Gone Forever

by Scott Blade

  I lay down on the hard bench and closed my eyes.

  I figured that I probably could’ve asked for a pillow and a blanket or they could’ve at least offered me that, but I would be okay. I’d slept on worse.

  They had taken my cell phone. I had to use my mind to mark the time. It was 2:45 in the afternoon. Sounded right.

  Chapter 23

  The FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide covers policies and procedures on how the FBI deals with domestic crimes such as kidnappings.

  Traditionally, officials are strictly bonded to stay within the confines of the law in order to try and recover a kidnapped individual, but the Patriot Act changed that. It gave authorities considerably more room to maneuver within the law in order to secure abductees.

  In abductions there was an unwritten rule—the 48-hour rule.

  If an abductee wasn’t rescued within 48 hours, then the rescue generally turned into a homicide investigation. The kidnapping part was over. Chances were the victim was already dead. Not good for Faye Matlind. What was even worse was that there had been no ransom demands—not one.

  If she was taken by the same people who took Ann Gables or any of the other missing girls, then Faye was as good as dead.

  I knew that. I hoped that Chris didn’t.

  I woke up to a dark hallway and an even darker cell. The lights had shut off.

  I estimated that the time was somewhere around 10:30 at night.

  I got up from the bench and stretched my arms out as far as they would reach. The muscles in my body had cramped up from that tiny stiff bench.

  I stood up and walked over to the bars. I craned my head and peered down the hallway.

  A single fluorescent light blinked in front of the door to the corridor.

  Another light was above my cell, but it only flickered once and then went completely black. I wasn’t sure if it was out or just off. Neither would’ve surprised me. I didn’t imagine that they came down here often to do maintenance.

  I closed my eyes and listened hard. Surely someone was supposed to be guarding me. I heard nothing but the hum of an air conditioner somewhere outside my wall. Probably a large outside unit.

  I sat back down on the bench and thought and then decided to return to sleep.

  Chapter 24

  I slept for another hour and woke up to a faint noise that sounded like keys rattling in someone’s pocket.

  I sat straight up and peered into the darkness. First I craned my head and looked down the edge of the cell toward the door to the hallway. The single light still flickered in the darkness.

  I saw that the door to the hallway was wide open. I turned my head and stared at the center of my cell door. I stared through the bars. Someone was standing there.

  The door swung open in an abrupt, fluid motion and the light above it flickered once. I saw in that brief flash two things that unsettled me.

  First, it was a short stranger whom I had never seen before. Not a cop. No uniform. Not one of the rednecks. My first thought was maybe they had gotten their cousin deputy to let them in and maybe they had come for me in the quiet of the night. Small towns were known for that kind of corruption, but the stranger I’d glimpsed was definitely not one of them. He was Hispanic.

  The second thing I noticed that stirred me up inside was that at the end of a short arm, in a gloved hand—outstretched and pointed right at me—was what looked like a Heckler & Koch P30 with a suppressor attached to it.

  Possibly it was a P30L or LS. I thought P30L. Not a common gun in this area except among collectors. A good weapon. Better when it’s not pointed directly at your center mass.

  I remained still. I had the chance to dive to the right-hand side, roll, and come at the guy with a fast right hook. It was dark enough that I had a good chance to make the connection before a novice shooter fired his weapon, but I wasn’t sure how novice this guy was. He might’ve been as novice as a newborn and then again he might’ve been born holding a gun, which was a more likely scenario being that he had broken into a jail cell in the middle of a stationhouse. Also the guy might fire blind. Even a novice can fire randomly into the dark and hit something, especially in such a confined space. I was fast, but not faster than bullets. The distance between where I stood and his last known position was about 11 or 12 feet.

  I might’ve made it. Maybe. But I didn’t want to get shot. Better to wait and learn his intent, then react.

  Unless he fired. At which point it didn’t matter the odds. It didn’t matter the questions that boiled in my head. If he fired a single shot, then I’d react. Self-preservation demanded it.

