Blood Trade: A Sean Coleman Thriller (11 page)

Friday

Chapter 7

S
ean awoke the next morning with a strong sense of purpose flowing through his veins.
He’d slept well that night, which was a rarity. Typically, he tossed and turned in
bed until the wee hours of the morning while his mind continually redirected him
to a hundred different thoughts.

He’d sometimes dwell on the past. He’d think about the relationships he’d lost throughout
his life, including the one with his father. Other times, he’d contemplate why it
had always been so hard for him to capture the endearment of a woman—someone who
could open her heart to him and see through his rough exterior to find something
worth sticking around for. And then he’d worry that he
had
indeed found such a person
in Lisa, yet managed to let the opportunity slip right through his fingers.

The crisp tune of Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” poured out through a pair of speakers
stationed on opposite sides of the room. Sean had always liked the warm sound of
vinyl, but the only records he owned were those that he inherited from his uncle.
Sean didn’t have an ear for country music, which was all Zed had listened to, but
Johnny Cash never struck him as quite fitting into that genre. So, one of Cash’s
greatest-hits albums was the only one that wasn’t still collecting dust on the shelf
above Sean’s desk.

Sean threw on an old gray sweatshirt that smelled clean and a pair of frayed jeans
that didn’t. After he laced up his hiking boots and buttoned his coat to the top,
he pulled a ski cap down over his
ears and made his way out the front door. He knew
the record player would shut off by itself once the album wrapped up.

The Nova cranked a little rough because of the cold weather, but it eventually roared
to life, and Sean spent the next ten minutes brushing snow and scraping ice off of
the car windows amidst the freezing temperatures. The snow had stopped sometime during
the night and now the bright sun lit up a winter wonderland of scenery outside of
the Hansen Security office building.

Large evergreens stood like imposing white towers overseeing unblemished blankets
of snow whose drifts had been chiseled into sleek shapes from the overnight winds.
The dirt road at the end of his driveway had been yet to be traveled upon that morning.
That was about to change as Sean climbed into his car and fiddled with the radio
dial before popping the transmission into reverse.

He took things much easier than the night before, watching his speed, and pumping
the gas pedal when needed. In just a matter of minutes, he was coasting through the
downtown area where the streets were being carefully cleared by a plow on the front
of an old pickup truck being driven by Alex Martinez.

Martinez was a college kid who Sean guessed was around twenty years old. He’d been
working an internship at the Winston police station for a few months while taking
criminal justice classes at a community college in nearby Summit County. Chief Gary
Lumbergh was big on Martinez. Somehow, he saw promise in him as a future law enforcement
officer. When Sean looked at the kid, however, all he saw was a “five-star kiss-ass,”
as he put it. Martinez’s overeagerness to please and impress Lumbergh always made
Sean squeamish.

Sean often observed Martinez performing what he called the “public monkey work” around
town that no one else wanted to do. The kid always wore a permanent smile across
his face while he did it, too. It was a shifty smile as far as Sean was concerned.
When Martinez’s smile was paired with his disproportionately large nose, the kid’s
face reminded Sean of the mascot for the Cleveland Indians.
It was that smile, along
with the wave of a hand, that greeted Sean as the two passed on the street. Sean
nodded his head subtly, not really returning the gesture.

“Lumbergh’s bitch,” he muttered as he listened to the truck’s plow scrape packed
snow from the pavement.

Only Lumbergh’s Jeep and his lone officer’s cruiser sat in the police station’s cleared
parking lot. Sean pulled in alongside the cruiser, watching shards of snow fall from
the roof of the building as the subtle warmth of the sun began to strengthen.

It was hard to believe with the sun so bright that a large snowstorm was expected
to come through the following night. Some Lakeland deejays had been talking about
it on the radio. At least two feet of snow was the estimation, possibly more.

When Sean walked in through the front door of the police station, he saw no activity
in the reception area to his right, which was unusual. He did, however, hear some
voices from down the hallway creeping out from Lumbergh’s office. The tone of the
dialogue was low and restrained, and when Sean approached the office door, the talking
stopped—seemingly in reaction to his presence.

