The Ackerman Thrillers Boxset: 1-6

by Ethan Cross

  Maggie had done some friendly questioning of Dunn on the ride from Foxbury to the training academy. She had kept it light and personal, just getting a feel for some things he should have had genuine reactions to.

  She had asked Ingram to drive, and she rode in the back, studying Dunn and his every twitch, his every stutter, every movement of his head, eyes, his posture, and his breathing. Having warned Ingram about her intentions, she had asked some friendly yet deeply personal questions. Unfortunately, none of Jerry’s reactions had indicated anything strange. It either meant Jerry was who he claimed to be, or he was exceptionally skilled at pretending to be someone else.

  She dropped the last file on the table and said, “And Jerry Dunn.”

  Jerry looked up at his name, but he didn’t seem surprised. Instead, he gave a quick double nod and stuttered out, “I figured you would want to check me out too. And hey, whatever helps stop the guy who hurt Bill. I have nothing to hide. And the quicker you can eliminate me as a suspect, the quicker you can zero in on the real bad guy.”

  She didn’t acknowledge his addition to the conversation. She just said, “So what can you tell us about these men?” She resisted the urge to look down at Dunn again. He had answered reasonably and appropriately, but his anticipation of this coming up displayed some deep forethought. She still hadn’t decided if Jerry was their guy—was he a professional killer playing a part? Judas did wear a theater mask—or was Jerry Dunn just a good kid wanting justice for his friend, who had treated him like a son by all accounts?

  She could definitely relate to wanting justice for a family member. But there was something that still didn’t sit right about Jerry. Like he had another level. Like there were strong currents in the waters beneath the calm surface that was Jerry Dunn.

  The instructors and the commander flipped through each file, refreshing themselves with former graduates. Commander Emery said, “I don’t remember any incidents or problems with any of these men.”

  Two of the instructors, the two men, both quickly agreed with the commander. The female instructor—a dark-skinned, middle-aged woman with black, curly hair pulled back in a low-hanging ponytail—seemed conflicted. Maggie had noted that the instructor’s features tensed up a bit more after each file was discarded, and she had shaken her head as she set the last file aside.

  Maggie said, “There was nothing dark or strange or even over-zealous about any of these men? Don’t just think of negative things. This guy might be working toward something, but he’s definitely disturbed. And he has a deep desire to prove his superiority. Even if he was playing a part, it’s unlikely that he would have been able to hide that part of himself completely.” She looked down at Jerry. He was just listening thoughtfully, displaying no reaction one way or another.

  Commander Emery thought a moment but said, “Nothing that I can remember.” He looked to his instructors. The men just nodded, but the female instructor seemed like she had finally made up her mind to say something.

  Maggie glanced at the instructor’s name tag. It read Sergeant J. Usher.

  Sergeant Usher said, “I’m sorry, but I have to volunteer something.”

  “Of course,” Maggie said, “anything you think can help us, we want to hear it.”

  “He’s not in your stack of files, but there’s a former graduate who I believe could have done something like this. In fact, when I saw the news about the shooting on TV, I made a bet with my husband that it was Clarence O’Neal who had done the crime. I had heard that O’Neal had volunteered to work at Foxbury.”

  The other two instructors seemed to consider this and then gave nods of approval. Commander Emery said, “Clarence O’Neal graduated almost three years ago.”

  Maggie leaned forward and gently moved all the files aside. She said, “All of you remember Clarence O’Neal that vividly? What was wrong with him?”

  “A lot, I think,” Sergeant Usher said.

  Emery shook his head. “He was just a little creepy. A bit too intense and a bit too serious. But he never did or said anything wrong, and he was top of his class across the board.”

  Maggie looked to Usher. “You disagree?”