  He hadn’t fired. Instead he clicked on a flashlight in his left hand and killed my chances of using the dark to my advantage.

  He shone the light right in my eyes, which told me immediately that this was not a novice guy. Therefore, I had made the right decision in refraining from action. Then he said in a thick Mexican accent, “Stand up.”

  I stood up.

  He tucked the flashlight between his cheek and shoulder like it was a telephone and then reached his left hand toward his center mass and removed something from around his body. It was something that was thick and bunched up like he had been holding onto a snake.

  He tossed it at my feet.

  I looked down. He returned the flashlight to his left hand and pointed the beam at the coiled object on the ground. It was about a seven-foot coil of extension cord, orange and bright under the beam from the flashlight.

  He said, “Tie it into a noose.”

  That was when I knew that I should’ve reacted sooner.

  Chapter 25

  The first time that I’d seen the Public Safety Building in Black Rock, I had thought that it was a brand new building. I had been half right. Most of it was new. New brick. New doors. New roof. But the building was old. It was remodeled and added onto and then years later it had been remodeled again. From the outside I hadn’t been able to tell. It had looked brand new—a fine job. But now that a short Mexican whom I had never seen before was pointing a solid Heckler & Koch P30L attached with a sound suppressor at my head, I realized that it had been remodeled and wasn’t built new like I had originally thought.

  I realized this because the Mexican guy seemed intent on forcing me to hang myself from the thick, brand-new sprinkler system that had been put in place above my cell. Staring up at the metal pipes that ran along the ceiling, I saw that the floor above me was newer than and lower than the walls, like the ceiling had been built only to split a larger floor in half. There were signs of paint distortion and chipped-away ceiling fragments that were much older than the rest of the building.

  The Mexican guy said, “Now throw the cord over the pipe.”

  I tossed the cord over the pipe.

  He said, “Loop it around the pipe and tie the other end around the bars. Make sure that it’s tight.”

  I did as he said. The cord was tight and the pipe was strong enough to support my weight.

  He said, “Jump up and grab the pipe and hang from it. Like monkey bars.”

  I evaluated the situation. My mind raced. I couldn’t calculate a scenario to escape that didn’t involved bum rushing him and getting shot in the process. So, I jumped up and hung from the pipe. He said, “Now slip your head through the noose.”

  I followed his instructions.

  He said, “If you don’t do as I say, I’ll find people that you care about and kill them.”

  I nodded. Sweat dripped from my brow. I appeared terrified.

  He said, “Hang yourself.”

  I didn’t move.

  He fired the gun and the muzzle flashed bright in the blackness and the sound popped and echoed in through the stationhouse. A gun suppressor didn’t silence bullets to a low ping sound like in the movies. The amount of sound that was silenced varied from gun to gun, but in a small room like a jail cell or a quiet stationhouse with cement walls, the sound is like a pop that sounds much louder than someone dropping a
pin, even louder than someone breaking a window with a baseball bat.

  The bullet zipped past my head and embedded deep into the ceiling above. Small chips of ceiling fell down on me and probably peppered my hair.

  I cringed.

  He said, “Hang yourself or I will shoot you and you will be dead anyway. Then I will find people you love and they will die too.”

  I didn’t move.

  He pointed the gun downward in an area where no man wants to get shot.

  I took a deep breath and let go of the pipes. The fall wasn’t far enough to break my neck, which was a huge relief, but my feet dangled off the ground. It was far enough to strangle me.

  The stranger watched as I strangled to death.

  I was calm at first, but soon enough I felt the breath rush out of me and the fear of death overpowered me. I clawed and grabbed at the cord.

  My legs kicked out violently and flailed around. He dodged back to avoid them. He kept the flashlight beam in my eyes and he kept the gun pointed at me. He watched as I struggled to breathe, to live, and in less than a minute, my body was limp.

