72 Hours (A Thriller)

by Moreton, William Casey

  CHAPTER 57

  With late afternoon drawing down and evening only a few short hours away, they made preparations for nightfall. Shadows lengthened as the sun went down behind the ridges of the mountains. The desert cooled significantly. Raj had shouldered a rifle and was sitting watch outside, glassing the horizon for unwelcome activity. Simeon opened a locker and pulled out more ammo. He handed Archer a Kevlar vest.

  “Ever taken a hit in one of these?” Archer asked him.

  Simeon grinned and nodded. “In Berlin. Took a 9mm slug from a Kimber at close range. Knocked me on my ass. Broke two ribs and turned my gut all black and blue. I wouldn’t be here now without it. I’m a big fan.”

  Archer zipped up the vest.

  Simeon keyed his walkie-talkie, rousing his brother for an update.

  “Just me and the coyotes,” Raj reported.

  Simeon had taken second shift. Archer would be up again in a couple of hours. It would be cool and dark for his next watch.

  The kids had discovered a television. An ancient twenty-three-inch set jacked into a satellite dish that pulled in a few hundred pirated channels. It sat at the end of the long table in the camera monitoring room. They stared at VH1 for hours, laughing at an endless parade of disposable reality TV.

  The Toyota Prius was now just a dark, static silhouette.

  The stillness made Archer nervous. It was the calm before the storm.

  CHAPTER 58

  The Volkswagen Passat was parked beneath the iron girders of a massive overpass near an industrial area of the city, warehouses and rail yards visible beyond fields overgrown with weeds. The late afternoon sun turned the brown weeds golden and made the tall grass glow. The sprawling buildings in the distance were silhouetted against the gray sky.

  Julie Sperry was seated at the steering wheel with her hands at her sides. The motor was turned off. Her face was streaked with mascara where tears had poured down her cheeks. She could barely breathe. The piano wire wrapped around her throat was cutting into her windpipe. She couldn’t understand what was happening. She couldn’t understand how the nice lady she’d met that afternoon, Wendy Cohen, had gotten into her car, or why. And she couldn’t understand why Wendy Cohen had attacked her.

  Noella Chu was in the back seat holding the piano wire around Julie Sperry’s throat.

  “Open your cell phone,” Noella Chu said.

  Between sobs, struggling for breath, Julie said, “Why…why are you doing this?”

  “Open your cell phone.”

  Julie reached out a trembling hand, fumbled for her purse and dumped the contents out on the seat beside her. She held up her cell phone so that the woman strangling her with the piano wire could see.

  “Dial your husband.”

  “I…I don’t…understand!” The wire was crushing her larynx.

  “Dial your husband’s cell. Do it now.”

  Julie could barely see through her tears. She scrolled through the contacts list and sent the call to Jason’s cell. It rang twice. Then Jason’s voice was in her ear.

  “Hey, babe,” he said.

  “Oh my God, Jason, it’s Julie…” Her voice constricted.

  A pause. “Babe, what’s – ”

  Noella Chu grabbed the cell from Julie Sperry’s hand.

  “Listen to me now,” she said. “I will kill her. Do you want to hear her die?”

  “Who is this?”

  “You will do as I say. You will not trace this call or I kill her. I will cut her throat. Do you understand?”

  Jason was silent. Noella Chu had the man’s attention.

  “Tell me what you want. Just don’t hurt my wife.”

  “Where is Lindsay Hammond?”

  “Oh my God, that’s what this is about?”

  “Where is Lindsay Hammond?”

  “I have no idea!”

  Noella Chu did not hesitate. She tightened the slack in the wire, constricting it against Julie’s windpipe. Julie wheezed, crying out.

  “Do you hear her pain?”

  Jason’s voice went low and quiet.

  “I don’t know who you are, but I’m begging you. Please don’t hurt her.”

  “Where is Lindsay Hammond?”

  Jason Sperry took a deep breath. “How do I make you understand? I don’t know where she’s at.”

