No Justice; Cold Justice; Deadly Touch

by J K Ellem

  “When we’re done with you, we’re going to pay old Daisy a little visit,” Billy said to Shaw.

  “Bring her back here, to the shed. Got another video camera all set up for that one,” Rory added.

  Billy slipped out a cell phone from his pocket with his other hand and held it up for Shaw to see. “I’ll just let Daisy know Callie is coming too.”

  Shaw looked at the phone in Billy’s hand as he thumbed a text message. He realized it must be Callie’s cell phone. Billy had taken her phone and was sending fake texts to Daisy, leading her on.

  “You know I had her back in high school,” Billy said without looking up. “Prom night, senior year.”

  Shaw could feel his anger rise. He thought as much. The way Daisy had reacted to Billy. The comments made by Taylor Giles in the basement.

  “Little whore wouldn’t put out, so I had to make her see my way of things,” he laughed as he tapped on the screen. “She soon learned, after I roughed her up a bit. She had it coming, you know.” Billy looked up and shared an evil smile with Jed and Rory. They both chuckled.

  “Some call it rape. I call it a lesson in discipline.” All three Morgan brothers laughed. “Now it’s Jed and Rory’s turn to teach Daisy McAlister some discipline. I’m just going to watch while they do her. You know? Keep it in the family like. I like to share everything with my brothers.”

  Billy sent the text and pocketed the phone.

  They moved towards Shaw, their backs to the ATVs, their shadows falling across Shaw as he pushed away from them along the ground.

  “Jed, Rory hold him down,” Billy said, bringing up the hunting knife. “I need to cut away his pants first.”

  Shaw heard it first, a suppressed puff, a faint expulsion of sound like a spit ball through a drinking straw.

  The high-velocity bullet went into the back of Billy’s right shoulder, punching a neat dime-sized hole through his anterior deltoid. It went in clean, but came out messy. The .338 Lapua Magnum round was overkill, but she preferred it that way. Better to shoot once, be certain, leave a mess.

  Billy took another step before he realized that most of his front shoulder was gone.

  He dropped the knife, but stayed upright and did what any normal person would.

  He turned around and looked behind him.

  It had the desired effect.

  Jed and Rory turned as well, to the only direction the shot could possibly have come from.

  They were perfectly lit, standing dumb as deer in the headlights.

  Three more suppressed shots, left to right, an easy natural sweeping arc, hitting them each dead center, bridge of the nose, precision shooting.

  Head shots. Dead kill. No chance.

  Jed, Rory and Billy dropped like puppets with their strings cut.

  Shaw could only look on in disbelief. In a split second the Morgan family tree had been pruned. Permanently.

  The darkness behind the ATVs moved and the silhouette of a woman materialized like a wraith.

  Shaw raised his hand, shading the glare from the headlights.

  She walked around the front of the three ATVs and the light hit her in full. She was tall, lithe, and moved with grace and supreme confidence, maintaining her feminine poise in a world where men typically did what she had just done.

  All black tactical clothing. Black gloves, boots, blackened face, raven black shoulder-length hair tied in a ponytail for practical reasons. Black compact sniper rifle in her hands, a German-made DSR-1, lightweight, with silencer and night-vision scope.

  Shaw just gaped at her.

  Two obliterated attack dogs, three dead Morgan brothers, the reason standing in front of him.

  What the hell, he was going to die anyway.

  Shaw said, “Halloween is still a few months away.” He grimaced as he got to one knee, hands raised. It hurt even to breathe, let alone talk.

  The woman didn’t smile. Two emerald green eyes stared at him from black camouflage face paint. She looked down at the bodies of Billy, Jed and Rory Morgan. She kept the muzzle of her rifle trained on Shaw without having to look at him. If she could hit a dog running flat-out in the dark, across undulating ground at three hundred yards, then killing a man on the ground ten feet away wouldn’t be an issue. She just needed to flex her index finger a millimeter and Shaw would be added to the body-count.

