False Signs (John Taylor Book 2)

by Travis Starnes

  “The one that says ‘Don’t tread on me’?” Taylor asked.

  “That’s the one. The tattoo is just the snake, though. No words or anything.”

  "Has Mullins worked here long?”

  “I’m not sure. I got hired about a year ago, and he already worked here then.”

  “Have you seen him recently?”

  “No, but he had some kind of big install job out of town. He’s been gone for almost two weeks.”

  A car pulled into the parking lot and parked next to the vans.

  “That’s Mr. Brooks. He owns the place,” the younger man said.

  The man got out of his car and walked over to them.

  “Can I help you folks?” the man in his forties said as he walked up.

  “They’re with the FBI, Art. They were asking questions about Willie,” the younger employee said, probably thinking he was being helpful.

  “Did something happen to him?” Brooks asked, concerned.

  “No. We just had a couple of questions for him.”

  “Well, he’s been in Oklahoma for two weeks, finishing a big contract.”

  “Have you talked to him in that time?”

  “A couple of times. He knows his job; so, normally I just leave him to it, so he can finish and get back.”

  “And he’s still there?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “Do you have a number for him?”

  “Sure, I have it in the office.”

  They followed Mullins around to the front of the store, and waited while he unlocked the shop. He was a little rattled, which most people are when the FBI shows up asking questions, and started to pull the door closed behind him. Taylor reached out and stopped the door from shutting.

  Brooks gave a nervous chuckle and held the door open for Whitaker and Taylor to follow him into the shop. He headed back to an office along the back wall and, after flicking on the lights, he pulled a binder off a shelf and flipped it open.

  Looking over his shoulder, Taylor watched as he flipped through sections in the binder, each with a different employee’s name. He got Mullins name and opened the page to a sheet that had phone number and address on it, which Whitaker copied down.

  “If you hear from Mullins, please have him call me,” Whitaker said, handing him one of her cards.

  “What next?” Taylor asked as they left the store.

  “I’ll call in a BOLO on Williams. Let's go over to his home, just in case he’s there.”

  “You don’t want to call him?”

  “Not yet. I don’t want to spook him into running.”

  They got into the SUV and, after consulting Whitaker’s GPS, drove a few blocks to a small apartment complex. Finding his apartment, Whitaker parked the car out front.

  “So how do we do this?” Taylor said, as Whitaker walked around to his side of the car, stepping up onto the curb she had parked next to.

  “Well, if he’s not home, we could try for a warrant, but there’s a good chance word would get back to Dorset. The other choice is to take the tape and ID to the Sheriff, and see if he’d let us piggy back on his investigation. Of course, he might be pissed we haven’t turned over the tape already, and shut us out.”

  “Man, doing things legally is a pain in the ...”

  Taylor was interrupted by the sound of squealing tires. A dirty green truck accelerated towards them at a high rate of speed. That alone would have been notable, but what made it really concerning, was the two men on the back of the truck who were both holding assault style weapons.

  Taylor grabbed Whitaker around the waist and pulled both of them to the ground, interposing the black SUV between them and the truck. Almost as soon as they hit the ground, the staccato crack-crack-crack sound of semi-automatic rifle fire filled the air, followed by the thunk and crunching sounds of bullets impacting on their improvised cover.

  Lying mostly on top of Whitaker, Taylor saw a bullet impact on the crevasse that joined the curb they were laying on and the road a few inches lower. Taylor recognized a fairly low speed impact, and experience told him it was most likely a ricochet hitting the curb, making it slow enough to not bounce further once it hit the cement, but rather dig into the concrete.

  Taylor felt a burning sensation as sharp chips of concrete were sent spraying up from the impact, peppering the side of his neck.

  The entire barrage lasted mere seconds, and then stopped as the truck passed beyond them and sped down the street. Taylor rolled off Whitaker and both were up in a flash, weapons in their hands ready to return fire. Unfortunately the truck was turning onto a side street and neither had a shot at their assailants.

