Cold Jade

by Dan Ames

  The third floor was Mack’s private sanctuary. It included his bedroom, bath, and home office. The home office was where he spent most of his time, reading various law enforcement blogs, news websites, and exchanging email with some of his former colleagues, most of whom were still with the Bureau.

  Now, he went to the outdoor kitchen, rinsed the tuna again, placed it on a platter with plastic wrap, and put it in the fridge.

  He used the small bathroom off the pool, washed his hands, went back outside, dumped the ice from the fish cooler, and overturned it next to the steps that led to the dock.

  Back on the dock, he opened the beer cooler and looked inside. He had three bottles left.

  He dragged the cooler over to the simple wooden bench at the end of his dock. The dock itself was a T with the base of the T being the walkway back to the house. The bench sat on the right side of the dock, with a clear view of the river, and the sanctuary on the other side of the water.

  Mack pulled one of the beers from the ice, twisted off the cap, and closed the lid of the cooler. He sat on the bench, drained half of the beer in one long pull and smacked his lips.

  The river was high, but the tide had started to go back out, and Mack listened as a soft breeze stirred the palmettos behind him.

  He finished the beer, grabbed another from the cooler and saw an osprey fly along the river before landing in a towering tree across from him. The tree was dead, its long branches spread out like fingers on a hand, perfect fishing spots for the osprey.

  “Who are you?” a voice said.

  Mack turned and saw his sister watching him from the end of the dock. She was tall and thin, and in some ways looked very much like Mack. But a much older, and much more tired version. Now, she didn’t look scared, she just seemed curious.

  “Hi Janice, it’s me, Wallace. Your brother.”

  Her eyes seemed to flutter as hints of recognition struggled to connect. Mack was never sure just how much registered with Janice, or how much didn’t. She suffered from Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome brought on by years of severe alcoholism. The condition, known in politically incorrect circles as ‘wet brain’ had left his sister with a collection of ever-changing psychological maladies that included memory loss, hallucinations and general confusion.

  “Oh,” she said. “Why are you sitting out here?”

  “I just got back from fishing. What have you been up to?”

  “I’ve been painting with Adelia,” she said. Adelia was Janice’s live-in nurse, a no-nonsense woman who was as good for Mack as she was for Janice.

  Mack had noticed the paint on Janice’s fingertips. It was an activity his sister enjoyed, but it was also excellent therapy. Anything to challenge the brain, make it connect its circuits. The theory being that one day, if enough connections were made, healing would take place. Janice enjoyed painting with Adelia, but the connections, and the healing, hadn’t happened yet.

  Janice turned on her heel as Mack’s cell phone rang.

  He slid the last beer from the cooler, and looked at the caller.

  Archibald Spencer.

  11

  100 miles west of Iowa

  Rebecca Spencer opened her eyes and saw a sheet of white metal. It took her a moment to realize that she was looking at the ceiling of a van. And that she was inside the van, and it was moving.

  Her other senses quickly sent other messages flooding in. Her head hurt. Her mouth was horribly dry. Her body ached.

  Worst of all, she couldn’t move because her hands were tied behind her back, and her feet were tied together.

  The van occasionally bounced and jostled, but the movements were slight. But she could sense the momentum. The sound of an engine running at an even pitch. Rebecca guessed they were driving on a somewhat smooth, and fast surface, probably a freeway. The sense of touch came over her and she could feel the ropes binding her wrists beneath her, and the tightness of tape across her mouth.

  And then fear. It came like a great wave of cold water that splashed over her soul, and shook her to the spine.

  She closed her eyes as the tears came.

  Rebecca saw herself in the restroom at the mall. She had been sitting on the toilet in the stall, texting her friend while she relieved herself. When she was done, she’d gone to the sink to wash her hands. She’d set her phone down, and then she’d knocked the phone through the hole in the counter that led to a wastebasket. She had cursed herself, finished drying her hands and was about to dig through the wastebasket for her phone when someone grabbed her and slapped something across her mouth.

  She remembered a chemical smell.

  And then there was nothing.

  And now this.

  Who had taken her and why?

  She thought maybe it was a practical joke, but then quickly realized that no one would play a joke like this on her.

  No, this was real.

  Someone was taking her somewhere.

  Rebecca tried to calm herself. It all had to have something to do with her father. He was a Senator and she knew that he had a lot of enemies. He had a lot of friends, too, but there had been plenty of hate mail that reached their house. Phone calls that were somehow made even though their phone number was unlisted, all with messages that in no uncertain terms expressed a severe dislike for Archibald Spencer and his policies.

  But what if it wasn’t about her Dad?

  She squeezed her eyes shut even harder. What if it was some kidnapper rapist who just wanted to take her somewhere and do awful things to her and kill her? Then dump her body in a ditch somewhere?

  Rebecca closed her eyes and thought of church. They went pretty much every Sunday to St. Paul’s just down the street. It was a beautiful church and Rebecca enjoyed going even though sometimes she pretended to have too much homework to get out of going to Mass.

