Wisdom Spring (18 page)

I tried calling Joe a couple of times after dinner on the cell phone, but his phone seemed to be shut off. Could he have been on Mill’s plane?

“They gave a list of passengers on the plane, right?” I asked Scott while we ate.

“Yup. There was no Joe Gray on it.”

“Weird. Maybe he’s just in a bad reception area.” But as I said it, I knew there was something more to it than that.

We talked for another couple of hours, shifting the focus onto Scott. He was genuinely happy, the total opposite of the kid who left home with a chip on his shoulder and a full-fledged drinking problem. Besides his carpentry work, he had bought a small plane and four years earlier got his commercial license, and had become a part-time bush pilot. He didn’t advertise, but his word-of-mouth business had grown rapidly.

“I expect to be busy this summer,” he said, and as an afterthought added, “if things get bad, I know some really out of the way places I can fly you where no one will ever find you.”

“That’s good to know,” I said. “Hopefully it won’t come to that, but you never know.”

His love life was fluid—he was dating a couple of women—and I could tell he wanted to settle down someday, but he said he didn’t want to marry the wrong woman. I thought of Victoria as he said that.

It was after midnight when we said our goodnights. Jess and I got into bed naked with great intentions, but were asleep in minutes.

We woke up the next morning to the wonderful smell of bacon cooking. We ventured out to the kitchen to find a feast awaiting us. In addition to the bacon were pancakes, hash browns, eggs, homemade bread, and a bowl of strawberries.

“You know that restaurant I never made it to?” said Jess. “Well, this beats anything I could have had there.”

I tried Joe again after breakfast. Again, nothing. I didn’t want to leave a voicemail.

“I’m worried,” I said. “Something has happened to him. He wouldn’t keep his phone off like that. To be safe, I think I’ll turn mine off and check it briefly every day. He can leave a message if he calls.”

“So,” said Scott, cleaning up the breakfast dishes. “We going to check out Wolf Run?”

Scott was really getting into this. What worried me though was that he seemed to consider it all a game.

“Scott, this is serious. It’s dangerous. What we’re doing could get us killed.”

“Yeah, I kinda got that from the four dead friends of Jess’s and the three you guys blew away. Your point?”

I could tell I had hurt his feelings.

“I guess … well.…”

“You don’t want to involve me in something that isn’t my problem. That the gist of it?”

“Well, it was, but it sounds kind of lame now.”

“Yeah, you think? Jon, I’m your brother. You’d be here for me if I was in trouble. You involved me the minute you showed up, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m happy you came up here.”

 “Besides,” he added, “I own half a dozen guns, and at a moment’s notice I could fly you out of here.” He put his arm around me. “Not to mention I’m a good cook.”

“That you are.” I was suddenly distracted by Jess’s silence. I looked over at her sitting on the couch. She had a faraway look in her eyes.

Scott mouthed “The Voice?” to me. I nodded.

So we waited. About fifteen minutes later, Jess came out of it.

“We’re looking for an article,” she said.

“On what?” asked Scott.

She shook her head.

“You were under, or gone, or whatever, for that time and all you got was ‘an article’?” Scott said it with humor and Jess didn’t take offense.

She smiled at him. “It’s not all that simple. It’s not like the words are just spoken to me, although that has happened. It’s hard to explain. It’s feelings. It’s emotions. Somehow they lead me to a message. Oftentimes I can’t even remember how I got there. I don’t think it’s easy for … for The Voice to communicate. I don’t understand how it works, just that it does.”

“Well then, I say let’s go,” announced Scott. “Wolf Run is waiting.”

As we got into Scott’s old Ford F-150, Max jumping in the back, I found myself wondering. Assuming we found whatever it was we were looking for, would it be the answer? Would it be the end of our search, or just the beginning?

Chapter 19

Joe Gray was astonished at the speed with which Hillstrom’s people launched their attack. One minute he was hearing about Mill Colson’s plane going down, and the next he was being ambushed. Did Jon and Jess escape the massacre? He was sure they did. Hillstrom’s goons seemed overly concerned about Joe’s knowledge of their whereabouts. Well, there wasn’t much he could do. If they were okay, they’d know to hunker down once they heard about Mill and weren’t able to contact him. Besides, they were the least of his concerns at the moment.

