Cal Rogan Mysteries, Books 1, 2 & 3 (Box Set)

by Robert P. French

  I turn the Healey into the parking garage of my condo. The automatic security gate is open. I drive through and stop. Condo rules say that you have to wait for the gate to close behind you.

  It doesn’t.

  Then I see why.

  The garage lights are out. Must be a power failure.

  The garage looks strangely unfamiliar, lit only by the Healey’s headlights. The reflection of the lights off the fire-resistant coating on the ceiling makes it feel like I am driving deep into an ice cave.

  As I go down to the next level, the thin light from the open security door is no longer visible. Apart from my headlights, the only other light source is from the red exit signs over the doors into the elevator lobby.

  I can see my parking spot between the hulking shapes of two SUVs. I always worry that the doors of those SUVs are one day going to ding my beautiful British racing-green paintwork.

  Three stalls down I see an unfamiliar white van parked at an angle. It looks like a BC Hydro truck but its lights are off and there is no sign of any electrician.

  I reverse into my spot making sure to leave an equal distance between myself and the behemoths on either side. I turn off the engine and headlights.

  Darkness and silence. No voices, just the ticking of the engine as it cools.

  I cannot see the red exit sign to guide me to the elevator which gives me an unpleasant feeling of disorientation. The darkness feels oppressive. Creepy even.

  I am going to have to feel my way out of here, like a kid playing blind man’s buff.

  Then I remember the flashlight in the trunk.

  I get out of the car and locate the trunk release by feel, insert the key and unlock the trunk. It opens with a squeak which I had never noticed before; I must remember to oil the hinges. The squeak is the only sound in the blackness.

  I have that feeling you sometimes get in a darkened room. The irrational feeling that someone is standing behind you. I can feel the goose-bumps at the thought.

  I feel hastily around the floor of the trunk, my hand coming into contact with the jack, the rubber hammer for releasing the hubs for the wire wheels, three emergency flares held together with an elastic band which feel like sticks of dynamite. No flashlight.

  I whisper an expletive.

  It sounds loud.

  Then there is another, softer sound but I cannot tell if it is close or far away. No cause for panic.

  As I reach further back, my fingers come into contact with the Maglight.

  “Gotcha.”

  I click the switch and the interior of the trunk is bathed in bright LED light.

  I have a great feeling of relief and I cannot help chuckling at my momentary primal fear of the dark. I straighten up and shine the light at the cars parked across from mine.

  There is a scuffling sound.

  It’s close.

  It’s behind me.

  As I turn, hard hands grab my biceps and a damp cloth is clamped across my face. There must be two of them, at least.

  The one holding my biceps is directly behind me, so I take three hard steps back and hear the whoosh of his breath as my momentum slams him into the garage wall. His hold on me is lessened and I try to wriggle out of his grip but I am too weak. The cloth is still over my face. The acrid smell makes me want to cough. I know I only have a very few seconds to fight my way out of this.

  The flashlight is jerked out of my hand and shone into my face.

  Someone jabs me hard in the stomach expelling the oxygen from my lungs, making me take in deep breaths.

  One chance. I lift my foot and stamp down hard on the instep of the man behind me. He shouts out in pain and one of my arms is free. I reach across myself to grab his other arm but I have no strength in my hand.

  My head is forced back and I am looking directly into the flashlight. No. It can’t be a flashlight because it’s getting smaller and smaller, like a space ship accelerating into the cosmos.

  Smaller and smaller until it flashes into warp-drive and is gone.

  23

  Cal

  I can breathe. With difficulty. My face hurts. Something feels rough. I can smell coffee. Wake up and smell the coffee. I ease my eyes open. The world is sepia. Something is on my face: brown, meshed and miserly in its allowance of light. In the dim, all I can hear is my breathing: lungs forcing air through sackcloth.

  I experiment with movement. I can roll my head but not without pain. I cannot raise my hand to my face. I try the other. Pinned. I feel thin wire cut into my wrists and my ankles.

