Gil Mason/Gunwood USA Box Set

by Gordon Carroll

  “Joseph, I need this to get Amber back, you understand?”

  He kept his face buried as if too ashamed to look at me. “Take it. I never want to see it again. I hate it! I hate it!”

  I nodded, then stood. “What about the contract Hepperman signed?”

  “Shane had it.”

  I tapped the thumb dot with a finger. “Thanks, Joseph. I know this is hard, but try to be brave for your family. I’ll get Amber back. This will all work out.”

  He looked up at me a final time, his lips trying to form words that wouldn’t come. I thought I knew how he felt; remorse, guilt, grief. Yes, I thought I understood. It wasn’t until later, after it was already too late, that I learned how badly I had underestimated his pain.

  40

  It was too late to head to the Springs so I started back to my house. Max sat in the back, his nose out the open window. I called Sarah Gallagher at CBI. It was after five, but I knew she worked late.

  “CBI, Sarah.”

  “Any luck with my friend in the Defense Department?”

  “Hi, Gil, I’m doing fine, and you?”

  “Sorry, it’s been a long day.”

  “Are you all right?”

  I smiled into the phone. “Yes, I’m fine, thanks.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, and yes, he gave me a name, Arnold Verick.”

  I thought back on guys I’d run into over the years, sifting through names and faces. “Never heard of him.”

  “He’s ex DEA, ex-special forces.”

  Like I’d thought. “Anything else?”

  “I ran him through NCIC/CCIC and several local law enforcement data banks I just happen to have access to. He’s in charge of security for a company called Micro Corp. in Colorado Springs. I googled him and found out he was hired by the CEO, Roger Doors himself, two years ago.”

  “You sound like you’re familiar with Roger Doors.”

  “When I go online playing Bloody Suzy, no one can hold a candle to me. My character is Bloody Sarah 713 and she’s a level thirty-nine ninja-priestess. It’s the best game of all time and Roger Doors produced it.”

  I shook my head. “Somehow I can’t picture you as the geeky gamer spending hours in front of a computer killing things.”

  “I work too much,” she said. “Gaming is an outlet for stress.”

  And a way to hide from possible rapists? “You need to get out more, Sarah.”

  “Are you asking me out on a date?”

  “You are way out of my league, Sarah. Thanks for the help. Would you fax a copy of everything you’ve got to me?”

  “Sure. One last thing. I found three residences for Roger Doors here in Colorado. The first is a mansion in Colorado Springs. He also has two cabins, one in Aspen, the other in Manitou Springs. But I can’t find any other information on them. No deeds, surveys, permits, or anything else. Power has its privileges. I’ll send you everything I have.”

  “You’re the best, Sarah.” The cabin in Manitou must have been the one Joseph and Shane had gone to.

  “I know. Don’t be a stranger, Gil.”

  I told her I wouldn’t, thanked her again and hung up.

  My phone sang almost immediately. “Gil Mason.”

  “You did a very foolish thing, Mr. Mason.”

  It was Mr. Spock, AKA Arnold Verick. “Is that right, Mr. Verick?” Silence on the other end of the line. “What, you didn’t think I could find out who you are? I am a detective after all.”

  “A better detective than I thought,” he said.

  “You wasted a lot of my time,” I said. “Why Black Hawk?”

  “Several years ago I had a… disagreement with the CEO of The Mills Casino. I thought this a novel way of paying him back.”

  “Well, you made a big mistake, Mr. Verick. I know who you are, the company you work for, your boss. Everything.”

  “I still have something you want.”

  “And I have something you want.”

  Silence again. Then, “You have the flash drive?”

  “I have it.”

  “Prove it.”

  I pulled into my driveway, shifted the car to park and turned the air conditioner up a notch. “I’m curious, does Mr. Doors know the lengths you’ve gone to in securing Whack the Pig for him? Or are you doing this on your own?”

  “Tomorrow, zero six hundred, Cave of the Winds. Straight trade. Keep the police out of this and come alone.”

