“Yeah, but that’s not who were going to see right now.”
She smiled a little, giving John a subtle nod as if to say, nicely done. Apparently, she was impressed enough with him to answer his question, after all they would be arriving at the school in another thirty minutes and they’d find out anyway.
“We got a lead on someone who used to bully Paul Dushku when he was still a student.”
“Any complaints filed?” John asked, curious as to why she’d waited until today to act on the tip.
“None. But we’ve got corroborating testimony from several of Dushku’s friends and his mother. Might be nothing, but I want to take a look at him.”
John was about to ask the boy’s name, the name which would have set alarm bells off in his head, but at that moment the radio cracked to life and he recognized McLeary’s voice instantly.
“Base to sixty-eight, come in.”
John grabbed the handset and keyed in, “Sixty-eight to Base, go ahead.”
“Yeah John,” there was a pause during which John lifted his foot off the gas pedal. His instincts told him that something had or was about to happen.
“I need you to give me a ten-twenty one.”
“Copy that, stand-by.”
John veered off onto the shoulder and was already pressing the speed dial preset on his cell phone before the patrol car had come to a complete stop. McLeary started talking the moment he answered the phone. “John, we have a . . . problem, what’s your twenty?”
“I’m on the forty, en route to the high-school for more interviews.”
“Turn the car around,” McLeary said with such a tone of severity that John knew what was happening before he heard another word. “I know you’re not going to believe this, and there’s a good chance that it’s bullshit . . . ”
“I’m listening.”
“I need you to get out to the new subdivision as fast as you can. But listen, until we know what were dealing with, you need to keep it low key, that’s why I haven’t put the call out over the radio yet.”
John repeated the instructions, “Understood.”
McLeary was painfully aware that ‘the Cannon Broad’ was in the car with him and keeping her in the dark was an impossibility. “We may have another one-eighty-seven out on the construction site, I need you to get out there and take a look.”
John turned the patrol car around and headed west, back in the direction they’d just come from, past Main Street and continued out towards the outskirts of town. The subdivisions were in the first of four stages of development, each stage consisting of two hundred and fifty houses, each one built and owned by Foster Harrington.
John spotted a large group of men in hard hats, each wearing heavy boots and reflective vests, standing around a large piece of equipment. All heads turned in their direction as the patrol car rolled up the street.
“What the hell is going on here?” Cannon said, frantically typing out an SOS on her phone, probably informing the rest of her team about what was happening.
They exited the patrol car and approached the group of men. They were strangely silent and many of them wore strange expressions and avoided eye contact with them. No one wanted to be the one to deliver the news.
“What’s going on guys?” Sarah asked, but the men nearest her didn’t answer, instead they shrugged and motioned over to the big mixing bowl they seemed to have congregated around.
The hard hats parted before them, opening a path to the machine. Standing around ten feet high, perched on a rotisserie stand, the large mixer had a small stair case built beside it, dozens of empty bags of cement mix were scattered around and the paper crunched under their feet, eerily similar to the leaves out in the reservoir trails.
Finally, a man wearing a blue hard hat spoke up. He appeared to be a foreman of some kind, all he could think of to say was, “We’re not sure if it’s real or what.”
John started to climb the steps, but Cannon slipped past him, darting up the stairs, her well-rounded ass in his face for a moment. He followed her up and watched as she leaned over the top of the mixer, her fingertips grasping the concave opening at the top. She lay on the mixer for almost a minute before her voice echoed out of the drum, “Hotshot, come look at this.”
John joined her, lying down beside her, so close that he could feel her warmth through his uniform. It had been a long time since he’d been that close to a woman. The morning sun cast a crooked shadow across the opening but inside it was pitch black. John took the flashlight off his duty belt and shone it inside the mixer.
Just below the opening was a cross member, from the center of which a scythe shaped implement. It was filled more than half way and the concrete inside was already rock solid. Except for where the mixing arm penetrated the center, there were two other objects raised off the even surface. One couldn’t have been more recognizable; it was the sole of a work boot. The second object was harder to identify because everything in the mixer was painted uniform gray by the concrete, it appeared to be a stump of some kind, possibly a tree-branch.
“What do you think it is?” Sarah asked.
“Hard to say,” John admitted. “Might be nothing.”
“If not for the boot.”
“Right, except for the boot.”
“Think there’s a foot in it?”
John prayed that there wasn’t but didn’t say so out loud. He stood up and dusted himself off and motioned for Doug to join them on the platform. Aware that more than forty construction workers were watching their every move, he leaned over and whispered into his partner’s ear and hated himself for having to break the news to him. “Doug, don’t react to what I’m going to tell you, nod if you understand.”
Doug nodded.
“I think we may have another body here, but we’re not sure. With me so far?”
Nod.
“We might just be looking at a sick practical joke here, but we don’t know, okay?”
Nod.
John didn’t believe a word he was saying. He knew perfectly well that he wasn’t looking at any mannequin any more than Tanya Sacco had been the day she’d found Paul Dushku at the reservoir. The idea that this could be something similar to the kids in JAWS who thought it’d be funny to strap on a cardboard fin and go snorkeling, was a pipe dream.
