Helpless

by Daniel Palmer

  Gill Sullivan was sitting at his desk in the little office with the big plate-glass front window. If Sullivan hadn’t been there, Tom had plan B ready to roll, but he was glad to see the bastard hard at work. Sullivan looked up, frowned at Tom, rose from his seat, and was quick to leave his office.

  Puzzled, Sullivan took hurried steps toward Tom, slowing as he neared. “What are you doing back here, Hawkins?” he asked.

  Tom lunged at Sullivan with a burst of acceleration that took Sullivan by surprise. Sullivan’s eyes went wide with fright. A panicked look replaced his earlier confidence.

  Tom sliced the side of his hand through the air as though he were brandishing a sword. The blow connected against Sullivan’s windpipe with enough force to drop the man to his knees, but not quite enough to crush the organ.

  Sullivan clutched at his throat, gagging for breath. He dropped to the floor and lay flat on his stomach. Tom straddled Sullivan’s back, seized a clump of greasy hair, and pulled his head back.

  “Where are your car keys?” Tom asked in a calm voice.

  Sullivan grabbed at his throat and struggled to speak. Tom pushed Sullivan’s face to the floor. He pressed the knuckles of his fist into the back of Sullivan’s head. His other fist dug deep into the man’s spine. Sullivan gasped and coughed up a glob of green phlegm mixed with strawberry-colored blood.

  “Car keys,” Tom said, repeating the demand.

  Sullivan patted the side of his pants, and Tom fished out the keys.

  “Make and model,” he said.

  “Chevy Equinox,” Sullivan squeaked out. His voice was raspy and weak.

  “Where is it parked?”

  “Out back,” Sullivan said. “Loading dock.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “What do you want?” Sullivan asked.

  “Well, first, I wanted a car. Thanks for that. Now I want information. Who killed Lindsey Wells? Was it Mitchell? Did Roland say?”

  Sullivan tried to shake his head but couldn’t move it much with his face still to the floor. Tom turned Sullivan over so he could study the man’s body language.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sullivan said. “I didn’t even know she was dead.”

  No tell. Nothing to suggest that Sullivan was lying.

  “What about Marvin? Was Boyd involved? Did Roland Boyd have anything to do with Marvin’s death?”

  “I don’t know. You’d have to ask him.”

  Tom noticed something this time. A twitch at the corner of Sullivan’s mouth. It was slight. But it was there. Maybe, what Sullivan needed was some added motivation to talk. Tom turned Sullivan over and hoisted him up by his belt loop. He saw the man’s massive belly swinging below his compressed waist like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. Tom pulled Sullivan to his feet.

  “I’m going to put you on a new diet, Gilly,” Tom said, patting the man’s sizable midsection and purposefully using Roland’s nickname for him. “It’s called the Frozen Feast Diet. Ever hear of it?”

  Sullivan’s expression shifted from a look of concern to one of panic. He began to shake, and his knees went slack. Tom kept him propped up, though.

  “Unlike South Beach, you actually won’t be able to eat anything,” Tom went on, “because all the food is frozen. Get it? Frozen Feast. Works wonders.”

  Sullivan tried to resist, but he lacked the strength. Tom opened the cooler door and tossed Sullivan inside. He noticed the automatic light was working again. Sullivan crashed into a shelving unit at the back of the freezer. Frozen meat and other provisions toppled on top of him.

  “You fixed that shelf I had to break, I see,” Tom said. “I’ll give you one more chance. Did Roland Boyd have anything to do with Marvin’s murder?”

  “Screw you, Hawkins,” Sullivan said.

  Tom knew Sullivan was going to waste his time. The man might be hiding something, but he wasn’t going to reveal it without a good deal of effort, which Tom didn’t have the time to expend. For now, at least, he was done with Gilly Sullivan. What he was going to do next was purely for revenge. Tom used a frozen sausage to shatter the lightbulb, hitting it like a bat connecting with a ball. The space descended into darkness.

