John Gilstrap - Hostage Zero

“What happened to that guy who was shot?” Jimmy asked.

“Why do you care?” Jonathan asked.

Jimmy blew a puff of air through his nose and shook his head. “I was the fucking driver, okay? I didn’t plan any of this shit. I’m not some fucking animal who snatches kids, but I also know that I’m fucked by the law because I was part of it. Doesn’t mean I want some guy to die.” His voice dropped in volume. “I was earning a living. I didn’t think it would go like this.”

Jonathan kept to the point. “This Sjogren guy. Is it S-HO-G-R-E-N?”

“I don’t know how he spells it. It’s not like we wrote letters back and forth.”

Jonathan conceded the point. “Was he with you at the school?”

Despite the fear and the discomfort, Jimmy was able to cough out a laugh. “Sjogren? Hell no. He never gets his hands dirty.”

“He’s just the middleman,” Jonathan helped.

“Exactly. People need help and they contact him.”

“Who were his customers?”

“The first jobs I did with him were about a thug named Sammy Bell. I don’t know if you know that name.”

Jonathan shot a knowing look at Boxers. Sammy Bell used to be an enforcer for the Slater crime family, whose interests often clashed with those of Jonathan’s father. When Old Man Slater kicked the bucket a dozen years or so ago, Sammy had stepped in to take over.

“This was Sammy Bell’s operation?” Jonathan asked.

“No, no, no, no. I didn’t say that. I said that’s how I first met Sjogren. I don’t know if Sammy Bell is involved.”

“Where can I find this Sjogren guy?” he asked.

The breathing tell kicked in again. “I don’t know,” Jimmy said. “I’ve never tried to find him. I don’t have to. He finds me when the time comes.”

“Is Sjogren his real name?”

“It’s all I’ve ever called him.”

“And what about the others?” Jonathan asked, moving on. “What did you call them?”

Frustration took root. “Jesus, you make it sound like we’re drinking buddies. I didn’t call them anything. Hell, I didn’t even want to talk to them.”

“Why’s that?”

“Scary, scary dudes. Like they were pissed at the world. They growled and snapped at each other like they were married or something.”

“How many of them were there?”

Jimmy hesitated long enough to verify the number in his head before answering. “Four,” he said. “Five, including me. Only, they all seemed to know each other, and they weren’t happy about me tagging along.”

The wording made Jonathan cock his head. He noticed Boxers doing the same. “What does that mean, ‘tagging along’?”

“Like when you have to take you little sister with you on a date.”

“I know what the phrase means,” Jonathan said. “It was an odd choice of words for you.”

“But that’s what it was like. I think something happened to their original driver. That’s why I was brought in.”

“Something happened like what?”

Jimmy’s frustration peaked and he shouted, “I don’t fucking know!”

The outburst brought another explosive but harmless blow from Boxers’ truncheon onto the heavy pillar.

“Go ahead!” Jimmy yelled. “Go ahead and hit me again, you stupid shits. But before you can beat information out of me, you’ve got to beat it into me first. I just don’t know this stuff you’re asking me.”

“Everybody settle down!” Jonathan commanded.

“Who are you people?” Jimmy asked.

Jonathan was shocked that it took him so long to ask. “Trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to know,” he said. “Are you telling me that you never heard any names from these guys you were with? They must have called each other something.”

Jimmy steeled himself with an enormous breath. “A guy named Ponder seemed to be the guy in charge. He was the one who was pissed when shit started to fall apart.”

“How did your time with these people end? When did you last see your friends?” Boxers asked.

Jimmy drew another deep breath. “I dropped them off at a storage place in Kinsale,” Jimmy said. “It had some stupid name that used the letter U instead of the word ‘you.’ They off-loaded the kids and never looked back.”

“Why the storage place?”

“I guess they had stuff stored there,” Jimmy said. He quickly added, “I’m not being a smart-ass. They honest to Christ didn’t tell me about their plans.”

“What did you see?”

“As little as possible. I’m telling you, these are really scary dudes. You know how when you get mugged you don’t want to look the dude with the gun in the eye so he won’t have to kill you to keep you from testifying? It was like that with these guys.”

Jonathan had never felt that way himself, but he’d inflicted the feeling on others a time or two. “What did you see, then, when you were trying not to see anything?”

This time, Jimmy hesitated a long time-probably twenty seconds. That kind of internal debate usually portended something big.

“First promise you won’t kill me,” Jimmy said.

Jonathan shot a look to Boxers. This was an interrogation, not a negotiation. The rules prohibited any deals with the target. To maintain the command position, the book said you had to make your target feel utterly helpless.

Jonathan decided to trust his gut instead. “I’m not an assassin,” he said. “I wouldn’t shed a tear if you got hit by a truck, but as long as you continue to cooperate, I’m not going to kill you.”

Another pause. Another gut-check for Jimmy. “They had a helicopter in there,” he confessed. “It wasn’t very big, and the propellers or whatever the hell you call them were, like, folded back, but I could see the front of it.”

Jonathan’s stomach fell. “So they moved the children by helicopter.”

“I think so.” Jimmy’s tone turned whiny. “I saw that, and I knew I was in deep, deep shit. A chopper, for Christ’s sake. Who does that? Who’s got the money for that? I just boogied the hell out of there as fast as I could.”

Jonathan’s brain was stuck on the image of the chopper. Jimmy had asked all the right questions. Who the hell did have those kinds of resources? “Where did you boogie to?” he asked.

Jimmy managed a laugh. “To jail,” he said. “I was supposed to ditch the van at a McDonald’s parking lot in Montross, where there was supposed to be a Mustang waiting for me. Only, I got pulled over on the way.” He sighed. “I guess I got a little heavy-footed.”

Jonathan didn’t share with him the fact that his van had been spotted by a witness. If it hadn’t been for that one insomniac, Jimmy probably would have skated with nothing more than a speeding ticket.

He found himself out of questions. He looked to Boxers and got a shrug. The big guy was out of questions, too.

Granville George struggled to contain his amusement as he watched the teams from the FBI and the Virginia State Police try to make sense out of all that had happened. Whoever planned this mess had every right to feel proud of himself-even though Granville himself was probably looking at an extended tour of duty behind the desk.

Sheriff Charles Willow had hauled his shriveled ass out of bed to be a part of the investigation, and from the looks of him, with his sleep-twisted hair and his white beard stubble, the usually media-savvy sheriff had forgotten to glance at a mirror on his way out of the house.

Presently, the sheriff seemed most concerned about remaining relevant among the state troopers and FBI agents, all of whom had taken the position that as keeper of the jail system, Sheriff Willow was more a target of the investigation than a participant in it. Still, since he literally had all the keys, there was no keeping him out of the reception area as the very attractive Sergeant Lindsey Wilson of the Virginia State Police ran Granville through his story for the third time.