Playing Dead in Dixie (24 page)

A couple of his officers had already cordoned off an area a few feet down the shallow incline just off the shoulder of the road.  Wes surveyed the yellow crime scene ribbon with a sense of satisfaction.  At the time he was tapped as chief three years ago, many of his officers had lacked all but the most rudimentary training in criminal justice procedure.  Since then, Wes had given his department a crash course in police work, from crime scene investigation to proper interrogation technique.

Seeing his officers handling the crime scene like professionals made him proud.

Off to the side, one of his officers was taking a statement from Trent Carlisle, the teenage boy who'd found the body.  Trent's dog, a hyperactive Beagle named Colonel, leapt at the end of his leash, barking at the gathered crowd of cops.

Wes moved to the edge of the cordon.  One of his cops had positioned a high-power Maglite to illuminate the crime scene around the body.

Caucasian male, mid-thirties, brown hair stained darker with blood.  He was clean-cut, dressed in a suit and tie.  Wes couldn't tell much about the guy's face.  It looked like the bullet had exited somewhere around the middle of his face, taking most of his jaw and nose with it.

One of his officers, Caldwell, approached.  He looked queasy, though he was trying not to show it.  He held out a plastic bag with something square and dark inside.  "You'd better take a look at this, Chief.  Got it off the body."

Wes took the bag and opened it.  Inside was a slim black wallet.  He opened it carefully and sucked in a quick deep breath.  Inside the wallet was a badge and an I.D.

Their dead body was Special Agent Mark Lindler of the FBI  Atlantic City office.
 

Chapter Thirteen

The number on the display panel of Wes's trilling phone wasn't familiar to Carly.  She let it ring again, remembering Wes's warning, chill bumps rising on the back of her neck.

"You gonna get it or not?" J.B. muttered.

She picked up the phone, wilting with relief when she heard Shannon's voice on the other line.  "What's up?"

"We just had something weird happen here."  Shannon's voice sounded a little shaky.  "A stranger came to the door a few minutes ago.  He said he was from Entertainment Tours."

Carly relaxed a little.  No doubt they were visiting the families of all the victims, hoping to head off any lawsuits.  "Was he trying to keep Bonnie and Floyd from suing?"

"He was looking for you.  He had a photo of you.  He said he had some papers you forgot to sign after the crash."

Carly's heart jerked, thudding hard against her ribcage. Tears of terror burned her eyes, filling them until everything was a blur.  "What did he look like?"

"I don't know, but Bonnie gave him Wes's address."

Carly's whole body went numb.  "Oh, God."

"We're trying to reach Wes, but he's not answering his cell phone.  But that's not all. When the guy left, Bonnie discovered that the phone lines were dead.  Floyd checked a minute ago.  The lines outside the house were cut."

So that they couldn't warn her, Carly realized.  Dumb Yankee thug probably didn't realize that even small town southern "hicks" had cell phones these days.

"Don't open the door to him, Carl—"

Shannon's voice cut off in mid-sentence.

Carly punched the disconnect button.  But there was no dial tone.  Panic twisted through her, knotting her muscles and fogging her brain.

"What's wrong?"  J.B.'s dark eyes widened with alarm.

Carly took a couple of deep breaths.  She had to calm down.  She had to think, and think fast.  Because if the phone was cut, then the mystery man was here already.  And all the locked doors in the world wouldn't keep him out.

A CELL PHONE TRILLED SOMEWHERE nearby.  The cops milling around the crime scene all looked at each other, waiting for someone to answer it.

It was coming from the d.b., Wes realized.

He stepped under the cordon and carefully rolled the body enough to pull the ringing cell phone from his pocket.  "Hello?"

There was a brief pause on the other end of the line.  "Lindler?"

"Yes?"

The voice tightened.  "You're not Lindler.  Who is this?"

"Who's asking?"

"Special Agent Jim Phillips.  FBI"

Great
, Wes thought.  "I'm Chief Wes Hollingsworth of the Bangor Police Department."

"Bangor?"  Phillips sounded confused.

"Outside of Savannah, Georgia.  I hate to tell you, Agent Phillips, but we found your man Lindler dead on the side of the road."  Wes braced himself.  "Any idea what he's doing here?"

