Nothing Left: A Jack Cameron Thriller
Page 13
Mister Man said, “No, hold on. Hold on. We can cut a deal.”
I said, “I’m not interested in a deal. I got all the money that I’ll need here. Plus, I got two dead cops who were definitely up to no good. I don’t know who you are, but I’m sure if I ever get caught, this information will certainly interest the FBI.”
I stopped and listened closely, still no clues as to his location. No bustling tables or clanking silverware. No air noise that you hear when someone is on the phone with you. No breeze from outside. And then there was another rumbling of thunder and I listened for it to resonate on his end of the line, but there was nothing. No rumble. No sound. Which didn’t necessarily mean anything. The guy could’ve been indoors. The rumble was low enough not to have breached a decent set of walls.
I said, “So long. Thanks for the cash.”
Mister Man said, “Now. Wait. Wait.”
I hung up the phone and settled my arm down to my side. I stepped away from the driver’s side door and the phone started ringing again. I ignored it and shut the door and went to the rear of the car. I leaned against it and waited.
It stopped ringing, must’ve gone to voicemail. After a few seconds, it started ringing again.
I answered it.
I said, “Yeah?”
Mister Man’s voice came over the line and he said, “Please. Please don’t hang up.”
I said nothing.
He said, “Good. Listen. I’m a powerful guy. Why don’t you keep the money? Like a reward.”
I said, “I already got the money. You need to be a little more accurate if you want to convince me to keep talking.”
Mister Man said, “Listen, I’m powerful and my friends are powerful. I don’t even care about the money. I just need to know what happened.”
I said, “Like I said, I got the money already. What’s in it for me if I cooperate?”
He said, “There’s more money.”
I stayed quiet.
He said, “Also, there are more cops involved.”
Thank you. I smiled.
Keep talking.
Mister Man said, “You got a record?”
I said, “I might have.”
He said, “We can help you.”
I said, “I’m nobody. A drifter. I don’t need your help.”
He said, “Okay. What about more money?”
I waited, let him sweat a little, and then I asked, “How much?”
He said, “Double what’s there.”
I stayed quiet, made it seem like I was considering his offer.
He said, “Double’s a lot more than just what you got. Imagine what you can do with double.”
I said, “Okay. What do I have to do?”
I smiled. He was buying it.
He said, “Tell me what’s going on.”
I said, “I told you. I’m a passerby. And I was passing through the town when I discovered this violent scene out in the desert.”
He said, “We know you’re in the desert.”
He knows. Must’ve been informed by the cops beforehand.
I said, “Not much to it. A couple of dead cops. A discreet location. And another dead guy with a bag full of money.”
Mister Man said, “That’s it?”
I said, “Yep.”
He said, “How did it go down?”
Perhaps, this was a smart move on his part, but then again perhaps not because if he was asking me to give him a shot-by-shot play, then he might’ve been testing to see if I was FBI. An FBI agent would’ve known how it went down. Then again, maybe he was just asking.
I said, “Looks like a big shoot-out, but I couldn’t tell you any more. I’m not a detective.”
He said, “So everyone’s dead? They shot each other?”
I said, “That’s what I told you. Looks like someone started shooting and they all got each other. Just like that.”
He said, “You did good.”
Silence fell over the phone again and then he said, “What about cops? Any local ones on the scene?”
I said, “If there were cops on the scene, then I wouldn’t be here with the cash.”
He said, “Right.”
I said, “There’s a local police department here, but I doubt they know anything. If they did, they’d be here already instead of me.”
Mister Man said, “Right. Okay.”
I said, “How do I get this money?”
He said, “You can come to us.”
I said, “No! No way! You come here.”
He paused a beat.
He came back and said, “Okay. We need to clean this up. We’re already on our way.”
I said, “Where? When?”
He said, “Already headed your way.”
Chapter 19
MISTER MAN SAID, “Keep this phone on you. I’ll call you when I get there.”
I said, “Okay.”
He said, “What do I call you?”
I said, “Cameron.”
I didn’t see any reason to lie. He could Google me or whatever. Wouldn’t make much difference without my first name. Besides that, there wasn’t much to find out.
I needed to find Janey; that was my top priority. I didn’t know if this guy knew where she was, but he sounded like the boss. No question. He might’ve had an idea.
I asked, “What exactly went on here?”
He asked, “What do you mean?”
Stupid, Cameron, I thought.
I said, “Just curious. This looked like a drop, but the other dead guy, you gotta see him. He looks like some kind of accountant.”
Mister Man said, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you soon.”
He hung up the phone and the line went dead. I played around with it for a moment, trying to look and see if I could find any clues, but I discovered that I was wrong about it being unlocked. It must’ve had a feature to let a person answer an incoming call without unlocking it. Did all phones have this feature? I had no idea because I had never owned a cell phone. I was familiar with the current generation phone. I was a young guy after all, but I had never cared to own one.