Sean poked his head in through the doorway to see the alert eyes of three men staring
back at him: Lumbergh, Ron Oldhorse, and Jefferson, Lumbergh’s sole officer. They
all looked anxious. Jefferson even had a thumb resting on the backstrap of his holstered
firearm.

The display prompted a sneer from Sean. “What the hell’s going on?”

When the men recognized him, the tension seemed to release from their bodies all
at once. Shoulders lowered and the uniformed officer’s hand dropped from his pistol.

“A little antsy this morning, aren’t we, Jeffrey?” taunted Sean as he trained his
gaze upon the officer. He lowered his eyes to the pistol. “Lumbergh doesn’t actually
let you keep bullets in that thing anyway, does he?” He knew Jefferson hated being
called
Jeffrey
. Sean had called him that since high school.

“He sure as hell does!” Jefferson snapped back, taking Sean’s bait.

Sean’s assertion had clearly struck a nerve with the tall, lanky officer, whose handlebar
mustache and bloated chest sometimes drew comparisons to a Civil War reenactor.

Lumbergh shook his head in irritation, displaying little patience for the bickering.
“Can you give us a minute, Sean?”

“Why?” Sean quickly retorted. “Is this a secret club meeting?”

“Please, Sean. Just a minute.”

Sean read exhaustion in Lumbergh’s eyes. It was then that he noticed the rest of
the police chief ’s appearance. His face was unshaven and his normally well-groomed
hair was a frazzled mess. His eyes were red and glazed, and they blinked with sensitivity
to the sunlight that was beaming into the room from the window beside him. He looked
as though he hadn’t slept in some time, though the clothes he wore appeared slept
in.

He had never seen Lumbergh like this. The police chief was a man who always valued
his appearance, priding himself on looking professional in a job he took very seriously.
Yet today, he bore no resemblance to a “metrosexual.” Sean had recently begun referring
to him that way after hearing the term used on an episode of
Law & Order
and
deciding it applied to Lumbergh.

Whatever conversation the men had been engaged in looked serious, and the mystery
of what was behind it triggered Sean’s curiosity. He would have pressed Lumbergh
for an explanation, but he had come there to ask for a favor; pissing off the chief
wasn’t a great way to get what he wanted. He bit his tongue, nodded his head, and
walked back to the small lobby. He imagined that the silence following his departure
probably came from the shock experienced by all three men. Sean Coleman actually
complying with a request from Lumbergh was almost unheard of.

Once the office door snapped shut, Sean quickly pivoted and entered through the doorway
of the neighboring room. He carefully
made his way inside, leaving the overhead light
off and relying on the luster from the hallway to keep him from running into anything.

The musty, windowless room housed a number of thick oak shelves overflowing with
town documents. The newer ones were stored in uniform, white-cardboard boxes. Many
were probably case files. The older ones, likely tax records and court documents,
were bound in tall leather books that appeared many decades old. They were pressed
together in several tight rows.

He tiptoed (as best a man of over 250 pounds could) around the shelves and a long,
solid wooden table before reaching the sidewall that adjoined Lumbergh’s office.
He placed his ear to it.

The wall was thin enough to hear the men’s voices, though not clearly. The three
had likely lowered the tone of their discussion, weary of Sean’s nearby presence.
Still, he made out snippets of dialogue—phrases like “back door” and “How could he
get so close?”

As Lumbergh was talking, Jefferson erupted into a long coughing fit that pretty well
drowned out the rest of what was said.

“Jesus, Jeffrey,” Sean whispered in irritation. As best he could gather from what
he’d heard, someone had either broken into the police department or vandalized it
from the outside. When he heard the loud shuffling of a chair, he briskly lumbered
his way back around the shelving and out the doorway to the front lobby. He softly
closed the door behind him.

He stood in the lobby, pretending to gaze out the window on the front door. When
no one immediately emerged from the office, however, he did take a moment to pay
some attention to the outside world. He became transfixed on the brightness outside.
It was almost blinding, with the sun reflecting off of the snow in dazzling brilliance.

