The Hunters Series Box Set

by Glenn Trust

  Santoro and Ponce exchanged their own serious look. “We hear you.”

  Santoro added with a shrugging grin. “You just keep those phones turned on…and charged up.”

  58. Pay The Price

  “Tell me what happened, George.” Trenton Peele put his glasses down and leaned back in the conference room chair.

  “I’ve told you.” George looked around at the paralegal and two junior attorneys seated around the table. “Seems like overkill, all these people here, Mr. Peele.”

  “Call me Trent.”

  “Okay, Trent. Seems like overkill.”

  “Work with him, George.” Bob Shaklee sat to George’s right, the only other person in the room who was not part of the law firm of Peele, Cloughton and Williams, Ltd.

  With a sigh, George nodded and began again. He felt like a suspect being interrogated, which, in fact, he was, he thought wryly. Except the interrogators were looking for some way to save his ass.

  “The chase of the killer ended in the woods behind the cabin up in the mountains in Rye County. He fired several rounds at me and at GBI Agent Price. She stayed with the victims, one he had just shot. I went into the woods.”

  “Alone?” One of the junior attorneys asked the question, without looking up, making notes on a yellow legal pad.

  Why yellow, George wondered. Seems like they always use yellow. Was that some special legal color? And why legal size? Why not regular eight and a half by eleven like the rest of the damned world?

  “Mr. Mackey?” The attorney looked up at him from the pad.

  Across the table, Trent Peele leaned back, hands behind his head smiling.

  “Yes, alone.”

  “What then?”

  “He emptied the revolver.”

  “He fired all the rounds at you?”

  “By the time he went into the woods he only had three left. He fired them at me, or at least in my direction.”

  “Right.” The young attorney nodded. “Please go on.”

  “I took cover behind a tree. He laid down behind a big log, a tree that had fallen down. I couldn’t see him, and he couldn’t see me.”

  “You’re sure he couldn’t see you?”

  “Yes, fairly certain. He sent a blast from the shotgun through the trees. It was not well aimed. I don't think he could see me. I think he was trying to keep my head down.” George gave a sincere nod. “It did the trick. I hugged that tree.”

  “So the killer was well armed. A pistol and a shotgun, while you had only your service weapon.”

  George nodded again. “He was armed. Didn’t seem to matter much at the time how many guns he had. I was more worried about how many rounds he had.”

  “Okay.” The sound of notes being scribbled on the several legal pads in the room was annoyingly loud. “Continue.”

  “I located his position.”

  “How?”

  “I peeked around the tree, careful as hell and saw the barrel of the shotgun sticking up.”

  “So at great risk to yourself you left your cover to locate the killer and saw his shotgun.”

  “Didn’t seem like that big a risk. Light was pretty dim, but yeah, I saw the barrel sticking up from behind a log. It was too straight to be a tree branch.”

  “What happened next?”

  George was quiet for a moment. Remembering the scene, he was there again, the leaves of the trees rustling softly filtering the sunlight, everything a muted green color, the smell of the gunpowder from the rounds the killer had fired still hanging in the air.

  “I decided, I could make it to the log before he could get a round off at me, so I rushed him.”

  “You rushed him? You left the comparative safety and cover of the tree, exposing yourself to a possible shotgun blast until you confronted the killer.”

  “I left the tree and rushed the killer. Yes.”

  “What happened next?”

  “He was there, on the ground, already wounded by the victim he had shot by the cabin.”

  “Yes?”

  George was silent.

  “Mr. Mackey. What happened next?” The young attorney lifted his head to look into George’s eyes. He was completely neutral. There was no right and no wrong. There was only how they would present the case in court.

  “I shot him.”

  The attorney nodded and returned to his notes. “How far away were you?”

  “Five feet or so.”

  “Did he die immediately.”

  “Yes, or at least within a few seconds. I could not have missed at that range.”

  “So, in summary, after putting your life in jeopardy, after being fired upon a number of times by the killer, acting alone and without backup, you confronted him. Then, not knowing if he would shoot you, or how he would respond, and in the heat of the fight you had just been in with him, you shot and killed him. You knew that he had already committed several murders. It was subsequently determined that he was a suspect in a number of other homicides.”

  “I was pretty sure he could not get the shotgun around to shoot me, the way it was positioned. That’s the truth. Then I shot him.”

  For the first time, Peele spoke, leaning forward, elbows on the table. “Are you a psychologist, George?”

  “No.”

  “Any psychological training?”

  “No.”

  “I only ask because you seem to think that all of the things that happened leading up to you shooting the killer have no bearing on the issue. The manner in which you present your account suggests that you find yourself at fault and that nothing that happened in the moments before the shooting, the stress, the danger, the adrenaline pumping through your body, none of that had any causal effect on the shooting.”

  George looked Peele in the eyes and spoke the words with slow deliberateness. “I wanted to shoot him.” He looked down at the conference table. “So I did.”

  “Of course you did. So would we all.”

