Blood Trade: A Sean Coleman Thriller (38 page)

The chief ’s head spun when he thought he heard the sound of an automobile engine
fire up from somewhere outside in between gusts of wind. He grabbed the overturned
rocking chair behind him and dragged it close enough to drape Carson’s ankles across
it. He then raced to the shattered bedroom window. Jessica glared at him in confusion.

Lumbergh pulled his Mag light from his side and swept its beam back and forth across
the blowing snow. Across the alley behind the building he saw the outline of another
smaller building that looked like it could have been used for storage. A door at
the front of it was flapping open from the wind.

A pair of brake lights suddenly lit up at the far end of the building. Lumbergh’s
head swiveled toward it. “There’s a car back here!” he yelled. “Whose is it?”

“It’s got to be our van,” answered Jessica, not moving her head from Carson.

“Who would be driving it?”

“I don’t know. Phillip maybe. He had the keys.”

Lumbergh whipped the radio to his mouth. “Redick! I need you here now! Right now!”

Redick didn’t answer. The van began moving around the corner of the building.

Lumbergh breathlessly raced for the bedroom door, stopping for a moment before he
reached the hallway. “If you let him die, I’m going to do everything in my power
to make sure you spend the rest of your life in prison. Do you understand?”

Jessica nodded, only lifting her eyes to Lumbergh for a moment before returning them
to Carson, whose glazed eyes swam in disarray.

With shotgun in hand, Lumbergh ran down the hallway.

Some radio air cleared before the chief finally heard Redick’s voice emit from his
side. “We’ve got a situation here, Chief.”

“I’ve got a situation
here
!” Lumbergh yelled out, knowing that Redick couldn’t hear
him with his hand off his radio.

He ran out through the garage and into the storm. He saw the flashing red lights
of the sheriff ’s car rotating down the road, close to where he thought he’d left
his police cruiser. The lights weren’t moving in closer and he didn’t understand
why.

The van was steadily heading in the opposite direction, traveling up the snow-covered
road with its headlights turned off. Lumbergh could only see the vehicle when the
driver tapped the brakes.

“Dammit!” he roared.

He threw the shotgun in a mound of snow beside him, knowing it would only slow him
down. He still had his pistol in his holster. He took off after the van on foot,
reaching for his radio while doing his best not to slip and fall.

“Redick, get up here! The culprits are getting away. They might have Sean with them!”

“I can’t!” Redick yelled back. “We . . . We ran over someone, God-dammit. They’re
mangled under the car!”

Lumbergh’s eyes bulged. A gasp whizzed out his lips. “Is it Sean?”

“No. I . . . I think it’s Martinez. He came running right at us! Why isn’t he with
you?”

“Shit!” grunted Lumbergh. “I left him locked up in my car! How in the hell did he
get out?”

“How the hell would I know?” Redick screamed back defensively. “You stole him from
us, remember?”

Lumbergh cursed, slid the radio back to his side, and yanked out his Glock. He clenched
his teeth and ran as quickly as he could, lunging with every stride as the frigid
wind and snow pounded his small body. Another flicker of the brake lights showed
that the van was now far away and moving too quickly to catch up to on foot.

Lumbergh dropped to the snow on one knee and steadied himself to fire. He knew almost
instantly, however, that he couldn’t take the shot. Even after the van’s headlights
switched on and gave him a more definitive target in the distance, he couldn’t risk
sending the van off the side of the road by blowing out a tire or hitting the driver.
Sean might be inside.

Lumbergh crumbled to the snow, falling to both knees, and cursing the world as he
turned his head to the sky. The haunting words that Andrew Carson had uttered back
in the building floated to the top of his thoughts.

“They’re going to kill him.”

Though it was possible Sean was in that van, the notion didn’t seem likely. If his
pursuers were intent on killing him, they wouldn’t have bothered to take him to another
location first. They would have put him down where they found him.

A reluctant tear began to slide down Lumbergh’s face as he holstered his gun. He
told himself that it was drawn from the wind, but he knew that wasn’t the case. He
held his radio to his mouth as his hand shook and told Redick to have his men find
out where the road came out and to get some deputies there.

