This had to have happened, I knew, only seconds before Sal stumbled across Johnson, and if Sal was telling the truth about Branson being present, then the sheriff almost certainly must have seen it happen. For whatever reason, Branson hadn’t wanted to mention the robot, and I had my suspicions about what that reason was.
Levens had told me that the sheriff was bragging about getting rich from some new invention, and that Johnson was somehow involved in it with him. Since we were looking at evidence of an entirely new kind of computer and robot, I was pretty sure I had found the invention he was so excited about. The big question was how he had gotten involved in the project. From what I knew of Sal, he seemed to be a loner, almost a hermit. He had very few friends, if any, other than the one man he’d been seen talking to at the bar, and even that one seemed to have ended in an argument the last time they were together.
Since Levens had implied that Johnson was involved with the sheriff in this plan, then my guess was that one of the two of them had met Sal and his partner, whoever it was that created this computer, found out what they had come up with, and decided that they wanted to be cut in on the deal. It wasn’t hard for me to see that the technology was probably worth ridiculous amounts of money, possibly even into the billions. That would explain why these two lowlife bastards would want to muscle their way in on it, of course.
The trouble is that, if I was right and Branson had sent Johnson out to Sal’s place to try to put some sort of pressure on him to cooperate, or even to try to steal the computer or robot, then under the law, that made Branson responsible for Johnson’s death, not Sal. Whether Sal killed him in self-defense or the robot did it to protect Sal, it was still a death that occurred during the commission of a crime. The crime, in this case, was Branson’s intention to take at least some share in an invention that was not his own. At the very least, we were looking at some form of theft, and it could even be extortion.
Under United States federal law, as well as most states, if someone dies during the commission of a crime, even if it’s one of the perpetrators, any surviving perpetrators are automatically charged with murder. Based on all of the evidence I had come across, I had enough to charge Branson with theft and murder. The only problem was that a good part of that evidence was based on the testimony of the computer that I couldn’t even find.
At about nine thirty that night, Chloe and I decided to call it a day. I drove her back to her hotel in Clement, which was a whole lot nicer than mine, by the way, and then went back to my own room. We were planning to try again the next day, but my phone rang as I walked into my hotel room.
“Agent Decker,” I said.
“Agent Decker, this is Ross Levens. I don’t know what on earth is going on, but Sal and another man just escaped from the jail. They’ve been gone about half an hour, and video shows them walking out dressed as deputies and getting into a pickup truck that was apparently left in the parking lot for them.”
“Where’s the sheriff?” I asked instantly.
“He’s at the jail, throwing a fit. Somebody’s going to end up losing their jobs over this, you can bet on it. I took a chance and called you, because I wasn’t sure anybody else would.”
“Yeah, and I appreciate it. I’m on the way.” I turned and hurried right back out the door, got into my car and raced to the jail. The place was in an uproar, with Branson stomping around like some kind of angry deity, and everyone cowering, trying to get out of his way. I walked up to him, coming up on a blind side so that he didn’t see me until I was right beside him.
“What’s going on, Sheriff?” I asked. “I understand our prisoner seems to have walked right out of your jail. Is that correct?”
Branson spun around so quickly that I thought he was about to deck me. “He’s gone, all right, and I’m going to find out how. We looked at the video, and it looks like he knew exactly where the new uniforms were kept and how to get to them, and then he just walked right out the door pretty as you please.”
I let my eyebrows go up a bit. “Sort of sounds like an inside job, don’t you think? Somebody who works here had to have been involved, for him to have all that information and get out so easily, wouldn’t you agree?”
“You think you’re so fucking smart,” Branson said. “Of course we figured that out, and I’m arranging a polygraph test for everyone tomorrow morning. For right now, though, I’m determined to find our missing killer, and that may not be easy. Somebody left him a pickup truck out there, and we’re trying to get a lead on it, now.”
“Got a tag number? The video should’ve picked up a license plate number.”
“Do you think we didn’t think of that? Damned license plate had mud all over it, we couldn’t read it. I’ve got deputies searching for that vehicle right now, we’ll find it.”
“Well, good, and what can I do to help?” I was watching Branson’s eyes, looking for any sign that he was up to something, and I wasn’t disappointed.
Those eyes spun around and bored into mine. “You? All you’ve done since you’ve been here is get in my way. Well, not this time, you sonofabitch. This time you can just sit it out, and we’ll take care of things our way. You can just go on back to your hotel, and we’ll let you know when we catch our suspects.”
I pretended to be hurt. “Sheriff, I really just want to help. Isn’t there somewhere I can be useful?”
“Hell, yes, there is! Anywhere except in my way! Now get the hell out of here!”
There’s an old saying, about how you can’t con a con man. In my experience, that is absolutely untrue. One of the things I’ve learned about people who set out to deceive others is that it’s even easier to deceive them while they’re doing it, apparently because they’re already in a state of suspended disbelief, trying to make themselves believe their own lies, in order to seem more believable to their intended victims. It worked in my favor in this case, because Branson couldn’t tell that he had said exactly what I wanted him to say.
