Silver Lining - A Carpelli Adventure: Sequel To The Bestselling Thriller Fatal Mistake (14 page)

“Perhaps it would be best I listened to you for a few minutes, before I made any calls.” The doctor stated and took a seat in the chair opposite the desk.

“I knew you were smart, Doc. Good choice.” I teased him.

“Do you have a death wish or something?” He asked straight faced.

“No, do you?” I replied.

“Do you know who I work with?” he inquired.

“Let’s see, if I had just one guess, I’d guess, Smith and Jones.”

“If you know this, why do you insist on giving them cause to kill you?”

“Oh, they started it, Doc. I was minding my own business until they tried to frame me for murder. So now, it’s my job to repay the favor. By the way, what is the combination to the safe?” The Doc visibly blanched, so I added, “Doc, don’t try anything stupid, ‘because I will kill you, as easily as squashing a bug under my foot. Now open the safe.”

As he began working the combination he asked, “What do you want, money?”

“No, I’m looking for justice,” I countered.

“Justice? For what, the pills we sell? The people who buy them will do anything to get them, but the government won’t allow them to have the pain relief they seek.” I jumped in hard on the Doc, to stop the circle jerk he was starting, I didn’t have the time.

“Stow it, Doc. I’m not interested in your justifications for selling the shit. I’m out for justice for one, Daniel Harris and his mother, Anne. Now get this safe open.” I demanded.

“Doctor Anne Harris sent you?” The doc blurted out, his face a question mark.

“Yes, Doctor Harris. Why does that surprise you?” I asked seeing his obvious concern and confusion.

“Oh she is beautiful lady. A friend of mine, is all. She not send you here. I no treat Daniel.” The Doc lied. It was written all over his face as his eyes were darting all over the place. I let it slide to avoid his sidetracking me from the safe any longer.

“The safe Doc or it’s going to ugly.” I snarled and then changed the subject. “It seems the men you work for, have been using Daniel and his drug addiction to force his mother, the coroner, do some really bad things, allowing them get away with murder.” I watched the doc for a reaction to his friends and business partners being called, ‘Murders’, but there wasn’t any, he face was a total blank. I continued.

“I found out a short time ago, Daniel Harris, the ME’s son, was picked up a few weeks back by men who worked for the big drug bosses, Smith and Jones. That was one day after he was here to see you and his blood was taken for testing. Smith and Jones had been threatening his mother saying they would harvest his organs, if she didn’t cooperate. They also promised to produce him for treatment, if she did as she was told and so she cooperated, but they’ve never produced him.”

“In fact, the corner dealers all say, it’s been a couple of months since they last saw him. So here’s the deal Doc, I want Smith and Jones but you not so much, I’m going to give you a choice. You can either go down with them or get the hell out of town. Find a new place to play doctor, one where I’m not living and do it within the next five days or I’ll help you move on, to a new plain of existence.”

“You have no proof. I’ve done nothing wrong.” He whined.

“That’s the nice thing about my situation. I don’t need to have absolute proof or even hard evidence. A gut feeling will do and my gut is telling me, you’re all bad. So, things have got to change and I am the agent of that change. There is nowhere, you can hide and no one you can call to protect you. I am the ultimate Judge, jury and executioner,” I explained. “Now open that safe.” I snarled and banged the barrel of my gun against his head. Not enough to actually hurt him but enough to make sure he knew it was coming down to that.

“It is not fair. You cannot get away with this. There are laws!” The Doc bellowed.

“Laws? Doc don’t be such pussy. You’ve broken at least two dozen, major felony laws. So who you going to call? The police?” I snickered at him briefly, then continued. “Go ahead, call them. They’ll arrest you far faster than they will me.” I glanced at the safe now that it was finally open and saw it was literally stuffed with money. “Pack all that money into your brief case there on your desk and while you’re doing that, tell me, did you harvest Daniel Harris’s organs?”             

“I did nothing. I am being falsely accused.” The Doc had a truly sour look on his face as he dumped the papers out of the brief case and began packing it with of money.

“Doc, I’m only going to ask you one more time and then it’s going to get really ugly real fast.” I pointed my gun at the Doctor’s left knee.

“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot. I’ll leave, but you’re making a big mistake. We could make a deal with you and you’d get rich too.”

“Doc, I am rich and I’m getting richer right now.” I looked at the brief case which was begining bulge with cash and then I looked back over at the doctor. “What happened to Daniel Harris’s body?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t dispose of it. They like to use the blast furnace over to the steel mill or the one at the cement factory. They’re both off Rutledge Pike. They burn them up fast.” Smart, I thought. The blast furnace wouldn’t leave any evidence at all.                                                        

“So you did murder Daniel Harris and then harvest his organs.” I stated coldly.

