Elevation: A London Carter Novel (London Carter Mystery Series Book 5)

by BJ Bourg

  When he was satisfied he was alone on the highway, he drove straight into the forest—dodging trees and large rocks—until he found a bush large enough to conceal one side of the truck. He unloaded his drag bag and ghillie suit and set them aside while he chopped large branches to cover the other side of the truck.

  Once the truck was hidden, he painted his face and prepped his ghillie suit. While the pattern of his ghillie suit matched the Arkansas wilderness well, he needed it to look more authentic, so he collected some of the natural vegetation and carefully blended it into his suit and drag bag. It was painstaking work, but necessary. He couldn’t risk being detected. If these men saw him, they would kill Dawn immediately and find another patsy to carry out their plan.

  Finally satisfied with his work, he slid into his ghillie suit and slung his drag bag over his shoulder. He turned down the volume on his satellite phone and set out into the thick underbrush, heading for what he hoped would be the lion’s lair. If he was wrong about this hunch, he would have wasted so much time that it would be almost impossible to make up the difference. London would have to do some serious stalling on his end, and that could be risky.

  “You’d better be right about this, son,” Patrick said softly to himself. “You owe it to London.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Detective Bureau, Payneville, Louisiana

  I was still sitting at my desk waiting for the phone company to call when the door to the bureau opened. I stood and looked over the cubicle wall just as Rachael walked in pulling off her sunglasses. She glanced over at me and stopped in her tracks.

  “You look like shit,” she said. “Did you sleep here?”

  After thinking about it for a second, I realized I hadn’t had a wink of sleep. “It was a long night. I was working this case.”

  Rachael walked around the cubicles and plopped on my desk. Her dirty blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she was wearing dark slacks and a white shirt. “What kind of case?”

  “A burglary and then an arson. They kept me busy, that’s for sure.” I rubbed my face and turned away, wanting to avoid an extended conversation. I didn’t want her asking too many probing questions and force me to reveal that something was amiss. I needed everyone to believe things were normal, but I didn’t want to lie to them. I worked with these people every day and we needed to trust each other. “I guess I’ll head in and get some sleep—”

  My desk phone rang and interrupted me. I stared at it for a long few seconds, knowing it had to be the phone company and wondering if Rachael would hear too much.

  “Aren’t you going to answer it?” Rachael asked, standing to walk to her desk.

  Once she’d turned the corner, I snatched it up. “London Carter.”

  It was the phone company and they had retrieved the data from Dawn’s phone. “If you give me your fax number, I’ll send it right over,” said the technician.

  I provided the number and rushed to the machine, drumming my fingers on the top of it, as though it would help the report come through faster. Finally, the machine hummed to life and started spitting out pages that contained her phone records. I snatched them from the tray one by one and began scanning the entries like a wild man. There it is!

  I stabbed the page with my finger when I found an entry for six-forty-five yesterday morning. That was when I’d received the text message from Dawn containing the picture of her Jeep. I slid my finger to the right and located the corresponding coordinates.

  Taking the report with me to my desk, I fired up my computer and punched the coordinates into the search bar. I got an immediate hit on a spot in the Arkansas mountains. I zoomed in and found that her phone had hit on a tower in the area of County Road 2136. I searched the satellite image and located Dead Man’s Canyon within several miles of that county road.

  I checked the phone records and found another entry later in the day. When I punched in those coordinates, it showed she had crossed State Highway Two and continued on County Road 2136 for over twenty miles. I wasn’t sure where Abel Chism lived, but Patrick did say the route Tricia followed was leading in that direction. I quickly pulled out my cell phone and sent the coordinates to his satellite phone. If Dawn had been taken along a different route than he was following, he needed to know that fact as soon as possible. We couldn’t afford to waste precious time going down the wrong path. We had until the weekend to find her, and we were rapidly running out of sunshine.

  More people started arriving at the office, so I slipped out the door and got into my truck. With nothing else to do but wait, I headed home.

  On the entire drive to my house I kept thinking about Dawn. All of the precious moments we’d spent together flashed like strobes through my mind. The smoothness of her skin…the softness of her lips…the tenderness of her touch…the depth of our conversations. What if I never experienced any of it again? The thought made my chest ache like never before.

  When my family died in the car crash many years ago, there was an extreme sense of loss and hurt, as well as anger toward the man responsible. But this was different. The anxiety I felt was almost overwhelming. At times, it felt as though I couldn’t catch a breath and I thought I would pass out. The only thing that saved me from experiencing a panic attack was my years of mental training.

  I concentrated on my breathing and forced the negative thoughts from my mind. Instead of dwelling on all the bad things that could happen, I accepted that they were possibilities and then moved on in my mind. My focus had to be on the task at hand. I had to carry on like nothing was wrong and hope that Patrick could rescue Dawn before I was in a position to assassinate the vice president.

  Just as I was stepping out of my truck to walk inside, my phone rang. I snatched it up thinking it was Patrick, but it showed an unknown caller. My blood ran cold when I answered and heard Bruce’s voice.

