Chapter 4
1553 Words
Chapter 4
Jacksonville, FL
Sunday
THEY’D MADE GOOD time on the trip home. For once, there were no traffic slowdowns on I-95 and they’d been able to maintain a steady seventy-three or so most of the way.
As Nate pulled the car into their garage, he said, “I just remembered something.”
“What?”
“Remember our first trip up I-75 in your Mustang?”
“Sure.”
“I wanted to see how fast it would go, and you reminded me of the consequences of getting too many tickets.”
“That I did.”
“You also promised me something,” Nate said.
“I did?”
“Yes you did. You said you knew some back roads where I could safely give all those horses free rein, but we never got around to doing that.”
“Put it on our calendar for Friday or Saturday night, babe, and we’ll do it.”
“I’m going to hold you to it, this time.”
“That’s not a problem.”
They exited the car and went into their house.
“It’s nice, not having to carry luggage, isn’t it?” Nate said—a reference to the complete wardrobes they’d begun maintaining in their mountain home.
“That’s true, although I think we ought to keep at least one overnight case in the car for emergencies,” Quentin said.
“What kind of emergencies?”
“Geez, I don’t know. Emergencies, or maybe whims. What if we decided to stop overnight on the way to and from the mountains?”
“Yeah,” Nate said. “I like it, and we could pack a few essentials for both of us in one small bag.”
They’d stopped by the Post Office on their way home, and Quentin had a bundle of mail in his hands.
“I’m going over to the office and deal with this mail.”
“I’ll be here when you get back.”
“Don’t forget that we have to visit a few service stations this evening,” Quentin said.
“I won’t.”
They had a contract with a company that owned and operated multi-pump service stations all over the southeast. Their contract covered all of the company’s stations in Duval and several adjacent counties, and required them to visit every station a predetermined number of times each month, looking for potential employee dishonesty and/or theft. The actual job wasn’t that hard. Either one or both of them would visit a station and, while pumping gas or making a small purchase inside, they would use their telepathic abilities to find out what, if anything, the station employees were doing that they shouldn’t be doing. That was the easy part of the job. The difficult part came when they had to report on what they’d found, because they could never reveal their abilities. Quentin often referred to that phase of the task as creative writing 101.
He walked across the backyard, through the gate in the fence, and across another small backyard to the backdoor of his office. Quentin’s office was in a former residence located on Blanding Boulevard in the Cedar Hills section of Jacksonville. The area had been developed in the fifties, and as the suburbs had grown, the remaining houses along that small strip of Blanding Boulevard, now a major thoroughfare leading to Orange Park and the suburbs beyond, housed doctors, lawyers, and other professionals such as himself. When the house directly behind his office facing the street that ran parallel to Blanding had become vacant, Quentin had purchased it and spent a great deal of time and effort gutting it and turning it into a comfortable residence. Being able to walk across two backyards to get to work was his idea of an ideal commute.
He settled down at his desk, dealt with the mail, paid a couple of bills, then looked at his calendar. It was going to be a full week, but with Nate’s help he’d get it done.
They spent that evening and much of the rest of the week making the rounds of service stations and found a few minor trouble spots, and one major problem in the process. It took a while to write up the necessary report and send it to their client, but they wrapped that up Friday afternoon.
“That’s that,” Quentin said as he pushed the send button and the e-mail with the report attached disappeared into the ether.
“Can we go let the horses out, now?” Nate said.
“What? Oh, you mean the pony car.”
“Yeah.”
“Not right now,” Quentin said. “We need to wait until after midnight. Well after midnight to do that.”
“Why?”
“Too many people out and about. There are a few people living out there in the country, and there’ll be an occasional car on the road. It would be risky even then, if it wasn’t for our special skills.”
“Meaning?” Nate said.
“Wait and see. Meanwhile, how about a quick tumble in the bed, followed by a shower and ultimately, dinner?”
“What a good idea.”