“Alright then, what we need to do is to get these people as far back as possible. You and I are going to set up a perimeter, and we’re going to call in Brooks and Chavez to help us but don’t use the radio. Any questions?”
Doug took it all in like he was preparing to run an obstacle course, in some ways, he was. “Yeah John,” he nodded. “I got you.”
“Good. Go.”
John gave him a pat on the back and watched him walk calmly down the steps towards the waiting men. He was already holding his hands up passively, assuring them that there was nothing to be concerned about, and at the same time that they needed to either go on with their work or move back.
“How the hell am I supposed to get him out of there?” Sarah asked, possibly to herself.
“Jack hammer?” John suggested.
Some of the hard hats were already on their cell phones, already spilling the news to their wives and friends. The whole thing was going to blow up right in their faces and nothing they did could stop it. And whether he liked it or not, John was right back in the middle of it.
Twenty-four
Mark took the long way out to Harrington Manor, opting for the winding route through farm country rather than the straight shot down the highway. A kid walking along the side of the highway during school hours attracted more attention than he wanted to, it turned out that he would have been better off being around people. Walking along the gravel shoulder, inches from passing pick-ups and big semis, Mark didn’t notice when a truck pulled up behind him. But when he heard the tires grind to a halt, he spun around and instantly recognized Mike’s pickup truck. Randy sprang from the driver’s side, coming at him at a dead run with Mike
and Lisa following close behind. Mark burst into a sprint, tearing down the road, his heart racing, he ran as if his life depended on it. Their footsteps quickly faded behind him, which was bad news because it meant they went back for the truck. Sure enough, about a minute later he heard it coming.
Without bothering to look back, he veered off the shoulder and leapt over the drainage ditch before heading for the farmer’s field bordered with a crude wire fence.
Mark had never seen a cattle fence before.
The variety of cattle he’d seen in Toronto was limited to the packaged kind found in his freezer. He had no idea as he ran for the fence, hearing the truck screech to a halt behind him, that the seemingly harmless wire fence was about to end the chase. He figured he had a good fifty yards on his pursuers and he thought as long as he kept running at that pace, they’d never catch him. The damned thing was only about four feet in height, which made him wonder why in God’s name the cows didn’t just jump over it. He kept wondering that right up until the moment when he reached out and grabbed the top wire on the fence and an explosion of white-hot agony temporarily blinded him. He felt a massive blow to the chest and a brief moment he thought he’d been shot. His hands remained locked onto the top wire in a death grip for several seconds before Mark found himself falling backward, arms flailing.
He hit the ground flat on his back, his chest pounding as if he’d been punched from the inside. He had a taste in his mouth like when he’d put his tongue on a nine-volt battery on a dare as a kid and before he could even consider sitting upright, Randy was standing over him.
“Look who it is,” he said, panting from the run. “Maybe I didn’t make myself clear yesterday, you’re not fucking welcome here, got it faggot? So you and your pig dad should just pack your shit and get out of here before I bring a shit storm down on you that you’ll NEVER forget.”
A pair of massive fists grabbed him by the neck, choking him with his own shirt collar. Mark tried to respond, but all that came out of him was gurgling noises. The hands slammed him back onto the ground.
Mike chimed in, “Look at this Randy, I think he wants to suck your dick! Bet this isn’t the first time you’ve had a bunch of dudes standing around you, is it . . . cocksucker?”
Mark gurgled some more, mumbling something that sounded like ‘Pleeeesssh’ but before he could say more, a flurry of kicks assailed him from every direction. All he could do to protect himself was curl up in a ball. He managed to protect his head but the kicks shifted to his legs and torso. After a sharp shot to the kidneys, he began to taste blood in his mouth and he could feel himself losing consciousness. He couldn’t say who was kicking him or where, but one foot with a hard heel seemed to be stomping him, rather than kicking him. He assumed that one was Lisa but at that point, it didn’t really matter.
All he could do was lie there and take it. After what felt like several minutes, he felt himself drift off.
- - -
Sarah Cannon stared at the ringing phone in her hand and wondered what she would say. The number on the call display belonged to her boss, Chief Inspector Barry Devaney. It had been just five minutes since she’d alerted her team, more than enough time for Lewinski to backdoor her by calling it in. Sarah swiped the screen with her thumb and held the phone up to her ear and tried to sound calm, “Cannon.”
“What the hell is going on out there?” Devaney’s voice exploded through the speaker.
“We may have another one-eighty-seven, sir.”
“Well no shit, detective. Were you planning on telling anyone?”
“We don’t even know what we have yet, sir. We could be looking at a prank but it’s difficult to tell. We need to get a crew out here to bust the thing open before we can say what’s in it.”
“How can you not tell if it’s a body?”
“Sir, it’s encased in concrete. I didn’t want to call in the cavalry until we were sure.”
Devaney let out an exasperated sigh, “Oh for fuck’s sake.”
