Say No More

by Rose, Karen

Mercy checked her reflection one last time. Hair, check. Makeup, check. No bags under her eyes, courtesy of a decent night’s sleep. She tugged at the collar of her turtleneck. Hickey hidden, check.

  She joined Rafe on the sofa, where he had his laptop set up. ‘It’s not my fault. I told you to be quick.’

  He smirked at her. ‘Like you didn’t enjoy it, too. Oh, here’s the warden. Right on time.’ So she was blushing when Rafe answered the Skype call. ‘Warden Shipley. Thank you for calling me,’ he said, his smile businesslike and definitely not blushing. ‘I’m Detective Sokolov, Sacramento PD. This is my friend Mercy Callahan. She’s a forensic investigator with New Orleans PD but is here as a civilian.’

  Okay, so he did blush a little at ‘friend’. Mercy gave the woman a nod, mildly mollified. ‘Warden Shipley.’

  ‘Hello,’ Shipley said. She appeared to be somewhere around sixty years of age, her silver hair pulled back in a severe bun. ‘I don’t have a lot of time, but your query caught my attention. Why are you asking about Aubrey Franklin and his associates, Detective?’

  She already knew, Mercy thought. The warden was being cagey. And then Mercy had to bite her lip to keep from giggling at her own pun. Cagey. Prison warden. You’re just nervous. Calm down or you won’t get any information. Plus, she’s ignoring you. She knows who you are and that Aubrey Franklin’s brother connects to what’s been happening this week.

  ‘Because his brother has been trying to either abduct me or kill me for the last four days,’ Mercy answered before Rafe could. ‘He’s left a trail of bodies from New Orleans to Santa Rosa, with victims in Reno and Sacramento as well. Surely you’ve read about them?’

  The woman’s smile was faint, but respectful. ‘Yes, I have. I wondered if you were planning to lie to me, so points to you. What does Aubrey Franklin’s incarceration in the eighties have to do with his brother’s murder spree now?’

  ‘We think Harry Franklin’s had help,’ Rafe said, squeezing Mercy’s hand out of camera view. ‘We were wondering if you could tell us about anyone Aubrey associated with while he was a guest at Terminal Island.’

  Shipley frowned. ‘Help? From whom? You mean from other inmates currently incarcerated?’

  ‘No,’ Rafe said quickly. ‘From former inmates who were released after serving their time.’

  Shipley visibly relaxed. ‘Oh good. Current inmate involvement would be a nightmare of paperwork. I can tell you what I remember and I also have notes from my old boss, who’s since passed away. He was the contact of record when the FBI investigated thirty years ago, after Aubrey Franklin robbed his second bank. My boss was old-school thorough and kept copies of everything he said or sent to the FBI. I’ll send his notes when we’re finished here.’

  And when I’m satisfied that you’re not lying to me went unsaid.

  ‘Aubrey served fifteen years. He was barely eighteen when he was convicted of the first robbery in the early seventies. I remember his kid brother and his mother. They’d visit like clockwork, twice a month. The mother never believed her son had committed any crime, and the kid brother looked at Aubrey like he was Superman.’

  ‘And his conduct as he served his sentence?’ Rafe asked.

  ‘At first he was a belligerent ass,’ Shipley said candidly. ‘I was young and female and . . . well, I suppose you can imagine the comments I got from the prisoners. It toughened me up fast. By the time Aubrey was incarcerated I’d been working on my cell block for more than six months, and I just let his comments roll off my back. Besides, I never believed he was serious. He wasn’t into women my age.’

  Mercy felt the edge of anger licking at her control, because Gideon’s face flashed in her mind. Edward McPhearson, aka Aubrey Franklin, would have raped her brother if Gideon hadn’t fought back. ‘No, Aubrey was more into young men.’

  Shipley nodded. ‘I got that impression. Did he hurt someone when he got out?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mercy said. ‘But that’s not my story to share.’

  Shipley was quiet for a few seconds, studying Mercy. ‘I understand,’ she finally said. ‘Aubrey got the reputation of a fighter. He worked out and bulked up. Anyone who laid a finger on him got their fingers broken. He broke one inmate’s neck, but he didn’t take credit for it and another inmate took his punishment – thirty days in solitary.’

  ‘Who took his punishment?’ Mercy asked.

