The Quest: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 6 (2 page)

     Becky countered, “I’ve already talked to the hospital staff, and all the other nurses agree it’s best for the long-term to let me go.”

     “Meaning what?”

     “In Kerrville, twelve miles from the compound, the old community college has been boarded up since the blackout. They used to teach nursing and medical courses there. They still have the equipment and materials, and they can be used once again. The unemployment situation in both Junction and Kerrville is dreadful. People are out of work and clamoring for something to do.

     “I’m going to reopen that college. Only instead of Kerrville Community College it’ll be called the Kerrville School of Medicine. I’ve already talked via ham with the state licensing board. They’re up for it, provided one of their members reviews and approves the curriculum and testing material.”

     But not everything was rosy.

     One of John Castro’s oldest and closest friends, Robbie Benton, had been driven mad by the monotony of collecting and burning bodies day in and day out.

     He wrote in a private journal, “This isn’t what I signed up for when I became a cop. I think it’s time for me to start generating some dead bodies of my own.”

     Robbie was also driven by his attraction to John’s wife Hannah. For years he’d been trying to insert himself into the family’s lives, so that when John was assassinated by an unknown thug, he could step in to comfort them. And to become Hannah’s new hero.

     And now, Book 6 of the series…

THE QUEST

-1-

     Robbie knew that John Castro was a creature of habit. At the end of every shift, John took his rookie partner home, then radioed in to tell SAPD dispatch that he was calling it a night.

     As soon as Robbie heard that radio call, he knew that John was just a few minutes away from his location, and headed toward him.

     Because John was a sentimental man with a flair for the romantic, and a deep love for his wife.

     And he loved to make her smile.

     So every night when he was on his way home John stopped to pick a few wildflowers for Hannah.

     And he always, without fail, stopped at the corner of South Ellison Drive and Marbach Road.

     It seemed to have just the right combination of Hannah’s favorite flowers.

     And after all she’d done for him over the years, it really wasn’t much of a gesture.

     So he’d continue to do it until the first frost killed the delicate flowers and rendered the plants dormant for another season.

     Robbie was still on duty, having just gone in an hour before. The SAPD overlapped their shifts by an hour so that the outgoing crew could brief their replacements on pertinent information regarding hot spots and troublemakers.

     He wondered, for a moment, whether he should be the one who should drive by and find John’s lifeless body.

     Then he decided that no, he’d let someone else do it.

     Marbach Road was the dividing line between Robbie’s patrol area and someone else’s. He wasn’t sure who was on duty in delta sector on this particular day. His mind had been on other things at the standup earlier and he’d forgotten to see which of delta’s officers were coming on.

     But it didn’t matter much. Eventually whoever it was would drive down Marbach Road and see John’s cruiser parked there, the lights still on and the engine still running.

     They’d stop out of curiosity, and it wouldn’t take long for them to find John’s body in the middle of the field.

     By that time, Robbie would be far away, on the opposite end of his sector, talking to residents who could later place him miles away from the scene of the crime.

     As soon as the alarm went out over the radio, of course, he’d scramble to the scene. Just like every other SAPD officer on duty.

     The chief of police would be there too.

     Robbie would ask the chief if he could go along on the notification.

     “I’m a close friend of the family,” he’d say. “I can offer them some comfort and answer their questions after you leave.”

     He would also be in the thick of things as the murder investigation of John Castro began. And he would make damn sure it headed in a direction away from him. In the absence of a homicide unit or an internal affairs unit, Chief Martinez would likely tell his patrol officers to hit the streets. To talk to the citizens, and to ask them if they’d witnessed anything.

     Or knew of anyone who had some type of grudge against the fallen officer.

     Of course, no one would suspect Robbie. He was the epitome of what the SAPD and the city of San Antonio sought in its policemen. He was hard working and dedicated. The first one to volunteer for the really tough jobs. Friendly and helpful to the city’s citizens. He tried to portray himself to the people not as a hardened cop, but as one of them. A man who spent some of his days off helping to restore an Old Catholic church in downtown San Antonio.

     Robbie smiled the smile of a truly demented man.

     Maybe he’d talk to Chief Martinez. Maybe he’d tell the chief that he was taking John’s death particularly hard. Because John was his best friend in the world.

     Maybe he’d talk the chief into letting him, Robbie Benton, take over the homicide investigation himself.

     “No one wants to get this creep more than I do,” he’d tell the chief. “I know I’ve never investigated a homicide. But neither has anyone else on the department, since no one in the old homicide division made it.

     “You know I’m tenacious, Chief. What I lack in experience I make up for in determination. You know me, Chief, and you know I can do it.”

     Once in charge of the investigation, Robbie would make sure someone else took the fall.

     Someone like a homeless drifter, perhaps. Or a known marauder.

     Someone who would disappear without a trace before he could stand trial and profess his innocence.

