The meeting place had been prearranged as both knew their call may be monitored.
“So we’re a go then,” Rhody said. "They'll be something waiting there for me?"
“Yes. It's been taken care of,” Tia confirmed. "All you have to do is take care of your part."
“I’ll owe you a big one for this,” Rhody promised.
“You can thank me when you see me baby,” Tia retorted.
“Soon, baby, soon,” Rhody pledged as they said their goodbyes.
It was time to call in some favors and put the wheels in motion for his jailbreak.
“I want around the clock surveillance on Bart Foster,” Sam directed after calling his staff together immediately after getting back to Easton. “He’s the one person, outside our own Rhody Turner, who we know is connected with all this. And, since Rhody is safe as a baby in his momma’s arms inside our jail, there’s a good chance Mr. Foster could be our killer’s next target.”
“In other words sheriff, we’re using Bart for bait,” Bo pointed out.
“I guess you could say that,” Sam admitted. “But then he wouldn’t accept police protection even if we offered so we’re going to give it to him anyway. We're just going to have to do it at a distance and without him knowing about it.”
“Then, if the killer kills him we’ve got our culprit,” Bo interjected.
The detective's comment drew a cold look from the sheriff and snickers from his fellow officers.
“No Bo, we try to get the killer before he kills him,” Sam corrected. “I know that might not be a popular order but we’re sworn to protect even jerks like Bart Foster.”
“If you say so,” Bo responded.
“We need a man on him wherever he goes and I also want someone conducting surveillance on his home. We’re going to need a couple of teams so we'll pull a couple of men off the night shift this evening,” Sam ordered. “This goes into operation immediately and continues until further notice.”
Ending the planning meeting by briefing his staff on what he learned during his trip to Shelby that day, Sam revealed his plans to return the next day to examine Gina Porter’s sealed records.
Even as Sheriff Sam Delaney was laying plans involving him, Bart Foster was finalizing his own plans - his with the mayor of Easton.
“Could you burn a candle or something?” Bart asked as he entered the mayor's office.
He was immediately struck by the scent of their old friend's rotting flesh which was starting to escape from the closet. The decay had accelerated during the course of the day despite the fact the mayor’s office felt like a walk-in cooler.
“I can’t smell anything,” Glenn replied as he took a couple of deep breaths.
He was already acclimated to the smell. It was the same overpowering scent that offended Bart's nostrils the moment he walked into the office just before the end of regular business hours at Easton City Hall.
Bart rolled his eyes and got right to business, his day full of planning about to come to a head.
“In a few hours it won’t matter,” Bart began. “All you have to do is stick to the plan and everything will be fine.”
Glenn questioned Bart’s optimism. His view of the world was influenced by spending an entire day closed up in the same room with their dead friend.
“Will it Bart?” Glenn asked. “Say we get Stevie out of here without a hitch and say we convince Rhody not to spill his guts, what then? There’s still something out there and that something is after us. What do we do? What can we do? What’s to stop this thing before it gets all of us?”
Bart shot him a steely glare, snapping at his old friend.
“It? Really Glenn? It? Are you really going there?” Bart asked incredulously. “Surely the high mayor of Easton isn’t suggesting there are ghosts and goblins at play here. Tell me you aren’t saying that.”
Slow to return Bart’s gaze, the mayor looked at the floor before timidly lifting his eyes.
“He said he’d get all of us, even if he had to chase us to Hell,” Glenn responded. “What if it is him? Who else could know what we did? What if the dark man is him?”
Bart was surprised by his friend’s willingness to believe a supernatural force was to blame for the killings. He had to nip the mayor's imagination in the bud.
“What we’re dealing with here is flesh and blood, a human being just like you and me,” Bart declared confidently. “There are no such things as ghosts or evil spirits that come back to seek revenge. We have someone who knows what happened. That’s it, nothing more.”
“But who?” Glenn interrupted. “Who would know except the people who were there? And, in case you haven’t noticed, that number is shrinking pretty fast.”
“Somebody ran their mouth,” Bart surmised. “Someone talked to the wrong person.”
Glenn shook his head. He didn't agree with Bart’s simplistic explanation.
“What if you’re wrong? What if it is him come back like he said?” Glenn asked in a worried tone.
“Then there’s nothing we can do,” Bart replied. “He will drag us to Hell with him. If you're right then we may as well eat, drink and be merry.”
A sick look came over the mayor’s face with Bart’s comment. Glenn was on the verge of achieving his lifetime goals. The present situation threatened to ruin everything as well as perhaps lead to a grisly death.
“Trust me. We’re dealing with a human being,” Bart said as he placed his hand on Glenn’s shoulder. “And sooner or later he’s going to mess up. All we have to do is give him enough rope and he’ll hang himself.”
“But … ” Glenn began.
“There’s a reason whoever it is went after those three and not us,” Bart interrupted. “They were the easy ones. They were soft. I don’t know about you Glenn but I’m not like them. I’m not soft. And something else, I’m not scared either. That’s just what he wants. He’s using fear as a weapon. That’s why Stevie is in your closet. It’s all mind games.”