  The panic hits. Where the hell am I?

  I move my fingers. Blanket. I try to sit up and bed springs groan. I groan. A hand on my chest easily returns me to the horizontal.

  Silence. The silence increases my feeling of impotence.

  “Hello.” Inane thing to say.

  Still silence.

  Questions rush to my mind but I suppress them all. Speaking now would be pointless… and show weakness. Breathe deeply. Calm the rising waters. You’re OK. You can get out of this.

  A door clicks closed.

  There is a new level of silence, in some way more ominous. I try to sit up and this time there is no resisting hand. My bound wrists hold me to a semi sit-up so I slump back. I deep breathe. Right into my belly. Ten breaths.

  Think, Rocky.

  What was my last memory before being here? I’m not sure. Thursday evening. Parking my car, the garage darkened. Then what?

  I need to know more about where I am.

  I push my head up. I strain my eyes to see through the sack. The light in the room is artificial. It’s nighttime. That’s all I can see.

  The smell of coffee is from the sackcloth. It masks everything else: no clues from that department.

  I grit my teeth and try to work my hands free of the wires binding them until I feel blood dripping from my wrists.

  I quiet my breathing and listen. There is a hissing sound, vaguely familiar but I cannot identify it. There is a faint traffic hum. It tells me nothing.

  Time passes and I strain for a clue, any clue.

  Then the fear seeps in. Slowly at first.

  I think back a year or so to the drug gang that tried to kidnap me. Kill me. But they are all in prison or dead. So who has got me now? Another gang? But why? The maniac who brutally murdered Terry Wright? Or maniacs.

  I cannot control the rising heart rate, pumping fear through my body.

  I must be here because I am nearer to solving Terry’s murder than I thought.

  Every cop knows that the simplest hypothesis is the most likely. The most likely suspect is Seth Harris. The man with the dog. Was it his hand on my chest? Is he Terry’s killer? His only alibi is his sister.

  What is he going to do? Carve me up like Terry and leave me in the woods?

  The door opens.

  Two sets of footsteps. One in shoes, one in runners. Seth and Morgan Harris together? Maybe I’m in the basement of their church.

  A hand grabs my right wrist. Are they going to cut me now?

  I feel my bowels loosening and clench against the ultimate humiliation.

  But instead of baring my chest for the fatal blow, the sleeve of my jacket is pulled up and something is tied around my right bicep. My heart starts a frenetic pounding at the familiar feel.

  “God no. Please no. I’ll tell you anything…”

  Not that. Anything but that.

  The alcohol smell cuts through the mask and the wire cuts into my wrists as I try to pull my arms free. The pain becomes excruciating.

  “NOOOOOO.” I scream. “HELP ME! HELP ME!” Maybe someone passing on Oak Street will hear me.

  My struggles are suppressed by a hand on my face and knees on my chest.

  I struggle to buck off my assailant. If I can’t stop this, in seconds, everything that I have gained in the last fifteen months will be flushed away. Sam, Ellie, my return to the VPD will all be gone.

  I shake my head to loosen the grip and clamp my jaws on
to the hand. With a grunt the hand is jerked away.

  “Please don’t do this.” I am not above begging. “Please… Anything…”

  And in a tiny corner of my soul, the Beast, so long suppressed, paraphrases Shakespeare. The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks. And I know it. This is what the Beast has been craving, for every minute of every day for one year, three months and six days, since the hour when Sam dropped me off at rehab. My skin crawls at the knowledge that a part of me wants this. Wants this more than anything.

  “Please…” I am sobbing with anguish… or is it desire?

  Or both.

  I hardly feel the pinprick in my arm, I just feel the throbbing where the wire has shredded my wrists.

  The ultimate cruelty: they are going to get me hooked again and they are going to let me enjoy it.

  The surgical elastic is removed from my arm with a snap.

  Three… two… one…

  Oooh.

  Ooooooooooooooooooh.

