by Erik Carter
Deadly Silence
Erik Carter
Copyright © 2021 by Erik Carter
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Continue Your Silence Jones Journey
The Suppressor: Chapter 1
The Suppressor: Chapter 2
Also by Erik Carter
Chapter One
Sarasota, Florida
The 1990s
A silent assassin in the shadows. A vigilante killer righting wrongs without a word. A man who would look someone in the eye as they begged for life—and not flinch as he pulled the trigger.
But only a myth. A legend.
Reports of serial rapists left outside seedy motels with bullet holes in their skulls. Crime bosses discovered behind mahogany desks, their heads on backwards, twisted all the way around, noses pressed into rich leather high back chairs.
Rumors. Fanciful stories. Little jokes that were followed by too-emphatic chuckles, like children laughing off superstitious threats they had to convince themselves not to believe—ghosts, monsters, the boogeyman.
Rupert Lowry had heard all the tales, and he’d heard most of the names too. The Whisper. Shadow. Silent Death. But the name Lowry had most often heard attributed to the legend was the Quiet Man.
The underworld’s own boogeyman.
Of course, Lowry had never thought the Quiet Man was real— until the night he saw the man with his own eyes.
Lowry had been parked a block and a half away from a shitty little shack of a house, planted a few feet behind a set of railroad tracks. Faded blue paint. Flaking white trim. At the back of a disproportionately large, weed-filled yard, the Ramirez house flaunted a single door, a single window, and a comically small front porch.
The entire building was smaller than a nice hotel suite. Lowry was doing the world a favor by eliminating it.
Three of his men closed in on the place, crossing the yard and converging toward the tiny porch. They moved stealthily, purposely.
One of them held a red plastic gasoline can.
Lowry took a hand off the leather-wrapped steering wheel of his Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4 and clicked the bottom end of the temperature control rocker a few times. It wasn’t hot outside, but the humidity was picking up, turning the orange-amber glow of the streetlights—those that were functioning—into halos of tinted haze.
As he returned his hand to the wheel, there was a bit of movement in the patch of trees a few feet beyond the Ramirez house, a little copse that ran along the property line.
Lowry squinted, leaned over the steering wheel, and took his attention away from his men for the first time as he looked into the trees. There was a strong breeze, and the branches tossed viciously, cutting through the misty orange light. As a gust buffeted the 3000 GT, rocking him slightly in the bucket seat, he leaned back again, confident that his imagination had gotten the best of him.
It had been a tree branch, most likely. At worst, it was a neighbor from the adjacent house, sneaking into the trees and gawking at the three people creeping toward Adriana Ramirez’s home.
If the latter were true, his men would handle the situation.
Thaxton, his man with the gasoline can, stepped onto the porch. He fumbled a moment with the can’s childproofing.
And then something yanked him into the trees.
Bent in two. Arms, legs flailing.
A shadow flashed behind him, then the gas can clunked on the wooden porch.
And he was gone.
Lowry jumped to attention.
His other two men—Goodman and Poletto—exchanged a look, their frames tense, their movements twitchy. But neither of them panicked.
Goodman pulled out his piece and slowly approached the copse. Poletto also retrieved his weapon, then covered the house, getting closer to the porch, eyes on the door.
Goodman adjusted his grip on his pistol, aiming it before him as he closed in on the spot where Thaxton had disappeared. He crept closer and squinted. He was to the trees. He reached for the branches, and—
A dark figure swooped over, consuming him. There were a few brief sounds of a scuffle.
Then all was quiet.
Poletto’s mouth hung open. He whipped around, looking across the yard to Lowry in the car, giving him a What the hell do I do now? look.
Lowry swiped his hand hastily, urging Poletto forward.
Damn. He hated when his men got weak on him, and Poletto was one of the weakest.
Poletto approached the same spot where the other two had been. He pulled back a branch, and Lowry could just make out in the distance the other two men, lying in a pile among the trees, motionless.
“Oh, shit!” Poletto shouted, which Lowry heard muted by distance.
Dread on his face, Poletto stumbled backward, breath shuddering from his mouth, eyes locked on his dead friends.
And then Lowry saw the man behind Poletto. Emerging from the trees.
The Quiet Man.
There had been no logical reason for Lowry to know that the figure who emerged from the trees and stepped behind Poletto was the man of legend. Call it intuition. A cold, sinking feeling in his gut.
The man was about six-foot three inches, quite tall, as rumors held the Quiet Man to be, though Lowry had heard descriptions as tall as six-foot-seven. Broad-shouldered, lean, and powerful. Black pants, dark gray button-up shirt under a light sport jacket. His figure cut across a patch of light, stepping within inches of Poletto’s side, unnoticed, and in that quick flash, Lowry perceived dark hair, straight and choppy, and an angular, hewn face.
Lowry saw all of this for only a moment.