They locked up the office, set the alarm, and returned to the house. An hour or so later they were seated at a four-top in Biscottis, one of their favorite eateries. With them were their friends Carl and Jim. Carl was a cute redhead with a perfect bubble butt, and was a newly appointed lieutenant in the Jacksonville Sheriff’s office. His partner Jim was an attractive brunet who had his own CPA practice in the Five Points area.
As always, they had a great time visiting with their friends over a meal, then they said good-bye to them, and headed home.
“What now?” Nate said as soon as they were inside the house.
“We wait.”
“How long?”
“Let’s shoot for one in the morning, and by the time we get there, the area should be pretty quiet. Meanwhile, didn’t we acquire a new movie on DVD the other day.”
“That’ll work.”
While they watched the movie, Nate kept an eye on his watch. The movie finally ended, and they went to the garage and the waiting pony car. Quentin’s only vehicle was a ten-year-old Mustang that, at first glance, appeared to be somewhat neglected. That of course, was by design. On those occasions where he had to follow someone, the car helped him because it was so inconspicuous. Under the hood, however, it was a different beast entirely. The engine and power train were a nearly new Ford interceptor engine with the appropriate transmission, and it was finely tuned for maximum performance. Quentin could, and on a couple of occasions had, outrun anyone.
With Nate driving, and Quentin navigating, they headed to one of the more remote corners of Duval County. The area was somewhat isolated, but not entirely devoid of people. Over the years, the city had grown toward the east until it had encountered the intracoastal waterway. To the northeast were the salt marshes separating Duval from Nassau Counties, and to the south was Orange Park and Clay County. In recent years the western portion of the county had slowly begun to become built-up, and there was no doubt in Quentin’s mind that it would eventually become as densely populated as the rest of the county.
Quentin directed Nate to a long stretch of road. “Pull off the road, park under that tree, and kill the motor for a minute.”
“Why?”
“Just do it, please.”
“Okay.”
Nate followed Quentin’s instructions, and when the motor was silent, said, “Now what?”
“Now, we go into rapport and have a mental look around.”
“Why?”
“I want to see if there’s anybody about who isn’t asleep, and I’m particularly interested in the police. This area is known for occasional drag racing, and it’s not unheard of for the cops to be lurking about.”
{Oh!}
They slipped into rapport.
{What now, Q?}
{Now we look for signs of life in every direction. There’ll be too much background noise to the east of us, but let’s try that direction first, then work our way around the compass, clockwise. Okay?}
{You’re the expert in surveillance.}
{That’s what my clients pay me for: expert surveillance—among other things.}
With their minds linked, they reached out mentally toward the city, and immediately encountered so much mental static that it was impossible to distinguish any individual thoughts.
{This is like static on a radio, isn’t it, Quentin?}
{Yeah. That’s a good description. Let’s probe slowly around in a circle now.}
{Clockwise, right?}
{Yeah.}
They sat quietly in the car and probed to the south, immediately running into a band of static.
{What’s that, Quentin?}
{Orange Park, I suspect. Let’s keep moving.}
{Okay.}
The static grew less as their search neared the Middleburg area, and they even picked up bits of late night conversations here and there. Then, when they were mentally searching an area due west of where they sat in the car, they picked up a pair of mental voices that were so strong that they had to be nearby.
{Why’d you have to kill the other guy, Marv? We only needed one body tonight for the ritual.}
{What did you want me to do, Harv? Let the little fucker get away? That’s all we need right now.}
{What are we gonna do with an extra body then, Marv?}
{Dig the grave a little deeper and bury them together, Harv.}”
{She won’t like that, Marv. Not one little bit.}
{She don’t have to know about it, Harv.}
{She says that the wrong kind of body can mess up the ritual, Marv. She says the body has to be in a certain age range, and killed right here, in the grave, and nowhere else. If that can mess the ritual up, who knows what two bodies will do?}
{f**k her, and f**k the ritual, Harv. I don’t believe in all that mumbo jumbo, I’m just in it for the money.}
{In that case, shut the f**k up, Marv, and start digging this grave a little deeper.}
- Writer