  “You are FBI Special Agent Jason Sperry. You have ten minutes to utilize the resources at your disposal as a federal agent. I will allow your wife to remain alive for only those ten minutes. Call her cell phone in ten minutes with information regarding the location of Lindsay Hammond or I will leave her body for the animals to find and move on to someone else, someone who will give me what I want. This conversation is over.”

  Noella Chu disconnected the line.

  Julie Sperry convulsed with sobs.

  CHAPTER 59

  Julie Sperry’s cell rang seven minutes later.

  Noella Chu saw Jason’s name appear in the ID window. She answered.

  “Where is Lindsay Hammond?”

  “I need more time.”

  “I will not ask again. Tell me now.” Noella Chu was calm and unemotional.

  Jason Sperry was flustered. “All I can give you is a name. Ryan Archer. He was hired to protect Lindsay Hammond, but I have no way of locating him. They have disappeared. You have to give me more time! Please!”

  “No.”

  “Please, half an hour! That’s all I’m asking!”

  Noella Chu glanced at the rearview mirror at Julie Sperry’s panicked, pain-stricken face. Julie saw her looking and their eyes met. Noella Chu believed that Jason Sperry would go to the ends of the earth to rescue his wife. Break any law, cut any corner, tell any lie. He’d stop at nothing.

  “Find him,” she said. “You have twenty-nine minutes. Not a second more.” She ended the call. She leaned forward, gently bumping her cheek against the side of Julie Sperry’s headrest, her lips an inch from Julie’s ear. Noella Chu let up slightly on the piano wire.

  Julie gasped, sucking in a deep breath. Julie had seen the gun in Noella Chu’s lap and knew not to try anything stupid.

  “Drive,” Noella Chu said.

  Julie was sobbing. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Drive, or I won’t wait for his call to kill you.”

  Hot tears streamed down Julie’s face. She could feel the deep marks and bruising from the piano wire. She put the car in gear and rolled it out from beneath the overpass.

  CHAPTER 60

  It was less than twenty minutes when Julie Sperry’s cell phone rang again. Noella Chu answered. The conversation was brief. Noella Chu responded to the FBI Special Agent in her usual flat businesslike tone.

  Special Agent Sperry was frantic.

  “My partner gave Archer his backup cell phone.” He quickly relayed the ten digit cell number. “I contacted the service provider to find out the incoming and outgoing call activity for the past twenty-four hours for that number. The list is short. No incoming calls, and he’s called out to only three different numbers.” He dictated the list of phone numbers for her.

  “What else?” she demanded bluntly.

  “There is nothing else I can do, I’m telling you!”

  “Not good enough, Jason.”

  “You are asking me to do the impossible!”

  “I believe you will do the impossible if that is what it takes to spare the life of your lovely bride.”

  She could hear the strain in his voice as he spoke through gritted teeth. “Please…I’m trying.”

  “Dig deeper, Jason. Julie is counting on you.”

  “Let me speak to her.”

  Noella Chu held the phone to Julie’s lips.

  “…Jason…please…”

  Noella Chu pulled the phone away and said simply, “We’ll be waiting.”

  Then she dropped off the line.

  CHAPTER 61

  Kline saw Jason Sperry’s number show up on the Caller ID window of his cell again and ignored it. Kline shook h
is head. The kid could be like that sometimes. Always wanted to be in the middle of everything. Wanted more info than he really needed. That was the way with junior agents. Ambitious. Anxious. Gung-ho. But Kline didn’t have time for it. He had already told Sperry all he knew, and more than he really should have. He had a headache a mile long. A headache with the name Gaston Dunbar stamped on it. He was headed to San Quentin for the second time in five hours. The governor was breathing down his neck. The governor wasn’t happy about the notion of sticking Dunbar with the needle until they had collected the bodies.

  Kline was buckling under the pressure. He had no choice but to play Dunbar’s game. He would have to stand in his cell on death row and try to get a straight answer from a man who would be dead by sunrise on Monday.

