Shiver on the Sky

by David Haywood Young

  * * *

  As predicted, Martina went with them. Owen piloted the boat, which had turned out to be a recent acquisition of the Hermit’s. He began to enjoy himself as they headed across the water toward Snoopy’s.

  He held down his speed to avoid being conspicuous, most of the time anyway, but the Hermit had outdone himself. The little boat would get up on a plane and go faster than anything Owen had ever seen. What did a guy like the Hermit need with a toy like this? And who cared? It was sweet. Owen and Aaron exchanged grins as they skipped across the wake of a larger boat taking a load of tourists out to do some fishing.

  They pulled up to the dock outside Snoopy’s at five minutes before eleven. Aaron and Martina hopped out and said they’d be in Scoopy’s, the ice cream parlor next door. Owen nodded and tied up the boat as they left, arguing about the virtues of Mint Chocolate Chip vs. Rocky Road ice cream.

  When Owen went inside a little after eleven, Carl was already sitting at a table. Snoopy’s had just opened and there wasn’t much of a crowd ordering food yet, so Owen sat with him.

  Gordon and Faulkner showed up fifteen minutes later. Carl volunteered to go place their orders. But Faulkner wasn’t familiar with the restaurant, so he went along to choose from the menu over the counter.

  “Anything I need to know about?” Owen asked Gordon as they waited.

  Gordon shrugged. “Be happier if you just holed up someplace and let us handle this thing.”

  “Yeah, probably. But I can’t, you know. So it’s better you know what I’m doing, and maybe you can keep me from doing something really stupid by telling me what you know.”

  Gordon laughed and pointed his index finger at Owen. “Nice argument. But okay. I can tell you some things. Faulkner and I looked at the autopsy reports on Purvis and Bentley. Purvis got hit on the head and a few other places. He was probably unconscious, or nearly, when the spear went in, because it didn’t get moved around much afterwards. Might not have been fatal, in spite of appearances, but he bled out right into his lungs.”

  “Drowned in his own blood?” Carl asked, coming up behind Gordon and taking a seat.

  “Yeah.” Gordon eyed Carl for a moment, then shook his head slightly. “Off the record. All of this is off the record, or at least one of us is leaving right now. Understood?”

  “Sure. I’m here as his friend,” Carl said, pointing at Owen with a plastic knife. “But if there’s a story afterwards, and you can talk then . . .”

  “We’ll talk to you before any other member of the press, Mr. LaMott,” Faulkner said, sitting down. Gordon glared at him, but Faulkner blandly squeezed lemon juice from a packet into his tea. He tasted it. “Very good. You were saying, Phil?”

  “Yeah. I was saying. Anyway, Bentley probably died of a blow to the head. Report said he didn’t drown, though they hedged that just a tad. Something about salt levels.”

  Owen shifted in his seat. He hadn’t thought about it, but was there anything that might show up in an autopsy to distinguish Junior from a normal human? But…why would there be? Sharks didn’t even have bones, so the transformation had to be more involved than just shifting pieces around…he saw Gordon looking at him and forced his attention back to the conversation.

  “There’s something you can do to help us, Tremaine. We need to know where you were, if you can remember, on the dates and times I’ve written here. If you can back any of it up with witnesses, so much the better.”

  Owen took the list. Dates were given in December, March, June and August, as well as the previous Saturday night. The times shown were all in the evening. “What’s this for?”

  Gordon tapped the list with his finger. “There’s more stuff involved here. If we can show you were somewhere else at any of these times, it’ll help.”

  Carl was looking at the list too. “Is this about the kidnapping? The ‘stuff’ Stanley was working on?”

  Gordon’s face gave away nothing. “I thought you figured he was coming in on an eco-terrorist angle.”

  “Yeah, but I was wrong. I talked to a guy in the office who’s covering what happened to Pete Bradshaw’s kid, and he told me Stanley was the FBI contact until recently. Plus the kid’s dress was found with Junior’s body.” He saw Gordon’s look of disgust. “Oh come on, it had to come out eventually. It’ll be in tomorrow’s paper.”

  Owen felt adrift. The sun was burning off the fog outside, but in his head it seemed to be getting thicker. Why would her dress be found with Junior’s body? Unless they’d both been killed, and her body just hadn’t been found—or somebody had meant to give that impression? But…Junior’s body had washed up on the beach. Hadn’t it? Or had it been placed there?

