The Gemstone Peridot

By Jon Hébert

Liv Baird faces the one legal challenge she can't control—a Russian assassin at the heart of her final death row case in this 'ripped from the headlines' international thriller.

 

Liv advocates for countless death row cases, but none as dangerous as Ned Baker's. She thought the case would be cut and dry, then she uncovers evidence he may have been framed. When her investigation unearths a covert operative named Amethyst, it threatens to expose the high-ranking intelligence officer who'll do anything to keep his agent's whereabouts a secret—including putting her life at risk.

 

With a crooked cop army on her tail, Liv must navigate the rural town of Atwar, Alabama, to trap Amethyst and extract the truth: did he frame Ned? And if not, who did? But Amethyst's motives aren't easily discerned; he may be the real killer; he may be her savior; and she may have to partner with him to prove her client's innocence.

 

As she closes in on the shocking truth, Moscow dispatches an assassin to kill Amethyst, putting Liv in the way of his dragon-like blade. With the pressure mounting, the scene is set for a fiery, bloody showdown. Gripping and darkly fun, The Gemstone Peridot's slow-burning plot and action-filled twists push an expansive cast of characters toward a blistering, unforgettable finale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Hébert
• Release date: Nov 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215814468

Jon Hébert

Jon Hebert is an author and songwriter from south Louisiana. As an artist, musician, photographer, jewelry maker, and writer, Jon spends his days in his studio. When he isn’t in creation mode, he spends time exploring his home city of New Orleans, taking in the music, walking the parks in spring, and kayaking along Bayou St. John.

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Dedication

The mitigation specialist who inspired this book wished to remain anonymous. This story is dedicated to her.

Prologue

He remembered Atwar before the kudzu took over, remembered the day he first minded those fledgling vines climbing the telephone poles on Highway 17. It was that morning at Gran’s, when, as a child, he saw the world with a new, forced perspective. Now the vines were everywhere, swarming the ground, the trailers, the telephone poles and trees, sucking the soil’s nutrients, suffocating vegetation. The creepers exhaled ozone, destroyed the town’s air quality, killed the townspeople with meandering precision. They explained his entirety, why he did what he did to others, why others did what they did to him. He sneered and checked the clip in Gramp’s WWII Colt 1911, and chambered the round that would spill Harlen Keele’s blood all over those vines.

Those thirsty, creeping, goddamn vines.

Part One - Amethyst

1

Atwar, Alabama

The killer prowled a well-rehearsed path through thick reams of knee-high kudzu vine—in no way would his ingrained government training allow him to fail to take out his target. Through his night vision goggles, floodlights on the back wall of Brewer’s Grocery flickered like fiery green apparitions as he approached the building. He gripped a box elder’s trunk with a leather-gloved hand, his senses kindled. Something—or someone!—crackled the dry leaves under the viny sea behind him, furling his already rigid brow.

A second set of footfalls?

Impossible!

Stars filled a cloudless night sky over the forest’s pine and oak canopy as the kudzu spat the killer out. He sprang from the woods across the narrow clearing, but stumbled on his approach, his shoulder slamming into the store’s cinderblock wall. He rubbed away the pain, dizzy and lightheaded, his head swimming as if in a dream.

And that crackling again, who’s there?

No one’s there, dammit! Keep moving!

Wooden pallets lay piled against the brick as a dormant furnace sat rusted, falling apart, and filled with ash. Crouching near the door, he unzipped a pocket on his black tactical outfit and removed a tarnished key—he’d oiled the hinges the day before, and slipped into the back warehouse to a night-vision haze of boxes, pallets, and jacks. Black sneakers muted his footsteps as he stole to the swinging metal doors leading to the store’s interior. He pushed the goggles onto his forehead and swung one door open, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the harsh fluorescent lights. After pulling a ski mask tight over his face, he crept through the produce section and bakery before a clatter behind him tightened his brow again.

Who else is here?

No one! Go!

He crouched behind a wooden greeting card rack, his head still swimming. Someone had followed him in. Or did he imagine it?

My last fix, was it this morning? This tar’s cut, making me see things.

Get up and finish the job!