  The Mexican guy had watched me hang to death.

  Chapter 26

  The Mexican had figured that I knew how to tie a hangman's noose. And I did.

  I knew how to tie all sorts of complicated knots. My mom had been a Marine, but it was the Navy that was known for their knot craft. She had had friends in the Navy and she had said, “The usefulness of a Navy man was his ability to tie a knot. A good knot could mean the difference between life and death in certain situations.”

  This had been one of those situations.

  In order to tie a fake hangman’s knot, you have to tie a hangman’s noose but lengthen the short end and swap it as the long end. Pulling on this end instead won’t tighten the noose, but to the casual observer it will look the same. The sliding end has to be hidden inside the coil so there is no risk of tightening the noose. The surrounding coil has to be loose enough to ensure it can be pulled free.

  I had tied the trick knot, but if the Mexican had turned on the overhead lights, he might’ve seen this. He might have lived longer.

  The Mexican came in close to me to check to see if I was breathing. I wasn’t. Then he waited for a long minute to make sure that I was dead. It appeared that I was. That was when he lowered his gun and turned his back on me—mistake.

  I squinted, barely opened my eyes, and peeked out. I saw his back turned, opened my eyes all the way, and peered up. I reached up, grabbed the pipe overhead, lifted my body upward, and slid my neck out of the noose. It throbbed and ached from the fall when my neck had dropped and was caught by the noose, but my trick knot had worked. Any greater a drop and my neck might’ve broken and I would be dead, but I wasn’t. I was alive.

  I dropped silently to the floor. I was barefoot, so staying quiet wasn’t hard.

  I tiptoed in a low crouch. The floor was hard and cold under my bare feet. I snuck up behind the guy. He had fallen for my hoax, but he was no amateur. He must’ve sensed me behind him like a guy with a military background, some kind of special forces. He flipped around fast, gun ready to fire.

  He blind fired once into the darkness and the bullet whizzed past me. I heard it hit the opposite wall.

  The guy saw me in the muzzle flash, but it was too late. I was already right on him.

  I had never played baseball in my life, but I had always liked the sport. I had always respected the high-speed throws of major league pitchers. I was fascinated at how many miles per hour some of their fastballs could fly. A hundred miles an hour was fast, faster than most people had ever driven their cars. Faster than they were allowed to drive their cars.

  I couldn’t hit a fastball like that, much less pitch one, but I was fast and strong and powerful, stronger than most guys, that was for damn sure.

  I swung a vicious right hook through the air so fast and so hard that it knocked the guy off his feet, not as fast as a major league fastball, but I doubted that a major league fastball would’ve knocked the guy’s head clean off. I hadn’t knocked it off either, but I had come damn close.

  I heard him hit the wall on the other side of the hallway about a second after my punch connected somewhere on his head. I wasn’t sure where my punch had landed because it was too dark to tell, but I felt the vibrations of breaking bones and snapping teeth through my knuckles.

  The guy hit the wall hard, hard enough that if the force of the punch hadn’t killed him, then the solid surface of the wall would have.

  I picked up the flashlight. He had dropped it and it had rolled and stopped against my feet.

  One of the guy’s shoes was still laced up and on the ground where he had been standing. The gun had flown back a few feet and landed in the center of the hallway.

  I moved the beam up to the guy’s body. Not only had he kept his head attached, but it had turned around a little farther than it was meant to, like it had been screwed on wrong.

  My punch had broken his neck or it had broken when he bounced off the wall. I wasn’t sure which. Either way, the guy was dead.

  I picked up the gun and pointed it at the open door at the end of the hall in case he hadn’t been alone.

  No one rushed in after him. No backup to check on him. No one came to see what that loud noise had been. No one to check on his progress.

