Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Rigs

Ihad told Evan, that now Pope was out of the picture, then the precinct would be a safer place. I didn’t tell him that as far as his goons are concerned, he is still in charge, so this wasn’t gonna be easy. One of our prospects, Jamie, has an older brother who works at the precinct in booking or some shit like that, and he says he can get us in. I initially have visions of me being marched through the building in handcuffs to the chief’s office, me cracking open the safe and making off with the goods. It sounds like a reasonable plan in my head, but Brent thinks I’ve lost my freaking mind. He tells me as well as being the booking clerk, he’s the precinct fire officer and he can clear the building, get the stuff I want and all I have to do is keep my ass out of sight. He takes the key and goes on a stealth mission all by himself.

I don’t know how long I thought it was going to take him to make his way into the chief’s office and clean out the safe. But I settle in for the long haul in the van.

He’s been in the office for about five minutes when the fire alarm sounds. It’s a loud grating noise that I can hear all the way out in the parking lot. Naturally, tons of people come pouring out of the building. It’s interesting to see how they break up into several groups and go to different designated areas and I realize they have some kind of protocol in place. A few late stragglers make their way out and join the groups. Ten minutes later I see Brent come out as well. He’s holding a stopwatch and carrying a briefcase and a clipboard.

“Not bad, full office evacuation in three minutes and twenty-two seconds, Johnson, Rodriguez, and Carver,” he looks at the stragglers “If this hadn’t been a drill then you’d all be dead or suffering from smoke inhalation. You hear the alarm, and you leave. You do not stop to pick up your lunch, or finish writing that email. Understood?”

The men look suitably chagrined.

I watch him calling out names and checking off some kind of list. I’m assuming he must have already cracked the safe and the information I need is tucked away in the briefcase he’s carrying. After he’s finished checking off the names on his list, Brent says some suitably encouraging words, and everyone files back into the building. Once he’s alone in the yard he walks over to where I’m waiting and nods toward the van. Opening the briefcase, he shows me what’s inside, there’s a stack of official looking documents. I’m guessing these are the birth certificates we’re looking for and maybe some other stuff that could be helpful.

I hold a trash bag open, and he dumps the contents of his briefcase into it, then looks up at me. “Siege told me how important this information is. I hope it turns out to be everything you’re looking for.”

“Thanks, man. We appreciate your help.”

“Good luck finding those kids. I gotta get back inside before anyone misses me, thought I’d gotten caught for a moment, I was in the chief’s office and I heard a noise, turned out to be fucking Officer Carver eating his lunch wearing his fucking earbuds oblivious to the fact that the precinct could be up in flames around him.”

Once he’s gone, I tie up the bag and head back to the clubhouse. It’s funny how some jobs are incredibly complex, dangerous and time-consuming and others happen quickly without a hitch.

***

I haul the bag into my office and text Siege and Mattie to come and have a look. Mattie is there in the blink of an eye, Evan by her side. I didn’t want him to be involved, he’s been through enough without learning the depravity of what his captors were involved in, but I guess he’s old enough to know his own mind. Going through everything, we realize there are many more kids missing than we originally thought. There are over fifty birth certificates, stretching back almost twenty years. One of them I recognize from a cold case featured on a national television show a few years back. It seems like our tri-county area has been a black hole of missing kids for ages and no one noticed.

Mattie begins making a list of all the names and dates of birth, and I send the names to Zen so he can begin digging up information on them.

Siege finally walks in, with Dutch trailing behind him.

“How can there be so many we didn’t know about?” Siege asks.

Mattie responds, “We were only looking for the ones who came through CPS. If CPS wasn’t involved, how could we know?”

“A member of the syndicate was trying to get his hands on Joy and my son for years. If they had managed to find them, neither would have been on anyone’s radar. I’m surprised to find a bunch of other people went missing over the years that no one knew about,” Dutch says sadly.

