Friday Night Frights (Jack and Ashley Detective series Book 1)

by R. D. Sherrill

  Ashley nodded politely at Jack’s advice as the pair sat on the edge of the couch in awkward silence for a few moments. Both tried to recall the many missing pieces from the evening before, while shaking off the haze left by the night’s libations.

  “Whatever happened last night, it stays here. Agreed?” Jack spoke up, reading Ashley’s mind. “I mean, it wasn’t what most would consider ... professional.”

  “Well, nothing happened so there’s nothing to tell, right?” Ashley replied. “We were simply relaxing with a couple of drinks - two professionals discussing a case. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”

  “Exactly,” Jack agreed as he stood up, nearly losing his balance, the after-effects of the unholy cocktail they imbibed the night before still having its effects. “I hate hangovers and unfortunately, I don’t have time to nurse it. We need to be getting ready to get in the air.”

  “The air?” Ashley said with a hint of dread in her voice.

  While deep down she knew their mission would likely lead to her climbing back inside the cramped cockpit of Jack’s plane, she had held out hope that their journey might see them make the trip by car. The trip to Rock River, while not being as bad as she anticipated once the original butterflies flew away, didn’t totally cure her of her fear of flying. The mere mention of flying still left a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach alongside the remnants of tequila, whiskey and Chinese food. She would need to bring an air-sick bag.

  “We’ll be undercover so we’ll need to dress like your average football fans. No suits or anything that even suggests we’re cops, sweetheart,” Jack called out as he walked to the bathroom. “We need to be as inconspicuous as possible.”

  The informal attire was not a problem for Ashley as she preferred to be dressed down. She dressed up only for official duties and on those rare occasions when she got to go out on the town. As for dressing like a football fan, her pair of suitcases containing the clothes she brought from home had no less than five or six Texas Longhorn shirts. Her only challenge would be deciding which one to wear to Seymour.

  While Jack specifically requested inconspicuous, his choice of game-day attire left something to be desired when he emerged from the bathroom several minutes later.

  “I thought you said we weren’t supposed to stick out,” Ashley said as Jack emerged from the bathroom wearing a bright orange University of Tennessee shirt. “You do realize that’s the wrong big orange? This is Texas, you know.”

  Jack rolled his eyes at his partner’s statement. While living in Texas the past couple of years, he was yet to convert his allegiances when it came to collegiate athletics.

  “Sorry, dear, but I’m all out of Texas stuff,” Jack replied. “And, I kind of doubt yours will fit me, so this is what I’ll be wearing. Maybe I can convert a few of your Longhorn fans to the right way of thinking while we’re there.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Ashley barked as she went to get dressed, leaving one last jab at her partner. “Roll tide.”

  An hour later the pair was heading to the airport. Dread built inside Ashley the nearer they got to their destination.

  “You sure we can’t just drive,” Ashley asked as they approached the outer gates of the airport. “I mean, we got plenty of time to get there, even by car.”

  Jack shook his head, dismissing his partner’s suggestion.

  “No, I want to get there and get familiar with the place, maybe do some snooping around,” Jack said. “The quicker we get there, the more prepared we’ll be. You aren’t still scared of flying are you? I got us to Rock River and back in one piece, didn’t I?”

  Ashley sat quietly for the rest of the car ride and marched with a sense of trepidation across the tarmac to the plane, which seemed even smaller than she recalled. Taking deep breaths hoping to curb her anxiety, Ashley sat stoically in the passenger seat while Jack did his pre-flight rituals, his sophomoric rhymes doing nothing to ease her consternation.

  After a few minutes of checks and double checks, all of which served to only intensify her jitters, the plane motored down the runway and took off. Ashley's unsettled stomach felt every foot of elevation.

  “You’re not going to throw up, are you?” Jack asked in a worried tone as he saw his passenger get green in the gills. “You better not hurl in my plane, sweetheart.”

