Mount Hood: (Double Deception Series: Book 6), page 1
DOUBLE DECEPTION
MOUNT HOOD
BY
CHARLES ELLIOT
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Epilogue
Before the Series
About the Author
Review this Book
Chapter 1
W
ith everything laid out on the bed, Cory Van Doren felt reality settling on him like a lead coat. His phone call with Lorenzo Campbell left him reeling, and it was becoming hard to focus on any one thought. One thing was becoming perfectly clear though. Cory had been jumping through meticulously placed hoops ever since his night at Sugar Rush. Lorenzo’s description of the man with whom Medea seemed enamored was basically Cory, but there was someone else who looked just like him, right?
Sure, Joshua had jumped off Mount Hood seven years before, but Cory’s twin had also been a master in the art of securing and analyzing forensic evidence. Joshua knew that stuff almost obsessively, so it stood to reason that he could manipulate a situation or crime scene just as easily as figure one out. It was all a long shot, and everything was up in the air, but it made a crazy sort of sense.
And his body was never actually found, was it?
No, just some hair and blood on a rock near the bottom. It was presumed Joshua had hit it on the way down and been dragged away by the river below. It had been seen as the only possible outcome, as it had taken the medics hours to get anywhere close to where Joshua had supposedly fallen. By the time they had, there was no way they were ever going to find a body within 20 miles of the scene, given the power of the current.
Mount Hood was over 600 feet straight up and down, and the rock face was jagged and treacherous. Nobody could have survived such a fall, and Cory had seen his brother’s broken body poking out of the water when he’d looked down. Or had he?
Maybe he had mistaken what he had seen in the river. He hadn’t looked for long, and he’d been panicking. By the time he’d called 911 and returned to the cliff’s edge, the body—or whatever it was he had seen—was gone. He might not even have been looking at the same spot. What if Joshua hadn’t dropped all the way down? It had been dark, after all.
But what about the blood and hair on the rock below? DNA had proven it was Joshua’s, and it had been so far down that survival would have been impossible if contact had been made at that point.
Cory checked his phone and saw that it was 15:05. Then he went over everything on the bed one last time: flak jacket, change of clothes, sunglasses, laptop, phone charger, hooded sweater, gloves, rifle, Glock, ammo, and cash. He would need the last of these if he were going to stay on the lam. A call hadn’t been put out on him yet, but he knew enough about police work and the situation he was in to understand that the print found on Tim Maguire’s collar was going to be his.
Soon Cory would have everyone he used to call a colleague searching for him. When the story broke that a crooked cop had been whacking innocent people, the media would have a field day. He was glad he had been too depressed to shave recently and hoped that when his picture started circulating on news outlets, they would use a photo that had been taken any time before last month.
After taking a small suitcase from the closet, Cory carefully filled it with everything from the bed. He kept waiting for someone to knock at the door—maybe Shaw or even Warick herself—and then it would all be over. It was hard to imagine someone as meticulous as Joshua making a mistake, but if there was evidence out there that proved Cory’s innocence, he was going to have to find it alone—and very soon.
But why was Medea involved? Was it simply a case of two nasty people meeting randomly years ago in Philly and realizing they had a knack for terrorizing others? It seemed improbable, but Cory’s thoughts were so hectic that it was all he had been capable of imagining. He supposed he could understand why Joshua would want to mess with him, but why destroy Lorenzo Campbell? Had it simply been for fun, or had they been honing their skills in preparation for when they would attempt to obliterate Cory’s life?
“Fuck it!” Cory snapped, shaking his head. He could think about all of that shit on the road. Right then, he needed to disappear into the shadows before the PPD showed up at his door with a search warrant and a pair of cuffs.
Cory had already zipped the suitcase up when he spotted the Red Sox baseball cap on the floor. Without thinking, he stuffed it in the side pocket of the case and left the room. If Medea had planted more evidence, then so be it. There was nothing he could do about it. He needed to track her down, and if Joshua really was still alive—
This is insane, Cory.
—then Cory was sure he would be with her.
He could see a few cracks of light coming through the living room window as he walked over to it. Cory heard the screech of tires just as he looked down. An unmarked car and a PPD cruiser were coming to a stop in the parking lot. He didn’t wait to see who got out and was across the room and out the front door before he had exhaled.