Then the man was just a figure again. A silhouette looming within inches of Poletto.
The silhouette tapped Poletto’s shoulder, who swung around, pistol flailing in his grasp.
Lowry could just make out Poletto’s face across the distance, in the dull artificial light—his eyes like globes, his mouth twisted in a petrified gasp that Lowry couldn’t hear but imagined being primordial and pure.
Poletto’s initial reaction was short-lived, however, as the Quiet Man jabbed him in the face.
Lowry had been through a lot of street warfare. He’d witnessed his fair share of prize fights, many of them sanctioned, but most of them not. He’d seen and taken part in many back-alley beatings. But he’d never seen a punch like this.
The speed of it was stunning, but it was the precision that had truly made Lowry gape, how the man’s hand shot forward mechanically like an oiled piston hammering through a cylinder.
Poletto’s head snapped back, his eyes pinching shut. Another scream echoed across the yard. He staggered into the trees. The Quiet Man followed.
That punch…
A thing of beauty. Order in
the face of chaos. Engineering. Pugilistic art.
It was the punch more than anything—more than the fact that the man had the right height, the right hair, the right build, more than the fact that the man had appeared precisely before the attack on the Ramirez house—that made Lowry know.
It was him. It was the Quiet Man.
No normal man could punch like that.
Poletto grabbed a branch; and, as the Quiet Man lunged toward him, he pulled it back and released. It snapped into the Quiet Man, fazing him for just a moment—long enough for Poletto to level his gun.
But the Quiet Man grabbed the barrel before Poletto could squeeze the trigger. He twisted, wrenching the weapon from Poletto’s grip, and immediately reversed his momentum into a backhanded strike, acquainting Poletto’s face with the butt of the pistol.
A plume of blood snaked from Poletto’s mouth. Another scream.
The Quiet Man lunged again, this time putting his hands around Poletto’s neck. Poletto produced a knife from a sheath on his belt and jabbed at the man, who quickly juked to the side. The blade missed everything, even the flapping edge of the man’s sport coat.
The Quiet Man grabbed Poletto’s hand, twisted it, and brought the knife toward Poletto’s chest.
The two men struggled, all four of their hands on the knife’s handle, arms quivering. The Quiet Man was stronger, though, and he inched the blade closer and closer to Poletto.
Finally, with a surge of energy, the Quiet Man simultaneously thrust the blade between Poletto’s ribs and clamped his free hand over Poletto’s mouth.
Lowry could just discern, from a distance, Poletto’s eyes going wide. Death wide. His entire body shook as he stared at the Quiet Man for a few painful, pitiful moments. Then his body went limp, eyes still open.
The Quiet Man crouched down, bringing Poletto’s body to the earth. He regarded it for a half moment, then gave it a shove, rolling it into the trees.
And then he jumped to his feet and turned. Looking right at Lowry.
Oh, shit!
Lowry locked eyes with him. The man was now fully out of the shadows, completely revealed in the muted light. Those sharp, angular features Lowry had seen moments earlier were clear and defined with cold dark eyes looking out of them.
He hadn’t moved yet. Just stared at Lowry. A showdown. But Lowry could see energy about to explode from him—a sprinter on the line, a gunslinger about to draw.
And then it happened.
The man bolted toward him.
Unbelievable! There was no way the man could catch him. No way in hell. A block and a half separated them. And Lowry was in a car.
Yet Lowry still fumbled in his haste as he reached for the stick shift. He pounded the gas, dropped the clutch, and the 3000GT’s all-wheel drive grabbed the pavement with a chirp.
He peeled off—yanked the wheel to the right and squealed around the corner.
Ahead was a major road, Suez Street, the road he’d turned off to get to Ramirez’s shitty little house. Traffic. Bright streetlights. Benches. A well-lit restaurant. He shifted into second, barreled toward Suez.
He looked to the rearview. The Quiet Man was still running in his direction. And now he held a pistol.
Lowry buried the gas pedal. Almost to the street.
Another look in the rearview, and the Quiet Man had slowed to a stop. He was now a dark silhouette at the edge of the Ramirez property, pistol dangling by his side, watching.
Lowry slowed slightly at Suez Street, quickly checked for traffic, and then took another squealing turn.
He didn’t know where he was going or what he was going to do next. He’d barely considered the fact that the plan at the Ramirez house had failed—let alone the implications of that failure.
He just knew he needed to put some immediate distance between him and the monster two blocks back.
Chapter Two
Silence Jones stood at the edge of the yard, watching where the 3000GT had made its screeching, violent disappearance.
It had been Rupert Lowry he’d seen through the windshield. Silence recognized the face from the photos he’d been given. Long features with a pointy nose, thin eyebrows, a mustache and hair on his chin—a countenance brimming with twitchy, primal energy, a dark-shoulder-length-haired, blue-eyed bad boy, grungy cool in a natural way, not a purchased-at-the-mall way. Silence hadn’t expected to face the head honcho tonight.
