The Devil's Snare: a Mystery Suspense Thriller (Derek Cole Suspense Thrillers Book 4)

by T Patrick Phelps

  “I cleared every room. We are alone.”

  Movement from the backyard captured Nikkie’s attention. “Hold on,” she said. “Someone is in the back yard.”

  “I strongly suggest you do not engage …”

  Nikkie stood and moved towards the french style doors that led from the kitchen out to the backyard porch. She pushed open the door and scanned the backyard. From the corner of her eye, she caught more movement. This time, she was certain the movement was directed. Steadily holding the gun towards the direction of the movement, she paced across the back yard deck, down the two stairs then across the yard towards a row of pine trees, each no higher than ten feet high. The trees were planted so close that their low hanging branches provided cover for anything, or anyone intent on not being seen.

  “Come out from the trees, slowly with your arms above your head,” she said in a voice teeming with confidence and calmness. “Don’t make me come in there. This won’t end well for you.”

  A quick flash of movement coupled with the sound felled sticks and pine needles make when something of size shuffles through them was her only reply.

  “The police are on their way,” she called back. “Do yourself a favor and walk out towards me. Slowly.”

  She heard more sounds, more movement coming from further down the line of pine trees. Whatever was making the sounds was not complying with her demands but was, instead, moving further away.

  Nikkie stole a glance to where the pine trees ended and saw thick and dark woods no more than one hundred yards from the end of Bo’s property line and from the end of the pine tree line. She increased her pace to a jog, running sideways, gun pointed towards where she assumed the hidden suspect was moving and her eyes jumped from the tree line to her path. The last thing she needed was to trip over anything Bo neglected to clean up from his back yard.

  She reached the end of the pine trees, still unable to catch sight of the person she assumed had attacked Crown. She began to hear the scream and wail of distant sirens. “The police are almost here. There’s no way you’re getting away. You either walk out on your own or I’ll send some lead in to find you.”

  A hooded figure raced away from the pine trees, carving a crooked path across Bo’s neighbor’s back yard and towards the woods. He was fast. Too fast for Nikkie to give chase, considering the forty- or fifty-foot lead he had on her. She lowered her gun and memorized everything she could about the man sprinting away. She took several steps further towards the woods, clearing her view from the final pine tree. She saw the man—whom she estimated to stand around five foot ten, weighing around one hundred seventy-pounds—stop when he reached the edge of the woods. The man turned, pulled back his hood, smiled then waved at Nikkie. She raised her gun, fully intending on trying an impossible shot, then lowered her gun as the man casually slipped into the cover of the woods.

  As the sirens grew closer, she holstered her Glock, ran back into the kitchen; she knelt beside Crown and felt her pulse grow weaker and listened to the gurgling noises coming from Crown’s throat turn quiet.

  ˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇ

  Derek left the fire station, jumped into his car and followed the Ravenswood rescue vehicle. Going to the hospital instead of directly to the scene was not an option. He believed Crown, and whatever condition she may be in, was his responsibility. He took her son’s case and he encouraged Nikkie to invite Crown to the initial interview with Bo. He was going to the scene.

  As he drove—keeping up with the speeding rescue vehicle—he speed dialed Nikkie’s cell. Her voice was too sullen and sounded too watery for Derek. “Nikkie, what the hell happened? Is it Crown?”

  “Where are you?” she replied. “She’s not good. The paramedics are working on her now and the sheriffs want to ask me a lot of questions.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  The sheriff that had stopped Derek before he crossed the yellow police tape that was still being strung up, was now escorting Derek around the back of Bo’s house. Once in the back yard, Derek saw Nikkie sitting down, speaking to a plain-clothed detective on the deck. Derek quickened his pace, jumped the two stairs and headed through the open doors and into Bo’s house.

  “Hold on,” the detective snapped. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  “I’m Derek Cole, I’ve been hired…”

  The detective raised his unusually large hand, quickly waggled his thick fingers, and said, “Mr. Cole, your associate told me about you already. I’m sorry, but I can’t allow you inside the house. The EMT’s are still working on your employee and the entire house is a crime scene.”