Cory locked up after he left—the longer it took the cops to realize he wasn’t home, the better—and sprinted for the double doors at the end of the corridor pushing through them into the emergency stairwell. He took the steps two at a time as he descended, all the while praying that the people who came to arrest him hadn’t arrived at the back parking lot too. If they had, he would run straight into them at any moment.
He had spotted no one by the time he was on the ground floor. Cory took his spare shades from his pocket and slipped them on. Then he pulled up his hood and stepped through the back door into the afternoon sun.
The parking lot showed no signs of life, and Cory had to resist the urge to run to his car. If anyone were to see him in such a rush moments after two police cars pulled up outside the building, he would arouse unneeded suspicion. As he walked, he kept waiting for a hand to land on his shoulder and a booming voice to tell him he was under arrest for the murders of Eric Briar, Tim Maguire, Rohana Ashwell, and his old partner, Bradley Swanson.
Nobody did, and Cory reached his car without any issues. He tossed the suitcase in the backseat and jumped in the front. When the engine roared to life, he edged the Dodge out of the parking lot and into the busy street. His heart was surprisingly settled, but then again, he had always seemed at his most comfortable when he was deep in the shit, right?
At that moment, several cops would be pounding their fists on his apartment door. Maybe they had already kicked it in if the prints they lifted off Tim Maguire’s collar were a 100% match. Paired with his odd behavior the previous weeks, it wouldn’t have taken much for his former colleagues to all agree that Cory had snapped and gone on a killing spree.
He had always been seen as a loose cannon, after all. Even throughout his short, but glittering career, doubts had constantly been uttered regarding his state of mind. Nothing too damning, but whispered concerns nonetheless. If Joshua could toss himself off a cliff’s edge when everything in his life looked hunky-dory, then such unstable tendencies surely pulsed through his twin brother’s veins.
Cory knew of a motel on the outskirts of Portland called Langley’s. It was run down, and the rooms were small, but it was out of the way and private. He had only been called out there once on a rape case, which had been years before. The chances of the owner or his staff recognizing him were slim, and Cory needed to lay low until he figured out his next move.
As the gray-bricked city became an open freeway, Cory lit a smoke and wound dow
Medea Bishop was the key. She had made the mistake of being seen leaving his apartment. Also, mentioning her old partner to Cory had been a slip. If she and his brother were working as a team—he was confident they were—then he felt Medea was the weak link. Not a very weak one, but it was something at least.
As he drove, he continually checked his rearview mirror to see if he was being followed. Not by the PPD or the Investigations Division, but by any car he’d never usually have considered suspicious. If Cory and Medea were doing what he believed them to be, then it stood to reason they would have been following him at times. If they found out where he was staying, any slim advantage he would have gained on them by slipping out of his apartment building before being arrested would mean nothing.
The cool breeze whipping in through the open window felt nice, despite how tense he felt. Cory liked how it instantly sucked the cigarette smoke out and lifted it off into the blue sky. When he scratched his cheek, he heard the crackle as his fingers ran through a rough beard. He listened to the engine purring as he contemplated what his life had become. Things had gotten out of control very fucking quickly, but knowing someone had been messing with him made it a whole lot easier to process.
The blackouts were all him though, and that was unsettling. Then again, Lorenzo had mentioned the same thing happening to him. Yes, the ex-cop had nearly lost his shit when he had talked about the shrink who had—
“Ashwell,” Cory snarled. “She has been causing them somehow.”
It made no sense. That was the big problem. Cory’s first blackouts had occurred before he’d even met the woman, so how could she be triggering them? In fact, he’d only ever been to a psychiatrist once before his first visit to her office, which had been years beforehand, and he couldn’t even remember her name. But there had to be a link between Rohana Ashwell and his episodes—it was the only way to explain it.
Maybe you really are going crazy, Cory, that intrusive voice in his head suggested. Let’s face it, bud. You’re out here on the freeway trying to figure out how your dead brother and woman you barely know are attempting to set you up. If that’s not insane thinking, then what is?
Cory knew it was preposterous, but it had to fit together somehow. He knew it in his gut, and he was rarely wrong in those instances. Sure, he’d probably never be able to prove it—Joshua held all the cards and more—but he was going to give it one hell of a go.
His twin didn’t know he had figured out the baseball cap plant, so that gave Cory some time. It also gave him the slightest bit of leeway in terms of a counterstrike. Ditto for Cory calling Lorenzo Campbell. Knowing Joshua and Medea had pulled the framing shit once before earned Cory another few steps up behind them. In reality, it was all circumstantial, but any foothold he could find could be priceless in the long run.
