MYSTERY THRILLER DOUBLE PLAY BOX SET (Two full-length novels)

by Osborne, Jon

  lawdog71: OK, Barry. I guess you’ve talked me into it. Just one quick drink, though, OK? What hotel are you staying at?

  Jack’s heartbeat thundered in his ears. His palms flooded with sweat. His stomach swam with nausea. His skin crawled. This was it. The payoff for which he’d been waiting ever since seeing the FBI Director on the friendship site while the old man had been fiddling with his phone in that coffee shop back in New York City during the Chessboard Killer investigation. Krugman had never revealed his true identity to Jack during the two months they’d been talking on the site, of course, but he hadn’t needed to. Jack knew exactly whom he was talking to.

  And now it was time for the venerable old Director to find out exactly whom he’d been talking to, too.

  bullets4justice: i’ll be in the holiday inn downtown. how about this: i’ll shoot you a quick message through the site when i get there and we’ll go from there. play things by ear. sound good to you?

  Blissfully, Krugman answered him immediately this time.

  lawdog71: Yep, sounds good to me. See you tonight, buddy. Looking forward to finally meeting you in person.

  Jack rose to his feet with an odd ringing sound echoing in his ears. A delicious sense of anticipation crackled through his brain. Shoving the iPhone deep into the front pocket of his jeans, he grabbed his beat-up brown leather backpack off the bed and shoved in the bottle of vodka that he’d convinced a homeless man outside a liquor store ten miles away to purchase for him earlier in the day in return for being allowed to keep the change: six dollars and thirty-two cents. Then Jack added the syringe loaded with crushed-up and liquefied sleeping pills.

  He paused, hoping the crude gambit would prove successful again. He was no chemist, certainly, but the sleeping pill trick had worked out fairly well for him the last time he’d tried it, right before he’d killed his idiot father with a sharp pair of scissors while the man’s whore of a girlfriend had snored off her latest bender on a sheetless bed fewer than twenty feet away with a tantalizing mound of exposed boob flesh peeking out teasingly from beneath the left side of her exquisite body and just crying out for Jack to touch it already.

  Time to see if the trick would work just one more time.

  Sliding the straps of the backpack over his shoulders, he headed for the door to the motel room and checked his watch once more. Seven-oh-eight now. He’d really need to hustle if he wanted to make it into Cleveland by ten and give himself enough time to transition properly into his new, knife-wielding persona.

  Don’t look now, Crawford Bell, Jack thought as he pulled shut the motel room door behind him without bothering to lock it, but Nathan Stiedowe is on his way to see you again.

  Is on his way to murder you again.

  For good, this time.

  CHAPTER 47

  10:35 p.m.; FBI field office; Lakeshore Avenue; downtown Cleveland

  Bill Krugman was in Bruce Blankenship’s office downtown, the last person left in the place as he talked on the phone with his wife. “Hey there, darlin’,” Krugman said, leaning back in his seat and propping up his feet on Blankenship’s desk blotter beside a coffee mug that read WORLD’S GREATEST DAD. “How’s my favorite gal in the entire world doin’ tonight?”

  Peggy laughed, no doubt rolling her beautiful brown eyes as she did so. Krugman could picture her gorgeous face in his mind as her soft voice filled his left ear. Peggy’s beautiful features hadn’t changed one little bit – to Krugman, at least – in more than fifty years. And, God, how he missed those features. And the feel of his fingertips as he brushed them lovingly against her soft cheek. And the subtle scent of her perfume in his nostrils as they lay cuddled close together in bed before falling asleep at night. Seemed to him more like two decades than two months since he’d last seen, touched or smelled her. Far too long by anyone’s estimation and an absolute lifetime to Krugman. Along with the annoyance of needing to conduct press conferences every now and then, one of the few parts of his job that he truly despised. Being away from Peggy was harder than almost anything else about his work, and he’d killed two people a couple months ago, for Christ’s sake. “I’m fine, you silly old flirt,” Peggy said, breaking into his thoughts. “Are you still at work?”

