URGENT Justice Read online

  “Yeah.” I took a mouthful of beer and sighed in pleasure. She knows I love my beer near frozen, and the tiny chunks of ice danced on my tongue before melting away the day’s problems. “Tough day interviewing the owners of the Happy Home Orphanage. They had another runaway.”

  “Let me guess.” Debbie frowned. “Another teenage girl?”

  “Yeah. Seems to be a pattern developing there.”

  “I’ll say. Get any useful intel?”

  “Not from them, no. And I’m starting to doubt their story. I can’t shake that nagging feeling that something isn’t right.” I took another swig of beer and noticed that her number one fan, a drunkard and simpleton named Bobby who routinely professed his love for her, looked like he was about to cry in his beer. He was on his usual barstool in front of the main beer cooler. The better to observe my Debbie’s cleavage when she leaned in to grab a cold one for one of her fans.

  He was usually quick to smile at her every time she walked by, but not tonight. Frown lines covered his weathered forehead, and with his half-buckled overalls and torn T-shirt, he looked even more shit-kicking disheveled than normal.

  “What’s wrong with your boyfriend?”

  “He’s down in the dumps. Why don’t you go cheer him up?” She leaned in and whispered in my ear. “I’ll make it worth your while.” She blew me a kiss and licked her lips.

  “What’s wrong with him? Did you reject his proposal again?” I asked.

  “Again?” She stood in front of me, hands on hips in her classic Wonder Woman pose. “Who says I’ve ever rejected any of his proposals?” She winked and walked away with a smirk, her snug jeans drawing the attention of everyone under eighty-five at the bar. She returned a few minutes later and continued torturing me. “Not sure I can come over tonight. I still have to pack for our trip.”

  “We’re not leaving for a few days.”

  “Yeah, but you know my MO. Always organized and ahead of the game.”

  “But you come over every Friday night. How about I promise to get you home nice and early in the morning? I’ll even help you pack.”

  “Hah. A night with you is never followed by a get-up-early day.”

  I winked at her and raised my beer. “You’re welcome.”

  She smiled. “Okay, maybe. Let’s see how you conduct yourself tonight.”

  I reached into my pocket and took out the envelope with the reservations for our private jet. I slid it across the bar top, careful to avoid any wet spots. “I have an early birthday present for you. Maybe this will help my cause.”

  Her eyes widened in pleasant surprise. “Oh? Cash?” She clutched it to her chest. “You shouldn’t have.”

  “Better than cash, baby.”

  She opened the envelope and let out an excited scream. “Oh, no, you didn’t!” She left the bar and came around and gave me a tight hug. Her perfume, mixed with a hint of sweat, was the most wonderful smell that I could imagine. I’m not sure what it was about her body chemistry, but just one whiff and it drove me wild. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She punctuated each one with a kiss. “You’re freaking awesome, Jack Lamburt.”

  “Hey, you two, get a room, would ya?” Feisty Frances yelled from across the bar.

  Debbie grabbed some quarters and went over to the jukebox. By the time she returned behind the bar, Barry White’s “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe” clued me in that tonight was going to be special. I nodded to her and raised my mug in a silent toast.

  I took my beer and slid over to a stool next to Bobby. “Hey, what’s going on?”

  He looked up from studying his coaster and frowned at me. “Hi.” He looked back down.

  “What’s wrong? You seem upset.”

  “Aw, Sheriff, I seen something at Johnson’s Motel that just ain’t right, and I can’t get it out of my brain.” He shook his head and finished his beer. He waved over to Debbie, who came over, slid open the cooler top, and bent over to grab him an Old Milwaukee.

  We both stared at her breasts, hypnotized by their perfect symmetry. I felt silly, like one of Pavlov’s dogs responding to a cleavage bell. Here I was, dating this woman for over a year, and I still gawked at her like a teenage boy seeing his first nudie magazine. I shook my head and grinned.

  I took a mouthful of beer and turned to Bobby. “So, what’d you see that’s got you so upset?”

