The three of us discussed the possible significance of the three cabins for well over an hour before Ralph suggested Officer Franklin get back to his other duties and that he and I get down to the serious business of eating lunch.
“You want me to contact the state police, Chief?” Officer Franklin asked.
“They are probably well aware that I am up to something. Hell, I saw no less than four of their troopers drive by here when we was out waiting for those SCUBA fellows to finish finding what they were finding, but I am just not prone to invite them in on the rest of this case just yet. I will, don’t get me wrong, I certainly and truly will bring them up to speed. You can mark my words. But not yet. There’s some figuring needing to be done and Derek and I are the ones needing to do that figuring. So I can either ask you, or I can tell you, to keep a lid on this whole thing until further notice.”
“Asking will work fine, Chief.”
“And let any other officer know we will be bringing in the state troopers but aren’t doing so until we determine if we have anything worthy of their time.”
“Understood.”
Officer Franklin was no more than five feet outside the cabin’s front door when Ralph’s cell phone rang. Ralph flipped it open, pressed the “Accept” button and answered the call. His face went slack immediately, as if the blood had been drained from it in an instant. He pulled the phone away from his ear, pressed another button, then slowly turned his face towards me. A small grin was playing on his lips. He mouthed, “He asked me to put him on speakerphone.”
“Can you hear me?” The voice was unmistakable, though much softer and weaker than I remembered. It was Alexander Black. His hoarse, whisper of a voice trickling out from the cell phone’s speaker filled the cabin’s den with more volume than the weak voice should have commanded.
“We can hear you just fine,” Ralph said. “Might be better if you just come on over, up or down—depending on your current location—to doc Straus’s place, so the three of us can finish whatever unfinished business we have. Face to face, like men do. Maybe your daddy never taught you what it’s like to be a man, but real men don’t go sneaking up from behind and rapping another man on the head. They stand face to face, belly to belly, and solve things like real men. Of course, maybe that term is not appropriately assigned to you, Alexander.”
“Wonderful,” Alexander said. “Insults and challenges to my ego. What a predictable and impotent tack to take, Chief Fox. Should I allow time for Derek Cole to lob some of his insults, or can we continue?”
“What do you want, Alexander?” I said. Truth be told, though my voice sounded like I was more angry than I was scared, if Ralph hadn’t been standing beside me, I’m sure my voice wouldn’t have been much thinner.
“I am calling in hopes of gaining a status update. I’ve given you plenty of time to retrieve the items I left for you and I didn’t want to afford you too much time. People who are given too much time seldom invest that time wisely. So, please, tell me where you two fine gentlemen are with your investigation?”
“Well, if you’d stand still,” Ralph said, “and move just a couple of inches to your right, I’d say I’d have your head right in my sights.”
“A preposterous statement and one clouded with contradictions. How can I both stand still and move a couple of inches to my right at the same time, Chief? I know where you both are and, depending on your detective skills, you may have narrowed my location, or my near-term location, down to a handful of places. But you are far from having me in your sights.”
Ralph smiled and gave me a wink. “Now, Alex old boy...”
“I prefer to be called Alexander.”
“Ain’t that nice? As I was saying, Alex old boy, I do not know what you’re up to and really don’t care an awful lot about your reasons for doing whatever the hell it is you’re doing. But I will tell you one thing: When I see you, I am not going to give you a jolt of electricity. No sir, I am going look you directly in your eye and put a .45 caliber chunk of highly polished and ‘smooth as a baby’s ass’ piece of lead right into your twisted little brain. Hell, I may even give you an old Texas smile before I kill you. I have yet to make up my mind on that possibility. But, make no mistake, I am going to kill you. While that may not be what one would expect coming from someone dedicated to upholding the law, I have to say you aren’t deserving of the protection the laws of this wonderful country of ours grants its citizens.”
“I look forward to your attempts.”
Both Ralph and I struggled to understand what Alexander was saying. The longer the conversation continued, the weaker he sounded. It may have been how soft he spoke, but to me, Ralph’s threat had zero impact on Alexander. He didn’t seem angry, nervous or intimidated. He just carried on.
“Now, please, do me the favor of updating me on your progress. I am hesitant to offer any instruction as I still have some loose ends to tie up before I will consider myself fully prepared for our meeting.”
It was my time to wink at Ralph. He nodded, understanding it was my turn to speak. “You certainly left us plenty of rabbits to chase, Alexander. The message carved into the wall, the note left for me and what you wrote on Chief’s back; plenty of rabbits to chase. Even had to call in a SCUBA team to find the black box you left in the lake. We’ll find where you’re hiding out soon enough.”
There was a long, silent pause on the other end of the phone. “I left the box in such an obvious and easily reached location, I must admit I was surprised to have learned you felt compelled to reach out to a volunteer organization to retrieve the box. Apparently, you don’t respect those dedicated volunteer’s time. Of course, they seemed to have enjoyed the exercise, as evidence by the numerous images posted on the volunteer agency’s Facebook page. I expected, considering the unique trait of fierce independence you share, that you both would have elected to...” Alexander stopped talking and fell unsettlingly quiet for several seconds. Ralph and I were both about ready to check to see if the connection was lost when Alexander picked up exactly where he left off. “...keep your involvement in this renewed investigation top secret. So please, let us dispense of the lies.