  “Mr. Carter, there’s been a change of plans. It seems there’s a hurricane threatening the Atlantic coast, so the rally in Sharkstrum, Florida has been cancelled. Instead, the vice president is going to fly into New Orleans and drive down to Beacher, where she’ll hold a rally in support of big oil. She wants to return to the scene of her attempted assassination as an act of defiance to show the ‘terrorists’—as she calls us, but I call us patriots—that she will not be silenced.” Bruce paused to utter an evil chuckle. When he spoke again, his voice was dry. “Well, my friend, she will be silenced—once and for all and for everyone to see.”

  I wanted to tell him not to call me “friend”, but I resisted the urge. “When is this taking place?”

  “The arrangements are being made now, but it looks like they’re setting it up for Wednesday or Thursday.”

  “That soon?” I blurted, immediately cursing myself for the impulsive response. While I would enjoy home field advantage, Patrick’s window of time would be cut in half.

  “Is that a problem?” Bruce asked, sounding suspicious. “Do you have other plans for Wednesday or Thursday?”

  “No,” I said casually, wondering how he was able to get such insider information. “It just takes time to plan this kind of operation. You’re not asking me to euthanize a farm animal, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Well, that bitch didn’t ask me for my permission, so we’ll have to deal with it.” There was a pause, and then Bruce continued. “I don’t think I need to remind you what’ll happen if you don’t go through with our deal.”

  “I need to hear Dawn’s voice—to know she’s okay.”

  “That’s not going to happen, considering she can’t keep her mouth shut.”

  “Well, I need to at least see her,” I countered. “If you can’t guarantee me she’s alive and in good health, I’ll walk away from this mission and track you down and—”

  “And what? What could you do?” There was contempt in Bruce’s voice. “You got lucky the last time, sniper, but you’ll never get that opportunity again. Now, I’ll give you proof of life when the time comes, but you’d better get ready to kill t
hat bitch, Browning, before I start chopping up your girlfriend.”

  The call went dead.

  Taking a deep breath, I slowly unlocked the front door to my house and stepped inside. I’d been careful about my comings and goings—searching every possible place a sniper could be hiding and checking to see if I was being followed—but there was no sign of anyone following me. It seemed they were only keeping tabs on me through the tracking device. Maybe I could put the tracker on another vehicle? But what if that person began driving out of the parish?

  I thought about involving Rachael in the situation. If I gave her my truck, she could drive it around as though she were me, following all of my usual patterns, and it would allow me to get to Arkansas to help Patrick find Bruce. If I had my way, I would be the one putting a bullet in that bastard.

  My phone rang again and I half expected it to be Bruce, but this time it was Patrick. “Speak to me, brother,” I said. “Give me some good news.”

  “I received the coordinates from Dawn’s phone…”

  His voice was low, barely above a whisper, and I had a difficult time understanding much of what he said.

  “I lost you on that last part.”

  “The coordinates…they lead to here.” There was a pause and I could hear some slight rustling in the background. “I’m on Chism’s property and making my way toward the house…keeping a low profile. I should be there by this evening.”

  “Our time’s been cut in half,” I said. “It’s supposed to go down Wednesday or Thursday.”

  “Shit—then I’d better get moving.”

  CHAPTER 36

  After showering and shaving, I took a quick nap to recharge my batteries and then headed back to the detective bureau. I picked up a burger on the way and ate it at my desk. Other detectives were milling about the office catching up from the weekend off, but I ignored them as I began searching the web for any information I could find on extreme environmentalist groups.

  I found information on various factions of two main groups; those wanting to liberate the earth and those wanting to liberate the animals from the evil clutches of mankind. Some of the groups engaged in peaceful demonstrations and were sincere and reasonable in their approach, while other groups openly advocated acts of violence and terrorism against all those who disagreed with their beliefs.

  I searched through hundreds of photographs of protests, most of which were taken by the media and posted on their electronic news blogs. I didn’t know what I was hoping to find, but at least I felt like I was doing something productive.

  There were pictures of people holding signs, people burning the American flag, and even people dressed like the animals and trees they wanted to protect. They organized protests against oil companies, the government, logging companies, big game hunters, and even mom-and-pop leather shops. But amidst all the chaos and noise, it was hard to miss one small detail…at nearly every march and rally that occurred within the last four years, there were more than a few signs rebuking Vice President Browning. The protesters blamed her for everything from coastal erosion to the extinction of dinosaurs. Many members of the news media lost their objectivity when writing articles about her and her policies. Some of them even described her as a traitor who was deserving of nothing less than the highest punishment in the land.

  I began printing out images from different protests and spreading them across my desk. Once I had a large sampling, I started comparing the faces in the different groups, trying to see if there were any overlapping members. I even printed out photos from protests that occurred twenty years back, trying to determine if some of the older protesters in the more recent photos were involved in some of the earlier protests as young people. It was a difficult task, because everyone aged differently and trends in hairstyles and clothing could completely transform the way some people looked, but I was able to match a couple of faces.

