“Family by the name of Boyd. Probably nothing there for us but they’ve all got records for assault, weapons, drugs, you name it. They run a motorcycle repair shop that covers for their drug business. I think we can all agree were not talking about SAMCRO here, more like the three stooges. But, they’ve got a few licensed mechanics on the payroll so rigging the wheel to Paul Dushku’s Honda isn’t out of the question. Aside from that, no good hits from records.”
“No offense,” Wright said, taking a moment to clear his throat and scratch his head. “This kid was kinda . . . fruity, not that I have any problem with that,” he added. It was the first time that day that Sarah actually smiled, and probably the last. “I’m just saying, people in small towns can be pretty resistant to people who are, you know, different. This doesn’t feel like biker business.”
“Hate crimes,” Sarah nodded. “I’d be very surprised if this didn’t prove to be the most likely scenario. The person we’re looking for planned this thing out to the last detail. He knew how to rig the wheel to come off, knew he could over power him, get him out in the woods, bind him and probably had the bucket of acid waiting out there. We’re looking for an organized offender. I think because of the physical strength involved we can work on the assumption that were looking for an adult male, probably white, let’s put the age at between twenty and forty-five but we’ll expand on that as needed. In the meantime, I want his co-workers at the bindery, and his former classmates from the high school, friends, enemies, and former lovers . . . everybody. We’re going to start with his parents and work our way down the line until something pops.”
Sarah leaned forward resting her elbows on her knees and looked at each of them seriously. “What I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this room. The only other people that know are the coroner and the man we’re looking for. Understood?”
Each member of her team nodded in unison, whether or not they’d follow her instructions would remain to be seen, but she’d made her position clear.
“Nobody but us and the coroner know the specific word that was cut into the victim’s chest, but Paul Dushku may have also been raped.”
“Whoa,” Darcy sighed. “Sick bastard.”
“Because of the position he was bound in, we couldn’t see, but he had some shallow lacerations and bruising on his buttocks and the backs of his thighs. Not sure what to make of this as of yet, added to which, the coroner says there’s no signs of defensive wounds, skin under his fingernails and no semen. Problem is, some of these bruises are fresh, probably made within a few hours prior to the TOD, but some of them are older, almost healed in fact.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Tristan Cutler pointed out.
“It does,” Sarah replied evenly, “if you don’t look at it from the point of view of a one time event.”
Ian Wright drew out his notebook and scrawled something down before sliding it back into his pocket. “You’re thinking he was being abused?”
“It’s a possibility, but maybe not the way you think.”
Darcy was the first to arrive at the point Sarah was trying to make, perhaps due to the fact she’d been awake longer than the rest of them, maybe she was just smarter. “The ball gag . . . you’re thinking S&M?”
Sarah touched the tip of her nose with her index finger. “The way he was restrained, the bruising . . . ”
“But if we’re looking at a sex game gone wrong, how do you explain the tampering of his wheel and the acid?” Lewinski said, smugly.
Sarah bit her lip, trying not to show her annoyance. “I’m just pointing out a few more possibilities for us to look at. Maybe he was forced into it . . . maybe we’re looking at a former lover who got tired of playing with him and killed him to keep him quiet. We could be looking at a sadistic family member, who knows? My point is, consensual or not, someone had sexual contact with Paul Dushku shortly before his death, and that is someone we’re going to need to talk to. Now, I know this is going to sound a little off the wall, but after Dushku’s car broke down he called a number on his cell phone. The call only lasted for six seconds so I think he hung up before anybody answered.”
“So, who’d he call?” Tristan asked.
“His employer, Foster Harrington.”
Silence fell across the room. Sarah let them sit with the information before dismissing them to get cleaned up before heading to the police station. Darcy lingered behind the others, and closed the hotel room door after the others had left.
“How you holding up boss?” she asked, gently.
“Well as can be expected,” Sarah admitted. “That is, if you consider the fact that we’re already twenty-four hours in and we haven’t done a goddamned thing.”
Darcy shrugged, offering a simple explanation. “Logistics . . . these things take time.”
“It’s more than that,” Sarah said, grateful for the chance to unload some of her thoughts on an empathetic ear. “This whole thing stinks. Something’s not right here.”
“Meaning?”
“I’m not sure yet. I just can’t help but feel that there’s something more going on here than we know about.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Look at the victim!” Sarah blurted out, a little louder than she intended considering that the walls were probably made of paper mache’ and spit. She moved closer to Darcy, just in case her voice carried through the heating vents in the ceiling. “That poor kid was tortured to death out there,” she whispered. “Look at this town. Does this look like the kind of place where people are into leather and torture?”
“Not one bit.”
“And what kind of person carves FAG into someone’s chest and dumps a bucket of industrial strength acid on him, then leaves him out there knowing that someone’s going to find him?”
“Right.”
“It’s just not done. Chop him up, maybe. Burn him, bury him, sure. This thing is way bigger than the five of us. We’ve got twenty-five people on this when if they were serious about getting a fast close, it’d be more like two-hundred.”