“Cleo mentioned to me once that she thought there might be more, but I never once suspected there were so many.” Glancing at his watch, Siege says, “We really should get going to meet Rufus. I told him we were bringing Mattie, and he wasn’t wild about there being another witness, but he agreed to let her in.”

I expect my Mattie to say something, but she was still scribbling down notes.

Vapor and Haze stick their heads in the doorway. “We came to see if Evan wants to hang out with us tonight. We’re doing dropping some ink on a guy from Heartsford,” Haze says by way of explanation.

Evan jumps up excitedly. “Cool! You mean I can go to the tattoo parlor with you?”

“Yeah, I even brought you my old dirt bike,” Vapor says. “It’s street legal. We thought you might want to go for a ride afterward.”

Mattie gasped at that suggestion.

“Only in our parking lot, not on the road.” Vapor quickly adds.

Evan looks at me and then Mattie. “Can I go?”

Seeing the pleading in his eyes was too much for me.

“Yes, but no riding outside the parking lot,” Mattie says looking at Evan and then at Vapor like she was sure my club brother was gonna take the kid on the highway.

“Awesome!” he says before eagerly following the two youngest brothers in our club.

I give Mattie an approving smile. She was good at being firm but fair. And Evan responded so well to her authority, probably because he trusts that she has his best interests at heart. I was so fuckin’ proud of her, in a thousand different ways. Most especially because she was carrying my baby. I couldn’t wait to see her belly rounded with our child. She was beautiful and would be even more so, heavy with the baby made by our love.

***

It took us about an hour and half to get to Rufus’ house. He met us outside. “Welcome, Rigs.”

“Thank you. This is my old lady, Mattie.”

“Ah, the social worker. Welcome Mattie.”

“Thank you, sir. I wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”

He nods in agreement. “If you’ll follow me. The sooner we get started, the sooner we can get this over with.”

He leads us into the house, through the kitchen, and down into the basement. Pope is chained to a chair that was bolted to the floor. I suspect Rufus hasn’t beaten the shit out of Pope because he knew Mattie was coming. He was pretty old school that way. My best guess is he’ll save the blood sport for after Mattie leaves.

Siege pushes off the wall and walks over to us. “Looks like everyone is present and accounted for. Shall we get started?”

I step in front of Pope. “The gig’s up for you, I’m afraid. The Savage Legion has taken out every leader in your organization and now we have you at our mercy.”

“You’re waiting your time. You might as well kill me because I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of telling you anything.”

I squat down to look him in the eye. “Yes, you are. You might be talented at trafficking innocent women and kids and all manner of depraved shit, but I’m only good at one thing. That’s getting people to spill their guts before I do.”

“You sure fucking love to hear yourself talk, don’t you, preacher?”

“I’d rather hear you talk, but I get the feeling you’re going to be difficult. So, here’s what I’m going to do. You’ve got one opportunity to answer the questions my old lady puts to you, and if you don’t, you get to answer my questions. Trust me, you’re not gonna want me asking the questions.”

“Damn biker trash. You idiots like to talk tough, but you’re not stupid enough to hurt me. I’m in charge of this town. My officers will hunt you to the ends of the earth if you kill me.”

“Want to bet on it? What with the evidence we have from your safe, Ben’s body and the video he filmed, then no one’s gonna do anything you say, unless they want to share a cell with you.”

He gasps at that. I was lying about the video, but he doesn’t need to know that. He quickly rearranges his expression and looks like the fucking defiant pig that he is.

I punch him in the nuts just to get our little chat rolling. His scream wis long and shrill. When he finally quieted down, I said, “Let’s start again. My Mattie is going to ask you questions and you’re going to answer them. Are we clear?”

“Fuck off, outlaw.”

I give him three quick punches to the crotch and watch him writhe in pain for a while. I’m not happy about Mattie seeing this side of me, but she insisted she had to be here. I’m hoping that she’ll forget about it, once we’re done with Pope. “No man likes taking a hit to the balls, and you just took four punches with my iron fist. You’d be stupid to keep refusing.”

