The Devil's Snare: a Mystery Suspense Thriller (Derek Cole Suspense Thrillers Book 4) (13 page)

“I shouldn’t be saying this, but the paramedics told me they didn’t think she’d even make it to the hospital alive.”

Derek nodded his head. He then folded his arms across his chest, looked Mullins dead in the eye, and said, “You think Bo did it, don’t you?”

“The arson? Damn straight I do. No reason to think otherwise.”

“Not the arson. You think he tried to kill his mother.”

“That I do, Derek. That I certainly do.”

Derek had been in this situation before: Being involved with a case, knowing, or at least strongly believing, he wasn’t seeing everything that needed to be seen and having no idea what his next steps should be. He and Investigator Mark Mullins left the diner a full two hours after they had sat down. Most of their conversation—after Nikkie had left to be with Crown—had focused on the recent events Mark considered to be “highly strange, highly suspicious and highly connected somehow.” Those events were the fire that took the life of Brian Mack and his mother; Adam Strafford, the quiet and reserved manager of three chain restaurants in the area, who had, according to his wife, “just walked upstairs from the basement and got into beating” her; Pat Waterhouse and his three fifteen early morning chainsawing escapades; and Saul Troffert, Andy Benner and Bruce Ibsen, each accused of slashing car tires, smashing a few house windows and, in a few cases, pissing into the gas tanks of three or four cars.

“I can’t say I know any one of them well, but I can tell you that none of them has any history with the law and none of them presented themselves to be the criminal type. Hell, people in town can’t believe what these guys are accused of. People who know them called us, emailed us, even sent us snail mail, all saying basically the same thing.”

“And that would be?” Derek has asked.

“That something or someone set these people up for whatever reason. They say there’s no way on God’s green earth that these guys are guilty. But hell, it was Strafford’s wife who told the nurse in the emergency room that her husband had beaten her. Still, people don’t believe it was him. No one believes it was him. Matter of fact, Adam Strafford doesn’t believe it was him.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if each one of those guys say they have no memories of the times when the crimes were committed.”

Mullins gave Derek a long look, a half smile playing on the corners of his mouth. “All five have no memories of the time during which the crimes they are accused of were perpetrated. Tell me, Derek, what made you say that?”

“Bo Randall insists he has no recollection of the night of the fire. He’s damn emphatic about his amnesia, too.”

“Sergeant Ken McCallion did the initial interview with Bo. He told me the same thing. Now, understand, the fire that took the lives of the Mack’s happened this past Sunday. Turner’s wife was beat up the previous Monday. Strafford felled his neighbors oak tree the week before, and the three amigos did all their vandalism less than two weeks ago. So when McCallion told me about Randall denying any memory, my spidey senses got all nervous and twitchy. Knowing that all of the six accused claim to have no memory, told me something is wrong in this town.”

“And I’d be willing to bet that’s when you started looking for a connection.”

“Started then and continuing now,” Mullins said. “And it pisses me off that I haven’t found any connection beyond they all drink the water, breathe the same air and drive down Main street to buy whatever the hell it is they feel compelled to buy.”

“Some of the ways people are connected are invisible. Kept secret,” Derek said. “People are connected to others in a ton of ways that they’d rather no one ever learn about.”

“I think you and I are chasing the same rabbit down the same rabbit hole.”

“Only question is, where the hell will our chasing lead us?”

“That is the question, Derek. That is the question, indeed.”

Derek adjusted his position on the hard plastic bench seat of the booth. As he did, he felt an uncomfortable bulge in his back pocket. Remembering what he had shoved into his pocket and what he had seen while driving through the heavily wooded area of Ravenswood, Derek reached into his pocket, removed the flattened bundle of weeds and placed them on the table between himself and Mullins.

“And these are what?” Mullins asked.

Derek explained seeing the two men tossing overly stuffed garbage bags into the back of a pickup truck and how he came across the stash of weeds that was now sitting in a wilting declaration of their death, on the diner’s table.

“At first I figured it was pot, but, unless you grow some genetically altered species of cannabis here in Ravenswood, I have no idea what this weed is.”

