would bring out the hidden guard. Lucky thought, GREENLIGHT. It’s a GO!

  Time went into slow motion. The day was as tranquil as a botanical garden. No battle chaos. No havoc. No dust. No berserk militants firing thousands of rounds in Lucky’s direction. No radio comms buzzing through his ears. No choppers. No jet engine roar.

  The rifle was secure over its supports, positioned in the natural point of aim. The scope reticle was precisely placed, just behind Clemmons’ left ear. Lucky slowed his breathing. His trigger pressure was controlled, delicate, intimate. Make love to that sexy trigger, baby.

  At two pounds pressure, the bullet spit from the gun, Pffff. The scope bumped up, barely. Lucky continued light trigger follow-through. The scope repositioned.

  Jeannie Marie Baughn sends her love, counselor.

  The heavy magnum round punctured the back of Clemmons’ head and ripped the right side of his face apart as it exited, lodging itself in the concrete pad around the pool. The force knocked Clemmons out of his chair. He was face down on the pool deck with bloody brain matter splashed in front of him.

  Lucky imperceptibly shifted the scope to Kimbrell’s position on the ground.

  He ejected the spent shell, jacked another round in the chamber. He focused the scope crosshairs onto Kimbrell’s left back, just behind the heart. Another round blew out of the gun. Kimbrell’s trunk bounced in the air like it was struck by lightning. The round shattered a posterior rib before it liquified Kimbrell’s left ventricle.

  Lucky eased the scope towards the bodyguard at the table. He was squatting behind his chair, gun drawn, scanning the mountain. The suppressor disguised Lucky’s location. The guard’s head swiveled in panic, seeing nothing but harmless trees. Lucky knew he was thinking about making a run for the house. Adrenaline had the guy’s heart banging out 160 beats per minute and his eyes dilated.

  Lucky worked the bolt ejecting the shell and loading another round in the chamber. The guard’s head stuck up just above the table for a peek. A tiny peek. Lucky centered the crosshairs on his midface. The third magnum round left the rifle at 3000 feet per second. The man’s head exploded.

  Come on little superman, come out of the house, save the day.

  Lucky scanned the windows at the rear of the home. He caught a tinge of movement at the sliding glass door that opened to the pool. There you are.

  Rising sunlight from behind Lucky cast a glare on the door glass. Half of a face appeared at the edge of the reflection. Lucky made out a squint with the only eye visible, then the bodyguard’s eye opened wide. Fear. He saw his boss and coworker blown apart on the pool deck. Lucky placed the cross hair at the edge of the finely demarcated glare. Central face of the guard. The heavy gun bucked. Glass shattered. The guard’s head whiplashed backwards with the force from the magnum round. The glass was gone. Lucky knew the man was dead. Nobody walks away from a .338 round to the center of the skull. But still. Lucky saw the soles of the guard’s shoes. He tiptoed the rifle up to where his abdomen should be. Pffft. Lucky saw the shoes move. Adjusted the muzzle again, hopefully center chest or neck. He tickled the trigger backwards. The body jolted once again.

  Lucky hoped the man didn’t fire off a 911 call prior to placing his face in front of a Berger OTM tactical sniper round.

  He moved the sniper rifle back to the guard lying on the pool deck. He’d only received one bullet. Another round blasted the remaining skull bone to shards.

  Seven shots. Thirty-eight seconds. Boogie time.

  Lucky unscrewed the suppressor and packed the rifle in the Vault case, snapped it closed. Twelve seconds. Eighteen seconds to throw two tripods holding the Kestrel and camera and the shooting supports into the duffel. He froze, studied the area for fifteen seconds. Missing anything? Look! Look! Look! Six brass shells. Stuffed them in his pocket. Seventh still in the gun.

  Nothing else. Haul ass.

  Lucky’s thighs burned as he thrust his legs to get to the crest of the ridge while carrying a hard case and an awkward duffel. The downhill would be dangerous. He needed maximum speed without catching a limb in the face.