  “Suppose I just turn everything I have over to the police now?”

  “If you do that, no one ever sees the girl again. I go to jail, I go to court, I get the best lawyers in the world, I’m found innocent. Shortly after that, the mother dies in an accident, next the father, then Joseph and the other kids. After that, you die along with your dogs and your secretary.”

  He was telling me his boss was in on it and a guy that rich could get anyone off and make anyone disappear. I wished it wasn’t true, but I’d worked the system too long not to realize it wasn’t a justice system, it was just-a-system, and a broken one at that. Still, I had some leverage and it was time to use it. “I agree to the time, but the place will be Red Rocks Amphitheater, on the stage.”

  “No.”

  “Then I burn the flash drive and turn every scrap of information I have over to the FBI and we can see just how good those lawyers of yours really are.” There was another pause.

  “Tomorrow then.” The line went dead.

  It would be a long night.

  I called the Franklins, Tom picked up. I told him I had some new information and asked him to come over by himself.

  I went inside my house, put down some food for the dogs, found some leftover green chili in the fridge and popped it into the microwave. I gave it two minutes, added some Velveeta cheese, and nuked it a little longer. While that was heating, I warmed some tortillas on a flat skillet, diced up some red onions and grated some cheddar. I took the lot of it to the table and clicked on the television with the remote. I ate while the national news flashed before me. By the time I finished cleaning my bowl and spoon, Tom Franklin was ringing the doorbell. I let him in, offered him a drink and tossed him a Coke. He drank it from the can. Me, I like my Dr P over ice. Civilized.

  We sat at the table and I looked across at him. His eyes held the tired, sunken look of the lost. His cheeks and throat were dotted with stubble. He brushed a pale hand through oily hair. I told him everything I knew to date. He sat and took it in, burying his face in his hands when I told him about Shane deciding not to sell the game to Micro Corp. When I finished, he raised his face but kept his eyes closed as though he were seeing his dead son in his mind’s eye.

  “We’d been arguing for weeks,” he said. “I felt like Shane wasn’t very close to God. I feared he might be getting into drugs. The more I talked to him the farther he seemed to drift away from me. I didn’t know what to do. Then he went missing and I thought he ran away.” He shook his head and tears fell to the table. He covered his eyes with a hand. “They killed my son, and for what… a video game?”

  “I understand how terrible it is to lose a child, Tom, and I wish I could allow you to grieve. But if we’re to save your daughter, there just isn’t time — later yes — but not now. Understand?” He nodded, opened his eyes. I grabbed some tissues and handed them to him. He wiped his nose and scrubbed his cheeks.

  I laid a hand on his shoulder. “You can take solace in the knowledge that Shane had turned back to God. You’ll see him again one day, Tom. You will see him again.”

  He nodded, blinked several times and put his hand over mine. “Thank you for that. My faith isn’t very strong right now. I was so upset with Shane before… so certain he was playing games, trying to punish me… that I didn’t even pray for him. I didn’t pray for my son and they were… torturing him? I can’t get that out of my head.” He moved his hand and wiped his eyes.

  I understood, but I couldn’t let him wander down that path. It would destroy him and I needed him to be strong. “It’s Amb
er you need to think of now. It’s Amber that needs us.”