“Well, we don’t know that for sure,” she placed a hand on Sarah’s shoulder before she could protest. “Hear me out. Granted, this thing is pretty extreme, not something that normally goes on in little hick towns like this, I’ll give you that. But, it’s not unheard of. Paul Bernardo . . . Russell Williams . . . Willie Pickton?”
“That’s exactly my point. People think it never happens here when in reality we’ve had over sixty serial killers that we know of dating all the way back to the early nineteen hundreds! I was on the Russ Williams case, just answering phones and doing some leg work, but the budget on that case was close to ten million dollars. I’m telling you, they’re setting us up for failure, I can feel it.”
Darcy sighed, still not convinced. “You have to admit, in a town of less than twenty-thousand, when we start talking to people our odds of getting good Intel are a hell of a lot better than if we were in a city of two-million.”
“I suppose.”
“Then?”
Sarah knew what she was getting at, but it didn’t make it any easier from her standpoint. She felt like the entire world was watching, like an actress playing a role on a stage alone, with no script to play by and the success or failure of the production on her shoulders. Darcy gave her a warm hug, maybe a little too warm, and a little too long.
“You’re looking at this thing the wrong way, baby,” she whispered in Sarah’s ear. “You’re worried that if you don’t close this thing out, your career is over.”
“Uh-huh,” Sarah said, gently trying to pull away without offending her.
Darcy squeezed her a little harder, refusing to let her go until she’d made her point. “What you should be thinking is, if and when you close this thing out, you’re a fucking star, baby.”
- - -
Despite the near-frigid breeze that morning, Pete Andrews rode his Harley over to Boyd’s bike shop. Though he was due at the station in another hour he had oth
er business to attend to first. He kept the engine at lower revs than normal, trying not to draw attention to himself. With the townsfolk on high alert for anything suspicious, it didn’t look right for a member of law enforcement to be seen visiting known criminals but the bike was his ticket in. Should anyone question him about his presence there, he’d simply point out that Boyd’s shop was the only one in town certified to service his Harley.
He maneuvered his bike through the open bay door that led into the service area where two grease monkeys were wresting with an ignition problem on a big touring bike. He killed his engine and shoved out the kickstand, pulling off his helmet as he climbed off of his ride. A few men who were playing Texas Hold’em at a nearby folding card table shook their heads in disdain but made no move to leave the table.
They were used to his visits by now. He came to the shop twice a month to drop off product and to collect his money. The shop itself actually made a little money, but nothing compared to the Boyd families side-business. The youngest Boyd sold marijuana, ecstasy, and a myriad of prescription meds with two of his friends up at the high school, while his Father, Terry, and his uncle Briar, moved crystal meth through the bike shop, at least they had until recently.
It wasn’t just that they were the biggest dealers in town, they were the only dealers in town. That was where Pete Andrews came in. If anyone dared to tread on the Boyd family business, Pete would bust him or her accompanied by his partner Dale Warren. They would turn in enough of the seized product and recovered cash to make it worthwhile, but the rest would mysteriously disappear. The dealers being busted often found themselves being charged with simple possession rather than intent to distribute. None of them complained. Only a fool would have stood up in court and said; ‘Excuse me your honor, but I had a LOT more drugs than what I’m being charged with.’
“Who’s winning?” Pete asked as he approached the card table, pulling off his leather gloves and pushing his sunglasses up onto the top of his head.
“Nobody,” one of the men replied gruffly.
Pete looked at the man’s cards. “Whoa, pocket aces. I’d go all in, if I was you.”
All three men tossed their cards down in disgust and watched as Pete strutted through the shop, heading for the office in the rear where Terry Boyd worked. Pete found him at his desk, turned sideways, leaning back in his office chair, taking a hit from a glass pipe while his secretary serviced him on her knees. He entered the office so suddenly that Terry jumped out of his chair, knocking the woman on her ass and nearly getting himself re-circumcised in the process.
“Terry my boy!” Pete said boisterously. “I’m not interrupting, am I?”
“Christ on a fucking pogo-stick! Don’t you know how to knock?” he demanded angrily as he fumbled with his zipper. “What the fuck are you doing here anyhow?”
“Oh, I just thought I’d drop by, maybe decorate your secretary’s face like a cake,” he chuckled as he dropped himself into a chair opposite the desk. “What do you say Suzie? I’m sure there’s a bag with a hole in it somewhere I can put over your head . . . ”
“Why don’t you lick my ass, you fucking pig?” she said indignantly, giving him the finger before bolting out of the office, slamming the door behind her hard enough to rattle the pictures of custom bikes on the wall.
“Not without a tetanus shot,” Pete laughed. “How are you Terry? Doing alright?”
“Was doing just fine until you walked in,” he groaned, tucking in his shirt and snatching the glass pipe off of the desk where he’d dropped in when the cop walked in. He yanked the top desk drawer open and tossed it inside, despite the fact that if Pete Andrews wanted to bust him he wouldn’t need actual evidence to do it, he’d just plant it.
“I’m surprised your little prick hasn’t fallen off by now,” Andrews said, taking great pleasure in tormenting the man. “You really should get yourself tested. I wouldn’t put my dick in that woman with two condoms on.”
