Mortal Dilemma

by H. Terrell Griffin

  “How in the world did a Middle Eastern group of murderers take over a small-time New Jersey operation like Thomason’s? I’m guessing they didn’t buy him out.”

  “They kidnapped his live-in girlfriend, a Syrian woman named Rahima. They told him if he didn’t cooperate, they’d kill her.”

  “Did he get her back?”

  “No. They’ve still got her.”

  “I don’t think she’s coming back,” I said.

  “I agree, but hope springs eternal and all that.”

  “Is there a connection to Rachel Fortson’s death?” I asked.

  “Yes. Fortson was placing bets through Thomason’s bookmaking operation, going through Thomason’s Florida franchisee, Wally Delmer. He was losing money hand over fist and got deeper and deeper into Thomason. When the Arabs took over, they went after Fortson and told him he had to make a choice. They would make a rough example of him by killing him slowly and videoing it to use as an example to other delinquent debtors, or he could agree to kill his sister and inherit her trust and get the insurance money and pay them off.”

  “And Peter agreed.”

  “Yes. Delmer arranged for the murder, again using Bates.”

  “And Bates hired Jeremy Smithson, the kid in the panhandle, to actually kill Rachel,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  “How did they keep Fortson on the hook after he paid them what he owed?”

  “Old-fashioned blackmail. He had to either continue cooperating and giving them lots of money, or they’d kill him. They still had the video camera ready.”

  “I almost feel sorry for the bastard. He had no way out. Where does D. Wesley Gilbert come into all this?”

  “He got in the same way Fortson did. He was into Thomason for a lot of money and the Arabs made him a deal that, as they say, he couldn’t refuse. He was sort of a facilitator. He didn’t have the money to pay them, but his status in the Orlando community, and to some extent, statewide, gave him a lot of immunity.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “that and the fact that he was a well-known idiot who didn’t have the brains to put something like that together.”

  “There’s that. Whatever, it worked. They used him to help disguise the source of a lot of the money that Fortson was paying them.”

  “What do you know about Ishmael’s Children?”

  “Our agency wasn’t really following them, but the CIA was on top of it. The man who runs the operation is a Saudi imam named Ibrahim Nazari. He and his organization were mentioned in the documents taken from bin Laden after the SEALS got him. He’s a nasty one. He probably runs more suicide bombings using young girls and boys than all the others put together. His group has been more active in this country than most of them. They raise a lot of money and pass it on to the al-Qaeda nuts all over the world. It turns out that they keep some of the loot and use it to run their own ops.”

  “Do you have any idea about who Thomason’s partners were?”

  “Yes. He gave them up without a fight. We’re looking for them, but it looks like they’ve gone to ground. We’ll get them, though. Sooner or later. Ultimately, the so-called partners reported to Nazari.”

  “Did he give you anything on who was trying to kill J.D. up in Gainesville?”

  “He did. Wally Delmer came up with the idea and Thomason agreed to it. Delmer was afraid that J.D. was making some progress on linking the murder of Rachel Fortson to Peter and then up the chain to him, Thomason, and eventually the Arab partners.”

  “What did Gilbert know?”

  “He only knew that he was arranging for the one named Skeeter to kill somebody. He maintained that he didn’t know who the target was, and he wasn’t about to ask. He also sent the money to Wally to pay off the civilian worker at the sheriff’s office in Franklin County.”

  * * *

  J.D. was spending the afternoon in her office at the police station catching up on paperwork. I called her and gave her the short version of my phone conversation with Kendall. “Looks like that should wrap up both Rachel’s and Peter’s murder and the attempt on your life. A good way to close the cases.”

  “I’m glad we’ve got it all wrapped up, but I don’t think I will be able to close the cases. The national security people aren’t going to let me talk to Thomason or Delmer, so I’m not going to have the evidence I need tying Bates and Fortson and the others to Rachel’s murder or to Peter’s murder. I guess I can use Skeeter’s confession to let the Alachua County sheriff close that case. I don’t have anything I can give the Franklin County sheriff to close the case on the Smithson murder. Dave Kendall can’t turn Wally over to me, if he’s still alive.”

