Thrills

by K. T. Tomb

  He told them about the bum he had sent to his house in the Hamptons and that they should keep an eye out for the man. He got an early night then and turned in, still feeling that odd, disturbed sensation. But he had to put them aside now and focus on what would be by far the most important. He had to get through the courtroom proceedings the next day and then find out what was really going on with John Bainbridge, and what had really happened that day the Federal Bank Building had been robbed.

  Chapter Eight

  Storm sat down at the bar feeling completely drained.

  He had come back from the courthouse and though there had been success, in that, it had been decided that John Bainbridge would be tried as a civilian; the charges were multiple counts of murder, grand larceny, malicious destruction of government property and treason. The first three carried a penalty of life in prison, but the last charge meant the death penalty would be demanded. It was the worst thing they could have faced. He had expected it, but still felt shocked when he heard it.

  Somehow it made his cigars taste bad, it made the need for a drink bigger than ever, yet the alcohol did nothing to settle him this time.

  The trial was set to begin with a jury selection in two weeks’ time.

  And then there was still the pressing issue of why John Bainbridge could talk. He had not said anything during the day, but in private he had spoken. There had been only a few minutes in which they could talk, and now John had begun to do so. He had not said anything sensible though. It was just a plea for help and an expression of hope Storm would not force him to testify. It had been one of the things the prosecutor had said would happen.

  That made some sense to Storm. He knew then that the prosecution knew John could talk, but he still hadn’t put a finger on exactly what was going on. He’d demanded the medical files the moment he had taken the case, and the copy he had clearly stated John’s vocal cords had been shot through. The CT scan showed they were completely destroyed. It was not possible to recover from that injury.

  Storm went to his room and sank down on the bed. He just could not figure out what was happening. His only comfort was that he had a witness to the fact that John and his brother could not possibly have been driving the truck that plowed through the doors of the building on Liberty Street. It was his last shred of hope in winning the trial.

  He loosened his tie and closed his eyes to think. But the moment he did, he fell asleep.

  Just after midnight, the phone woke him. He shot up and looked around. He saw the screen of his phone light up and he reached for it, expecting it to be his office, or maybe the prosecutor. It was not. The voice he heard was Alex’s.

  “Storm...”

  “Hey Alex. What are you calling me for at this hour? Not a booty call, surely?”

  “Don’t do that these days.”

  “I was told something to that extent.”

  “Were you?”

  “Yes. Seems you pied someone at the hotel I recommended in D.C.?”

  “Yeah... Old habits die hard, but I didn’t want it in the end. Just thought I did when I was there. Stressing over the finalization of that deal I guess.”

  “That’s what you were doing here?”

  There was a silence on the line for a moment. “Listen, I didn’t call to talk about that.”

  “So what did you call me for?”

  “There’s someone in your house.”

  “Well, I know that.”

  “No, someone else. A car just pulled up and someone went inside. All the lights went on and we heard something.”

  She had Storm’s full attention now. “Did you call the cops?”

  “Not yet. Wanted to call you first.”

  “Don’t call 911, call the police chief at home.”

  “You forget we’re new here,” Alex said dryly.

  Storm gave her the number. But Alex did not answer. “Alex? Are you still there?” Still, there was silence. “Alex?”

  “Storm... your guy just came sprinting out of the house. And... well...”

  “What happened?”

  “He went down the beach, then two guys went after him.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know. They came this way, but I can’t see them now.”

  “Make the call, Alex. I’m coming back to the Hamptons.”

  “Okay.”

  Storm began packing that instant and within an hour he stormed out of his room. He forced the receptionist to check him out of the room. While she did that, he called a cab and half an hour later he was at Union Station.

  Union Station was virtually deserted and when Storm went to buy his ticket, he found the next train was leaving at 3:15 a.m. He looked at his watch. It would be an hour and a half waiting. But he did the math and knew he couldn’t get a flight to New York quicker at that time of the night. He would have to take a train to Dulles first and then hope there would be a charter flight ready to go.

  Storm rubbed his eyes and sat down on a bench. He sighed and leaned back. Suddenly he felt tired. He rose to his feet again and picked up his bags and his suitcase. He strolled around for a while and finally went into the Starbucks at the station. He wasn’t usually too keen on Starbucks, but he knew he could use the caffeine as the night wore on. He ordered a regular latte and a danish to go and went to the platform. He sat down on his suitcase in the cold air, placed his elbows on his knees and rested his chin on his hands. It was cold, but he liked to be in the fresh air. For a long time he sat there pondering, taking sips of coffee from time to time, eating bites of his pastry.

  He didn’t need Alex calling him to tell him the police had just arrived. The call was superfluous but quite welcome. She managed to pull him out of his meditative state and he came back to the world. And after she hung up, he felt much better than he had for a while. It was odd how that worked. He felt calm and at ease at that moment.

  Storm bought another cup of coffee five minutes before the train showed. He stepped on, sipping the drink. He didn’t like it as much as the coffee he made himself in the office or at home, but it was not half bad. And it was caffeine to help keep him going through the night.

