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

by Dustin Stevens

  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, 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 file, “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.

  “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 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, her tone so loud her nephew could most likely hear every word from inside the interrogation room.

  “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 to her sides and 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 certain other 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 48 hours just to see where things went. What a mistake that was.”

  On pure reflex Reed glanced over to Grimes. Not once had he mentioned the ticking clock, 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 to 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 pale, 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 who 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 out at 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 to look through the window.

  On the other side of the glass everybody could see Pierce staring at 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 register 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. 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.

  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 before finally shifting his attention to Brandt, sliding in and closing the door behind her.

  “Aunt E?”

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

  “What’s going on here?” Pierce asked, keeping his attention on Brandt. “Are these pictures real?”

  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 was that happened two years ago 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.”

  Reed glanced to Brandt, who was staring down at Pierce between them.

  As the young man spoke, Brandt drew her mouth into a thin line, Reed able to see guilt cre
eping in. 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 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 on the table, 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 already dead.

  “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, get him to the punch line, jump straight to the part they needed to hear.

  “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 above a whisper. “Had to be the only two people in The Bottoms more out of place than I was. Young couple, 30 maybe. Both nice looking, driving a pretty decent car, the kind of thing you never saw down there, definitely not after dark.

  “They rolled up late in the evening, just after the diner closed. We saw them as they pulled to 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 to their car, when Dub pulled back the slide on the gun he was holding, said it was time we got ours.”

  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 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 asked, 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.”

  Tears pooled at the bottoms of his eyes before gravity finally won out, pushing them down his cheeks. Gone was the cocky, conceited young man Reed had brought in an hour before, replaced by a scared kid, still in his 20s, for the first time realizing just how bad what he had done really was.

  Of the consequences it was now bringing down on his friends.

  “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 Pierce blinked, each time forcing more tears 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 great thing. At that point, I just wanted to go home, be done with it.”

  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 track, 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 to share.

  “What happened after that?” Reed asked.

  For the first time since beginning, 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 home.”

  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 drawing the forensic artist had made from Hank Winter’s description.

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

  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 and reinserted it into the folder.

  “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. By 5:00 nightfall was already well on its way, more than an hour earlier than usual.

  At 6:00 The Bottoms was completely dark, nothing but street lights and long shadows over everything.

  This 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.

  Still perched on its stand was the ken, its steel blade polished to a gleam, the new finish free of any imperfections. On the floor in front of it was the rifle, an ugly black killing machine, more impersonal than the ken, but lethal nonetheless.

  If the man was to be believed, the weapon was completely untraceable. No matter how badly the Boat Man wanted to fire it though, regardless of how much he wanted to check the accuracy, to feel the interworking of the mechanism pressed against his shoulder, he couldn’t risk it.

  Already, he knew the police were s
tarting to close in. Leaving a trail of spent shell casings or slugs to be dug out of trees somewhere would not help him reach the goal he was so close to accomplishing.

  Even with the noise suppressor, no gunshot was ever truly silenced. They had a distinctive sound that people would hear, would remember, that they might even come to investigate for themselves.

  The targets of his mission were a specific list of people, a list that would be two shorter in just a few hours. There was no need to put anybody else in the position of becoming collateral damage, no point in forcing himself to become like the men he was hunting.

  Fighting his every inner desire, the Boat Man refrained from practicing with the gun, trusting it was ready to go, as he now toted it up to the fourth floor of the abandoned schoolhouse, the same one he had observed so many nights before.

  Despite having spent countless hours in direct eyesight of its crumbling edifice, it was the first time he had ever set foot inside.

  The building had a central staircase crossing back and forth through the middle, a wide landing encasing it. Four classrooms made up the bulk of every floor, one in each corner.

  Sticking to the stairs, the Boat Man climbed through near darkness, just a faint ambient glow cast through the south facing windows, residual light from the diner nearby. The rest of the building remained dark, the doors to most of the classrooms closed tight.

  Behind each one the Boat Man could envision vagrants, or even families of homeless huddled together, whatever possessions they’d managed to salvage heaped in a pile. With every step he could imagine them hearing the tread of his boots hitting the wood floor, hunkering down low, beseeching each other to be quiet.

  Much like the people he might have encountered in the woods, the Boat Man wished them no harm. Their plight was difficult enough, he had no reason to add to it. He was only passing through for a short period of time, just long enough to do what he must before moving on.

  Coming to the top level, the Boat Man found all four doors open, a telling sign that it was deserted. Large water spots and bits of rotting plaster dotted the floor, pulling his gaze to the ceiling. Overhead he could see small pockets of the night sky peeking through, feel the cold air outside on his cheeks.