Relentless (Elisabeth Reinhardt Book 1) (20 page)

She could tell from the bits and pieces of information trickling in that the leader was decompensating
. He was impulsive and need-driven under ‘good circumstances’ and those traits would increase under pressure. This period of enforced inactivity would create turmoil for him. She predicted that he would not be able to wait until spring thaw to lead his gang out of their hideaway. He would need to get back to civilization because that was where he could get his needs met. His violent homicidal needs had been focused on Reggie for years and the greater his frustration the greater his need for release. He would not be able to hide for much longer; as soon as he was free he’d assault the first blonde he encountered.

She decided he was likely to head back to fa
miliar turf. Although it appeared the FBI thought they were headed north, she speculated his addiction to violence would lead him to return to the place where his criminal career began, to face those authority figures whom he blamed for everything that went wrong in his life. They would be the replacements for the adult authority figures that hurt or abandoned him as a rage-filled child but he could slide that feeling over to the authority figures that remained in his life the Hurricane Police Department, the local school authorities, Hattie and Earl Raines. She predicted, as soon as he came out of hiding he’d head for Hurricane.

The meeting re-convened amid chatter and speculation. Each was called on to report recent findings.
Stella reported finding a number of locals who had crossed prison paths with Jake Gennett. Reina provided the names of those witnesses who were associated with Reggie Lee Raines’ emancipation process. Manny reported that the FBI was headed to the Cumberland Gap in Middleborough.

Gil started with, “Sources tell us that the primary investigators on the case have concluded that the letter
R
is central to the victim selection process for these killers. That converges with our conclusion that these guys are after our
protectee
. There are R’s all over the place in her name. I’m convinced,” Gil continued “that publicity about the twins’ surgery will put the spotlight on her. Unless these guys are buried under 5 feet of snow they will soon know where she is. We’ll have to work fast. We’ll need specific plans for extraction, protection, evacuation and counter-attack.”

The group talked for over an hour about strategies and possible scenarios.
Stella stood at the white board with colored markers and filled the space with tasks, assignments and time frames. 

When warning lights installed around the room flashed, windows popped up on the computer monitors transmitting
images from along the rutted road leading to the farmhouse. A dark blue Dodge Durango bumped along and pulled to a stop under a stand of scraggly pine trees. It had started snowing again, a damp rainy snow. No one got out of the truck. It sat idling under a tree in the blinding snow. Through the blur an outline of a large muscular man appeared. Like a wary panther he stood still scanning the area right hand in the pocket of his black leather jacket. Then he turned up his fur lined collar and strode toward the steps. T-Max had arrived.

T-Max was the third member of ‘Protect and Serve
.’ Bald, black and tattooed, he was an intimidating presence. He weighed 280, stood 6’3’’ and sported a scowl that could scare someone to death. T-Max was an enigma. Though he looked like a brainless thug, he was creative, gentle and intelligent. T-Max, whose name was Thomas Minister had earned his moniker working undercover with the New York City Police Department’s Gang Unit 8 years ago; having grown up in a rough section of town he’d seen more than his fair share of gang violence. When he graduated from NYU with a Master’s Degree in Computer Science, he gravitated to the White Collar unit in the Chicago Police Department where he met Gil and Pedro. Together with Manny, he had constructed Chevra Hatzolah’s sophisticated computer network. T-Max was skilled in hand-to-hand combat, underwater diving and could fire any gun he touched. He was expert at Judo and drag racing but he was also a gourmet cook and well-versed in Archeology and Natural History. T-Max was greeted with hugs and handshakes as he grinned, tossed out his characteristic “Hey…” and reached for a corned beef sandwich.

The group was well organized and cohesive. Through the years, they had not only developed an elaborate underground network, with sophisticated technolog
y and human resources, but their trust in each other and mutual respect was unparalleled. A well-balanced organism... they were ‘in sync’ and would do anything for one another and for their cause.