“Head up the road on foot and you’ll find the building,” Lumbergh added. “You’re
not that far out. Andrew Carson is inside.
He needs medical attention. There’s a
woman in there, too. Take her into custody once the ambulance gets here. I’ll explain
later.”

“The ambulance is pulling up right now!” Redick shouted excitedly. “Wait! Andrew
Carson from Greeley? He’s there?”

Lumbergh switched his radio off. He wasn’t in the mood to explain it all. He climbed
to his feet with his head hung low and began making his way back toward the building.
He clipped the radio to his side and pulled his Mag light from next to it.

When he flipped the light on, he noticed that there had been a lot of activity along
the road. Footprints, tire tracks, and even what appeared to be the ski lines of
a snowmobile. Most were faint, having been covered with fresh snow, but he saw a
more recent set of skis that led over the shoulder of the road and down a hill.

Lumbergh scoured the side of the hill with his beam and traced the tracks downward
until they disappeared behind some trees. The hill was steep. He probably shouldn’t
have tried to navigate down it with only one arm to balance himself, but he did.
He slipped along the snowy, frozen terrain repeatedly, sliding on his butt when he
needed to. It was becoming dangerous, but he didn’t allow anything to discourage
his descent.

Whenever his light lit up new ground, he feared he’d find the large body of his brother-in-law
lying face down in the snow. Each overturned tree and narrow boulder seemed to resemble
that frightful image until his mind let him accept otherwise and allowed him to take
a new breath.

The further down he climbed, the more isolated Lumbergh felt both in his thoughts
and his soul. How would his family move past what had happened?

On wobbly legs, he ducked between two sagging trees. That’s when his eyes widened
at the sight of a thin red laser dot pinned to his chest. He froze in his tracks.

“Bang!” he heard a man’s voice shout out from the dark over the whistle of the wind.

The sound jolted Lumbergh’s body. His mind raced through the process of dropping
his light and replacing it with his Glock, but he knew it would take the hidden man
in the woods only a fraction of that time to fire off a shot.

“You’ve thrown your last shrimp on the barbie, mate!” the voice shouted.

Lumbergh recognized the bad humor, but more importantly, he now recognized the man’s
voice.

It was Sean.

The corners of Lumbergh’s mouth slowly curled into a relieved grin.

Sunday

Chapter 37

L
umbergh watched the beginnings of a new morning flourish out from beyond the distant,
snow-covered horizon. Billowy orange clouds with yellow streaks hugging their edges
hovered over the crisp outline of a curved mountain range. The crest of treetops
resembled goose bumps from so far away.

It would have been an even grander, awe-inspiring sight had it not been viewed from
behind the metal grill of the sheriff car’s backseat. He sat there in the warmth
of the vehicle’s heater as the engine purred along, waiting alone for the return
of one of the deputies who would drive him to Redick’s office. There, multiple charges
would be filed against him.

Lumbergh had never had his rights read to him before. It was a somber, surreal experience.

The wind had died down dramatically and the snow was no longer falling. The turbulent
weather had left with most of the squad cars and the ambulance that had taken Andrew
Carson to the hospital. Carson was going to pull through. He heard one of the EMTs
say the injury looked “purely vascular.” The same paramedic got Carson to feel finger-pressure
against his toes—a good sign that if there was damage done to his spine, it wasn’t
permanent. It was even possible the numbness Carson felt earlier may have stemmed
from an old leg injury that was acting up. Regardless, the bullet from his neck still
needed to be removed. Carson was likely already in surgery for that.

Carson would soon be reunited with his daughter. Katelyn was said to sound ecstatic
over the phone when she heard the news that
he had been found. Lumbergh had witnessed
the ear-to-ear grin on Carson’s face, in between winces, when he briefly spoke to
her from the top of a stretcher as he was lifted into the ambulance.

Jessica and Sean were still being questioned by the sheriff ’s people inside the
restaurant. Lumbergh expected Jessica would be taken away for processing at any moment.
Her life was a world of hurt: a daughter who was still dying, a brother she learned
had been killed, and the knowledge that she was the only one left to go down for
everything her family had done.

