The Hunters Series Box Set

by Glenn Trust

  George smiled. “You can count on it.”

  14. We Do It

  “That ain’t the car, man!” Stevie leaned forward in the passenger seat, peering over the van’s dashboard as if trying to conceal his bulk. “That ain’t the fucking car!” he said, spitting the words out, turning his head to Dale still squatting between the seats.

  Saying nothing, Dale watched the car pull to the back door of the restaurant. It was a Mustang, black, with red stripes on the hood. Not the Toyota Camry they had planned to jack from the girl and sell to a chop shop, but it was a very cool car.

  “Now what, Mr. Mastermind? That ain’t the fucking car. You said she shows up in a Toyota. Who the fuck is that? What the fuck we do now?”

  The car’s interior light came on revealing two silhouettes. Juanita Lopez pushed the door open, leaned over, and gave a quick kiss to her boyfriend, Bobby Sanchez and stepped out. Keys to her parent’s restaurant jingling in her hand, she smiled, bent into the car and said something and then turned to the building’s back door.

  “We do it.” Pushing the van’s side door open, Dale, skilled position football player, and robbery mastermind, jogged the short distance across the drive to the Mustang. Jerking the nine-millimeter pistol from his waistband, he pointed it at the driver as he approached.

  Watching as his girlfriend walked to the back door, keys at the ready to unlock the building, Roberto “Bobby” Sanchez was unaware of Dale and his pistol until the barrel rapped sharply against the driver’s window.

  “Get out motherfucker!”

  The pistol’s muzzle was pointed through the glass at a point somewhere in the middle of the young man’s face. Whirling at the sounds behind her, Juanita Lopez’s mouth froze, unable to make more than a startled gasp as two burly men rushed at her from a van parked beside the trash dumpster.

  “Get the fuck out of the car!” Dale reached down and jerked on the driver’s door. It was locked. Turning his head, he noted that Sam and Stevie had at least gotten their fat asses out of the van and made it to the girl. They stood on either side of her, each holding an arm, Stevie jerking the cash box from her arms. Dale rapped loudly on the glass again. “You want to see her live, you get your dumb ass outta the car!”

  Seeing the two bulky men holding Juanita, Bobby Sanchez had already started pushing the Mustang’s door open. It caught Dale in the leg as it swung, causing him to stumble back slightly. Bobby Sanchez stepped out and started to move towards Juanita and the two men.

  Swinging the pistol backhanded, Dale rapped Sanchez hard in the left temple, leaving a small gash that immediately trickled blood. “Uh, uh, motherfucker.” He put the pistol to Sanchez’s head. “Up against the car, you know, like the cops do it.” He punched the pistol’s muzzle roughly into the young man’s cheekbone. “Now!”

  Turning, Sanchez placed his hands on the car’s hood, looking over his shoulder at the girl held by the two men. Juanita Lopez’s routine opening of the family restaurant had been disrupted because she and Bobby Sanchez had been making wedding plans the day before. After dinner with her parents, Juanita had spent the night with Bobby. She had no idea that the change in her normal routine would change the plans of the young man with the gun and the two that held her firmly by the arms. She watched helplessly, not speaking, as the man with the gun pushed Bobby up against the car and started going through his pockets, the pistol held to the back of his head.

  “Keys motherfucker.” Dale leaned up against Bobby, the pistol pressed hard against his skull, spitting the words into his ear. “Give me the fucking keys!”

  “They’re in the car.” Sanchez shook his head. “In the car, dumbass.”

  Dale stepped back and swung the hand holding the pistol in a wide arc, catching Sanchez in the side of the face and causing him to sink to his knees. “Who the dumbass now, motherfucker?”

  “Bobby!” It was the first word Juanita had been able to speak, and she screamed it as she wrenched one arm free from the man who had taken the cash box from her and started towards her fiancé. She only took two steps before the other man jerked her by the arm he held, twisting it roughly behind her back and then throwing her to the ground.

  “No!” Bobby Sanchez turned, lunging up and knocking Dale backwards. He managed three steps towards Juanita and the two men jerking her violently from the ground.