He crept onto a foot-high wood-planked dais and peeked through a window set low in the door. Inside the office, Ned mopped with his head down as classic rock played at a low volume on the tinny radio. Wall shelves held organized paperwork and customer returns, and fifties wood paneling matched the two ancient pine desks. In the very back, Terry Brewer spun a floor-safe tumbler, locking away the day’s profits.

The killer had also oiled the office door hinges and let himself in. He crab-walked behind Ned to the nearest desk and eased open the top drawer to grab Terry’s pistol, then stood in time with Terry and pointed the black gun at him as he held out a white envelope.

Ned, you did a great job today. I have your pay read—

Terry fell hard against the paneled wall as Ned gripped the mop handle and turned to look over his shoulder, following his boss’ terrified glare. The killer thumbed open a small glass vial and blew a white powder into Ned’s face—the deliriant scopolamine, a controversial drug the CIA had been using for years. Ned sneezed, dropped the mop, and turtled his head into his shoulders. The killer capped and stashed the vial and lurched behind Ned, grabbing his shoulders and facing him forward. He put his arms around the boy and clasped Ned’s hands around the pistol’s grip.

This isn’t right. What am I doing?

You know why you’re here. Terry’s a monster. Now do it.

The dream overtook the killer again—scopolamine, did some get into me? He guided the boy’s two middle fingers onto the gun’s short handle and rested his pointer finger on Ned’s, millimeters from the trigger. The drug hit Ned’s system; he became suggestible, like slack putty in the killer’s hands. Terry’s eyes darted to the nearest desk, and the killer watched him calculate the moves he’d need to make to alert the police: thrusting himself from the wall, pushing the heavy rolling chair aside, ducking and scrambling for the panic button under the desk. Instead, he cowered, as expected.

What do you want? The money? Take it!

Terry fumbled the envelope as the killer squeezed Ned’s finger and the room thundered to life. The bullet pierced Terry’s forehead between the eyes and ejected blood and brain matter against the back wall before he dropped to the ground. Still holding Ned’s hands on the gun, the killer walked him around the desk, unloading four more bullets into Terry’s chest. Blood sprinkled onto Ned’s face and clothing as ejected shell casings rattled to the floor. The killer then lowered Ned’s hands and set the smoking black pistol on the desk, coughing at the pungent gun smoke. Ned closed his eyes and moaned no no no as the killer maneuvered around the blood on the floor to collect the casings. Finished, he grasped the boy’s head.

Ned, open your eyes.

Ned did so.

I need you to do a few more things.

Ned nodded.

Go close the desk drawer. Ned walked, zombie-like, to the other desk and performed as asked. Now, reach into Terry’s pocket. Get his keys. Ned fumbled for the keys as blood pooled around Terry’s head and soaked into the hardwood cracks around the safe. Open the door. Use the key with the green ring around it. No, the other one. Ned found the right key and unlatched the door. The killer guided Ned’s fingers onto the combination lock, using the boy’s hand to open the safe.

The money? It’s yours. The cash in the white envelope, too. Ned picked up the cash and the stained envelope resting in the blood pool. "Imagine what you’ll do, what your mom will buy. But you have to tell the police you did this. Say you knew Terry was beating his wife. He deserved it. They won’t arrest someone like you."

Ned nodded again, staring wide-eyed at the body—a blood trickle oozed from the gruesome forehead wound, and the legs splayed underneath the torso at an unnatural angle. The killer’s mind spun at what he’d wrought as he stared into Terry’s lifeless eyes, his ears ringing over Led Zeppelin’s tinny electric guitars.

Why did you make me do this?

I didn’t make you do anything.

This isn’t right.

No, you did this. Now you need to stay quiet. Lay low. You’re safe as long as the boy doesn’t talk. And if he does, you’ll deal.

As Ned’s eyes fixed on Terry’s corpse, the killer ran from the office, through the store and out the back door, letting the kudzu-laden forest suck him back in.

2

New Orleans, Louisiana

Liv Baird pushed away the plush, mint-colored comforter and sat in bed as her phone chimed 7:30 a.m. Milo and Cedar purred by her pillow as percolating coffee accompanied the alarm, and sheer white curtains filtered the morning sun into her bedroom as she pawed for her phone and cut the alert. The cats responded by jumping to the floor in an explosion of shed fur.

