The man with the gun to his temple squirmed, tried to break free, but Pike tightened his grip.
Again, the man Pike had called Rodriguez replied in Spanish.
Pike nodded.
“I understand; you have higher ups that you need to speak to, but I don’t have to remind you that this ain’t Sinaloa. You can’t blast your way out of this—not here, not stateside. If you don’t listen to me, then you are going to be fighting this war for a very, very long time. With the cops, with the church, with all of fucking Askergan. Look at it this way: remember Tony? Tony’s time had come, and you and your partner—”
The man in Pike’s arms squirmed again, and he responded by leaning backward slightly. The strangled man gasped, and from his vantage point, Jared saw his feet lift off the ground.
“—Tony’s time had come, and you shifted to Sabra. Made yourself some cash, too, by making another smart decision. And judging by the weapon upgrade, you seem to have put both the cash to good use.”
The gun in Rodriguez’s hand twitched slightly, and a smirk formed on his thin lips.
Jared swallowed hard, sensing that this standoff was about to come to a close, one way or another. He felt as if he had started watching a soap opera halfway through the episode, not fully understanding what was taking place before him.
Either that, or there had been a prologue to this discussion of which he wasn’t privy.
“Yeah, doesn’t seem like much, right? Bunch of hillbillies, Fargo wannabes coming between you and total control? But think about where you move the product, think about how much product you move through this County, then ask yourself how your jefe would feel if this pipeline was suddenly shut down for a year or two as the streets run red with blood. Think of the attention this would draw, not just with the DEA, but back home, too.”
Rodriguez’s eyes darted around, and Jared lowered his head into the grass and continued to listen.
“Sabra must pay; the other one, the Crab, he must pay, too,” the man replied in English this time, his accent thick as cold molasses.
“Oh, you’ll get the money owed, plus some. Just like last time, you do remember last time, don’t you?”
There was a pause, and then Pike continued.
“But if that’s not enough, I’ll sweeten the deal. I’ll make sure that the County remains exclusive with you guys, with the Sinaloa cartel—you can continue to move product through the mansion. What? Still not good enough? I can also give you immunity from the local PD and you can run product through the church as well.”
Jared couldn’t believe his ears.
Through the church? Immunity?
He had long since known that Father Carter was no ordinary man of the cloth—if he was one at all—but he had never expected to hear about it so objectively.
And this served to bring him full circle to the question that had nagged him ever since Pike had approached outside the church: why the fuck am I here?
Surely, it wasn’t as backup; after all, he had no weapon, and was told to remain in the grass.
What, then?
He pictured the gun in Pike’s hand, only it wasn’t pressed up against the Mexican gang banger’s temple, but his own.
He couldn’t help but think that he was being roped into something bigger, something that would make what had happened at the Wharfburn Estate look like a rural Easter egg hunt.
“Think about it, Rodriguez. Think.”
“And what do you want in return?”
Another pause. When Pike replied, his voice was expressionless. It was clear to him, and to Jared now, too, that a deal had been struck.
The rest was just details.
“Ten percent; and we need to have access to Sabra’s mansion, to the man inside.”
“He must pay.”
“Yeah, yeah, he’ll pay. We need your guns, too—your manpower to get inside. That’s it. You and your mano don’t have to even enter. We have a deal?”
The wind blew just then, rustling the tall grass in front of Jared’s face. He got another view of the scene, which looked nearly identical to as it had before, only Rodriguez had lowered his gun a few inches.
“Sounds good.”
“Do we have a deal? I need to hear you say it.”
“We have a deal. Now let him go.”
But Pike didn’t release his stranglehold right away.
“If you come in contact with anybody from the Police Department, you hear? And if anyone asks, our agreement is between us. Got it?”
The wind relented, once again obscuring Jared’s view.
“I said deal.”
Feeling that he might be called upon in any moment now, and cautiously optimistic that any real threat of danger had passed, Jared raised his head to continue watching the scene unfold before him.
Pike let go of the man’s neck and shoved him forward. He stumbled, the back of his head and ears that were only now visible to Jared a deep crimson.
“I’m backing away now,” Pike said. True to his word, he started to backpedal slowly.
The man that he had shoved seemed to fall forward awkwardly, and for a second, Jared thought that he had tripped on a rock or something else buried in the tall grass.
But when the man spun around, a pistol in his hand, Jared realized that that wasn’t the case.
“You fucking puta!” the man screamed, raising the gun from his boot where he had retrieved it from.
Unlike Jared, Pike wasn’t taken by surprise. Instead, he planted his rear foot and he squeezed off two rounds, the silencer rendering the reports supersonic puffs.
A red dot appeared just above the man’s left eye, while the other bullet tore through the center of his chest, a bloom of red on his white wife-beater.
The man collapsed forward, the gun clutched in his hand still aimed at Pike.
Oh Christ! Jared almost shouted. Oh Christ!
He buried his head and squeezed his eyes closed as tightly as possible. His mind was racing, barely able to comprehend what he had just seen.
