Silent Approach Read online

  PRAISE FOR BOBBY COLE

  “As he demonstrated in his debut, The Dummy Line, Cole has a quick-paced, winning style, dexterously juggling multiple points of view. For fans of Carl Hiaasen or Elmore Leonard.”

  —Library Journal

  OTHER TITLES BY BOBBY COLE

  The Rented Mule

  The Jack Crosby Series

  The Dummy Line

  Moon Underfoot

  Old Money

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2017 by William Robert Cole

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477818312

  ISBN-10: 1477818316

  Cover design by Cyanotype Book Architects

  For my sweet daughter, Jessi, whose adventuresome soul loves to be still and read.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Epilogue

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chapter 1

  Except for pulling a baseball cap down over his eyes to shield his face from the security cameras, the man simply acted like what he was: someone visiting a friend in the hospital.

  He’d thought through his lunch-break activities carefully. He noticed his hand was shaking as he reached out to press the elevator button. The first floor of the Baptist Memorial Hospital in Columbus, Mississippi, was busy, but the third floor, where his intended victim lay in a bed, was as quiet as he’d hoped it would be. He’d timed his visit around the lunch hour, hoping the staff would be limited. He also knew the patient’s wife left at noon every day to help out at the diner they owned.

  Though the man had committed a few minor crimes, he’d never killed anyone before. Now he was about to murder an old friend. Only an hour earlier he’d been ordering truck parts for the mechanics shop where he was gainfully employed.

  His friend, a partner in a long-ago theft, had been stricken with dementia and had taken to bragging about their heist to anyone who would listen. The secret that had been bottled up inside both of them for thirty years was now pouring out of his old partner with no regard for—or understanding of—the consequences. His friend couldn’t remember his own daughter’s name, but he could recall the events of that night with extraordinary clarity.

  The way the man saw it, he didn’t have any choice. Sooner or later his old pal would say something to someone who would start asking questions and connecting the dots. Hopefully, he hadn’t already run his mouth to the wrong person.

  Thirty years ago they’d both been young working-class men looking to make a big hit and quietly change their lives. Though not foolish enough to rob a bank or smart enough to embezzle money, they’d had an idea that lured them across the line and into the criminal world. When they added up the pros and cons and weighed the risks, their final analysis had come down in favor of committing the crime. The men felt like they’d been given a gift.

  Their loudmouthed neighbor had talked all the time about the value of the Native American artifacts at the Jones Archeological Museum in Moundville, Alabama, where he served as part-time curator. He’d claimed they were worth a small fortune and unknowingly had described the security of the place in enough detail that the two men had realized there was none. For two months they’d drunk beer, played poker with the man, and listened to him describe everything.

  According to their poker buddy, the museum’s main visitors were occasional busloads of sixth-grade students on field trips. The three hundred or so acres of property where the museum was located were very rural and bordered the Black Warrior River, which provided the perfect late-night entry point. The archeological site held twenty-six ceremonial mounds, including a huge pyramid-shaped one that was almost sixty feet high. More important, inside the small building were hundreds of irreplaceable artifacts that could be sold on the black market for cash. They knew there were collectors of Native American artifacts who would pay, but they would have to be careful. Sell to the wrong person—someone who would eventually have to show it off—and it could get them caught. They knew how to steal the artifacts, and they would determine how to sell them later.

  They hatched a plan that began with stealing a key from their passed-out-drunk friend one night and having a duplicate made. Then a few nights later they stole as many artifacts as they could in one haul. They’d planned to make a second trip that same night, but a flat tire on their borrowed van had slowed them down.

  It was just as well. Selling the artifacts for anything close to what they’d wanted to get for them had proven a lot tougher than they’d thought. As the years had dragged on, they’d been forced to shuffle the remaining pieces from one hiding place to another to avoid detection. Now they’d been living with their crime without profiting from it for thirty years while they’d raised families and become upstanding members of the community.

  The man in the baseball cap couldn’t let their secret get out.

  Taking care that no one saw him walk into the hospital room, he was pleased to find his old partner was asleep. The television was playing a rerun of The Price Is Right, and the remote speaker lay next to his friend’s ear. He looked just like he always had, but the man had witnessed his increasingly talkative friend’s mental deterioration during previous visits to his home. Now he was battling pneumonia in the hospital, where educated people could listen to him—specifically his doctor, who was a collector of artifacts himself.

  Turning a valve to stop the flow of the IV running into his friend’s arm, he then pulled a drug-filled syringe from his coat pocket, forced its contents into the port below the saline bag, and stepped away, leaving no evidence behind.

