Blood Trade: A Sean Coleman Thriller (29 page)

He lowered his head to the raised puddle of coffee that lay unmoving on the floor.
When he did, he recalled the pool of blood from the photograph on Lumbergh’s computer,
the one taken from the Andrew Carson crime scene. There was so much blood that Sean
was certain Carson had been killed.
But what if he hadn’t been? What if he had been
only severely injured, and was now being kept alive by the people who took him, somewhere
in this building?

Sean thought about what Jessica had told him through the freezer door—that what had
happened to Carson was an unfortunate accident. If that were true, it could explain
why they didn’t let him die. What it wouldn’t explain was why they took him from
his home instead of simply calling for an ambulance or taking him to a hospital.

The irrefutable reality was that these people were ruthless and up to something significantly
lawless. The fact that Sean had been taken from his home against his will and locked
in a freezer was only more proof of that. Whatever was supposed to be completed in
the next day or two was worth a huge price to them—something
serious enough to warrant
all the deception and felonies they had committed.

If they were willing to go as far as they already have, what more are they willing
to do?
he wondered.
Would Carson be safe here if I escaped and went for help?
In
the monitor, he made out what appeared to be some kind of restraints wrapped around
the bedridden man’s arms.

A jolt of anxiety suddenly ripped through Sean when the beginning of a loud song
blared out from the dark. The gun nearly fell from his hand before he swung it in
multiple directions, desperately searching for its source. It seemed to be coming
from somewhere inside the room, which dropped his heart down into his stomach. If
there was anyone else in the building, they’d likely hear what felt to him like a
tornado siren echoing into the outside hallway, drawing attention to the precise
spot where he stood.

“I like big butts and I cannot lie,”
the rap lyrics trumpeted out.
“You other brothers
can’t deny…”

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Sean muttered under his breath, his pulse racing.

When he realized that the sound was pouring out from the desk just a couple of feet
from him, he quickly yanked open the top drawer and found a black cellphone lying
there among loose papers. He snatched it and backed himself into the corner of the
room away from the doorway. Training his gun on the open door, he glanced down at
the phone, looking for an
off
switch.

When he flipped the lid open, he pushed the first colored button he spotted. The
song stopped. Sean breathed a sigh of relief, but before the air had time to escape
his lungs, he heard a man’s voice emitting from the phone’s small speaker.

“Hello?” spoke the voice in what sounded to him like a British accent.

His eyes widened. He glared down at the small, digitized display monitor on the phone.
It read, “Dr. Phil.”

He froze. He’d heard that name mentioned before by his sister—
something to do with
Oprah Winfrey. He was certain, however, that the two men couldn’t be one and the
same.

“You there, mate?” the voice asked.

Sean’s first impulse was to search again for the real
off
button, and end the call.
However, it promptly occurred to him that whoever was on the other end could be in
on what was happening. The name Phillip Robinson hovered in his mind—the addressee
on the boxes at the top of the stairs. Could he be “Dr. Phil?”

If the man was part of the ring and he didn’t receive the response he was expecting—likely
from the person who was now lying on the floor of the freezer downstairs—he would
immediately suspect that something was wrong.

Even without fully grasping the situation he was in, Sean knew he couldn’t afford
that. He also couldn’t afford to let the phone start ringing again.

He held the phone to his mouth and said in an altered tone, “Yeah?”

Chapter 25

“Y
ou shot out their tires in the middle of a snowstorm, Chief? Fellow law enforcement
officers? That’s pretty cold.”

“Is that a joke?” Lumbergh replied to Martinez.

The intern now seemed eerily at ease in the backseat of the police cruiser. His broad
smile could be seen from the rearview mirror, lit up by a pair of oncoming headlights.
He leaned forward with his face near the grill and chuckled. “Ah. Snowstorm. Cold.
Very good. Chief. No. There was no pun intended.”

“I didn’t want them following us,” said Lumbergh, working his hardest to keep the
conversation light. “They’ve got a police radio and a warm car in the meantime. Someone
will pick them up.”

