Rainey with a Chance of Hale (A Rainey Bell Thriller Book 6) Read online

  Deputy Robertson finished writing a note on her pad and then asked, “Can you give me the names of a few people I could talk to? Maybe they can fill in some of the blanks.”

  Tammy listed two names. “Jennifer Gables and Emily Santini. My mom has their phone numbers. She makes me give her all my friend’s numbers.”

  “That’s a smart mom you have. I’ll get that info from her. Anything else you think I need to know?”

  Tammy thought for a second. “I don’t know. I mean, I can’t really say for sure.”

  Deputy Robertson was intrigued. “Tell me what it is. We never know what little thing will solve a case.”

  “I think I saw Chance Hale. We were friends before he moved to North Dakota. He’s two years older than me, but I always kind of liked him.

  “And you think you saw this Chance Hale last night?”

  “I believe he was there. It might have been his cousin Robby. I don’t know why I keep thinking about him. I know he wouldn’t hurt me. He was always nice to me. Like kid sister nice, you know.”

  “Okay, anyone else?”

  “I…I can’t remember.”

  Tammy started to sob, indicating she needed another break from the constant questioning she had endured since being found wandering naked on a golf course at sunrise. The emergency room staff and the trained sexual assault team reported Tammy had been raped, multiple times and in every way possible. She showed no visible signs of being beaten or restrained, but she did have bruising from being handled roughly. Evidence of rape was irrefutable according to the ER doctor who treated her. She needed stitches to repair tearing. He was sure she had been drugged but had to wait for the toxicology report to know what was in her system. It was definitely a dissociative anesthetic. Tammy Gaskill might never remember what happened to her.

  “You get some rest, and I’ll come see you again before I go.”

  Deputy Robertson stepped into the hallway where her colleagues waited.

  “She named him too, just like the other kids did. Her parents suspect him, as well. Whoever this kid is, everyone thinks he’s capable of this crime.”

  A deputy wearing an Orange County Sheriff’s Department uniform spoke up, “I know this guy. He was accused of sexual assault a few years back. Rumors say his grandfather got the charges dropped—paid off the girl’s father. Chance left town right after we questioned him. He went to live with his dad in North Dakota.”

  Deputy Robertson started nodding with sudden recognition of the name, before she said, “Hale. His dad was a serial killer, right?”

  The Orange County deputy replied, “Yep. Joshua Lee Hale. He blew himself and an FBI agent sky high last January. Like father like son, I guess.”

  Deputy Robertson looked back at the trauma room door where Tammy Gaskill waited inside to begin the process of healing.

  “For that young woman’s sake,” she said, “we can only hope it’s that simple. It rarely is.”

  5

  November 1, 1998

  Hale Trucking

  University Station, North Carolina

  “Frank 25. Dispatch. In pursuit of suspect. On foot in the fenced area behind Hale Trucking.”

  “Dispatch. Frank 25 out of the car and in foot pursuit. Do you need backup?”

  “Frank 25. Dispatch. That’s a negative at this time.”

  “Dispatch. Frank 25. Roger that.”

  Orange County Deputy Kendal Kemble replaced the radio on his hip. He walked out of the gate at the back of the Hale Trucking parking lot and entered the woods. His assigned rookie for the evening followed behind.

  “Man, this woods is thick, ain’t it?”

  Kemble corrected the fresh-faced rookie’s grammar. “Isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it is. What makes you think we’re going to catch him in here anyway? He’ll have to come back out to the road. It’s a ways to the highway and there ain’t nothin’ else out here.”

  “There isn’t anything.”

  “Then why are we—”

  Kemble cut him off with, “Shut up, will you, Tucker? This is your first time on nights, and it’s Halloween. You should maybe think about listening and not running your mouth nonstop. All right?”

  “Okay, sure. I just don’t see why we got to come all the way out here, in the dark, at nearly three in the morning. We got his car, his wallet, and his keys.”

  “We would have him if you had been paying attention while I ran his information,” Kemble said.