  Krugman lifted his left wrist and checked his watch, sighing heavily. He’d been at the office for nearly four hours already after having worked ten straight hours earlier in the day, trying desperately to cram two workdays into one. Still, tough as the hectic pace might be on him at his age, that was exactly how his schedule would look for the foreseeable future until he could get some sort of lead on where Jack Yuntz might be at the moment.

  Krugman gritted his teeth. The murdering little prick hadn’t made a peep for two solid months now, which certainly marked a good thing for the general populace, but only made catching the sadistic bastard that much more difficult. And as a direct result of the machinegun-wielding teen’s suddenly shy nature, the inter-agency task force of more than thirty people assigned to this case had been doing little more than sitting on their hands for the past sixty days. After all, you couldn’t very well follow any clues if no clues were being left behind for you to follow; no matter how many well-trained people you had at your disposal. “Yep,” Krugman said, sighing even more heavily now. “I’m still at work. Just wrapping things up now.”

  Peggy clucked her tongue. Krugman could almost see her lying in their bed in her nightgown as she did so, her hair still wet from her recent shower. He’d give just about anything in the world to be there with her right now. And why not? He was old, after all, not dead. Not yet, at least. “You need to slow down, Bill,” Peggy said. “And I mean, way down. You’re much too old to be keeping these crazy hours. You’re no spring chicken anymore.”

  Krugman laughed. Understatement of the century right there. “Yeah, I know, honey,” he said, shaking his head in bemusement. Peggy had never been the type to pull punches, and she sure as hell wasn’t the type to pull punches when it came to the issue of his health and wellbeing. No big surprise there, though. Being a nurse for the better part of her life hadn’t stopped for her when she’d finally retired from the noble profession back in 1997. Officially, at least. “Thanks for reminding me of that unpleasant little fact, hon,” Krugman said, shaking his head some more. “Anyway, I’d like to slow down but it really isn’t an option for me right now. Won’t be until we can finally catch Jack Yuntz. If you know where he is, though, you should just go ahead and tell me already. That way I could finally get home to you.”

  Peggy sighed herself. As she did so, Krugman could hear the longing in her voice. A pretty easy emotion to identify when you felt the exact same way yourself. “Can’t help you there, dear,” she said. “I have no idea where that monster is. If I did, I’d arrest him myself. Anyway, why are you calling me so darn late? You must be absolutely exhausted. Quit wasting your time talking to me on the phone and get back to your hotel already and go get some sleep. You need it.”

  Krugman smiled. That was his wife in a nutshell right there: always worried about him, even when she’d been a Stage Four breast cancer patient who could barely manage to get out of bed to use the bathroom, sometimes not making it all the way down the short hall in their bedroom to the restroom, which must have seemed like a million miles away to her at the time. “Never a waste of time when I’m talking to you, Mrs. Krugman,” he said, widening his smile and meaning it more than she would ever know. “And I’m not going back to my hotel quite yet, anyway.”

  Peggy grunted. “Why not? Where are you going?”

  “Meeting up with a friend for a quick drink.”

  “Who?”

  Just then, a chime sounded from the computer in front of Krugman. He glanced over at the screen.

  Finally made it here. Room 421. You still up for that drink with me?

  Krugman put his feet back down on the floor and tapped out a quick response, cradling his cellphone between his cheek and shoulder as he did so. Yep, be over there in ten. Rising to his
feet, he answered his wife’s question. “Barry Ronson,” he said, shrugging his shoulders into his heavy gray overcoat and leaning down to press a button on the computer to turn off the monitor. “He’s an old retired county sheriff from Columbus that I’ve been chatting with online for the past couple months. Only in town for one night, so I can’t stand him up.”

  Peggy grunted again. “Jesus, Bill. You’re meeting up for a drink with some guy you met in a chatroom? Are you out of your ever-loving mind? You’re worse than one of those love-struck teenagers I’m always reading about. The ones who always wind up in a drainage ditch off the highway with no head attached to their shoulders.”

  Krugman lifted his left wrist to check his watch again. “Guilty as charged on the count of being out of my mind, sweetheart, but what can I say? Nobody I know in real life ever wants to hang out with me. I get bored sometimes. I need the break.”

