“My dad came in screaming you did!”
There was a short silence, then, “Are you alone?”
“I’m at Bruce’s house. It’s just us.”
“What I’m about to tell you, you can’t tell anyone. If you do, I’m a dead man. Do you understand me?”
Jon’s head was spinning. He expected to give Pete a piece of his mind while he was still in a place where he could make a decent phone call. He didn’t see this coming. Could he trust Pete? Was this all a twisted attempt to avoid confrontation?
“Jonny?”
“Yes,” he blurted. “I’ll keep it a secret. Just tell me what’s going on.”
“Someone came to me with an envelope full of money and said they wanted your dad and Sandra to break up. When I asked him why, he told me Sandra’s a grifter. She rolls men for money.”
“Are you kidding me? My dad doesn’t have any money!”
“She was after your grandfather’s money, you know, what your dad put into your college fund.”
“How would she even know about that?”
“I don’t know, Jonny. All I know is, I was holding an envelope full of hundred dollar bills and I thought I would do your dad a favor. I figured he’d go home, they’d have a big fight, and he would kick her out. Then later, after the dust cleared, I would explain what happened and give your dad half the money. I didn’t think he’d kill her! That’s nuts! He’s not a murderer! Now I’m freaking out! It just doesn’t make any...” Pete was quiet for a moment, then spoke as if to himself. “I think he wanted her murdered.”
“Who? My dad?”
“No, the man who paid me. I asked him why he cared if Sandra grifted your dad. You know, because it was a lot of money he was handing me. He said all he was allowed to say was that his client was very wealthy, and that he needed Sandra to think what was happening was real. I asked a few more questions, but he just kept saying his client didn’t want to reveal any more; that was why he was paying such a large amount.”
Jon let out an exasperated breath. Wh- why did you do it? You know Dad gets crazy when he drinks.”
“It’s easy to be judgmental after the fact! I didn’t know he would kill her!”
Jon couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“I could have turned the money away and gone to your father and told him, but what if it was true? What if she was grifting him? He wouldn’t have changed his opinion about her because some stranger was making accusations. She would have taken him for everything and your college fund would be gone.”
“You should have given him that option.”
“You’re right, Jonny. I should have, but I can’t change what happened. I’m sorry.”
“Are you going to tell the police?”
“They already came and questioned me.”
There was a short silence.
“And?”
“I told them I slept with Sandra.”
“You what?!” Jon gripped the phone.
“I told them I slept with her but that I never meant for any of this to happen.”
“You lied to the police?”
“I needed to buy some time and think!”
Jon gripped his head in his hands. “Pete, they don’t think my dad killed Sandra. They think I did it.”
“I know. The police told me, but I knew it wasn’t true.”
“My own father betrayed me.”
“I guess neither one of us knew him as well as we thought.”
Jon’s face tightened—then he shook off the emotion.
“I’m sorry, Jonny, I never meant for it to go down like this.”
“Look,” Jon spoke low, “if you’re asking for forgiveness, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“Well hate me if you want, but we have to work together on this. Someone is behind this, and we need to figure out who.”
“You want me to work with you? That ain’t gonna happen.”
“Whether you like it or not, we’re in this together.”
Jon dug his fingers through his hair and ground his forehead into his palm.
Pete pleaded. “Jonny, we go way back. I know I have my issues, but I’ve always been a good friend to your father and you. I never should have lied, but we’re in this thing now. You have to trust me.”
“I can’t trust you. You’re a liar.”
“We’re all liars, Jon. I just said the wrong lie for the wrong people.”
He had no answer for that.
“I have the money in my pocket. Let me come get you. I don’t want the police grabbing you until we have evidence to prove you’re innocent.”
The pieces swam in Jon’s head: his father changing his shirt and hiding the gun; the mysterious rich man and his intentions for Sandra; and Pete, a guy who, up until last night, was a familiar face and a trusted friend. His whole world had been flipped on its ear. But Pete was probably right, maybe they were all being played somehow. Maybe he was as much a victim as his father and himself. If someone with power was behind all this, Jon needed the resources to find out who that was—and at the moment, he didn’t even have a vehicle. “I just want to find out who is doing this,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’m not okay with what you did.”
“Fair enough.”
“Can you pick me up at the 7-Eleven on Center?”
“What time?”
“Thirty minutes.”
“Okay. I’ll tell Ralph I need to take the day off. I’ll see you there in thirty.”
“All right.”
Jon stabbed cancel on the phone and laid it on the counter.
Bruce stood in the corner of the kitchen, peeking out at the road. He looked over his shoulder at Jon. “That sounded heavy.”
“Yeah,” said Jon, putting his hand in his pocket.
“I only caught pieces, but it sounds like you were expecting the call to go different.”
“Yeah.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“No,” he said, pulling Julius from his pocket. “Can you do something for me?”
Bruce looked at the hamster, taking note of his its matted fur. It was probably urine.
