A Shadow of Death in The Woods (24 page)

Chapter 39

Snake

Snake was busy. He didn’t look busy. He was thinking. He was good at thinking. It was all he could do for the two years while he was in prison. He was doing time for a drug bust. He was guilty but that was beside the point. A lot of guys were guilty but they weren’t in prison. He was in prison because of rats. In particular, two rats.

One was a two-faced SOB. While in prison, Snake decided that the two-faced SOB would die a slow painful death as soon as he got out. He couldn’t figure out how a guy could be so stupid as this guy was. He was closer to Snake than any other person in the business. Snake had trusted him. The payoff was that he had gone to Snake’s competitor and sold him out. Together they had engineered a way for Snake to be busted. The competitor had done it to get Snake’s business. That made sense. Snake was still going to kill the competitor who set him up with the cops but it was just business. His so-called business associate was more than business. That was a personal betrayal. He was going to die first and he was going to die hard.

Snake knew that the two rats thought that they had gotten Snake busted without Snake knowing it was them who betrayed him. Well, Snake’s mother hadn’t raised any dummies. Snake had it figured out and had it confirmed. There was no doubt as to what had happened.

Snake had been out of prison six months and he had already taken care of part of his business. First, he got back into the drug business and got money rolling in. He still had plenty to do to build his business back up but it was good enough to supply him with the cash he needed at the moment.

His first expense was to get a Harley underneath his butt. It felt good to be on the road, free again. He had gotten a new tattoo to celebrate.

This time Snake was going to be smart. The first smart thing was that he was not going to sample the goods like he did before. The one good thing about prison was that it got him off drugs and not because drugs weren’t available. Prison was like a giant drugstore. There were more drugs in there than there were on the streets. It was amazing. No, Snake had seen the light. People who used drugs were not smart. They eventually went down. Snake wasn’t going down again unless it was going down for good, as in dead.

The next smart thing was that Snake was making some personnel changes. In particular there were two rats that needed exterminating. He had found the worst one first. That was about a month ago. He caught the guy and took him to a secluded place where he took the guy apart piece by piece, slowly. When he had finished, he put the parts in the guy’s car and left it on a street. He knew that was risky because it was going to create a sensation with the cops but Snake wanted to send a message to the street that he wasn’t to be crossed. He figured the police would chalk the murder up to a drug killing, which it was and wouldn’t do much. He was right on both accounts. The media had a field day with the body parts in the car but the police declared that the guy was a drug dealer and it was a drug deal gone bad. Those were police code words for “Who gives a rat’s butt about the guy getting killed?”

The only problem was that the second rat figured out the score when rat number one was found dismantled in his car. So rat number two ran away. That was okay. Snake knew how to find him. Snake knew the only place that the guy could run to. He was as good as dead and there was no hurry. Snake had waited and planned for two years. A few weeks wouldn’t make any difference. In fact it was kind of fun thinking about how the guy knew Snake was after him and would kill him.

Meanwhile he was taking over the competitor’s business. Snake was back. More money coming in for Snake. It was working out better than he imagined.

He had just gotten a phone call from his sister. His sister, amazingly, was a citizen and she still loved Snake. Blood thicker than water and all that crap. They had grown up together and were great friends. They were the only part of the family left living. For reasons that Snake never understood she grew up to be an ordinary law-abiding person that his crowd called citizens, while he drifted into drugs and crime.

When they were kids, they were a team. That was a long time before he acquired the name Snake. Back then he had a citizen name. They played together a lot. In school Snake was his sister’s protector. If anyone bullied his sister, they paid a price so dear that they were loath to try it again. Word got around and his sister was bothered no more. His sister had tried hard to keep him on the straight and narrow and it had worked until he ended up in the hospital. That was where the drugs started and they controlled his life until he went to prison.

The house they grew up in was a nice, middle class household. Snake went to school and even graduated from high school. Right after high school he joined the army. He liked the army. He was good at it and had gotten into special forces where he met Captain. They had gone on some good missions together until that time in Africa. That was a bummer. He might have stayed in the army except he was partially disabled, at least according to army standards.

Snake had been wounded and Captain had gotten him out. He spent months in hospitals. That’s where he got onto drugs. He had to take pain killers. He had become addicted and the VA was not of a mind to help him. One thing led to another and Snake ended up in a biker gang buying, selling and using drugs. It was a rough life but kept the adrenaline going. Snake couldn’t stand citizen life without the adrenaline plus he had a habit to feed, which was no problem. There were plenty of drugs. The gang’s club house was well-stocked with recreational drugs of all kinds. It was like a pharmacist’s playhouse.

