Bait
- A Harper Jones Novel
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CHAPTER 1
Gradually, he regained consciousness, emerging from the foggy darkness that had so recently enveloped him. He struggled to open his eyes, the blood crusted around the left one keeping the lid securely closed.
Where was he? He valiantly tried to remember, but his brain wasn’t cooperating, as it was busy taking inventory of his other afflictions. He shook his head, feeling sweat spraying from his matted hair. Or was it blood? Abruptly, a bloom of pain blossomed towards the back of his neck, simultaneously echoing the sharp stab he felt in his shattered knee.
He tried to move, twisting his torso, but found that his arms and legs were securely fastened. Finally, he was able to crack open his right eye as his head cleared, and he frantically looked around.
He was in what looked like an abandoned barn, judging by the vaulted roof and acrid smell of moldering hay and rotting wood. Through cracks in the wood walls, he could dimly make out that it was somewhat dark outside, most likely from overcast clouds, based on the steady drumbeat of rain above him.
He began to remember. It was, what? A day, two days now? He had been driving home from his office on the CIA campus in Fairfax County in Virginia around eight pm, when he was unceremoniously sideswiped by a Ford F-150, who had been trying to pass him on the two-lane highway. At the time, it had been also raining, so he assumed that the idiot driver had just lost control on the slick highway.
Cursing under his breath at the delay, he had pulled over to assess the damage and exchange insurance information. He thought briefly about calling his girlfriend, Suri, but then dismissed it. She was young, only twenty-four, almost a third his age. Suri was an Iranian national, in the United States on a student visa, studying at Georgetown. He had first seen her at The Sovereign, a bar and bistro in the heart of D.C., that specialized in French, German and Dutch fare. She had been sitting at the bar, dressed in a simple green dress, her long, straight ebon hair cascading down her back, reading from a poli-sci textbook open in front of her. He had sent another drink her way, a glass of Pinot Noir by the looks of it, and when she turned to him to smile in thanks, he had gotten one look at her almond eyes and olive-toned skin, and he was smitten.
That was almost four months ago, and every day since that he spent with her, he began to fall more in love. If he called and told her what had happened, he was worried that she would overreact and “freak out”, as her generation might say. And that would ruin the mood he was hoping to set, as he briefly glanced at the gift box from Abrielle, an upscale lingerie store on New Mexico Avenue that Suri absolutely loved.
Instead, he had left his phone on his charger and pulled over. Looking in his rear-view mirror, he saw the truck had followed him to the side of the road. Squinting through the truck’s high beams, he could barely make out two forms in the front seat. Mentally noting the license plate, he had reached into the glove compartment to grab his registration and insurance. His hand brushed the cold metal of the Sig Sauer P320 pistol that he kept there for security. On impulse, he grabbed it. Better safe than sorry, he thought, as he opened the door of his government-issue beige sedan.
Walking around the front of his car, he went to the passenger side to observe the damage. As he was, both doors opened on the truck simultaneously, snapping his attention away from the two long dented scrapes that graced his passenger doors.
The figure that emerged from the driver’s side was broad shouldered, taller than he was, and wearing a dark turtleneck and baseball cap. On his side, the figure was smaller, and lithe as she leaped agilely to the ground, eschewing the running board on the big truck. Momentarily dismissing her as a threat, he kept his eyes focused on the large man, who was starting to come around the front of the truck. Big mistake.
“Hey buddy!” He had called out to the man in a friendly tone, his right-hand inching slightly towards the gun at the back of his waistband. He was sixty-five, but he still kept himself in reasonably good shape, hitting the gym three times a week. He was also versed in Jiu-Jitsu, though he hadn’t practiced it since he had moved to a desk job some eighteen years ago. “Hit an oil patch in the road or something?”
The man didn’t respond, but kept coming around the front of the truck. Something wasn’t right. Too late, he switched his attention to the woman, who had closed the gap much quicker than he anticipated. As his brain registered her dark hair and Mediterranean features, she brought her arm up, holding a small oblong object, which he recognized instantly. A second later, he felt a sharp pain in his chest as two prongs tore through his shirt and embedded in his skin, sending over 100,000 volts coursing through his body. His last thought before he blacked out from the shock was disappointment that he wouldn’t get to see his Suri model the sequined negligee for him.
