Adamant Read online

  Adamant

  by

  E. H. Reinhard

  Copyright © 2020

  All Rights Reserved

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This book is a work of fiction by E. H. Reinhard. Names, characters, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Locations used vary from real streets, locations, and public buildings to fictitious residences and businesses.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

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  Adamant

  Looking forward to a weekend of mundane yard work, firing up the grill, and hoping the rain lets up enough to do both, FBI serial killer hunter Hank Rawlings finds himself staring at photos of dead bodies.

  Prison guards. Inmates. Innocents. A pair of sheriff's deputies. A soccer mom. All murdered by an escaped con named Charles “Chuck” Burr, a man who has left a trail of blood and bodies from Louisiana to Texas.

  With Burr’s name inked on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, Hank and his team are on the next flight out.

  For Hank, the assignment is easy: find Burr and bring him to justice. With everything pointing to the Waco area, he circles in on his man before the weekend is out.

  But Burr will choose death over being put in another cage. And he’ll do whatever he can to kill anyone who tries to put him there—FBI agents included.

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  Table of 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 1

  Chuck Burr pulled his recently acquired mid-nineties Buick Roadmaster into the diner parking lot and found a spot. The front tires met the parking curb and rocked the big land yacht back and forth. He rubbed his eyes. He’d been driving back roads most of the night and caught only an hour or two of sleep at the end of some old dirt road. Chuck shifted the car into Park, grabbed his ball cap from the dash, and walked to the entrance. He snugged the hat low on his head and tucked his sunglasses into one of the front pockets on the vest over his flannel shirt. He needed a coffee—a big one.

  The building, a stand-alone behind a five-foot-tall chain-link fence, looked like an old subway car. If it actually was a subway car, Chuck wondered how it came to be located out in the country between Houston and Austin, Texas. He climbed the four steps leading to the aluminum screen door marked Entrance and pulled it open. Bells stuck to the door’s top announced his arrival. Directly in front of him were the restaurant’s restrooms, a pair of gumball machines, and a pay phone stuck to the wall. Chuck made a right turn into the long rectangular restaurant. A line of booths filled the right side of the place, its glass windows facing the parking lot. To the left was a long diner counter with the kitchen behind it. Chuck passed the lit-up display case filled with doughnuts and had a seat on a stool at the diner counter.

  Chuck glanced around. Only one older couple was inside eating, and the lone waitress was on the phone in the waitress station. The interior of the building had classic diner down to a T—checkerboard floors, a long counter with red leather stools, neon lights, and some pie by the slice. Dressed in a pink 1950s outfit, the waitress finished her call and hung the green corded phone back on the wall.

  “One sec, sweetie. Let me just drop that table’s change over there, and I’ll be right with you,” she said.

  Chuck smiled, nodded, and snatched a laminated menu from the rack holding the salt, pepper, condiments, and jellies. The front of the menu listed the name of the place, the Subway Café. Fitting.

  The waitress walked over to the older couple seated in the last booth near the exit door at the restaurant’s far end, dropped their change, then headed in Chuck’s direction. The old couple walked out just as the waitress returned to Chuck, who’d been going over his breakfast options.

  “Coffee, darling?” she asked.

  Chuck took his nose from the menu’s pages, turned his cup over, and pushed it toward the waitress. She looked to be somewhere in her forties. The name badge pinned to the chest of her pink shirt read Susie.

  “Please,” he said.

  “Leaded or unleaded?”

  “Leaded. As much lead as you got.”

  She gave him a smile and grabbed a nearby carafe to fill his cup. “Cream?”

  Chuck shook his head.

  “Need a minute to look things over, or are you ready?” she asked.

  “I think I’m set. Let me get the classic breakfast and a stack of pancakes on the side. Over medium on the eggs and bacon instead of sausage.”

  “Classic and cakes. Over medium and bacon. You got it. Anything else?”

  “I may get a slice of pie after breakfast. What do you guys have?”

  “Dutch apple, strawberry rhubarb, cherry, and banana cream.”

  “Damn. Those all sound good. I’m going to have to toss that around.”

  “Okay. Well, you let me know.”

  “Will do.” Chuck poked his chin at the tube television hanging in the top corner of the waitress area. “Does the TV work? Maybe we can toss on some sports or something?”

  “Sorry, sweetie. That old thing has been shot for as long as I can remember.”

  “No problem,” he said.

  “Should just be a couple minutes on the breakfast.”

  “Thanks.”