  Carl shrugged fatalistically, not seeming to notice Owen’s sudden funk. “Probably on the news tonight, too. I doubt we’re the only people who’ve found out. Anyway, never mind that. I’ll grant that Stanley could be doing more than one thing. But this here,” he pointed to the last entry on the list, “is when Kate Bradshaw was grabbed from Whataburger downtown.” He looked at Gordon, then flicked his eyes to Faulkner. “That’s it, isn’t it? There are more kids who went missing on these other dates, and whoever’s doing it is tied to the stuff happening around Owen.” He nodded, his right hand going to the notebook in his pocket.

  “Carl.” Owen roused himself from speculations about the dress and reached out to push Carl’s hand back down to the table. “Off the record. Remember?”

  “Shit.” Carl slumped, then thought of something else. “So you guys don’t buy the theory that Owen’s behind it all, huh? Even though there’s a warrant out for his arrest?” He looked at Owen. “You’re armed and dangerous, by the way.”

  Faulkner shifted in his chair. For a moment he seemed oddly like a ferociously precocious child. “We find that theory to be suspiciously convenient.”

  Owen noticed Faulkner’s feet didn’t quite reach the floor. Maybe that was it. The difference between a child and a man came down, in the end, to leverage? He’d heard dumber theories.

  Carl nodded slowly. “Okay. So there’s more to this than you’re saying. That’s fine. But to answer your question…Owen, look at this.” He pointed to one of the dates. “In December? Two days before Christmas? Man, we were both out in your boat all night. So were several other people.”

  Owen pulled the list closer and nodded. “It’s easy to remember,” he explained to the others. “I’ve been having a pre-Christmas party every year for quite a while. And Carl’s right, last year’s was on the boat.”

  Gordon pursed his lips. “Can anyone say you were definitely on the boat all night?”

  “Sure. We left before dark and didn’t get back to land until the next morning.”

  “Okay.” Gordon’s forehead smoothed out. Owen hadn’t noticed the tension until it was gone. Gordon leaned back in his chair. “That’s a start. Know anything about the other dates?”

  Owen eyed him. Gordon’s obvious relief was kind of unsettling. Had he still wondered? “No. At least not offhand. I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Okay, do that. And give us a list of other people who were there in December, with contact information.”

  “Sure. Look, do you guys mind if I summarize what we know so far? I think there’s something we could try, but I’d like to lay a groundwork for it.”

  Gordon shrugged. Owen looked at Faulkner, who smiled at him. “Certainly, Mr. Tremaine,” he said. “By all means, lay your groundwork. I approve of an orderly mind.”

  Owen glanced at Carl, who was still staring at the dates of the other kidnappings. Owen reached out and took the paper away, then folded it and put it in his pocket.

  Carl looked up and spread his hands. “Go ahead, man. I sure as hell don’t know what’s going on, so I’m in favor.” But his eyes didn’t quite focus. Was he planning something?

  Owen took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Okay. I’m going to proceed from the assumptions that Shawna told me the truth, and that I’m innocent, if you
don’t mind.” Carl laughed, and Faulkner smiled. Gordon just waited. “So what do we know? Somebody killed Leon, and took my Jeep over to Junior’s place. At least two men were there.”

  “Was there another vehicle present?” Gordon asked. “Did Miss McPhee tell you that?”

  Owen shook his head. “I didn’t ask. I should have.” And now it was too late. “So…maybe, if they were planning to leave the Jeep there to frame me. Which is consistent with getting Leon’s blood on the seat. At any rate, Shawna showed up to meet with Junior and walked in on these guys. They killed Junior, but she got away.” He stopped. “Does that suggest anything to you, detectives?”

  Gordon nodded. “Bentley wanted to meet McPhee about hiring you to pry into something at CyberLook.”

  “So she told me.”

  “We got other evidence too. So it suggests somebody wanted to stop him from hiring you, and wanted to frame you for killing him. McPhee probably screwed them up when she showed up early. Though it could be they wanted to kill Bentley for some other reason, and you and McPhee were just a couple of handy pigeons.”

  Owen nodded. “Yeah, that’s possible. But Junior’s murder was probably related to CyberLook. Even reasons that had nothing to do with me or Shawna might still involve the company. The kidnapping connection baffles me,” he admitted. “But it’s obviously there. Ignoring that for the moment, Shawna was killed yesterday morning, and I was set up for that. My guess is that I was being watched, rather than Shawna, because if she was the target and they’d been following her, they could have killed her at any time. They couldn’t know she would come to me.” But they’d damn well taken advantage of the opportunity. And so far they’d managed to get away with it.

  Owen looked at Carl. “You haven’t heard this part, but next we have the FBI taking over the case.”

  Carl shook his head. “NSA. With FBI support.”

