by Roger Weston
The receptionist was a tired, overworked, distracted blond girl. She pointed. “If you’ll just have a seat over there—”
“Get a doctor out here right now,” Chuck yelled, “or I’ll drag him out here by his ankles!”
The receptionist dialed fast. Chuck jogged out the front door and drove out of there. This place would be swarming with cops in just a few minutes. He had to find out who set him up and fast.
***
A stiff-mouthed female cop with a boyish haircut jogged into the emergency room reception area. She stopped and stared wide-eyed at the police officer slumped against the wall, a nurse checking his vitals. A doctor ran past her and kneeled by the nurse. The stiff-mouthed female cop rushed to the glass door and stared wide-eyed at the fleeing cop car as it turned the corner. She hurried over to the receptionist.
“Who was that?”
“I think it was…It was…”
“Just say it!”
“That guy. The one who’s all over the news.”
“You mean Chuck Brandt?”
“That’s right, the one they think assassinated the president of Venezuela.”
The cop grabbed her walkie-talkie and said, “Code 3. Officer down. Suspect fleeing in unit eighty-three. He’s heading west from Virginia Mason Hospital. Suspect a white male. Lean. Short red hair.”
***
Chuck had only gone a block when he saw a pancake house with two cop cars out front. He pulled into the side parking lot and parked just around the corner by the windowless cinderblock wall. He pulled on a black stocking cap and his orange plastic-frame glasses. As he walked around the front of the pancake house, four cops rushed out the front door past him. They jumped into their cruisers and headed west. Chuck walked a few blocks and stepped into a coffee shop as more police cars roared past.
He bought a cup of coffee and thought about Kielce, the fraud who’d set him up in Venezuela. Was he also behind the assassination attempt that just put a cop in the hospital? Was he the one who’d offered the bounty? Chuck could hardly wait to get his hands on Kielce. He got out his smart phone.
He accessed his ghost email account and ran the photos that he’d emailed from the antiquarian’s shop through a facial-recognition program that he had emergency access to thanks to Lawrence Robertson. It took a few minutes, so Chuck sipped his coffee and watched several more police cars speed by with sirens and flashing lights.
The barista said, “What’s going on? You’d think they were chasing that assassin from the news.”
Chuck looked up from his device on the table. He saw she was talking to a lady at the drive through.
“You think so?” the lady said.
“No, he’s probably in Canada by now.”
The facial-recognition program produced a hit. The perpetrator turned out to be an ex-con who’d become a contract lawyer. He’d done time in Walla Walla for assault plus illegal drugs and weapons possession. Then Chuck glanced at the name—Martin Hurst. Maybe he wasn’t at sea after all. Chuck studied the face closely now. An air of morbid hostility clung to his face like rag. Like thick cobwebs, long, tangled locks spread all across half his face.
Chuck reread the report to make sure he wasn’t misreading.
A lawyer being an ex-con seemed unlikely so Chuck did some fast research. He learned that you could become a lawyer if your crimes were not those of moral turpitude. Crimes not involving moral turpitude included drug possession, alien smuggling, re-entry after deportation, disorderly conduct, assault, some weapons-possession offenses, and other misdeeds. Suddenly, it seemed plausible that a lawyer might be involved in a violent crime, such as taking out a defenseless antiquarian.
Back outside, Chuck ditched his phone in a dumpster behind 7-11. Then he put up his hoodie and walked toward the freeway, where he would hitchhike to I-90.
It was time to pay Hurst a visit...
Heads Up: Thank you for reading this far! The next book in the series, SHADOW COURT, is now available on Amazon. Grab a copy today. Now back to SHADOW LAWYER.
CHAPTER 15
Issaquah, East of Seattle
Past Midnight
The black SUV pulled up behind the van and Todd Kielce got out. He stepped over to the van and knocked on the side door. He knocked twice, paused, and knocked again. The door opened half way, and he found himself looking at Jayden, a techie who was wearing a headset. Jayden startled a little bit when he first saw Kielce, as many did due to his threatening eyes.