  She hollered his order to the kitchen and went about stacking coffee cups in the area behind the counter. Chuck folded the menu and read the story on the back of it about how the restaurant used to be located in New Jersey but, some fifteen years before, had moved to wherever the hell in Texas they were. The story went on to give the hows and whys of the relocation, but Chuck didn’t care enough to read further. He slipped the menu back where he’d gotten it, grabbed his coffee, and pulled it to his lips. He took a big gulp, swallowed, and lifted his eyebrows. It was a damn good cup. He took another drink, trying to determine if it was actually that good or if he’d gotten so used to the black swill he’d been drinking inside of the Louisiana State Prison that anything resembling actual coffee would have netted the same reaction. Perhaps it was a bit of b
oth.

  The ringing of bells from someone entering came from Chuck’s left. A woman, alone, came in and walked straight to the doughnut case. She crouched as she looked inside. Susie, the waitress, appeared in front of Chuck with a pair of plates. With his attention on the woman surveying the doughnut selection, he hadn’t even seen his order hit the window.

  “Here we are. Need anything else?”

  “Syrup,” Chuck said.

  “That would help.” Susie fetched Chuck some syrup, and when he said he didn’t need anything further, she went to help the woman at the doughnut case.

  Chuck dove into his breakfast like a dog into a T-bone. He’d barely eaten in days, and everything for the last couple of years had come from the prison chow line. Whether they called it spaghetti, or Swedish meatballs, or meatloaf, or pot roast, all the prison food had nearly the same color, the same texture, and the same taste.

  The bacon went down in a few bites, and the eggs didn’t stand much of a chance of sticking around, the toast sopping up the runny yolks. Chuck slathered the stack of pancakes with butter and doused them with syrup. He dug his fork in and filled his mouth. As he chewed, he watched the woman select her doughnuts, one by one, until she had a dozen in a box. Susie went to the register, just a few feet from Chuck, to ring the woman up.

  “How are the doughnuts?” Chuck asked.

  “So good,” Susie said. “Bernie in the back makes them fresh every morning.”

  “Made here, eh?”

  “Yessir.”

  The woman fetching her wallet from her purse piped up. “I come once a week from Navasota about fifteen miles south of here to get a box for the weekend. Best I’ve had. My kids and husband can’t get enough of them.”

  “Ah,” Chuck said. “Maybe I’ll get a couple to go.”

  “What in the heck is this now?” the doughnut woman said. Her eyes were fixed out of the windows at the parking lot.

  Chuck turned on his stool to see what she was looking at. His eyes locked on a pair of police cars with their lights on. The cars happened to be blocking in the Buick that Chuck had been driving. A uniformed officer, his gun drawn, stayed low and moved fast to the diner’s entrance. Another cop was jogging across the parking lot, looking like he was heading for the restaurant’s exit door.

  “Son of a bitch,” Chuck mumbled. He shoveled another forkful of pancakes into his mouth, stood, and yanked the pistol from inside his vest. The woman getting her doughnuts cowered as Chuck passed her with his gun aimed at the entrance door. He glanced over his shoulder at the building’s exit—he didn’t see the other cop in the doorway. Chuck turned toward the entrance door just as it pulled open, and an officer rushed in. Chuck put a round in the side of the guy’s head before he had two steps into the door. Blood spattered the wall as the officer dropped face-first to the checkerboard floor. His body kept the door propped open, and his service weapon slid toward the restrooms. Chuck spun for the exit door just in time to see the other cop appear in the doorway. Chuck squeezed off a pair of rounds. The aluminum screen door did nothing to stop the bullets, and the officer’s head snapped backward before disappearing from view. The screams of the waitress and doughnut lady filled his ears.

  Chuck turned his attention to the women. The doughnut lady clutched her purse and crouched. The waitress had vanished—he couldn’t see anyone working the grill. The off-the-beaten-path restaurant in Texas seemed exactly like the kind of place that would have a shotgun or firearm mounted under the counter or in a back office. Chuck had no intentions of being surprised by a waitress or cook with a twelve-gauge. He walked behind the long counter into the waitress station, his gun at the ready. Susie, his waitress, was sitting on the floor at the counter’s end. She held her knees against her chest. Fear was the only thing in her eyes when she lifted them to meet Chuck’s.

  He glanced through the service window into the kitchen—the area was empty, but a back door stood open. The guy had slipped out. Just as Chuck brought his eyes back on the waitress, he caught movement outside. A car sped out of the parking lot, kicking up dirt and gravel as it made a sliding right out onto the street. That was exactly what Chuck needed to do, get the hell out of there.

  Gun in hand, he left the kitchen area and started for the exit. The doughnut woman hadn’t budged, aside from getting lower against the glass case. Through the windows, Chuck saw the pair of patrol cars still blocking his Buick—he would have to move the cruisers to get the car out. Yet the car could have been what alerted someone to his presence at the restaurant. His decision was made. Chuck snatched the doughnut woman by the back of the hair. She yelped and flailed. He yanked her toward him and pressed the barrel of his gun to her cheek.