  ‘Guy by the name of Waylon Belmont.’

  Mercy tried hard to contain her excitement, but inside she was jumping up and down. Yes.

  ‘Did he have prison tats?’ Rafe asked. ‘Maybe a teardrop for that broken neck?’

  Shipley nodded. ‘He did.’

  ‘Did Waylon get extra time for the murder?’ Mercy asked.

  ‘No,’ Shipley said. ‘Waylon was never formally charged.’

  ‘Because your lives were safer with the asshole dead so it got covered up,’ Rafe said flatly.

  Shipley shrugged and said nothing.

  Mercy approached from a different angle. ‘Do you know why Waylon took credit for a murder he didn’t do?’

  ‘Now, that’s an actual question,’ Shipley said. ‘Waylon was a troublemaker. He spent a lot of time in solitary. Aubrey’s “alleged” murder of the other inmate happened when Waylon was in the hole. It was his final day for that infraction. He came out of the hole, found out what happened, said he did it, and went back in.’

  ‘So the staff knew he hadn’t done it because he was in solitary at the time.’

  Another shrug from Shipley. ‘Likely. I wasn’t in a supervisory position at that time.’

  Rafe drew a breath and Mercy could feel his impatience. She gave his hand a squeeze this time. ‘Warden Shipley,’ she said, acting on a sudden hunch, ‘did Aubrey break the inmate’s neck to protect someone else?’

  ‘The inmate’s neck was broken, yes. I know this because I saw it. It was the first time I’d seen a murder on the job and it’s stuck with me all these years. I’ve always believed that Aubrey did it, but you won’t find any documentation on either of those things.’

  Rafe glanced at Mercy, appreciation in his eyes. ‘Who was the inmate trying to attack at the time that Aubrey “probably” broke his neck?’ he asked, turning back to the computer.

  Shipley took a full minute to check her notes. ‘Okay, here it is. The subject of the attack was Benton Travis.’

  Mercy fought off her disappointment. Not Herbert Hampton. ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Not tall, not short. Average guy. Brown hair. Wore glasses. Spent a lot of time in the prison library.’

  Pastor, Mercy thought, both relieved and energized. ‘Did he start a church there, by chance?’

  Shipley looked impressed. ‘He did. His nickname was Pastor.’

  Yes, yes, yes. Mercy had to fight to keep the grin from her face. Benton Travis. Now they had a real name.

  ‘What was Travis in for?’ Rafe asked.

  ‘Embezzlement, bank fraud, mail fraud, and forgery,’ Shipley answered, then narrowed her eyes. ‘Why?’

  ‘Do you have a photo?’ Mercy asked, ignoring the question.

  Shipley’s eyes narrowed further. ‘Quid pro quo, Miss Callahan. Why?’

  ‘Because he changed his name, then went on to form another church when he got out,’ Rafe answered. ‘From whom he embezzled. Then he disappeared. That was thirty years ago.’

  ‘Do you have a photo?’ Mercy asked again.

  Shipley nodded. ‘It’s in the packet of information I’ll send to Detective Sokolov’s email. It was a shot taken for propaganda purposes, basically. Benton Travis led services in the mess hall on Sunday mornings. We had a chaplain, of course, but the inmates liked “Pastor” better.’ She used air quotes. ‘We got a photo of them in prayer. We thought he was using those services to coordinate criminal enterprise within the prison walls, but we could never catch him doing any
thing illegal.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Mercy said, then remembered something. ‘Wait. Was Pastor married? Did he have a family who visited him in prison?’

  ‘No, but Waylon had a girlfriend. He met her when he was incarcerated. She was some kind of do-gooder. He had all these tats and she looked like she should be a student at an Ivy League school.’

  ‘Do you remember her name?’ Mercy asked.

  ‘Not off the top of my head. If I get a chance, I’ll ask my assistant to go to the tombs and get the visitor logs from that time frame. They haven’t been digitized, so it’s a pain in the ass to search them.’

  ‘That would be very helpful,’ Mercy said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Rafe added. ‘When can I expect that email?’

  ‘I just sent it,’ Shipley said. ‘I’m late for my next meeting. Signing off.’

  And the screen went dark.

  Rafe and Mercy sat quietly for a moment, and then Rafe kissed the knuckles of Mercy’s hand, still twined with his. ‘We have a name. Pastor’s real name.’