     Oh, but there would be plenty of evidence to convict him in absentia. Robbie would make sure of that.

     A rogue cop can always buy eye witnesses.

     All he had to do was offer up the illegal drugs and weapons he confiscated but never reported.

     Now Robbie laughed out loud at the irony of it all.

     If his plan played out, he would not only be placed in a position where he could exonerate himself. But by solving the case he’d be a hero in Hannah’s eyes.

     In his heart, as well as his twisted mind, he knew that sweet Hannah would soon be his.

     It was just natural that Hannah, upon hearing of John’s death, would gravitate to those friends who’d been so helpful to her and her girls in the past.

     And Robbie’s would be the first name on that list.

He’d be at Hannah’s side through the whole ordeal.

     He’d even conjure up some phony tears at John’s funeral.

     He’d allow Hannah to comfort him in his moments of grief and despair.

     Eventually he’d share her heart.

     And then her bed.

     And hopefully not in that order.

     Robbie smiled as John sauntered through the wildflowers, without a care in the world, collecting the best ones he could find for Hannah.

     Then Robbie caught himself. He had to get used to showing no joy at John’s demise. From now on it was merely disgust or rage.

     He lined up his shot. Center mass on the side of John’s head. Leading him a bit, but not too much.

     There, in plain view in his scope at ninety yards, was the obstacle standing in his way.

     He took a deep breath, let half of it out, and very gently squeezed the trigger.

-2-

     Scott had been back home in the compound for several weeks now. It had been a glorious homecoming, and he was glad to be back.

     But soon there would be others missing from their midst. For Sara and Tom, as unlikely a team as there ever was, would soon be setting out on their own adventure.

     To find Sara’s mother.

     No one wanted to see them go. Sara had joined their numbers at the last minute, on the day the earth went black, because she had nowhere else to go. She’d lied to Jordan and said her parents were out of the state to escape a brutal home life.

     Despite her deceit, though, the others harbored no ill will toward her. They knew she’d been desperate, and saw the opportunity as her one chance to run. So they welcomed her into their fold and made her one of them.

     They understood something else as well.

     They understood that once she learned her mother was out there somewhere searching for her, that she had to go. She had to go find the mother she once thought was complicit in her abuse. The one who, she found out later, was in reality a second victim. The mother she forgave, and now felt a need to protect.

     Oh, they didn’t want her to go. They knew that the world was still a dangerous place.

     They would worry about Sara each and every day, just as they’d worried about Scott when he’d been stuck in San Antonio all those months.

     It would give them some peace of mind, though, knowing that Tom Haskins planned to accompany her on her journey.

     Tom had met with the Kerrville city council on three different occasions.

     The first was to request an extended leave of absence from his duties as Sheriff of Kerr County.

     The council asked, “How long would you expect to be gone?”

     “I don’t know. We don’t know where the woman is. If she left the city, and we followed her trail, it could take weeks. Months, maybe. I just don’t know.”

     Tom met with the council the second time to hear their decision.

     None of the members wanted the sheriff to go. They liked him personally, considered him a friend. And there was no doubt it was his toughness as a sheriff which had cleared the city of the gangs of marauders that had ran roughshod over Kerrville in the early days of the blackout.

     But it was because they thought so highly of him that they decided to support his cause.

     They wouldn’t be able to call themselves his friends if they had refused him.

     And he’d be sticking his neck out for a young girl he didn’t even know three years before. That gave them even more reason to admire him.

     So they would give him his leave of absence.

     But there would be stipulations. There always were in such cases.

     “We still have a duty to protect the citizens of Kerrville and Kerr County,” they told him. “Before you leave we want you to take whatever steps are necessary to keep the marauders from coming back.”

     It was a reasonable demand, and one that Tom had planned to do anyway.

     He met with the council the third and final time with Deputy Paul Swenson at his side.

     Tom stood to address the council in their chambers.

     “I’ve known Deputy Paul his whole life. I helped change his diapers when he was but a pup. I coached his little league team and was there at his high school graduation, whooping and hollering with the rest of his family. I taught him how to tune up his car and helped him overhaul his first engine.

     “Paul is like a son to me. I know his strengths as well as his shortfalls. And I know he is capable of protecting the city and the county in my absence.

     “Yesterday I gave Paul a promotion. I asked Judge Harvey Bailey to swear Paul in as undersheriff of Kerr County.

     “The title sounds a bit funny, I know. But it’s there, in the county charter. The charter says I am authorized an undersheriff to act as my assistant, and it grants me the authority to select him myself.

     “I’m leaving my wife and other people I’ve come to love in his hands. And I know they’ll be safe there.”

     The men were asked to wait in the hallway while the council voted on his request.

     The mayor himself stepped into the hallway a few minutes later to give them the news.

     “It was unanimous. No one in there wants to see you go. But everyone understands it’s something you feel you have to do. Good luck, my friend.”