He had to admit that he had only half believed Jess’s story about Hillstrom. He knew that she had people in pursuit of her—there was no question about that—and that she was a victim in all of this, but the Hillstrom angle seemed a little far-fetched. Not anymore. He realized now that there wasn’t one mole in Mill’s office, there were two. He … or she … knew Mill was going to “out” Hillstrom at his press conference, and that just couldn’t happen. Even to just have Hillstrom’s name mentioned in relation to a scandal could derail his whole campaign. No, Mill—and by association Joe himself—had to go, and quickly.

*****

The “hit” had come out of nowhere. He had flown to Rochester, New York, to check out the company Hillstrom had worked for before moving to Massachusetts and running for office. He hadn’t gotten very far in his research. Exchange Systems had been around for almost thirty years making motherboards for personal computers. They started off small, but were able to make lucrative deals with some of the largest computer manufacturers with prices the companies couldn’t pass up. It was a win-win deal for all concerned. The computer companies got inexpensive, reliable motherboards, and Exchange did well enough to keep expanding. The “well enough” part of it hadn’t sat well with Joe. Companies weren’t usually content to just do “well enough.” They were always searching for ways to cut costs and beef up production. While the company’s sales were brisk—their motherboards were everywhere—they seemed happy to sail along with only modest increases in profits from year to year. He had to admit though, if the company was a “front” for something, it was a really good one. It gave off an air of legitimacy.

He hadn’t found out too much on Hillstrom. Because of his notoriety, the company had made up a small bio that they passed out to reporters looking to do background on the man. It didn’t say much. He had joined the company in the customer affairs department soon after it opened, quickly rising to vice president, and had remained there for ten years, until his move to Massachusetts. Nothing else was available.

That was as far as Joe had gotten. His third night there, just a few hours after Mill had called to tell him he was setting up a news conference, he pulled into his hotel parking lot. As he opened his door he was struck in the head and immediately lost consciousness. When he woke up, his head was pounding and there was a golf ball-sized lump near his left temple. He was in a hotel room—a shabby one—and he was tied to a chair. The minute he opened his eyes, he was punched in the face. He felt his nose break and blood streamed down his chin onto his clothes.

“That’s to show we’re serious,” the attacker had said.

There were three assailants working him over, spending the next two hours asking him questions about Jess and “the man” with her, but he gave them nothing. The questions would be interspersed with beatings. They asked about his research and what he was looking for. They didn’t seem to know about Hillstrom. He tried to give them just enough to show that he knew something, but was being kept out of the loop for the important stuff.

Finally they gave up. He had convinced them of his lack of worth. They told him they were going to take him to their boss, but he knew better. They were going to kill him, but just didn’t want to do it in the motel. There was no way out and he knew he was going to die. That is, until they made a stupid—and fatal—mistake.

They waited until the middle of the night before transporting him. He was bloody and in a lot of pain, but he noted with a certain amount of satisfaction that they were all nursing bruised knuckles. Two of the three walked him out to the car, and then inexplicably put him in the driver’s seat. One got in behind him and the other sat in the passenger seat. Both had guns pointed at him. Before he could touch anything, they had him put on surgical gloves. They wanted no one’s fingerprints in the car.

So why did they have him drive? Joe could only guess. Most likely, his death was going to appear accidental and they needed him in the driver’s seat. Regardless, five minutes into the drive, Joe saw his way out. In a deserted section of the warehouse district they instructed him to turn left at the next stop sign. Halfway through the turn, Joe floored the gas and drove straight into a concrete retaining wall at sixty mph. The guy next to him got off a shot, but it missed Joe and embedded itself in Joe’s door.

