by Michael Kerr
Will started to blubber like a five-year-old, but Logan didn’t feel any sympathy for him. “You have a chance to get through this in one piece,” he said. “Start by telling me where the little girl is, and then we’ll get to other stuff.”
Will closed his eyes and knew that he would have to talk. Not exclusively to save his skin, but because to unburden himself to these men would in some way save him from continuing to be a part of something he was caught up in and wanted out from under.
“Okay,” Will said. “I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“Music to my ears,” Logan said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
TOM made coffee while Logan questioned Will. Getting him to talk freely was like turning on a stiff, rusted faucet; just a few drips at first, and then a steady gushing stream. He was like a Catholic with a heart full of pent-up guilt, essentially being contrite and stating his sins, together with a resolution not to commit them again. But Logan wasn’t a priest sitting at the other side of a grill in the dark confines of a confessional. He had no intention of offering any absolution to a man that had knowingly been an accessory to Cady by being in his employ. Logan had always preferred to keep it neat and simple. There was good and bad, right and wrong, and people usually had a choice of how they lived their lives and behaved, if only in a moral way. Degrees of guilt were an abstract. If you knew that you’d offended, hurt or caused unnecessary suffering to someone, then being sorry didn’t undo it. Will Fleming would not be shown any consideration from him. He had at best turned a blind eye to what was happening, and at worst had not cared about what was taking place, psychologically washing his hands of it, as Pontius Pilate had done when the unrelenting crowd demanded that Jesus be put to death. Shirking responsibility was in itself an offense to Logan. Maybe his attitude was a little too fixed, be that as it may he slept easy at night because he sometimes got into god-awful situations like this, saw them through to a resolution, and took satisfaction from being able to have made a difference.
“Shut up” Logan said as Will attempted to exonerate himself from anything that Cady’s operation was responsible for. “Get a sheet of paper and a pen.”
Will stood up slowly like a cowed dog, cringing as he walked over to where there was a wall-mounted phone at the side of and above the kitchen counter, with a spiral bound notepad and a big red plastic cup full of pens and pencils ‒ which seemed uncommon in this technological age ‒ next to a stack of phone directories. He picked up the pad and plucked a gel-filled pen from the cup and returned to place them on top of the coffee table as he sat down.
“Like I’ve already asked, where’s the girl, and what state of health is she in?” Logan said.
“A woman called Jade brought her in. The girl looked tired and was upset. She was taken to the Bunker by another woman, Carla Melville.”
“What’s the Bunker?” Logan said as Tom placed a mug of coffee in front of him and then went back to stand near the counter to sip his own. He had not offered Will a drink.
“It’s a basement under one of the buildings that trucks are kept in.”
“And what’s in it?”
Will looked down at his feet and said nothing.
“Talk to me Will,” Logan said. “Or we’ll have to go the hard route, which would result in broken teeth and bones.”
“That’s where they keep drugs and…and people. It’s a holding area.”
“Okay, we’ll get back to that and you can draw me a plan of the layout.”
“I’ve never been to the Bunker,” Will said. “I stay in the office.”
“Whatever. Write Jade’s full name down.”
Will complied. His hand trembled but the writing was legible.
“The Limey with the Jag next”, Logan said. “And the guy called Larry. And add their addresses and descriptions.”
Will wanted to say that he didn’t know their addresses, but he did, so wrote them down.
“So far so good,” Logan said. “Now for the king rat, Cady. Is he married?”
“Yes,”
“Children?”
“One daughter, but she never visits the company. She lives on Sanibel Island.”
“Is she married?”
“No, but she lives with a guy. I don’t think she knows what Mr. Cady does.”
“Write Cady’s address down, and his daughter’s and—”
“I don’t know Karen’s private address, only the name of the business she runs on the island.”
“So write down everything that you do know.”
When Will had finished and put the pen down, Logan ripped the pages out of the notepad and read through what he had written.
“Where’s your computer?” Logan said.
Will pointed to a closed laptop on a small desk in the corner of the room.
“Boot it up and bring up all these addresses on Google map. Start with NC Transport.”
Two coffees and an hour later, Logan had color printouts of the places he was interested in. Will had known about the drugs distribution and people trafficking, but was not actively involved. He just worked a computer for Cady.
“We’ll stay the night,” Logan said to Will when the talking was done. “Phone a local pizza place and have some delivered.”
Will made the call to a nearby Domino’s, and a half hour later the three of them were sitting at the kitchen counter eating Deluxe Feast pies with side orders of fries.
“Why are you working for a piece of shit like Cady,” Logan asked Will as they ate.
“It seemed like a regular job. The pay and medical were good, so when they offered me the post I took it. God’s truth, Mister, I didn’t know that Cady was a gangster. I thought it was just a transport company. And then I got sucked in, and I knew that if I’d said anything to the police I would have been killed.”
“Bullshit! You could have walked away, or made an anonymous phone call to the police and told them what you knew. There are always options. You turned a blind eye and kept taking Cady’s blood money.”
Will had only nibbled at his pie. He put the almost full slice down on his plate and nodded. “Okay,” he said. “You’re right. I just got on with the office work and minded my own business. What are you going to do to me?”
