The Summer Job - 57. Release the Hounds

Chuck Farmer may have hosted the weekend parties, but he didn’t like them. He cordially detested the men who pawed his boys, but it was better and safer for them under his watch than it was in the Park.

Being Saturday night, the usual suspects were here: Jeremy Aubrey, Cade Brock, Miguel Gomez and Kevin Sutton. Tonight they were joined by Tony Benardi and his little brother Angelo. Anywhere Tony went his little brother Angelo was sure to follow. Another pair of younger kids, Dale Moss and Frank Ballard arrived. Those two followed Cade and Kevin around like a couple of puppies.

All the boys were a pain in the ass at school. Their behavior should have had them suspended or expelled. It was only after you got them to open up when you figured out why. They all had grave problems at home: serious enough to involve Child Protective Services.

Farmer would have loved to involve CPS if it was actually functional. His experience with it was a nightmare. The woman who ran it was a religious nut sending every case that came her way off to some religious-based rehab or detention. If homosexuality was an issue, the more punitive she was likely to be. His few experiences with her had convinced him that the local CPS was a corrupt, dysfunctional clusterfuck.

The Johns were also the usual suspects. The contrast between whom the men were in broad daylight and who they were when they thought no one was looking was jarring. All five of them never missed a Saturday night, and tonight they were flying their freak flag high.

Jerry Quinn’s fellow lawyers would be shocked to see him loading bong hits for two fourteen-year-old boys wearing only fancy jocks. Farmer felt some degree of satisfaction that Jerry would soon be experiencing the criminal justice system from the offender side.

Sean Walters, a city councilman and outspoken conservative radio host, had a cute Italian twelve-year-old boy in his lap. That wouldn’t go over so well with his audience or his voters.

Emile Sanders was such a creep he made Farmer’s skin crawl. He owned many rental properties and even a few apartment complexes. Sanders was filthy rich as balance sheets go, but a piss poor human being.

Arthur Banks owned a car dealership. There were persistent rumors handsome young men could get really great deals at his place. Farmer did not doubt that at all.

Last and certainly least of the loathsome quintet was Larry Jacobs. He was a board member for a statewide bank that would soon be in need of a new board member.

As usual, Farmer provided the space for the boys and their clients to have their opportunity for fun and commerce. This way none of the boys would vanish. If anyone got out of line with the boys, Farmer would happily eject them from the proceedings with gusto.

Technically, it might have made Chuck a sort of pimp. He was actually a man desperately trying to keep a bunch of disturbed and damaged kids alive between bad and worse choices.

When Hunter Young had vanished off the face of the earth, it had been a jarring education for Farmer. For a couple of weeks there were articles in the papers. Then his picture occasionally appeared on milk cartons. Then every few years an article might appear in the paper of a web-blog on the anniversary of his disappearance. Hunter had become just another statistic. He had become just another trailer trash kid that vanished no one seemed to give a damn about.

No one except Charles Farmer who invested the time, effort and money no one else would. He did his research and discovered that Hunter wasn’t the only lost boy on that stretch of highway. He couldn’t tell if the FBI or state police had a serious investigation, so he set out on his own to figure out what happened to Hunter.

A few nights a week for a couple of years he would get in one of his several vehicles to surveil the places where the boys had gone missing: highway rest areas and truck stops. It didn’t take him long to figure out what was going on there and some creep was hunting those kids.

It took a couple of years to figure it out and finally get lucky. He kept seeing the same truck in the same places at approximately the same time. The break came when he witnessed the abduction of an intended victim. It was Farmer and the intended victim’s good luck. It was terrible luck for the serial killer David Wayne Allen.

Farmer shadowed the truck until it made its way to a rural home and interrupted what was about to be another murder. David Wayne Allen was a three hundred pound behemoth with the strength to easily overpower his young victims. He had never run into anyone like Charles Farmer who made short work of him, and left him bound and gagged in his own murder room. He took the terrified boy home and counseled him about the wisdom of finding another occupation.

Farmer returned and rigorously interrogated Allen until he had the approximate locations of where all the victims were buried. Then he took his time killing the diseased piece of shit slow using the murderers own tools making sure he felt all the torment, despair and agony of his victims.

The whole affair was written up in a series of six moleskin notebooks. Allen’s trophies from his kills were bagged in zip lock baggies and clearly labeled with a Sharpie. That and all the evidence necessary to set the record straight about the Freeway Killer and the five louts in his living room were in four bankers boxes in the kitchen pantry.

Tonight Chuck was busy. His many chores distracted him, so he couldn’t provide the supervision the party goers were used to. It was all right. They knew he was close and none of them wanted to be excluded from their recreation. He had other matters that concerned him to attend to.

At eleven-forty an email arrived of particular interest.

To: Todd Bridges
From: Larry Bell, Wilmington Slips of Wilmington, NC
RE: Lucky Charm

Mr. Bridges:

Thank you for your purchase. I'm sure you’ll enjoy Lucky Charm. She is a beauty. Attached is the bill of sale as a PDF. The original will be aboard.
We have her fueled and readied for departure Monday. We will expect you to arrive at our facility Monday before noon. Please let us know if you are delayed.

Larry Bell

Now if he could just stay alive long enough to get there.

After Bermuda, there would be a series of flights. The world was large and, if all went well, the fox would have a nice head start.

Farmer's other major challenge was to find the frequencies the police were using. With his Uniden police scanner, it didn’t take very long, but it had been a while since he had to figure out OppForce comms. Usually, you couldn’t do it, but most civilian police departments hadn’t made the jump to encrypted comms yet.

Part of it was easy. The strongest signals were close. Someone with the call sign HawkEye was close and probably had a drone flying. He was acting as over watch and providing situation reports every ten minutes until he changed to five. That must mean things were getting close.

The call sign “Delta Mike” seemed to be in overall command. He had a Team 1 and a Team 2. Team 2 was already deployed, most probably in the park. Team 1 was holding somewhere nearby.

Listening to the chatter, Farmer deduced that their go time was probably twelve-thirty. The more he listened, the more he was sure he had heard “Delta Mike’s” voice before.

Just after school had ended for the summer, the teachers and administrators had a series of exercises with the police department for school shootings and other disasters. It allowed the facility and the police department personnel to get to know each other and understand the contingencies they had planned for emergencies. He reached inside his desk and pulled out a file and rummaged through it until he found what he was looking for: a list of names and phone numbers of key police officers.

He ran down a list of names and saw Delta Mike: it was Detective Jack Murphy who ran the city’s small SWAT team. Farmer grinned grimly. If the police department were going after a rogue Green Beret, he would be the poor bastard who got the call.

The voice crackled on the scanner: “Delta Mike to Teams: ten minutes to Paladin. Team 2 move up. Team 1 is rolling.”

Farmer picked up his cell phone and entered Detective Murphy’s number and dialed.

Murphy was sitting in the SWAT van a few minutes from their objective when his cell phone rang. He looked at his phone and swore when he read the caller ID.

Should he answer? They were blown. The subject knew they were coming.

Murphy answered his phone, “Hello?”

Farmer said, “I thought we should talk before you release the hounds Detective.”

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