  Ashley held up a finger, signaling him to give her a minute to get her air wings. Her stomach finally started to settle as they rose to cruising altitude. Before that, the chances of her hurling were conservatively fifty-fifty.

  “It’s not like I do this every day,” Ashley finally said after a few tense moments teetering on the edge. “I prefer to keep my feet on the ground, thank you.”

  Jack cracked a smile, realizing his passenger was not about to fill his cockpit with the remnants of last night’s dinner.

  “Don’t worry, Seymour is just a little further than Rock River but this time we have prettier landscape to fly over, not just dirt and rocks,” Jack said. “I have to warn you in advance, we may have a little more turbulence than before. It’s just the lay of the land we’re flying over.”

  “Oh great, that’s all I need,” Ashley responded, already worried about the possibility. “You should have left that part out. Now I’m just going to be dreading it.”

  Ashley decided to dull her angst by talking, hoping constant conversation like their first flight would make the trip go faster and make her forget they were a few thousand feet in the air.

  “So, how many agents do you have joining us?” Ashley asked. “I assume they’ll be mixing in with the crowd like us.”

  “Yes, they will and we’ll have plenty,” Jack said. “If he’s around, he’s not getting away, that’s for sure. We have every agent we can get at the ballgames where our guy may strike.”

  “I’m still not sure why we couldn’t have anyone from our department involved,” Ashley declared. “I mean, come on, everyone can’t be under suspicion, can they?”

  Jack gave Ashley a glance from behind the plane’s controls.

  “Until we find out who the mole is in your department, everyone’s a suspect,” Jack answered.

  “What about me? I’m a ranger. Am I a suspect?” Ashley countered, challenging Jack’s suspicion.

  “Not really, but I’m keeping my eye on you,” Jack replied. “But there’s no doubt there’s a connection between our killer and someone in your agency. If I had any doubts, they were taken away when we got to your friend’s house and found out she’d already had a visitor. Whoever did that had to have inside knowledge of the rangers and had to know where she lived and had to know what they were looking for. There’s no doubt in my mind that there’s a connection. That’s why we were called in.”

  “How deep of a connection?” Ashley shot back, her attention now on the conversation rather than the flight.

  “For all I know, the killer may be a ranger,” Jack said, taking his eyes off the sky to look Ashley in the eye. “It’s happened, folks going off the deep end or a background check missing something. You never know what goes on in a person’s mind. Like I said before …”

  “Don’t trust anybody,” Ashley finished his line.

  “Exactly,” Jack agreed, looking back at the sky in front of him. “You learn well, grasshopper.”

  Ashley sat in introspection for a moment, scanning the data base of her mind for agents she knew personally, asking herself if they could be the killer.

  “Do you have any ideas?” Ashley wondered. “I mean, as to agents who may fit the profile?”

  “Well, that’s not really where I’m looking,” Jack admitted. “My feelings are, if we catch the killer tonight then we find out the connection. With that said, we have people in the agency taking a closer look at some of your fellow agents. We have people working on all facets of this, both from the ranger end and even on the internet end. I’m just the pretty face heading up this thing, honey. If we can simply get a handle on that website, then I think we can narrow thi
ngs down.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Ashley reminded him. “Do you have any suspicions?”

  Jack remained quiet for a full minute. He looked out the windshield over the horizon as the plane began to enter some cloud cover, bursting through the puffy white cumulous as the droning of the aircraft’s engine was the only sound that could be heard.

  “How well do you know this Randy fella?” Jack finally asked.

  Ashley was taken aback by Jack’s obvious assertion that Randy was on his list. Sure, he had showed up at odd times, but a killer? It was hard for her to swallow.

  “You can’t be suggesting that Randy is part of this?” Ashley said with surprise. “He’s the son of our commanding officer for crying out loud.”

  “He was also carrying on a romance with Jana Ferrell,” Jack immediately responded. “We’ve already found out about that in the digging we’ve done, although I don’t know if their little tryst was a big secret or not since it was pretty easy to find out.”

