Perilous (15 page)

“How many guys?” I asked.

“Two. They went north,” Sommer said. “I tried getting word out on the radio, but it wouldn’t go through. Our radios just came back on right before we came in. I put the call out on the car and what direction they headed. They have to be at least a few miles up the road or more by now.”

“They have some kind of cell-and-radio jammer,” I said. “We couldn’t get a call through for backup. When they were at my sister’s house this morning, our cell phones showed no signal. Can one of you take Kinnear’s car and start looking?” I asked.

Esler spoke up, sitting at Kinnear’s side. “We’re stuck here. You haven’t been outside. Kinnear’s cruiser has four flats. The same as the truck out there,” he said.

I ran my hand over the top of my head. “Shit.”

Two more deputies walked in. Deputy Sommer immediately sent them in search of the shooters.

I took a chair at the kitchen table. “You said just two guys?” I asked Sommer.

“Two.”

“I think there was at least one more,” I said.

“How’s that?

“I think I may have put one of them down out back.”

“Let’s take a look,” Sommer said. “Esler, you okay waiting with Kinnear here?”

“Yeah, EMTs should be here any second.”

I grabbed a flashlight from under my father’s sink. Sommer followed me from the front of the house. We walked around back and started through the snow. With each step, we sank to our knees.

“We took shots from the back and front of the house at roughly the same time,” I said. “I put half of a magazine into where the gunfire from the rear was coming. Within a minute, I heard two people talking at the front.”

“That still could just be two people,” Sommer said.

“The shots were at distance. You wouldn’t be able to get from back here, to up there, that fast. The snow is too deep.”

“Unless he was wearing snowshoes.”

Sommer had made a good point, but I was betting that we’d be finding a body within the next fifty feet. We started up the hill that he fired from. I used the trees to pull me along. My flashlight shone across red mixed into the white snow at the crest of the hill.

“There,” I said.

Sommer drew his sidearm and took the lead. We reached the blood at the top of the hill. A rifle lay in the snow. I knelt and looked at it—a Knight SR-25.

“Hmm,” I said, standing.

“What?” Sommer asked.

“There’s a body around here somewhere.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s an expensive weapon. No one would leave that laying in the snow.”

I followed the blood with my light, down the other side of the hill. Forty feet away, a man lay pinned against a tree, facing away from us. Black pants covered his legs, and he wore a camouflage jacket and a black ski mask. He was, no doubt, either one of the guys from the house or an associate of theirs.

“Hands where I can see them!” Sommer yelled.

The guy didn’t move. With my light, I followed the trail of blood from the body back to us at the top of the hill. Blood covered everything around our feet. I looked at the snow between us and the body. It was all disturbed, but not from walking. The man’s footprints to get to his shooting position came from the east. The guy had rolled to his final resting position after being shot. I examined the amount of blood again. He’d been dead before he left the top of the hill.

Sommer walked sideways down the snow-covered hill to the body. I followed in his footsteps.

Sommer reached out and took the man’s wrist. He held it in his left hand while keeping his gun pointed at the man with his right. “Deceased.”

He rolled the man onto his back, and I saw the cause of death. Below his ski mask were two bullet wounds in his neck. Another two holes could be seen in his jacket around the collarbone area. I took the bottom of the ski mask and began to pull it up off his head. As soon as I started, I became confused. The light from our flashlights was shining off brown skin. After I removed the mask, the dead eyes of a Hispanic man stared back at me. His nose and lips were swollen, and he had two busted-up eyes.

“This guy got the hell beat out of him. Does he look familiar to you?” Sommer asked.

“No.”

“I thought you said something about these guys being Russian?”

“I did.”

“Well, this guy sure as hell isn’t Russian.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

Sommer knelt and started checking the guy’s pockets.

“Anything?” I asked.

“I have a phone, um, I think I have a wallet here, too.” He slipped out the wallet and phone and then finished patting down the guy’s jacket. “Feels like he’s got a pistol. We’ll leave that for the crime-lab guys.”

