The Alex Troutt Thrillers: Books 1-3 (Alex Troutt Thrillers Box Set)

by John W. Mefford

  “They won’t let us go around?”

  “Doesn’t follow state highway procedure,” Nick said, using air quotes with his fingers.

  “Did you tell Farmer Brown that we have an urgent need to be at the penitentiary?”

  Nick slowly turned his head in my direction, rolling his eyes. “He said everyone in this area is in a rush saying they’ve got to get to the pen for something. Everyone, he said, throws around the term ‘life or death’ like it’s a parking ticket. He said it means nothing to him.”

  I could feel my jaw clench tighter, and I gripped the door handle.

  “Alex, you’ll just get your blood pressure up. They’ll clean up the carcass and let us through no sooner than their own timetable.”

  “I don’t have high blood pressure.”

  “I know that. I’m just sayin’.”

  As if someone had flipped the switch in the gray clouds overhead, a bevy of snowflakes descended from the sky.

  I sighed. “Winter. It never ends.”

  “Kind of like that relative who comes over for Thanksgiving, but ends up staying all the way until Christmas. And toward the end, he forgets he’s in someone else’s home and he starts walking around in his underwear, belching and farting whenever he wants, even if guests have come over.”

  I showed my teeth.

  “Yes, it was that painful,” Nick said.

  “Seriously? I thought you were just spinning a tale to pass time?”

  He shook his head. “Just be glad you don’t have an Uncle George.”

  I lost myself for a quick second in the white flakes, unsure if either of my parents had siblings. I’d only had a couple of brief conversations with my father since I woke up from my crash coma a couple of months back. And they had been rather superficial conversations at that. In fact, he’d slurred every fifth word, which made me think he’d been drinking—and it was ten in the morning.

  “Is he really that bad?”

  “Four of the last five years.”

  “Uggh.”

  “The only reason it wasn’t a perfect five-for-five was because two years ago he took a cruise with a new lady friend. It gave Antonio and me hope that we’d finally broken the cycle with Uncle George.”

  “Didn’t work?”

  “Hell no. He actually called us every day during the holidays, saying he missed us and vowing to never skip another holiday season in our home.”

  I forced out a smile as I gazed out the windshield. “I guess I shouldn’t complain about the weather.”

  “Eh,” he said with a slight shrug of his shoulders.

  After a few seconds of watching the snow build on the wiper blades, we slowly turned our heads and glared at each other until he broke the stoic standoff. “The long winters up here suck. Even being a New Yorker, I have to admit it. ”

  “Admitting it is the first step.” Mid-chuckle, my phone buzzed and beeped.

  “What’s up, Brad?” I put him on speakerphone.

  “Oh, glad we caught you. I thought you’d be in the middle of your interview with Cobb by now.”

  “Sidetracked.”

  “More like deer-tracked,” Nick said.

  “Huh?” he asked.

  “We’re in a standstill on Highway 15. Car slammed into a deer, so we’re just watching it snow for the hundredth time this winter.”

  “Winter sucks.” A pinched woman’s voice.

  “Gretchen?”

  “Yeah, she’s on,” Brad said. “Long night last night juggling a ton of other investigations, but we’ve made good progress.”

  “Practically tied at the hip, Alex,” Gretchen said.

  I could see her smile through the phone, and I smirked at Nick.

  “I have to admit, the rash of homicides on top of our current caseload caught us off guard. We haven’t been quite as responsive as we normally are,” Brad said.

  “It happens, but thanks for taking accountability.”

  “Look, I know you guys are in Lewisburg to try to figure out if there’s any truth to Cobb’s hint of having a female accomplice.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, Gretchen finally had some time to dig into those Rod Stewart lyrics.”

  “The ones Cobb started to sing last time we interviewed him,” I said.

  Ha-chew!

  “Sorry, I might be getting a little cold,” Gretchen said.

  I mouthed, Winter sucks, to Nick, then said out loud, “Working these crazy hours doesn’t help.”

