by John A. Daly
Martinez lifted his face to the ceiling. An immense grin returned to it. His eyes glared at the above lights. “The fact that you’re asking me that is only more proof you’re a fraud, Chief Lumbergh. You’re neither a man of great courage, nor a man of great intelligence.” The intern lowered his eyes to meet his questioner before continuing. “You know . . . your brother-in-law looks very cute when he’s asleep.”
Aggression exploded beneath Lumbergh’s skin. He clenched his teeth and lunged forward, using his good hand to grab Martinez around his throat and squeeze it mercilessly. “Where’s Sean?” he screamed as Martinez’s eyes bulged from their sockets and his mouth gaped open. “No more games!”
Lumbergh quickly felt Redick’s arms wrapped around him, trying to pull him off of Martinez.
Lumbergh wouldn’t let go.
“Chief!” Redick yelled.
The deputy standing behind Martinez grabbed onto Lumbergh’s wrist with both of his hands and pried his clenched fingers from Martinez. Lumbergh and Redick stumbled backward into the desk behind them, with Lumbergh nearly falling to the floor.
Martinez coughed and gagged loudly before erupting into hideous, strained laughter.
Redick escorted Lumbergh out into the hallway and back to his office.
“What in the hell are you doing?” he snarled.
“This guy knows where Sean is!” Lumbergh snapped back. “My brother-in-law may already be dead and he’s jerking us around!”
“Listen. If Montoya wanted Sean dead, he would have killed him last night and left his body for you to find. We don’t know what’s going on with Sean, and no one can blame you for being pissed, but we can’t just beat a confession out of this guy!”
Lumbergh’s chest pumped in and out with deep breaths as he stared down the sheriff. “Why not?”
The sheriff ’s eyes widened. “What’s happened to you, Gary? When we first met, you were a disciplined law enforcement professional. As clean as a whistle. You did everything by the book. Everything! You prided yourself on it, and you were a role model for all of us.” Redick shook his head, taking a moment to raise his hand and lift his hat just long enough to scratch his forehead. “Some killer breaks out of a Mexican prison, and he’s been threatening you and your family, and today’s the first I hear about it? If someone like that’s in my county, I need to know about it! Hell, the feds probably need to know about it!” He threw his hands in the air. “What were you going to do, Gary? Have one of your men just shoot this guy on sight and sort out the legalities later?”
Lumbergh spoke quickly. “You don’t know what this family is capable of, Richard. Alvar Montoya was as sick a son of a bitch as you could imagine. Killing was the man’s hobby. You heard what Martinez said just now. We don’t even know what all these brothers did in Mexico. The body count could be in the dozens!”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re not a lawless country like Mexico. We live in the United States!” Redick emphasized. “We have a justice system! I don’t need to tell you this stuff.”
Lumbergh knew the sheriff was correct, and his silence seemed to acknowledge that fact to Redick. Lumbergh also understood that the sheriff had always been more of a politician at heart than an instinctive pursuant of justice. His record meant something to him. If he felt that there was a chance of a case dismissal due to police brutality, he’d probably go as far as personally advising Martinez to lawyer-up.
“Listen,” said Redick. “I’m certain we can get the D.A. to cut this jackass some type of deal in return for his cooperation. If he’s really just Montoya’s stooge, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Lumbergh shot him a wicked glare. “He’s far more than a stooge. He shot one of my officers! What kind of deal do you think they’re going to want to give him?”
“I know that, but Jefferson’s going to be just fine. The paramedics said the bullet passed right through. By now, he’s probably propped up in some hospital bed in Lakeland, flirting with a nurse.”
Lumbergh took exception to the sheriff ’s cavalier attitude toward his officer’s well-being. Redick had clearly never been shot at or forced into the kind of life or death situation that Jefferson had just been through. If he had, he never would have made such a lame joke. Lumbergh worked to calm himself down.
“Richard,” he began in a more mundane tone, “I’m not convinced Martinez is going to roll. He worked in this building for months. What we’re dealing with today was part of a larger plan. There’s clearly some kind of personal stake in this for him. I’m not sure what it is yet, but the man has clearly pledged his loyalty to Montoya.”
The sheriff offered no visual reaction to what the chief said, but Lumbergh hoped his silence meant that he was letting the words bounce off the inside of his head.
“What do you want to do then?” Redick finally asked.
“Don’t process him yet. Don’t put him into the system. Give me some more time with him. Let me figure—”
Before he could continue, both men heard a man’s voice stream out of a black police radio hooked to Redick’s belt. “Sheriff, this is Chester. Come back?”
Redick pulled the radio to his mouth, its long antenna nearly poking him in the eye as he did. He turned up the volume and acknowledged his deputy.
“We’ve got a match on Martinez’s shoeprint at the crime scene, but he wasn’t either of the two people who dragged Coleman out.”