Mullins took one stem of the green weed into his hands, his thick fingers making the stem look like a green toothpick. He twirled the stem around, staring at it with an apparent level of curiosity. After several seconds, he dropped the weed to the table, and said, “Looks like an ordinary weed to me.”

“Then why,” Derek began, “would people be gathering ordinary weeds up into several garbage bags, then hightail it out of the area after someone, and that someone happened to be me, spotted them?”

“Tell you what, Cole,” Mullins said as he picked up a couple of the weeds from the table, “I’ll send these up to our lab and see if they contain some special ingredient.” He shoved the weeds into the breast pocket of his sport coat.

“Pretty sad, actually.”

“What’s pretty sad?” Mullins asked.

“That the only tangible thing I’ve found since starting this case is a bunch of weeds that probably are nothing more than weeds.”

“Add the weeds to the mystery, Cole. And who knows, these damn weeds may be the break we’re looking for.”

After speaking with Nikkie and having learned that Crown was taken into surgery, where a piece of her skull was removed in order to relieve the swelling of her brain, Derek needed to calm himself. Though he couldn’t see a direct connection between the events happening in Ravenswood and the attack on Crown, he knew there was one. Mullins had assured him that the sheriff’s department would apprehend Crown’s attacker and both he and Derek believed that whomever it turned out to be, would claim to have no memory of the attack.

Bo’s absence certainly concerned Derek and while he had yet to meet Bo face to face, something in the back of his mind told him Bo wasn’t the attacker. Someone else, connected or not connected to Bo, had done the attacking, and Derek was hell bent on finding out that someone’s name. Bo Randall being Crown’s son made the case personal for his agency. Having Crown attacked and fighting for her life made the case personal to him.

The last thing Mullins told Derek before he headed back to the Sheriff’s Department was that, besides the three men accused of slashing tires and a few other assorted misdemeanors, none of the men accused of being involved in the recent crime spree were acquainted.

“They all knew one another, but to no more degree than how people in small towns across this county know each other. Turner and Waterhouse belong to the same gym. Troffert and Turner attend the same church and Bennet and Strafford have mutual friends. But beyond Troffert, Bennet and Ibsen working together at the compounding facility, there’s nothing that connects them to each other. Nothing.”

Derek pulled out his Moleskine notebook and skimmed over the notes he had taken since accepting the Bo Randall case. He couldn’t remember the name of the bar Bo claimed he had spent the majority of the night at on the night of the fire. Once he found the name, Route 69 Bar and Grill, he plugged it into his GPS, then followed the turn-by-turn directions to the bar.

Route 69 Bar and Grill was less than three miles to the west of Ravenswood. Stuck, as if by accident, on the left hand side of Route 69, the bar looked out of place. Its weathered brown siding, sharply slanting blue steel roofing, gravel and pitted parking area and brightly painted orange doors belied the long stretches of vacancies that ran both sides of the road. The bar simply sat alone, screaming at drivers passing by with signs claiming, “The Best Chicken Wings in the Area,” “Twenty-three Beers on Tap,” and “Live Music Every Tuesday, Friday and Saturday.” A pulsating neon sign glared from the window closest to the front entrance, “Saranac Sold Here.” Derek parked his car in the spot nearest the front door, bringing the total number of cars to six in the parking lot. It was a few minutes after noon and the wished-for lunch crowd had either not yet arrived or decided that, despite Route 69 Bar and Grill laying claim to the best chicken wings, that a more welcoming establishment was more deserving of their patronage.

The inside of Route 69 Bar and Grill continued the expected theme of decorations. Unpainted, rough-cut timber boards running horizontally served as the bar’s walls while even rougher-cut six-by-six-inch pine posts braced the ceiling. The bar stretched straight across the recently swept floor, spanning fifty feet and buttressing up against a wall on the left hand side, and a narrow hallway leading deeper into the establishment to the bar’s right. As he made his way to the bar, each step sending screams of board squeaks as his weight fell and then was lifted off the wooden floor, Derek saw several dining tables spread in what could have been interpreted as some semblance of order. A man wearing a “Buffalo Bills” t-shirt stood behind the bar, smiling at Derek with both arms braced on the bar’s surface.