Terry Boyd raised his chin and took a breath as if to say something, but surprisingly (considering how few brain cells he likely had left), thought better of it. Letting a long breath out through his nose, his eyes dropped down to the desk while he contemplated what would happen to him if he said something about Pete Andrew’s wife. More likely than not, he’d wind up in a garbage dumpster or all messed up out in the woods somewhere like the Dushku kid.
“So, let’s talk turkey,” Pete said, rubbing his hands together eagerly. “What have you got for me?”
Terry sighed as he did what he had been doing for months now. Reaching into the bottom drawer of his desk for the metal cash box he kept there, his lips pulled to one side of his mouth like a child refusing a spoonful of cough medicine. It was getting tougher to swallow with each visit, but Pete knew all too well that the other man’s options were equally bleak. His connections in Mississauga wouldn’t tolerate him being sent to prison. More likely than not, he’d be shanked on the bus ride over. They had done just that to people in the past, other dealers like Terry and B.B. who either took their product and failed to pay or got themselves arrested and were facing long sentences. Dead men didn’t rat.
“I might as well tell you, I’m a little short,” Terry said cautiously, opening the metal box and removing a stack of bills wrapped in a rubber band.
“Hmmm,” Pete smiled, nodding in amusement.
“What do you want me to say? I’m buying it twice but I can only sell it once, what am I supposed to do?”
“Interesting . . . ”
“Added to which, we lost BB! No thanks to you, I don’t mind saying . . . ”
Pete continued to smile while he watched the man squirm, confronted with the no win scenario he found himself in, but he couldn’t care less. Terry Boyd meant one thing to him, money. His end of the drugs the Boyd family was selling was good for four thousand dollars every month, tax-free. That was almost as much as he earned as a cop. He risked his life everyday, protecting the public from guys like the hired muscle playing poker in the other room, meanwhile, guys like Terry Boyd made more money in a week than Andrews did in a month. It was only right that he should take something extra for himself.
If he wanted to, Pete could bring the whole thing down and walk away clean. Terry, B.B. and, possibly, Randy, would get up to fifteen or twenty years in prison. Their drug connection would have the three of them killed on principle alone. Even if the Boyds’ were stand up guys (which they weren’t) common sense dictated that anyone facing that kind of time in a cage might say anything to shave five or ten years off. Even if they kept quiet during the trial and their initial incarceration, that was no indication of what they might do five or ten years later. It was far easier to eliminate the problem altogether.
“That’s fine,” Pete said, relishing the other man’s anguish. “However much you’re short, I’ll carry over to the next pickup at say . . . twenty-five percent interest a week.”
“You can’t do that!” he blurted, leaning forward in his chair. “Times two weeks, that’s an extra grand to your next pickup!”
“That’s very good,” Pete nodded approvingly. “Who says that you can’t get an education on the inside?”
“That’s my whole profit! There’s no point if I’m just gonna break even!”
“Blah, blah, blah,” Pete said, sticking his tongue out and tilting his head like a bored child. “Cry me a fucking river, Terry. I’m not running a charity here. Nothing you can say even compares to what would happen to me if this got out. And if it did, I think it goes without saying, I’d bring everyone down with me including your west end people and go into witness protection for the rest of my life.”
Terry tossed the stack of bills onto the edge of the desk, which Pete instantly snatched, pulling off the band and flipping through the bundle. “As far as the thing with your brother goes, that was out of my control. McLeary brought some guy up from Toronto.”
“BB said he didn’t recognize the guy,” Terry nodded thoughtfully. “Whoever h
e is, he owes my brother about three years in lockup.”
“Don’t count on collecting it,” Andrews scoffed. “McLeary loves the guy, if anything happens to him or his kid, there’ll be hell to pay. Regardless, I could have kept the stuff he had stashed at the roadhouse, you’re lucky I didn’t just turn the stuff in, get my name in the paper.”
“That’s awful white of ya, but I’m not running a charity here either,” Terry snapped, his subservient mask cracking for a brief moment.
“That’s the beauty of your business Terry,” Andrews said as he rose from his chair, slipping the bundle of cash into the inner pocket of his leather riding jacket and slipping on his shades. “There’s no shortage of lowlifes out there. If you want to make more money . . . make more money.” He reached into another pocket and pulled out a bundle wrapped in brown paper. “There’s another half pound, see you in two weeks.”
“Hey Pete, you say this cop has a kid?” Boyd called after him.
“Yeah, kid named Matt . . . Mark, maybe. About sixteen,” Andrews replied casually.
He could see where he was headed with the question. Stevens had messed with the Boyd family, now he’d be repaid in kind. Best part, Pete himself would be totally clear of the thing. Whatever happened, Stevens would definitely suspect his involvement, but he’d never prove the connection.
With that, he strutted out of the office, leaving the door open behind him. With the fifteen hundred he’d just collected, in addition to the twenty-grand that he’d already stashed away, he almost had enough to put a deposit down on the speedboat he had been pining after. He’d seen it docked at the marina in Gravenhurst last summer and practically fallen in love with it. At his current salary from the police department, it’d have taken him another twenty years to buy it. Now he almost had enough cash to buy it outright.
Rage: The Reckoning Page 14