Jack of Spades

by Diane Capri

  “Yeah,” Gaspar sighed. Not that he was giving up on his point about Finlay forever. Not a chance. “I’ll make it quick. I sent arrest records and court files on Jake Reacher. Three are juvenile arrests for assault. All pled down to lesser charges. There was some jail time involved, but the records are sealed because of his age. Two of the files are arrests after he became an adult, but the charges were dropped both times.”

  “Sounds like the kid’s got a knack for finding trouble,” Kim said thoughtfully. “Also sounds like he’s displayed some skill at getting himself out of trouble.”

  “Like my father used to say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Gaspar replied. “But you be careful around him, Otto. He’s twice your size and a lot less patient. Hot-headed, too.”

  “Okay. Let me know if you find anything else.” She paused as a new idea popped into her head. “Can you find out what kind of vehicle Jake is driving? If it’s newer, we might be able to hack it’s systems and locate him.”

  “Yeah, I can handle that,” Gaspar replied. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m not sure. San Diego in the morning, probably. Old Man Reacher says both Jack and Jake were headed that way.” She glanced at the SUV and saw the passenger door standing open. The flashers were blinking. Smithers had done everything but blast the horn to get her attention. “I’ve gotta run. Talk later.”

  She ended the call, dropped the phone into her pocket, and shuffled as fast as she dared toward the SUV.

  “Close the door,” Smithers said when she’d climbed aboard and snapped her seatbelt into place. “My team found something. I need to get out there before the storm gets worse. Want me to drop you at the inn?”

  “What did they find? More bodies?”

  He nodded. “Two more victims.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Saturday, February 26

  4:45 p.m.

  Laconia, New Hampshire

  Smithers took the last turn leaving town and toward the motel site, away from the Laconia police station where his team had been headquartered for the past two weeks.

  Kim said, “All nine of the previous victims were found within a mile of the motel. Did they do a wider ground search today?”

  Smithers shook his head. “A black bear alerted them to the location in the woods, about a mile off the two-track. They saw the bear first and then located the bodies with a drone.”

  “Lucky break.”

  “Yeah. Otherwise, what’s left of these two victims would probably have been buried tonight and stayed buried until Spring. We might never have found them at all.”

  Kim nodded, thinking things through. “Only one bear?”

  “So far. There’s more in the vicinity. Bears don’t generally travel in packs, but that doesn’t mean they’ll show up only one at a time,” Smithers said. “Why are you so interested? Still think one of the victims could be Jack Reacher?”

  Kim remained silent.

  He drove along the county road at a rapid rate of speed too fast for the driving conditions. The blizzard had picked up strength. Wind and snow buffeted the big vehicle on all sides. At least a few inches of new accumulation blanketed the ground. The windshield was covered with icy snowmelt, even with the defroster blasting and the wipers slapping time.

  Kim cinched her seatbelt tighter and held onto the armrest as the vehicle bounced and swayed. “How’d they get rid of the bear? We’ve got black bears in Michigan. They don’t hunt humans, but they definitely can be deadly. Especially if humans interfere with their feeding ground.”

  “They didn’t find the bodies until about half an hour ago. They chased the bear off using flare guns before they realized he was feeding or that he was possibly feeding on human remains. But he made it pretty clear he didn’t want to go. And they figure he’ll be back tonight.” Smithers swiped one of his big palms over his face. “My team is working on getting the bodies out of there before he comes back. I called Amos. She and a deputy are on their way with a couple of snowmobiles. That’s the only way we’re going to get in and out of those woods before Spring.”

  He didn’t say it, but Kim knew the working conditions had to be brutal. Lifting bodies and carrying them more than a mile through the deep snow and the dense woods would be a daunting task under the best of circumstances. There was no way to get electricity back in there without a generator. Battery operated lights and heaters were probably not in the cards tonight, either. All of that would need to wait for daylight.

  Tonight, the area would be cold, dark, windy, and with the bear involved, extremely dangerous. Bears were fast. Strong. They could do serious damage to members of the team before anyone could stop them. Collecting evidence safely, or at all, would be close to impossible.

  But if they waited until conditions improved, the evidence might well be gone. Only one choice.

  “Have you got helos on the way?” she asked. Helicopters would have search and rescue equipment. Better lights. Additional crew. If the ground crew could load the bodies onto the lift systems, the helos could raise them out of the trees and away from hazards.

  He shook his head. “I checked. Flight conditions won’t permit them to get in there tonight. If we had live victims, I’d make the request anyway. But we can’t ask them to risk their lives for evidence retrieval tonight. We’re on our own.”

  He slowed the SUV and turned onto the two-track leading toward the motel, and then slowed even more. He’d been driving with his headlights on the whole way, but now they were essential. The dense forest crowded out the last of the daylight.

  Which meant the bear was likely on the prowl.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Saturday, February 26

  5:30 p.m.

  Laconia, New Hampshire

  Smithers navigated the SUV around a curve and came to a stop twenty feet behind a Laconia P.D. Ford 250 diesel truck pulling a flatbed trailer loaded with two Polaris Titan 800 crossover snowmobiles. The truck’s red and blue light bar was flashing on top of the cab. A big spotlight on the passenger side was pointed east, shining into the dense trees.

