“I know. I just need some time to think it out.”
“Sir . . . I’m a bit scared here. It’s kind of freaked me out being knocked out and all.”
Hunter stood up and looked down at the young man. “Son, I need you to keep things together for a couple of days. That’s it, that’s all I’m asking for.”
Perkins dropped his head for a moment, then met Hunter’s eyes. “Okay. I will see to your family. How is Mrs. Hunter?”
“Mad as hell. She’s going to want blood. Thankfully, she took a sedative. I need you to get her away, now.”
Mike moved toward the door. “Got it.”
Hunter slouched back into his chair and drained the last of his drink. He reached down beside his desk and lifted his leather briefcase, opened it, and placed the old revolver into it. He eyed the half-empty bottle of bourbon for a moment, but thought better of it. He needed a clear head.
His cell phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number, but the same number had rung through earlier in the day. He’d given orders that he was not be disturbed. He wanted to hit the decline button, but something told him that the call just might be important.
“Hunter.”
“Mr. Senator, this is Detective Rick Ramirez of the Lee County Sheriff’s Department. Do you have a minute?”
“Detective Ramirez, who the hell gave you this number?”
“I understand your agitation, sir, and I apologize in advance. There is no such thing as an unlisted number for the State of Florida. We have our ways.”
Hunter paused. “Fair enough. You’ve got one minute to tell me what you need to tell me. I am a busy man.”
“Absolutely, sir. This won’t take a moment. I believe, Senator Hunter, that your intern, Jackson Walker, has been set up in order to get to you. My partner and I believe that he is innocent. We would like to talk to you about some of our findings. Maybe you can shed some light on what’s taken place over the past week.”
Hunter paused. “Well, Ramirez, you’re lucky that your timing is good. I’d like to hear what you have to say about Jack. I can’t meet you at my home; I think I’m being watched. I’ll call you back at this number in half an hour and tell you where we will meet.”
“I appreciate it, Senator.”
****
Rick pulled up behind the idling Town Car. He turned to Lani. “He said that he wanted to go for a drive with us, that there were things happening, that he didn’t trust anyone, that he was afraid someone would see him. We’ve got half an hour with the guy, then we’re to bring him back to this same spot where his driver will be waiting.”
“Okay Rick,” Lani said as she placed the digital recorder under the seat. “I don’t know how the hell you pulled this off.”
“I’d like to say that it required skill, but I have the feeling that we just might have lucked out. The department wants to know what he has to say as soon as possible.” He looked at her. “Is everything all right? You look a bit pale.”
“I’ve just got a few personal things on my mind. I had a call from someone in my family last night,” she lied, “and it’s put me into a bit of a mood.”
“You can’t pick your family . . . Look, he’s getting out.” Rick hustled out of the front seat to greet the senator.
Hunter stepped out of the car and walked to the back of the cruiser. Rick helped him into the back seat. “Watch your head, sir.” He smelled of alcohol, but he didn’t appear to be drunk. Rick turned and flipped open his wallet to show the senator his ID and badge. Lani did the same from the front seat.
“Thank you for meeting us, Senator Hunter. I’m Detective Lani Green from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. This is Detective Ramirez from the Lee County Sheriff’s department.”
Hunter looked Rick in the eye. “Like I said, your timing was good. Please drive.”
Rick pulled away from the curb. He saw the senator’s car pull away at the same time and make a U-turn in the opposite direction.
Lani turned to face Hunter. “Mr. Senator, I won’t beat around the bush, we are pressed for time. We are investigating the killings that took place nearly a week ago in Clewiston. As Detective Ramirez mentioned to you on the phone earlier, and as I’m sure you know, your intern Jack Walker is the prime suspect in those killings.”
Hunter nodded. “Go on.”
Rick interjected. “Like I said earlier, we don’t think he did it.”
“What makes you think that?” Hunter said.
