The Hunters Series Box Set

by Glenn Trust

  Reaching into the ice chest for another can, George stopped and fumbled at trying to get his fingers into the breast pocket of his shirt. The cell phone he kept there in case the sheriff’s office called was vibrating unpleasantly against his chest.

  “H’llo,” he said, popping the tab on the can up with his right thumb as he cradled the phone against his cheek with his left hand.

  “George, that you?”

  “It’s me, who’s this,” he said, tilting his head back and taking a long pull from the can.

  “Bob…Bob Shaklee.”

  “Oh. Been expecting your call.” George straightened up a bit in the chair and lowered the beer.

  “You have?”

  “Yeah. Ronnie Kupman came by earlier and said you would be calling. Said that you had the sheriff fit to be tied…as usual. What’s up?”

  Old Fel, seeing George’s reaction to the call, straightened up a bit himself. “Who’s that, George?” When there was no answer, he asked again. “Who is it, George, who?”

  “Hush, Fel. I’ll tell you. Let me hear.” Motioning with his hand for the old man to shut up, George pressed the phone close against his ear as Shaklee spoke.

  “George, I have Sharon Price in the room with me, and Detective Andy Barnes of Atlanta Homicide here also. You’re on the speaker phone.”

  “Okay. I’ll watch my language.”

  “That would be the first time, George.”

  Mackey smiled at Sharon’s comment and the sound of her voice. They hadn’t spoken much since that day behind the cabin in the mountains. She sounded good in his ear.

  “Hey, Sharon.” Something inside made him want to say more at the sound of her voice.

  “That the lady GBI girl?” Fel asked, sitting completely upright. He had met her on this very porch one evening when she and Bob Shaklee had come to visit. It was a visit that had pulled George into an investigation that had ended in the north Georgia mountains, outside a cabin in the woods. George had to wave Fel quiet again before continuing.

  “How are you, Sharon? Haven’t heard from you in a while.”

  “Doing good, George, how about you?”

  “Good as can be expected, I reckon.”

  Shaklee broke in saying, “Hate to break this up, but we have a favor to ask you, George.”

  “Anything, Bob. Name it. You know that.”

  “We are trying to track down the owner of a blog. It’s called ‘Term Limits’, and it comes out of Everett there in Pickham County. Fella by the name of Timothy Farrin runs it. We want to talk to him, but we want it kept quiet. That’s why we’re calling you. Don’t want to involve anyone else.” He did not have to say that they did not want Sheriff Richard Klineman involved at this point. Klineman and the GBI, Shaklee and Price in particular, were not exactly on speaking terms.

  George put the beer can to his lips and sipped before answering. “Can’t do that, Bob. I’m sorry.”

  “Why not, George? What’s up?” It was not like Mackey to just turn down a request like this.

  “Because Timmy Farrin is dead.”

  The silence that followed George’s pronouncement was long and heavy, hanging in the air. Finally, Shaklee spoke. “How, George? What happened?”

  “Run down by a vehicle while out jogging.”

  “So it was an accident?”

  “Sheriff says so. I don’t think so.”

  Shaklee’s experience with George in the past made him much more comfortable with George’s analysis of Timmy Farrin’s death than with the sheriff’s. He looked at the other two faces in his office. The news of Farrin’s death by accident, or any other means, clearly pushed the improbability factor up several notches.

  “Tell us what happened, George. This is important.”

  It took George Mackey seven minutes to relate the circumstances of Timothy Farrin’s death and his subsequent follow-up and discovery of the pickup and the body of Ray Cross. Even after the beers, he was reasonably confident that he didn’t leave out anything important.

  Bob Shaklee’s response was direct and simple. “George, I’m sending Sharon out to meet with you. She’ll be on a plane tomorrow morning.” He looked over at Price who simply nodded her understanding of the assignment. “Show her the scene of the accident and everything you have, or don’t have, in the way of evidence.”

  “Right, Bob. No problem, but what’s going on.”