“Where is he now?” Kielce said.
“Hurst’s office.”
Kielce was silent for a moment then he swore. He ran his hand over his slicked-back hair. “You were right then. All right, tell the team to move in. I’m putting the black mark on him. This is the witching hour, and I want a body tonight.”
CHAPTER 16
Issaquah, Washington
Issaquah was a town by Lake Sammamish, east of Seattle. It seemed like an unlikely place for the office of a lawyer who’d been part of a hit team or offered a million dollar reward for Chuck’s death. Chuck was going to find out more about Hurst—who he worked for and what he was involved in. Then he’d find out why he was set up in Venezuela—and who really killed the president.
The law office was located in a two story building on Main Street in an old bank building, which Chuck learned because there was a brass plaque with a couple of sentences of history on the green-tile siding. In the dark of night, he found a side door under an awning and picked the lock.
The door opened into a law library with a high ceiling, boardroom style table, and floor-to-ceiling shelves of law books. Toward the back of the building he found an office, but he rifled through a briefcase and determined that this was a different lawyer’s office, not Hurst’s. The front of the building was a big open space with high ceilings where bank tellers used to work. One wall had four partitioned spaces for paralegals. The other side had three doors leading into offices.
Another doorway led through very thick walls into what apparently used to be a vault back in the 1800s, but the steel vault door was long gone. In fact there was no door at all. Chuck walked into the old vault, which was now a file room. The walls were lined with file cabinets. He found the cabinet that was alphabetized for clients with names beginning with ‘M.’ Opening the drawer, he scanned file tabs, but there was no file for anyone named Maroz.
Chuck left the old vault. In one of the attorney’s offices, he sifted through a big stack of mail on the credenza and found the name Martin Hurst on envelopes. Chuck thought about Hurst. Clearly he was not at sea if he helped murder the antiquarian, but he wasn’t opening all his mail either. The pile included unopened mail with stamps that had been canceled over a month ago. None of the senders were listed under the name of Maroz.
Chuck crouched down and picked the lock to Hurst’s special file cabinet.
He shined his light into the file cabinet, noticing something unusual. The files came right to the upper edge of the drawer. It looked like the drawer had a false bottom. Having once built a wood boat in Alabama, he was aware of the architecture and mathematics of hidden compartments. He removed the files, and sure enough, there was a false bottom, which he removed. The contents included a leather pouch. Opening that, he found two keys attached by a gold chain to the leather. It was just two flaps of leather sown together at the edges allowing for a slip of paper or a credit card to be slipped into the pouch. Chuck removed a business card. It was Hurst’s card, but on the back it said, “Basement: 2-7-3-4-6.”
Chuck kneeled there for a moment of silence… It sounded like the old bank building had a second vault, one that required a combo. He heard voices outside and the sound of a few cars driving by. Just normal city sounds. Nothing to worry about.
Chuck pocketed the business card and the keys.
He walked through the whole building, but there was no stairway to any basement. Then he recalled the other doorway he’d seen on the side of the building. He’d seen stairs going up th
e second floor, but they must have also gone down to the basement.
Leaving the law office through the side door in the library, he stepped over to the next side door. Standing under the awning, he flickered his flashlight. “What’s going on?” he mumbled. Just as he thought he’d seen earlier, the stairway went up to the second floor, but there was no stairway going downstairs. Was this basement in some other building?
Then he saw a cop car cruise by on Main Street. Hopefully the officer hadn’t seen him. Chuck listened. If the cop pulled into the parking lot on the other side of the building, he would hear the tires or the engine. He heard nothing. Still, the cop could come back if he was suspicious. Chuck decided that he was wasting time and had better leave the area.