I stared at it. It asked for a passcode to unlock it. I didn’t know it and would never have guessed it. So I slipped the phone back in my pocket. Figured that it was best to avoid having the wrong code put in. I figured that would shut the phone down and then it would be completely useless.
I looked back at the scene and heard the thunder roll again.
The clouds started to move in closer and the sound of the thunder grew louder and louder. Just like that I saw the rain. It started to hammer down in the distance and the thunder rumbled and rumbled until it turned to a roar. Then one spider web of white lightning shot across the underbelly of the clouds.
It was only a matter of seconds until the rain started to come down on top of me. I reversed the Hope Police Department’s radio into my pocket to stop it from getting wet.
A second after that, the moonless, clear night turned into a free fall of rain and bursts of lightning and the raging sound of thunder.
Chapter 20
WE’RE ALREADY ON OUR WAY, the guy had said.
I sat in Saunt’s Silverado and watched the rain. Vaughn and Oliver were coming and so were the bad guys. I didn’t know when and I didn’t know how many.
I was wet from the sudden rain. The leather seats squeaked every time I shifted because my clothes were wet. I wasn’t drenched, just wet. I had jumped into the truck right after the rain started.
I wasn’t sure if the storm would slow the bad guys down or not. I had no idea which direction that they were coming from. From the east, it would’ve slowed them down, but from the west, back toward Hope, it wasn’t that bad. It was as if the storm stayed right over my position, a bad omen. My own little storm cloud.
I sat back and stared out the windshield at the rain and the blur of the police car.
What the hell was I missing?
Nothing to do but sit and wait and just go over t
he evidence that I had already been over a lot of times. I started to recap everything and I just couldn’t help but feel I was missing something.
I stared at the rain, the truck hood and the beams of light. Then I looked at the ground and the footprints, which were being destroyed by the rain.
I started to think about the ground.
I thought about the trunk.
I grabbed the radio out of my pocket and called Vaughn.
“Vaughn. Vaughn. Come in.”
Static.
She said, “Cameron? We’re on our way.”
“But where are you. Exactly?”
She said, “We’re just pulling onto the highway. Why?”
I said, “I’m headed your way. Meet me on the road.”
She said, “Why? What’s up?”
I said, “Just do it.”
I pulled the gear into reverse and hit the pedal. I no longer cared about messing up the crime scene because the rain would do that for us.
I shoved the gear back into drive, once I was all the way back, and then I slammed the gas and the truck skidded only a bit in the wet dirt and then it shot up onto the road.
I pushed it fast and kept the high beams on.
I knew where Janey was.
Chapter 21
THE SILVERADO bucked and dipped and splashed water under the tires as I headed back toward Hope.
I saw Vaughn’s police cruiser ahead with the blue light bar on and her headlights on high beams. She must’ve seen me at the same time because she switched off her high beams. I turned off mine. I drove as fast as I could and slowed about a quarter of a mile from her. I took my foot off the gas and let the truck coast. The speed slowed to thirty miles an hour and then twenty and then I pushed the brake.
They stopped first and waited for me. I turned the truck to a slant across the road, which was out of habit from a life I lived long ago trained by my mom.
I opened the door and jumped out fast.
I called from over the door at Vaughn and I guess Oliver, the FBI agent. Both of them were standing outside the car.
I said, “I know where Janey is!”
Vaughn called to me. She said, “Where?”
The lightning crashed far off behind her and lit up the sky and the road.
I called back, “Take me to where you first followed them!”
She said, “What?”
I said, “Take me to the place where they lost you! Where you thought they ditched you!”
She said, “Okay!”
Oliver said, “Is that where she is?”
I said, “Let’s go!”
Vaughn nodded and hopped back in her cruiser and Oliver followed. Then she hit the gas, driving past me.
I reversed the Silverado and slammed the gas and followed behind them. I started a good way behind. The Silverado wasn’t built for speed, not when compared to a police cruiser with the interceptor package. Not even close. But I gained speed and came up close behind them.
Vaughn hit the brakes and slowed. I slowed behind her and she stopped almost dead for a moment, like she was trying to remember where they had led her. It was pouring rain.
She turned the car and hit the gas and bumped along off-road. I followed suit.
We drove for five to ten minutes, darting one way and ducking the next. She led me down an obvious off-road path, but the path was shrinking. She slowed and turned onto a sharp, rocky patch of gravel and sand.
We drove until we came to a clearing. Rain hammered down even harder than before and things became very hard to see out of the windshield. The wipers were blasting on overdrive already. I hoped that we were at the place and it turned out that we were because Vaughn honked her horn and jumped out of her car.
Oliver stayed inside.
Vaughn had popped her trunk and went back to it and grabbed a thick police rain poncho. She slipped it on over herself and got situated in it. Then she dipped back in her trunk and pulled out another one.
She ran around to my door and I dashed it open.
