Her Last Breath - Debt Collector 9 (A Jack Winchester Thriller)

by Jon Mills

Sam munched down on the BLT before taking a sip of his coffee. “Actually I don’t.”

  “Shit, Larson. Do you wear the pants or does she?”

  He was always making these kinds of remarks. Had it not been for the fact that he was still trying to make a good impression with the chief, he would have told him where to stick it. Instead, he pursed his lips and gave a faint smile as if he was somehow amused by it.

  Rigby was about to drone on when his radio crackled and dispatch came over the speaker.

  “Control to Car 1, 18-4-0.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Respond to 819, 3rd Avenue for a possible B and E in progress, one male broke a window. There could be more than one intruder. Stand by. Trying to get further…”

  “52-0. 3rd Avenue, right now, 819?” Ethan asked.

  “819 3rd Avenue, um, suspect still in the house, unknown on the race.”

  “Is that the apartment number?” he probed.

  “Apartment 9.”

  “C-13 to control, I’m over on 2nd Avenue, I will respond.”

  Sam shifted his chair back, tossed down a few bills on the table and both of them double-timed it out. In the cruiser a few minutes later, sirens blaring and lights flashing, Sam fishtailed it around a turn, almost losing control while slamming his foot against the accelerator. Marlinton suffered from all manner of criminal behavior, there wasn’t much that didn’t occur there, however, it was how frequently it occurred that separated it from larger cities. By all accounts, folks kept to themselves and most of his calls were related to domestics, usually fueled by alcohol. Boredom in a small town was rampant and with it came all manner of vices. Alcohol was the top one, drugs followed a close second. In recent years they had been trying to curb prostitution though it wasn’t as easy as driving by street corners. They didn’t operate like that. It was all done behind the scenes, over the Internet. By the time they got a lead, the john and hooker were long gone. Sam was pretty sure that the recent string of deaths had been somehow related to Aaron Gance, that’s why he’d been keeping a close eye on him. His track record wasn’t clean and despite him swearing that he was on the straight and narrow, Sam didn’t trust him. He’d just got out of prison for beating a woman, drug use and pimping, and rumor had it he was back to his old tricks.

  From Dories Lounge it usually took less than three minutes to reach the apartment block. With the siren blaring and no other vehicles on the road, he was there in two. A moment later Sam brought the car to a skidding halt, flicked off the siren and pushed his way out of the car. He surveyed the block as Rigby joined him.

  “Go on up, I’ll go around back,” Rigby said before jogging off into the darkness. He wasn’t one for placing himself at risk. Word had it, Ethan was eyeing the position of Shift Commander, a cozy little job to ride out until he retired, but that wasn’t going to happen unless Harry retired and that old coot wasn’t showing any signs of slowing. He unsnapped his holster and pulled his gun, keeping it low. As he entered the ground entrance, a female neighbor wearing a robe pointed to the stairs.

  “He’s still in there.”

  Sam took the stairs two at a time. Inside it was quiet, except for the rain pattering against the windows, the sound of a dog barking outside and the woman muttering downstairs. It was humid inside, a bead of sweat trailed his forehead, and one rolled down his back. His pulse raced and his breathing picked up. As he got closer to apartment 9, he noted the door was closed, but the window at the far end of the building was open. Staying as silent as he could, he headed towards the window and peered out. Rain battered his face. Rigby was at the bottom. He motioned with his hand for him to go back inside, he had it covered.

  Heading back to the door, he moved to the side and used the wall as a shield just in case shots rang out. Standing in front of doors had killed countless cops. It wasn’t just rookies. He rapped his hand on the wood and pulled back.

  “Pocahontas County Sheriff Department. Open up!”

  By the time Jack heard the sirens blaring, it was too late. The cops must have been close as within minutes of hearing them he’d exited the window and was scaling down the fire escape. Unfortunately, he never made it to the bottom as several neighbors began shouting, “There he is!” just as two cop cars screeched into view. Jack quickly retreated and went back inside and tried heading for the stairwell. He figured he could just pretend he was one of the residents, but another vigilant neighbor was quick to point him out.

