Dead Shot (A Cal Murphy Thriller Book 1) Page 9

  Cal Murphy had become an exception.

  CHAPTER 32

  GUY HUNG UP THE phone. Another grilling from Mr. Mendoza. Another order to tone down the coverage of the three teens’ deaths in Wednesday’s edition of The Register. Today, he truly felt like nothing more than a managing editor. No real decisions to make, just ensure people did what they were told.

  It also explained why he was getting so agitated with Cal. With his assignment changed to a simple management position, Guy’s star reporter was gone and not returning his calls. Guy couldn’t even do the one thing he was being asked to do that day.

  Three calls were made to Cal throughout the early afternoon. And three calls went straight to voicemail.

  Guy had been tough on Cal before, but he always responded in a positive way. This time though, it wasn’t elderly wisdom being passed down by Guy. It was a direct command, complete with all of Guy’s redirected anger that went against every journalistic instinct Cal had ever cultivated. Stop working on a story that could expose a deep level of corruption? Cal had questioned after being told to stand down. And Guy knew it was a tough directive to follow. After all, stories like these were what journalists dreamed about at night while climbing into bed after eating a TV dinner all alone. At least, it was what Guy used to dream about.

  Guy knew Cal would never stop pursuing this story. Something in the seasoned newspaperman’s gut told him that Cal wasn’t just concocting a cockamamie conspiracy theory. He only hoped Cal’s pursuit of the truth wouldn’t end in his death.

  CHAPTER 33

  CAL HEARD THE SHOT and felt the sting in his right arm almost simultaneously. He had never been shot before, nor had he imagined the searing pain that would accompany a bullet barreling into his tricep. It was such a sharp pain that it sent him sprawling toward the ground as he half tripped and half dove, hoping to avoid any other bullets whizzing his way.

  Kelly dove for the ground as well. Lying on her stomach a few feet from Cal, she inched her way toward Cal while remaining on her belly. When she reached him, she frantically tried to get Cal to move. It was only about 15 yards to the dock, which had an open bay at the moment. With a gunfight breaking out, it was unlikely to stay open for long.

  “Come on, Cal. We’ve got to move!”

  Cal nodded, grimacing at the pain and the sight of blood gushing from his arm, despite pressure from his left hand. He looked more like a butcher than a reporter.

  Two more bullets zipped in their direction, both off target.

  Cal and Kelly scrambled for the open bay door. It took a few seconds for their eyes to adjust from the bright Idaho sunlight to the dimly lit warehouse space that was surprisingly less full than Cal anticipated. The back of the warehouse was empty and stretched into darkness for at least 300 yards. It was quickly looking like a dead end when it came to finding a place for cover.

  Stacks of empty wooden pallets lined the back wall of the facility, and there was a small janitor’s closet about 30 yards away.

  Still no sign of anyone from inside the facility.

  Cal recognized his two less-than-desirable choices: make a run for the racks and hide on top of a shelf, or hide in the janitor’s closet. The burning sensation in Cal’s arm along with the close proximity of the janitor’s closet made Cal’s decision easy.

  ***

  Cloverdale security fanned out across the building looking for two suspects. Mel Davis, head of Cloverdale’s security operation, received a phone call from one of the executives about a possible perimeter violation. A man and a woman were headed for their facility and they didn’t have good intentions, at least that’s what Davis was told.

  The order was shoot to kill.

  While he didn’t mind the healthy paycheck, Mel often questioned why there was such tight security at a mid-level marketing company. Whenever he voiced his concern, he was silenced by the rehearsed chorus of managers telling him that corporate espionage is real—and if you don’t take proactive steps to stop it, it will stop you.

  Mel just nodded and did what he was told. This wasn’t the first time he had shoot-to-kill orders, but he doubted he could pull the trigger if ever faced with one of these corporate spies.

  ***

  From within the janitor’s closet, Cal and Kelly heard the footsteps of presumed security guards racing around the building in search of them. They didn’t dare speak, much less breathe.

  They heard voices shouting out instructions about how they were going to sweep the facility. Then Cal heard something that lodged a lump in his throat. It was the phrase “shoot to kill.”

  He looked at Kelly, and, even in the darkness of a compact janitor’s closet, he could see the terror in her eyes.

  Cal had been careful not to bleed on the warehouse floor in order to prevent establishing an identifiable trail of blood. Kelly had added her left hand for additional pressure—and it seemed to be working at the moment.

  Cal was itching to get something on his arm to clean out the wound and bandage it up. It didn’t feel life threatening and he wasn’t worried about it killing him. But he was worried about the untold number of armed security guards hunting them.

  Most of the audible footsteps grew more distant. The search had apparently moved toward the other end of the facility. Cal and Kelly were almost feeling confident to breathe in a deep breath when slow-paced footsteps appeared to be headed straight for the janitor’s closet.

  Just then, Cal’s iPhone buzzed. He scrambled to stop it. And then he and Kelly held their breaths. The footsteps had stopped. Right outside the closet door. Someone was blocking what little light had been seeping under the door. It was the only light Cal and Kelly had to faintly see anything in the closet. Sheer darkness matched sheer terror.