I hung my head as if defeated, and made my way back to the door. Levens caught my eye, and I winked at him to let him know things were going the way I wanted them to go, then I wandered on out to my car. I sat down in it, and just waited.
My gut told me that Branson knew exactly where these men were going, and I had every intention of following him right to them. The second man, Morice Jackson, was only doing a small amount of time on a home invasion charge and had an otherwise clean record, so it really surprised me that he’d be willing to escape. The jailers were saying that Sal and Jackson had been spending a lot of time together, so it could be that Jackson was a stooge, planted there by Branson to befriend Sal and win his confidence. I had to assume that he was working with the sheriff, and was therefore a danger to Sal.
The escape had taken place shortly after lights out, which was at 10 PM. It was nearly 11 by the time I got to the jail and made enough of a nuisance of myself to get kicked out of the investigation, so I was back in my car and parked around the corner well before eleven thirty. I settled in to wait, expecting it to be a long night. I wasn’t disappointed.
The sheriff stayed inside the jail until almost four AM, and even from where I was parked, I could occasionally hear his voice ranting and raving. It struck me that he had pulled so many of these con games over the years that he didn’t even really care how believable he was, as long as everyone was afraid to go up against him. The jailers and deputies certainly were afraid of him, or at least, most of them were. I was getting occasional text messages from Levens, just keeping me up to date on what was happening inside.
It seemed the sheriff was threatening all of the jailers with termination and even prosecution, insisting that more than one of them had to have been involved. I scoffed, because I was quite certain that the sheriff himself had been the mastermind of the escape. The men in the cell block were refusing to cooperate, of course, and it was highly unlikely that Sal and Jackson had confided their plans in any of them, anyway.
At four o’clock
in the morning, I finally saw Sheriff Branson leave the building and climb into his car. He started it up and just sat there for a moment, then put it in gear and drove away. I followed, keeping a distance between us. I had expected him to drive directly to wherever Sal and Jackson might be, so I was quite surprised when he went straight home, instead.
Chapter 30
There are certain studies that have been done on amnesia that suggest that aromatherapy may become an effective, standard treatment. This is because the olfactory sense, the sense of smell, is most commonly connected with incidents of spontaneous memory and déjà vu. If we smell a particular fragrance that was present during an important or extremely pleasant event in our lives, the memory of that event can surface so powerfully that, for a moment, we seem to be back in it.
I mention this because I had a sudden epiphany as we climbed up into the loft of that barn, a sudden realization that, even though I knew that a barn smells “musty,” I also knew without any doubt that I had never smelled a barn before. There were a number of fragrances and aromas present in the barn, but I did not recognize any of them.
I said as much to Gunner, and he looked at me oddly. “You serious? You ain’t never smelled nothing like this before?”
I shook my head. “Nope, never, I’m sure of it. And now that I think back on it, I didn’t recognize any of the smells in the jail, either. Now, as I think back, I know what sweat smells like, and what the shampoo we used smelled like, things like that. I know what each of the things we ate smells like, but before I opened the tray, I could not have come close to guessing what we were getting, just from what it smelled like. None of those smells meant anything to me.”
Gunner shrugged. “So, you saying your nose got amnesia, too, right?”
I grinned. “Yeah, I’m the world’s first case of olfactory amnesia, the forgotten sense of smell. No, to be honest, I really think I’m right when I say I’ve never smelled these things before. I can’t explain it, it’s just a feeling, but somehow I know I’ve never, ever smelled the inside of the barn before. I mean, I know what a barn is, I know what the loft is, I know what hay looks like and all the things that I see here, it’s just the smells that I can’t recognize.”
“Maybe you was just a city boy,” Gunner said, “ain’t never been out in the country before.”
We sat up there in the hayloft for a few hours, waiting for whoever my secret friend was to make an appearance. Gunner dozed off for a bit, and I stayed awake to watch, but I knew that it was well past midnight and into the wee hours of the morning, and still there was no sign of anyone. I was beginning to wonder if Gunner had been right, and this whole thing had been some kind of a trap. Maybe the deputies wanted to take their time coming after us, make it look good, like they spent hours tracking us to this barn before they shot us dead.
Gunner woke up as I was thinking that through, but before I could begin to tell him my concerns, we heard the sound of a vehicle approaching. We both instinctively crept to the hayloft door, peeking out while trying to keep ourselves out of sight. A van pulled up into the barnyard, but it parked around the far side, so we couldn’t see who was driving. We moved as quietly as possible to the ladder, hiding behind hay bales as we looked down toward the big, open doorway.
We could hear the driver moving around outside, near where he parked, so I made a quick decision and scurried down the ladder. Gunner followed me instantly, and then we each ran into a separate stall and got low. Neither of us could be seen unless someone walked right up to the stall and looked in, but we could see each other between the slats.
Somebody walked in just seconds after we got into position, a fairly big man wearing a jacket with a hood. I couldn’t see his face, but something about him seemed familiar.
“Sal?” My name was called in a loud whisper, as if the man were almost afraid to say it out loud. “Sal? Are you here?”