  He thought about waking the victim but decided against it.

  Standing at the foot of the bed, he took a moment to experience what he hoped was his first and last murder.

  Later that day when a nurse checked the IV and turned it back on, the drugs would flood his friend’s system, triggering complete muscle paralysis, and he would suffocate without being able to talk. He was nearly sixty-five years old, overweight, and a candidate for a stroke. No one would suspect a thing. And best of all, a standard toxicology report—
if the authorities bothered to run one—wouldn’t catch the drug.

  Without a twinge of guilt, the man opened the room’s door and vanished down the hallway.

  Chapter 2

  John Allen Harper gritted his teeth and exhaled deeply, punctuating his frustration as he settled the office phone onto its base after disappointing his wife yet again. He had no idea just how upsetting this day would turn out to be.

  Staring at the enthusiastic accountant who sat across the table from him shuffling reams of papers, John Allen wondered when his life had careened off course. Precisely when had work become more important than family? When had business meetings become easier to remember than family events? Rubbing his forehead, he fought to understand how managing his time had become such a challenge, and he was suddenly pissed at Frank Riley, the branch accountant who was now stealing this valuable commodity.

  As he watched Frank fan the pages of the spreadsheet, indicating how much more they had to go over, John Allen exhaled again and cursed silently. This was the third time in less than two weeks that he was in danger of missing a birthing class. Today it was a Lamaze class; last week, a birthing video that he wished he’d never seen. Somewhere in the mix he had completely missed a meeting to pick out paint for the nursery and, worse, a checkup with the doctor. His wife had cried after the missed doctor’s appointment, and the last thing he wanted was to hurt Sadie. He was happily married and excited about the baby. He just couldn’t get his workload lightened. Sadie understood both his responsibilities at work and his motivation for working—which, ironically, was family—but he knew her patience was wearing thin. He hoped she truly understood. Every Monday morning she would remind him of the weekly birth-preparation activities, hoping he’d be in attendance, but his absences were, if anything, becoming more frequent. She was the rock in his life, and he hated to disappoint her.

  John Allen looked at his watch, knowing he had saved himself about fifteen minutes during their phone call by arranging to meet her at the hospital for the class instead of picking her up at home. But then his eyes fell onto the stack of spreadsheet pages, and he knew that small amount of time wasn’t going to come close to helping.

  “Frank,” he said, “I need to call this a day. I forgot I had something important this afternoon.”

  Frank Riley was recently divorced and waiting patiently for eHarmony to put him back in the game. In the meantime he always put work first, logging an amazing number of hours in his quest for John Allen’s job. Armed with another excuse for poor branch performance, the determined bean counter feigned frustration and gathered up an armload of printouts before waddling down the hall to his cubicle.

  John Allen couldn’t care less about Frank’s issues. Relieved to get away from the boredom of analyzing his branch’s own numbers, he began preparing for his exit.

  He was tired of everything, especially of accounting discussions where every word had to be considered before spoken. He did much better when he could say whatever came to mind without first passing it through an “accurate answer” filter. He promised himself that tomorrow, reinvigorated by sleep and caffeine, he would answer the accountant’s questions. Dragging the mouse as he’d done a million times, he clicked “Quit,” and the mind-numbing spreadsheet magically disappeared somewhere onto his hard drive.

  Coat and briefcase in hand, John Allen wasn’t surprised to see he was the last one in the office except for Frank, who always worked late. It was 5:02 p.m., and in just two brief minutes the other nine employees in the accounting office had deserted the building with extreme efficiency. He locked the back door and started for the parking lot, then after taking a few steps went back and double-checked. His head was so full of deadlines, often the simplest tasks went undone or completely slipped his mind.

  The Jeep TJ’s engine cranked over, and for a few seconds John Allen relaxed in the seat. Then he shifted into drive and headed off to learn how to help his wife birth their son. He doubted he could provide anything other than moral support, but he wanted to do all he could. Sadie wanted an epidural to prevent pain, and he hoped the doctors and nurses would do all the heavy lifting.

  It was spring, and college baseball was in full force. He had the radio tuned to a local sports call-in show, and he listened to the announcers previewing that night’s matchup between Mississippi State and a nonconference opponent. He wished he were headed to Starkville to watch the game from the infamous Left Field Lounge instead of learning what to expect in the delivery room, then reminded himself that he would soon have to put tailgate parties behind him to be a dad.

  Sadie Harper had waited until the last minute to leave, hoping her husband would arrive on time and that they could travel as a family.

