The Boat Man: A Suspense Thriller (A Reed & Billie Novel Book 1)

by Dustin Stevens

  Pierce Brandt fell into another group that Reed had seen many times, those that used false bravado. The move was so overplayed, so patently over-the-top, that Reed had to stop himself from laughing.

  “Pierce, what did the Kings of The Bottoms do two years ago that was so bad you guys immediately disbanded?”

  As he spoke Reed leaned forward, pressing his palms flat against the table, looking across at Pierce.

  The same half-cocked smile remained on Pierce’s features, the thin bit of stubble covering the lower half of his face twisted up to the side. “Officer, I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

  Reed knew that his time was running short, that any moment the door behind him would fly open, the chief herself storming in. Vitriol sprouted deep in the pit of his stomach for the entire Brandt family, sweat starting to form in all the usual places.

  “Detective,” Reed corrected, “and you mean to tell me you just went out and got a shitty tattoo on your forearm for fun? Just picked four letters at random and had a buddy with an ink pen and a needle carve you up?”

  “Yeah, you look like a dick,” Pierce replied, seizing on Reed’s amendment. “And what’s it matter why I got this tattoo? Lots of people have even crazier stuff that doesn’t make any sense. Buddy of mine has that girl with black hair pulling the football out from Charlie Brown across his back, doesn’t mean a thing.”

  It was clear Pierce wasn’t going to give anything up on his own. For whatever reason, whether it be a sheltered life or a supreme belief that he was above everyone else around him, he had truly started to believe the aura of faux invincibility he had created for himself.

  The time had come to shake that out of him.

  “Tell me though,” Reed said, “did somebody take a sword and slice your buddy’s Charlie Brown tattoo in half?

  Starting with the file on his left, Reed jerked back the top cover of it, revealing an 8x10 glossy print from the crime scene. “Cause somebody sure as hell did that to your friend Edwin Mentor.”

  Two feet away Pierce’s jaw dropped open, the ghastly image hitting him full in the face.

  “But they weren’t done there,” Reed said, moving to the next one in order, “after that they paid your buddy A.J. Wright a visit.”

  He extended an index finger down at the image, and said, “Messed him up so much his own dog mistook him for Puppy Chow.”

  The color drained from Pierce’s face as he turned his head to the second image, the mangled forearm of Wright visible.

  “Definitely wasn’t done there though,” Reed pressed on, feeling adrenaline surge through his system as he opened the third file. “This guy hates you all so much he even risked walking in to Midwestern Paper to get rid of Mason Durell.”

  No sound crossed Pierce’s lips as he looked from one image to the next, shaking his head in disbelief. “No. This isn’t them, this is you messing with me.”

  Reed opened his mouth to reply but was cut off before he got a word out, the door behind him exploding open, the sound so sharp it caused Pierce to jump in his seat.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Eleanor Brandt snapped at Reed, her entire body quivering, one finger extended in front of her, just inches from Reed’s face.

  Reed opened his mouth to respond, but Brandt continued before he could get a word out.

  “It’s bad enough you were digging through my personnel records, but now you’ve gone and brought my nephew in for questioning?!”

  This time Reed knew better, keeping his mouth shut, waiting for her tirade to pass.

  “Well?” she snapped, swinging her hands out from her sides, letting them fall with a slap against her hips.

  Reed was acutely aware that Grimes and Oliver Dade were both standing right beside them, watching things unfold like spectators at a tennis match. While he couldn’t see them he was also near certain various personnel from the precinct were nearby listening, the entire station having gone quiet.

  “I’m following the evidence,” Reed said, fighting a losing battle to keep the anger he felt from his voice. “It led me to you, which led me to him.”

  “Led you to me which led you to him,” Brandt muttered. “Are you listening to yourself? How stupid are you, Detective?”

  Fire flashed behind Reed’s eyes as he stared across at her, feeling his body temperature rise, knowing that an explosion he may soon regret was lurking just beneath the surface.

  “I should have thrown your ass off this case yesterday,” Brandt said, shaking her head. “I got conned by your little display so I told Grimes to leave you on another forty-eight hours just to see where things went. What a mistake that was.”

  On pure reflex Reed glanced over to Grimes, his arms still folded over his torso. Not once had he mentioned the ticking clock hanging above, giving Reed the autonomy he needed to work.

  “No,” Reed said, iron in his tone, “not letting me finish my questioning in there right now, that would be the mistake.”

  This time it was Brandt’s turn to try and respond, Reed cutting her off before she had the chance.

  “And let me save you the time of your little three minute game you put me through yesterday.

  “So far, all three victims have the same tattoo on their forearm, all marking them as a group called the Kings of The Bottoms, a group that did something so heinous that just killing them isn’t enough, someone is going out of their way to chop their arms off and destroy the brand forever.

  “A brand, I might add, that your nephew in there has on his forearm.”

  Brandt’s face went stiff, her breath catching in her throat as she tried to fire back at Reed.