  “I need to see Crown,” Derek said, his voice cracking with fear and anger.

  “That’s not going to happen,” the detective said. “Matter of fact, I need both of you,” he said, pointing his finger at both Nikkie and Derek, “to either walk around to the front of the house and wait for me there, or head down to the sheriff’s station and wait there. Your choice.”

  “What’s wrong with waiting here?” Derek asked, more in control of his voice and emotions. “Since you’ve already begun interviewing my associate here, I have to assume my being here won’t jeopardize the integrity of the crime scene.”

  “And your assumption would be wrong.” The detective, who stood six foot four, had a thick, barrel chest and hair as white as Derek had ever seen, was now standing, arms crossed, looking directly at Derek. Obviously, Derek realized, this man was not a fan of anyone trying to persuade him to see things differently. “I was polite when I asked you to make a choice but my politeness is being kicked in the balls by my impatience right about now. So, either wait out front, or wait at the station. And wherever you decide to wait, make damn sure you stay the hell out the way. Clear?”

  Derek matched the detective’s stare. He had plenty of experience dealing with police detectives and knew any further arguing would be likely to create a tense atmosphere, making the chances of Derek working closely with the sheriff’s department unlikely. “Sorry,” Derek said. “I know what you need to do here and the last thing we want to do is to interfere. We’ll wait out front but please let us know how Crown is.”

  The detective nodded his head, gestured towards the way Derek had approached, then turned, walked inside and drew the blinds closed.

  “She doesn’t look good at all, Derek,” Nikkie said, her eyes heavy with tears.

  “If I know Crown, death is probably scared shitless of her. She’s too damn stubborn to check out.”

  “You didn’t see her.”

  “I didn’t, you’re right. But I will. And you will, too. We’ll both see her when she’s sitting up in a hospital bed, snapping orders at us. She’ll be fine.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Derek leaned against a sheriff’s cruiser while Nikkie paced. They had left the backyard and the company of the yet-to-be-known detective nearly twenty-five minutes earlier, and still they waited. Crown was still inside where both Derek and Nikkie assumed she was still being assisted by the paramedics.

  “She’s been in there an awfully long time,” Nikkie said. “That’s not a good sign.”

  “They need to stabilize her before transporting her to a hospital,” Derek replied, calmly. “Maybe secure her airway, or stop her bleeding. Or, she’s awake and giving our big-handed detective a description of her attacker.”

  Nikkie gave Derek a long look. Her eyes were heavy with tears but his were a bit too clear for Nikkie’s comfort. “You don’t seem to be all that worried,” she said.

  Derek traced the scar on his cheek, looking off towards the front windows of Bo’s house. There were still sheriff’s and medical personal coming and going, and he caught sight of John Mather a couple of times, but the house and the area with police and medical professionals strutting about were much too similar to another scene Derek had been to.

  That scene was when he was a cop and his wife was being held at gun point inside a bank. At that scene there had been cops and medical personal m
oving about, too. That scene had his wife’s face pressed against the picture window with a deranged lunatic standing behind her, his gun pressed hard against her temple. Back then, it was his fellow City of Columbus Police Officers that demanded protocols needed to be followed and that he was likely to get himself and others killed if he was allowed to gain entry to the bank.

  “I can get in that bank,” he had said. “I know this place. There’s a back entrance with a key pad, and we have the code.”

  “Officer Cole,” the captain in charge of the scene had said, “you need to stand down and let our hostage negotiators do their job.”

  That scene ended with Derek cradling his dead wife’s body as cops—his co-workers, friends and supervisors—scrambled around the scene, collecting evidence and doing their absolute best to avoid eye contact with him.

  This time, this scene, was different but held hints, held reminders of his past. It wasn’t his wife inside and it wasn’t his fellow City of Columbus Police Officers keeping him outside. Whoever the deranged person who had committed the attack was not standing in the front window, but had run into the nearby woods after throwing a sick smile of contempt or pride back at Nikkie. Still, for Derek, the scene was poking hard at a section of his brain, the part where vivid and unwanted memories are stored away.

