Vengeance: A Reece Culver Thriller - Book 1 (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

A
large dual-axle truck
with the name Maverick Gardening painted in green letters across both sides turned into the Southern Hills subdivision on the south side of Tulsa with a black Range Rover following close behind. The two trucks drove down a residential street lined with cars on each side, and slowed as the passageway between the cars became too narrow to proceed. The driver watched his rearview mirror, as if wondering what to do.

Melvin Phillips walked up to the driver’s side window and rapped on it with his knuckles.

“Are you here for the golf tournament?” he shouted.

The driver cranked the window open. “No, Mister. We’re here to do some gardening in the neighborhood.”

“Gardening, huh? Whose house are you working on?”

The man in the truck hesitated and reached across the seat for his cellphone. Michael Zimeratti, dressed in a solid green gardener’s outfit, emerged from the Range Rover and approached Melvin Phillips.

“What’s the hold-up? We got work to do,” Zimeratti grumbled.

“I was just trying to figure out what you’re up to. This is a neighborhood watch area,” Phillips said.

“We’re here to work on the Austins’ place. They’re out of the country, and their daughter Ann called saying that the place is overgrown with weeds,” Zimeratti said, running his hand through his slicked-back hair.

“I know Chuck Austin. He’s a good man. Wait a minute, I’ll clear the way for you.”

Phillips made his way down the street, stopping at each car to talk to its driver. A group of cars pulled to the side so that both trucks could pass. Soon the large one pulled past a long red brick driveway with a circular arch. Turning in reverse, he backed toward the garage of Melvin Phillips’ seventy-two hundred square foot home.

Vinton Blackwell, who had been lying under a blanket in the backseat of the Range Rover, climbed out wearing dull green pants and a matching shirt with the name Maverick Gardening stenciled across one sleeve. He bent down and began working the multi-colored flowerbeds, appearing busy but studying the nearby houses for signs of life.

He worked his way down the right side of the garage, stopping every so often to pull a weed from the flowerbed. As he neared the side door of the three-car garage, he looked through the window. The side door was unlocked, he discovered, and once inside, he brushed the dirt off his gloves.

A sleek navy blue Aston Martin was parked on the far side of the garage, and Blackwell sniffed at what smelled like the inside of a basement. He pulled a small leather pouch from his rear pocket and went to work on the keyhole of the garage doorknob. With his cellphone held to his ear, he started talking.

“I’ve got the door unlocked. Read me the alarm code.” The reply came instantaneously.

“Four-nine-six-two,” he said out loud, reciting the code. Blackwell smiled, pushed open the garage door, and entered the home, setting off the beeping of the alarm. He flipped on a light switch and entered the code he had just been given. He watched the alarm status light change from red to green.

“Got it. I’m inside with the alarm off. Back into the driveway, and be ready for the left door to open,” Blackwell said. He walked out to the door, and watched the large work truck pass by the house like he had planned and park a few houses down on the opposite side of the street. A white Ford van with the same Maverick Gardening logo painted across both sides backed into the driveway toward the garage door. When the van was almost all the way to the house Blackwell pressed the garage door opener, watching Zimeratti’s progress as he waited for the door to fully raise and then backed the van in. Blackwell closed the garage door behind him.

Heading efficiently to the rear of the van, he opened both rear doors. He reached inside and unfastened a brown leather briefcase from the side. The interior of the van had been outfitted with a series of vertical compartments, each covered in fuzzy black material. Vinton had just pulled his briefcase out of the van when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“What you got there?” Zimeratti said.

“Tools for the job. What’s it look like? Stop standing around and let’s get this done,” Blackwell barked, not wanting to explain himself.

The two men entered the home with several others and fanned out. Zimeratti went to the foyer and scooped up a set of keys with a pink fob on them. Then he went to the basement, where Vinton Blackwell had gone with Melanie Phillips the night of the dinner party. Zimeratti pressed a four-digit code into a black keypad and swiped the set of keys past it. He heard a “beep,” and the telltale sound of the lock on the stainless steel door of the Phillips’ art vault “clicked” open. Zimeratti stepped inside and instructed the other men to grab each of the works of art, insert them into a felt bag, and carry them out to the van.

In the meantime, Vinton Blackwell searched the gigantic house for signs of a secret room. The night he’d met Melanie Phillips he’d found out that she and her husband had a private collection of paintings that would never appear on the auction block. Blackwell entered their master bedroom and ran his hand down a wall absent of decoration. He stopped, feeling what seemed like a joint in the wall. Blackwell set his briefcase on the Phillips’ bed and pulled a small flashlight from his back pocket. He shined it onto the wall and worked his way along the seam, looking for a way in.

