“Don’t you have any other family?”
“Yeah, I have some blood relatives, but we never talk.”
“What about friends?”
He shook his head.
“I consider myself your friend,” I said.
“Thank you, Chica, Blue; that means a lot to me.”
“So, when can I tell Becca to expect you?”
“Never. Whenever I get around normal people it makes me nervous. I can’t imagine working nine to five and then coming home to the same woman night after night, and the kids, all that responsibility, it isn’t natural.”
“I think you’re an adrenaline junkie, but I warn you, I promised Becca that I’d bring you by some day and I never break a promise.”
He grinned. “This one might be your first.”
“So how long have you worked for Chaney?”
“I don’t. I’m freelance. If you want somebody found; I’ll find them. The bodyguard bit today was a one-time thing. So, who’s this guy you’re looking for?”
I told Ramón about Joe Harmody and his connection to Bongo Bongo.
“Four grand? That’s good money, but if he’s smart, he won’t come back here.”
“Yeah, I know, but I—”
“Gotta check it out,” Ramón finished.
I laughed. “That’s right.”
“You got a picture of this guy?”
I passed him a copy of the flyer with Harmody’s photo on it and he studied it.
“Bank robbers, short term thinkers every one of them. There was a guy in California years ago who robbed banks for twenty years and got away with over three million. When they finally caught him, he had less than a thousand dollars to his name.”
Our waitress came by and asked if we needed anything else. She had big blonde hair, obvious fake boobs and long, shapely legs. I told her that we were good and asked for the bill. Before she left the table, she sent Ramón a bright and lingering smile.
“It looks like our waitress likes you.”
“All women find me irresistible; in fact, it’s probably taking all of your self-control not to reach across the table and fondle me.”
“The thought has crossed my mind, but I’m seeing someone.”
“That guy Gary you told me about?”
“Yes.”
“Good for him. Now tell me, which of these girls is Harmody’s?”
The waitress walked back toward us with our bill in her hand and her eyes on Ramón.
“Here she comes now,” I said.
At closing time, Ramón left the restaurant with our waitress, otherwise known as Deanna Andrews. He was going to try to get her to open up about Harmody. I appreciated the assistance but doubted that his only motive was to help me; after all, Deanna Andrews was a good-looking woman. I don’t mind saying that I envied her. Ramón was a good-looking man.
I followed them to her apartment and searched the street for any sign of Harmody. There was none. It was quiet, after two a.m., and the street was deserted.
A light came on in a third-floor apartment and a second later, went off. I thought it odd, but harmless, that is, until I saw the two struggling figures bang against the window.
I jumped from my truck and raced up the stairs to the third floor. Just as I rounded the corner, a shot rang out, followed by a man yelling, “No!”
I tried the door and found that it was unlocked. As I eased it open, Ramón called my name.
“Blue?”
“It’s me.”
I found the light switch.
Joe Harmody was on his knees in the middle of the living room and crying in grief. Lying on the floor beside him was Deanna Andrews. There was a gunshot wound that entered just beneath her right eye. There was no need to try for a pulse, the brains and blood splattered about the room told me she was dead.
“What happened?”
Ramón looked a bit shaken, but his voice was strong and unwavering.
“When we entered, I hit the lights and she shut them off and kissed me. I heard a sound behind me and found Harmody coming at me. He had a gun in one hand and a blackjack in the other. I threw his partner, Deanna, at him, and reached for my gun. As I was taking it out, she grabbed my wrist and we struggled for a second before I could throw her off me. As I pushed her away, Harmody fired a shot at me and hit her instead. When he realized what he’d done, he dropped the gun and rushed over to her.”
A tentative knock came at the door. I opened it to find an elderly woman wearing a pink robe. In the hallway behind her were other people in their sleepwear.
“I heard a shot. Is Deanna all right?”
I sighed. “No ma’am, please call the police.”
The old woman began to cry.
“I already called.”
Although Ramón might be irresistible, Deanna Andrews took him home that night because he was roughly Harmody’s height and size. They had planned to lure someone to her apartment and murder them.
Afterward, they would place the corpse in Harmody’s car and set the vehicle ablaze. It was to be an attempt to fake Harmody’s death, and to then start a new life together.
Instead, Deanna was dead and Harmody was going to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Ramón insisted on bringing wine because, as he put it, “That’s what real people do, right?”
When Becca answered the door with Richie, Amy pushed her way out between them and jumped up into Ramón’s arms.
“Ramón, I missed you,” Amy said, then she gave him a big smooch on the lips.
Ramón smiled at me. “Maybe normal life isn’t so bad after all.”
Then, we entered the house and had dinner with our friends.
Part 6
The Monster In The Woods
Chapter 17
I was in East Texas, deep inside the Piney Woods.
The Piney Woods are fifty thousand square miles of forest that stretch across parts of four states. I was there looking for a bail skip named Tanner Harlow. Harlow was a doctor, forty-nine, long divorced and, judging by his picture, would appear to look younger than his age.