  Running, sliding, dodging trees, hard case and duffel flopping aimlessly, he quickly felt out of balance. Twenty-five yards from the Jeep his right toe caught on a root he didn’t see. The rifle and duffle flew out of his hands as he braced for the fall. His hands were late to the ground forcing him to plant with his face, leaving a skin-ripping abrasion on his right forehead and nose.

  He bounced up, flicked dust from his eyes, grabbed the gun case and duffel, and raced over to the Jeep. Dropped the gun case on the hood next to the bag. Stepped on the front bumper then up onto the hood, grabbed the hardcase, stepped onto the roof of the truck and stuffed the case longways into the leg well of the kayak. Went back to the hood. Grabbed the tripods, camera, Kestrel, and rangefinder. He placed them in the kayak.

  He jumped down to the ground from the hood, opened the driver’s door, and threw the duffel into the floorboard. He fired up the Jeep, glanced into the rearview mirror. Shit! A fuckin’ bloody mess. Blood down to his chin. No bandages, no towel. He reached back over his seat, grabbed the drop cloth, wiped off blood and sweat. Looked back in the mirror. The hat! Where’s the hat?

  Jumped out with the engine running, ran uphill hyper-focused, pupils racing over the ground. There, there, there. Upside down in the dirt, the Patagonia cap. He grabbed it, raced back, jumped in the Jeep, hammered it.

  THE CESSNA CARAVAN WAS STASHED in its hangar at the McClellan-Palomar airport in Carlsbad, California at 11:36 that night.

  ZEUS RECEIVED VIDEO nine hours after Lucky landed. He let the news of Clemmons death marinate in the national news for five days then sent out an invitation to thirty-five lawyers with an intimidating video.

  How would a .338 magnum fashion accessory look in your head?

  Over the following four business days after the invitations launched, $21.9 million dollars arrived in nineteen separate bank accounts, all overseas.

  Zeus smiled as he playfully typed his encrypted message for Lucky to decrypt on DataCage.

  Congratulations! $17.52 million moving into your account.

  PART THREE

  54

  Charleston, South Carolina

  Tuesday, June 4, 2019

  “I’M JAKE MONTOYA, FBI, here to see Detective Hewitt.”

  An early-sixties woman behind a desk looked him over before speaking, then stood, looked down at the dog with a cast on his leg, a badge on his collar and a muzzle on his snout. Thought, what’s up with this guy? Longish hair, three-day scruff, chiseled face, built, looking kind of shabby, but in the way she’d be into as a younger woman. She pointed. “End of this hall on the right. Waiting on
you.”

  Jake found Rye Hewitt behind his desk tapping the keyboard on his computer.

  “Good afternoon, Detective, I’m Jake Montoya, and this is Rowdy.” They shook hands.

  “Have a seat, Agent Montoya.” Hewitt gestured to an empty chair. “Good looking service dog. The news filtered down that he’ll have a full recovery.”

  “Please, call me Jake. And, yes, he’ll be back full steam in about six weeks.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  Jake eased into a chair, placed his right ankle across his left knee. “So, as you know, since the attorneys were taken down here in Charleston and in May in Colorado, the Bureau has been called in. We can bring a lot of resources in to help the local departments. Officially, I’m on suspension after the Virginia Beach deal. Unofficially,” Jake made air quotes, “I’m here to get an overview of what you guys know. I’m headed to Alabama to look into a car bomb on a local attorney to see if there may be any connection.”

  Hewitt wasn’t thinking about murder. He was thinking about the former all-pro defensive back in front of him. He had a question but let it pass.

  “But, anyway, whatcha got on this Green murder?”