  “I’m good. Anyway, I read through the lyrics about a dozen times. I tried to look at them from Cobb’s perspective—his life, the social and mental issues he’s been dealing with, and yes, as a murderer.”

  “And?” Nick said.

  Without saying a word, I waved my arm so Nick would see that traffic was finally moving. He threw the car into drive and we headed south on the highway. As we passed the patrol officer, Nick even gave him a friendly wave.

  Ha-chew!

  “Bless you, Gretchen.”

  “Uggh. After this call, I’m going straight to the grocery store to pick up every kind of cold medicine I can find.”

  Her high-pitched voice now squealed like Minnie Mouse.

  “Make sure you turn in your receipts to Jerry on an expense report,” I said.

  “You think he’d pay?”

  “He should. It’s hazard pay.”

  She tried to giggle, but her nose honked instead. “How embarrassing,” she said.

  Smiling at Nick, I said, “It’s fine, Gretchen. I’m interested in your research. The ‘Maggie May’ lyrics.”

  “Tissue?” I heard Brad say.

  Three obnoxious snorts, and the phone nearly rattled in my hand. “That’s a little better,” she said.

  Nick took the Ziegler Road exit, and we turned west, moving away from the West Branch Susquehanna River, although the windblown snow angled against our car, reducing our visibility. We were close to the penitentiary.

  “It was obvious to me that the lyrics were about a guy and girl, but no real theme hit home for me. Nothing that made sense in relation to Cobb. Not until I found an interview Rod Stewart gave about the story behind the song.”

  Another pause. The blowing snorts were shorter this time. Then I heard a deep inhale. Apparently, her nasal passages were completely blocked. I’m sure she wasn’t thrilled to share some of her grossest moments with Brad, the object of her affection. I felt for her.

  “Okay. The interview brought it all home for me.”

  “How so?” Nick asked, his hands at ten and two on the steering wheel.

  I thought I heard a giggle. “What’s up, Gretchen?”

  “Stewart said the song was based on a true story from his own life.” She cleared her throat. “He met a lady at the Beaulieu Jazz Festival and she...uh, took his virginity.”

  “Ha!” Nick called out. “Seriously? I had no idea.”

  “Most people don’t. In fact, it was sheer luck that the song ended up on his 1971 album named—”

  “Every Picture Tells a Story. I have it on vinyl,” Nick said.

  “That’s a humble brag,” I said.

  Gretchen pushed ahead. “His record label almost didn’t put it on the album. He and a partner had written the lyrics, but there was no music for the song. Finally, it got done, but it was originally on the B side of another song.”

  “The forty-five,” Nick said.

  “I feel like we’re getting a history lesson,” Brad said, adding, “in ancient history.”

  “Is he saying we’re old?” Nick said.

  “He’s saying you’re old.” I raised an eyebrow.

  “So...” Gretchen regained our attention. “I think Cobb was singing the song because it was about the woman who was his first.”

  “Interesting. Do we know if he has any Maggie Mays in his life?”

  “Actually, the full name, Maggie May, is never mentioned in the song. Stewart borrowed the song’s title from an old Liverpool folk song about a Li
me Street prostitute.”

  I watched Nick execute another turn, this one onto Heartbreak Ridge Road.

  “Wow, Gretchen. Helluva job. Thanks. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure I recall his case file having any information about a female in his life.”

  “It’s blank. No mentions of anyone named Maggie, nothing about a wife, no girlfriend at any age. I even checked in with the office of the assistant US Attorney, and they confirmed it. No women.”

  The wheels of the car slipped just a tad as Nick turned left onto Big House Circle.

  “So, we’re back where we started.”

  “What do you mean, Alex?” Brad asked.

  “Out of nowhere, Cobb mentions that someone else was along for the ride. A woman. Then he whistles this tune, sings a few lines. We run off, do this research, review his case file. Here we are pulling up to the gate, and I’m wondering if this is nothing more than a game to him. He knows about the murders we’re investigating, at least the first two. Being incarcerated, maybe for the rest of his life, he could easily get his jollies by toying with us like puppets.”