  Shaw knew she wouldn’t answer the first obvious question, so he asked the second obvious question that came to mind.

  “Why?”

  She looked back at Shaw, battered and beaten.

  Her eyes narrowed like she was deciding how much to say. “The girl. They weren’t supposed to touch the girl.”

  The woman had crept up behind the three Morgan brothers while Billy was telling Shaw everything. She had heard it all. They were told not to harm the girl, just spook her a bit. But they had taken it too far and the woman had orders to make sure no harm came to Daisy McAlister. She had to intervene. They were dumb-ass murdering rapists that she would have killed for free anyway.

  The dogs were a separate matter. She had been watching the Morgan compound from a distance and had seen Shaw being led outside the fence to where the three Morgan brothers were standing with their ATVs. She had watched them let Shaw go and then the dogs were brought and soon after they were released after him. He had no chance. She retreated back towards the McAlister ranch but kept an eye on proceedings. While she was tracking Shaw through her night vision scope as he stumbled across landscape, she could see that one of the attack dogs was closing in on him. As she watched, the dog suddenly stopped, sniffed the air then turned its head towards where she lay perched on a small rocky ledge.

  She didn’t know they were going to use dogs. If she had, then she would have washed three times with a fragrance-free soap and not worn any deodorant or body-spray. Maybe even set up a bait decoy to draw the dog in.

  The dog must have picked up the faint trace of her, and was deciding whether or not to follow the new, stronger scent. So she put a bullet in its side before the dog made up its mind.

  She hated attack dogs. They were vile, vicious creatures bred for killing. So she cut its throat as well just to make sure the thing was dead. That gave her some pleasure, made it more personal with the dog’s owner.

  The woman lowered her rifle slightly. “I don’t have to provide proof-of-kill,” she said, looking at Shaw. “It’s not a requirement for you.”

  Shaw was perplexed.

  “I don’t like what happened here,” she continued. “It’s none of my business. I don’t ask questions. But you are part of my business. I was paid to make you disappear.”

  Shaw felt a tightening of his gut and raised his hands a little higher. “Who paid you to kill me?”

  The woman shook her head. “You don’t seem to understand. I was paid to make you disappear. That’s what I do. So disappear.”

  Shaw cocked his head questioningly, but she answered him before he could ask.

  “You have twenty-four hours to leave, disappear, never come back. Return to the McAlister ranch if you must, but do not set foot again on the Morgan property. It will be taken care of. ”

  There was a back-up plan. Her employer always had a back-up plan. Jim Morgan had his chance to resolve this, but he couldn’t control his three sons. So her employer had no choice but to instruct her to intervene.

  She looked down at the three corpses. “I’ll tell them I started early on my next assignment.” She looked at Shaw. “The girl will be safe. But you won’t be, if you’re not gone in twenty-four hours. Leave town. If you return, I will kill you. I have a reputation to keep.” She had never failed an assignment, but she looked at Shaw with a mutual respect. She had seen his file. Like all her assignments, she was always given a meticulously researched dossier on all her targets.

  Her hand went behind her waist, unclipped a trauma pouch and tossed it to him. “Don’t go to a doctor or local hospital. It will raise suspicion. You will find everything you need in that to
recover quickly. I have a spare.”

  The trauma pack landed just in front of Shaw. It contained everything to treat wounds ranging from a simple infected laceration to a full chest gunshot. Antibiotics, insulin, adrenalin hyperemic, halo seals, CAT tourniquet, including special military-grade steroids to aid a fast recovery.

  “But first,” she said. She slung her rifle over her shoulder, stepped forward, and bent down. Taking Shaw’s hand in her own she said, “Lay flat on the ground.” Shaw did as he was told. He knew what she was going to do

  “Thank you,” he said. There was no time to inject anything into his shoulder, he was just going to have to bear the imminent shock.

  “Don’t thank me. It’s purely business and your business here is concluded. Leave and don’t return.” She stood up, placed her foot on his shoulder, pushed her weight down on it and slowly rotated the arm to the angle she wanted.

