VOICES: Book 2 in the David Chance series (Suspense, Mystery, Thriller)

by Hileman, John Michael

  “Sir, I will pitch a tent for $200 dollars.”

  Jon climbed out and looked in through the open passenger window. “I won’t be long.”

  The cabbie flicked a switch near the meter box and settled back in his seat.

  Jon headed up the sidewalk, keeping a wary eye on the traffic passing by. As he got closer to where he intended to cross over to Canary’s street, he noticed a burning smell. He looked up, above the houses and trees he could make out the top of a smoke plume. Something was burning, he picked up his pace. He came to a spot between two houses where he could see the flashing lights on top of a fire truck, and a sense of horror descended on him.

  He ran across the lawn of a ranch-style house, through two back yards, and out onto Canary’s street. There were emergency vehicles everywhere and a police officer directing traffic. Behind the noise, confusion, and flashing lights, two streams of water arched through the air in the direction of Canary’s house.

  He called to the voices. What is this? What’s going on? Did they take her, or is she in there?!

  “Elliot James,” they whispered.

  I know who did it! he screamed internally as he jogged down the sidewalk toward the fire perimeter. Where is Canary?

  “Don’t tell him,” said a voice.

  “He has to know,” said another.

  Know what?!

  Through the sirens, shouts, and confusion, Jon’s mind was eerily quiet.

  I’m trusting you! he thought. You have to be straight with me. What’s going on?

  “Elliot James,” they whispered.

  Jon came up on the backside of a fire engine and saw a paramedic speaking with one of the firemen.

  “Um- excuse me,” he said, trying to control his voice. “I’m a friend of the family.”

  They looked in his direction.

  “Was anyone in the house? Are they okay?” he said with more desperation than he cared to show.

  They looked at each other in silent communication, then the medic stepped toward him. “I’m so sorry to have to tell you this,” he said with a somber face, “but they found two bodies burned in the fire.”

  Jon gripped his gut.

  “I’m so sorry,” said the medic. “I’m so sorry.”

  Jon stumbled backward as the world began to spin. “No. No. It’s not right. Something isn’t right.” How could this happen? The voices wouldn’t allow this. How could she be dead? “This is wrong!” he said, defiantly, as if speaking to the flood of tears threatening to overtake him. “This can’t be right!”

  The medic motioned toward the back of the ambulance. “You should sit down. We can talk this through.”

  Jon wiped a tear trickling down his cheek. Why did everything he ever loved get taken away from him? Why?! Was he cursed?

  The medic tried to connect with him. “Did you know the young lady who lived here? Were you close?”

  Jon gasped for air and began to pace. He yelled into the void of his own thoughts. Why?! Why didn’t you tell me?!

  “We did,” said a female voice.

  When?!

  “At the station.”

  I thought I had time. I thought I could save her.

  “There was no chance to save her.”

  But can’t you see everything?

  “Not everything,” said a male voice.

  “What’s your name?” said the medic.

  Jon waved his hands. “I can’t do this. I just- I need to be alone.” He turned and started back down the sidewalk.

  Why did you let me come here to see this?! Why didn’t you tell me she was already dead?!

  “Would it have stopped you from going to see for yourself?”

  No. They were right. He would have gone anyway. He would have wanted to see, wanted to know for sure.

  You could have told me there was no chance to save her. I was coming to rescue her. I didn’t think she was... he couldn’t finish the thought.

  “You needed to see this,” said the female voice. “Canary would have wanted you to see this.”

  Why? Why would she care? She’s dead!

  “You can do what she couldn’t.”

  The pieces of the puzzle began to slide together. There was only one way out of this nightmare—a way the voices had probably known for some time. That was why they had led him to grab the gun at the station, and why they’d allowed him to come here to see this. They knew there was only one way he would ever be free, only one way he would ever be safe.

  His thoughts rested on the beautiful, blond girl who shared his affliction—the only girl who had ever cared for him. And as regret gnawed at his bones, it became clear. He could do it for her. For her, he could kill Elliot James.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The door to the SUV opened, and Collins appeared in the opening. David caught a glimpse of Karen behind him on the sidewalk, still talking to Brad on her phone. He was at the airport waiting for his flight. In all of the excitement, she had missed her chance to say goodbye to him face to face.

  “We found another one,” said Collins, handing a book into the vehicle. “It’s an S.O.P for vehicle maintenance. How’s that?”

  David took the heavy paperback into his hands. “Does it have words?”

  “Whole pages of them.”

  “Then we’ve done our part. Now it’s up to the messages to do theirs.”

  “I’ll go see what else I can find. Let the driver know if you need anything.”

  “Sure.” David set the book down on top of the others in his lap as Collins backed out and closed the door. What were the chances he would find anything in this book when there was nothing in the last three? The messages were not coming.