  “Come on. We’re leaving.”

  She protested, but he steered her toward the door and around the dead cop propping it open. Chuck looked down at the man as they passed. The back of the guy’s brown hair was filled with pink and white chunks of bone and brain. A pool of blood had formed under the man’s head and was rolling down the restaurant’s front steps.

  Outside, Chuck took the woman’s purse and shoved her to the ground. The purse strap that had been around her shoulder snapped. He dumped out the contents of her purse and picked up her car keys that had fallen. Chuck thumbed the unlock button and saw the lights flash on her minivan. For a second, he contemplated what to do with the woman. Take her with him and she would be a problem, without a doubt. Kill her and the cops would know that he took her vehicle, and they’d have everyone inside of five counties looking for it immediately. Chuck looked at the restaurant and at the waitress staring back at him through the windows. He would have to go back in and kill her if he didn’t want to leave any witnesses. She could run, and he would have to chase her. She could hide or lock herself in an office or cooler, and he would have to get at her. The cook leaving was already a problem—the guy probably called 911 the moment he was up the road. Chuck figured 911 calls aside, there was probably backup already en route when the two cops didn’t report back. He needed to go.

  Chuck crouched and grabbed the woman’s wallet from her purse. Her ID was in it. He scooped up the cell phone that had also spilled out. He stuffed the wallet and phone into one of his vest pockets, put three rounds into the woman on the ground, and walked to her van. Seeing where the van was parked in relation to the restaurant’s windows, he doubted the waitress inside would be able to get a plate number. For good measure, he fired a couple of times into the front glass of the restaurant to get her away from the windows as he hopped in the driver’s seat. Chuck started the minivan, slammed it into Reverse, mashed the gas, and rocketed backward. With a yank of the wheel, he pulled the van into Drive, spun it around, and pointed it toward the street. He would need to put some miles between him and the little restaurant before ditching the van and finding another vehicle.

  Chapter 2

  Pat Gase, wearing a thick rain jacket, hung out of the guard shack window as I pulled my Jeep to the gate. Pat had been working the FBI’s Manassas field office gate since my first day on the job a few years back. He looked about sixty but could have been a few years on either side of it. Mostly gray hair poked out from beneath his blue hat that read Security. The wipers on my truck swatted the water from the windshield. I turned them off to avoid giving Pat a shower.

  “Agent Rawlings,” he said.

  “Morning, Pat. How’s it going?” I held my credentials out the window to be scanned.

  “Ah, same as always.” Pat took my ID card. “You?”

  “Another day in paradise.” The temperature was around fifty. The sun hadn’t shown in three days, and the storm system parked on top of us was doing its best to flood the entire state. The fall, winter, and most of the spring made me miss Florida, where my wife, Karen, and I had moved from.

  Pat craned his neck and looked out of the guard shack at the leaking gray sky. “Looks like it’s slowing down. The news says it’s supposed to stop raining and clear up tomorrow. Get back to around six
ty or so.”

  “Just in time for the weekend,” I said.

  “Any plans?” Pat swiped my ID into his computer and passed it back to me.

  “Mowing the lawn if it dries out,” I said. “Rake some leaves. Yard work and then probably fire up the grill. Watch some football.”

  The gate blocking my path into the lot rose.

  “You?” I asked.

  “I’m working tomorrow morning then off Sunday. The wife says we need to get the Halloween decorations up. We have a whole basement full of stuff that we put up, and then as soon as we take it down and get it packed away, we dive into decorating for Christmas. She likes to be festive. I like to one-up everyone on my block.”

  I chuckled. “The neighborhood one-upper, eh?”

  “I’m competitive by nature. Plus, someone has to do it.”

  “Have a good weekend, Pat.”

  He gave me a wave, and I drove into the lot, found the closest spot to the entrance, and parked. Thankfully, the rain had slowed to a drizzle, and getting my umbrella from the back wasn’t worth the hassle. I killed the motor, grabbed some files from the passenger seat, and hopped out.

  The main federal complex consisted of two identical five-story buildings separated by a larger curved building in the center with a Lannon stone facade. I followed the sweeping sidewalk to the entrance and walked inside. After quickly brushing the rainwater off my shoulders and hair, I walked across the white tile floor to the bank of elevators to take me up to Serial Crimes on the second floor. As I had every other morning, I nodded a couple of hellos and small talked with whoever happened to catch the one-floor elevator ride up with me. The elevator kicked me off on 2, and I crossed the main serial crimes bullpen to our team’s office at the back—the homicide division of the department.