Gone South (A Butterscotch Jones Mystery Book 3)

by Melanie Jackson

  We heard the elevator ding and both jumped. It was almost five in the morning. Maybe it was some neighbor coming off a night shift, but maybe not.

  We hurried back to the living room. Chuck tossed me my coat and tugged his own jacket off the coat tree. He opened the closet and pulled out a pistol. He checked that it was loaded.

  “The fire escape,” he said softly. “Let’s go. We’ll get clear and then decide what to do.”

  “You’ve got your phone? The keys?”

  “Yes.”

  The air was cold enough to fog our breath and the light outside the window bright enough to read by, which was convenient but not discreet for a getaway. Though we were lit up like a Broadway kiosk, parts of the parking lot were in shadow. I prayed nothing dangerous was lurking in the pockets of darkness.

  Chuck reached around me and did something with a latch, and a metal ladder telescoped down almost to the ground. I began scrambling down the aluminum stairs. Chuck was right behind me, almost stepping on my hands.

  Inside, I heard a knock on the door.

  * * *

  Agent Desoto knocked on the front door of Inspector Goodhead’s Winnipeg condo. There was no answer, though at five in the morning one could expect a person to be at home even if not in the best of humor.

  “Shall I kick the door down?” Reese asked from behind.

  “Good thinking, numb-nuts,” Dawson muttered. “That’ll only wake up everyone on the floor.”

  Desoto reached out a hand and tried the doorknob. The door was unlocked and opened easily to reveal a dark room beyond. He stepped through the doorway and switched on a light. It appeared there was no one in the room, though there were signs of a struggle.

  Then the agent heard moaning coming from behind the desk.

  “Check it out,” he said, signaling to his two agents.

  Reese and Dawson drew their weapons and each stepped around an end of the large desk. They found a man lying on the floor next to a damaged portable. The man was semiconscious and wearing latex gloves. Dawson holstered his firearm and bent to attend to the fallen figure. His first move was to remove the gun in his holster.

  “No ID but he has lockpicks.”

  “Get a photo of him and send it off. Let’s see if we can get a match.” There was no doubt in his mind that this was a hired thug. But hired by whom? He’d love to question the intruder, but there were just too many sensitive toes loitering around this case to take him in.

  “Don’t leave any fingerprints,” he added for Reese’s benefit as the idiot was reaching for an open desk drawer.

  Though it was probably pointless, Desoto drew his own weapon and cautiously moved farther into the apartment, glancing quickly at the kitchen and then the empty bedroom. The covers were kicked onto the floor, but that indicated haste and not a fight.

  A breeze was blowing through the curtains covering an open window at the end of the living room. Desoto pulled the curtains aside to reveal a fire escape leading down to the parking lot behind the complex. He watched as a man and woman ran across the pavement and climbed into a Range Rover then sped away. There was enough light to see the halo of red caused by the woman’s long hair. Thirty seconds later, another vehicle came to life and started after the couple. The license on the Escalade was obscured by mud.

  “Reese, Dawson, we’re done here,” Desoto barked. “Take the gun but leave the man. We’ll send it back for a ballistics check.”

  “We aren’t going to arrest him?” Reese asked.

  “We are Americans in Canada. We have no authority to arrest anyone. We are also trespassing in a police officer’s private residence.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  The three men stepped back into the hall outside the apartment. Once there, Desoto removed a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped the light switch, and then used it to polish the doorknob.

  “Dawson, I want you to get on the horn and find us a flight to McIntyre’s Gulch,” Desoto ordered as they retreated to the elevator. He used his handkerchief to press the call button. “It’ll have to be something small and private—and probably damned expensive—but we need it now. Wake up whomever you have to.”

  “I already have a name.” Dawson was pleased with himself. “There’s only one pilot who flies there regularly.”

  “Is his name Jones or McIntyre?” Desoto asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Which?”

  “Both.”

  “We’re headed for hillbilly hell,” Reese muttered.

  Desoto didn’t disagree, but it was time to meet the elusive Butterscotch Jones. That is if she lived long enough to make it back to her home.

  Chapter 8

  I was having an inner debate. On the one hand, I clearly needed help, at least until I got to the Gulch. I had no car, no gun, and no friends to shelter me. But on the other, I didn’t want Chuck catching any bullets meant for me. That he was there and still wanting to aid me made me grateful but also pissed me off, and though it was a waste of time, I wished my father wasn’t so far away so I could go back to the hospital and shoot him myself.

  “So, we are sure that the intruder was after something and not there to kill or rob us?” Chuck said as he pulled out of the parking lot. It was nice of him to say “us” when really the killer just wanted me.

  I turned in my seat and looked out the back window. There was another car on the road but it was hanging back and in the dark I couldn’t make out what it was. Probably I was being paranoid, but one of us needed to be.

  “I think so,” I said, settling into my seat. “But I don’t know what they could want. He didn’t tell me anything. Didn’t give me anything. I never even touched the old.…”

  I stopped, remembering how his fingers had brushed my pocket when I had jerked my own hand away. My father had always been a master of sleight of hand, a necessary skill if you cheated at cards.