  She gave a nod to Shaw. “Ready?”

  He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and nodded.

  45

  The heavens opened and the rain fell in cold, solid sheets. Daisy’s phoned pinged, but she didn’t hear it over the downpour. Someone was coming towards her, a shape through the curtain of rain.

  She raised her rifle and took aim, her finger on the trigger. The sky flared with lightening.

  There was a loud crack and thunder exploded overhead.

  Then Shaw hobbled out of the darkness towards her.

  She lowered her rifle when she recognized it was him, slung it over her shoulder and started running, catching him just as he was about to fall.

  “Christ, what happened?” she yelled.

  Shaw put his arm around her shoulders, grateful to take the weight off his swollen ankle. “We need to keep going,” he grimaced in pain. “Get away from here… back home.”

  She shone the flashlight on him. He felt ice-cold, his body shivering, his face drawn. Streams of water cascaded off his head, turning pink from a deep cut above his eye, before running down his chest and bare torso, his skin pale, bruised, drawn tight, his ribs showing.

  Daisy pulled off her anorak, wrapped it around his shoulders and held him close.

  Shaw went to sit down, but Daisy dragged him upright again. “No!” Daisy screamed. “You need to keep moving, I need to get you back to the homestead or you’re going to die of exposure.”

  “Callie,” he mumbled. “Your phone, it’s not her.”

  Daisy tried to make sense of what Shaw was saying, but the rain beat down with such ferocity that she had to yell as another flare of lightening cut across the sky, and a clap of thunder boomed directly overhead.

  “Callie, what about her? Where is she? Does Billy have her?” Daisy was desperate, wanting answers.

  Shaw was disorientated, he looked around wildly. He had gone another mile thinking he could make it without any meds, but the cold overhauled him and now hypothermia was setting in.

  “Here,” he said, thrusting the small nylon pouch into her hands. “Open it,” he slurred. He was chilled to the bone. The rain had brought a sudden drop in temperature. His teeth started to chatter.

  Daisy took the pouch, unzipped it. It opened up like a clam. It was packed on each side with an array of medical supplies: small bandages, auto injector pens, field dressings, foil packets, shears, all held neatly in place in layered pockets and Velcro bands.

  “Quickly.” Shaw fumbled through the contents, his fingers almost numb, and found what he was looking for: an auto injector. He removed the pen-shaped object, pulled off the safety release with his teeth, spat it away and pressed the end hard against his thigh and pressed the button releasing the spring-loaded syringe.

  He felt an instant surge of warmth and energy coursing through his body.

  He gave the spent injector to Daisy to put back in the pouch, he didn’t want to discard it—he wanted to leave behind no trace of himself or any evidence.

  Shaw took a deep breath and felt his energy reserves kick in from the meds.

  They still had a distance to go to get back to the ranch, but Shaw knew he could make it with Daisy’s help.

  “Your phone, I need your phone,” Shaw said. “We need to save Callie.”

  “Where is she?” Daisy said distraughtly. She pulled out her phone, saw the last text, and deleted it.

  The rain started to ease, the storm moving away.

  “You need to make a phone call. I’ll tell you the number. Tell the person who answers that you have a message from Ben Shaw. Say my name. Tell them the address of the Morgan ranch. They’ll know what to do. Tell them it’s urgent. They need to contact the Sheriffs Department, not the Hays local police. Tell them people are dead and more will die.” Shaw spoke rapidly while Daisy dialed the number. “Tell them there’s a woman held hostage in a shipping container on the Morgan property.”

  Daisy looked at Shaw in horror.

  “It’s okay, she’ll be safe for the moment,” Shaw said. But he didn’t tell her it was because the three Morgan brothers were dead, or that she and Callie were going to be the brother's next victims had they lived.

  Daisy made the call, following Shaw’s instructions.

  A woman answered after two rings. At first the woman on the line seemed confused, then Daisy told her a line, like a code, that the woman understood, to verify the caller. Daisy told the woman the information, stressed the urgency and ended the call when she was done.

