Wild Card

by Luke Murphy

  The ATV from yesterday drove by, loaded with a dozen men holding machine guns. A giant spotlight on the back of the vehicle shone brightly amongst the trees and branches. The light just barely missed them, skimming over the tops of their heads.

  Once it passed, Calvin pulled Sanders to his feet. “Let’s go.”

  “Are you fucking nuts? They’re going that way, we should go the other way.” Sanders shook and pulled his handcuffed wrists away from Calvin’s grasp.

  The ATV headed towards the location where Calvin and Livia had stored their clothes and equipment. Livia could already be there waiting for Calvin. She’d be an easy target.

  “This isn’t up for debate. You want to live, you stay with me. Let’s go.” Calvin grabbed Sanders’ wrists.

  Again, Sanders shook away from Calvin’s hold. “Fuck you, Watters. You can go that way. I’ll take my chances.” Prison and being held against his will by a dangerous drug cartel hadn’t eliminated Sanders’ arrogance.

  When Sanders stepped away, Calvin grabbed him by his shirt and yanked him back. Sanders fell to the ground awkwardly, landing on his arm and twisting his shoulder.

  Sanders muttered a curse.

  “Can you see in the dark? This isn’t optional.”

  Calvin grabbed Sanders by the handcuffs and tugged hard. He knew that the force of the quick jerking motion would shoot pain through Sanders’ now injured shoulder. When Sanders let out a yelp, Calvin smiled.

  The casino owner didn’t say anything as he followed Calvin through the woods. Calvin gauged his distance by the sound of the ATV in front of them. They weren’t going to get too close, but Calvin also had to see where the cartel was going, and stay close enough to protect Livia.

  Sanders was silent, but Calvin knew the casino owner wasn’t straying far from the trail. Either Sanders was pouting, thinking of a way to get away from Calvin, or didn’t think he could get by on his own with his shoulder injury.

  Calvin watched the ATV roll directly past Calvin’s hideout without even so much as a second glance. They’d done a good job of concealing the location. Once it was out of sight and the sound of the vehicle had vanished, Calvin slipped into the woods.

  Livia wasn’t there.

  Again, Calvin looked around the site, whispering her name.

  No response.

  Calvin turned on a giant flashlight and swept it over the area. There was no indication that Livia, or anyone had been there. Nothing had been moved, no disturbance on the ground or in the bushes. No note or sign.

  His throat went dry. There was only one possibility.

  “We’re going back,” Calvin said.

  He placed the light on the ground, securing it in a way that would shine it low, giving them vision where they stepped, but not give away their location from the brightness.

  “What?” Sanders sat down on the ground, leaning back against a tree to catch his breath. “You’re fucking crazy. The only place I’m going is to a sunny beach far from here.”

  Calvin brought the light up to look Sanders in the eye, seeing the murderous casino owner in the flesh for the first time in months, other than from the video feed at the Nevada prison. The first thing he noticed was how much older he’d gotten. His clothes were torn and ragged, jeans stained, and rubber-soled loafers caked with mud. His face was a mask of dirt. A tuft of gray hair jutted out of his ripped collared shirt. He had an uneven tan, with wide lines around the corners of his mouth, and his lips were sun-chapped. Dark circles rimmed his eyes and his hair was graying. He’d lost a lot of weight since the last time Calvin had seen him in person.

  Calvin went over and knelt beside him. “How do you plan on doing that? Do you have any idea where we are?”

  “All I know is that I’m a free man.” He extended his hands “Cut me loose.”

  “You’re only free because of her. We’re going back for her.” Calvin cut the ropes off and Sanders rubbed his unbound wrists, which were chapped and dry.

  “Who?”

  Calvin told him about Livia, a local girl who risked her life to save his.

  Sanders grunted. “You want to go back for a fucking broad? What happened to that dime-store hooker in Vegas?”

  Anger rippled through him. Calvin grabbed Sanders by the shirt collar and yanked on it, head-butting the casino owner on the bridge of the nose.

