Chance Reddick Box Set 1

by David Archer

  “You’ll get it,” Dixon said. He hung up the phone and put it back into his pocket as they pulled up in front of the apartment building where the next victim lived.

  Her name was Jennifer Sawyer, and they had already called ahead to arrange an appointment. Like Melinda and the others, she had also awakened one day to find that several weeks were missing. She had not been arrested, nor approached by police about any crimes.

  “Come on inside,” Jennifer said. “I hope you don’t mind, but I had my neighbor come over while we talk.”

  Another woman was sitting in the living room, and she smiled as Dixon showed his ID and introduced himself and Chance.

  “No problem,” Dixon said. “I can understand this might seem like it came out of a clear blue sky. Ms. Sawyer, like we told you on the phone, we are investigating what happened to a couple of women who had the same experience you did. Unfortunately, their cases didn’t turn out so well, because both of them have been charged with murder. Since they can’t remember what happened, they really don’t know whether they actually committed the murders or not, but it actually looks like they did. What we are trying to determine is whether they were brainwashed into doing this, and who might have been behind it.”

  “Well, I haven’t been charged with anything,” Jennifer said. “What brings you to me?”

  “We’ve already determined that all of the women who have had this experience have one thing in common. All of you, it seems, went through the drug rehabilitation program at the Rivers Center two years ago, and I needed to ask you…”

  “Rivers Center?” It was the other woman in the room who had spoken. “Jenny, you went to drug rehab?”

  Jennifer cringed, and her face turned red. “Yes, I did,” she said. “Marcy, don’t get the wrong idea. I wasn’t hooked on illegal drugs or anything, it was actually an addiction to antidepressants. My doctor had put me on some when I was a teenager, and I just got to the point that I couldn’t get by without them. My mom read about the program out at the Rivers Center and talked me into giving it a try, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I no longer take medications, but I don’t suffer from crippling depression anymore, either.” She turned back to Dixon. “And you think that there’s a connection between the Center and what happened to me and these other women?”

  “We do,” Dixon said. “Ms. Sawyer, do you remember a woman named Dr. Elizabeth Cardwell?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jennifer said. “Liz was great. I got to talk to her several times, she really helped me a lot. Matter of fact, I’d say she is most of the reason that I don’t have any problems anymore.”

  “Do you remember her giving you any kind of medications? Or using hypnosis?”

  Jennifer nodded. “Yes, both. She would give me a shot, and that would help me relax and get ready for the hypnosis treatments. I probably went through that nine, maybe ten times. It seemed like every one made it easier for me to cope with everything, until finally I was really having a lot of fun in there. I lost weight, became more confident, got over my depression and got rid of the pills that had been ruining my life.”

  “What about the hypnosis sessions? Can you remember any of them? Exactly what happened, I mean?”

  She shook her head. “No, nothing at all. She said that was the way it was supposed to be, so I didn’t worry about it. Why? Was there something wrong?”

  Dixon looked over at Chance, and nodded for him to speak up. Chance turned to Jennifer.

  “Ms. Sawyer, it appears that all of the women who have had this experience have been brainwashed. That means that you are programmed to do something, and probably to forget all about it afterward. In at least two of the cases we know about, these women were programmed to commit murder. As far as we can tell, Dr. Cardwell is the only person that you’ve all been involved with who might be capable of such a thing.”

  Jennifer’s eyes went wide and she covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh, my God,” she said. “Are you saying I might have killed someone?”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Chance said. “All we’re saying is that in the cases we know of, that seems to be the pattern. It’s possible you might have been programmed to do something else, or that you simply weren’t able to do whatever you were sent to do. There could be a number of reasons why you didn’t do anything, but we have to work on the assumption that there was a reason for what happened to you.”

  Dixon took over again. “Ms. Sawyer, can you think of anything unusual about your interactions with Dr. Cardwell? Are there any strange memories associated with it, or have you had any kind of weird feelings about it?”