  She always gave him every chance to participate. She knew he wanted to, but that he also had responsibilities at work that required him to be there, as his bosses seemed to reward manager workaholics based on hours spent behind a desk and not just on productivity. At least that’s how John Allen had explained it to her.

  She was proud of him. He was the regional manager for a national accounting firm. He spent all his days surrounded by numbers and number crunchers and, according to John Allen, had come to hate every minute of it. The saving grace of his job was that he had three states’ worth of offices to manage, which allowed him to travel and to escape the prison of his desk. She knew he slipped his fishing gear into his travel bags, and she always acted as if she didn’t notice. The quick fishing trips before and after work helped him keep his sanity, and she figured he could be slipping away and doing much worse things. Last month he’d caught a four-pound smallmouth bass in Tennessee and was still gloating about it.

  John Allen’s salary was more than that of most men his age in Columbus, Mississippi, and until recently she had devoted most of her energies to helping spend it. They had a nice house on the north side of town that probably cost more than they could afford. Basically, their life was good. Once Sadie found out she was expecting, though, she quickly became more interested in building a family nest than acquiring assets. Where not long ago she would have pined for a new television, now Sadie found herself researching car seats with the zealousness of a consumer-review magazine.

  Like her husband, Sadie felt stress, but hers was different from John Allen’s. She now felt the strain of molding a family together along with the accustomed pressures of teaching special-needs students at a local public elementary school. Unlike John Allen, though, Sadie mostly felt energized rather than oppressed by her life’s intensifying challenges. She’d always been that way. Recently named Educator of the Year in her region, she’d excelled at teaching from the start. Sadie was also a fitness freak and always made sure John Allen ate healthy when she was around. She played tennis, ran half marathons, and tried diligently to encourage John Allen to join her in self-improvement activities. He promised he would one day soon, when he had the time.

  A quick glance at her car’s digital clock caused Sadie to accelerate, pressing her way through traffic instead of just flowing with it. Forced into Plan B after John Allen’s call asking to meet at the hospital, she’d known she’d have to hurry to arrive at the class on time. They were always late, and today would be no exception.

  John Allen drove north on US Route 45 from his office in downtown Columbus. Sadie should almost be there, he thought as he stopped at a red light.

  Traffic was heavy for the small town, and worried that he might be late, he’d stomped on the gas to pass cars and change lanes all across town as he’d hurried to the class. As luck would have it, though, it seemed like he’d gotten caught at every red light along the way.

  Glancing across a busy intersection, he was surprised to see Sadie in her white Tahoe, waiting in the turn lane. He recognized her Ole Miss tag and smiled. They were a mixed couple: he pulled for Mississippi State, and she rooted for Ole Miss. It only caused issues a few times a year when the schools collided in athletic events.

  John Allen waved, but he cou
ld see she was busy looking in her rearview mirror. For a moment he wondered what she was looking at, then he saw it as it passed an eighteen-wheeler and revealed itself. A fire truck was approaching Sadie rapidly, its lights flashing. Turning his radio down, John Allen could hear the siren.

  With the multilane intersection jammed with late-afternoon traffic, the fire truck had few options. Cracking his window, John Allen could hear the roar of its diesel engine under the whine of the siren as it pulled the heavy load of the truck and its gear. Adding to the cacophony, the fire truck’s driver began blowing his air horn as he braked to a stop behind Sadie’s bumper. What in the hell did he expect her to do—just shoot on through the four-way intersection against the light?

  John Allen was watching the drama unfold, mesmerized, when he suddenly noticed Sadie glancing around and awkwardly easing her vehicle forward.

  “No, Sadie!” he screamed. “Stop! Stop!”

  From his front-row seat, John Allen saw that the cars flowing through the intersection weren’t acting as if they saw the fire truck or understood its urgency. Blowing his horn, John Allen screamed pointlessly at his wife.

  The fire truck’s air horn blared again, and Sadie, clearly confused and scared, punched her gas pedal to give the fire truck her lane.

  John Allen watched the scene play out in front of him in what seemed like slow motion: the fire truck beginning to navigate the traffic, its air horns blaring; Sadie staring in her rearview mirror as she accelerated into her turn against the red light. He could only watch in horror as she pulled right in front of a fully loaded log truck trying to beat the yellow light.

  The surprised driver slammed on his brakes, smoking its tires seconds before the impact. He carried a heavy load of hardwood trees and had absolutely nowhere to go. Everyone watching could see him yell and brace for impact.

  Sadie had nowhere to go, either. Seeing the log truck bearing down on her and realizing she had no control over what was about to happen, John Allen watched as she hunkered down in the car. His mind pictured her closing her eyes and placing her arms over her belly to protect their unborn baby.