The Haunts of Cruelty

by R. G. Ryan

“So,” I inferred. “He can only hear your end.”

  “That’s accurate.”

  “Okay. Is Washington with you?”

  She suddenly lost it.

  “Jake, hurry! Hurry, he’s—“

  The call terminated.

  “So, he’s already there?” Redfern exclaimed.

  “Yeah…inside.”

  “He would’ve had to get past Washington in order to do that, and that isn’t an easy thing to accomplish.”

  I shook my head slowly.

  “The man is devious beyond belief, resourceful beyond comprehension and still running on whatever is left in his system from that drug. And when you factor in his belief that he will die in pursuit of his revenge against Cassie, he’s virtually unstoppable.”

  “But shouldn’t that drug be running down any time now?”

  “Based on my knowledge of the drug—which is nowhere near comprehensive—I would think so.”

  I took a hard right turn into the neighborhood where Gabi lived, nearly losing control of the big, lumbering SUV and causing Redfern to swear prolifically and energetically.

  “We can’t help her if we die in transit, Moriarity!”

  “I guess I can’t push this like my Range Rover.”

  “You think?”

  We squealed to a stop in front of her building and found two Metro squad cars already on site and saw three more moving into place to set up a perimeter two blocks away. Her condo development was in a newer section of Henderson with the units designed to resemble the red brick “Philadelphia House” row houses built in the late 1800’s. Units filled both sides of the tree-lined street giving the impression of an established neighborhood even though the development was a scant three years old.

  We piled out of the vehicle and rushed over to where the Metro officers were posted.

  I said, “Anybody got eyes inside the unit?”

  “No sir,” he answered. “Detective Green told us to wait until either he or Jake Moriarity arrived. Would that be you, sir?”

  Detective Green was reference to Jason Green, a close friend who had been instrumental in helping me shut down the Olivetti criminal organization a little more than a year ago.

  Just then an unmarked car skidded to a stop next to our SUV and Green hustled out.

  “Good to see you, Jason,” I said, shaking his hand.

  “You too, Jake, although I can’t say I like the circumstances we always seem to be meeting under. Give me a rundown on what’s happening.”

  As I filled him in, a heavily armored vehicle rumbled to a stop just to the rear of our position.

  The FBI’s vaunted Hostage Rescue Team had arrived.

  Before they could even exit their vehicle, however, all eyes spun toward the entrance to Gabi’s condo thirty feet away where a stark naked Paul Morgan stood behind Cassie with a gun pressed against her head.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  “All of you came to see little, ‘ol me?” Morgan hollered in a cartoon voice. “Why, I simply don’t know what to say—oh, wait, yes I do. If anyone inside of the big armored truck there even twitches, like maybe a sniper trying to draw a bead on my head or something, this lovely young lady dies. Not in the manner I had intended, mind you, but she’ll be dead enough either way.”

  Cassie stood rigidly, staring straight ahead.

  “You okay, Cassie?” I hollered.

  “Me? Oh, I’m fine, Uncle…couldn’t be better. In fact, I haven’t felt this good since our weekend trip to see Mrs. Stanton.”

  She was trying to tell me something, but I was too exhausted to connect the dots.

  “Shut up!” Morgan bellowed while grinding the barrel of the gun cruelly into her scalp. “I did not give you permission to speak.”

  Cassie winced and stared intensely at me as if willing me to comprehend what she was trying to communicate. It was no good! I just wasn’t tracking.

  I said, “And how are you feeling, Morgan? Like you’re going to explode into flames any second?”

  Even from thirty feet away in the pale light of dawn, I could see involuntary twitching and trembling running rampant throughout his body.

  “And how about that heart rate?” I continued. “Must be up around two hundred, maybe two hundred-twenty beats per minute by now.”

  He threw his head back and let loose with another one of those inhuman screams Washington and I had heard up on the bluffs.

  Redfern whispered, “How do you want to play this, Jake?”