  CHAPTER 62

  Smackdown had locked himself away inside his mansion in Bel Air. He stared at his cell phone and waited. He had driven home in a crazed flurry, seized by a sudden attack of anxiety and fear. He waited for Soji to call. Mr. Jupiter demanded updates every half hour. They had to know if Lindsay and the Hummer were on the move. So far, nothing had changed.

  Smackdown took a hit off a joint and swirled whiskey in a glass. He was on his way to getting smashed out of his mind. He couldn’t get his mind off the hundred million, tax-free.

  When Mr. Jupiter called, Smackdown assured him that Lindsay Hammond hadn’t moved an inch.

  CHAPTER 63

  The plane was a DHC-6 Twin Otter. It was a turboprop outfitted with two long bench seats that ran the length of both sides of the passenger cabin. It was a non-pressurized aircraft so that the door could be opened for skydiving. It sat inside the secure hanger owned by Mr. Jupiter’s business associate. The Otter was being fueled and loaded.

  The flight would not leave the ground until midnight.

  The ten men were resting. It would be a long night.

  But Mr. Jupiter did not plan to rest until Lindsay Hammond was dead and the five hundred million was safely dispersed and hidden among the banks of South America.

  CHAPTER 64

  A guard the size of a U-Haul truck led Kline through the maze of corridors toward the tier of the Adjustment Center where Gaston Dunbar was imprisoned. The guard had an assault rifle slung from his shoulder. Kline followed him in silence. Their footsteps echoed off the concrete, the echoes rolling down the length of the corridors.

  The pounding in his head that had begun earlier in the day had intensified. He had poured a gallon of bad coffee on the problem, but the pain remained.

  Doors slammed. Buzzers droned. Inmates cursed at him through the tiny grids in the doors of their cells.

  The guard stopped at a door of thick iron bars and gestured at a guard with a paunch and gray stubble over his ears. The guard with the paunch hit a switch and the door clanged open. They passed through, Kline feeling himself being pulled deeper into hell.

  It was Friday evening. Just over forty-eight hours from show time. Ordinarily, Kline would have been itching to get Dunbar on the table and get the toxic juice pumping into his veins, but he needed answers before Dunbar moved on into eternity. The Governor wanted answers. The media wanted answers. The public wanted answers. And Kline was the one who had to go in and dig them out of him.

  They turned down the tier. Kline’s stomach twisted.

  They stopped at Dunbar’s cell. Kline peer in through the narrow sliver of window. Dunbar was on his back on the thin mattress, eyes closed.

  The guard hammered a fist against the door and called out in a booming voice that rattled Kline’s skull. “Wake up!”

  Dunbar’s eye flicked open. He stared at the ceiling and blinked. He didn’t move. He didn’t sit up or make any sort of abrupt reaction other than the open eyes.

  Kline stepped aside to let the guard open the door.

  The door jolted open.

  The guard gestured with his chin. “He’s all yours. I’ll be right here when you’re done.”

  Kline stepped inside the cell. The guard slammed the door shut behind him.

  Dunbar continued staring at the ceiling.

  Kline stood just inside the door, absorbing the sparse details of the tiny, bleak cell. The toilet. The bed. The sink. The stains on the walls. The aroma of death standing so near.

  “I don’t get many visitors,” Dunbar said in a neighborly, conversational tone. “It’s a pleasant surprise. A real treat to see a friendly face.”

  The headache buzzed between Kline’s ears. He was in no mood.

  “What does it feel like?” Kline asked.

  Dunbar moved only his eyes, ratcheting them toward Kline.

  “What does what feel like?”

  Kline shrugged. “Today is Friday. This is the last Friday you’ll ever see. What does that feel like?”

  Dunbar stared at him long and hard. Then his eyes went back to the ceiling. “Honestly, I’ve never been much of a Friday kind of guy. I won’t miss Fridays much.”

  “That leaves Monday through Thursday. You’re done with those, too. You’re down to one Saturday and one Sunday, then it’s lights out. How does that feel, Dunbar?”