  Didn’t these people have something better to do with their time?

  Had it been one of the big cities, he would have taken his chances and run for it, hell, he probably could have walked. New York was a haven for breaking and entering. Muggings, rapes, and domestics were the norm. It wasn’t unusual to hear someone screaming, glass shattering or a car alarm going off, but here… small towns were another thing entirely.

  Minutes earlier, he’d slammed the door. “Sonofabitch!”

  He paced back and forth for a minute or two, then it dawned on him. He didn’t need to run. The way he saw it, he was just concerned about his client. He figured he could talk his way out of this. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  The cop bellowed his order again. He crossed the room and looked out the window and saw the other cop below talking to a resident. Screw it.

  The door cracked open and Sam slipped the safety off and his finger hovered near the trigger. His heart was slamming hard against his chest. After a few seconds, the door widened, pushed by the hand of a guy of average height. He looked strong and drenched by the rain.

  “On the floor now!” he bellowed.

  Hands shot up. “Listen, I can explain.”

  “Now. Hands behind your back, face away from me.”

  He dropped to his knees and laid face down. Sam moved in fast and planted a knee on the back of his shoulder before getting on the radio and alerting Rigby.

  “Suspect in custody.”

  “Copy that. Coming up.”

  Sam shook his head. Yeah, you do that now that the threat has been neutralized. After slapping a pair of cuffs on the man, he quickly assessed him for any weapons and found a Glock.

  “This better be licensed.”

  “It is,” the man croaked.

  “You want to tell me what you are doing here?”

  “She’s my client.”

  “You a lawyer? Cause you don’t look like one.”

  “No.”

  “Too bad, you’re going to need one.” He hauled him up and strong-armed him out. “So you break into most of your clients’ apartments?”

  Ethan appeared at the top of the stairwell out of breath. The guy seriously needed to lose some pounds. It was only one flight of steps. A man of his age, and with his job requirement, the department should have pulled him aside. It was embarrassing. He was leaning a hand against the wall.

  “Good job.”

  “Take him down to the cruiser, I’ll be there in a minute. I just want to check on the apartment.”

  “Why don’t you take him down?”

  The guy cast a glance over his shoulder at Sam and shook his head. Even he must have understood what a prick Ethan was. “Because I’m not out of breath.”

  Ethan scowled as he led the man away. Sam updated dispatch on the current situation before heading inside the apartment. His radio crackled and he turned it down a few notches. He surveyed the shattered window and noted that most of the items that were commonly stolen in a break-in were still there; the TV, DVD, an iPad on the table, a wad of cash beneath a pair of keys in the kitchen. By any measure, it didn’t look as if anything had been taken. Then again, they had interrupted him. He crossed into the kitchen and looked at the corkboard on the wall. There was a list of numbers on the counter. Names he didn’t recognize. He took out his phone and took a snapshot of it before running his gloved hands over a few personal effects.

  Back outside in the corridor, he was met by the same woman he’d seen on the ground level.

  “Is Jenna ok
ay?” she said trying to peer around him.

  “Jenna?”

  “Jenna Whitmore, she rents the apartment.”

  “Ma’am, she’s not there. Do you know her?”

  “Of course, my son is the landlord.”

  “Is he here?”

  “No, he’s away on vacation.”

  “What can you tell me about her?”

  “She’s a good girl. Always pays on time. Is she hurt?”

  “No, she’s not there.”

  “Odd. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen her for the past two days. I always see her. She’s dropped off groceries on occasion for me because I can’t get out as much as I used to and relying on my son is hit and miss. You know, my legs keep swelling up and whatnot. I keep trying to tell the doctor that the pills he’s given me aren’t working, but he doesn’t listen.”

  “Right.” He smiled. “I should probably get a statement from you. And you are?”

  “Mrs. Welch.”

  He pulled out his notebook and took down as much information as he could. “You wouldn’t happen to know if she has family nearby? The job she holds, etc.?”