Instead, his eyes continued to survey the barn, locking onto a small table, twenty feet away, where his Sig Sauer was, along with a hammer, a bloodstained knife, pliers and a screwdriver, to which his assailants had used most effectively. He looked down, assessing his mobility. Both of his wrists were securely zip-tied to the arms of a sturdy Adirondack chair. He noted that six of his ten fingers had had their nails torn off, a memory that his brain had conveniently blocked off. He was shirtless, his gray chest hair matted with dried blood from where the man had carved long, bloody slashes. The throbbing pain in his knee was from the bullet from his own Sig that had shattered his kneecap. Even if he could somehow escape from the ties that bound his arms and legs, there was no way that he could outrun his captors, let alone the fact that he had no idea where he was.
But why was he here? What did they want? He was struggling to remember what the man had been shouting at him as he had used his tools, but the hazy pain coursing through his body prevented him from rational thought. He was breathing heavy, he could tell his pulse rate was high, and his strength was ebbing fast. Years ago, when he had gone through field training as part of his Unites States Air Force Pararescue indoctrination, one of the courses was SERE, or Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, a course originally developed by the British during World War II. The “Resistance” portion of the training referred in part to hostile interrogation, and methods to combat violent techniques of coercion. He had applied what he had learned, what had been ingrained in him some forty years ago, but he could sense his resistance slipping, his time was coming.
There was a noise in the shadows ahead, followed by the groaning of wood against metal. Slowly, the two large barn doors were pushed inward, and the hulking figure of the man appeared silhouetted against the backdrop of pouring rain. In one hand, he carried a large Mag-lite flashlight, its powerful beam flashing around the deserted barn until it finally came to rest on him. In his other hand, he had a small, rectangular object, possibly a cell phone. The woman was nowhere to be seen.
Turning, the man pushed the doors closed, latching them with a heavy bar. “You are awake.” He announced in heavily accented English. Greek, Italian, maybe Israeli, he couldn’t be certain. He took a shaky deep breath to steel himself for his final stand of defiance as his tormentor approached.
Lumbering over to the small table, he set the flashlight down, positioning it so that it shined directly on the trussed man’s bloody face. Then, surprisingly, he did not pick up any of his torture tools. Instead, he turned and approached the seated man, raindrops dripping off the rubber slicker that he wore. As he neared, a cruel smile displayed on his mouth, revealing yellowed teeth, two with gold caps. His beady eyes over his hooked nose and bushy black beard glinted with anticipation.
He stopped in front of the older man, who looked up at him in confusion, his thinning white hair plastered against his scalp from his sweat and the humidity of the dank barn. The large man raised the phone to look at it, then punch a few icons. After a minute, he grinned and looked at the battered man in triumph.
“Zoteri,” he addressed his captive in guttural English. “I think that we have found a way past our impasse.”
Again, the old man looked at him in confusion. He had called him “zoteri” on numerous occasions. He had no idea what it meant, but assumed it was some version of ‘mister’ in the language of whatever hole the man had crawled out of.
“Fuck off.” He gasped out hoarsely, and shot a spray of blood spittle towards the goon’s face.
Pausing, the man reached up with a huge paw to wipe the spittle from his jaw, still grinning. “I don’t think you should be quite so…cocky? No?” He flipped the phone around so that the trussed man could see the screen too.
“I believe you recognize this person, yes?”
The older man looked at the phone, at the picture, and his gut turned to ice as he recoiled in horror. It was a picture of Suri, getting out of her beat-up white Chevy Cavalier, her flowered white and yellow sundress, the one he adored, hiked up above her knees as she rose from the driver’s seat. Grinning, the man swiped the screen, and there was another picture, this one through his dining room window, where he could see Suri setting the table for two. Finally, a last picture, through the same window, Suri was sitting on the couch watching television, waiting for him, with a glass of wine, probably Pinot Noir, in her hand.