Sommer stood and thumbed open the wallet. “Got an ID here. Florida. Daniel Juares. Oh, look at that, we have another ID, Florida as well. Jose Gomez. No credit cards. Looks like about a hundred bucks in cash.”

“So which one is he? Or neither?” I asked.

“Both IDs have the same photo.”

I stared down at the body. “Do you have a pen?” I asked.

“Pen? Yeah. For what?”

I held out my hand. “I need to check something.”

Sommer unzipped his jacket and reached into the breast pocket of his shirt. He pulled out a pen and handed it over to me.

I pressed it against the guy’s lip.

“What are you doing?”

“I need to check his teeth.” I lifted his top lip—three busted teeth across the top row.

“Broken teeth. What’s that telling us?” Sommer asked.

“More than likely, my father was the one who delivered the beating on this guy. I found broken teeth in the master bedroom.”

“So this was one of the guys who took your parents? I’m not sure how that helps, though,” Sommer said.

“They have to still be in the area.”

Sommer blew on his hands. “See that?” he asked. “The guy has a radio earbud.”

I knelt and looked. “He must have been communicating with the others.”

Sommer started back up the hill. “Come on. We’ll leave him for the crime-lab guys. They can figure out how to get him out of the woods. We’ll be able to get him printed and have a positive identity by morning.”

My mind went back to the bodies removed from my sister’s house. Getting a confirmed identification on this guy was our single lead. “I’m carrying the body back,” I said.

“You’re what?”

“The bodies were removed from the last scene. I don’t want to chance it.”

“What about forensics? Shouldn’t we leave the scene as is?”

“Not this time. I’m not leaving this body unattended, and I’m sure as hell not staying out here to freeze to death. The rifle and scene can stay as is, but the body comes with.”

“Fine. Let me get his legs,” Sommer said.

We lifted the body and trudged back through the snow, again sinking up to our knees with each step. The process was grueling. By the time we were halfway back, I took it upon myself to just carry the body. We rounded the cabin to more squad cars in front. Two sheriffs stood next to a car and watched me lay the man’s corpse on the frozen driveway. An ambulance idled close to the front deck. Four squad cars that hadn’t been there when we left sat parked next to my father’s garage. We walked indoors. Kinnear was gone.

Esler was sitting at the kitchen table with two other deputies.

“Kinnear?” Sommer asked.

“The paramedics just got him loaded up,” Esler said.

“Outlook?” I asked.

“He lost a lot of blood.”

I heard the ambulance pull from the front. I stared out the broken front window and watched them flip on the lights as soon as they hit the street.

“What are we doing here?” Esler asked.

“We’re going to fan out.” Sommer looked at his watch. “It’s eight fifteen now. I want groups of two knocking on every door in the area before ten p.m. There’s a chance these guys are holing up locally. Where’s Purwin?”

“Back bedroom,” Esler said.

“Purwin!” Sommer yelled.

A thin man in his thirties walked from the hallway. He wore a white jacket with the word
Forensics
across his right breast pocket.

“There’s a body out front,” Sommer said. “I want him printed before you do anything else. We need an identity on that guy as soon as humanly possible.”

“Okay,” Purwin said.

“I have a friend that’s helping me at the FBI,” I said. “If you can get the prints to him, he’ll have something for us tonight yet.”

Sommer dipped his head in confirmation. “Get the FBI guy’s information from him and share the prints.”

“Okay. Let me just grab my kit from the bedroom.” Purwin grabbed his kit and came back to me.

I gave him a contact number for Faust then looked at Sommer. “I need the two names on those IDs, and we need to go through that cell phone. Do you guys have a system in place to get a current GPS location on the numbers?”

He shook his head.

“All right, we’ll use my guys. Phone and wallet?” I asked.

Sommer pulled them from his jacket pockets and handed them to me.

“Do you have something to write this stuff down?” I asked.

Sommer pulled a small notepad and his pen from inside his jacket. “Copy down the names and addresses from those.” I handed him the two ID cards and started pulling up the cell phone’s call log. I found just one number dialed in the history and three numbers programmed in. I rattled off the numbers to Sommer.