“Can you watch Julius? He’s making a mess of my pocket. I need a place for him while I figure this stuff out.”
The look on Bruce’s face left no doubt that, although he detested the idea, he would do it.
“Thanks, man.” Jon cradled the hamster into his friend’s hands. “I won’t forget this.”
Bruce frowned and held the hamster at arm’s length. “The amount you owe me cannot be contained in all the vaults in the world.”
Jon gripped his friend’s shoulder. “He likes carrots.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Good morning, sir,” said a stout, female officer standing near the elevator.
“Morning, Captain,” said a detective from his desk.
“I put the Grabowski case on your desk,” said a suited man passing by.
Captain Jackson addressed each with a nod as he strode down the long aisle to his office. Everything was moving like a well-oiled machine. The worker bees had their assignments, and the pressure to perform was keeping them sufficiently distracted. He watched them all scurrying about their tasks, most of them unaware of their role in the grand scheme, the rest playing the game to climb the ladder. They were all just grease. The wheel bearings of bureaucracy required ample grease—dirty filthy grease. Fortunately, grease was also a lubricant, and, when necessary, quick to allow things to slip through the cracks.
He looked at his secretary, typing furiously on her computer. “I’ll be on a private call, Stacy. I don’t want to be disturbed.”
“Yes, sir.” Her eyes held on him for only a moment before returning to the screen.
Captain Jackson stepped into his office, closed the doors, and closed the shades. From his pocket he drew a pair of medical gloves and slid them on his hands. He took the phone receiver and set it on the desk, a button lit red on the phone panel. With his othe
r hand he swooped his dress coat aside, reached back, and pulled a .22 revolver from his waistline. He smiled.
Gunpowder residue, he mused to himself, clings to everything, the hands, the weapon, a shirt, a pair of trousers. There is hardly a place in a police cruiser where residue couldn’t be detected by a police dog.
Police dogs have an acute and discriminate sense of smell. If a drug dealer were to hide a pound of weed in a pool of pudding, a police dog would not shrug his shoulders and say, all I smell is pudding. If the dog could speak, he would say, I smell marijuana pudding, and mmm, do I detect a hint of cinnamon?
But police dogs are at the mercy of their training. Though they can detect the smell of gunpowder from a handgun buried in a pile of dung, they must be discriminate. When there are twenty officers standing around with microscopic particles in their clothing, on their hands, and in their hair, the dog and its handler must choose to rule out what are considered known sources of the smell, and seek out the unknown.
He slid his drawer out and twisted the combination lock on the safe inside. It opened with a click. He carefully slid the handgun inside and sealed it in.
The gun and its fingerprints would be found, eventually, but not yet. For now, the boy was on the run, alone, and scared. Besides the mistake of allowing David Chance to poke around, everything was moving forward according to plan. The pieces were in position. It was time to strike.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jon watched the 7-Eleven from the bakery across the street. He tapped the home button on his iPad and checked the time. Pete would be rolling in soon. The thought was both comforting and disconcerting. They had known each other his whole life, and there was a familiarity, even a closeness, but recent events had so distorted Jon’s perception that he didn’t know what to think. Everything felt strange and unfamiliar. There was no longer anyone in his life he could truly trust. He had always felt alone, but now he felt even more alone, if that were even possible.
Cars came and went, some for fuel, some parking in the spaces in front of the store, some parking along the road. In all cases, the driver of each vehicle got out. All except one, in a dark blue sedan. There was no plate on the front of the car, and the glare on the windshield and the darkened side window prevented Jon from making out the driver. Probably an unmarked police car, he thought. He had wondered why they questioned Pete and then left him alone. Now it made sense. They weren’t ready to take him in just yet. They needed him—for bait.
There were any number of reasons why he would try to get in contact with Pete. The police must have known that and decided to play a little catch and release. Throw the little fish back to catch the big fish.
Pete’s truck came into view. It rolled down the street, passed the blue sedan, then slowly turned into the parking lot of the 7-Eleven and stopped. Pete hopped out and looked around, but did not look in the direction of the blue sedan. Either he didn’t know they were watching, or he was purposely avoiding them because he didn’t want Jon to realize he knew. It didn’t matter. Jon had no intention of meeting Pete with that car there, whether Pete knew about it or not.
He slid his earphones out of his pocket, plugged them into his iPad, and called up his phone app. Time for plan B. Pete’s name and number were already cued; he figured something like this might happen. That’s why he had come into the bakery. It had free WiFi. With his iPad connected to the Internet, he could call anyone in the country, free of charge. It wasn’t as convenient as having a cell phone, but it would get the job done. He tapped the screen and listened for the rings.
Pete stopped and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Hello?”
“Pete.”
“Yeah, where are you?”
Jon spoke discreetly into the microphone hidden in the earbud wire. “You’re being watched.”
“No, I’m not, I made sure I wasn’t followed.”
“They arrived before you did.”
Pete looked around. “You’re kidding. How could they know?”
