Wild Card

by Luke Murphy

  Did Josie still have romantic feelings for Dale after all these years? Jimmy seemed to think so, but Dale was doubtful. A lot of time had passed, and feelings could be suppressed.

  “The mail has been picked up.” Jimmy checked the slot box nailed to the siding at the front beside the door. “The neighbors didn’t say anything about picking it up.”

  Dale noticed the empty mail box as he rapped on the front door. “Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan. Detective Dayton, LVMPD.”

  After waiting for ten seconds, Dale rapped again, harder.

  “Head around to the back, Jimmy. See what’s happening with the rear door.”

  Jimmy left.

  Dale walked around to the side of the house, in the opposite direction to Jimmy. Windows were closed and locked, and blinds shut. He returned to the front at the same time as Jimmy.

  “Everything is locked up and shut down. Even the curtains are closed. I can’t see inside at all.”

  “Well, the sarge said to go in. The warrant will protect us.”

  Dale kicked in the door, splitting the frame. The minute they entered the house, a rank odor hit them.

  “Jesus!”

  Dale’s eyes watered when the scent reached his nostrils. He pulled out his gun. He felt a cold chill down his back and his spine tingled as his heart kicked into full-gear.

  Directly inside the front door, to the right, was a small den/living room that stunk of stale urine. They found Sullivan dead, on a lazy boy chair, seated in front of a big screen TV. His hands and feet were tied, and his shirt gone. Marks on his upper body showed that he’d been tortured.

  “That’s what you get for dealing with the devil. Smells like he’s been dead for days. Rigor mortis has come and gone so it’s been at least twenty-four hours.”

  They checked the rest of the floor, guns out, but found nothing. The house was surprisingly neat and orderly. That meant that either the person who had killed Sullivan wasn’t actually looking for something, or they’d taken the time to clean up.

  Dale and Jimmy returned to Sullivan to find that his eyelids had been scotch taped to his forehead, keeping his eyes open.

  “They made him watch something,” Jimmy said.

  Dale turned on the TV to find a video feed from another room in the house.

  “Holy fuck!” Jimmy covered his mouth.

  Dale turned away and bent at the knees. Once he’d caught his breath, he went behind the TV and found a wire that didn’t belong and followed it to the end, where it disappeared into a hole in the floor.

  “Looks like it heads into the basement.”

  “I’m not going down there.” Jimmy’s face had turned as pale as a black man’s could.

  “It’s our job.”

  They went downstairs and found the rest of Sullivan’s family. His wife and two children had been killed in the boy’s basement bedroom.

  Dale looked around the room of what once belonged to a happy young man. Clenching his fists, he took in the sports posters, memorabilia, trophies and medals, video games and TV. An iPod was plugged into a docking station.

  Dale approached a camcorder on a tripod set up in the corner of the room. His first instinct, gut feeling, was to take the camera and ram it against the wall, but he knew this was a crime scene and it could contain pertinent evidence.

  “Seal off the scene, and call it in. I’ll canvass for witnesses.” Dale let out a deep breath.

  They trudged upstairs and out to the car. Jimmy sat in the driver’s seat, grabbed the radio and made his report.

  Dale stood outside the driver’s door, breathing in the fresh air, looking around the neighborhood when his eyes spotted someone watching them from down the block. His internal cop compass needles immediately twitched, telling him something was off.

  He slipped on his sunglasses but avoided looking directly up the street, continuing to search the neighborhood, keeping an eye on the man in his peripheral vision. The man didn’t look like he fit in the neighborhood, and didn’t appear to be heading anywhere in particular.

  Dale lightly tapped Jimmy on the shoulder and bent down to the open window.

  “Without staring, does that guy look familiar?” Dale asked in a low whisper.

  Jimmy furtively turned his head and glanced towards the stranger. “Should he?”

  “I’ve seen him before.”

  “Where?”

  Dale looked at Jimmy and shook his head. “Not sure.” He was standing back up when it clicked. “The mug shots from Alexandrov’s KAs.”

