Psycho Hill (JP Warner Book 3)

by Derek Ciccone

  ***

  Thank you for reading Psycho Hill!

  Reviews are greatly appreciated

  You can follow the continuing story of JP Warner in the next book in the series, Confederate Gold. Preview begins on next page.

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  Books by Derek Ciccone

  JP Warner Series (in order)

  Officer Jones

  Huddled Masses

  Psycho Hill

  Confederate Gold (See preview starting on next page)

  Stand Alone

  Painless

  The Trials of Max Q

  The Truant Officer

  The Heritage Paper

  The Jack Hammer

  Kristmas Collins

  Preview - Confederate Gold

  Chapter One

  New Orleans

  December 22

  He climbed the creaky staircase, finally reaching the weathered green door. The sign hung crooked—Buzz Richardson, Attorney at Law.

  He spent so much time here that it felt like home, and after surviving that insane asylum called the mall, it felt good to be home. But when he stepped inside and flipped on the lights, he realized he wasn’t alone.

  He almost jumped through the roof, before recognizing the young black man.

  “Benny—what the hell are you doing here? You almost gave me a heart attack!” Buzz exclaimed.

  “I’m going away for the holidays, so came by to wish you and the missus a merry one before I bolted.”

  After the amount of times he had represented Benny in court, Buzz knew the word bolted was a bad sign.

  “You could have left a message—I would’ve come down when I got back.”

  Benny “lived” in the abandoned restaurant below. Buzz had given him a key to the office in case of emergency—he sure hoped tonight didn’t meet that description.

  “I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss you—especially with all you’ve done for me this year,” Benny replied.

  With his heart rate now stabilized, Buzz moved behind his cluttered desk. He cleared off a spot for the pizza he was carrying, and set down the box.

  “So where you headed off to?” Buzz asked, trying to mask his worry.

  “Going to visit my mom in Shreveport for the holidays.” Benny proudly held up the bus ticket as proof.

  Buzz was pleasantly surprised. He’d been encouraging a reunion between Benny and his mother for years. “I’ve made that Shreveport trip a few times—it’s a long one. Make sure you take some food with you.”

  Benny held up an oversized bag of cheese puffs and a six-pack of Diet Dr. Pepper, along with a Walkman that appeared to be circa 1978.

  “341 miles—five hours,” Benny replied. If nothing else he’d done his homework.

  They made small talk, and Buzz made sure to stay clear of the topic of Benny and his mother. Their relationship was complicated, to say the least. When Benny seemed to linger, and Buzz started to wonder if he was getting cold feet, he subtly nudged him out the door. Benny, forever the emotional type, hugged Buzz like he’d never see him again.

  Alone at last, it was time for dinner. He had an important business call to make, and didn’t want to make it on an empty stomach. He opened the mini-fridge that he’d had since his undergrad days at LSU—the only time he’d lived away from the New Orleans metro area. Baton Rouge was only eighty miles away, but it always seemed like a different world to him. He grabbed a bottle of Bud Light and returned to his desk.

  He devoured the greasy pepperoni slices, washed them down with the beer, and let out a burp that echoed through the empty office. It was a far cry from the lifestyle at the big firms from New Orleans to Dallas that had tried to pry him away. But Fat City was in his blood, and he couldn’t see himself ever leaving.

  He rarely got nervous, but tonight was different. So he first called his wife, Mandy, as just hearing her voice always boosted his confidence. She sounded skeptical of his claim that he’d be home in an hour—she’d heard that line many times, only to have him roll in after midnight. But with his successful mission to the mall, securing the hard-to-find Christmas gifts for his sons, Zachary and David, he’d built up some collateral.

  After they hung up, he walked to the window and looked out. Staring back at him was the familiar sign that flashed Nude Girl in neon. Either the ‘s’ at the end had burned out, or that one girl must be really busy, he thought.

  Before it closed, the bar/restaurant below would have been hopping this time of night. He missed the background noise, and had enjoyed slipping downstairs to grab a burger and an adult beverage … not to mention, he found some of his best clients there. He still hadn’t grown accustomed to the eerie silence, and it unnerved him.

  He pulled himself away from the window and walked to the other end of the office. He removed the framed diploma from Tulane Law School from the wall, revealing the safe. He twisted the combination and pulled it open. He reached in and took out a prepaid cell phone.

  With perspiring fingers, he made the call.

  He was a skilled negotiator, and knew it was the right moment to insert urgency. The request to hold off was nothing but a stall tactic, and accommodating it would mean handing them leverage. He kept telling himself that the man on the other end of the phone had more to lose, and wanted to settle—if he didn’t, the process wouldn’t have gotten this far. But their window to make a deal was small—there was no time to waste.

  “I talked to my client, and we considered your offer, but we are not interested in the process lingering on. So we will give you until the day after Christmas to agree to terms, or we will go public,” Buzz said, trying his best to sound assertive.

  “That’s very disappointing, but I respect your frankness. You’ll have your decision shortly. I wish you and yours a very happy holiday,” the man said, and abruptly ended the call.