  Actually, the scene was kicking the shit out of that brain section, demanding it jump to life and flood Derek with whatever unresolved emotions and feelings were still left milling about in his subconscious mind. So unresolved were Derek’s anger, pain and sense of utter and complete loss, that several months after his wife Lucy’s death, he created the scar on his cheek. The scar he was again tracing with his index finger, absentmindedly remembering sticking the gun into his mouth, squeezing the trigger, right at the moment he saw the briefest flash of his wife’s smile in the corner of his mind. The image had caused him to turn his head a critical few inches as the bullet slammed through his teeth and out his cheek.

  “You’re only seeing my outside,” Derek replied to Nikkie. “Inside me isn’t all that pleasant.”

  Nikkie, perhaps understanding that Derek’s mind was flipping back and forth, crossing the years between the present and the day his wife was murdered, smiled at him. She walked over closer to him, caressed his arm, and said nothing.

  “You’re not going to start singing some Barry Manilow song to me, are you?” Derek said.

  Nikkie’s brow furrowed and a stifled laugh leaked out. “I know he wrote a lot of songs, but I can’t remember any that were about two friends standing outside of a crime scene, while another mutual friend was lying in the kitchen of a house after being attacked. “

  “Then maybe I should have asked about a Neil Diamond song. Hell, that guy wrote more songs than Dylan. He must have written one appropriate for this scenario.”

  “Honestly, Derek,” Nikkie said as she leaned against the sheriff’s car beside him, “you have the weirdest thoughts of anyone I’ve ever met.”

  Derek squinted his eyes then, with his chin, gestured towards a man standing next to Bo’s garage. The man was speaking with a sheriff and two members of the Ravenswood Fire Department. “See that guy standing over there? The one with his arms crossed and the receding hairline he’s doing a horrible job of trying to cover up?”

  Nikkie said, “Yes. What about him?”

  “His name in John Mather. He’s a lieutenant with the fire department. Notice how he hasn’t looked our way since we’ve been standing here?”

  “Actually, I hadn’t noticed him till you pointed him out so, no, I didn’t notice he hasn’t looked our way.”

  “Well I have and that is telling me something.”

  “Telling you what?” Nikkie asked.

  “I spoke with Lieutenant Mather at the fire station. I was speaking with him while the department was being toned out for this emergency, actually. He told me that he and I needed to talk about Bo and about whatever is happening in Ravenswood. He said we shouldn’t talk at the station and that he would contact me and arrange a time for the two of us to talk in private.”

  “And?” Nikkie said.

  “And I know he saw me standing here but he hasn’t let on that he recognized me. It’s like he doesn’t want anyone at this scene knowing that we’ve spoken. The young fire fighter standing next to him knows John and I spoke at the station, but I’m pretty sure John doesn’t want anyone else to know.”

  “What do you make of it?”

  “That whatever Lieutenant Mather wants to say to me is something that other people, probably one or more of the people at this scene, don’t want me knowing. Mather needs to get something off his chest or maybe he just has a suspicion he needs to share.”

  “And there’s no one else but you he can share it with,” Nikkie stated.

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  Some radios began squawking outside, sending a few members of Ravenswood Fire Department into motion. Some, including John Mather scurried into the house, while others walked more casually towards their rescue vehicles. Less than a minute later, the ass end of Mather appeared at the front door. He was slightly bent forward, his hands securing and pulling the stretcher that Crown was lying on.

  As Crown came into Derek’s and Nikkie’s view, they stood and moved a few steps closer to the ambulance she was being brought towards. Derek counted six medical personnel surrounding the stretcher, none of them revealing any information on their faces.