  “Don’t want to get into it on the phone tonight, George. Sharon will brief you fully in person when she gets there.”

  “Okay then.” The look on George’s face had grown concerned. For once Fel Tobin remained quiet and waited for George to finish the call. “Let me know what time Sharon will be here and I’ll meet her.”

  “George, one more thing. Keep this between us. No one knows anything until we are ready to brief them. Okay?”

  “Okay, Bob. You know, you’re not making this easy for me. Sheriff is going to be on my ass.”

  “I know, George. Just be patient. You’ll know everything tomorrow. We have the sheriff handled for now. You are officially part of our task force.”

  “Can I talk to Ronnie Kupman? I have to have somebody to report to down here. You know Ronnie.”

  Bob thought for only a second before answering. “Yes. Ronnie can be your local contact at the SO.” Shaklee and Kupman had united in the investigation of Leyland Torkman, and George’s handling of the case against the wishes of the sheriff. If anyone besides George could be trusted in Pickham County, it was Ronnie Kupman. “We may need him to fly cover with the sheriff and keep things under control. No one else though, George. This investigation is confidential. We don’t know where it is going, but it looks like it is going up…up high. Understand?”

  “I understand, Bob. Tomorrow then.”

  “I’ll call you in the morning, George with Sharon’s flight time.”

  “Right, talk to you then.”

  The call ended abruptly. George sat quietly thinking about the conversation. It was not like Bob to be mysterious and secretive.

  “So, you gonna tell me?” Fel Tobin was eyeing George from his chair on the porch.

  “I can’t Fel.”

  “What? What do you mean you can’t?”

  “I can’t. They said it was confidential, so I can’t.”

  “Son of a bitch. That’s all I got to say. Just son of a bitch.” Fel put his beer can to his mouth and didn’t take it down until it was empty.

  George’s can rested on his knee, making a wet circle from the condensation in the humid night air. He watched the lightning illuminating a tall cloud twenty miles away, but so tall it seemed to hover over the house. The cloud was invisible in the night until the lightning strike. When the flash ended, the sky was black again and the cloud vanished into the darkness.

  Day Four

  *****

  I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.

  *****

  Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960

  A brave man dies but once, a coward many times.

  *****

  Native American Proverb

  39. Her Thoughts Went No Further

  Parking her car in the visitor lot, Sharon Price walked into the small side office of a hangar building at DeKalb Peachtree Airport. Located in the north Atlanta suburb of Chamblee, the hangar was operated by the Georgia Department of Public Safety. The airport was one of its bases for aircraft operated in support of law enforcement and emergency operations around Georgia.

  Walking down a narrow hall, past doors leading into the hangar and to restrooms, she glanced at the old black and white photographs lining the walls. DeKalb Peachtree had been around for a while, almost a hundred years, although its history was mostly unknown or forgotten.

  Originally part of old Camp Gordon during World War I, it had fallen into disuse
after that particular war. When another war came along in 1941, it became a Naval Air Station training facility and was operated as such until 1959, when the Navy moved their operations next to Dobbins Air Force base in Marietta, Georgia. The Naval Air Station facilities became DeKalb Peachtree Airport, known locally as PDK. It was the second busiest airport in Georgia, behind Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson on the south side of the city, although that bit of information was generally unknown to everyone except the PDK staff and pilots using the airport.

  To Sharon it was simply convenient and easy, and she was very glad that Bob had been able to arrange a Georgia Department of Public Safety (GDPS) flight for her to Everett. The alternative would have been fighting the Atlanta morning rush traffic, hassling through security at the airport, flying to Jacksonville, Florida, and then making her way to Everett. A good bit of the day, and her patience, would have been wasted. Patience not being a commodity that Sharon possessed in abundance, she was happy with the arrangement and hadn’t even questioned what type of aircraft the GDPS aviation unit would have available for her use. That was probably a good thing.