  Usher looked down and said, “Not really. It was mostly just gut instinct. I started out at a men’s facility for five years, medium to maximum security. Then I transferred and spent fifteen years in a female facility before I came here to teach. And I don’t know if you’ve personally spent much time in prisons with your job, but the female facilities are much worse than the men’s. I’ve seen a lot of bad people in my time. I think I’m a pretty damn good judge of character. And Clarence O’Neal always struck me as one of those people who deserved to be on the other side of the bars.”

  *

  After refusing medical treatment for himself, Marcus helped the paramedics load Powell into the ambulance. Thankfully, Marcus could already tell that Powell was going to be okay. The warden had been coming around even before the paramedics arrived.

  The ambulance hadn’t made it a hundred yards before Marcus turned and moved back toward the intermodal shipping container. Members of the sheriff’s tactical team had converged on the container when the parabolic microphones hadn’t heard a noise in what the sheriff had deemed to be “too damn long.” By Judas’s design, the soundproofing had masked their screams. Luckily, Sheriff Hall hadn’t been so easily fooled.

  The sheriff stopped Marcus before he could reach the container and said, “My men are checking it for any other surprises. You were lucky to have survived that thing once. He could have had the whole place wired to blow, instead of just dropping some bees. It may still blow. We know he has access to explosives.”

  Hall laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.

  Marcus shoved the hand away and pushed past the sheriff. He didn’t have time to wait. He kept seeing the video of the woman drowning in the sand, a poor innocent young woman trying to claw her way to air, to the most basic strand of life, even after enduring unspeakable pain and torture. He imagined Renata and Ian Navarro dying in the same way.

  “Hey, wait!” Hall said. “At least let me bring in the dog to check that it’s not wired. He could still be watching. Waiting for us to go back in before he blows it.”

  Marcus said, “Just pull your men back to a safe distance.” He didn’t want them in the way as he searched the scene for the next clue anyway. He already knew what he would find. Another video. Another message. Another path to be dragged down kicking and screaming. Another game to play.

  All these guys wanted to play games now. He missed his days as a Brooklyn homicide detective, when most murders were gang related or a marital dispute. He blamed reality television for all these crazies suddenly having delusions of grandeur.

  Marcus slowed his speed and waited to enter until the five men in tactical gear surrounding the container had pulled back. Then he re-entered the long metal box that had very nearly become Scott Powell’s tomb.

  Some of the hornets still buzzed angrily around the compartment, but the majority of the colony had followed Powell and Marcus outside, where the swarm had been dispatched with the assistance of the tactical team.

  One of the big yellow insects dive-bombed Marcus, and he cringed at the sound of its wings buzzing past his neck, but he did his best to ignore the distraction. He had already received an injection to counteract the effects of the stings and had bigger considerations than his own discomfort.

  He moved to the back of the container first. He had a suspicion of where he’d find the next clue. It wouldn’t be hidden. This guy was through playing around in the shadows. He checked the small end tables and the chair Powell had been sitting on. Then he searched the broken hornet’s nest. He kicked open each piece of the ruined nest. The hornets doubled their efforts at his further intrusion, and a squadron flew out from beneath one especially large chunk that he kicked over. He found the device inside the third piece. A pill-shaped cylinder just like the last one but missing the clear end, which had contained the poi
son. He twisted off the cap at one end to reveal the USB dongle of another flash drive.

  Marcus wondered about the way the devices were concealed inside of something. The first inside Ray Navarro’s stomach. This one inside the hornet’s nest. Did that mean something? Something symbolic to the killer? Was it intentional or subconscious?

  He double-checked the rest of the scene, and then he walked back toward the entrance, glad to be free of the buzzing and stinging. Sheriff Hall had formed a perimeter farther back. Hall didn’t walk out to meet him. The sheriff waited for Marcus to walk back up the hill. Apparently, Hall hadn’t abandoned the notion that the shipping container was a powder keg poised to explode.

  Marcus held up the flash drive as he reached Hall and his men. “Do you have a computer here that we can watch this on?”

  The sheriff nodded and shouted orders at one of his men. Then he said to Marcus, “Your partner called from Foxbury. He’s wanting to speak with you.” Hall held out Marcus’s cell phone.