  There was so much more Reed wanted to add, to stand in the precinct and yell at the top of his lungs. Things such as how the sole mention of the Kings was a complaint that had been covered up because the incoming Chief of Police was worried about a scandal. Facts such as the judge that wiped the record clean was able to parlay that action into a United States Magistrate chair.

  He didn’t though.

  As much as he wanted to, as much as every impulse told him to lash into her, he held back. He had done enough to make his point. There was still a case to solve and deriding the chief in front of everybody would get him no closer to it, potentially making his life that much more difficult in the process.

  Opposite him Brandt seemed to sense everything Reed was thinking, somehow working back in her mind how he had gotten from The Bottoms to her nephew. Bit by bit the flush of her face receded, her hands falling slack by her side.

  “He’s not going to tell you anything,” she said, shifting her head at the neck to look through the window.

  On the other side of the glass everybody could see Pierce looking through the files, his hands shaking as he took in the carnage of the photos.

  “The little prick has spent a lifetime being sheltered,” Brandt said, the fury gone from her tone, her demeanor all business. “You’re going to need me in there to prove to him he can’t hide from whatever happened.”

  It took a moment for the sudden downshift to catch with Reed, his eyes widening a touch before he too settled back into a professional stance. “Okay. I’ll follow your lead.”

  “No,” Brandt said, shifting away from the glass to look up at Reed. “You’ve been working this thing and clearly have reasons for bringing him in. You do it, I’ll back your play.”

  Deep in Reed’s stomach something twisted tight, a roil that felt like barbed wire within him. It was the first time since Riley that he had had a human partner on anything, this one a woman too, though only a shell of the one he had worked with and trusted months before.

  The tangle gripped him so tight it forced the air from his lungs, suffocating him inert for a long moment before he nodded, moving back into the interrogation room without speaking.

  Seated on the other side of the table, Pierce looked up from the photos as he entered, his eyes wide with fear. He kept
his gaze on Reed a long moment before shifting his attention to Brandt, sliding in and closing the door behind them.

  “Aunt E?”

  “Hey, Pierce,” Brandt said, taking two steps towards him before stopping, her hands remaining by her sides.

  “What’s going on here?” Pierce asked, keeping his attention on Brandt. “Are these pictures true? Did this really happen?”

  The chief flicked her gaze to Reed, who nodded just slightly.

  “Yes,” Brandt said. “You haven’t heard from any of these people?”

  “No,” Pierce replied, pleading in his voice. “We haven’t spoken since everything happened. Things were already bad after what you did, and then after...”

  He let his voice trail off, his gaze reaching past Brandt, focusing on nothing along the back wall.

  “But I didn’t have anything to do with this,” he whispered. “I saw on the news something had happened, but I swear to God, I had no idea.”

  “We don’t think you did,” Reed said, raising his voice just slightly, enough to be heard through the daze Pierce was fast falling into. “But we do think whatever it is you’re talking about is the reason this is all happening now.”

  Chapter Fifty

  “It was right after the thing with the mini mart,” Pierce said, his eyes unfocused, his attention aimed at the table in front of him.

  “Some of the guys didn’t like the way things had gone down, with the owner calling the police on us and then the whole thing getting wiped clean. They thought for us to really take hold, for us to make a name for ourselves in The Bottoms, we needed to make a statement.

  “Having my aunt take care of the first thing we ever got busted on didn’t exactly do that.”

  Positioned on one corner of the table, his arms crossed, Reed glanced to Brandt. She was posted on the corner opposite him, looking down at Pierce between them.

  As the young man spoke Brandt drew her mouth into a thin line, Reed able to see tendrils of guilt creeping into her visage. In trying to help, in trying to protect her family and her own career, she had potentially set something in motion that was now much, much worse.

  “So we needed to do something big,” Pierce said. “Something to get noticed by some of the other groups in the area. There were only six of us, but we wanted to prove we were hard, could stand toe-to-toe with anybody.”

  It took everything Reed had not to shake his head in disgust as Pierce spoke, listening to the misguided delusions of young men, their notions of toughness.

  “Night after night, we started hanging out down in the old gas station lot. Somehow one of the guys, I don’t remember who, got his hands on a couple of guns. They were old as hell, rusted out, probably wouldn’t even have fired, but we were all convinced that’s what we needed to show we were legit.”

  He paused a moment and swallowed hard, a lump traveling the length of his throat.

  “There were only two of them, so they went to Mase and Eddie. The rest of us did what we could. Dub-P and Mac got knives, I had a set of brass knuckles. I’m sure A.J. had something, but I can’t remember what.”

  Reed had made a point of keeping the files open in front of him, using the photographic carnage to force complicity, leaning on the young man by assaulting his senses, making him realize that the people he was speaking about were no more.

  “We spent a good month or so out there every night, nothing really happening. We’d all show up around dark, drink some beers, take turns passing the guns back and forth, running into the diner whenever we got hungry.

  “Wasn’t like there was anybody else around, the cops sure as hell weren’t patrolling the area.”

  More than once Reed wanted to urge Pierce forward, get him to divulge the punch line, jump straight to the part they needed to hear. Pulling in long breaths through his nose he remained silent, feeling his heart rate pick up as seconds ticked off.

