3
The whole setup reeked of gross expenditure, ostentation, and privilege. It wasn’t that Ellery hadn’t been to houses that used more baroque architecture and building materials—it was that they’d been in an appropriate place. The white Grecian columns and white-painted doors of this particular mansion were coated in red dust—or even redder mud.
As they’d driven the long, winding cul-de-sac that wrapped around a small lake, there had been perhaps five other properties facing the lake itself, and those houses—just as large, Ellery suspected—had accommodated their surroundings. Some had been built lodge style with exposed and stained wood paneling, and some had been stuccoed—red, yellow, or orange—the stucco, Ellery was certain, helpful insulation for a climate that could be brutally hot in the summer, but also cold enough for a moderate amount of snow in the dark seasons.
Gannett Hoover was trying very hard to be a southern gentleman.
“My mother would faint from the vapors before she entered this monstrosity,” Galen said, his Savannah accent dripping acidly into the damp air.
“At least it’s green,” Ellery said, feeling the inanity deeply. In the foothills of California, winter often hit not as buckets of snow—although this far up there was some —but as lots and lots of rain. Mudslides were known to close down aortic freeways for weeks. In rural, undeveloped areas, grasses and flowered weeds grew in great swaths. The mansion—surrounded by three outbuildings, one of which appeared to be a mother-in-law cottage far back in the rear of the grounds—only had a partially developed lawn. About halfway to the mother-in-law cottage, the mowed, manicured grass gave way to the thigh-high, hay-length clumps that prevailed out among the trees in the rest of the red-earthed county. Because of the recent rains, the weeds were pressed flat, almost forming little huts of grasses and the husks of plants that had died in the fall. The result was a sort of rank and entropic derision, as though the people who lived in this place no longer cared about appearances or bothered with the niceties, and Ellery suppressed a shiver of fear.
Two nights ago Henry had been shot through a wall guarding a teenaged boy. Last night, Jackson had stormed an enemy citadel and produced witnesses of widespread corruption.
It was late afternoon now, the shadows stretching long from the great oak trees and the chill in the air threatening a dark, dank night. What would happen when night fell again over this place where evil—even Ellery’s mother had said it was evil—had settled in to fester?
Green—even in a land as plagued with drought as California—didn’t seem as important here in this mud-spattered monument to greed and poor taste.
“Last minute sound check,” Ellery said, speaking normally as though offering his mother an observation on the carport extension over the driveway. “If you can hear us, buzz our cell phones twice.”
It was reassuring to feel the twitches in his pocket as Galen—leaning on his cane with one hand—reached out to employ the door knocker with the other.
Then Ellery felt another buzz in his pocket and frowned.
“Hold up a moment,” he said and fished out his phone. “It’s a text from Jackson.”
Retty and another woman dumped in the second mine site. Something’s going down. OMW!
Ellery forwarded that to his mother, Galen, and Gerald Manning, hitting the Send button right as the door opened.
JACKSON WAS running too hard, the pack jouncing on his back, to do the math. He knew that the mine cap was probably five kilometers from the back edge of the property, and as he and Cody had jogged up the ramp of packed earth from the mine chamber to the sunlight, they’d caught sight of ATV tracks in the mud at the entrance to the mine.
The tracks went off in the direction of the Gannett Hoover property, forming a path that looked as though the vehicles had been out in this area a lot over a prolonged period. On the one hand, it made it easier to traverse, and Jackson felt as though they were making good time, but on the other?
It meant that somebody—probably the two henchmen who had come to fetch Retty—had been hacking a trail to the mine caps as quickly as possible. Jackson didn’t want to know what was at the third mine cap, but he was reasonably sure it wasn’t a moving body at a body dump.
All he knew—all he really knew—was that Ellery, Jade, Lucy Satan, and Galen were all walking into a hornet’s nest that was already buzzing .
“Know what,” Cody panted next to him, “I been thinkin’?”
“Tell me,” Jackson said, and that whole physical fitness thing he’d been doing since his heart attack the year before seemed to be paying off in a big way today because he wasn’t even winded.
“How freaked out do you have to be to dump a body that ain’t a body yet.”
Jackson grunted. “Same. What the hell is going on in that house?”
