Sheepdogs: Keeping the Wolves at Bay by Gordon Carroll (tools of titans ebook .TXT) 📗

in Colorado Springs. I took down the address and asked him to let me know if they spotted Tom Franklin’s car.

Before I made it to Lisa’s, Andy called me back. One of Denver’s finest spotted the Blue Audi parked behind a Laundromat on east Colfax. It had a flat tire and blood on the steering wheel. Tom must have tried to put up a fight. Good for him. Andy wanted to know what I was mixed up in. I told him I wasn’t sure but he’d be the first to know. He didn’t like it and started to yell, but my cell phone mysteriously cut out just then.

I stopped a few houses down from the Franklin’s and shut off the car. I’d left Max back at the office. I sat there, eyes closed, breathing deeply. Trying to gather my courage.

Some tough guy.

I hardly knew the lady, but she was nice, a good mother and wife, and I was going to have to tell her that her son was dead and her husband and daughter had been kidnapped by the same people. Lucky me. I felt sick at the thought of it.

A flash drive. What could a seventeen year old teenager have on a flash drive that was important enough for anyone to torture and kill him over? Government secrets? Drug transactions? Maybe he had seen something… taken a picture of something or captured some video of something he wasn’t supposed to see. But then there was the question of the flash drive itself. Thumb dot, I corrected myself. Stupid name.

So was it the drive itself that was important or what was on it? Smaller than a normal flash drive, but big deal, these days electronic memory gets smaller by the nanosecond. So what? Smaller? Faster? More memory? No, it must be what was stored on that drive…dot…whatever. Just what was Shane mixed up in?

I opened my eyes. I’d stalled long enough. There was work to do. A sad dirty, stinking job, but it had to be done. I left my Escalade and walked to the front door. It was nearly seven-thirty and the sun was beginning its slow descent behind the mountains. The breeze had cooled, dropping the temp below sixty. The sound of children playing down the block made my eyes sting. I knocked, stepped to the side of the door. Like I said, old habits die hard. The door opened. I smelled cookies baking; Lisa trying to get life back to normal. That wasn’t going to happen.

She knew the second she saw me; it was in her eyes. She went white.

I didn’t mince words. Fast and quick, like a Band-Aid. “The police have found a body. They think it’s Shane.”

Her knees unhinged. I caught her before she could fall and carried her into the living room. She’d done a lot in the few hours she had. The papers were cleared from the floor, the furniture back in place. I sat her on the couch and went to the kitchen to get her some water. All the shattered glasses were piled in a trashcan sitting in the middle of the floor. I found a plastic sippy cup without a lid and filled it from the sink.

Lisa took a few small gulps. I ripped off the other band-aid and told her the rest.

Water wouldn’t help this time.

When we were done at the morgue, I took Lisa to her sister’s house. Lisa was in a state of shock; so was I. The forensic pathologist only unzipped the body bag far enough for Lisa to make identification. Afterward he gave me the complete rundown. I wish he hadn’t. It’s like when Tommy Lee Jones is about to have Will Smith zap his memory in Men in Black and he says, “I’ve just been down the gullet of an interstellar cockroach, kid. That’s one of a hundred memories that I don’t want.” What had been done to Shane was beyond comprehension. It made me very afraid for Tom and Amber. It easily made my list of a hundred memories I wish I could forget. And suddenly the idea of this being tied in with organized crime didn’t seem quite so unlikely.

The sky was in a bad mood, humped and ugly dark clouds rode low, moving fast. A light rain spit against the windshield as we arrived.

Lisa’s sister was two years older and fifty pounds heavier. It was immediately obvious she was the boisterous one in the family. Under other circumstances, I felt she would be gregarious, as it was she took charge of her sister and carted her off to another room.

The Franklins had five children. Shane was the oldest; his younger brother, Joseph was fifteen, followed by thirteen-year-old Marshal, nine year old Sarah, seven year old Autumn, and two year old Amber. Joseph was my first choice. But I didn’t want to talk with him in the house. First rule of interrogation; remove the suspect from his comfort zone.

“Are you and Shane close?” We were sitting in my Escalade, thunder rumbling overhead.

“He’s my brother.” Joseph stood as tall as me, but thin, maybe a hundred and forty pounds, with sandy, blond hair that touched the collar of his Silver Chair t-shirt. He had clean features, a straight even nose, innocent eyes. He reminded me of a young Jim Halpert from the TV show The Office, before he got all buff and hairy for the movie 13 Hours.

“Sometimes brothers don’t get along.”

“We do.”

“Do you know anything about his disappearance?” None of the children knew about his death yet. A peel of thunder cracked above us. Joseph ducked, then flushed red as he realized I was watching him.

He looked away. “No, I don’t know anything.”

“What are his hobbies?”

“Hockey, computers, stuff like that.

“The two of you play on the same hockey team?”

He shook his head. “He’s older, better. He plays AA Midgets. I’m on an in-house team.”

“What about school?”

“We take some classes together, down at DU.”

“You take college courses?” He still hadn’t looked