Deadly Sommer: Nora Sommer Caribbean Suspense - Book One

by Nicholas Harvey

  Escaping sounded far more appealing. Although I was locked in a room, it was time to take some of the control away from Jensen Massey. I began lifting the helmet off my head.

  “You can take that off now,” came his voice over speakers in the room.

  So much for going against his wishes. I lifted the helmet off and looked around me. It was not what I was expecting.

  22

  Engaging Smile

  Beth and Kowalczyk listened intently to a radio feed coming across her computer tablet. It was a live link to the operations van parked down the street from Jensen Massey’s home in St Petersburg, Florida.

  In St Pete, FBI agent Don Brandt knocked on the door to the house and waited. Neither he, nor his partner Faith Graham, expected a response. He knocked several more times while Faith stepped across the lawn and peered through the front window. No lights were on in the home and the bright afternoon sunshine made it hard to see much inside. But she caught no movement.

  “No response,” Brandt announced over his collar-mounted microphone. “Send over the guys to bust the door open.”

  “Hold up,” came the reply from operations command in the van. The man’s voice clear in their wireless earpieces. “You have a neighbour coming your way.”

  Faith saw the man approaching from the house next door. He was wearing the ugliest golf trousers she had ever seen and a bright yellow golf shirt with a country club logo embroidered on the left chest.

  “Hello there,” the man she guessed to be in his sixties called over. “Jensen’s not home.”

  Both agents presented their badges in a well-practised flip of the wrist.

  “I was wondering when you’d show up,” the man said. “Had some news crews come by earlier, according to my wife. I was playing 18 this morning.”

  Faith was glad his outfit at least had a purpose beyond scaring away the wildlife.

  “I was just getting up to speed on all this nonsense in the Caribbean,” the man finished, as he stopped a few yards away from the agents.

  “You know Mr Massey well?” Brandt asked.

  “Sure,” the man said jovially, and then seemed to think about the implications. “Well, as a neighbour you understand. Not like we’ve gone on vacations together or anything. Backyard barbecues. Hold the ladder while we put up the Christmas lights. Been fishing a few times. He told us he was heading out of town for a few weeks and asked us to collect his mail and keep an eye on the place. I’ve been inside once a week just to check the AC’s still working and what-have-you. Can’t say we ever suspected he was off to kidnap someone and all this trouble he’s caused. Most unlike the man.”

  “You have a key to the house?” Faith asked.

  “Of course,” the man replied, smiling at them.

  “Would you mind getting that key?” she added.

  “Oh, sure,” he said, and finally beetled back towards his house.

  Faith found herself transfixed by his generous behind, squeezed into the oddly patterned trousers. Was that plaid, or a patchwork of some description? She wasn’t sure when none of the squares matched in colour. She tore herself away and wished she could steal back the storage space in her brain that the hideous garment now occupied.

  After a less than a minute, fancy pants waddled back towards them and held out a door key. “Here you go.”

  Brandt put the key in the door and paused for a moment. Faith smiled at the neighbour. “Please head back to your house and remain inside, sir. Someone will be by to talk with you shortly.”

  The man looked disappointed but reluctantly dawdled away, glancing over his shoulder as he went.

  Brandt unlocked the door and swung it open, confident no surprises lay in store as the neighbour had been in and out over the past few weeks. The house was a three-bedroomed bungalow with a large open-plan living space encompassing the lounge, dining room and kitchen. They could see the canal out the rear windows beyond a short backyard. They both donned gloves before entering and slipped covers over their shoes before leaving the doormat.

  The place was spotless. Nothing was out of place. The fridge was almost bare, no cartons of milk to spoil, or left-over meals. Just a handful of jars that would keep forever. A few packets of frozen vegetables and an oven-ready pizza remained in the freezer. The front lawn had been neatly kept and, looking out of the sliding glass doors to the backyard, Faith noticed the weeds were pulled and pathways swept. He’d likely continued his gardener’s regular visits.

  The two agents moved from room to room, opening closets, cupboards, and drawers, without disturbing anything. In the master suite, Faith examined the walk-in closet and discovered half of the space was occupied with women’s clothing. She picked up picture frames from the dresser and saw the now familiar Jensen Massey with a pleasant-looking woman with curly brown hair and an engaging smile. Several of the photographs were from international trips with distinguishing architecture behind the happy couple. One was the woman in a running race of some kind, a number pinned to her singlet.

  Faith entered the last bedroom and found her partner already in the room. A futon sat against one wall and a large desk dominated the room, a chair on each side. The desk was clear of clutter with a modern monitor stand supporting two matching monitors back to back. The leads ran through an access hole in the desk and Faith crouched down to look underneath where the wires hung to the floor.

  “So what’s the only thing missing?” she asked.

  “The one thing you’d expect an IT engineer to have an abundance of,” Brandt replied.

  They both opened desk drawers on either side to find stationary, office supplies, and little else.

  “Not a single computer, external drive, thumb drive or even a notebook or diary,” Faith commented.

  “It’s much easier when they have a wall full of pictures and articles all linked with pieces of string,” Brandt said, grinning as he stared at the blank, pale green painted walls.

