by R.M. Haig
September 16th, 2016. 11:00AM
Waycroft, Indiana
"Drop it, Jake!" Louie Rambo repeated, staring down his sights as a smirking Ron Boudreaux looked on, standing nonchalantly beside the busted up LeSabre.
Jake still stood frozen, breathless and distraught in the swirling, swirling memories and disbelief.
"Do it now, Jake!" The deputy continued. "Don't make me do something we're both gonna regret!"
Resigning to defeat by dark psychology in the moment, his mind screaming et tu, brute?, he did as ordered and let the Beretta drop finger by finger until gravity was pulling it down to the concrete. It landed with a metallic thud and it was over. The investigation was over, his romance with Nikki was over, his plans for double indemnity were over, his life as a free man was over, it was all over.
"Now turn around and put your hands behind your head!" Rambo shouted.
When Jake complied very, very slowly, Rambo followed with a command to interlock his fingers and move backwards towards the sound of his voice. Ten or eleven shaky, adrenaline and horror laced steps later, he felt a firm hand lock around tied up fingers.
"That's a boy, Jake!" Boudreaux praised sarcastically as Deputy Rambo used his free hand to pat down the suspect, getting as personal as Nikki as he squeezed and rubbed along his body. "I knew you would do the right thing when the time came!"
"Go to hell you fat fuck!" Jake fired back, looking to the sheriff through the corner of his eyes as Rambo pulled his hands apart and swiveled them behind his back. He felt the fine steel rails of handcuffs around the bottoms of his wrists and heard the series of clicks as they locked in place over the top, cutting off his circulation with their tightness. "What are you covering up now, you bastard?"
Boudreaux laughed at this accusation, then signaled Rambo with a hand gesture. In response, Louie slammed Jake forward onto the hood of the LeSabre a bit less than softly. Grunting at the impact, Jake lifted his head to face the man that'd ruined his childhood, that was actively ruining his adulthood further than it had been already at his own hands. He looked every bit the scumbag now, in this situation, as he had when when it all came down in early 1997... when the walls fell and everything changed.
"Who'd you kill this time, Ron?" Jake snarled as Louie dug through his pockets, removing his wallet, keys, cellphone and everything else he was carrying. "Was it Billy Marsh, by chance? Is that what you're hiding this time around?"
Again Boudreaux snickered, stepping forward so that he stood directly across the hood from Jake and unceremoniously taking his fat, greasy hand and slamming the man in custody's head down on the dark blue aluminum.
"No, it's not like that, Jake!" He proclaimed, holding his head to the metal. "Murder isn't compatible with my business plan, you should know that better than anybody!"
"Right!" Jake said, spitting blood after injury at the hands of the law. "That's why you're in business with Rusty Parker, so he can do the killing for you!"
Rambo finished with his search of every nook of Jake's body and clothing, so Boudreaux let loose his hold and Louie pulled him to a standing position that allowed him to look Deputy Ron in the eyes. It was clear in them that Boudreaux wasn't worried. That, for all Jake had done, he and his investigation posed no threat to the continued existence of FGSI or Leo's Transport, Pest-X, Thompson Construction, Avanti Holdings, Mega-Sure, Wilson Travel or whatever other names he gave to his criminal endeavors. He knew Jake didn't have the answers. He knew that his secrets were still safe.
"Before you say anything else," Boudreaux said as crimson fluid ran down from Jake's busted lip, "I think perhaps you should listen to your rights in this situation!"
Jake rolled his eyes, stumbling a bit in Rambo's grasp as his head was spinning after its collision with the LeSabre's hood. Louie held him up, giving him the only support that he was apparently willing to extend to an old friend and confidant in this situation.
"First," Boudreaux continued, "and perhaps most importantly, you have a right to remain silent! Second, anything you say can and -- trust me -- most definitely will be used against you in a court of law! You have the right to an attorney, and I recommend that you don't retain Donnell Hughes in this capacity, as it may be too severe a test of his loyalties for him to bare! If you can't afford a real attorney, one will be appointed for you before any questioning is conducted, if you wish. Keep in mind, though, that the attorney we appoint will be one on my payroll, so it's kind of superfluous if you ask me! Do you understand these rights as I've presented them to you, boy?"
"Yeah," Jake said, "and I still say go fuck yourself!"
