The Devil's Snare: a Mystery Suspense Thriller (Derek Cole Suspense Thrillers Book 4) (17 page)

“I’m hearing Bo is the main suspect in the attack,” John said, seemingly vacant of any judgement of Derek. “Damn, what the hell is going on with that guy?”

“It wasn’t Bo,” Derek said. “He’s with me now and was getting drunk in a bar north of town during the attack. I’m taking him up to the hospital. After he sobers up, that is.”

“Listen,” John said with a palpable sense of urgency flooding his voice, “now is not a great time to talk. There’s a cinema in Brookfield, about twenty minutes south of town. It’s the only one in town so you shouldn’t have any challenges finding it. They’re showing the new Star Wars movie at ten-thirty tonight. Meet me in the back row.”

“The back row?” Derek questioned. “Should I wear something pretty?”

“Funny. I go to shows at that theatre a lot and the late showings are usually shown to near empty theaters. We can talk there about what’s happening in Ravenswood and won’t be disturbed.”

“Sounds a bit strange. Couldn’t we just meet at an out of the way bar? How about Route 69 instead?”

John’s voice turned into a cutting, gravely whisper. “Listen Derek, there’s some seriously bad shit going on and the last thing I’m willing to do is let anyone know I’m talking with you. I’ve already heard your name mentioned around town from people you don’t want to know your name. Meet me at the movie or not at all.”

“Ten-thirty,” Derek said. “I’ll be there.”

“Good. And come alone. Don’t even think of bringing Bo or anyone else with you.”

Derek stared at his phone for several seconds, making sense of John’s request. He decided that either John was the paranoid type or something bad,
really bad,
was happening in Ravenswood.

ˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇ

The time on his iPhone was close to four in the afternoon when Derek made his final call. Nikkie answered on the first ring.

“Where are you?” she asked. “Is Bo still with you or did he pull another Houdini act?”

“He’s still with me. I’m getting some food in his gut; I’m hoping it sobers him up enough for him to show his face at the hospital.”

There was a long, silent pause before Nikkie spoke again. “I think you better hurry, Derek. Hurry and get here.”

Matt McCormick lived every one of his forty-three years on Cedar Street in Ravenswood. Forty-three years in the same room, in the same house, under the same roof. He wasn’t the only child of James and Lucy McCormick, but he was the only one of their four kids who didn’t leave home.

He didn’t leave for college. Not for a job. Not for a woman. Not just to get away from small-town USA and from his, at times, overbearing parents.

Matt went to the local community college, graduated third in his class of three hundred sixty-five, found a job in Syracuse working in his chosen field of information technology and reached an understanding with his father.

“You move anywhere else in this town or in Syracuse, hell, even in Utica, and you’re looking at five hundred dollars plus utilities for a place decent enough to invite friends over. What I’m offering is four hundred dollars per month plus a hundred dollars extra for five years. The extra hundred will go towards the build out. I’ll convert the space over the garage, have a private entrance built, and make it feel like your own apartment. In exchange for the low rent, you agree to keep the lawn short in the summer and the driveway clear in the winter. When your mother and I go on vacation, you agree to stay close to home and watch over the place.”

“And the dogs?” Matt asked. “What about the dogs?”

“What about them?” his father asked. “Should go without saying. When we’re gone, you take care of the dogs. That’s what a good son should do without trying to use taking care of some damn dogs as a leverage point to negotiate rent down a couple of bucks.”

Matt agreed to the terms. Why wouldn’t he? Though staying home meant a fifty minute drive, each way, to his job in Syracuse, he knew his dad was right. He’d checked out apartments in Syracuse and while he found several with rent lower than his father’s estimate of four hundred dollars per month, those either included a roommate (or two) or were in the south side of Syracuse, a place Matt didn’t want to live. Though Matt was pretty sure his older brother and two older sisters would claim that he was living down to their expectations, he didn’t care. His father always delivered on his deals, which meant Matt wouldn’t be living in the same room he once shared with his brother Dan, but would have his own apartment.

