The Alex Troutt Thrillers: Books 1-3 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set)

by John W. Mefford

  “Are you tapping our phones?” Nick asked in jest.

  “I know people,” Jerry said, a hint of a smile crossing his lips. “Anyway, could this sniper be connected to that investigation?”

  I felt a tug on my knee. Glancing down, the medic was wrapping my leg with bandages. Apparently the other leg was fine in comparison. No bandages there. “How? We were two of two dozen FBI personnel at that crime scene yesterday.”

  “I don’t want to sound sexist, but maybe someone—the perp—was watching all the action go down in response to what he did. It might have excited him in some sick way. And then he turned his obsession to you, Alex.”

  I scrunched my eyes closed. “The only things observing us were rats and squirrels. And by rats, I’m not just talking about the ones with long, slithering tails.”

  I eyed Nick. He knew whom I was talking about.

  Jerry looked at Nick, then back at me. “Is there something I should know?”

  The medic stood up and snapped off her rubber glove. “Good as new.”

  I pushed the legs of my pants down and eased off the gurney. My body was telling me that the surge of adrenaline to survive the brush with death might have depleted every core resource. Even my brain had started hurting. But I wasn’t about to share that information.

  “Nick and I are late. We need to get to this small island where they’ve found another body. Same MO supposedly.”

  For some reason, my mind started grinding on our previous theories involving Agatha Barden. The resentment and betrayal she must have felt from her philandering husband, Christopher. But now with another victim in the mix, I wondered if this sick ritual might have been repeated because the love-sex spider web had somehow snared another man.

  “Unless someone threw the Harry Potter magic cloak over my head, I didn’t disappear, did I?” Jerry asked as his nose lit up.

  “Jerry, if something was wrong and you could fix it, you’d be the first person I’d ask. Right, Nick?”

  Pausing as he was slipping his sports coat over his shoulders, Nick opened his jaw but no words came out.

  “Nick agrees.” I shot him a quick wink, then found my own coat with a hole in the arm. It would have to work for now.

  “Alex, are you ready for all of this? Your doctor hasn’t cleared you, and here you are getting in shootouts, diving into ice cold water,” Jerry said, raising an eyebrow.

  I pointed a finger in his direction, my mouth open.

  “Yes, I heard about all of it. I know people, remember?”

  Someone was a snitch. I glared at Nick over Jerry’s shoulder.

  “It wasn’t me. I’m just the babysitter.” He pretended to turn a key at his lips then throw it over his shoulder.

  “I’m not a hundred percent, but I’m good enough to be on the playing field. Getting better with every hour that passes,” I said to Jerry, knowing full well that I’d just taken two giant leaps backward, at least on the physical side of my health.

  “Good.” He raised a hand and nearly popped my bandaged shoulder before catching himself and lightly patting the opposite one.

  “So can I have my own gun back?” I held out my hand and tried to smile through the pain.

  “Don’t have it on me.” He scratched the back of his head. “Listen, I just need you to talk to your doc and get a note saying it’s safe for you to carry.”

  “And use,” I added.

  Jerry closed his eyes and slowly rubbed his forehead. I’d probably given him a migraine.

  I suddenly felt hungry. The only food that came to mind was something spicy, Mexican perhaps. Nick moved next to me, and I said, “Do you know a place where we can grab a quick bite on our way out to the crime scene? I’m dying for Mexican food.”

  He twisted his lips. “I know just the place.”

  “You always do.”

  13

  “You call this Mexican food?” I spit out a bite of burrito into the wrapper.

  “The best in Boston,” Nick said, reaching forward to wipe at the fogged-up window as the windshield wipers flapped away wet snowflakes.

  “This is nasty, Nick. Really, this is the best we’ve got?”

  “If there is better, I haven’t heard about it. Antonio cooks up a mean dish of homemade cheese enchiladas, so I’m spoiled.”

  I stuffed the rest of my food in the bag, my stomach still longing for something to fill the void.

  “Still hungry?” he said, cramming another taco in his mouth.

  “I thought you loved Antonio’s homemade enchiladas.”

