The Game of Life or Death: A Detective Series of Crime and Suspense Thrillers (The Jacob Hayden Series Book 3)

by Prandy, Charles

  As the years moved on, the hand-to-hand combat training progressed to weapons. Rule was taught how to fight with sticks and knives. He knew the body’s pressure points and where a stick would be most effective when it hit the body. He knew where all of the body’s main arteries were and how to quickly hit them with a knife.

  When Rule turned sixteen, the weapons training moved from sticks and knives to guns. Rule was an expert marksman with a rifle. He knew how to handle just about every handgun on the market. Rule never questioned how his father knew so much about what he was teaching, but ever since seeing the fake passports and now hearing the word “assassin,” Rule had to start putting two and two together.

  For as long as Rule could remember his father owned Cardinal Rule. They never talked much about Dennis’s childhood or what he’d done for work before the firm. His mother stayed at home and cared after the house and the children. She was the typical mom of three who ran errands and took the kids to and from their after school hobbies and sports. There were times when Dennis would be out of town for work for days at a time, and he told the family that he was either bringing in new clients or tending to the existing ones.

  Rule’s childhood was typical of most suburban kids growing up in the seventies and eighties. Jacob had been his best friend since they were five. They lived in the same neighborhood and pretty much did everything together. During some of Rule’s training sessions, Dennis invited Jacob over to pick up some of the arts, however, Jacob was more into playing basketball. So, those times when Rule was training, Jacob was usually on the court.

  Rule tried to search his memory for a specific event or moment that now, looking back, would be that “ah ha” moment to give him a clue that his father wasn’t who he said he was, but he couldn’t think of anything. Rule’s mother often said that when Dennis was away he was working hard to give his family the things he didn’t have when he was a child. Rule never questioned that.

  He never knew his father’s parents. They died before he was born. His grandparents didn’t have siblings, so the only thing he knew about his father was what his father told him. He knew that his dad grew up in northern Virginia. He knew that his dad went to the University of Virginia and studied business and economics. He knew that his parents met while they were in college and married shortly after they graduated. He knew that his dad met Samuel Cardinal at UVA and sometime after his parents married, Samuel and Dennis started Cardinal Rule.

  However, now as Rule thought about his dad, he realized that he only knew snapshots about who his dad was and not the intimate moments of his father’s past that make a man human. His dad never talked about his first crush, or his first kiss, or his childhood friends. Rule didn’t remember a conversation where his dad talked about the house he grew up in or a time when his heart was broken.

  Assassin floated through his mind again. Could it be possible? Could everything he thought he knew about his father be a lie? Why would Dennis teach him that when engaging in physical contact, the first thing you do is take away the opponent’s weapons? He used to always say to Rule, “If they can’t walk, they can’t kick you back. If they can’t make fists, they can’t punch you back.” What kind of a father would teach something like that to his son? Rule let the thought sit in his head. The only conclusion he came up with was the kind of father who wouldn’t let a person walk away from him alive.

  His mind finally came out of his memory pit and back to the conversation that Jacob and Jadyn were having.

  “I think you’re right,” Rule said, “I think my father was an assassin.”

  Jacob and Jadyn looked at Rule and then back to each other.

  “I was only thinking out loud,” Jadyn said.

  “I know,” Rule said, “but I think you’re on to something.”

  “Like what?” Jacob said. “You can’t possibly think that your dad was killing people.”

  “I think he was. And more importantly, I think Samuel Rule was with him.”

  Jacob’s eyes grew wide. “Rule, don’t do this.”

  “I know, Jacob, but I was just here thinking, and something from a long time ago came to mind. Something that could prove Jadyn’s theory.”

  “What?” Jacob said.

  “My father killed a man. And I witnessed it.”

  Fifty-four

  To say that I was speechless was an understatement. I was more like mortified. Rule just told us that he witnessed his father murder someone. I had known him nearly my whole life, and we were as close as friends can be, and yet he’d never mentioned this to me.

  “Rule,” I said, “think about what you’re saying.” I exhaled and looked around the room. “You just said that you saw your dad commit murder.”

  Rule leaned back in his chair and placed both palms on the table. “I don’t want to believe it either, but ever since we found the passports, it’s like my mind is going through old vaults and pulling up memories from my childhood that I must have locked away.”

  “You repressed your memories,” Jadyn said. “Sometimes when we’ve experienced something so traumatic, our mind can actually force us to forget what we experience. I worked on two cases where we brought in a hypnotist to help the victims remember what happened to them.”

  I nodded, “Working homicide I’ve seen the same thing. But, Rule, your dad killing someone. I just can’t see it.”

  Rule exhaled and then leaned forward in his seat and looked at me, “You wouldn’t have known this, but when we were kids I was seeing a therapist.”

  My eyes grew wide, “Really? When?”

  “I was ten years old. It was during the summer before sixth grade.”

  My mind started turning, “I was down south for most of that summer.”

  “Right. I believe you were visiting your grandparents.”

  “Yeah, my grandfather had been diagnosed with cancer, and my parents wanted me to spend the summer with them.”