On the wall a few feet from the seam he found a small picture that looked like it had been hand-drawn in crayon by a youngster. Vinton pulled the framed portrait off the wall and uncovered a red button. He pressed it and the wall popped open. He replaced the picture and entered.

The room had two large wooden queen anne dressers, and on top of one sat a one-foot by one-foot painting on a miniature easel. He stared at the thick brush strokes and vivid colors of the Van Gogh. Paydirt. Vinton edged back out of the room and grabbed his briefcase. He reentered the small vault holding his flashlight in his teeth, opened the case, and pulled out a black felt bag. He shined the light on the small painting and admired the vase of yellow flowers the artist had painted more than a century earlier.

Blackwell joined the others in the garage and watched as they loaded the last of the black felt-covered paintings into the back of the white van.

“Where were you for so long?” Zimeratti asked.

“None of your goddamned business,” Blackwell said. “Remember who got us this job, asshole.”

Zimeratti turned toward Blackwell with his hand cocked to throw a punch. The painting in his other hand dropped and banged into the trailer hitch of the van. Both men froze at the sound of tearing canvas.

“Great move, idiot. I hope that piece of artwork wasn’t priceless,” Blackwell said.

The younger man looked up at him sheepishly and pulled the painting from the felt bag. It was a western that now had a perfect fist-sized hole in the center. Zimeratti shoved the torn painting back into the bag and walked toward a nearby tool bench.

“What are you doing?” Blackwell yelled.

“I’m leaving it. It’s ruined.”

“No, you’re not. Bring it. We’re running out of time. Let’s finish this thing and get out of here.”

Blackwell rounded up the other men and told them it was time to leave. Zimeratti climbed into the driver’s seat of the van. Two other men climbed into the van through the sliding side door. Blackwell pushed the garage door opener and watched the van drive away.

He pressed the “9” button on the alarm panel and pulled the locked six-panel door closed listening to the alarm beep as it counted toward arming. With his briefcase in hand he walked out of the side garage door smiling. He’d just become a very rich man.

Chapter Thirty

R
eece drove south
toward Haisley’s neighborhood, listening to Waylon and Willie singing, “Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys” on the car’s radio. He’d stopped at the candy store and picked up a big box of chocolates for Mavis. Hearing the ring of his cellphone from the center console of the rental car, Reece held the phone up and saw that the call was from his mother. He let it go to voicemail and stuffed the phone back into the console. The last thing he needed was to hear more of her garbage about how he wasn’t cut out to be a PI.

Parking in front of their brick ranch, set among other well-kept homes along the street, he strolled up to the door and rang the bell.

Mavis Averton answered with a big smile. “Reece, you look great. Come in,” she said, giving him a big hug. He smiled at her familiar face. Her dark skin was smooth except for a few crows’ feet at the corners of her eyes. Her hair flowed down to her shoulders. Reece guessed that she and Haisley were in their mid fifties. She hadn’t had an easy life being the wife of a black police detective in the Bible belt, but he had never heard a negative word from her. The two had met in college, when he was playing basketball and she was a cheerleader. They’d never had kids.

“Here, this is for you,” he said, handing her the chocolates. “Thanks for remembering my birthday.”

“Oh, Reece, you shouldn’t have. We’ll dig into these after dinner,” Mavis said, running her hand down his forearm with a fondness reserved for longtime friends or family. “He’s out back in his office.”

“His office?”

“Yeah, after he got his dream car, he built a second garage out back. When he’s not working, or watching basketball, he’s out there doing god knows what,” Mavis said with a laugh.

“It’s pretty neat that you found a house close to where you guys first met. It looks great,” Reece said as he headed for the back door. On the porch he saw a large wood building that matched the house in every detail. Haisley came around the corner on his right.

“Come on in, Culver. Check out my man cave.”

Reece followed his friend inside and saw in the dim light of the garage a bright orange 1970 Camaro. The car Haisley had always wanted.

“Wow, buddy, this is something,” he said, admiring the car.

Haisley motioned Reece past, and they walked through a door that separated the two halves of the building. The office was carpeted with finished walls, a ceiling fan, and a large-screen TV on one wall. The opposite side had a fax machine, copier, and several computers spread out across an L-shaped desk.

“I’m glad you’re here, Reece,” Haisley said, grinning at him.

“It’s good to be here. I really like your digs.”

“So how’s your new case going? Did you find any new leads?”

“It’s been slow, but I did think of something you could help with,” Reece said as he watched Haisley pour two glasses of Scotch.

“What’s that?”

“I was wondering if you could do some background on Owen Roberts.”

A frown crossed Haisley’s face. “Reece, there’s something I’ve got to tell you.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?” Reece asked, wondering if the name meant something to him.