  As the stretcher reached the back of the ambulance, Derek and Nikkie, less than five feet away, got a good look at Crown. Her right eye was partially open; the whites of her eye, now yellowed and tinged with red around the edges, seemed to be bulging out through her partially opened lid. The hair on the right side of her head was matted down with dried blood, clinging to her skull. The paramedic on the right hand side of the stretcher pressed a two-by-two-inch gauze over both of Crown’s ears, removed the gauze then muttered something about spinal fluid and a “halo” pattern to the other paramedics. Derek saw that Crown had angry looking dark patches behind her ears and the same angry and distressing darkness below each eye.

  The top of the stretcher was pushed into the back of the ambulance, then with the push of a button on the side of the stretcher, the collapsable undercarriage of the stretcher drew in the legs and wheels. Crown was pushed inside. Seconds later, the doors of the ambulance closed and the backside of an EMT blocked Derek’s and Nikkie’s view of Crown.

  Derek held Nikkie’s arm and pulled her away from the ambulance. “You’re right, she doesn’t look good.”

  “Jesus, Derek,” Nikkie said, her hands covering her mouth.

  “She has battle signs behind her ears,” Derek said, loudly enough for the EMT’s and paramedics to hear.

  “Yes, sir,” one of the blue uniformed EMT’s stated. “We see.”

  Nikkie grabbed Derek’s arm. “What did you just say? What are battle signs?”

  Derek led Nikkie back to the car that had served as their leaning post for the previous twenty minutes. “It’s a sign of traumatic brain injury. Dark, small bruises behind each ear and the raccoon look of her eyes. This isn’t looking good, Nikkie. Not good at all.”

  “Oh my God,” Nikkie sighed.

  “Listen,” Derek said, turning Nikkie to face him, both of his hands holding her arms firmly. “I’m not a medic and far from a doctor. I just saw a bunch of injures when I was stationed in Iraq. But, I need you to get to whichever hospital this ambulance is going to and keep close to Crown. The detective or whatever rank he is will want to talk with you first, which is fine. But as soon as he’s done with you, you need to leave.”

  As if on cue, the man with the snow-white hair, banana-sized fingers and barreled chest approached Nikkie and Derek. “Very sorry about what happened here,” he said in a voice that seemed to resonate deep from his thick and neck. “My name is Investigator Mark Mullins.” Mark extended his oversized hand to Derek, who shook it and for the briefest moment, wondered
if Mark Mullins was planning on crushing his much smaller hand.

  “How’s she doing?” Derek asked.

  “That’s for people with diplomas hanging in waiting rooms to say. All I can tell you is I and the sheriff’s department are going to do everything we can to catch the SOB who did this to your friend. Before that can happen, I need to speak with you. Mostly you,” he said, looking at Nikkie. “There’s a small coffee shop less than a mile from here. Tucked behind the hardware shop off of Main. Don’t know about you two, but I sure could use a few cups of caffeine about now.”

  ˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇ

  Derek and Nikkie pulled into the Morning Grind Roast House after making the five minute drive from Bo’s house. As the two walked in, they were met with a somewhat frantic waitress, vigorously waving her hand in front of her face, and the fetid smell of burnt coffee.

  “Can I help you?” the waitress asked, forcing a smile to remove the look of nausea she was wearing when they had first walked in. “Sorry for the smell.”

  “I hope that wasn’t your only pot of coffee I’m smelling,” Derek said.

  “New barista,” the waitress said, tilting her head in the direction of the young man standing behind the counter, hands on hips and a deeply etched scowl of anger and fear on his face. “And no, we have plenty of coffee and the smell won’t last but a minute longer. Table for two?”

  “Booth for three,” Derek replied.

  Nikkie and Derek were escorted to a booth in the rear of the coffee shop. Moments after sitting, Investigator Mark Mullins joined them. Mullins ordered the “tallest, blackest and strongest coffee available, and add a shot of expresso.” He asked his first question before his ass hit the bench seat. “So, you had just come back into town after taking Bo Randall for blood work?” his sternly slanted brow dropped slightly towards Nikkie. As Nikkie spoke, he slowly and almost imperceptibly nodded his head.