Snake hadn’t thought about it at the time but he was really into two kinds of drugs. One was the pain killers. The other was adrenaline. He had been an adrenaline junky and still was. He quit the pain killers (after a while) but the adrenaline was for keeps. That was not acquired; he was a born adrenaline junky.

The phone call was important. Captain had called his sister to get hold of Snake. Snake hadn’t heard from Captain in years. Captain had saved his life in Africa. They were on a black ops when things went very wrong. They all would have died except Captain pulled things together and gotten a lot of the guys out. It was a mess but Snake lived only because of Captain. For this reason Snake was willing to drop everything and help Captain if he was needed.

He called Captain at the number that his sister gave him. Knowing Captain, it would be a throw-away phone. He had no way of contacting Captain. It was good talking to him after all these years even though it was a short call and all business. Captain was always all business.

Captain didn’t know what, if anything, he needed. He just wanted to make contact and see if Snake was willing and able. Yes on both accounts. Captain had said he might need information from Snake’s world. That was cool. Snake had a lot of contacts in the biker world. He could get almost any information needed. And he could go on operations with Captain if needed. Who knows; it could be fun.

It was just like Captain to remember his sister as a way of getting hold of Snake. Captain was always resourceful. He also planned ahead. He probably kept his sister’s contact information just for an occasion like this. Captain’s resourcefulness and planning was why so many of the team came back from Africa. Some of the guys didn’t make it but no one blamed Captain. It was just one of those things. Things go wrong on high risk missions. The point was that many of them got out and none would have gotten out if it wasn’t for Captain.

Snake wondered what Captain was into that might need his help. Snake had helped Captain on some business ventures, adventures actually, years ago but Snake was sure that Captain was out of that business. Well, it didn’t matter. Captain would tell him what he needed to know, if anything.

Meanwhile Snake would work on growing his drug business. Killing the other rat would have to wait. That was all right. Sometimes aging things makes them better. What is that saying? Revenge is a dish best served cold? Snake just hoped that the rat didn’t get killed before Snake could get to him. He could tell from the phone call to Captain that whatever was going down with him was not going to take long. It would be nice to be able to help Captain out. It wouldn’t be like the old days but it might be similar. Snake would set up his business so he could be away a few days if necessary. He had to be careful doing that. He had learned to trust no one. But still he needed lieutenants. He had ideas and ways of handling it.

Chapter 40

The Dealer

Jim was grumpy. He was always grumpy when he first got up. He lived alone so no one was there to be irritated by him. However, he was so grumpy that he irritated himself, which probably made him grumpier but he wasn’t sure. He was grumpy until he had one or maybe two cups of coffee. Caffeine was a good drug. It got his heart going and kept it going. The only thing wrong with caffeine was that you couldn’t make any money selling it. To make money selling drugs you either had to be a big drug company with patents or you had to sell illegal drugs. Jim bought and sold illegal drugs.

Before Jim’s time, alcohol was the drug of choice to make money. Most citizens wanted alcohol. Through a quirk in our democratic process, people made it illegal to manufacture for sale, transport or sell alcohol, starting in January 1920. It was a bonanza for enterprising young men with the stones to do it. Street thugs suddenly became millionaires. And that was back when a million dollars was worth a million dollars. Some of those guys would be billionaires today.

Today it was different kinds of illegal drugs and it was making double-digit billionaires out of some of the big operators. Jim wasn’t a big operator in the big scheme of things. He was a big operator in Ohio, a big fish in a small pond. He made plenty of money but then he had a string of bad luck and he owed a bigger dealer in Texas a huge amount of money. He had to pay right away or be dead. That was the kind of business it was. There were no courts or judges for him. His only recourse was to kill his supplier or pay the money. Jim wasn’t in a position to kill his supplier. The guy was too big. And if he killed him, Jim wouldn’t have a supplier.

Not that Jim hadn’t dreamed about it. He would love to go to Texas and put one in the guy’s head. Especially since Jim strongly suspected that his supplier was behind his "bad luck." Jim was sure the Texan had set him up. Realistically, Jim wasn’t going to kill his supplier. The guy in Texas called the shots. The Texas guy also had money for the best security and he had full-time guards. There was no way Jim could take out a guy like that.

Jim was in big trouble and, for the time being, he did his supplier’s bidding. Jim wasn’t going to take it forever though and he was looking for a new supplier.

The problem was that Jim needed to move drugs to make money to pay the guy but the guy wouldn’t ship him any drugs until he paid. A catch-22.