  24

  Cal

  Friday

  It’s morning. I can tell from the quality of the light filtering through the coffee sack covering my head. I have been here for over twelve hours.

  They shot me up some time during the early hours. It was the fourth time. They are as regular as clockwork; before I feel any withdrawal, they inject me again.

  They do it in silence, but for the hissing sound.

  About every four hours. Always in my right arm.

  All attempts at communication are ignored except for my request for water; a corner of the sacking was rolled back and a straw thrust into my mouth. The water was warm and tasted of chlorine; from a tap but not recently.

  Something is different. But what? I strain for a sound, any sound. The hum of the traffic is there but the hissing has stopped. What was that hissing? It seemed familiar but from the past, from my childhood. Outdoors…

  That’s it! The hissing was a Coleman lantern. We are not in the church on Oak, we are in a building with no electricity; probably an abandoned building with no running water.

  Between brief moments of sleep, I have had a lot of thinking time and somehow the euphoria induced by the heroin has relaxed my mind and sharpened my thinking processes… I think.

  I have two theories.

  The more I think about it something feels so wrong at the Church of the Transcended Masters. Am I getting too close to something? If I am, it must be huge because criminals don’t kidnap cops; the consequences are just too dire. But the big negative in this theory is that there is no way that Seth and Morgan Harris could know that heroin is my Achilles heel?

  It now makes less sense than my second theory.

  Most of the gang that we busted last year may be in jail but their leader is still a powerful man with a long reach. We never found where he keeps his money but, at a conservative estimate, he must have amassed over two hundred million dollars. He has enough to pay for a professional kidnapping. To see me a junkie again would be the perfect revenge for me ruining him. It would be sweeter even than killing me, to know that I will lose everything: Sam, Ellie, the job, everything.

  But where is this going? How long are they going to keep me?

  With a shock I realize they have to let me go today. I am meeting Sam and Ellie for dinner tonight and it’s my weekend to have Ellie. Although part of me dreads it, I need to ask Sam about who she was on a date with and if it’s serious. The thought of her with someone is more painful than the cuts on my wrists.

  The door opens.

  One person this time. I have to try and negotiate my way out of this.

  “Hi,” I say. “Listen, if you want to get me hooked, you’ve succeeded. Giving me more is not going to make a difference.”

  My right sleeve is pushed up for what, the fifth time now?

  “You could let me go now.”

  The surgical tape ties off the blood flow.

  “I have to see my daughter tonight. You under—”

  My plea is cut off by a blow to the side of my head.

  I smell the alcohol.

  My right arm. I’m right-handed, I always shot up in my left arm. I try to picture him shooting me up. Dr. Marcus said that Terry’s fatal blow was delivered either from the front by a lefty or from behind by a righty.

  Before I can make sense of it, I feel the prick of the needle.

  It is time to feed the Beast.

  25

  Ellie

  I can tell Mommy’s mad at Daddy; she says she’s not but I know she is.

  It started in the restaurant. She kept calling his cell phone and leaving a message and I could tell she was getting angry. She ordered my dinner but didn’t order anything for herself and while I was eating she called her boyfriend. She gets angry when I call him that. ‘He’s just a friend, Ellie,’ she always says. She kept saying things like, ‘No, it’s not like that,’ and ‘I really want to as much as you do,’ and ‘I’ll call you as soon as he arrives, I promise.’

  But Daddy didn’t arrive and now we are back home and it’s eight-thirty. I’m scared for him. Maybe he’s in a car accident. When I tell Mommy this she looks worried.

  “Why don’t you call the hospital and ask if he’s there, Mommy?”

  “Don’t worry sweetie,” she says. “Daddy will be OK. If he was in an accident the police would call me.”

  She thinks for a moment and then makes a phone call.

  “Hi,” she says, “This is Samantha Rogan. Is my husband still there?” She never uses Daddy’s and my name anymore; she always says she’s Samantha Cullen. She called Daddy her husband. I wonder if that means that we are all going to live together again. I really, really, really hope so.

