Hostage Zero

CHAPTER NINE

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.

“But there’s no such person as Special Agent Leon Harris with the FBI,” she said, responding to the information he’d just recited.

“I’m not hard of hearing,” Granville said. “And I’m not especially dim-witted. Right around the time that he was coldcocking my colleague I think I began to consider the possibility that he was an imposter. How many times must I say it?”

Sheriff Willow rose to his opportunity to make noise. “I’d watch my tone if I were you, Deputy,” he said.

Granville ignored him.

So did Sergeant Wilson. “When you explain how you let an imposter into a secured area, I can stop asking.”

“He was an imposter with legitimate FBI credentials,” Granville explained. Again.

“Not possible.” This from Special Agent William Meyer, FBI, whose role in this was not clear to Granville, beyond the fact that Jimmy Henry was being held on federal charges. “They had to be counterfeit.”

“Then they were good ones.”

“Perhaps to the untrained eye,” Meyer said. Wilson nodded in agreement. It seemed that the federal government and the Commonwealth of Virginia had jointly decided that there was a certain dimness between Granville’s ears.

Granville gestured to them both. “You two met before?”

“Actually, no,” said Sergeant Wilson. And judging from her tone, this was a good thing.

“Then how do you know he’s really with the FBI?”

Meyer puffed up like an indignant fish.

“His credentials, right?” Granville answered for her. “I mean you didn’t do a quick background check or take any fingerprints? It was the attitude, the badge, and the gun, right? Same with me.”

Sergeant Wilson smiled as she got the point. Special Agent Meyer did not. “Let’s move on,” she said.

“No, let’s not move on,” Granville said. He struggled to keep his tone even, but the more he spoke, the more difficult that became. “Let’s stay right where we are until we all embrace the fact that I am not an idiot. In fact, let’s all agree that I am not only a victim, but in many ways the primary victim of what went down here.”

Sheriff Willow took a step forward.

“Save it, Sheriff. I understand that this is embarrassing to the department. Christ, of all the people in the room right now, I understand that better than anyone.”

“You’re getting defensive,” Meyer said with a roll of his eyes and a wave of his hand.

Granville shot to his feet, toppling his chair with his knees. “Defensive, my ass. Shall we talk about what really happened here tonight?”

“What we’ve been trying to do since we got here,” Sergeant Wilson said.

“Bullshit. Y’all have been trying to dig a bunker for yourselves with a door that’s too small to let me in.” As he felt the color rising in his cheeks, he knew that his dreams of getting away from the desk were done, but he didn’t give a shit anymore. “What actually happened here is a very carefully planned and brilliantly executed prison break.”

“That better not be admiration I hear in your tone, Deputy,” Willow said.

Granville glared. “Jesus Christ, Sheriff, open your eyes. ‘Admiration’ might not be exactly the right word, but I gotta tell you it’s close. It was a flawless plan.” He turned on Agent Meyer. “And why would you doubt that a team that was able to hijack our entire security system-and, in the process, erase every goddamn trace that they were ever here, despite the eyewitnesses-could figure out a way to forge a hunk of metal into a precious FBI badge, and some papers into convincing creds?”

He paused. It was a real question, but Agent Meyer’s only answer was to make his ears turn red.

Granville shifted his attention to his boss. “You know, Sheriff, as you struggle to find the right kind of message to send out to the voting public, you might want to mention the fact that thanks to me and all the other competent deputies you hired, we came this close to stopping them, and we limited what could have been a mass breakout to only one.”

Sheriff Willow prepared to be angry, but then the words got through, and he backed off.

Granville lowered his voice as he closed the deal. “What I saw happen tonight was nothing short of heroic. One deputy was overpowered and severely beaten, and then the rest of the team risked their lives to keep everything from going to hell.”

He turned to Meyer. “I’m guessing that your guy has some damned important friends, and they didn’t want him spending time with you. The kind of help he got doesn’t come cheap.”

“But he’s nobody,” Sergeant Wilson said. “Jimmy Henry is a small-time crook, in and out of the system two or three times, but no known ties to anyone important. No known ties to anyone at all.”