  “Let's go,” he said, leaning on her again.

  Daisy took his arm, steadied him, and they set off in the direction of the ranch.

  * * *

  The Ellis County Sheriff officers were the first to arrive, a convoy of five squad cars from Hays. Lights blazing in the predawn darkness they descended on the Morgan Ranch and were none too happy about being greeted at the entrance by a private security force armed with automatic weapons.

  Since the Sheriff’s department had a county-wide jurisdiction compared to the local police, the Hays police officers who were amongst the guests could do nothing but stand aside and watch as the sheriff’s deputies made their way to the shipping containers and demanded that they be opened.

  Jim Morgan was all smiles and very accommodating—until they unlocked the third shipping container.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  Inside they found a young woman, Callie Wilson, a waitress from the local diner at the gas station who had been missing for three days. She was chained to the inside wall and was left with nothing more than a water bottle and a steel bucket to urinate into.

  The entire Morgan property was immediately placed in lock-down. No one was allowed to leave including the Mayor and several high-ranking State and county officials. Paramedics were called and then, forty minutes later, the FBI rolled in from the closest field office and things got a whole lot worse for Jim Morgan and his guests.

  Callie Wilson was relatively unscathed except for mild dehydration, but she was bundled into the back of an ambulance and taken to the local hospital.

  Computers, laptops and external hard drives were seized that would later reveal that Jim Morgan and a number of his guests were involved in an extensive underground network of political corruption, money laundering, tax fraud and business extortion.

  Just after 9:00 a.m. a second team of FBI investigators found a large collection of hard drives hidden in the living quarters of Billy Morgan in the sprawling Morgan homestead. The FBI estimated in total the drives contained over five hundred hours of high definition recordings showing more than forty women being violently raped, tortured then murdered over a number of years. All three Morgan brothers were featured in most of the videos together with local police officers and county officials, most of them married with children.

  Forensic testing of the computers would later also reveal an entire online community who had access to a secure “members only” website run by Billy, Jed and Rory Morgan, where live video streaming was conducted on pay-per-view basis. Special live requests were being sent by the member
s for a certain fee during the live streaming of victims all in real-time.

  A thorough search of the Morgan compound failed to locate the three Morgan brothers, Billy, Jed and Rory Morgan. However a wider search of the property was made and three bodies were discovered in an old tin shed on the property where three ATVs had also been found. The bodies had been trussed up to a rafter, and each had been killed by a single head-shot. Upon closer inspection the FBI found that the genitals of each brother had been removed and stuffed into their own mouths.

  Based on the information provided in the phone call by Daisy McAlister, a second contingent of Sheriffs Deputies arrived at the McAlister ranch by mid-morning. Daisy had simply relayed what she had been told to say by Shaw, that another area of interest was the old pit mine that was located on the McAlister property.

  When the FBI came up to the McAlister homestead, Daisy greeted them and invited them inside. She escorted them down into the basement where Taylor Giles was still handcuffed. He was promptly taken into custody when Daisy told the agents that he was one of Jim Morgan’s corrupt associates who also took part in the systematic rape of young women abducted by Jim Morgan’s three sons.

  Taylor Giles was subsequently identified in three of the rape videos taken as evidence by the FBI.

  The FBI agents thanked Daisy, but said that they would be returning the next day to question her and search her property as part of the widening investigation. She thanked them as well and said she would fully co-operate with any search and investigation. She told the FBI that it was just her, on her lonesome on the ranch, as it had been for years.

  Later the police would search the old pit mine where they would make the gruesome discovery of three bodies of women in various stages of decomposition at the bottom of the mine. Post-mortems and DNA tests revealed that one was a young woman called Annie Turnball from Michigan, who had gone missing six months ago.

  In the weeks that followed the raid on the Morgan compound, the FBI would descend on all business locations and property holdings of the Morgan family across the entire state to conduct a thorough forensic examination of all their business dealings going back more than twenty years. Bank accounts would be frozen, assets would be bonded and all property would be seized pending a full federal investigation.