  “I doubt they’re finished with those guys yet.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You want to get some dinner?” I asked.

  “We could meet at the Haye Loft for a quick bite. Then I’ll have to get back to the office and finish up on all these cases. Have you talked to Jock today?”

  “Not yet. I’ll give him a call in a few minutes. You want to stay at my place tonight?”

  “No, sugar. I’ve got to go back to the office. I’m going to have to go through all that stuff on all the cases and come up with some rational explanation as to why I want to close them. I need to compare notes with Steve Carey at some point. You go home after dinner and get a good night’s sleep.”

  We had a quick dinner, and J.D. left to meet Steve Carey at the police station. I was still nervous about her being alone and asked, “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Yeah. There’s only one way into my condo and I’ve got a big gun. And Bates is dead. I’ll be fine. I’ll call you in the morning.” A buss on my cheek and she was gone. I stayed for another beer and a little conversation with Sammy and Eric, the bartenders, and went home. I read for a while and turned out my light at ten. My bed felt desperately empty.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7

  I CAME WIDE awake suddenly, my heart racing, my brain alive and sorting through all the possibilities of what had disturbed my sleep, tuning up my reflexes, getting them ready for action. It’s the way an infantry soldier wakes in the middle of the night when some little thing is out of place, maybe the sound of a broken twig, or the shifting of the desert sand, or more ominously, the tiny sound of metal on metal that a sling swivel might make on the barrel of a rifle.

  I looked at the clock on my bedside table. A little after midnight. I’d only been asleep for an hour or so. I slipped out of bed and went to the windows that overlooked the backyard and bay. The moon was high, hidden by a thin layer of clouds, and shed minimal light on the area. I saw a man standing on my dock, facing my house. He stood as still as a statue. I couldn’t make out his face in the dim light, or see if he held a weapon. What was he doing there? Had he come by boat? If so, the boat must be moored on the far side of my boat where it would not be visible from the house. The man seemed to be alone, but I couldn’t bank on that. Terrorists tend to run in packs.

  I retrieved a nine-millimeter Glock 17 from the drawer of my bedside table. I had to get into the yard and see if I could figure out what the man on the dock was doing. I went to the window again, looked out. The man hadn’t moved. I quietly pulled on a pair of dark cargo shorts and a black t-shirt, and slipped my feet into an old pair of boat shoes. My cell phone was in its charger. I put it in my pocket in case I needed it to call for help, but on the off chance that somebody would call at that time of the night, I turned it off. I didn’t want a ringing phone to alert anybody that I was close.

  I went into the living room and moved slowly past the windows. I didn’t want to show any movement that might catch the eye of someone in the front yard. I could see nothing out of the ordinary. The weak illumination from the nearby streetlight wasn’t much help.

  I eased the front door open, inch by inch, and slipped out, pushing the door closed behind me. I crept across the yard, bent over, and staying as close to the ground as I could while keeping my legs under me. I m
oved to the corner of the house on the bedroom side and peered carefully around it. I saw a slight movement. It was hard to see, but I decided it was somebody sneaking toward me, using the same technique I was. I stood stock-still and waited. More movement. It was definitely a human form, coming my way. He stopped. I didn’t move a muscle, hoping to blend into the darkness. The figure waited for a minute, maybe less, and then turned and walked slowly toward the back of the house, putting one foot ahead, stopping, listening, then bringing up the other foot, another step, another stop, quietly, still bent over in an attempt to hide himself. What the hell was he doing? Where was he going? Had he seen me? Was he armed? Was it the man I’d seen on the dock? No way to tell.