  There was nothing. No movement. No sound. Just a pair of boots stationed outside the door and two occupants on the other side, holding their breath

  Cal imagined the guard pressing his ear against the door and listening for any type of movement within. The pause at the door seemed to last an hour.

  Then the guard jiggled the doorknob. Cal was glad he locked the door behind him but he knew this was probably the end. He cringed and prepared for the worst.

  CHAPTER 34

  “IT’S LOCKED,” SHOUTED THE guard. “I don’t hear anything. I don’t see any blood either. And I don’t feel like walking all the way back to our office just to get a key to double-check what I already know. Let’s call this section of the warehouse clear and move on.”

  “I’m with you. Let’s go,” came the response.

  The footsteps went from threatening to faint to gone. Cal and Kelly both felt it was safe to whisper but remained still.

  “I thought we were done,” Kelly said.

  “And that was the first time you thought that today?” Cal’s sarcasm attempted to lighten the gravity of the situation. It didn’t work.

  “No, but if we don’t get you bandaged up and get out of here, someone is going to find us and turn us in.”

  It was five o’clock and Cal knew Guy would be looking for them. Maybe that was a good thing. Otherwise, who would be looking for them? As upset as Guy could get, his rage could cause him to send out a search party. As long as it wasn’t the police, it would be OK.

  Cal’s phone vibrated. He had three missed calls and one text message. Guy hated text messaging, so Cal figured the calls were from his boss. He went to the text message. It was from Josh. In all the excitement over the past 48 hours, Cal nearly forgot Josh was coming to visit on Friday.

  Looking fwd 2 seeing u & ragging u 4 starting Matt Garza on fantasy team. U r loyal 2 a fault. C u Thur

  Checking his starting pitchers for his fantasy league team was the last thing on Cal’s mind while stuck in a janitor’s closet inside a building crawling with armed guards who were instructed to shoot him. But the text did cause Cal to smile and provided a momentary diversion from the fear beginning to take over his mind.

  Cal then stood up and used the light
from his iPhone to search for some strips of cloth to bandage his wound. By the dim light, Cal could tell that the wound wasn’t nearly as deep as he initially thought. His arm still throbbed with sharp pain.

  Kelly joined him, volunteering to shine the phone’s light around the closet so Cal could thoroughly search the shelves for something to bandage him up. Cal found a first aid kit with some alcohol wipes to sterilize the wound along with some gauze and tape to dress it. Kelly took the items from Cal’s hand. She began cleaning Cal’s bloody arm and patching it up without the slightest communication from Cal. But she needed to talk.

  “So how are we going to get out of here, Cal?”

  Kelly’s nerves were near their frazzled ends.

  “Good question. I say we wait until it’s dark and there’s hardly anyone here. Then we try to hide in a delivery truck.”

  “A delivery truck? Are you out of your mind?”

  Just then the sound of footsteps halted the hushed conversation. Four, maybe five people. Cal couldn’t tell for sure. But they were within a few yards of the janitor’s closet before they began talking. Cal and Kelly carefully returned to a sitting position.

  “You guys be careful tonight. The boss man says there were some reporters who broke into our facility today. Do you all remember The Golden Rule? Let’s play by it tonight. Got it?”

  The remaining voices beyond the door muttered in agreement. They understood. Kelly thought she did too and gasped at the order before cupping her hand over her mouth. Cal scowled at her, something he knew Kelly could see even in the darkness of the closet.

  “Peppy, you’re headed to Seattle tonight. Big John, you’re going to Portland. And Ringo, you’ve got the lucky all-nighter to San Francisco. As always, keep a low profile and travel the speed limit. We don’t want anyone getting too interested in our product that shouldn’t be …”

  “Product?” Cal faintly whispered. “I thought these people made vitamins and household cleaning supplies.”

  “… and remember, if you see those reporters, shoot to kill. We’ll have a team clean up the mess and provide a nice cover story.”

  The footsteps sounded as if they headed out in different directions. Big overhead doors rolled up, breaking the still air. The hum of forklifts zipping about the warehouse overwhelmed the silence.

  But it didn’t matter to Cal. He still held his breath, hoping Kelly was doing the same. Maybe he wasn’t that interested in writing this story after all. If the teens were dead, the teens were dead. No amount of sleuthing could bring them back. But Cal had already dug too far. Now all these Cloverdale Industries goons were concerned with was silencing him and Kelly – permanently. Yet the story was getting more intricate and dangerous to Cal. It appeared that Cloverdale Industries was involved in a different type of multi-level marketing company—and it wasn’t legal.

  CHAPTER 35

  GUY SLAMMED HIS PHONE down and let out another string of expletives. Two hours until deadline and his two best newsroom personnel had vanished. Between Cal and Kelly’s phones, Guy had left six messages and didn’t get a single response. He even sent Mindy over to Cal’s apartment to look for them, and he hadn’t heard from her in nearly an hour. His newsroom was falling apart with two hours to go before deadline.

