The Devil's Snare: a Mystery Suspense Thriller (Derek Cole Suspense Thrillers Book 4) (15 page)

“Did he live in Utica?” Derek asked.
 

“Nope,” Lance said. “Brian Mack was born and raised and lived every one of his years in Ravenswood. He used to get up at four in the morning to make sure he was in his classroom by no later than seven every morning. He was the most committed teacher I ever knew about. But what makes him fit into my two percent theory is his stance against kids using drugs. There ain’t no one in their right mind who believes that drugs and schools go together like peas and carrots, but only a few, like only two percent, will actually do anything about the drug problem. Brian gave up plenty of his personal time to help kids who were being pressured into using drugs or to help those that started using. He organized community events, raised money for drug awareness and spent a whole mess of days speaking to the state legislature out in Albany. He hated drugs and what they do to kids. Some people who knew Mack believe he never got married because all his time was spent teaching, fighting against drugs and down at the fire station. Probably true, but I believe it was something else that kept him from getting married.”

“What do you think it was?”

“Brian Mack was an alcoholic back in his youth. He was a few years older than me, but I remember hearing stories about him back in high school. From what I’ve heard, he got into a car accident when he was seventeen that put a six-year-old in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Mack never talked about it and I never bothered to dig around to see if the story was true, but I can tell you that in all the years I was friends with Brian Mack, I never saw him take so much as a sip of alcohol.”

“Mack seemed like a hell of a guy,” Derek said.

“He was in the two percent of people I’d call great.”

Derek gave Lance the look of a man both lost in thought and confused as a result of his thinking. He watched Lance roll back years in his mind, reliving his friendship with Brian Mack. “Two percent rolls up to a hell of a number,” he said, hoping to pull Lance back from his painful romp through his past and back into the present. “If there are three hundred million in this country, your theory says that we have six million terrorists roaming our streets? If that’s true, we’re in some serious trouble.”

“I said two percent are radical in their beliefs. I didn’t say that they were all terrorists. Of those six million, break it down again to another two percent.”

Derek looked to his right as the mental calculator in his brain jumped back into action. “That’s one hundred, twenty-thousand people. Still not looking good for us. You going to tell me that only two percent of those are actually radicalized enough to actually carry out a suicide bombing or an act of mass terror?”

Lance nodded his head slowly, as if the challenge Derek was presenting was causing an awareness he hadn’t yet realized. “That’s twenty-four hundred people in our country, ready and willing to kill themselves in order to advance their beliefs. Scary as shit when you think about it.”

“There’s a problem with your theory, though. Who’s to say that we can’t keep knocking down the numbers by two percent? So let’s say there are twenty-four hundred terrorists in our county; that’s a terrifying number but it’s more palatable than six million or one hundred twenty-thousand. But if we can keep cutting the numbers down, your theory can be made to claim that of those twenty-four hundred, two percent of those, or forty-eight are the real deal and are actively planning an attack. And two percent of that, actually, around one person, will actually pull off a terrorist attack. That could be one attack per year, per month, per day or per hour.”

“And how many terrorist attacks have been stopped in this country? How many have really been stopped, not the number the government lets us know about?”

Derek’s eyes drifted off to a recent case he worked. He had been contacted by the FBI—a tremendously unusual client to say the least—to help stop a terrorist attack in New York City. He had been successful in stopping the attack but only one of the gang of terrorists were either killed or stopped. The others (and no one had any solid idea of how many others there were), scattered and were, presumably, still alive, still plotting and still could be counted in the two percent of people ready, willing and able to execute an attack.
 

Lance took a small sip of his drink, paused a beat and offered Derek a knowing smile. The kind of smile not intended to convey or share happiness but, instead, to display a shared fear. “Bo Randall is a two percenter in a lot of ways. He’s what I call a real alcoholic, meaning that his body and his mind needs alcohol. Lots of people who think they are alcoholics
want
booze way more than they
need
it. That’s a big and important difference. Those that only believe they need a drink, are running their lives out of habits. Bad habits, but habits nonetheless. Bo and others like him, aren’t just alcohol abusers or people with nasty habits; they are people who can’t even get so much as get a sniff of alcohol without giving in to their weakness. These are the type of people destined to be a wino you see wandering the streets, pandering for spare change.

