The Devil's Snare: a Mystery Suspense Thriller (Derek Cole Suspense Thrillers Book 4) (22 page)

“And you want me to keep an eye on him and prevent him from leaving, right?”

“Actually, no. If he takes off, I want you to call me right away, but let him go.” Derek paused several heavy seconds. “Has Louis Randall been notified of Crown’s condition?”

“Bo borrowed my cell and called him, but Mr. Wonderful hasn’t graced us with his presence yet.”

“Bo used your cell?” Derek asked.

“Yes. Is that a problem?”

“Could be. Not sure yet, but I need you to do me a favor. Copy the number Bo dialed and text it to me. If you leave the hospital for any reason, you need to leave the phone in Crown’s hospital room.”

“You think someone may be tracking me through the GPS on my phone?”

“Like I said, I’m not sure. Send me the number Bo called and I’ll figure out what I think.”

A few minutes after ending the call with Nikkie, the text message containing the number Bo had called from Nikkie’s phone pinged Derek’s phone. He opened the message and read the ten digit number six times before closing his messaging app. “Son of a bitch,” he mumbled. “I’m chasing every damn rabbit I see, even the ones I only imagine seeing.”

Even as he asked Nikkie to text him the number Bo had dialed on her phone, he knew it was a long shot that he’d had have some epiphany, as if the number dialed would contain a secret, hidden codex, that, once deciphered, would cause the mysteries surrounding the case to unravel before his very eyes. While he did think Bo started the fire that killed Mack and Mack’s mother, Derek didn’t think Bo was involved in some massive conspiracy plot. He believed Bo got very drunk and very high on cocaine, lost control of his mind, started the fire because starting the fire sounded like a good idea when Bo was in his state of intense inebriation, then lost all memories of the night. Bo probably lit the match, but Derek highly doubted he was involved in anything else.

He unlocked his iPhone, and dialed Alex Manner’s number. He wanted to fill Alex in on what happened to Crown, to give him an update on the Randall case, and also to get an idea of Alex’s availability.

“I’m kinda locked up right now,” Alex said. “Give me a day or two to finish things up on the case I’m working and, if you still need me, I can cruise down to Ravenswood to give you guys a hand.”

“Thought you were in Manhattan?” Derek said.

Alex paused a beat. “I am. What are you talking about?”

“Just that you said you could cruise ‘down to Ravenswood’ and not ‘up to Ravenswood.’ That’s all.”

Alex laughed. “Yeah, sorry. My head is all upside down with this case I’m working on. Don’t know my ass from my elbow right now. What I meant was I could get my ass—and both of my elbows—up to Ravenswood in a couple of days if you need me to.”

“I’ll let you know. Hope your case works out well,” Derek said.

“Yeah, yours too,” Alex said. “And, Derek, let me know about Crown, will ya? Damn, that sucks about her getting her skull cracked like that. She didn’t deserve that to happen.”

“No she didn’t, Alex. She certainly didn’t deserve what happened to her.”

Gene Witten was awake, pissed off and was suffering from a probable concussion and a certain broken nose when Investigator Mullins arrived. Mullins’ flashlight revealed the severity of the facial abrasions and bruises Derek had inflicted on Witten’s swollen and bloodied face.
 

“Sure you didn’t give him a few more love taps after sending me the pictures?” Mullins asked Derek.

“My friend here may have stirred a tad while I removed his shoelaces. I needed something to tie him up with,” Derek answered.

“And you
may
have reacted with a fist or two to settle him down?” Mullins asked Derek. While Derek sensed a hint of displeasure in Mullins’ tone, he was pretty confident that had he been in the same situation, Mullins would have used a few well placed punches to quiet Witten down as well.

“Who’s to say?”

Mullins dragged Witten by his feet, out of the woods and onto the hard surface of the strip mall’s parking lot. The street lamps were casting enough light to allow Witten to see the frosty and intimidating gaze of Investigator Mullins. Mark knew quite well of the unique power his DNA had awarded him. His size and strength were impressive enough, but it was his cold gaze from behind his brilliant light blue eyes—a genetic gift from his mother—that put the whole package together. When his fellow troopers first began calling him “Frosty,” Mullins wanted nothing more than to have the nickname fade away. But it stuck. And he grew to like it.