  Whitaker ran around the vehicle, only to skid to a stop. Taylor followed behind her and saw what she saw. The SUV was riddled with bullets and even as they looked at the damage, smoke started billowing from under the vehicle's hood.

  “Shit,” She said, pulling out her phone. “I’ve gotta call this in.”

  She leaned against her car and started dialing a number. Taylor walked away and headed towards the apartment while she was on the phone. Trying the door, he was surprised to find it unlocked. Looking back and confirming that Whitaker was otherwise occupied, he pushed the door open and walked in.

  The apartment was a tiny one-bedroom, but seemed generally fairly clean. The first thing he noticed was the lights were all on. The second thing that drew Taylor’s eye was the small table next to the kitchenette, where a single plate sat with a fork perched on its edge. Walking over, Taylor held his hand over the rice and stew-meat that filled the plate, and felt heat radiating off it. In the kitchenette he found a pot with more of the same food that was on the plate, the sides still too hot to touch.

  “What the hell are you doing,” Whitaker said from the doorway behind him.

  “The door was open,” he said.

  “I don’t give a shit. We don’t have a warrant. Anything you find in here now will be inadmissible, later. You want to let Julie’s killer walk on a technicality? Get out of there, right now!”

  “Sorry,” Taylor said as he walked out the door and Whitaker shut it behind them.

  “Did you touch anything?”

  “No.”

  “I sure as hell hope not. How will you feel if he skates.”

  “I get it. Sorry. But...”

  “But what?”

  “Did you notice all the lights were on?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They were like that when I walked in. Food was on the table, still hot. He high tailed it out of there only a few minutes ago. Someone tipped him off.”

  “I think the guys in the pickup truck could have told you that.”

  “They could have been following us.”

  Whitaker shook her head, “I would have noticed it by now. Also, we were all over town yesterday, we were at the hotel last night. Why pick this moment to take a shot at us?”

  “'Cause we were going to look into Mullins' activities.”

  “Bingo. If I had to guess, I’d say someone tipped him off we were coming.”

  A squad car, lights wailing tore around a corner and slammed to a stop right in front of Whitaker’s car. The deputy they had met at the pond hopped out.

  “Shit, we got a call of a gun battle happening over here,” he said, slowing down when he recognized Whitaker and Taylor. “Didn’t expect to find you folks.”

  “I just called it in. Three men in a pickup, one driving, two in the bed with assault rifles. They took some shots at us and then hauled ass,” Whitaker said.

  “Your car’s shot to shit.”

  “Yeah, I saw that. That’s why I called it in, instead of chasing them down myself.”

  “You’re bleeding,” the deputy said, looking at Taylor.

  He put his hand up and felt the slick blood coming off the cuts running up his neck.

  “It’s not bad,” Taylor said, after feeling around for a second.

  “Call a bus anyway, Deputy,” Whitaker said.

  �
�Sure thing,” he said, stepping away and reaching for the small radio mic at his shoulder.

  After a minute he returned, saying, “It’s on the way. Sheriff's headed down here, too.”

  “Shit,” Whitaker said.

  “What were you folks doing here?”

  “Looking into the Julie Jones case,” Taylor admitted.

  “I heard that we were keeping jurisdiction on that,” he said.

  “You are,” Whitaker said, shooting a side-eye glare at Taylor. “We were just looking around since we think her death may be peripheral to a case we’re working on.”

  “Well, you’ll probably have to explain that to Sheriff Goodman.”

  Whitaker and Taylor looked at each other with concerned expressions.

  “Don’t worry, he’s a fair man,” the deputy said.

  They let the conversation fall off as the deputy walked around their vehicle, whistling to himself as he looked at all the bullet impacts along the driver's side. Taylor had to admit, it was notable. Not that the shooting had been difficult. The truck had slowed as it passed them, an SUV is a pretty big target, and the shooters were no more than five feet away the entire time they were firing.

