A Hard Man To Forget Read online

  She carefully moved forward, using the edge of the wall for protection. She darted through the hallway into an open door across from the kitchen and in her peripheral vision, she saw the man with the gun at the end of the hallway.

  His pistol was raised and he shot, but Pauling had already flung herself forward. Chunks of plaster from the wall behind her flew in all directions.

  Pauling wheeled around and was about to fire.

  But the man was gone.

  The door at the end of the hallway was wide open.

  She moved quickly forward.

  It was a small house. The first room on the right was a bathroom.

  It was empty.

  Pauling leaned against the bathroom’s doorjamb. Outside, she heard a car start up, followed by the sound of squealing tires and an engine racing.

  Pauling ducked back into the hallway, moved quickly down the hall to the door on the right. She took a quick look inside.

  It was a bedroom with a dresser, two windows, and a body on the floor.

  It was Cassady.

  She wasn’t moving.

  27

  The car emblazoned with the logo of the New Mexico State Police pulled off the highway and its driver looked into the distance.

  His name was Paul Veasy and he’d gotten the call that an aircraft had notified dispatch a body had been seen out in the desert.

  Not exactly big news in this area. The desert was a harsh and unrelenting place. Homeless people. Drug addicts. Folks suffering from mental illness. When they went into the desert they usually didn’t come back.

  Now, Veasy looked at the sun in the sky, and mentally ran through the past few days, weather-wise. It had been hot with very little cloud cover. Great for the golfers, not so good for a person lost and perhaps in a weakened state.

  The pilot had been fastidious with pinpointing its location, and Veasy had gotten the call.

  Veasy debated about driving his vehicle into the desert, but decided against it. One, even though the terrain was obviously flat, there were occasional boulders, well camouflaged to completely blend into the landscape. More than one trooper had managed to rip out pieces of his squad car’s underpinnings by being too aggressive in taking his vehicle off-road. In cop shows on television, a character’s penchant for ruining squad cars was often a lighthearted joke. Not so in the real world. Your car was your responsibility. You could get a black mark in your employee file if you were careless with it.

  Two, Veasy was on a diet. He’d joined Weight Watchers, was now down fifteen pounds, and was constantly looking for reasons to exercise. On the program, food was correlated to a point system and the more he exercised, the more points he earned. The more points he earned, the more food he could eat. And Paul Veasy loved food. It was how he’d ended up in Weight Watchers in the first place.

  So, Trooper Veasy shut off his vehicle, pocketed the keys, locked her up and walked toward a patch of land currently being overseen by two vultures circling overhead.

  It took him about fifteen minutes to reach the corpse.

  It had been torn apart, but Veasy could see it was a man. The work boots, jeans and shirt all told him the deceased was male. What was left of the face and other areas of exposed skin were all charred black.

  Ethnicity was impossible to estimate.

  Veasy carefully stepped around the body, and slipped a hand into the front pockets. They were empty.

  He gently lifted the body and found a wallet.

  He opened it and studied its contents.

  There was a New Mexico driver’s license.

  With a photo and a name.

  Rick Simmons.

  28

  Pauling went to Cassady, pivoted so she was facing the doorway and couldn’t be ambushed, and knelt down next to her. She saw the duct tape around the woman’s wrists, and quickly turned her so she could see her face. Cassady’s wide eyes stared out at her in terror, another strip of duct tape was across her mouth.

  Pauling held up her finger to indicate she needed a second. She then left the room, checked the bedroom across the hall, and raced to the front of the house.

  The mystery car was gone.

  Pauling grabbed a small paring knife from the kitchen, went back to Cassady, and cut her hands free.

  “This is going to hurt a little bit,” Pauling said, and then pulled the tape from Cassady’s mouth.

  “Owwwww,” Cassady said, and then burst into tears.

  Pauling helped her to her feet, and guided her toward the kitchen.

  “We need to call the police,” Pauling said, and reached for her cell phone.

  “No!” Cassady barked at her. “No. They have Rick.”

  “Did they say that?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “Why else would they be here trying to get me, too?”

  Pauling wasn’t sure she could answer that. She hadn’t gotten a very good look at the man who’d shot at her. He’d been a white guy, in jeans and a dark jacket. Black shoes.

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  Cassady sat in one of the chairs at the kitchen table and Pauling got her a glass of water, then sat across from her.

  “That’s just it, I don’t know what happened,” Cassady said. She took a drink of water and then gulped the rest.

  “Why don’t you start with when you came home from work?”

  Cassady nodded.

  Pauling knew that someone had heard the gunshots and the cops would most likely be arriving soon, despite Cassady’s desire not to call them.

  “I came home from work, changed, and was getting ready for your visit when someone grabbed me from behind. I don’t know how they got into the house.”

  Pauling knew. If they had Rick Simmons, they no doubt had his keys to the house. No need to break in. Just use the key and let yourself in. Easy.

  They took me back to my room and I thought they were going to rape me.”