“Tell me, Mr. Cole, your thoughts on what I included in your envelope? Stir any emotions, did I? Please understand I was not intent on causing you to relive what must have been a horrible life event, but was instead intending to offer you a suggested approach when, and if, you and Chief Fox determine my current intentions and location.”
I didn’t know how to respond. I knew what I wanted to say, but was pretty sure telling Alexander I was going to finish what the medical examiner started, then spread his body parts across fourteen states didn’t seem like what a controlled and professional detective might say. “How about I tell you my thoughts face to face?”
“I fully expect that to happen,” he replied.
“Good, then stop hiding like a coward, and either tell us where you are or stop over at Straus’s cabin for a visit.”
“I have already told you, or rather, shown you where I am.”
“Why did you include a picture of my parent’s home?” I asked, then quickly regretted the question. Asking revealed how the inclusion of the picture and the possibilities its inclusion, deeply effected me.
“Everyone needs a place to recover, Mr. Cole. Do we not?”
Ralph gripped my arm, shook his head at me and flashed a ghost of a smile. He wanted me to stop engaging Alexander in conversation. “Alex, I have to say, you are either a blundering idiot or a damn genius. Taking those pictures and using them as clues sure did create a highly advanced treasure map for us to follow, but not taking out the location information, well, it made our looking for you a bit too easy.”
“Excellent,” Alexander whispered. “Then you know where I am. When shall I expect you?”
“If I had to estimate,” Ralph answered, “I’d have to say we’ll arrive about thirty-seconds before you are ready for us.”
“And about what I left for yo
u, Chief Fox? Was your journey down your memory lane fruitful?”
Three things smacked me in the head right then. The first was we really had no idea where Alexander was, whether or not he was alone or what he was planning. The second was I had no clue why Alexander left those manilla envelopes for Ralph and me or what the hell I was to make of what he left in the one for me. Third, I still had no freaking idea what was in Ralph’s folder.
I was about to say something, then quickly checked myself. It was Ralph’s question to answer. My interjecting would probably come across as me defending Ralph, thus suggesting whatever was in his envelope created a need for Ralph to be defended.
I saw Ralph’s head drop a bit out of the corner of my eye. He slowly began nodding his head, then the nodding turned to shaking. I heard his breathing change slowly, until he sounded more like a pissed off bull than the calm and controlled man I knew. He was building up to an explosion of anger. I figured I had better interject after all before that explosion gave Alexander exactly what he wanted: To know he was inside our minds and was, in some ways, controlling us.
But before a word slipped through my lips, Ralph’s calm voice replaced his charged breathing.
“Well, Alex, I must say I am impressed with your ability to find one side of old stories. Hell, I have first hand information about the story you referenced and I didn’t know half of what you shared with me. But like I said, you only provided different interpretations of the same side. So, I must say your gift to me wasn’t all that fruitful.”
“The story of death is always one sided, Chief Fox.” There was a long pause on both ends of the conversation. After what felt like ten minutes, Alexander ended the silence. “I do hope our reunion will be kept ‘invitation only,’ Chief. I have my guest list and in fact already have one in attendance. If you were to extend your invite list, I am afraid of what might become of my guest.”
“You’re afraid of us calling in other law enforcement agencies, aren’t you?” I asked.
“Afraid? No. The conclusion to our relationship is virtually written in stone. However, I do have objectives and I do have leverage. In fact, I am expecting additional leverage to arrive within the next few hours or so. I am offering you and Chief Fox a chance to exact whatever expression of revenge that may be populating your minds. Should you arrive with uninvited guests, you will never see your desires reached.”
“That’s fine by me, Alex. Just fine by me. I was needing a bit of a break from my duties up here, and delivering on my promise to you might be a wonderful way to release some of the tensions that have built up over the days.” Ralph either had a lot more confidence in our ability to find and then stop Alexander than I did, or he was trying to hide his fears and doubts.
“Chief Fox,” Alexander said in response, “I hope you’re not left holding the dead child again. Hypothetically speaking, of course.”
I had to see what was in Ralph’s folder.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
There wasn’t much more we could say to Alexander and not much more he was willing to tell us that would help us find him and stop whatever he was planning. Soon after the call had ended and Ralph and I each offered our ideas and shared our thoughts, Ralph fell silent. It didn’t take long before he nodded towards the couch, then suggested finding and stopping Alexander would fall solely on our shoulders. After first, I was resistant to not involving a law enforcement agency with greater reach and resources than with what we were working. But I knew if Alexander was already holding someone or someones captive, that he would deliver on his threat if he learned we called in assistance. I reluctantly agreed with Ralph.
As we sat in the den, making small talk about what the clues meant Alexander had left in the cabin and in the folder addressed to me, both Ralph and I were simply delaying the conversation we both knew we had to have.
