‘No, sir, but he did film it…’
‘Right, but we will never see that film, will we? I mean, if those kids have half a brain they would have thrown the cell phone into the goddamned river.’
‘Exactly, sir, and that’s why we have divers searching in the river where the robbery took place. We are also doing house to house searches for the two boys within a one-mile radius of where it happened.’
‘Yeah, yeah, you are doing all you can. I see that, Ari. I doubt they’ll find anything in that polluted river, though. What about the driver and the two missing security guards? Have they been found?’ Adam Themison asked.
‘No, sir. There is no sign of them, which leads us to suspect that they may be in the trunk of the Tesla…’
‘Oh, my God! And their families?’
‘They are being kept informed, sir, and we have agents trained in psychological trauma looking after them.’
‘Good, yeah, that’s very good. Keep me posted, Ari,’ the Attorney General added.
**
Meanwhile in Southeast Washington, Noah and Merc, desperate to know how much Dion Elpis had managed to get out of the TV company for the video clip, arrived at Dion’s Diner dead-on midday.
The place looked deserted. Merc tried the door; it was unlocked. He pushed it open. The window shutters were still closed, and there were no lights on. It was very dark inside.
‘What do you think?’ Noah whispered nervously.
‘I think the old SOB’s done a runner with our money,’ Merc replied angrily.
‘So, why is it unlocked?’ Noah whispered.
‘Let’s find out,’ Merc replied pushing the door open.
The brothers cautiously edged into the darkened diner. Suddenly, the door slammed shut behind them. The room was then in total darkness.
‘What the…’
The lights came on.
‘That’s them! That’s the boys what were talking to my Dion yesterday,’ screamed Emerald Elpis.
Emerald, a middle-aged, obese, African-American woman, was standing behind the counter and pointing dramatically at the brothers. She was clearly terrified. Her frizzy hair was all messed up; tears were streaming down her flabby cheeks; blood was dripping from her wide nostrils onto her white pinafore; and one eye was so swollen that she couldn’t possibly see out of it.
Suddenly, the lights went out again; she screamed in fear; and the boys screamed too, but from pain, not fear.
**
Two men stood either side of a morgue slab on which lay a green body bag.
‘Who is he?’ Special Agent Carl Rutter asked, pointing at the bag.
‘Absolutely no idea,’ replied the resident forensic pathologist, Dr. Jo Fleming. ‘Just another nigger who has come to a sticky end.’
‘You can only say that because you’re black,’ Rutter said, annoyed at the racist inference. 'Where was he found?'
'In the Potomac near Fort Washington. Just tossed in like a bit of rubbish. Didn't even weigh him down.'
'That suggests that they didn't care if someone found him. Or perhaps they wanted him to be found as a warning?' Rutter said.
‘Yeah, maybe, but someone went to a lot of trouble to make sure we couldn’t identify him. His face is all smashed up and they cut off both his hands so we have no fingerprints…’ Jo began.
‘Son-of-a-bitch!’ Rutter exclaimed, horrified by the sheer barbarity of it. ‘What sort of maniac would do such a thing. Was he alive when they did that to him?’
‘No idea – yet. So, what do we do now, man?’ Fleming asked sarcastically.
‘Cutting off his hands suggests he might have a record,’ Rutter mused, more to himself than to the black man dressed in green, medical garb.
‘Yeah, so why don't you go look for his hands?’
Rutter thought for a moment before replying. ‘Sure, but if he has a criminal record, we might have his DNA on file someplace.’
‘That's true. I’ll get on it.'
**
When Merc regained consciousness, it took some time for his situation to register. His head was aching, and his arms felt that they were being pulled off. Wherever he was, the place was in a semi-darkness. The little light there was came from sunlight filtering through cracks in the wooden walls of the building. He could smell hay and horses, and his arms ached – God, how they ached.
Slowly, his mind cleared, and he realized that he was suspended from a large hook in a beam. His hands were tied together, and the cord tying them was looped over the hook. He was sweating; no, it wasn’t sweat; it was blood – his blood.
He looked down and only then understood that he was naked; his body was red with his own blood, and his feet were not touching the ground. Beneath him, the blood, his blood, was being absorbed into the straw on the ground. To Merc’s confused, terrified, and semi-conscious mind, the mixture of his blood and straw looked pretty, edible, he wanted to eat it, old spaghetti and dried tomato sauce.
He vomited.
Merc looked around for his brother. He couldn’t see much in the dark, dank barn, for that is what he assumed the old wooden building was.
‘Noah,’ he called out in little more than a whisper. Even the effort of doing that was incredibly painful.
Before he could call out again, the barn door was pulled open and two men stood in the doorway. With the light behind them, he couldn’t see who they were, or what they looked like.
‘Well, son, this is your lucky day. Fortunately for you, your little brother was quite cooperative…eventually,’ said one of the men in an accent unfamiliar to Merc. Italian, he guessed not being acquainted with any one of Greek descent, like the speaker.
‘Do you recognize this?’ the Greek asked, waving a memory stick under Merc’s nose although Merc couldn’t see it clearly because blood was getting in his eyes.
Merc, petrified with fear and wracked with pain, couldn’t speak.
‘No? Well, let me help you out, son. This is a memory stick with pictures from a cell phone that you and your late little brother stole from a friend of mine. Ring any bells yet?’
Merc just nodded. He couldn’t speak. Did he say "my late brother?" Noah dead? He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
‘Now we have gotten ourselves a little problem, son. You see, we have this here memory stick, and we know that someone who likes to keep records took a video of a certain car,’ the Greek said. ‘Now, your little brother told us, before he prematurely expired, that a certain Dion Elpis transferred the video clip to this here memory stick, and then deleted the video clip from his computer, his cell phone and your cell phones but not from my friend’s cell phone. Am I right so far?’ the man with the false Greek accent asked.
Merc nodded; it still hadn’t sunk in that Noah was dead. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, believe it. Everything seemed so surreal. A bad horror movie in which he was the central victim.
‘So, in a nutshell, boy, the problem I have now is this: Your little brother didn’t tell me where I can find my friend’s cell phone. And I need that phone,’ the Greek yelled at Merc. ‘You see, son,’ he continued quietly, ‘I need that phone to eliminate any loose ends. You with me, son?”
Merc nodded.
‘Good, good, that’s very good,’ the Greek said, suddenly all sweetness and light. ‘So, where is it?’ he screamed.
‘I…I