  Mercy smiled. ‘Yes, we do. Let’s see if we have a face. Can you check your email?’

  Rafe logged into his email. ‘She sent the photo separately. Nice of her not to bury it in that other megafile.’ He clicked it open and Mercy stiffened.

  There, filling Rafe’s laptop screen, were Pastor, Edward McPhearson, and Waylon. ‘Benton Travis, Aubrey Franklin, and Waylon Belmont,’ she murmured. ‘Their paths crossed in prison.’

  ‘Just like you figured out last night.’ Rafe tipped her face up and kissed her hard. ‘This is huge, Mercy.’

  She nodded numbly. ‘They were criminals the whole time. Criminals masquerading as spiritual leaders.’

  Rafe’s face softened in sympathy. ‘I’m sorry, honey. I got carried away. This is . . .’

  ‘Personal,’ she murmured. ‘Very personal.’ She gave herself a little shake. ‘Are you going to pass this on to Tom Hunter?’

  ‘Of course.’ He pulled his phone from his pocket and flinched. ‘Shit. I had my ringer turned off so I wouldn’t wake you up earlier. I’ve got twenty missed calls.’ He paled. ‘Oh shit. They’re from my mom and Damien’s wife.’

  Dread grabbed Mercy’s gut. She found her own phone on the coffee table, the volume turned down as well. Her stomach turned upside down, bile rising to burn her throat. ‘I’ve got six missed calls. All from Farrah’s mother.’

  Twenty-eight

  Dunsmuir, California

  Wednesday, 19 April, 11.45 A.M.

  Ephraim woke up still too damn tired for words. The nap he’d taken hadn’t been nearly enough, but at least his eyes felt a little less like they’d been scrubbed with fiberglass. The spot he’d chosen to stop was peaceful and pretty perfect, actually. Especially since he could rest for a while. It would take Mercy at least four hours to get here.

  But she would come, because he had leverage now. He glanced to the camper behind him with a triumphant grin. He had triple leverage now – one New Orleans best friend, one New Orleans police captain, and one Sokolov cop. The Sokolov cop might not still be alive, but Mercy didn’t need to know that.

  Damien Sokolov had taken a hard hit to the head when Ephraim had forced his car off the road and into a tree – ironically enough, not far from where Ephraim had killed June Lindstrom after she’d smuggled him out of the airport on Saturday night.

  Ephraim’s luck had finally changed. Once he’d lost DJ on the interstate, the rat hadn’t found him again, and he’d arrived back in Rafe Sokolov’s neighborhood with perfect timing. The house behind Sokolov’s didn’t have a view of the Victorian, but he had been able to see the flash of headlights through the gap separating the houses.

  Lucky once more, the headlights had belonged to a car that had been parked in the driveway. It was the car that belonged to one of the Sokolovs – Damien Sokolov, another cop. The car carried two other passengers – Mercy’s friends from New Orleans. Ephraim had followed, keeping a decent distance the whole way to the exit for the airport.

  Looked like the New Orleans folks had been going home. If Mercy had been with them, it would have been a perfect day, but he was still happy with his haul. The road from the interstate to the airport was lightly traveled that early in the morning. Not a single witness.

  Truly my lucky day. The little car had been no match for Burkett’s Escalade, the SUV shoving the smaller car off the road and into a tree with no trouble at all.

  The trouble had been getting the three passengers out of the wrecked car and into the back of the SUV. At least the huge SUV provided adequate cover for him to work, blocking him from view of anyone who passed by on their way to the airport. It had taken a bit of time to secure the passengers, all of whom had been stunned by the impact – or worse in Sokolov’s case. He had been fully unconscious when Ephraim had approached their car, his gun out, ready to shoot the men at the very least.

  Ephraim had been disappointed to see that Mercy wasn’t with them, but Dr Romero would serve as an irresistible lure. The Sokolov brother would ensure compliance from the blond bastard who’d become Mercy’s damn shadow.

  Holmes had been stunned enough by the airbag that Ephraim was able to stab the needle of one of Burkett’s prepared syringes directly into his arm, through the man’s shirt sleeve. Holmes had tried to fight Ephraim off, but the gun that Ephraim held in his other hand had kept the cop frozen in place. A minute later, the man’s head had lolled to one side, drawing a scream from the woman in the backseat, who’d apparently just woken up.