  The echoing roar of the handgun was amplified by the close space and the surrounding buildings. The echoes faded, replaced by a hollow silence. Juanita Lopez stood between the two men who held her. Dale stood with the nine-millimeter pistol by the open door of the Mustang. All were looking down at Bobby Sanchez, face down on the pavement, blood pooling out from under his body, a neat hole in his back from the bullet that had passed through and cut his aorta as it exited his chest.

  The silence ended when one of the men holding Juanita spoke. “Shit!” The one who had taken the cash box. “What we gonna do now?” He looked accusingly at Dale.

  Raising his eyes slowly from Bobby Sanchez’s body, Dale spoke calmly. “Put her in the van.”

  “What? You crazy?” Sam was about to say more, but the look in Dale’s eye, and the pistol in his hand, stopped him.

  “Put her in the van. Follow me.”

  A minute later, the black Mustang followed by the old furniture van moved from behind the restaurant. Making several random turns, Dale led them out of the area and away from Bobby Sanchez lying in the pool of blood. A few minutes later, the vehicles merged anonymously into Atlanta’s morning traffic.

  15. Business Details

  “You know who I am?” Roy Budroe shifted his bulk in the thickly cushioned chair. He sat in the house of the head whore, Sonya, the Nicks’ best girl. He looked at her. “You know who I am?” he asked again.

  She nodded.

  “Who?”

  “You the one the other man said would be coming. You the head man…the boss.” She returned Budroe’s gaze evenly.

  He smiled, nodding. “That’s right. I’m the boss and you girls work for me now.” He looked around the room at the other whores standing in a semicircle behind Sonya. “You all understand that? You work for me.” His eyes fell on one of the girls who looked at the floor without looking up. Her eyebrows raised and lowered in spasms, and a small twitched played across the left side of her face. Jerking his head in her direction, he asked Sonya, “Who’s she?”

  Following his gaze, she replied evenly. “That’s Bandy. She’s a good girl. Lot of customers. You know…‘cause she a blond and all.”

  “You get her cleaned up.” Budroe’s eyes narrowed. “I won’t have no tweaker meth-heads around. This is a class operation. We’re going to change some things.” He paused, smiling again. “Management changes you could say.” Then by way of explanation he added, “High class all the way, the higher the class, the more the johns will pay.” He moved his head scanning the face of each girl. “Right?”

  Otherwise motionless, the girls nodded in unison.

  “Johns pay more, we see about getting you paid more.” His eyes moved back to the pale-haired girl. “You, blondie, look at me.”

  Sonya nudged Bandy, and she raised her eyes to meet Budroe’s. The facial tics increased and her eyebrows raised and lowered rapidly as if she were keeping time to a banjo picking ‘Orange Blossom Special’.

  “Get cleaned up. No more meth. You understand?” He waited for Bandy to force the muscles in her neck to nod her head. “You need to smoke a little weed to mellow out, okay. A little cocaine, it’s high priced for a working girl, but all right we’ll fix you up and take it out of your pay. But no more meth. No more poison drugs. You stay away from them.” He waited for a response, and when there was none, he raised his voice. “You hearing me, girl. No more poison!”

  Trembling, Bandy was able to force another nod from her overstressed nervous system.

  Budroe smiled. “Good” Then speaking more softly like a businessman reasoning with his employees, he spoke to the group. “It’s bad for b
usiness, and for my investment. That’s what I am, a businessman…an investor. You might say you are my investment, my property, and I won’t have my property…devalued.” The girls looked at him without responding. Making his point clear he said, “I own you.”

  Standing, Budroe walked to the door and stepped onto the small concrete stoop. The day was warming up. The shiny black Escalade glittered in the sunlight that filtered through the trees. A whiff of smoke drifted in the air.

  Nodding at the woods that separated the clearing at Nicks Cove from the house the Nicks had inhabited until recently, he turned to Sonya. “Anyone call the law yet?”

  She shook her head. “No. No one talked to the law. They don’t come around much out here.”

  “Well, you better, don’t you think? It’s been a couple of days” Budroe pulled open the Cadillac’s door.