Jon stared at the car. “I don’t know, but there’s no way I’m coming over there while they’re watching.”
Pete continued to look around. He turned toward the bakery. Jon leaned back behind the posters on the window in front of him.
“Well,” he said, “maybe we can meet somewhere else.”
“What if they have your phone bugged?”
“How would they bug my phone? It’s been in my pocket all morning.”
“I’m not taking any chances. I’m not going to jail.”
“Look, how about you pick a place, and then tell me what it is by telling me when we were there last, or what we did there.”
That would require coming up with another location where he could observe from a place with WiFi—but he couldn’t think of anything off the top of his head. “I don’t know, Pete, I can’t...” He stopped.
The sedan was pulling out of it spot, creeping into traffic. Jon hid even farther behind the posters. As it passed, he could see the dark silhouette of the driver, but no features. Had he been wrong? Was it just a random vehicle? The car took a right and pulled around into the side entrance to the 7-Eleven. Jon’s stare intensified. “I think the police are coming for you.” His voice grew intense. “They probably know it’s me on the phone.”
“What? Where? The blue car?” said Pete, turning toward it.
“Run, Pete! If they bugged your phone they know all about the money and how you lied to them. Run through the store and out the back!”
The sedan slowed to a stop in front of Pete, and he stepped up to the driver’s window. Jon could hear him talking. “I told you fella’s everything you wanted to know. Give me a break, will ya?”
Two loud cracks exploded inside the earbuds, and Jon ripped them from his ears. He heard muffled screams as people ran for cover—and immediately their terror became his. Those were not police officers.
He ran to the door of the bakery, but fear kept him from bursting through it. Fear kept him from running across the street. And fear made him crumble into a squat, paralyzed, as the blue sedan peeled out of the parking lot. Pete’s lifeless body lay in a lump. Unable to even look at the rear plates, Jon’s body shook with terror, locked in a tight knot.
The old woman who worked the counter called out to him,” Are you okay, young man?” She must have been hard of hearing to not have heard the gun shots. Jon’s eyes stayed locked on the scene unfolding across the street.
People slowly returned from the cracks they had hidden themselves in, but judging from their expressions, it was too late to help Pete. Whatever wound he had taken was clearly fatal. Those who dared to approach the body were instantly repelled, their faces showing a strange mixture of revulsion and pity. Jon stared in numb disbelief. What was happening to him? His life was shattering into a million tiny shards. Something was going on here, something far bigger than his dad and Sandra.
Behind him, the squeak of the bakery woman’s shoes could be heard on the ceramic tiles. “What’s going on?” she said.
“Someone shot that man,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. He kept the back of his head toward her. He had not seen any television all morning, and for all he knew, his face could have been plastered all over the news.
“Oh God,” she said, her voice shaky. “Is he gone? The one who shot him?”
“Yeah,” he said. “They drove up the road.” Jon rose to his feet slowly, keeping his back to the woman.
“Should we call the police?” she said.
“Um, probably someone already called.” He walked briskly to his table and grabbed the iPad, still not turning.
“Are you all right, son?”
Jon looked down at the tablet. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
He could feel her eyes boring into the back of his neck. Did she recognize him? Was she waiting for him to turn around so she could identify him? No. She would have recognized him when he bought the donut. Get a grip, Jon!
He lifted the tablet off the table and
turned, expecting her suspicious eyes to scan him up and down, but she wasn’t even looking at him. Her attention was on the crowd across the street. Her frozen expression and the sirens wailing in the distance hit him like a bucket of water. He had to get out of there! His fear of the assassins was momentarily trumped by the fear of being caught by the police. He pushed past the woman, squeezed out the door, and ran up the sidewalk. As police rounded the corner at the base of the hill, he dropped to a walk and moved toward the alley.
Once in the alley and out of sight, he broke into a sprint. His sneakers slapped on the tar, and his heart burned in his chest and neck. He didn’t know where he was running to, or why he was running at all. No one was pursuing him, but he felt pursued. He had to get away. Far away. But where could he go? Who would he turn to? How would he ever claw his way out of this nightmare?
A faint voice spoke through the noise of his heavy breathing. It was a small section of a longer sentence. “...buried by Hunter Brook,” it said.
He caught the phrase and repeated it over and over as he ran. He clung to it as though life itself depended on his remembering the cryptic message.
Because, for all he knew, it was quite possible it did.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Karen chewed the end of her pen, and stared across the barren surface of her desk at David who was staring at the station’s cluttered bulletin board. He started at one end, then walked his way down and back again, for the fourth time. After each pass he paced with the same look of disgust on his face.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“There has to be something here, something I’m missing.”
She squinted. “You really are a junkie, aren’t you?”
That got his attention. He gave her an irritated look.
“All the way back to the station, you complained about how the messages always leave you hanging, and how you’re sick of being a puppet. Yet the first thing you do when you get back is stare at that board looking for more messages.”
VOICES: Book 2 in the David Chance series (Suspense, Mystery, Thriller) Page 7