  “He started puking again. I didn’t want him to puke on my shoes. He looked too sick to ru—”

  Deputy Kemble cut Tucker’s chatter off when he dropped to one knee and raised a closed fist in the air. Faintly, just out of his flashlight’s reach he heard a twig snap and then another, in rapid succession and some distance apart. Whoever it was moved fast, taking long strides. Only a person familiar with the area could run through this forest in the dark with that much confidence.

  As Kemble tracked the footfalls, Tucker raised his weapon and shouted, “Stop! Police!”

  “Do not fire that weapon, rookie,” Kemble said. “He’s just a kid.”

  Tucker challenged the reprimand. “It’s probably a deer anyway.”

  “Deer don’t generally jangle keys as they run,” Kemble said, as he rose from his crouched position. “Come on. He’s headed toward the old grotto.”

  “The old what?”

  “It’s like a manmade cave. Old man Hale used to keep a pet lion out here. The lion died in the eighties. It’s been grown over for years. Kids party in the grotto sometimes, especially since the old man’s grandkids became teenagers.”

  Tucker followed Kemble through the trees. He asked, “Isn’t there another way in here? Like maybe a way to drive up in the car with the big lights strapped to it.”

  “Now where is the fun in that?” Kemble replied with a chuckle. “No, we can’t drive to it. The old man put up an eight-foot chain link fence topped with razor wire on this property. That gate back there is the only way in or out. We searched for evidence on this property when old man Hale’s son, Joshua, turned out to be a serial killer. The State and FBI lab guys were all over this place.”

  “Did ya’ find any bodies or parts?” Tucker asked with a morbid excitement that rubbed Kemble the wrong way.

  “No, we didn’t. Jesus, do you ever shut up?”

  Kemble pushed through the trees, leaving Tucker in a wake of branches snapping back into place. After a few more yards, his flashlight beam fell on the thick Carolina Jessamine vines that obscured the chain link fence surrounding the old grotto. He walked around the corner to see the gate standing open. He heard Tucker trip over a root and stumble around behind him.

  At the same time, someone began heaving. The sound of projectile vomiting on the concrete floor inside followed. Kemble peeked into the darkness beyond the gate. The beam of his flashlight lit up a teenager on his knees engaged in vomiting over a ledge into the dark abyss formed by the sunken area where a lion had once lived. The grotto looked like a forgotten zoo exhibit, overgrown and eerily quiet, except for the puking teenager.

  “Don’t bother getting up right now, but when you’re done, I need to see you out here,” Kemble said to the teen, who glanced over at the light before returning to the task at hand.

  “That ain’t him,” Tucker said, as he regained his balance and joined Kemble at the gate.

  “It isn’t him,” Kemble corrected.

  “That’s what I said. Where’d the other guy go?” Tucker asked the puking young man.

  The response was more retching.

  Kemble stepped through the gate and aimed his light around. Beer cans and broken liquor bottles tumbled out of an overflowing fifty-gallon drum near the gate. He felt a near carpet of smashed cigarette butts under his feet. On the floor between two old truck seats, a stack of well-worn porn magazines stuck together from the humidity and dampness trapped inside the vine-covered grotto.

  Along with the seats, a discarded couch, with f
ive wooden legs and a brick substituted for a missing sixth, formed a circle around a halved steel drum with a dying fire inside. The couch held a second young man passed out in a sleeping bag with a mostly empty bottle of whiskey still clutched in his hand. An empty sleeping bag lay stretched across two seats that had been pushed together. Kemble surmised it belonged to the kid a few feet away, the one trying to keep his guts from coming out his mouth. Neither of the inebriated occupants of the grotto was the young man Kemble and Tucker had chased into the woods.

  Kemble approached the puking teenager, who was at least conscious. “Hey, what’s your name?

  The teen turned to face Kemble, still on all fours. He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his hoodie and answered, “Robby Hughes.”

  Tucker, who was suddenly at Kemble’s shoulder, said, “That’s the name of the guy we’re chasing, but this ain’t him.”

  Kemble ignored Tucker. “I need to see some ID.”

  The teen’s coloring had left his face. He was too sick to lie. He answered, “I left my wallet in the car.”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “Up at the house.”

