The Virgil Jones Mystery Thriller Boxed Set

by Thomas Scott

  “Well, maybe not that scared,” Mason said.

  Virgil gave him a look.

  “Okay, okay,” Mason said. “Just making a point. Anyway, you were scared, and I knew it. So was I. That’s why I slept on the floor by your bed that night. You remember our conversation the next morning?”

  Virgil thought about it. “You said you’d never leave me. In fact, you promised me you’d never leave me.”

  Mason nodded. “That I did. And here I am.”

  “At what cost?”

  “There is no cost, Virg. I’ve tried to tell you countless times…everything is exactly the way it should be.”

  “Delroy said something to me today. Have you ever heard of the Lethe?”

  Mason waited a long time before he answered. “It’s all Greek to me,” he said, but the look on his face suggested otherwise. “I’ll tell you something though, I learned a long time ago to listen very carefully to what that man says.”

  “It’s not as easy as it sounds.”

  Mason nodded. “It does take some practice. I’m not quite sure how he does it, but he has a good sense of intuition.”

  Virgil thought for a moment and when he spoke he chose his words with care. “Murt’s in trouble, Dad.”

  “You don’t know the half of it, Bud.”

  “Care to fill me in?”

  “I would—”

  Virgil cut him off. “Wait, let me guess…you’re not allowed to?”

  “Well, there is some truth in that, except what I was going to say was I don’t have time. Or, more to the point, you don’t.” Mason looked past Virgil. “I think Huma might need a little help.”

  Virgil turned and looked at the house. Huma was running across the yard, dragging the hose behind her. It looked like the entire grill was going up in flames. The whole unit was one big fireball and was threatening to take the deck with it.

  “Ah, Jesus.” Virgil ran to the house, grabbed the hose from Huma and began to spray down the grill. When the fire had been beaten back enough, he kicked the grill off the deck and into the yard.

  “What the hell happened?” Part of Huma’s hair had been singed but other than that she seemed okay. “Are you hurt?”

  She was shaking. Adrenaline. “Stop yelling at me, Jonesy.”

  Virgil lowered his voice. “Sorry.”

  “I’m fine. I don’t know what happened. I turned the gas on and it wouldn’t light. I thought maybe something was wrong with the sparkler thingy, or whatever it’s called—”

  “That’d be the igniter,” Virgil said.

  “Yeah, whatever, the igniter. So when I opened the lid to check…”

  “You have to open the lid before you turn the gas on, Huma. Otherwise it could…ah, never mind. You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah, but I think I ruined your grill.”

  Virgil didn’t care about the grill. “Don’t worry about it. I’m glad you’re okay. Listen, how about we all go out to eat tonight?”

  Huma pulled at the ends of her hair, inspecting the damage. “Let me clean up a little if that’s okay. Maybe find a hat.” Then, “By the way, were you talking to someone down by the pond? When I waved at you I didn’t see anyone, but then when the grill went up I thought I saw someone through the smoke.”

  Virgil turned and looked at the cross. His father was gone, of course. “Must have had some smoke in your eyes or something.”

  Huma stared at him and didn’t say anything. After a few moments Virgil put his arm around her and led her inside. “C’mon. I’m hungry. Let’s go eat.”

  15

  Ethan Sanders and Janie Cassidy were ready. They were high school seniors, had dated each other exclusively for almost an entire semester and both remained unfortunate virgins. That was about to change.

  Ethan was a virgin because he wasn’t a jock, didn’t hang with the cool kids at the Jeffersonville high school, had a job as the assistant manager at the cineplex, and a two-year run of acne that would have left a leper feeling like he’d just won a beauty contest. But he was kind, had good manners, a swift, if not somewhat wry wit—you learned to be funny in a hurry when your face looked like you were walking around with a permanent case of the measles—and the smartest kid in no one’s favorite class, Calculus.