  “I do. But a man’s got to eat, and we’re not making it home in time for dinner. But it’s okay; I’ll get home in time to watch Jimmy Fallon. I think Tom Cruise and Jimmy are supposed to battle each other in Nonsense Karaoke.”

  “Ah,” I said, not the least bit intrigued. Out of nowhere, another fact flew into my brain. “Fallon is from Boston?”

  “You have a mind like a trap.” Nick laughed, and I followed suit.

  We motored up Route 1, making decent time as the snowflakes grew bigger and the snow began to stick. Taking Highway 128 East, we cut across Beverly. I imagined the Barden estate with a couple of inches of snow. Befitting a postcard, no doubt. But I knew inside the home, Agatha was a boiling pot of emotions. Her husband had died, suffering a brutal death, leaving her with a kid with Down syndrome and a four-month-old baby. Her grief made sense, so I shouldn’t be surprised. Then again, my internal alarm had sounded. Why? Was it the drama with her brother-in-law’s accusations? Trent had seemed like he was barely able to keep it together, living life one minute to the next.

  A family hairball. We all had one.

  I fired off a group text to Mark, Sydney, Erin, and Luke, letting them know I’d be home after dinner and to go ahead and eat without me.

  My family seemed equally tangled, but in a different way. I didn’t pretend to be above it all. In fact, I was probably a major component of the complication. It just felt as if the people in the house were constantly on edge, me included. Shit had happened, most of which I couldn’t recall, although flashes of images had begun to reach my frontal lobe. And they weren’t all cheerful pictures. To some degree, I supposed having a teenage daughter brought out the claws in all of us. I’d seen it up close the last two days.

  I thought more about my relationship with Mark. I longed to feel a connection with him…for us and the family. It felt strange to think of our group as a family if Mark and I didn’t have a rock-solid foundation.

  “What are you thinking about over there?”

  I gazed at the white-trimmed trees as the area became more rural. “How scenic it is driving up the coast with the light snow.”

  “I know that mind of yours. You sure that’s it?”

  “Sure.” I spotted a green and a sand trap just off the road—a golf course. “Do you play golf?”

  “Negative.”

  “You don’t belong to the fancy club in Beverly?”

  “We live in Manchester-by-the-Sea. And we don’t do clubs. A little too snobby for our taste.”

  “Says the man who drinks fine wine.”

  He took his eyes off the road and shot me a quick look. “How did you know that?”

  “It’s a recent development. I have this odd picture in my mind of you holding the stem of a wine glass, giving a toast.”

  “Huh. Could be foreshadowing.”

  “Or something like that.”

  I saw signs for Ipswich Bay. “I forgot to ask if the crime scene is in the same place—Choate Island?”

  “No, but it’s close. Just to the east of Halibut Point State Park, in Sandy Bay. Randy said he has two operation units set up. One on the mainland in Gull Cove, near where the boats are ferrying equipment and resources back and forth to the tiny island. And then the island itself.”

  Twenty minutes and a million trees later, we pulled into the parking lot at Gull Cove, although I’d seen the globe of portable lights for the last half mile. We checked in with the ma
inland agent in charge and learned they were about to pull the body from the ocean.

  “You can’t do that. Not until I see it.”

  About ten heads turned in my direction.

  It took a little coaxing and an animated phone conversation between the agent and Randy, who was on the island, but in five minutes, Nick and I were on an open-air motor boat zipping across the bay toward an island no bigger than a comma.

  “Watch your step,” a young kid said, helping me off the boat. “The rocks are slippery from the snow.”

  We hiked about fifty yards, navigating through not only the rocky terrain and clusters of splintered trees but also people, many who had the standard FBI lettering on their shirts or jackets. A smaller number of uniforms and plainclothes detectives from the local Rockport police were mostly hovering near the heels of the Feds. Twenty or more personnel were combing every inch of the land, looking for evidence. I wasn’t sure they’d find any, not left by someone as meticulous as what I’d seen at the Barden crime scene—if I were to believe these two crimes were committed by the same person.

