The Ninth District - A Thriller

by Douglas Dorow

  “Yep. And he shot at us from down there.” Jack nodded down the bank to the area of sand where a dozen people were milling about. “Think you can make it down there with that bad arm? You could stay here.”

  “Lead the way. I’ll be fine.”

  There was a path worn through the vegetation that clung to the side of the gorge. Jack and Ross followed it down towards the river, carefully testing their footing so they wouldn’t lose their grip and slide to the bottom. By the time they reached the sand beach along the river, they were both sweating.

  “It’s different down here, Jack. Like a nature reserve in the city.”

  “That’s why I like to run down along the river in the morning.”

  “And you can smell the river.” Ross wrinkled his nose.

  “Part of nature, Junior.”

  They slowly walked over to the group of people clustered around a dead tree lying in the sand. Their shoes sunk into the fine silt and sand deposited when the river was at a higher level in the spring, filled with winter snow run-off. Jack addressed one of the men in white Tyvek coveralls. The man was short and overweight. He looked like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man wearing a blue baseball hat on his head with FBI across the crown in gold letters. Sweat streaked the man’s cheeks and ran down his neck.

  “Hey, Pete? Hot out here, isn’t it? You know Junior?”

  Ross stepped forward and shook Pete’s hand. “Agent Fruen.” He discreetly wiped his hand on his pants to dry it.

  Jack stood with his hands in his pockets, looking over the site. “What’ve we got, Pete?”

  “This is ground zero, Jack.” Pete squatted down a few feet away from the tree so as not to disturb the area around it where the shooter had laid waiting. “You ran along the opposite bank, right to left, north to south. You can see the shooter was laying in the sand here, the rifle propped on the tree.” There was a large depression in the sand the length of a body, deeper depressions where the knees and elbows rested in the sand. The dead tree, half-buried in the sand, showed lighter marks on top where something had scratched its weathered wood. The scratches presumably came from the stock of the rifle resting on the tree for support. “We found a couple of slugs across the river. It was a hell of a shot to hit a moving target.”

  Ross followed what Pete said and looked back across the river. “Jack, you know he was waiting for you. He wasn’t just taking shots at whoever happened to be running by this morning.”

  “Yeah, he’s been watching me, that’s how he knew I’d be out for a run. He was waiting here in the shadows. The sun lit us up on the bank over there. He was trying to scare me off. Must’ve surprised him seeing two of us running.” Jack turned around in the sand and looked up the hill, then up and down the shore. “So where did he go?”

  Wires with colored plastic flags were stuck in the sand, a different color running off in three directions.

  “Guess.”

  “Pete, come on. Where did he go?”

  Pete grunted and stood up, pushing his body up by placing his hands on his knees. “You guys are detectives.”

  “OK, we’ll play.” Jack looked at Ross. “Junior? Your case. What do you think?”

  Ross stood back and studied the area.

  “And don’t take too long,” Jack added.

  “OK. My bet is he didn’t go downstream. The bank gets really steep and further downstream is the dam. He couldn’t go past there.”

  “I didn’t ask where he didn’t go. Where did he go?” Jack asked.

  Ross shook his head, smiled, and looked out to the river. A silver powerboat from the Sheriff’s department idled twenty feet out from the riverbank. Two deputies in life jackets were in the boat; one driving it and keeping it in place against the current, the second was manipulating something over the side, hanging from a rope.

  “What’s up with these guys?” Jack asked.

  “They’re looking for the gun,” Pete said. “It’s not here. He either tossed it or took it with him. Me, I think he threw it in the river and took off.”

  “Good luck,” Jack said. “Junior, where did he go?”

  Ross started walking along the flags and followed the blue ones to the storm sewer. “If he followed the other path up stream, he ran the risk of somebody seeing him. If people up above on the paths heard shots from the gorge, they would have been more alert to strangers. I think he disappeared into this storm sewer and came out a distance from here.”

  “How’d he do, Pete?”