  Rule nodded. “I never discussed it with anyone. My parents said that I didn’t have to tell anyone if I didn’t feel comfortable.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t really talking to anyone. I stayed in my room a lot. My parents kept asking what was wrong, but I said that it was nothing. My mom was worried about me, so she had me see a therapist for most of that summer.”

  “You seemed fine when I got back.”

  “I don’t know. I just started acting normal again and forgot about what I saw.”

  There was a brief pause by all of us and then Jadyn asked, “What’d you see?”

  “I don’t know how I forgot about this,” Rule said to me, “but you remember the weeds before they built that shopping center behind our neighborhood?”

  “Of course. That’s where we made most of our tree forts.”

  “The weeds?” Jadyn asked.

  “The woods,” I said. “For some reason all of the kids in the neighborhood called it the weeds. It was about ten acres of wooded land behind our old neighborhood that now is a shopping center.”

  “School had just ended for the summer,” Rule said, “and I believe you had just left. It was dark out, and I was coming home from Eric Neely’s house. I was just starting to cut through the field when I saw my dad and Samuel walking with a man toward the weeds.”

  “The field?” Jadyn asked.

  “The field is where we played football and baseball. Eric’s house was on the opposite end of the field,” I said.

  Rule cleared his throat and continued, “I called to my dad, but he didn’t hear me. So I ran after them hoping to catch up. By the time I got close enough, they had already entered the weeds. I thought it was a little strange because my dad never went into the weeds. Remember he used to always tell us to stay out of there because we could get hurt?”

  I smiled, “Yeah, all of our parents did.”

  “Right, so to see him and Samuel go into the weeds caught me off guard. So, when I got there I tried to be quiet so they wouldn’t hear m
e. I walked about twenty yards before I heard the arguing.”

  “Did you recognize the man?” I asked.

  “Nope. Never seen him before.”

  “What were they arguing about?” Jadyn asked.

  “I don’t know. I could only hear bits and pieces, but I know I heard my dad say that ‘you betrayed us’.”

  “Betrayed?” I said.

  “Yeah. Then I got close enough to see them. My dad was standing to the man’s right, and Samuel was standing to his left. The man kept saying that he didn’t betray anyone, and that’s when my father pulled out a gun and shot the man in the head.”

  “What?” I said. It felt like my mouth had dropped to the floor.

  “I remember now that I wet my pants.”

  “I’m so sorry, Rule,” Jadyn said.

  Rule’s eyes started tearing up. “Somehow I made it home that night. I don’t remember anything much after that happened. Then the rest of the summer felt like a blur. I wasn’t hungry. I didn’t want to go outside and play. I definitely didn’t want to go to the weeds again.”

  “Your brain somehow must have forced those memories into some kind of a vault to protect you,” Jadyn said.

  Rule nodded.

  I wanted to say something, but didn’t know what to say. My best friend had just told me that he remembered seeing his father murder a man. What do you say to something like that? I wasn’t sure, so I just stayed quiet.

  “You said that you can prove it?” Jadyn said.

  “I believe so. Ten years old would put it at about 1987?”

  Jadyn and I nodded.

  “I think that’s around the time when Congressman John Turner from North Carolina went missing.”

  I scanned my brain. I was too young at the time to have cared if a Congressman went missing, but theories about what happened to him were still talked about to this day.

  “I think he was the man that my father killed,” Rule said.

  “Rule, do you realize what you’re saying?” Jadyn said. “No one’s been able to solve his disappearance in over twenty-seven years. Some people believe that he suffered the same fate as Jimmy Hoffa, buried underneath a stadium somewhere.”

  “I know how it sounds. And, believe me, I don’t want it to be true. But now that I’m starting to remember things, I can almost say with certainty that my father killed Congressman Turner.”

  “If I remember correctly, wasn’t Congressman Turner touted as possibly being a presidential candidate?”

  “He was,” Jadyn said. “That was one of the big conspiracy theories going around, that his disappearance was due to his rise in political status.”

  “If that’s the case then why would Mr. Rule have killed him? And more importantly, why would a potential presidential candidate be meeting with, at the time, a small time venture capitalist who lived in a small town in Maryland? And how does any of this fit with the fake passports and the Russians? It doesn’t add up,” I said.

  “It does if Mr. Rule and Mr. Cardinal weren’t just venture capitalists,” Jadyn said.

  Rule and I looked at her.

  “I have to do a little digging, but the FBI still looks into the Congressman’s case from time to time. And if I remember correctly, Congressman Turner was accused of being a communist with ties to the Soviet Union.”

  “But weren’t a lot of people accused of communism during that time?” I said. “That was a way to discredit a lot of people who were gaining popularity.”

  “It was. But don’t you think it’s more than a coincidence that we think Russians have something to do with the Rule family’s murder, and now we hear that Mr. Rule may have killed Congressman Turner, who may or may not have had ties to the former Soviet Union?”

  “So what are you thinking?” Rule said.

  “This may explain why we don’t have any information on your father further back than thirty-five years ago.” She looked at both of us before going on. “Your father may not have been a secret assassin, but a covert CIA operative. And if that’s the case, we may never know his real identity.”