  Detective Amos and her deputy, Max Gonzalez, dressed in high visibility yellow monosuits with full helmets and face shields, were busy unloading the big machines.

  Smithers shuffled in the glove box for his encrypted digital radio. He tuned the radio to the correct channel and connected to his two-agent team who were setting up in the two-track on the other side of the truck.

  Amos walked back to the SUV and Smithers buzzed his window down. “Thanks for coming out on such a nasty night, Amos. Tell Deputy Gonzalez we appreciate his assistance, too.”

  She nodded. She raised her voice to be heard over the howling wind. “We’re going in to take a look at the bodies. Your agents are going with us. It’ll be slow going to maneuver through these trees in the dark on hilly terrain. Hard to hear the radio with the engines running, so we’ll call you when we reach the site.”

  “Visibility is bad out there, especially once you get deep into the trees, too. You know where you’re going?” Smithers asked, frowning.

  “We’ve got GPS coordinates from the drone footage,” she replied. “If we see bears near the bodies, we’ll attempt to flush them away from you. We’ll try to give you some warning, but be ready. Black bears are protective of their food supply and their behavior is unpredictable. They’re damn fast runners, too. They’ll be on you before you know it.”

  “You’ve got rifles we can use in the truck?” Smithers asked.

  “Couple of them. We’ll want to get DNA from the bear’s gut or off its claws and teeth. So there’s a spring powered tranq gun with darts, too,” Amos replied, pulling her big yellow gloves over her hands. “You’re not dressed for this weather and we shouldn’t need you. We’ll report back as we go. We’ve got helmet and body cams, and you can watch our progress on the screens from inside the cab. Stay inside our truck. Stay warm. Last thing any of us needs is to get frostbite tonight.”

  “Got
it,” Smithers said. “Be careful out there. Keep us posted.”

  Two members of the FBI team also dressed in Laconia P.D. yellow monosuits with gloves and helmets, walked around the big diesel truck from the other side. They were indistinguishable from each other with the weather gear in place. One agent waved toward the SUV and climbed aboard the snow machine behind Deputy Gonzalez, who was already seated, engine running.

  Detective Amos put the face shield down on her helmet and returned to the other big snowmobile. She took the driver’s position and the second FBI agent settled in behind her. Amos was the team leader, responsible for the lives of all four.

  She fired up her engine and took the pole, moving slowly eastward from the two-track into the woods. The deputy followed. Within a couple of seconds, both snowmobiles were no longer visible. Even the big spotlight’s beam lost the high visibility yellow-clad cops among the dense trees.

  Smithers shut down the SUV’s engine. He and Kim slid out and trudged through the knee-deep snow toward the big truck. The diesel’s engine noise and the howling wind filled the air.

  On a ski vacation or relaxing by a fire with spiked hot chocolate, Kim might have been enthralled by the snow-globe like scene. Snow coming down, blanketing the world around her as far as her eye could see, might have been almost magical.

  As it was, everything about the mission felt dangerous and life-threatening instead. She shivered from head to toe and not totally from the cold that enveloped her, burning her nostrils as she inhaled.

  While Smithers found the rifles in the back seat of the truck and loaded them, Kim climbed into the cab and got the screens working to receive images from the team’s four helmet and body cameras.

  Detective Amos left the evidence collection to the FBI agents. She and Deputy Gonzalez stood guard with rifles at the ready, alert for bears or other predators common in the New Hampshire forests.

  Kim checked the clock and matched it’s time to the video feed. They’d been gone five minutes already. So far, the only images she’d seen were tree trunks and snow and blackness surrounding them.

  Kim cracked the back window about two inches for a bit of fresh air and to allow her to hear the engine noise from the snow machines. All she heard was the diesel and the wind.

  Smithers readied the rifles and left them within reach on the back seat. He climbed in behind the steering wheel and they watched the screens together.

  The video returned by the cameras from the snow machines was as clear as natural visibility. Meaning not very clear at all because the blinding snow reflected the headlamps and collected on the camera lens as it did on the windshields and face protectors.

  Leafless trees stood so dense that the snow machines were forced to move slowly and erratically toward the clearing, weaving between the black trunks, straining to climb hills and avoid crashing into trees on the other side.

  Removing the bodies strapped to any kind of transport sled might be impossible given these circumstances.

  When they reached the clearing, Amos and Gonzalez positioned the two snowmobiles opposite each other to light up the ground and capture broader video images on the cameras. The storm still interfered with the video feed. The images were not clear. She saw no bear tracks in the fresh snow, which she hoped was a good sign.

  The two FBI agents climbed off the back of the snow machines and made their way over to two large lumps covered by new snowfall. Each agent held a small broom and used it to sweep the snow aside. The lumps became increasingly visible.

  Both victims were wearing black clothing in stark contrast to the white snow. As the snow was swept away, Kim saw the bodies were as gruesome as she’d expected. One was missing most of a leg and an arm. The other was missing both legs and both arms. The heads were uncovered. The remaining tissues and bones were frozen and frosted. The faces were no longer recognizable.