  “No, not that I can remember,” Jennifer said. “When I think about her, I just feel like she did so much for me, I just—I just love her to pieces. I just can’t believe she could do anything like this.”

  “I’m sure that’s normal,” Dixon said. “After all, whatever else happened, you did come off your addiction and you seem to be much better today. Have you had any kind of unusual dreams since this experience occurred? Any strange feelings, almost like déjà vu, maybe?”

  Jennifer started to shake her head, but then she stopped. Tears began to flow down her cheeks all of a sudden, and she looked at Dixon again. “I don’t know if it really means anything,” she said slowly, “but—I can’t remember the dreams, but I woke up a few times just feeling bad, like a guilty feeling. I’ve tried over and over to figure out what it is I’m feeling guilty about, but it just won’t come. After a little while, it fades away. Could that be it? Am I feeling guilty because maybe I killed somebody?”

  The other woman, Marcy, was nodding her head. “You told me about that,” she said. “You said you felt like you had done something terrible but couldn’t remember it.”

  Jennifer nodded. “Yeah, that’s it,” she said. “Just this feeling that I’ve done something really bad, but I can’t remember what it was.”

  Dixon smiled kindly, but there was a sadness in his eyes. “Ms. Sawyer, I’d have to say there’s a strong possibility that you may have actually done something. I’ve read about brainwashing before, and one of the interesting things about it was that, even though the subject couldn’t remember what they had done, they would feel guilty. They couldn’t remember why, but couldn’t explain the guilty feelings, but they were strong and definite at times. At other times, they fade away.”

  Jennifer nodded, the tears slowing. “Yeah, that’s what it’s like. So, what do I do? I mean, are the cops going to show up and arrest me all of a sudden?”

  “Ms. Sawyer, we already found that one of the women was apparently involved in a murder, but I need you to understand that if you were, under the law you are probably not guilty of anything. When someone is brainwashed into committing a crime, no matter how terrible it might be, the courts have ruled several times that they cannot be held liable. It’s the person who brainwashed you who was actually guilty, and they simply use you as a tool to commit the crime.” He sighed. “With your permission, I’m going to contact a friend of mine at the police department and have him look for similarities between your description and any unidentified suspects. He’s probably also going to want you to come down and be fingerprinted, but even if it turns out you were involved in something, I don’t believe you’ll be arrested. His name is Detective Jensen, and he’s working with me on this.”

  Jennifer nodded as Marcy came over and sat on the arm of her chair, wrapping her arms around the girl. Dixon and Chance showed themselves out.

  FIFTEEN

  They got into the pickup truck and pulled away from the apartment building and eased onto the street. Dixon took out his phone and called Detective Jensen, giving him Jennifer Sawyer’s information and reiterating that she was not aware of any crime she might’ve committed.

  “Well,” Jensen said, “the Cummings girl is almost certainly the one in the picture I sent you, you were right about that. Pete, I checked out this Dr. Cardwell, and I can’t really find much of anything other than h
er professional background. On the other hand, did you know she’s working for Daniel Finnigan, now?”

  “Yeah, I heard,” Dixon said. “That tells you exactly what I’m suspecting, right?”

  “Scares the hell out of me,” Jensen said. “If Finnigan had a way to turn ordinary people into killers, people who wouldn’t even know they were connected to him or remember what they did, he could probably have anybody killed and get away with it.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m thinking. If we hadn’t stumbled across the connection between these women, they might actually have gotten away with it. That’s a scary thought, Bobby.”

  “Well, I can’t find anything on Cardwell that I can use to bring her in, and we’re going to have to have something pretty damn solid before we approach a prosecutor with all this. Right at the moment, it sounds a lot like a horror movie. Prosecutors are not known for their ability to see complicated plots.”

  “Ain’t that the truth? Okay, Bobby, I’ll get some solid evidence. You just be ready to move on it when I call, okay?”

