Page 38 of Diesel's Perseverance
The three men entered a spacious master bedroom with a tray ceiling, stone fireplace, sitting area, and a minibar.
“Myla said it’s disguised as a bookcase,” he said, scanning the wall of built-in bookcases. “It’s got to be one of these.”
“Let me see the map,” Animal said.
Diesel and Rags went over to the wall and started tapping.
“It’s the third case from the left. Take out the fourteenth volume ofEncyclopaedia Britannica,” Animal said.
Diesel removed the book and saw a keypad that blended perfectly with the back of the bookcase. He punched in the numbers Myla had given him, and each side of the case swung open to reveal a clandestine space concealed behind the shelving.
A wave of a putrid, decaying odor washed over them.
“Fuck,” Rags said, plugging his nose.
Diesel entered the room, his hand covering his mouth and nose. Everything became apparent when he flipped the switch, and the light flickered on. Tracks of dried blood lined the tiled floor, ending where a mess of bags lay in a heap in the corner of the room. Tiny drops of dark brown fluid surrounded one corner of a bag.
Diesel walked over and pushed the bag with the toe of his boot. The two layers on top fell away and revealed a male’s red-colored, bloated body. He bent down and saw gaping wounds on the man’s torso and a couple of bullet hole wounds on the side of the head. From the looks of the body, it didn’t seem like Freddy was defending himself.
“What do you wanna do?” Animal asked.
“Get rid of him, but we’ll leave him here for now.”
“My buddy has a bio-clean business. He owes me a big favor. I can call him. It’d be all hushed up.”
“Yeah, let’s do that. I’ll pay for the service.”
Diesel noticed a large cabinet and stepped over to it. He opened it up and found several AK-47s, handguns, and pistols. An image of their dad taking them out to the shooting range when they were young flitted through his mind. Freddy would always squeeze his eyes shut and shoot. Then there was the time Freddy and their dad went hunting. Freddy had been almost thirteen. When they’d returned to the house, their dad looked disgusted, and Freddy sniffled and brushed away the tears rolling down his cheeks. Diesel had asked his brother what happened, but Freddy couldn’t talk. He was that upset. Later, he found out his brother had shot a bird and cried the whole ride back to the house. Their father never took Freddy hunting again.
He closed the cabinet door and realized he didn’t know his brother at all.
“Look at all the cameras installed in this house,” Rags said from another room.
Diesel walked out of the panic room, and Animal closed the double-wide doors, turning the room back into a bookcase.
He strode over to Rags, who was inside a room with wall-to-wall cameras, showing each room in the house at different angles and the entire outside area.
“He must’ve had a shitload of product and money stashed here.”
“Or people thought he did,” Diesel said.
“He even had cameras in the bathroom,” Rags said.
I wonder if Myla knew about that.
“There is a ton of flash drives too.”
“Let’s see what’s on them. Put one in,” Diesel said.
Images of three women having sex with Freddy popped up on the screen. Diesel sucked in a breath. “Go to another one,” he said.
Most of the flash drives were of Freddy and different women engaged in various sex acts. Some of the flash drives were of Myla in the bathroom during private moments. Rags quickly pulled those out of the USB port.
“Looks like the cameras are motion-activated. Your brother seems to have saved some of the footage onto his computer or cloud and transferred it to flash drives,” Rags said.
“Yeah, I’ll take the rest of these, the two computers and the SD cards from the cameras. I bet the murder is on one of these,” Diesel said.
“Dude, there’s a shitload of boxes here,” Animal said as he stood in front of a walk-in closet. “Do you want all of them?”