But the room above the garage with the private entrance was never completed. True to his word, Matt’s father had paid his preferred contractor a downpayment of four thousand dollars to start the work, and the contractor had begun cleaning out the five hundred square-foot space above the garage. But when James and Lucy McCormick were killed in a car accident two weeks after Matt handed over the first four hundred dollar rent check, the contractor and the dreams of having his own apartment with a private entrance disappeared and left no trace.

Matt stayed in the same bedroom he had once shared with his brother. His older siblings—all of whom had moved a minimum of five hundred miles away from Ravenswood—agreed to sell their share of their parent’s house to Matt for twenty thousand dollars each.
 

“You’re getting a steal. You know that?” Matt’s brother Dan had told him on the day of the closing. “This house is worth at least two hundred thousand dollars and will only appreciate in value. You’re walking into a hundred and twenty thousand dollars of equity on day one. I hope you appreciate what we’ve done for you.”

Dan McCormick owned a residential disaster cleaning operation in Charlotte, North Carolina. He earned a healthy income and never missed the opportunity to remind his siblings that he fulfilled his dad’s wishes that at least one of his kids earn more than he did.

“I know what I’m getting,” Matt had said back. “And, like I said, I ain’t planning on selling the house anytime soon.”

“But if you do,” Dan had said while waving his index finger entirely too close to Matt’s face, “the agreement we gifted you clearly states you share all profits, equally with all of us.”

“I ain’t selling the house.”

Nineteen years later, Matt held true to his word and still was listed as the only owner on the deed to the home at Three Hundred Twenty Three Cedar Street, Ravenswood, New York. He had received several offers to sell and had recently turned down a solid offer for seven hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars from a doctor who wanted to open his private practice in Ravenswood and wanted to live on the best street in town. Turning down that offer had felt especially good for Matt. He knew his brother Dan’s business had fallen on hard times and he was facing some serious financial challenges. Had Matt decided to sell the house—which he owned free and clear—Dan would be looking at close to two hundred grand in much needed profit.

“Why the hell did you turn down the offer?” Dan snapped. “That’s more than the house is worth. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Matt waited until he had turned down the doctor’s offer (as well as the doctor’s counter offer of eight hundred thousand dollars) before telling his siblings about his decision. He wanted to make sure they all knew that he, little Matty, held a lot more power over their lives than they ever thought he would.

“It didn’t feel right, Dan,” Matt said through the phone line. “I mean, Dad and Mom designed this house themselves, raised the four of us kids and probably would still be living here, if not for the accident. When I started thinking about accepting the offer, I just felt like I was slapping Dad across the face. It didn’t feel right.”

“You could have bought a house free and clear with that money and helped out me and your sisters. Instead, you decided to sit on that house we practically fucking gave you, and for what? Because you feel like selling the house would have insulted Mom and Dad? We should have never trusted that you would do the right thing with that house. You know that, Matt? We should have never trusted you.”

But they had trusted him and knowing that his siblings—especially his brother—would always regret giving him the power to make all decisions about their childhood home was worth more than a couple hundred thousand dollars to Matt.

Matt left his job in Syracuse two years ago when the Information Technology Manger position opened up at the La Salle
 
Compounding Facility in Ravenswood. For the past two years, Matt had a fifteen minute commute to work and watched as the compounding lab grew from sixteen employees to nearly seventy-five. As the number of employees grew, so, too, did the number of peripheral devices on the network he managed.
 

Things were going much better than expected for Matthew McCormick. Though the owners of the La Salle Compounding Facility didn’t agree with Matt’s request for a pay increase once the devices he managed topped one hundred, his salary was good enough. Sixty five thousand dollars per year, three weeks paid vacation, six sick days, eight paid holidays, a decent 401(k) retirement plan, profit sharing and the flexibility to set his own work hours. Yeah, things were going much better than expected for Matthew McCormick.