  “Not bad for a new agent. That’s what we think happened.” Pete stepped up next to Ross and shined a flashlight into the dark sewer. “These things run all over under the city. Farther in there, we found tracks that look like they match. Looks like he came up in a church parking lot about three or four blocks from here. Abandoned his vehicle up in the lot up here. Just walked away. Maybe had another car.”

  “Or a bike,” Ross added.

  Pete thought for a second. “Yeah, maybe a bike. That would blend in here.”

  “You couldn’t have told us that sooner, Pete?” Jack asked.

  “If you just wanted me to tell you how he got away, you wouldn’t have walked down that hill through the brush dragging your injured partner along with you. You wouldn’t be standing here looking around to make sure we did the job right. You wanted to be here, see where he was when he shot at you. You wanted to get in his head.” Pete reflexively reached for a breast pocket and then the back pocket of his pants. “You guys don’t smoke, do you?”

  Jack yelled out to the group of investigators standing at the edge of the river watching the sheriff’s deputies fish for a gun. “Who has a cigarette for my friend, Pete?” Jack caught the pack of cigarettes that one of the men tossed to him. He stepped forward and offered the pack to Pete. “Thanks, Pete. We’ll look for your report later. Figure out how tall he was from the impression. I want to make sure it was the Governor.”

  Ross and Jack worked their way back up along the rocky path and through the trees to get back to Jack’s car. At the top, they stopped to catch their breath, sweat running freely down their faces. “Think Pete will make it up this hill?” Ross asked.

  “If he’s lucky, the sheriffs will give him a ride back to the boat ramp. Otherwise it’ll take more than one of those guys down there to get him back up the hill alive.” Jack looked across the river where he’d ran that morning. The image of his morning run with Patty replayed in his mind. The path, the light from the rising sun, the smell of the river, the realization that somebody was shooting at them, that Patty had been shot. Patty was OK. He made it out of the situation a little wet and smelly. He couldn’t think of a thing he would’ve done differently. He didn’t know he was in the sights of a shooter. He needed to change up his routine. Somebody was waiting for him this morning. “Come on, Junior. Let’s go check on Patty.”

  Chapter 39

  The hallway was cooler than the outside, but the unique hospital smell struck Jack as he and Ross stepped off the elevator. “This is like déjà vu all over again, Junior. Second time at the hospital this week. Not good.”

  “At least this time, I’m not a patient,” Ross said.

  At the counter were a few nurses talking and filling out forms. Jack knew about paperwork. The FBI had more than its share. Jack stood at the counter and waited for somebody to notice him. He cleared his throat to get some attention.

  “Excuse me, can you tell us where we can find Patty Lopez?” The nurse closest to them turned and opened her mouth to answer, but she paused when she saw Ross.

  “You’ll have to excuse him,” Jack said. “He usually looks better than this, but he was in a little car accident. Miss Lopez’s room?”

  The nurse smiled, and looked down at her list. “I’m sorry. I just came on shift. Let’s see. She’s in room three oh five, just down the hall here.”

  “Thanks.” Jack and Ross walked down the hall in the direction the nurse had pointed. “Junior, you really have an impact on women. Have you though
t about dating a nurse?”

  Ross didn’t answer, but paused outside of the door to Patty’s room and motioned for Jack to enter first. Jack hesitated, thinking of what he was going to say to Patty. Responsibility, guilt, he should have been shot if anybody was. He took a deep breath, slowly pushed the door open, and stepped into the room. Ross quietly followed and stood with his back against the wall at the foot of the bed. Patty was lying in the bed reading a magazine; the shoulders of her hospital gown showed above the edge of the sheet.

  Jack walked over and leaned on the bars on the side of the hospital bed that were there to keep the patient from rolling out. “Patty, how’re you doing? You’re not mad at me, are you?”