“Nothing,” Logan said. “It would be suicide on your part if you let Cady know that we’d made a house call and that you’d talked to us. And don’t forget I’ve got damning info that is in your handwriting. He’d probably tell the Limey to cut your tongue out and your right hand off, before you were taken somewhere to be shot in the back of the head and dumped.”
Will said nothing. He was thinking that he would phone the office in the morning and tell them that he was sick, when in fact he would be on the road, driving out of town and heading north, if he survived this interrogation. He could be a long way from Fort Myers in twenty-four hours. He would get rid of the car and start afresh in another state. Thousands of people went missing every year; he would just be one more.
It was midnight when Logan bound Will’s wrists and then his ankles together with duct tape from a roll that Tom had brought up from the Camaro. Will was on the settee with a pillow under his head, more comfortable than he’d expected to be. The two men could still feasibly be going to kill him, but he didn’t think so. He had told them all that he knew, and they had seemed content to believe that he wouldn’t be stupid and admit to Cady that he had talked out of turn. And he wanted the little girl to be saved. He had no idea of what fate waited the women and children that had been abducted and were in the Bunker. He assumed that they were sold, but had always mentally disassociated, deciding to block out what was nothing to do with him. But it was. He realized that now. Having knowledge of such crimes but saying or doing nothing was itself a terrible wrong. Due to fear and greed, many people choose to turn a blind eye and become collaborators ‒ willing or not ‒ to those that prosper through their evil acts. And he had been a part of that evil, not directly by his actions, but by his in
action, which he had chosen to deceive himself into believing rendered him unaccountable for any wrongdoing. It had been a poor excuse. It was everyone’s responsibility to speak up or act against unlawfulness; not let it grow like a cancer and cause so much wretchedness to befall others.
Tom went through to the bedroom and slept in Will’s bed. He had a Remington model 870 5-shot pump-action shotgun next to him. There was no possible way that anyone could know that they were at Will’s apartment, but he took nothing in life as a surefire certainty. Better to expect trouble than to get complacent and be taken by surprise.
Logan had sat in the single easy chair and gone over the details and maps that Will had furnished him with. He had choices. Making an assault on what Will had called the Bunker would be a last resort. There would be armed men guarding the people. And he did not have the layout of the interior. Risking Kelly’s and no doubt a lot of other innocent prisoners’ lives was not the way to go. If he could get Kelly back, then he would call the police, tell them what he knew, and let them deal with it.
Dozing in the chair, Logan enjoyed the peace and quiet, which he knew was no more than an interlude. Soon enough he and Tom would be pitting themselves against adversaries that would now be on full alert and intent on taking them out.
It was a little after three in the morning when the door burst open, immediately followed by a suppressor-muted hail of bullets that Logan knew were coming from the barrel of a submachine gun.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“WHO is Logan?” Gail said after Tom and the stranger had driven off in the Camaro.
“A godsend,” Debbie said as they walked around the back of the store again and sat at the table. “Like I told you, I was a split-second away from being raped when he came into my life and saved me.”
“Do you know why you were taken?”
“No. But it didn’t seem to be random. It was as if they knew that I had a young daughter. I think that we were targeted.”
“For Kelly?”
“Both of us. The guy that was about to rape me said that Kelly would be sold, and that my organs would be harvested for transplants. It was horrifying. They’re just taking people from their homes or off the street and doing whatever they want with them.”
“That is totally fucking sickening,” Gail said. “There is so much evil in the world. Always has been, always will be. You should be safe to live your life in peace, but there are creatures out there that have absolutely no respect for anything. I used to embrace peace and harmony, and actually thought that love and understanding would prevail and overcome war and immorality, but I was so wrong. It’s a never-ending battle, and I believe that good is losing it. The only way to win might be by being like Logan; using violence to overcome factions that need to be eradicated.”
“We’re at the mercy of a government that puts greed before the welfare of ordinary people,” Debbie said. “They don’t give a shit about the masses, only about having power and bleeding the poor with ever-increasing levels of taxes, due to their incompetence. They can’t combat crime, provide care for the sick and elderly, or house everyone. And half the world hates us and is hell-bent on destroying us. But at this moment in time the only thing I care about is getting Kelly back.”
“Logan and Tom will come through for you, Debbie.”
“I’m praying that they do. My mom’s dead, and Kelly is all that matters to me now. I can’t imagine how scared she will be at this moment. I really hope that Logan and Tom kill whoever is responsible for having her taken from me.”
“Come on,” Gail said. “Let’s clear up and go inside. There are only a handful of customers still eating. Once they’ve left I’ll close the store for the day and put the Gone Fishin’ sign in the window.”
Earlier, Marty Shaw had been on the street, hunched over the shopping cart he was pushing as he limped along the sidewalk opposite the perimeter fence of NC Transport. He wore an old and ripped wool greatcoat ‒ that looked as if it could have been an original from the Civil War ‒ and a pair of faded, stained blue jeans that were too long and concertinaed on the tops of his scuffed and splitting desert boots. His heavily-lined face was partially covered by a straggly beard that was gray and brassy-yellow and a match for his unkempt and overlong hair. The apparent vagrant was staring at the ground, no doubt looking for dropped dimes or cigarette butts. He was someone that would attract attention in a well-to-do area, to be run off by incensed residents that did not want his kind in their neighborhood. But on the street of a business park off Old Highway 41 he was just part of the scenery, almost unseen to people that took no notice of him whatsoever.