  I can hear whoever she is talking to but I can’t tell what they are saying. “Not since Thursday? Are you sure?” she says. She listens some more then, “OK, thanks.”

  Now she looks worried like me. I don’t like it when she looks worried.

  “Pleeeeaase, Mommy. Pleeeease call the hospital. I want to see Daddy.” I can feel tears starting.

  “Ellie, for god’s sake!” she yells at me.

  She’s made me start crying. She didn’t have to shout like that.

  “Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry,” she says and puts her arm round me. I squirm away from her and cross my arms. Now I’m really crying a lot and I want Daddy. I want him now.

  The door-bell rings.

  OMG. I made Daddy come to the door. I’m like Hermione in Harry Potter. I turn to Mommy and give her a big smile then run so fast to the door.

  “Ellie wait—” Mommy says as I pull open the door.

  “Daddeeeeeeeeeeeee—”

  But it’s not Daddy. It’s a stranger. I’m not allowed to talk to strangers. He looks—

  “You must be Ellie,” he says and smiles at me. I don’t like how he smiles.

  Mummy’s right beside me. “Hi,” she says. I look up at her and she is smiling at him in a funny way. I look at him and he is smiling at her just the same. I’ve seen that look before… on the face of a boy on Hannah Montana… Ooooh. No way! He’s Mommy’s boyfriend.

  “Ell, sweetie, would you go to your room for a moment. I need to talk in private.”

  “NO.”

  She looks at me and she’s mad at me. “OK,” she says and steps outside pulling the door closed behind her.

  I’m a little bit worried that she will go somewhere with him but she wouldn’t leave me here, not without Daddy or a babysitter, even that horrible Roxanne. I can hear them talking.

  “You shouldn’t have come but I’m so glad you did,” she kind of whispers.

  “I just really wanted to see you.”

  Then they stop talking… It’s quiet… For like a minute… Maybe I should just open the door and check if…

  As soon as I think it, the door opens. I am definitely like Hermione.

  Mommy comes back in and brings him with her.

  “Ell, honey, this is my friend that I was telling you about. He�
�s just going to come in for a moment.”

  “Hi Ellie,” he smiles at me. Now I can see why Mommy likes him. He puts out his hand for me to shake. He tells me his name but I don’t want to hear it. He’s not my Daddy. I don’t want him here.

  26

  Cal

  Sunday

  It’s morning again. I have been here since Thursday night, tied to this bed. They have given me only water for the last sixty-something hours. And heroin every four hours, up until yesterday evening. Then they stopped.

  It must be ten or twelve hours since the last fix and the agony of withdrawal is in full force. It’s the worst it has ever been. My muscles keep knotting into unbearable cramps and I cannot suppress the screams that bubble up. My bowels and bladder have voided repeatedly and even the stench of that hurts. Pain knifes through every joint and every muscle of my back. Every spasm makes the bonds at my wrists and ankles cut deeper into the flesh. Even the touch of the sackcloth on my face is excruciating. Maybe they have abandoned me, left me to die. I hope it will be quick.

  Without warning something cold and wet falls across my face. There is a strong chemical smell and then I am suffocating. It ratchets up as a hand pushes down over my mouth and nose. They are killing me. The fear lancing through me eclipses even the pain. That’s…

  I’m at the bottom of a well. I’m cold and wet and far, far above me is the sky. As I drift upwards, the throbbing in my head gets worse. But there is no other pain. No withdrawal. As I float out of the well, I open my eyes. I am lying on my side, on the floor. The walls are gray concrete and the windows, high up, are encrusted in grime with arachnid-lace curtains which occlude the watery winter sunshine. I look down at my body and the reason for the lack of withdrawal symptoms is revealed: a hypodermic hanging from a vein in my right arm. I reach over with my left hand—which is covered in blood from the cuts in my wrist—withdraw it with care and then fling it into a corner of the room.