Tertiary Effects Series | Book 2 | Storm Warning

by Allen, William

  “Yeah, I figured they killed her as soon as Bailey took Maddy out and put her on the road.”

  Mike came over then, interrupting our grim conversation, and lugging a long plastic Pelican rifle case.

  “What you got?”

  “McMillan Tac-50,” Mike replied with a wide grin that nearly split his head in half. “That damn safe is full of high-end weapons. And drugs. Lots of drugs.”

  “Take the weapons, leave the drugs,” Pat suggested, but I shook my head in the negative.

  “We have to take it all. Strip the house. In fact, we want the weapons off the bodies back in the bunkhouse, too. Remember, we need to make this look right. I’d check the other barn, too.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, with things as bad as they are right now, are the authorities going to look that close?” Wil asked, finally joining the whispered conversation. He was still looking back down the hallway, carbine shouldered.

  “If we give them what they’re looking for, then I think we have a chance of getting away with this,” Pat chimed in, finally revealing his own thoughts. “This is like a black ops hit, and Bryan is trying to give us plausible deniability.”

  Turning his attention to me, Pat continued, his voice still pitched low. No sense in letting the prisoners know what we planned.

  “You want to ask them anything? We can, if the clearance doesn’t take too long.”

  “No better chance,” I agreed. “Just be safe and take your time. I think I can keep an eye on these two.”

  “Try to stay on your feet, it will make your breathing easier for now,” Pat advised, adjusting the carry sling for his M4 as he slid over to join Wil at the door.

  “Thanks, Doc. I hope you take my insurance,” I teased, then a thought struck me.

  “What the heck did that deputy hit me with? And how the heck was he so fast? God bless, I’ve never seen anybody draw and shoot so fast.”

  “40 S&W, and that was Deputy Stertevant,” Mike said, emerging from the safe once again. Now he was carrying a weird-looking shotgun and several boxes of shotgun shells.

  “Is that…”

  “Yeah, Keltec KSG-25,” Mike replied smugly. “Just like the one I wanted. Marta said I had plenty, so I didn’t get it.”

  “Well, looks like just the thing to use as a doorknocker,” Pat quipped. “Just be aware we might find more friendlies in the house.”

  “Got it,” Mike acknowledged, feeding shells for the tubes into the port at the bottom of the receiver. “Let’s go find some more bad guys.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Clearing the house took less time than I thought it would, but then, all three men had experience doing this chore. I heard them as the trio went from one door to the next, minimizing their time exposed in that scariest of positions known as ‘fatal funnels’, or doorways. In my tactical training with Andy, I had some idea of what this involved, but nothing like these three veterans who I knew were drawing from a deep well of knowledge.

  The rhythm of breaking wood and glass continued for several minutes, and I listened intently as I stood guard over the two bound officers laying on the nice Persian rug by the sheriff’s desk. At least these two slugs had stopped wriggling so much, clearly tired out from their fruitless exertions.

  Trying to make best use of my time, I swept the room with a glance towards more than just a simple threat assessment. The walls featured the standard ‘I love me’ wall with Sheriff Bernard Landshire posing with various local and state officials in the time-honored grip and grin position. Nothing of real interest there, except I’d seen the same pictures on display in the sheriff’s office, but I did notice the absence of a picture with the current governor.

  On the folding tables that took up so much space, I found much more telling information. These tables were being used as stands for a series of detailed topographic maps for the entire county. These maps had been laminated and I could see cryptic grease pencil notations on several points. I would need to study these further at a later date, but I found several key highway intersections marked, as well as a few locations highlighted that appeared to be wooded areas, or vacant lots. Seeing a large swath of greenery illustrated on one of the maps, I recognized the shape of a block of land representing the thousands of acres owned by the paper company. The timberland that bordered our farm.