It always made her happy when they came over, her girls and their kids. Their husbands didn’t come over too often anymore. They said they were too busy, but Hattie knew better. Those husbands just didn’t like her Earl. Well truth to tell, Earl wasn’t the easiest man to get along with, ‘set in his ways’ is how she thought of it. He was sort of different from other people; he had his own ideas about things. Sometimes when he drank too much, he’d say more than he should. She told him not to, but did he listen to her? No, he did not. Stubborn old goat! That’s why the kids all moved away, she thought.  Every last one of them gone! Not like in the old days when kids stayed around and helped their parents with the farming and things. Earl was getting too old to do much around the farm any more. Good thing those young boys from over the hill were willing to earn an honest dollar. They’d come over and help Earl with the heavy stuff. But her sons-in-law, they never offered to help out not a once. Nope they didn’t like her Earl, she was sure of it.  She didn’t like them much either, but she wasn’t the meddling type. ‘I’ll keep my thoughts to myself,’ that’s what she thought.

She and her daughters Betty Jo and Patty Sue were in the kitchen cutting up apples for the pies. They were going to make
different kinds for the holidays. They would keep some and sell the rest of them in town. The girls were going to take them into town after they were baked. There was a little coffee shop on the edge of town that always bought about 4 of their pies. And, of course, the grocery store always took about a few dozen of them and then there was Gus’s Diner. Gus loved her pies. He was good for at least 6 of them, maybe more it being the holidays and all. The apple trees had a good crop this year, good thing they got collected before all this snow fell. The kids liked it, though, Hattie thought, as she glanced out the window at her 3 grandchildren romping in the snow. They were cute kids. ‘I didn’t do too bad myself,’ she thought, ‘I raised my sister’s kid and four good kids of my own.’ Then with a stab of conscience, she realized she had forgotten about Reggie, ‘I raised me 5 kids…well, I almost raised 5,’ she added.  Whatever had happened to that girl, she wondered again, but quickly pushed those unpleasant thoughts from her mind.

“Jake stopped by a few weeks back,” she told her girls, “Him and those two friends of his. He asked after you
girls. Looks pretty good, I’d say.” She was chatting and cutting apples when she said, “Brought me another one of his little gifts like he always does, always brings something pretty, he does...” she had momentarily forgotten those gifts were supposed to be a secret.

“Really, Mama,” Patty Sue said,
“What’s he bring you?”

“Oh,” said Hattie,
flustered now, “just some little things, nothing really.”

“Come on Mama, show us, we won’t tell
anyone your little secret!” they teased.

“
Well I’m not supposed to, you know,” she said worriedly.

“Oh come on Mama, we’re your kids...” Betty Jo added.

“Oh alright,” Hattie said flustered, “I’ll show you, just wait a minute and I’ll go get them.”

Her daughters exchanged
looks wondering why their mother seemed so uneasy. Hattie knew Jake said never to show anyone her gifts, but it had just slipped out. She hadn’t meant to tell her daughters, but she was just cutting those apples and forgot herself.  She just blurted it out. She was so proud of her gifts. Well, he surely hadn’t meant she couldn’t show them things to her daughters. Why they was practically his sisters wasn’t they? Besides she never got to show off her things, to wear them anywhere cause he said not to show anyone. There couldn’t be no harm in showing her girls her things right here inside of her own kitchen, now could there?

They gasped when she opened up the jewelry case he’d given her. “Mama!” they spoke in unison, “He gave you all this stuff?”

“He sure did,” said Hattie proudly, “ain’t them things pretty?”

“Wow,” they said and began to lift and examine the pieces of jewelry. There w
ere 10 pieces in all. Delicate and feminine… necklaces, bracelets and tiny rings with birthstones in them…

“Mama,”
Betty Jo exclaimed, “these are all so pretty and so… youthful. Jake must really see you as a young woman,” she finished hesitantly. They each tried things on and admired them, but they noticed that none of the pieces really suited any of them.