  The crunch was evident. Sanders brought his hands up to his nose. Blood spewed out between his fingers and tears rolled down his cheeks. Sanders rolled onto his stomach, writhing.

  “You fuck!” He screamed through his hands, still covering his mouth. Blood and spit dribbled from his lips.

  Sanders stood up, unbalanced, staring at Calvin the whole time. His face was tight with anger and his nose was now on the side of his face.

  “You’ll be okay. Breath through your mouth.”

  “Fuck you,” he said sourly with a nasally voice. He dragged his hand across his nostrils. “So how do you plan on getting her back? They’ll be waiting for you and any counterattack that could be coming.”

  Calvin nodded, throwing a cloth at Sanders. “I’ll have to think of something. But one thing I do know for sure, drug cartels only care about one thing—money. Kind of like Vegas casino owners.”

  Sanders wiped the blood off his chin and hands and then held the cloth against his nose, shoving it partly up both nostrils. “Go fuck yourself.”

  “The cartel won’t get anything for Livia. She’s worthless to them. They want money, or at least something worth some money.”

  “You’re going to make a trade with them?”

  “I think I have something they want. Something that they could get a handsome ransom for.”

  Calvin stood and stared at Sanders, waiting for his words to register. When Sanders dropped the cloth to his side, Calvin knew they had.

  Sanders’ eyes grew wide. Then he swallowed hard. With his final move, what Calvin had been waiting for, Sanders turned and took off in a sprint.

  Once he left the dimly lit area, Sanders ran into the blackness of the Colombian night. With the density of the rainforest trees blocking even the light from the moon and stars, Calvin knew Sanders couldn’t see two feet in front of him.

  He heard Sanders fall with a thump. Calvin slid on his goggles and followed the noise of heavy, labored breathing.

  He found the Vegas casino owner sprawled on the ground, his ankle twisted in a thick tree root. Calvin helped him to his feet, draped Sanders’ arm around his neck and guided him back to the lit area. He leaned the casino owner back against a tree.

  “I’m not going back there, Watters. You’ll have to drag my lifeless body.”

  Calvin moved without hesitation. He put his left leg forward, and twisted at the waist. With a single, fluid motion, he side-swiped his right fist, aiming directly for the side of Sanders’ jaw. The impact of the blow snapped Sanders’ head to the side, causing his brain to swing violently against the skull lining, resulting in immediate blackout.

  Calvin had learned years ago that there was a nerve that could be hit by striking the jaw to knock your opponent out. He’d been doing it for so long with his debt-collecting that it was almost second nature.

  When Sanders’ body fell to the ground, Calvin said, “I knew we’d come to an agreement.”

  Chapter 21

  “We’re going around in circles!” Dale slammed the file onto his desk.

  He and Jimmy had spent the morning going over results from Grant’s house after yesterday’s murders, or the lack of results retrieved from the investigation.

  Baxter had to have scouted the area in advance to find a vantage point from which he could hit Grant from a distance. He had to lug a big, heavy, rifle into place and set up, all without being seen. Then he had to lie in wait for Grant to show up where he wanted him, to give him a clear shot.

  All that took time.

  Then, he had to get out of there really fast. Sniper rifles were typically loud and heavy. Depending on the distance, the pe
ople near the victim may not hear it, but the people around the shooter definitely will.

  Baxter didn’t leave the gun. That would risk having the weapon be tied to him. Sniper rifles are expensive and rare for civilians. It would be much easier to track a sniper rifle than a pistol, even if it was obtained illegally. Also, there was a decent chance Baxter left some hair, saliva or skin cells on it, which could potentially identify him.

  How do you lug a highly conspicuous rifle away from an area where people had just heard a really loud gunshot, without being seen? Grant’s neighbors lived so far away that they turned out to be very unhelpful.

  Now that Grant was dead, Dale didn’t have to go through the red tape of getting permission to search through his things: accounts, offices, houses, etc. Shawn Grant’s life was now an open book to the LVMPD.

  Dale had cross-referenced every single one of Grant’s accounts, local and overseas, and matched the account Grant had used to transfer money to Calvin for the retrieval of Ace Sanders, to the money Grant had transferred to Derek Baxter’s secret account in the Cayman Islands.