"I didn't expect anything less from you, Jake," the Sheriff smiled as he retrieved a fat cigar from his breast pocket and lit it up. It stank of cheap tobacco and shit, an unflattering combination that all too closely resembled what Jake would smell after Boudreaux had one of his naps with his mother in the old days.
"Come on, Jake," Louie Rambo said a little more gingerly than he had behaved during the arrest. "Let's get you in the car so we can take you downtown."
"On what charges?" Jake asked, not taking his eyes off of Boudreaux while Louie pulled him towards the backseat.
"Oh, lots of good ones!" The creep began, enjoying each word more than the last as he spoke between drags on his smoke. "Let's see, we've got obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence, which I warned you about last week. Then we've got impersonating a police officer for the times when you were harassing a poor, old and dying man! Along with that went tampering with and theft of mail, which are definitely biggies! There's assault and battery for what you did to that fool at Burlwood Downs, and fleeing the scene of a crime for not hanging out until we got there! Add to that some reckless driving for what you did chasing Louie just a few days ago, as well as destruction of police property for the damage you did to this fine automobile! Trespassing will be there for what you did back at my barn, then burglary, possession of burglary tools and breaking and entering for what you just did here today, those are all certainly good ones as well. Then, as if that weren't enough, depending on what our old friend Nikki Spencer has to tell us, we might even add soliciting a prostitute to the hit parade!"
"Nikki?" Jake asked, his mind jarred and shaken. "I highly doubt that she's any friend of yours, Ron!"
"Oh, but she is!" Boudreaux replied, and immediately Jake felt sick.
Was she one of his operatives too? Was she Louie's tag-team partner in surveilling him? The answer he would get was like a sharp jab to the stomach... something perhaps worse than even that would've been.
"Miss Spencer knows us very well," Boudreaux grinned, "and I'm surprised she didn't tell you! In fact, she lived with us not so very long ago! She did what they call a bullet on the street, which you would understand better spelled out as three-hundred and sixty-five days behind bars at the county jail!"
"For what?" Jake asked, his legs noticeably weaker than they had been moments before in anticipation of hard truths.
"Oh, it slips my mind!" Boudreaux smiled, taking a puff of his shit smelling cigar. "Why do you tell him, Louie!"
Ever the dutiful officer, Louie obliged him. "Prostitution, third offense, driving under the influence, second offense, and possession of crack cocaine, second offense," he said coldly, shaking Jake to his core.
"What's wrong, boy?" Boudreaux smiled in recognition of the change in Jake's expression. "You didn't know that your little honey is a crack whore?"
Enraged and blinded by his fury, Jake lunged at the Sheriff shouting expletives. He was quickly and violently snapped back by the deputy, by Louie, his childhood friend. Boudreaux laughed the hardest yet at this, choking on his carcinogenic smoke and chuckling all the while.
"I bet she told you she gave that kid of hers to her mother, right? That she was just watching him until she could make a better home for him?" Boudreaux said in perfect harmony with the tale she told. "The reality is that CPS took that boy from her, Jake,
and awarded her mother custody because she'd too much of a fuck up to care for him herself! Reality is a bitch, isn't boy?" The goon poked him as Rambo pulled the suddenly uncooperative prisoner towards the back seat of the LeSabre.
Kicking and fighting, Jake was dying to get his hands on the big fat master of Elsmere County. If he had, he would've torn the chubby bastard limb from limb with his bare hands, making the atrocities of The Butcher look like child's play in his rage. His anger in the moment was two-fold; both directed at the son-of-a-bitch behind the badge and at Nikki for having withheld information so key to her life, so telling of who she was at her core.
Boudreaux was still laughing and Jake still fighting, Louie nearly having pulled him all the way to the back door of the LeSabre with his regularly trained muscle when suddenly there came the chirp and buzz of a police siren tapped by its operator from somewhere behind them, down the alley. All three of them froze at the brief noise, turning in the direction from which it came to see an Indiana State Police cruiser rolling towards them slowly with the light bar painting the doors of the storage units around them with blue and red. It was clear that there was at least one occupant in the car besides the driver, seated in the passenger's seat, and Jake almost thought he could make out the face in the distance.