“Showing it to you won’t do you as much good as me telling you what really happened,” Ralph said when our conversation reached a lull. I knew immediately he was talking about what Alexander left for him in his folder. I sat back a bit deeper into the couch, and just listened.
“I’ve been in law enforcement since I was twenty-three years old, Derek. Finished high school, served four years in the Army, took a year off to clear my head and get my thinking working again, then got a job with the police force in the small town I grew up in outside of Dallas. Worked on that force for three years before being offered a position with the Dallas PD. I loved working in Dallas. Had a whole mess of good cops, serving an even larger mess of good people. Not sure why I accepted the position with the Harris County Sheriff’s Department, but I did. I was married at the time to my first wife. She was none too pleased about packing up and moving to Houston, but doing so meant more money coming in and living in Houston meant less money going out.
“After my fifth year with the department, I made Investigator. I was as happy as a pig in shit, I’ll tell you. Wife and I had all but split up by then, which was fine by me. Made taking the position even easier. I knew my hours would be far from a forty hour work week and I wouldn’t be able to just come home after my shift and leave work behind. Gloria—that was my first wife’s name—was a good woman and deserved a better husband than she had in me and certainly didn’t deserve to be married to an investigator who was going to take his job a whole lot more seriously than he was taking his marriage.
“I did tell Gloria I was taking the promotion and, like I expected, she filed for divorce less than two weeks later. I didn’t fight it. Hell, by the time her lawyer showed up and handed me the divorce papers, I must admit I was already divorced in my mind. I ain’t telling you because I’m proud of how I was as a husband, mind you. Just need you to better understand my mindset back in those days.
“Now, in Harris County, new investigators get all the shitty cases the more tenured investigators aren’t interested in. For the first five months, all I did was chase after repeat non-violent offenders and assist with a couple of the more serious cases. One of those more serious cases is what old Alexander found out about and stuffed my envelope full of information about.
“I got called in to assist on a case involving a double murder in a small town on the outskirts of the county. Man named William Montgomery killed his wife and daughter and kidnapped his six-year old son. The lead investigator was Randall Q. Roscoe. Hell of an investigator. Real son of a bitch to work with, but Q knew his stuff. I arrived on-scene about thirty minutes after Q arrived. He walked me through the scene, had me ask the locals a whole mess of questions about William but he never asked me for a single thought or idea. That was fine, I guess. Hell, I had seen murder scenes before but none I was supposed to investigate and solve. I was happy playing second fiddle to Q. Still, I was assigned to the case and I had my responsibilities to help bring William in and to save the life of his son.
“We chased down every lead for two weeks without catching so much as a whiff as to where William had run off to. We figured he’d either killed his son and himself or had skipped across the border into Mexico and we’d never hear from him again.
“We was wrong with that train of thought.
“William was slicker than owl shit but even the best criminals start to make mistakes if given enough time. ‘Bout three weeks after he murdered his wife and daughter, a lead came in that he was spotted out on Pelican Island outside of Galveston. We contacted the Galveston Sheriff’s and were more than welcomed to help them find the man who should have never become their problem.
“Texas A&M University has their Galveston branch located out on Pelican Island, and the last thing either sheriff’s department wanted was to have a murderer running around among all those students. So we joined forces and sent out every available man and woman available. We closed the roads leading off the island and figured it would be just a matter of time before someone came across William.
“It was me to come across him, turned out. Actually, I came across his son.
“There was a whole m
ess of small outbuildings on the campus; some were used by the professors and students and some used by the groundskeepers and maintenance staff. Q had me check out a string of small buildings nearest the sport fields. The first one I walked into was the equipment building for the football team. I walked in, started going room by room and found William’s son just standing in one room, in front of a floor-to ceiling-set of cabinets. He was just standing there, arms hanging straight down and the blankest expression I had ever seen anyone wearing before. Couldn’t tell if he was drugged or scared beyond any ability to show emotion.
“I walked up to him, said a few things to let him know he was safe. When I asked him if he knew where his daddy was, the boy turned his head as slowly as he could, and looked off to his right. Before I followed the boy’s gaze, I noticed he had started shaking all over. His whole damn body was just trembling like he was standing outside and naked down on the South Pole. I reached out to hold his shoulder, trying to calm him down. He never took his eyes off whatever he was looking at. The weirdest thing I remember is how he stopped trembling the second my hand was on his shoulder. Like I turned off a switch, or something. He went as calm and still as a boy without a care in the world. The only problem was I still hadn’t looked over to where he was still staring at. So I cannot say for sure where his daddy was hiding, but I did see the hammer crash into the boy’s head.
“It was one of those things smart people call ‘surreal.’ I remember seeing a hand holding a good sized hammer come into my line of sight, then saw the hammer slam into the little boy’s head. That’s when the boy stopped looking off to his right. He stood there, still not shaking or looking terrified, and was staring directly at me. He was staring at me as the blood started to stream out from the top of his head and kept staring till his blood was gushing out and got to covering up his eyes.
Still Heartless: The Thrilling Conclusion to Heartless (Derek Cole Suspense Thrillers Book 5) Page 10