  “She used to work for the newspaper here in the town but they let her go. Terrible state of affairs, letting a young woman go, after all she did for them. I told her she should go to national media, you know; give them a taste of their own medicine. Shame on them. Anyway, her mother lives in Durbin but don’t ask me where, oh, and she has a brother, Corey, he works for a church. Nice lad. Comes by often to check in on her.”

  Sam pulled out his phone and brought up the snapshot of the paper with all the numbers on. He scanned it and saw a number beside the name Corey Whitmore.

  “Have you seen the man we took out of here before?”

  She shook her head. “Never. By the way, who is going to pay for that window? I hope it hasn’t damaged the floors. It costs a lot of money to run this place.”

  He nodded while she droned on about how money didn’t grow on trees and that her son was thinking of hiking the rent because the cost of living was crippling them. Sam put up a finger to indicate he just needed a second. He dialed the number and waited.

  “Deputy,” Mrs. Welch tried to get his attention.

  Sam raised a finger. “Ma’am, you’ll have a chance to press charges. Just give me a second, please.”

  The phone rang and a young man answered.

  Chapter 7

  This cop was getting on his last nerve.

  Aaron Gance stood outside his brother’s garage under a carport, smoking a cigarette and staring at the message on his phone. It was the second message in two days. He’d reported him for harassment but that didn’t seem to go anywhere. It never did. The pigs stuck together. His older brother Merle walked out of the garage, wiping his oily hands on a dirty rag before tucking it in his back pocket. The rain was still falling heavily, spilling over the gutter like a waterfall and splashing near his feet. Merle was three years older and since getting out of prison, he’d tried to go straight but there was no money in it. He barely had enough to keep the garage open, and support his family, let alone pay Aaron.

  It was all a front, nothing more than smoke and mirrors to keep the cops at arm’s length. Behind the scenes, Merle subsidized his income through an arrangement with a local biker gang to be a distributor for their narcotics. Of course, they didn’t get their hands dirty, they left the actual selling to the guys on the street. It didn’t pay much, but it was better than getting a real job.

  A mosquito buzzed around his neck and he slapped it.

  “Brother, you know how these cops are. They have nothing better to do than stick their nose in where it’s not wanted. I’m sure something will come up in a month or two and they’ll harass someone else.”

  “Two months? They are making trouble with my parole officer. Not to mention my little side gig.”

  Merle crouched over and pulled out a couple of cold brews from the cooler and handed him one. He ran the sweating can around the back of his neck to provide some relief before he cracked it open and took a hard swig. After, he took a long drag on his cigarette. The humidity was suffocating. There wasn’t even a breeze in the air that night.

  “I keep telling you. That gig is a one-way ticket back to jail and next time they aren’t going to be as lenient. Do you really want to blow it?”

  He wasn’t stupid but relying on minimum wage wasn’t getting him anywhere. Now dealing drugs had been a beginning, a small step towards paying for the lifestyle he wanted — a lifestyle like those fat cats living in the suburbs. He wanted the nice SUV, the four-bedroom house, the cabin on weekends and a boat for those hot summer days. Why couldn’t he have it? Why shouldn’t he have it? Hell, he’d tried going down the road of doing shift work in factories, and waiting tables. But that was a chump’s game. Never mind, humiliating. He hated seeing people he knew coming into the restaurant or bar. The smug look on their faces as he took their orders as if they were better than him. No thanks, 9 to 5 was for sheep, it was nothing more than eating the scraps from the table. He had plans, big plans and for a while, he’d been on track until that bitch squealed to the cop and he busted him.

  “Anyway, what’s in the past is in the past. Dwelling on it does nothing. You need to knuckle down, keep your nose clean and maybe, just maybe we can build up this garage into a decent business.”

  “Decent business? Shit, Merle, you did one oil change today and replaced some spark plugs for a farmer. You call that business?”