  Taylor actually considered either this to be a warning for them to back off, which seemed like a bad idea since he wouldn’t think that sort of thing would work on any Federal agent; or they just aimed at the SUV and not the two people who were supposedly their targets. If that was the case, it was a waste of bullets. Since he and Whitaker were already outside the SUV when the shooting started, he could think of a dozen better options that would have had a better chance of killing them than just blazing away at the side of a vehicle.

  The sound of more sirens could be heard as a fire department ambulance pulled up, followed by a second cruiser. A man Taylor didn’t recognize got out of the cruiser and walked up to them, almost simultaneously with the medics. He waved the medics to go first, and they led Taylor to the bumper of the ambulance.

  “Agent Whitaker?” he said as he stopped next to where Whitaker was sitting.

  “Yeah. You Sheriff Goodman?” she asked.

  “I am. Can you explain to me what the hell is going on here?”

  “We got our hands on some information about the Julie Jones case that we were following up on. We came here to talk to someone we think might have been involved in her abduction, when an older model green truck sped by, and two men in the back opened up.”

  “He ok?” the Sheriff asked one of the medics.

  “He’ll live,” the man said as he was cleaning pieces of concrete out of Taylor’s neck.

  “What the hell do you two think you’re doing investing a case you haven’t been invited in on, yet?” He said.

  He wasn’t yelling, but he was clearly upset. Taylor thought it said something about the man that he made sure everyone was ok before reading them the riot act.

  “We think her death was tied into the explosion at the armory,” Whitaker replied.

  “I gathered that from your initial inquiry when her car was pulled out of Raider Pond. But I seem to remember getting a call from a man who said he was your boss, who very clearly explained the FBI did not think it was connected, and didn’t want jurisdiction.”

  “He's wrong,” Taylor said, wincing as the medic continued debriding the wound.

  “And yet, this isn’t your case.”

  “You’re right. We’re sorry, Sheriff.”

  “Instead of being sorry, how about you tell me what you found.”

  “Julie was the girlfriend of Samar Abbas, one of the soldiers at the armory that night. We learned early yesterday morning, before her body was discovered, that she had disappeared from her job. We obtained a tape showing her being grabbed in her work parking lot late at night by two men, with a third in a van as the driver.”

  Taylor couldn’t help but notice that Whitaker fudged the timeline a bit.

  “Ok, and how does that end with you here?”

  “We tracked down a logo on the side of the van to an AC repair shop here in town, and learned that they had an employee who had a van checked out since shortly before her abduction and was supposedly out of town on an assignment. We also got a positive ID that placed him as one of the men on the security footage, grabbing Julie. We came here to see if he was home, and ask some questions, if possible.”

  “I’m going to want that tape,” he said.

  “Sure,” Whitaker replied.

  “So, what am I going to do with you two?”

  “Sir?” Taylor asked.

  “I have a request from your boss ... or more likely hers, if I read things right ... specifically saying you weren’t to be involved in this case. And now I have you here poking around into it.”

  “Sir, if you could ...” Whitaker started, but the Sheriff kept talking as if she hadn’t spoken.

  “On the other hand, we don’t get a lot of this kind of thing. Mostly we chase drunk college kids and break up fights. So my guys are a little out of their depth.”

  Both Whitaker and Taylor remained silent.

  “I do sometimes get a little forgetful, so it’s possible I might not remember to call your boss and tell him about this little incident. I might even forget to mention it, if I see you at one of the crime scenes associated with this murder. Of course, the only thing that would make me be that careless, is if I’m distracted by a bunch of evidence dropping into my lap.”

  Whitaker and Taylor looked at each other, amazed at their good fortune and not sure what to say next.

  “Now, I’m sure Wade over there would love it if I went back and got him a warrant for this apartment. Of course, to do that, I’m going to need to find some evidence connecting the man who lives there with a crime,” he said, holding out his hand.