  “Well, it was a secret to some of us,” Ashley noted with disdain, folding her arms. “So they were having a thing; that doesn’t mean he’s a killer.”

  “If you want me to be frank, sweetheart, I just don’t like the way he keeps showing up,” Jack said in a more forceful tone. “It’s funny to me that he just happens to show up at Lone Star Outfitters and then he just happens to show up at your house the night someone tried to burn you alive. I don’t believe in coincidence, sweetness.”

  “But he saved my life!” Ashley exclaimed as if she was trying to fight the thought of him being involved in the killings. “I mean if he were the killer, why would he save my life?”

  “Because, unless you are the deepest sleeper in the world, that fire wasn’t going to kill you,” Jack declared. “That fire was set as a warning, a way to scare you off. Come on, darlin’, if our guy had wanted you dead he would have snuck into bedroom and slit your throat while you were snoring away dreaming of Val Kilmer or whatever guy you girls dream about nowadays.”

  “Well, number-one, I don’t dream of Val Kilmer since he is so 1995, and number two, I’ve known Randy for a long time and he’s not our guy,” Ashley replied with conviction. “And, number three, I don’t snore.”

  “Don’t be too sure of number three,” Jack cracked with a wry grin. “You’re talking to the guy who slept with you last night, sweetness.”

  “Slept is the key word there,” Ashley replied, finally relaxed enough to give Jack a smile just as the plane jolted, nearly sending her head crashing into the roof.

  “Was that the turbulence you were talking about?” Ashley asked with a white-knuckle grip on the dash. “Because if it is, well, it sucks.”

  Jack didn’t answer as he was busy staring at the gauges. His silence gave way to something outside the plane which even Ashley recognized. The peaceful drone of the plane’s engine had now become erratic, the purr of the motor intermittent as if it were missing beats.

  “What’s that?” Ashley asked as her voiced cracked.

  Jack didn’t answer but instead held up his hand for her to be quiet as he continued going over his controls. Then there was silence. The engine stopped running. For a few seconds there was complete silence. The quiet was deafening inside the small cockpit.

  “Jack, what’s wrong?” Ashley asked, barely repressing all out panic as she felt the plane start a subtle downward trajectory.

  Jack looked over at Ashley, his expression one she’d never seen on his face. It was one of bewilderment.

  “We’re going down,” he said, his calm tone making Ashley think for a second he was playing a cruel prank.

  “You’re kidding, aren’t you?” Ashley said, holding out a shred of hope this was all a joke.

  “I’m serious as a heart attack, Ashley. We’re going to crash,” Jack said, his words causing her heart to skip a beat.

  “You just called me by my name,” Ashley said, with her face now white as a sheet. “We’re going to die!”

  Jack clutched the controls as the plane began making a more pronounced descent toward the landscape below.

  “Actually that’s my line,” Jack responded, trying to ease the tension, a quest that was impossible since the plane was now plummeting from the sky. “And, we won’t die if we can find a place for me to put this thing down.”

  “You mean crash, don’t you?” Ashley cried out in horror as she read between the lines.

  “Let’s call it a controlled crash then,” Jack answered as he now fought with the stiff controls while looking for somewhere to land. “Help me find a road, an open field or anything I can put down in.”

  Had they been flying over the prairies like before, the mission would have been easier. This part of the state, however, had much more uneven terrain and was heavily wooded, giving them fewer opportunities to find an impromptu landing strip.

  “Can’t you get on your radio and do something?” Ashley wondered, still in a panic.

  “And, do what?” Jack asked. “Tell them where to send the Hearse? We’ve got to find somewhere we can put this thing down!”

  Ashley felt the increasing rate of their descent in her belly as Jack banked the plane into the wind hoping to catch a bit of extra loft. She strained her eyes at the ground, searching for a bare spot in what seemed to be an endless sea of treetops and foreboding hills and mountains.

  “I found something!” Jack barked, pointing dead ahead to a green field. “I need you to buckle up tight and duck and cover as soon as we are about to hit - I mean - land.”