  “Yeah, well, make it soon, okay? I don’t know how long I can sit on these murder charges.”

  Dixon ended the call and put his phone away, and then turned to Chance. He started to speak, but he saw that Chance was watching something in the rearview mirror.

  “We picked up a tail,” Chance said. “Black sedan, about 100 yards back. It pulled out from the curb when we turned onto the street. I’ve made a couple turns, and it’s staying right there.”

  Dixon looked into the mirror on his side of the truck and spotted the car instantly. “Yeah, they’re following us,” he said. “I don’t know how, but Finnigan must be onto us. That looks like some of his people, to me.”

  “We should have expected it,” Chance said. “We are dealing with someone who can program people to commit murder. Seems to me, they probably get programmed to protect the person who’s doing it, as well. I’d just about bet that Melinda Cummings was programmed to contact Cardwell if anyone came around asking questions about her.”

  Dixon looked at him. “Damn, I should’ve thought of that. You’re right, that has to be it. Think you can lose them?”

  “This is an antique, not a hot rod,” Chance said. “There’s no way I can outmaneuver that sedan.” He looked over at Dixon. “I’m going to handle them my way. You on board with that?”

  Dixon looked at him. “You ever watch reruns of Hogan’s Heroes? Old TV show?”

  Chance grinned at him. “Are you Sgt. Schultz?”

  Dixon returned the grin. In a fake German accent, he said, “I see nothing, I hear nothing, I know nothing!”

  Chance turned his eyes back to the road and suddenly floored the accelerator. The truck shot forward, and the black sedan increased its own speed to keep pace. About two blocks later, Chance cut the wheel and turned into a parking lot, then slid to a stop on the gravel. He waited until the sedan had caught up, they got out of the truck.

  The sedan had two men inside, and they simply sat still and watched as he walked toward them, his hands empty. As he got close, the man on the passenger side rolled down his window.

  “You’re following us,” Chance said. “If you want to talk, why not just ask?”

  “You boys are sticking your nose where it don’t belong,” said the man who had rolled down the window. “We just want to know what you’re up to.”

  Chance squatted down beside the car, hiding himself from view from anyone on the other side of the vehicle. It also put his body and hands below the line of sight of the two men in the car, and he quickly snatched the Maxim out of the holster under his arm and held it between his knees.

  “We’re just driving around, talking to some pretty girls. Anything wrong with that?”

  “There might be, since you seem to be asking the wrong kind of questions. We want to know why you would be asking those questions.”

  Chance grinned at them. “But I don’t want to tell you,” he said.

  He stood quickly and leveled the Maxim, squeezing the trigger twice. Blood and brains sprayed the inside of the car as both of the men took a 9 mm round through the forehead. The muffled sound of the suppressed weapon sounded like a car door slamming, and Chance slipped the gun back into its holster. He watched the two men for a moment to be certain they were dead, then turned and walked back to the pickup truck.

  Dixon was staring at him, and Chance looked him in the eye. “Any problem?” Chance asked.

  Dixon shook his head. “No problem,” he said. “I just never seen anybody who could really do that so calmly. Man, I’ve seen professional killers who couldn’t handle that as well as you just did.”

  “Handle what?” Chance asked as he put the truck in gear.

  “Nothing,” Dixon said. “Nothing at all.”

  “Well, we just sent a message to Finnigan,” Chance said. “The trouble is, they know what we are driving and what we look like. Might be time to change that up.”

  Dixon nodded. “Yeah, good idea. We need a different car. Take a right at the next light, we’ll go see an old friend of mine.”

  Chance followed Dixon’s directions and they ended up at a used car lot in a seedy part of town a few minutes later. He pulled the truck around the back of the building and found a place to hide it between a pair of old school buses. Dixon climbed out and went around to the front of the building while Chance found an old tarp and threw it over the truck. When he was done, he followed Dixon.

  He found the old detective in the little office building, sitting in front of the desk. As he stepped inside, Dixon and the other man looked up at him.

