Heartless: a Derek Cole Mystery Suspense Thriller (Derek Cole Suspense Thriller Book 1) (22 page)

“If you found out six months ago, why didn’t you go to the authorities then?”

“If someone called you out of the blue and told you the same story, would you believe it right off the bat or would you do some research?”
   

“Research, but not six months of it.”
   

“It took longer than you might imagine to verify her story. They covered their asses pretty damn well. The state of New York had zero information on Alexander Black since Straus kept him hidden in some closed-off ward in a now-closed psych hospital. It took a while to pick up a trail, and that trail leads straight to the lodge you are looking at right now.

 
“Once I discovered that the story was true, I started planning my next steps. Only thing was my next steps were interrupted by what Alexander Black is accused of doing.”

“Did you ever see Alexander? I mean, did you ever go out to Piseco Lake to verify?”

“Mr. Cole, I am a man of resources. No, I never went out to Piseco Lake, but I hired a few people who did all the verifying I needed. I received pictures of Alexander and copies of his entire file two weeks ago.”

“Mr. O’Connell,” Derek said, “I strongly suggest that you make your location known to the local authorities. Your name was on that list as well for whatever reason, and if the state police or Chief Ralph Fox find out you never boarded that plane, they will come looking for you and will have some targeted questions.”

“You worry about doing what I am paying you to do, and I’ll take care of myself. I know that my son is safe, but that doesn’t mean that he will stay safe. Find Straus, Lucietta, and Mix. And if you happen to find Alexander Black, give him a message for me.”

“And that message would be?”
   

“To leave my family the hell alone. Call me at 8:00 your time. Got it?”

“Got it.”
 

William Straus was conflicted. He didn’t know what to concentrate on. His thoughts flipped between congratulating himself for his cunning and the intense fear that he knew demanded more of his focus.

When he received the call and heard the demands expected to him, Straus knew he had to respond with caution. Though he offered no resistance, he calculated how he would respond. He practiced which words he would use, how to use them, when, and even the tone of voice he would present the rehearsed words with. But he also planned his approach, and that planning, that calculation, was why he was still alive.

The caller was viciously clear.

“Be at your cabin no later than seven in the morning. Alexander and I will be waiting for you. Do not alert anyone about our meeting. Should you have previously scheduled guests planning on arriving, let them keep their schedules. If you decide on inviting anyone else who you feel might give you some negotiating advantage, don’t. You know exactly what this meeting is about and can probably correctly assume our demands. However, if you fail to comply or choose to modify your expected response, our demands will be satisfied in a different manner.”

William Straus had no intentions of making a risky move. He would comply fully. Do what was asked, exactly as directed. But he also would have his own “Plan B” and “Plan C” ready to be implemented. Before any plan was set into motion, Straus designed a prequel.

He stopped his car a full half-mile down the twisting, tree-lined road that housed his lodge. It was still dark when he shut his BMW off and disappeared into the thick woods. The closer he got to his lodge, the slower and quieter he made his pace. When he was within a safe viewing distance, he opened his gym bag, pulled out a long sleeve shirt and sweat pants, and put them on over his Jos A Bank gabardines and crisp, white pinpoint Oxford. He found a low bush that afforded excellent cover and crawled beneath its concealing bows.

Once situated, he glanced at his watch.

“Six-thirty,” he said to himself. “Perfect.”

 
From his position, Straus could see the back end of a sedan, unfamiliar to him, parked in the stone driveway of his lodge. His angle of view did not allow him to see the plates nor the make, but he knew whose car it was.

Ten minutes after he arrived in his perch, Straus saw a car slowing, then turning into the lodge.

“Curtis and Adams,” he whispered.

He watched Jacob Curtis and Peter Adams enter the lodge after pausing to consider the strange car parked in the driveway. He knew they were planning on being in attendance when Straus told Alexander the good news, but he didn’t expect them till well after ten.

It was perfectly still and quiet for several minutes before Straus saw the main door of the lodge swing open. Standing in the doorway was a bloody Alexander Black. The morning sun was still struggling to ward off the dark shadows, but Straus could see, even from one hundred feet away, the blood dripping from Alexander’s hands.

“Shit!”
he thought.
 

The decision to leave and to execute Plan B was made instantly, but he knew he had to remain unseen and unheard. He needed a distraction. And as he glanced further down the road, he saw his needed distraction headed straight towards Alexander.

He didn’t know the man, but Straus recognized him. He remembered having seen him walking by his lodge before. His name didn’t matter. All that mattered was the fact that he looked to be speaking with Alexander, which meant Alexander would be distracted.

As quietly as he could, Straus crawled backwards, keeping his gaze fixed on Alexander and the familiar stranger as they spoke in the middle of the road. When he was free of the bush and could stand, Straus began to quicken his pace. Before he turned his back on his lodge, Straus saw Alexander plunge a knife deep into the man’s neck.

He sprinted back to his car.

He made no attempt to keep quiet. He wheeled his car into the road, hastily made a two-and-a-half-point turn and gunned his engine towards his escape route.

Had he just followed the instructions he was given, Straus was sure that the blood dripping from Alexander’s hands would be his. If he had trusted Alexander’s assistant, he would have no ability to implement Plans B and C. No, if he had been a sheep like most others and had just done what he was told, he would be dead.

As he slowed his BMW to a speed less likely to raise suspicions, Straus grabbed his phone, removed the battery, and tossed it into his back seat. He then removed the Plan B driving directions from his center council and prepared to turn off State Route 8.

