Chasing the Son (17 page)

Golden put the top folder on Hannah’s desk.

“And Senator Gregory?” Hannah asked.

Golden shook her head. “This isn’t the Senator’s case file. It’s his son, Preston Gregory.”

“Go on.”

“He came on the radar a year and a half ago when he was involved in a death at the Military Institute of South Carolina. I get alerts from the various public and private military academies since their severe environments can be a trigger for certain types of activities.” Golden then relayed the same version of events that Dillon had received in Charleston.

“Sounds like an accident,” Hannah said when Golden was done. “Why did you start a file?”

“The Senator is a powerful man,” Golden said. “His son’s desire to be even more powerful. Couple that ambition with a death, and I always find it suspicious.”

Hannah considered that. “The situation is very dark and deep here. Sarah Briggs’s file in the wrong place. As if Nero was paying special attention to it. And we know his attention was never misplaced. And Preston Gregory being involved in events that are brewing in South Carolina. Keep monitoring.”

Golden stood up, dismissed.

“Leave Gregory’s file.”

* * *

Dillon took down Jerrod Fabrou in Charleston Library garage the way his platoon would hit a Taliban-controlled village: fast, fierce and ruthless. Stepping out from behind a concrete column, he jabbed the stun gun into Jerrod’s back, then moved back, letting him fall to the ground, saving him from splitting his skull open by sticking out his foot and letting the head bounce off his toes.

Tucking the stun gun away, Dillon reached down and threw Jerrod over his shoulder, walked five feet to his car and tossed him into the open back of the SUV. He roughly grabbed Jerrod’s arms, pulled them behind his back, and zip-tied them together at the wrists. Then he jabbed a needle into Jerrod’s neck and pushed the plunger. He threw a tarp over the body. Then he slammed the door shut.

It was done in under eight seconds.

Dillon looked around. No one to witness and he’d spray-painted over the single security camera that could possibly have gotten worthwhile images.

Dillon got into the driver’s seat and started the car. He drove out of the garage underneath the library onto Calhoun Street and turned right. He followed Calhoun to a brief right onto Lockwood and then onto 17 South. To his right front, the sun was setting, another day in the Low Country coming to an end, leading to what promised to be an interesting and long night. He crossed the bridge over the Ashley River, leaving Charleston behind.

He cleared the outskirts of West Ashley and continued until he saw the exit for Edisto Island on the left. He crossed onto the island, then took back roads, certain of his destination, not needing to use the GPS, although he had it on to double-check.

Always double-check. His platoon sergeant in Afghanistan had insisted on it and it had saved their asses more than once. Dillon had heard about the platoon leader who’d replaced the batteries in his laser designator but forgotten to reboot the system, thus designating his own position for a five-hundred-pound bomb.

That was bringing in a world of fatal hurt.

The paved road gave way to gravel, which, after one last turn, gave way to dirt. There were no lights from houses, no sign of civilization, other than the road. Dillon finally braked when he saw the dirt give way to wood. He left the engine running and the lights on, put the SUV in park, and got out. Walking forward, he stepped onto the old bridge. It was in decent shape and crossed a deep tidal cut. Dillon guessed it would hold the weight of his vehicle, but he wasn’t planning on crossing.

He went back to his vehicle and opened the back. Jerrod was still unconscious from the shot. Dillon checked his watch. He had at least another forty-minutes with which to work. He quickly got to it.

Twenty minutes later Jerrod Fabrou was lying on the wooden bridge, near the edge. His hands were still zip-tied behind his back, his feet were also zip-tied together, a black hood covered his head, and, most ominously, a rope was tied around his neck.

The noose was not done professionally, as a hangman would with the long, stiff knot that would break the neck. This was a simple slipknot, but that would be sufficient. Dillon very much doubted that Jerrod knew how to make a true hangman’s knot.

He went back to the SUV, turned the lights off, then shut the engine down.

Then he waited. He’d learned the art of waiting early in his military career and taken it to higher levels by going out with his hunter-killer sniper teams at least once a month while in Afghanistan.

Snipers knew how to wait.

Jerrod began to stir. Dillon turned the headlights back on. The creatures of the night were also beginning to stir, insects buzzing about. The strong smell of tidal flats filled the air. Dillon got out and walked over to Jerrod and kicked him, none too gently.