“I not kill anyone. They kill him, Smith and Jones. Then they bring me the body.” The Doc quickly did what he could to spread the blame.

“So how does this work? You pick a guy at random and kill him, then harvest his organs?” I asked.

“Oh no, we first must test them. Know their blood type and any diseases they may have. Then we get orders in from all over the world. We sell to highest bidder. Once it is determined we have a buyer, we have to hurry and get a donor. Typically, we have to deliver within thirty-six hours. That can be difficult since it takes six hours to harvest” The Doc explained and I contemplated what he was sharing.

“So how much do you get for say, a heart?” I inquired.

“It depends on the bid, but the minimum we will accept, is two hundred thousand American.” He stated firmly.

“Is that what you normally get?” I asked.

“No, it is rare we get the minimum bid. The average price is seven hundred and fifty thousand.”

“The other organs go for about the same?” I asked.

“The lungs go for more, the kidneys less, others about same. Now, if you’re done robbing me and threatening me, I have patients to see.” The Doc stood and stepped towards the door.

“Freeze Doc,” I snarled. “I decide when we’re done. Now take the gun out of your pocket. Do it real slow and set it on your desk. Do it now.” The Doc, he gave me a look that could kill but he did as he was told.

“How did you know? I shielded you from seeing me grab the gun from inside the safe.” The Doc inquired.

“You didn’t do too good a job, Doc. Your little stunt is going to cost you. Instead of a week to get out of town, you’ve got seventy-two hours. After that, I’ll be back and I’ll shoot to kill. Now back up into the corner. I don’t want to see your face as I leave Doc. Don’t make me shoot you, now instead of later.” I grabbed the Doc’s brief case and gun, a nickel plated short barrel automatic and exited the office. I left the same way I came in, through the Doctor’s entrance. I trotted across the street to my car, tossed the brief case on the front seat and drove off as quickly as traffic allowed.

That was a very productive stop, unfortunately, the results were going to be hard on Doctor Anne and I’d need a little time to think of a compassionate way to break the news to her. The worst part was that she’d never have closure. There’d never be a body to bury and never one last chance to make amends for all the hard things that get said in every relationship.

I set that situation a side only to have my thoughts immediately jump to Betty. I couldn’t help but wonder what I had done wrong. I was the perfect gentleman. Could she have found out somehow about the fight in the men’s room? But what I wondered about the most, was why I cared if she liked me? I had no trouble finding and picking up women to satisfy my needs and it wasn’t as if Betty was making herself available. Hell no. It was the exact opposite. She’d made a big deal about how she was not going to be hopping into bed with me anytime soon. So what was the attraction? Was it the challenge to get her into bed well before herself proclaimed earliest possible date, six months from now? Or was it because for the first time in years I felt something? I not getting any younger and I sure as hell wasn’t looking forward to being alone in my old age. I doubted Betty was the last chance for me but she probably wasn’t that far off.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I found a WI-FI hot spot and did a Google search for Betty Tate living in Sevierville TN. It worked the same as it did for the low life criminals I typically searched for and within a half hour I was on my way to her place. She said she was on the side of a mountain overlooking Weirs Valley and she had told me the truth. The drive down from Knoxville took most of an hour. There just isn’t a direct route to it with all the mountains, hills and hollers.

The road to her place was thin as a razors edge and as crooked as a snakes back. No guard rails or shoulders with a solid rock wall to the inside and a steep drop off to the outside. More than once, I nearly pee’d my pants when I met a fast moving pickup coming down the mountain, which forced me right to edge in order to allow them to pass. Through the trees I saw a glimpse of her pickup truck parked above a cabin built a few yards down the mountain side from her parking space and the road’s level. It had a huge deck that wrapped around the whole cabin with a long flight of stairs leading down from the back deck.

As I squeezed around the last bend before the cabin, I suddenly had a sinking feeling that I should have waited until tomorrow and saw her at the restaurant. I thought about just driving by until I realized there wasn’t much road left after her place and I’d be having to come right back by, so I pulled in.

I turned off my car and opened my door only to find a shotgun pointed in my face and Betty barking at me. “Who the hell do you think you are coming here? Did I invite you?”

“Whoa there, I come in peace,” I stated.

“I do give flying fart about you’re coming in peace. You weren’t invited.” She snapped at me.

“You’re right, I’m sorry. I’ll leave.” I stated as I reached for my door handle.

“Get away from the car.”

“But I thought…”

“Step away from the car now,” Betty snarled and jabbed me in the ribs with the shotgun.

“Okay, Okay,” I replied and stepped several steps away.

“Don’t get cute with me, asshole. Move it.”

“Where to?” I inquired.