  A puzzled look crossed Sonya’s face. “You want us to call the sheriff?”

  Eager to be on the road, Budroe explained briefly. “Call the law and report the fire. You don’t, it will look suspicious. They might even think you girls had something to do with it.” He saw understanding spread across Sonya’s face. “You see, right?” He smiled. “It was an accident. Fire started somehow. The Nicks burned up. That’s all you know. That’s all they gonna be able to put together…an accident.”

  Sonya nodded. “We’ll call the sheriff. Let him know about the Nicks’ accident and all.”

  “Good,” Budroe said seating himself behind the wheel of the Escalade. “You’re in charge, ‘til I get back, just like always.” He started the car and rolled the window down. “Keep things going. Take care of business. Make money…lots of money. When I get back, we’ll talk…about your future. Remember, I want it high class. Clean things up. Girls clean. Houses and trailers clean. Maybe a little paint, some flowers. Make it nice.” He gave Sonya one final look. “And get her cleaned up,” he said jerking his head towards Bandy and then raised his voice for the other girls. “And anyone else that’s putting poison in them. I won’t have my property ruined.”

  The Escalade’s tires spun in the sandy soil as Roy Budroe exited Nicks Cove. Working his way along the country roads, he was back on I-75 heading north an hour later. His mind shifted gears from the conversation with his new property to the meeting he had planned for the next day. He had intended to take care of the trouble with the law when he got back to, Pete’s Place. The call from Lonna MacIntyre and the raid by Sheriff Davies and that son of a bitch chief deputy, George Mackey, were going to accelerate things a bit.

  Rolling through the south Georgia countryside, Budroe sighed. There were always details in business. Some, he wished would go away. Some, he enjoyed. A smile crossed his face as he realized that taking care of Mackey and Davies was both. He wished they would go away, and he would enjoy making it happen.

  16. Bobby Wasn’t Talking

  The piercing scream echoed off the block walls where the gunshot had reverberated a few hours earlier. Atlanta Homicide Sergeant, Andrew Barnes, looked up from the body of Roberto “Bobby” Sanchez. Two uniform officers were restraining a woman trying to force her way through the yellow crime scene tape.

  “Roberto! Bobby!” It was a wail, agonized and terrible. “No! No! No! Not my beautiful baby…” It was a mother’s plea for reality to change, for her boy not to be lying in a pool of drying blood in an alley. “Santa Maria Madre de Dios…please, please bring my boy back…please!” The woman sank to her knees still in the grasp of the officers who tried to raise her gently and escort her from the scene of her son’s murder. She made a last plea for her youngest son; her voice lowered to a whispered, tearful prayer. “Tú también eres una madre…you also are a mother…do not let this be. I beg you Santa Maria, bring my boy back to me.”

  A man and woman approached the two officers and helped lift Gina Sanchez from the ground, steadying her and leading her away from the scene of her son’s death. Manny and Leona Lopez were dealing with their own fears and grief. Their only daughter, Juanita, was missing. They looked over their shoulders at the young man’s body as they led his mother away, their fears rising from the ground, enveloping them, suffocating them. They took her into the restaurant they owned and that Juanita had never opened for the day.

  Careful to stay out of the pool of blood, Barnes squatted and returned to his examination of Bobby Sanchez’s body. With latex gloved hands, he carefully examined the young man’s shirt. He could see no powder residue. Many robbery shootings were at close range. This one was not, or at least was beyond the powder spray from the barrel of the gun that had fired.

  He rose and stood quietly, taking in the crime scene, lifting the brim of the fedora worn by all Atlanta murder detectives. His head turned slowly, his body motionless, as he scanned the area, making a picture of the scene in his mind. The fedora he wore was awarded to detectives when they solved their first murder. Andy Barnes had solved many, but he knew that not all murders were solved. This wasn’t television, every case neatly tied up at the end of the hour. This was street violence with no clues left behind. Random act of violence. Robbery gone bad. Murder for revenge or jealousy. Motive was an unanswered question at this point. Statistically, most murder victims knew their killer. The ones who didn’t were just as dead, but solving the case and finding the murderer was exponentially more difficult. Many of those were never solved.