“Fucking fine. Let her ask her damn questions.”

Mattie asks her questions, but this fucker was evasive. It takes a few more skillfully applied punches and other forms of physical persuasion to get the information she needs. Finally, after almost two hours she gets her answers. Then Siege takes her upstairs to have coffee with Rufus’ wife.

Now it’s my turn to drill down on him and this time I don’t have to be on my best behavior. “How many do you think are alive right now?”

“Most of them. The people I sold to aren’t rich. They value their merchandise and would probably take special care not to break it.”

I grab him by the hair and yank his head back. “By it you mean kids, right? You sick motherfucker.”

“Yeah, fuck. I meant kids. Fucking hell, you’re vicious for a man who wears such a big cross.”

I smile at him, grab my cross and jab it into his eye socket. He lets out a blood curdling scream. Even though I am a spiritual person, that doesn’t mean I won’t hurt him. By the time I’m finished with him he’ll be repenting his sins. I wipe the end of it clean on my shirt, as he’s screaming and writhing on the chair with blood running down his face.

“What the fuck was that?” Pope stammers.

“We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. Now, give me the names of every person on the list that you know is dead.”

“Shit, I don’t know. The first three I sold to a mobster in New York, and he decided to raise the kids to be on his payroll. They made it to adulthood but died in a shootout defending him. Then there was Gordon Kingsley, who died in a riptide when his family took him to the beach one year. He was ten at the time.”

“Anyone else?”

“Shit, give me a fucking minute. I haven’t thought about most of these people in years.”

Eventually after more persuasion, he gives me sixteen names. He has logical excuses for what happened to all of them, but I’m sure there’s more to their stories than what he was telling us. That was fine, because I wouldn’t stop until I knew for sure what happened to each of them.

When I’m satisfied that I’ve gotten all the information I can from him, I step back and let Rufus take over.

“So, what in the fuck made you think you could get away with killing my grandson? Did you honestly think I wouldn’t get out and come looking for you one day?”

“How did you know I killed him?”

“One of your syndicate cronies came looking for me with a proposition. He told me what you’d done to Ben.”

“That’s bullshit.”

Rufus punches him so hard that Pope’s head slams to the side. “Charlie Boyles, remember him? Fucker is swimming with the fishes now, but not before he told me what you’d done to Ben. He saw you set the dogs on that woman and when you realized he knew, you came for him. My grandson was barely thirteen years old, you twisted fuck. “Ben didn’t deserve all the shit you put him through or to get his head bashed in by you.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“Yes, it was. My kid, Evan saw you bash him on the head with a rock. That’s why you came to the hearing, you thought he was dead, and you wanted to finish the job.”

“Stupid little shit should have been.”

I was about to punch him again, but Rufus got in there first. “Wanna know why your man didn’t kill him?”

Pope looks exhausted and confused by the beating, but he fixes his good eye to Rufus, “Why?”

“Boyle learned what had gone down, he was Ben’s friend’s case worker at CPS and when Evan got scared, he was the only person he trusted. Bad mistake, but luckily for us, Charlie-boy thought it would be something to hold over you, and he had an idea of taking over control of operations.” Rufus says.

“Fool,” Pope spits out.

“That’s as may be, but look where you are now.”

“How long are you planning to drag this out for?” Siege interrupts.

“All fucking night. We’re holding Ben’s funeral here at the homestead tomorrow at four in the afternoon. If you and Rigs want to take off, you can view the dead body tomorrow before the funeral.”

I nod. “I’d like to get my missus home so she can rest.”

“You’ve got a nice lady there. Any woman who would come down and help interrogate a piece of shit like this to save some kids is worth worshipping.”

“Thanks, Rufus. You’ve always been good people.”

I head upstairs and can hear Siege saying his goodbyes behind me. We say our goodbyes to Rufus’ wife and head back to the clubhouse. On the ride home, Mattie and I talk about the additional information I’d recovered. It has been a long day and I want nothing more than bed down with the woman I love and sleep for a million years.