Phoenix: A Hunter Novel

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Phoenix: A Hunter Novel Page 7

by J. V. Speyer


  Luis barked out a laugh. “I never want to think about Kevin naked. I have to work with him.”

  A pink tinge crept into Millie’s pallid glow. “You burst in on a man in the bath?” She smiled at Lightfoot, so Luis suspected her scandalized look was more for show than true disapprobation.

  “Aye. We’re dead, my friend. Why bother with social niceties? I can show you some amazing things if you’ll allow it. There’s a whole amazing world out there, a world of laughter and delight, if you want to see it.”

  Millie seemed to straighten up, just a bit. “I can’t leave though.”

  “Ye can if ye’re with me.” Lightfoot offered Millie his arm. Then he remembered something. “I couldn’t bring yer gun, as it’s got too much iron. Yer friend Alex sent a phone.”

  Millie stared at the cell phone Lightfoot produced from a pocket in his frock coat. “That’s a telephone? Without wires?”

  “Oh, Miss Millie, wait until you see what I have to show you.” He tossed Luis the phone, and the pair disappeared.

  Luis was alone.

  He checked the phone. He could have predicted the lack of signal before he saw the screen. At least he could use the phone as a flashlight. And Lightfoot had gotten his message through. Donovan knew he was out here, at the very least. He wouldn’t give up on Luis.

  It took three hours to get the list of people who’d showed up at the courthouse to observe the trial of Santo Gelens. At first, Donovan was impatient. Then he saw just how long that list was, and just how much legwork had already been done on it.

  The FBI was more than competent to conduct this investigation. Donovan needed to remember that.

  The vast majority of people in the gallery that day turned out to be witnesses, waiting patiently to give testimony. “None of them seem to have been prepared for Luis’ testimony to have gone on as long as it was.” Kevin scrolled through interviewers’ notes. “According to the father of Sarah Bengtsson, one of the victims who is still unaccounted for, he figured Agent Gomes would testify for about an hour. ‘His testimony was gripping, and it was good. The jury seemed to be into it—but a day and a half in and we were still on the prosecution’s questions. We hadn’t even gotten to cross-examination yet.’ Yeah, in cases like this the prosecution loves to throw Luis up there to kill them with facts. He could have been up there for days. Cross could have been quick, or it could have been a week. I can’t imagine anyone involved with the trial who knew what to expect would have had anything to do with it.”

  Alex wrinkled his nose and glanced over at Donovan. “I don’t know. Um . . . back when we were working together, he told me about a case where a witness was abducted before cross-examination specifically to trigger a mistrial.”

  Donovan knew exactly why Alex had been so careful with his wording. Donovan could be jealous and boneheaded. There wasn’t room for jealousy now. “Did it work?”

  “Sort of. They tried the defendant for conspiracy to commit murder. Given that it was in Texas, it got him put on death row. So, all in all, it wasn’t a very effective strategy. Desperate people aren’t always the most logical, and criminals never think they’re going to get caught.” He grimaced and reached for his bottle of pain medicine.

  “Maybe not the kindest example?” Kevin cringed.

  “We know he’s alive.” Donovan couldn’t make himself look up. “At least for now. We need to consider all the facts. What about the parents of the victims? I can see where they might be mad that Luis hadn’t found Gelens before he got to their kids. It’s the wrong choice, but remember back when Luis and I had that first case together? I thought my mom was going to shoot him when I got hurt.”

  Kevin’s face darkened. Donovan figured he was embarrassed. No one had come out of that serial killer case looking good except maybe Captain Lightfoot, who was a serial killer himself.

  “Yeah, I thought so too.” Kevin straightened up. “Parents can be irrational. All but one set of parents can be accounted for—”

  All three of their phones rang at the same time, echoing off the still-new walls of the town house and waking Tria up from her nap. The three-legged cat jumped and yelled at the noise as the three men groped for their phones.

  Agent Holcombe turned out to have called all three in a kind of conference call. Her voice was tense, exhausted. It had been a long day for her too, Donovan remembered, and it was only going to get longer.