  “What? Where’d you hear that?” Gordon asked.

  “From Stanley, indirectly. He got pulled off the case. My friend at the paper said he was pretty irritated. Anyway, Stanley gave my friend the number of somebody new to contact about the kidnapping. We checked in our database, and the new guy turns out to be with the NSA.”

  “Why would Stanley give out information like that?” Gordon asked.

  “I don’t know,” Carl said. “Maybe because he was pissed off? We wouldn’t quote him on a thing like this, anyway. It’s too useful, and if we play fair he might do it again.”

  “Guys,” Owen broke in, “this is important. The software they’re working on at CyberLook? It’s exactly the kind of thing the NSA would be interested in.”

  Carl laughed and held up a hand. “Whoa there. You’re saying the NSA is blocking investigation of kidnapping and murder because they’re interested in software? I’m as willing as the next guy to believe the government’s out to get us, but doesn’t all this seem a little too…well, blatant?”

  “Maybe it is,” Owen said. “Maybe it’s not the NSA per se, just some guys who work for them. Could be it’s a private deal somehow. I don’t know. But what I do know is that everything is pointing to CyberLook, and that’s what the idea I came up with for our next step is all about.”

  Faulkner wiped his lips with a napkin. “All right, Mr. Tremaine. I’ll ask the question. What is your idea?”

  Owen grinned. “I want Carl, here, to call up Danny Sheffield and tell him he’s doing a column about federal money and CyberLook.”

  Carl whistled. “That might be kind of fun. I could say it’s a piece about the extent to which our local economy is based on dollars from Washington. It’d actually be pretty timely, considering the local cutbacks people are talking about—the Naval Air Station and so on.”

  “Sure, whatever,” Owen said. “Just as long as he gets the idea you know more than he wants you to—and I can give you some of the stuff I heard from Johnny, only you can’t tell anyone he’s involved, so I guess I’m the source if you need one.”

  Carl was grinning. “I don’t need to attribute the information to anybody. I told you, you’re a computer guy, you don’t know squat about that stuff. I’m just going to make a phone call.”

  “Hold on,” Gordon said. “Suppose Tremaine’s right. Exactly what do you think is going to happen?”

  “If the NSA hears about it,” Carl said, “and it’s not supposed to be public? They might just walk away from the deal. If they do, and somebody’s hiding something behind them, maybe he’ll get left out in the open.”

  Gordon snorted. “Not likely. And I’m pretty sure you know better, so quit pretending to be innocent. I told you, I read your column.” He held Carl’s gaze for a moment, then continued. “They’d figure you wouldn’t back off, being in the business you’re in, and trying to scare you would just make it worse. So if anyone over there’s ruthless enough, which I think we can assume at this point, they’ll just kill you.” He shook his head slowly. “They wouldn’t have any other choice.”

  Owen pointed at Gordon and Faulkner. “That’s your part in this. You guys get to keep that from happening.” If they could. He wished he could do this himself. But it had to be Carl.

  “Why start with Mr. Sheffield?” Faulkner asked.

  “Because he has to be involved,” Owen said. “I’ve known him for years, and he’s one of the sharpest people I’ve ever met. Also, he’s in charge at CyberLook now, which is only true because Junior was killed. So whoever was responsible for that, assuming the CyberLook connection is real, must have been—at the very least—willing to see Danny in his new position.”

  Owen wiped his hands on his napkin. He wasn’t proud of what he had to say next, but he wouldn’t dodge it. “Look, back when Junior wanted to bring me back to CyberLook, I figured Danny had to be mixed up in whatever was going on. That was one of the reasons I didn’t take the job—I’ve always sort of liked Danny, and if he was taking advantage of Junior somehow, well, that was okay with me just then.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know if I can explain about Danny, really. It’s refreshing, somehow, the way he’s always focused on getting ahead. If he respects you, and knows you’re watching him, he makes a great business partner.

  “But never mind, that’s just my personal take on the guy. The main point is that all of this has worked to Danny’s benefit, and he’s nobody’s dupe. So whether he’s guilty of anything personally or not, believe me, he knows what’s going on and what he has to lose if Carl publishes his column.” A thought struck him. “Hey, did you guys find out if Danny had an alibi for Saturday?”

  Faulkner pursed his lips. “Wouldn’t Miss McPhee have recognized him if she saw him that night?”

  “Yeah. If she saw him. But he might have been around. He’s not particularly squeamish.”

  “Maybe he ain’t,” Gordon said. “But he was off on Goose Island for the weekend with a couple of other guys, with no boat. They got dropped off on Friday and picked up on Sunday.”