  “No way.”

  Jimmy made a move to get up out of the car when Dale placed a hand on his shoulder and said, “Start the car.”

  Dale walked towards the road, not looking at the man. He turned his head in the opposite direction, counted to three, then turned quickly and took off in a sprint towards the Russian.

  But the man had anticipated Dale and also ran.

  Jimmy backed out of the driveway and took off the other way, squealing the tires around the corner. Dale gained on his assailant but he knew he’d never catch him if he didn’t take a shortcut and hope to cut him off somewhere.

  He didn’t know the neighborhood, doubted that the Russian did either. He did know that the street they were on was a crescent, so it would be curling back towards his direction. He ducked into a back yard, sprinted across a lawn, over a fence and under a car port. Dale picked up about three seconds on the man he chased.

  He emerged between a set of houses just as the Russian ran past. Dale pulled out his gun and stepped out into the middle of the street.

  “Freeze!” he screamed aiming his gun at the middle of the Russian’s back, hoping he’d have an excuse to use it. Dale steadied it. He would not miss.

  The Russian stopped, raised his hands and turned. He looked at Dale and smiled.

  Wheels squealed and squawked as Jimmy rounded the corner and steered the car directly towards them, blocking any chance for the Russian to take off. The Russian never turned around to look at Jimmy.

  “On the ground, now,” Dale ordered.

  The Russian smiled again but did not get down.

  “I said, down on the ground, asshole,” Dale repeated.

  “You are out of your league, Detective.” The Russian spoke with a heavy accent. He pulled out a PSS Silent Pistol, a “special purpose” Russian handgun and held it in the air.

  Dale gripped his pistol tighter, sighting the middle of the Russian’s chest. “Don’t be stupid. This won’t end well for you.”

  The Russian looked at Dale, his eyes smiling. He cocked his head, put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. A thick, dark red spray exited the back of the man’s head and splattered the hood of the cop cruiser.

  The Russian’s body collapsed. Gasps and screams broke out, and Dale noticed for the first time that neighbors at home had come to watch the commotion.

  Dale approached the dead body and knelt down next to the Russian, searching for a wallet or some form of identification. He couldn’t find any.

  “What’s wrong with these guys?”

  Dale looked up from the Russian, just noticing that Jimmy had gotten out of the car. “Normally suicide is a self-motivated act. But something tells me that Alexandrov has been whispering in this guy’s ear.” Dale stood up. “Phone it in and then let’s get back to the house. You take the body, I’ll take the scene. And call in a few body teams to sort through the mess.”

  “I don’t think Sullivan knew what he was getting into.”

  Dale shook his head. “I don’t give a shit about Sullivan. He was a lying, cheating asshole who did this to himself. But his family didn’t deserve what they got. Alexandrov is a fucking animal and he’s going down.”

  ♣

  “What do you plan on finding in this rubble?” Livia asked.

  Calvin had spent the last twenty minutes searching the remains of Sanders’ plane at the crash site. Except for a section of the body, the airplane had been ripped to pieces, and the fragments scattere
d throughout the forest, in a radius taking up hundreds of yards. From the sky, the tree lines blocked him from seeing how large of an arc the airplane explosion had sent the debris.

  Metal, plastic and glass had been propelled and sprayed from the impact of the blast. Trees were torn out of the ground, bent and sawed in half. A fire from the engine had torched a good section of the trees, burning branches and even a patch of weeds. It would be impossible to find a body in this. If Sanders had been in the plane at the time of impact, he disintegrated. But Livia was right, this was useless rubble.

  He was surprised to find Sanders’ orange prison-issued jumpsuit buried under pieces of the plane. Alexandrov must have arranged a change of clothes for the casino owner to help him blend into wherever he headed.

  “I’m not sure,” Calvin replied. “Some sign of Sanders. If not the man himself, then maybe a hint of which way he went.”

  “If your Ace was in this plane when it exploded, there’d be nothing left of him.”

  “I don’t think Sanders was in the plane when it hit the ground.”