The older man’s shoulders slumped in defeat. It was over. They had won. In SERE training, they taught that everyone has a breaking point, and everyone’s is different, depending on their willpower and pain threshold. And this man had just found his.
“Please don’t hurt her.” He whispered through cracked lips as tears formed at the corners of his eyes. He was powerless now, all resistance gone. And pretty, soon, he would be gone too. The best he could hope for now was a quick death. “I’ll tell you what you want, just please don’t hurt her.”
The large man loomed over the defeated form of his captive, and chuckled evilly. “That all depends on how much you know.” He responded, then waited.
The old man struggled through his pain and despair to recall what the man had asked him so many times. But he couldn’t, and finally looked up at his captor leering at him, and shrugged helplessly. “What?” He lisped through his broken bloody teeth.
The man’s face above turned into a scowl of rage, and with his hand, belted him on the side of the head with the phone, the screen splintering the picture of Suri into a web of cracked images. “The name!” He roared. “I want his name!”
Suddenly, the old man recalled what his captor had been asking for this whole time, that he had been able to withhold, despite the man’s violent attacks. But now, it was over, and he could only hope that the person whose name he was about to divulge would be better equipped to face this monster than he was.
Looking up one last time, the image of Suri’s smiling face imprinted on his memory, he croaked out the answer that his tormentor was seeking. “Jones.” He gasped brokenly. “Captain Harper Jones.”
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CHAPTER 2
It was a beautiful sunny morning in mid-August, and I was in a room at the Ocean House investigating a domestic violence dispute when my day began. I was interviewing Catherine Alcott, a pretty, mid-thirties brunette with a whale of a purpling bruise under her left eye. Her husband was Vern Alcott, who I had gone to high school with. He had been our star left tackle, and I was the gangly wide receiver with sticky hands when we won Wolf Hollow’s last county championship. After graduating we had gone our separate ways, me into the army and Ranger school, Vern into the family plumbing business. Now, from what I initially gathered, Vern had come home late last night drunk and in a rage about a pool game. When he began to take his frustrations out on Cathy, she cracked him over the head with a dirty rolling pin that she had left out after making a blueberry pie. Unfortunately, Vern was still a large man, and didn’t go down easily. Cathy barely managed to escape, and fled to the Ocean House, where she checked in for the night. This morning, she called the station to report what had happened.
I had decided to let my new partner, Mary Lou Perkins, run point on the interview. Mary Lou was actually my partner in body only. After the Colton Jericho debacle with my previous sidekick, Detective Medora Dunning, Chief Barnes apparently decided that I couldn’t be trusted to work alone. However, given that he didn’t have any detectives to spare, he was in quite the quandary. So, his solution was to attach sweet Mary Lou to my hip as a protégé, learning the ropes of detective work while studying for the detective’s exam this upcoming fall. Mary Lou was young and inexperienced, but she had a quality that Barnes coveted, loyalty to him. She would be his eyes and ears, watching over his maverick detective who liked to go rogue, namely me.
As Mary Lou gently pried the details of the previous night out of Catherine, I kept one ear to the conversation while I wandered over to the open sliding glass door that led out to the room’s balcony. Catherine had certainly spared no expense on her bolt hole when she fled last night, I thought with a touch of amusement. Good for her, serves Vern right. The hotel room was on the eighth floor, overlooking the boardwalk and Wolf Hollow’s pristine beach. I stepped out onto the patio as a soft salty breeze caressed my stubbled face and the sun warmed my skin, not quite up to the mid-summer heat that it would emit by the early afternoon. I walked to the railing and braced my arms against it, listening to the waves crashing on the beach, mingling with the low hum of the chatter of people on the boardwalk below.
Life is getting better, I thought to myself as I watched families enjoying the sand, with young children cavorting through the surf, making sandcastles, and chasing seagulls. Since Jericho, my ex-wife Angie and I had gotten back together, the trauma of those events fusing us again as we realized what we had lost. Now, Angie had decided that she wants to have children, so we’ve been trying, but with no success so far. If there was one thing that was causing us anxiety, this was it. And once Angie sets her mind to something, it takes an act of God to move her. Which suddenly reminded me, I was supposed to go to the fertility clinic this afternoon. Angie had already gone to get herself tested, and when the results came back that she was ovulating just fine, she determined that it was my turn. Sigh. It has only been four months!