Glenn reluctantly accepted Bart’s reasoning and sat down at his desk, putting his head in his hands.
“Okay, what do we do?” Glenn asked in a muffled voice.
Bart wondered why he always had to be the calm one. Why was he the one in the group who had to come up with the solutions to their collective problems? Why couldn’t anyone else carry their own weight? It was like he had to do everything.
“Okay, you need to listen close because we’re going to be on a tight schedule tonight,” Bart said as he coaxed the mayor’s head from his hands. “At exactly eleven-thirty tonight I’m going to pull up to the curb outside your office and blow my horn once. You need to have your window up so you can hear it.”
“Do you want me to come down and meet you and let you in?” Glenn asked. “Are we going to carry him down together? Maybe we can wrap him in a carpet or something in case someone happens to come up on us?”
Bart corrected the mayor. He was annoyed that Glenn was getting ahead of himself before he could reveal his plan.
“No, it’s nothing like that,” Bart said. “When I pull up, I won’t be in my car. Let’s just say I’ll be in a car that has been borrowed without permission so I can’t afford to stay parked out front very long. I’d hate for one of your boys in blue to come up and run the tag. That’s why we have to get him into the car quick.”
“So we’ll use the elevator,” Glenn suggested.
“I was thinking of something even faster,” Bart responded with a wicked smile.
“Faster than the elevator?” Glenn asked. “I don’t know of any way faster than that.”
Bart knew a way.
“When you hear my horn blow, you’re going to toss our friend out the window,” Bart directed. “I’ll have the trunk already open so it’ll be quick.”
“What? You want me to just hurl Stevie’s body out of the third story window of city hall?” Glenn asked in a surprised voice. “That’s insane. Do you hear yourself?”
“It isn’t like it�
��s going to hurt him,” Bart dryly responded. “He’s already dead.”
“But … ” Glenn began.
“There aren’t any buts about it,” Bart interrupted. “I’m the one taking all the risks out there. All you have to do is throw him out and I’ll do the rest.”
Pausing to consider Bart’s strange plan, Glenn still wasn’t sold. What if someone saw him tossing a body from his third story window at city hall? It would certainly hurt his reelection chances.
“Look, it’s going to be like ten degrees tonight and the snow is going to start. There shouldn’t be a soul on the street,” Bart argued. “This may be our only opportunity. The way I look at it is we either go with my plan or you’re going to need to invest in a lot of air fresheners.”
Glenn relented knowing he had no option but to follow Bart’s plan, just like he had twenty years ago.
“Eleven-thirty sharp?” Glenn clarified.
“Not one minute earlier, not one minute later,” Bart confirmed as he extended his hand.
They shook on the deal as they stood in the middle of the mayor's office. They were now both part and parcel of the unholy alliance.
“My light will be on when you get here,” Glenn noted.
“Don’t be calling attention to yourself,” Bart cautioned. “We don’t want people getting curious about why the mayor is burning the midnight oil.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve been leaving it on at night lately to make people think I’m working late,” Glenn admitted. “Some nights I even leave my car parked out front and walk home to make it look like I’m working all night. Hey, it’s an election year.”
Bart shook his head in disbelief.
“You politicians are sick,” Bart declared despite the improbable plan they had just hatched to dispose of their friend’s body.
Bart paused at the door as he turned to leave.
“Eleven-thirty sharp,” he repeated.
“What about our other problem?” Glenn asked.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got that under control too,” Bart grinned as he closed the door behind him.
OUT OF THE FRYING PAN
The flu had cut a swath through Castle County Jail over the winter. The illness had spread like wildfire through the inmate population. Rhody Turner was one of the lucky ones, avoiding the bug as it worked its way through the cellblocks. Being a loner, Rhody tended to do his time in self-imposed solitary. Sure, he would participate in a poker game here or there and become somewhat social if another inmate was sharing smuggled drugs with his fellow prisoners even though he knew what orifice most drugs came from that made their way into the institution. But, for the most part, Rhody believed in just doing his time without becoming part of a clique when at the county jail. It was his solitary nature that likely spared him from the flu epidemic.
Rhody saw many of his fellow inmates suffering through the throes of the flu while avoiding it himself. The chills, fever, and the vomiting were par for the course. He also noticed the tell-tale symptoms would usually get the sick inmates sent to the infirmary and into isolation. Jail administration tried to stem the outbreak by quickly separating the sick inmates from general population. He would use those observations to his advantage this evening.
Lying around his cell during the early evening hours, Rhody held a sock, heated with warm water from his faucet, against his head. He made sure to point out to the trustee, who served him supper, that he was not feeling well. His head blazing after two hours of the warm compress, Rhody made his play. He called for a nurse, using his best sick voice, around seven o’clock. Moments later he stuck a finger down his throat and brought his supper back up. It was a necessary evil even though supper consisted of his favorite - spaghetti with mystery meat meatballs.