At that moment, they heard the rumble of a two-stroke engine, with an excited cacophony of muted voices. The path they were jogging down wove itself through wooded areas and around a particularly winding slough, and as the sound of the engine—probably a motorbike or ATV—grew closer, Jackson nodded toward a stand of trees on the other side of the path itself. He and Cody made for the trees, finding shelter behind one of the copious granite boulders scattered around the area like marbles and was currently being split in two by an old and mighty oak.
They crouched behind the boulder, peering around the tree itself to see where the noise came from, as the sound of the engine— engines —drew nearer.
“Wow,” Cody muttered, squinting up at the tree that was literally cracking the boulder in two.
“What?” Jackson asked. While they were still, he fished water out of his pack and shared a bottle with Cody.
“See here? This is why I never bottom.”
Jackson stared at him, then stared at the tree in the rock and then stared at him again. “Who, pray tell, is the oak tree?”
Cody snorted. “They all are. I don’t know who started the myth that a man has to have a twelve-inch cock to scare the shit out of someone, but I’m saying, at this point butt plugs make me clench up.”
Jackson swallowed, feeling his ears flush for reasons that had nothing to do with running through the backcountry. “You know, I now know things about you I never ever wanted to.”
“Yeah. I should have had a gay friend a long time before this, you think?”
“I’m bi,” Jackson muttered, disgruntled. “That I fell in love with a man is Ellery’s bad luck.”
“Fair. I’m just saying. I’ve only had a couple of men friends before now, and I have questions. So many questions.”
Jackson fought the urge to laugh, and he peered over the boulder, barely making out two ATVs struggling along the path through the trees.
“When this is over, I’ll hook you up with Henry—he mentors a bunch of porn kids who may not know their belly buttons from a lint trap, but what they know about sex will blow your hair out your ass.”
Cody nodded sagely, as though that was the only fair solution. “I would be very grateful,” he said earnestly, and then Jackson was shushing him as the ATVs finally jounced into sight.
The one in front was piloted by one of the two men who had come in to grab Retty from the rehab facility, and Jackson would guess that his thinner buddy with the long stringy hair was driving the one hauling the trailer.
The trailer hauling three frightened kids wearing the same pink pajama things as the kids Jackson and Cody had rescued the night before.
“Well, shit,” Cody said, dropping his pack.
Jackson’s was already on the ground, and he scanned the earth under the tree, looking for… for….
He grabbed a hefty tree branch, blown off by the wind, while Cody picked up a fist-sized rock.
“I’ll take the guy in front,” Jackson said, and they both clambered to the top of the boulder, one on either side of the tree.
Cody stayed on his perch, cocking his arm back like a pitcher on the mound, and Jackson slithered to the ground, thinking unhappily about road rash on his ass as his jeans shredded.
Oh well.
They’d planned their entrance almost perfectly so he was arriving in the first driver’s blindside. Jackson braced his giant tree branch like a baseball bat and shouted, “Play ball!” as he swung, and the ATV growled under the arc of his weapon.
He heard a satisfying “ Oolf !” and the sickening thump of the tree branch probably cracking open a couple of ribs as the ATV pilot sailed off the machine and landed flat on his back slightly to the side of the path of the other ATV, his arms extended, stunned but still breathing.
And then, even over the engine noise of the two machines, one of them still coasting in idle after its driver had been dumped, Jackson heard the kind of thunk a watermelon makes when it hits pavement.
Neither of the drivers were wearing helmets, and Jackson grimaced as the second driver’s head snapped sideways and he slid off his ATV and directly under the wheels of the attached trailer.
He was still out of it when Jackson and Cody ran to the ATVs, put them each in Park, and then turned toward the teenagers, bound and furious on the back.
But not gagged.
“Who are you?” one of them—a rail thin, tall, and sturdy boy—asked as Jackson pulled his Leatherman tool from his pocket and went to work on the zip ties holding his hands together behind him.
“Random cowboy, hoping to give help,” Jackson told him. “Were you guys staying at the mansion up the way?” They’d gotten close enough to see the roof, peeking over a long rise of hill in front of them.
“Mr. Hoover and Mr. Dwayne,” the boy said, shuddering, and one of the other two boys began to cry—small heartbreaking sobs that twisted Jackson’s heart. They were all male, reinforcing Jackson’s sick supposition of why some of the kids had been transferred up to Sonora instead of staying in Sacramento, and they all looked shell-shocked and angry.