My reverie was interrupted by a low ‘boom’ that sounded like it came somewhere from the south. I turned around to see if Mary Lou or Catherine had heard it, but they were both still talking, Mary Lou with her pretty freckled face concentrating on scribbling notes on her pad, Catherine sitting on the edge of the rumpled bed, staring at the floor.
“You hear that?” I called inside as I turned to scan the beach to the south.
Mary Lou stopped writing, and looked up at me quizzically, her light blue eyes squinting against the sunlight behind me. “Hear what?” Cathy also looked up and shook her head.
“A boom.” I replied, for lack of a better description. “Sounded like maybe an explosion.”
Mary Lou shoved her pad in her back pocket and came out on the deck to join me. “No.” she said. “Where?”
I slowly raised my arm and pointed south. “There.” Down the beach, beyond the dunes, I could see a slowly rising plume of smoke rising into the sky. Looking down, a few people on the boardwalk must have heard it also, for they had stopped what they were doing and were pointing towards the smoky cloud.
“Where do you think that is?” Mary Lou asked, brushing her curled blonde hair out of eyes as she craned out over the railing to get a better look.
I continued to keep my gaze fastened on the plume of smoke, trying to guess what caused it. “Not sure.” I muttered. “Maybe the Enclave?”
Catherine had come up behind us now, and was looking south also. “An explosion in the Enclave?” she asked rhetorically. “Gee, I hope that’s not Vern’s fault.”
I turned to her and raised an eyebrow. “Catherine, I know you’re pissed at your husband right now, but why would it be Vern’s fault?”
Catherine looked up at me with her one good eye, the other swollen shut. “Yesterday.” She replied. “That’s where Vern was working. A house in the Enclave.”
_____________________________________________________
I had Mary Lou finish up getting Catherine Alcott’s statement while I continued to look south from the balcony. There were no follow-up explosions, and once the initial excitement died down, the tourists below returned to their vacations, reassured that a nuclear strike wasn’t happening today.
For my part, my gut was telling me that this wasn’t just someone’s backyard grill propane tank exploding, there was something more. I could hear the faint scream of fire truck sirens responding to the incident, and shortly after, the smoke began to thin.
As I was beginning to lose interest in the smoke, my phone clipped to my hip buzzed. I glanced down at the name, and sure enough, it was my boss, Chief of Police Addison Barnes III. I glanced at Mary Lou, who looked up when she heard my phone. I mouthed ‘Barnes’ to her silently and quietly closed the sliding door between the room and the balcony.
“Detective Jones.” I answered formally, raising my phone to my ear. After the Jericho case last fall, Chief Barnes had decreed that all phone calls were to begin with a formal acknowledgement. According to department gossip, my phone etiquette, or lack thereof, had significantly contributed to Barnes’ edict.
“Jones it’s Barnes. Where are you?” He demanded tersely.
“Where do you think?” I retorted. “Where you sent me and Mary Lou. To get a statement from Catherine Alcott.”
I could sense Barnes mentally restraining himself on the other end. “I need you to wrap that up. There’s been an incident.
I glanced over at Mary Lou, my erstwhile apprentice, as she comforted Mrs. Alcott. “What about Cabot and Sears?” I asked, referring to Wolf Hollow’s other detective pairing. “Aren’t they up next?”
Barnes’ voice softened noticeably as he replied. “They are. But for this one, I need you.” Boy, that must have been hard to say, I thought. We both knew what Barnes had left unspoken, and I knew it was killing him. Of the three current detectives on Wolf Hollow’s payroll, I was his ace. But he’d never admit it, even if a bomb exploded in a prestigious neighborhood.
Enjoying the awkward silence following his admission, I finally asked. “OK, we can finish up here in twenty. Where we going?”