  “Damn it.” I reached into my left coat pocket and found something hard and rectangular hiding among the rubber bands, tissue, and hard candy. It was about a half inch wide and an inch and a half long.

  “What?” Chuck asked. “Did you find something?”

  I moved the plastic thing in my hand up to the dash where it caught the light of a passing street lamp.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A USB memory stick. For a computer.” Chuck sounded excited.

  Chuck’s portable computer had been on his desk near where I found the thug with the scar.

  “I guess we know what he was looking for on your desk. I wonder what’s on it.”

  “Me too. I mean, it could be anything. By anything, I mean something really important. So, I have a plan. I’m going to get you to Seven Forks and leave you with Anatoli, then I am taking the memory stick back to headquarters. This is probably something vital. Maybe career making. I’ll have to think of some way to explain how I got it. Maybe the intruder dropped it during the struggle.”

  That Chuck wanted to make his career came as a bit of a surprise. He had been sounding awfully disenchanted.

  “Okay. I’ll be glad to be rid of it.” I turned in my seat again and looked back. “Do you think that car is following us?”

  “Yes, but it’s the main road to the highway.”

  “Oh.” I tried to relax. “May I have your phone?”

  Chuck pulled it out of his coat pocket and handed it over.

  “I wish I’d thought to charge it, not that there is much of a signal out here,” he said while I dialed Big John.

  My mind was on other things. Our mayor wasn’t going to be happy about the early morning call.

  “Be careful what you say,” Chuck reminded me. “Others may still be listening.”

  The phone only made it through half a ringtone before it was picked up. It turned out that Big John was up already and waiting for me to check in.

  We of the Gulch have learned that television and telephones are not among the necessities of life at least ninety-nine percent of the time. And when
you really need either, they can be had at the pub. My neighbors had been dropping in since I left, watching the news, hoping to hear nothing about an arrest at the border. As a social service, Big John had taken to leaving the TV on all the time and that was how my friends knew before I did that my father was dead. The strange killing at the hospital had made the news. There was no mention made of Chuck or me, but the coincidence was too large to ignore.

  I wasn’t shocked to hear this bulletin relayed from the mayor, but still it gave me a chill. Whatever my father had been doing down in the States, it was enough to get him murdered and to send a killer across the border to chase after me.

  “The Wings is here,” Big John said. “Should I send him up to Winnipeg to collect you? You’d be safer here, eh?”

  It would take him about two hours to get here. If he was fueled up. If he was sober. Did we want to wait that long? How soon would the body be discovered—and by whom?

  “No. We’re in the Range Rover. We’ll try for Seven Forks. If he can, have the Wings meet us there tomorrow. Big John,” I paused; cell phones are not private and this being Chuck’s phone, there truly could be listeners. “Sasha is with you, isn’t he?”

  Sasha was Big John’s son-in-law. He had also once been known as the Butcher of Minsk. I felt Chuck look my way.

  “He’s here. Misha is visiting too. Right now, Anatoli, Alexei, and Ivan are at their cabin at Seven Forks. They’d be pleased if you stopped in. I could let them know to expect you.”

  “That’s good, and we may do that. Just be sure Sasha and Misha stay around the Gulch until I get back.”

  “Will do. It’s like that then, is it?” He meant organized crime as opposed to the police.

  “Yeah, different flavor but the same recipe. Haven’t seen any signs of other parties following us, but it’s early days yet.”

  Big John digested this.

  “Let them come. It might be best to take care of this problem ourselves, eh?”

  I don’t want you to think that because many Gulchers don’t have flush toilets that they are godless savages. Though there are a few who are godless and a couple who might turn savage if you emptied their stills, insulted the Manitoba Junior Hockey League, or threatened their neighbors. Still, we are a family and look after our own. Even if it means doing the hard things.

  “Do whatever you think best to protect everyone. Give my love to the Flowers and take care all of you.”

  I folded the phone. Again I checked the back window. The sun was up enough to see that the car behind us was a black Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows. It screamed BAD GUYS! But Chuck didn’t seem upset by their presence so I decided to not mention it again.

  “I hate mornings that start this early. It’s never a good sign of things to come,” Chuck said suddenly.

  “Especially when the first act of the day is to assault an intruder with a laptop.” I sighed. “We’ll feel better after coffee.”

  Better but nowhere near normal.

  “Is anyplace open this early?”

  “Fortunately, yes. And the coffee is actually good.”

  I smiled at Chuck and checked the back window. I was wondering if the Escalade was going to stop for coffee too. If it did, we were going to have to test Chuck’s evasive driving skills. We didn’t need anyone following us to Seven Forks.

  * * *

  A man wearing dark clothes and latex gloves came stumbling out onto the sidewalk from the front door of the condominium complex. He was holding both hands to his head, which was still bleeding from serious blunt trauma to the face. His vision was a bit blurry, but he was determined to once more give chase to his quarry.