Once Witten was propped up into a seated position on the macadam, Mullins sat back on his haunches, his face two feet from Witten. “Cole tells me you wanted to send him a message. That true?”

“Wasn’t trying to kill him,” Mullins said immediately. “Just wanted one shot to let him know he was being watched. Didn’t think the son of a bitch would go all Rambo on me. I was told he never carried a gun on him.” Mullins pointed his chin towards Derek, a look, a mixture of both respect and anger playing across his face.

“But he was carrying, wasn’t he?”

“Look, if I wanted to kill him, I could have done so when the asshole chased me outside. He was charging right at me. All I would have had to do is turn and put a couple in his chest. Bam, bam, fucking bam.”

“I suppose I should let you go, then. I mean, all you did was fire your gun in a movie theater at someone. How many times was it that you fired? Five? Six? That’s a hell of a message you were sending.”

Witten stared silently at Mullins, then broke his gaze. “Yeah, well, he dove down and started coming after me. When I saw he had a gun, I figured it was on.”

“And on it was. And on it was.” Mullins stretched out each word as if each were its own paragraph. He inched a bit closer. “I went through your wallet. Your driver’s license says you live in Newburgh. That’s an awful long way to come to watch a movie.”

“I heard good things about this place.”

Mullins moved within a foot from Witten. “Let’s you and I stop playing games here. You are going away for a very long time, that I can assure you of. However, the ultimate length of your upcoming vacation has a lot to do with whether or not you decide to cooperate with me. I’m tired and, honestly, not in the best of moods. But most of all, I’m angry. Hell, I’m half tempted to get back in my car, drive home, have a shot or two of whiskey and let my friend Derek here do what he wants with you. Far as I can tell, he’s only a few more elbows to your head from finishing you off.” Mullins stood, shot Derek a quick smile. “Yeah, maybe that’s what I ought to do. Hired scum like you aren’t worth the paperwork and the expense demand on the public to send you to prison.”

Witten grumped out a small laugh. But when he felt the intensity of the stare Mullins was giving him, his face grew tight and any remaining laughs were slammed back into his chest. “Listen,” he said, his voice taking on a slight whistling sound. “I swear I was paid to show up and send a message. That’s all. Things got out of hand here.”

“Sounds like you’re ready to talk to me,” Mullins said. “Am I interpreting you correctly?”

Witten nodded his head. Whoever he was and whatever he had agreed to do in the theater was quickly revealing itself to be beyond whatever severity his character possessed. As he nodded his head, heavy tears began to pool and collect in the bottom of his eyes. “I ain’t never been in prison before.”

“You’re not going to like it,” Mullins snapped back. “What was the message you were hired to deliver to Cole?”

“To get out of Ravenswood.”

“Who paid you to deliver that message?”

“It wasn’t that lawyer Cole said before. That Randall guy. It wasn’t him.”

“I did not ask you who
didn’t
pay you to deliver the message,” Mullins said. “I asked you who
did
pay you to deliver the message.”

“I don’t know the guy’s name,” Witten said. He was pleading now, his voice having lost all of its edge and defiance. “And I ain’t never done work for this guy before. I don’t know how he found me.”

“So this isn’t the first time you were hired to deliver a message?” Mullins asked.

Witten paused and when he answered, his voice was hardly more than an apologetic whisper. “No. It ain’t my first.”

“So the fact you haven’t been in prison, tells me either you’re still new to the message delivery industry or are damn good at your occupation. Which is it?”

A look of confusion whipped across Witten’s face. He seemed to resolve whatever internal conflict he was battling with, and said, “Maybe I’m just lucky?”

“Your luck just ran dry.”

Derek took a step closer to Witten. “What happened to the guy I was supposed to meet here? John Mather. What happened to him?”

“I don’t know anything about any John Mather,” Witten replied. “All I know is I was paid a grand to drive up here, take a shot or two at you, then get the hell out of the area. If you didn’t see me and start all this shit, I’d be halfway home by now.”

“The man who contacted you, did you ever meet face to face with him?” Mullins asked.

“I only work by phone. Makes things easier for everyone.”

“When were you first contacted?”

“Around two this afternoon.”

“This guy call your cell?”

“Yeah, and then he paid me a little extra to drop my cell in the Hudson. He told me to buy two burner phones and to call him when the job was finished. Gave me an extra five hundred dollars for the inconvenience.”