Lani spoke. “He doesn’t fit the psychological profile of a cultist. We intercepted one of Walker’s cell phone calls to a friend and tracked down the recipient. The call came shortly after the killings occurred. His friend, after we threatened him with incarceration for aiding and abetting, indicated that Jack was seeing a girl who was a Satanist.”
“Sarah Courtney.”
“You know this woman, sir?”
“If you’d done your homework, you’d know that she worked out of the Republican office down in Naples . . . Of course I knew Courtney.”
Rick spoke. “Lani is a cult specialist, sir. And yes, we have done our homework.”
“Good to know. You now have twenty minutes.”
Lani continued. “His friend Perry indicated that his infatuation with Courtney led him to attend some of the regular functions of the Brotherhood of Set, of which she is a member. The church has deep roots in South Florida, at least from what we can tell. There are similar sects throughout the country and around the world, and they exert influence in places that you would never suspect.” Lani paused. “When I say that Walker doesn’t fit the profile, I mean the profile of a Satanist. He does, however, fit the profile of someone the Satanists might target in order to press their interests. His friend Perry indicated that he was about to split with Courtney, as things were going a bit too far for his liking. They are clever when they bring you into their fold. Jack was probably asked to do something on their behalf and has been framed in doing so.”
Rick interjected. “Do you know why the cult would have wanted to frame Walker? I suspect that it’s tied in with your political dealings, Mr. Senator.” Rick pressed his point. “I believe that they are putting pressure on you for some reason. I haven’t been able to piece together the whole puzzle, but I suspect that you might be able to help us out.”
Hunter was quiet for a few minutes. His face had turned grey. When he spoke, his voice seemed hesitant, slightly shaky. “My better instincts tell me that what I am going to say . . . is the correct thing to say.” He looked out the window for a few moments. “I hadn’t planned on doing this for a few days.” He hesitated. “Can I take you into my confidence?”
Rick quickly replied, “Of course.”
Lani deftly moved her hand under the car seat and turned off the digital recorder while Rick navigated through a left hand turn.
“I was told not to contact the authorities.”
Rick inadvertently let the car slow down and the driver in the car behind them lay down on his horn. Rick sped up. “Mr. Senator, I assure you that you are doing the correct thing. Now. I am going to pull over so we can take some notes. Do you mind if we record what you have to say?”
“No I don’t, but I have some conditions. I am telling you only because you are closer to the truth than you might think, and I don’t know how to move this thing forward without creating an even bigger fiasco. I don’t want to jeopardize the safety of my family. These people have made threats.”
Rick pulled into a side street and stopped the car in front of a large furniture warehouse. “You’re being blackmailed?”
Hunter nodded.
As she pulled a pen out of her jacket pocket, Lani slipped off the safety on her Glock semi-automatic pistol.
“If I confess to the authorities—and this of course means you—they have threatened to kill my family, and let the cat out of the bag about my affair with my assistant Phyllis.” Hunter let his head fall back against the headrest. “I don’t mind confiding in you as lon
g as nothing is said until I have the chance to resolve matters in my own time.” He looked down at his feet. “Yes, I have been implicated in the Jackson Walker mess, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. They have pictures of me openly socializing with the national head of the Church of Satan, Mason Matye. They have pictures of me having sex with Phyllis. The other night I was invited to a dinner where I was broadsided by the Satanist bastards. They have killed Phyllis and threatened to implicate me unless I back off on the Clean Water Bill.”
Rick exhaled loudly. “Christ!”
In one swift motion Lani pulled the Glock from its holster and placed the muzzle of the gun against Rick’s head. Rick was too shocked and caught off guard to react. “You were told not to contact the authorities, Senator Hunter.” Lani squeezed the trigger as Rick moved to knock her arm away. The bullet exited the back of Rick’s head, shattering the side window of the car. He slumped against the door. She turned and pointed the gun at Hunter. “Don’t make a sound!” Hunter put his hands up.