“Up on the porch and then around to the back of the house,” Betty directed.

Normally I would have already taken the shotgun away from anyone pointing it at me and I usually make it hurt. That way it discourages them from trying it a second time. But this was Betty, someone I thought I cared about, so I’d wait until I could do it without hurting her. I followed her directions and stepped up the two steps to the porch. The porch was probably fifteen feet wide with a dozen large wooden chairs and rocking chairs, all with a fresh coat of varnish lined up against the house. As we walked around the side of the house, I was stunned by the view. It was as if she had the forest cleared cut to provide her with a panoramic view.

“Take a seat and don’t talk. This is my house my rules and you weren’t invited, so I won’t be making this short and sweet. It’ll be more like brash and nasty.”

I did as I was told and found a chair. It was quite comfortable, despite it being made of solid wood and having no seat cushion. Betty took up a perch on a shelf or maybe it was a corner bench built in to the heavy wooden railing that was in the corner of the stairs.

“How did you find me?” Betty asked with no preamble, then she sat staring at me. I assumed it was okay to speak and started to explain.

“I googled you. It wasn’t hard at all.” I stated.

“Damn that was supposed to be erased. Did you just type in my name and I popped up what?” Betty inquired.

“I added a few choice words of my own to narrow the search down and presto, there you were. You really have a lovely spot. This view is incredible.”

“Yeah, I like it. Why are you here?” Betty asked.

“I called and you wouldn’t talk to me. So I decided I’d try the direct approach and find out why? What did I do wrong? I thought we got alone great and you were open to a second date and everything.”

“Didn’t it occur to you that when I didn’t answer your call, that maybe I didn’t want to see you?”

“That wasn’t what you said,” I practically whine at her.

“I’m a woman and I can change my mind, if I want to.”

“Yeah, I guess you can. But why? I haven’t change my mind.”

“You want to know why?” Betty asked sarcastically.

“Yeah, I do. I always want to know why.”

“Don’t move,” Betty stated as she slipped off the bench and stepped into the house for a moment. When she stepped back outside she tossed a newspaper at me and told me to check page 3, in the front section.

All I had to do was flip open the paper and there it was. It was a big photo of Michael Nolan. His face battered and bruised, his clothes all wet and twisted about him. The headline read, “Noted Local Attorney assaulted in the restroom of posh downtown Knoxville. There were no witnesses to the assault which Mr. Nolan said must have been a robbery attempt because they had managed to steal his watch and some cash he had in his pocket.

A second man was tasered outside the door to the rest room and witnesses there said the man they saw next to him was of average height, average weight, light brown hair and was wearing sunglasses inside the building. Witnesses stated the man also began yelling out that the man had food poisoning as he ran from the building.

“So? What does this have to do with us?” I asked.

“What does this have to do with us? Are you crazy or something. I watched you eyeing that guy Michael Nolan all night. He was three tables away from us. He was just as bad. Him and his girlfriend watched you right back. You two were like chained animals waiting to get at each other. Then he shows up in the paper looking like he does and you show up here looking like you do, it’s quite obvious as soon as I was gone you two went at it.”

“It wasn’t as though I had an option. He attacked me while I was indispose at the urinal.”

“Isn’t that a lovely detail,” she sarcastically snapped and then held up her hand and cocked her head to one side for a moment. “Hear that?” Betty asked.

“It sounds like thunder,” I said.

“No, that’s not thunder. I know how thunder sounds in this hollow and that isn’t thunder. Its motorcycles and their headed up the road.” Betty said.

“Got bikers for neighbors?”

“Not a one,” Betty said as she reached for a pair of binoculars on the window ledge. She quickly swung around peered down the valley. “There, right there. Shit. When you screw things up, you really screw thing up.’ Betty snarled.

“What did I do?” I asked as she tossed me the binoculars. I took a minute adjusting and searching the lower valley and then I found them. There were at least four bikers coming up the road. “Maybe they’re coming up to a resort or something.” I suggested.

“There aren’t any resorts up here.” Betty informed me.

What about the side road right over there at the last turn?” I asked having seen the sign that said, ‘Ponder Hill’.

“Ponder Hill?” Betty asked. “The Catholic Church owns it and it’s a rustic group of cabins that stressed out Priests come to distress and ponder whatever Priests ponder.” Betty stated and then quickly added. “Any bright ideas about what we can do avoid being killed by a biker gang?”

“I’m thinking. Say where do the stairs lead?” I asked.

“They take you down to the ground level below the cabin unfortunately there’s really no place to go once you get there. It’s very steep. Basically no way out. If they have guns, they can stop on the road and shoot us from there real easy.” Betty gave her bleak assessment of the situation.