“Bo may also be a drug addict, which makes me think that Troll Man was Bo’s drug dealer, not a long lost friend. I’d also put Bo into the two percent of people who tell the truth all the time. That man doesn’t lie, which tells me either he didn’t kill Mack in that fire or he really has no memories of that night.
 

“You told me that Bo took off when he was with your other private investigator this morning and that Frosty is thinking that Bo attacked his mother. But I’ll tell you what Bo took off to do and what he’s probably still doing. You want to find Bo Randall? Look in the bar closest to that lab. He’ll either be sitting belly up to the bar, or taking a short break from drinking and is banging some bar slut in the parking lot. Still want to know where the heart of your Gordian knot is? I say you swing your sword right at Bo Randall.”

ˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇ

It was after two in the afternoon when Nikkie called. Derek was still talking with Lance, comparing ideas of what (and where) the heart of Derek’s case was, and what his best next step in solving the case should be. Derek excused himself from the table, walked outside and felt an overwhelming fear that he was about to hear terrible news.
 

And he did.

“It’s not good, Derek.” Nikkie’s voice sounded wet with tears. She sounded fragmented, confused and filled with sadness, anger and a haunting fear. If the attack on Crown wasn’t a completely random act, the attacker may be intent on silencing anyone involved in the Bo Randall case. Nikkie’s anger was fueled not only by the condition her friend and co-worker was in, but also by Bo. Though she struggled to believe that he was the person that bashed Crown’s head in—fracturing her skull and causing brain damage so severe that the doctors were only giving Crown a five to ten percent chance of survival—the fact he had run off from the lab and had not contacted anyone made giving Bo Randall an “all clear” impossible.

“Tell me what they are saying,” Derek said.

“They’re tossing around medical terms like dough in a pizzeria, so I can only give you the Reader’s Digest version.”

“That’s all I could understand, anyway.”

“They removed a three-by-three-inch piece of her skull to relieve the pressure on her brain. They put her in a medically induced coma but are also pretty sure that Crown would be in a coma, induced or not. They can’t say for certain and won’t be able to know for sure until the swelling on her brain reduces, if it reduces, but she was hit so hard that they are almost certain she’ll have brain damage. Permanent brain damage.”

“Holy shit balls,” Derek said, his own voice sounding damp with emotion. “Stupid question, but how much brain damage are they thinking?”

“Probable blindness, severe difficulty with motor control and speaking. It’s really early but one doctor told me she’ll probably need to be cared for the rest of her life. And Derek, that’s the best case scenario. The doctors are worried that her organs may start shutting down.” Nikkie sighed heavily and Derek could tell that she was losing the battle she had been fighting to keep her emotions in check. “She’s dying, Derek. She’s dying.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Derek said. “I have to make one stop before I get up there.”

“You have a lead for the case?”

“Actually, you’re my lead. Tell me the address of the lab you took Bo to this morning.”

“I hear you’re afraid of needles? Or, is it, you’re afraid to see your own blood?”

Bo was sitting, as Lance predicted, at the end of a bar within a half-mile from the Retrax Clinical Lab. By the looks of him, Derek surmised Bo had gone straight to the bar stool as soon as he took off from Nikkie.

“Let me guess, you’re Derek Cole; my knight on a white horse, come to save me from myself. Well, save your breath. I’m going to prison. That’s all there is to it.”

“Not if you didn’t start that fire,” Derek said as he sat beside Bo on a three-legged bar stool that teetered to one side.

The bar was poorly lit and in dire need of a health inspection. Dirt layered the laminate flooring and the stale stench of beer and vomit wafted over any of the more pleasing smells that may have been floating in the damp air.

