Fire and Ice: A Thriller (A Hawk Tate Novel Book 3)

by Dustin Stevens

  Lott sat perfectly still, processing the information, before a disdainful smile spread across his face, his head shaking just a bit to either side.

  “Well, Sheriff, I appreciate your concern, but I am afraid you are mistaken. I just left my house a half hour ago. Everything was still standing, thank you.”

  Every word seemed to drip with derision as he delivered it, glancing to his friends on either side, eliciting small chuckles of support from the group.

  “Your other house,” I called out, aware that every person in the room watching the exchange was now turned to look at me, not especially caring.

  This was about Yvonne Endicott. It was about the men making meth grabbing her, and whoever was in that snow coach coming to clean up the situation.

  We did not have time for these clowns to sit around and have a laugh at the expense of the town sheriff.

  The smile that had been on Lott’s face melted away as he looked past Ferris to me, replaced by a scowl that told me he did not appreciate me entering the conversation or divulging such information in front of the room.

  I matched it, having to stop myself from taking a step or two forward, knowing that any sign of aggression would only escalate the situation further. I knew there was no way one older man would be foolish enough to make a move, no matter how thick he might have been in the midsection, but a room with more than a dozen men was a different matter altogether.

  The Kimber Ultra Carry was still tucked into the small of my back, but that would only lead to something bad.

  A moment passed, both of us peering at one another, before Lott unfolded his arms and stood.

  “Boys, will you excuse us for a minute?” he said, his attention never leaving me as he stepped around the table and came toward the door, Ferris bringing up the rear behind him.

  It was clear from his posture and the continued stares of every person in the room that this was not a conversation that was going to take place inside Ned’s, Lott not wanting to speak before an audience and the group not willing to give us the privacy needed.

  I waited until he was just a few steps away before turning and exiting through the front door, moving just a couple steps down the sidewalk, my feet in the middle of the narrow trench dug through the heavy snow outside. A moment later Lott and Ferris both stepped out behind me.

  With our backs to the building, most of the wind and whipping snow was blocked, the full wrath of the storm continuing to play out before us. Overhead the lone pair of stoplights in town swung back and forth, pushed by the wind as one swirl after another of ice was lifted from the ground and twirled through the air.

  “You have two minutes,” Lott said, his arms folded over his chest. He had not bothered to bring his coat, a thermal undershirt and a plaid flannel his only protection from the cold.

  Up close he didn’t look quite as old as I had previously thought, the impression coming from the thatch of silver hair atop his head. Beneath it he had gray eyes and a face shaved clean, bearing just a few lines around the mouth and eyes.

  “Who lives in the farmhouse?” I asked, taking the lead.

  Already, it had been apparent that Lott had no interest in being cooperative, Ferris’s evenhanded approach falling short.

  If my playing the role of Bad Cop was what was needed to move this along, I was more than happy to do it.

  “Why?” Lott shot back.

  “Because they’ve got one hell of a meth lab going out there,” I said. “Or at least, they had one, before it blew up and took most of your barn with it.”

  The scowl receded just a bit with the information, surprise flooding in momentarily, before Lott collected himself.

  “Bullshit.”

  Buried in the front pockets of my coat, I felt my hands curl into fists, my fingernails grinding into my palms.

  “We just left there,” I said. “You’ve been harboring an operation putting out hundreds of pounds of crank a month for who knows how long.”

  “Yeah? And you’re some kind of expert?” Lott said. “I’m just supposed to believe you?”

  “Yes,” Ferris said, jerking both our attention toward him. “I’d say 10 years with the DEA makes him an expert. And I was there too, saw the whole damn thing. He’s telling you the truth.”

  The awkward arrangement of us against the building, hemmed in by the knee-deep snow piled in front of us, forced Lott to rotate his head between the two of us, making sure we both saw the look of disdain on his face. It was clear he was debating something, his long held disgust with the law fighting with the reality of what we were telling him.

  “Let me put it this way,” I said, intent to help along that internal battle, “we don’t think you have anything to do with this. If you did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation out here.

  “But if you don’t give us the names of whoever rents off you right now so we can go save a woman’s life, we’re hauling your ass to the station and leaving you there for obstruction of justice. Got it?”

  Chapter Forty-One

  The second blow wasn’t enough to knock Yvonne unconscious. Instead, it merely amplified the effects of the first, making it feel as if her head might explode. Bit by bit the pressure grew, shoving outward against the sides of her skull, bringing pain in undulating waves.

  Still sitting in the chair that Cuddyer’s backhand had deposited her in, Yvonne lowered her head between her knees in an effort to stop the nausea she was feeling, drawing in deep breaths of air.

  Every few seconds she opened her eyes, attempting to see just how much damage had been done, the floor beneath her distorted through the sheen of tears covering her eyes.

  Already, she had taken three packages of Advil, having nearly wiped out the small supply. With nothing to eat or drink since leaving the hospital, she could feel herself getting queasy, the NSAID’s wreaking havoc on her stomach. Any more would cause her to vomit, hastening dehydration, exacerbating the effects of her head injuries even further.

