State of Killers: A Mystery Thriller Novel (Virgil Jones Mystery Thriller Series Book 11)

by Thomas Scott

  Miles turned back and grabbed the list. “I hadn’t, but I’ll try to pay better attention. Thank you. Send Henderson into the break room.”

  “We don’t have a break room. It’s the conference room.”

  “Just get him in there, Betty.”

  “Why?”

  “Because right now, that’s what I want you to do.”

  Betty gave him a look, but Miles had already turned away.

  They were studying the map and looking at the list Becky had faxed down when Henderson walked in. “Betty said you wanted to see me…?”

  Miles waved the fax pages in the air. “That list we spoke of earlier? The ex-cons? This is it.”

  “Boy, that was fast.”

  Murton smiled. “We have good help.”

  “What we’re trying to do is figure out a way to narrow the search area. The problem is, we don’t know your county nearly as well as you do.” Ron put his finger on the map, down by Flatrock. “This is the last place Graves and Mizner were seen. Do I have that right?”

  Henderson nodded. “According to the sheriff…uh, Sheriff Holden that is…sorry.” He reddened slightly at his gaff, then said, “They were down there eating at Nick’s Kitchen.”

  “I hope they didn’t get the special,” Murton said.

  The map was huge, pinned to the wall by no less than a dozen pushpins. Ron pulled one out and stuck it through the map right over the town of Flatrock. Then he looked at Henderson and said, “Run out to the supply closet or wherever you keep your supplies and bring me back a bunch of these pushpins, some string, and a pencil.”

  Henderson hustled off to get the requested supplies, and while he was out, Murton’s phone buzzed at him. He checked the screen, then put the phone to his ear and said, “Hello wife of mine. Miss me already?”

  “I do,” Becky said. “But I’m calling to let you know that I spoke with Rosencrantz a few minutes ago and he says they’ve identified a number of candidates they might be able to lean on for information.”

  “That’s great. I’ll let Jonesy know. Are they going to move soon?”

  “It sounds like it. Says they’re prepping for tonight. Everyone is going to be hit at home, and they’ll be hauled in, questioned, and held until someone gives up a name or names.”

  “Good work, baby. Keep the intel coming.”

  “You got it. Watch your back, will you?”

  Murton told her he would, then hung up and repeated what she’d said to Virgil.

  “They’re working fast,” Virgil said. “Agent Martin must be cracking the whip.”

  “Either her or Ross.”

  Henderson came back into the room with everything Ron had asked for. He set it all down on the table, looked at Miles, and said, “I’ve been with this department for a long time. Wondering if you might want some advice on how to get on Betty’s good side.”

  “She has a good side?” Ron said.

  Henderson turned his palms up. “Well, she has a less cranky side, I’d say.”

  “I always thought Holden was the cranky one,” Virgil said. “Maybe now I know why.”

  “Anyway,” Henderson said to Miles. “Ask her about her birds.”

  “Her birds?”

  “Yeah. She keeps all kinds of exotic birds. She raises them up, then sells them. It’s mostly a hobby, but I think she makes a pretty decent side income from the whole thing.”

  Miles shook his head and said, “Christ. Birds. Why am I not surprised?” Then he looked at Henderson, pointed to the map, and said, “Put a black pin on the map to show where Mizner’s place is. Graves’s too.”

  Henderson did as he was asked, then stepped back. Ron inspected the locations and saw they weren’t too far apart. He looked at Virgil and said, “That’s fairly close to the cultural center, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is. Where are you going with this, Ron?”

  “I had a hard time falling asleep last night. It didn’t have anything to do with being in a strange house or away from my own bed or that sort of thing. It was because I kept asking myself two questions, neither of which I had answers for.”

  “What were the questions?” Murton said.

  “The bodies were found by Holden and Johnson inside Mizner’s barn. So the questions are these: How far would you drive around with two dead bodies in the back of a pickup, or put yourself behind the wheel of a squad car with a dead cop in the trunk?”