  “There is a certain comfort, a certain power in knowing the day of your death, Special Agent Kline. I view it as a gift. I’ve had the chance to watch it approach. To embrace it. To make peace with it. Death will not take me by surprise. You, on the other hand, might die tomorrow in a car wreck and be completely blindsided by it, or you might drop right there where you stand now. Your heart could just stop and you would not have had the luxury I’ve been granted of preparing my mind and soul. In that way, I consider myself fortunate.” Dunbar pursed his lips.

  “Think I’d rather have another twenty, thirty years, and take my chances,” Kline said drolly.

  “To each his own.”

  Kline flicked his tongue between his lips. He shoved his left hand into a pocket, the fingers of his right hand rubbed together anxiously.

  Dunbar noticed. He lifted his head from his thin pillow. He turned on the bed and dropped his feet to the floor and sat up.

  “Ah,” he said. “I think I know what you need.”

  Kline watched him carefully.

  Dunbar brushed aside the blanket on his bed and inserted two fingers into a narrow slit in the mattress. He brought out a cigarette.

  The sight of it made Kline’s lungs ache.

  “Hmm?” Dunbar said, placing the smoke on the end of the bed nearest Kline.

  Kline grunted, “I don’t smoke. I quit.”

  Dunbar grinned. “Good for you.”

  “Tell me where you put the bodies.”

  Dunbar shrugged. “Why?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “You’re going to have to do better than that, Special Agent Kline. I’m kind of beyond the point of trying to be a Boy Scout.”

  “Did you ever really love your wife and daughter?”

  The humor briefly dimmed from Dunbar’s eyes. He was thoughtful for a moment. He smirked. “With all my heart.”

  “You can’t hurt them any more than you already have. And you can’t hurt me. This is not personal for me. I’m just trying to do the job the state pays me to do. I’d like to see them buried someplace nice. Out of respect. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “You should have seen your eyes yesterday,” Dunbar said. “You never saw it coming. What a fool you were to give me an opportunity like that. I’m truly dumbfounded by your stupidity. Now the world is falling apart around you. Every criminal within a few hundred miles wants a piece of the action, and you allowed it to happen because you’re more stupid than you could possibly understand.”

  Dunbar sat with his back to the wall, light dancing in his eyes.

  “Where are the bodies?” Kline demanded.

  Dunbar ignored him. The subtle changes in Kline’s face spoke volumes. Dunbar had successfully agitated him. He turned and lay on his back on the bed. Crossed his legs at the ankles. Propped his hands behind his head on the pillow.
<
br />   “I’m disappointed in you,” Dunbar said. “You are pathetic. You are a failure. I hope you can see that about yourself.”

  “Where are Sidney and Robin?”

  Dunbar did not reply.

  “What do you want? Booze? A hooker? Name it.”

  “Don’t insult me.”

  “What are you trying to prove?”

  “I’m not going to make it that easy. The location of my wife and child is the only thing I have left that is mine alone. And it happens to be the one thing you most need. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  Kline stared at the pilfered cigarette clinging to the edge of the bedding. He lusted for it. He could almost taste the paper on his lips.

  Dunbar appeared relaxed enough to simply drift off to sleep.

  “Special Agent Kline,” Dunbar said.

  Kline hesitated a beat. “What?”

  “A confession is what you want, isn’t it?”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “Well, I suppose I’m ready to tell you the story. How I did it and why.”

  Kline did not respond.

  “I loved Sidney from the first moment I saw her, but she betrayed my love and my trust, and I could not allow that betrayal to go unpunished. I became suspicious. I suspected she was seeing someone. It was the little things. She seemed no longer as interested in sex, this woman who’d been insatiable in bed from the moment we met.”

  “How’d you discover Kenneth Brant?”

  Dunbar wet his upper lip. “Sidney got careless. She’d gotten away with it for so long she became complacent. I spotted her getting into Brant’s Ferrari.”

  Kline rested his weight against the inside of the cell door, captivated and saddened and repulsed all in the same breath. After all the endless hours of investigative work, he was finally getting the truth, the real story, straight from the mouth of the monster.

  Kline asked, “Did you kill Brant first?”