She stretched stiff muscles and rubbed behind her neck, and picked her cane from its resting place against the nightstand to pad to the bathroom. The cane itself—a simple affair, a dark wood staff, a black plastic handle shaped like a toucan’s beak, and a brushed metal collar inlaid between them—was a gift given to her by her father Jack, ex-CIA, dead now five years.

Sixty-two. Way too young for knee replacement surgery. But I’ll put it off until my doctor forces it. Milo stretched on the floor while Cedar stood beside the bathroom door and meowed. When she walked out, they chased the cat faces on her blue flannel pajamas, trotting down the hall after her.

Cedar jumped on the kitchen counter and meowed. I know, I know. Give me a minute. She poured coffee and stirred in half-and-half until the black turned almond brown. Milo, always the playful one, rolled at her feet and exposed his furry belly while clawing at the fluffy tan kitchen rug. She dug wet cat food from a tin and plopped it into two small bowls on the counter, holding her aching back as she set one bowl on the floor for Milo. He purred and weaved around her feet, eating on the floor as Cedar took his meal on the counter.

Don’t go thinking you can eat yours and jump down and eat Milo’s. Finish what you have first. Always something. Coffee and cane in hand, she walked through her single-story cottage, a newer construction featuring an open floor plan, different than her neighbors’ traditional New Orleans shotguns—rooms following rooms in straight lines, bathrooms at the back. Eggshell walls mixed into brown shades, as if the décor was custom camouflage for the cats.

She shuffled onto her deck and closed the screen door, startling a cardinal perched on a bird feeder hanging off the giant oak shading the backyard. A block away, Bayou St. John offered a light breeze, hinting humidity into the morning air as a distant sound system came to life—technicians setting stages at Jazz Fest, ten blocks away. Sting headlined tonight, and his band kicked off their early morning rehearsal—the Police’s Don’t Stand So Close To Me. She sipped coffee and threw fish food flakes into the koi pond, relishing the tranquil scene—the distant music, house wrens chirping among the crepe myrtles, a bayou breeze rustling the oak’s leaves. She closed her eyes and let out a soft breath. Do I have to leave all this for a week? Ugg.

Morning, Liv! Meg’s voice sang from the neighboring courtyard. 

Well, hey, neighbor, she answered, leaning on her raised deck’s wooden fence.

Sting is serenading us! Meg lifted her arms to the sky. It’s heaven! Sorry, you have to miss his show.

Well, you can’t go to them all. Her voice, once clear, had become gravelly due to age—but its vibrancy remained. So, I leave in an hour, and I’ll return next Saturday. I left the key under the mat. Please eat any food you find. It’ll go bad, and I’ll have to throw it away. Do you need some money before I go?

No, but thank you. Are you sure you don’t want to take a few books? I just finished a great spy novel.

I’ll stick with romance. I never liked thrillers. She wrinkled her face. Too much blood.

And you’re driving to...? Meg lowered her brow, seeking an answer because Liv didn’t share much about her job or life. All Meg knew was her love for her garden, cats, fish, and wine. But she didn’t need to hide so much today.

Northern Alabama, near Tennessee. I’m interviewing the family of a young man on death row. It’s his last appeal, and he’s fighting against Alabama’s new fast-track bill passed last year. Can you believe these cases used to take decades to resolve, and now the state wants to finish them in two? And the prosecution is hell-bent on execution.

Meg huffed. What do you do?

I give my all to my clients. And I hope. She never talked about her job to friends, save for those in the business, but years spent anticipating losses had chipped away at her resolve. A therapist would say, don’t burden your friends with your sour mood, and try this medication. But no need for therapy. Her French wines would continue to do just fine.

I better get on the road. I’ll see you in a week. She blew a kiss to Meg.