“Shit,” Cody muttered. “Jackson, we gotta get to the mansion. Can you feel it?” Cody rubbed his stomach, and Jackson had no choice but to nod. First Retty and Gannett Hoover’s wife and now these three kids. They were cleaning house, fast and furiously, and Ellery was walking into that house !
“I got an idea,” Jackson told him, and he pulled out his phone, wondering at the miracle that gave him a strong signal in the middle of South PigBlanket, USA.
“Manning,” came the voice of a man who was not used to hauling ass through the underbrush.
“You almost at the first site?” Jackson asked.
“Drawing close now,” the man confirmed. “Are you here?”
Jackson gave him directions to travel into the cave and through the tunnels. “The dog handler will be staying with two women, one of them still alive, while the chopper pilot tries to land closer. I’d tell you to stay and help them, but we’ve got a problem about three miles east of the dump site, and you, sir, are our solution.”
With that he gave Manning absolute orders to keep heading out, and to follow the ATV path until he found the trailer full of young people eating protein bars and drinking a good portion of Jackson and Cody’s water.
“There’s two assholes with broken ribs and concussions that will be tied up with zip ties nearby,” Jackson told him. “I’m giving the kids sticks and rocks to use to beat the fuck out of them if they try to get away, so you need to get over here before your suspects are beaten to death by sticks and rocks. You understand me?”
“You’re leaving them there?” Manning gasped.
“ My people are walking into a meat grinder !” Jackson yelled. “They are cleaning house , and if the cleaners are there, your FBI guys aren’t going to have enough time to get there. Now shut up and run faster!”
With that he hung up and went to help Cody bind and gag the two injured men, ignoring their groans of pain as they double-bound their wrists and ankles in zip ties.
Then Cody surprised him by pulling out two lengths of paracord from his own pack and helping Jackson bind their feet to their wrists—and then wrapping a length of P cord around their throats and making the hogtie complete.
“Only hit them if they escape,” Jackson told the kids.
The boys, busy gulping down fresh water and huddling under some more of those foil blankets, all nodded.
“You swear,” one of them whispered. “You swear help is coming? ’Cause… ’cause we all screamed. In that house. We screamed and screamed and help never came.”
Jackson squatted, putting himself near to the boy. This one was young—not twelve yet—and small, and Jackson’s stomach lurched at what the kid must have been through. “I’ve got family in that house now,” he said softly. “You’re out. You’re safe. We’ve got help coming. I need to go help my family so they don’t have to scream like you did. Is that okay?”
And the hell of it was, he meant that. God, he was leaving these kids in the woods and—
“Go,” said the oldest. “I’ll take care of them.” He gave an unpleasant grin, one hand wrapped around the rock Cody had used to incapacitate one of the captors. “I sort of hope they break their zip ties.”
“I do not,” Jackson told him. “But there is help on the way.” He glanced at all three kids, and Cody held out his pack for the older boy. “Stay safe. Hide behind our rock if you want. It’s dry there because the tree kept the water off.”
“No worries,” said the oldest kid, turning his face toward the sky. “A little rain won’t hurt a thing.”
Jackson and Cody took off then, free of their packs and much lighter now.
Particularly since Jackson and Cody had both unzipped their weapons from the compact nylon-and-foam carry cases, and holstered them in the pancake holsters they’d worn just in case.
Jackson hated guns—had always hated them, even when he’d been on the force. But the chafe of the holster in the small of his back was a great comfort to him as the two of them made spectacular time sprinting through the wet grass and the mud.
ELLERY GLANCED around the foyer as they entered, unaccountably disturbed by what he saw.
He understood what the setup was supposed to be. A grand entrance hall, with two staircases rising up on either side to take the family into the private parts of the house. Underneath the first landing, where the staircases met, was a grand door leading to a receiving room, and behind that there was probably a kitchen and a dining room. He figured the receiving room might be adjacent to a ballroom used for parties, but while he’d always come from money—and had gone to a few parties in his time—he had no head for the peacocking architecture of the disgustingly rich.
What worried him was the stripped-down furnishings of a house that was being very quickly disassembled, its most expensive items packed away first.
There were two niches on either side of the grand french doors leading to the receiving room, which were bare, although small silk area rugs, each one bearing the four-point imprint of what had probably been a pricey antique display stand, remained.
