Slay Bells Read online

  SLAY BELLS

  By

  REMINGTON KANE

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  SLAY BELLS

  First edition. December 16, 2015.

  Copyright © 2015 Remington Kane.

  Written by Remington Kane.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  LEARN ABOUT NEW RELEASES FROM | REMINGTON KANE

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  CHAPTER 1 – Kids these days

  CHAPTER 2 – Pain, the perfect gift

  CHAPTER 3 – Seesaw Susie

  CHAPTER 4 – The reluctant terrorist

  CHAPTER 5 – The Ghosts of Christmas past

  CHAPTER 6 – Old flame, new fire

  CHAPTER 7 – The truth comes out

  CHAPTER 8 – Things that go bump during the day

  CHAPTER 9 – Giving and taking

  CHAPTER 10 – Mass casualties

  CHAPTER 11 – It started with carnations

  CHAPTER 12 – Fourteen Marker Street

  CHAPTER 13 – Mugged by Santa

  CHAPTER 14 – I spy

  CHAPTER 15 – Look to the cookie

  CHAPTER 16 – Deep doubt

  CHAPTER 17 – Crooner

  CHAPTER 18 – Brazil will have to wait

  CHAPTER 19 – Of mice and madmen

  CHAPTER 20 – Please knife me

  CHAPTER 21 – Santa war

  CHAPTER 22 – ...Often go awry

  CHAPTER 23 – Strangers in the night

  CHAPTER 24 – The longest of long shots

  CHAPTER 25 – Tanner trap

  CHAPTER 26 – It all works out in the end

  CHAPTER 27 – Don’t believe everything you see on TV

  CHAPTER 28 – No chimney required

  CHAPTER 29 – Transfer of power

  CHAPTER 30 – Home for Christmas

  AVAILABLE DECEMBER 26, 2015

  AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER

  COMING IN FEBRUARY FROM REMINGTON KANE

  A PLEA

  ALSO BY REMINGTON KANE

  LEARN ABOUT NEW RELEASES FROM | REMINGTON KANE

  Further Reading: The Contract: Kill Jessica White

  This book is dedicated to the fans of The TANNER Series.

  LEARN ABOUT NEW RELEASES FROM

  REMINGTON KANE

  http://www.remingtonkane.com/contact.html

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  SLAY BELLS – A TANNER NOVEL

  The events in this book take place prior to the events in the 1st Tanner Novel, INEVITABLE I

  CHAPTER 1 – Kids these days

  LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, TWO DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS 2013

  Tanner saw the girl walking towards him with her breasts threatening to spill out of her halter top, and used his peripheral vision to locate her partner.

  Tanner was in the parking lot of a strip mall where he’d just bought a new pair of boots and was walking between rows of parked vehicles to reach his own car.

  The blonde came at him as he was moving between two vans. She looked breathless and was crying without any sign of tears.

  She had the body for the work, and if Tanner hadn’t seen the hustle pulled a time or two over the years he might have dropped his guard. But he had heard talk on the street that there was a team working the North Vegas area and that, typically, they were a man and a woman.

  Tanner spotted the blonde’s partner through the windows of a van as the man moved towards the rear to sneak up on him. If they were the pair he suspected they were, then the man was about to give him a nasty rap on the back of the head.

  They had rolled a number of tourists over the last several weeks. Tanner assumed that they were currently targeting the outlet shops, which were located on the other side of the parking lot. Those shops were a magnet for tourists.

  They should have stuck with targeting tourists.

  Tourists don’t fight back and they were more distracted by a great pair of tits than Tanner had been since he was a boy.

  “Are you all right there, Miss?” Tanner asked. He moved to stand directly in front of her, while watching her eyes.

  The girl was looking over his shoulder for her partner to appear, and a smile lifted the corners of her mouth when the boy rounded the back of the van.

  Tanner grabbed her and spun around. Her partner, a skinny guy with bad acne and good hair, was already bringing down the pipe.

  The foot-long length of galvanized metal caught the girl on the back of her skull with a solid whack and turned out her lights.

  “Oh shit, Ellie,” the boy said, as he realized what he’d done.

  Tanner tossed the girl at him and the kid let go of the pipe in an effort to keep her from falling. That caused the boy to bend over and Tanner smashed an elbow down on the back of his head. The guy fell to the ground between the two vans with the girl settled atop him.

  Tanner had done all of this while using only one hand, as he was holding the bag containing his new boots in the other one.

  A good look at the two on the ground told Tanner that they were young, just another pair of street kids, and neither of them likely more than seventeen.

  Tanner looked around and saw that the drama had gone unnoticed. The vans that were parked on either side of them, one black, one red, hindered the view. Out of habit, he had parked his car away from cameras. Still, someone would be along soon, as the parking lot was packed with cars.

  Tanner nudged the pipe with his foot and watched it roll under the van on his left, the black one. When he looked up, he saw that the kid had recovered and was holding up a knife.

  “Goddamn kid, I was about to walk away.”

  “Your phone, asshole, give me your phone. Ellie needs to see a doctor.”