  As usual, Buzz was unable to read him. It didn’t help that they never met face-to-face—reading eyes was his specialty. But he remained convinced that the leverage was on his side, and when it came to negotiations, leverage was king.

  He called Omar to provide a status update. Buzz cautioned that they had no choice but to wait out the next few days, but assured him that their demands would be met. It had become pretty standard procedure for large corporations to pay off lawsuits to avoid the publicity, and for all intents and purposes that was what was going on here. Not that their demands were without merit.

  Omar was always much more composed than he was, and took the news in stride—the kid must have ice water in his veins, Buzz thought.

  He placed the phone back in the safe and re-hung his diploma. It was time to prove his wife wrong, which would be a first. But when he moved to the coat rack, he noticed something sitting on the couch. Damn—it was Benny’s bus ticket. Son of a …

  He wondered what to do—stop at the bus station on his way home and give it to him? But what if Benny had realized he’d left it, and was on his way back here? There was no way to get in touch with him, since Benny didn’t own a phone.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the creaking sound of the stairs. Problem solved—Benny had returned for his ticket.

  Chapter 2

  Two men stepped into the office, neither of which was Benny. Buzz didn’t recognize them as the typical neighborhood riffraff and that worried him.

  One had a shiny, shaved cue-ball head, and wore a tight black T-shirt. His sculpted, tattooed arms told Buzz that he’d spent much time in the gym, but they were less threatening than the straightedge barber razor he held in his hand.

  His partner was dressed in head-to-
toe denim, and had the same mullet haircut Buzz had back in high school.

  “Not who you expected?” Cue Ball asked, and Buzz couldn’t take his eyes off the razor.

  “Your friend don’t look too bright, so it might take him ’til Tuesday to figure out he left his ticket behind. Looks like it’s just us,” Denim added.

  Cue Ball viewed the small office. “I thought lawyers made big bucks—I got closets in my house bigger than this.”

  “I don’t have much money, if that’s what you’re after,” Buzz said.

  “It’s probably why he got into the blackmail business … pays much better,” Denim said.

  Buzz now understood why they were here, and who they worked for. He gulped.

  Cue Ball glared at Buzz, and began menacingly swinging the razor by its rubber blade-holder. “I don’t want to keep you from getting back to that nice family of yours, so I’ll be brief—give us the manuscript, and we’ll be on our way. No harm, no foul.”

  “I thought we had a deal,” Buzz managed to say, kicking himself for his naivety. These types of people don’t negotiate, they obliterate.

  Cue Ball had a good laugh at that one. “I can assure you that whoever you’re dealing with, they don’t have the power to authorize any type of agreement—only my boss can do that.”

  Buzz was confused by the response. But he didn’t have time to analyze the words, as Cue Ball was walking toward him with his razor out.

  In one motion, he punctured the blade through the pizza box, and lifted it up—like bait on a fishing line.

  “I knew I smelled toxic odors,” he said, while carrying the empty box on the end of the blade to the door, and tossing it outside.

  He looked back at Buzz. “No wonder you have no fear—anyone willing to put that poison in their body must have a death wish.”

  “But I can’t judge you too harshly, because I’ve been in your shoes,” Cue Ball continued, again approaching Buzz, who braced. “I was almost three hundred pounds before I decided I wanted to live. Changed my diet—changed my life.”

  “He’s a lean mean killing machine,” Denim said with a smirk. “I’m a fat, out-of-shape killing machine. So there’s more ways to skin a cat … or a lawyer.”

  Cue Ball looked to his partner. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Denim shrugged. “I figure we’re all going to die someday … so I’d rather die young and happy, than old and eating rabbit food.”

  Cue Ball returned his focus to Buzz. “He’s right—we’re all going to die. But we do have a choice in when we die.”

  These two weren’t very subtle. Buzz searched for that escape hatch, hoping for that one moment of distraction where he could make his move.

  “Fine—you win. It’s in the safe,” Buzz said meekly.

  Cue Ball smiled. “And here I thought all lawyers were dumb.”

  “They’re not dumb, but they sure are greedy,” Denim said.

  Cue Ball held his stare on Buzz, who he felt a chill. “I wouldn’t get greedy, Mr. Richardson.”

  Buzz nodded, and walked slowly to the safe.

  “Are all the copies in there?” Denim asked.

  “They are.”

  “I think you’re an honest guy, but we’re still going to have to pay Omar and Luci a visit … just to make sure.”

  Cue Ball read Buzz’s surprised look. “You didn’t think we knew about Luci, did you? She should’ve stayed hidden—your little meeting was a bad idea. Somebody is always watching.”

  “I have all the copies.”

  “I really hope that’s true … for your wife’s sake. It’s Mandy, right?”

  He was really hitting where it hurts, but Buzz had to remain calm if he planned to get out of here alive.

  He removed the diploma and nervously wheeled the combination lock. Denim stood right behind, peering over his shoulder.

  Buzz slowly reached in and wrapped his fingers around the small plastic object. He removed it from the safe and handed it to Denim, who looked surprised.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s a flash drive that contains the manuscript file.”

  Denim continued staring at the object in his hand, probably expecting a bulky document. “You better not be yanking my chain.”