  Andy paced the distance to a dumpster on the far side of the alley. About fifty feet. Standing beside it, he saw that someone turning into the alley behind the restaurant from the street…Bobby Sanchez and Juanita Lopez, for example…would not have seen anyone or even a vehicle behind the dumpster.

  He looked at the back of the building, the point where the bullet had exited Bobby’s chest and struck the concrete block wall. Turning his head to the street, his eyes followed the route that Bobby’s Mustang would have taken, triangulating where it had probably been parked. Wooden pallets and trashcans lined up behind the building would have kept him from pulling right to the back door. Standing there, he let the scene sink into his brain, imprint itself on him, trying to recreate in his mind what might have happened in the alley.

  The body, the dumpster, the position of the car, the bullet’s impact on the building. If the killer had been behind the dumpster it meant he was waiting, knew that Juanita would be coming in with the cash box. So it started as a straight robbery…maybe.

  Bobby in his Mustang must have been a surprise. The Mustang was gone. That meant the killer was on foot…or he had an accomplice who had driven another vehicle. The accomplice idea seemed likely. Someone had controlled Juanita while the killer dealt with Bobby. Andy thought about that. The killer could have acted alone, but confronting Bobby, kidnapping and controlling Juanita and stealing the car…a lot to do for one assailant. Someone else was present, and probably another vehicle. One final thought occurred. Bobby was lying about half way between the back of the building and where the Mustang would have stopped. Bobby was moving away from the car, probably to where Juanita was confronted by her assailant. Bobby Sanchez was trying to protect Juanita.

  He stood quietly by the dumpster for a few more minutes, watching the crime scene techs gather evidence and take photographs. There was very little in the way of evidence, but they would take a lot of photographs, hundreds. The last would be of the body as they turned it over to examine the exit wound and look for signs of a physical struggle and any information that could be gathered from the damage done to what had been Bobby Sanchez.

  Andy had his initial theory. At least two assailants, maybe more, a probable second vehicle. It was a planned robbery. They knew Juanita would be coming in with the cash box, and they were waiting. Bobby was a surprise, and he paid for it with his life, probably trying to protect Juanita, moving from the car to where the assailants had confronted Juanita, the killer had shot him in the back. It was a theory. Andy wasn’t married to it, but it was a starting point. Like most theories, it would change and evolve as he worked the case.
There were a lot of unanswered questions, and very little evidence, except for Bobby and the bullet that killed him. And Bobby wasn’t talking.

  17. The Rookie

  Smoke still misted around the blackened remains of the house from timbers buried beneath that continued to smolder. The acrid smell of charred flesh pierced his nose. Standing at the point where the Nicks’ bedroom would have been, Sheriff Jake Beery spoke over his shoulder to Sonya and the other girls gathered behind him.

  “When this happen?”

  “Dunno.” Sonya shrugged. “We ain’t seen the Nicks in a couple days, I reckon.” The girls standing around her looked intently at the ground, wanting no part of the sheriff’s questions.

  Beery turned. “Couple of days, you reckon?” He eyed the girls all intent on avoiding his gaze. “When’s the last time you saw the Nicks, exactly?”

  “Not sure. Afternoon, day before yesterday I think it was.” Sonya turned to the others. “Right?” They nodded in unison, looking around the clearing, at the ground, at the charred house, looking everywhere except at Sheriff Beery.

  “And you expect me to believe you don’t have any idea what happened?

  Looking him directly in the eye, Sonya spoke somberly. “We ain’t seen them in a couple days. That’s why we came to check. Found them like this.”

  “That’s all you got to say?”

  Sonya shrugged, the other girls still avoiding Beery’s eyes.

  “How long you work for the Nicks, Sonya?”

  Now Sonya turned her eyes down to the ground. “Dunno. Maybe ten years.”

  “Ten years with them and you don’t have any idea what happened here. That what you’re saying?”

  She nodded, eyes still turned down. “I reckon so.”

  Beery shook his head and began a slow walk around the remains of the house. “You girls touch anything?”