  The wooded area was free of any stray marks, but there was a series of letter notations over the original plot of land I’d purchased, as well as the Bonner property next door. On the other side, I saw almost as many letters and abbreviations neatly inscribed over the Husband property. Further on, I saw more letters written in over the Lovett’s and Fitts’ lands. The more I studied the maps, the more notations I could make out. On the next map, I saw another high-resolution map, and this one depicted the city of New Albany. Here the script of letters nearly overwhelmed the available space, but I began to see certain letters repeated in a specific pattern.

  After puzzling over the maps, I managed to figure out a few of the meanings based on commonly used letters and abbreviations. The key was Harry Ludlow’s fuel distributorship, as I was able to decipher the code for gasoline and diesel. After that, the map started to make more sense. This was a graphic depiction of available resources in the county.

  “Wow,” was all I could say. Someone had spent a lot of man-hours preparing a treasure map that would make any group of looters sit up and salivate. I went back and looked, ignoring most of the letters and looking to the numbers depicted, and I felt my blood turn cold as I checked my farm. I saw the number ‘5’ with an arrow and a question mark, and a smaller ‘4’ with a circle over it.

  I counted. Me, Mike, Marta, Nikki, Pat. That was five. Four children. Not only did it list where to go, the map also gave a base number of defenders one might expect. Defendants and non-combatants. One ray of potential sunshine was their numbers didn’t include the new additions. This was still way more information than I wanted out there about our family, and I resolved to take these maps back with us to the farm. We wouldn’t use them to raid our friends and neighbors, but I wanted to see what else was depicted in these maps. Maybe find out what was significant about those empty woods being noted in such a way.

  I thought for a second about trying to force the sheriff into interpreting the code for me, but I realized it would take longer than Sheriff Landshire had to cover all that territory. No, stick with the easy stuff and get his computer passwords first. Even getting those might be a chore. I knew none of us had the stomach for real torture, and if it took cutting off the man’s fingers to get the desired information, I realized I didn’t need to know it that bad.

  “Bryan!”

  The call caught me off-guard, and I despaired at having my name shouted in such a way, then I remembered that no matter what else happened, Landshire and Haines wouldn’t be around to provide testimony against me, or any of us.

  Thumbing the press-to-talk, or PTT switch, on the personal radio we were all wearing, I replied calmly.

  “Use the radio, M. And calm down.”

  “We found, uh, Cece,” came the half-hearted response. I couldn’t tell how much of his disappointment was from forgetting the radio and how much stemmed from the young lady’s condition.

  “Status of subject?”

  “Pa…P is treating her right now. I’m headed your way with W.”

  “Got it, and out.”

  As I took up position to watch both the hallway and the two bound prisoners, I saw Mike stomping down the stairs and steaming towards me like a raging bull elephant. Even though Mike was an inch or two shorter, he’d still continued to carry thirty or forty more pounds more than me on his frame. In the past, that extra bulk might have been mostly fat, but hard work and a changed diet meant that even though Mike would never be a swimwear model, he was a lot more muscular than he’d been in the past. That was clearly reflected in the positively massive metal footlocker he was carrying across one shoulder like it was nothing.

  Brin
ging up the rear, Wil Huckabee looked like a mini-me version of Mike, his normally placid features twisted in a rictus of barely controlled rage. He was walking with a large laptop tucked under one arm, leaving both hands free to carry his M4 at the low ready, scanning for trouble.

  Mike had to twist the three-foot-tall footlocker off his shoulder to get it into the office, and he carried the box over to the nearest of the card tables to slam it down on top of the defenseless map on display there. The metal legs of the folding table bowed a bit but continued to hold up the added burden for the moment.

  “Careful with the maps,” I said carefully, not wanting to draw Mike’s ire but feeling the need to lay down the rules about preserving these treasures. “They’re going with us.”

  “That God-forsaken, filthy…”

  I tuned out the majority of Mike’s scatological tirade, but I picked up enough of the highlights to go over and deliver a swift kick to sheriff’s ribs. That resulted in a renewal of the earlier curses and threats, but Wil Huckabee stepped past me, around the screaming sheriff, to slam his booted foot into the bound deputy’s nether region instead.