Joe had fastened his seatbelt the moment he got in the car. He knew the other two wouldn’t. At impact the airbags went off. The combination of the seatbelt and the airbag saved Joe from serious harm. The other two, however, weren’t so lucky. The one behind him sailed passed his head, through the broken windshield, headfirst into the retaining wall. The one next to him had been saved by his airbag, but the bag had cracked his head against the passenger window, leaving him dazed. Joe grabbed the man’s head from behind and smashed it down into the dashboard several times until he was sure he was dead.

He quickly searched his attacker in the passenger seat for a wallet, pulling out the cash—a total of $160—and putting the wallet back in the dead man’s pocket. It would do no good to steal the credit cards. Those would be flagged in no time. Picking up a loose gun, he painfully extracted himself from the driver’s side window, falling to the ground with a thud that left him momentarily stunned. Finally, he got up and limped away from the scene. Once away, he looked for a place to clean up. He came across a metal drum filled with rain water and rinsed off his face. His nose was killing him—his whole body was killing him—but there was nothing he could do about that. He just knew he had to get as far away from the crash site as possible.

Should he go to the police? No, too much explaining. And frankly, Hillstrom’s men would find him and kill him. He wasn’t safe with the police. Near dawn he came across a clothes donation box with bags piled in front. After ten minutes of digging, he found a shirt about his size. He took off his bloody shirt and stuffed it into one of the bags and put the new one on. Not perfect, but it would do. He looked down at his pants. There were only a few flecks of blood. They were okay. Later, he checked into the dump he now called home.

The question Joe found himself asking was, “How in the world am I still alive?” He should have been dead, at the bottom of a river or deep in a landfill somewhere. But no, here he was, holed away in a bed bug motel paid for with what little cash he had in his wallet—which for some reason they hadn’t gotten around to taking from him—and money from his attacker’s wallet. He couldn’t risk using his credit card or going to the ATM. A month earlier he had picked up a fake ID and had applied for a credit card under the new name, but the credit card hadn’t arrived before all this happened. No, he was going to have to figure out some way to get cash. And then what? Essentially he was out of business. He couldn’t keep researching Hillstrom. He couldn’t really do anything. His attackers had made that clear.

He counted his remaining cash. He had enough to pick up a disposable cell phone. Then he’d call Jon and Jess. He wasn’t sure if they would tell him where they were, but he had to try. The irony of all this was that if Jon and Jess—the two most sought after people in the country—were still alive, being with them, wherever they were, would probably be the safest place for him to be right now. He was going on the run.

Chapter 20

Calling Wolf Run Antiques a “junk shop” was being kind. All I could figure was that the owner also owned the building and it was long since paid off. It was the only possible way he could have stayed in business so long. If he did more than fifty dollars a day in sales, it would have shocked me. He kept the newer items, which were probably all he ever sold, near the counter. Scott was right about the dust, which lay over the rest of the store. It was obvious some of it hadn’t been touched in years. The store was a hodge-podge of knick-knacks, books, tools, magazines, newspapers, and furniture. Somewhere in there might have existed a real antique, but most of the items were just “old.”

Scott, who had left Max to guard the truck, introduced us. “Elmer,” his name even seemed old, “this is my brother Jon, and his wife Marie.”

Elmer nodded his head and mumbled a “hey.”

“They want to look through your magazines and newspapers.”

“That’s fine. Just don’t make a mess while you do it.” Could it be he had a sense of humor?

We turned and looked around the store.

“So where do we start?” I asked.

“Article? That was it?” asked Scott. “You’re sure there was nothing more specific?”

“Sorry,” replied Jess.

He sighed and the three of us wandered through the piles for the next hour, picking up magazines and flipping through them, looking at headlines in old issues of the local newspaper, and generally being unproductive.

Finally Jess looked over at me with a pained expression. “I’ve been getting a message for the last fifteen minutes. Basically it’s just ‘no, no, no’. I thought maybe it was a kind of ‘you’re getting cold’ message, so I’d move, hoping I’d start to get hot. Now I’m not so sure what it means.”

I could see Elmer looking at Jess over his glasses. It must have sounded a bit odd.

“Maybe this isn’t the place at all,” she said.

“Gotta be,” I answered. “It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence.”