  “Chance,” Dixon said, “this is Johnny Fargo. Johnny was a friend of mine from years back, and I’m lucky enough that he still feels like he owes me a couple of favors.”

  “That’s right,” Johnny said. “Pete saved my bacon a couple of times, back when I was dumb enough to think I was some kinda gangster. He’s the one who got me to go straight, and even helped me get started in the used-car business. You need wheels, I got wheels.”

  Chance nodded. “We could use something,” he said. He turned and looked out the window at the old cars that populated the lot and tried to guess which one might be the most dependable.

  “Don’t worry about any of those,” Johnny said. “Those are for my low-end customers, the ones who have to make little payments every week. For Pete Dixon, I can do something a lot better. Let’s go in the shop.”

  Chance and Dixon followed him through a back door into what turned out to be a fairly large shop building. Inside were several cars in various stages of being repaired, but there was another room at the back, and that’s where Johnny took them.

  Chance let out a low whistle when they stepped through the doorway. “Okay, not bad,” he said.

  There before him were several late-model sports cars. He saw a fairly new Camaro, Corvette, and a couple of Mustangs. The one that actually caught his eye, however, was a late-model Dodge Charger, the kind used by many police departments. The car had just a hint of a high-performance look to it, and Chance took a step toward it without even thinking.

  “Your man knows cars,” Johnny said to Dixon. “That one is what I had in mind. Pete says you got some bad people trying to catch up to you, and there ain’t much around here that’s going to catch up to that.” He raised the hood on the Charger and Chance whistled again. “That’s a hemi, but not the little dinky thing they put in them lately. That’s a 500 cubic inch crate motor, cranking out 600 hp easy. I build these to sell to some of the security guys around the city, but this one isn’t sold yet. You need something that doesn’t really stand out but has plenty of power, this is your baby.”

  “How much?” Chance asked.

  “Nothing, unless you wreck it,” Johnny said. “I get forty K a pop for these, so try not to wrap it around a tree or anything. When you’re done, bring it back and we’re all even.” He tossed a set of keys to Chance, and pushed the button to open the big overhead door that l
ed out into the alley.

  “I put my truck between those old buses out back,” Chance said, “and covered it up with an old tarp that was laying there. I’ll be back for it, so don’t let it get away.”

  “No worries, man,” Johnny said with a grin. “Nobody steals from me. I got too many friends, and they know it.”

  Chance slid behind the wheel of the Charger while Dixon climbed into the passenger seat. He started the car and put it in gear, surprised at how quiet it was but still feeling a sense of the power under the hood. He eased his foot off the brake and let it idle forward, then stopped in the alley and retrieved their bags from the pickup truck. Once they were back inside the car, he turned toward the street half a block away.

  “Okay,” he said, turning to Dixon. “So, what’s next?”

  “We can keep talking to the victims, but we know where that goes. We need to talk to the two who were arrested again, Yolanda and Maggie, but it’s getting too late, today. I’m a little worried about trying to get a hotel, because Finnigan has a way of finding out anything he wants to know. What you say we head back to Reno, talk to Maggie again tomorrow morning?”

  Chance let out a sigh. “That’s another long drive,” he said. “I wish she was closer.”

  Dixon grinned at him. “Who said anything about driving? Head for the airport, Chance. There’s another friend of mine out there.”

  Chance shrugged and headed toward the airport, and they arrived about thirty minutes later. Dixon directed him around the terminal to a smaller hangar on the edge of the field. There were several small, twin-engine airplanes sitting outside it, and they parked in a small lot beside the hangar.

  Chance followed Dixon into the building, and was introduced to a man who seemed to run his own small airline. “Bill Simmons,” Dixon said, “meet Rex Amherst. Rex runs Southwest Shuttle Air, his own little charter service.”

  Amherst stuck out a hand. “He tells me you’re the guy who got him off the sauce,” he said. “Mighty pleased to meet you.”