“Strange thing about memories,” Bo said as he waved to the middle-aged woman standing at the far end of the bar, “just when you think they’re gone, they make a sudden appearance.” He turned and looked directly into Derek’s eyes. “I have two memories that are crashing into each other in my brain about the night of the fire. One memory has me starting the fire then standing in Mack’s backyard and watching the flames consume the house. The second memory is of me driving by Mack’s house right about the time I set the fire. That memory is not as vivid as the first. Almost like it wasn’t me driving that car but I knew who was and why they were driving by Mack’s house the same time I was ready to start the fire.”

“Bo, have you been sitting in this bar since you took off from the lab?” Derek asked, his voice laced with a concoction of anger and concern.
 

“If you’re asking if I had another mental black out, no. I’ve been to this place a time or two before, so when I got to feeling like I needed a drink, I came right here. Been sitting on this crappy stool in this crappy bar ever since. Why? Something else happen that I’m being accused of?”

“You need to pay your bill and come with me.” Derek stood, signaled for the check. “It’s your mother, Bo. She’s been injured.”

ˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇ

Bo sat mostly in silence during the thirty-minute ride from the bar to the hospital. He had only asked about the attack on his mother and about his cell phone being found in the woods once. Beyond that, he said nothing.

“How many beers you have in you?” Derek asked, wondering if making their first stop at at gas station to get a large coffee and a roll of mints would be more prudent than going directly to the intensive care unit’s waiting room.

“I don’t count,” Bo said.

“You sound fine. Don’t sound like a man who claims to have been drinking beer for a few hours straight ought to sound.”

“Finding out that your mother had her head bashed in and may not live to see the next day has the ability to sober a man up in a hurry.”

Derek understood that drunk is drunk, and while a person with enough alcohol in their system to make a horse walk sideways can feel sober in a second when faced with an intense emotional event, the alcohol doesn’t give a shit about what’s happening outside. Bo was drunk. He wasn’t showing signs of being so—beyond the smell of beer exuding from seemingly each one of his pores—a sheriff or a state trooper was certainly going to be at the hospital and would probably take Bo into custody if they suspected he was as drunk as Derek knew he was.
 

Derek grabbed his cell phone and dialed Nikkie. She answered in a whisper of a voice.

“I found Bo,” he started. “How many police officers are up at the hospital with you?”

“Two,” Nikkie said. “Mullins just showed up five minutes ago. Why do you ask and where did you find Bo?”

“I found him in a bar, less than a mile from the lab. I ask about cops because of the condition I found Bo in.”

“Drunk?” Nikkie said, her voice muffled as if she was shielding her phone with her free hand.

“As the proverbial skunk.” Derek glared at Bo who was staring out the passenger’s window, showing no reaction to Derek. “He wasn’t the attacker. He was in the bar the whole time.”

“And you’re thinking the police will arrest him first before checking his alibi if he shows up here hammered?”

“Exactly.”

“How long till you feel he’s fit to arrive here?”

“I guess that depends on how his mother is doing,” Derek said.

“Haven’t heard anything new since we last spoke. No news is good news, right?”
 

“So they say.” Derek paused a few beats. “Give us an hour or two. Call me if anything changes or if the doctors tell you something concerning.”

A few seconds after Derek ended the call, Bo turned a shaky head towards him, and said, “You aren’t being paid to protect me, you know?”

“I actually don’t give a shit about protecting you,” Derek shot back. “I’m only thinking about Crown and the case I am being paid to investigate. If I take you up to the hospital in the condition you’re in, you’ll be locked up. You being locked up makes my ability to contact you and meet with you if I need to more challenging than I’d like.”

“You’re just delaying the inevitable,” Bo said, his words slowly acquiring a distinctive slur. “You can’t keep my ass out of jail forever, you know?”

“You sound like a man ready to plead guilty.”

“Then you need to get your hearing checked. Because I’m a whole lot closer to disappearing long enough to figure this out on my own than taking some plea deal my father is arranging for me.”

“Innocent men don’t run,” Derek said.

Bo said, “And guilty men sit still, waiting for someone to fuck up and give them a chance to claim innocence. My only claim is my damn amnesia.”