  All right, David. Get a grip. Stressing out about it is not going to make them come any faster. The messages had always been there when he needed them. He simply had to have faith. He cracked the book open and began slowly turning pages, bouncing his eyes off words as he went. There were a few interesting combinations, but nothing spoke to him. The pages were cold dead things—until his eyes landed on the word noise. The familiar sense of confirmation washed over him. He hopped his eyes over to the word growing and then shaking. He turned the page and found the word safety then hopped three sentences down and grabbed shines. Noise growing shaking safety shines.

  What the heck did that mean?

  “Let’s see what else we have.” He paged to the middle and bounced off more words: Take your new car. With the words came the feeling. There was pleasure in it; the kind of pleasure one might have when they give a Christmas gift. But the next words felt like a dire warning. Go alone. He sensed that the consequences for not obeying this message had ramifications he would never be able to live with.

  The final two words were bank and booth which were also connected to a feeling, like God was saying, “See, I didn’t send you there for nothing.” It was a point of reference, he knew now exactly where he had to be. He slid the books off his lap and climbed out of the vehicle.

  Karen was still on the phone. “Yes. I took care of that weeks ago. Yes. What’s your flight number? Okay...” she turned her back to David.

  He looked up the row of Black SUVs. Two strong men in three-piece suits stood talking by one of them. Collins was not visible. He was probably off getting more books. David looked at the Porsche and his heart began to pound. Was this the right thing to do? The FBI had trusted him. Would they ever forgive him for ditching them? Would Karen forgive him? In a strange way, he was more worried about her than the FBI.

  Her back was still to him, he had to move now. He reached in his pocket and felt for the keys. He pulled out his house keys, then the two keys for the safe deposit boxes. Where was the Porsche key? He dug into his other pocket and felt a wave of relief. All right, it was now or never. He casually walked down the sidewalk and in between the first SUV and the Porsche, out of sight of the two men. He turned casually and looked through the windshield of the SUV; it appeared to be empty. The element of surprise was defini
tely his. No one had any idea he had a key to the Porsche in his pocket, and by the time they did, he would be gone.

  He surveyed the traffic as he walked briskly to the driver’s door. It beeped lightly when he grabbed the handle. Karen was still turned away from him, and from his vantage point, the two men were hidden. He quickly pulled the door open, climbed in, put the key in the ignition, and let the door thump closed as he fired it up. His hand shot out with confidence and slapped the car in gear. It made a satisfying click as it locked into drive, and exhilaration caused his body to tingle.

  He mapped out a route that would take him to the parking garage two streets over. By the time any of the black SUVs could follow him, he would be on the next street and turning into the alley that cut across.

  A sudden bleep caught his attention and he looked over at the passenger seat. An iPad sat face up, and a tiny box in the center of the screen said, “Incoming message.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Terrence Peltz eyed the security guard next to terminal 47B but made no attempt to hide his nervousness. It was all a part of the plan, a plan only he could execute. If this was a movie, he would have been forever typecast, unable to find a part in anything else. It was truly the only role he was fit to play.

  Fate had not given him good looks or social skills, but had chosen to make his frame thin and gangly—and his skin paler than the accepted norm. But this was their normal, not his. They wanted him to believe millions of years of evolution had spit out a reject, fit for only abuse or pity. But he would show them. They would see that they had underestimated him.

  A voice broke him from his introspection.

  “Are you sure?” said a man, standing with his wife and two children. The airline attendant swiped his boarding pass again, and a low buzz rang out.

  “I am sorry, sir,” said the attendant. “It’s not in our system.”

  The man turned to his wife. “Let’s try yours.”

  His wife handed him an envelope with the boarding pass on top. The attendant slid it off and ran it through the machine.

  Bzzzz.

  The man took in his surroundings. “This is the gate for flight 304, right?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry, sir. You’ll have to step over to the service counter. They can help you there.”

  His wife attempted to quiet their questioning children as the man made one last plea. “We have to be on this plane. My sister is getting married. She’ll kill me if we miss it.”

  Terrence was disgusted by the amount of empathy on the attendant’s face and the obvious regret in her voice. It wasn’t manufactured emotion, like he was used to receiving. It was genuine. And why shouldn’t it be? They were pretty people with pretty children and designer clothes and expensive carry-on bags, the kind of people everyone wants to know and be seen with. How sad that they should be inconvenienced in their perfect, little lives.

  He might have gotten a similar expression from the attendant, but he wasn’t the fool people took him for. Oh, people loved pretending like they cared; it made them feel good about themselves. But they were always relieved when they were finally rid of him. Their lives were so wonderful when they didn’t have to be inconvenienced by his awkward presence. It didn’t even matter that he avoided looking at them or that he attempted to speak only when he had something of interest to say. Most would never admit it, but they were uncomfortable just being around him.

  “They should be able to help you,” said the attendant. “There’s still time.” The man and his family left the line peaceably, and the line lurched forward.

  Eventually, Terrence had his turn with the attendant. He didn’t have to pretend to be nervous, his forehead felt noticeably flush, and his skin was slick with perspiration. The attendant swiped his ticket but did not take notice of his heightened level of duress or question him about his obviously labored breathing. What did he have to do, draw her a picture? Where did they get these people from?

