The Kid: A Suspense Thriller (A Reed & Billie Novel Book 3)

by Dustin Stevens

  “Oh my God,” Hendrix whispered, the life having seemingly bled from his voice. “Oh, my God.”

  “Yes,” Reed agreed. “And again, I do apologize for delivering the news like this. Obviously, a crime scene unit was brought in to search for fingerprints and forensics.”

  He paused just slightly, hoping the lifelessness he heard on the other end of the line would be enough to bypass getting berated. “Which means we can’t release the scene just yet. Is there somewhere your family can go for a day or two, just until we make sure the place is scrubbed clean?”

  A sharp inhalation found its way to Reed’s ear, so loud it brought an image of a man standing in stunned silence on the other end, the color draining from his face.

  “Somewhere to go? You mean...”

  “A hotel, a family member, anything,” Reed said. “We don’t believe you are in danger in any way, more a target of opportunity than anything.”

  “But...but...” Hendrix sputtered. “How would they even know?”

  Reed had asked himself the same question many times.

  “We’re not sure yet, Mr. Hendrix. These days, could be any number of ways, social media being the most common.”

  “Oh, my God,” Hendrix repeated, the voice just barely audible.

  Sensing that he was losing him, Reed moved on with his last request, wanting to get to it before the man slipped into catatonia.

  “Also, if possible, I would like to speak with you once you land here in Ohio tonight. I will meet you wherever you’d like so you can shield your daughters as much as possible from all this.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Bishop had been moved to the critical care unit. It was determined moments after his surgery that his life was not in danger, the need not existing for intensive care. Instead he was positioned in a separate wing, high on the 8th floor, the place just as well staffed but lacking in the manic energy that seemed to resonate in other places throughout the hospital, areas where life and death still hung in the balance.

  Places like where Iaconelli was currently housed.

  Exiting the elevator, Reed pocketed his badge. He didn’t want Bishop’s wife or daughter to see it, to make things any worse for them than it already was. There was no way he could hide Billie from them, the oversized animal obvious as a police dog on sight, if not for her look then for the fact that she was being allowed to roam the halls of the hospital.

  Still, in his limited experience with such matters, every little bit helped.

  Stepping forward to a waist high desk, he rested his palms atop it and waiting for a middle-aged nurse in pink scrub pants and a multi-colored top to finish a call. When she was done she glanced up at him, a look of resignation already on her features.

  “Room 818,” she said, the undercurrent of a sigh in her voice.

  For a moment Reed opened his mouth, wanting to make sure he was pointed in the right direction, before thinking better of it and nodding his thanks.

  The nurse returned the nod and extended a single finger out to her left, Reed tapping the desk with his knuckles twice before setting off in that direction.

  Given her response, and the turnout that had been in the lobby the night before, it was a safe assumption that he was far from the first officer she had seen on the day.

  Keeping the looped handle of the short lead gripped tight in his hand, Reed led Billie down the hallway, her toenails and his running shoes making for a unique two-part concerto. Side by side they made their way forward, a pair of uniforms coming into view up ahead. Without even bothering to check for room numbers Reed walked straight toward them, feeling his pulse pick up just slightly.

  Reed’s initial appraisal of Bishop had been that he was Iaconelli’s flunky and little more. He laughed at every bad joke his partner made, did his best to insert his own whenever possible. At times the bravado seemed forced at best, the kind of thing brought on by someone trying way too hard for acceptance.

  Over time that assessment had diminished somewhat, Reed finally resigning himself to the fact that the men meant well, in their own misguided way. A few cases had caused their paths to cross in significant ways, and like most professionals, any petty personal strife had fallen by the wayside.

  In recent months something approaching a begrudging respect had begun to surface between the two sides, a fact aided considerably by the fast-approaching day when the older duo would be hanging up their badges.

  “Officers,” Reed said as he approached, nodding to a pair of fresh-faced uniforms that couldn’t have been more than a month out of the academy.

  Both turned and openly stared at him for a long moment, taking in his attire and Billie by his side, before the young man on the left said, “Detective.”

  His face was void of any stubble, his blonde hair buzzed close to the scalp. Glancing past him into the darkened room, Reed asked, “Is Detective Bishop awake?”

  A moment passed as the officer again gave Reed a once over before saying, “He was just a little bit ago. Your captain came by to see him.”

  On the opposite side of the door the second young man leaned forward and said, “Been a pretty steady stream all day. I’m sure he appreciates your support, but you guys might want to set up some kind of visiting hours so he can get his rest.”

  Fire flashed behind Reed’s eyes as he glared at the young man, his dark hair shaved tight on the sides and left long on top, slicked straight back in the newest hipster style. “I’m not just here to show support, and trust me, he won’t be getting much sleep until I catch the asshole that did this.”

  In unison the jaws of both men fell slack, a flush of blood coloring the second guard’s cheeks. Reed made no effort to hide the disdain on his face as he stepped between them, Billie on his hip, and closed the door behind him.

  Without the ambient light from the hallway, the room was almost completely dark. The only sources of illumination were a pair of computer monitors, one tracking heart rate, the other vital statistics. Together the screens cast a pale glow over the room, bathing Bishop in a chalky light.