  Walking from the narrow hallway into the slightly larger reception/waiting area, she saw a very thin, weathered looking man sitting behind the counter. Gray and slightly balding, he appeared to be sixtyish. He looked up and smiled.

  “You must be Price?”

  Sharon nodded smiling in return. “That’s me.” She walked over to the counter looking down at the man who wore a blue-gray shirt that had Georgia Department of Public Safety embroidered on a shoulder patch and the name Rincefield over a breast pocket. “Are you the pilot?”

  He nodded, still smiling, and stood up extending his hand. “Johnny Rincefield. Call me Johnny, or Rince. Either one works.”

  Eyeing Johnny closely, Sharon decided that the sixty plus pilot didn’t look like a Johnny. “Okay, Rince it is then,” she said with a smile. “So what do I do? We ready to go?”

  “Ready when you say. Got a call from my boss, who got a call from the governor’s office. Apparently, you and your task force are a pretty big deal. I’ve been assigned in support of your investigation.”

  “Well, then, I’m ready. Let’s go.” It was good to be a task force.

  “Sounds good. She’s gassed up and sitting outside on the apron. Already did the visual. We’ll do the preflight when we get aboard.”

  “Okay then.” Sharon started for the glass door leading out onto the tarmac apron.

  “Might want to hit the head before we go,” Rince said nodding his head towards the restrooms down the hall. “It’s about three hundred twenty miles to Everett, about two and a half hours flying time once we get away from Atlanta air traffic. No restrooms onboard.”

  “You know, you’re right,” Sharon said with an ‘I’m just one of the boys smile’. “I better make a coffee deposit.” Leaving her roller bag with Rince by the counter, she headed back down the hall.

  Returning to the waiting area a few minutes later, she found it deserted. She squinted through the dusty window. Rince was pulling her suitcase across the tarmac to what seemed to be an extremely small plane. Sharon was not a nervous flyer, but she had not considered that she would be flying on an airplane that didn’t look any bigger than a good sized SUV.

  Fifteen minutes later, she was seated in the right front seat beside pilot Johnny Rincefield. As it turned out, the cockpit was a good bit smaller than the cabin of an SUV. She watched as he dutifully went through the preflight checklist making sure the small aircraft would be able to roll down the runway and lift off from the safe asphalt. Checklist or not, she had her doubts.

  Wearing a headset that Rince had handed her, Sharon could hear his communications with the tower. They were cleared to taxi.

  Sharon heard the tower controller squawk over the headset. “Alpha two seven niner, proceed to runway two left.”

  “Roger, tower. Proceeding to runway two left.” Rince seemed completely comfortable and in his element.

  Five minutes later, Rince pushed the throttle forward, and the Cessna 182R rolled forward. It seemed to be moving slowly to Sharon, too slowly. She had the uneasy feeling that it was not going to have enough speed to lift off the runway. And then suddenly, it did. They were airborne.

  Looking out the side cockpit window, she watched the greenery and trees surrounding the yards of houses near the airport shrink in size as the Cessna climbed steadily. Rince made several turns as directed by air traffic control. Airspace around Atlanta was crowded. Sharon could see numerous small airplanes and commercial airliners scattered in the air around the city. She had never really noticed the number of planes in the air while in the large commercial jets she was accustomed to flying. In the four-seat Cessna, it was hard not to be aware of all of the air traffic around them. Her nervous factor rose a bit.

  After a few minutes, Rince turned the plane to the southeast and leveled off at six thousand feet. They would fly below commercial traffic once out of the Atlanta area. Sharon settled back, listening to the hypnotic hum of the plane’s engine and the occasional radio traffic Rince exchanged with Atlanta ATC or some local community airport.

  Unpleasant as the circumstances might be, she was looking forward to seeing George again. The last time had been at the debriefing after the ‘Predator’ killings. George had taken out the killer and had taken flak from his sheriff, who accused him of executing the suspect, Leyland Torkman. The sheriff had let it drop when the GBI’s investigation cleared George of any wrongdoing, calling it a justified shooting in the act of apprehending a dangerous felon. Sharon knew that Torkman was, in fact, a dangerous felon, the most dangerous she had ever encountered. Whatever George had done to end his trail of bloodshed and pain was just fine with her.