  Frank Serno had said something about that, hadn’t he? Why had Owen forgotten it?

  “So anyway,” Gordon went on, “he’d have to be one hell of a swimmer, or the guys with him would have to be lying, or both.”

  A hell of a swimmer? That raised other possibilities Owen wasn’t going to mention to Gordon. Maybe Andrea would know something. But either way, if Danny had been somewhere besides that island, the people supposedly with him would have had to know. “Did you check them out?”

  “Who? The guys with him?” Gordon pulled out his notebook. “One of them works at CyberLook…Mark Horton. The other one said he sells used cars, which wasn’t hard to believe. Irritating guy.”

  Owen looked at him. “Let me test my psychic powers. The other man was Howard Michener?”

  “Yeah,” Gordon said. “You know these guys? They hang out with Sheffield much?”

  “They might. They’re his cousins.”

  Faulkner leaned forward and tapped Gordon’s notebook. “They’re not, you know. Unless they lied to us about thi
ngs it would be easy to check.”

  “What do you mean?” Owen asked.

  “Michener said he was an only child, and his parents were dead,” Gordon said. “Went on to say he had no family at all. We didn’t ask, but he worked it into the conversation. Trying for sympathy, maybe.” He looked thoughtful. ”‘Course, a lot of your dumber habitual liars are like that, going overboard with it. Once they get going, they won’t say anything that’s true. It’s like they think they can re-create the whole world and nobody will notice.”

  Faulkner nodded. “Perhaps. Mr. Horton said he was from Boston, and didn’t know anyone here before he moved. He said he came down because he hated winters.”

  “He could still be related to Sheffield,” Carl said.

  Faulkner smiled. “But if he is, Mr. LaMott, it is odd that he chose not to mention it.” He turned to Owen. “Where did you get the impression that such a relationship existed?”

  Owen thought about it. “I guess Danny never said anything one way or the other. But one of the programmers at CyberLook told me they were his cousins. I know I referred to the relationship a few times, and it might have smoothed things over if Danny had denied it, but he didn’t.”

  “Smoothed what things over?” Gordon asked. “Want to let us in on the rest of whatever it is?”

  “Yeah. Sorry, I’m trying to figure this out myself. But anyway, here’s what happened.” He told them about the suspiciously divided database and separate bank account that had led to Michener’s termination. “I always thought there was something funny about all that, something more than what came out. But it blew over, mostly.”

  “Huh.” Gordon had been flipping through his notebook. He put it back in his pocket. “It’s interesting that Sheffield didn’t deny the relationship back then.” He spread his hands. “Either they’re not cousins or they lied to us when they knew we might check. Dangerous to lie about something like that, if it might affect your alibi. My guess is they’re not related, but I don’t get Sheffield’s reactions.”

  “Maybe that’s tied into the rest of it.” Owen thought he might know what sort of “cousins” the three were. “It might make perfect sense if we knew what Junior had wanted me to look into.” Or not, but he needed to get Gordon and Faulkner off this topic for now.

  “Maybe.” Gordon sounded unconvinced. “But anyway, here’s the thing. If they’re all three innocent, at least one of ‘em should have said something about this ‘cousin’ thing, unless they’re hiding it deliberately for some unrelated reason, which I don’t buy right now. And if they’re guilty, they should definitely have mentioned it even if they’re not actually related. Or at least the fact that Michener used to work for CyberLook. Because if they didn’t, and you got accused of murder, it would come up. Your lawyer would fasten on to a thing like that. It would cause some confusion, which always helps with reasonable doubt. It might or might not have made a difference, but it would come up and they had no reason to muddy the water.”

  He tapped his teeth with a fork. “You say Sheffield’s smart? Well, if he is, you’d better get over liking him. He never meant for you to have a chance to hire an attorney or an investigator. I’d say he wanted you dead, and since you were framed so well for Miss McPhee’s death and left in place where we could have picked you up…he was pretty sure you’d die in custody somehow.” He glanced at Faulkner, who looked back expressionlessly.

  “This would be,” Carl said, “a hell of a story.”

  Gordon snorted. “Off the record, remember? If you ever want a cop to talk to you again.”

  “Yeah, I remember. I was just saying.” Carl stood up. “Anyway, so what’s the plan? I call Sheffield and get him to meet me somewhere, and you guys cover me? Because I want to go check a couple of facts first for the story I’ll tell him, but I’m up for it this afternoon.”

  He grinned at startled faces. “What? Is there a reason to sit on this?”

  ***