  He snatched his ticket from her pinched fingers and took comfort in the fact that his plan did not hinge upon this one incompetent attendant and her inability to properly screen passengers. He had accounted for the likelihood that the boarding attendant would do as everyone else did and consider him invisible. It didn’t matter. She was only a pawn he had wished to capture. The game was far from over, and his strategy allowed for many failed variables.

  He trudged forward through the reinforced, metal door and up the long, suffocating hallway that led to the side door of the passenger plane, following the line of living corpses, like cattle being herded to the slaughter. He never understood why anyone would want to climb into the hull of a plane; it was nothing more than an air-tight Petri dish in the sky. Not to mention, the only thing keeping the almost two hundred tons of sheet metal airborne were two shaky wings, both of which were absolutely required to keep the cylinder of death from plummeting to the earth like a missile.

  As he rounded the corner he craned his neck to see, over the people in front of him, the crew greeting people as they entered the plane. There was a male attendant and a female attendant, but she wasn’t Joyce.

  He fought the urge to second-guess whether or not she was even on the aircraft, and consoled himself with a reminder that even she was not necessary for the success of his plan. She was a happy coincidence. He’d been planning this long before she’d started dating his neighbor. It just made sense to add her the day he’d found out that she made the trip from Boston to Los Angeles on a weekly basis. She simply gave him one more chance at a perfect outcome.

  He continued to watch for her as the passengers entered one at a time, but she never showed. No matter. He would simply have to trust that another attendant would take notice of his nervous and suspicious behavior. They couldn’t all be buffoons. What were the chances? He gritted his teeth as an insidious thought attempted to root itself. Why would fate treat you any different than it has since your unfortunate birth? Shut up! he thought. It doesn’t matter!

  He had not given himself over entirely to fate. Most of the variables were well within his control, especially the critical details. Besides, fate had not abandoned him his entire life. It could be argued that she had made all this possible by giving him access to the substance that would ensure his name would be remembered long after the handsome man and his wretchedly pretty family were long forgotten. He preferred, however, to think of it more like: fate had underestimated him. She thought him incapable of inventing such a plan, and thus considered it safe to taunt him. Fate, like all the rest, imagined he would just take the hand he was given and give into the inevitability of his obscure and worthless life.

  But fate was wrong, whispered his mind.

  His cheek fluttered.

  Fate couldn’t have been more wrong.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Jon wasn’t cold, but his body shivered. It came in uncontrollable trembles as he walked up to the front of the bank. In the glass he studied his disguise one last time. He looked like a plump Mexican. The bronze tanning spray and mustache made his features indistinguishable, and the pillow duct-taped to his midsection gave the appearance of added weight. The clothing he’d grabbed from the store beside the costume shop had a sports theme: baggy jeans, jersey, Red Sox cap, and high top sneakers to complete the look. His own father wouldn’t have recognized him. But he was still terrified.

  He pushed through the doors into the lobby. Two security guards were visible, one near the entrance, the other over by the loan department. In the center of the room, people funneled through a roped-in section to get their after-work banking done. He headed across the back of the lobby toward the bank manager’s office. The door was open a crack, so he pushed through and closed it behind him. “Show me your hands or your mother is dead,” he said, pulling the handgun from under his shirt.

  “My mother...?”

  “Hands up, or the man I hired to kill her will put a bullet in her head.”

  His hands shot up. “Okay. Okay.”

/>   A voice screamed in his head. “His foot! Back up! Back up! The button!”

  “Back up!” he said forcefully.

  “What?”

  “Do you think I’m bluffing?! With the money I got from you I could have hired fifty assassins. Back away from the desk! You push that button with your foot, she’s as good as dead!”

  The man slid back with a look of shock. “Why are you doing...”

  “Shut up, and listen to me closely. I want you to call Elliot James. Have him meet us here in your office. If I don’t think you sound convincing, your mom is dead, you’re dead, and everyone in this bank is dead. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”

  The man held his composure and nodded. Jon envied him, and the training he must have gone through to acquire such resolve. Jon wished he shared his courage. His hand wouldn’t stop shaking, and there was a chance he might vomit on the desk.

  “I’m getting the phone,” said the man calmly. Jon watched his body, making sure he stayed clear of the desk. Wellington picked up the phone and dialed an extension. “What if he’s not there?” he said, setting his jaw.

  Jon tightened his eyes. “You better hope he is.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  David pushed through the lobby doors of the bank and scanned the room apprehensively. God only knew what was waiting for him here, quite literally. It was a big bank, and he had no earthly idea what he was supposed to do. There were some signs close by, so he strolled over and bounced his eyes off a few words, but nothing spoke to him. The security guard near the door looked him up and down. David offered a friendly smile and headed over to a table in the middle of the room where various bank slips and trifolds lay in shallow troughs.

  Why was he back at this bank? Jon was at the police station, and Collins said the chemist had a lab on the outskirts of Boston. What was the significance of this bank? He bounced his eyes off of some trifolds and a sign laminated to the top of the desk. Still nothing.