  He looked down at his coaster and rotated his fresh beer on it with both hands. I studied his face. He looked like he’d aged ten years since I’d last seen him, which was yesterday. He sighed and unburdened himself on me.

  “Yesterday I had to work late at the motel to finish up some repairs on a toilet in one of the rooms. I heard some, um, weird sounds from the next room. Sex sounds.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “And they didn’t sound like normal sex sounds.”

  “What’d they sound like?”

  “A woman was angry. Crying, like.”

  “Oh. Maybe they had an after-sex argument.”

  “No, it was during sex, and it didn’t seem like the woman was into it. It was like she was fighting against it.” He sighed and downed his beer. He motioned to Debbie for a refill, but this time I didn’t stare at her cleavage. His last comment had my interest piqued, and my heart rate picked up.

  “Go on,” I said, interrupting his mental undressing of my honey.

  “I left and came here, not thinking too much about it. But this morning I seen an old man, I don’t know, maybe sixty or so—I didn’t get a good look at him. I seen him leave the room where I heard the weird sex sounds come from. He got in his car and drove away. Only thing was, there was a woman in the passenger seat. It was raining this morning, so I couldn’t see her face through the drops on her window, but I could see that she had shoulder-length blond hair.”

  I took a sip of beer and nodded. “Okay.”

  “She lit a cigarette as they drove away, and when she rolled down her window to toss out the match, we made eye contact.” Bobby turned and looked at me, a deep frown on his forehead. “I swear, Sheriff, I seen death in those eyes.”

  “What?” I looked up at him with a confused squint. Had he gone off the deep end? I knew a life of boozing could wreak havoc on a guy’s mental abilities, but this was just too much. Bobby couldn’t have been more then forty years old, even though today he looked over fifty, and he’d always been a reliable person. At least until happy hour rolled around. I’d crossed paths with him during his daytime job as a handyman at Johnson’s Motel many times, and he’d never once been drunk. I’d never even heard Old Man Johnson, who was getting downright cranky in his old age, say anything bad about Bobby.

  He continued. “I can’t explain it, Sheriff, but those eyes were black. Lifeless. Like a shark’s just before they roll up in their head and they bite you in half. And another thing, she couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen. I don’t want to imagine an old guy like that with her. That’s just wrong.”

  Aw, crap. This was not going to end well. Despite being a cold-blooded killer, I had a soft spot in my heart for kids. They’re just so vulnerable, especially the girls, and it drives me crazy that there are predators out there that take advantage of them. The proverbial stealing-candy-from-a-baby type.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “What was his name?”

  “John Smith.”

  “Come on, don’t be funny.”

  “I’m not being funny. He paid cash, and he signed in as John Smith.”

  “What about his license plate?”

  “He lied about that. The license plate in the registration book didn’t match what I saw.”

  “What’d you see?”

  “Pennsylvania plates, but I only got the last three letters. ADV. But that don’t match his registration.”

  “So you’re telling me that you have no idea who this guy was?”

  “Yeah. And to make matters worse, our cleaning lady, Sally, is o
n vacation this week. My job at Johnson’s is handyman, but I have to clean rooms when she’s on vacation. Or out sick.” He shook his head. “I hate that job. I wish that Sally didn’t have any vacation time.”

  “What’d you find in the room?”

  “I saw an empty container of blond hair dye in the garbage.”

  Hmm. Wendy was a brunette, and about the same age as this girl. Could it be? The more I heard, the more I became intrigued by the possibility that Bobbie’s story was tied to Cecile’s runaway.

  “What kind of car was it?” I asked.

  “Four-door sedan, Buick or GM, I think. Light gray or silver.”

  “Hold my seat, I’ll be right back,” I told Bobby.

  I went out to my truck and grabbed the manila folder. I handed the photo to Bobby. “Is this the girl that you saw in the car?”

  He took it and looked at it for a few seconds before shaking his head. “I don’t think so. This girl looks younger, and she’s making one of those funny faces that kids make, so it’s hard to tell. Plus I never seen her whole face.”

  I sat back down and grabbed my beer with a sigh. “See anything else when you cleaned the room?”