  “I don’t know what else we can do right now until he makes a move,” I answered. “I mean, the way he’s positioned behind her coupled with the architectural design of that porch overhang, even if your HRT guys could exit their vehicle without being seen, I don’t see how they could even get a clear shot.”

  “Roger that.”

  Jason said, “What if a couple of my guys could get into position on the porches of those adjacent units? Maybe they could distract him long enough for someone to take him out.”

  “But that’s what I was just saying. We can’t get the snipers out without him seeing their movement, and unless you’ve got another idea on how to get them deployed, I don’t want to risk doing something that will set him off. He’s planned this very well.”

  Morgan yelled, “I know you’re talking about how you’re going to kill me. But there’s no way to do it, is there? That, ladies and gentlemen, is because I outsmarted the legendary Jake Moriarity.”

  Mrs. Stanton…Mrs. Stanton. What the hell was Cassie trying to tell me?

  “Oh, yeah,” I replied. “You’re real smart, Morgan. I mean look how well this has all worked out for you. You’re missing an ear, one eye, your right arm is barely working; a girl beat the living shit out of you, your heart is about to explode because of the drugs and you’re standing out here buck naked in front of the FBI and Las Vegas Metro. You’re a genius, all right!”

  “Shut up!”

  “Is your vocabulary shrinking, because that’s basically all I’ve heard you say for the past twenty minutes.”

  “I’m warning you, Moriarity,” he said through gritted teeth while shifting the gun’s barrel from Cassie’s head to the back of her neck.

  Mrs. Stanton…

  And then it hit me.

  Clarice Stanton. Three years ago. Seventy-eight year-old widow. Dropped off the map. Her two youngest children hired me to find her. She was being held hostage in a coastal motel in Reedsport, Oregon by her oldest son who was into bath salts. Not for soaking, but for snorting! Since it was basically a case of kidnapping, I got the FBI involved. But when we got to the Reedsport motel, the kid had his mom restrained in a closet and was running around the room naked bouncing things off the walls, throwing furniture and the TV through the windows and screaming unintelligibly.

  I knew exactly what to do.

  “Morgan!” I said loudly. “You know, I’ve got to tell you that if I had a body as pathetic as yours, I certainly wouldn’t want to be seen naked in public.”

  He had been babbling something to Cassie who, in turn, was patently ignoring him, and stopped suddenly, staring at me as if I had a horn growing from the top of my head.

  “What…what are you talking about?”

  “Oh, I think we all know what I’m talking about, you pathetic excuse for a man.”

  “Pathetic excuse? What—“

  “You know what I’m talking about, bro. It’s the…” I shifted my eyes downward toward his genitals. “…you know…less than adequate, shall we say, size?”

  He glanced quickly down at his genitalia, which were, indeed, rather miniscule and stared before raising his head slowly and piercing me with a stare of pure hatred.

  He hollered, “There is nothing wrong with my…my…stuff!”

  “Oh really? Shall we ask Cassie’s opinion?”

  “Ask…what…”

  “Or, maybe Muriel, or Eddie, or any woman you’ve ever been with. So, shall
we? Shall we ask them how you…uh…measure up to other lovers?”

  By now he was panting just to acquire enough oxygen to keep up with his ever-increasing heart rate. It was a pathetic sight, really. But he was intending to kill Cassie, and God only knew what he had already done to Eddie, Gabi and Grover.

  It was time to die.

  “No wonder you had to use drugs to get laid.”

  “What! Drugs to…I…”

  It was like watching that old episode of Star Trek where Captain Kirk tells a supremely logical robot that he is a liar and everything he says is a lie, and the robot attempts to process the fact that he is a liar, but if he says he’s a liar he is lying, and therefore…you get it. Eventually, the robot melted down right in front of him.

  That is what was happening to Paul Morgan.

  “I could have any woman I wanted!” he brayed. “Any of them! I never had—“

  “Any woman who wasn’t on drugs,” Cassie said quietly and calmly keeping her gaze firmly locked on me.