  “You think he knew that we’d be coming back to interview him?” Nick said, a single trench forming between his eyes.

  “He’s brilliant in ways we can’t imagine, Nick.”

  My partner pulled up to the front gate, and we watched a guard trudge through snow toward our car. “Should we just turn around and head back to Boston?” Nick asked.

  My eyes looked through the snow and studied the prison’s ominous façade, wondering what J. L. Cobb was thinking at that exact moment.

  Then, a knock on Nick’s window.

  “Alex, go or stay?” he asked.

  “Stay.”

  ***

  The moment the interview door opened, I could see this wasn’t the same guy we’d spoken to just three days earlier. He walked with a noticeable limp, his arm was in a cast, and his face was so beaten and bruised that I could barely see the whites of his eyes.

  “Are you okay?” I only asked to let him think I cared. Or did I actually feel some compassion for him, given his battered state?

  “Yeah,” he said in a solemn tone.

  Cobb sat in the scarred metal chair as the same two guards from our last visit chained him to the metal pole. The guards moved to their positions, one by the door, the other at the opposite end of the room. Unlike our prior interview, Cobb didn’t fidget, and he didn’t mumble indecipherable messages. He wasn’t rocking back and forth to the point where I could almost feel his brain buzzing with activity. He just stared at the wall, his injured face in a daze.

  I walked over to the guard and asked, “Is he on any medication?”

  “Nope. Even refused ibuprofen for his broken arm,” he said.

  “How did he break it?”

  He pursed his lips and shifted his sight from me. “Said he fell. That’s all I know.”

  I turned and locked eyes with Nick. We were both aware of the pervasive abuse throughout the prison system—corruption, drugs, violence, you name it. Typically, the inmates who’d yet to be convicted were protected from the rest of the population. Federal prison, though, provided more opportunities for inmates to comingle—convicted felons with those who had only been charged with a crime.

  Nick and I exchanged no words, but I felt positive we were both thinking the same thing: the guards had allowed Cobb to be abused. Either they had been paid off through any number of methods, or they simply agreed with the inmates’ fucked-up method for dealing out justice and turned a blind eye. He’d violated their skewed code of conduct. Cobb’s actions in the free world deserved punishment behind bars.

  Up until I’d met him, I would have probably led the charge to beat the crap out of him. I’d lost someone because of him. My kids had too.

  But now, after seeing how he’d regressed into something resembling a mute, my vengeful fury had subsided, replaced not by indifference but disgust. Disgust at the system more than any one person.

  I slipped off my suit coat and draped it over my chair, then anchored my arms on the back of the chair, eyeing him. He couldn’t be playing us, could he? The warden didn’t have a Hollywood makeup artist and set director working with the inmates to create a scene straight out of The Shawshank Redemption. The injuries were real.

  But so were the murders we had to solve—the number increasing on a daily basis. With Bruno Chappaletti no longer a primary suspect, our best hope was to get Cobb to open up about the ring murders. Before we left Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, we had to know if he had an accomplice. It was that simple.

  Yet I knew it would be anything but.

  “J. L., Agent Radowski and I are interested in learning more about your life.”

  He didn’t budge or blink his eyes.

  I continued. “Who are your friends? What did you do for fun?”

  Seconds ticked by, and then he finally blinked. But he said nothing. His lips didn’t move. I inhaled and thought about another tack.

  Walking to my left so I could see more than just his profile, my heels clipped to a stop about eight feet away from him. He had shades of blue around his eyes, mixed with other bruising that had a purple hue.

  “Do you have a friend named Bruno?”

  He didn’t flinch. Nothing. He just stared. Not defiantly, but more like he didn’t care. About anyone.

  “So you don’t know anyone named Bruno?” I asked with a slight edge to my voice. “How about a girl? Do you have any friends who are girls?”

  I waited a few seconds, but he acted like I wasn’t there. “The last time we were here, you mentioned another person, a woman, who worked with you while you took care of your business. What’s her name, J. L.?”