  “We’re really going to crash, aren’t we?” Ashley said almost tearfully, fearing she was living her last moments.

  “I’m afraid so, Ashley,” Jack said soberly as he wrestled the plane, lining it up with the field, his use of her name further convincing her they were about to die.

  Ashley prepared herself for impact, curling up in a ball while summoning enough courage to look over the dash toward their destination.

  “What is that?” Ashley called out just before the plane made impact as Jack gave the controls one last tug.

  “CORN!” Jack exclaimed as the plane slammed into the cornfield, tearing through rows of the vegetables like a giant weed whacker.

  MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

  The aircraft seemed to careen on forever through the endless river of corn. Each bump caused Ashley’s head to bounce off the ceiling as Jack continued working the controls, trying to bring the plane to a stop before they plowed out of the corn and into a tree line that was just ahead. The horrific crash, which spanned what seemed like acres, finally came to an abrupt end as the plane found a rut, causing it to slam nose first into the soil before springing back on its wheels.

  The pair sat with their eyes wide, frozen in their seats. Ashley’s fingers dug nearly an inch into the plane’s dash. Blood was trickling from one of her broken nails. They had come to a stop at the very end of the cornfield. Another fifty feet and they would have slammed into a large stand of trees, an impact which would have certainly proven fatal.

  “Are we dead?” Ashley asked with her head still back against the seat.

  “That depends,” Jack replied after a moment, himself still frozen in his seat. “Does Saint Peter ride John Deere?”

  The crash caught the attention of the owner of the cornfield, who was working in a nearby field when the plane whizzed by before tearing through his crop. The old farmer was now coming toward them on his tractor at top speed, something Jack estimated to be about five miles per hour.

  “Are you okay in there?” the farmer called out as he pulled up on the crash site.

  Jack pushed on the pilot’s door. It was stuck from the impact of the crash. Bracing himself against the back of Ashley’s seat, he pounded the door with both feet until it gave way, leaving the pair an avenue of escape from the cockpit which was steadily filling up with smoke. Jack extended his hand back inside the aircraft, helping Ashley from the cramped fuselage.

  “Do you see why I ha
te flying now?” Ashley declared as she stepped onto the ground, resisting the urge to kneel and kiss the dark Texas soil.

  “Thanks, I’m okay, and you?” Jack replied mockingly as he gave Ashley a once-over to ensure she wasn’t bleeding or injured other than bumps and bruises from the crash landing. “We’d both be dead if there was a lesser pilot at the controls, honey.”

  “But we’d be fine and happily on the road right now if we’d just taken a car like normal people do,” Ashley retorted as she brushed herself off.

  Jack stepped away from the plane to survey the wreckage. The plane’s prop was bent, one of its landing gear twisted underneath it and there was an array of dents and rips in the fuselage.

  “We’re not going anywhere in this anytime soon,” Jack declared as he shook his head in disbelief that he had just crashed.

  The farmer, who watched the couple from his perch atop his tractor, seemed amazed the couple was in one piece after tearing a swath through his field.

  “You folks are lucky to be alive, I’d say,” the overall-clad farmer volunteered. “What happened?”

  “The engine just stopped,” Ashley revealed as she stepped over to the tractor.

  “It didn’t just stop,” Jack said coarsely as he forced open the hood of the plane, smoke pouring from the engine compartment. “I just had it serviced this past week. Someone tampered with it. And, yes sir, we’re lucky to be alive because someone out there intended otherwise.”

  Ashley offered her identification to the farmer. The man identified himself as Al Varner, owner of the property for as far as the eye could see.

  “Police officers, are you?” the farmer said, looking out from under the bill of his trucker’s cap, pausing to spit a plug of tobacco he was working in his cheek. “Are y’all working on some kind of big case out in these parts?”

  “Not in these parts, sir,” Jack said as he slammed down the hood of his plane in disgust. “We were heading over to Seymour before this.”