  “Agents, and Lieutenant Carey. I’m sending a link to your accounts. I want you to watch it and then get back to me right away.”

  She disconnected the call.

  Donovan glanced at the others. Their faces had drained of all color—not difficult in Kevin’s case, but impressive in Alex’s. Holcombe wasn’t usually this terse, so whatever had come through must be pretty negative.

  He turned on the TV and flipped through the inputs until he got to the input from his laptop. Kevin raised an eyebrow, and he squirmed a little. “Luis likes to watch soccer. But, like, real soccer, not MLS. So it’s just easier this way.”

  “No judging.” Kevin gave half a smile, but it looked a little weak. “It’s working for us now. If it helps us get him back, I’ll even sit back and watch soccer with him.”

  It was the work of a minute to get to the link in the sea of Donovan’s emails and open it up.

  The link went to a video, which Donovan had expected. The woman staring back at him from the other side of the camera had peroxide-blonde hair and feverishly bright-blue eyes. Her face was frozen in a tight, unmoving smile. Her cheeks and her lips both looked artificially plump, which added to the impression of a botched plastic surgery.

  Pity rose in Donovan’s chest. He wasn’t going to sit there and judge women for getting whatever surgery they wanted. The pressure on women, from all kinds of sources, to maintain a certain appearance could only make a botched surgical result worse.

  Then the woman spoke. “By this point, you’ve probably noticed that your golden boy, Super Special Agent Luis Gomes, didn’t make it back from his little lunch break. I’m sure you’ve worked yourselves into a frenzy getting all upset about it. I mean the way that lawyer bitch made it sound, this guy is the second coming of Christ or whatever, but all I can see is some dude who thinks he’s hot shit.

  “He’s not. He’s just shit.

  “He’s shit, but he’s shit doing a job. I’m not interested in hurting a dude who’s just doing a job, you know?”

  Donovan forced himself to breathe and to focus. The speaker hadn’t identified herself yet, but she was telling them plenty just by speaking. She had one of the worst Boston accents Donovan had ever heard, coupled with the rasp of someone who’d been smoking at least two packs a day for a decade at a minimum.

  Donovan couldn’t tell if she was standing or sitting, but her background was a grimy brick wall. He couldn’t hear much in the background.

  The apparent kidnapper continued. “You fuckers are probably going to want proof that I’m the one who did the deed, right? I slipped him some special K in his water at lunch. Dumbass was too distracted to pay attention. Some hotshot agent. And then when he passed out right in front of the courthouse, I was waiting in my ambulance.”

  The camera moved, showing a legitimate EMT’s uniform.

  “You can get away with almost anything in this thing, I’m telling you. So anyway. You’re probably wondering what I want, since people don’t go kidnapping federal agents for fun.” She stared into the distance for a moment. “I mean, I could. He’s got a nice body, but as it happens, I’m taken.

  “Which brings me to why I’m making this call. These charges against Santo Gelens are bullshit. He didn’t do anything to anyone they didn’t end up wanting and begging for. If a couple scenes wound up going too far, so what? Can you think of any other industry where you arrest the CEO if a worker happens to bite it in an industrial accident?”

  The woman curled her lip as best she could and rolled her eyes. Just like that, Donovan found any sympathy or pity evaporating.


  The woman continued. “Be serious. A dude drowned in the water storage tank in Braintree. His kid followed him in and followed him into hell. Did anyone blame the CEO of the company, or even their supervisor? No. So why is it my Santo’s fault if some stupid kid croaks during a movie? Make it make sense.”

  She snapped her fingers. “See? You can’t. Now, I’m sure you’re going to want proof of life.”

  The camera changed, showing Luis strapped to a gurney. He was unconscious and covered in vomit. While the camera continued to film, he made a gurgling sound.