  “Yeah, that’s handy,” Faith agreed. “Have you ever seen that? Even one time?”

  “Oh yeah, loads of times,” her partner replied. “On TV. Not once in 12 years as part of the Bureau.”

  They both chuckled. Brandt keyed his mic. “House is clear, there’s nothing here of interest we can see. You can have the lab guys do their thing.”

  The agents walked back to the living room and methodically searched one more time with little expectation. Brandt stood in front of the thermostat on the wall and read off what he saw. “78 degrees.”

  Faith nodded and carried on opening drawers to the coffee table.

  “What do you set your AC to when you go away?” he asked her.

  She closed the drawer and sat up on the sofa. “Hmm, I’m trying to remember the last time we went anywhere for more than a day or two. Two Christmases ago, we went to my parents in Colorado, but I couldn’t tell you what we did with the thermostat in the condo. My husband may have changed it. I was too busy shepherding the kids.”

  “This thermostat is one of those fancy ones you can control from a smartphone and has different settings for times of day, days of week, and all that jazz,” Brandt said, and then pointed to the front door. “Same network the alarm is on. All controllable remotely.”

  “But the alarm wasn’t set,” Faith pointed out.

  “Exactly,” Brandt replied, taking his mobile from his pocket. He went to settings, then Wi-Fi, and waited for the screen to populate with options. A long list of every Wi-Fi network in range sprang up, varying in name from the standard manufacturer tags and numbers to ‘MossWiFi’, ‘Madhouse’, and even ‘FBI_Surveillance_Van’. That one was always a favourite with the agents. He wondered how many curtains were being pulled back and people pointing at the innocuous white van parked down the road, letting their spouses know they’d finally found the mysterious van.

  Brandt didn’t know what he expected from the list as he wouldn’t know Massey’s Wi-Fi name if it was on there. But his hunch was it didn’t exist anymore. He returned to t
he thermostat and studied the screen. The small network icon blinked in the corner with a cross through it.

  “No Wi-Fi network,” he said. “He even disabled or removed the network, which is why the alarm isn’t set. He’s left us nothing we could use to quickly trace his online or cloud-stored information.”

  “Hardly surprising,” Faith commented. “From everything we’ve seen so far, the man has meticulously planned every move.”

  Brandt left the thermostat and paused by a series of photographs arranged in a modular frame on the dining room wall. Faith walked over and joined him.

  “I think he planned on never returning,” her partner said quietly.

  “He had to know he couldn’t, however this ends,” she replied. “I’m guessing in his mind there’s nothing here for him anymore, regardless.”

  Brandt looked around them. “Well, I don’t think anything’s been disturbed since he left, and we know that was three weeks ago.”

  “My guess is nothing has been disturbed much in eight months,” Faith replied, staring at the face of Massey’s wife, standing on a podium with a medal around her neck. “This guy hasn’t moved on since Olivia died.”

  “You think there’s a connection?” Brandt asked, “They haven’t found much of a link so far.”

  Faith tapped a finger on the photograph. “Oh, it’s about her all right. I don’t know what happened or why, but what he’s up to now has something to do with the woman he loved.”

  23

  Contrary to Propriety

  Whittaker alternated between text messages on his mobile and listening to the digital radio calls. Police vehicles were systematically searching every road in Barkers National Park. While that added up to a mere five or six miles of marl lanes, they were thoroughly checking the canals on either side, which took a great deal longer. Casey from the DOE had made a series of phone calls, making sure no one knew of any other buildings hidden away in Barkers, regardless of their condition. She’d drawn a blank.

  Currently, three humans had disappeared into thin air. Logic told the detective they had to be in the woods of the park somewhere, but without aerial assistance, finding them was going to be tough.

  The two FBI agents joined Whittaker under the tent, and he looked their way, hoping for a new lead.

  “Massey’s house turned up nothing of interest,” Kowalczyk reported. “Neat, tidy, clean, and void of all computers and network equipment. He knew we’d be looking there.”

  “Did he have an office? Storage unit?” Whittaker asked. “Any other location that might be useful?”

  “None that we’ve tracked down,” Beth replied. “He worked from home. He freelanced his IT services, but mainly worked remotely for one company in California. No ties we can find to Briggs or his company.”

  “The agents on site seem to think his wife’s death may play into this somehow,” Kowalczyk added sceptically. “But we don’t have anything to prove that theory.”

  Whittaker held up his mobile. “There’s a reporter who contacted me this morning,” he said. “She had been helping Massey research his wife’s accident, and what he claimed was potential foul play. He stopped speaking with her a month back, around the time Skylar Briggs made the news for her most recent arrest,” the Detective recalled and pulled up a contact on his mobile, hitting the call icon.

  “Hi Pam, it’s me. Do you have the number for the reporter you put through this morning?”

  “I do,” she replied, sounding just as frazzled as she had earlier. “Somewhere in this pile of paperwork I’m accumulating.”

  He heard rustling and a thud over the line followed by Pam swearing and then apologising to whomever was standing nearby.

  “Here it is,” she said. “It’s…”

  “Text it to me Pam,” Whittaker said, cutting her off. “Right away, please.”