This wasn’t the first person he had seen die; he had seen Mrs. Drew shot in the back, he had seen countless others perish during the cracker infestation.
But this was the first time he had seen someone murdered so callously.
And it had an effect on him, one that after all he had seen was unexpected.
Run you idiot! Jared, stand the fuck up and run!
In his mind, he only had a split second before Pike was torn to ribbons by Rodriguez’s automatic rifle.
But Jared didn’t rise, Pike’s words somehow holding him in place in spite of everything.
Head down, ears open.
To his surprise, the expected eruption of automatic gunfire never happened.
Instead, Pike started speaking again, his voice still calm and even.
“I can overlook this man’s indiscretions. As far as I’m concerned my deal was with you, and not with him. And as far as I’m concerned, the deal is still good. Now it’s up to you to decide whether we get to walk away from this, or if we continue to paint the dead grass red. So I’ll ask you just once: are we good?”
Rodriguez’s response made Jared’s body deflate, the adrenaline that had flooded his system was suddenly squeezed out of every pore at once.
He felt exhausted; and then he felt embarrassed at being exhausted, given that he hadn’t actually done anything particularly taxing.
Head down, ears open.
He was here to listen, to overhear certain facts, information. How this was supposed to get him closer to Corina, he had no idea.
But his presence here, as clandestine as it was to Jared, was no accident. That much was obvious.
“We’re still good. I never liked him anyway.”
“Good. Now remember what I said. Ten percent, and some armas when I call for you.”
There was a final exchange in Spanish, and then nothing for several seconds.
Eyes still closed, Jared waited, still in disbelief at what he
had seen.
Pike shooting the man dead.
Pff, pff, two bullets and his life cut short.
A hand suddenly grabbed him gruffly by the shoulder and yanked him to his feet.
“C’mon, let’s go,” Pike ordered. “And next time I tell you to stay down, you stay down.”
Chapter 10
“So you know how you were open to anything? Anything that might help us learn more about Sabra—er, the Crab’s mansion?” Deputy Williams began, a smile on his face.
“Go on,” Paul replied gruffly. The idea of any of his men smiling at a time like this irked him.
Seeing his expression, the grin slipped off his face.
“I spoke to a friend in the Askergan Building Permits and Code office, and managed to grab the plans for Sabra’s mansion; engineering blueprints.”
The word blueprint piqued Sheriff White’s interest, and he leaned forward.
So far, nothing that he or his men had done had gotten them any closer to any semblance of a plan. Reggie was off trying to garner information from any of the small time dealers that they had frequent interactions with, but so far that had proven fruitless. After word got out about what happened to Sabra, most had been spooked. As for Coggins, he had sent the man to get some rest. Of all his men, he knew Coggins well—or at least thought he did.
And he knew that he would not stop trying to get Alice back until she was in his arms, or he was dead and buried.
Paul was going to do everything he could to make sure that it was the former.
As for Dirk, he had been gone for several hours without checking in, and Sheriff White was starting to wonder where the man’s head was.
And how much they could really trust the recent convert, despite what he claimed was a past as an officer of the law.
The only lead, until Williams had stormed into his office, was the strange conversation with Father Carter, one that he was going to keep to himself until the last possible moment.
Hopefully forever.
Father Carter, Askergan County’s fourteenth mayor.
Paul couldn’t picture it, nor did he want to. There was something off about the smooth talking priest.
And then there was Gregory Griddle, the man who had fought so valiantly against the crackers, but then seemed to have gone off the rails after he had been born again in the fire. It was more than that, though; his son’s death had changed him, and now he was nowhere to be found.
Coggins had said that maybe Greg would come back around again, like all things from Askergan had a penchant of doing. But this thought, this idea of Greg coming back, caused something in his stomach to clench.
He wasn’t sure if he wanted that, even if the man might be able to help.
The way he had exploded at the station—screaming about Corina, about how she had murdered his son… something wasn’t right with him.
Realizing that Williams was staring at him, Paul looked at the giant poster rolled and tucked beneath his arm.
“Engineering plans?”
“Yep,” Deputy Williams replied. “Plans to the mansion when it was built more than a decade ago. And there is something I need to show you.”
Sheriff White began clearing things of his desk, essentially shoving files to the floor. When it was nearly empty save a small notepad, he indicated for Williams to unravel the document. As he did, something crossed Paul’s mind.
“Wait; you said you got these plans from the Askergan permits office? How is that possible? Sabra’s mansion is technically in Pekinish.”
The grin returned.
“Well that’s what I wanted to show you.”
Paul didn’t care for the secrecy, but decided to go along with it for the time being.
Williams spun the diagram around so that it faced the Sheriff, then he joined him on that side of the desk.
The light blue paper was covered in white lines, which, to Paul, clearly looked like the plans for a house of some sort, along with the surrounding area. Having only ever seen photographs of the estate, he couldn’t be sure if it was the same one, but he really didn’t have a reason to question it, either.