“I’ve been helping with an investigation that involves Owen Roberts. It’s part of a three-state task force,” Haisley said, handing Reece a glass of Scotch.

“A task force, huh. I hope you’re not working for the FBI. You know what happened the last time you got involved with them.” Then he took a long pull of the Scotch, savoring the taste.

“Culver, you’ve got to learn how to trust people. Not everything is so black and white.”

Reece didn’t like what he’d heard, but he let it pass. “So what’s this got to do with Owen Roberts?”

“I got a call from Special Agent Stephen Cox a few weeks after I retired.”

“What’d he want?” Reece asked, knowing he wasn’t going to like the answer.

“He needed some surveillance done. He knew south Tulsa was my home turf, and he offered to pay me for my time.”

“What kind of surveillance?” Reece asked.

“Cox had spotted Owen Roberts and followed him to a farm south of town. Owen was living there and working on the place. Cox had been following a lead on Sam Shanks when he found the farm. It turns out Roberts is working for Shanks, and they’ve been operating an illegal gambling operation out of that property for years.”

“Sounds like what they were doing up north,” Reece said.

“That’s why I got involved. That and the extra money don’t hurt either. Do you know what healthcare insurance costs these days for a retired cop?” Haisley said.

“No, I can’t say I do. Is it expensive?”

“Everything is expensive these days. I used to pay twenty bucks a week for the best plan they had, and it covered everything,” Haisley said.

“You know what the problem is, don’t you?” Reece said.

“I got my idea of what the problem is. Crooked politicians and lobbyists back in DC.”

“Yeah, that’s one part, but it’s also how everything is set up,” Reece said. “The entire healthcare industry should be non-profit. There are too many people getting rich off of sick people in this country.”

“Hell, Culver, you got some good ideas. Maybe you should run for office.”

“No, thanks. I don’t have the stomach for politics,” Reece said. “So, what we were talking about earlier, the task force. That sounds odd to me.”

“It does why?” Haisley said.

“Why would the FBI farm out a surveillance job to a retired police detective? Don’t they usually do their own work?”

“They usually do, Reece, but this task force is something they came up with after 9/11. It’s a new concept for them.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

Haisley paused, and in his meaningful look Reece realized this was what he had been building up to the whole time. “Say, there’s something I could use your help with tomorrow morning. It would mean getting up early, and it might be dangerous.”

*

In the pre-dawn darkness Haisley shifted into low and eased his wife’s green Ford coupe off the pavement onto a snow-covered single track. They had driven into the countryside south of Tulsa, a place where beef cattle were more numerous than people. They headed down a road cut through a forest of green plants, like something, Reece thought, you’d see in a jungle. The headlights painted a scene of old corn stalks from generations past that stretched ten feet tall in some spots intermixed with wide-leaved plants that threatened to overtake the road.

The air smelled fresh and sweet as Haisley continued toward what he believed to be one of Shank’s hideouts. A large casino was hidden in back of this overgrown land. The road took a jaunt to the left, and Reece looked out the side mirror into the dark field behind them. He felt the car coming back right and up ahead saw a cluster of old structures with one long single-story brick building that looked like it had been constructed very recently.

They drove the last thousand yards with the headlights switched off and parked just short of a clearing. He followed Haisley to the trunk, and his friend unloaded matching black bulletproof vests and a pair of gun belts. The belts each had a holstered sidearm with a flashlight on one side, and several clips, and a leather compartment housing a set of handcuffs on the other. Reece took a vest from Haisley, put it on, and took one of the belts, wondering if he’d kept a few souvenirs from his days on the Tulsa PD. Reece felt a black 9mm semi-automatic pistol on his right side after clipping on the belt.

“You’re familiar with a Glock, right?” Haisley asked.

“Yeah, I’ve shot these a few times at the range.”

They walked single file through the tall grass. Halfway through, Haisley stopped and motioned to him. “Either this place is abandoned, or they’re asleep. Let’s be ready.” Reece watched him pull his gun and continue onward. He looked for light, but the only thing he saw was the glow of a distant neighborhood to the east. The sky was devoid of stars and a gentle breeze rustled the foliage. The ground was rock hard. It was covered with a dusting of snow, but the traction was fine.

The two men suddenly heard a noise and froze. Haisley turned back toward Reece, pointing his gun to his left. They both stood listening. Reece heard what sounded like hooves, and guessed it was livestock. Haisley motioned for them to continue. They stepped out of the tall grass onto a dirt lot in front of the long brick building. To the left was a large barn, and to the right an assortment on galvanized circular steel outbuildings.

Reece followed Haisley and peered into a window of the brick building. He took a flashlight off his belt and shined it in.

“Looks abandoned to me. I was surveilling in that field just last week and there were over fifty cars parked in this lot,” Haisley said. “It’s starting to seem like this guy is always one step ahead.”