  Deputy Haines erupted in his own cacophony of screams at that point, but the pitch was decidedly elevated. I looked between the two hard-faced men and gave a questioning shrug, then spread my hands. That little motion reminded me of my painful ribs and I couldn’t avoid a weak grunt.

  “That little fucker,” Wil Huckabee declared, a shaking finger pointed at Deputy Haines, “had Cecelia tied up in that upstairs bedroom. He’s been…assaulting her and taping it. He was also whipping her while he did it.”

  “Whipping?”

  That verb resonated with what Maddy had said earlier, as well as something from deeper in the vault of my memory. Something I wasn’t supposed to know, but accidentally found out anyway.

  The fourteen-year old girl that Rudy Polinsky was accused of kidnapping and raping had suffered more than the general public ever knew. In addition to being violated almost constantly for days while blindfolded, she’d also been subjected to several vicious beatings. Using a short whip, or a riding crop.

  I only came upon the information by accident, when I was helping Butch Kaminsky move some files. Butch had been Rudy’s lawyer, and he’d had access to some of the medical records pertaining to the victim. She’d been raped, sodomized, and beaten by her attacker with his fists, but the worst damage had been administered with a short, leather whip or riding crop. She’d been whipped across her back, legs, and breasts with the crop, and by the time her abductor dumped her on the side of the road, her cuts and abrasions had become infected.

  “You. Fucking. Asshole.” I punctuated each word with a kick of my own, giving Deputy Randy Haines a firm understanding of my opinion on the matter of abusing helpless women.

  Looking over at Mike, I saw him standing over the now-open footlocker. He looked nauseous from whatever he was seeing.

  “You okay, bro?”

  “You need to see this,” Mike said, finally turning away from the contents of the box and waving me over.

  I don’t know what I was expecting. A collection of human eyeballs preserved in formaldehyde, maybe? Instead, it was a crate full of DVDs, all labeled with names and dates. There must have been hundreds of them, and the dates ranged from ten years ago as the oldest up to the latest, which was six months ago. The names were arranged together, and they ranged from a single date up to one name with six dates attached to it. One name in particular stuck out. Vanessa. I didn’t know her last name, but that was the first name of the little girl who’d been abducted. The one lashed with a whip.

  “Landshire?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Mike growled. “This was in the room where they were holding the girl. Cece. She was unconscious, but there was a video camera set up. I think the room belonged to Randy Haines.”

  “So, what? Landshire knew it was Haines, but he covered it up? Why would he do something stupid like that?”

  “I don’t know,” Mike huffed in disgust. “Why don’t we ask him?”

  Looking over, I caught Wil’s eye. “How bad is she?”

  “Remember my earlier qualms about what we’re doing? Consider them banished. Anybody who contributed to that, I’d set them on fire myself.”

  “Good to know we’re on the same page. Now let’s get them boys up and talking. I’ve got some questions, and all the sudden I feel like the gloves are coming off.”

  Part of that might have been posturing on my part, but honestly I could sense my earlier ‘no torture’ ban crumble like a Prius in a car crusher. Before the sun came up, we would know everything. And I even had a plan for that.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Cecelia Robinson had been a pretty young lady, and she would be again, but for the moment, she resembled zombie. She stood tall, near to six foot which would’ve had her towering over her blonde friend Maddy. She was slender of build, like a runner, but the appropriated sweat suit she now wore looked to be hanging off her bent frame. Her eyes were bloodshot and hazy, and the loose bandages around her wrists still leaked a little blood as she stood there with her arms extended.

  “Thank you,” Cece said, as she lowered the pistol, smoke still trailing from the barrel. She looked down at the slide locked back on the Colt 1911 and back up at Pat. Then down at the corpse that into a second ago had been Deputy Randy Haines.

  “You only gave me one bullet?”

  “I didn’t want you to get any ideas, ma’am,” he said evenly. “Sometimes, when people go through what you’ve endured, they get the urge to…hurt themselves. We didn’t want that.”

