Pawnbroker: A Thriller

by Jerry Hatchett

  “What do you propose?” I said.

  When RoboVoice spoke again, I could hear the malice in his voice even through the disguise.

  “I don’t propose anything. Instead, I’ll tell you exactly what to do, and if you ever want to see your family again, you will do exactly what I say. Do you understand?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “I will chop your brats into pieces and scatter them up and down this river for one hundred fucking miles. Do—you—understand?”

  I nodded.

  “Good.”

  Since he saw the nod, he had to be in a position to see me. I quickly scanned the windows but saw nothing.

  Docker motioned for me to board their boat, then stepped back as I made the short jump. He raised a finger to his ear and stood still for a moment, obviously getting instructions through an earpiece. A few seconds later, he said, “Hands on the wall and spread your legs.”

  I did it. He kept his gun on me with one hand and patted me down with the other. He took my Sig and the two extra magazines, a knife I had tucked in my rear waistband, and worst of all, he pulled the earpiece from my ear and the radio from my belt. He motioned toward the stern with his pistol.

  “Let’s go for a ride,” he said.

  Chapter 127

  Using a small head-mounted flashlight—it was fitted with a red lens to preserve her night vision—Penny checked the chart in her lap, then looked at a handheld GPS unit. Up ahead, the channel took a forty-five degree curve to the right. The GPS, which they had programmed with the aid of charts and satellite imagery from the internet, marked her distance from the old building at 1,236 yards, just around the bend. She killed the outboard and moved to the front of the boat, then used a wooden paddle to scull into a small cove on the right.

  She stepped out of the boat and her foot sank into mud above the ankle. When she pointed the light at the ground, her heart jumped. Footprints. Fresh ones. She pushed the transmit button on the radio pack.

  “Gray, come in,” she said, just above a whisper. No answer. “Gray, you there?” Still nothing. Her heart beat faster. She stood still, listening for sounds that didn’t belong but hearing only the “music of the night,” to borrow an old phrase from her father. Crickets. Cicadas. A bullfrog croaked and another answered.

  She looked closer at the footprints and saw that they led into the woods, toward the building. She retrieved the duffel from the boat, slung it over her shoulder. After checking the GPS one last time, she too headed into the woods, but not along the existing trail. If someone was ahead of her, and she was sure that was the case, she didn’t want to walk into an ambush.

  In the woods, the air was heavy and thick, filled with the pungent scent of vegetation that sprang from the rich, moist ground, then rotted in the absence of sunlight. Every few minutes Penny checked in with Jimmy and tried to reach Gray. No luck on the latter. That worried her, but she had no choice. She could only work the plan and hope he was all right.

  Chapter 128

  Rocky had picked up Ray Earl’s bicycle tracks before sundown, but he was having a hard time catching him on foot. He had studied an old county map that had been passed down from his daddy, the kind of map you couldn’t buy at the gas station. It was a hunter’s map, filled with markings of game trails and other tells that came in mighty handy to a year-round hunter.

  The map showed two ways into the spot where the building stood. The first was by an old government channel that left the river, passed right in front of the building, then looped back out to the river about three miles downstream. Ray Earl had taken the other route, the same one they’d been on the night they found the building. It was an old road, bad grown up and hadn’t been tended to in probably fifty years, but it was still plenty wide enough for Ray Earl to make good time on his bike.

  Rocky had grown up walking the woods and riding the river. He knew the sounds of the country the way a guitar player knew his chords. Something was going on. In the past hour he’d heard three different boats, all running outboards, put into the channel on the upstream end of the loop. The first two had gone quiet a while back, probably parked near the building. The third one sounded like it was about halfway between the river and the building. Then, just a few minutes ago, he heard something else. Not a boat, though. A jet ski. It was headed toward the building too, but it came in on the downstream end of the channel.

