Moral Hazard (Southern Fraud Thriller)

by J W Becton

  I dragged myself to a seated position on the bed and gazed woozily at Dawe. I shrunk back immediately when I saw hundreds of roaches crawling across the wall behind him. I shook my head hard.

  “Bugs!” I said, yanking the covers up to my neck.

  The man looked at me like I’d lost it. “What bugs?” he asked.

  “On the wall,” I insisted, trying to point.

  He turned to look and then rolled his eyes at me.

  “You’re hallucinating.”

  Hallucinating. I looked back at the wall, and the roaches were gone.

  I was hallucinating. That made some level of bizarre sense. It explained the shifting colors and the disappearing roaches.

  Maybe Dawe wasn’t really there either. Maybe I was having this conversation with my subconscious, and I really did want to kill myself. Or maybe I was dying already.

  I had to get a handle on reality. What was happening to me?

  I focused on the bedside table and saw about twenty capsules and a torn medicine box sitting beside a glass of water.

  Did I want to take those?

  No, I didn’t think so.

  “I don’t want to take pills,” I said to the maybe hallucination.

  “No?” he asked, showing me a black gun. “What about using your gun, then? I know you’ve killed before. Seems only fitting that you’d take your life with your own weapon.”

  I twitched and then tried to reach for my M&P. It should have been on my hip. My fingers fumbled across my belt, snagged on a loop, and skittered to the snap.

  Where the heck was my gun?

  “Here,” he said, holding it out to me. “This is what you’re looking for. Go ahead. Aim under your chin. I hear that works better.”

  My eyes focused on the gun—my gun—and everything around it seemed to dematerialize. Something was seriously wrong with my head.

  Dawe said I was hallucinating, and I had to believe that because nothing looked real or right to me, except that gun. I recognized it as the one I carried every day, the one I’d used to protect myself, the one I had used to take another life. Would I use it now to take my own?

  I squinted at it for a long time.

  No, this was wrong.

  I did not want to die. By my own hand or any other.

  And that realization cleared my head just long enough for me to recognize that I needed to get out of that motel room.

  I looked around for my phone so I could call for help. It was nowhere to be seen. The motel phone was missing too.

  Okay, so help was out of the question.

  I’d have to escape without help.

  But how? Everything was mobile and hazy and loopy, and I couldn’t focus my eyes without a great effort of will.

  I needed to move, get my bearings. I shifted my weight and tried to throw my legs over the side of the bed. The movement felt awkward and jerky, my head spun, and my leg muscles screamed. At first, Dawe looked as if he wanted to restrain me, but he just watched as I flailed to the edge and attempted to stand.

  I felt unbalanced, drunk, but just steady enough to walk. I didn’t think I would be able to sprint or do anything that remotely required coordination. I could walk, so if I could clear the cobwebs from my brain, I had a chance.

  But Dawe didn’t have to know that.

  Let him think I couldn’t walk at all.

  I wobbled and fell back to the bed. I didn’t have to work too hard to fake it.

  “See,” Dawe chided. “You’re not leaving here alive. You don’t have the strength.”

  At his ominous words, panic should have risen in my throat, but I couldn’t feel anything other than the accelerated beat of my heart from whatever drugs he’d given me earlier and the burn in my chest from trying to stand. My mind was distantly aware that I was in danger, that I needed to act now if I wanted to save my life, but I couldn’t muster any real fear. No adrenaline surged through my body, charging me with extra strength and focus, at least not that I could tell. Physically, I was a rag doll, a leaf in the wind.

  Somehow that lack of feeling—the absence of fear—managed to terrify me more than anything else, more than the gun and the drugs and the man looming over me who wanted me dead. Just hours ago—or what I assumed to be hours ago—I’d been as low as I’d ever felt in my life. I’d wanted to descend into the numbness of sleep and never feel anything ever again.

  Now that I couldn’t feel anything, I wanted the pain and the fear back. I wanted to know that I was still alive and in my right mind.