It was a small detail—but it was a telling one. The house was being stripped, and judging by the hastily rolled rugs—all of which bore the mark of a fine silk/wool blend on the back—stacked against the far wall of the foyer, it was being done in a hurry.
Almost as though the residents had maybe a day’s warning to clean house and get the hell away.
Ellery, Galen, and Taylor all exchanged uneasy glances.
“Perhaps,” Galen said, his drawl as unhurried as it always had been, “we are disturbing the people of this house at an inopportune time.”
Ellery’s mother turned toward the man who had opened the door for them. Thin and nervous looking in real life, Gannett Hoover bore himself like somebody who was used to making his soul disappear. Although he was dressed in a men’s catalogue of leisure clothes befitting a wealthy man in his “rustic country residence”—khaki slacks, loafers, and a cashmere zip-up sweater in an odd color between mauve and granite—Hoover, who should have been a lean, confident man with a politician’s polish, appeared harried and, well, almost gray .
“I’m sorry, Congressman Hoover,” she said, “I know you had some warning we were coming. We weren’t told you were in the process of moving.”
The smile Hoover gave them was a ghastly pulling back of thin lips to expose white teeth.
“Not at all,” he said faintly. “We’re just….” The corners of his mouth twitched up like a muscle spasm. “Cleaning. Spring cleaning. The living room is, uhm, relatively undisturbed.”
From the corner of his eye, he could see Galen shaking his head while trying to appear unalarmed.
Ellery was not that good of an actor.
“Sir,” he said bluntly, “are you well?”
Another one of those terrible smiles. “I’m fine. Fine. My, uhm… wife, she’s not well. She’s usually so good at uhm….” His face fell. “Greeting people. So good. I shall miss her today!” His voice cracked on the last word, and Ellery suddenly knew who one of the women in the bottom of the mineshaft had been.
And that made up his mind. “You know,” he said decisively, “I think we’ll go. We can come back tomorrow.” He spun on his heel and was pulled up short by a squat man, dressed impeccably in a suit, who might have been handsome a lifetime ago.
His once-blond hair was now a translucent stubble, and his sweet, disarmingly round face had gone jowly and hard in prison, but Ellery still recognized Newton Dwayne, aka Conway Schmitt.
“I think you should stay,” the man said, and his voice was absolutely transcendent, a lovely baritone, mellifluous and kind.
The voice of a murderous choir director, and it gave Ellery the shivers.
“Why is that, Mr. Dwayne?” Taylor asked sharply. “We’re here to discuss some of your current business dealings, and you are obviously in disarray. We do realize we’re here at the attorney general’s request, but I’m sure if she’d known there was illness in the house she could have—”
Dwayne made a short slicing motion with his hand in an attempt to cut Ellery’s mother off, but he didn’t really know who he was dealing with.
“We are not your enemy, Mr. Dwayne,” she said, her voice reasonable. “We are merely here to—”
And that’s when he pulled out the gun.
“I knew it,” Galen muttered. “Fucking cowards all.”
Dwayne closed in, grabbed Galen’s arm with what must have been a cruel grip, and Ellery was about to cry out when Galen swung with his cane, first smacking Dwayne in the shin and then, with a truly prodigious swing as the man was crouched down assessing the damage, he landed a solid blow on his back. Dwayne went down with a grunt, and Ellery’s mother caught at Ellery’s hand and dragged him and a stumbling Galen through the doorway to the receiving room, slamming the door shut behind them as Dwayne scrambled to his feet.
“Hide,” she gasped. “Quickly. He’s got no choice but to shoot us, particularly if the FBI storms the place.”
She tapped the bug that had been put under a tacky flower on her tweed Chanel jacket. “Hello,” she muttered. “Are you people there at all?”
Ellery had a sick feeling in his stomach, and he pulled out his phone. Unlike the reception under the carport, which had been stunning, stellar, the Wi-Fi among the gods, their bars had gone down to zero once they’d crossed the threshold,
“Blocker,” he muttered. “Or a dead router. Or he killed all Wi-Fi in the house. Whatever was powering our bugs is dead.”
They heard shouting in the foyer, and Taylor gave them both grim looks. To Ellery’s right was a small staircase, probably a servant’s passage, leading up and away toward the back.