  “Yeah. I found an empty condom wrapper under the bed.”

  Shit.

  5

  Frances Comes Through

  Frances slid over from her barstool and sat next to me. “Hey, Sheriff Jack. I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation. I saw that guy you’re talking about this morning. He was at Harry’s Bait Shop, and he bought a pack of Newports from the cigarette machine.” She grimaced and fake-spat to the side. “Yuck, menthol garbage.” She shook out a Lucky Strike and lit it. “Now this is a real cigarette.”

  I waved the smoke away from my face. “Jeez, Frances…”

  “What’s a matter, afraid of a little secondhand smoke? Grow some balls, will you, Jack?” She elbowed me and laughed. She knew full well about some of my past vigilante activities, and her taunting me on my lack of sac size was a never-ending form of entertainment for her.

  I nodded my approval to Frances, a “That was good, Frances, very good” motion that I’m sure she understood.

  Bobby chuckled into his beer, oblivious to the real meaning behind her taunts.

  “Anyhow,” I said, “did you see the car he was in?”

  “No, I was inside with Max and Gus when he walked in. I know it was the same man that you’re talking about because he had a funny out-of-state type accent.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s the same guy.”

  Bobby slapped the bar with an open palm, like he’d just gotten the idea of the century and was about to run home and invent the iPhone. “I found an empty pack of Newports in the garbage too.”

  “Well, I guess it’s possible that it could’ve been him.” I turned to Frances. “What was he wearing?”

  “Jeans and a purple polo shirt.”

  Bobby’s eyes lit up. “Yep! That’s him.”

  “Okay. I need to think this over. Thanks for the info, Bobby. I’ll let you know if I have any more questions.”

  I stood up and nodded goodbye to Frances. She stuck her tongue out at me.

  I took my beer and went over to my usual barstool in the corner. My thoughts turned to poor Wendy, and how my vacation might hinder this investigation. What if it was her in the car? What if she wasn’t a runaway? Could she have been kidnapped?

  6

  Barry White

  Debbie did come home with me after she closed down the Red Barn, and as expected, a night of blissful romance followed. A little red wine, some Barry White in the background, and before you knew it, a couple of hours had passed and we fell asleep in each other’s arms, exhausted by the night’s splendor.

  I woke early and, not wanting to disturb my honey, dressed quietly in the bathroom. I snuck out, softly closed the bedroom door, and was greeted by my Doberman pinscher, Saber, and his new sidekick, a pit bull mix named Buddy. They’d gotten along amazingly well since Debbie and I had rescued Buddy a few months ago, and now they were inseparable. It was nice to see, them being best buds and all.

  I unlocked the doggy door, and they trotted into the backyard and took care of business. While they were outside, I filled their food bowls. I watched through the door as they frolicked in the backyard, not wanting to call them in and disturb their fun. But I had work to do, so I gave one quick whistle and they came racing in. Saber, a thoroughbred among dogs, was always first to the food bowl. Buddy did his derailed freight train imitation and careened off walls and chairs in his unbridled fervor for all things that he could chow on. What a team.

  HFS has a treasure trove of data. Everyone from the president on down is secretly being watched, recorded, analyzed, archived, and all-around constitutionally infringed, in the name of preventing terrorist attacks on US soil. My definition of bad guys is a little different than HFS’s, so I found myself turning over multiple detailed reports of guys who had done really bad stuff but didn’t qualify as a terrorist risk in the eyes of the FBI. They couldn’t arrest the person because the illegally gathered data wasn’t admissible in a court of law, so they’d start their own investigation. If they had the manpower, which they usually didn’t. I didn’t have the manpower either. But I did have the firepower, so I took care of these evildoers my way. After a respectful post–Flight 2262 mourning period, I’d dedicated my life to killing bad people. It wasn’t any civic-minded protect-our-citizens duty that kept me in the spying game and renewing my top secret clearance every six months.

  It was pure revenge.