  “Whatever anyone else thinks, we don’t shoot people, just because we want to.” George shook his head. “But I did…”

  “Of course you don’t shoot people just because you want to. Your record as a deputy, your training, interviews with those whom you’ve served in Pickham County, all of that tells us that you don’t just shoot people. That’s the point, George. You don’t go around shooting people, but in this case you did. There’s a reason for that.” Peele took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We are going to work on that George, and we are going to work on how you tell the story, when we get to court.”

  “I won’t…”

  “I know, you won’t lie…you won’t fabricate…you won’t say anything that might exonerate you.” Peele sighed and replaced the glasses on his face. “Tell the truth, George, including the truth that you are not a killer and that there were a lot of underlying reasons for the death of a serial murderer in the Rye County mountains.”

  Walking from the law offices a few minutes later, George was silent. Bob looked at Agents Twilley and Simpson, who withdrew a few paces to give them some privacy.

  “George, you know Peele is trying to help.”

  “I know.”

  “Then let him.”

  “I will, Bob, but it has to be on my terms. If we are going to have a life after all this…a life for Sharon and me…the slate has to be wiped clean, everything out and everything erased…no loose ends. I won’t have this haunt us for the rest of our lives.”

  “And if you lose and go to prison?”

  George’s face twisted with emotion for a second and Bob immediately regretted the question.

  “I won’t have this haunt her, Bob. I’ll do what I have to, pay the price, whatever it is, but she stays out of it. If she is with me, she carries the load too, always worried about people like Swain wanting to reopen the case with new evidence, wondering about another knock on the door, another warrant. I couldn’t live with that.” He stopped and looked at the ground. “Besides, I did it.”

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nbsp; 59. No Other Alternative

  Lonna’s large bare bottom rolled and undulated as she walked from the bed to the bathroom. Vernon watched with a smile, dreamy, happy and as content as he could ever be in his world of fear and regrets.

  When she returned, she leaned over his skinny frame stretched out on top of the sheets, letting her large round breasts fall over his birdcage chest, tickling his nipples. He felt the stirring between his legs begin again. She noticed it too and slid down so that she held him between her cleavage. He moaned as she began to move slowly up and down, stroking him with her breasts.

  When they were done, and she had made another trip to the bathroom to clean up, she lay next to him in the bed, his head cushioned against her chest. She felt his breath tickling her left nipple.

  “We need to talk.” Lonna stared at the ceiling trying to find the right way to begin.

  “Uh hmm.” Vernon’s eyes closed dreamily, satiated, enjoying the afterglow. He hadn’t come twice in an hour since…well he couldn’t remember when…at least not since they were both young, running drugs and turning tricks in the eighties, up in Atlanta.

  “It’s serious, Vernon.”

  “Okay.”

  “Really, I need you to pay attention.”

  “Okay.” He left his tongue flicker over the nipple, tasting the salty sweat from their exertions.

  Lonna sat up, pulled the sheet over her chest and leaned back against the bed’s flimsy headboard.

  “Whatsa matter.” Vernon looked up at her, noting the annoyance on her face. “I thought we were havin’ a good time.”

  “We were…we are…” Her face contorted, her chin wrinkled and her lip trembled.

  Lonna MacIntyre was not a trembling sort of woman. In all the years he had known her, Vernon Taft could not remember her crying…not once. He sat up on the bed and turned to face her.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Roy wants to see you.” The words came out as a whisper through the quivering lips.

  “What?” Vernon paled to the point that Lonna thought he might pass out, or vomit, or both.

  “Roy Budroe. He wants to see you. He says all is forgiven; he knows you didn’t talk to anyone…knows you wouldn’t talk.”

  “Th-then wh-why does he want to see me.” Vernon struggled to get the words out and remain upright on the bed.

  “He has something for you to do.”

  “Wh-what?”

  “Something to say…a message or something. He wouldn’t tell me what, but after you do it, he says you and me can go…do what we want.”

  Vernon shook his head slowly back and forth, staring past Lonna at the wall, seeing himself disappear into oblivion. That’s what he imagined would happen if he came within seeing distance of Roy Budroe. He would just vanish…poof out of existence in a brief, tiny explosion of dust, so many particles scattered to the wind.

  “I can’t, Lonna…I…”

  Hands over her eyes, shoulders shaking, Lonna struggled to make him understand. “You have to. He knows about us. Knows you’ve been staying at your sister’s in Valdosta. Says he could have killed you any time if he wanted to.”

  “What if now he wants to?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. He has something for you to do…something he can’t do himself because he’s on the run.” She looked at him, wiping the tears from her eyes. “You have to do it, Vernon. If you don’t, he’ll kill us both.”

  “Both?”

  She nodded. “He said I bring you in or we both…” Her words trailed off.

  The room spun around Vernon. He felt himself sinking into an abyss. Lonna leaned forward and took his hands.

  “You don’t have a choice, Vernon. We don’t have a choice.” She shook his hands to bring his eyes to her face. “We do this and we’re free. You see that don’t you.”

  Vernon’s eyes saw little but the hazy red glow of panic.

  “Here, I have something for you. It’ll help.”

  Lonna reached into her purse on the nightstand and pulled out the small, clear plastic container. It was loaded to the brim with white powder. Vernon’s head moved, eyes following the container, like a dog to a bone. Vernon was an addict. Cocaine and Lonna were the two things in life he absolutely could not resist.