Martinez asked, “So what does this mean for you now, Chief?”

“What does
what
mean?”

“This act of insubordination. How many laws did you just break? Will you lose your
job? Spend some time in jail? That would be a shame to the fine people of Winston.”

The comment seemed sarcastic at first, but when Lumbergh stole another glance in
the rearview mirror, he recognized what appeared to be sincerity—as deviant as its
origins might be—in Martinez’s dark eyes.

It was above Lumbergh’s pay grade to even begin to understand what was going on inside
the head of someone as mentally disturbed as Martinez. He was well aware of that.
In the brief conversation they had had since the moment they left Redick, Martinez
largely talked
as if the two of them were still friends—colleagues sharing a casual,
after-work conversation. Not at all enemies.

If the awkward cordiality would bring Lumbergh to Sean, the chief was more than willing
to play along with it. The limits of his compliance, however, were tested with the
next query out of Martinez’s mouth.

“Do you think I can get these handcuffs taken off? They’re a tad tight around my
wrists.”

Lumbergh hesitated for a second before saying, “I can’t. They belong to the sheriff
’s department. I don’t have the keys to open them.”

It was a lie, one that Lumbergh hoped Martinez wouldn’t question. Being that the
cuffs were taut behind his back and not subject to a close inspection, Lumbergh wasn’t
worried about telling it.

Martinez simply nodded.

Seconds that seemed like minutes labored by without either man saying a word. An
uncomfortable sense of anxiety floated inside of the car. The cruiser’s rapidly waving
wiper blades emitted a persistent buzzing sound that seemed louder than it normally
did due to the holes in the windshield.

Lumbergh ruminated on the questions Martinez had just asked about his career and
what his fate would be once all was over. He didn’t know the answer. And for a distinguished
law enforcement professional who once prided himself on his stellar record and reputation
for following protocol, he was stunned by his own disinterest in the possible ramifications.

The past week had taken a toll on him. It had changed him. His fear for his family
had prompted him to engage in actions he would have never before considered. His
deputy had taken a bullet and Oldhorse had taken far more—both because of a personal
vendetta of a deluded individual.

Laws and rules just didn’t seem to matter anymore.

Lumbergh drove slowly along Road 91 as Martinez directed him off the Interstate.
The slippery conditions and narrow visibility tempered his thirst to go faster. The
snow was like thick confetti dropped from a tall ceiling at a New Year’s celebration.
The wind was still strong, pushing against the front of the car in an eerie effort
to keep it from their destination. The car’s heater fought the chill pouring in through
the windshield.

The flashers were off to avoid detection from anyone from the sheriff ’s department
who might be out looking for him. His radio was powered off as well. He didn’t want
Martinez to hear any chatter blare out from the speaker that would make him think
twice about taking him to Sean.

Martinez finally cut through the silence with a question that gave Lumbergh pause:
“Would you really kill a woman?”

“What?”

“A woman. There was a man and a woman who took Sean last night. When we get there,
are you going to kill the woman? Are you going to kill the red fox?”

Lumbergh’s hand trembled and he gripped the steering wheel tighter to compensate.
He wasn’t sure which answer Martinez was hoping for, so he iterated what he believed
would be a safe response.

“I’m going to kill anyone who stands in my way.”

Martinez’s face twisted into near exuberance. He grinned from ear to ear.

What a sick fuck
, Lumbergh thought to himself.

The truth was that Lumbergh didn’t know how he would approach the situation once
they arrived at their destination. He didn’t understand the circumstances under which
Sean was being held, and Martinez refused to give him any hints. It was possible
Martinez didn’t even know.

What he
had
to know, however, was the lay of the land and the type of building they
were in, if they were even in a building. The
term “den” might have meant something
entirely different. He might also know how many people Lumbergh would have to contend
with at this den.