"Hollingsworth, you said?  You claimed a body from the bus crash.  Your name was on the release form."

The bus crash?  What did the crash have to do with any of this?  "I'd have thought you'd be more interested in finding out a fellow agent had been murdered.  Any idea why he was here?"

"Lindler was followinag a suspect in a case we're working up in Atlantic City."  Phillips sounded grim.  "Money-laundering at one of the casinos.  Lindler was following one of guys we had under surveillance, a guy named Dominick Manning."

Wes's heart stuttered.  "Manning?"

"Chief, I'm sure you're a fine officer, but what's just landed in your neck of the woods is some real bad shit."

And Carly was alone at his house with his crippled father.

Wes took a deep breath.  "Manning's looking for Lottie Sandano, isn't he?"

"Does he know where Lottie is?"  Phillip's voice dropped an octave, tight with alarm.

"I don't think so."  The back of Wes's neck prickled.  "This isn't a stalking case, is it?"

Phillips gave a humorless bark of laughter.  "Is that what Lottie told you?"

"What is she involved in?"

"She was supposed to testify against Dominick Manning.  But a couple of weeks ago, she skipped town.  We traced her to a bus crash in Virginia, where we found her purse and her I.D.  Until a couple of days ago, we thought she was dead."

Wes's stomach hurt.  "Was she involved in the laundering?"

"No," Phillips said quickly.  "She's the one who reported her suspicions to us.  But she was skittish about testifying.  Can't blame her; Manning is about the most dangerous S.O.B. around here.  We think he's connected to a dozen murders in South Jersey alone."

"Mob-related?"

"Manning makes the mob look like amateurs."

And he wanted Carly dead.  Wes's blood ran cold.  "I know where Lottie is.  I'll protect her until you get some of your guys over here from Savannah.  Can you take care of that call for me?"  He gave Phillips his cell phone number.  "Tell them to call when they hit town and I'll meet them."

He grabbed Neely and gave him a terse explanation on the way to the car.  As he opened the driver's door, he heard a trilling sound.

Neely opened the passenger door and pulled Wes's cell phone from the floorboard.  "This yours?"

Wes took the phone.  "Hollingsworth."

"It's Floyd, Wes.  We think Carly's in trouble."

"DO YOU KNOW HOW TO USE that thing?" J.B. asked softly.

Carly tightened her grip on the gun.  "No.  Do you?"

"Not left-handed."  J.B.'s brow wrinkled.  "Guess I should've given the warm rice a little more time, huh?"

It had been J.B.'s idea to get the gun, a semi-automatic hidden in one of Wes's dresser drawers.  It had a full clip and J.B. had showed her how to disengage the safety.  It had also been J.B.'s idea to head downstairs to the storm cellar, a small, unfinished room under the house built to protect the house's occupants from tornados.

"Not much good in hurricanes, though," J.B. had said as they made their way down the narrow wooden steps to the cellar as quickly as his wobbly legs would allow, Nate the bloodhound padding down ahead of them.  The dog stopped at the bottom of the steps, his tongue lolling and his tail wagging.

Reaching the dirt floor of the cellar, Carly stopped and listened.  She could hear nothing besides Nate's soft hassling and the rapid-fire cadence of her own pulse.

Suddenly, the bare light bulb hanging from a rafter above their heads flickered out, plunging them into utter darkness.

Nate made a low, moaning sound in his throat.

"There's a flashlight on a table against the wall right across the room," J.B. said softly.  "I saw it before the light went off."

Carly ran her finger over the side of the gun and pushed the safety back on before she tucked the it in the waistband of her jeans.  She reached out blindly, feeling her way across the darkened cellar until her thigh banged hard against something, making her gasp with pain.

"I think you found the table," J.B. whispered.

She ran her hand over the flat surface, feeling a scattered array of metal objects—tools, she guessed.  Her fingers finally brushed over something cool and cylindrical.  She ran her forefinger up the cylinder until she reached a small button.  She gave it a push and a beam of light illuminated the wall of the cellar.

Nearly wilting with relief, Carly ran the flashlight beam across the room to get her bearings.  J.B. hobbled toward her, gesturing toward a row of stairs leading up to wooden double doors set at an angle into the ceiling of the cellar.  "That's the exit," he whispered.  "Ain't sure if it's locked or not."