Jerrod cried out and began to ‘worm’, the movements a trussed-up person made while on the ground and disoriented.

“Stop moving,” Dillon said.

Jerrod, of course, in panic mode, ignored the warning. Dillon knelt, putting his knee in the middle of Jerrod’s chest. “Stop moving,” he repeated. This time, with the aid of the knee pinning him to the wooden planks, Jerrod stopped squirming.

Dillon reached down and whipped the black hood off his head. He stood and backed off slightly.

Jerrod blinked into the headlights, disoriented. “What? Who are you? Where am I?”

Dillon was just a black silhouette in the headlights, looming over Jerrod. He held his hand out, turning it to and fro so Jerrod could see what he held between his fingers.

“Your ring,” Dillon said.

“What are you doing? What do you want?”

“Look around,” Dillon said. “This is where you’re going to die if you don’t do what I say. This is the last place you’re ever going to see.”

Jerrod’s eyes grew wide. “Who are you?”

Dillon leaned over. “We met yesterday.”

That clicked for Jerrod. “Dillon? What do you want?”

“I want the truth. What happened that night with Greer Jenrette?”

“We told you.”

“Then you die here.” Dillon pulled on the rope around Jerrod’s neck. “See?” He grabbed Jerrod’s hair and twisted his head so he could see that the noose around his neck was tied to a wood plank in the bridge. “It’s low tide so the drop is about eight feet. The rope will stop you at seven. Just a single foot below your feet. Close, but not close enough. It will be enough to let you swing. Choke to death. Bad way to go.”

“We told you the truth!” Jerrod exclaimed. Tears ran down his face. His eyes were on the rope, but then he looked up at Dillon. “You’re a brother! An Institute man. You can’t do this to me! We wear the ring!”

“Bunch of Institute men beat the crap out of me yesterday,” Dillon said. “They didn’t seem to care that I wore the ring. Were you there, Jerrod? Who had the axe handle? I recognized Chad. Can’t quite hide him even with a hood on his head. But I think the guy with the axe handle was Preston. Seems his style. Attack in a pack. With a hood on.”

“I wasn’t there. I swear.”

“Yeah,” Dillon said. “I bet you weren’t. Too much action for you. But you were there that night in the Sinks. What happened to Greer Jenrette?”

“Brannigan stabbed him. He didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”

“Bullshit,” Dillon said. He put a foot on Jerrod. “Just a little kick and you go over. You’ll be dead before the tide comes in to make your feet wet. And then the crabs will come. You’ll make a good meal. Someone might find you some day, but when I reconned this spot, didn’t look like any tires had been down the road in a while. Maybe your skeleton will be found. Maybe nothing.”

“You won’t kill me,” Jerrod said. “That’s murder.”

“Oh, no,” Dillon said. “It’s suicide. There will be no reason to think otherwise. Distraught man takes his own life by hanging after having been involved in an accidental death at the Institute. There will be questions, of course. Did you walk all the way out here? Why here? Why so long after the incident? But you’ll be dead. Just like there’re questions about Jenrette’s death, but no one wants to answer them right? So I don’t think anyone will be too interested in
your
death either. Maybe your dad. But there will be no answers. Because only two people will know. And you’ll be dead and I’ll never tell.”

Dillon leaned over once more, putting his face inches away from Jerrod’s. “You’re going to die very soon if you don’t give me some answers. Tell me the truth. What happened that night?”

“Fuck you!” Jerrod screamed. “Fuck you!”

Dillon straightened and stepped back several steps. He considered Jerrod, trussed and noosed, screaming defiantly. In the movies in this situation the good guy was always sure the bad guy was hiding a truth, but Dillon wasn’t certain. Jerrod
could
be telling the truth. Sometimes it was what it was. At least he’d said it had been an accident; manslaughter, not murder.

“Why did you guys pick Wing?” he finally asked.

Jerrod stopped screaming long enough to consider the question.

“We wanted to make it easy for Jenrette. He would have been inducted into the Ring his third year. But we had to at least test him.”

“Like you were tested.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sure they picked someone similarly tough for you.”

Jerrod didn’t say anything to that.

“What was the test?”

