The Devil's Highway

by Timothy C. Phillips

  THE DEVIL’S HIGHWAY

  The Roland Longville Mystery Series #7

  Written by Timothy C. Phillips

  Kindle: 978-1-58124-460-1

  ePub: 978-1-58124-298-0

  ©2012 by Timothy C. Phillips

  Published 2012 by The Fiction Works

  http://www.fictionworks.com

  fictionworks@me.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations to books and critical reviews. This story is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  This one’s for Doug, my dearest

  friend, through thick and thin.

  Prologue

  They were coming for me. They had taken a few minutes to regroup and reload after the firefight earlier, and they were coming in now to make sure I didn’t leave this battered building alive. The people who had fought alongside me were either dead, or hiding somewhere out there in the wreckage of what had been a town, one short hour before. Cushman’s men would find them, and kill them, one after the other, if they hadn’t already. First, though, they wanted me.

  “Check that building over there!” I heard someone yell, and then many booted feet were running, crunching through the broken glass that filled the street.

  “There’s no one in here!” came an answering voice.

  “Keep it moving!” the one in charge commanded. “Find Longville! Then we’ll mop up the rest!”

  I had seen them all in the earlier fight. They were all wearing flak jackets and carried assault rifles. I had even met their leader. They were a militia. I knew they had trained for this day for a long time. They had trained to hunt men, and it was just a matter of time before they found where I was hiding.

  I checked the magazine in my Colt .45. I had three shots left. Giving up wasn’t an option. The sun hung still in the glassless window; the day was long past its prime, out here in this barest dot of a town in the West Texas desert. I wondered if I would see the sun set. The sedate parlor in Atlanta where this journey had started seemed impossibly far away, a part of some other distant place and time.

  Chapter 1

  The telephone rang several times before I picked it up.

  “Is this Roland Longville?” a woman’s voice asked before I could speak.

  “Yes, it is.” I was still not quite awake.

  “Mr. Longville, I need to speak with you. It’s about my son.”

  “What’s the trouble?” But I knew already, of course. It was almost always the same.

  “He’s missing. My husband and I are beside ourselves. You come highly recommended, Mr. Longville. Can you come to Atlanta? We live in Buckhead, 447 Washington Road. Do you know it?”

  I held the telephone away from my head and groaned quietly. I had touched down on a redeye flight at 3:00 a.m. and hadn’t gotten to bed until after four. It was just 8:35 by the red light of the alarm clock by the bed.

  “Sure. I’ll be on my way shortly,” I said. I rubbed my eyes, rolled out of bed and walked to the bathroom. I stepped into the shower and let the hot water wash the rest of the cobwebs from my still weary mind. I took a long shower, the kind you take when you are trying to feel human after a long weary day and a short rest.

  I didn’t know it as I came back into the bedroom, got dressed, and walked to the door, but I had just taken the first step in a journey of two thousand miles, one that would take me many places and bring me face to face with some very dangerous people before I was done. If I had known, I wonder if I would ever have dared start on such a journey. But, yes, knowing what I know now, I suppose I would have, after all.

  Chapter 2

  Two and a half hours and about one hundred and fifty miles later, the GPS on the dashboard guided me to the Caldwell’s address on Washington Road. The house was back from the road, a white two-story faux Georgian castle that peeked demurely out from behind a high wall of carefully sculpted hedge. A stately chestnut tree loomed over the yard. The Caldwell home suggested that this was a well-to-do family with a beautiful house in an upscale enclave, but on closer inspection, things were slipping; the yard looked a little untended. As I walked up to the front door, I noticed the place also needed a new coat of paint.

  A Mexican maid let me in, but didn’t greet me or announce my arrival to anyone. She just let me walk on into the house. The Caldwells were waiting on me, though. Mrs. Caldwell greeted me and ushered me into a sitting room off to the side of the entryway.

  The Caldwells were an attractive couple, who looked to be in their early forties. Mr. Caldwell at first glance was aging well, but at second glance seemed a tad thin, and had a sickly pallor, Mrs. Caldwell, a bottle blond, looked fit and energetic. They both looked me over with barely suppressed surprise—I am a big, brown man; I used to be a linebacker for the University of Alabama, in another life. No one ever expects an African-American private investigator, it seems. They just hadn’t read any of Walter Mosley’s novels, I guess. Easy Rawlins is one of the best.

  The Caldwells welcomed me graciously enough, though, and offered me a seat on a comfortable armchair in their living room, which did not look very lived-in. They sat across from me on a matching sofa. Between us was a coffee table, and on it was a large bowl, filled with butterscotch candy in tiny yellow cellophane wrappers.

  “Our son is a very bright young man, Mr. Longville,” Mr. Caldwell opened up. “He graduated near the top of his class from Emory. He had several job offers from good firms straight out of school, and offers from two prestigious Grad Schools. The world was just opening up for him. Young men just don’t walk away from promising lives like that.”