  They had serious evidence on Shawn Grant for conspiring to commit murder, intellectual murder, and murder for hire—in his father’s case.

  They had confiscated all of Grant’s computers which included three laptops and two desktops. A CER Specialist (Computer Evidence Recovery) was going through them looking for anything worth reporting, hopefully something on Derek Baxter’s whereabouts.

  Another detective, who’d been assigned to help with the Grant murder, approached and dropped a folder on Dale’s desk. He grabbed a chair from a neighboring desk and pulled it up.

  “We recovered nine bullets from Grant’s living room, all untraceable. But we did have an interesting find outside. Using bullet striation results, CSI was led to the top of a tree about a hundred yards from the back of Shawn Grant’s house. That’s where the bullets came from.”

  Dale opened the folder and thumbed through the photographs.

  “Baxter had made some sort of home-made swing, and suspended himself from close to the top of the tree, actually thirty-six feet up to be precise.”

  Dale looked up. “How the hell did he get that high?”

  “CSI found evidence of holes on both sides of the tree, as if Baxter had used some sort of spiked tool on his shoes to climb.”

  Dale shuffled the pictures and then stopped on one in particular. “What’s this?” He held up the image.

  The detective shook his head. “We’re not sure. It was whittled into the tree, at the top. We’re assuming it was Baxter who did it. I mean, who else would be up there? No telling how long he hung there waiting for Grant to come close to the window. A ‘wait and watch’ approach.”

  Jimmy accepted the photo from Dale and checked it out. “Looks like some sort of military symbol.”

  “Maybe it’s a calling card. We know that snipers have a history of leaving calling cards, something to take credit for a kill. But I don’t remember seeing this at any of the other Baxter murder scenes. Do a search and see what you can find out about it.”

  Jimmy swiveled in his chair and logged onto the computer. He started tapping keys as the other detective spoke with Dale.

  “There’s no sign of Baxter. He must have high-tailed it when he heard the sirens. He made sure to pick up slugs or any other evidence off the rifle he used. Ballistics should give us something from the bullets CSI pulled from the victims, drywall and flooring.”

  “Who gives a shit,” Dale said. “We know it’s Baxter. He knows that we know it’s him. He’s taunting us. He can get to any of us anytime he wants.”

  “Want me to do anything else?” the detective asked.

  “Nothing I can think of at the moment.”

  The detective left and Dale stood up. He walked over to Jimmy, who still surfed the net and shook his head.

  “Any luck?” Dale asked.

  “Weird,” Jimmy answered, without looking away from the computer monitor.

  “What is it?” Dale stood behind Jimmy, reading the screen over the detective’s shoulder.

  “I’m not sure. When I first plugged in the search topic, it gave me a list of possible hits.”

  “Great, pull them up.”

  “That’s the thing. Before I could click on anything, the screen froze for about three seconds, blinked twice as if resetting, and shut down the internet. When I logged back on and tried the same search items, it came up blank. There were no hits the second time around. It was as if someone wiped out everything I’d previously seen.”

  “You’re not making any sense, Jimmy.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Call Mike Armstrong.”

  ♣

  “Think about what you’re doing, Watters,” Sanders mumbled as he staggered over the rough terrain.

  Calvin had Sanders’ wrists tied and a rope attached to the cuffs so Calvin could lead Sanders through the rainforest. He’d let the casino owner sleep through the night, and used the quiet time to plan, prepare and come to a decision.

  “Don’t do it. We have history, you and I. I could make you richer than you ever dreamed. You’re going to give me away for a stupid fuckin’ broad?”

  “You hired Baxter to kill me.”

  “Don’t take that personally. You were in my way.”

  Calvin didn’t answer, didn’t even turn around to acknowledge the casino owner who’d been whining and complaining since they’d started out.

  This shouldn’t have been a tough decision, but because of the person Calvin was and his die-hard commitment to Dale and Jimmy’s ‘cause’, this choice nibbled at his soul.