  “After about a month, I thought things were chill again. All the talk of needing to do something big had died down, most of the guys content to hang out every night.

  “Of course, that was before they showed up.”

  At the sound of the last sentence Reed and Brandt exchanged a look, nothing more than a quick meeting of gazes before focusing back on Pierce.

  “They?” Reed asked.

  Pierce’s head shifted an inch or two from side to side as he continued to stare straight ahead, his voice just a decibel above a whisper. “Had to be the only two people in The Bottoms more out of place than I was. Young couple, thirties maybe. Both nice looking, driving a decent looking car, the kind of thing you never saw down there, definitely not after dark.

  “They rolled up at some point late in the evening, just after the diner closed. We saw them as they pulled onto the curb outside and both hopped out, running up to the door hand in hand, laughing and falling against each other when they found it locked up.”

  His eyes narrowed a bit, the skin around them tightening as he continued. “At the time we thought they were drunk or high or something, but now looking back I think they were just enjoying themselves, out having fun together.”

  He said the words as if such a notion were completely foreign to him, something that he never would have considered before that very moment.

  “We all sat there and watched as they stumbled back towards their car when Dub pulled back the slide on the gun he was holding, said it was time we got ours.”

  A veneer of moisture came to his eyes as he pressed on. “The rest of us, hell, we just jumped up and went along with it. We didn’t think he was actually going to hurt anybody, just thought we’d scare them, leak the story out, let people know not to mess with us.”

  Again he paused, his lips moving, but no sound passing over them.

  “What happened next?” Brandt said, her voice the tone of an investigator, not a concerned family member.

  “Dub and Mac, they told me and Mase to hold the guy while they went for the girl. Made us stand him up while they started touching her, doing things to her.”

  Moisture pooled at the bottom of his eyes before gravity finally won out, pushing twin tears down his cheeks. Long gone was the cocky, conceited young man Reed had brought in an hour before, replaced by a scared kid, still in his mid-twenties, for the first time realizing just how bad what he had done really was.

  Of the consequences it was now bringing down on them.

  “The guy fought against us for a while, and he was strong too, hell of a lot stronger than he looked. About halfway through he stopped fighting as hard, started crying, us forcing him to stand there and watch what was happening to his girl.”

  Twice he blinked, each time forcing more moisture down his cheeks.

  “That was when I couldn’t take it anymore. I slipped my hand into my pocket and pulled out the brass knuckles. One shot to the temple, put the poor bastard out of his misery.

  “The guys, they all thought it was because I was sick of restraining him, starting whooping it up like I’d done a hell of a thing. At that point I just wanted to go home, be done with it all.”

  Reed had to force his mind to slow down, to stay in the moment, to focus on what Pierce was telling them and not jump too far ahead. He had just been handed enormous chunks of information, things that finally confirmed he was on the right trail, that every supposition he had was correct.

  At the same time, he couldn’t allow his thoughts to retreat into themselves. He had to stay alert, to hear everything Pierce had left to share.

  “What happened after that?” Reed asked.

  For the first time since beginning his narrative, Pierce looked up at him. No longer was he in the past, now in the room, the spell having been shattered.

  “The car we left sitting on the curb. Both of them we loaded into Mase’s van and drove down to Grove City, dropped them in a park.

  “The guys worked them over a little bit more before we took off, but by that point I was pretty out of it. I was sick to my stomach and wanted to go h
ome.”

  He shifted his attention from Reed to Brandt and said, “Two days later I moved back in with mom. This is the closest I’ve been to The Bottoms or the Kings since.”

  Dozens of thoughts sprang to Reed’s mind, all of them things he now needed to check up on, new angles that had to be considered. Before he could though he had one last thing he needed to ask Pierce.

  Flipping to the bottom file of the stack he’d brought in, Reed pulled a single sheet of paper from it. On it was the pencil drawing the sketch artist had made from Hank Winter’s description, the image that had been generated taking up the entirety of the sheet.

  “The man you held that night, was this him?” Reed asked, turning the paper so it faced Pierce and sliding it across.

  Offering a quick look to his aunt, Pierce shifted his stare down at the sheet, his head beginning to bob up and down almost immediately.

  “Yeah, that’s him. His hair wasn’t like that. It was shorter, not as curly, but that’s his face. I’ll never forget that face.”

  Upon receiving confirmation, Reed pulled the image back to himself and reinserted it into the folder, piling the stack back atop one another.

  “Go,” Brandt whispered, watching as he collected his things. “I’ll take care of this here. You just go do what you need to, Detective.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  An overcast afternoon had brought with it a heavy cloud cover, blanketing all of central Ohio, blocking most sunlight from getting through. By five nightfall was already well on its way, more than an hour earlier than usual.

  At six The Bottoms were completely dark, nothing but street lights and long shadows over everything.

  The bit of meteorological luck fit the Boat Man’s plans perfectly, most of his day spent in the rear of his home, alternately oiling and checking his weapons.