  “Hey guys.” Patty pushed herself up in bed and ran her hands back through her hair. “I’m not mad at you, but I’m mad. Mad that I got shot, and my leg hurts and I won’t be able to run for a while. If I don’t run, I’m going to get fat. I can’t get fat. Can you believe I got shot?” Patty said a few more words in Spanish.

  Jack smiled at Patty going on like this. “Hey, I recognize some of those words and I don’t think they’re nice. You look good and it sounds like you’ll be OK.”

  “Are you OK, Jack?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You catch the pendejo that did this?”

  “Not yet. That’s what Junior and I are working on. We were just down at the river. It was a freak shot to hit you from across the river with us running. He was probably aiming at me. Or shooting towards me. Trying to scare me.”

  “My luck.”

  The room got quiet as they all took a break from the nervous talking.

  “Find anything at the river?”

  Jack shook his head. “No, nothing obvious. Have you thought of anything that you saw or heard this morning that might help us?”

  Patty shifted herself in bed and grimaced. “I peeked after you ran and he was shooting at you. I couldn’t really see anything. I wanted to get out of there, but the leg hurt too much. I think he was shooting from a sandy spot across the river.”

  “That’s where we just came from. That was the spot.”

  “Do you have some info for me?” Jack asked.

  “Just shoot me again, Jack.” Patty stuck out her lower lip and pouted. “The video we shot at the press conference showed nothing. I was hoping I could learn some more from you. I’m sorry.”

  “Getting shot once is enough. We’ll see you later, Patty.”

  Jack was exhausted. The mental strain of the investigation, lack of sleep, and the excitement of the morning built up. He sat in the car waiting for Junior to call him and let him know the coast was clear to the room so that his family wouldn’t see him going into the room across from theirs. He needed some sack time for both his body and brain to get reinvigorated. He was still disappointed by how little they knew and bothered by the attacks on Ross, Patty, and him. The Governor knew who they were, where they were, and had shown he would go to great lengths and personal risk to get at them. They needed to catch up. Jack closed his eyes and tried to unfocus, to let his subconscious work on the details while he physically rested.

  Settling into the seat finding a position that was somewhat comfortable, Jack remembered back to when Lynn was born. He was a young agent in his first field office, new at his job and new at fatherhood. He woke often in the night, alert to sounds that he normally would have slept through. He also got the duty of getting up and bringing Lynn to bed so Julie could feed her. There were many days he drove to a quiet spot during lunch, parked the car, and tried to catch a nap, like he was now, propped in his seat. His old FBI car had a lot more room than this car did. His legs were bent, and the steering wheel pressed into his thigh.

  The cell phone on his belt vibrated and Jack reflexively twisted to grab the phone. His thigh jammed into the steering wheel, jarring him back into reality. The phone slipped from his hand and fell to the floor on the passenger side of the car. It continued to ring and Jack stretched, his fingers probing the floor for the phone, trying to locate and answer it before it went to voice mail. He found the phone, grabbed it, and answered the phone while he raised it to his ear.

  “Hello.” Nobody responded and Jack looked at the small window on the phone. There was not a connection. “Damn it.” Too impatient to wait to see if the caller left a voicemail message, Jack poked buttons to get to the list of who called and called back. With the phone at his ear he shifted to a more comfortable position in the seat.

  “Sleeping, Jack?” Junior asked.

  “Dropped the phone. Can I come up?”

  “Come on in. Julie and the kids are swimming. The geeks are here. You’ll like what they’ve done.”

  Chapter 40

  Jack cautiously walked through the halls of the hotel, listening for the tell tale voices of his kids to let him know if the coast was clear or not. At the door to his room, he lightly knocked and the door opened. Sure Thing and one of the other geeks sat on the end of the bed playing a video game. Junior sat in a chair and watched the contest.

  “Hey, Jack,” Sure Thing said.

  “Hey yourself, ST. You guys enjoying yourself?” Jack couldn’t keep the frustration from showing in his voice. These guys were playing games? “Junior says you’ve got stuff set up for me to keep track of my family?”