  “You think he jumped?”

  “Maybe. I checked what’s left of the cockpit and there are no signs of parachutes.”

  “If he did jump, there’s no telling when he did it. That means he could be anywhere between here and America.”

  “Sanders is no fool, and he’s mean spirited. He can’t fly a plane, so he’d make sure he was well out of the States before he made his move. You said these planes don’t have autopilot, so if he sliced the pilot’s throat, that meant he didn’t have long before the plane took a nose dive. He had to have jumped not long before the plane went down. We start backtracking this way.” Calvin pointed north. “Sanders is a big-city guy, he won’t last long in the jungle and he won’t be moving swiftly. That might be our best chance to catch up.”

  “What about our plane?”

  Calvin looked at the Cessna. “We need to move it out of the sightlines of the crash and cover it up, for now. We’re on foot from here on out.”

  “You know, we’re in Colombia now. That means cartel country. And the Colombians show no mercy.”

  Calvin nodded. “Let’s get started. We have a lot of ground to cover. Bring everything we can carry on foot.”

  “I’ll grab the first aid kit.”

  ♣

  “Great, does everyone in this city own an iPhone?” Dale shut the computer monitor off in disgust.

  He and Jimmy had just watched a video of the Russian committing suicide in broad daylight that had been recorded from someone’s front porch on their camera phone. It was headline news and already receiving hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube.

  “So, let me get this straight,” Jimmy said as they sat at their partnered desks. “Sanders hired Alexandrov, who in-turn hired Sullivan.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Why bother with Alexandrov? We know the kind of casino owner Sanders was. He liked to think of himself as a ‘big ideas’ kind of guy.” Jimmy used his fingers to make air quotes. “He’s a slimy car salesman. Why not avoid the middleman and just go straight to Sullivan himself?”

  “I’ve thought that same thing. The only way I figure it, is that it takes years to earn respect in prison. Alexandrov already had clout, the guards knew it and they trusted him. Alexandrov also had access to outside contacts who could do dirty work. Sanders didn’t want to wait any longer than he had to, so he used Alexandrov’s contacts. Plus, now that he’s incarcerated, Sanders has no money to pay Sullivan off.”

  Jimmy sighed, shook his head and got up just when a call came in to Dale’s cellphone. Dale clicked it on and heard a lot of background noise, including what sounded like the whopping of rotating helicopter blades.

  “Detective, this is Colonel Hughes. I’m in a chopper heading to the war zone.”

  “Did you get Baxter?” Dale had the phone jammed against his ear and covered his other ear with his free hand. But it was still hard to make out Hughes. Dale left the busy main lobby of the detective bureau and locked himself in a small, unoccupied office.

  “The beaker has been activated by my team. The signal that Baxter has either been captured or killed, and the team is ready for pickup. I’m hoping the bastard is dead. Just like we’ve discussed. Although we still have no voice contact, it’s only a matter of time now.”

  “That’s good news. Let us know when it’s confirmed.”

  Dale hung up and went back to his desk, just as Jimmy dropped a handful of folders onto it.

  “The Baxter problem has been solved,” Dale said.

  “Thank God, one less thing to worry about.”

  “I guess we were right about Grant. Can’t believe he’d take out his own father. What did you bring me?” Dale sorted the folders and checked the labels.

  “Police files, crime scene photos, autopsy protocols. You know, the usual. The Sullivan house has been vacuumed, dusted, photographed and videographed.”

  “Did we get an ID on the Russian who ate the pistol this morning?”

  “VICAP system found a match.” Jimmy read from his notes, “Viktor Dernov, forty-eight, from Moscow. Ties with the KGB, definitely part of Alexandrov’s crew. We found his prints all over Sullivan’s house, so he wasn’t trying to conceal his identity. His hands were blood stained and he still had the knife on him.”

  “Jesus Christ, these Russians don’t give a fuck, do they?” Dale shook his head. “I guess if you plan on killing yourself if you’re caught, why go to the trouble of covering everything up?”