  “I know you’re going to need to make arrangements and stuff. The wheels of justice move slow and all that horseshit, so I’ll be in touch tomorrow at noon with a way to make the exchange. I know I don’t need to tell you what’s going to happen to Barfing Boy here if you decide keeping my Santo locked up is more important than getting him back?” She held a gun up in front of the camera.

  “And don’t you worry. He won’t be escaping in this lifetime. I’ve got enough ketamine to put down twelve agents, permanently.” She wiggled her fingers at the camera. “Ta!”

  The camera went dead.

  Donovan’s blood turned to ice in his veins. “Get Holcombe on the line.” His voice sounded harsh even to his own ears.

  Kevin rushed to obey. He didn’t object to taking orders from Donovan. His face had gone gray, his jaw set into a grim line. Alex sat up straighter, swaying but determined.

  Kevin found a way to get Holcombe on the screen. She looked terrible. Dark circles ringed her eyes, emphasizing the washed-out look of her skin. If Donovan didn’t know better, he’d think she was one of Luis’ ghost friends.

  “So you’ve watched.” She closed her eyes for a second. “I need your thoughts.”

  Alex spoke up. “The kidnapper isn’t insane, ma’am. She’s completely amoral, but she’s sane. She knows what she’s doing, and she planned this carefully.”

  “That’ll be very helpful when we put her on trial.” Holcombe glared at him. “The charges will depend entirely on whether we find Gomes alive or dead. Did you find anything in that video that will give us clues about her location or identity?” She seemed to notice Alex for the first time. “And go change that bandage before it gets infected.”

  Donovan cleared his throat. He liked Alex, and Luis had been friends with him even longer. Luis wasn’t here to run interference for Alex, so Donovan would have to do it. “The EMT uniform seemed to be legitimate, and she referred to the ambulance as being hers. It’s a lead to follow up on. We know the name of the ambulance company. If we can get the names of employees who might be missing, we should be able to compare it against the list of people at the trial.”

  Kevin nodded quickly. “Luis mentioned, when we spoke on the phone, that he’d noticed someone at the trial who was giving him the creeps. It’s not much to work with, but it’s something.”

  It was more than something. It was a good cover for Luis managing to get them information about the kidnapper from wherever he’d been hidden. Kevin was a genius.

  “Excellent. What else can you tell us?”

  “She’s local. I’d say Chelsea if I had to guess.” Donovan ran his tongue against his teeth. “Smoker. Age is hard to figure because of the work she’s had done, which was botched. There might be a paper trail for the bad surgery, but it would take too long to track that down to be useful in locating Luis. If she’s not there when we find him, that’s something else.”

  “She’s got him somewhere with brick walls.” Alex spoke up. “It looks old and not well kept. Also, she’s someone with access to a large quantity of ketamine.”

  “All right. Good job. Keep hunting. I’ll be in touch when I find anything. Donovan, you’ve got access to RMV records, right?”

  Donovan nodded. “Yes, I can get into records from the Registry of Motor Vehicles if I need to.”

  “Perfect. You can cross-reference gallery visitors against Chelsea residents past and present. Let me know if you find anything.” Holcombe ended the video call.

  Donovan opened up the Registry’s records. “Let’s get on it.”

  Kevin gave him a quizzical look. “I guess I expected more . . . explosive rage.”

  Donovan ground his teeth together. “Oh, the rage is there. But it’s not getting Luis back. We know Luis is alive and awake. We’re going to find him. And if I find that . . . person . . . you’ll see enough explosive rage to last for thirty years.” He stood up. “Come on, Alex. Luis would kill me if I let that wound get infected.”

  Chapter Six

  For half a minute, Luis resented Lightfoot for taking off with Millie and abandoning him to his own devices here in the dark with the rats. He was still in danger, damn it. When he listened to the thoughts going around in his head though, he gave himself a little shake.

  Luis was an adult, and Lightfoot couldn’t do much besides sit there with him and scare the rats away. Millie was an adult too, but she’d been through a lot of trauma and had been locked away for nearly a century as a result. She deserved the opportunity to see how the world had changed. And Lightfoot, bless him, recognized it.