Just like that, Granville saw that he’d earned his way inside the circle. She was speaking to him, not at him. “He was accused of shooting up that school yesterday, right?” he asked. He knew the answer, so he kept going. “Maybe it was just a vigilante thing. People broke him out to string him up.”

“For God’s sake, Deputy George,” Sheriff Willow growled.

Again, Granville decided not to engage the boss, deciding to cut a break for the guy who was watching his career implode.

“Was there anything in this Leon guy’s words or actions that make you think that might be the case?” asked Sergeant Wilson.

Granville shrugged. “No. But then again, there was nothing in his words or actions that made me think he wasn’t an FBI agent.”

“Seems awfully Zane Grey to me,” Meyer said, alluding to the famed writer of pulp Westerns.

“You know what goes on at the school, right?” Granville pressed. “Every single student there is the child of an incarcerated parent. If ever there was a group that could open up a can of Zane Grey vigilantism, that would be the one.”

“It’s worth looking into,” Wilson said, jotting a note to herself. “We start with the parents of the two who were kidnapped-”

A state trooper who looked too old not to have any stripes on his sleeve interrupted Wilson by clearing his throat. He held a cell phone in his fingers, ready for it to be taken. “Excuse me, Sergeant, but this is a park ranger. He first asked for Sheriff Willow, but when I told him you were running the investigation, he said he wanted to talk with both of you.”

“A park ranger?” Wilson said. She looked to Willow. “Any objection to putting it on speaker?”

The sheriff shrugged.

She pressed the button on the phone. “This is Sergeant Wilson with the Virginia State Police,” she said. “I’m here with Sheriff Willow. How can we help you?”

The background noise through the speakers made it clear that the ranger was outdoors. “Yeah, hi,” said a young voice. “This is Paul Johnson with the National Park Service. I’m at the George Washington Birthplace Memorial here on Popes Creek?”

Everyone in the room shrugged together. “Okay,” Wilson said.

“Well, I think I’ve got something here that belongs to you.” A smile appeared in his voice. “Some one, actually. He says his name is Jimmy Henry. Does that mean anything to you?”

The morning crew at the Washington Birthplace Memorial had been shocked to find the shackled man chained to the base of the obelisk that marked the entry to the park. According to the incident reports they’d filled out for the National Park Service, the young man had been sleeping soundly on the ground. Once the workers saw the chains and the orange jumpsuit, they were able to link what they were seeing with the reports they’d heard on the radio, and they’d called higher-ups without actually approaching the fugitive.

Granville George was waiting at the jail when Jimmy Henry arrived. The overtime hadn’t been approved, but he didn’t care. If he had to eat a couple of official hours on his own nickel, that would be fine, just so long as he saw justice done.

They’d sent a car from Middlesex County to Westmoreland County to make the pickup, and when Jimmy was escorted in, Granville made a point of being right there in his face to let him know that actions had consequences in this part of the world, and that Jimmy had chosen poorly.

The rules in a case like this were clear. Jimmy Henry was processed just as if he were a first-arriving prisoner. His personal effects-none-were catalogued, and then he was escorted to the processing bay, where he was stripped naked and cavity searched. It was a part of the process that Granville didn’t particularly enjoy, but he’d long ago lost his guyshy instincts. It doesn’t take but one incident where someone literally pulls a weapon out of his ass to make you respect the importance of a cavity search.

He’d accordingly been prepared for the humiliation; but he hadn’t been prepared for the bruises. Jimmy Henry’s left leg was bruised beyond purple. It bore a deep black stripe from what must have been a brutal attack. When they called in the jail physician-actually a local doctor who moonlighted for folding money-they also found bruising around the kid’s throat, in addition to the more typical stress wounds inflicted by the unyielding shackles.

“Who did this to you?” the doctor asked.

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Jimmy answered.

“Seems to me it serves your best interests to talk about the people who tortured you,” Agent Meyer said. Sergeant Wilson was in the room, too, but remained silent. If Granville wasn’t mistaken, she was embarrassed by the prisoner’s nakedness.

“Who said anything about torture?” Jimmy asked. “These bruises are from falling down.”

“Must have been a hell of a fall,” Granville said.

But the prisoner had shut down. “I know my rights,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you anything without a lawyer.”

“Who broke you out of here?” Sheriff Willow asked.