I knew that if he decided to look, he’d find me anyway, so I rose and stepped out into the barn, where he could see me. “I’m here,” I said. I took a couple of steps closer, and then the man reached up and threw back the hood. I froze as I saw his face, because I was suddenly looking at Sheriff Eugene Branson.
“Don’t panic, Sal,” he said quickly. “I really did find evidence that you didn’t kill Kyle, and I really am going to help you, but we had to shake that fed. All he’s done is try to hang you, and he’s messed up everything I’ve done to try to show this evidence. We had to get him out of the picture first, and that’s why I had to help you escape.”
Gunner had stayed in hiding, and I was suddenly glad. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but facing Branson was not what I had pictured in mind.
“So, what kind of evidence?” I asked. “How does it prove I’m innocent?”
“We’ll go into that, we just don’t have time to do it right now, though. We’ve got a problem on our hands, since you helped somebody else escape, too. Your buddy Jackson, you’re gonna have to give him up. Where is he at?” The sheriff was looking around the barn, as if expecting Gunner to suddenly jump out at him.
“We split up as soon as we got out of the jail,” I said. “He got in the truck with me and I drove him about four blocks, then he said he wanted out. I don’t know where he went after that.”
The sheriff looked at me, and he began to grin. “Now, Sal, you wouldn’t be lying to me about that, now would you? I mean, I see two different size boot prints in the dirt, here, so I know you got someone else here with you.”
I looked down at the footprints and shrugged. “Maybe there were some teenagers out here last night,” I said. “Everyone knows they like old barns, cause they make great places to bring girls and get drunk, right?”
The sheriff looked around again, then back at me. “Maybe,” he said. “Well, he’ll just have to take his chances, then. Hopefully, he’ll surrender when one of my deputies finds him; I’d hate for him to get shot.”
“Yeah,” I said, “me, too. He’s a pretty good guy, took care of me while I was in the jail. I’d hate for anything bad happen to him.”
I was talking for Gunner’s benefit, of course, trying to warn him not to let the sheriff see him. It seemed to have worked, because he was staying quiet in the stall where he was hiding.
Branson seemed to accept that we were alone, because he relaxed. “Well, we need to get going,” he said. “Last thing we need is for that stupid fed to catch up with us, and you know he’s going to try. Come with me, and I’ll take you to all the proof you need to clear your name.”
“Well, wait just a minute,” I said. “Tell me about it, what kind of proof is it?”
A flash of anger crossed his face, but it vanished almost as quickly as it had come. “We don’t have time to stand around talking, we need to get going, now. Come on, Sal, don’t you realize I’ve put my neck on the line for you? If we get caught, I’m going down right along with you. Now let’s go.”
I shook my head. “I still don’t have any idea what kind of proof it is we’re talking about, and I want to know. Come on, just tell me.”
He stood there and looked at me for a moment, and then he let out a sigh. His right hand dropped onto the gun in his holster, and he pulled it out and pointed it at me.
“Okay, you got me,” he said. “There isn’t any evidence to clear your name, because you really are the killer. The problem is, you’re worth a whole lot more to me than just another conviction. You’re going to make me a very, very rich man, Sal.” He reached into a pocket, then tossed me a pair of handcuffs. “Put those on, hands behind your back.”
“Don’t do it, Sal,” I heard Gunner say, and both Branson and I spun to see him stepping out of his stall. “This whole thing is getting pretty screwy, just like I thought it might.”
Branson was waving his gun back and forth between the two of us, and he seemed to be trying to think of what to do next.
“Well, well,” he said. “Sal, it seems you lied to me after all.” He pointed his gun at Gunner and moti
oned for him to step over closer to me. “Get on over here, Jackson. And you can thank your buddy here for the mess you’re in. He wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about the notes, but I guess he just loved you so much he had to share.”
Gunner stood beside me, tall and strong. “That’s okay,” he said. “One thing you learn when you come up like I did, you don’t never abandon your friends. I told him there was something wrong with this whole thing, and I come along to make sure he had a witness.”
The sheriff shook his head, sadly. “And that’s a pity,” he said. “I know you, boy, you’re not a bad guy. You got caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time, but you could’ve done your time and gone on home. Now, though, I’ve got no choice but to shoot you dead for escaping. What am I supposed to tell your wife and little girl?”
Gunner smiled. “You tell them that Daddy wasn’t nearly as stupid as you thought he was,” he said. “Did you really think we were going to come out here without making some kind of contacts, first? Old Sal, here, he figured out real quick it had to be you sending those notes to him, so we knew it was gonna be you what showed up out here. You think we didn’t tell a few people? Just in case something bad happen to us? You might want to think about this real hard, ‘fore you go shooting anybody.”
Chapter 31
INTERLUDE SIX
I should have known he’d figure it out. After all, I know that they recorded almost all of the incoming calls to any law enforcement agency, and with caller ID, it would be obvious who called, I was sure. Law enforcement had that extra thing, where the caller ID showed the GPS location the call came from, so I should never have even considered the possibility that he wouldn’t know it was me.
Thriller: I Am Sal - A Mystifying Crime Thriller (Thriller, Crime Thriller, Murder Mystery Book 1) Page 21