  He didn’t know just what was up, but he knew what he’d seen in that building that night—couldn’t forget it, truth be told—and he didn’t want a damn thing more to do with it. He wanted to find Ray Earl’s goofy ass and get them the hell out. He still didn’t know what he was gonna do about the sheriff being after him, but he’d jump that ditch when he found it. He suddenly stopped, listening hard. Something was moving about a hundred yards in front of him. He listened for a few seconds more, then broke into a jog.

  Chapter 129

  Penny approached from the rear, where the woods came within twenty-five yards of the building. Still in the cover of the trees, she moved slowly, testing each step before she put her weight down, determined not to step on something that would snap and give her position away. When she made it to the edge of the woods, she lay down and studied the building. It was long, over a hundred feet, built of clapboard that had long since shed its paint and turned the lifeless gray of old wood. Six windows were spaced out along its length, but she couldn’t see anything inside. She retrieved a pair of binoculars from the duffel and saw that the windows were covered from the inside with something black. Garbage bags? She could also now see a whitish light inside the building, visible at a couple of places where the black didn’t completely cover a window.

  After ten minutes of scanning the area, she saw no one. Penny stowed the binoculars and prepared to cross the open area between the woods and the building. She stayed on her belly in a commando crawl, moving slowly, patiently. Every three feet or so, she reached back and carefully pulled the duffel up beside her. The short trip seemed to take forever. When she was within ten yards of the building, the ground turned from hard dirt to gravel, the remnants of an old unpaved parking lot, she guessed. Many of the rocks had sharp edges, and the crawl became not just uncomfortable, but painful. She forced herself to go forward, fighting the urge to stand and run the rest of the way.

  Finally, she reached the building and rose to a crouch. She looked at her hands and saw that they were bleeding from a dozen small cuts. Staying low, she moved left to the nearest window, then stood. She had been right: The windows were covered from the inside with garbage bags. This one had a two-inch gap at the bottom, which was about eye level.

  She was looking in on a large room, lit only by a pair of Coleman lanterns. Straight ahead, she saw nothing but the lanterns. She looked left. Also nothing, just empty space, but when she looked to the right side of the room, she saw movement. That part of the room was dim, at the edge of the right lantern’s arc of light. It took a moment for her eyes to focus and her brain to interpret. When they did, she couldn’t stop a small gasp from escaping her mouth. She had to do something.

  She thought for a moment, then dropped back to a crouch and duck-walked to the left end of the building. She needed to hurry, but she also couldn’t get stupid. Not now. Staying low, she turned the corner. And found herself staring into the muzzle of a gun.

  Chapter 130

  I sat on the middle seat of the aluminum boat. Docker was behind me, one hand driving the outboard, if you can call it that; the guy acted like he had never driven a boat, going back and forth across the width of the water, almost capsizing it in the first little curve. The other hand gripped his .45 that rested on one of his giant knees and pointed in my general direction. We entered a deep bend in the channel and I saw the building. It sat in the middle of a clearing, around a hundred feet back from the bank. If a building can take on human characteristics, this one looked like a corpse. An ashen gray, glowing pale in the moonlight. Docker turned toward the bank, but he didn’t thro
ttle down until we were ten feet away.

  The boat made a screeching sound as it hit the shallow bank and continued forward, momentum driving it until the prop dug into the mud and brought us to a stop. It would’ve been the perfect time to make a move, but for the fact that I didn’t know where my kids and my father were. For now, I had no choice but to play along and hope I survived long enough to save them.

  I looked back at Docker. He remained in his seat, left hand still gripping the outboard tiller. His skin looked the color of the old building, the color of someone...terrified. He was scared of water. That had to be it. He felt safe on the yacht, but being a foot away from the water was a different matter.

  “You okay?” I said. I of course didn’t care if he fell over dead—would welcome it, in fact—but it couldn’t hurt to feign concern for the oaf.

  “Course I’m okay. Get out,” he said, motioning with the pistol.