Walking past the Camaro, Marty didn’t seem to give it as much as a fleeting glance, but in fact had eyeballed the occupants as he looked around him in a paranoid manner as if he were being watched. He carried on, around the bend in the road, to be hidden from view by buildings before taking a cell phone out of a deep coat pocket and making a call.
“That you Larry?” Marty said as he straightened up and seemed to shed ten years by doing so; just shrugging off the persona of a down and out.
“It’s my number you called, so who the fuck did you expect to be talking to?”
“Okay, okay. Be nice. I’ve just walked past a guy that fits the description of the person of interest that you’re looking for.”
Larry grinned. He had other people besides Marty in close proximity: a couple on foot, and three cruising in cars. He’d expected Logan to make a move. “Where is he?”
“Sitting in a bronze Camaro with another guy about two hundred yards from the main gate. I’ve got the plate number.”
“Good work, Marty. Don’t backtrack. If they see you again they may get edgy. Call it a day, go home and clean up. We’ll take it from here.”
Larry was a little apprehensive. The two guys in the Camaro could be from a rival firm, or even feds. That Logan would have found an ally was to say the least a surprise.
Within three minutes one of the security cameras on a section of the fence was zooming in on the Camaro. Larry was in the control room on the second floor of the next building, staring at a monitor. The image that he saw was of a man’s head and shoulders. The craggy profile of the face fitted the description that Nelson Brown at the Cottonmouth Motel had given him. The other guy’s features were in partial shadow.
“I want a still of him,” Larry said to Taylor Harris, who was monitoring the cameras. “And a copy of it sent to Nelson Brown.”
Nelson answered the phone in his office and was told to look at the photo attachment that he should have just received.
“That’s the guy that was here,” he said to Larry after seeing the photo.
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
“Okay, delete it, Nelson,” Larry said before ending the call.
Vince was at home when Larry phoned him. He listened as he was updated, and then said to Larry, “I take it you’re finding out who the Camaro is registered to?”
“As we speak,” Larry said. “Do you want me to have Logan boxed-in and dealt with?”
“No. Have the car watched, and when it moves have it followed. Then let me know where it goes. We’ll deal with Logan and his partner when they go to ground for the night.”
It had been when Will Fleming drove out that the Camaro moved. It appeared to be following him.
Larry, Johnny Rocco and Kelsey Conway followed in a seven-seater Toyota Prius.
Will drove home, and the Camaro tailed him and parked outside his apartment building, and Logan and the other guy went in after him.
“What do you think that they want with Fleming?” Johnny asked Larry.
“Information,” Larry said. “Logan wants to find out where the kid is being held. We’ll wait out here and waste them when they leave.”
The hours’ crawled by.
“What do you reckon, boss?” Kelsey asked Larry.
“That they’re staying the night. We’ll go in hard and fast. They’re
not expecting company.
Larry cleared it with Vince, and was eventually given more news; the Camaro was registered to one Thomas Curtis Cody, who it was discovered was the owner of a country store out at Alva. A couple of guys had been sent to the store to find out the link between Cody and Logan.
As the door burst open, Logan immediately threw himself sideways to the floor in front of the settee that Will was sleeping on. He drew the Glock and fired six bullets through the back of the settee in the direction of the door, and by the resulting line of holes that peppered the ceiling he knew that he had struck the shooter, though heard no cry of pain above the sound of the gunfire.
Johnny Rocco opened up with the suppressed Heckler & Koch MP5 as soon as he entered the doorway. Shock and awe was the aim. The initial burst of fire would cause anyone in the apartment to scramble for cover if they survived it. Kelsey and Larry were moving in behind him, both armed with handguns and searching for targets.
Three of the six bullets from Logan’s gun found their mark. Johnny fell back, and the last few rounds from the MP5’s box magazine raked the ceiling as he went down.
Logan rose up on his knees so that he could see over the back of the settee. There were two armed men. He took aim at the nearest one’s chest, only to stay his finger on the trigger as the man’s head exploded.
Tom had rolled off the bed as the firing began. He jacked a shell into the shotgun and approached the door as the first hail of bullets was fired into the room. On seeing the guy with the submachine gun jerk backwards and fall, he shot the one who had been standing directly behind him, and the heavy load turned the guy’s face into what reminded him of a strawberry jelly-filled ring doughnut.
Larry felt the warm splash of blood and brains on the side of his face. He was still at the threshold of the door, and so darted to his right, back towards the elevator and stairs, which were next to each other.
Logan rounded the settee, leaped over the two bodies and then went down on one knee before looking around the jamb of the door at a low level that would not be expected. He took aim at the fleeing man’s legs, deciding to bring him down, not kill him. Shooting people in the back was something that he had always avoided doing. But then circumstances changed in the blink of an eye, and he couldn’t take a shot.