Lumbergh exchanged a confused glance with Redick.
Redick spoke into the radio. “Where did you find it?”
“The tracks on the side of the house that lead into the forest, parallel to the ones Chief Lumbergh left this morning.”
Lumbergh felt his stomach tighten. He reached for the radio. Redick handed it to him.
“Chester, this is Chief Lumbergh. Is it possible that one of the two sets of prints that led in and out of the house also belong to Martinez? At two different times, wearing two different pairs of shoes?”
“I sure don’t think so, Chief,” the deputy replied. “The size is wrong. The weight and stride look wrong, too. I think the smaller set might even belong to a woman. The larger set is from a man larger and heavier than Martinez.”
“What do you think that means?” Redick asked Lumbergh.
Lumbergh thanked the deputy and handed the radio back to Redick. “It means Martinez didn’t help take Sean.”
“He could have been a lookout for the other two,” Redick said. “You know, for headlights coming down the road?”
“No. That wouldn’t make any sense. Martinez wouldn’t have even been able to see the road from that side of the house. And there wasn’t any interaction between him and the other two. None.”
“What are you saying, Gary?” asked Redick. “That he had nothing to do with Sean’s abduction? How can that be?”
Lumbergh didn’t know the answer. His gaze went blank as he tried to piece together what the new information meant. His eyes finally focused back on Redick. “Even if he wasn’t in on it, he saw what happened. He had to have. None of the accusations I’ve been throwing at him since the moment I tossed him into the back of my car has come as a surprise to him,” he told the sheriff. “He’s been play
ing up to it. That crack about Sean being asleep? I never told him that Sean was dragged outside. You know, as opposed to being forced into the car at gunpoint or something. He knows what happened in Sean’s house last night. He saw what happened.”
Redick opened his mouth to respond, but before he could utter a word, both men’s attention was suddenly seized by the racket of the front door of the building being swung open and crashing into the wall behind it.
Lumbergh darted out into the hallway where he saw a breathless Toby Parker stumbling through the doorway. There were bloodstains smeared along his thick winter coat. His eyes were riddled with sheer fear and panic, and when they found Lumbergh, he screamed out.
“Ron Oldhorse is hurt bad, Chief! He’s bleeding. He’s out in my mom’s car! Hurry!”
His words prompted a finally quieted Alex Martinez to erupt into hysterical laughter in the next room. The sound of his deranged glee flooded throughout the entire building as he stomped his feet on the floor.
“This is perfect!” he cried out. “The real hero has arrived!”
Chapter 18
When a blur of light streamed in between Sean’s awakening, narrowly open eyelids, he gasped and quickly spun to his back. Feeling he was still under attack, he instinctively threw a wild punch into the air above him. He connected with nothing.
The abrupt movement was followed by a wave of pain that tore through his skull, and a sense in his stomach that he might need to vomit. He held his forearm in front of his eyes, dimming the penetrating glare from the overhead light.
His throat was dry, as if he hadn’t had a thing to drink in a week. He let out a heaving cough and turned to his side, realizing for the first time that he was no longer in his living room.
It wasn’t hardwood that was sprawled out beneath him, but concrete, gray in color and cold to the touch. In fact, it was so cold and the air around him was so damp that he thought for a moment he was outside among the winter elements.
He wasn’t. Four imposing metal walls surrounded him in a room that was probably twelve-by-twelve feet in size. A tall ceiling stared down. Its two rows of fluorescent lights began to seem less interrogatory and undefined once Sean’s eyes had time to adjust. When clarity prevailed, a staggered collection of fire sprinkler heads and piping that hung from the ceiling came into view. Mounted along the upper area of the back wall was a long metal box that housed four fans. None was moving. A large metal door stood at the front of the room.
Within moments, he realized that he was sitting in an old walk-in freezer. It wasn’t all that different than one he used to move stock in and out of when he worked at a restaurant in Winston for a short time as a teenager. This one, however, was stripped bare other than a thin mattress from a cot that had been tossed on the floor beside him, a large rubber bucket in the corner, and a rectangular, topless cardboard box that sat near the door. The word “peaches” and a brand name were written on the side.
There was no shelving inside. It appeared to have been taken out based on some floor discoloration and long, even scratches along the concrete that led underneath the door.
He could hear no operating sound from the fans at all. The brisk temperature inside the room, however, suggested that they had been running fairly recently. Whatever his captors had in store for him, it wasn’t to freeze him to death. Still, he could see his breath.
He climbed to his knees and then to his feet, taking a moment to let his groggy body find some balance and stability. He hadn’t a clue what had been injected into his body, but whatever it was had worked fast and kept him out for some time. There was a moment when he remembered gaining consciousness earlier, just for a second or two. He was sure he had been crammed in the trunk of a vehicle.