  My eyes flicked wildly around the room again, searching for some idea, some way to get out, but I had no means of escape. I couldn’t overpower Dawe, and I couldn’t run or call for help.

  I was all alone.

  “That’s right, honey. No one knows where you are. No one is coming to help. No one cares. They’ve all abandoned you. That’s what happens when you hang around with cops and do-gooder types. You do one little thing wrong, and suddenly, you’re on your own. You’re all alone, little girl. You’ve got nothing left. No one left.”

  Hadn’t I just thought that myself? Had I spoken aloud and not realized it? Was he reading my mind? Was I delusional?

  “Not only have your friends left, but your professional reputation is ruined. Everyone knows what you did, and don’t think they’re going to let that slide. Everyone will know that you are the world’s worst police officer.”

  I blinked back tears. What he said was true. I had no family, no friends, no job, and I was the worst cop ever. I couldn’t dispute these facts.

  I shook my head. I refused to listen to his voice, to that negative voice inside my own head. If I listened to them, I would die.

  I had to focus, figure out what I was dealing with. At this point, I still wasn’t sure that Dawe was real.

  I reached toward him, trying to use another sense to determine the truth of what was happening to me.

  My vision blurred more than I realized, and I missed with my first swipe, striking lamely out at the air, but on my second attempt, I touched the man’s arm. The hairs brushed across my fingertips. He was real. He had to be.

  “Here,” he said, taking my hand and pressing my own gun into it. “The world would be a better place if you would just leave it.”

  I looked down to see the gun in my right hand. The pebbled grip felt familiar, the weight comforting, but my fingers were loose and weak.

  “This will solve all your problems,” the voice said, blurring in my subconscious. “You’ll be free. Everyone will be free.”

  That’s when the idea came to me. How to escape. My best chance.

  I raised the gun slightly, looked at the blurred image of the man, felt the tears streaking down my face.

  “Will you hold my hand?” I asked, reaching out for him again. “I don’t want to die alone.”

  Like a good Southern gentleman, he sat on the bed beside me and gave me his hand.

  I gripped the M&P as hard as my uncooperative fingers could, raised it so that the tip pointed parallel to the surface of the mattress, and swayed.

  The weight of the gun pulled my hand down, and I let myself sprawl toward him.

  “Jesus!” he said. “Careful. That thing is loaded.”

  I held fast to his hand, using it to orient myself, and pushed the barrel of the gun into his pelvis, hoping like hell I had the angle right. I didn’t want to kill him. I just wanted to take out his ability to pursue me.

  I wanted him alive to know that the worst cop in the world had defeated him.

  I pulled the trigger.

  At the explosion of sound and force, I dropped Dawe’s hand and gripped at my own head in a feeble attempt to block out the pain. Blood and bone splattered everywhere. I felt droplets land on my face, and I jerked back hard, stumbling off the bed.

  Dawe had fallen backward onto the mattress, his face twisted, mouth open and most likely screaming, but I couldn’t hear it over the roar the gunshot had left in my head.

  I didn’t know
how much time I had to escape, so I didn’t bother looking for my phone, keys, anything. I pushed away from the bed and ran on unsteady legs toward the door. I slammed into the chair that stood beside it and scrabbled to undo the chain with shaking fingers, the gun still grasped in my other hand.

  Dawe remained where he’d fallen in a writhing, bleeding mass.

  I wrested open the door and flung myself outside and onto a second-floor motel balcony that opened onto the parking lot. My momentum propelled me forward, and I caught myself on the iron railing.

  How in the hell had Dawe gotten me up here unnoticed? And where was here?

  I jerked my head in both directions, looking for the closest stairs, and took off in a wobbling jog to my right. My hearing began to return as I careened down a set of stairs, the clatter of metal ringing in my ears. Or maybe they were still ringing from the gunshot.

  Once in the parking lot, I hesitated. I didn’t see my car, didn’t have my keys anyway. Didn’t know where to go.