With a temperature of one hundred two, vomiting and chills, Rhody was diagnosed with the flu by the jail nurse. She immediately administered antibiotics and ordered him moved to sick bay. Given the flu epidemic had been almost stomped out, they would take no chances when it came to Rhody. A doctor would not be available until morning so he would be held in medical isolation until then. That would be more than enough time for the cagey inmate. The first hurdle was cleared. Rhody was out of his cell.
The move to sick bay was a major part of his plan since there he was away from the prying eyes of the guards. In the cell block, any movements could be monitored by the correctional officer who sat in the crow’s nest, casting a watchful eye on the inmates in general population. Sick bay was a closed area. While still well within the confines of the jail, guards would have to physically walk up to the door and look inside. And, given it was the evening hours, Rhody knew the nurse along with a guard would only check on him roughly every three hours. This left him a wealth of unsupervised time.
Rhody selected the time of his jailbreak carefully. Much like your average prisoner, he fantasized, plotted and planned an escape. He used his many idle hours in his cell to think on such things. While, for most inmates, such plans remained simply a whimsy, for Rhody it was set in stone. During his many stays at the county jail, he discovered the facility’s weaknesses. He also knew the method of operation for its employees and knew shift change happened at midnight. That would provide him with an extra bit of confusion as the torch was passed between the second and graveyard shifts. Rhody wanted every advantage he could get, thus his careful choosing of the time of his departure. However, he would have more hurdles to clear before midnight if he was to keep to his schedule.
While Rhody was setting his plan into motion, Bart was also hatching his own. It all began with taking delivery of a recently stolen sedan. His discreet contacts in neighboring Pickett County were always good at performing certain jobs that were often afoul of the law. Their first duties this evening were providing him with the stolen automobile. They would also be providing a bit of assistance later on in the evening.
Bart realized he only had to avoid suspicion for a few minutes to accomplish his mission. The snow was beginning to fall and the mercury had already dipped below twenty. There would be very few prying eyes, especially after the false call he would make, sending police to the opposite side of town just before his drive over to city hall. Provided Glenn stuck to the plan, things should all go off without a hitch. Bart wasn’t so sure his old friend could hold up to the pressure. He was showing signs of cracking and that was worrisome and surprising.
Glenn had normally been strong like him. The pair were the alpha males of their group. Where they led, the others would follow. Perhaps politics had made Glenn soft. Bart now wondered if his old friend could even be trusted.
Bart headed through the snow in the stolen car. The big flakes which had fallen for hours were now starting to cover the ground. It would only be a matter of time until the roads became slick and made driving treacherous. He had given his surveillance team the slip hours earlier using one of his friends from Pickett County to lead his tail away while he remained hidden inside his dealership.
Bart assumed he was being watched. After all, why wouldn’t he be? He was the only connection, aside from Rhody, that Sheriff Delaney had between the murders and the old Red Dog. It would be foolhardy not to keep him under observation if for no other reason than to use him as human bait. Bart knew his father would have done the same if he was still sheriff. Now, as he headed toward city hall, the sheriff’s stakeout team was watching his home on the other side of town, wrongly assuming he was inside.
Bart eyed his watch as he parked his car on the other side of the park from city hall. It was moments until zero hour. He could see the mayor’s light glowing and could make out a figure pacing back and forth inside. The window was already open. Perhaps Glenn would be able to hold up his end of the bargain after all. Picking up the cellphone which came with the stolen car, Bart called in a fiery crash on the East Street Bridge. The howl of sirens sounded almost immediately as police and emergency crews raced toward the scene. It was go time.
Glenn had been pacing for quite a while
. He was too nervous to sit still. That had been his routine for the last hour. He would pace around his office and pause for a moment to look out his window. Now, on what seemed like the millionth time he looked across the deserted downtown, he saw a single flash of headlights. It was Bart.
It was time to pull Stevie from his temporary tomb in the closet. He had dreaded this moment all evening. Glenn spread out the black tarp on his floor in front of the closet and reached inside the closet, pulling Stevie from the spot he had been hanging all day.
Glenn gave the body a tug and was able to muscle the lifeless carcass out of the closet and onto the tarp. He now realized why they call it "dead weight." The body of his lifeless friend was heavier than he expected. Glenn was particularly disturbed by the fact the body was no longer stiff, the cadaver feeling soft like a piece of meat. The entire situation combined with his open window sent a chill down his spine as he rolled Stevie into the tarp like a cocoon. At least he would no longer have to look at his face. The expression on his dead friend’s face was forever burned into his brain. He was sure, however, that he would see it again in many future nightmares.
No sooner had he rolled Stevie into the tarp than he heard the sound of a car horn from the street just below his window. The single beep told him Bart was ready.
“Just do it,” Glenn muttered to himself as he latched onto the tarp containing Stevie’s remains.
The mayor let out a grunt as lifted the dead weight and lugged it to the window. He could see Bart standing next to his car, looking nervously up and down the street. Bart began motioning for him to toss the body down to him.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Glenn said under his breath as he gave the body one more tug.
Glenn felt a tweak in his lower back as he deadlifted Stevie's remains onto the lip of his window. He again took inventory of downtown to make sure no one was lurking in the shadows. Then, with one last push, the body fell free.
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