  Denim handed it to Cue Ball who also appeared skeptical. “How do we know you’re telling the truth? For all we know, it could be blank.”

  Buzz pointed to the laptop computer on his desk. “Be my guest to test it. Or I can do it if you’d like.”

  Cue Ball inserted the flash drive into the computer. As he watched the screen his face switched from anticipation to irritation. “It says I need to put in a code and password. What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Buzz said.

  Cue Ball nodded to Denim, who took out a gun from his waistband.

  Buzz put up his hands. “What I mean is, I don’t know it off the top of my head—I keep the code hidden in the safe.”

  Denim went to the open safe and searched through it. When he came up empty, he turned to Buzz with gun raised.

  “Like I said, it’s hidden,” Buzz said. “Do you want me to get it?”

  Denim looked to Cue Ball, who nodded.

  “No funny stuff,” Denim warned, watching closely as Buzz again reached inside the safe. There was a secret compartment, that part was true, but it didn’t contain a code. Buzz opened it and wrapped his fingers around the gun. No matter how bad this neighborhood got, he’d never had to use it before—he always felt protected here. Until tonight.

  He said a brief prayer to help guide Mandy and the kids if this went badly, counted to three, and then turned to fire.

  Before he could pull the trigger, the gun fell to the floor. He slumped beside it. The strange thing about the razor blade lodged in his neck—sent across the room at lightning speed from Cue Ball’s hand, like he were some sort of Ninja—was that it didn’t hurt.

  But he could feel the life seep out of him like air out of a punctured balloon.

  “I wouldn’t pull that out. It’s the only thing holding the blood in,” Cue Ball said, sounding far away, as if he was under water.

  Buzz knew he was going to die either way—he would do it on his terms.

  He pulled the blade out, and felt like his head was floating away. He was mesmerized by the amount of blood that was spilling out of him. Where does it all come from? He just stared at it until everything went black.

  The two men took their time searching the rest of the office. They found the code and password hidden inside a thick law book, but the flash drive was filled with legal documents, backup from old cases. And nothing resembling the manuscript they were looking for.

  They took their time cleaning away any evidence that they’d been there, and made it look like a robbery gone deadly. Cue Ball reclaimed his razor and they left Buzz Richardson lying in a pool of his own blood like a harpooned whale.

  One down, two to go. Their next stop would be to meet with Omar, and hopefully they would have better luck. For his sake, anyway.

  Denim whistled “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” as they stepped back into the night.

  Chapter 3

  Rockfield, Connecticut

  December 23

  If Santa Claus was coming to town, he wouldn’t find the Warners this year.

  I maneuvered cautiously over the icy driveway and loaded more wrapped boxes into the back of the rented Toyota Sequoia.

  “Are all these gifts for me? I could just open them here … that might be easier,” I said.

  “None of them are for you,” replied Gwen Delaney, my girlfriend, resident soul mate, and currently my frustrated foreman. She went on to explain that the gifts were for my brother Ethan and his family, along with my parents. The haul also included items we were taking to Byron’s wedding, and we still had to find room for the bags for our vacation.

  We hadn’t been on a true vacation together since I’d come home to Rockfield some eighteen months ago. My trip to Syria
, where I was almost killed by the world’s most wanted terrorist, and Gwen’s journey to Ocracoke Island, where she was held hostage by the infamous serial killer, Officer Jones, were trips we took, but wouldn’t be considered vacations by any measure. Nor would the first part of this one.

  I took a moment to look at Gwen, who was dressed down in a Columbia University sweatshirt and a pair of faded jeans. Her raven hair fell out of her winter hat, and snow had begun to collect on it. Any man lucky enough to call this woman his girlfriend mustn’t be in his right mind to find fault with anything in this world. But I’ve never been accused of being in my right mind.

  I was having a hard time accepting that we were going to spend Christmas in a foreign land. And I was annoyed how easily those around me had accepted such a mockery of Warner family tradition.

  When I’d mentioned my concerns to Gwen, she reminded me that I’d spent numerous holidays in foreign lands during my past life as an international correspondent for GNZ cable news. And usually in places that were much less safe and desirable than Savannah, Georgia, where we were headed. This was a rational argument, but JP Warner had never been a big fan of rational thought.

  And there wasn’t anything I could do about it, anyway—the itinerary had been set in stone. We would spend Christmas and most of the following week at my parents’ new home in Savannah, before traveling to Charleston, where my longtime friend, Byron Jasper, was getting married on New Year’s Eve. Gwen and I would then be off on our much-anticipated vacation.

  Where that would be, I had no idea. Gwen refused to even drop a hint, swatting away all my questions with, “you’ll see,” followed by a mischievous smile. I had met my match with Gwen Delaney.

  We began to make our way back to the comfy A-frame house. It’s the home I grew up in, and Gwen and I purchased it from my parents after they decided to fly south.

  “I thought you had come to terms with your parents’ move? You sure aren’t acting like it,” Gwen said.

  “I had … I am … but this isn’t about that. This is about the holidays—Christmas is always here, in Connecticut.”