  I followed him, moving one careful step at a time. He turned the corner of the house and disappeared. I picked up my pace, still staying as quiet as possible. Within a minute I was at the spot where the intruder had vanished. I stuck the top of my head around the corner, just far enough to see. I peered along the back of my house. Nothing. Where had the man gone?

  I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, to my left, in the direction of the bay and my boat dock. A man was walking toward me from the bay, the deep gloom enshrouding him and making him almost invisible. I turned and trained my pistol on him. “Stop,” I said. “Don’t move. I’ll shoot you dead if you so much as twitch.”

  Suddenly, there was an arm around my throat, a muscled arm, tightening. I smelled the odor of old sweat and garlic breath. Before I could react, I felt a pinprick in my neck. As my eyesight dimmed, I saw the man from the dock moving closer. He appeared as a wraith floating through the fog of my diminishing consciousness. My mind flashed to the blurry photo of Youssef al Bashar and matched it to the man approaching me, his face fixed in a cruel grin, a rictus of evil. Then the blackness took me and there was nothing.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7

  J.D. AND STEVE Carey had made a long night of it, working on the documents sent by Parrish. She had finally given it up, left the police station, and gone home. By the time she fell into bed totally exhausted, it was a little after two in the morning. She slept fitfully, the numbers and names found in the trove of information she’d studied running through her dreams. She finally gave the night up a little before six o’clock, took a shower, dressed, made a pot of coffee, and dug into the documents again.

  She couldn’t concentrate. She called Matt. He was an early riser and would be awake by now. She was thinking about one of those Belgian waffles they served at the Blue Dolphin café. Breakfast with Matt would give her a chance discuss some of what she’d learned during the evening. She could use his insight.

  There was no answer on Matt’s house phone. It wasn’t quite seven o’clock. Maybe he was already out for his daily run. She called his cell phone. It rang only once before his voice mail picked up. The phone was turned off. This wasn’t right. If Matt were out of the house, he’d have his cell phone with him, and it would be turned on.

  Matt’s cottage was only a little over a mile from her condo. She drove there through the early morning twilight, worry tickling the edge of her thoughts. It wasn’t like him to be out of communication. It was part of the ethos of the twenty-first century. Everybody had to be in touch with everyone and available by phone, or text, or Twitter, or something, twenty-four hours a day.

  J.D. turned onto Matt’s street and saw that his SUV was still in his driveway. She pulled in behind the Explorer. She tried to use her key to let herself into the front door of his house. It wasn’t locked. She stepped through the door and called to him. No answer. She went to his bedroom. His cell phone wasn’t attached to its charger on his bedside table. The bed had been slept in, the sheets and blanket left askew. Matt always made his bed as soon as he got out of it in the morning. He ascribed that almost compulsive behavior to his Army training.

  J.D. went through the rest of the house. Nobody home and no sign of Matt’s cell phone. She had a thought and went back to Matt’s bedroom and looked in his closet. His only pair of running shoes was there. She checked the bathroom. His toothbrush was in its holder. She touched the bristles. Dry. It had not been used that morning. Matt always brushed his teeth first thing after getting out of bed.

  She checked the kitchen. The coffee pot was unused. She let herself out the back door. His boat was in its slip. She walked around the house. At one corner, she saw a rupture in the neat grass, two divots displaced. An ornamental bush was partially flattened. And beneath the bush she saw a nine-millimeter Glock 17. Matt’s gun.

  J.D. pulled her phone from its holster on her belt and called her chief, Bill Lester. He answered with a gruff, “I’m about to get in the shower, J.D. I hope this is good news.”

  “Matt’s missing, Bill.”

  “Missing?”

  “He’s not at his house. His bed’s been slept in, but his cell phone isn’t here and he’s not answering it, and I found his gun and signs of a struggle in the yard.”

  “I’m on my way. Call dispatch and get them to roust out Kevin and tell him to get the Manatee crime scene people moving. I’ll send the patrol car closest to you on over and I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Do you have your weapon?”

