Web of Justice

by J J Miller

  “Do you think she was being genuine?” I asked Jack.

  “Francine? Seemed so to me. I don’t think it’s a con. She seemed truly frightened.”

  As we drove Jack found the Reseda house online and gave me a rundown of the property.

  “Not much to it. Three bedrooms. Single story. Short driveway on the left and a kidney shaped pool out back.”

  “Inside?”

  “Inside it looks like the sort of place where your life’s ambition goes to die. It’s as ordinary as it comes. Why would a guy who owns a thirteen-million-dollar Learjet buy a dump like this?”

  “Beats me. But it is strange. Who knows, maybe there’s some family connection to the property. What’s the layout?”

  Jack walked me through the floorplan. We then planned how we would to move in on it.

  As we talked, Jack reached into his jacket and released his sidearm from its shoulder holster. It was a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson semi-automatic pistol. He dropped the magazine out, checked it, and then rammed it back home with the heel of his palm.

  “I didn’t know you were packing,” I said.

  “I guess I had a feeling we were going to need backup. And I even thought of you.”

  Jack bent forward and lifted his bag into his lap. He dug his hand in and pulled out a nine-millimeter Springfield.

  “Say hello to my little friend,” he said as he repeated the ammo check. “Never say I don’t do anything for you.”

  He put the weapon briefly up to his face and sighted it. “Sorry, I can’t say this is the most accurate piece, but if you’re close enough, it’s good enough.”

  “Thanks Jack. I’ll be sure to wait until I see the whites of his eyes.”

  Jack put the Springfield back in the bag just as I swerved to change lanes again. His head banged hard against the glass.

  “Jesus, dude. You trying to take me out of play?”

  “Not on your life, my friend. I want you there every step of the way.”

  “Well, quit doing the Mario Andretti tango. I’m no good to you unconscious.”

  “You should have brought a helmet,” I said stomping on the throttle to seize another gap and then shooting sideways. This time Jack had taken a firm grip on the passenger handle.

  My phone started ringing. I took it out and saw it was Charlie. I put the phone on speaker and placed it in the hands-free cradle.

  “Charlie, what’s up?”

  “I’m just looking at the property records,” she said. “Lund just bought the place recently.”

  “When exactly?”

  “January nineteen.”

  “The day of Demarco Torrell’s verdict,” I said.

  “Why would that have any significance?” asked Charlie.

  I couldn’t say. But I had a growing feeling that this was more about me than anyone else, and this new evidence made me think it could be more related to the trial than Afghanistan.

  “I don’t know. But Lund would have been following the trial. If for nothing else than to take satisfaction in the fact that his planned had worked out perfectly. That an innocent man was being convicted of two murders that he, or one of his helpers, committed.”

  “There’s something else about the property that you should know about.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s got a fallout shelter in the back yard.”

  A fallout shelter? Maybe that’s what Francine had been about to divulge before she’d cut her message short. My thoughts swung to an image of Bella, my darling child, enduring the terror of a makeshift prison, her life in the hands of a serial killer who I now realized didn’t really need a motive. He enjoyed killing. He got off on playing the judge, jury and executioner.

  God, please let her still be alive.

  “They were all the rage in the 1950s, apparently,” Charlie said. “People built them in their back yards to hide in if the Russians nuked LA. They were designed for survivors to stay inside for a few weeks until the radiation danger eased off.”

  “What, then walk out and resume life in a nuclear wasteland?” laughed Jack.

  “Yeah, that’s why a lot of people didn’t build them. That was not the kind of world they wanted to live in.”

  “Do you have any images you can send through?”

  “I’ll send you both the link. It only has photos of the shelter’s interior. It doesn’t say where it is actually located.” Charlie was perceptive—she knew we’d need to plan how we were going to storm the shelter without getting Bella killed.

  “Thanks Charlie. Good work. Talk later.”

  Fallout shelter. Nuclear apocalypse. What an awful fear to have for your family. But I’d take that over having some psycho getting his hands on my child.