  “Not very far,” Virgil said.

  Miles tipped a finger at him. “Exactly. But what’s not very far? It’s subjective.”

  The four of them debated the issue for a few minutes, each man coming up with a different figure. Henderson was on the high end of the scale, mostly because he knew the county well, so the distance for him seemed less than it actually was. Ron, Virgil, and Murton were at the lower end of the scale because they basically didn’t know the county, other than the times they’d spent near the cultural center. Ultimately they decided to average it all out and went with nine miles.

  Ron took a piece of string and measured it out from the map’s distance scale. Next, he pinned one end of the string over Mizner’s house, then held the other end close to the tip of the pencil and drew a circle on the map. “I went with ten miles because it was easier to measure.”

  “You’re saying that Graves, Mizner, and Undersheriff Hall were killed somewhere within that circle?” Henderson said.

  Miles looked at him and said, “You tell me.” Then he waited to see if Henderson would catch on or not. After a few seconds, Henderson’s eyes got wide and he said, “I’ll be right back.” Then he ran from the room.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Henderson was back in two minutes. He had a smaller county map in his hands, along with a duty roster, and a ruler. He flipped to the correct date on the roster, then spent a few minutes comparing the smaller map to the larger one on the wall.

  “What’s he up to?” Murton asked.

  “Putting the pieces together,” Miles said.

  Henderson said, “See that pencil for a minute?”

  Miles gave him the pencil and Henderson stuck it behind his ear. Then he took four pushpins and stuck them in the map at various points, carefully checking their placement against the smaller map he held in his hand. With that done, he put the ruler flat against the wall map and drew four straight lines—two vertical, and two horizontal—until he had an enclosed space that was almost square.

  Most of the square was inside the circle Miles had drawn earlier. When Henderson stepped back, he pointed at the map and said, “That’s where we’ll find the motherfuckers.”

  “What’s the square represent?” Virgil said.

  Henderson gave Virgil a sad, toothless grin. “Undersheriff Hall’s area of patrol the night he turned up missing.”

  Ron gave Henderson a tight nod and clapped him on the back.

  “I don’t want to burst anybody’s bubble, but it’s still a hell of a large search area,” Murton said.

  “It is,” Ron said. “But it’s someplace to start.” He gave Henderson the list Becky had faxed over, then said, “Take this list of names and put a pin in every single place where any of them live inside those areas on the map. See how many you come up with. It’s probably okay to go out a ways if there aren’t that many.”

  “You got it, Sheriff,” Henderson said.

  It only took Henderson about fifteen minutes to mark all the spots on the map. In the end, he had eight names.

  Miles looked at the map and the list of names. “These are the guys we’re going to lean on…hard.” Then to Virgil: “Are the ISP troopers still covering down here?”

  “Yeah, but I was going to call them back by the end of the day. Why?”

  Miles ignored the question and said, “Can you leave them in place for a couple more days?”

  Virgil said he could.

  Miles looked at Henderson. “Forget what I said earlier about a meet and greet. Tell Betty to get the entire day shift in here right now. Go.
”

  Ross and Rosencrantz met with Agent Martin back at the hotel after the plant had shut down for the day. They were using one of the hotel’s small conference rooms. Martin seemed to be doing her best not to look directly at Rosencrantz, who finally couldn’t take it anymore. He pulled her aside and said, “He knows.”

  Martin gave Rosencrantz a look. “You promised me you wouldn’t say anything.”

  “I didn’t. It was pure chance. He was getting ice at the other end of the hall…you know, in that little alcove? Anyway, he was down there when we got off the elevator. He saw the whole thing.”

  “I don’t need any career problems right now,” Martin said.

  “Who does?” Rosencrantz said. “Besides, Ross knows how to keep his mouth shut.”

  When they walked back into the conference room, Ross looked at them both and smiled. “Get everything all figured out?”

  Martin gave Ross a stern look, then said, “I’m just as human as the next woman. But like I told Rosie, here, I don’t need any career problems.”