  She held the container up for him to see.

  “Have a hit.”

  Without argument, he nodded and leaned, snorting in the powder she offered on the end of a small spoon. He turned his head and she held the spoon under the other side of his red, drippy nose.

  Another snort on both sides and Lonna lowered her head between his scrawny knees again. She looked up at him, his eyes wide, intent, leaning against the headboard watching her move between his legs. Amazing, he thought. Third hard on in two hours and he felt like he could come again.

  Lonna didn’t care if he came a hundred times. She would do what she had to. Vernon would be in front of Roy Budroe as ordered. If they wanted to live, there was no other alternative.

  60. Working On It

  “Anything?” Sharon looked up as Sandy Davies walked into her small OSI office in the basement of the Pickham County Courthouse.

  “No.” Davies shook his head as he sat down in a chair across from her desk. “Darlington is keeping an eye on things as best he can, doing drive-byes trying to make it look as normal as possible. He’s been keeping an eye out for one of the signals but nothing so far.”

  The undercover team had established some simple ways to let Darlington and Davies know that they needed a meeting or had some intelligence to pass on through them to Sharon and Andy. Santoro would tie the red bandanna he kept in his back pocket to the handlebar of his Harley. Ponce would leave the tailgate down on the old pickup. It was basic but effective, and to this point unused.

  “Wish they would come up with something.” Sharon stacked up the papers and reports she had been going through. “We need something actionable…something to move on…quickly.”

  Sandy watched her face. “How are you doing, Sharon?”

  “Okay, I guess. Getting by.” She shrugged. “I miss him.” A single tear glistened in the corner of her eye.

  “I miss him too.”

  “Hell, we all miss him.” Sharon’s hand flicked at the tear and she took a deep breath, in control again.

  “It should have been him, you know.”

  “What?” Sharon’s brow crinkled.

  “Sheriff. It should have been George.”

  She shook her head. “No, Sandy. It should be you. That’s the way George wanted it. Me too. You’re the one, not George, not anyone else. George could see that. One thing about that big guy, he has no ego, not about things like that.” She smiled. “A stubborn, pain-in-the-ass sense of honor? Yes…Ego? No.”

  “Still…”

  “Stop it, Sandy. You’re the sheriff, and that’s as it should be.” Her eyes narrowed, looking into his face. “The sheriff who promised to clean up Pickham County, so clean it up, Sheriff.”

  He nodded. “Working on it.”

  61. Score

  “Whatcha got?”

  The sandy haired girl in tight jeans and tank top looked up. “What?”

  Marco nodded at the bar in front of her. “Your drink, what you drinkin’?”

  “Why?”

  “So I can buy you another.” He smiled and took the stool beside Brenda, the biker girl. She spent a lot of time with Big Luke McCrory and the other guy in the big ass pickup who gave the orders. Get close to her, and he might get close to them.

  “Where you from?” Brenda leaned back so that the tank top’s fabric pulled tighter across her breasts, her braless nipples clearly outlined. “Not from around here. You talk funny.”

  “Nope, not from around here.” Marco smiled and nodded, eyes riveted on her chest. Girls down south had a way of almost showing you what you wanted to see. “New York, upstate.”

  “New York. Never known anyone from New York.”

  “You do now.” He
nodded at her glass. “So you gonna let me buy you a drink?”

  “What’s your name?” Her eyes examined him coolly, not coyly like a girl at a bar, flirting. Brenda was accustomed to that, men flirting with her. She wasn’t impressed by the strange talking newcomer who had been around Pete’s for several days, drinking and hanging in the parking lot with the bikers that came and went.

  “Bono.” Marco sat on the stool beside her, letting his arm brush hers lightly as he pulled it up to the bar.

  “Bono?” Her face crinkled into a wry smirk. “Bono, like the rock star, Bono?’ She lifted the nearly empty glass and turned her eyes back to the bar. Enough time wasted on this clown. “Sure it is.”

  Marco laughed, unphased by her dismissal. “It’s short for Bonaventura.”

  “Bona…what?” Her head turned slightly, indicating a marginal interest, letting him know he had one chance, and had better make it good.

  “Bonaventura.” Marco swiveled on the stool to face her. “It means good fortune.” He laughed. “But it’s a mouth full so people call me Bono, for short.”

  “What the hell, kind of name is that?”

  “Italian.” He smiled. “It gets worse. The whole thing is Bonaventura Bellino Sansone.” He said it with all the Italian inflection and flourish he could muster from upstate New York.

  It was a name he had used on a number of undercover operations, in similar circumstances. Get them talking about your name, asking about where you come from, it was a good ice-breaker. The more you talked, the more their suspicions faded away. But you had to be good at it, cool, calm and believable in a matter-of-fact sort of way. Marco Santoro was very good at it.

  Her face crinkled again, this time in an actual smile, and she turned slightly towards him on the bar stool. “And what’s all that supposed to mean?”

  “Bonventura, good fortune, Bellino, handsome.” He smiled flashing his white teeth, shaking out his long hair dramatically like some biker Fabio.