  “Ellie needs a new boyfriend.”

  The punk made an ugly face and placed his free hand on the side of the black van for support, as he slowly stood and let the girl slide off him. Tanner flicked out his hand and gripped the wrist holding the knife then, jerked down hard, which caused the boy to slice a jagged wound across his own stomach.

  That made the kid scream. It also spurred the two well-dressed women walking nearby to look in their direction.

  Given their strong resemblance, the older woman appeared to be the mother of the younger one, who was in her thirties. The women moved closer with curiosity in their eyes.

  “What’s going on over here?” the older woman asked.

  “These two tried to mug me.”

  The woman looked down at the pair, both of whom had needle marks on their arms. Despite the girl’s natural beauty, her clothes were dirty and her hair was an oily mess.

  “I’m calling the police,” the woman said.

  The boy called her a vile name and Tanner kicked him hard on the chin. The blow bounced the kid’s head off the side of the black van and the punk fell over onto his back, to lie unconscious beside the girl.

  The two women moved back several steps and stared at Tanner, while Tanner gave the pair on the ground a final look and walked away.

  The woman called to him as she held up her phone.

  “Sir, the police may want to talk to you.”

  “I’m sure they would,” Tanner said, and headed for his car with his new boots tucked beneath his arm.

  CHAPTER 2 – Pain, the perfect gift

  Tanner entered a tavern on North Decatur Boulevard in Las Vegas, only twenty minutes after leaving the strip mall where he’d encountered the two teen hustlers.

  After ordering a mug of beer, a Torpedo IPA, at the bar, he watched the tourists lose money in the slot machines as he waited for the bartender to pour his draft.

&n
bsp; Once the ale arrived, Tanner grabbed the mug and headed to a table in the back, where Dwight Sorrell was busy talking on a cell phone.

  Sorrell was a tall man with dark good looks. He acted as a go-between for Tanner and the people who sought the services of someone with Tanner’s skill set.

  A commercial real estate agent, Sorrell had been lured into the underworld by a former girlfriend. Sorrell liked the money he made from brokering certain services, such as murder, and the set of his moral compass allowed him to feel no guilt over his activities.

  Tanner liked Sorrell. His previous go-between had been a man named Jim Horrigan. Horrigan had given Tanner more business over the years, but had become an addict, and thus, unreliable.

  Also, while Sorrell didn’t offer Tanner as many chances to ply his trade as Horrigan had, Sorrell’s clients tended to pay better.

  Dwight Sorrell greeted Tanner with a smile as he ended his call.

  “Yes, Lillian, I’ll call you back soon. I have some business to see to... me too, bye bye.”

  Tanner pointed at the phone.

  “Lillian? What happened to the redhead, Joy?”

  Dwight sighed.

  “I found out she wasn’t a hostess. She was a pro.”

  “A hooker? Hmm, I never caught that vibe off of her.”

  “It’s all for the best. I think Lillian might even be the one.”

  “You said you had some work for me?”

  Dwight grinned.

  “That’s what I like about you Tanner; you have a low tolerance for small talk.”

  Dwight removed a white envelope from an inside pocket of his suit coat and slid it across the table.

  Tanner picked it up, opened it, and looked at the set of photos inside.

  They appeared to have been taken from a distance and showed a middle-aged man who was graying at his temples.

  The man was average height, pudgy, and had a kind face.

  His name was Richard Wexler, 44, never married, and when he was much younger, Wexler had done time for possession and distribution of child pornography.

  There was an address for Wexler in New York City and a rather detailed sheet of his activities over several recent days.

  Tanner put the photos and the sheets of paper back in the envelope and placed them in the inside pocket of the black corduroy jacket he was wearing. After taking several swallows of his ale, he asked Dwight a question.

  “How much is the client offering?”

  “Twenty-five thousand and another five for expenses,” Dwight said.

  “That’s good money; the client must be motivated.”

  Dwight pointed at Tanner’s pocket to reference the envelope it held.

  “I’m not as ignorant about the target as I usually am. The client is a talker and he told me that the bastard you’re going after molested his twin girls. They’re eight, Tanner, eight-years-old, and the bastard broke the arm on one of them.”

  “Why isn’t he in prison then?”

  “The girls were too traumatized to go through the ordeal of picking the bastard out of a line-up. Wexler also had an alibi from a man named Max Vannick that placed Wexler thirty miles away at the time the girls were snatched.”

  “I guess that Max Vannick is a solid citizen?” Tanner said.

  “Yeah, a pediatrician no less, and he said that he was meeting with Wexler to sell him a piece of property he has in Upstate New York.”

  “Okay, so why is the client convinced of Wexler’s guilt?”

  “The girls’ brother saw him. The kid is only ten but he’s very artistic and he drew a perfect likeness of Wexler. One of the cops recognized Wexler from the drawing. That’s when he was picked-up. But, given his upstanding alibi witness and the fact that it’s his word against that of a ten-year-old, the DA declined to press charges.”

  “Where did Wexler attack the girls?”