“You have the number still?” Mullins asked.

“Yeah.” Witten paused a beat. “You gonna ask me to call him now, ain’t you?”

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

After spending ten minutes detailing exactly what he wanted Witten to do, what to say and how to say it, Mullins dialed the number on Witten’s burner phone that he had scribbled on a torn-off edge of a napkin in his wallet, put the phone on speaker and waited for the call to connect.

“What took you so long?” the gravel voice sounded through the cheap, tinny speaker on the burner phone.

“Complications,” Witten said. “But the message was delivered. Took longer than you told me it would. Fucking Cole brought heat with him and came after me. Ended up bashing each other up outside the theater. He’s down but he ain’t dead. I checked.”

“Excellent.”

Mullins, Witten and Derek stood quietly, waiting for the voice on the other side of the call to say something else. When nothing sounded but silence for a stretch of ten to fifteen-seconds, Mullins nodded towards Witten.

“So, um, is that all or do you need me to do something else?”

Again, a pregnant pause was all Witten’s question received.
 

“You still there? Hey, I can do more shit than just sending a message, you know?”

Silence.

“You gotta tell me what you want me to do with Cole now. He ain’t dead, like I said, but he’s gonna wake up in a few minutes and…”

“Why don’t you ask Investigator Mullins?” the gravel voice boomed through the speaker phone, “He is standing right next to you at this very moment. Ask old Frosty what you should do with Cole.”

Witten’s head lurched backwards and his body began dropping straight down to the pavement before Mullins or Derek heard the sharp, high report of the distant shot. Mullins responded immediately, releasing his hold of Witten and bolting in a zig-zag pattern into the woods. Derek, more shocked and less trained than Mullins, took an extra second before things registered. Derek spun, crouched over and bolted towards the back of the strip mall. As he darted away from the now dead Gene Witten, Derek heard a high-pitched buzzing whipping quite close to his ear. A second later, when he was less than ten feet from the back wall of the strip mall, he felt a strong tug on his right jeans pant leg. The tug was so strong that he tumbled forward in an effort to regain his balance and ended up diving around the concrete rear wall of the strip mall. As he bolted back onto his feet, Derek checked for the cause of the tug he felt and noticed a small hole, in and out, in the right leg of his newly purchased Levis.
 

“Son of a bitch,” he said. “Too damn close.”

He watched Mullins disappear into the woods forty-five feet away from where he was standing. Derek couldn’t be sure, but it looked as if either Mullins had taken on a pronounced hitch in his gait or the hitch only revealed itself when he was running. Though he was charged with adrenaline, Derek counted no more than three shots that had been fired. One made it smoothy out of Witten’s brains. The second nearly took the right side of Derek’s head off. And the third shot tore a hole, small as it may be, through a brand new pair of jeans. If Mullins did indeed have a hitch in his giddy-up, Derek was fairly certain it wasn’t caused by a bullet.

Derek felt too exposed, despite being out of the assumed line of fire. He drew his .38 from the holster tucked against the small of his back and readied himself for the shooter to come skulking around the corner of the building at any second.
 

“
Pistol versus rifle,
” he thought, then accepted the fact that if a shootout was to take place, his jeans wouldn’t be the only thing to have holes punched through. He needed to get behind something or, better yet, into something. The woods, and the presumed safety they promised, were thirty-feet from where he stood. He charged at once, angling his path to take him further behind the strip mall, around a six-yard dumpster before diving head first into the woods. He military crawled through the overgrown grass and didn’t stop until he was fifty-feet into the woods.

Derek braced himself behind a thick tree, listened and watched.

At first, all Derek could hear were the sounds of traffic and the slight rumble of bass oozing out of the theater. Then he heard the treble-laden sound of a radio voice squelching something. Derek knew Mullins had contacted the dispatcher at either the nine-one-one call center or at his trooper barracks and someone, preferably a whole lot of someones, would be ripping down the street, lights flashing and sirens screaming, any second now.

Derek recognized the distant wobble of a siren, breathed a heavy sigh and stood, still shielding his body from the assumed position of the shooter. His legs were shaking both from the flood of adrenaline and from having squatted for an extended time. A few seconds after hearing the sirens, Derek heard Mullins calling out to him.