  He caught himself running his hand through his hair again as he sat down and pulled out his laptop. There were emails to write and research to do, even at this time of night.

  When he finally got home, he was delighted to see his new car parked outside the garage. He’d gone ahead and ordered the Buick SUV as soon as he’d received a favorable decision on the insurance claim. He jumped in it and backed out into the street. The light was just showing on the horizon, shining a few wan rays through the tall buildings. It took him another hour to drive to the Hamptons, and that was breaking some speed limits.

  The police car was still outside his house. The light was on, and so was the light in the next house.

  The front door was open. When Storm walked into the house, he noticed it was open because the lock had been broken. It could not be kept closed. “Hello?” he said as he dropped his bags in the hallway.

  Some feet moved on his parquet flooring and he heard someone rushing towards the front of the house. It was Alex who appeared. “Where is he?” Storm asked her before she could even open her mouth to greet him.

  “We don’t know. The sun is fully up in half an hour. We’re going to look then.”

  Storm looked at his watch and suddenly shivered. “I’ll get on the phone to a locksmith then.”

  “Carmen probably has some breakfast.”

  “Let me have a look in there first.” He pushed past Alex and entered the living room of his house.

  The living room was a mess. It had been completely trashed. Half the furniture had suffered a blow of some sort. The couch was dirty and something that looked like blood had sprayed over the cloth. The police chief had been sitting on one of the few chairs that had survived whatever happened, but he jumped to his feet when he saw Storm. “Mr. McCoy.”

  Storm shook the man’s hand heartily. “Thanks for co
ming, Doug. And call me Storm, will you?” He gestured around. “Got any idea what happened here?”

  The police chief shook his head. “Someone got hurt there, but I don’t know who yet. We’ll find your guest, but I’m not sure he will still be alive when we do.”

  Storm nodded. “He’s a witness in a case. A very important one. We need to find him, alive.”

  “And what if we don’t find him alive?”

  “Then someone else is also going to die.”

  When the sun rose fully, they went outside taking to the beach first in hopes of finding tracks there. There were none visible, apart from a single footprint where the grass met the sand. The police chief remarked the men could have been walking further down the sand and the tracks would have been washed away by the high tide.

  They split up, Storm and the police chief going off to the right, while Alex would walk past her own house and towards the town.

  Storm didn’t hope to find much, but within five minutes they did find something. It was the police chief who saw the baseball bat lying in the grass, close to the line of the sand. When they approached, Storm instantly saw the blood on the wood. It had been used for a sinister purpose that much was clear. The police chief drew a single glove and a plastic bag from his pocket and put the bat into the evidence bag. Carrying that, he led on.

  Storm’s FBI investigative instincts began to kick in again and he was carefully scanning the beach, looking carefully for any clue, and any piece of evidence that might be left out there.

  He found another bat about fifty yards from where they had found the first one. There was only a small spot of blood on it, mingled with brown hair. He called the police chief over and this bat too was taken into evidence.

  They wanted to move on from there but were stopped by a shout from down the beach. When Storm looked around, he could see a figure far in the distance waving. He could just make out flying red hair and knew that Carmen was trying to attract his attention. It seemed she and Alex had found something.

  Storm and the police chief ran back across the sand. It took them five minutes to get there. They were both panting and out of breath when they got to Carmen.

  “What is it?” Storm managed to ask her, cursing himself for having let himself go recently.

  Carmen just pointed onward. Alex sat next to something in the sand. Storm saw her fingers were red. He came closer and what he had feared became reality. His witness, the one witness who could give him reasonable doubt in the case, lay dead on the beach just outside his house.

  Chapter Nine

  Storm sank down onto the sand.

  He buried his head in his hands and sighed. He felt like he was at the end of his wits. Alex sat down next to him. “You never did explain what that man was doing in your house, but it seems he was important.”

  Storm looked at her. He wanted to kiss her then. She was beautiful and he needed someone right then and there. He knew he would have done it too, had it not been for Carmen squatting down behind Alex and placing her hands on her shoulders. The urge to kiss her passed and he let himself drop onto his back into the grass.

  “He was a witness to something odd about the Fed Bank robbery. He claims nobody was driving the truck when it broke through the doors. And since I still have not seen the CCTV footage, which I’m assured exists, it was the one thing that could get my client off the hook. And now he’s dead.”

  Alex laid a hand on his thigh, at the very same time that Carmen laid a hand on his shoulder. Storm looked up and saw them sitting there. Carmen’s other hand still rested on Alex’s shoulder and Alex’s left hand had closed its fingers around that hand. They were not looking at each other, but Storm saw a perfect couple. Some people would look down on them, but Storm found they suited each other like no other couple he had ever seen. He suddenly felt guilty he had slept with Alex, feeling a powerful urge to tell Carmen about that. At the same time, he knew it had been a good thing that it happened, as these two women would never have been in his life without that moment.