  Morgan looked down once more and it was as if he suddenly realized that he was naked. His head snapped back up, he started panting in the way large dogs pant on extremely hot days. The gun fell from his grasp as his hand flew of its own accord to his throat, clawing at his skin as if trying to tear a larger airway into existence.

  He staggered.

  He bounced off the doorjamb and tumbled down the steps where he lay gasping for air, his one good eye darting about like a fish on dry land desperately searching for a source of water.

  We moved cautiously forward while Cassie stayed rooted in place, moving only her eyes to follow the drama playing out in front of her.

  I stood over Morgan and, surprisingly, took no pleasure in what was happening to the man.

  His eye found Cassie. At the same time there seemed to be an alteration in his features, as if a changing of the guard were taking place in his soul.

  She looked back at him.

  He gasped, “I…I…loved you, Cassie. I really and truly did…I…was just too broken…”

  His body convulsed, and then he was utterly still.

  I rushed past him to envelop Cassie in an embrace that I’m pretty sure neither one of us ever wanted to end.

  “You remembered,” she whispered with her head on my shoulder.

  “Yeah, I did. Finally!”

  Gerald Redfern came up behind us.

  “What was going on between you two? That ‘Mrs. Stanton’ stuff?”

  I said, “A case Cassie helped me on a few years ago. Same kind of scenario only with bath salts. I basically baited the guy into getting so worked up that his heart couldn’t handle the added stress and he went into cardiac arrest.”

  “He die too?”

  “No, he lived.”

  I suddenly remembered that Gabi was still inside.

  “Is Gabi okay, Cass?” I asked hesitantly.

  “Last time I saw, she was okay. Eddie and agent Washington, though…”

  As her sentence trailed off I rushed inside and saw Gabi tied to a kitchen chair with a dishrag stuffed in her mouth. I jerked it free, cut her bonds and picked her up out of the chair, crushing her body to mine and swinging her around slowly.

  After a few seconds she said, “You know, if we’re going to be together, I either need to get used to being taken hostage, or you need to supply me with a big gun. A really, really big gun.”

  “I know. And I’m sorry. This will never happen again.”

  “Promise?”

  I sat her down and kissed her lips.

  They were such great lips.

  Like they were made for kissing.

  I said, “Where are Eddie and agent Washington?”

  She pointed toward her master bedroom.

  I walked slowly toward the doorway, not really wanting to enter for fear of what I might find.

  Agent Grover Washington was lying on the floor with two bullet wounds to the back of his head. Eddie was beneath him. Quite obvious was the fact that he had thrown himself on top of her to prevent her death. Then and there, my grief nearly overcame my resolve. While I hadn’t known either of them well, I had liked them and knew that, given enough time, we could’ve been friends.

  I was about to leave the room to inform Gerald Redfern of the death of his heroic agent when I heard moaning. Turning around I saw Eddie gasping for air and trying to wriggle out from under Washington’s body.

  “Eddie!” I said loudly and rushed to give her aid.

  “Jake. Oh, thank God. He…he sacrificed…he…”

  The emotion took over and she couldn’t speak.

  I gently rolled Grover’s body to one side and closed his eyes that had been locked in a death stare before picking Eddie up and carrying her from the room.

  Gabi had pulled Cassie back inside to avoid the circus that had developed around Morgan’s dead body, with local news crews beginning to gather, law enforcement personnel from Metro and the FBI clustered in small groups recounting the tale, each version growing into its own particular legend.

  I gently placed Eddie on the sofa between the two girls and then stepped back.

  Well, actually, I didn’t step back so much as I stumbled back and sat down onto Gabi’s travertine floor.

  That’s not quite right either…I collapsed onto the floor and just sat staring.

  I heard somebody say, “Jake! Are you okay?”

  I grinned stupidly and mumbled something to the affirmative, but I knew better. Like Cassie before me, everything caught up to me all at once and all I really wanted to do was curl up into a semi-fetal position and sleep for several days undisturbed by reality of any sort.

  And I did.

  Sleep, that is.

  It wasn’t for very long, but long enough to dream.