  Janie remained a virgin for other reasons. She wasn’t unattractive, she was simply plain, uninterested in cat-eye make-up, high heels, tight jeans, and three hundred dollar hairdos. She wore oversized glasses in an attempt to make her face appear smaller than it actually was and still carried a little baby fat that didn’t want to go away. In short, there wasn’t much about Janie that interested any of the boys in her class. And even if there had been, her mother had drilled into her over and over the dangers and pitfalls of a teenage pregnancy. Like that was ever going to happen.

  But when she started having trouble with Calculus, Ethan volunteered to help her through the difficult parts. They spent their afternoons together, their noses buried in the books and eventually young Ethan got her up to speed. Then one day out of nowhere, Janie leaned over and kissed Ethan right on the lips. She even slipped him a little tongue. That got Ethan up to speed as well.

  “I had to do something,” she told him. “I didn’t think you’d ever make a move.”

  Ethan wiped a hand across his oily face, then down the side of his jeans. “I don’t have any moves,” he said. Pure honesty.

  For months they didn’t do anything except kiss and hold hands. Then one day in the back of Ethan’s car—a genuine piece of shit Geo—Ethan got brave and ran his hand up inside of Janie’s bra. When she let out a little moan he kept going. But then, she stopped him.

  “I want to do it, Ethan, I really do. But not in the back seat of the car.”

  It was a problem for them. Both their mothers were always at home and they had nowhere to go. So Ethan got creative and bought an inflatable mattress, a cheap blanket, and a box of Trojans. When he told her his plan, Janie forgot all about the lectures her mother had given her, ready to let young Ethan help her learn something other than Calculus.

  He parked the Geo around the corner from the opening of the quarry and removed the mattress from the box and let the air pump do its job. The sun was out, the day was warm, and when the mattress was ready, Janie was too. She’d stripped off her clothes, laid down on the cushion of air, covered herself just so with the blanket, conveniently leaving one bare breast exposed and patted the spot next to her. Ethan had his shirt off and was fumbling with his shoes. He was all the way down to his boxers when Janie sat up, made a face, and said, “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?” Ethan asked.

  “That odor. My god, don’t you smell it?”

  Suddenly Ethan did. He’d been so caught up with Janie’s singularly exposed tit that he hadn’t noticed, mostly because he’d been breathing through his mouth. But the breeze had shifted, and when he inhaled through his nostrils the offensive odor hit him like a slap in the face. “Jesus, that’s bad. It smells like a dead animal.”

  Janie wrapped the blanket around her body, stood and walked over to Ethan. “Must be a pretty big animal. Look.” She pointed behind him, further down in the quarry. A flock of Turkey Vultures were picking at something. They were too far away to tell what it was.

  “Wait here,” Ethan said, a little wary. “I’m going to go check it out.” He slipped his shoes back on and walked closer to the large birds. When he got within twenty feet or so, he stopped, picked up a few small rocks and chucked them at the birds to scare them away. When Janie saw his acne-covered back, it didn’t bother her at all. But when he threw the rocks at the birds, she thought, hmm. He sort of throws like a girl. She put her clothes back on, the moment lost…not so much to Ethan’s lack of athletic ability, but to the god-awful smell of death.

  It took a number of throws, but Ethan finally managed to scare all the birds away. They took flight and circled the area, cawing away at the intrusion. When Ethan got close enough to see what the birds h
ad been feeding on, he gagged twice, then vomited all over what would in a matter of days become a federal crime scene.

  The Clark County deputy arrived much earlier than either Ethan or Janie would have predicted. They were still trying to stuff the mattress back into the box when he rolled up in his cruiser and burped his siren at them. He was a barrel-chested man, his brown uniform shirt strained at the button holes, his head shaved, his steel toed boots polished and shiny. Without the uniform, he looked like he’d fit right in with the Klan or any other type of white supremacist group.

  When the deputy walked up to them his mouth carried a crooked grin, as if a lewd joke played behind his eyes, one he had to work to keep in check. He was not, Ethan decided, someone he’d want to meet in a dark alley, badge or not. Maybe especially because of the badge.