  Even on his best day the man had a complexion that trended toward albino, his excessive height and lack of body weight giving him the appearance of a skeleton. His pale skin and close-cropped hair tended to accentuate the look.

  Lying in the hospital bed, every one of those attributes seemed to be emphasized, save the normally gaunt face. In its place was a puffy ball, the result of bags of saline fluids being pumped into his system, causing his deep-set eyes to appear almost cavernous.

  “Well played,” Bishop said, his voice low. It was so unexpected Reed flinched a tiny bit at the sound of it, Billie clenching, her striated muscle pressed against his leg.

  He paused a moment before answering, feeling foolish as his heart rate slowed, before asking, “They been like that all day?”

  “All day,” Bishop replied. “My family got sick of them two hours ago and decided to head home for food and a nap. I thought the captain was going to shoot them.”

  Despite the gravitas of the moment, Reed couldn’t help but smile, easily able to picture Grimes doing just that.

  “How you feeling?” he asked, stepping forward, the light from the monitors rising up his chest, stopping just short of his chin.

  On the bed before him Bishop was laid completely flat, a thin white blanket covering his right leg and upper body. Extended out from beneath the side of it was his left leg, the entire appendage encased in a heavy air cast.

  “Not feeling a damn thing,” Bishop said, rolling his head over to glance at Reed a moment before returning his focus to the ceiling above. “They have me on a time-release morphine drip, so about every 90 minutes or so a new jolt floods the system, knocks me out for a while. Then I wake up, lie here a bit, talk to whoever might stop by, do it all over again.”

  Reed nodded, unsure how to respond. He had been fortunate enough never to have been in a major accident before, nothing requiring a hospital stay since he had his wisdom teeth
extracted as a teenager.

  “Any update on the knee?”

  “What knee?” Bishop responded, the combination of morphine and exhaustion pushing aside any bit of inhibition, his true feelings on the matter ebbing into his voice. “Damn thing is basically a mash of spare parts right now, they just have to wait a while before they can put in a new one.”

  Reed felt his features draw up into a wince, though he remained silent. Given the man’s unique dimensions and his advancing years, such a procedure would be tough, most likely the first of many just like it.

  The force would give him an early retirement, would take care of all related expenses, but it was still a far cry from how anybody would want to kick off their post-work life.

  “Any word on Ike?” Bishop asked.

  “Came up here first,” Reed said. “Wanted to see if you were awake, talk to you about what happened last night.”

  Again Bishop rolled his head to the side to look at Reed, his face impossible to gauge. The two men held the pose several moments before Bishop nodded, his chin dipping just a fraction of an inch.

  “You know, I was glad when the captain said he’d assigned you to this. Some of the cases you’ve handled since coming over were...impressive.”

  Heat flushed Reed’s face and back, drawing a sheen of sweat to both. For a moment he remained silent, unsure how to respond, before pressing his lips together and nodding slightly.

  “I will find who did this. I promise you both that.”

  To that, Bishop said nothing, staring at Reed. He held the pose a long time, long enough that Reed wondering if fresh morphine was being pumped into his system, before saying, “I know Ike and I, we gave you a hard time when you first came over. You need to know, we didn’t mean anything by it.”

  More than once Reed had suspected it wasn’t quite that innocent, though he was far past caring, especially given the circumstances.

  “I know,” Reed said, “and even if it was, this is different. We would be throwing ourselves at this anyway.”

  Bishop swallowed hard, a lump traveling the length of his throat. “I mean, I know what some of the people think about Ike, but he’s been my partner for 19 years, you know?”

  Without realizing it, without knowing why, Reed reached forward and grabbed Bishop’s hand. He squeezed it twice and said, “I do know, Martin. More than you or anybody else will ever realize.”

  There was no effort by Bishop to return the gesture, though he made no attempt to pull away either. Instead he continued to stare at Reed, moisture pooling at the bottom of his eyes.

  “What was it like to lose a partner?” he whispered.

  For an instant Reed thought he too might tear up. He raised his face toward the ceiling and took a deep breath, extending his right hand down and finding the thick hair atop Billie’s head. “Hell. It was nothing short of Hell.”

  Bishop drew in a breath through his nose, snorting a bit of phlegm in, the sound loud in the enclosed room. “That’s what I thought. That’s why it had to be you, it has to be you, on this.”

  Taking one more pull of air, Reed pictured Riley. He envisioned the last time he’d seen her, dropping him off at the airport, wishing him a good trip to California.

  He thought of her gravestone that he and Billie still visited frequently.

  “I will find him,” Reed whispered. “But first, I need to know every single thing you can remember from last night.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Dispatch to Unit 225, over.”

  Reed could just make out the sound of his radio squawking through the locked doors of his car, fumbling fast for his keys. As he did so they slipped through his grip, landing in a misshapen heap on the ground, the clatter of a half-dozen metal implements hitting concrete finding his ears.

  Beside him Billie stood with an impassive look on her face, the tiniest bit of animal judgment aimed in his direction.

  “Dispatch to 225, over.”