Carly took a deep breath and crossed to the steps, peering up.  She'd feel a whole lot better about opening the door if she had some idea where Manning's thug was. But she needed to know if they were trapped in this cellar.

She climbed the steps, stopping just before her head brushed against the doors.  She shined the light at the crack between the doors, trying to see if there was a lock outside.

"Well?"  J.B. peered up at Carly from the bottom of the steps, his good hand gripping the rough wood railing.

Carly gave a push.  The doors were heavier than they looked.  They barely budged, gravity giving them added weight.

At J.B.'s feet, Nate made a soft whimpering noise.  Carly shushed him, cocking her head and listening.

"Try it again."  J.B. demanded.

"I don't know where he is," she whispered.  "He could be waiting just outside."

"What makes you think there's just one of 'em?"

Carly didn't know.  Maybe it was the fact that an armed assault on the house hadn't started as soon as the phone line was cut.  "He's being careful.  Checking the place out.  He cut the phone and the power so we have to go out to get help."

"How does he know we don't have a cell phone here?"

"Because he's an arrogant Yankee dumbass who thinks y'all eat dirt for two meals a day."  Carly didn't hide her disgust.  "He thinks he's smarter than anyone around here.  He's wrong."

"Not about the cell phone," J.B. pointed out gruffly

"That was a fluke."

"Look, if he was out there, he'd have already heard us whisperin' like a couple of school girls and he'd be in here by now.  Try the door again."

She pushed up on the storm cellar doors again.  They gave a little more, enough for her to see that while there was a padlock hooked to the door, it wasn't locked.  "It's not locked, but it's holding the hasp together.  I've got to get something to stick between the doors so I can push the lock up and away."

J.B. let go of the railing and hobbled over to the wall, looking through a metal box lying on the table next to the steps.  A few seconds later, he reached up through the railing, holding out a heavy flathead screwdriver.  "How's this?"

Carly took the screwdriver from him and started to push it through the crack between the two doors.

Then she heard the noise.  A tinkling sound.

Glass breaking.

J.B. turned his head, and Nate gave one quiet woof.

"Hush, Nate!"  Carly nearly dropped the screwdriver in her haste to turn and silence the dog.  "J.B., see if you can keep him quiet!"

J.B. worked his way over to the dog's side.  Holding onto the railing with his good hand, he forced his wizened hand down to the dog's head, forced his gnarled fist open to stroke the top of the dog's head.  Nate calmed down, reaching up and licking J.B.'s hand.

"Next best thing to warm rice," he murmured.

Carly turned back to the door with a renewed sense of urgency.

"THE FRONT WINDOW IS BROKEN," Wes murmured into his radio, trying to keep his pulse from barreling out of control.  Every nerve in his body was screaming for him to get his ass into that house and save Carly and his father, but he forced himself to stay crouched behind the sprawling oak across the road from his house.

"Can you see anyone inside?" came Neely's whispered response through the radio receiver.

"It's dark.  I think he may have cut the power."

"I just got a call from the county sheriff's department."  Neely was parked well down the road, out of sight so as not to spook whoever was inside Wes's house.  "He's got a SWAT team headed our way.  ETA around ten minutes."

"I'm not sure we have ten minutes," Wes murmured.

"You can't go in alone, Chief."

Wes knew Neely was right.  Intellectually, anyway.

But his hand tightened on his pistol grip anyway, and the muscles of his thighs bunched, ready to move in a heartbeat if he saw Carly or his father in danger.

He noticed a flicker of light appear to the side of his house, then extinguish.  His eyes, already accustomed to the dark, picked out two figures moving quickly through the trees between his house and the house about fifty yards down the road.

Carly and his father, he realized, recognizing his father's hitching gait.  They must have escaped through the storm cellar.

He glanced back at his house, wondering if they'd been spotted by the man inside.  Suddenly, the floodlights on the side of his house came on, illuminating the grove of pecan trees.  Whoever cut the power must not have realized the floodlights ran on battery if the power went out.

Wes's heart skipped a beat as Carly and J.B. froze, their hiding place stripped away by the bright lights.

They were sitting ducks.