He had spent a considerable amount of time planning his alternate route, making certain that if Alexander and his accomplice were to try to follow him that they would be hard pressed to keep up with the frequent turns. Within an hour after leaving his lodge, Straus pointed his car south and headed towards New York City.

His first stop would be to see Brian Lucietta.
 
He had to let Brian know what had happened.

“Brian,” he said while standing outside of his car in Mercy Hospital’s employee parking lot, “both you and I need to protect ourselves. If what O’Connell told me is true, he and Alexander are not planning on making everything public but in exacting revenge.”

“William,” Brian Lucietta said, “you’re running scared from two people who, unless I’ve missed something, are not career criminals. If what you believe you saw at your lodge actually happened, the police will have them in custody within a day. Two at the most. I’m staying right here and keeping things business as usual.”

“I’m going to Hilburn. Ward C is impenetrable. I’ll keep in touch with you and with the news and won’t come out until I know Alexander and O’Connell are either dead or behind bars.”

“You’re overreacting. What you should be more concerned about is explaining to the authorities why you kept Alexander hidden all these years.”

“I’ve already figured that out,” Straus replied.

“Shouldn’t you share your story with me so that we are on the same page?”

“As far as you know, Alexander was just another patient, and you had no idea of the circumstances behind his arrival to Hilburn or departure.”

“Keeping me safe, are you, Will?”

“Keeping things clean, Brian. My story is the only one that is ever heard, if things come to that point. The more you deny, the better.”

“And with Jacob and Peter out of the way, that only leaves the doctors from Chicago to deal with,” Brian said as he checked an incoming text message on his cell. “I have to get back. You keep in touch, and let me know if there’s anything else I need to know about your story.”

“I have a plan for the good doctors from Chicago.”

“Good enough,” Brian said as he extended his hand to Straus.

“I do think it unwise for you not to take precautions,” Straus said as he shook Brian’s hand.

“I still carry my Taser. Just in case.”

Doctor William Straus was now safe, hidden in a place that he knew better than anyone. A place where no one would look for him, but from where he could keep fully informed of Alexander and his accomplice’s doings. Behind the locked doors of Ward C on the second floor of the vacated Hilburn Psychiatric Institution, he sat surrounded by a month’s worth of supplies. He had everything he needed, and now only ventured out of the protective confines early in the morning and late at night.

The rooms in Ward C had no exterior windows. The steel and brick construction blocked the WiFi signal from the tech startup company that was housed in the old Hilburn supply building that stood fifty feet from the walls of the main Hilburn hospital building. Straus would carefully listen for any noise outside of the only door that led from the “hub” of Ward C to the hallway. After hearing nothing for at least three minutes, he would unlock the door and quietly make his way down the southern hall to a window that faced the old supply building. There, Straus was able to log on to the tech company’s WiFi signal on his iPad, access news streams, check emails, and respond to any that he considered to be “critically important.”

He was certain that no one knew that Ward C was no longer vacant and knew that the only time a visitor would enter the abandoned main hospital building would be if a possible tenant was interested in seeing the available space. Over the years, three of the four buildings of the Hilburn campus were converted. One building was occupied by the tech company, another was converted to a warehouse, and the third was converted to small offices for start-up companies looking for inexpensive office space. While there were many companies interested in the three story main hospital, no tenants had been found. Rumors of the hospital being haunted were well known in the area, and local police had to increase their watches to keep out amateur ghost hunters and teenagers looking for a thrilling night.

Straus didn’t believe in ghosts and was able to easily dismiss the occasional sounds he heard during the night as echoes from the nearby roads or kids, loitering in the parking lot. There were some sounds, however, that gave Straus pause. Sounds that sounded eerily familiar.

His first night back in Hilburn, Straus thought he heard a crackle of electricity coming from the first floor where doctors like Brian Lucietta would perform “therapeutic shock therapy.” Later that night, Straus was certain that he heard the voice of a particularly disturbed patient calling for him. The patient died on the second floor from asphyxiation, though the exact cause was never determined.

Though the sounds startled Straus, he passed them off as his nerves getting the better of him.

“I’ve never read an obituary that claimed ghosts as the cause of death,” he chuckled to himself. “Empty halls distort sounds, and a nervous mind can turn the wind into a blood curling scream.”

It was at the window where Straus read about the two doctors murdered in Chicago. He read about Rinaldo having been killed by “severe blunt force trauma to his skull” and about Zudak being strangled in a motel thirty miles west of Chicago. He also read the details of the murders at his lodge and of the police search for “Doctor William Straus, wanted for questioning.”

There were no emails worth his response and nothing from Brian Lucietta. The only email that he did find interesting enough to be saved and read several times, came from an unknown Gmail account. He assumed that someone, probably Alexander or O’Connell, had accessed the computer in his study at the lodge, had learned his email address and had contacted him. The message was simple, concise and well written;

“Your name still appears on my list. I’d like to remove it, soon.”

Part of his Plan B called for three stops. The first being to visit with Brian Lucietta, to both make Brian aware of the happenings at the lodge and also to instruct him to deny knowledge of Alexander Black. The second was to a grocery store, where, using cash, Straus bought a month’s worth of food, water, and supplies. The final stop he made was to his home on Long Island. There, Straus collected boxes of files, his Smith and Wesson .380, two boxes of tactical bullets, and several changes of clothes. He needed nothing else and felt confident that, if after his food and supplies ran out, he would be able to sneak out to gather more if the situation with Alexander Black had not been resolved.