After turning onto Interstate 26, the scenery changed again. Green fields spread out on either side, the sun reflecting in waves as the grass swayed in the breeze. Cory had always envied people who could find tranquility in such beauty, and he tried to tell himself it was just the situation he was in that was denying him his pleasure. But that was bullshit.
Even on Cory’s best day, he would have been too impatient to sit back and enjoy it all. It was how he was programmed, and he would have spent the whole time irrationally imagining his father’s huge hand clipping him around the ear as he told him to get off his ass and stop laying around like a goddamned hippy.
The clock on Cory’s phone told him it was 16:20 as the Langley Motel came into view. He pulled the car in and parked it round the back. As he got out and grabbed his bag, he scanned 26 for a moment, making doubly sure nobody had been tailing him. When he felt somewhat satisfied, he pulled his hood back and walked around to the front of the motel and toward the main door. He counted ten rooms in a line and hoped the one at the end was free. It was the shortest distance from his car, and if he had to make a dash in the middle of the night, then every second would be vital.
A woman with huge, purplish hair looked up from her iPad when he walked into the small office-cum-foyer. She was behind a desk stacked high with papers, and he could smell weed hanging in the air. The room was cramped and stuffy, and a layer of sweat instantly covered his brow. He put the woman at maybe twenty, but she wore so much makeup that she could have been twice that age underneath it all. As he approached the desk, she readjusted her bra through her T-shirt.
“What can I do ya for, handsome?” she asked. Her lips were shiny like she had been eating greasy fries all day. He could smell her pungent perfume through the stale weed stench.
“A room for the night, please,” Cory said.
“We got ’em!” the woman said, then cackled.
“Great. Can I have the one at the far end?”
“Number ten? Sure, I think that’s free.”
“Thanks.”
“Cash or credit?” she asked.
“Cash.”
The woman winked. “Gotcha.”
She took his money, counted it, and then handed him a key with a huge wooden keychain hanging from it. Cory thanked her and picked up his suitcase. As he headed for the door, she called after him.
“I’m off in a few hours, handsome. Maybe you want some company tonight?”
Cory turned and smiled. Then he shook his head. “No, thank you. But you’re sweet to offer.”
The woman shrugged and went back to her tablet. Without looking up, she said, “Well, you know where I am if you change your mind.”
Cory stepped back out into the bright day and looked up at the sky. The following forty-eight hours would decide how the rest of his life played out. He was going up against someone he always had begrudgingly admired—even if he had neglected him for nearly a quarter of a century. Cory had been too late by the time they went on a camping trip to Mount Hood with his twin. He just hoped his timing would be a little better the second time around.
Chapter 2
C
ory needed to go back to Mount Hood. He had to examine the scene again, but through the eyes of a cop who was looking at a faked death rather than a suicide. Whether Joshua was still alive or not, Cory didn’t know. He’d spent his first night at the Langley Motel relentlessly mulling it over in his head. On the one hand, everything that had been happening to him would make a lot more sense if Joshua was some crazed son of a bitch who had faked his death and had started fucking with Cory. But on the other hand, it just seemed too ridiculous to give any real credence.
He lit another cigarette and refreshed the screen on his laptop. The PPD website had locked him out as he’d known would be the case. His phone had been ringing so much throughout the night that he’d put it on silent, and after listening to the first message from Warick telling him to get his ass to the station and explain himself, he stopped checking them. Cory knew he’d have to face the music sooner or later, but he just wanted to do it with some evidence that proved his innocence. Without it, he was certain he would be sent down.
As he blew thick ribbons of smoke into the musty motel room air, he watched until they hit the fan on the ceiling before it obliterated them. The shower he’d had after waking a few hours before had refreshed him somewhat, but he could feel his stomach growling for nourishment. The garage across the road would be a safe enough place to grab some snacks, but he still felt a little on edge. Cory knew he’d have to go sooner or later, but at that moment, he needed some motivation.
He sat back on the chair and rested his feet on the bed. Even though he was only wearing his boxers, he was still feeling the effect of the muggy air, despite the window being open. With the drapes closed and the room filled with smoke, he truly felt like a throwback to a different era. He had a laptop and a conduit to the digital world, sure, but without access to police files, he really was working with scraps.