  Peggy clucked her tongue. “Fine, Bill, but just be careful. And tell me something before you go.”

  “What’s that, babe?”

  “Why doesn’t anyone ever want to hang out with you?”

  Krugman lifted his eyebrows on his forehead. “I don’t know, babe,” he said. “Because I’m the boss, I guess.”

  “Well, guess what?”

  “What?”

  “I want to hang out with you.”

  Krugman’s veins flooded with warmth. Seemed that his wife was something of a hopeless old flirt, too. And her playful nature right now only made him miss her that much more. “And I want to hang out with you, too, Peg. More than you’ll ever know.”

  “You’d better, mister.”

  Krugman flipped off the light in Blankenship’s office and headed for the elevator, nodding to a janitor who was mopping the floor as he went, the headphones over the man’s ears blasting some sort of heavy metal music deep into the center of his brain. Krugman crinkled up his face in distaste. Coming from Oklahoma himself, he’d always been more of a country-western fan himself. Nothing beat Waylon Jennings and an ice-cold six-pack on a Saturday night. “You know I will, honey,” he said. “I always miss you.”

  Peggy’s paused for a long moment then. Then she said, “You know what, Mr. Krugman?”

  “What’s that, honey?”

  “I love you more than I love life itself.”

  Krugman frowned despite the tenderness of the sentiment. He just couldn’t help himself. Still, his wife hadn’t sounded quite right at the moment, causing him to worry briefly that her cancer might be back. If it were, he knew she wouldn’t tell him about it until he’d finally finished up with this maddening case and gotten home to her, would probably think that she’d be burdening him with the information. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, but that was just Peggy being Peggy. It’s the way she’d always been ever since the wonderful day more than fifty years earlier that he’d first met her, he in his best seersucker suit and she in a beautiful dress that her mother had sewn for her out of leftover curtain fabric as he’d arrived on her doorstep in Norman, Oklahoma to pick her up for their very first date, hat in his hand and his heart pounding wildly in his throat. “Is everything OK, Peg?” he asked, furrowing his eyebrows in concern.

  Peggy blew out a slow breath. “Yeah, everything’s just fine, Bill. I just miss my husband, that’s all.”

  Krugman’s eyes misted over at that. He just couldn’t help himself. If it were possible for him to love Peggy any more than he already did, he thought that his heart would probably burst from the emotional overload. Never in a million years would he understand what he’d ever done to deserve her. Whatever it had been, though, it must have been something pretty darned special for him to end up with a woman like her. If all of life were one big dance, she’d always be the queen of his prom. “I miss my wife, too,” he said, again meaning it more than she’d ever know. “Anyway, I’ll call you first thing in the morning, OK?”

  “Yep. Promise to miss me until then, though?”

  “Always, honey.”

  “Always and forever?”

  “And then for a million years after that.”

  After exchanging a few more I love yous, Krugman flipped off his phone and tucked it into the side pocket of his coat, at the same time pressing the button on the elevator for the ground floor.

  That was when he suddenly felt a hot pain slice across his throat.

  Krugman tried to inhale but found that he couldn’t breathe. He jerked up his hands in a panic and wrapped them around his severed windpipe, trying frantically to staunch the heavy flow of blood that was squirting through his trembling fingers and splattering down onto the marble floor at his feet in a polka-dot pattern. The inefficient attempt at self-cauterization didn’t work. Not even a little bit. Spinning around in confusion, he saw the janitor that he’d just passed standing there with a long knife dripping in his right hand, the heavy metal music still blasting from the headphones fastened over his ears. Only it wasn’t a janitor. Not really. And it wasn’t a man, either. Not a full-grown one, anyway.

  It was Jack Yuntz.

  Shocked, Krugman tried to choke out a question but only a wet, gurgling sound emerged from his sliced throat. He wanted to ask the boy how he’d made it past the security desk downstairs but then he realized that it was a question to which he’d never receive an answer. Not in this lifetime, anyway. He only had time for one last thought now.

  A maniacal smile spread slowly across Jack Yuntz’s thin lips as Krugman collapsed hard to the marble floor with a rapidly expanding pool of bright red blood spreading out around him.