  “I noticed you fixed the safety latch, too,” Tom said. He pushed against the well-oiled mechanism and saw how it easily disengaged the latch. “I wouldn’t want you to break your diet by sneaking out,” Tom continued. With one hand he bent the release rod back and forth, using the hole for leverage. He twisted the metal until it snapped off. Tom made sure it couldn’t be opened from the inside.

  “One more part of the diet I forgot to mention,” Tom said before he left the cooler.

  Sullivan cast Tom a doleful expression. He was still rubbing at his throat and looked to be on the verge of tears.

  “The best way to ignore hunger pangs is to have something more painful to focus on.” Tom took a step forward and unleashed two quick jabs. The first connected just below Sullivan’s right orbital socket. The second punch tracked the position of Sullivan’s head as he rolled away from the initial blow. That punch caught Sullivan in the jaw, strong enough to push the heavy man up off of his feet. Sullivan went sprawling backward. His body fell into an open carton of swordfish steaks that were frozen hard as bricks. The steaks cracked against Sullivan’s skull as they fell.

  Sullivan lay at the back of the cooler, groaning and massaging his tender face. A large red swath coated much of Sullivan’s injured throat like a rash.

  “If I find out you were involved in Marvin’s death,” Tom said to him, “consider this the warm-up act. Speaking of warm-up, make sure to cover your head with something. That’s where you’ll lose most of your body heat.”

  Tom closed the door and waited. Sullivan was probably banging against the insulation and was probably screaming for help, too. Good thing the thick walls blocked out all sound from within.

  He left through the back door, with Sullivan’s car keys dangling in his hand. Tom found the Equinox parked where Sullivan said it would be. Maybe Sullivan would be found in twenty minutes. Maybe sooner. Probably longer. Either way, he’d ditch the car long before the police knew to look for it.

  Tom drove unnoticed past several police cars on his way to the meeting spot. The location he’d picked was a development under construction. No residents. And at this hour, no workers, either.

  Tom pulled up to the first house on the right. He could see Jill’s bike parked in what would eventually become the garage. He honked the car horn. Jill didn’t come out of hiding. He honked again. Still no Jill.

  Tom got out of the car and walked over to the bike. He looked at the ground. He saw Jill’s cell phone.

  Tom picked up the phone. He looked at the text message someone had earlier composed. His stomach sank the moment he read it. The two-word instruction made Tom’s whole body go weak.

  Turn around.

  Tom turned and looked behind. Roland Boyd was standing there. Roland held a gun leveled at Tom’s chest. It was a Smith & Wesson 22LR, not the best handgun, but at this range the best didn’t much matter.

  “Hi, Tom,” Roland said.

  “Where’s Jill? What have you done with her, Roland?”

  “I’ve got to search you. Don’t get cute.”

  Roland searched but didn’t find any weapons. He checked Tom’s backpack, too. He found the kitchen knife Tom had packed.

  “My car is parked at the end of the street,” Roland said afterward. “Walk with me.”

  “And you’ll shoot me if I don’t?”

  “No, Tom,” said Roland. “But somebody will shoot your daughter.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Simple,” Roland said. “I want to know where you hid ten million dollars’ worth of my heroin.”

  Chapter 78

  Rainy couldn’t wait to have her little chat with Mitchell Boyd. Depending on his reaction to her questions, she’d decide the next best move. The federal magistrate might already have enough probable cause
to issue an arrest with the watermark evidence alone, but Rainy didn’t want to burn through the opportunity. She’d present Mitchell with her findings, ask for another consent search, and fully expected him to become much less cooperative. That little turnaround should be more than enough to guarantee Mitchell’s federal arrest warrant on child pornography charges.

  Rainy rang the front door bell and waited. Seconds passed. She rang the bell again. Mitchell opened the door, but only a crack. Rainy flashed him her badge.

  “Hi, Mitchell,” she said. “Mind if I come in and have a word with you?”

  “Why?”

  “Are your parents at home?”

  “My mom’s here.”

  “Good. Can we come in and talk?”

  Mitchell pulled the door open wider. Rainy and Carter stepped into the high-ceilinged foyer of the Boyds’ grand residence, with the majestic corkscrew staircase at its center. Rainy looked up to see Adriana descending the stairs.