It stopped just behind the LeSabre, lights still flashing, and now Jake was sure who was riding shotgun on this expedition. It was Clyde Rambo, his white hair and beard catching the color of the cherries and berries as he stepped out of the vehicle along with the unmistakable driver, former Elsmere County Sheriff and current Indiana State Police Commissioner Pat Dickinson. The two of them were shocking enough to see joining the fray at Safe & Secure Self Storage, but a door opened from the backseat of the cruiser to expose another man that no one expected to see on this day. It was Special Agent Alberto Gomez, his hair full of a bit more salt than pepper in his advancing age.
Boudreaux, Louie and Jake all left speechless, it was Commissioner Dickinson to speak the next words and break the stunned silence that engulfed the alley.
"Sheriff Ron Boudreaux," he said commandingly as he marched toward the man, "I'm here to inform you that you have been placed on administrative leave effective immediately on suspicion of racketeering, production and distribution of a schedule two narcotic and misconduct in office. You will relinquish your badge, identification and service weapon to me pending the result of a formal inquiry."
With his boss standing mere inches from him, his upturned hand extended, Deputy Ron looked like a deer in the headlights, and the look was unflattering on him.
"What?" He asked, trying to absorb the words and looking over Dickinson's shoulder to see former Burlwood Sheriff Clyde Rambo staring at him with his hands linked together behind his back casually. "You!" He said, his eyes accusing his former boss and partner. "You did this, you bitter old son-of-a-bitch!"
"No sir!" Agent Gomez piped up from behind Rambo, walking towards where Louie held Jake in bondage. "You did this, Ron," he said, turning his gaze up to Boudreaux's deputy. "And I'm afraid you got caught up in it!"
"What's going on?" Louie said now as Gomez pulled his hands away from their position around Jake's cuffs.
"Deputy Louie Rambo," Dickinson started up again, "you too have been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of this investigation. You will turn over your badge, identification and service weapon to Agent Gomez."
Both of their jaws agape, the representatives of the Elsmere County PD did as they were instructed because they had no other choice in the shadow of superior officers. Stripped of their authority, the two of them looked more now like the criminals they sought to apprehend on a daily basis than they did men of the law. Jake could only watch, speechless and smiling ear to ear on the inside, as Gomez collected Louie's paraphernalia and Dickinson did the same to Boudreaux.
Tucking everything into his pockets, Agent Gomez looked to the junior Rambo and requested one more piece of his equipment. "I'll need your handcuff key as well," he said, extending his hand once more.
When he got it, he proceeded step closer to Jake and turn him gently so that he could have access to his cuffs. Jake gave it readily, his wrists screaming at the tightness of the restraints, and he was relieved when the man opened the locks and removed them.
"You're free to go, Jake," he said in music to the former prisoner's ears.
Boudreaux looked twice as shocked at that than he had been, and he looked between the three men robbing him of his office with contempt and disdain. "Wait a minute! Now wait just a minute!" He shouted, none of those gathered looking too impressed by the outburst, but waiting for what he would say irregardless. "That man is under arrest!" He cried, pointing to the liberated Jake.
"On what charge?" Dickinson asked flatly.
"Breaking and entering!" Boudreaux yelled. "He just cut the lock off that storage unit and broke in! I don't care what you do to me, but that man is going to jail!"
Gomez cocked his head and looked to the dethroned Sheriff. "Is there any evidence of this crime?" He asked.
"You bet your ass there is!" He replied curtly. "Just look on the ground, there! There's the lock he cut off, there are the bolt cutters, there's your evidence, now put those goddamned cuffs back on him!"
Turning to see the proof, right there in front of him as promised, Gomez examined things for a moment before he looked to Commissioner Dickinson.
"Take a look, Pat," he said. "Does that look like evidence of a burglary to you?"
The Commissioner walked casually to where the chain and the remnants of the lock were and looked down at them, studying them carefully for a few moments.
"Well holy shit!" He declared, bending at the waist to the damaged items better. "In all my life, I have never seen a piece of Masterlock merchandise just split at the shackle like that! I tell you what, if I had paid for that lock, I'd be writing a strongly worded letter to the manufacturer and demanding a refund! What's become of American steel quality, boys, this is just a goddamned shame!"
Gomez nodded. "Just as I thought," he said. "Jake, you're free to go."