Lani pushed the security locks, making sure that Hunter couldn’t get out of the car. The back seat, once locked down with the security mesh between the front and back seat, was impossible to get out of. She decided that cuffing him on her own might be risky; she decided to leave him be. She then reached over Rick’s body and opened the car door. With some difficulty, she unbuckled Rick’s seatbelt and pushed him out the door, his body falling in a heap beside the car. She pulled herself out of the passenger’s seat. With her jacket, she removed as much blood, bone, and brain matter as she could from the driver’s seat and side door panel.
Lani didn’t have much time; soon someone would pass by. Ramirez’s body lay in a fetal position wedged under the side of the car. Lani pushed him up against a chain link fence next to a large clump of tall weeds. Using some road debris, she hid the body from anything but close inspection. She knocked out the rest of the glass and slipped in behind the wheel. Within minutes, the car was headed south down Highway 41 toward Naples.
“What the hell have you done!” Hunter yelled.
Lani lost it. “If you had just done as you were fucking told, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“We?”
“Yes, we. You realize they most likely won’t let either of us live.”
“Who are they?”
“The Satanists, that’s who. The goddamned devil worshipers, remember? The ones we have been talking about.”
****
The call she’d received the night before ran through her head again, his voice calm and measured with its French inflection:
“Lani, it has been some time since we last talked—years, in fact. You made a deal with the devil, my dear, and it is time to pay up. I made sure that you were the one who would be called in on the Walker case. We need you to keep an eye on Senator Hunter. We have been applying some pressure on the man. We need to know that if he decides to speak to the police, he will be intercepted and silenced. Like you, I am doing an old friend a favor. I need to know that I will not be disappointed . . . Lani.”
Hunter broke Lani’s trance. “Whatever it is you think you have to do, it doesn’t have to happen. You can drive us back to my house We will sit down and talk this through.”
Lani sat quietly for a moment, concentrating on the road. If she did what Hunter was proposing, the Satanists would hunt her down. They had their ways; they still had their claws on her. She feared what they might do to her even more than incarceration. She wished that she hadn’t had to kill Rick, but it had to be done. Rick was a straight shooter, a by-the-book cop. He would have reported what he’d heard from the senator. She’d hoped and prayed that Hunter would hold his silence, that she wouldn’t have to do what she’d just done.
“Mr. Senator, I don’t think your situation puts you in a position of power anymore. You have been implicated with the Satanists, and in fact, probably had an affair with one of them. You’re just as screwed as I am.” As the words left her mouth, she wished she hadn’t said them. She wasn’t thinking clearly.
“So you’re one of them?”
Silence for a moment. “Yes, I guess so, yes. I spent some time in deep cover with them many years ago. I had no intention to participate in their practices, but they have their ways of drawing you in, even if you don’t want to, much like what probably happened to Walker. They are like the Mafia. Once you’re in, you’re in for life.”
“So you’re going to take me to them and they’re going to kill both of us. That makes a hell of a lot of sense.”
“Nope, I’ve done what was asked of me, so hopefully they will still have some use for me. You . . . you should have kept your fucking mouth shut. They were only asking for more time before you flood their farmlands. Something could have been worked out. Now be quiet. I’m not in the best of moods. I just killed a police officer and kidnapped a state senator. Nope, just don’t say another fucking word or I’m going to turn around and put a hole in your forehead.”
Hunter was a caged animal, his face a deep shade of red, his arms folded across his chest. “You are delusional if you think they’re going to let you off the hook. You’ve been manipulated as badly as I have, as badly as Jackson Walker.”
24
The Delivery
JACK STIRRED. HE’D BEEN drifting in and out, but this time something was different. There was a weight upon his chest and a tickling sensation. Was it sniffing? Christ! He tried to push whatever it was off of him, but his numb hands were painfully tied behind his back. He could feel its claws digging into his chest as he struggled. He rolled to the left, away from the smelly pile of rags that his head rested on. The animal fell off him, its long skinny tail slapping him in the face as it scurried off into the recesses of the dark room. There were spiders and cockroaches, but it was the rats that scared the hell out of him. He feared falling asleep to awaken to his flesh—or worse, his eyes—being eaten by the hellish creatures. He’d been able to fend them off, but they were becoming bold and he didn’t know how much longer he would be able to keep up the battle.