  He was getting a little tired of his older brother ordering him around and giving him the spiel about how Gance Motors was going to bring in the big money. It was nothing but bullshit. His brother had always been like that. A dreamer. Nothing more than someone who talked the big talk but when it came down to it, he didn’t have the balls to make the tough decisions. He, on the other hand, was a go-getter. He always was and always would be. He wasn’t one to rest on his laurels, or get ordered around by some asshole whose highest achievement was becoming manager at the local burger joint. No, fuck that.

  “Mind your tongue, Aaron. All it takes is one call to your parole officer and…”

  Aaron snorted. He couldn’t even be bothered to reply to that. Lately, his brother was starting to step over the line. If he didn’t watch it, he was liable to find himself face down in a ditch with a bullet in the back of his head like those who’d crossed him before.

  “Anyway, you heard or seen Bonnie?”

  Merle blew out a plume of smoke from his cigar and chuckled. “Aaron, just drop it. She’s got a kid now. She’s working down at Ali’s Bar.”

  The thing was, he couldn’t drop it. Sure, Deputy Larson had charged him but if it weren’t for her, he wouldn’t have done time. Kid or no kid, she was going to learn the error of her ways. No one fucked him over, and certainly not some cheap ass whore. Who the hell did she think she was kidding taking a job in a bar? He knew her better than that. With the small amount of cash they tossed at them there at the end of the week, he couldn’t see that supporting her crack addiction. It was rampant back when she was one of his girls. It was how he was able to control them. He kept them stocked up on drugs while they serviced clients in the area. If they gave him lip about their cut at the end of the night, he slapped them back into line.

  “Anyway, don’t you have a few new ones working for you?”

  “Yeah, Tina and Rita. Though I’m thinking of dropping Tina. She’s a lippy bitch who keeps talking back. She’s been hassling me about increasing her share. Says that she knows a few girls in town who are doing their own thing. She wants to cut out the middleman. Like I’m going to let her do that?”

  “So what did you say?”

  “I didn’t. I just backhanded her and knocked some sense into her.”

  “Shit, dude, you are just asking for it, aren’t you?”

  “Who gives a fuck? I’m running this show, not them.”

  “They are the ones taking the risk.”

  “The r
isk?” He spun around on his brother unable to believe what he was saying. They weren’t the ones who got put away last time. No, they were just given a slap on the wrist and sent on their way. But him, he had to endure days of looking over his shoulder in jail. They’d made an example of him.

  “Calm down, man. You take things way too seriously.”

  “Yeah, well, you would too if you were in my shoes.”

  “I’ve been there. Done that. It doesn’t pay, brother.”

  “Pays a helluva lot better than the shit you are paying me.”

  “I told you. Things are tight right now. Besides, I’m saving your ass. You could be working down at the diner or in some factory. Do you want that? At least here you don’t have a boss over your shoulder.”

  “No, I have you. That’s worse.”

  Both of them laughed. Aaron flicked his cigarette butt out into the darkness. The glowing embers fizzled, and he turned back inside thinking about what he was going to do about Deputy Dipshit. His brother was right to some degree, he had to be smart, however, that didn’t mean he couldn’t have some fun. They were going to have a little face-to-face, and he was going to regret taking a position in this town. But first things first: Bonnie had to be dealt with. He’d been waiting a long time to get even with her. There wasn’t a night that had gone by that he hadn’t thought about a fair punishment. Now that he’d heard about her having a kid, perhaps beating her up and leaving her in a ditch wouldn’t hit her where it hurt. Perhaps he’d take it out on the kid. He ground his teeth as he went in and scooped up another beer. Because of Bonnie, he’d suffered greatly at the hands of inmates; because of her, he was now under the watchful eye of Larson and struggling to make ends meet. No one screwed him around and walked away. So now she was living a life outside of opening her legs, all content to earn minimum wage in some bar so she could raise her kid? Well, he was about to piss on her parade and no one was going to stop him. Not Larson. Not Bonnie and definitely not Merle. He was going to enjoy this.

  “By the way, you know anything about who killed those women?”