  And this time, it was a very nice dream free from evil men with cruel intentions.

  Epilogue

  Six months later

  The laughter from the party drifted across the sand causing the two elderly beachcombers to pause and wave a greeting, which was cheerily returned by the crippled man in the custom wheelchair.

  “Don’t they make a striking couple?” the old woman was heard to say as a stunning blonde woman eased herself onto the crippled man’s lap, slipping her arms around his neck and burying her face in his shoulder.

  The wedding had been an intimate affair attended only by close friends and family members—thirty in all. Due to Michael’s handicap, the decision to hold the ceremony and reception on the sand in front of his beachfront home in Carlsbad had been the subject of hot debate as there were more than a few concessions that had to be made. Such as building a ramp and a solid surface to accommodate his custom-built, motorized wheelchair. In the end, it had been his decision and based on what I was now seeing, he had chosen well.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” I heard Michael say while motoring up to me with Cassie still sitting on his lap looking so lovely I could hardly stand it.

  “Only a penny, suh?” Cassie said sweetly in a faux southern accent. “Why Mr. Harvey, surely you can afford more than that. Especially with that new book simply burning up the best seller list.”

  I thought through all that had transpired in the months since the “Paul Morgan Incident” (as the case was officially designated in the FBI files) had come to a close. Against all odds—and possibly to prove to himself that he could still write from a wheelchair—Michael had written a book that was breaking sales records right and left. The novel, “Reckoning”—based on the lives of the Ransom brothers, as culled from their handwritten journal I recovered from the cabin—had made him even more of a celebrity than he already was. Even more mind blowing than the sales was the fact that he had written the manuscript in a little over six weeks. It was virtually unheard of in literary circles, as was the fast track his editors and publisher had put it on.

  Recovery from the accident had been long and arduous. Following the i
nitial surgery in the ER, there had been three subsequent surgeries: one to deal with collapsed lungs, one to reconstruct a shattered wrist that, according to the doctors, would never function normally again, and one to deal cosmetically with unusually severe facial lacerations. Typing with that reconstructed wrist was painful, but Michael is nothing if not driven and he pressed through the pain.

  Muriel’s condition had looked a lot worse than it was, given the extreme swelling on the right side of her face. A titanium rod had replaced the broken femur, necessitating a permanent twelve-inch scar down the outside of her right leg—a scar she insisted was welcome in that it was a daily reminder that she had survived. There was also a slight limp that the physical therapist assured her would eventually go completely away as soon as her muscles were retrained, and a teardrop shaped scar right below her right eye, left over from the removal of imbedded safety glass. In my view, neither scar detracted even slightly from her beauty.

  Aaron had been released from the hospital two days following the wreck and bore no signs that it had ever happened, except, that is, for a lingering sense of guilt that neither I, nor anyone else, could counsel out of him. The driver of the other car, who had perished at the scene, was judged to have had a blood-alcohol level of .22 at the time of the accident. Nearly three times the legal limit.

  Gabi had her own guilt to process, which I was helping her to do, but it was challenging.

  Shortly after agent Washington had driven the girls back to Gabi’s condo, Paul Morgan had simply walked up and knocked on the door. On the way over from the hospital, Washington had called for another agent from Andy Steward’s crew to join him as backup. Anticipating that it was this other agent arriving, Gabi had opened the door without looking through the spyhole. Morgan had stuck a gun in her chest and forced her back into the room. It all happened too quickly for Washington to do anything more than grudgingly comply.

  After relieving Grover of his weapons, Morgan had announced his intention to kill everyone, beginning with Eddie. It was at that point that agent Grover Washington had given his life to save her. By Cassie’s account, Morgan had pointed the gun in Eddie’s direction and had started to pull the trigger when Grover had thrown himself on top of her knocking her into unconsciousness and taking the bullets meant for her. Given his extreme state at the time, Morgan assumed they were both dead and hadn’t bothered to check. Shortly after that, I had called Gabi, thus initiating the sequence of events that culminated in Morgan’s heart exploding.