Barnes paused momentarily. “The Enclave” he replied, referring to the exclusive wealthy community on the south end of Wolf Hollow beach. “There’s been an explosion. A car bomb.”
So much for the backyard grill theory. “Whose car?” I asked, as I opened the door to walk back into the hotel room.
“Councilman Kilpatrick.” He responded. “I believe you know him.”
Shit.
CHAPTER 3
Cruising down Beach Drive, the road that meandered through the dunes starting at the end of the boardwalk and winding for about a mile until it reached the entrance to the Enclave, I glimpsed the Atlantic waters to my left, sparkling in the hot morning sun. A car bomb? I thought furiously. Nobody was hurt, thank God, but who the hell would want to hurt Danny?
Danny was another guy from my high school days. He was very smart, but unfortunately too small to play football. He had an intense competitive streak which, instead of athletics, he then channeled into another avocation, chess. We met through the Wolf Hollow chess club, I dabbled, and he kicked my ass. But we became fast friends, I went to his chess matches when he competed, and he became our statistician for the football team. When we were both juniors, he briefly dated my kid-sister Siena, who was a freshman at the time. But it didn’t last long. Siena had always had a wild side, something that didn’t fit with Danny’s more buttoned-up personality. At graduation, when I decided that college wasn’t for me and chose to go into the army instead, Danny, despite my reservations, decided he wanted to go too. Unfortunately, basic training turned out to be too much for him, and he had to bow out. Instead, he went to college, then came back home to help his family open a new nursing home in Wolf Hollow, Ocean View Senior Living. Where my mother, Marty, was now being cared for due to her Alzheimer’s. Now, twenty-five years and three more North Carolina nursing homes later, Danny’s car was blown up outside of his home.
Jumping back to present day, I looked out the window and tensed up involuntarily. I had just passed the spot where last fall I had found Angie’s car abandoned after she had been kidnapped by the serial killer Colton Jericho, and a shiver ran up my spine as I recalled that frantic few days.
“You feeling okay Harper?” Mary Lou asked me skeptically. “You look like someone just walked over your grave.”
I shook my head, freeing the memories of that fateful night and looked over at her fresh face, so innocent to the barbarity that the world can dish out. “No worries,” I smiled at her reassuringly. “Just an unpleasant memory.” At the time of Angie’s kidnapping, Mary Lou had been working the crime scene at the bank, after I had unceremoniously thrown a rock through its front door.
Five minutes later, as we approached the exterior textured walls of The Enclave, I noticed two media vans parked outside. Good, I thought. Someone had the good sense to keep the media at bay at least. As we approached, I saw that one of them was WOLF media, TV-6 and radio FM 98.9, Angie’s former employer. Looking over, I recognized the golden-haired reporter in a low-cut yellow summer dress as Brianna Carlisle, who was once Angie’s main rival, and now that Angie was pursuing a new career, was the station’s queen bee. Angie will never admit it, I thought, but when she sees that Brianna is covering this, she’s gonna silently seethe for days. The other van was the media red-headed stepchild of Wolf Hollow, TV-12 and FM 100.3, otherwise known as WH Broadcasting. Their lead reporter, an older, square-jawed man in a shirt and tie with a serious face had his crew parked across the road. Comparing the two reporters, I thought ruefully, when the five o’clock news rolls around, bucko, you don’t stand a chance.
Seconds later, we pulled up to the security gate at the Enclave, and I briefly recalled the last time I had been here a little over six months ago. It was last October, and I had come here with my new partner at the time, Medora Dunning, to question “Little Frankie” Manetti, a “retired” reputed mobster from Philadelphia. There had been a murder behind his bar, the Wolf’s Den, that had had ties to one of my cold cases, Alison Newton. Manetti had been ultimately cleared in the murder, although to this day I harbored serious suspicions about his involvement in Detective Dunning’s strange disappearance.
Rolling down the window of my unmarked patrol car, I recognized the thickset guard who stepped out of the booth as Kevin, the same grouchy gatekeeper I had met back in October. Great.
“Kevin!” I tried, smiling brightly as I flashed my badge. “Guarding the pearly gates well I see!”