  “You said ‘they.’ Why do you think there was more than one person?”

  “When I came to I could hear them talking.”

  “What were they saying?”

  “I don’t know. I thought I heard them say Rick’s name, but I can’t be sure.”

  In the distance, Pauling heard a siren.

  “Cassady, I need you to think. Why would someone be after you and Rick? You’re absolutely right. If they already have Rick, why do they want you?”

  The young woman burst into tears.

  “I have no idea,” she said.

  29

  The bald man with the bulging veins was not pleased. He didn’t show it to his subordinates, however. Any sign of negative emotion was not helpful. It was its own form of weakness.

  He simply remained staring at them.

  “It was supposed to be a grab and go,” the smaller of the two men said. He was thin and wiry. A relatively new employee. He was also the most nervous of the two. The other one, a tall man, knew better than to speak. He’d been working for the bald man for quite some time.

  “How were we supposed to know that some chick would show up? She was some kind of cop, too.”

  “So you failed to bring Cassady Simmons here,” the bald man said.

  “Well, yeah. But it wasn’t our fault.” The shorter man looked at his coworker for support and possible vindication, but he was greeted with silence.

  These were excuses, and everyone in the room knew it.

  The bald man contemplated the human beings before him. That was one of the intrinsic failures of evolution. It didn’t create perfection. People died all the time, mostly because of gaps in the evolutionary process. A lack of knowledge. A momentary lapse of awareness. One had to recognize the fallibility of their own minds and bodies. Too few did.

  Hundreds of years ago, a failure to recognize a danger in the environment meant certain death. Genetic material that played any kind of role in that failure, was also eliminated. It couldn’t be passed along.
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  It was the beauty of evolution.

  Natural selection.

  The two men stood waiting for their superior’s response.

  He was still contemplating the laws of nature.

  In the wild, a human being could wander out into the night, get snatched up by a tiger, and that particular personality trait would become less apparent in the population.

  The bald man did not believe in God. He believed in science. In physics. In the power of the natural world.

  He understood, however, that at this moment he was a part of that evolutionary process. He could either be the tiger in the night who eliminated the weakness in these two men, or he could allow the undesirable trait to continue. Perhaps the fear they were obviously experiencing right now would curb that predilection.

  That might be true.

  It also seemed like the best approach was to split the difference.

  The bald man pulled the gun from its resting spot in the small of his back, raised it and fired. The bullet struck the short man on the right, and blew off the top of his head.

  The body sagged to the ground.

  The tall man hadn’t moved, despite blood spray flecking his face.

  Although he didn’t show it, he felt vindicated by his decision not to speak. Unless his boss was going to shoot him, too, it had been a life-and-death decision.

  Instead of a bullet, he received an order.

  “Throw him in the incinerator.”

  30

  “Let’s try to work this out,” Pauling said.

  She had finally gotten Cassady under control. The tears had stopped, but the young woman was still shaking. Pauling had poured her a glass of water from the kitchen counter, and let her drink while she performed some security.

  Pauling went to the doors and windows and made sure everything was locked. She dead bolted the door.

  While she went through the house, she studied the belongings. It was all to be expected. Basic furniture, probably from one of the big warehouse furniture stores. Nothing very expensive. Nothing unique.

  There were a few framed prints of desert flowers on the walls, and the rest were pictures of Cassady and Rick. Some of their parents and extended family as well.

  It looked like the home of a relatively young couple about to start a family.

  Pauling made her way back to Cassady.

  “What am I supposed to do?” the young woman asked her. Her voice was more steady, but still a little shaky. She looked like someone whose world had been turned upside down, more than once.

  There was no doubt how awful Cassady must feel, Pauling thought. Her husband’s missing, no family nearby, her home invaded, attacked, and now the only person here to help is someone she just met. Someone who Cassady doesn’t even really know.

  Pauling decided the wrong way to go about this was to start telling Cassady what to do. For starters, she didn’t even know where to begin. And to start listing things for the young woman to do would only overwhelm her more.

  So she decided to take a different approach, and get Cassady’s mind off of herself.

  “Let me tell you a little bit about myself,” Pauling said. She gave Cassady the rundown on her background, including her work at the FBI with kidnapping and other types of cases. She also told her a little about the Anne Lane case, leaving out the part about Jack Reacher.

  “But I still don’t know how you found me,” Cassady said. “How do I know you’re not one of them?”

  “Well, for starters, I didn’t try to kidnap you,” Pauling pointed out. “If I was one of them, I would have helped them get you into their car or something. And they shot at me, I didn’t shoot at them.”

  “Yeah,” Cassady said. “Unless you just want to appear to be my friend to get something from me.”

  “Something like what?” Pauling asked. She wasn’t being a smart-ass. The fact was, there was a possibility that Rick Simmons had been taken in an effort to get something. That attempt had failed. So now they were coming to Cassady for whatever it might be.

  Pauling didn’t think so, but since it had come up, she thought she would pursue it.