  Now, she pictured the church, the priest, and the feeling of holding her mother’s hand during the ceremony. She heard the sound of the church choir singing praise.

  Rebecca prayed like she had never prayed before.

  And then she started crying again.

  12

  Silicon Valley, California

  Bernard Evans nearly gasped.

  The newest product on The Store immediately spoke to him. It was the kind of girl he always looked for as he endlessly surfed through porn sites and triple xxx videos.

  A farm girl. Pale white skin. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Rosy cheeks. Solid and wholesome with meat on her bones and the kind of sweet body you could rock all night long.

  And young.

  So young she was probably illegal.

  He laughed. This whole thing was about as illegal as you could get.

  He couldn’t believe it. For years he’d sought out escorts, street prostitutes, strippers, and worst of all, ordinary women on dating websites just to find his farm girl.

  There had always been so much disappointment. The women were either lying online, or using fake pictures, or just somehow never lived up to his expectations.

  But this, this was different.

  Evans instinctively knew that this girl was the real thing. An honest-to-goodness young, virginal farm girl with flawless skin and a succulence that only came from fresh air and unspoiled innocence.

  Now, at long last, here she was.

  With a price tag of two million dollars.

  Evans smiled. Two million dollars was chump change. Especially considering what he would get for his money. A long weekend alone with this girl in a remote location where he could do whatever he wanted, with no fear of being caught and arrested. His brilliant but clueless partner, Reese Stocker, could manage the day-to-day activities of Burn while he was away.

  All of his rape fantasies, his darkest dreams of screwing an innocent young girl literally to death could all come true. He would be completely alone with this girl and free to do whatever he wanted to do to her.

  At this price, it was the steal of the century.

  Evans was tempted to click th
e buy button, but he didn’t want to rush it. He stood, not an easy task considering the mega erection he was sporting, and crossed the room to refill his glass of scotch. He swirled the amber goodness around the heavy crystal glass and gulped it.

  The fire from the liquor warmed his belly, and it matched the heat in his crotch.

  He topped off the glass again, then sat back down in front of his computer.

  The truth was, he loved this part, almost as much as the rest of it. The waiting, the tension, the possibility that one of the other “customers” would take his dream girl off the site by purchasing her, made it all so tantalizing.

  Sometimes, he waited a long time.

  Tonight, though, this was different.

  He didn’t want to risk losing her.

  Evans stared at the picture of the girl. His breath became shallow and a flood of images washed over him.

  He clicked the button.

  And bought her.

  And then he had an orgasm that shook him to the core and nearly rocked him from his chair.

  13

  Locust Springs, Colorado

  Still reeling from the information in front of him, Locust Springs Deputy Sheriff Windsor Smith fired up his cell phone.

  The phrase “call in the FBI” seemed like something out of a bad movie with Bruce Willis. Die Hard 16, or something like that. Never in a million years would he, Windsor Smith, have thought that one day he’d be picking up the phone calling the number for the FBI in the official Locust Springs Police Department handbook.

  But he had no choice.

  He had already called in the coroner and his team, as well as some other local law enforcement to help seal off the crime scene.

  And then he had gotten honest with himself. He knew that in most cases, local cops resented the Feds. They stonewalled them, wanting to work the case themselves and then bask in the glory of catching a killer.

  But Windsor Smith was different. He enjoyed keeping the peace. Running an orderly operation in his territory. However, when it came to innocent little children being butchered and stuffed into the ground, the whole world went sideways on him. The thought of becoming engrossed in the case disturbed him on a level so deep he could barely register it. Yes, he wanted justice for these little kids, but he was not the man to deliver it. He would help in any way he could, but there was someone else who could do this job much better than he could, and he was either modest enough, or was devoid of the required confidence, that he had no problem admitting it.

  Now, with the images of the bodies in the woods, the sight of dead children still rattling his mind, he began to punch in the numbers on his phone with a slightly shaking hand.

  How old was this handbook anyway, Smith thought. Were these phone numbers still good? It would be just his luck that the number was out of service and he took forever to somehow get in touch with the FBI. If they never caught the killer, years from now people would look back and say, well, if that local cop hadn’t taken so goddamn long to call the Feds.

  Smith heard a ring on the other end of the line and then a voice answered, “Denver FBI, how may I direct your call?”

  For just a moment, he was at a complete loss for words. Even though it was only the receptionist, Smith struggled to get the words out of his mouth.

  Finally, after a quick gulp of lukewarm coffee, and trying not to sound like an overly dramatic bumpkin from the Colorado boonies, Smith eventually told the right person just what he’d found.

  14

  Federal Bureau of Investigation, Denver, Colorado

  If it were possible for shaken nerves to transmit themselves through the phone lines, clear evidence of the phenomenon could have been documented via the phone call from Deputy Sheriff Windsor Smith to Denver Special Agent In Charge Brent Kunzelman.

  Kunzelman was a thin reed of a man with thick black hair and long, thin limbs. He looked like a praying mantis in a dark suit. He was also a year from retirement, anxiously awaiting his pension, and looking forward to moving to Montana and memorizing every pool and eddy on the Bozeman River where a lunker trout might be hiding.