  “They were molested in their own home, after their stupid babysitter left them alone to have a quickie with her boyfriend upstairs in one of the bedrooms. If the twins’ older brother hadn’t come home early after getting sick at school, who knows what would have happened.”

  “Who took the photos in this envelope, a P.I.?”

  “Yeah, so all the leg work has been done.”

  “I don’t know how soon I’ll be able to complete the job given that it’s nearly Christmas, but if I can get a flight to New York I’ll leave tomorrow.”

  “That would please the client.”

  Tanner finished his ale and stood, signifying that the meeting was over.

  “I’ll tell the client that the matter has been handled,” Dwight said.

  Tanner nodded, took several steps away, but then walked back over to the table.

  “Let the client know that I won’t make it quick.”

  Dwight looked surprised.

  “He actually inquired about that, but I told him that you didn’t work that way.”

  “I’ll make an exception in this case,” Tanner said.

  “All right, fine, and I’ll charge him an additional fee.”

  “Don’t. The pain I’ll inflict on the target will be free. Let’s call it a Christmas present.”

  Dwight stared up at him.

  “I hope that you weren’t planning on getting me anything for Christmas, Tanner.”

  “Not as long as you stay off my Naughty List, Dwight, and have fun with Lillian.”

  Dwight watched Tanner leave the bar. He liked the man, but as always, he felt safer knowing that Tanner was going after someone else and planned to stay on his good side.

  Dwight ordered another drink and took out his phone to call Lillian.

  CHAPTER 3 – Seesaw Susie

  Tanner arrived in New York City on Christmas Eve, checked in to a motel in the Bowery, and went to work tracking down Richard Wexler.

  Wexler wasn’t difficult to find thanks to the preliminary work done by the P.I. and Tanner was on the man’s trail by the afternoon.

  As usual, Christmas Eve in New York City was a cold day and, to the delight of many, there was snow in the forecast. It looked like it would be a white Christmas.

  Wexler was shopping, or so it would appear to anyone who didn’t know what he was, but Tanner could tell that the pedophile was actually hunting for future victims.

  Tanner had followed the man to a huge toy store on Fifth Avenue that was packed with parents and children. He took note that many of the parents split up soon after entering the store. The tactic allowed one parent to distract the kids while the other grabbed the toys and went to stand in line at the checkout counter. The practice made sense and saved time.

  It also made it easier for men like Wexler to gain access to children in the aisles, with fewer parental eyes keeping watch, and many children had been molested in toy stores over the years.

  There were four separate lines at the counter. When Wexler finally took his place in one of them, Tanner stood in line behind him.

  Tanner was holding a jar of multi-colored marbles that must have weighed several pounds. He had snagged the plastic container off an end-cap so that he would have something to pay for when he reached the front.

  Wexler was carrying items that would appeal to young girls, and Tanner knew that if given the chance, the sick bastard would someday put them to use as bait to attract a victim.

  A few of the things Wexler carried were accessories for a popular doll, one that Tanner knew about from watching the news. The doll was the craze of the current toy season.

  The doll, Seesaw Susie, had sold for more than a hundred times its list price on online auction sites. Wealthy parents who had waited too long to purchase the doll in the stores had to part with their cash over the Internet, if they sought to please their young daughters on Christmas morning.

  Those without the money would be disappointed, as was the case the next line over, where a mother was forced to tell her daughter that Santa would have to bring the toy sometime after Christmas.

  The little Hispanic
girl, whom the mother had called Isidora, appeared angelic, and was the epitome of adorableness with her curly reddish-brown hair and doe-like eyes.

  Wexler was practically drooling as he stared at the child, who was no older than six. The girl was gawking back at him, because she had noticed what Wexler was carrying.

  The child pointed at him.

  “Mister, does your little girl have a Seesaw Susie doll?”

  Wexler smiled down at the girl.

  “She certainly does, and now she’ll have every accessory too, including the Seesaw Susie Swing Set.”

  The doe eyes grew even larger as the little girl’s mouth formed into an O.

  The girl’s mother had taken out her wallet to pay at the register; it was the type of purse that came with plastic sleeves. The sleeves held the woman’s credit cards, as well as several forms of identification, including her driver’s license.

  Wexler made a point of leaning over as if to show the little girl one of the toys he was purchasing, and while doing so, he read the address off the woman’s driver’s license.

  Tanner was certain that he was the only one who had noticed the act. Wexler had the woman’s address memorized. If he were to show up with one of the much sought after dolls, the little girl would fly to him.

  All it would take is for the mother to turn her back for a moment and she might never see her child again.

  Wexler had no children, but if he possessed one of the coveted dolls, he could lure almost any young girl in the city towards him.

  Tanner grimaced. Killing the toad would be a public service.

  The woman reached the front of her line and Tanner overheard her talking to her daughter.

  “I’m sorry that I couldn’t get you a Seesaw Susie, baby, but Mommy promises you that you’ll have one soon.”

  The little girl smiled.

  “Santa will bring me one tonight when he comes to visit.”

  The mother said nothing to that, but her eyes looked sad.

  Mother and child soon left the store, and Wexler followed them, as Tanner followed him.

  ***