  Storm watched the police chief make his calls and begin to examine the body. He was not, strictly speaking, allowed to do that, but over here it could take a long time for a coroner to arrive and it was common for the police to begin searching the body before the arrival of an expert.

  “I don’t know how to save him now,” Storm sighed.

  There was a long silence.

  “Is he meant to be saved?” Carmen asked.

  Storm looked up at her and frowned.

  “Don’t mind her, she’s a bit more religious than us.” Alex smiled up at her girlfriend.

  Carmen shook her head. “It’s not that. I was wondering whether you are meant to be saving him? Maybe there is something else going on?”

  Storm blinked when she mentioned what he had already heard Tom Claridge’s voice say. “Like what?”

  “Maybe somebody else robbed the place and they need to be seen as punishing someone, or doing something at least? Meaning there’s not a thing you can do about him getting hung out to dry.”

  Storm blinked again and looked straight into her eyes. “You haven't been speaking to Tom Claridge, have you?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Supreme Court judge,” Alex answered. “Suppose you know him?”

  Storm nodded. “Family friend. Said pretty much the same thing.”

  “And you ignored what he was saying?”

  Storm didn’t answer.

  Alex punched him in the leg. “Seriously, if she’s thinking conspiracies, there’s probably a conspiracy. And if your friend told you about that already, there might be something to it.”

  “So you’re saying I should not try to save him from the chair?”

  “Chair?”

  “He’s facing the death penalty.” Storm sighed.

  Alex shook her head. “Whatever. I’m saying you’re probably going to be prevented from saving him from the chair, so you might as well focus instead on finding out what is going on. Maybe you’ll find something that can be useful.”

  Storm sighed and looked at Carmen. “Never figured you for a conspiracy nut.”

  “I’m not. I see conspiracies when there are conspiracies,” Carmen said dryly. “Just like I know full well you and Alex had sex.”

  The comment took Storm by surprise. “How...?”

  Carmen shrugged. “I’ve known since the moment she looked at you that morning in the lobby that she would. I don’t like it, but at the end of the day it’s my bed she returns to.”

  Alex took Carmen’s hand from her shoulder and kissed it. There was nothing to say. The gesture was worth more than a thousand words. The gesture said, “I love you more than anyone else.”

  When the coroner finally arrived, Storm had seen everything the police chief took out of his witness’ pockets. There was not much and with little to do, he went back to his house, Alex and Carmen in tow, holding hands. In the kitchen, he made fresh coffee and he sat down at the kitchen table with the two women. Soon Alex and Carmen were deep in conversation. Storm heard Alex explain something about her business, but he drifted in his thoughts.

  There had been something to the suggestion of Tom Claridge and now Carmen. He had already thought there was something odd going on. Having found out the car had not been driven by the brothers and there was a set-up going on was one thing, but to think there was actually someone trying to get a man on the electric chair to stop someone from looking further than this was a completely different thought. He ran a hand through his hair and caught Alex speaking to him.

  “What’s that?”

  “Seems you have quite a bit of furniture that needs replacing now. You should come and have a look tonight. Come over for dinner, will you? Nearly all the furniture is done now.”

  “That was quick.”

  “I move quickly.”

  “You’re sure you did all of it yourself?”

  “What do you take me for?”

  Storm didn’t answer that with
anything more than a grin. “I’ll be there. But I think I’ll need some sleep before that.”

  “Mind if I have a look around for ideas?”

  Storm shook his head and stood up. The fastest route to his bedroom was through the living room, but he took the door to the hallway and went up the front stairs. He saw the bed in the big guest room had been slept in, but he ignored it and went to his own master bedroom. He went through to the master bath and relieved himself, then stripped down to his boxers and slipped under the covers.

  He dozed for a few minutes but woke up when he heard Alex come up the stairs. She didn’t look in his room, but she checked every other room for a few seconds then moved on. He heard her footfall and wondered what was going on when he realized she had stopped moving about. “You alright, Alex?” he growled, not bothering to open his eyes.

  “Yeah...” Alex’s voice sounded from the guest room. “Think you might want to come and see this.”

  “I’m sleeping.”

  “Seriously.”

  Storm got up again and, not bothering to put clothes on, he went to the guest room. He saw Alex sitting on the floor. Next to her was a small box he had never seen before.

  He sat down next to Alex and looked at the contents of the box. There was an array of different things there, but the thing that stood out straight away was a notebook. He grabbed it and looked at the name on it. It said ‘Ben Jones’. It belonged to the bum from Washington D.C.

  Storm began to look through it. It was a diary. He looked up the date of the Fed robbery. There was an entry, but only one phrase. “Never thought I would see driverless cars. I know they’d been working on developing them, but I didn’t know they were out there yet. But I saw one driverless truck plow through the posts and into the door of the Federal Bank building just before it erupted into flames.”

  He looked up the last entry. It was yesterday’s date. “I know they’re coming after me. That lawyer has been awfully decent, but he should not have told them I saw that car. It’s them after me now. I think I’m a dead man.”