  “Our crew found evidence that Dernov was house sitting, waiting for the cops to find Sullivan. We found his prints on cereal boxes and bowls, food, cutlery, and anything else he used to eat. I guess he just made himself at home. We think he checked in daily with Alexandrov, but we never gave him that chance this time.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Dernov had used dishes and appliances to cook himself meals while he waited for us to show up. He basically hung out in a house full of dead bodies. I don’t know how he could stand the stench.”

  Dale nodded. “Makes sense. When I sent Dernov’s photo to the warden, he was pretty sure he recognized him from the meeting area. He met with Alexandrov every day at the same time during visiting hours. I guess he was reporting in each time. He sent us the video and the techs are using facial recognition to make a positive match.”

  “The ME is still working on the autopsy on Sullivan’s family but I don’t think we need one. We know how they died.”

  Dale put his face in his hands, breathing deeply. He kneaded his throbbing temples.

  “I say we rattle Alexandrov,” Jimmy said.

  “What the fuck’s the point?” Dale swiped an empty coffee mug off his desk and it shattered on the floor. A dozen cops in the room stopped what they were doing and looked at him.

  Jimmy waved them away. He knelt down and picked up the pieces. Dale bent down and helped.

  “Sorry about that. I’m just frustrated. We know Alexandrov is behind it. I’m sure Alexandrov knows we know. He’s already serving a life sentence. What else could we possibly do to him? He’d probably welcome death at this point.”

  “We need to do something for Sullivan’s family.”

  Dale let out a breath. “I know. Let me think of something. What’s the name of that guy from the tour company?”

  “Denis.”

  “Call Denis and tell him we need his plane again. We’re going back to that prison.”

  ♣

  The pilot turned around in his seat. “ETA two minutes, Colonel.”

  “Any voice contact?”

  “Not yet, sir. But we still aren’t in range.”

  “Beacon still activated?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The colonel nodded. He sat back and closed his eyes.

  He couldn’t believe it was coming to an end. Hughes remembered when he’d recruited a young Derek Baxter, over a decade ago—highly touted, highly praised. He took on Baxt
er when no other senior officer wanted him. The colonel knew Baxter would be a great soldier, and he was right.

  Baxter had shown early on that he possessed all of the attributes to make him the perfect killing machine: intelligence, strength, speed, agility, with no signs of remorse. He was taught to kill, and he had rocketed to the top of his class. The military’s perfect weapon. But things spiraled out of control, and Hughes was tired of trying to cover up Baxter’s misconducts. Baxter was a loose cannon, and a dangerous one. It was time he was stopped.

  But a piece of the colonel pitied Baxter and he’d miss watching him in action. He’d miss working with the madman. And he was almost sad that it had to end this way.

  “We have a visual, sir.” The pilot pointed to the island, coming up over the horizon.

  He looked out the window and saw a cloud of smoke hovering over the secluded island. He could smell the war, and it took him back to Beirut. He realized that Baxter had not gone down without a fight. He knew he wouldn’t.

  The military helicopter reached its destination and started the descent, getting down as low as possible on the beach of the island. The colonel watched the circular ripples of water from the ocean as the helicopter descended.

  The area was quiet, too quiet. The only sound emitting from the forest was the pulsating slapping of the rotating helicopter blades.

  Hughes stood, set one foot on the landing skid and grabbed the hand rail as the helicopter lowered. He watched the ground, the bush, with a quick, roaming gaze. He was sixty years old and although, physically, not a young man, his keen sense and alertness had not waned.

  “Any word?” he yelled to the pilot, over the thunderous roar of the main rotor blade.

  The pilot shook his head.

  The chopper touched ground and then hovered just above the muddy beach sand. “This is as close as I can get, Colonel. The beacon activation device is about a mile east, but you’ll have to move on foot since there is no landing space inside the forest.” The pilot handed Colonel Hughes a tracking device with a mini radar to follow to the beacon.

  The colonel dropped down to the ground, took five steps and stopped. He smelled something in the air. He looked around but didn’t see anything.