  And hell, if Lightfoot and Millie found something they liked in each other to ease the burden of eternity, Luis would have to be a much worse person than he was to want to block it just because he was afraid of a few rats.

  The skittering started up just as soon as Lightfoot left. Luis took a deep breath and pushed the fear to one side. He wasn’t going to get anywhere if he sat here and blubbered like an infant. His dress shoes might not offer much protection from razor-sharp rodent teeth, but they were better than nothing.

  Hyena Lady had brought him down into this place somehow, and she’d done it on a gurney. Luis was a sizable man. Sure, there were women out there who could haul an unconscious man of his weight around by themselves. He wouldn’t pretend it wasn’t possible or that Hyena Lady might be one of them. She’d had to ask for help getting him onto the gurney though, and she apparently wanted to keep him alive. She wouldn’t want to risk hurting herself or killing him by manhandling him through an abandoned facility like this.

  So—gurney. That meant he needed to avoid the door with the stairs. It wasn’t hard to figure out which one that was, thanks to the phone Lightfoot had brought him. He had two other doors to consider, neither of which appeared to lead to the outside world. He had to pick one of them.

  The one to the right felt better to him. He wasn’t sure why at first, but when he looked closer the one on the left had an older lock mechanism that seemed to be rusted shut. The one on the right seemed to be a more modern door, which meant it had been opened more recently.

  It was too dark to see tracks, as of a gurney being wheeled through the doors. He could have used the flashlight on his phone, but he didn’t want to waste the battery. Fortunately, logic was on his side here. Luis had definitely been brought through these doors.

  He closed his eyes for a second and regretted it as soon as he did. The skittering drew closer, brushing against his filthy dress pants again. He fought against a scream and kicked at the push mechanism on the door. After a second, it gave.

  He had no choice other than the phone’s flashlight to see in here. It was even darker than the main “treatment” room. No windows, however small, lit this corridor. He fought down a wave of panic, and then he closed the flashlight. He had a good sense of the space now, and he needed to conserve his resources.

  He slid slowly, like time was a thing he didn’t have to worry about anymore, over to the right. A familiar scent tickled the back of his throat. This corridor was blessedly free of the skittering of rats too. Even if he couldn’t smell the ghosts, the lack of rats would have been a big clue.

  Of course, he could smell the ghosts. Lucky Luis.

  The walls down here were damp, and they felt like old drywall as he groped his way along them. His mind’s eye saw them as being a kind of dingy yellow, the way they’d been in any of the dozen neglected secure faciliti
es he’d had the pleasure of visiting over the course of his career. He wasn’t sure why he assumed this corridor led to secure rooms. There wasn’t any logical reason to make that assumption, but the presence of spirits was a big hint.

  The first door he came to yielded pay dirt in the form of confirmation and a huge wave of cognitive dissonance. The physical door had fallen across the frame, hanging on by a bent bottom hinge only. A residual image of the door lingered where it had been, looking more like an old-fashioned iron-barred cell door than the comparatively modern door with a large Plexiglas window that had existed when the place was abandoned.

  The ghost inside was male, hairy, and nude. He curled his lip and spat at Luis when he noticed him. Maybe it was the suit, destroyed though it was.

  “I’m not here to hurt you.” Luis looked around the room—or cell, depending on what one wanted to call it. Whoever had decided to “treat” the man in this way hadn’t even given him a toilet, just a bucket. His gorge rose, but he fought it down. He couldn’t afford to lose any more fluids. “What’s your name?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “What are you in for?”

  The patient laughed, a wild, inhuman sound that showed his rotten teeth. Luis couldn’t tell if his teeth had been rotten before his death or not, but they made a stark contrast to the white of his jaw.

  Then the patient reached into the bucket, pulled out a handful of filth, and grinned. “Boom.” The mess in his hand ignited.

  Luis jumped back before the flaming shit could hit him. It landed against the wall, providing real light and leaving char marks before it dissipated.

 

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