  Behind his back, his squad of handpicked assassins referred to him by his old street name, Jimmy Nine Toes. To his face they called him Mr. James. They all agreed that he was an animal, someone to be both feared and respected.

  Mr. James staggered to the curb just as the second of two black Cadillac Escalade SUVs came screeching to a halt before him. He reached out a hand to steady himself against the side of the vehicle as the doors popped open and his men poured out to secure the scene.

  “What’s the status, Mr. James?” one of his enforcers asked.

  “They got away.”

  “They got away? The boss isn’t going to be happy to hear about that.”

  Mr. James responded to the implied criticism with a quick backhand to the insolent man’s face. The target of this fury almost retaliated before checking his own hand and glaring back at his boss. People got dead when Jimmy was pissed off.

  Mr. James shouldered the man aside to slip inside the backseat of the Escalade. There he reached amongst the equipment stored in the back of the vehicle to retrieve a small electronic device. He switched the device on and almost purred in response to the answering blip. It was working. It wouldn’t matter if Moose lost the Rover.

  Mr. James was thankful that he’d taken the time to find the Mountie’s Range Rover, parked out back, and attach a tracking device to the inside of the rear bumper before going inside. Now his prey could run but they could not hide even in the wilderness. He had prepared for this eventuality once he learned how remote the Gulch was.

  “Let’s go,” Jimmy Nine Toes barked.

  “Which way?” the driver asked as he climbed behind the wheel.

  “West,” Jimmy replied.

  As the Escalade pulled away from the curb to give chase, the driver saw Mr. James smile, probably thinking about what he was going to do with the Mountie and the girl when he got his hands on them.

  * * *

  We pulled into a drive-thru at the city limits and Chuck ordered coffee. The Escalade hadn’t followed us, but when we pulled back out into the street, there were two thug-mobiles following close behind. There were a few other cars as well, but they were headed into the city instead of out.

  “Chuck.”

  “I see them.” Chuck pulled out his phone. “Damn, the batteries are gone.”

  “We could turn back. Maybe go to police headquarters.”

  “You think they’ll let us?”

  No, not really. I sighed and refastened my seatbelt. I hoped the cups stayed in their cup holders.

  Rain began to fall, just a few fat drops, but I wasn’t thrilled to see it. It didn’t take much rain to make the dirt roads around Seven Forks impassable.

  “We can’t lose them on the highway.” Chuck was thinking out loud.

  “But off-road?”

  “Out there, traction counts more than speed. They have mass but we have maneuverability.”

  “Let me have your gun,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “You’re driving. If things get nasty I’ll have to be the one to shoot back.” I didn’t add that I was probably the better shot in that kind of situation. Chuck practiced with stationary targets at a shooting range. Though I hated hunting, I sometimes had to deal with things that moved fast in bad weather.

  “You’d do that?”

  “In a heartbeat.” I didn’t like shooting animals but I had no problem shooting vehicles.

  Chuck reached the same conclusion I had and handed over his service revolver. He had checked before we left the apartment but I opened it again. It was fully loaded.

  “You handle yourself well,” Chuck said, checking his mirrors. He was getting ready to exit the highway and not in an approved manner.

  “I don’t like guns but I’m not afraid of them.”

  “You can find the way if we leave the road and head into the back country?”

  “Of course. I’d prefer it.”

  “I’m glad one of us is confident that this is a good idea.”

  I am afraid of jails, afraid of strangers who can put me in jails. Or kill me. But I am not afraid of the forest. Show reasonable respect for its denizens, know your terrain, and you’ll be okay. Mostly. Though I wished like anything that we had Max along if we were going to be spending time in the woods at night.

  The Escalades didn’t like our
leaving the tarmac and as I had feared, they started shooting the moment that it looked like we would get away. There were no cars in either direction so no one impartial to call for help.

  I didn’t shoot back until we reached a band of trees that offered cover and they somehow managed to hit a tire. We wouldn’t make it far traveling on a flat and we couldn’t very well stop to change it. Our pursuers had to be disabled so we could escape on foot.

  Chuck had his hands full, controlling the car that was trying to pull left, so I rolled down the window, released my seatbelt, and then swung myself so I was sitting in the window opening.

  “Butterscotch!”

  I laid my right arm on the top of the Rover and sighted on the nearest Escalade. The ground was bumpy, so it was nothing short of a miracle that I managed to eventually shatter the windshield. Fortunately, the driver panicked and slewed sideways and the second Escalade T-boned it. It wasn’t a fatal crash, but it would slow them down.

  Unfortunately, we only had one bullet left.

  “Get us as close to the riverbed as you can,” I said. “It will be easier to walk the banks than push through the undergrowth.”

  Chuck didn’t say anything. His face was pale but he was calm. I guess getting shot at wasn’t as scary as smuggling a girlfriend across the US border. Also, as I had reason to know, Chuck is good in a crisis.

  Though the batteries were dead, we took the phone, the gun with one bullet, a car blanket, and a survival/first aid kit Chuck kept in the back.

  “The rods?” he asked.

  “No. I don’t need them.”