  Lowering her hands to the legs of the chair on either side of her, Yvonne squeezed, seeing her knuckles shine white beneath the surface of her skin, her teeth clamped to keep from screaming out.

  Despite her every inclination being to do just that, she knew she couldn’t. Doing so would only draw attention to herself, would bring her captor back.

  She had been wrong, something that seemed so foolish now through the lens of hindsight. She had mistakenly believed that the leader was in control, that he would see the value of her being there, would do her no harm.

  In making such a mistake, she had overplayed her position, leaning on him for more supplies.

  There was no way to know if that was what had caused his recent outburst. She had heard the truck start and the door open, had heard the vehicle drive away, not yet having returned. It was possible that the other man had been unable to get what she needed, had ended up in trouble.

  Any of a number of things could have been the cause for his rage.

  Yvonne remained folded in half, letting the position calm her. Little by little the nausea settled, the intrusive throbbing receding into the same steady agony she felt since she came to hours before.

  With her condition somewhat stabilized, her resolve became clear, bringing with it a new realization.

  The time of simply waiting – of doing what was asked of her, of trusting that they would keep her alive and well, maybe even release her afterward – was gone. With just one blow, one outburst, the man had completely obliterated any hope she had for surviving once the man beside her was healed, if he could be.

  In the time she had been held captive he had not moved, had made nary a sound. It was now past the point of Yvonne believing his condition was entirely based on his body trying to protect him from the trauma of the burns, moving into a state that suggested whatever had caused his coma was most likely ingested.

  Knowing that the operation out there was a fledgling meth lab, it was not much of a stretch to imagine him having imbibed in his ow
n concoctions. Without the ability to perform blood work and do a full and proper physical, lacking the supplies she needed to treat the wounds topically, she had been reduced to nothing more than a babysitter.

  Raising her head a few inches, Yvonne turned to stare at the man, everything just as it had been a moment before, just as it had been an hour before that.

  Sitting up to her full height, she stood, pausing, her hands outstretched to either side, waiting for the inevitable bout of spinning that gripped her.

  Once it had passed, she took a half-step forward to make sure her balance was okay, followed with a second and then a third, reaching the table and leaning against it. One palm she left pressed flat, supporting her weight, while the other she used to pick through the meager supplies before her, taking up a roll of gauze.

  Holding her middle and index fingers together, Yvonne wound the gauze around them, watching as her mocha color skin disappeared, replaced by a single mummified object.

  She turned back to the man, her hand extended. Feeling anxiety, uncertainty, roil within her, she leaned over him.

  Using those two fingers she slowly parted his lips, inserted the fingers and pulled his jaw down.

  It was so much worse than she thought.

  The number of teeth in the man’s head could be counted on both hands. Of those, at least a few showed signs of rot and decay, a telltale sign of heavy methamphetamine use. Given the state of his mouth, it was not a stretch to imagine his entire body was affected in ways she couldn’t treat.

  He was not the first drug addict Yvonne had ever encountered, her feelings not particularly sympathetic. Nobody had made this man take drugs, had forced him to ingest well past the point of doing physical harm.

  Even under the best of conditions, the odds of her being able to treat someone with just the exterior wounds, given their extent and what she had to work with, were minimal. It was clear that she had been handed a losing proposition, this man in his condition never being strong enough to survive whatever had happened.

  Again, Yvonne’s mind came back to the incident a few moments before, to the bearded man walking through, backhanding her for no clear reason, using her as a release for his frustration. If that was his reaction to whatever had happened outside, there was no doubt about how he would take to the news that the man could not be fixed, or worse yet had died on her watch.

  Feeling as if her insides were being squeezed, Yvonne felt the air grow short in her lungs. Her vision began to blur as she stumbled back to the chair, sitting down, staring at the floor.

  One breath at a time she drew in deep gasps of oxygen, knowing if ever she were going to survive, she could not simply wait for help to arrive.

  She had to do something.

  She just had no idea what.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Ferris was back at the wheel, navigating the streets while I scanned the paperwork we had just printed out in the office, committing as much of it as I could to memory.

  Hank Lott had tried his best to be obstructive, letting a deep-held disdain for enforcement of any kind cloud his judgment, just south of the point where it would land him in jail. Ferris had explained to me on the way back to the station that it was nothing personal, a feeling stemming from a run-in with a state trooper years before that Lott had seized on and never quite let go.

  At the time, my adrenaline was so spiked from the interaction, from forcing myself not to fly into the man, that I only half-listened as I powerwalked back, ignoring the deep snow as it curled away on either side of me.

  Even now, the better part of an hour later, I still didn’t feel much sympathy.

  The man was an ass. I didn’t care when or how he’d gotten his feelings bruised. If he hadn’t started playing ball when he did, I would have done a hell of a lot worse to him in order to help Yvonne Endicott.

  What he had eventually handed over were the names, Sam Cuddyer and Jasper Maxx, a pair of men that he said weren’t gay but had been living together since he bought the place. Both were somewhere in their 40s, but beyond that he had no idea what they did for a living, didn’t much need to know, so long as the money arrived on time and in full every month.