The Texas guy was a pedophile. That was disgusting to Jim but that was the way it was. It was like finding out an eight-hundred-pound gorilla was a pedophile. What can you do? Just smile and try to avoid the guy.

Jim had been buying drugs from the Texas guy for several years. The guy was getting weirder and weirder. But business had to go on. “Bad luck” had put him in debt to the Texas guy. Jim figured he could make up the money on a few shipments but the guy said no. He wanted Jim to supply him with a boy. At first Jim couldn’t believe it but the guy was serious and refused to negotiate. Jim knew if he didn’t do it the guy was going to kill him. Jim was in a tight spot. It wasn’t just the money; the Texas guy was going off his rocker more and more. His supplier was using the money as an excuse. It was a tough spot because Jim knew that this guy loved killing as much as he loved boys. It would be nothing for him to send up Mexican hit men for a few dollars or the promise of drugs. Jim would have seen his last birthday. Jim wasn’t ready for that yet. So he decided to supply the guy with a boy.

Jim had enlisted the help of his nephew, Kevin. Kevin wasn’t the shiniest penny in the lot but he was useful. He was also addicted to drugs and that was Jim’s leverage to get Kevin to do what was needed. Uncle Jim was his supplier.

Jim did all of the planning. It took a month of planning and watching. He finally selected a boy in a rich part of town. Jim did that because he figured the police would think it was a ransom kidnapping. By the time they figured out it wasn’t, it would be too late. It turned Jim’s stomach but his life was at stake.

He had picked a boy who dawdled and fell behind the other kids. Being alone, he was vulnerable. The boy was also from a rich family, a perfect target.

The job went off as planned. The hard part was getting the little boy to Texas. That was accomplished through drugs. They drugged the kid so he was dopey and drove him to Texas to a meeting point. He didn’t know exactly where his supplier lived. He just knew it was in Texas and Texas is big. They had agreed on a meeting place. Of course the big boss didn’t come out to the meeting. He sent some of his minions. They got the job done and returned to Ohio.

Jim’s only worry was Kevin. Kevin was a weak kid and a drug addict. Jim had his eye on Kevin. He just hoped it wouldn’t turn out that he would have to put his sister’s boy down. That would be hard. Life was hard in the world of drugs.

Chapter 41

The Officers Fly to Ohio

The engines were roaring. We were pressed back into our seats as the plane accelerated down the runway, vibrating as it increased speed. The plane quieted as it left the ground and started its climb into the sky. There was a clunk as the wheels were locked into their hidden compartment to reduce drag. We were airborne.

Takeoffs are the most dangerous part of flying. If the plane loses power, there are no options other than crash without altitude to maneuver. That wasn’t on my mind though. I just loved the acceleration. To me it was exhilarating.

I don’t know much about airplanes. I did read a spec somewhere on the plane and it said that it carried from one to nine passengers, which I thought a stupid statement. If it could carry nine passengers, most people could figure out that it could carry fewer without having it written down. In fact, I was sure that the plane could carry zero passengers so the spec wasn’t even correct. The seats in the turboprop-powered aircraft were plush. It was a comfortable plane in which to fly once I was seated.

The interior of the plane was four feet nine inches in height. I almost had to get on my knees to get to my seat. Once seated I had plenty of leg room. The seats folded back almost horizontally so one could sleep. Except we weren’t going to be sleeping. There was too much adrenaline flowing, at least in me, and we had things to do. The other guys looked relaxed.

I also knew how much fuel the plane burned per hour because I had seen the expenses in the financial reports. I tried not to think about all the money that I was going to owe Bob. Maybe I could talk him into taking it out of my salary with pretax dollars. That would save us the tax money. Strictly speaking, legally, that was borderline but one of the advantages of owning your own company; there no stockholders to satisfy and he could pay me what he wanted. So he paid me a low wage until the debt was paid—who was to know? I tried not to think about it. I had more urgent things to think about.

The exterior of the plane was white to reflect the sun’s heat. The interior was a soft beige. The seats were well padded and wide. I liked the width and I liked the leg room. There were no ash trays. No smoking, which was okay since none of us smoked.

This flight was going to be too brief for sleeping. It was going to take us only about an hour to get to where we were going in Ohio. Plus we were going to eat.

When we got on the plane, we were handed paper bags and bottles of water. I opened my bag and inside were three ham and cheese sandwiches made with Momma’s baked bread. The bread slices were thick. The ham was not processed ham. It was also thickly sliced and I knew it came from local ham. City people would call it organic. Momma knew that was what I liked. She also had put on the right amount of spicy mustard. Spicy mustard was one of my concessions to the processed food world. Along with the sandwiches were two apples, also organic. It was a little early for dinner but we didn’t know when we would have time to eat. Using flying time for dinner was efficient. Someone on the team had thought ahead and had Momma make us the dinner sacks. Not sure who it was. No one had mentioned it. Probably it was Paul. He was the planning and the logistics guy. When Bob told him to have the plane ready, he probably ordered the meals.