“Have you told anyone else about the investigation?”

“No, you’re the only other person who knows other than Special Agent Cox and the other people on the task force.”

“Do you want to go in and have a look?” Reece asked, holding the Glock by its barrel and raising the handle toward the panes of glass on the exterior door.

“Can you break it quietly?” Haisley asked. Reece walked over to a large plant and tore off several of the thick green leaves. He held the leaves up to the glass and tapped the handle of his gun on them. It took two hits until he felt the glass give way and he reached through to unlock the door.

They entered shining their lights in a circular pattern around the interior. The center of the room had a couple of poker tables with stacks of chips, and a deck of cards in the middle of each.

“Looks like they left in a hurry,” Haisley said.

“I wonder what spooked them.”

Haisley was shaking his head. “I’ll tell you, Culver, I’m starting to think this bastard has someone on the inside at the FBI.”

Haisley and Reece did a quick search of the grounds and found several sets of deeply grooved tracks, the kind a moving truck would make on a wet dirt road.

“What now?” Haisley remained quiet and Reece followed him back toward the car. The sky was gaining a blue-orange tint, hinting at sunrise, and the trees to their west were filled with the chirping of birds starting their day.

“Well, this will change things with the task force. There goes my second income,” Haisley said, kicking dirt next to his wife’s car. The two men got in and Haisley drove back toward the main road. Reece had to admire Shanks’ ingenuity. The landscape provided perfect cover for the work he and his men did at the farm, and unless someone flew over they’d never know it was an illegal casino. Yet the question was: why they’d moved out so fast?

“What’s that?” Reece said, pointing toward a red flash of light. “Do you see it? Over in those plants, it looks like they left something behind.”

Haisley drove off the road. The headlights illuminated the reflectors on the back of a small moving van that looked like it had been driven deep into the cover in an attempt to conceal it.

The front wheels of the car spun, losing traction in the deep foliage. Reece opened his door and got out. He walked toward the truck, curious about why it had been abandoned.

“Hold up a second,” Haisley yelled from behind. Reece saw his friend digging through the trunk of his wife’s car. He walked back and Haisley handed him a pair of latex gloves and blue cotton foot covers.

Reece pulled on the gloves, covered his shoes, and followed his friend toward the truck. The sun was up and he felt a cool breeze running through the field. They walked closer, climbing past tall plants, and he pulled his gun and held it outward. Every couple of steps he glanced downward, figuring they might find a booby-trap.

“Haisley, look for trip wires,” Reece said.

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

“Lets take this slow,” Reece continued. The property had been abandoned, but Shanks had a history of leaving behind surprises.

“You smell something?” Haisley said, closing in on the truck a few yards ahead.

“Yeah, smells like death,” Reece said, having smelled dead carcasses more times than he cared to remember.

“We got a body,” Haisley said, looking into the side window of the General Motors truck. Reece came up behind and looked over his shoulder. The sweet smell of rotting flesh hit him. He instinctively brought his arm up to cover his nose and mouth with the fabric of his jacket, but the smell had already entered his lungs and he felt like retching. Inside the truck Reece saw an elderly man with short wisps of white hair parted to the side. The dead man’s eyes bugged out, making his face look mask like. He still had his seatbelt on with his hands on the steering wheel, and Reece noticed the guy’s right
wrist was fastened to the steering wheel by a pair of stainless steel handcuffs. Three dark stains had long ago dried on the corpse’s chest where multiple bullets had punctured.

“I’ve seen enough. Let’s take a quick look in the back, and then I better call this in,” Haisley said. “Looks like an assassination. Especially with those cuffs fastening his wrist to the steering wheel.”

“Any guesses on who this is?” Reece asked, watching Haisley work on the truck’s back door latch. After a few minutes they got it undone, but it took both of them to shove the heavy door open. Reece stood up on the back of the truck, holding the door up while Haisley went in with a flashlight.

“Just a bunch of old slot machines. I don’t see anything that would help ID the body,” Haisley said, backing out with a handkerchief held tight against his face.

“What’s that?” Reece said, pointing at a large rectangular object covered in black felt. Haisley handed off the flashlight, and Reece crawled into the truck hunched over to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling. He took a breath and caught the smell of the decaying body up front. He dry heaved, and then took a second breath with his nose buried in the sleeve of his jacket.

Reece latched onto the felt-covered container. It felt wooden like a frame. He pulled it out of the truck, and welcomed the smell of fresh air as he stepped down onto the ground. Haisley peeled back the felt bag, holding the frame with his hands. It was a painting of several cowboys on horses near a stream. The detail was amazing, and if it weren’t for the three-inch hole punched through the center it might have been worth something.