  “Are you Roger Hughes boy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who is that?” Kemble asked while aiming his flashlight at the passed-out teen on the couch.

  “My cousin, Chance.”

  Kemble knew neither of these kids was the one they found puking on the side of the road. He was about to ask the real Robby Hughes if he knew who might be driving his car at this hour. They were interrupted by the sound wave that came a half a second before the night sky erupted with an explosion that shook the ground. The concussion rumbled through the cavernous grotto. The concrete forming the cave-like structure coughed dust into the air. The metal bars creaked against the steel mesh that covered the open-air roof, raining rust and dirt down on the occupants.

  “Holy shit,” Tucker said and hit the ground like a veteran fresh from the combat zone, which he was. “That was close, man. Somebody’s blowing shit up out here. Big shit!”

  Kemble had served during Operation Desert Shield. He had heard his share of explosions. That was indeed a large one. The flash had penetrated the heavy vegetation covering the grotto, but he could see nothing through it now. He stepped outside and peered through the dense woods. Over the tops of the trees, the reflection of fire glowed orange on fingers of smoke spiraling upward. Pieces of insulation and particles of debris floated down like snowflakes in the beam of his flashlight.

  “Frank 25 to Dispatch,” Kemble said into his radio.

  “Frank 25, go ahead.”

  “Dispatch, you’re going to want to roll fire and ambulances, detectives, bomb squad…oh hell, just send everybody. That boom I’m sure you heard was Hale Trucking blowing sky high.”

  #

  “The Dread Pirate Roberts?”

  “Yeah, he was dressed like the Dread Pirate Roberts. You know, like from the ‘Princess Bride’ movie.”

  “I know who the Dread Pirate Roberts is. You’re telling me the guy that was puking on the side of the road when you pulled up was dressed like the Dread—”

  Tucker interrupted the detective. “—Pirate Roberts. Head covered in black, black pants, shoes, shirt, you know.”

  The detective asked, “Did he have a cape, a mask?”

  “No on the cape, but yeah, he had a mask pushed up on his forehead.”

  The detective seemed relieved to see Kemble walking toward him.

  “Hey, Kemble,” he said, beckoning him closer. “Describe the guy you were chasing.”

  “Five feet ten inches tall, about a hundred and fifty pounds, Caucasian, looked and sounded like a teenager, light hair color, blond probably, pulled back in a ponytail. Black pants, black athletic shoes, black turtleneck under a black hoodie, black knit hat with eye and nose holes worn pushed up on his forehead.”

  The detective looked at Tucker. Sarcasm smothered his question, “Dread Pirate Roberts?” He looked back to Kemble, “Where do you get these guys?”

  Kemble shrugged. “He can shoot the eyes out of a gnat at a thousand yards and disarm an IED with his eyes closed, so we’ll work on the rest.”

  The detective’s attitude changed a bit, but not much. “Okay then, you tell me what happened.”

  “We came up on a car pulled over on the shoulder and saw an individual vomiting in the grass. We stopped. He didn’t appear to be under the influence. He said he just felt sick and pulled over, but he was too jumpy to be innocent. I went back to the cruiser to run his info when he decided to bolt. As it turns out, neither the car nor the ID was his. While we were searching for the guy that ran, we found two of OB Hale’s grandsons drunk in the old grotto, Chance Hale passed out and Robby Hughes too sick to stand. We had just ascertained that the car and ID given to us by the suspect we were chasing belonged to Robby when the explosion happened. I thought one of the fuel tanks blew at the trucking office.”

  “Unfortunately,” the detective said, looking at the smoldering ruins of a large structure, “it was the house that blew up. Fire says it was probably a propane leak.”

  Firefighters picked through the debris, in search of live embers. One knelt then raised his head so that his voice carried clearly, when he said, “I’ve got human remains here.”

  6

  February 16, 2000

  Federal Bureau of Investigation

  National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime

  Quantico, Virginia

  “Bell! Hey, Bell, wait up.”

  Rainey didn’t look back.