Sarah closed her eyes and resisted the temptation to tell him to screw himself. Devaney, the department and Lewinski could all go screw themselves as far as she was concerned. Anything she said at that moment would be wrong and she knew it, so she said nothing instead. She was tired of meeting resistance at every turn, especially since it always seemed to be coming only from the men around her.
She needed to focus on the task at hand and any energy wasted on senseless pissing contests like this was a waste of time and resources. If it did turn out to be a body, that would mean that someone had forced another human being into the cement mixer, dumped in dozens of bags of concrete, tossed in a hose from the adjacent water tower and began filling it up. Then, as if that wasn’t gruesome enough, the son of a bitch had started the mixer. She hoped . . . prayed, that their victim was dead before that happened, but given what was done to Paul Dushku, she didn’t have high hopes for that.
“Okay,” Devaney said finally, “since you seem unable or unwilling to, I’m going to make the call. I’ll fly in the forensics guys with a couple of sledgehammers and some UNI’s to help you control the town. If this turns out to be victim number two, you’re going to need them.”
“Yes sir.”
“Assuming that we are looking at a series, where are you on finding this guy?”
It was the question that Sarah had been dreading as the wrong answer could end her involvement in the case, instantly. She chose her words carefully and tried hard not to sound scared, meanwhile, she was about to throw up.
“Our interviews have yielded a few leads. I was on my way to follow up on one of them when Ratcliff PD got the call. There’s a kid, Randy Boyd, he’s only eighteen but he’s already got a pretty sizeable jacket.”
There was another long pause. Clearly he was trying to decide whether or not to yank her from the case but that was a big decision. To do so too early would be to admit failure in assigning her there in the first place while leaving her in too long would make him look incompetent when he finally DID pull her out. He was quite literally damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.
“I want progress reports,” he said finally. “I want a blow by blow of what in the hell . . . just keep me updated.”
The call was ended before Sarah could respond. She couldn’t have said anything that would have helped, even if she had the time. As the big black SUV arrived on the construction site followed by two more Ratcliff patrol cars, Sarah put the rest of it out of her mind. At that moment, she had a job to do.
Twenty-five
Mark found himself on the roof of the old high-school. He felt warm and content, as if out of all the places in the universe that his body could occupy, he was in the exact spot where he belonged. The rifle cradled against his chest was cool and soothing and through the scope he saw the world with a clarity his own eyes had never known. Below him a wall of fire curved into an arch that encompassed the entire school. Inside the flames, the distinctive form of human bodies writhed and danced. Their faces were a mass of twisted agony and supplication. They were all down there, every person who had ever hurt him.
There was ample space between the flame and the building so that they could have removed themselves from the inferno, but they did not dare. That was the worst torture of all, that they could have stepped away from the flames that were consuming them, but to do so would have invited a killing blow from Mark’s rifle.
His eyes blinked open and he realized he wasn’t on the roof of the school, nor was he lying on the grass by that stupid cattle fence that had nearly killed him. He was lying on a single sized bed in a small windowless room. Beside him a brass lamp sat on an oak nightstand and a small dresser stood beside the open door. He struggled to focus his vision beyond the doorway into the room beyond, but his glasses, the nerdy round ones he’d been forced to wear after losing his good pair in the woods, were no where to be seen.
Water trickled down the sides of his forehead from the wet cloth someone had placed there. Mark remov
ed it, wondering who had put it there and where he was. The room seemed vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn’t put his finger on why he thought so. He closed his eyes and tried to recall the events of that afternoon and found he could remember everything right up to the point when he was on the ground being kicked, after that, there was nothing.
Mark tried to sit up on the small bed but his guts felt like they’d been torn out. He pushed down the duvet that was covering him and was shocked to see that he was completely naked and covered with massive ugly looking purple bruises. Just then, a figure stepped into the open door way of the small room and Mark immediately recognized the man, and thereby, his current location.
“Mr. Harrington?”
“How are you feeling, Mark?” he said, stepping forward and placing a massive hand on Mark’s forehead.
Mark quickly pulled the duvet up to his chin and lied back down on the bed, “Where are my clothes?”
“Sorry to say, but you weren’t wearing any. Don’t worry, I’ll get you some of Taylor’s and you’ll be right as rain again.”
Harrington was close enough to him that Mark could see his face clearly, and he seemed to be genuinely concerned for him. There was kind of a sad look in his eyes that almost made Mark break into tears. He squeezed his eyes shut against them and took several deep breaths.
“How did I get here?”
“A man called me, a farmer. He told me what had happened to you and said you asked him to call my number, well, Taylor’s number. He wasn’t in so I went down there and collected you.”
“Oh,” Mark said, painfully aware that he was naked under the blanket.
“You kind of flipped out when I said I wanted to take you to the hospital. I didn’t know if you were bleeding internally or what, so I had to give you a once over just for my own piece of mind. You seem to be okay, just banged up pretty good.”
The explanation made sense to Mark. He couldn’t blame the man for wanting to make sure he wasn’t dying before bringing him back to his house. How bad would that have looked if he’d done that and Mark had died of a stroke or something?
Rage: The Reckoning Page 20