The sandwiches were delicious. Surprisingly, I was hungry and my sandwiches hit the spot. I thought as I ate.

I wondered what had happened to Will and if he was alone. I just couldn’t believe that he would wander off by himself. My feeling was that he had been kidnapped. If this was what had happened, I hoped that the kidnappers were being kind to him. At least Will had no health or medicine issues to worry about. But he was just a little kid and would be frightened.

The family must be frantic. On the phone Bill sounded the most vulnerable I had ever heard him. Being a lawyer, he was always the man in charge, full of confidence. He didn’t sound so confident. He sounded shaky.

And Katherine. She must be in a state. It wasn’t that long ago that she lost her first husband in a car wreck. Within the last year she had thrown me out. All that she had left in that big house were her two children. The family would be surrounding her but she would be frantic for Will.

And what would Laura make of this? She was very young but she would be scared with all of the excitement and she would wonder where her brother was. They were very close and hung around with each other. And less than a year ago she had lost the only father that she had ever known.

It was all a very bad situation. I couldn’t call Katherine to try to comfort her. She had told me never to call her again. She was probably hysterical anyway.

I was deep in my reverie when I realized someone was calling my name. It was Bob. We didn’t have much time before landing and he wanted to make sure we knew what we were doing when we got off the plane. That way we wouldn’t waste time on the tarmac talking about an action plan.

Our plan was to canvass all of the houses on Will’s path from the school to his house. With Paul’s maps we had figured that we had about one hundred houses to visit. Paul had made a list of questions that we would ask the people. We reviewed the questions and made one or two changes. Paul then gave each of us the list of questions plus a steno pad and a pen with which to make notes. We went over the plan on how to record each house visit and what happened at each house. If no one was at home or didn’t answer the door, we would mark it down for a revisit later.

Paul led us through a timeline. With one hundred houses to visit and assuming five minutes per house on average, it would take five hundred minutes. With four of us it would take one hundred and twenty-five minutes or just over two hours. It would be almost seven when we got to the neighborhood so we planned to finish before nine thirty. That was actually a good time slot, catching most people at home after dinner and before they went to bed. What we did after the canvassing would be determined by what we learned, if anything. Paul thought it unlikely that our business would be completed tonight so he booked rooms for us in a motel.

We talked about how we would approach the houses and how we would talk with the people. We agreed on our words so we would present a uniform and professional approach. And then I got a surprise.

Mike handed each of us a badge in a leather folder like police or private detectives carry. We were going to be private eyes. Mike had set it up through his contacts. If anyone challenged us, we had a phone number on a business card that they could call. A woman would answer with the name of the detective agency, assuring the caller that we were legitimate. We hoped, however, that by showing the right amount of confidence people would buy into our act. We didn’t want to hand out the business cards or show our badges unless it was absolutely necessary. This wasn’t, strictly speaking, legal. We would say that we were assisting in locating Will and not give any more details unless forced to. Our cover story, if needed, was that the family had hired us to assist the police. We were trying to help a distraught family in a time of dire need.

Bob asked me to drive the car that would meet the plane since it was my town. We decided that I would also be the one to interview the teacher so it was arranged that I would drop the guys off on Will’s school-home route and then I would go interview the teacher.

I didn’t know the teacher because Will had moved up a year since I was home. I might have seen her at the school but would have no reason to know her name. We had gotten her name from my ex-father-in-law when we called him. We had used the Internet to look up her address. I knew the neighborhood where she lived. It was about two miles from Will’s street. I would drive over there, interview her and then come back to Will’s street and pick up the canvassing effort. With me gone for a few minutes, it would extend the canvassing time but we still thought, if I hurried, we could still finish by nine thirty or close to it.

The plane touched down smoothly. We were in Ohio. I grabbed my steno notebook with the pen and crawled off the plane. A car was waiting. I got in the driver’s seat with Bob in the front passenger and Paul and Mike in the back. Mike with his shorter legs sat behind me. I had the front seat pushed all the way back so I could cram my legs under the steering wheel. It made for a full car.

I took the most direct route to Will’s street. I drove from the school to Will’s house so that the guys could get the lay of the land. I dropped Bob at one end and Paul and Mike at the other end. Then I drove off to find the teacher.