She came around and stared at me from under the hood of the poncho. Her hair was drenched already.
The rain pounded so hard that we had to yell at each other, even close up.
I asked, “Is this the place?”
She said, “Yes. Here.”
She handed me the poncho.
I took it and said, “Go around and hop in.”
She looked back at her car and then said, “Okay.”
She darted around the Silverado’s front hood and hopped in the other side.
She said, “Phhh. This rain is crazy!”
I said, “I know. It came out of nowhere.”
She said, “So where is she?”
I said, “Here!”
Vaughn asked, “Where?”
I said, “I don’t know where exactly, but this is where they took you?”
She nodded.
I said, “I was hoping that there was a shack or something out here. But it looks like nothing.”
She said, “Yeah. I told you. There’s nothing here.”
I said, “In the trunk of their police car.”
She said, “Yeah?”
I said, “There was everything that you’d expect.”
“Yeah.”
“But one thing kept bothering me and I couldn’t figure it out for a while.”
She said, “Yeah?”
I said, “The shovels. Their shovels were covered in dirt and grime as if they had been used recently.”
She said, “Oh, my God! They buried her out here?”
I said, “Probably. But I’m thinking about that picture and how dark it was. I don’t think that they moved her. It’s hard to move a captive around without anyone noticing. That’s why you wanna do it as little as possible.
“I think that they were keeping her out here. That’s why I was hoping that there was a shack or old house out here. It is a clearing. Maybe a house was once built on it.”
Vaughn said, “Wait! There used to be houses out here. Long, long ago. Like a million years ago. Some of them had bunkers.”
I said, “Yeah?”
She said, “Yeah. The way it was during the Cold War. Way back in the beginning. It’d be possible that there’s still one here. Maybe they covered the opening up with dirt?”
I said, “That’s probably exactly what they did.”
She said, “I have a shovel!”
I said, “Damn! I should’ve taken the ones from the bad guys’ trunk!”
She said, “Where do we dig?”
I said, “I have no idea, but we better do it fast. We don’t know how big this bunker is. Will it flood? And how bad a shape is Janey in?”
She said nothing.
I said, “We can start by watching the water. The opening should be in the center of the area.”
She asked, “Are you sure?”
I said, “Best guess.”
I slipped on the poncho. It was snug, but better than getting wet.
She said, “The sleeves unbutton from the bottom. That should let it fit.”
I adjusted them and it fit okay.
I said, “One more thing. “
Vaughn asked, “What?”
I thought for a moment. I was about to tell her that I spoke to one of the bad guys, Mister Man, but then I thought twice. Instead, I shrugged and said, “Never mind.”
She said nothing.
I thought about what these guys had done and I wasn’t sure if they deserved the kind of justice that they would get from Vaughn, normal blind justice. I wasn’t sure that they deserved a fair trial that would take months and months and would involve evidence and lawyers and being presumed innocent until proven guilty.
No. I started to think that some bad guys don’t deserve blind justice. I started to think that maybe in this case, they deserved my own personal brand of justice instead of Miranda and constitutional rights.
So I kept quiet. I said nothing.
Chapter 22
We stood out in the pouring rain and he and I took turns banging Vaughn’s shovel in the mud. He wore her rain poncho and she waited in the police cruiser with the car facing us, fog lights on so that we could see the dirt.
I called out to Janey every couple of minutes on the off chance that she could scream. If she was alive, which was a big question.
I felt the rain pounding down on my back. My muscles ached and my head hurt from the relentless pounding and thunder roaring. The rain made my poncho heavy. Every time I stabbed into the mud, the shovel became heavier and heavier.
Oliver was an average-looking guy for an FBI agent. He looked pretty much the way that I had imagined them to look, which was like a Secret Service agent, only humbler and less intimidating.
He had a good build, with brown hair, and young too. If I had to guess I would have said that he was less than forty, but barely over thirty-five.
He took turns at using the shovel and I took turns.
I figured that they dead cops must’ve had a bunker out here or a pit, something where they could act without worrying about someone coming along and bothering them.
We poked and prodded all over the area, which wasn’t a massive space, but big enough. Maybe the whole area was about six hundred square feet, if you didn’t count the hills and ditches and dips because it didn’t make sense to bury a door under a hill or ditch or dip. It would’ve been too hard to uncover every single time that they wanted to get in. It was most likely on the flat ground, but I was wrong.
For the first forty-five minutes, I had cursed the rain because it was making it hard to move. But then I was grateful for it because while Oliver was trudging along near a hill he hit something and it was the rain that helped to flatten out the dirt.
He said, “Here! Here!”
I went over and looked. He started to shovel mud to the side as fast as he could. We began to sink a little from the mud under our boots. He shoveled and slung mud off to the side.
I saw what he was yelling about. He had hit a flat, metal object on the ground. He started to shovel the mud faster. I felt the adrenaline start to flow through my body.