  “Who’s the daytime soap star?” Carter whispered into Rainy’s ear.

  “That’s Mama,” said Rainy.

  “Mamma mia!” Carter whispered back.

  “Hello. Can I help you?” Adriana asked the agents as soon as she reached the landing.

  Rainy and Carter inadvertently synchronized the flashing of their badges.

  “We met at Cathleen Wells’s house a few weeks ago,” Rainy said. “My name is Special Agent Loraine Miles, and this is Special Agent Carter Dumas. We’re with the FBI’s Innocent Images National Initiative. We’d like to have a few words with your son, if that’s all right with you.”

  “What’s this all about?” Adriana asked, her face long with worry.

  “We’d like him to explain something we’ve discovered as part of an ongoing investigation.”

  From within a manila envelope, Carter extracted a color printout of the once hidden digital watermark. He handed the glossy paper, ink still fresh, over to Adriana. The three huddled close.

  “What is this?” Adriana asked.

  “It’s a watermark,” Rainy said. “We believe the creator of this watermark is also a distributor of illegal images. We also think the same distributor automatically applied Internet addresses to these watermarked images to keep track of who was downloading the content and from where.”

  “And you think Mitchell had something to do with this, because the watermark matches his tattoo?”

  “We’d sure like to ask him a few questions.”

  “Mitchell, do you have anything to say about this?” Adriana asked in a harsh tone, turning around to address her son.

  To Rainy’s surprise, Mitchell didn’t answer her back. Alarmed, she realized why.

  Mitchell Boyd wasn’t with them in the foyer anymore.

  Chapter 79

  Tom told Roland where he’d hidden the drugs. Roland, in response, communicated his threat to Tom quite clearly. Jill would be shot if they didn’t arrive at that destination by a certain time. Tom didn’t know who was holding Jill. So he let Roland drive and he kept silent.

  He held Jill’s cell phone, praying that she’d call him. Each second the phone didn’t ring was agony to him. He decided to keep pressing Roland for more information.

  “How did you know where Jill would be?” Tom asked.

  “I didn’t,” said Roland. “But I knew I could follow her. And I knew she wasn’t going to be with you.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “I’m the one who told Tanner to call you,” said Roland. “I scripted him on exactly what to say. I knew you’d believe it and try and run. I knew Jill would slow you down when you did. You SEALs are consistent with your training, if anything. Your only option was to separate.”

  “Did you kill Lindsey!” Tom shouted.

  “Easy, Tom,” Roland said. “I told you, I don’t hurt people.”

  “No. You have people do that for you. I forgot.”

  Roland turned his head, with a smile on his face that made Tom’s insides shiver.

  “Is Frank Dee one of your cronies?”

  “Maybe.”

  “How do you do it?” Tom asked. “Gilly. Dee. How do you get these guys to work for you?”

  “For Gilly, let’s just say the return on investments with Boyd Investments is well above the industry average. I pride myself on building customer loyalty. Dee I took care of as a favor to his cousin. I think you know who I mean. You’re a smart man.”

  “No, Marvin was a smart man, and you killed him.”

  “Don’t jump to any conclusions,” Roland said.

  “How’d you know about the drugs?”

  “Considering I’m the one who told Lange about Greeley trading military secrets for heroin, I’d say I was in the know from the start.”

  “Kelly never told me you were involved.”

  “That’s because Kelly didn’t know,” Roland said. “It was just me and Lange. I was the one who told Lange to bring Kelly into the deal. I knew she’d play the perfect little vixen. She was so sexy, hard for any man to resist.”

  “You planned to be off the base. Didn’t you?”

  “As smart as you are, Tom, I was a bit surprised you never checked my records. I transferred out from Greeley’s command three months before the heist.”

  “Guess I didn’t think of everything,” Tom said.