  “I do. I’ll be all right. I’ll stay in the front yard.”

  In less than two minutes, J.D. heard a siren coming her way and almost immediately a Longboat Key police car pulled to a stop in front of the house. A young officer got out and walked over to her. “What’s going on, J.D.? I just got a radio call from the chief who told me to, and I quote, ‘Get your ass to Matt Royal’s house now. Siren and lights.’”

  “Matt’s missing, Joe. It looks like some kind of altercation took place. I think somebody kidnapped him.”

  “Let’s hope not. The chief told me to stick with you. He’s got everybody coming this way. Both shifts.”

  J.D. knew that the patrol shifts changed at seven every morning. The night shift would be leaving and the day shift coming on duty. There’d be a lot of cops to canvass the neighborhood, talking to the neighbors, looking for evidence, trying to get a lead on Matt’s whereabouts. There’d be hell to pay if he wasn’t really missing. But J.D. knew he had been taken. There was no other explanation and she realized that there was a chance she’d never see him again.

  She felt the tears welling, but she choked them back. She was a cop and she would act like one. Her job was to find Matt, and she knew that the best way to overcome her panic at the thought of losing him was to throw herself into the job and concentrate her mind on getting him back.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7

  I SLOWLY BECAME aware that I was alive. First, there was a buzzing in my ears, or maybe my brain, that diminished slowly, second by second. Then the headache hit me with the ferocity of a speeding train, the pain so severe and debilitating that I vomited, the acid burning my throat. I tried to put a hand to my mouth to wipe off the residue. I couldn’t move either hand. I tugged at the right and then the left and concluded that my wrists were bound behind me and secured to the back of the chair.

  I opened my eyes, expecting my head to explode. There was little light, but I could see that I was sitting in a straight-back chair, my wrists pinioned to the back of the chair by what felt like duct tape. I tried to move my lower legs. No go. I looked down. They were duct-taped to the legs of the chair. I was totally immobilized.

  I looked around the room. There were windows, but drapes had been drawn, giving the room the look of twilight. I could not tell from the little bit of light what time of day it was. I just knew that it wasn’t dark outside and that meant that I’d been unconscious for at least several hours, or maybe several days.

  The room was bare of furniture except for the chair to which I was bound. It was quiet. I wondered if the room was soundproofed. Then I thought of the windows. If there were windows, the room couldn’t be completely soundproofed. Maybe they were double-paned like the hurricane force wind-resistant windows tha
t the newer building codes required.

  My mind was wandering. What the hell did I care about building codes? I tried to concentrate, but my brain wouldn’t hold still. Errant images floundered around in there and confused me. I had no concept of time, but since light was slipping through the draped windows, I deduced that it was daytime. But I’d already figured that out. Concentrate, Royal. What day? What time zone? How long had I been out?

  I tried to retrieve my last conscious thoughts before waking up in this dismal room. I was at my house, in my yard, and Youssef was walking toward me. An arm was around my throat and there had been a sharp pain in the side of my neck. My last memory, but it slipped and slid through my consciousness, and I wasn’t sure if it was real.

  My mouth was dry, a raging thirst overtaking my senses. I croaked out a sound, a single word that I think was, “Hello.” No response. I tried again. Louder. And then a third time, louder again. Nothing. I slumped back in the chair and tried to clear my mind.

  The door to the room opened and a man walked in. He wore a ski mask, his face completely obscured. “You’re a pig,” he said in lightly accented English. “You’ve vomited all over yourself. It stinks in here.”

  “Water,” I said.

  “I need some information.”

  “I need water.”

  “First the information.”

  “First the water. I can hardly talk. Give me water and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

  The man left the room and returned a moment or two later with a plastic bottle of water, the kind you find at the grocery store. He unscrewed the cap and put the open end of the bottle to my mouth, tipped it up. The water came so fast I couldn’t swallow it all. It flowed out of my mouth, and I began to cough. The man pulled the bottle away.