  The voice definitely belonged to Jackie, having come in early to relieve Lou after a very long shift. An obvious edge was apparent as Reed grasped the proper key and jammed it into the lock on the door, going headfirst across the seat without letting Billie into the back first.

  “Reed, you there?”

  This time the words came out sharp and harsh, an obvious response to everything that had happened in the last day.

  “Go ahead, Jackie,” Reed said, resting a knee on the front seat and holding the mic to his face.

  The sound of his voice seemed to surprise her, a moment passing before she spoke again, her tone having retreated back to normal. “Everything alright over there?”

  “Yeah,” Reed replied, his own annoyance starting to rise. For his first three months with the 8th Jackie had appointed herself as his unwanted guardian, checking on him at all hours while he worked the graveyard shift. At the time he knew it was in response to what had happened to Riley, though he still didn’t appreciate the insinuation that there was something wrong with him.

  In the time since she had backed off a bit, though she still let it be known that she was the overseer of the precinct.

  Moments like these Reed found himself wanting to point out he had a mother - a damn fine one at that - though each time he managed to bite it back before saying something he would inevitably regret.

  “We were speaking to a witness. What’s going on?”

  He intentionally left out the part about which witness he was speaking to, not wanting to have to give a full rundown of his investigation at the moment. He himself was still processing what Bishop had shared, not yet up for articulating everything.

  “We just got a call from the Madison County Sheriff’s Office. They found Jonas Hendrix’s car.”

  A jolt of adrenaline passed through Reed’s chest as he squeezed the lever on the side of the mic and said, “Tell them I’m on my way and send the address to my GPS if you would.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  Reed lowered the mic, about to hang it back on the stand, then snatched it back up. “Jackie?”

  “Yes, Sugar?”

  “When you talk to them, can you ask if they would mind our crime scene guys taking a look at it? Earl was on-site, already has a familiarity with everything.”

  Even as he said the back half of the statement, he knew it sounded like bunk. The truth was, Earl and his crew was the best in the city, a fact widely known and accepted. On the flip side was a rural county office with limited manpower, the very definition of understaffed and overworked.

  This was too important to let something that might be a crucial detail fall through the cracks.

  “Will do,” Jackie said. “Should I get Earl up and ready on standby?”

  Reed mulled it a moment, the right side of his face squinted up as he considered the question.

  “How far to the site?”

  “Looks to be about...” Jackie said, her voice trailing off as she went to check her numbers. “Eighteen miles.”

  “Tell him to go on out,” Reed said. “I’ll clear it again with whoever’s there and call him in the first chance I get.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The differences between Reed and his partner were many. The most pronounced of those, something he had encountered a dozen times in their work together and was only still beginning to fully appreciate and utilize, was her extreme sense of smell. Armed with more than 220,000,000 scent receptors, her ability to detect aromas was more than 45 times more attuned than his own.

  Even at that, his nose did just fine picking up the distinct smell of smoke and lighter fluid in the air.

  The directions of the GPS unit on his dash had deposited him on the bank of Big Darby Creek, the location little more than a turnout from a country road. Six miles from the closest throughway of any size, Reed had spent the back half of the drive thinking that the sheriff or Jackie or both had gotten the location wrong, not believing he was on the right path until a pair of Madison County cruisers came into view, pa
rked nose-to-tail on a gravel drive extended away from the road.

  In front of them stood two men, both wearing brown pants and shirts, tan hats balanced on their heads. They each turned and stared as Reed eased his sedan to a stop in line behind them, looping his badge over his head before stepping out.

  “I’ll just be a minute, girl,” he said as he exited, immediately picking up on the odor in the air. Unlike barbecue, it was distinctly free of any appetizing properties, carrying a twinge of something chemical with it.

  Stepping forward past the cruiser, Reed could see the drive open up into a gravel lot leading down to the riverbank. Parked in the center of it was Jonas Hendrix’s Chevy Tahoe, or rather the remains thereof.

  Resting more than 50 feet from the closest foliage, the automobile had been burned to nothing more than a shell, a circle of black soot staining the pale gravel in a wide arc around it.

  “Great,” Reed muttered, wondering why nobody had mentioned that the thing had been charred beyond use, but remaining silent as he stepped forward.

  “Detective Mattox?” the man on the right asked, a tall, rawboned man in his late 40s. In total he couldn’t have weighed more than 150 pounds, parts of his hollow cheeks hidden beneath a heavy moustache.

  “That’s right,” Reed said, extending his hand. “Sheriff...”

  “Monterey,” the man replied. “I have a first name too, but everybody just calls me Monty.”

  “Alright, Monty,” Reed replied, “and I’m just Reed.”

  He released the grip and moved to the man beside him, someone several years younger than Reed. He was a bit thicker than his counterpart and was free of any facial hair, but the resemblance was uncanny.

  If forced to guess Reed would peg him as a son, though wouldn’t rule out a nephew.

  “Howie,” the young man said, pumping Reed’s hand once before releasing it.

  “Appreciate you guys calling me in,” Reed said. “We’ve had every officer in the state looking for this car for 16 hours now.”