An endless number of possible scenarios stretched out before Lumbergh, and Martinez
had no interest in narrowing that number down for him. Lumbergh’s discreet attempts
to draw answers were met with irritation, and he understood that if he persisted,
he’d risk validating Martinez’s earlier conclusion of him being a charlatan. If the
state of the intern’s mind disintegrated back into the zombie-like display of glazed
eyes and moaning, Lumbergh would never find Sean.

What Martinez wanted was a front row seat to a brutal confrontation between his hometown’s
idol and very dangerous people who made men disappear in the middle of the night.
As long as Martinez believed that was what he was getting, Lumbergh was convinced
that he would find Sean.

There was one question that had been nagging him from the moment Martinez’s footprints
were confirmed at the crime scene, a question that seemed fair game because it didn’t
pertain to Sean’s abductors. After building up some nerve, he asked it.

“Why were you at Sean’s house last night?”

Martinez let a breath of air escape his lips. Though Lumbergh couldn’t see him now
in the darkened reflection in the mirror, he could sense some disparagement brewing
in the backseat.

He nearly withdrew the query when Martinez spoke.

“I thought he may have been another Ron Oldhorse.”

Lumbergh squinted and asked what he meant.

“Another of your guardian angels. Another parent.”

The chief glanced in his mirror. “Why would you think that?”

A touch of somberness accompanied Martinez’s words as he spoke. “I overheard the
two of you talking the other day, in your office. You were arguing. He told you that
you owed him for
cleaning up your shit.
Was he part of the Montoya cover-up?”

Lumbergh didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He would have felt mortified if the
question had been asked by anyone other than a sick mind like Martinez, whose opinion
meant nothing to him.

What the intern couldn’t have possibly known was that Sean’s statement hadn’t been
metaphorical. It was literal; an embarrassing incident back at the hospital six months
earlier, when Lumbergh was recovering from the Montoya shooting, was what his brother-in-law
had referenced.

Against doctors’ advice, Lumbergh had changed from his hospital gown into street
clothes to meet reporters and answer questions in the hospital lobby. The drugs he
was on had been turning his stomach in knots all morning.

Sean happened to be visiting at the time while Diana was taking care of some long
overdue errands. Lumbergh was running late for the press conference and had only
taken three steps outside of his hospital room into the hallway when a horrific sound
and stench from Lumbergh’s pants locked both men’s eyes.

In a rare show of compassion—perhaps out of a silent understanding between men—Sean
helped Lumbergh change and dispose of the badly soiled clothes before anyone came
back to check on the chief. Not even the nurses found out what had happened, and
the two men had never spoken about it until yesterday, when Sean held it over Lumbergh’s
head to secure himself a favor.

Lumbergh shook his head. “God. Sean covered up nothing, and he’s not my protector,
Martinez. Far from it. In case you haven’t noticed since you came to work for us,
Sean and I don’t exactly get along.”

“Yet you’re risking your career to save him. Your life, in fact. Why?”

Lumbergh recognized the absurdity of having such a candid conversation with a nut-job,
but he answered the question anyway. “He’s family, Martinez. When someone fucks with
your family, you do something about it.”

The mirror revealed the contour of Martinez’s head as he nodded in understanding.
“Take a left up here.”

“Crenshaw,” muttered Lumbergh, reading the small green mileage sign that sprouted
out from a metal pole partially buried in a mound of snow. The sign hosted some dents
and dime-sized holes from a shotgun round. Many road signs throughout the area did.
The embellishments were a hallmark of mountain living.

“A little past Crenshaw,” clarified Martinez.

There wasn’t much in the town of Crenshaw, Colorado. Lumbergh had only passed through
it once or twice before. It was really more of a rest area than a town, home to a
few businesses that serviced travelers on their way down to Leadville, Granite, and
Buena Vista along Highway 24. Few people actually lived there.

“How in the hell did you follow them so far without getting noticed?” Lumbergh asked
before thinking to tamp down his tone.

“Impressive surveillance for a junior law enforcement officer, eh?”

Lumbergh said nothing.