  But Guy didn’t really care about their big story, although he was sure their pursuit of it had something to do with all of Cal’s recent questionable behavior. All he wanted were two warm bodies writing articles and editing photos. This legendary gunslinger in the newsroom was turning his back on his arch nemesis – hard news. He was too tired to fight political battles and public perception. He just hoped that if he turned his back, no shots would be fired. It was time to ride off into the sunset and be a good newspaper man for a small community paper, where scandals surface on the next-to-last page at the bottom in the briefs section—if at all.

  The voices in his head fought courageously.

  “What’s your gut telling you, Guy?”

  “It’s telling me that I’m going to get another ulcer worrying about this story.”

  “Don’t you want to know the truth.”

  “Sure, but nobody else here does. Why make any waves?”

  “What’s happened to you, man? You used to stand for something.”

  “I am standing for something—my sanity … and my job. There’s no need to mess with a good thing.”

  And Guy settled it—for now. Just get those trouble-making reporters back into the office and put this week’s paper to bed. That would make this all go away right now. If only he knew where Cal and Kelly were, he would go get them himself.

  Guy sat down at his desk, burying his head in his hands. He let out a long sigh. The powder keg was set to blow.

  ***

  Joseph Mendoza looked across the office into The Register’s newsroom from his publisher’s perch—the only walled office in the building. He used to care about the truth at one point too. But not anymore. It didn’t pay nearly as well as the lies.

  His office phone buzzed. It was Gold.

  “Hello, Mr. Mayor. Any news to report?”

  “That’s why I called you. Don’t you run a little thing called the newspaper? Besides, it’s your employees that are mucking everything up.”

  “They won’t be employed here any longer. As soon as I find them, they’re gone.”

  “Even your niece?”

  “Especially her. She still thinks she’s going to get this paper—and there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that I would give it to her.”

  “Well, I applaud your resolve to do whatever it takes …” Gold’s voice trailed off. He paused. Then he restarted his sentence, pushing the limits of acceptable decibel levels. “… BUT IT’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH! FIND YOUR EMPLOYEES OR ELSE SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES!”

  Yelling rarely rattled Mendoza. For someone coming from a lineage of impassioned Basque people, yelling merely revealed that one was unsatisfied with something. It didn’t usually convey the same urgency as someone outside his family might express. Gold was outside Mendoza’s family.

  Mendoza shook as he hung up the phone, thoroughly frightened at the way Gold was growing more paranoid by the hour. It was traumatic enough that Gold had lost his son two days before, but to have his very way of life threatened? He wasn’t going to let this pass without doing some damage. Mendoza realized he wasn’t collateral either—he would be in the crosshairs if things didn’t go Gold’s way. His reporters’ whereabouts suddenly became his chief concern.

  ***

  Still seething in his own right about the apparent abandonment of his two best news people, Guy might have accepted the order with welcome arms. Mendoza had just called him to say that Cal and Kelly were to be fired immediately—or whenever he saw them next.

  Instead of gladly accepting this order to rid himself of the two biggest pains in his life over the past two days, Guy – the newspaper man gunslinger – stopped to think. Was his complicity in Statenville’s secret going to result in the death of both a reporter and photographer he had grown fond of? Was a sack full of money on his back porch every month worth having their blood on his hands? He was unsure of what his next step should be, even though he knew which one he preferred to take.

  Guy also knew diplomacy was the key to surviving long enough to deliver the final editorial blow, if that’s the direction he decided to choose. In the meantime, he would have to seethe in private about granting permission to have his editorial power stripped.

  CHAPTER 36

  KELLY INCHED CLOSER TO Cal, serving the two-fold purpose of calming her terror and putting pressure on his wound. Cal pulled her even closer.

  “We’re going to be OK, Kelly, but you’ve got to hold it together. If these guys hear us, we’re done.”

  Kelly quietly sniffled as she nodded. They both knew what was at stake—and it was far more than winning some writing award that seemed rather trivial considering the new ante.

  For more than 30 minutes, Cal and Kelly
sat motionless as the warehouse whirred with the sound of normal commerce. Every sound of approaching and fading footsteps created a series of emotional highs and lows for them. Would this be the moment someone would discover them before putting a few bullets in their defenseless bodies? Despite all the near misses, nobody seemed concerned with mopping the floor at the moment. What mattered was getting those mysterious deliveries out the door and onto their destinations.

  Finally, the last audible footsteps faded and it was quiet again.

  Cal was curious—and impatient. He pressed his face flat against the cold concrete floor and squinted one eye closed. With his other eye, he peered into the warehouse, looking for feet. He saw none. But he did see a stack of boxes just 10 feet outside the janitor’s closet.

  Without a warning to Kelly, he jumped up and dashed out the door, grabbed a small box with a Cloverdale Industries logo imprinted on the side and ran back to the closet, re-securing the door.

  “Are you nuts?!” Kelly shouted in a whisper.

  “Yes, I am. But if these goons are gonna kill us, at least I want to know why.”

  Cal took out his house keys and slid it across the tape that held the box together. Except for his moment of insanity, he had been careful to do everything as quietly as possible.

  He opened the box and pulled out the packing material. Inside the box was a bottle of “Clean and Clear.” Instead of containing a cleaning liquid, it was filled with white crystals.

  “That doesn’t look clean to me,” Cal whispered, shining the light of his cell phone on the foreign substance.