  Farrah Romero had come at him like a drunken wildcat, all hiss and no coordination. A gash on her head was bleeding and her pupils were huge. But a well-placed slap had her bouncing back against the seat. He hadn’t wasted any of the sedative on Romero – he could handle her with no problem. He’d bound her hands and covered her mouth with the same roll of duct tape he’d used on Sean MacGuire. Once she’d been secured, he slapped Burkett’s handcuffs on Romero’s fiancé, then sedated the Sokolov cop and bound him like he had Romero.

  Romero had walked to the SUV on her own power, his gun an effective motivation, but getting the two men into the SUV had not been fun. Sokolov was a big guy, but Holmes was even bigger. Both were heavy motherfuckers. Dragging them from the car to the SUV had caused Ephraim’s wound to reopen.

  He touched it now, the new bandage dry and free of blood. He hadn’t changed it until he’d transferred his passengers once again – this time to the honeymooners’ camper that he’d left parked in the state park when he’d gone to meet Burkett.

  He’d wanted to sleep then, but he hadn’t felt safe until four hours later. He’d driven north, past Redding and into the forest east of Dunsmuir. He knew this area. Eden had settled here once, in the early days. Mt. Shasta loomed in the distance and the sight left him feeling peaceful.

  He got out of Burkett’s Escalade and dragged in a lungful of the crisp air. He liked the city in small doses, but the air really was better here.

  A peek into the camper revealed that the Romero woman was awake and glaring hatefully, but the two cops were still out cold. He’d given them higher doses and had stopped to repeat the injections midway to his destination because he wanted them to stay asleep, but the woman he was going to need soon. She’d be the bait to draw Mercy to him. The men he’d keep in case anything went wrong. He’d be able to use them to bargain his way to freedom. Cops protected their own.

  Once Mercy learned that her friends were in danger, she’d fall into line. She’d do exactly what he said. And once she had, he’d get rid of his hostages and whisk her back to Eden in an hour and a half along roads that most people didn’t even know existed. Nobody would stop him from finally delivering his prize to Pastor.

  A buzzing in his pocket startled him. For a moment he panicked, but remembered he’d turned off Romero’s phone and the phones of the other two were
left behind. He dug for his flip phone and saw that it was Pastor.

  He debated not answering, but knew it was better to know what was going on than to show up in Eden unaware. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Brother Ephraim.’

  Shit. Pastor was using the mild voice and that rarely meant anything good. ‘Pastor.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Santa Rosa,’ he lied. ‘My mother is ill.’

  ‘Ah, so the doctor got in touch with you. I was hoping all was well. I’m sorry to hear your mother isn’t well. When will you be back?’

  Ephraim rolled his eyes. So much empathy. ‘As soon as I can. Is something wrong?’

  There was a beat of hesitation that made Ephraim straighten his spine in interest.

  ‘Perhaps. We may need you to bring back some surrogates.’

  Surrogate meant a body too mauled or decomposed to be identified. ‘Who went missing?’

  ‘Amos.’

  Ephraim blinked, genuinely surprised. ‘Did he get lost? He’s always out there looking for new trees to use in his workshop.’

  ‘We might have thought so, but his daughter is gone, too. We didn’t miss them until this morning. Amos told Sister Coleen that he and Abigail were sick, so no one bothered them all day yesterday. But this morning he didn’t show for chapel and Abigail didn’t go to school. Their home is empty.’

  ‘Shit,’ Ephraim breathed. ‘But if he’s on foot, he can’t have gotten far, even in a day.’

  ‘And that’s why I said we may need a surrogate. We’re hoping we find them. DJ is out searching.’

  And lying. DJ wasn’t looking for Amos. DJ is looking for me.

  ‘I’m stunned, Pastor.’ And Ephraim truly was. ‘Amos is faithful.’

  ‘I know. I was hoping you might know why he left, seeing as how you’ve been gone all this time as well.’

  Ah. That explains it. He thinks I helped him. Which was ludicrous. Ephraim didn’t help anyone except himself. ‘I didn’t know he was planning to run. I would have told you.’

  Unlike that prick DJ, who – either willingly or not – helped Mercy escape. Or Waylon, who let Gideon go free.