  “What are you kids doing out here?” he asked. “This area is off-limits to the public.” He let his eyes roam over Janie’s body from head to toe. Ethan saw him lick his lips, the crooked grin never leaving his face.

  “We weren’t doing anything wrong,” Janie told him. “We’re the ones who called.”

  “Uh huh. I’ve managed to piece that together.”

  Ethan told him what they’d discovered. The deputy went and had a look, and seconds later the crime scene was contaminated a little more.

  The sheriff of Clark County, a no-nonsense, lifelong cop from a long line of family cops showed up an hour later and took charge. By the end of the evening the bodies had been bagged and tagged, and copies of fingerprints and dental molds had been sent to the NCIC to determine the identities of the two men. The prints would be a little iffy—this from the Clark County Coroner who thought the two men had probably been in the ground for the better part of a month. “Too much skin slippage. I’ll get some fluids and run that through the DNA database though. What about the state?”

  The sheriff pulled a toothpick from behind his ear and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. “What about them?”

  “Do you want me to copy the reports to them as well?”

  “That’s standard procedure, as I understand it.”

  The coroner rolled his eyes.

  The prints turned out to be a bust. But three days later the DNA came back with a hit on both of the men. Paul Fischer and Evan Reed. Fischer’d been involved in a holdup at a gun shop in northern California, a smash and grab done in the middle of the night. He’d been masked and wearing gloves, but sometime between the smash part of the operation and the grab, he’d managed to cut himself and leave a nice little trail. Once the military turned over the proper records the California cops knew who he was. They discovered he lived across the line, up near Portland. They turned the matter over to the Oregon State Police, who promised to keep the California cops updated.

  The Oregon cops went through Fischer’s and Reed’s residences and backtracked their history and known associates. Word eventually filtered out to the streets and when that happened, all the mainline hustlers, street dealers, bagmen, and grifters of every stripe looking to score some good will against future crimes got their motors running. Eventually a two-time loser who was looking at life without parole on a bogus bust came forward to his probation officer and gave him a name.

  Randy Stone.

  The cops took Stone’s place apart with the same efficiency they used to deconstruct the lives of Paul Fischer and Evan Reed. By the end of the next day, they had all the names…all the way up the chain to a guy with dual citizenship in both the U.S. and Canada. Someone named Armon Reif. Because Reif had dual citizenship, ICE got in on the action and it became a federal case. As a matter of procedure, DHS was pinged, and when that happened—for reasons neither the Oregon nor the California cops were ever told—the whole investigation seemed to grind to a halt.

  Out of courtesy the lead investigator for Oregon called his counterpart in California and gave him the news. “It’s a joke,” the Oregon guy said. “Every single one of these guys is from my backyard.”

  “It’s the feds,” the California guy said. Being from California, he was a little more laid back than the Oregon guy. “What can you do?”

  “Nothing, I guess. Still pisses me off. I’ve got their pictures plastered all across the state. They better think twice before they ever show up here again.”

  “Well, keep me up,” California said. He didn’t really care.

  “Do that.”

  16

  The next morning Virgil was up early…much earlier than he would have liked. He showered as quietly as possible and kissed Sandy good-bye. She mumbled something in return that was either ‘love you,’ or ‘leave me alone.’ Optimist that he was, Virgil whispered ‘love you too,’ tip-toed down the hallway and out the door. He hopped into his truck, jumped on the highway and set the cruise control to five over the limit.

  Heading South.

  Down to Shelby County.

  Last night over dinner they’d talked about the land, and couldn’t quite come to an agreement over who should farm it for them this season. Sandy thought Sunnydale was the better choice, while Virgil leaned toward the remaining members of the Shelby County Co-op. Three mega-farms owned by Angus Mizner, Basil Graves, and Cal Lipkins ran the Co-op. It had been six members, but two of the six, Charlie Esser—whose land Virgil now owned—and Vernon Conrad, had been killed during Virgil’s previous case. The remaining member, Hank Stutzman, had moved to Arizona after auctioning off his house and all his equipment.