  Arriving back at the office, Ferris gave the names to Azbell, having her run them through the system while he again made a coffee run and I went to visit the lavatory. Three minutes later we both emerged to find her waiting on us, Baker still sitting on his condescending perch a few feet away.

  As with Lott before him, I almost dared the man to do so much as give me a funny glance, my growing agitation desperately needing to find an outlet.

  Rather than wait for the full report from Azbell, Ferris told her to print whatever she found, handing the stack to me as we again headed out.

  After hours trekking around outside, my body barely even noticed the temperature difference as I plowed straight for the passenger side, the wind whipping at the pages in my hand. It passed over my exposed scalp, turning my ears red, as I reached my destination and climbed in, long past bothering to brush the snow away from my jeans.

  Seeming to be of the same mind, Ferris had climbed in and set off just as fast.

  “Alright,” I said, separating the top sheet from the stack and holding it up a few inches, letting the others rest in my lap, “Samuel Jones Cuddyer, born 1969 in Fort Benton. String of small stuff through his youth – MIP, driving with a suspended license, petty theft. Wasn’t until his 20s that he hit the big time, doing two years for possession with intent.”

  “Drug offense,” Ferris said, the words little more than a stream of consciousness as he processed what I read off.

  “Right,” I said. “That was in Butte. Doesn’t say when or how he ended up here, no mention of anything since.”

  “Hmm,” Ferris said. “Seems unusual for someone to have a steady flow of stuff and then suddenly go clean.”

  “Right,” I agreed, moving Cuddyer’s sheet to the bottom of the pile, pulling up the next in order. On it was his mug shot from booking, the image nearly 20 years old, showing a man in his late-20s with the beginnings of a beard and a sneer.

  “I would say maybe jail scared him straight, but somehow I doubt it had that effect on this guy,” I said, holding the picture up for Ferris to see.

  Shifting his attention away from the road, Ferris nodded. “I’ve seen this guy a couple times. He’s obviously older now, but I’ll recognize him if we cross paths again.”

  “Noticed, as in...” I began, letting the implication hang, not finishing the thought.

  “Not in relation to anything in particular,” Ferris said. “Just another guy that kind of rolled in one day. I assumed he was an oil hand, but who knows.”

  I grunted softly and moved the picture down, unable to argue with the simple logic. There had been a lot of unfamiliar faces push through town recently, mine as well. It was easy to attribute them all to the new economic boon in the area, a fallacy Ferris was no doubt regretting at the moment.

  “Up next is Jasper No-Middle-Name Maxx,” I said. “Forty-two-years-old, a sheet that reads a lot like Cuddyer’s, only in each instance the charges are a little less severe. Culminated with a possession charge that got him probation, didn’t rise to the level of jail time.”

  “Sounds like a textbook crony,” Ferris said.

  “Looks the part too,” I said, moving to the fourth page in the stack and holding it up for him to see. On it was an image of a rat-faced man with short cropped hair, the markings on the wall behind him stating he stood just 5’6”.

  In the image his shoulders were rolled forward and his mouth drawn tight, his expression looking like he might cry at any moment.

  An indistinguishable sound slid from Ferris as he maneuvered us into the Albertson’s parking lot, the enormous space holding only a pair of vehicles, one a truck, the other an SUV. Eschewing any manner of parking lot decorum both had parked straddling the front door, Ferris pulling up alongside the SUV, both of us climbing out.

  The sno
w beneath us was no more than three or four inches deep, steep embankments around the edge of the lot indicating that someone with a snow blade had been through within the last six hours or so.

  Folding the pages into quarters, I pushed them down into the front pocket of my coat and followed Ferris through the front door. We both paused just inside, letting the fans overhead blow heated air down on us, stomping our feet a few times before stepping on through.

  The interior lights had been cut in half, the supermarket a bit dimmer than I expected. Along the front of the store nearly all of the registers stood empty and silent, only a single person manning one, an older man in a white dress shirt and apron, the remains of his hair white and wispy atop his head.

  “Afternoon, Sheriff,” he said, raising a gnarled hand to us as we stood and surveyed the place.

  “Hey there,” Ferris said, bypassing any use of a first name, taking a few steps forward. “We got a call a little while ago about someone loitering in here.”

  The man’s brow came together before he shook his head, extending a finger toward the back of the store.

  “Wasn’t me, must have been Grace. She’s in the pharmacy aisle, can’t miss her.”

  Ferris gave a wave of thanks as a man and his daughter emerged from the opposite side of the store, both bundled up against the outside cold, each carrying red plastic baskets in their hand. As they approached, the old man behind the register turned his attention to them, leaving us to find Grace, to determine if one of the people we were looking for and the one she had called about were the same person.

  Discovering they were wouldn’t give us a clear direction on where they might be, but it would tell us if they were still in the area.

  Knowing what they were after might also give us some indication if Yvonne was still alive.

  “This way,” Ferris said, turning right, leading us past two more rows before coming to a stop, a woman in a red apron standing at the corner. The open box at her feet indicated she had been stocking shelves.