Dr. Phillip Robinson’s mutilated body was discovered in the abandoned van near Leadville.
His legacy would not be to live on as a hero in the medical world, but rather as
a man with a twisted mind who was murdered by perhaps an even more twisted person.
Norman Booth was on the still on the loose.

Lumbergh lowered his gaze to his freshly wrapped sling before turning his head and
peering down the road through the back window at the mob of reporters being held
at bay by a few strands of yellow tape and uniformed officers. He couldn’t hear the
reporters from that distance, but they looked to be shouting over each other, snapping
off pictures, and panning the area with video cameras.

He hoped Redick would at least have the decency not to drive the two of them through
that crowd on their way out and let the police chief of Winston be shown as a common
perp. Broadcasted on the evening news and in papers with pictures of him humiliated
in the back of the sheriff ’s car wasn’t the way Lumbergh wanted the public to learn
of what he had done.

He knew his days as the police chief of Winston were over. He’d broken serious laws
and the man he’d illegally taken into custody was now dead. Martinez’s body had left
with the county coroner an hour earlier, after deputies worked for twenty minutes
to pry it out from under the car.

Lumbergh understood that he was likely going to serve
time, and the accomplished
law enforcement career he’d built over the years wouldn’t count for anything once
he got out of prison.

At least he could still face Diana. His wife understood that everything he had done,
he had done for her brother. He felt the warmth and unconditional companionship of
her voice over the phone when they spoke. Their marriage would remain strong. He
felt as though there was more she wanted to tell him, but he told her they’d get
to talk in person at the sheriff ’s office. He couldn’t wait to see her face again.

He lifted his head when he felt the passenger door open. He was expecting it to be
Redick or one of the deputies. Instead he found Sean taking a seat in front of him.
The car creaked under the added weight. A large gauze bandage was fastened to the
back of his head.

“What are you doing?” asked Lumbergh.

“Just checking in. You warm enough?”

“I’m fine.”

“Listen, uh . . .” Sean began with a humility in his tone that Lumbergh had never
heard before from his brother-in-law. “I want to thank you. I want to thank you for
coming after me.” He turned his head to meet Lumbergh’s attention with the corner
of his eye. With a chuckle, he added, “I didn’t know you cared.”

Lumbergh blew air from his nose, subtly shaking his head. “A lot of good it did you,”
he said. “I didn’t end up helping you at all. You got away on your own.”

“Don’t give me that shit,” said Sean. “You saved Carson’s life. He was dying on that
bedroom floor. Jessica couldn’t have kept him alive on her own. You got the paramedics
here in time.”

Lumbergh lifted his shoulders in concession. “Fine.”

“It’s more than
fine
,” said Sean.

Lumbergh took a deep breath. “Unfortunately, it’s not going to do me any good. I’m
going away, Sean. Martinez is dead and I’m to blame for that.”

“Martinez,” Sean grumbled. “I never liked that guy.”

“It doesn’t matter. His death is my fault.”

“Actually, it’s Jefferson’s fault.”

Lumbergh’s eyes narrowed. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

“I talked to old Jeffrey on the phone a little while ago. In the hospital. I think
I interrupted his sponge bath. He said he crashed the side of the police cruiser
into my car yesterday—which he’ll be paying for by the way. He fucked up the door
somehow. The lock wasn’t working right. That’s how Martinez escaped.”

“Shit,” Lumbergh moaned, leaning back in his seat. “Don’t tell anybody that. Don’t
drag Jefferson into this.”

“I won’t. It’s got to be hard enough for him just to be . . . you know . . . just
to be Jefferson.”

“Be nice, Sean. He’ll be the acting Winston Police Chief now.”

“Christ,” Sean breathed.

Neither man spoke for a while. Lumbergh stared out the side window while Sean did
the same out his window.

Lumbergh finally broke the silence. “When I’m done answering for all of this, I’ll
be lucky if I can find a job as a security guard.” Upon digesting his words, he winced
and added, “No offense.”

“None taken.” Sean twisted in the seat until he was looking Lumbergh directly in
the eye. A sly smile slowly formed on his face.