Jack had lost track of how long he’d been captured. It might have been two days, maybe three. He could hear the crickets, and there was a sliver of moonbeam threading its way through the cracks between the planked walls of his cell. He could hear snoring from the adjoining room. He shook his head to stay awake. He didn’t want to go over the events of the past weeks and months as he’d been doing for the past few days. Worry was beginning to drive him nuts. He had to let go of what he could not control. For now, he would try his best to stay alive.
He cursed his naiveté. He’d been too trusting of people. Sarah, Buck, Henrietta, his father. He began to shake with fury. Damn them all. If he were to somehow survive, he would change. He laid his head back down on the kerosene-scented rags and closed his eyes for a time. Without intending to do so, he fell into a dreamless sleep.
“Wake up, you lazy bastard.” Jack was ejected from his slumber by the hard end of a boot to his ribs. His body clenched in agony. He looked up. It was daytime, he could see the silhouette of the pucker-faced Jimmy standing over him.
“Wake up, you lazy bastard,” Jimmy repeated. “It’s time to feed you to the gators.” He pursed his misshaped lips. “The woman phoned. Says she has no need for you. Lucky bugger, time to put you out of your fucking misery.” Jimmy laughed. “Yep, time to put you out of your fucking misery.” He reached down and dragged Jack by his feet.
Halfway out of the room, Jimmy reached to his belt and pulled out a fillet knife and cut the rope that tied his hands to his ankles. “Can’t drag you that way, you bugger . . . you lucky fucking bugger.” His face formed that horrible pucker that Jack had learned to dread. He resisted the urge to struggle—just yet. Jimmy dumped him in the middle of the large room. To his right he could see the blond man sitting at a small table, impeccably dressed, reading a newspaper and sipping from a tea cup. He turned casually towards them. “Just leave him there for the time being. We’ll have to wait unt
il nightfall. We have another one coming in, a senator no less. Special instructions to follow, my dear brother. They should be here in half an hour.”
Jimmy frowned and nodded toward Jack. “Thought you said we’re gonna kill him?”
“Patience, little brother. We must follow the demands of the old woman. She’s the one paying us, and she wants him alive for the moment. Leave him there, I want him to look lively when she gets here.”
Jack’s fury continued to mount. His eyes found the metal mortician’s table a few feet to his right. How many people had they tortured and killed? They needed to be found out. No, a prison cell would be too good for them. He would kill them both if he got half the chance.
****
Jimmy and Isaac stood out in front of the shed, its wide, sliding door open to the hot, dusty driveway. They watched the black sedan roll into the yard. A blonde woman stepped out of the driver’s side door. She was probably in her mid-to-late 40s and had a gun holster strapped across her chest. As she moved toward them, they could see bloodstains on her shirt and the left side of her face; her hair was matted.
“Mr. McFadden?” Her voice was gravelly with a hint of shakiness.
Isaac stepped forward, offering her his hand. She shrugged it off.
“Isaac McFadden, ma’am.”
Her eyes held a wild look, darting left and right as if she were looking for something or someone. “They said you might have another car for me?”
The car began to rock slightly from side to side. They heard muted yelling from within.
“You’ll have fun getting him out of there; he’s been going nuts in there. He’s not tied down but he is locked in. Here’s the keys.” She handed them to Isaac.
“So this is the fucking senator?” Jimmy said in a gleeful burst.
She nodded slightly and turned away quickly.
Isaac motioned towards the shed. “Would you like some tea? It might take some time to get another car.” He motioned toward the sedan. “We can let him bake in the sun for a time. It will make him more docile.”
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