  Fifty-five

  “Why the CIA?” I said.

  Jadyn looked at the passports. “How else would you explain these? They’re real. Everything matches up. They’re not forged.”

  I leaned forward and placed my elbows on the table and raised my index finger to my lips. I often did that when trying to figure something out.

  “There’s gotta be another explanation.”

  “My ears are wide open,” Jadyn said.

  I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. I was stumped. The CIA? Could Mr. Rule actually have been an agent with the Central Intelligence Agency? As hard as it was to believe, right now, it made the most sense.

  “So let’s assume that what you’re saying is true. Why the Russians? Why now?”

  Jadyn shrugged her shoulders. “Could be a million reasons.”

  “It’s actually one reason,” Rule said. “Whatever it is that got my family killed is on that videotape.”

  “Right,” I said, “the tape. I forgot about that.”

  “And they think that I know where it is.”

  “What could be on it?” Jadyn asked.

  “Something that probably happened a long time ago.”

  Jadyn and Rule looked at me inquisitively.

  “Think about,” I said. “What did they ask for?”

  “A videotape,” Rule said.

  I pointed to Rule. “Right. Who uses videotapes anymore? I wouldn’t even know where to buy one.”

  “So the fact that they’re asking for a videotape, you assume that whatever is on it was filmed a long time ago?” Jadyn said.

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  We became quiet for a spell.

  “What could be on a videotape that’s so important a family is killed over it?” I asked.

  “A scandal,” Jadyn said.

  “A murder,” Rule said.

  “How about possibly a murder and a scandal,” I said.

  “It would have to involve someone of importance,” Jadyn said. “Why else would Russians travel thousands of miles to American soil for a videotape?”

  “Then that leads to another question,” Rule said. “If we think that whatever was shot on this videotape happened a long time ago, why would they think my father still has the tape?”

  “Maybe he told someone,” I said.

  “So, you mean to tell me that a former CIA operative who’s kept his true identity a secret for over thirty years decided to tell someone that he’s in possession of a videotape that may or may not have captured a murder or a scandal? Doesn’t add up, Jacob.”

  “How else would they know?”

  Rule shrugged his shoulders.

  “Maybe this Betsy Miller lady found out,” Jadyn said.

  Rule and I looked at Jadyn.

  “She was obviously a mole,” Jadyn said. “She worked for your father for six months. Who knows what kind of information she found out?”

  “Therein lies another question,” I said. “How did she know who your father really was? Or more importantly, how did the people she worked for know who your father really was? If Jadyn couldn’t find out any information on him, how did they?”

  “You guys are starting to make my head hurt,” Rule said.

  “The question is fair enough,” Jadyn said. “I turned over every leaf that I could and still couldn’t find anything. How did these people find your dad?”

  “I think we may be getting ahead of ourselves,” Rule said. “First of all, we don’t know that my dad was in the CIA. Second, we don’t know that my dad even knew about this videotape. And third …”

  Rule looked at me while letting the word “third” hang in the air.

  “I can’t think of a third.”

  “Okay, I get it. We’re just brainstorming here,” I said. “But, Rule, you’ve got to admit that what we’re saying makes sense. I mean, a woman you’ve known for six months, who yo
u even did a background check on, is killed the day after your family is killed. The same woman who lied to me in hopes that I’d find you quicker because they probably didn’t know where you were. That can’t be a coincidence.”

  “I never said that it wasn’t. But come on, the CIA? Why would he have worked for them?”

  “Maybe he never stopped?” Jadyn said.

  We both looked at Jadyn.

  “Maybe that’s how they were able to find him. Maybe they have their own mole in the CIA?”

  I nodded, “It’s possible.”

  “I think I know how we can find out if any of this has legs to stand on,” Rule said.

  “How?”

  “We talk to Mrs. Cardinal.”

  “Samuel Cardinal’s widow?” I asked.

  Rule nodded. “If any of this is true, I think she’ll tell us.”

  Fifty-six

  Jadyn went back to the office. The whole CIA talk got her mind turning, and she wanted to reach out to some contacts to see if she could find out any information. After Samuel Cardinal’s fatal heart attack two years ago, Margaret Cardinal moved from the city to Alexandria, Virginia, a twenty-minute drive away.

  The neighborhood was modest and quiet. Some parts of Alexandria still had that old southern charm that can be found in the Deep South, while other parts are more modern and fitting for a city close to Washington, D.C. Mrs. Cardinal lived in a small one-story, brick ranch at the end of a cul-de-sac. A blue Mercedes E Class was parked in the house’s carport.

  “That’s her car,” Rule said.

  Rule rang the doorbell and a chime sang through the house that lasted for a few seconds. A glass screen door covered the front door. The door slowly opened and a tall, attractive, silver-haired woman answered. She looked at me first and then at Rule. Her eyes grew wide, and her mouth partly opened. She raised her hand to cover her mouth, and then seconds later she unlocked the screen door and pushed it open.

  “Rule,” her voice couldn’t hide its surprise. “Dear, God, I saw the news.”