“They were supposed to fight. After we had them sweat in the showers. Let them fight it out. But fucking Brannigan interrupted.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Dillon said.

“They’ll kill me if I betray them,” Jerrod said. “They will. And you know what?” He tried to jerk himself into a sitting position, but that tightened the noose around his neck and he panicked, flopping back onto the bridge’s plank roadway. “They’re coming for me.”

“What?” Dillon said.

“I was supposed to meet them at the High Cotton. What time is it? I’m sure it’s after seven. They’ll come looking for me since I haven’t shown.”

Dillon spared a glance at his watch. It was 9:30. “Where will they look? We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“My phone,” Jerrod said. “We all allowed each other to track our phones. We decided that after we met you yesterday. Turns out it was a smart move. They know exactly where I am right now.”

Dillon reached in a pocket and pulled out the offending device. He hadn’t exactly stayed up on technology while deployed. The phone was on and pushing the button he could see that there had been a half-dozen calls from Preston. “Not any more.” He tossed it out into the dark, toward the water. He was rewarded with a splash.

“Doesn’t matter,” Jerrod said, gaining confidence. “They located it and are on the way.”

“You trust them to do that?”

“Yes. And you won’t kill me. Not over this bullshit.”

“I think you read me wrong,” Dillon said.

“Fuck you!”

Dillon sighed.
He
had read it wrong. Jerrod wasn’t the weak link; he was the obvious one. He should have picked Chad. He could just imagine that tub of lard writhing around, pissing his pants, begging. Dillon had a feeling old Chad would give up anyone and everyone in this situation. But Jerrod was showing some spine. And the phone thing threw a twist in his plan; started a clock ticking. And he had no idea when he would run out of time. How long would Preston and Chad wait before searching for Jerrod? He figured he had about thirty minutes, then it was time to bug out. He didn’t see Preston as being overly concerned about racing to help anyone else. But he would come, just to find out what was going on as it affected him.

“I’ve killed people,” Dillon said. “The first time is really hard. And my first time, I didn’t even do the killing direct. That’s the thing about being an officer. We give orders for other people to kill. I know lieutenants in my unit who never fired their weapon the entire deployment. But they ordered lots of people killed. In a way, it’s an easy introduction to a hard thing.

“We’re taught to respect life. Because that’s the way we’re brought up. It’s what religion tells us. But we’re trained at the Institute, then during basic, during officer training, during Ranger School, to go against that instinct. Bayonet training for example. We talked about that, didn’t we Jerrod?”

Jerrod just glared back from his prone position, the headlights fixed on his pale face, tears or perhaps sweat dripping down his cheeks.

“But until you do it the first time, you question yourself. Every man does. Tell me, Jerrod, have you ever killed?”

Jerrod shook his head.

“I’m talking not just a human. Ever go hunting? Surely your old man took you out with his buddies. Big guns. Boar hunting maybe?”

Jerrod continued to shake his head.

“Really?” Dillon said. “That’s unusual for a Low Country rich boy like you. Anyway, I got a call in from a hunter-killer sniper team my second night there. They’d spotted a couple of dudes digging next to a road. Like who the fuck would be digging next to a road in Afghanistan at two in the morning except some dipshits putting in an IED? Right?”

Dillon took in a deep breath through his nostrils, smelling the pungent night air of the Low Country, a fragrance unique to that part of the world. Part life, part decay. Part land, part water.

“They wanted to engage. My first thought was,
Shit, I need to ask someone about this. Get permission
. But I looked around the CP and I realized
I
was the guy. There was no one for me to pass the decision on to. And everyone was looking at me, new boot L.T. in-country.
What’s he going to do?

“In Ranger school they beat into you that you have to be decisive. Even a bad decision is better than not making one. You can’t stand in the kill zone trying to make your mind up when ambushed. ‘
Do something Ranger
!’ they scream at you all the time. So I said ‘take the shot’ like I was in some damn movie.

“So they took the shot. Correction. Shots. Drop two dipshits.” He shrugged. “Once you do it the first time, it loses its mystique. Every decision after that was easier. And I ended up eventually using my weapon. Killing directly. I stopped counting too. How many people I ordered killed, how many I killed.” Dillon stepped up next to Jerrod. “So don’t tell me I won’t kill you.”