  “I think Sunnydale is more trustworthy,” Sandy had said. “Mr. Johnson was completely honest and upfront about his operation and his intentions.”

  Virgil hadn’t disagreed with her on the point. “That’s true. I feel the same way. Carl Johnson is about as honest as they make them anymore. But when you look at the numbers we’ll get a better deal from the Co-op members. They’ve got the advantage when it comes to covering their costs, and they’ve got the manpower to make sure everything gets done right, and on time.”

  “It isn’t all about the numbers, Virgil.”

  “You’re right, it’s not. But it’s mostly about the numbers.”

  Huma had been listening quietly, taking it all in. After a few more rounds of back and forth between Virgil and Sandy, she asked a question. “What happened with Stutzman? I don’t quite understand that.”

  Virgil explained it to her. “When the lawyer presented the fracking deal to the group, they all wanted to go through with it, except for Charlie Esser. Stutzman jumped the gun a little and auctioned everything off, right down to the goddamned spoons—his words, not mine—and when the deal didn’t go through he was stuck with no equipment, no place to live and no other choice. So he did what he’d intended to do all along. He and his wife moved to Arizona.”

  Huma thought about that for a minute. “So what happened to his land? Was that part of the auction?”

  “No. He still owns it. The Co-op is farming it for him.” He turned his attention back to Sandy. “That’s another reason the Co-op would be better for us. They already know how to take care of someone else’s land.”

  Sandy was about to reply but Huma wasn’t done yet. “Jonesy, didn’t you say that Sunnydale isn’t in the Co-op because their operation isn’t big enough?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you want to go with the Co-op because the numbers are better?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  She went back to her dinner without saying anything else. Sandy looked at Virgil. He shrugged and Huma caught it.

  “Think it through, big guy. You’ll get there. Pass the potatoes, will you please?”

  He figured it out. When they got home from dinner, Virgil made the calls and set the meeting up. Now, at not quite five in the morning he turned his truck into the Co-op’s lot. The others were already waiting for him. When he walked inside he found them seated at the table, each with a cup of coffee. They all looked like they’d been up for hours. They probably had, Virgil thought.

  Lipkins got the first j
ab in. “That’s a pretty fancy truck you got there, city-boy. I’ve got a load of manure that needs hauling. Think I could borrow it for a day or two? Get her nice and broke in for you.”

  Virgil had become friendly with the group over the past few months. They were all pretty good guys, Lipkins the possible exception. He wasn’t exactly mean, but he did like to see how far he could push people. But Virgil wasn’t afraid to push back. In fact, he thought if he didn’t, Cal Lipkins was the type of guy who’d keep applying the pressure until something cracked. He’d seen it happen with Vernon Conrad.

  “You could, Cal, except there’s too many buttons on the dash. It’d take you too long to figure everything out. Besides, like goes with like. If you’re hauling shit, you should do it with a piece of shit…sort of like the one you’re driving. Did one of these other boys have to tow you here this morning, or did it actually start?”

  Cal’s face reddened, and they all laughed. Even Cal, though not nearly as much as the others. Virgil poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down. He nodded to Carl Johnson, an acknowledgment of his presence as the other outsider and then got right to it.

  “We’ve made our decision. I wanted to meet with all of you together because it’s probably not something you’re expecting. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I’ve already informed Carl, here, and he’s agreed to it.”

  “Well, there you go then,” Lipkins said. “Congratulations, Carl. Hope you’ve got the manpower. You’re going to need it.” He stood from the table and looked at Virgil. “Thanks for wasting my time.” Then to the others: “Who wants breakfast? Angus? Basil?”

  “Cal, sit down,” Virgil said softly. “You don’t know what I’m about to say.”