  “Having an active and balanced social life doesn’t automatically imply career problems, does it?” Ross asked. Martin opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out, so he finished with, “Don’t worry, I know how to keep my mouth shut.”

  Martin gave him a polite nod. “Thank you.” Then it was right down to business. “What did you see?”

  But Ross couldn’t quite let it go. “I’ll tell you what I saw. I saw you in that T-shirt and those heels. Went to bed with a little chubby trout myself.”

  Martin turned a few different shades of red. Rosencrantz cleared his throat and said, “I think Agent Martin was asking what we saw at the factory.” Before Ross could say anything else, he quickly continued with, “We’ve got six guys we want to hit tonight. There is absolutely no question in my mind that these people were working in a chemically altered state.” He gave a copy of the list of names to Martin, then said, “Have you coordinated with the Elkhart County sheriff’s office?”

  “I have,” Martin said. “The warrants will be cut as soon as I get him this list. The sheriff wants to let his people handle the arrests, which is fine with me. Our job will be to question them all once they’ve been detained. The hope is, we’ll be able to walk right up the ladder.”

  Ross kept the ladder analogy going. “How many rungs are we talking about here?”

  Martin seemed to consider the question before answering. “That depends on how many wholesalers there are. If the operation stops at Hawk and Dakota, that’s as far as we need to go. But to answer your question, we simply don’t know how many people are between them and the end-users. In the past, I’ve seen as few as two, and as many as ten.”

  Ross shook his head. “Ten? Christ, we’ll be here for a month.”

  Martin shook her head. “Not necessarily. Sometimes these things move very fast. In fact, speed is the norm in these types of situations. You can’t let word get around that you’re out there looking, because if you do, everything just stops and they wait you out.”

  “So how do we prevent that,” Rosencrantz said. “Not letting the word get out?”

  Martin shrugged. “By working hard and fast. If we’re lucky, we won’t get much sleep tonight.”

  “I didn’t get much last night,” Rosencrantz said.

  Martin kicked him under the table.

  Rosencrantz made the call to Becky and asked her for quick background checks on the list of names he had. “You don’t need to go very deep. We don’t care about credit scores or any of that crap. All we need to know is if any of them have priors, and if so, what they were for.”

  “That’s easy enough,” Becky said. “I can have that in about thirty minutes.”

  “Great. Shoot it to my email when you’re finished. What’s the word with Jonesy and Murt?”

  “They’re working the angle out of Shelby County with Ron. They’re all but certain that’s where Hawk and Dakota are operating from.”

  “Okay. Good enough. Thanks, Becks.”

  Johnny and Dakota were working around the clock, getting their supply set for another run. This would be their biggest shipment so far, and both of them were more than a little anxious.

  They were talking it through, and Johnny said, “The thing is, we’ve got the van, we’ve got the boxes, and as long as you don’t get pulled over and searched, or get in a wreck, we’re golden.”

  “That’s the part that worries me the most,” Dakota said. “Getting in a wreck. I’m being careful, but what if some drunk asshole runs a light or something and T-bones me? Even if I lived, it’d mean the rest of my life in the federal pen. The cops aren’t fucking around anymore with this stuff.”

  “I know, I know. But you said it yourself. You’re being careful. Keep doing that, and we should be okay.”

  “I’m wondering if maybe we should lay low for a while after this run. It’s not like we need the money.”

  “Got that right,” Johnny said. “But we’ve got to keep going and make it while we can. If we don’t, your guy will find someone else, and we’ll be out.”

  Dakota nodded at him. “I hear you. But the thing of it is, you know who stays out of jail? The guys who know when to quit.”

  “That’s true enough,” Johnny said. “Except here’s the thing: It might seem like we have a lot of money right now, and we do. What we don’t have is enough to walk away and go live on the beach.”

  “Ah, fuck the beach,” Dakota said. “When this is over, I’m heading to Alaska. I’m going to disappear like I’d never been born. Maybe start one of them fishing operations. Go after Halibut or whatever.”