  I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, and then the asphalt at my feet began to pop and ping around me. At first I wondered if I were hallucinating again, but I felt pain on my legs, saw blood oozing through my jeans. I looked up to see that Dawe had dragged himself to the edge of the balcony and was shooting at me. Apparently, he had another gun with him.

  I flung myself toward the side of the building, tripping along under the balcony beneath Dawe and toward what I thought must be the main road, all the while trying to keep myself from falling into his line of sight.

  Doorways flickered past me, and I overturned a garbage can, falling again, skinning the palm I’d used to catch myself.

  Still I ran. Death was chasing me, and I intended to live. I needed to get to safety, call for help.

  The front desk office had to be around here somewhere.

  Breathing heavy, I finally saw a sign above a tinted glass door.

  “Check in.”

  I hurled myself at the entrance and fell inside the room.

  “Help!” I tried to shout, my voice sounding fainter than I intended.

  A man appeared behind a tall counter, his eyes wide, mouth gaping open. He stared at me as I tried to make my tongue form comprehensible words, to say something that would explain the situation, but my brain was too sluggish.

  Finally, I rose to my knees, hoping my badge might still be on my belt and become visible to him. I looked down, but it was gone. Ted had taken it away. Damn it. I swayed and brandished my gun just in case the hotel employee didn’t understand the urgency of my message.

  “Help! Police!” I rasped. “Gun. Upstairs.”

  I must have looked like a lunatic, covered in blood and bone fragments and waving a handgun around. The man turned and vanished into a room behind the desk, slamming the door behind him. The lock clicked into place.

  “Crap!” I said, sinking back onto my heels.

  I hoped he was calling the police to come and arrest the crazy, bloody person on the floor and not retrieving his sawed-off shotgun so he could finish the job. Either way, I decided to find some cover. If Dawe managed to drag himself down the stairs, which seemed unlikely, I didn’t want to be in the open. I crawled to the edge of counter and started fumbling around for a telephone.

  From the other side of the door, I heard the man yell, “The police have been called! They’re on the way!”

  He sounded like he wanted to add, “Don’t shoot!” But he didn’t.

  Relieved, I curled behind the desk and focused on breathing in and out. My heartbeat seemed to rock my entire body with each pulse, and I desperately tried to get ahold of myself.

  Either this motel was downtown somewhere, or the drugs were messing with my perception of time because, seconds later, two MPD cruisers angled into the parking lot. My vision blurred through my tears, and I slumped with exhaustion as two officers came into the room and looked warily around.

  “Over here,” I called.

  Within moments, I felt two bodies drop onto me, divesting me of my weapon and shoving me on the linoleum floor facedown.

  The world went blissfully black.

  But I was alive, dammit.

  I was alive.

  Thirty-six

  “Jacob Dawe,” Special Agent Vincent said. Reading from the arrest paperwork, he sounded as if he were saying the watcher’s name for the first time, which, of course, he wasn’t.

  Dawe knew that this asshole was the reason he was chained to a hospital bed in the first place.

  “You’re a difficult man to track down,” Vincent said.

  Dawe smiled at him as pleasantly as he could and jingled the handcuffs that secured him to the rail. “Given my present circumstances,” he said, pulling as much charm into his voice as he could manage in his incapacitated position, “I find that difficult to believe. By the way, you wouldn’t mind removing these restraints, would you? I’m hardly capable of escaping in my condition.”

  The investigator eyed the elaborate dressing on Dawe’s hip and upper leg, studied the IV strapped to his arm, and then gave him a bored look.

  “You might want to try that line on someone who doesn’t know you dragged yourself out of a motel room, shot at an innocent woman, and then managed to make it halfway down the stairs before the police arrived to arrest you.”

  Vincent returned to flicking through the file, making a great pretense of pausing over each page.

  Dawe sat quietly, wishing suddenly that he’d decided to target this man instead of his partner. Clearly, he was a prick.

  When Special Agent Vincent spoke again, Dawe expected his tone to remain neutral and bored, but instead he sounded slightly impressed.