Have a safe trip, Liv. The cardinal returned to the bird feeder, and Sting’s band broke into Roxanne as she used her cane to walk inside, anxious about being such a downer. So not like me. She went to her bedroom and dressed—baggy green cotton pants and a loose-fitting white blouse, comfortable clothes for the eight-hour drive to Atwar. In the bathroom, she faced down the vanity mirror, her wavy brown hair showing gray at the roots. I’ll deal with you. Eventually. She smoothed the blouse’s wrinkles and returned to the living room to turn on the TV, already set to the news. Two commentators argued over the likelihood of former President Vinson’s re-election. She’d voted blue and suffered through Vinson’s rule—all four-plus years—surprised / not surprised when he set the country on fire. At his term’s grand finale, she’d replaced her counter wine rack with a floor tower four times its size. How would she react if she ever met a Vinson acolyte? Without shame, she fantasized about slapping one across the face. Lord help her if the opportunity arose after she’d had a few glasses of chardonnay.

She killed the news and double-checked the lights, windows, and doors, then crouched to pet Milo and Cedar. They purred and rubbed their cheeks against her open hands.

You two behave and don’t give Meg any trouble. 

Liv used her cane to rise to her feet, slung on a shoulder bag, and extended the handle on her wheeled suitcase. The cats kept vigilant watch in the full-length door window as she loaded her luggage into the SUV and backed out the drive.

3

Weaverville, North Carolina

Cole held the deflated, misshapen red balloon over the toilet, dropped it, and flushed. He rode the water’s cyclone with regret—regret for getting himself hooked again, regret for the night in Atwar two years before, for Terry and Ned. He gripped the bowl and tracked the dirty water swirl, then let go and hit his spine against the particleboard vanity doors. He’d stay sitting here forever, but the job, as always, propelled him.

Being late to Sapphire’s drop site? Inconceivable. It’s why his bowels clenched and scorpions burrowed through the raw nerves under his scabs. He always cleaned up for Sapphire’s drops. Maybe this attempt would stick. He stood and steadied himself against the wall, stumbled to the bed, his pistol resting on the pillow like a waiting lover.

The motel clock read 8:44 a.m. Sapphire’s instructions were for a strict 10 a.m. pickup. He should have started this kick sooner because Sapphire would be observing from afar. He’d recognize his former agent Amethyst’s disheveled, thin shell. He’d pass judgment, sure, but he’d bring him in if safe. Wouldn’t he? Unless Sapphire masterminded everything. Unless he had no use for an agent gone to junk. Unless his sniper kept the drop scoped with a rifle.

He stuck the gun in his hoodie pocket before driving a maroon compact to the drop site, parking near a Weaverville strip mall. Blue dumpster, loading lane behind the Aldi grocery store. Okay Sapphire, where are you? A woman donning teased hair pushed a stroller by his car. Her jacket bulged on the left side. A shoulder holster? Or the wind? A waitress tied on an apron as she walked to the wing shop, flashing him a nasty glance. Have I seen you before? No. No way. He leaned against the door and lit a cigarette—his last vice to overcome—and eyed a gray truck parked forty yards away. That truck was at the motel. No, wait, it had an extra cab. Didn’t it? He eyed the rooftops for snipers, scanned for quarter-size holes cut through tinted car windows, holes big enough to fit a silenced gun’s barrel.

Sapphire’s signal for a compromised drop, a yellow Camaro, hadn’t shown. He crossed Weaver Village Way, his mind spinning, his eyes darting all around. Someone had betrayed his DSO unit and put him into this miserable life on the run. His internal compass told him Sapphire wasn’t to blame, but this new life threw off his poles and made his every thought suspect.

Skip-walking across the lot, he stopped next to a grass-filled curb and feigned tying his shoe next to a shallow grass furrow. He nabbed a walnut-sized rock, the fake kind used during the Cold War when America tried to beat Russia at the spy game on foreign turf. Gripping the cigarette in his teeth, he stood, the fake rock in his right pocket, his hand on his gun in the left.

After rounding the Aldi, he walked inside the store and came out drinking a day-glow vitamin C-boost smoothie. The Camaro still hadn’t shown, so he found his car and drove around for half an hour to shake off any tails. He parked at a storage facility on Reems Creek Road, the one he’d rented when Sapphire chose Weaverville for the drops. There, he unfastened the rusted lock, which kept protesting until his hands worked the trick to opening it—don’t force the key, let it slide. Inside the cramped unit, he rifled through half-crumpled boxes and left holding a black binder, the plastic cover’s edges cracked and worn.