“
These are like for teenage girls,” they remarked and exchanged funny looks with each other as if to say, ‘What’s up with that?’ Now they were curious about the jewelry. They looked more closely at each piece. One of the necklaces was a small silver cross. It had a vine curled around it. Betty Jo frowned as she handled the little cross. She gestured to her sister to take a look. Patty Sue looked at it and frowned looking up at her sister. The piece looked familiar but she couldn’t place it. She felt she’d seen this cross before. Next a small gold filigree hand caught their attention. It was beautiful, foreign they thought. An odd gift for Hattie Raines... Then they noticed scratches as if the jewelry had been worn and some small stones were missing from one of the pieces. One of the bracelets had the initials R H on it. When they pointed it out to their mother, she said it was for her name Hattie Raines. But the girls argued the initials are backwards. The R comes before the H. “Well,” Hattie shrugged, “maybe that’s the way they do it in the big city.” After all, Jake was from the big city now.

On their drive into Hurricane
, their children sleeping in the back, the daughters talked about the jewelry and their cousin Jake. They were confused about it, especially some of the pieces, like that cross. They knew they’d seen that cross before but couldn’t place where and that gold hand; now that they’d seen on a TV show. It was from somewhere like the Middle East or India or somewhere. It seemed odd that Jake would select pieces like that. Jake was up to something, they agreed. Since they had gotten married and moved away from home, they never talked about Jake. Not as adults. Not since they had become parents.

They
grew up modeling themselves after their mother, they avoided conflict like she did and didn’t talk about unpleasant things, but now they lived in a more modern world, in a small city. They had friends and neighbors. They were adults. They had children. They went to PTA meetings. They read books and watched TV. They had been exposed to new and more modern ideas. They had learned how to talk about the things that bothered them. They looked back on their childhood and saw things they hadn’t seen at the time. They talked about Jake honestly. They had never liked him. He had been mean and hateful to all of them except for their mother. He was a sneaky liar and he was cruel. They remembered how mean he had been. How he pushed them or tripped them and then tried to pretend he was helping them up. All of them hated him. The only one who liked him was their mother. They realized now how he had pulled the wool over her eyes. And he had been horrible to Reggie, they remembered. ‘Poor Reggie,’ they thought. They remembered the things she had told them about him. They hadn’t understood it then. They understood it now. Now that they thought about it, they felt guilty for not helping her. Were they as guilty as their mother was for not helping her?

As they drove they remembered the things Reggie said that he did. For the first time in their lives, they thought
she could have been telling the truth. For the first time in their lives, they felt guilty about Reggie and scared for her. For the first time, as they drove through the falling snow, the smell of freshly baked pies infusing the air, they saw their mother as flawed. It was unforgiveable that Hattie had ignored her daughter’s pain. Reggie said he was tormenting her. He scared her. He was hurting her. And then she disappeared. They never knew what had happened to her. The sisters thought it was odd that neither of their parents ever spoke about her after she was gone. It was as if she’d never been there. They never understood why no one had looked for her after she disappeared. Now, that they thought about it, it was outrageous, simply outrageous that their parents had done nothing! What if it had been one of them? Would they have cared? What kind of people were they anyway? The Raines family, with all its talk about family tradition and family values; what kind of a family had they really been?

Suddenly they were struck by a slew of questions. Had Jake really abused
their sister all those years ago? Is that why she ran away? Did she run away or had Jake done something to her? Could he have killed her? Could their sister be dead? Did their parents know what happened to her? Had they known all these years? Is that why they never reported her disappearance to the police? Did they know she was dead? The sisters looked in the back seat at their own sleeping children and wordlessly asked each other …
‘What’s the matter with us?’ ‘Why haven’t we done something ourselves?’ ‘What would we do if this happened to one of our children?’
They rode along in shock. As they inched over unplowed roads, the edges of a terrible truth peeked around the corners of their consciousness. Opening that jewelry box had opened their eyes. They had seen more than a few pieces of jewelry in a box. They had seen Jake. They had seen their mother. They had seen Reggie Lee.