As he walked out behind the building, something caught his eye when he shined his light between two dumpsters, something that he hadn’t noticed earlier. He saw what looked like a large metal grate on the ground. He stopped and listened for sounds of approaching cars, hearing none, so he walked behind the dumpsters. The old grate measured around 4x8 and covered a cement stairwell leading down to a wooden door leading under the building. A padlock secured the grate, so Chuck got out the keys he’d found in the pouch inside of Hurst’s locked file drawer. He tried both. The second key opened the lock. He lifted the grate, which swung back on hinges.
Flashlight in hand, Chuck descended the stairs, allowing the cage-like door to close over his head until it lay flat over the stairwell. The steps felt uneven under his feet. Evidently from a hundred years of use, the cement had lost its flatness. Small pebbles crunched under his feet, pebbles that had probably been blown down the stairwell in some windstorm. At the landing, Chuck used the second key to open the door.
He entered a dank old basement. Everything was dirty and looked to be a hundred years old. Asbestos-covered pipes ran along the ceiling. Mouse droppings lined the base of the cement wall. Even the three-thousand-pound door to the vault looked like an antique. Chuck worked the numbers on the combination dial and then pulled the latch handle downward. The latch responded with a hollow, metallic clicking sound. Chuck heaved the door open.
The file cabinets were just like those upstairs.
This time, however, he found a file with his own name on it. Inside he found hand-written details related to a wire-transfer and a receipt for a million dollars for “escrow.” The date of the deposit was seven days ago. In the “M” drawer he found notes on a legal pad related to taxes and an offshore corporation named Lancastria Industries, registered by Andrew Maroz.
Chuck smiled and shook his head. Hurst was not at sea after all. It was probably just a story he put out as a decoy or he’d just been in hiding somewhere and avoiding his office, because he feared the repercussions of being the man to offer a bounty for Chuck Brandt, now considered world’s most notorious professional assassin. Chuck took no pleasure in that distinction. He lived to help people and save lives. All the attention was unwelcome, especially given that he played no role in the death of the Venezuelan president. His mission was to protect innocent people from threats involving weapons of mass destruction. Sometimes that required him to bring down the hammer. At least Hurst was smart enough to know that he was he was taking a major risk. Maroz—or someone—must have paid Hurst a lot of money to bet his life and walk away from his law practice. No doubt he was gambling for millions.
Patiently, Chuck continued flipping through the yellow pad and saw disturbing references in the notes. The offshore corporation was somehow connected to a WW2 shipwreck called the Lancastria. The corporation was Lancastria Industries—an offshore corporation based in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.
Chuck found a security report with the name CERBERUS on the letterhead and an insignia—a horned, rearing horse with human hands and wielding chains. He had seen this insignia in on the ring finger of the assassin who’d tried to kill him on his boat. Who were these killers, Chuck wondered, some kind of secret police force? They were certainly enforcers, but for what kind of organization?
Then he heard soft voices outside.
CHAPTER 17
Chuck returned the file to its metal drawer, left the vault, and walked to the basement door, peeking outside. He saw nobody up above standing near the grate. This was a tough spot to be in. If they knew he was here, they could lay an ambush for him as he emerged from the stairway. He heard voices.
A man said, “If anyone comes out the front door, fill him with lead. Remember, we take him with us.”
“I brought the body bag.”
Chuck slipped out the door and crept up the cement steps. He slowly pushed the grate up on its hinges a foot, enough to get a look around. All he could see was the backside of the dumpsters, so he pushed the grate up more—very slowly so the hinges didn’t squeak. A little squeak could not be avoided in the rusty hinges. He emerged at ground level and let the grate down just as carefully. Peeking around the back side of the dumpster, he saw a gunman standing by a van, a killer with a broad face and a wide mustache. The van was parked barely twenty-feet away, so the triggerman was lit up from the street light. He was holding an assault rifle that looked like a German Sturmgewehr with a thirty-shot magazine and an infrared “vampire” night-sight. The Sturmgewehr was an old weapon famously connected with a special committee on infantry weapons established by Adolf Hitler in 1944. It was not a weapon you saw every day. This model appeared to be a 7.92x33mm Maschinenpistole 44. The man was wearing a bullet-proof vest.