  “Okay, Roy,” she began, “and I’ve delayed these press folks about as long as I can now, Roy, dey be coming…”

  “Yup, yup, thanks Pam,” he interrupted again and hit ‘end call’.

  “I’ll have a number in just a moment,” he continued, turning to the agents. “Her name is Myra Shah, and she works for one of the newspapers in Tampa. I don’t recall which one. When I talked to her this morning, she was sure there would end up being a connection back to his wife’s death. In her time working with Massey, they never found hard proof, so the story hasn’t run. But they do have a link between Olivia Massey and Briggs Paper & Packaging International. It’s tenuous at best, and Myra couldn’t remember all the details as she’s moved on to several other stories in the past month. She was heading to her house to get her notes. I got the impression she worked old school with paper and pen. Anyway, I asked to speak with her again once she’d refreshed her memory.”

  Whittaker showed Beth his mobile screen as the text dinged through.

  “You’ll have to scroll down, detective,” Beth said with a grin. “I think your communications lady is going to make her point one way or another.”

  Whittaker looked at the screen and the long text message, which appeared to explain how the police communications department was not building very good international relations by stalling the world’s press. He scrolled down to the number and held the mobile out to Beth again.

  “Sorry, here you go,” he explained. “It’s been a trying day for everyone in our little police department.”

  Beth noted the number and stepped away, dialling the FBI office in Tampa, who had taken the reins on the investigation.

  Massey’s online feed switched from what they now knew was a looped shot of Skylar, to what appeared to be a live view. It was Skylar once again, but tied to a different chair in a new room.

  “He’s back,” one of the IT techs shouted, and Whittaker and Kowalczyk immediately rushed to the monitor.

  “Are they black curtains?” Kowalczyk asked.

  Light shone down from above the Briggs girl, but the background was a dark material.

  “Maybe covering the wall,” Whittaker replied, “or a divider of some sort.”

  “Certainly appears to be inside again,” the agent noted. “I don’t hear wind noise or birds, but I think the mic’s on.”

  They could hear faint movement on the feed, and Massey appeared behind Skylar.

  “Welcome back, everyone, and I hope you enjoyed the entertainment courtesy of the Cayman Islands’ finest. They seem like a good bunch of people and quite determined to track me down, as you can imagine. A stark contrast to my experience with Florida’s police back home, who proved themselves highly unmotivated when it comes to less obvious crimes.”

  Whittaker noticed the man gritting his teeth and although his tone didn’t change, he exuded anger and frustration.

  “That might be a reference to his wife’s accident,” Kowalczyk noted.

  “But now it’s time for the third challenge. So, while Nora and Skylar prepare themselves, let’s take a look at another entertaining video I prepared for the world to see.”

  Massey began pacing back and forth behind Skylar’s chair while he continued, “If you recall, we’ve reached ‘Speak no Evil’ in our homage to the ancient prophets. The original proverb literally translated, says ‘speak not what is contrary to propriety’. Propriety by modern definition means the state or quality of conforming to conventionally accepted standards of behaviour or morals.”

  “So what did they mean by contrary to propriety? Well, our modern term has become ‘speak no evil’, which most take to mean that we shouldn’t speak ill of other people. That’s a simplified interpretation, and the statement was more likely intended to cover a broader reach of damage done by words. Such as telling lies.

  “Challenge three will be a test of speech. It will require a clear and precise explanation from one human being to another, without error or falsehood. I think you’ll find it quite entertaining, and a lesson we could all learn. But now, as promised, is a short video of important people in key positions in business, education
and government, speaking ‘contrary to propriety’.”

  The Internet feed switched to the prepared video, starting with the Governor of Florida standing at a podium, addressing a large crowd at an outdoor venue. His tie fluttered in the breeze and the bright sun reflected off his mirrored sunglasses. He stood bold and upright with both hands on the podium.

  “My good friend Donovan Briggs has not only made a commitment to the environment ladies and gentlemen, he has made a commitment to you, the great people of Florida.”

  Cheers rang out. Banners were waved, and the governor did nothing to dissuade the crowd. He patiently waited with a large smile until the noise quietened.

  “Briggs Paper & Packaging International is setting new standards for an industry that’s come under scrutiny in recent times. Well, I’m here to tell you, scrutinise all you want. This plant behind us in these beautiful grounds employs the latest clean energy and water waste techniques. And you know what else is employed here? Hundreds of Floridians.”

  The crowd rose to their feet in raucous applause, primed no doubt by the champagne reception and generous gift bags at every seat.

  The clip moved on to a woman addressing a crowd at another venue, this time inside, and Whittaker tore himself away. He did notice the viewer counter had reached 1.6 million.

  Beth re-joined them. “I see he’s back live. Any clues to where?”

  “Dark room, cloth hanging to cover the walls, it appears,” Whittaker commented. “Seems quite small but nothing to give away the location. Any luck with Miss Shah?”

  “She didn’t answer her phone, but we left a message and the Tampa branch is trying to track her down,” Beth replied. “They’ll send someone to her home to see if she’s there.”