  Actually, they do, I thought, but I didn’t say anything at the time. Young Brad had a sweet setup there in Atlanta. He had a wealthy family, and it did look like the future that lay ahead of him was a rather inviting one. But there was always something lurking beneath the surface when people ducked out like Brad had done. I asked them the questions that most people didn’t want to think about in this situation.

  “I don’t mean to be indelicate, but there are certain things we need to consider. Did Brad ever do any gambling? Does he have a drug problem?”

  Brad’s mother rose from her chair and came over to me. With a bitter smile she held out several sheets of paper. Clearly, she was way ahead of me. I knew, of course, she’d probably been over all of this with the police. “We wondered, too. This should answer your questions in those areas, Mr. Longville.”

  I looked at what she had given me. It was a bank statement, for an account in Brad Caldwell’s name. According to the balance sheet, which they had apparently printed out just before calling me, Brad had just over $45,000 in a savings account in his name. Yes, that answered my question, all right. Junkies and people in deep Dutch don’t usua
lly have any money in the bank, let alone forty-five large. But of course that raised other questions. Was he on the run from something or someone? People on the run, though, made frequent withdrawals. Brad hadn’t made any in two months.

  “That’s a lot of money for such a young man to have in the bank.”

  Mrs. Caldwell nodded. “It was a trust fund, set up by my parents. The fund matured upon Brad’s graduation from college. As you can see, he hasn’t touched it since he vanished.”

  “Can you tell me exactly, when did your son go missing, Mr. Caldwell?”

  He looked slightly embarrassed. “We don’t know, precisely.”

  “I don’t think I understand.”

  Mrs. Caldwell came to the rescue again. “We aren’t sure about the time, though we do know the day. He left with some of his friends—fraternity brothers—on a trip to Southern Florida the day after their college graduation. They stayed several days, and then, on the way back, he insisted that they drop him off in Jacksonville, Florida.”

  “Where in Jacksonville?”

  There was an awkward pause. Mrs. Caldwell actually looked away, and Mr. Caldwell rubbed his leg in an anxious manner, and colored slightly.

  “In a supermarket parking lot,” Mr. Caldwell said finally.

  “You mean these friends actually dropped your son off in a parking lot, in a city hundreds of miles from home and left him there?”

  Mrs. Caldwell looked embarrassed for her husband and her absent son. “They told us—he had told them a story, while they were vacationing in Florida. He said that he’d met a girl there, also a recent college graduate. Brad told them that this girl wanted him to come visit her, in her home town.”

  “And her home town was Jacksonville, Florida?”

  “Yes, that’s correct. I can’t imagine what he told them to induce them to leave him. I understand that they tried to talk him out of it. Brad was very persuasive, however, from what they told us. Which I believe, because I know my son. He gets an idea, and he won’t let go of it. His friends, also, are lovely young men, but not as sharp as Brad, if you follow me.”

  “Does this young woman have a name?” I ventured, sensing the response already.

  “I’m afraid that Brad never told his friends her name,” Mrs. Caldwell said sheepishly.

  “I see. So how much time has passed since Brad convinced his friends to leave him in Jacksonville?”

  “Around six weeks,” Mr. Caldwell answered for his wife.

  “Did you inform the police immediately?” I asked them both.

  Again, the cross-glance of the long married. “No,” Mr. Caldwell said. “We talked to his friends, and we thought it was just Brad sewing his wild oats after graduation. After a week passed and we heard nothing, though, we called the police, although it seemed there was little they could do. We’ve heard nothing from Jacksonville police, and the police here in Atlanta feel the case belongs to the Jacksonville P.D. After a time we grew frustrated, then angry. At last we decided to employ our own investigator, which is why we called you.”

  “So mine is the first private agency that you have contacted?”

  “That’s right,” the Caldwells both said, nodding in unison. They were distraught, confused, and out of their depth, but they were getting their act together, now. They were keeping each other strong through this strange ordeal, I could tell, though I was betting between the two of them, Mrs. Caldwell was the tougher customer. Brad’s father didn’t just look weak, I thought after taking another look at him. To put it bluntly, he had death in his face. I’d seen it before.

  Mrs. Caldwell looked at me, and there were tears in her eyes, but she was holding together fairly well. Maybe it was just a brave face she was putting on for me; if so, it was a damned good show. She was a strong lady, I could tell. Life hands you things, sometimes, and you just have to soldier through them. She was soldiering through, because she was a mother and that’s what real mothers do.

  “Will you find our son, Mr. Longville?”

  “I’ll do my best.” I took a breath and let it out slowly. It had been a short night, and it was going to be a long day. “I’ll need to talk to these young men, these friends of Brad’s.”