  “It can’t be anything. I would have given them whatever they asked for to get Rick back. But we don’t have anything,” she said, her voice on the verge of breaking into sobs again. “We have, like, five hundred dollars in our checking account.”

  “Right,” Pauling said. “So if you don’t have anything, what could I possibly be after?”

  “That’s true,” Cassady admitted.

  “Also, I wanted to go to the police. You didn’t. If I were doing something illegal or trying to harm you, I highly doubt I would have suggested the cops.”

  “I’m sorry, I do trust you,” Cassady said. “I’m just scared. And sick of this shit. And I miss Rick.”

  She started crying again.

  Pauling was about to say something when the doorbell rang. She got up, walked to the living room, with her hand on her gun.

  What the hell was it now, she thought.

  Pauling looked out toward the front and saw exactly what she had hoped she wouldn’t.

  Two police cars.

  31

  “Cassady Simmons?”

  The cop peering in at Pauling was young, with big brown eyes, a hawk nose, and thick black hair swept straight back. There was another man in back, an older cop. They both looked solemn.

  Pauling immediately knew what that meant.

  Oh no.

  She hesitated before answering the cops, but there was no other way. There wasn’t time to soften the blow she knew with certainty was coming.

  “Sure, let me get her. Come in,” she said.

  Pauling walked back to the kitchen and Cassady looked up at her. It was a horrible moment for Pauling, because she knew what was about to happen and felt incredibly guilty that Cassady didn’t. There was no way to prepare her, though.

  “The police are here,” Pauling said.

  “I said not to call them!” Cassady hissed at her. A mixture of terror and anger swirled behind Cassady’s big blue eyes. Her mouth was set in a tight, grim line.

  “I didn’t call them,” Pauling said.

  “Well who did?”

  “Someone probably heard the gunshots. Or maybe nobody called them and they’re here for a different reason,” Pauling said, trying to prepare Cassady for what was most likely to transpire.

  Cassady’s eyes went wide and she jumped up from her chair and practically ran down the hallway to the police.

  Pauling trailed her, heard the cops break the news.

  Cassady let out a long wail, a painful scream, and collapsed.

  The two cops caught her in their arms.

  Pauling pointed to the couch in the living room.

  They carried the young woman to the couch and Pauling grabbed a pillow, to rest Cassady’s head. There was a throw blanket on one of the chairs. Pauling put that over Cassady.

  She turned to the older cop and gestured for him to follow her into the hallway.

  “Tell me what you found,” Pauling said.

  The old cop looked at her with bemused skepticism.

  “And exactly who are you?”

  “Lauren Pauling.”

  “Okay, Lauren Pauling. Now tell me who you are and why you’re here. Family? Friend?”

  “A friend.”

  The cop had taken out a notebook and pen, ready to take notes.

  “Do you know her husband? Rick Simmons?”

  “Never met him,” Pauling said. “I’m a friend of Cassady. She called me because she was worried about Rick. Do you know anything about that?”

  The old cop tapped his pen against the notepad, weighed his options.

  “You have some ID?” the cop asked.

  Pauling showed him her driver’s license.

  “New York, huh?”

  “So what’s the deal with Rick?” Pauling asked, ignoring his question.

  Finally, he glanced toward the living room and th
en back at Pauling. “Rick was found deceased in the desert.” His voice was low, but Pauling could tell he’d done this before. Probably many times.

  Pauling just nodded. She had figured that was the reason for the police stopping by, and from their body language. Breaking this kind of news never put a bounce in anyone’s step.

  “Cause of death?” she asked.

  The older cop looked at her. He had a weathered face, deeply lined and tan. His eyes were blue, and accepted no bullshit.

  “Are you sure you’re just a friend of the family?” he asked.

  “Friend. And private investigator,” Pauling said. “We can talk about that later, though. Cause of death?”

  He shook his head. “Not for public consumption. Were you a cop? You seem like it.”

  “FBI,” Pauling said. “Formerly.”

  The old cop gave a little smirk. “Figures.”

  He brushed past her and walked toward the living room. Pauling followed him and watched as he joined his young partner standing next to Cassady, who was now curled up on the couch. In the fetal position, numb with shock. Her worst nightmare had come true.

  Pauling knew what was going to happen next. They would want to bring Cassady to the station to identify the body. They would probably put her in an interview room afterward and ask her a ton of questions. Pauling was confident Cassady had nothing to hide, but she still thought about finding the young woman an attorney. She filed the thought away for the moment.

  Instead, it was Pauling’s intention to take Cassady to the police station. The poor woman had no one now. Maybe there was extended family, but in the meantime, Pauling was it.

  She really wanted someone to go out to the crime scene. She wanted to find out where the body had been found and look at it before nature ran its course. She was licking her investigative chops but couldn’t do anything, as she had to protect Cassady from further harm.

  Pauling ran through the people with whom she had worked previously in the area. Immediately, one named jumped out way ahead of the rest.