From where he stood he could see that the yellow newspaper machine was vertical again,
standing beside the blue one. Though it was quite far away, Sean could make out some
of the damage he had done to it the night before. It was lopsided and warped, and
he smirked as he mused over the expression that likely adorned Roy
Hughes’s face
the moment he showed up that morning to load it with papers.

Moments later, Lumbergh’s office door opened up and both Jefferson and Oldhorse streamed
out. They exchanged sober glances with each other before walking right by Sean, barely
acknowledging him.

“Jefferson,” said Sean, using the officer’s full name. “Do you need a cough drop?”

The men stopped and the officer spun around.

“Do you have one?” Jefferson asked, his eyes wide.

“Yeah, I think I’ve got one right here,” Sean replied, digging his hand into his
pocket. He lifted his hand out, empty, but his middle finger stood up at full mast
for Jefferson to see. “There you go,” he said with a satisfying grin. “Feel better?”

Jefferson’s eyes narrowed angrily.

Oldhorse fended off a smirk. “Come on,” he muttered to Jefferson, who struggled to
find a verbal comeback.

“You’re an asshole,” was the best he could blurt out.

The two men left through the front door.

Sean pondered why Oldhorse had been there in the first place. His involvement in
a matter as simple as vandalism made little sense. All Sean could think of was that
Lumbergh called on Oldhorse for his tracking skills, which were second to none. But
with the area covered in snow, Sean imagined that
anyone
could simply follow footprints
if there were any to be found.

Regardless, Lumbergh was now alone in his office, and Sean aimed to take care of
some business. As he walked back down the hallway, he noticed for the first time
that a collapsed steel folding chair had been placed up against the back door of
the building. It was wedged there at an angle, as an extra lock, presumably to prevent
entry.

He peered through the office doorway and found Lumbergh sitting at his desk with
his head turned toward his window. The chief
gazed through the glass as if he were
lost in a deep thought. His eyes shifted to Sean once he entered.

“What do you need, Sean?” Lumbergh asked. He grabbed a couple of manila file folders
from the top of his desk and shoved them into the top drawer.

“Everything okay?” asked Sean.

“Yes. Fine. What do you need?”

Sean took a deep breath. “What do you know about Andrew Carson, the missing person
down in Greeley?”

Lumbergh’s face twisted in confusion, as if he were having difficulty transitioning
away from his previous thought. “Andrew Carson?”

“Yeah. He’s the guy who went missing out in front of his house. Blood in the garage.
Blood in the driveway.”

“Okay. Sure.” Lumbergh nodded and pulled himself deeper into his desk. “All I know
is what I’ve read in the paper and seen on the news. That case is pretty far out
of my jurisdiction.”

“I know that.”

“Why are you asking me about it then?”

Sean’s eyes drifted to a corner of the room before a chuckle escaped his lips. He
wasn’t sure how to best formulate his words. When his gaze returned to Lumbergh,
it was met with raised eyebrows. The chief was awaiting an answer.

“I know someone who’s related to him,” Sean blurted out.

“Okay. Is there some information they want to bring forth or something?”

“No. I was just wondering if there was any progress in the case. Any leads? Any suspects?
Maybe something they’re not reporting on in the papers?”

A wince formed on Lumbergh’s face. “Sean, even if I was privy to that information,
which I’m not, I couldn’t give it to you.”

“Why not?”

“What do you mean
why not?”
Lumbergh said angrily, leaning
forward in his seat. “It’s
official police business. It’s an active case. I can’t just leak that kind of information
out to people.”

Sean’s jaw squared as he glared at Lumbergh, scrutinizing him with his eyes. He shook
his head slowly. Lumbergh gasped at the audacity of Sean’s reaction, throwing his
good arm up in the air and tilting his chair back.

The sound of the front lobby door being opened and closed grabbed both men’s attention.

“The streets are all clear, chief!” the enthusiastic voice of Alex Martinez sounded
out.

“The streets are all clear, chief!”
Sean said in a mocking tone, not loud enough
for the intern to hear him. “Kiss ass.”