  Tom took several deep breaths, bucking himself up, pushing down the thoughts and memories of his dead son. I could see it in his expression. He said, “It’s been a very bad year, Mr. Mason. My wife and I… we’ve been having problems. It’s not Lisa, it’s me. It’s my fault. I’ve been so caught up in work… crazy hours… tons of stress… late nights.” He looked up at me. “The first time I saw you, after our house had been broken into and you said you were a private investigator, I thought she’d hired you to follow me.” He shook his head. “There was a woman, a coworker; she had sort of a thing for me. She was younger, and I was flattered. I should have shut her down right away but I didn’t. Nothing happened between us — I mean absolutely nothing — but like I said, I let it go longer than I should have and when I finally told her that I was happily married and that I wouldn’t cheat on my wife, she got mad and called Lisa up and told her a lot of lies. Lisa confronted me and I told her the truth. She believed me, I think, but it put a stumbling block between us. She didn’t want me to touch her — not at first — then, later, when things probably could have gotten better I… I don’t know, I guess my pride got in the way. I was angry at her for believing that I did something when I didn’t and…” he held out his hands as if he couldn’t find the words. “I don’t know, I was just being stupid, so when she tried to soften, to let me come back, I pushed her away. I didn’t mean for it to last, I just wanted to show her how wrong she had been and how it hurt me, but then I hurt her and it’s been going back and forth since then. I don’t know how to stop it. How to bring us back together. And now with Shane gone, and Amber, I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

  I felt for him, for both of them. Their marriage was on shaky ground, but like I said before, there just wasn’t time for this now. Amber had to be our only focus. “Tom, I have a plan for tomorrow, but Amber is your daughter, you have to make the final call.”

  “Call?”

  “There are two ways we can play this. We can let the police know what’s going on. They would call in the FBI and eventually they would probably be able to nail everyone involved.”

  “What would happen to Amber?”

  “They’ll either get scared, and give her back, or they’ll kill her.”

  “You’ve met these men. Do you think they’ll get scared?”

  I saw Mr. Spock’s cold eyes. “No. They’ll kill her. And then they’ll try to kill the rest of your family.”

  Tom nodded, he had one dead son already, proof of their mindset. “What’s the other option?”

  “It’s dangerous. You may have to kill.”

  He looked up at me, his face pale but his eyes hard. “Good.”

  41

  It would be a trap of course. There was no way Mr. Spock would leave all these loose ends dangling around to come back and form a noose to put around his own neck. The important thing was they would have to bring the girl, just as I would have to bring the thumb dot.

  I had to forgo my morning workout and cancel a K9 demo. We arrived at Red Rocks, having come in the back way through the small town of Morrison. The roads were twisting, winding, narrow stretches of lightless roadway, with drop offs on one side and massive boulders of sandstone on the other. Back when I was growing up, we used to have Driver’s Education taught in the schools and the instructors would take us up on these roads to teach us. Talk about guts, those guys must have had ulcers on their ulcers. Bad enough having a pimple faced, hormone enraged, indestructible fifteen year-old behind the wheel, but then to have him race around these curves? No thanks.

  The mountains loomed ahead, dark and foreboding like an omen of bad things to come. This early in the morning, before the sun was up, the jagged peaks looked like thick, blunt fingers stretching for the sky. Black silhouettes guarding over the lesser mounds of the foothills and infant slabs of sand stone stained red from the earth’s blood.

  I found a little patch of ground that wasn’t too littered with rocks and brush, and stashed the Escalade. We were about a half mile from the base of the theater, just a jog for me and Max and Pilgrim, even with my backpack, but Tom was slicked with sweat and huffing pretty hard by the time we reached the big bay door that led to the underground tunnels running beneath and behind the stage.

  Most people don’t know that these tunnels exist. The giant slabs known as Creation Rock and Ship Rock form the sides of this natural phenomenon known as Red Rocks Amphitheater. Creation Rock sits to the north while Ship Rock guards the south, their sheer sides funneling down in a half bowl shape to an enclosing disc shaped rock called Stage Rock that completes and seals the bottom of the theater.

  Way back in the old days it was called Garden of the Angels, but in 1906 the name was changed to Garden of the Titans. Denver acquired it in 1928. In the thirties FDR’s New Deal workforce, the CCC, constructed the stage, seating, and parking lots, one at the bottom and one up top. They also hollowed out the mountain at the bottom of the stage, creating rooms for performers and stage hands and equipment to be housed. The tunnels also lead to the bathrooms on the north side of the stage as well as under the first few center rows to a platform that sits in the middle of the seating, for lights and soundstage equipment. It took the workers five years to complete the job.