  “Your name has been showing up quite often around the Mercer law enforcement community. You’ve been busy.”

  Dawe shrugged. “Everyone’s busy in this day and age. Always something to do.”

  Vincent pulled a nearby chair to Dawe’s bedside, the legs shrieking across the linoleum floor, and sat down.

  “Not just anyone can do what you did,” he said, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest. He gave the impression of a man at his leisure.

  Dawe also settled back into a more comfortable position and watched the investigator from beneath hooded eyelids. They were playing a game, him and Vincent. He just needed to figure out the rules, get a feel for what the investigators already knew, and use it to his benefit.

  If that failed, the guy looked like a run-of-the-mill meathead. He could use that to his advantage somehow.

  “What’d I do that’s so special?” Dawe asked.

  Vincent chuckled. “What haven’t you done? According to what I’ve been able to uncover, you’ve been moving people around Mercer like chess pieces. I’d sure like to know how you managed it.”

  Dawe studied him fully. The guy thought he knew what he’d been up to. Might as well give him a little something, let him think he had the upper hand.

  “How doesn’t matter. In my time as a PI, I’ve learned one thing. It’s not what you know, but who.”

  “Okay,” the investigator said. “Who do you know?”

  Dawe only smiled.

  “Obviously, you know Julia Jackson.”

  Dawe remained silent.

  “Bonnie Millstone definitely knows you,” Vincent added. “And so does Marty Hunter. Then there’s Randy Blissett.”

  Jacob concealed a grin at the amount of information the fool had just disclosed. Vincent had managed to assemble a good many dots, and maybe he had even connected a few of them, but he didn’t have all the information.

  “Got to admit,” Vincent continued, “you had us off balance for a while, and I’m still not sure exactly how Blissett got dragged into this mess. But you want to know what I think? I think the fraud investigation was just a smoke screen. Your scheme had a different aim, a hidden purpose.”

  “You detectives are always looking for something hidden, aren’t you?” Dawe sneered, hating how close the investigator was to the trut
h. “Sounds a bit paranoid to me.”

  “Well, then call me paranoid,” Vincent said lightly. “Humor me. Tell me why you decided to target my partner.”

  Dawe crossed his arms and regarded the detective quietly. A hint of concern crossed Vincent’s features at the mention of Jackson.

  Yes, the meathead was soft where his partner was concerned. Dawe could exploit that.

  “You expect me to tell you all my secrets?” he asked. “To confess all my sins?”

  “Can’t fault me for trying,” Vincent said in his annoyingly agreeable tone.

  “Of course not,” Dawe said. “It’s what cops do. You can’t help it. You’re programmed to be a law enforcement robot. I get it, but I’m not telling you anything.”

  “We’ll get there in time,” Vincent said conversationally. “Besides, we don’t need a confession. It’s clear that you were after Julia Jackson from the beginning. What’s more, we have all the proof we need to convict you of any number of crimes, including attempted murder, wiretapping, and generally being a jackass.”

  “Nice,” Dawe said, rolling his eyes. “You’re not much on the quips, are you, Special Agent? I’ve heard sitcom jokes wittier than that one.”

  Vincent ignored him and continued. “I’m afraid there’s even more bad news for you.”

  “That right?” Dawe asked, his voice rising in mock curiosity.

  “Yup,” Vincent agreed, leaning slightly forward into Dawe’s space. When he spoke again, the facade of Mr. Friendly Cop was gone, and in its place was a battle-hardened soldier.

  “You screwed up when you failed to kill my partner.”

  Dawe chewed on his lip but didn’t respond. Vincent probably expected him to piss himself in fear and then agree that he had attempted to murder Jackson—say it just to make the intimidation stop. That wasn’t going to happen. Not ever. Sure, the authorities had enough evidence and testimony to convict him, but it was never a good idea to admit anything. Always leave a little doubt in the minds of those who have the power to decide your fate.

  That’s where Jackson had erred, and Dawe refused to commit the same mistake.