  “Freeze your fucking ass off, is what you’ll do. Besides, what do you know about fishing?”

  “I’ll figure it out. Get me a boat, and I’ll be good to go.”

  “Whatever. You want that boat, we gotta keep going for now. When is your guy expecting you?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Let’s get this cook finished, then we can pack it and load up tonight,” Johnny said. “That way we won’t have to worry about anything in the morning.” Then, he shook his head and said, “Halibut? Out of Alaska? I think you’re nuts.”

  Betty got the day shift rounded up and they were in the conference room with Virgil, Murton, and Ron. After some quick introductions, Miles laid out the plan, using the map on the wall as his reference. “We’re focusing all our efforts on this sector.” He pointed at the lines that Henderson had drawn. “That’s where Hall was killed, somewhere inside that box.”

  “Pretty big area,” one of the deputies said. With Miles as acting sheriff, there was some tension in the room, and everyone could feel it.

  “It is,” Miles said. “But maybe not as big as it seems.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Look,” Miles said. “We’ve got troopers covering the regular calls, handling the traffic stops, and all that. There are ten of you guys, plus myself, and Virgil and Murton here. We’ll work out a system where we’ll talk to everyone we can, and ask them what they know, have heard, or seen since the time the delivery driver up in Boone County was killed. We’ll lean hard on the assholes, and ask the regular folks to help spread the word regarding what we’re doing, and why. I’ve done this type of thing before and it works.”

  Another one of the deputies looked at Miles and said, “No disrespect, but you did it up in the city. Do I have that right?”

  Miles nodded. “Yeah. What of it?” The tension still floating around the room.

  “Well, it’s a tighter area.” He walked over to the map and pointed with his index finger. “Some of this area out here is wide open. You can talk to a guy whose nearest neighbor is more than a mile away, not one floor up in an apartment complex.”

  “I get it,” Miles said. “But the theory is still sound. Show everyone the pictures of Hawk and Dakota. Someone knows where they are. Ask folks to get on the phone and have a conversation with someone they know. Something will turn up.
Like I said, it always does. Now, let’s divide up this sector so we can get to it. We’ve got ten guys, so we’ll just make ten smaller sectors within one big one.”

  “Who gets the assholes?”

  “We do,” Murton said. “Along with the sheriff, of course, who sounds like he’s ready to kick a little ass.” He was smiling when he said it.

  Then one of the deputies laughed and said, “He might sound like he’s ready to kick some ass, but with those pants he’s wearing, he looks like he’s expecting some high water.”

  That got them all laughing, and the tension eased itself out of the room.

  Ron looked down at his pants, the tops of his ankles clearly visible, and said, “Yeah, that fucking Betty. I think she did it on purpose.”

  Every single deputy in the room winced at Ron’s comment. A few of them looked at the doorway with genuine fear in their eyes.

  Miles looked at them and said, “What? It’s not like she’s going to come flying down the hallway on a broomstick.”

  Everyone got their assignments, then filed out of the conference room to get started. Virgil and Murton followed Ron back to his office. As they were passing Betty’s desk, Ron decided to take Henderson’s advice. He looked at her, put a smile in his voice, and said, “So, I understand you keep exotic birds. That must be fascinating. I’d like to hear about it some—”

  Betty dipped her chin and looked at Miles over the tops of her glasses. “Do not patronize me. Those were the only pants they had in supply at the moment. I’ve ordered replacements and they should be here in a couple of days. I’ll be sure to hop on my broomstick and fly them in as soon as they arrive.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Then, Ross and Rosencrantz had to wait. There wasn’t anything for them to do until the factory workers they’d identified had been rounded up, and brought in for questioning. They hung out in the bullpen area of the Elkhart County sheriff’s department in Goshen, the county seat, Ross talking long guns with one of the deputies, Rosencrantz trying not to nod off. Agent Martin was on and off the phone with her superiors.