  ✽✽✽

  I pulled the Mustang up fifty yards short of the address. Jack handed me the Springfield, and as I stepped out of the car, I tucked it into my pants at the small of my back. We jogged up the sidewalk to the house next door and took cover behind a parked car. I sneaked a look around to the target house. No cars in the driveway. More specifically, no Lincoln. We scanned up and down the street, but there was still no Lincoln to be seen. We knew the lot had no back entrance—the house backed onto another residential property. So either someone had taken the car out for a spell, or they’d all moved on. That, or we’d been led on a wild goose chase. I hoped like hell it wasn’t the latter. I wanted my daughter back. And I wanted to make Lund pay royally for his actions. I hadn’t decided yet whether I’d take him alive or dead. I preferred dead, but revenge was secondary. I just longed to hold Bella again—that was all that mattered.

  The curtains were drawn across the home’s two front windows. I turned to Jack.

  “Let’s go.”

  We dashed to the front left of the house and crouched. I snuck a peek into the front room through a small gap between the blind and window sill. There was nothing in the room at all: no furniture and no people, just white walls and floor boards. I darted across the front of the house to the other side. That was the plan. Jack would scan one side, I’d scan the other, and we’d regroup at the rear.

  I waited for a while, listening. There was no noise. A cool, gentle breeze was blowing, and it carried the sweet scent of cypress from the hedge behind me. There were three windows on my side of the house. I’d memorized the floor plan. The first window was the family room, the second the bathroom, and the third the laundry. Through a slit in the curtains, the first room also looked empty. And there was neither sound nor movement coming from the other two. I soon reached the back of the house where the pool was. A small rectangular lawn extended from the pool’s fence and paving stones to the lot’s back boundary. A shed sat in the corner on Jack’s side.

  When Jack appeared, he shook his head. With that, I leapt silently over the pool fence and landed in a crouch. In one fluid motion, I aimed and swept my weapon across the kitchen and dining area through the home’s rear floor-to-ceiling windows. Again, the space was totally bare. I motioned to Jack that I was going in and quietly slid the glass door open. Jack was right behind me. We cleared the entire house room by room but found nothing. The place was deserted.

  I rushed out the back door and around the pool, cleared the fence, and then approached the shed. I could hear nothing but a few birds and a dog barking from a few houses down.

  The shed was wooden with old paint tins stacked up against the window, completely blocking the view inside. I put my back to the shed as I readied to enter. I scanned the rest of the lawn area, but there was no sign of anything but grass. The entrance to the fallout shelter had to be inside the shed.

  I turned the handle slowly and silently but was betrayed by badly squeaking hinges. I stopped and then pushed the door open fast and hard. It worked—I’d gotten it ajar without further noise. Jack covered me as I entered. The room was only dimly lit by sunlight. A few rusted tools were stacked in one corner alongside a lawn mower that looked like it hadn’t been used for decades. But there, set
into the floor, was a round, rusty trap door with a lever handle.

  I stepped quietly towards it and took hold of the handle. My heart was pounding. Opening the door could trigger many outcomes I didn’t want to imagine.

  Lund could be poised underneath, waiting to pick me off.

  I could find the body of my daughter.

  Or I could find nothing at all.

  I slowly opened the hatch. The shelter was lit with fluorescent light. A ladder descended to a floor lined with cheap black carpet. Still, I heard only silence. I fell to my stomach and motioned for Jack to hold my legs. I then positioned myself over the hole, brought my weapon up and quickly swung my upper body down through the hatch. As I hung there, scanning the room upside down, all I could hear was my breathing. There was no one there. No one alive, that is.

  I saw two bodies: a man and a woman.

  “Bella!” I shouted. My voice disappeared into the walls, and I got nothing in reply. I swung myself up and climbed down.

  It was like the shelter had remained untouched since the people who built it had moved on. It had been preserved like a museum exhibit. The small room was fitted with two bunk beds, one against each side wall. Some shelves at the far end were stocked with tinned food and a stove, and a sink was bolted to the opposite wall.