There was a small window embedded in the upper half of the freezer door. It was circular and resembled a porthole on a submarine. It was no more than a foot in diameter. The glass was thick but clear. Sean couldn’t see through it, however, because something was placed over it on the other side—something of dark material. Perhaps a coat.
He reached for the long bar handle of the door, tried to push it out, but found, unsurprisingly, that it was locked. He took a couple of steps back, then lunged forward, slamming the sole of his boot squarely into the handle. The hit was solid and loud, but generated no better results. He repeated the move over and over again, sometimes edging his foot up higher and sometimes lower, looking for a weak point with any amount of give. He found none.
“Fuck!” he grumbled when his leg began to ache.
His gaze crept down to the cardboard box beside him. Sitting inside it were a half-dozen bottled waters, a couple of peaches, a bag of store-bought cookies, and a few slices of pizza that appeared to be leftovers.
“Room service,” he muttered. He peered over his shoulder at the bucket sitting in the corner.
“And the bathroom.”
His regulated his breathing as he carefully assessed his predicament. A dozen thoughts drained from his head like water through a colander. He thought about Jessica, knowing that she was the one who had brought him to the floor with a taser. She was involved in what had happened to Andrew Carson—either directly or indirectly. That was crystal clear. Beyond that, he understood little else. As hard as it was to believe, there was a sinister side to the quiet, attractive woman he had watched for weeks back at the plasma bank. She lived in a world of secrets.
Sean was more than a physical prisoner. He was a prisoner to the stinging uncertainty that clouded his fate. He recognized that the natural inclination of most people would be to feel fear in such a situation, but all he felt was anger. He was angry that he let himself be taken from his home. He was angry that his captors had the gall to toy with him so dangerously.
“Jessica!” he shouted. He savagely slammed his fist against the door. “Get over here! I know you and your asshole boyfriend are out there!” The truth was that Sean didn’t know that, but as he’d once learned from an episode of The Fall Guy, it was best, even in weakness, to exude awareness and a sense that you’re holding some cards. “Jessica!”
He pressed the side of his head up against the small window that still hosted a trace of frost. He listened carefully for movement while angling his eyes to try and see past the edge of whatever material was covering the window from the other side. He came up empty on both ends.
He paced the room with his hands on his hips, controlling his breathing and calming himself down. He eyed the pipes that lined the ceiling and thought about trying to dislodge one of them to use as a possible weapon. He couldn’t quite reach them, however, and they were too narrow and pressed too tightly to the ceiling for him to jump up and hang from one until his weight brought it down.
He retrieved the bucket from the corner of the room and flipped it upside down. He steadied his weight on top of it, careful not to step in the center and risk an implosion. Some lingering grogginess worked against his sense of balance but he managed to stay upright.
The pipes were thin enough that he couldn’t hook his thick fingers around them well with how little room there was between them and the ceiling. He impulsively searched his pockets, looking for his keys to try to use one as a miniature crowbar. They were missing. His pockets had been emptied and his belt had even been remo
ved. This kept his pants low around his waist, being that he had lost some weight in recent months. He found himself repeatedly tugging them up while he stood on the bucket.
When it became clear that he was getting nowhere, he dropped back down to the floor. He circled to the side of the freezer evaporator that hosted the row of fans. There, he saw another pipe, this one copper, leading out from the wall. It was likely protecting the electrical wiring used to power the machine.
The pipe was as thin as those that lined the ceiling, but its horizontal mount left some space between it and the ceiling. The pipe wasn’t long, possibly a foot in length. It wasn’t the ideal weapon, but he believed that he might be able to use the end of it to smash through the glass of the window on the door.
He leapt into the air and wrapped both hands around the pipe. He dangled from it before realizing that it would take more than his dead weight to pull it down. He wildly yanked on it, thrusting his hips and legs up and down to try to work it loose. He growled before planting his feet on the wall beside him and, using his newfound leverage, leaned back and pulled. He felt the pipe bend. After a few more seconds, the end that entered the wall finally snapped. Sparks flew as he fell to the floor. He managed to land on his feet before stumbling backwards to his butt. A bare, insulated electrical wire was left hanging from the wall while the pipe dangled loosely from the evaporator.
He stood up and twisted the pipe counter-clockwise until the strand of metal that had kept it attached to the evaporator snapped.
He grinned. When he turned to face the door, however, his hope quickly vanished.
Standing in the now open doorway was the man who had broken through the back door of Sean’s home. He held a black revolver in his hand and it was pointed directly at Sean. A thin strip of duct tape bound his glasses together at the center and there was deep bruising and some swelling under his eyes. A gauze bandage crossed the bridge of his nose. They were all battle marks from his earlier altercation with Sean. Having switched out of his black attire, he was now wearing a navy-blue sweatshirt, jeans, and tennis shoes.