Dr. Harlow had embezzled over two million dollars from the medical facility he was employed at. He did so after learning that they planned to sever ties with him. That same night, he was arrested for driving while intoxicated.
He managed to bail himself out on the drunk driving charge just in time to be arrested for the embezzlement. Two days later, he skipped on an eighty-thousand-dollar bond and left Fort Worth.
After asking around, I discovered that Harlow was an avid hiker and often spent time in The Piney Woods while on vacation.
Seven hours of driving got me to the woods. After talking to dozens of people, I came across a man who knew Harlow slightly. He told me that he had spotted the doctor earlier that day, hiking along a trail that led into Louisiana.
That made sense; Harlow was from Louisiana and still had family there.
I contacted the local cops and let them know who I was and who I was after. I soon met with a Forest Ranger named Doug Selby. Selby greeted me with a smile and a tip of his cap, before asking me to hop into his yellow jeep.
Selby was about my age and wore a wedding band. He had a full head of reddish-blonde hair that seemed to go in all directions at once.
After we chatted up some people at a campsite, we learned that a man fitting Dr. Harlow’s description had been seen hiking along a trail less than a mile from where we were.
Selby and I hopped back into the jeep and drove parallel to the trail for about five miles. Afterward, we parked the jeep amid a copse of trees. After I put my backpack on, we then walked northwest along the trail and hoped to run right into Harlow.
As we tramped along, Selby and I talked quietly.
“Is this guy supposed to be dangerous?” he asked.
“No, he’s a doctor, an obstetrician, but then, you never can tell.”
“I hear you, so how long have you been a bail enforcer?”
I opened my mouth to answer him when Tanner Harlow came walking out from behind a bush while zipping up his fly. I grabbed the cuffs off my belt and walked over to him.
“Dr. Tanner Harlow, you are under arrest for the crime of—”
And that’s when he turned and ran back into the woods.
Selby and I shared a look of frustration, then we went after him. Harlow was in good shape, but he was still twenty years older than either me or Selby. We ran him down within minutes and I cuffed his hands behind his back.
Thank God Selby was along. Harlow’s attempt at escape had taken us deep into the woods on a meandering route. I could only guess where we’d left the jeep. Without hesitation, Selby pointed north and began guiding us back to the trail.
While walking back, we heard a noise that sounded like someone digging. Selby motioned for me to stay put with Harlow, before he moved quietly toward the sound to take a look. A few seconds later, I heard him shouting.
“You! Drop that shovel and put your hands in the air. Now!”
The next thing I knew, several shots were fired from two different guns.
With my weapon in my hand, I ran toward the sound of the shots while dragging Harlow along by the belt. He tripped and fell on his face just as I spotted a strange man reloading his weapon.
The guy was six feet tall, with a thirty-something face and prematurely white hair. He stood over Selby, who was wounded and writhing in pain on the ground.
Twenty feet to the Selby’s left was the body of a naked girl, lying in the dirt. One look at her lineless, bloodless face and I knew two things. One: she was dead, and two: she had never made it beyond fourteen years of age.
I told the man to drop his weapon just as he finished loading. He raised his gun and I shot at him three times, but missed, due to the distance. The man turned and ran into the trees.
I rushed over to Selby and saw that he had been struck once in the abdomen, but that there was no exit wound. As Selby gritted his teeth against the pain, I grabbed the radio from his belt and reached the dispatcher at his headquarters.
It was only then that I realized I had little idea how to tell them where to find us. I’m no city slicker, but The Piney Woods were unfamiliar to me. That fact was the main reason Selby was along in the first place.
He must have realized this too, because he motioned for me to place the radio near his mouth so that he could talk.
It took over a minute, but between moans and gasps of pain, Selby let his fellow Rangers know where we were, and that his attacker was extremely dangerous.
Harlow!
I had forgotten all about him. I turned my head and found that he was still lying where he fell, eyes wide and staring at the dead girl with a look of horror on his face.
I rushed over to him, helped him to stand, and took off the cuffs.
“Ranger Selby’s been shot, help him.”
“What?”
“You’re a doctor, help him.”
“I don’t do gunshots; I deliver babies.”
I shoved him toward Selby.
“Help him!”
A scream.
It was followed by two shots, then silence.
I picked Selby’s gun up from the ground before taking my backpack off and tossing it to Harlow.
“I know it’s not much, but there’s a first-aid kit and bottled water in there. You do what you can to help him. When the other Rangers arrive, tell them that there may be more casualties west of here.”
I was thirty feet away when Harlow called to me.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going after the killer.”
I headed toward the place where the screams came from while praying that Dr. Harlow would help Selby and not run away again.
The woods were thick with fallen branches and I soon gave up any attempt at stealth. Every step cracked and crunched fallen twigs and leaves, and so I relied on my eyes to keep me safe.
If anything moved, I would be ready to kill it.
I found the source of the scream lying at the side of a trail with a gaping wound in the back of her head, beside her lay an older man with features much like her own. He had probably been her father. He’d been shot in the heart and must have died instantly.