  Marcus said, “Thanks,” to Sheriff Hall and then called Andrew back. “Give me some good news,” he said as the call connected.

  Andrew replied, “We have a problem.”

  “When don’t we have a problem?”

  “Okay, then we have another problem to add to the list. Ackerman is in solitary confinement for putting six men in the infirmary. Reese even ordered outside specialists to be brought in to tend to the wounds that some of these guys sustained. Ackerman nearly killed one of them.”

  Marcus walked over and rested his hand on the nearest police cruiser. He fought back the urge to ram his fist straight through the cop car’s hood. “How the hell did he manage all that? He hasn’t been there one day, and he’s already bypassed their whole system?”

  “He says that he needs to speak with you immediately.”

  “I’m sure he does. Let him rot in there for a while. I should have never brought him into this.”

  Andrew said, “It was actually the Director’s idea to send him in undercover.”

  “Yeah, but I agreed to it. And I’ve been pushing for something like this for months. Maybe he’s just too far gone.”

  “Either way, whatever trick he used to bypass the system could help us. And he might have beaten some other useful information out of Lash’s men.”

  “Lash?”

  “Yeah, the guards pulled Ackerman off the ULF leader himself when they burst in.”

  Marcus cracked his neck. He felt like a greedy tick swelling up with blood and ready to pop. “I’ll talk to him when I get back, but after that he’s not even going to see a flicker of artificial light until this case is over. The most important thing now is that I’ve found another USB device.”

  “Same as the other one?”

  “Close enough.”

  One of the sheriff’s men returned with an armored laptop that looked like it had been unfastened from some kind of mounting system. The deputy, dressed in black tactical gear, rested the laptop on the hood of the cruiser in front of Marcus. He raised the lid and a virtual desktop flashed to life.

  On the other end of the phone line, Andrew said, “Does it contain another video?”

  “I’m about to find out,” Marcus replied.

  *

  Marcus and Sheriff Hall were about to start the second Judas video when a silver Audi A4 sped to a stop in front of them, riding a tornado of dust. Bradley Reese, Powell’s PR representative and future son-in-law, stepped from the car and scanned the faces of the remaining officers, disposal teams, and medical workers. When his gaze came to rest on Marcus, Reese raised his eyes and a finger as if he was going to ask his question while still fifty feet away. Then Reese moved with purpose in their direction.

  Marcus growled deep in his throat.

  “Great,” Sheriff Hall said. “The cavalry’s here.”

  Marcus said, “How long have you been on the job?”

  “Heading toward twenty,” Hall said.

  Marcus laughed. “You started young. What’s the exact number? You know you know what it is.”

  “Eighteen years and five months.”

  “You were full-time SWAT before coming here?”

  “Yeah. How’d you know that? You been reading my file?”

  “It’s in the way you handle yourself. Point is, in all your years in law enforcement, including full-time SWAT, have you ever seen a bigger minefield of disaster than this case?”

  “Not even close.”

  Reese arrived in front of Hall’s cruiser. He wore a tightly fitting gray suit. One a bit beyond what Marcus assumed was Reese’s pay grade. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Reese had made a TV appearance that day. Powell’s company may have bought Reese the suit as a job-related expense. Like providing a construction worker with a hard hat. Marcus could see the muscle beneath the suit clinging tightly to Reese’s small frame. Reese was about five foot seven, and he looked like he was one of those blessed at birth with an unusually high metabolism. But Reese had done his best to make himself look bigger and more formidable than his genetics allowed. His hair was that deliberately messy look, which he had probably spent an hour preparing, organizing the chaos. And Reese’s features were that of a chiseled B-movie star. Marcus detected a make-up smudge on Reese’s collar—likely a byproduct of the earlier TV appearance and not a life choice—and the man had ink stains on his fingers. The ink stains seemed unusual, as if Reese had done a lot of writing by hand recently.