  I bent down and checked the guy’s pockets. I found his wallet and IDs and sifted through them—totally phony. Silenced Heckler & Koch P30L, gloves, nice clothes, clean cut, able to make his way into the stationhouse, stole the keys to the cell, and the fake IDs were good. This guy was a professional hit man. No question.

  Who the hell sent you? And why are you after me? I questioned.

  There was far more to Faye Matlind’s disappearance than a clan of Mississippi rednecks.

  Chapter 27

  I picked up the gun. I was right; it was a Heckler & Koch P30L. I detached the silencer and slipped it into my pocket. I wasn’t concerned with stealth. I dumped myself back onto the bench in the cell and slipped my shoes back on one-handed. I had kicked them off before I went to sleep. The strings were still all laced up.

  I walked past the holding cells and out of the hallway and then checked the bullpen. No one was around. I searched for my belongings and found them in a manila envelope marked Reacher, sitting in an evidence cabinet with a tiny steel drawer that squeaked when I opened it. My ID, ATM card, and cell phone were the only items in it.

  I tore it open, emptied out the contents, and returned them to my pockets.

  I stood up and explored the rest of the station, clearing each room as I went. Nothing. Then I started to wonder where the hell the night watch deputy had been. Surely someone was assigned to watch the jail while I was there? But there was no sign of life anywhere.

  No matter what happened next, I wasn’t going back in the cell. No way. That was for damn sure.

  I tucked the gun into my waistband and exited the police station.

  The night air was clammy and gusty. Thin, almost nonexistent clouds moved fast overhead like someone was speeding up time.

  Through the dips in the clouds, I could see the stars. They were lively. One of the perks of living in a small town or the country was seeing bright stars.

  I could see the lake off in the distance, a couple of blocks beyond the Eckhart Medical Center. It looked quiet, peaceful.

  The streets were quiet. I heard the faint whines of a steel guitar from the country bar down the street. To the north I heard the sedative buzzing of one of those pesticide trucks that drove up and down the street at night, spraying for insects, almost like a pest itself as it buzzed through the silent town.

  I began walking through the parking lot when I noticed something irregular. One more sound hit my eardrums.

  It was a beeping sound. No it was a dinging sound. A familiar sound like a car’s seatbelt alert.

  I crouched down low and looked around the parking lot. I held my hand near the butt of the
P30L, ready to draw it out quickly if I needed to. I looked left. Looked right. Checked all around me.

  The building was empty, but the parking lot still had cars. There were five police cars and two trucks, all with reflective, official sheriff markings on the doors, and all quiet.

  One car had no light bar on the roof.

  Across from the cars were two civilian vehicles.

  All of the cars were parked neat in two rows. All except for one.

  One police cruiser was stopped in the middle of the parking lot, facing the street.

  I stood up tall to get a better look at it. The passenger door was wide open, but no one was in it. From this distance, it appeared unoccupied.

  The open door was tripping the seatbelt alert in the dash and it beeped and beeped.

  I crept over to the cruiser, staying close to the rear of the parked cars for cover. I hadn’t drawn the Heckler & Koch, not yet. If there was a cop inside or nearby, he would’ve been within his rights to shoot me without warning if he had seen a gun in my hand. As far as he knew I was an escaped, armed fugitive. No judge in the world would convict him of a wrongful discharge of his weapon under those conditions.

  I neared the car and gasped. Inside, sprawled across the front bench was Gemson. Blood covered the dashboard toward the passenger side like it had been sprayed across the front of the car.

  He had been shot in the head.

  I drew the P30L out of my waistband and scanned the area. There was no one in sight. He must’ve been shot by the Mexican. That was how the guy had gotten the keys and access to my cell. Then I stopped, frozen in place. Just to be sure, I ejected the clip and counted the rounds. Missing an extra round, plus the one fired back in the cell.

  Great. Now I was holding the weapon that had shot a cop. And a cop that I had had an altercation with in public. With witnesses.

  Why did the guy try to get me to hang myself if he had just shot Gemson? I had no idea.