  The dead man was lying face down on the carpet. The dead woman was face up on one of the bunk beds. I didn’t have to get closer to see who it was. Francine Holmes had died with her eyes open in an expression of mild surprise.

  Jack followed me down. He bent over the man’s body.

  “Who do you think this is?” he said.

  “Don’t know. Could be Lund’s driver. Perhaps Lund had no more use for him. Or maybe, like Francine here, he made the mistake of being disloyal. Check his pockets for ID.”

  While Jack searched, I turned my attention back to Francine.

  Her left hand rested on her abdomen, the fingers drenched in blood. Her right hand lay straight beside her body. Then something caught my eye. I bent down for a closer look to find Francine’s hand clutching a wad of bank notes.

  I took the money from her hand. A message was scrawled onto the top note:

  “Madison. Cash for your daughter’s life. Sound fair?”

  I felt violently ill. I forced back the urge to vomit.

  I counted the money, but I already knew what it would add up to.

  Five thousand dollars.

  Jack stood beside me and read the note.

  “What’s that about?” he said.

  “That’s what we paid the Afghan families for each civilian my unit killed in Bati Kot. Five grand. And then we moved on.”

  I looked down at Francine’s face.

  “So this has nothing to do with social media,” Jack said. “And he’s not going to be asking for a ransom.”

  “No. This about one thing now and one thing only—vengeance.”

  Just then, my phone buzzed. I took it out and opened the message.

  “YOU’LL SEE YOUR DAUGHTER SOON. PROMISE. BUT FORGET ABOUT SAVING HER.”

  It was punctuated by a string of the same emoji—tears of laughter.

  But maybe Victor Lund shouldn’t have been too sure he’d have the last laugh, because he’d just screwed up big time.

  Charlie’s trap had worked.

  There, on my screen, was Victor Lund’s number.

  At last we knew exactly where this son-of-a-bitch was.

  33

  As I hurried back to the car, I sent Charlie the number. I called as I got behind the wheel, put the phone in its cradle, and hit the ignition button. I pulled out with no plan besides putting Reseda behind me. Charlie soon had the phone’s radio signal traced.

  “Got it,” she said. Then she paused. “That’s weird.”

  “What’s weird?”

  “Hang on just double checking. Yep. He’s in Nevada.”

  “Nevada? Are you sure?”

  “Yes. He’s just outside a place called Ely, near the Utah border.”

  Where the hell is he going? I did a quick mental calculation to account for the time that had elapsed since I’d received Francine’s tip-off. It had only been two hours. How could he be anywhere near Utah already?

  “He couldn’t have driven that far that fast,” I said.

  “He’s not on a road,” said Charlie.

  “Jesus Christ!” I checked my mirrors and pulled over hard.

  “What’s going on?” asked Jack.

  “Transmission’s gone,” said Charlie. “He’s just turned his phone off—it’s no longer transmitting.”

  “He’s not in a car,” I said. “He’s flying. He’s got Bella in his goddamn plane!”

  My anger had returned in full force, and it quickly found a new target.

  “What the hell is Cassinelli doing?! Why haven’t we heard from him? Charlie, I’m hanging up to call him.”

  Cassinelli answered first ring.

  “What’s up, Madison?”

  “Jesus Christ, Cassinelli, what have you been doing? Lund is in the air!”

  “He can’t be. I’ve been watching the terminal. I’ve got eyes on the hanger he keeps it in, and there’s been no movement whatsoever.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “If you’re about to ask if I’m sober, don’t. I’ve been watching that hanger till my eyes went dry. No one’s been in there—no ground crew, no flight crew, no coffee and cake trolley—nothing. If he’s in a plane, it did not leave from here, I’m telling you.”

  Suddenly it dawned on me.

  “Van Nuys,” I said. “He must have flown out of Van Nuys!”

  Van Nuys Airport was just minutes away. I hung up on Cassinelli, swung the car around, and hammered the accelerator with all the delicacy of enraged blacksmith.