  I stepped out, and he wobbled out behind me. We walked up a small trail through weeds that were at least five feet tall. I wondered where Penny was. This building was our rally point, the place she was to go to with the device and wait for me to tell her I had the girls and Dad, the place we were to go to, if possible, if things went wrong. It was obvious that our adversary had thought about the building before we did; it was undoubtedly the real reason he had insisted on changing our rendezvous point.

  I continued to feel like an idiot for not anticipating all this, but I tried to focus on coming up with a new plan.

  Along the way, I had watched both banks for a sign of Penny’s boat, but saw nothing. She would have known something was wrong when I dropped out of contact, so I could only hope she was nearby and prepared. If not, I was down to one flicker of hope: Teddy.

  Chapter 131

  Penny stood with her back against a pine tree the diameter of a telephone pole, securely lashed against the rough bark with duct tape at ankles, waist, and neck. Her hands were behind the tree, bound so tightly with a nylon tie that her fingers were now completely numb. She wasn’t gagged, but she dared not cry out. Standing in front of her, with a look on his face that hovered shakily between satisfaction and full-blown insanity, was Sheriff Ricky Ballard, close enough that she could smell his sour breath.

  “You know,” he said, “I knew I’d be killing you tonight, but having a few minutes, just me and you? That’s nice.” He leaned in and kissed her, ramming his tongue into her mouth so forcefully that she almost gagged. She tried to twist her head away but the tape around her throat was so tight that she choked. Then she felt his hands: one squeezing her breasts, the other grinding hard against her crotch.

  His filthy tongue, the breath, the groping; the horror of it all seemed to fill her soul to the point of bursting. A wave of intense nausea swelled inside her. She fought for a breath, and when she finally got it, she surrendered to the nausea. Vomit raced up her stomach and exploded into her mouth, her nose, and into Ballard’s mouth. As he pulled away, she heaved again. The acrid stream splattered his face, his eyes. He staggered back, choking and coughing as he tried to wipe the acidic puke from his eyes.

  Penny fought her own battle. Unable to bend over, she fought violently for a breath as her throat and larynx reacted convulsively to the vomit that ran back down her throat. In the struggle, she aspirated it. Her lungs burned from the vomit and her body screamed for air that couldn’t get through her seizing, constricted airway. The pain was intense, worse than anything she had ever experienced. Her vision faded to black and white as her oxygen-starved brain started to shut down. Penny Lane was dying, and she welcomed it. The convulsions weakened, then stopped. Tiny white flashes of light exploded in her field of view and her body went slack, held upright only by the duct tape. She saw Ballard coming toward her, but she was past caring. Her last thought was about Gray. She should have told him the truth.

  Chapter 132

  Carmen never knew such sensations existed. The pleasure was so intense that her mind couldn’t form words to describe it. She vaguely remembered the fear, but that was gone. She even remembered thinking the doctor was ugly and evil. Now...now she wanted more of him. He was on top of her. Up and down. In and out. Más, quiero mas. More. She looked into his face, his mouth open, his breath hot. His teeth were so yellow, like a lemon. Dientes de limón. That was funny. The music. Oh God, the music. She would never take the headphones off. Emilio. She would tell Emilio about this, how wonderful it was. Something about that, something about telling Emilio felt strange, but she couldn’t process it. Then the thought was gone, and there was only the pleasure, and the doctor. The wonderful doctor.

  * * *

  Wainwright couldn’t believe his good fortune. Most of the test subjects they furnished for his “clinical trials” were filthy trash straight off a long ride in a metal box. Fat or ugly, or fat and ugly, stinking Mexicans, women he wouldn’t touch with his cousin’s dally, much less his own. Oh, but how very different this one was. She was exquisite. Young, clean, gorgeous. He would very much like to keep this one.

  The girl moaned, and he put his hand over her mouth. “Shan’t have that, my dear girl,” he said into her ear. She struggled to breathe. “Can you be quiet?” She nodded and he removed his hand. Her smile was back now. She ran her tongue out and raised her head toward his. It was a dream. This nubile creature, beneath him, wanting him—

  “Well well well,” a voice said behind him. A familiar voice. Wainwright froze, literally in mid-thrust. The girl writhed, tried to pull him back down.