  Pushing through a thicket of trees, I hopped off a boulder and found myself three feet from the man in charge.

  “Nick, Alex, glad you could finally make it.” Randy pumped out foggy breaths, each of us with a single foot on the tiny shore, the other resting on a rock.

  “We had a little jam we had to get out of first.” I could already feel my pulse pinging a little faster. And it wasn’t because he was tall and reasonably attractive. Our last interaction had left me wanting to give him a piece of my mind, if not a fist to the jaw. Now after surviving the sniper shooting, pushing my body beyond its already reduced capacity, and dealing with the brat pack, my nerves were on edge, ready to take down the first person who pissed me off. Probably just my natural instinct to survive.

  Nick continued my thought with a few more details. “Sniper shooting in downtown. We were pinned against the front of the Boston Revolutionary Museum. They almost got us, and two kids.”

  “Did you take them out?” Randy asked, his eyes pausing on the tattered hole in my coat and then turning to notice Nick’s butterfly bandage on his temple.

  I could feel wet flakes sticking to the side of my face as I tried to look around Randy for a glimpse of the dead body. Spotlights illuminated two divers swimming in the ocean, but I couldn’t see the victim.

  “Take them out?” Nick sounded annoyed, and I shifted my eyes back to my partner.

  Pointing a defiant finger, Nick shuffled his foot, slipping on a rock and falling to the rough surface, but not before instinctively reaching out and grabbing for something. His hand snagged Randy’s belt loop, thrusting Randy’s hips forward into me.

  Nick landed with an audible thud, while I was forced to scramble over uneven ground to rid myself of the leech, Randy. We looked like the three stooges. It took a few seconds before we’d gathered ourselves, gotten back on our feet, and allocated the proper amount of personal space. Each of us took a quick glance around, ensuring no one had noticed.

  “You guys can give me a full debrief on your interview with Barden’s wife in a minute. You insisted on seeing the body in its full glory,” Randy said, pointing a finger directly at my gut. I imagined breaking his finger, and I had to hold back a smile.

  I gave a simple nod, and Randy turned to walk down the pebbled shoreline to reach the closest point to the body. We followed.

  “Technically, we’re still in Sandy Bay, but since we’re on the east side, facing the Atlantic, the elements are harsh on the body and anyone working the scene, especially in this shitty weather.”

  I spotted the submerged body about twenty feet from where we stood. Straining my eyes, I could see the same gray funnel attached to the man’s torso, a green-and-blue tie waving in front of his face for a quick moment. I thought I noticed something gold and shiny hovering just above his head. Those could be the rings, being pulled in the strong current. A pair of underwater lights illuminated salmon-colored stains across his chest and neck. Like Nick said earlier, we were looking at the same MO, which meant the same guy had killed another person. Unless it was a copycat. I didn’t want to go there.

  My eyes were drawn deeper, where the shimmering water played with my vision. I inched my feet down the bank until the miniature waves lapped over my shoes, instantly creating a chill up and down my spine. I paused for a second, my sights questioning my earlier assessment of the crime scene.

  Pointing out toward the body, I turned my head to Randy. “What happened to the vic’s clothes?”

  He chuckled, then stroked his mustache as if it were a pet. Leaning his hands on his knees, he faced the ocean.

  “He was stripped from the waist down.”

  “Damn, I wonder if hypothermia killed him before he drowned,” Nick said, moving up to my right side, his hands on his knees as well. “Are we assuming the COD is the exact same as the other guy, Barden?”

  I nodded and said, “Toxicology could show something different. By the way, did we ever get back the toxicology reports on Barden?”

  “Focus,” Randy said to me, wagging his finger at the dead body in front of us.

  I decided not to tell him where to stuff it.

  “This guy suffered like few vics I’ve ever seen.” He turned his head to me. “If it happened before he died.”

  “If what happened? And has anyone ascertained why he was stripped? Someone just wanted to see how much shrinkage could actually occur?”

  “Do you breathe when you talk?” Randy asked.