  Whitaker didn’t need further prompting. She went to the SUV and pulled the tape out of the glove box. Thankfully, it hadn’t been damaged in the barrage.

  “Thanks, Sheriff,” she said, walking back and placing the tape in his hand. “While you’re at it, I’d send someone to go talk to Brooks and his employee at the AC shop. If I had to bet on it, I’d say one or both of them were the ones that set this up. At the very least they called Mullins to tell him we were coming, which let Mullins set it up.”

  “I’ll go talk to ‘em, see what I can see,” he replied and turned to the deputy. “Wade, you hang loose here, and keep an eye on this place. I’ll have Roberta call you when we get Judge Lafferty to sign off on the warrant.”

  The deputy waved in acknowledgment, and continued walking around the property. The Sheriff tipped his hat and walked back to his cruiser.

  “I’ll be damned,” Whitaker said.

  “No kidding. You’ve still got to get the car replaced.”

  “I'll put in the paperwork on it, describing the damage. If I order up another car, Dorset’s sure to find out, so we have to figure out something on our own.

  “Won’t Dorset find out about the report on this car?”

  “Yes, but not for a little while. Paperwork moves slow at the Bureau. He’ll hear about it, but we probably have a day or two. We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”

  Taylor just smiled as they milled around, waiting for the warrant.

  Their wait didn’t take long. About twenty-five minutes after the Sheriff pulled away, the deputy received a call giving him clearance to enter the residence.

  As they entered, the deputy started to pull his weapon until Whitaker put her hand on his arm.

  “Deputy, we’ve been sitting out front for more than half an hour. Anyone who was in here is long gone, by now.”

  “Oh! Sure,” he said.

  Whitaker pulled out two pairs of plastic gloves from her pocket and handed one to Taylor. He hadn’t considered it, but he understood the need once she brought it to his attention. The deputy followed suit a few seconds after.

  Each person took a different spot, looking through every drawer and under every surface.

  “F
ood’s still a little warm,” the deputy said from the kitchen.

  “I’m pretty sure Mullins got tipped off we were coming, and took off before we got here,” Taylor said. “It would also explain the appearance of the shooters.”

  He saw Whitaker roll her eyes at him as he passed off her statement from earlier as his own, and just smiled at her.

  She started going through his closets while Taylor sat at Mullins' desk and pulled open drawers.

  “Hey, Taylor,” Whitaker called from the closet.

  “Yeah?”

  “Does this look like the ball cap on the video?” she said, sticking her head out of the closet door and holding up the indicated hat.

  “Yeah, it does.”

  “Deputy, do you have any evidence bags? This might help connect him to the abduction, if we ever catch him.”

  “Sure, I’ll go get them.”

  Whitaker sat the hat on the table near the kitchen and returned to the closet. After a minute, the deputy returned and put the hat inside one of the bags he was carrying.

  “Huh!” Taylor said from the desk.

  “What?” Whitaker asked, coming back into the room.

  “He’s got a lot of stuff from a group I haven’t heard of, but it seems a little out there.”

  “What’s ‘Out There’?”

  Taylor handed them over. Each flyer basically had the same theme: the US Government was the enemy and it was every citizen’s right to oppose it, violently if necessary. Each pamphlet covered a different issue, whether it be taxation or various regulations or restrictions on firearms, but they all basically fit into the same mold.

  “I haven’t heard of The American Liberation Party, but I’ve seen this, before. The sovereign nation’s movement has been popping up for years, now. Sometimes it’s one or two guys, other times its whole militias, although that’s usually in more remote states. Basically, they’re anti-government extremists who believe that living inside the borders of the US does not mean they have to be part of the United States. They fight taxes, don’t register their vehicles, that kind of thing. It varies pretty widely from groups that just file lawsuits to tie up the courts, all the way to the really violent ones. There was a big news story a few years ago about this father and son who shot several cops. It was all over the TV.”