As I moved past them, I noticed blood on the man’s right fingertips, a closer look revealed what looked like flesh.
Good!
He had marked the son of a bitch even as he died. When I caught the monster, he wouldn’t be able to deny the DNA evidence under the nails of his victim.
From my right and below, I heard someone traipsing through the woods, and I headed that way.
A few minutes later, I came upon a dirt road that was nearly hidden by foliage, then I heard an engine start a hundred yards to my left.
I cursed. Of course, he had a car nearby. He couldn’t very well have walked the dead girl in here on foot.
A moment later, I saw the car. It was a black BMW and it was picking up speed. I ran into the road and fired a shot into the air, before sighting in on the windshield.
The killer ducked down just as he floored the car. I leapt aside and waited. When he was even with me, I fired my gun’s two remaining shots at the right front tire and watched as the car swerved toward the trees.
He hit a stand of saplings with a resounding CLUNK! that caused steam to rise from under the hood, but a moment later, he was out of the car and sprinting away.
He was fast, faster than me by far. As we reached a treeless field of weeds, he was nearly a city block ahead of me.
My gun was empty, but I still had Ranger Selby’s Colt Python. I checked the cylinder, three bullets left.
I fell to one knee, arms extended, and sighted down the six-inch barrel.
My first shot missed, but the sound of it halted him and he stared back at me.
Big mistake.
I fired a second shot and watched him jerk his head back with a start. Then, he reached up to the right side of his head. Even from where I was, I could see the blood on his fingers.
He shouted a string of obscenities and began firing at me in a frenzy.
I hit the ground hard and, and as cliché as it sounds, I heard the bullets whiz above my head.
Click! Click! Click!
He was empty. I raised my head. We locked eyes for a moment before he dropped the now useless gun and ran away.
I followed, with one bullet and one thought, to stop this walking nightmare before he hurt anyone else.
The field ended at a small stream. As I reached it, I saw him on the opposite bank. I splashed my way across while keeping him in sight. When I was halfway to the other side my foot landed on something slimy and I went down on one knee. I felt an immediate jolt of pain as my right knee landed on a jagged rock and cut through my jeans. When I reached the shore, I was wet up to my waist and had a scraped, bloody knee, but the pain was fading and I was still able to run.
I looked around for my prey. Just when I thought that I had lost him, I spotted a shock of white hair running away to my right. His hair was so white that it was brilliant and seemed to sparkle whenever the sun hit it.
I then followed him as best as I could. It was a losing proposition though, as he was just faster than I was, and soon I lost sight of him amidst the thickening trees.
I slowed, listening for footfalls, for movement, for anything.
When the silence broke, it was so loud and so close that I nearly leapt out of my skin.
“What the hell are you doin’ there, son?”
The question came from an old man sitting up in a tree, in a deer blind. He was looking down at a tree ten feet in front of me. My white-haired quarry stepped out of his hiding place and threw something up at the old man.
I saw a glint of metal, a flash of blood, and then the old man tumbled twenty feet to the ground with a knife in his throat.
I fired my last remaining shot at White Hair as he reached down to pull the rifle off the dying old man.
&nbs
p; White hair screamed in pain and left the rifle. I watched as he hobbled off into the woods and knew he’d been wounded. I ran to the old hunter to see if I could help, but he had already died from either the fall or the knife in his throat.
Four dead bodies and a seriously wounded Ranger in less than an hour, White Hair needed to be stopped, and he needed to be stopped now.
I relieved the dead hunter of his rifle and was happy to see that it had a scope. It was a Weatherby with a twenty-eight-inch barrel. My daddy had one just like it when I was growing up. I’d shot it enough to know how to use it.
I followed White Hair and was pleased to see an intermittent blood trail amongst the grass. Within a minute, I was in sight of him as we came upon a hill that sloped downward. The hill ended at what sounded like a road, as the sound of tires on pavement came and went sporadically.
My last bullet had slowed White Hair down, and as he reached the rim of the slope, I was less than a hundred feet behind him.
He went down the tall hill in an uncontrollable slide and hit bottom hard before tumbling out into the road. A green Mercedes braked with a long squeal and just avoided running him over. When it finally stopped, he was lying halfway beneath it.
The driver of the car, a well-dressed, middle-age woman with short red hair, exited the car. As I cried out to warn her, White Hair leapt up and punched her in the face.
The woman fell to the ground, unconscious, and White Hair ran around to the driver’s side door. He stared up at me then with a maniacal grin on his scratched and bloody face as he sent me an obscene gesture.
As he sat in the driver’s seat, I dropped flat, rifle up, and sighted down at him.
Before I could take the shot, he floored the gas pedal and drove over the woman lying in the road. He deliberately aimed for her head, and he hit it.
I dropped the rifle in revulsion as I fought not to vomit at what the car had done to her.
Then, rage overcame repulsion and I grabbed the rifle again.
By the time I took the first shot, he was a quarter of a mile away, moving fast, and it was a downward angle.
Blue Steele Box Set Page 8