  Krugman’s last thought, of course, had been reserved for his lovely wife. And why not? He loved her more than anything else that he’d ever loved in this world. Always had ever since the wonderful day more than fifty years earlier that he’d first met her, he in his best seersucker suit and she in a beautiful dress that her mother had sewn for her out of leftover curtain fabric as he’d arrived on her doorstep in Norman, Oklahoma to pick her up for their very first date, his hat in his hand and his heart pounding wildly in his throat.

  Bill Krugman’s last thought, of course, was of his beloved wife:

  Peggy.

  CHAPTER 48

  Half a mile away from the field office downtown, Bruce Blankenship was having coffee at the Arabica shop on Ontario Street with Claire Wexler, the young spitfire with fiery red hair and an attitude to match who’d been his de facto partner for the past two months now, ever since Bill Krugman had finally given in and allowed Blankenship to begin working the Jack Yuntz case. Unfortunately for Blankenship, however, everything had seemed to come to a dead stop in the case right after he’d joined it. Not so much as a single peep from Yuntz in the past sixty days. Still, he and Wexler had plenty of paperwork to go through – from psychiatrist reports to profiles genned up by the FBI’s famed Behavioral Analysis Unit down in DC to Jack Yuntz’s fucking report cards from grade school. Unless they could somehow slide the sharp edge of one of these pieces of papers across Jack Yuntz’s throbbing jugular vein, though, Blankenship knew that shuffling around already well-shuffled paperwork wouldn’t stop the murdering little prick from killing anymore innocent people.

  He and Wexler would need to do it.

  Blankenship sighed heavily before blowing off a thick cloud of steam from his boiling drink and lifting the Styrofoam cup to his lips. Taking a tentative sip, he studied the buxom redhead seated across the table from him. Though she’d done her very best to disguise the fact with her conservative clothing, heavy black eyeglasses and no make-up on her face, Wexler was a real looker any way you sliced the bread. Whatever marked the opposite of putting lipstick on a pig was what she’d tried to do here tonight. What she always tried to do. Hadn’t worked out very well for her, though. And to put things mildly, Wexler’s drop-dead good looks hadn’t made Madison especially happy when his beloved wife had popped her head into his office unexpectedly the previous week with the twins in tow to see if he’d wanted to go grab some quick lunch w
ith them.

  “Jesus Christ, Bruce,” Madison had hissed, pulling shut his office door behind her so that Wexler couldn’t hear what she was saying and glaring a hole right through him. “You told me that she looked like a cartoon character when I asked you about it six weeks ago.”

  Blankenship had felt frozen to the spot despite the sheer heat of Madison’s angry stare, not having the faintest clue on Earth of what to say. For some reason or another, his brain had gone completely numb, rendering it pretty much useless for any sort of cogent thinking. Still, no huge surprise there. His brain always felt that way whenever Madison glared at him. “Well, she does look like a cartoon character,” he’d protested feebly.

  Madison had only increased the intensity of her stare at that, until Blankenship had thought laser beams might shoot of her eyes. “She looks like Jessica Rabbit, for Christ’s sake, you big goddamn idiot.”

  Blankenship’s cheeks had flushed hot, and he’d immediately felt guilty, even though he hadn’t had the slightest reason in the world to feel that way. He’d never cheated on Madison before and he had no plans to do so in the future. He loved her, for God’s sake. She was the mother of his children. Besides, Wexler was young enough to be, well, his little sister, anyway. “I didn’t say which cartoon character she looked like, honey.”

  That clever little remark had cost Blankenship three-hundred-dollar earrings that he couldn’t afford and solo laundry duty for the next month. Still, he knew that he’d gotten off cheap with the punishment. He was fairly certain that he’d read somewhere before that divorces were fairly expensive propositions.

  Blankenship was just setting his coffee back on the table in front of him beside a small stack of files dealing with the Jack Yuntz case when Wexler broke into his thoughts. “I think I left a file we need back at the office,” she said, flipping back her long red hair over her left shoulder and pursing her full lips in irritation. “I’ll just run over and get it real quick. Be back in a jif.”