Kevin approached my window and bent down, scowling as he realized who I was. “Detective Jones, it’s been a while. What a pleasure.” He remarked sarcastically. “Here to bother Mr. Manetti again?” He pretended to consult a clipboard he held in his meaty paw. “Don’t see no appointment here.”
“An appointment.” I replied brightly.
“Excuse me?” Kevin glared at me as Mary Lou shifted uncomfortably. She had been riding with me long enough to be aware of the fact that my sunny personality often hid pointy daggers.
“Don’t see an appointment here.” When Kevin continued to stare at me, I rolled my eyes and sighed theatrically. “You see Kevin,” I said patiently, “you employed what’s called a double negative. When you say ‘don’t see no appointment’, that actually means that you do see an appointment.” When angry recognition began to dawn on his sweaty face, I shrugged and said, “Just in case an English major wants entrance here.” I waved at the walls in front of me. “You want to be sure there’s no miscommunication.”
As Kevin puffed up in indignation, I continued “In any event, Mr. Manetti is not our concern this time. We’re here for the explosion.” I was certain Kevin knew this all along and was just trying to be difficult. “Now if you’d be so kind, please let us through.”
Kevin stood back up without a word, muttered a curse under his breath, and stalked back to his lair. A second later, the iron gates swung slowly open, and we passed through into the land of underground electric lines, handcrafted street lanterns, and manicured lawns fronting multi-million-dollar mansions.
The main road into The Enclave was Midas Lane, which paralleled the beach going south with picturesque estates on both sides, many behind security walls and ornately gated drives. The second mansion on the beach side had a “Sale Pending” sign out front. I winced slightly as I recalled the previous owner, Brian McCole. Brian had been my ex-wife Angie’s boy toy after we had gotten our divorce. He was unfortunate enough to get caught up in the Jericho case last fall and was ultimately killed in a shootout up on Abbot’s Trail. It was of course sad that Brian was killed, but one good thing that did come out of the Jericho case was Angie and I getting back together, pregnancy difficulties or no. So far, so good, as the saying goes.
Six gates later, we passed 1800 Midas Lane, home to the infamous Little Frankie Manetti. His estate was styled after a Japanese Go-tei, with bonsai trees, tiered koi ponds and waterfalls, stone walkways, and expansive gardens. The main house, I knew from my last visit, was styled in traditional Japanese fashion with a tiled roof and wide eaves, and tatami mats and sliding paper doors inside. I slowed down as I passed his gate, trying to pierce the sculpted trees beyond. Somehow, I knew that I’d be seeing Manetti again soon.
Six hundred yards further, and the Kilpatrick property was painfully obvious, with the two patrol cars bracketing the open gate. I rolled down my window as I pulled up, flashing my badge to the officer leaning against his vehicle. The lanky, dark-haired patrolman pushed himself off the hood and approached, squinting at my badge.
“Detective Jones and Officer Perkins.” I said, noting his nametag as Officer Ritchie. “This is my case.”
He glanced at my badge, then bent down to look past me to my perky, blue-eyed protege, and tipped his cap. “G’morning Mary Lou.” He smiled widely, showing off a set of perfect pearly whites. “Let me know if you need anything!”
I snapped my badge closed and said sharply. “Officer Perkins is just fine. However, the detective in charge of this investigation needs someone to canvas the neighbors to see if they know anything about what happened here. You think you or your partner,” I nodded to the other patrol car where a chubby patrolman was tapping his phone, “can the two of you handle that?”
Officer Ritchie quickly straightened up as Mary Lou looked down, blushing slightly. “Yes sir.” He replied quickly. “Me and Kegs will get right on it.”
“Just one of you.” I reminded him as I put my car in gear. “Someone has to guard the henhouse.”
Ritchie nodded and gave me an apologetic wave. “Oh, and Ritchie?” I called out, braking suddenly. “Leave 1800 for me, I’ll take care of talking to that house.”
Time to get re-acquainted, Manetti. I thought to myself, pulling into Kilpatrick’s long gravel driveway. See you soon.
First Harper Jones Novel: TORMENT - A HARPER JONES NOVEL
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