Movement behind him. He turned. The house. A figure in one of the front windows. A woman, just visible in the shadows, clutching the drapes. Even from a distance, Silence could see her shaking.
He holstered his Beretta 92FS and crossed the yard.
The porch’s floorboards squeaked with his weight. An earthy smell of faint rot, wood exposed to Florida humidity too long. He rapped on the door twice.
The door moved immediately, but the person who’d been waiting behind it opened it incredibly slowly. A cautious delay. When the gap was two inches wide, it stopped growing.
A woman peered out of the sliver of open space, the same woman he’d seen in the window. The house beyond was mostly dark, lit by a single lamp, most likely. He couldn’t discern much of her, just dark, wavy hair, an almond-shaped eye, and olive, Hispanic skin.
“Thank you,” the woman whispered. “Who … who are you?”
Silence didn’t respond. He took his wallet from his pocket, removed the card, handed it to her.
It was a plastic business card, the size, shape, and thickness of a credit card, no magstripe. Frosted, semi-transparent. Dark blue, raised lettering explained his purpose:
She read over the card, the fear in her face morphing slightly into a concerned strain of bewilderment. “Is this real?”
Silence didn’t respond. He held his hand out. After a moment of confusion, she took his meaning and returned the card. He pointed through the crack of the door, as though asking permission to enter.
“Oh, um … Of course.”
The door closed slightly, a chain rattled, then she opened it fully and stepped inside. Silence followed.
The woman switched on another lamp. Now he saw all of her. She was in her forties, maybe late thirties. Far from thin, but she was the type who carried extra weight exquisitely with a pleasant shape and proportions. She wore a uniform, a housekeeper’s dress, bluish gray.
The house’s interior was at odds with the exterior. She’d made the most of her current station, transforming the shack into a home. Plenty of decorations, some of them chic, some of them homey. A loveseat and an armchair, both well worn but also well loved. Cozy area rugs covered portions of the matted, filthy carpeting. There was a terribly loud ticking of a clock. Distractingly loud.
Silence gestured toward the loveseat as he sat in the armchair, inviting her to sit across from him. She hesitated, taken aback by a stranger asking her to have a seat in her own home. But she did so, squaring herself to face him.
Silence pointed toward the front of the house, indicating the dead men he’d left outside in the trees.
“Talk,” he said as kindly as his voice allowed.
A slight pain in his throat, like the tiny movement of a knife permanently lodged in there. The explanation he’d given her with the plastic card—the message he shared with all those he helped—was no exaggeration. Speaking was painful for him. That’s why he spoke as little as possible, counting his syllables and editing his speech before any sounds left his lips.
The woman jerked back in the loveseat, a hand going to her chest. When a person first heard his voice, there was almost always a powerful reaction, even if the person tried to mask it politely.
Because aside from being painful, his voice was also incredibly harsh, the sound of two volcanic stones being slowly pressed against each other, all the popping, deep rumbles, cracking.
The woman watched him for a long moment, her lips parting once in a failed attempt before finally responding.
“They were Lowry’s men. Rupert Lowry. You know, the guy in the news,
the one who’s been burning people’s houses down.”
She grabbed a folded newspaper from a small table besided the loveseat, which held an antique lamp, a framed photo, and a small, crystal clock, the source of the obscene ticking. She handed it to him.
The top headline read:
ANOTHER SARASOTA FIRE, ANOTHER TIE TO LOWRY
Below the headline, two images—a building engulfed in flames and Rupert Lowry, wearing a leather jacket and jeans, surrounded by a crowd of reporters, head hunched, a manila folder in one hand, trying to shield his face, a suited man behind him, hand on his shoulder, clearly his lawyer.
Another prominently featured article was beneath the main one about Lowry, “below the fold” on the bottom half of the paper.
Hardin to Bury Hatchet with Mayor Sizemore
Silence read the opening sentence.
Though Commissioner Matthew Hardin continues his harsh criticism of Mayor Ken Sizemore’s leadership during these tumultuous times, he has announced that he will join the mayor in a show of unity at tonight’s candlelight vigil at Bayfront Park honoring those lost in the continuing chaos.
As with the top article, there were two photos beneath this story’s headline, side by side. The left image showed a man in shirtsleeves, rolled to his elbows, loosened tie, standing behind a microphone giving a fiery speech. His mouth was open mid-sentence, eyes squinted with strain, fist in the air. Caucasian, maybe late thirties, athletic build, short beard. Commissioner Hardin.
In the other photo, Mayor Sizemore descended a set of governmentally appropriate stairs, hands in the pockets of his overcoat, looking to the ground. He was in his sixties, white hair, tired face, cleft chin, dark eyebrows.