  Sure Thing turned off the game.

  “What’re you doing? I had you,” his video game opponent said.

  “Rematch later. Time to get to work and show Jack what we’ve done for him.” Sure Thing stood up and asked Jack to take his spot sitting on the foot of the bed. He handed Jack a larger remote that required Jack to use both hands to hold it.

  “I’m not playing,” Jack said.

  “Don’t worry, Jack. The family is safe. We have one of our crew down at the water park reading a magazine and watching them.” Sure Thing reached down and pushed a button on the remote. “And you can watch them too.” The television screen lit up into split screens with views from four cameras showing on the television at the same time. Two of the screens showed video from the water park. One of the other two showed a hallway in the hotel and the last showed an empty hotel room.

  Jack was looking at the water park views. He was able to pick out the kids sitting in the hot tub.

  “We’re patched in to the hotel’s video system as well as a number of our own cameras to pick out views we need,” Sure Thing said. He walked in front of Jack to block his view. “Jack, pay attention.”

  “What?” Jack tuned into what Sure Thing was saying. “Right.”

  “Push the right arrow and you can cycle through the views.”

  Jack followed Sure Thing’s instructions and went from the water park to reception area of the hotel. Next, he was in a hotel hallway.

  “Hold it there, Jack.” Sure thing turned to his video game opponent. “Go stand in front of the door across the hall. Then go on in and walk around.”

  Jack watched the screen and saw the man in front of Julie’s hotel room open the door and enter the suite. A quiet beeping sounded from a speaker on top of the television.

  “That tells you their room door has opened. Scroll over a couple, Jack.”

  Jack pushed some buttons on the controller and two of the views showed the inside of a hotel room. On the television, one view showed the man entering through the door. The other view was from the corner and showed the beds. The man waved at the cameras. “This is great. I can’t believe what you guys have set up.”

  “There are a couple of other things to show you.” Sure Thing pulled his cell phone from his pocket, dialed, and walked into the bathroom. A few seconds later, the sound of a ringing telephone erupted from the speaker on the television and Jack watched as he answered the phone across the hall and listened to the conversation. “Time for a rematch. Get your skinny ass back to the office and I’ll educate you on the finer points of the game.”

  “Cool,” Ross said, leaning forward in his chair.

  Jack used the controlle
r to flip back through the screens. The beep from the speaker told him he had left the room. Jack stopped at the view of the hot tub. The kids weren’t there. He scrolled through a couple of other views and found them in the arcade playing skee ball.

  “Not as good as being there with them, but pretty cool,” Jack said.

  Sure Thing rejoined Jack and Ross in the room. “I hope this gives you a little better sense of security.”

  “Beyond what I expected,” Jack answered.

  Sure Thing shook Jack’s hand. “I’m glad you’re OK and glad we could help. Just let us know what else we can do. We want to keep your family safe and catch the bastard.”

  “What the hell you doing, Junior?” Jack stood over Ross, who had stretched out on the bed with his shoes off.

  “I thought I’d get a nap in so I could give you a break later.”

  “Get out of here. I’ve got the screens, I’m across the hall.”

  “Jack, listen. You need to sleep. I know you’ve taken precautions. Paid cash, changed cell phones, you’ve got the command center. But, you need to man it and you need to sleep. You can’t afford to miss anything or to not be sharp.” Junior tried to struggle to a sitting position and stuck out his good hand to Jack. “Give me a hand?”

  Jack pulled Ross up to a sitting position.

  “Thanks. Let’s hang out, order a pizza, give each other a break.

  “All right.” Jack sat on the foot of the bed and searched the screens for his family at the water park. “Get what you want, I’ll eat whatever. Get a couple liters of soda too. It’s going to be a long night.”

  “And a long day too. Aren’t you spending tomorrow with the family at the Fourth of July celebration?” Ross asked.

  Jack kept his focus on the television. “Yeah, so get that pizza ordered and come take watch so I can get a nap.”