  A stench of fish passed by my nose. Rotten fish. I immediately ruled out my surroundings and pinned it on the asshole staring at me.

  I didn’t blink. “I’m ignoring your ignorant comment. Are you going to answer the question, or keep your divers in the freezing water that much longer?”

  He snickered, still staring at the crime scene.

  I took in a shaky breath, telling myself not to be baited by his behavior or his lack of intelligence. A quick count to five, and I arched both eyebrows, proud of my ability to blow off his childish antics.

  He finally returned to the matter at hand.

  “Poor fella got his dick torn off. Makes me gag just thinking about it.”

  “Ouch,” I said.

  Randy turned his head suddenly, starting to retch. He looked like a cat preparing to throw up a fur ball. I didn’t realize how lucky I had it with Pumpkin—no hairballs yet, anyway.

  I looked at Nick, who was wincing, and said, “Can you believe Mr. Tough Man over here?”

  “There’s not a man alive who wouldn’t feel some pain just by looking at that gory scene. But to gag…geez, kind of makes me wonder what else he’s had in his mouth.”

  I snorted a snotty giggle.

  A few seconds later, Randy had finished his business and resumed the position, hands on knees, like a linebacker ready to make a tackle.

  “Was it cut off?” I asked.

  He gritted his teeth. “It’s hard to determine in the water and with the type of fleshy skin involved.”

  He paused for a second, obviously not comfortable with the discussion.

  “If it wasn’t cut off, then what are they thinking?”

  He opened and shut his mouth, as if he didn’t want to say the words. Then he did. “They think it was bitten off.”

  “By what?”

  He raised a finger. “Or by whom?” Randy acted as if he’d just asked the key question to the entire case.

  “So you think the perp did this?”

  He swallowed hard. “The flesh is so mangled, there’s no way to determine if it was man or animal who’d done it. That’s another reason we want to pull the body—to preserve the wound as best as possible.”

  “A shark. Had to be a shark, right?” I turned back to Nick, who seemed less shook up than our fearless leader.

  Nick shrugged. “Makes sense to me.”

  “Have there been any shark sightings in this area?”

&nb
sp; “A detective from the Rockport PD is chasing that down right now.”

  “Where’s the team lead for the diving unit?”

  “Why?” Randy asked.

  “I want to go in, just like with Barden. Do we have an ID on the vic yet?” I pulled off my coat and handed it to Nick, then blew warm air into my hands.

  “Are you smoking something, Alex?” Nick said.

  “You know I’m serious. Where is he, or she?”

  “He’s in the water. Had to minimize personnel on the island, given the terrain and bad weather.”

  “Before you pull him, I need to see the victim in his natural state. Do you have a name or anything on the vic yet?”

  Five minutes later, the dive-team lead was handing me a wetsuit, saying, “You’ll never get this suit on over your clothes. Not in a million years.”

  I heard Randy whinny like a horse. “You got two options, Alex. Drop this nonsense and let us remove the body, or give us all a little peep show.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was give Randy a peep of anything. I turned to the illuminated ocean and tried to imagine the victim’s final thoughts. Had he been focused solely on trying to breathe or had he been in agony from the castration? “Nick, over here please.”

  Without saying a word, he followed me across the bed of rocks and boulders. Two tree trunks had seemingly merged into one enormous tree.

  “Hold up my coat, and I’ll change inside your little cave.”

  Putting all modesty aside, I stripped off my clothes in about twenty seconds. The laborious part was tugging the wetsuit over my thighs and hips. I grunted and growled with each tug.

  I noticed Nick squeezing his eyes shut.

  “What are you doing, freak?”

  “Trying not to look.”

  His face was all wrinkled up like a Chinese Shar-Pei.

  “Nick, no need to give yourself an aneurism. I trust you,” I said with my breasts still exposed and very aware of the cold weather.

  “We’ve known each other for, what, twelve, thirteen years?” he said. “But we’ve never seen each other naked.”

  “No offense,” I said, pushing one arm into the suit with an extra grunt, “but I doubt seeing you full Monty was ever, nor will ever be, on my bucket list.”