  Still no response. I looked at Nick, who shook his head, pressing his lips against his teeth. I could see he thought Cobb was a lost cause.

  I wasn’t close to giving up.

  “J. L., have you been wanting to get your hands on a packet of pepper?”

  His eyes shifted for a split second, then back to their set position of looking at the wall or whatever images danced in his mind.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Nick shift in his seat, his elbows on his knees.

  “J. L.,” he said. “How many people are you willing to let die? Five? Ten? A hundred? If you could swing it with your legion of killers in the field, would you like to see some type of genocide?”

  Cobb swallowed, then slowly turned his torso, his neck apparently stiff. He looked at the ground, but his eyes blinked several times, as if a switch had flipped on his brain. His lips parted, then they closed again.

  I traded a quick glance with Nick, glad that he’d poked the bear, but now hoping he’d let Cobb come around on his own.

  The silent room was interrupted by a single, sharp cough from the guard at the other end of the room. I looked at him, wondering if he was sending some type of signal to Cobb. A form of intimidation possibly? Was he concerned that Cobb might implicate those who’d beaten him? And if he did share that information, was the guard fearful that he might be included in the group?

  “The attorney showed up yesterday.”

  Cobb spoke. I released a breath. Now, we had to keep him talking.

  “What’s your attorney’s name?”

  His eyes looked up and met mine for an instant. Looking to the corner, he said, “It wasn’t my attorney.”

  “Whose attorney was it?”

  “Feds.”

  I tried to keep my expression blank, but it caught me off guard. “Assistant US Attorney Kasha Timmons?”

  He nodded stiffly, then shifted in his seat and he winced.

  I crossed my arms and bit the inside of my cheek, pissed as hell that her office wouldn’t have shared that information with us. “What did you guys discuss?”

  He ran a fingernail down his cast, then back up, his eyes studying the path. “Same questions you’re asking me.”

  “And what did you share with her?”

  “Not
hing.”

  I looked at Nick and realized maybe this had been a waste of time. One that could have been avoided had we’d been afforded the tiniest bit of professional courtesy. We were all on the same side, weren’t we? Then again, Timmons was a lawyer.

  “Nothing,” I repeated to myself, my eyes locking on the floor. I could hear air stream through my nostrils. I took in a breath, frustrated that Cobb wouldn’t open up or that maybe there was actually nothing to share.

  A phlegmy sound, and I held my breath.

  Lifting my vision, I saw Cobb sitting on the edge of his seat, seething and panting as tears welled in his eyes.

  “I...I was,” he gasped, his chest expanding more with each breath.

  I leaned forward. Nick rose from his chair. I even noticed the head of the guard at the opposite end of the room turn to look directly at Cobb.

  Without warning, Cobb screamed at the top of his lungs. The parts of his face not bruised glowed red, and veins bulged from his neck.

  “J. L., what is it you want to say?”

  He kept rocking and panting as tears streamed down his face.

  The guard moved toward Cobb with a hand on his billy club. I put up my hand like a stop sign, and the guard halted his position. He narrowed his eyes at me, and I got the distinct feeling he wanted to use his weapon on me.

  It wasn’t going to happen.

  I turned and faced Cobb. Turning down my volume and intensity, I said, “J. L., tell us what you’re upset about.”

  His panting continued for another ten seconds, and then it began to dissipate. He looked around the room, then found my eyes and glared at me.

  “Two nights ago, I was raped.” He swallowed back more tears, his breathing still labored.

  I closed my eyes for a second.

  “With a broomstick,” he said as his jaw muscles flinched.

  “Dear God,” Nick said, bringing a fist to his mouth.

  I wasn’t sure what to say. I couldn’t bring myself to say that I was sorry.

  “Tell me more, J. L.”

  He tried wiping his face, but he winced and stopped. The bruising must have been too severe. “It’s just like when I was younger.”

  “Younger? What happened?”

  “I was teased, beaten up for being different. And there was this one time...” His voice trailed off, his eyes going distant.