  I brewed some Black Rifle coffee and sat down at the kitchen. I flicked open my laptop, started my TOR browser, and logged in to the HFS portal. I started my research with the last three letters of the Pennsylvania license plate that Bobby had given me, and I came up with seventeen license plates that contained them and that belonged to four-door domestic sedans of light color. Now I had to track their locations for the past few days.

  Through HFS, I had admin access to every single cell phone carrier. I soon found out that of the original seventeen matches, three were registered to females, and twelve of them had never left the state of Pennsylvania in the past week. Or at least their cell phones had never left the state of Pennsylvania. I checked the E-ZPass system to verify. This was far from foolproof. A person could leave their cell phone and E-ZPass on the kitchen counter while driving all over the place and engaging in illegal activity, but people were creatures of habit, and since most of the baddies that I came across were dumb as a rock, I went with it. I took a closer look at the two who had left Pennsylvania.

  The first one was registered to a fellow by the name of Jeffrey Wells, who lived in a small town called Centralia, Pennsylvania. I’m not sure why, but he didn’t strike me as a good candidate for what I was looking for. Maybe I’d have better luck with the second one, Fred Sinclair, who turned out to be a business executive in the garbage-hauling business. Now we’re talking. I wondered if the Pennsylvania garbage haulers were, like their New York brethren, controlled by the mob.

  Both Jeff and Fred were in their early sixties and fit Bobby’s description of the fellow who’d checked into Johnson’s Motel and left with the girl the next day. It seemed to me that garbage man Fred would have the upper hand in illegal activity, so I decided to dive into his life first.

  Boy, was I disappointed. Talk about a Boy Scout. Still married to his high school sweetheart, father of four, all Ivy League–educated, and a perfect credit rating. His Internet browsing history was squeaky clean. He never posted on his Facebook page, but did visit his wife’s on a regular basis to leave likes. He was a registered Republican and had voted in every presidential election in the past thirty years. To save money, he always bought a used car, kept it 6.3 years on average, and had no credit card debt. Every three years, he bought his wife a new fully loaded Cadillac for Christmas. Last year’s model was white. He’d been working steady for forty-eight of his sixty-two years, starting as a paperb
oy in his hometown of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he still lived. He filed his tax returns by February 10, and every single year for the past forty-eight years, he’d received a refund from the IRS, averaging five thousand six hundred and thirteen dollars. Rounded up. He only drank alcohol on weekends, and that was usually just a glass of light beer or some red wine with his wife at dinner. He’d never been arrested, never gotten a speeding ticket, and worked out before work six days a week at the local YMCA, where he also sat on the all-volunteer board of directors. He preferred the missionary position, ensured that his wife had at least two point three orgasms before he did, and then got a warm washcloth and cleaned her up. He donated ten percent of his annual salary of two hundred and seventeen thousand dollars to various charities, including the Red Cross breast cancer awareness and the Make-a-Wish Foundation. He had an IRA with two million thirty-nine dollars in it, and a vacation home in Ocean City, New Jersey, which, by the way, is a dry town. Every November, he donned a red suit and volunteered for the Salvation Army, ringing his little gold bell in six-hour shifts outside the local CVS.

  Could anybody be that good?

  My preliminary research on Jeffrey was equally boring. In a lot of ways, he was the same as garbage man Fred, except for the amount of money he made, which was, as I’d expected, boatloads less. He’d never been arrested, paid his taxes on time, what little they were, and donated time to charity. He ran a lesser-known church, First Unitarian Covenant of Friendly Friars, or FUCOFF, for short.

  He had a clean Internet browsing history, etc. The only thing missing from the Jeffrey Wells’ portfolio was a clear photograph of him. There were only a few photos of him on the net, and every one that I found was taken from far away or at a bad angle. I found that odd.

  I looked into the town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, and discovered that the households in the once-thriving coal town were lacking in electronic devices. Poor cell phone reception, no red light cameras, no free Wi-Fi. Many of the homes didn’t even have cable, which meant that they didn’t have Wi-Fi, which meant that HFS had no way of spying on them, since the majority of residential home spying relied heavily on cell phones, the Internet, and Wi-Fi.