  Reese announced, “I assume Mr. Powell is on his way to the hospital?”

  Sheriff Hall said, “He’s headed to Cornerstone Hospital. I can have one of my men drive you over there if you want.”

  “No, thank you,” Reese said. Marcus couldn’t place the man’s accent. American, but too generic to tell where Reese had been born. Reese continued, “Our VP is in Italy right now, and we’re not that big a company, so I’m about as close to being in charge as anyone now that Mr. Powell’s been hurt. I figured that I should be here to represent the company’s interests.”

  As Marcus considered his next words to Reese, he knew that they would have made Andrew cringe had his friend been present. But sometimes being rude to people could serve a very specific purpose. Putting a person’s back to the wall or giving them a verbal shove could bring out much more of that person’s true character than Andrew’s honeyed, diplomatic tone ever could.

  Marcus said, “You do like to slime your way into things, don’t you, Reese?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Might as well show the boss that you can be in charge, if given the opportunity. I bet this whole situation is killing you. After all, you’ve been working so hard with Powell’s daughter to worm your way in, and now this mess could bring down the company you hoped to inherit.”

  Reese took a hostile step forward. “I have my job because I deserve it. Not because of my relationship with—”

  “Which came first.”

  “What?”

  “Did you start dating Powell’s daughter before or after being given your current position at his company?”

  “That’s beside the point. What’s your problem?”

  “I just don’t have time to hold the hand of a wormy little executive as he stumbles around deciding what to do. And in your case, trying to figure out what decisions make him look the best.”

  Reese jammed a finger into Marcus’s chest. “I know how to do my job. You worry about doing yours!”

  “Okay. If you know how to do your job, then shut down the prison and start moving out all those inmates immediately.”

  “That’s ridiculous. We almost have this situation under control, and it doesn’t affect the integrity of the prison itself. We’ve called in a few extra guards, but we’re—”

  “Did you hear what happened in there?” Marcus pointed toward the shipping container resting farther down the hill. “He used your software against us; which means that he has full access to it.”

  The correlation dawned on Reese’s fac
e, but he said, “We’ll bring in some forensic computing experts and figure out how that could have happened. But our system is still functioning normally.”

  “People are going to die if you don’t shut down the whole thing and get out now. Judas is using this prison and the controversy surrounding it as a stage. If you take away the stage, you stop the performance. I don’t know what he has planned, but it’s not going to be good for your company or your career.”

  “Even if I agreed with you, I don’t actually have the power to make a decision like that.”

  “Then get in touch with the person who does. You mentioned a VP. Get him on the phone.”

  “I’ll try to reach him, but he’s probably in the air. He was in Europe with his family when it happened, so he might not be back until tomorrow. And the assistant warden at Foxbury is really just a paper pusher. He has no decision-making power.”

  Marcus shook his head. “Just don’t get in the way of me doing my job.” Then he reached out and clicked a key on the armored laptop to play Judas’s next message.

  Reese said, “What’s this?”

  Marcus ignored him.

  Judas’s face, or at least the same tragedy theater mask with its downturned features of anguish, filled the screen. From behind the mask, the electronically disguised voice said, “If you’re watching this, you passed the first test. But you have one more mountain to climb before reaching Renata and Ian.”

  The image changed to that of the woman in a glass box drowning in sand. The same woman from the previous video. In this video, the sand was up to the woman’s waist. She was trying to push herself up onto the sand and somehow claw her way out through the ceiling of the enclosure. But a hood that had been tied in place covered the woman’s face and her hands had been secured behind her back. Marcus could hear her sobbing as she fought for her life.

  Judas said, “This is what Renata and Ian are experiencing at this very moment. They’ve already lost a husband and father. They’ve already endured so much. If they live, they will both likely have nightmares for years to come. But if you don’t reach them soon, nightmares and PTSD will be the least of their concerns. Actually, they won’t have any concerns at all.”