  Rumpled and a little gruff at times, she and Shaklee had bonded with George during the hunt for Torkman. It was an easy thing to do. George Mackey was one of those people who could not lie and who would not give up when on the hunt. His honesty was refreshing, and they for sure needed a hunter right now.

  Questions in this case were growing like jigsaw puzzle pieces dumped from a moving car. They had to find the pieces before they could sort them out and put things together. The death of Timmy Farrin, designer and producer of the ‘Term Limits’ blog, was too coincidental to be coincidence. Price knew that as part of the investigative team, Mackey, the hunter, would latch on like a dog on a scent and would not back off. She knew. She had seen him do it. It was instinctive with George. He saw things others did not, put things together in ways others overlooked. He was not a cerebral investigator like Sharon or Bob. Putting himself in the skin of the perpetrator, he just had the ability to anticipate what they would do next.

  Bottom line, they needed George Mackey, and yes, she was looking forward to seeing the plainspoken deputy again. Her thoughts went no further than that.

  40. Loose Ends and Assignments

  “We are having a strategy meeting. Four this afternoon. You need to be there.”

  “What?” Stanton James’ unsteady voice cracked and wheezed as if he had just left his bed to answer the phone. He sounded tired, or drunk, or both.

  Calmly and forcefully, PT Somerhill repeated the instructions he had been told to deliver to James. They were actually orders, and PT was not about to argue with the people issuing the orders. “I said, there is a meeting this afternoon, a strategy meeting to discuss progress and take care of any loose ends. We have been instructed to be there. I have been instructed to advise you.”

  There was no response from James. After several seconds of silence, he asked, “Are you there? Did you hear me?”

  Standing barefoot in his underwear in the den where he had been napping, James struggled to pull himself out of the numbing catatonic state into which his mind had sunken. It was an almost physical effort. “Y-yes, I heard you…meeting this afternoon.”

  “Good,” PT shook his head in disgust. The man was weak. “Meet at the cabin. You remember where?”

&nbs
p; This time the pause was not quite as long, and PT did not have to ask if James heard. “Yes, I know, I remember.”

  The cabin was actually PT’s small cottage in the north Georgia mountains above Dahlonega. Nestled near the top of a tree-covered mountain, the only access was along a small switchback road. It was secluded and quiet, and the group had used it for several of their planning meetings.

  “Same protocol as before. Meeting is at four, staggered arrival times. Your arrival is three o’clock.”

  The group, always careful, had established the staggered arrival protocol so that no attention would be drawn by a number of vehicles driving together along the rural mountain roads and arriving together at the cabin.

  “R-right. Three o’clock.” James cleared his throat, trying to control his voice and remove the panicky fear that he knew PT could hear and that made his chest feel as if it would burst open and spray the walls with his guts. He was not successful. “I-I’ll be there.” It was all he could do to squeak the words out and remain standing in the den without falling to the floor unconscious.

  “All right, then.” There was nothing more to say and PT disconnected.

  Stanton James stood swaying in his underwear, the phone still pressed against his ear for several minutes. When he finally managed to pull himself out of the paralyzing stupor, he sank into a large overstuffed chair. He might have remained there permanently if he had not been overcome by the need to vomit. Running to the bathroom, he bent double over the toilet bowl and heaved until there was nothing more to heave, and then heaved some more for good measure. After emptying his guts, he went to his bedroom and stood in the shower, letting the warm water rinse off the piss that had run down his legs while the vomit spewed from his gagging throat into the toilet.

  Replacing the phone on his desk, PT glanced across the office to the man seated on the sofa. The sun shone brightly through the window. Outside people milled about the courthouse and wandered the shops lining the square.