  “I thought as much. The police have taken statements from both of them, and I have their contact information here for you.” She went to an end table and brought back another piece of paper for me. There were two names on it, and numbers and addresses. Mrs. Caldwell was a very thorough lady; I had to give her that. I supposed that I would be just as thorough, if I were in her place.

  They walked me to the door and said their goodbyes. Mr. Caldwell turned and went back into the small parlor and sat down heavily. Mrs. Caldwell lingered there, her hand grasping my arm. I waited to hear what was on her mind.

  “Promise me that you’ll find him, Mr. Longville. Swear to me you won’t stop until you do. Brad’s father is not well, or I’d go look for my son myself.” She spoke in a fevered whisper, an urgency in her every word.

  I looked past her at the thin man on the couch.

  “My husband has cancer, Mr. Longville. It’s progressing rapidly. Promise me.”

  Her eyes were blue and burned like the eyes of some Old Testament prophet. She had me pinned and I couldn’t move. “I promise,” I told her, because those were the only words that would quench the blue fire and let me go. But they cost me, because with those words I had put my feet on a road that wound through the heart of a lost country toward dangers that I dared not even dream.

  I walked out of the house and into the shadow of that spreading chestnut tree, where little Brad had undoubtedly played, and dreamed his secret dreams, in days lost and gone. It was sunny there, and peaceful. A nice place to be young. I’d grown up in the North Side Birmingham Projects, so I had no idea why someone might leave all of privilege and wealth behind. But that was okay, I didn’t have to understand. I just had to find Brad Caldwell, and bring him back there. I got in my car and headed off down the road. Little did I know, I’d be a long time coming home.

  Chapter 3

  Andy Blades was a busy young man. He’d graduated with Brad from Emory University, somewhere in the middle of his class, no scholar, maybe, but still a very bright guy. He’d gotten a degree in computer science and programming languages. Immediately after he’d come home from his week-long fling in Florida, he’d sobered up and punched in at his new place of employment as an entry-level programmer for a large firm that wrote financial software for hospitals. He was also engaged to be married in six weeks, so his life was pretty geared up at the moment.

  He was in sitting the back of a large corporate suite, in his cramped cubicle, talking on his cell phone with his wife-to-be and trying to eat a deli sub while scanning a page of code for some nagging error. I had fought my way across Atlanta during morning rush hour to get here, after I’d called ahead and he’d eagerly agreed to meet with me. He struck me as very concerned about Brad, and eager to help find him in any way that he could.

  “Sorry that I’m so rushed, Mr. Longville. The firm put me on a software development team that’s working on a pretty crunched schedule. I’m the new guy, and I really want to show these senior programmers what I can do, so the guys on the team told me to do all the customer simulation, you know, grunt work. I jumped right in, checking for all the bugs and what not. I’m trying to get some of that done while I grab a bite to eat, but my fiancé keeps calling me with wedding stuff.”

  “I understand, Andy,” I said as I took in his cubicle. Pictures of a pretty redhead, the fiancé, it was a fair assumption, dominated the walls. There were pictures of the two of them ice skating, hiking, smiling in a restaurant next to other friends.

  “I just wanted to go over the facts about the day you left Brad Caldwell in Florida,” I said.

  He stopped eating his sandwich, and looked at me. “I know, it all sounds pretty stupid. And maybe it was, but you don’t know Brad. He’s pretty much the alpha male in the picture when it’s me, him and R
ay hanging out, and it’s just the three of us most of the time. We were roommates and friends all through college. Bros, you know? Anyway, here’s what happened.”

  He put a fingertip on his desktop, like he was going to draw a picture there.

  “On the way home from partying down in Florida, Brad told Ray and me that he had hit it off with a girl he met one night down in Panama City, and she lived in the Jacksonville area. Supposedly he met the girl one night after Ray and I passed out from some pretty heavy drinking, and he’d decided to go for a walk to clear his head.

  This could have been one of several nights. Ray and I partied pretty hard down there, and on a couple of nights, Brad had only a beer or two and that was it. Sort of odd, because Brad can really put it away when he’s in party mode, you know? Anyway, He told us that he and this mystery girl had really hit it off, and they’d talked about it and agreed that he would meet her in Jacksonville.”

  “Did this girl have a name?” I tried again, just in case he might have remembered something since he spoke with Brad’s parents.

  “I’m sure she did, but Brad wouldn’t tell us.”

  “You don’t find that odd?” I asked.

  “Once he got me to agree to drop him off, he was pretty tight-lipped.”

  “So just how was Brad supposed to get home after you guys left him down in Florida by himself?”

  “He said that he was going to take a bus or a plane back. He had plenty of money to do whatever he wanted.”

  Yes, he did; forty-five thousand dollars, I thought. All of it still sitting untouched in his bank account, however.