  In the mid seventies up into the eighties, a promoter named Berry Fey made Red Rocks literally rock. With seventy to ninety concerts a summer, most of them sold out and beyond. The stated capacity is about ninety-six hundred, but I’ve seen recordings of concerts that topped out at over twelve thousand. Fans would sit in the plant stands, the aisles, on top of the roof of the upper bathrooms; they’d even hang off the rocks.

  Man, what I wouldn’t give to have seen those bands.

  Not that I haven’t seen my share of concerts. I worked summers up there for three years starting when I was eleven. I lied a little about my age (I did that a lot when I was a kid). I worked cleaning up after the concerts and keeping the bathrooms stocked during them. I saw some great concerts. Only not the seventies and eighties bands… more the nineties and two thousands era.

  The theater is actually part of the City and County of Denver even though it’s nowhere near the city. And this far out of Denver proper, the cops almost never patrol in the day time, which I hoped would give us the privacy we needed to make this thing work.

  The massively tall, double bay doors were secured by a simple, but thick padlock. I pulled a forty-two inch bolt cutter from my backpack. It went through that padlock like it was aluminum foil. And we were in.

  I went straight to the alarm box. It took me about thirty seconds and two alligator clips with a three-inch wire, to disable.

  Beneath the tons of rock above us it was pitch black. I knew where the breakers were, but I wanted it dark. I didn’t want to take the chance Mr. Spock might spot us. If we lost the element of surprise, we were done for. I closed the doors and broke out my flashlight. The ceiling rode a good twelve feet above our heads, the walls were about twenty feet across. Our steps echoed and bounced off the stone walls and floor, both dogs nails clicking hollowly. I smelled dust and mold and decades of stale alcohol that had spilled from hundreds of thousands of plastic cups sloshing beer and broken bottles of the stronger stuff snuck in under coats and in fanny packs and blankets. I knew that up in the seats, outside, the pungent tang of burnt marijuana permeated every bit of porous material it could seep into.

  Tom stopped, shining his light into a large room to the right. There was a rectangular table, the legs rusted, the top scarred by legions of cigarettes set on the edges and forgotten during games of cards or dominos and allowed to burn into the thin sheet of linoleum, blistering the surface. I’d lost a lot of money to the men I worked with during those summers at this same table, and once I’d had to pick up one of the scattered folding chairs and smash it across Dick Owens’ face to keep him from gutting me with a switchblade.

  Some guys just couldn’t take a joke.

/>   “Maintenance Staff Room,” I said. Pilgrim bounded into the room, going from table to chair to locker, back to chair, up on top of the table, sniffing every smell, taking it all in like a kid let loose in a candy factory. Hard to believe he was thirteen.

  Max, looking bored, lifted his leg and peed on the doorpost. Hard to believe he was two.

  “This way,” I said and started down the tunnel. We came to the branch that led to the outside center platform. This tunnel was a little tighter. I gave the dogs the stay command and we went single file, the stairs angled upward until they broke into a hollowed out section encased in a wooden shed. The doors were secured by a wooden beam held in brackets across their width. There was a lot of lighting equipment; spots, tracks, single stands, color-wheels, but no sound boards. I guess they didn’t trust the expensive stuff to wood doors and beams. Smart.

  I said, “This is your post.”

  Tom gave the small area the once over, then nodded curtly. Sweat beaded and rolled down his face and his already dark shirt was even darker with it.

  “You’ve got the gun?” I’d given him a six shot, .44 magnum revolver with hollow point shells. Not a lot of rounds, but they were packed with enough powder and lead to equal the kinetic energy of a Volkswagen going a hundred and five, and there was a lot less to go wrong than with a semi-auto. Besides, a gun good enough for Dirty Harry should be good enough for Tom. He pulled the gun from the holster beneath his shirt. It had a four inch barrel, not as long as Harry’s but this would all be close-in work so Tom shouldn’t need the extra inches. I took the gun and checked the load, snapped the cylinder closed and handed it back to him.