  I tapped redial on Charlie’s number.

  “Charlie! How did we miss the fact that Lund’s plane was Van Nuys Airport and not LAX?”

  “Van Nuys? Never heard of it.”

  “It’s in the San Fernando Valley, where we are right now. Lund had his plane ten minutes from his Reseda house all along.”

  “I’m checking it now. When I looked earlier, its last stop was LAX, I’m certain. But yes, it moved to Van Nuys.”

  “When?”

  “About two hours ago, which was after I’d checked.”

  “He must have had it delivered there,” I said. “It had already left by the time Cassinelli arrived.”

  Where the hell is that prick taking my daughter?!

  My grip on the wheel could have choked out a lion.

  “Charlie, can you find out where he’s headed?”

  “Checking the logs now. Here it is. Gallatin Field BZN, wherever that is.”

  “Bozeman,” I said. “He’s heading to the Bozeman Yellowstone Airport in Montana. Charlie, I need you to find what ties Lund has to Montana.”

  “I’m on it.”

  She hung up and we raced to Van Nuys.

  “What’s the plan when we get to the airport?” asked Jack.

  I hadn’t really thought that far ahead. But there was only one answer.

  “We need to get our hands on a jet.”

  Jack pulled out his phone.

  “I think I know someone who can help.”

  “You’re kidding me. Who?”

  “A Fortune 500 friend I did a big favor for. The one who was going to lend me that chopper before you rudely interrupted my Napa Valley date.”

  “Has he got a plane at Van Nuys?”

  “No. At LAX. And it’s a she.”

  “A rich lady you did a favor for?”

  “Yeah. Carla Pearson. I exposed her cheating husband and saved her a mint on the divorce settlement. She was very grateful.”

  “Grateful enough to lend us her private jet?”

  “You bet. And I’m sure she’d throw in the pilot too. We just have to hope he’s available, and sober.”

  Jack tapped a call and put the phone to his ear.

  “Carla
,” he said, making sure his million-watt smile shone through in his voice. “How are you doing this fine afternoon?”

  After a minute or so Jack thanked her and hung up.

  “She said her plane’s out.”

  “How come? I thought you said ...”

  “Steady on, dude. Let me finish. Carla said that if time is of the essence, we shouldn’t wait for her plane anyway. She’s going to book us a charter jet. She said we can take it wherever we want for however long we want.”

  A shot of warm gratitude hit my wretched heart.

  “That’s very kind of her.”

  “We’ll be in the air within the hour,” Jack said. “She’s going to secure a mid-sized jet. It’ll have us in Bozeman in two hours ten minutes.”

  I thanked Jack. It would be getting dark soon after we arrived. I tried to send a thought to Bella, not that I believed in telepathy—or that I disbelieved it either. I just hoped that some part of her was holding onto the hope that her daddy was going to come get her, that he would cross the planet on broken glass to put an end to her ordeal and see her smile once more. After the Anaheim shooting, I promised Bella I’d always be there for her. And, God help me, I was going to deliver on that promise.

  I did the time sums in my head again. The result wasn’t what you’d call a relief.

  “He’s got about a three-hour start on us.”

  “Yeah, that’s true,” said Jack. “But we do have one thing going for us.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “He doesn’t know we’re coming.”

  ✽✽✽

  The Gulfstream 100 sped us north at point eight of the speed of sound—about six-hundred-and-forty-five miles an hour in land-speed terms. It was of significant consolation to me that even though we didn’t know where Bella was, we were chasing her at about the fastest speed humanly possible.

  At Van Nuys, I’d told the charter company we didn’t need a flight attendant, just the pilot, Captain Hank Seger. Having someone waiting on us at a time like this seemed frivolous. Similarly, while it was hard not to be impressed by the plane’s plush interior and massive leather seats, I couldn’t lapse into anything remotely close to comfort. The plane had wi-fi, so I waited keenly for whatever Charlie could pull up in terms of Bozeman property and business data.