Chuck narrowed his eyes.
Using his tactical flashlight to blind the shooter, he said, “Drop it!”
The assassin swung the Sturmgewehr up and opened fire. Bullets rang off the dumpster. Chuck brought his Glock on point and squeezed off four body shots.
The shooter stumbled backwards and hit the ground. Chuck ran to him and kicked the gun away. The shooter was wearing a ballistic vest and despite his pain started to get up, so Chuck pistol whipped him, knocking him out cold. His hand, which was spread out on the pavement under the streetlight, caught Chuck’s attention.
Kneeling by the unconscious man, Chuck took a closer look with his tactical flashlight. The killer’s ring glinted in the light. An insignia was etched into the gold mounting underneath the red ruby. It was the horned horse insignia.
It was the same ring that the assassin on Chuck’s fishing boat had worn. It had the same insignia on it that Chuck had just seen on a file down in the vault, an insignia connected with a secret police group called CERBERUS, a group that reported to Maroz. Private assassins.
Chuck scanned the scene. He’d neutralized the man they’d left in the parking lot, but there were other killers nearby who’d heard the shooting—at least one inside and one across the street.
Chuck eyed a sewer grate by the shooter’s head.
He ran over to the grate covering the basement doorway and put his phone under it. He stomped on the grate, smashing his phone.
He heard a man yell, “Roderigo!”
He heard running footsteps.
Death was closing in. Chuck ran.
He slowed enough to lean down and shove his burner phone through the bars of a sewer grate then broke into a sprint.
***
Tech van, Front Street, Issaquah
The techie wore a headset. He batted his lips, revealing his big gums and gleaming white teeth. He was staring with utter frustration at his computer monitor when a voice came over the speaker.
“Algernon, which way is he going?”
“I think he’s still at the bank building,” the techie said.
“We’re there now. He beat the crap out of Kevlar. He’s not around.”
“I lost his signal, but that’s where it was a minute ago.”
“Well, get his signal back!”
“I can’t.” Algernon batted his lips.
“I said get it back. He’s getting away!”
“He must have destroyed his phone. Look around for it. That’s the only way I could lose his signal.”
“Find the damn signal!”
“I’m trying, but—”
“Just shut up!” The line went dead.
The techie wiped sweat from his forehead. Then another voice blasted over the radio.
“This is Kielce. What the hell is going on!”
CHAPTER 18
A block over from the old bank building, Chuck was sprinting down the street when he saw headlights shining on a stop sign up ahead telling him that a car was about to take the corner. He cut to the right and darted behind the Fischer Meats building then swung a look back around the corner just in time to hear the screech of car tires as a vehicle got sideways on the corner. The car, however, slowed down. It cruised, it crawled, it crept down the street.
Chuck got out his extra burner phone and dialed up his old CIA pal Lawrence Robertson.
A tired voice came over the phone. “You realize it’s four a.m.?”
Chuck said, “People are hunting for me right now. I need your help, related to Andrew Maroz.”
Lawrence groaned. “Alright, yeah, I planned to call you in the morning about him.”
“Hold it!” Chuck peaked around the corner as a Black Ford Mustang crawled past, its engine purring. The back window yawned open, and he saw the black figure of a man holding an assault rifle, probably another German Sturmgewehr, but it was too dark to tell. Chuck pulled back around the corner as the car cruised on.
“They’ll be back soon,” he said. “What did you learn?”
Lawrence said, “Go back to sleep, darling.” His voice sounded distant through the cheap phone, as if Lawrence had covered the speaker.
A sleepy voice in the background said, “Who is it?”
“You don’t want to know, sweetheart.”
“Yes, I do!” his wife said. “It’s Brandt, isn’t it? I cannot sleep with him calling here! Why, Lawrence? Why would the president give Brandt authority to act as a law unto himself then disavow any knowledge of him?”