“Okay then follow me,” I stated and started around the corner of the house. Betty though went through the cabin so she could grab her purse and more shotgun shells. As I rounded the front corner of the house, Betty met me on the front porch.

“How the…” I started to say but Betty cut me off.

“I took a short cut. Now what’s your idea? Once they that turn into the valley it’s just two minutes until they’re here blocking the road.”

“Get in my car, I have idea.”

“Your car? Wouldn’t my truck be better? It rides higher and can go off road.” Betty reminded me.

“I know but we don’t need to go off road              , we need to plow the road so to speak.”

“What?”

“Get in, we gotta go!” I said as I started the engine.

“What are we going to do?” She asked.

“I’m going bowling for bikers.” I wisecracked.

“What’s to keep us from getting knocked off the road? Those bikes aren’t light you know.”

“I’m counting on momentum to do the trick.” I stated, as she closed her door and I backed out the parking space. “I’m counting on the fact this car weighs as much as probably five or six of the bikes and the road is going to allow three, at the most, line up across the road.”

“That sounds like suicide,” Betty snapped.

“So you’d rather wait here for them?” I said, then I hesitated a moment looking back and forth between a utility company trail that was running downhill towards the main road and the county road that the sane people use.

Betty looked at me then looked out the wind shield and then back me in short order. “Hell no, I’ll take my chances on the road.”

“Yeah, me too.” I added and gunned the motor. By the time I reached the first curve, I was going forty and scared out my wits. It was a big sluggish boat, my ’67 Chevy Impala. The car’s weight though gave me a sense of control, but I had no idea how it would react with a ton of Harley Hog, a Flat Head Indian or a customized Gold Wing flying into it at forty to fifty miles an hour. 

The old Chevy’s tires squealed as the beast slid around a turn in the road and jumped up to fifty miles per hour in less than five seconds as the road took a steep drop. At the bottom of the drop it twisted to right and then back left, as it climbed out of what Betty called a dip in the road. I was about to find out that it was just a preliminary dip, like on a roller coaster. They build in a small dip right before the big one, so the riders will have something to compare to the big dip. The big dip is the one where they take you two hundred feet up and then drop you at over a hundred miles an hour before hurtling you skyward once more. I hadn’t realized it when I had driven up, but when you were in the little dip, you had no chance of spotting anything coming your way prior to cresting the rim on the opposite side. Neither had I taken into account what it would look like, when an old Chevy Impala burst upward directly in front you.

From the look on the faces of two bikers leading the way to my execution. I’d say it was kind of like a huge Great White Shark bursting out of the water at the rear of the fishing boat and then slamming down on the gunnel and ripping off the inboard/outboard while trying it’s best to grab hold of you. These first two trail blazers each turned to the opposite side in panic. The rider on my left swung left and drove right over the edge. He and his bike flew through the air for a good thirty yards before the bike slammed into a tree and burst into flames. The rider dropped like a stone into the valley below. I didn’t waste any more time trying follow what happened to him, because the sound from the collision with the other rider, who had swung left had drawn my attention. He and his bike slammed into the mountainside and then bounced back into the passenger side of the car. There was a God awful sound as the bike scraped down the side of the car, before being spit out the back behind us into the middle of the road where it exploded as it slid over the rise and down into the dip in the road behind us. The smoke rising from the ruined bike was the only hint there was an obstacle of death awaiting the next vehicle to pass.

“Whoa, that was close,” Betty called out as she turned her head to look back at the wreckage.

I turned back forward just in time to see two more bikers racing into the far end of the lazy curve. About a hundred yards ahead of us. I pressed the peddle to the metal, and the old Chevy leapt forward.

“Get your head down.” I yelled as the first shot punched a hole in the windshield just half a foot from my head.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Betty shouted as she slipped down behind the dash. I leaned over as low as I dared and still see enough to stay on the road. Several bullets punched through the front and back windows before we collided with the bikes. Predictably the bikers slammed into the front end and then bounced to the sides. The biker on the driver’s side tried at the last second to jump from his bike onto the hood of the car but he missed timed it. He bounced off the hood and into the oblivion of the ravine, next to us. The other biker tried to steer his way between the car and the mountain and almost made it, since the road had opened up a bit here. The three feet was almost a enough space to slip past the Chevy except I swung the car a little bit to help keep the hood jumper from getting his grip and when I did that, the guy on the passenger side was bumped just enough to get rubbed on the wall and down he went. No explosion this time, just a big bump and a loud thump as we rolled up and over the bike and rider. 

“Can you get the shot gun out window and pointed forward, without picking your head up?” I asked Betty as several more bullets bored into the windshield, sending small blocks of the safety glass in all directions.

“I guess, why? I can’t see to shoot anyone from down here though.”