  While most of the protesters remained true to their one calling, there were some crossovers between the different factions. One face, in particular, looked oddly familiar. I first saw the man in a photo that was taken at an animal rights rally eighteen years earlier in New Jersey, and he appeared in a photo taken a month later at a march protesting the logging of forest land in upstate New York.

  “Why are you so familiar?” I asked softly, enlarging his face. The man was dressed in tattered clothes (jeans with large holes in both knees, a shirt that was torn under the right armpit, and shoes that looked two sizes too big for his feet) and his red hair was stringy and his beard unkempt. In both pictures, his arm was around a young man with bushy black hair, dark sunglasses, and a thick bandana, and who was dressed in similar rags. They were alone in the first picture and both had one thumb up in the air. In the second picture, they were accompanied by four other young men, all of whom were obviously friends and brothers of the cause. Two of them wore masks and they all wore tattered clothes. One of the men with a mask wore a Bruce Lee T-shirt and my blood ran cold as I wondered if this was the same Bruce who was holding Dawn hostage.

  I squinted and turned my attention back to the redhead in the group photo. Who in the hell are you and why do you look so familiar—?

  “Shannon Reed!” I blurted, a surge of adrenalin coursing through my veins. Shannon was an alligator activist I’d met a couple of years ago when he got caught up in some protests down in south Seasville. I’d spoken to the district attorney about dropping some of the felony charges I’d placed on him, so he owed me big time. If I could get in touch with him, he might be willing to give me some insider information on these groups and the guy with the Bruce Lee T-shirt, which could possibly help lead me to the men who kidnapped Dawn.

  I was just minimizing the screen on my desktop so I could access the arrest report containing Shannon’s information when a shadow fell over my desk.

  “Isn’t Shannon Reed that fellow you and Dawn got into a boat chase with a couple years ago?” Rachael asked, looking over my shoulder at the photographs on my desk. “What’re you working on?”

  “Just trying to figure something out,” I mumbled, casually collecting the printouts and stacking them face-down on the side of my keyboard.

  Sensing I didn’t care to talk about it, she nodded and walked back to her desk.

  I snatched up my cell phone when I found his number and dialed it as fast as I could. I pushed the phone to my ear but groaned when it went straight to a recording. I was going to leave a message, but the recording stated that his voicemail was not set up. I drummed my fingers on the desk. There was a good chance he changed his number, so I decided to run his name through the system.

  Nothing recent came back.

  Next, I called Nelly Wainwright, who was an assistant district attorney for the Magnolia Parish DA’s Office. While I had known of her for years, the first time we’d met face-to-face was under horrible circumstances. Her brother, who had been lucky enough to retire from a long career in law enforcement, was brutally murdered three years ago and we’d met at his funeral. I had never forgotten the sorrow on her face when I first saw her. Every time we met in person I remembered that day and my heart would break for her.

  Nelly answered right away. “London, how’s it going?”

  “I’d love to say great, but I’d be lying,” I said flatly. “What about you? The last time we talked you were trying to keep your daughter from swimming in a public toilet at Disney World.”

  She laughed and we made small talk for a few seconds. “So,” she finally said, “what can I help you with?”

  “Shannon Reed…do you remember him?”

  “No. Can you refresh my memory?”

  “He’s the guy who was spearheading the protests against alligator hunting two years ago.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “He was actually a very polite man. A little flirtatious, but very polite.”

  “Yeah, he’s definitely a character. I spoke with Mr. Crawford (the district attorney) about dropping the felony charges against Shannon, and he said he�
�d look into it. Do you know if that happened?”

  “Hold on a minute.” Nelly began humming and I heard her fingers snapping against the keyboard. After a minute, or so, she got back on the phone. “Yep, all of his charges were reduced to misdemeanors. He pled guilty back in December and was sentenced to two years, but the sentence was suspended provided he abstains from criminal activity.”

  “Do you have any contact information on him?”

  “Let me pull the file.”

  Nelly was gone for several minutes this time. When she returned she sounded out of breath. “Okay, there’s an emergency contact number in the file. It’s got a New Jersey area code.”

  “Great…what is it?”

  After she gave me the number, I thanked her and then quickly hung up to call Shannon. A woman answered, identifying herself only as Flower. I told her who I was and asked to speak with Shannon.

  “Ah, he mentioned you before. Aren’t you the oppressor who arrested him for defending the helpless alligators in your county?”

  I wanted to tell her Louisiana’s counties were called parishes, but I was afraid that would lead to excessive chatter. I simply needed to speak with Shannon. “I certainly realized the error of my ways, which was why I intervened on his behalf to have the felony charges reduced to misdemeanors.”

  “He spoke about that, as well. He was very appreciative of your efforts, and he swore to never again set foot in Louisiana to partake in alligator rescue attempts.”

  “Is that what he said?”

  “Indeed.”

  When she didn’t say anything further, I asked if I could speak with him.

  “He’s not present at the moment, but I can deliver a message to him when he returns and have him call you back.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” I said. “Please tell him it’s an emergency. My number is—”

  “It showed up when you called. Good-bye.” With that, she abruptly ended the call.