Still, he was no engineer, and the diagrams meant next to nothing to him. Paul sighed and rubbed the corners of his eyes. The few hours of sleep that he had gotten, as welcome as they had been, hadn’t been enough.
Especially given the dreams.
“What? What am I supposed to be looking at here, Williams?”
Williams pointed at the center of the house.
“This is—was—Sabra’s estate. It’s massive, over seven thousand square feet.” He moved his finger to the front of the house, and the long drive, before following a thin line around the circumference. “And this here is the front drive, and the metal fence surrounding it. Both Dirk and Pike said that the fence wasn’t built for security; it’s reinforced by the front gate, but the rest is just simple wrought iron. But it’s heavily guarded, all the way around the perimeter.”
Sheriff White caught himself nodding, and stopped.
“Yeah, we know all this already.”
“But—but we didn’t know this,” Williams proclaimed as he plunked a finger down on a line that extended to the end of the paper. To Paul, it looked like part of the fence that someone had accidentally drawn off the page.
“What? What is that?”
“I thought it was just an error at first, so I asked my buddy at the permit station about it.”
“And?”
“And he told me that the reason why they had a copy of the engineering diagrams in Askergan when the mansion is located in Pekinish, is that because of sinkholes in the area.”
“Sinkholes? For fuck’s sake, Williams, what does this have to do with anything? We can’t use a sinkhole to—”
“Hold on, hold on. There was nothing on the lot before Sabra’s estate was built—it was just part of a hill. When they started surveying the land, they realized that with the potential of sinkholes, they weren’t going to be able to route the regular residential sewer pipes from Pekinish to the new house. Or, at least, they didn’t want to risk it. Anyway, my buddy said that—get this—it was cheaper to reroute Askergan sewer pipes to the house, including all the extra paperwork and permits, rather than try to snake around the sinkholes. And that’s what this line represents.”
Paul blinked, trying to figure out what it all meant.
He quickly gave up; he was too tired for this shit.
“So? So what?”
“So…that means that Sabra doesn’t just have water pipes going to his fucking house, but he has sewer pipes directly beneath it.
“Sewer pipes.”
Williams nodded.
Something flashed in Paul’s mind, and he thought he finally realized what Williams was getting at, in his roundabout way. Still, he didn’t want to get his hopes up.
Not just yet.
“Sewer pipes,” Williams repeated.
“How big?”
Deputy Williams’s grin had returned with a vengeance, and he tilted his head to one side, clearly proud of himself.
“I knew you would ask that. You remember after the storm the problem with the rats? How the cold had driven them deep underground and after the snow melted, residents in both Askergan and Pekinish reported them coming out of the toilets in droves? Chewing up everything in sight?”
Paul bit his lip. Deep in the recesses of his memory, he thought he recalled something about a rat infestation, but that was more than six years ago. At the time he was also in the process of becoming Sheriff, and was overwhelmed dealing with the death and destruction in the wake of the storm.
“Maybe,” he offered.
“Well, as Sheriff you must have signed off on a clean-up crew, because it was a joint effort between Pekinish and Askergan to try and flush the rats out of the sewers.”
Paul made a face.
“How do you know all this?”
Williams stared at him, unblinking.
“You rea
lly didn’t read my CV when I applied to be a deputy, did you?”
Paul said nothing, and Williams quickly continued.
“I know because I was managing Pest Riddance at the time. And we got the contract. Big money for us back then. Anyways, me—not me specifically, but my men—went into the sewers. And they’re huge, not like those typical residential pipes. Looks like Sabra wanted the sewers to be extra large for reasons—”
“Drug manufacturing? Escape route?”
Williams shrugged and continued, placing the pad of his index finger on the white line that represented the sewer.
“My buddy couldn’t help me there; he said a hefty price was paid, however. Anyway, when we were flushing out the rats we didn’t go all the way to Sabra’s place—we were told to keep clear—but the tunnels aren’t going to just funnel there.”
Paul stared at the thick white line on the blue background for a moment.
“So they are big enough for men to pass through, and they go directly beneath Sabra’s estate?” Paul asked.
Williams nodded vigorously.
“Well I’ll be damned—that’s our way in.”
“Yep—that’s our way in.”
Paul scrambled to the walkie on his belt.
“Coggins, you there? Coggins, if you’re there, come in.”
He waited for a moment, nodding at Williams who was smiling now. After about a minute the radio crackled and a groggy voice came through.
“Yeah.”
“Coggins, get your ass back to the station as soon as possible.”
“What’s up?”
Paul took a deep breath.
“We found a way… we found a way in to Sabra’s estate, and we’re going to get Alice and Corina back. Bradley, we’re going to get them back.”
For the first time in what felt like forever, Paul felt something akin to hope form in the back of his mind.
Chapter 11
Father Carter frowned as he surveyed the lot before him. He wasn’t sure what to expect when Robert Cormath had told him that he could have the place—had no idea what kind of shape it would be in, how large it was—but he had never imagined this.
Stitches (Insatiable Series Book 5) Page 5