  She called over her shoulder, “What is it, McNally? Still trying to figure out how not to pay off on that bet?”

  “No, no, you’ll get your fancy bottle of whiskey.”

  “Tequila,” Rainey corrected him, as she continued around the track.

  “Yeah, yeah, I wrote it down.”

  Special Agent Danny McNally was the exact opposite of what people thought of when picturing an FBI agent. Far from dark and severe, Danny’s freckled cherub cheeks reflected his Irish roots and seemed always to frame a smile. His head full of red wavy hair sat atop his tall and broad frame. McNally had been in Rainey’s academy class. It was her acceptance to the BSU training program before him that cost Agent McNally a nice bottle of Don Julio Real, even if she was ahead of him by only a few months.

  McNally began to breathe harder as he quickened his pace to come alongside her. Rainey could hear him gaining ground and lengthened her stride.

  “Come on, Rainey, wait up. It’s important. Wood sent me.”

  Rainey eased to a cool-down lap pace.

  Danny fell into stride with her. “Thank you for slowing down,” he said, a bit out of breath. “I’m not out of shape, but I’m the guy you hounds run the fox to. I’ll tackle them, but I won’t ever catch a runner.”

  “It’s important to know your strengths,” Rainey said, patting him on the back and laughing. It was then she noticed he was in street clothes. “Not a bad pace for dress shoes, though.”

  “I didn’t have time to change. The old man said go find you. So I did.”

  The old man was SSA Robert Douglas Wood. He recommended her for the behavioral science training program and taught a few classes she attended, but Rainey had not been called in for an office conference since that first interview. She couldn’t imagine what he wanted. Unless it was time to find out what her future was going to look like.

  “Is Wood making the placements today? I thought the decisions would come down next week.”

  She jogged to a stop by her gym bag and reached for the water bottle inside.

  Danny seemed thankful when Rainey stopped moving.

  He kicked off a dress shoe and rubbed his arch, “I’m rethinking my opposition to rubber-soled dress shoes.”

  “Try Rockports,” she said, before asking again, “What does Wood want?”

  Danny looked up from examining his foot. “I walked by his office and he yelled at me to go find y
ou, ASAP.”

  “It’s probably because I was talking to O’Toole about a school shooter inquiry from one of my dad’s war buddies, Wellman Wise. Remember him from the academy computer class I helped teach. He asked my dad to arrange a meeting. He wanted to talk about a possible school shooter thing. I guess the old boys were testing me.”

  “It could be Wood needs to see you and not some conspiracy theory,” Danny said, adding, “You’re paranoid, Bell.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidence,” Rainey countered, as she removed her damp sweatshirt. She stood in the crisp air in only her sports bra and corrected Danny’s appraisal of her. “I’m prepared, not paranoid. There is a difference.”

  “You aren’t modest either,” Danny observed.

  “It’s a sports bra.” Rainey indicated the other runners, mostly men, with a nod of her head, adding, “These guys have seen more at the beach.”

  Cool and dry, she retrieved a clean academy tee shirt and FBI windbreaker from her bag and redressed. She thanked Danny for finding her, tossed him her water bottle, for which he seemed grateful, and then jogged off toward the Behavioral Science section of the academy.

  Hoping Wood called her in to give her a BAU assignment, a little voice in the back of her mind chanted, “Not crimes against children. Not crimes against children.”

  Rainey was at the end of eighteen months of mentored training, which had followed the initial sixteen weeks of additional academy classes. Now among the elite few FBI trained behavioral analysts, she was soon to be assigned to one of the BAU teams. Most recently she had been training with the crimes against children unit. Of all that she had seen, those crimes got down to her bones. Rainey hated cases that involved kids.

  She had just completed a preliminary assignment with the crimes against children unit and returned last night from a long-needed vacation in North Carolina with her father. The powers that be would assign her where the bureau thought she would be most effective in the next few days, she’d been told. Rainey assumed she was going to computer crimes because of her computer forensics degree. She also had a graduate degree in behavioral science and hoped that would allow her to work with the crimes against adults unit, the mind hunters.