  “Jake, we’ve got a tiger by the tail, a calamity. Green, as you know, was a high-income trial lawyer, good looking guy, generally popular, all over the place in TV ads and billboards, also a major presence socially around town. His wife Hallett was also high-profile. She owned and ran a very successful real estate firm. Their son, Brax, was weeks away from graduating from a local prep school. And the crime scene? Oh, dear God. Nobody here has seen anything quite like it.”

  “Give me the summary if you can.”

  Rye exhaled. “Horrendous. Braxton and Hallett were both naked. The husband had his penis sliced off and stuffed in his mouth. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he had a thin fluorescent tube rammed ten inches into his rectum. It was one of the skinny bulbs from a bathroom vanity light. The autopsy report said it ripped through the colon and caused massive bleeding.”

  Jake’s face contorted. “Damn.”

  “The wife, Hallett, had her head severed from her body. It’s gone. Not recovered.”

  “For God sake, Rye.”

  Rye shook his head. “Hell, I know.”

  “Their son was shot in the knee, tied up, and stuffed into his bathroom. Thank God he didn’t see his parents. We think a tomahawk was used to take the wife’s head off.”

  “A tomahawk? How would you know?” said Jake.

  “We have a photo of one that was emailed to us. Hallett had a blindfold on. The tomahawk was photographed as it was held next to her neck. We received a second photo a few minutes after that. There was no head on the woman’s shoulders. The weapon’s not some little Indian souvenir, either. It’s a wicked design in which the business end has a sharp spike on one half and a blade on the other. A brutal weapon.”

  “Huh, a tomahawk. Yeah, I want those photos,” said Jake.

  “Gets even stranger here. In Hallett’s bedroom, a young guy, thirty-three, was found tied up on the bed with velvet covered restraints, completely naked, with duct tape over his mouth and a mask covering his eyes. He’s a local country club tennis pro, a guy from Denmark who used to be on the pro tour. Hallett was an avid tennis player and the chatter on the street was that she was into sleeping around with tennis pros. We’ve identified two other young pros, neither over thirty-five, who have admitted sleeping with her. They’ve been cleared at this point from any involvement in the murders.”

  Jake shook his head. “Brutal. Okay, so at this point where are you headed?”

  “Here’s where we are, Jake. Our main motive here is the drug trade.”

  “Drugs? What drugs?”

  “Here’s what we know. On the morning of the murders, a twenty-eight-year old black man went to Braxton Green’s law firm. He gave no name and no ID. He wanted to deliver a package to a sixty-three-year old female lawyer who had worked with Green since he started his firm. Back when he was nobody.”

  “Dope?”

  “Uh-uh, no. A brand-new Porsche Boxster.”

  Jake whistled. “Interesting.”

  “Come to find out the car was purchased by the son, Green’s seventeen-year-old kid. There was no financing. It was purchased with straight out cash the week before. The black guy who delivered the car was caught on video from both inside and outside Green’s office.”

  “ID him?”

  “Hooohhh, yeah. Demarious Campbell, the leader of Charleston’s top dope gang.”

  Rye continued. “The female lawyer at the office has no clue about the reason for the car’s arrival but admits she was very close to the boy since he was about ten-years-old. She has no clue how he had the money other than his parents giving it to him. She said the kid is going to be an environmental lawyer and wanted to establish an outdoor clothing company and an adventure travel outfit. The boy’s quite industrious.”

  “We’ve torn the Green mansion apart. Found $125,000 cash in a clever hiding place in the wall of the boy’s bedroom. Another $50k at the bottom of a deep freezer that the kid kept his fishing bait in. The boy’s phone has a lot of calls to California and other spots. And a lot to Demarious Campbell. The kid’s supposed to be a weed-only dope dealer for the upper crust set.”

  “So, the son’s alive. What’d he have to say?”

  “The kid’s distraught, naturally. His doc has him on anxiety and depression meds. He denies any drug involvement. He told us the lawyer, Allison Trotter, was more like a mother to him than his own mother and he wanted to give her a present since he was going off to school. He says his dad gave him the money.”