“Hello young man,” the assumed bar tender said to Derek. “Thanks for stopping in. Looking for lunch or just a bite of some beer?”

“Not sure, yet,” Derek replied. “I was hoping to speak with whoever runs this place or is here so often that a stranger like myself might mistake them for being the owner.”

The man in the Buffalo Bills t-shirt laughed and said, “The name is Lance Mahoney, and I am both the owner and someone a stranger might assume to the be owner. How can I help you?”

Derek shook Lance’s proffered hand, then sat at one of the high bar stools. He checked the time on his phone, scanned the line of bottles behind the bar, glanced at his phone again, then ordered a Dewar’s White Label scotch, two ice cubes and a whisper of water.

“Fine choice,” Lance said. “How about a menu?”

“My appetite waxes and wanes depending on how welcome I feel when I enter a new place.”

“Not sure which is better for me, waxing or waning, but I sure hope you’re comfortable.” Lance shot a quick glance around the mostly empty bar. He then squinted his eyes and drew a slightly more noticeable smile across his face. “Most people don’t announce themselves as being a stranger, but you were pretty quick to do so. Since you are a stranger, at least to me, and you have a look of determination marking your face, I’m betting you’re here to ask me some questions about someone or something specific. And,” Lance continued as he placed Derek’s drink in front of him atop a chicken wing sauce ceramic coaster, “I bet you’re unsure about my reaction to the questions you want to ask and are probably thinking that eating one of my award winning burgers with a guy pissed off at you will wax or wane your enjoyment. How am I doing?”

“Spot on,” Derek replied.

“Well, how about I hand you a menu and you ask your first question. If I don’t like your question or think your question is taking our first ever conversation down a path I’m not comfortable taking, I’ll politely take the menu from your hands, you finish your drink, drop a five on the bar and we part as strangers?”

Derek took the menu Lance was holding out. “My name is Derek Cole. Freelance Detective. My agency was hired by Louis Randall to investigate the fire that took the lives of Brian Mack and his mother and to find out any information that may exonerate his son, Bo.”

Lance buttressed his thin frame with his arms on the bar, smiled broadly and said, “Like I said, my burgers are award winners. If you ask me to see the actual awards, I’ll suggest the chicken wings. But, take me at my word: The cheddar and bacon double is the best within a hundred mile radius.”

“Any chance you have sweet potato fries to go along with that double?”

“And a free well drink, which I’m guessing will make me reach for that bottle of Dewar’s again.”

After Lance returned from the kitchen—calling out Derek’s order to an unseen cook—he pulled up a stool and sat next to Derek. The two talked for several minutes, occasionally interrupted when other patrons found their glasses too empty for their comfort. By the time the cook brought Derek’s lunch out and placed it alongside a setting of cheap silverware wrapped in a paper napkin at the bar, Derek’s waxing appetite was demanding some attention.

“Don’t let me stop you from eating,” Lance said. “You get to eating. I’m going try to get some of these bums to either pay up or order something from the kitchen.”

He wasn’t sure if the cheddar and bacon double had actually ever won an award, but it certainly should have. Coupled with his second heavily-poured glass of scotch, Derek was certain the lunch was one of the best he had had in years.

“So, what d’ya think?” Lance said as he sat back next to Derek. A few people had entered Route 69 Bar and Grill while Derek was eating, and, not wanting to be disturbed, Lance called two of his employees out from the back kitchen: One to man the bar and another to serve the new, and hopefully, hungry customers. “Award winner or not?”

“Damn good,” Derek said, swallowing the last few sweet potato fries. “Not sure if it will mean anything to you, but I officially award this lunch with the ‘Private Eye’s Best Rated Burger East of the Mississippi Award.’ Congratulations.”

“Hell’s bells,” Lance chuckled. “You write out those words on a piece of fancy parchment paper and I’ll frame it and hang in behind the bar.” He pulled closer to Derek. “Listen,” he said in a low, serious-toned voice, “folks around here don’t like when strangers talk about locals. Let’s you and me sit down at one of those unfortunately empty tables in the dining area where we can talk about Bo, the fire, and whatever else it was that inspired you to come in here.”