“Got them,” he said.

I held out my hand for the notepad. “I’m going to go make the call.”

“Sure,” Sommer said.

“Let’s get one of the other deputies listening in on that earbud the guy wore. If these guys are communicating, maybe we can get their location,” I said.

“I’ll get someone on it,” Sommer said.

I headed outside to the 4Runner to get my phone from the passenger seat. Shell casings littered the snow around it—they must have been using the vehicles for cover. The squad car and 4Runner had fresh bullet holes in the grilles and windshields—mine from when I’d returned fire blindly, I assumed. I walked to the driver’s door. Blood colored the snow at the rear of the truck. I’d hit one of them. I popped the door and grabbed my cell phone from inside. The screen showed four missed calls from Callie’s prepaid number. I dialed her back and placed the phone to my ear.

“Carl?” she answered.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“We’re fine. I was just worried. I hadn’t heard from you in a while. Is everything okay? Did you find your parents?”

I dug my palm into my eye. “No.”

“No everything isn’t okay, or no you didn’t find them?”

“No to both. Whoever is doing this is up here. They have my parents.”

“You’re sure?” she asked.

“Positive.” I didn’t tell her I’d just been in a gunfight.

“Are we still safe here?” she asked.

“As far as I know. I’m going to see what I can do about getting a sheriff from that area out to you guys, just to be sure.”

“When are you coming back?”

“I don’t know, Cal. As soon as I can.”

“I know you’re not telling me something, Carl. What’s going on? What happened?”

“Babe, let me just tell you later. I’m fine.”

“You tell me right now.” Her tone wasn’t one I’d heard before. She wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

I let out a breath and went over what had happened. She was silent for a moment after I finished.

“Carl, I know you have to find your parents. Just, please, be safe. I don’t want this baby to not have a father. Promise me that’s not going to happen.”

“I promise.”

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too.”

I hung up and shook my head. I imagined the situation had to be killing her—it was killing me. I was torn between finding my parents and protecting my future. I walked back into the house. The deputies were gathered at the kitchen table. They were marking points on a map—houses or cabins to check, more than likely.

“Sommer,” I said.

He turned from the table and walked to me at the front door. “I got someone listening for their radio communication,” he said.

“Good. What can you do about getting a couple sheriffs stationed at a cabin about a half hour from here?”

“Our county?” he asked.

“I think it’s Langlade.”

“I have a couple friends over there. What’s going on?”

“My family is holed up in a cabin there. There’s a child involved. I’d feel a lot better if they were being looked over by someone.”

“Let me see what I can do. What’s the address?”

“Nine five nine Woodhaven Lane, Pickerel.”

Sommer jotted the address down. “You talk to your FBI guy?”

“I’m doing that now. Another thing, I hit one more of the guys outside.”

He pointed toward the driveway. “Out front?”

“Yeah. There’s blood in the snow at the back of the 4Runner.”

“We’ll get someone on it and check with the local hospitals.”

I let out a deep breath and jerked my chin toward the kitchen table with the map. “How far is the net you’re casting?” I asked.

“As much ground as we can cover tonight. Probably a few-mile radius before it gets too late.”

I walked to the living room and took a seat on the bullet-ridden couch. There, I pulled up Faust’s number in my phone and clicked Talk.

“Agent Faust,” he answered.

“Faust, it’s Kane.”

“Hey, Kane. I’m still working on connecting some dots here. From what Sergeant Rawlings was saying, it looks like you’ve got some trouble on your hands.”

“That’s an understatement. I need a couple of things if you can help.”

“Shoot.”

“I got a couple of names and phone numbers. I’m looking for whatever you can get me on the names and some real-time GPS on the numbers.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

I gave Faust the information. He said he’d call me back with whatever he got. I clicked off.

Sommer walked over from the kitchen. “I’m sending some of these guys out now to do a little door knocking. I got a hold of the Langlade County Sheriff’s Office. I explained to them what was going on. They are going to sit on the place for the night.”

I let out a breath in relief. “I appreciate it, Sommer. Anyone check out the shop yet?”