Boudreaux snorted, growled and protested vehemently as Jake turned his back to him and walked to Clyde Rambo, who was still standing by the ISP cruiser, observing the action. He found the man with a barely contained smile, seeing his work come to fruition exactly as he figured it would.
"Howdy there, bud!" Rambo said, letting his grin break free a bit. "How's Burlwood been treating you?"
"Not so hot," Jake advised, "I've been out here all week, and I'm no closer now to setting Chucky free than I was when I started."
"Oh, somehow I doubt that," Clyde responded. "But it doesn't help that the deck is stacked, and -- believe me -- it is stacked against you. What were you looking into here?"
"This unit belongs to Rusty and that company I mentioned, FGSI." Jake said.
Rambo nodded as though he understood why that was suspicious.
"I was hoping to find the Church Van or Evander's Brougham in there."
"And they're not in there?"
"No," Jake said tentatively, "but there was definitely a vehicle in there recently."
"I'd bet ten to one that it was that van," Rambo suggested, "and that if you find out who's at the helm of that company, you'll probably find that van and have your answers. I came across that company in my investigation, and it's very suspicious to put it kindly."
"I found paperwork that suggests old Ron here has something to do with that operation. Based on what I've seen, I think it could be just he and Rusty."
"No," Rambo replied, "there's someone else. According to what I found, it used to be a real company with revenues far less than what it says on the stuff that you came across. They filed real taxes and did real business until 2002. They fell off the radar and went underground then, and they've been that way ever since."
"If you uncovered stuff like taxes," Jake said, "then you must've found out who the
registered owner was."
Again, Rambo nodded, with a smile this time. "You'll like this one, Jake, it was registered to a Frank Staten. That was the name of a New Orleans Voodoo king who was better known as Papa Midnight. The papers were filed under a false identity, of course, but if that doesn't tie the company to what happened here back when you were a boy, then I don't know what does. But there's more that you're not aware of, Jake, more that I shouldn't be telling you."
"What?" Jake wondered, imagining that there was nothing that would surprise him in this twisted and strange case.
"I'm afraid I'm gonna have to ask for a trade for this information, Jake," Rambo replied. "I can't just give this one away free."
Confused, Jake paused for a moment. "What could I possibly have that you need?" He asked.
"You said you found paperwork linking FGSI to Boudreaux... where was it? Do you have it?"
"Eighty forty-one Iris Lane," Jake recalled from memory, thinking about Miss Ferguson and her treasure trove of secrets. That would be key to the investigation of Ron Boudreaux and his misdeeds. His barn full of cooked books, his warehouse piled high with meth and things unlawful. "That's where I saw it, in the barn. He's got all kinds of shit in there that you can throw the book at him for."
"His old house!" Rambo smiled. "Of course! That'll be our next stop!"
"Great," Jake said, "now a deal is a deal, what have you got for me?"
"Well," Clyde began, "There's a lot more to this Billy Marsh case than meets the eye, Jake. For starters, there was no private eye who saw blood in Chucky's trunk like you thought there was. The case against Chucky was built almost entirely on the testimony of two people, both of whom that slippery Boudreaux managed to have classified as CI's."
"Confidential informants?" Jake asked. "Can he even do that?"
"Not over the long-term, no," Rambo advised. "They'll have to reveal themselves in court when the time comes, but it sure as hell makes it difficult to do anything about it until then. I'd bet my left nut that one of those two men is Rusty Parker," he suggested, "and I doubt I'd lose that bet. The second is probably his partner in crime, and they probably cooked up some bullshit story up to pin this all on Chuck and sold it to Ron. I mean, he's an easy target, especially if they knew his link to the boy."
"Any idea who that second CI might be?"
Rambo shook his head and looked down, aggravated that he couldn't crack the shell himself. "No, I don't," he verbalized his disappointment. "But I'd bet it's whoever brought Rusty into FGSI, and that could only be the son-of-a-bitch that owned it to begin with. There's no reason that Boudreaux would associate with Rusty otherwise, that much I know. Find out who that is, and I'd bet you've got your killers."
"So that's my accomplice, the original owner of FGSI?" Jake asked. "I find him, and I have the key?"
"Well," Rambo shrugged, "if I were you, that's what I would do.
FIFTY-EIGHT