  “You believe him?”

  Rye shook his head. “Not for a minute. And there’s no evidence we could find of $71,000 dollars coming from any of Green’s accounts to pay for the car. The kid has an attorney who has informed us his client has nothing more to say. We mentioned dope and the lawyer laughed in my face. Said the kid was headed to Duke.”

  “Okay, so what does Demarious have to say?”

  “With a little less polish, he said, ‘suck my dick and then talk to my fucking lawyer’,” said Rye. “And that’s an exact quote.”

  Jake laughed. “Good one. But what I really want to know is did you find any extortion demand information aimed at Braxton, senior, or any large sums leaving his bank accounts going overseas?”

  “Extortion?” Rye’s eyebrows scrunched as a puzzled look creased his face. “From whom? We’re working the dope angle.”

  55

  Black Point, Alabama

  Wednesday, June 5, 2019

  JAKE AND HIS LEAN MUSCLED PARTNER GHOSTED INTO TOWN like night shadows. Passing through the stoplight at Colony Street, the town clock read 4:14 a.m.

  Black Point is a carefree, semitropical village situated on tall bluffs overlooking the amber waters of Mobile Bay. It’s an enclave flush with creative types where leafy trees are revered, abundant flowers are coddled, and building codes are micromanaged.

  The place had changed since Jake left twenty-six years ago. The expansive bayfront old money estates had been renovated, spruced-up. Rickety, uninspired, in-town shacks were being shaved off their lots to make way for modern high-cachet homes designed in the classic vernacular architecture of the old south. Sophisticated money was moving in. The place had been discovered.

  On Black Point Avenue, in the heart of the town, he glanced over at Wild Bill’s office. Plywood covered the blown-out windows. Everything was quiet now.

  His mom’s house was no more than a mile away, one home off Great Bay Road. It was a cozy bungalow built in ‘36 with exposed rafter tails and covered with shiplap siding coated with jonquil yellow paint. A rain-loving tin roof with a hint of rust in the valleys covered the house. A yellow twenty-five-watt bug light shone over the front entrance, no other lights through the blinds. Though dark, Jake knew the yard was golf course green and fresh flowers circled the mailbox.

  Everything about the
home was happy, except Ed had been gone seventeen years. Jake thought about his adoptive father daily.

  The neighborhood was silent, no dog barks, no cars poking around, just a few unseen Boo Radleys lurking in the dark. Night dwellers. By nine that morning he’d hear he was in town.

  He edged his Tahoe up over the sidewalk and right down to the edge of the 40-foot bay front bluff. Fading rosy moon glow lit the way. Only a couple hours until sunrise. Tall slash pines sparsely covered the dewy-grassed overlook. Flower beds lined the road ready to wake the day with wet color. Locals were proud of this bluff with ample reason. Just before twilight, the western skyline uncorks wild palettes of corals and pinks and purples that drift into a starlit indigo night, sunsets every bit the caliber of anything in Malibu.

  Jake stepped out of the Tahoe, glanced toward the water at the lights, dull yellow from the Black Point pier below. Other lights danced like diamonds on the black water’s distant surface toward Mobile, Alabama, fifteen miles northwest across the bay. Jasmine and honeysuckle drifted past his nose on salty bay air. His mother was safely asleep in her house 150 feet away. He was home.

  A real good place for a murder.

  56

  GRAY DAYLIGHT, the earliest dawn before the sunrise. His watch said 5:35. Jake could finally make out the human movement he expected to see on the bluff forty yards south of him. He quietly slipped out of the Tahoe and moved from tree to tree drifting as silently as he could in the direction of the motion.

  Twenty yards from his target he heard the familiar voice. The small man faced away from Jake with his arms and legs participating in slow motion tai chi as he spoke.

  “Jake Montoya. I’m surprised you and your animal didn’t notice me when I peeked at you in the truck. Your eyes were closed.”