Sergeant Wilson put a hand on his shoulder. “He asked for a lawyer,” she said. “We’re done with questions.”

With that, it was over.

Granville stayed with Jimmy as he dressed himself in fresh orange coveralls, and then escorted him back to the cell where his evening had begun only a few hours before. As they walked together down the central hallway, Granville called out to the other inmates, “Take a look, gentlemen. You can try to run, but you’ll never get away.” Faces appeared at the windows in cell doors. “Jimmy Henry is back with us after only five hours on the run. He raised all that ruckus, and what did it buy for everyone? Forty-eight hours in lockdown. When y’all start going stir-crazy in there, I don’t want you getting pissed at me and the other guards. I want you to remember that Jimmy is the one to blame.”

Jimmy shot him a panicked look, and Granville shook it off. This was the kind of announcement that could get an inmate beaten to shit, but Jimmy should have thought of that before.

“You’re a kidnapper,” Granville said to his charge as they arrived at his cell door. “And you’re the guy who cost every inmate a lot of privileges. I’d be careful if I were you.” Jimmy’s eye grew large as the truth sank in. “If I were you, I might think about cooperating a little.”

Something happened behind the kid’s eyes, but it was gone as quickly as it arrived. Fear, maybe? Perhaps just a grim acceptance of what lay ahead. “Well, I tell you what, Deputy George. If I was you, I’d have killed myself a long time ago. Now, why don’t you just quit worrying about me?”

Granville opened the cell and let Jimmy inside.

As he pushed the door closed, he glanced to his left and saw another prisoner, Antoine Johnson, grinning widely as he strained to see what was happening.

“What are you looking at?” Granville barked.

Antoine gave a little giggle. “I’m just happy to learn that I’m smarter than I thought I was,” he said.

Evan Guinn knew that he was moving.

He couldn’t see or hear anything, and his head hurt like it had been pounded with a hammer, but he knew he wasn’t lying still anymore. He had the sense of floating. Maybe the sense of spinning. It wasn’t a good feeling like the ones you get when you dream about flying on Harry Potter’s broom. This was a sick-making feeling, not unlike the morning after the night when Powell Andersen had treated a bunch of the RezHouse crew to the moonshine that had been sneaked into the dorm via his Uncle Ed. Evan had always thought that Father Dom had suspected something that day, but he’d never called the question.

Even as he was floating, though, he had the sense that he was somehow anchored down. He couldn’t feel any ropes or chains, but as he tried to move, his arms and legs felt as if they weighted a hundred pounds apiece.

He needed to run. But why?

Men in the dark. Men with tape and heavy hands. The foul-smelling rag over his face.

He’d been kidnapped. Kidnapped. Was that possible?

Who would want to kidnap him?

The more he thought about it, the more his head boomed. He wanted to move, to run; but he was paralyzed.

Except his eyelids. If he really struggled against the weight that burdened every part of him, he could get them to open. First his left eye, all by itself, and then his right. It was hard to focus, but when he forced himself, he could make the scenery come together.

He lay on his back, staring up at a low ceiling that had knobs and things he’d not seen before. They cast shadows that cut straight across at a sharp right angle, and from that he knew that the light was coming in at him from the side, instead of from above, as he would have expected. He turned this head to the right-carefully, to keep the hammers inside from beating against each other-and he saw an oval window that looked out on the sky. It was a little thing, nowhere big enough to climb through.

He was on an airplane. He’d never been on one before, but he’d seen enough of them in movies. The fact of being airborne made him feel fear for the first time since awakening. There’s kidnapped, he thought, and then there’s kidnapped. If they flew you to where you were going, you’d be gone forever, right?

Moving his head to the left, he confirmed his suspicion. This was definitely an airplane.

“He’s waking up,” a voice said, and Evan feared he’d done something wrong. If he could have made his vocal cords work, he would have apologized.

“Not for long,” said another voice.

The shadows shifted, and a man appeared in his field of vision. “You must have a hell of a liver, kid,” the man said. He bore the faint scent of garlic.

Unable to do anything-to talk or scream or even roll over-Evan watched as the man lifted a plastic tube and stuck a needle in it.

He had the fleeting thought that the other end of the tube must be stuck in his arm someplace, but then his thoughts and his mind went blank.