  “Yeah, fuck that. Maybe I wanted to shoot him again. Maybe in his pathetic little peepee this time.”

  “Oh, I like her,” I said with a touch of humor in my voice.

  I’d been questioning Landshire and Haines for four hours before we’d reached this point. For the first two hours, I’d worked alone as Pat was busy treating the recovering Cece upstairs, in a bedroom that was not set up as a dungeon, while Mike and Wil loaded up one of the unchipped, meaning no GPS, ten-wheel delivery trucks parked out by the barn.

  Mike had simply backed the truck up to the front porch and commenced to loading boxes and crates. We were taking all the guns, all the ammunition, and all the drugs. We also found stacks of cash, gold coins we would take, along with anything else we thought might be considered loot for the three dead deputies we were busy framing. Mike even made a point of accidentally spilling some of the cocaine on the office floor to give any evidence guys something to find.

  After Cece was up and moving, gingerly, Pat brought her downstairs. She would not go in the same room where we were holding Haines, what we’d found was the game room off the main foyer, but she took up a perch on the cow-hide couch in the corner of Landshire’s office and thus had a front row seat for his interrogation.

  The floors in the office and game room were covered with blue plastic tarps liberated from one of the trailers stashed in the big barn. Seemed the sheriff’s boys were hitting delivery trucks coming through the county and taking the choice items while passing the rest along through their black market connections.

  Ethan found three fifty-three-foot-long container trailers parked in the barn, along with six dead bodies dumped in a pit behind the barn, and there may have been more underneath. He’d only needed to follow his nose to locate the dump site. Since he knew two of the drivers, he was all-in for hurting the sheriff the next time he needed prompting. Against my better judgement, we let Ethan cut off one of the fat fucker’s fingers with a pair of garden shears. After the screaming faded, he went back out in the rain with a solemn order to the rest of us to make the fucker suffer. Some people really shouldn’t be allowed to do things like that, I thought as I used a blowtorch to cauterize the stump. I didn’t tell Ethan the torture implements had been mainly for show, and the sheriff was reacting more from the threat than the actual use. Actually, just hitting him with a Tazer a few times usually di
d the trick.

  After that, I continued with my questions until I was all out of things to ask the broken man. Once he started talking, really, he seemed to want to get some of his crimes off his chest. He had been busy, both before and after Rockfall. Mainly drugs and human trafficking before the disaster, and the hijacking and flat-out murder after. He was strangely reticent about certain topics, like the abduction and rape of Vanessa Comeaux, until we discovered that Randy was his illegitimate son. Then his fall from grace started making more sense. He’d been hanging out with family, after all. Sheriff Landshire might not have been the rapist, but he’d been an enabler, cleaning up after his boy’s crimes.

  Turns out, surprise, Randy Haines was a monster. A kidnapping rapist, a pedophile, and all-around psychopath. His favorite targets included young African-American girls. Like Vanessa Comeaux. He was careful about not leaving any DNA behind, and even faking up some things to muddy the waters. That’s why he’d left his previous job, that his daddy got for him, in Beaumont. He was a serial rapist working as a beat cop, but when the heat got to be too much, Landshire broke down and hired him for the Albany County Sheriff’s Department.

  Once he copped to Haines and admitted their relationship, then he started giving us more of his recent crimes. We thought the killings of our neighbors, the Fitts, was the tipping point for his boys. An unsanctioned attack. In reality, they’d been hitting homesteads and travelers for weeks, but just outside the Albany County line. Byron Fitts was on the list because he’d made the mistake of letting it be known in the community that he was a coin collector. That was enough to get him on the list. We got listed, as I feared, because we were out-of-towners and suspected preppers.

  He also confirmed who in his department was just a bent cop, and who had graduated to participating in the murderous attacks. We’d gotten most of them either at the farm or right here, in addition to removing one of the three Sherwoods brothers who’d acted as his conduit to the county’s criminal underbelly. I’d killed George Sherwood in the bunkhouse, but that still left Keith and Matt to settle accounts with later.