  “You’re quite the ladies’ man, doc,” Ballard said.

  Wainwright pulled completely out of the girl and started fumbling with his pants, trying to get them back up from around his ankles.

  “No pare,” the girl said. Don’t stop.

  He was on his feet now, zipping his fly. He looked down at her. “Shut up!”

  “Oooooh,” she said, and gave a seductive come-here motion with her finger.

  Wainwright bent over, grabbed the wire, and jerked the headphones off her, then turned to face Ballard. “I’m glad you could make it, sheriff.”

  Ballard walked toward him. “Oh, I’m sure you are, doc.”

  Wainwright gave a nervous smile. “Indeed I am. I do hope you understand I had no choice in the...the...how shall we put it...in my sudden change of employer?”

  Ballard smiled, stepped closer. “I understand perfectly.”

  Wainwright’s gaze drifted to Ballard’s right hand, which rested on the butt of his holstered gun, then back up to his face. He had been sweating for the past several minutes, but a different kind of sweat came now, the cold kind.

  The girl made a whimpering sound. Both men looked her way. She looked disoriented, terrified. She tried to cover herself with her hands.

  “Looks like she’s losing interest in you,” Ballard said. “Hard to imagine, stud like you.”

  “What do you want, sheriff?” Wainwright said, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice, failing.

  Ballard smiled and stepped closer.

  Chapter 133

  “Damn it, Ray Earl! How come you always got to pull some shit like this?” Rocky stood bent over, hands on his knees, trying to regain his breath from the sprint it took to catch Ray Earl before he rode right up to the front door of the building.

  “I’m real sorry, Rock.”

  Rocky looked up. Ray Earl stood beside his bicycle, head drooped. He was wearing a blue Blockbuster Video shirt with a picture of Shrek on the front. He looked like a scolded kid.

  “What am I gonna do with you, Ray Earl?”

  “I just wanted to collect some evidence and solve the case like Grissom, Rock. That’s all.” Now his lip was quivering.

  Rocky shook his head, the way he had a thousand times before. He had long since stopped trying to explain his relationship with Ray Earl Higgins. He wasn’t sure he understood it himself. He just knew that since the second grade, when Seth McGowan pushed Ray Earl down in the cafeteria and then led the rest of the bullies in
a “re-tard...re-tard...re-tard” chant, he had looked after him. (Rocky busted Seth in the head with a metal Starsky & Hutch lunchbox, and both he and Ray Earl wound up suspended.) Ray Earl needed him, and in a way, Rocky supposed he needed Ray Earl, too. So, here they were in the woods, no more than a couple hundred feet from what was no doubt the building from hell.

  Ray Earl’s head popped up.

  “What?” Rocky said.

  “I hear something.” His voice was quiet, barely more than a whisper.

  Rocky cocked his head. “I don’t.” He knew better than to discount his friend on this point. Ray Earl was a few cigarettes shy of a pack in some ways, but he made up for it in others. Like hearing. “Sounds like what?”

  “It’s a woman. Somebody’s...doing something to her, Rock.”

  And then Ray Earl took off in a wide-open, head-down run.

  Chapter 134

  It was a classic August night in Mississippi, which is to say it was miserable. The air was thick—tangible. The old gravel walkway crunched beneath our feet. We were no more than thirty feet from the front door to the building now. The door was ajar and I could see a glow inside, not electric, something powered by camp fuel maybe. Twenty feet. My kids and my father could be right through that door. Ten feet. I walked up the steps and onto a small porch, then stopped and looked back at Docker.

  “Go on in,” he said, still holding the gun on me.

  I pushed the door open and stepped into a large room, basically the size of the building, although there were a series of doors on the far right that led somewhere, showers probably. I knew this place had originally been built as a barracks for government workers during the Depression. Two Coleman lanterns sat roughly in the center of the room, about ten feet apart. Docker stepped in behind me and shut the door as I looked to the left.