Matt was still coming off his high of telling his brother how much he
almost
sold the house for as he snorted a third line of cocaine. Matt loved his mom and dad and still wished his dad hadn’t fallen asleep at the wheel and slammed his Cadillac head first, going sixty miles per hour, into that oak tree off of Route 69. But his dad did fall asleep and the Caddy had slammed into that oak tree and both his mom and dad did die on the way to the hospital. The Ravenswood paramedics did what they could but the damage was much too severe. But as much as he missed and respected his parents, Matt stole a strange thrill using his mom’s old cutting board and his dad’s four-inch pocket knife to prep and snort his coke. He was far from an addict, he believed; just an enjoyer of good quality cocaine. And the stuff he was currently blowing his nasal passages out with was damn good. He knew it was cut with something, for the buzzing he started feeling was certainly different. But, damn, it was a good buzz bouncing around in his head.
 

After finishing the third, long-cut line, Matt grabbed a Molson tall-neck from the fridge and sat on the adirondack chair on the front porch. The evening promised to be a fantastic one.
 

“Temps in the high sixties and no chance for precipitation,” the big breasted weather woman announced during the six o’clock news. “Perfect weather for sitting on front porches or around a backyard fire pit.”

“That’s right,” Matt said as he sat. “Perfect night for front porch sitting.”

And it would have been perfect if not for the smells and the music oozing from his neighbors house.
 

“Jesus H. Christ,” Matt said, as his nose, numb as it was, caught the stench carried by the soft, early summer breeze. “Those fucking Indians.”

Dr. Dev Patel had moved in next door to Matt six months ago, bringing his Indian wife, Indian kids and Indian fucking food. To Matt, the Patel house stunk with curry, sweat and a few other nose-rotting odors Matt couldn’t identify. He sat, head buzzing, anger rising and beer slamming into his gut, till something snapped.

He didn’t hear anything or feel anything, but something inside snapped. Something important that shouldn’t snap.

He charged back into his home, grabbed his father’s four-inch blade and headed out through the back door. He was going to put an end to the gut-twisting stink coming from good ole Dr. Patel’s house once and for all. He didn’t care that the full moon made concealment nearly impossible as he scrambled over the six-foot-high stockade fence. Nor was he all that concerned about making too much noise since whatever the fuck the good doctor was listening to—a combination of high pitched droning stings, coupled with what he supposed to be the Indian replacement of drums—was practically vibrating the ground beneath him. He stole a few glances through the back window before deeming it safe enough to creep up to the sliding glass doors which led from the imitation-wood back into the Patel’s home.

Fortunately for Matt, the sliding door gave him a clean view into the kitchen, where Patel was busy dancing his little fucked up Indian dance and cooking. That’s when something else snapped in Matt’s brain. That’s when he saw what Patel was cooking up in his curry-stinking kitchen.

It was well known around Ravenswood that Dev Patel was an obstetrician and that he also was the on-call doctor for Women’s Care; the clinic devoted exclusively for the medial treatment of women. Woman’s Care was tucked inside an office building on Main Street and was, due to Women’s Care’s less than secret practice of performing abortions, often the target of the Right to Life organization’s attacks. Matt didn’t care much about abortion, he figured that since he wasn’t a woman, he had no right to tell women what they should or shouldn’t do with their bodies.
 

Matt watched as the steam poured up in frequent bursts from the stove Patel was standing in front of. He watched as the steam and smoke morphed into figures of small children, changed from vibrant colors into deep maroons, blacks and death gray. Matt watched as the music ripping out from the Bose speaker in the corner of the kitchen pulsed out waves of blood red colors and began dripping foul looking gray matter onto the granite counter then spilling onto the porcelain tiled floor. But when he got a clear view at what Patel was cooking, Matt couldn’t take any more.
 

At first glance, Matt mistook the fetus’s arm the doctor was slicing thin strands off and dropping into the frying pan for a thin chicken leg. The color looked the same as did the shape, so he forgave himself of the error. But the closer he looked, the more he was certain of what the doctor was slicing.

“Son of a bitch,” Matt whispered, then felt his stomach lurching in realization of the horror he was witness to. “Fucking baby arms.”

As they fell into the curry-laden boiling oil, Matt could see, and then could hear, them spitting out their anger. He was certain he heard the final screams of the babies but the damn Indian music was pouring out too loudly. Their screams—as best as Matt could tell—were not words, but desolate, soul-wrenching mourns of sorrow. Of lives lost having never begun.