John Miller - Smoke and Mirrors

“Hampton!” Leigh snapped. “He’s your father.”

“Not anymore he isn’t. I hate his guts.”

“We’ll discuss this later, after you’ve calmed down,” Leigh said. “Let me talk to Brad.”

Estelle and Hamp left the room reluctantly. Alexa and Winter took seats across from the fireplace.

“What happened, Leigh?” Brad asked.

“This is terrible. I don’t know what to do-how to tell you.”

“Take your time,” Brad said.

“Cynthia…Jacob said Cyn called from his mother’s. Jacob said Cyn wasn’t coming to the funeral, so I picked up the phone to call her, and he stopped me and told me that I had to sign papers on the land.”

Leigh waited a few seconds before she said, “I told him I would sell the land, but I wouldn’t do so unless I could meet with the buyer and negotiate a better deal. Like we discussed, so I could get it on tape. I didn’t tell him that. I told him the land was obviously worth more than they offered, and I wanted to negotiate personally. I told him to tell the buyer to take it or leave it. He freaked out. He was yelling that these people weren’t screwing around, that they’d kill all of us. He said this was the final offer and that if we were dead, it would make it more convenient for this person.”

“Did he mention a name?” Alexa asked.

“Mulvane. Pierce Mulvane. He said the casino had to have the land and the casino owners weren’t going to take no for an answer. He said they had over a billion dollars on the line, and life was cheap against that kind of investment. He said they’d kill him first, or all of us at the same time. I’ve never seen him so scared. I told him I was going to make sure our children got the maximum benefit possible.”

“And that was when he hit you?” Brad asked.

Leigh started crying. “He told me he’d lied, that they took Cynthia. That she wasn’t in Memphis at all and that she was fine, and she’d be released after the land deal was finished, but we’d never see her again if it didn’t go through.”

“You think he was in on it?” Brad asked.

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. He said he didn’t know who had her, that he’d spoken to some man twice who had her phone. I said I would call Mr. Mulvane and get her freed.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “God, I think he’s telling the truth. And she needs her insulin. They might hurt her. You have to do something.”

“Leigh, Alexa is going to stay with you,” Winter said firmly. “We’ll figure this out and get her back.”

He nodded to Brad, and the two men left the room in a hurry.

Alexa said, “Leigh, Winter threatened them and I don’t think they’d dare harm Cynthia. But if you decide you want me to do so, I’ll bring in my FBI Immediate Response Team. Though I have to tell you that I can’t guarantee it won’t do more harm than good at this point. We need to talk to Jacob and make sure that he told you the truth. She’ll be fine.”

“But you aren’t sure,” Leigh said.

“No, I can’t be one hundred percent, but this is my field of expertise. Mulvane is in a very difficult position because he knows we know about the land. If he’s behind this, he’ll make sure she’s all right.”

“Jacob won’t cooperate,” Leigh said. “There’s no telling what he’ll say or do.”

Alexa heard the sound of Brad’s siren wailing in the distance.

“They’ll catch up to him,” she said.

Cynthia lay naked on her side on the ice-cold tile floor of a fancy bathroom. Her abductor sat on the toilet contemplating her, an empty insulin syringe in his hand.

He said, “Did that help? I’m new at this diabetes thing.”

“You need to give me more,” she said weakly, covering herself as best she could with her hands. “Let me measure my blood sugar.” Her vision was still blurred, but maybe clearing. There was a bottle of water on the floor beside her and she managed to keep herself covered until she took a long drink. He didn’t seem interested in her sexually. Maybe it would be better if he were. She had decided that, in exchange for a shot to make her feel better, she could let him screw her. It was no big deal. She’d had sex with a few men she wasn’t attracted to when they had something she wanted.

“The water in the tub is warm,” he told her. “Get in. You smell like piss and bile.”

“My clothes?” she asked.

“They’re in the washing machine. I have to wash them before you put them on. I have a nice warm robe for you when you get out of the bath.”

“Of course I ruined my clothes. What did you expect?”

“I’m no expert, but if I gave you more insulin, I suspect you’d be a lot more trouble.”

“Please,” Cyn said. “I won’t try to escape.”

“But you might, Ms. Gardner. I know a great deal about you. More than I care to, in fact.”

“My mother will pay you whatever you want.”

The man said, “All I want at this moment is for you to get into the bath.”

Standing, the man helped Cynthia up. Her knees buckled, but she stepped into the warm bath and sat. The man recaptured his former position on the closed toilet and watched her as she bathed, but the ugly bastard didn’t seem to want to do more than that.

And she made sure he saw plenty. She knew that men went stupid when she showed them even less of her body than he was seeing.

“You know,” she said, mentally bracing herself, “this doesn’t have to be so unpleasant. I mean, if you wanted to, like, have sex with me, I wouldn’t say you couldn’t. We couldn’t,” she said, smiling.

The man smiled back. “You want to trade sex for your freedom?” And then he laughed loudly. “I don’t think so.”

Angry at the rebuff, she thought, He’s gay.

Jacob’s Cadillac had left the road, shot straight across a cotton field for fifty yards, and ended up nose-deep into a tree. Brad left the road and drove to the scene, cutting the siren when he stopped, but leaving his blue lights flashing. As Winter climbed out, the cold wind was like a slap in his face.

The car’s front end was bent around the tree’s trunk, like a man in the water holding on to a pier leg for dear life. The front windshield looked like a blanket made from thousands of beads. Jacob lay in the dead leaves twenty feet in front of the car in his sock feet.

“He’s dead,” Winter said as they walked up on the body.

Brad whistled. “He was still doing a good fifty when he hit the tree. Looks like he never even braked. Didn’t have his seat belt on. Wasn’t for his clothes, I wouldn’t recognize him.”

Winter stared down at the body. Half of Jacob’s head was smashed and pushed against his shoulder. His brains were out, leaving an open and empty white bowl connected to his neck. Winter figured they were both thinking the same thing: Cornered and desperate, Jacob Gardner had taken a coward’s way out of his wreck of a life.

While Brad called for the coroner and a backup unit, Winter went to the driver’s side and looked into the Caddy. The driver’s side window glass was scattered in the interior, but the passenger’s side window was intact, and splattered with blood and bits of brain matter. And the blood droplets each formed lightning bolts, as if Jacob’s blood had already been running down the surfaces when the sudden impact had caused a violent change of direction.

“It wasn’t suicide,” Winter said. “Somebody shot him in the head.”

In the distance a siren announced a cruiser approaching from the plantation.

A cloud passed between the wreck and the sun, and the birds scattered in the woods chirped like gossips.

Tearfully, Leigh listened to the news of Jacob’s death, nodding as Brad filled her in. It was impossible to tell if she was particularly upset by the news, since she was already overwhelmed with worry for Cynthia. Afterward, she went into the kitchen to tell Hamp about his father.