  “Lange could keep his mouth shut. But you and I both know that Kelly was a talker, so we kept her in the dark. We didn’t have any idea what happened to the drugs. Lange told Kelly to ditch ’em, and that was the last he knew. I kept close watch over Kelly when I got back to Shilo. She didn’t change her spending habits any. She married you. She divorced you. She kept her job at the bar. This wasn’t a woman with millions of dollars at her disposal.”

  “You didn’t know Kelly gave me the drugs,” Tom said, more to himself than to Roland.

  “I figured she tossed them,” Roland said. “I had to let it go. Imagine that. Meanwhile, I kept my word to Lange that I’d help get him out of prison. Got his cousin a new life. As my business started to take off, I had the funds to keep my promise.”

  Roland made several turns without having to ask Tom for directions. He knew how to get where they were going.

  “I don’t get it. Why did Lange break into the house if he knew the drugs were gone?”

  “Because Lange couldn’t let it go,” Roland said. “He was convinced you had something to do with it. I told him he was wrong. He didn’t know Tom the way I knew Tom. I figured even a Boy Scout like yourself couldn’t pass up on that kind of money. But Lange, he didn’t listen to me.

  “First thing he did when he got out of prison was go see Kelly. He broke into the house, hit her, spooked her, and she ran out the back door. She died the way the police say she did, falling down that ravine. But even after all that, Lange couldn’t let it go. He started spying on you. He thought you were going to try and move the stuff. Guess he didn’t know who he was messing with.”

  “Guess he didn’t,” Tom said.

  “But then, out of the freakin’ blue, you came over to my house, asking about Kip Lange. Well, that’s when I knew. I knew Lange had been right all along. You did know about the drugs. But I didn’t know if you had them, hid them, or destroyed them. So I bugged your house.”

  “You what?”

  “The alarm company,” Roland said. “The owner also is a major investor in my funds, if you know what I mean.”

  “So you listened in on my conversation with Jill. That’s how you knew I hid the drugs.”

  “Not every word. I had keywords programmed. Got snippets with any mention of heroin. And that’s when I told Lange to come out of hiding and make a strike. Dee arranged to have your coffee drugged. As you know, that plan didn’t go very well, either. But good news, I’m the project manager for this one. And I promise you, it’s going to go just as planned.”

  Tom had more questions for Roland, specifically about why he framed him for child pornography, his connection to Cortland, but tho
se would have to wait.

  They’d arrived at their destination.

  Roland parked his car in the lot used to access the most popular trail into Willards Woods. The lot was empty. Weeknights the place should be deserted.

  Tom and Roland got out of the car at the same time. Roland kept a few paces behind Tom as they marched ahead. Night had fallen and moonlight made the trail easy to walk without flashlights, but Roland used his nonetheless. Even in the darkness, Tom couldn’t see any way of disarming Roland. Not without risk. He’d never gamble with Jill’s life.

  Tom reached the clearing in the woods and stopped walking.

  “Haven’t been back here since we were kids,” Roland said.

  “The Spot hasn’t changed any,” Tom said.

  Tom’s back was to a tree. Roland was facing him.

  “Where is Jill?”

  “With a friend.”

  “I want to see her. Nothing happens until I do.”

  “Then we wait.”

  Roland’s phone rang while they were waiting. Tom watched Roland check the number, then answer the call.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” Tom heard Roland say. “Just get out of there.... I don’t care how.... The Spot ... I’ll wait for you here. Be safe.”

  Roland put his phone away just as Frank Dee came lumbering down the only path to the Spot. Roland trained his flashlight on Dee. Jill was wrapped in Dee’s massive arms. She was blindfolded and gagged with a bandanna. Her wrists were bound, too.

  Tom rushed toward her. But Roland waved his gun, which made Tom stop. He motioned for Dee to take Jill into the woods.

  “You buried my drugs in the dirt?” Roland said to Tom.

  “Not the dirt,” Tom said, pointing to the quarry.

  “My drugs have been underwater for fifteen years? You ruined ten million dollars of heroin?”

  “I made sure the packages stayed protected,” Tom said. “I wanted to preserve the drugs and any fingerprint evidence in case I needed some leverage.”

  “Good thinking. You ready to go swimming?”