  Smithers spoke softly, as if he was talking to himself. “Looks like these two were attacked by smaller carnivores about the head and face. The bears probably took the limbs. The torsos look mostly intact. Two males, most likely, given the size.”

  “You’ll still be able to use dental records, maybe. But DNA will be your best ID under these circumstances,” Kim replied.

  He swiped a big palm over his face. “Yeah. And enough evidence for DNA samples is about all we’ll get out of there tonight anyway. The blizzard is getting worse. And those bodies will need to be air lifted. No other way to move them out of those trees. We certainly can’t hand-carry them out. The snow’s way too deep for that.”

  “Right.” Over the noisy diesel, Kim could barely hear the snow machines in the distance through the open window. Her nose wrinkled involuntarily when she caught a whiff of something else as it wafted inside the SUV on the wind through the open back window.

  She recognized the scent immediately.

  Nothing else smelled quite like it.

  Wild animals stank. The stench was as far from warm, cuddly images conjured up by a Disney movie as it was possible to get.

  As a child, Kim camped in northern Michigan with her family. She recognized the scent instinctively, probably a survival mechanism from ancient times when advance warning of a predator might have kept puny humans alive.

  “Do you smell that?” she asked.

  “What?” Smithers asked, preoccupied with the images on the screen. His agents were collecting samples from one of the two black lumps.

  The two Laconia cops stood near the second body. There were no fresh bear tracks showing on the video feeds. Detective Amos reported on the radio, “Under all that snow, we’ll probably find more body parts in the spring. Bears are not tidy eaters.”

  “Copy that,” Smithers said.

  Kim murmured, “What a horrible way to die.” A shiver of revulsion coursed through her.

  Smithers replied, “You’re not kidding. Let’s hope they were already dead when the bears found them, and not simply wounded.”

  They watched the screens for a few more seconds before noxious odors churned Kim’s stomach. She said, “Smell that?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Saturday, February 26

  6:40 p.m.

  Laconia, New Hampshire

  Smithers took a quick glance around the truck. He sniffed a few times, comically. “You know young white women smell things old black men can’t, right?”

  “Yeah, I took that training, too. And I’m only half white, but I’m definitely younger than you,” she teased back before she frowned. “You seriously don’t smell that? When I first noticed it, the odor was faint. But it’s getting stronger.”

  “Actually, my sense of smell was damaged years ago. I can’t smell much of anything. Which is a blessing around decomposing corpses in my line of work.” He shrugged and shook his head. “What do you think it is?”

  “Something large. Could be deer or moose or even bear. They all move quickly when they need to.” She paused. “Given the bear food supply we know is out there, and a bear’s keen sense of smell, it’s reasonable to assume the bear the team saw on the drone video earlier is on its way back to its dinner. And that he knows we’re here.”

  “There’s a lot of black bears in this area, so it could be a different one, too.” Smithers opened the door of the truck and balanced on the floor to raise himself up above the cab to have a look around. Heat poured out while the cold wind blasted through the cabin faster than a speeding bullet. Or at least, it felt like the warmth escaped that fast.

  “See anything?” Kim called out.

  He raised his voice to be heard. “With the low clouds, it’s black as pitch. And the trees provide a solid wall of cover on both sides. I can’t see around the SUVs behind and ahead of us.”

  He maneuvered himself back behind the wheel and closed the door. “But there’s no animals out there that I can see. Or smell. Sorry.”

  Kim glanced at the screen again. The two FBI agents had finished collecting samples from the first body. They were moving toward t
he second victim.

  Smithers spoke into the radio. “Everything okay out there, Amos?”

  When she keyed the radio to reply, Kim heard the wind howling. Amos shouted, “Good so far. Hold communications. Can’t hear you.”

  “Copy that,” Smithers replied. He laid the radio on the dashboard of the truck.

  The two FBI agents stored the first batch of samples on the snowmobiles and moved to the second body with collection equipment.

  “A black bear might not approach the truck. The noise and the lights should warn him off, and they generally avoid humans,” Kim said.

  “But black bears will attack people for food and the number of bear attacks has been steadily increasing around the country. They’ve been known to attack houses when people are home inside, too. We can’t assume he’ll give up,” Smithers said.

  She inhaled again, deeply this time. “There’s definitely a large animal coming this way. The odor was even stronger when you opened the door.”

  Smithers said, “Okay. The safest thing is to assume it’s the same bear my team saw earlier today.”

  “Right. Call them on the radio. Let them know the bear might be approaching. They might not smell him with those helmets on, either,” Kim replied.

  Smithers tried to call Amos again, but she didn’t acknowledge. On the video feeds, they could see her and the team at the site but couldn’t communicate with them.

  Kim located a long-range focusing LED flashlight, opened the door, and stood up like Smithers had done, using the extra height to look around outside.

  The flashlight illuminated more than twenty-two hundred feet ahead in the spot beam mode, which she tried first.

  The diesel was stopped on a curve in the two-track. Like Smithers said, the bureau’s SUVs parked behind and in front, blocked the light.