He drove to the derelict motel and lit another cigarette, then tossed the butt out the window when he parked next to the truck with the extra cab. He fought the bolt to secure the door to his room, another small victory, then threw the binder on the bed and set his gun on the TV. Downing smoothie, he unscrewed the walnut rock and pulled out a fortune-cookie-sized paper strip. The note read: amth, bd air, sty 2 grnd. S.

Sapphire’s message didn’t at all read as fortunate. He read the abbreviated words in his mind: Amethyst, bad air, stay to ground. Sapphire. Stay to ground? Again? How much longer? Another year? If so, he couldn’t take it—The CIA shouldn’t trust him in the wild for another hour. On the strip’s opposite side, a date and a number, Sapphire’s code for Call this number on this day for further instructions, six months away. At least Sapphire had upped his communications. Three drops, three years, every paper strip a worse fortune than the last.

His stomach gurgled. He lurched to the bathroom and vomited on the floor next to the toilet, using the bathmat to wipe his mouth. The balloon called for him, and he plunged his hand into the cold toilet water, all the way back, fingering slimy scummed ceramic too far for a brush to reach, but it was useless. The plumbing stole his tar.

He rinsed his mouth and dried his hands on a towel as scratchy as the puke-covered mat. His gun seemed to track him as he returned to the main room, parting the heavy velvet curtains an inch, cataloging every car and person in the parking lot. The traitor, maybe Sapphire himself, waited out there. I can wait, too; three years I’ve waited to get what I deserve.

He shut the velvet curtains and settled on the bed, holding the battered binder his mother had put together after the Oklahoma City bombing took his brother, Adam. He flipped the cover to a faded clipping, Adam’s obituary from The Daily Oklahoman, dated April 24, 1995. Next came clippings about the bombing and a hand-written note in his mother’s hand. What drove McVeigh to kill one hundred and sixty-eight people and wound another seven hundred? Articles followed on Posse Comitatus, Ruby Ridge, Waco, The Michigan Militia, the Montana Freemen, The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord. His mom had amassed an encyclopedia on domestic terrorism, but it never brought her or the family understanding. Or closure.

He closed his eyes to death-filled visions, and put his hand to his heart in remembrance of his dead DSO brothers and sisters. He’d spearheaded the Domestic Security Office, a twenty-five-strong covert group tasked to fight these domestic threats—until its betrayal—and he might be the sole survivor. The irony—him, at last in the fight, and if there was an article for the binder, it would read of utter failure. At the hands of those kill teams. Who sent them? I need to find Sapphire.

Shutting the binder, he turned on the TV to a media garbage blast, his sensitive ears as raw as his healing track marks. He flinched and mashed the remote to lower the volume; whoever last turned off the TV had left it cranked. Horizontal lines running across the old boxy screen obscured the picture. Probably for the best. Video played, last week’s Lincoln Memorial bombing aftermath, thirty-nine civilians dead, seven children. Children—Jesus!

Lincoln’s statue and half the memorial’s marble columns were stained black with soot from the blast. The news shifted from the Lincoln attack to pundits spouting off about America’s beleaguered state. Five years after former president William Vinson’s fall, the country still dealt with the disarray he’d left it in. Disarray, right, the media’s too-polite way to say Vinson came close to destroying the country’s politics, all while rousing America’s militia movement to boost him after his failed re-election. If the extreme right-winger overcame his scandals, which looked like a strong possibility, he’d run again, win the White House, and send the country spiraling into totalitarianism.

He slept, but suffered assaulting nightmares: seven thousand pounds of diesel fuel, ammonium nitrate, and nitromethane igniting into a blinding flare; Vinson leading an assassin pack hungry for his blood. At 4:30 a.m., he bolted upright. His gun rested on the TV, the threaded barrel pointed right between his eyes. He tried to work out the motel’s plumbing, if the red balloon had stuck in a pipe and longed for him to stage its rescue.

4