  Sanders was a slimy, grease-ball killer who murdered innocent people for his own advancement. Livia was an innocent woman who’d been barely surviving in a violent, war-ridden country, had watched her own brother killed by the cartel and had been seeking revenge for a long time. She deserved to live.

  It didn’t make sense; the logistics should make it an easy choice. Even with all of that, Calvin still had to make sure that trading Sanders back was the best option moving forward.

  He thought about Rachel. Would she want him to just turn around and go home with Sanders, job completed successfully, or would she expect Calvin to go back for Livia? He knew the answer to that. As much as Rachel wanted him home safe, she’d want Calvin to do the right thing.

  Then he thought of Dale, the detective’s words about not putting himself in harm’s way—to just pull out if it wasn’t going to happen. But Dale and Calvin were cut from the same cloth: do what’s right, what’s best for the people around them, and let the cards fall where they may.

  Livia deserved to live more than Sanders deserved to be behind bars. Calvin was sure of that, but it was still an unsettling feeling.

  “Are you really that desperate? How about this, if we leave now, once we’re out of here, I’ll buy you all the women you can handle.”

  Calvin pulled him forward. “Move.”

  Calvin wasn’t sure how it would all go down. He doubted the cartel would go for the deal—just hand over Livia in return for Sanders. They’d be waiting for him, with an ambush perhaps. His mind riffled through potential back-up plans, but he had to at least try, for Livia’s sake. She didn’t deserve to suffer the consequences for helping Calvin. His only hope was that the cartel’s greed would overshadow their thirst for Calvin’s blood.

  Sanders stopped and dropped to his knees. Calvin felt the tension pull on the rope.

  “At least tell me the plan.”

  “It’s simple, really. I’m going to walk in there and trade you for the girl.”

  “Are you fuckin’ nuts? You think they’re going to just let you and the bitch walk out of there alive?”

  “Let me tell you something about the drug cartel,” Calvin said. He yanked hard on the rope, pulling Sanders forward along the ground, probably overextending his already bad shoulder. Then Calvin lifted him up by his hair.

  “What makes y
ou an expert?” Ace asked, getting slowly to his feet.

  Calvin shook his head. “I’m not an expert on the drug cartel, but they’re a lot like Vegas casino owners, and I have a lot of experience with them. They’re only after one thing…money. When they understand the kind of money they can get for you, they’ll gladly trade.”

  “You’re forgetting one thing, we also want power and reputation. Colombian drug lords letting an American just walk out of their camp would make them look bad. Do you really think you can trust the cocaine cartel?”

  “No, and I don’t trust Vegas casino owners either. But I’m just going to have to take that chance.”

  “Then you’re fucking dumber than you look.”

  They walked in silence until they came into the wooded area just outside the cartel’s camp, the same place where Calvin and Livia had scouted from the night before. Calvin and Ace knelt down side by side, peering through the bushes.

  A crowd had gathered in the middle of the open area, and one man, perhaps the leader, looked to be the center of attention. It was as though he spoke down to the group of soldiers who surrounded him.

  The leader screamed and pointed a gun at a young boy, who couldn’t have been more than fifteen. The boy was bound to a wooden post, a rag tied around his head pinching into his open mouth to block his words. He looked terrified.

  “That’s the head honcho. He decides who lives and who dies. He’s a fuckin’ madman. The boy tied to the post was my guard on most nights,” Sanders said. “He would stand by my cage and watch over me. The night you broke me out, he left for some reason. That’s probably why you didn’t kill him.”

  “Looks like the boss isn’t happy with him leaving his post.”

  The boss said one more thing to the crowd, then turned around and shot the boy point blank. The boy’s body went limp, but stayed upright thanks to the ropes and wires around him. He had at least died mercifully fast.

  The whole scene was dreamlike, reminding Calvin of the Linda Grant murder, when Sanders had done the same thing to her. Although this was a gun, instead of a knife. Calvin looked at Ace, to see if the significance registered with him. The casino owner looked pale, almost sick, and Calvin was sure that Ace, standing on the other side of this murder, had different thoughts.