  The news he got from the local cop didn’t exactly make him shake with anxiety, but his blood pressure gained twenty points by the time he was done with the call.

  An FBI agent for nearly twenty-five years, Kunzelman had not, by any means, seen it all. A handful of murders, sure, but mostly drug dealing and stupid criminals.

  But this was the kind of case he had never expected to pop up in his backyard.

  Fifteen years ago there had been a child murdered, but it had been an accident. A shootout between drug dealers and an errant bullet had caught a child sleeping in his bedroom.

  But this. Several children, buried in a remote location, with all the signs of mass murder?

  The first thing to do would be to visit the crime scene, along with a team of agents, each with a unique skill set. Kunzelman would assign the team, send them on their way, and then he would join them as soon as possible.

  Kunzelman was also enough of a veteran to know that this kind of case would need to be reported sooner than later to the head office in D.C.

  If there was no immediate evidence pointing them in a clear direction, and he highly doubted there would be, some more investigative assistance would be needed.

  Not that he didn’t feel he had a world-class group of agents working underneath him, because he did. They had handled everything the world had thrown at them since he was in charge of the office.

  To be safe, and if FBI bureaucracy had taught him anything, it was that there was safety in protocol.

  So Kunzelman fired up his company laptop, opened his encrypted email program, and began writing an email to his superior in Washington, detailing what little he knew, but at least putting the incident on his boss’s radar.

  When he was done, he dragged the sent email into a folder he had created within the program.

  It was called CYA for Cover Your Ass.

  15

  Des Moines, Iowa

  Mack knew firsthand that when Archibald Spencer wanted something done, it tended to get done, and fast.

  Which is why in less than eight hours from the Senator’s call to Mack, Mack had packed a bag, been whisked to the Ft. Myers airport, flown to Des Moines first-class, and then promptly transported via black limo to the Spencer home.

  The door opened before Mack’s driver knocked and Mack saw his old friend looking like he’d never seen him.

  “Mack,” Archibald Spencer said. Mack took in the tired face, the dark circles underneath the eyes, and the stooped shoulders. But there was still fire in the senator’s eyes, and Mack knew that Archibald Spencer would never stop fighting.

  “Arch,” Mack responded. He and his old college roommate hugged, and then Mack was led into the dining room where a massive oak table had been transformed into a communications center.

  Several cops, detectives, and assorted security personnel were milling about.

  “How’s Molly holding up?” Mack asked. He looked around the cavernous home, not surprised by what he was seeing. Mack hadn’t seen Spencer in over five years, and he had never been to his home. Most of their dealings had been in Washington, D.C. when Mack was still on active duty with the Bureau.

  “She’s sleeping,” Spencer said. “With a little chemical help. She’s been through the ringer.”

  “I wish I was here for any other reason,” Mack said.

  Spencer nodded and then led Mack to an agent. Mack knew that because it was a kidnapping and Spencer was technically a federal employee, the FBI would take control of the case as it fell legally in their jurisdiction.

  “Mack, this is Agent Bullock,” the Senator said.

  Bullock was a short, square man with dark skin and light blue eyes. “Mr. Mack, it’s good to meet you.”

  Mack shook his hand. “Thanks. I don’t intend to interfere…”

  “Bullshit,” Spencer said. He looked at Bullock. “Give Mack everything
you have and keep him informed.”

  That was the Archibald Spencer who Mack knew. Tough, sometimes abrasive, and uncompromising.

  “Yes, sir,” Bullock said.

  “I’m going to check on Molly,” Spencer said. He left the room and a tension that Mack hadn’t sensed before now seemed to ease from the space along with Spencer’s departure.

  Mack turned back to Agent Bullock. “Sorry about that, he’s in attack mode and I can’t blame him.”

  “I understand,” Bullock said. “It’s an honor to meet you – I studied a lot of your cases at Quantico.”

  Mack nodded and changed the subject to Rebecca Spencer. “So what do you have?”

  “Not a lot,” Bullock admitted. “It was very quick and clean. But we think he got her in the bathroom.”

  “Security cameras?” Mack asked.

  Bullock nodded and motioned Mack over to a desktop computer with a wide screen display. A young man in a wrinkled dress shirt was tapping the keys. He had long, skeletal fingers that flew across the keys faster than Mack could track them.

  “Logan, show Mr. Mack the clip.”

  The young man worked the keys until an image popped onto the monitor. It showed a hallway with a long seating bench, a wastebasket, and a water fountain.

  “Check this out,” the young man said. He fast forwarded to a specific time at which a young woman entered the ladies room. Logan slowed the video down so Mack could absorb every detail.

  “That’s Rebecca Spencer,” Bullock noted.

  Mack watched the girl go into the bathroom. There were no other people in the hallway. Moments later, a janitor rolled a cart into the hallway and then into the ladies room.

  “We examined the schedule – the mall’s cleaning service wasn’t in this part of the mall at the time, and that’s not the cart, or the clothing they use,” Bullock told Mack.