Under Pressure

by Kathy Brandt

  God, I thought, how could I not be with this man.

  Afterward, we lay together looking up at the stars.

  “You know, sometimes I wish life were simpler. Just you and me, an island somewhere,” I said.

  He stood, pulled me up, and pressed his body into mine in a tight embrace. Then we waded into the ocean and floated under a million stars. I lay my head back, closed my eyes, and let the sea block out sound.

  I don’t know how long I’d been drifting there when suddenly O’Brien was yanking me above the surface.

  “What, O’Brien?”

  “It’s Simon,” he said, splashing to shore. That’s when I heard it too. Simon’s horrifying screams. Another nightmare. Sadie ran ahead as we raced down the dock to the Sea Bird, pulling on clothes as we ran. By the time we got there, Simon was standing in the cockpit.

  “Hannah,” he cried, “I couldn’t find you. I got so scared.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, jumping onto the boat, O’Brien right behind me. “We were down on the beach. We’re here now. You’re okay.”

  O’Brien picked him up and carried him down to the salon and sat with him while I heated some cocoa. He was still trembling when I sat down next to him. O’Brien had him wrapped up like a burrito.

  “Did you have another nightmare?” I asked as he managed to extract a hand and take a sip from the cup.

  “I guess, but this one was different. I was dreaming about someone moving around on the Sea Bird. I remember in the dream I thought it was you. Then a man came and stood in my doorway. I was so scared. It felt like I was awake. I called out for you, and then I started screaming and screaming and the man disappeared.

  “It’s okay, Simon. You stay with O’Brien and I’ll have a look around.” I didn’t expect to find anything, but the kid needed to be reassured.

  I headed up top. The moon was barely visible behind heavy clouds that were moving fast across the sky. I felt that same unease I’d felt at the market yesterday. Everything felt off—heavy, foreboding. The air was leaden, swelling with moisture. The wind had picked up and was blowing through the palms on shore. I shone a flashlight in the water, the light bouncing off choppy wave crests and casting eerie shadows onto shore. I saw a mongoose dart across the sand and run into the brush, but there wasn’t a soul around.

  By the time I went back below, Simon was already asleep. O’Brien was sitting in the salon with the kid cradled in his lap. He carried him back to my cabin and lay him in my bed.

  O’Brien took Simon’s bed. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to be there if Simon woke up again.

  I lay for a long time, Simon cuddled near me, listening to the wind moaning in the dark.

  Chapter 25

  Enok Kiersted was in his lab testing some of the hundreds of samples he’d collected in the mangroves in the past month when he heard the door bang open in the front office. At first he thought it was the wind. Then he heard it click shut. He never bothered to lock up, not in the islands. A stab of apprehension twisted in his gut. It was well past midnight. Too late for anyone to be conducting business.

  He hadn’t meant to stay so late, but he’d lost track of the time. He’d gotten wrapped up in his samples. It happened often. For Kiersted there was nothing more important than his research. He’d been worried about his grant and what was going to happen to his funding once Redding got back to the States and reported to the foundation. Now that was not going to occur.

  And he’d be smarter next time someone from the foundation came down. He'd be savvy enough to cover his ass. It wouldn’t be hard. He’d back off about the politics and the corruption he was sure was taking place on the island. He’d never needed to give Redding that information. He’d been mistaken to think Redding or the foundation would care, maybe even increase the grant money so that Kiersted could counteract what was happening. The next foundation officer who came down would get the revised version.

  He’d heard that the cops had found Conrad Frett dead that afternoon. Good riddance was how Kiersted looked at it. He had seen Frett in the mangroves with the owner of the property, checking out boundaries. Kiersted didn’t believe for one minute that they’d simply been trying to firm up property lines for the records. That’s what Frett had said.

  Kiersted worried about what might happen to the mangroves. Something had been going on there. He’d seen Frett back later with some other people, drifting in the lagoon on a motorboat, looking at the property. He’d recognized the boat. It was the same one he he’d seen Friday dumping garbage over the side.

  When he’d spotted it tied to the dock in Road Town, he’d confronted the boat owners about the garbage. Then he’d gotten into it with them about the damage that would be done if the mangroves were bought for development.

  They’d laughed in his face. “Do you think we really care about a few fish and coral?” they’d asked.

  He’d threatened them, told them he’d expose them, go to the papers and to the charter companies’ owners. Those owners would be up in arms when they learned that Paraquita Bay was about to be sold for development. They depended on the mangroves in the bay to protect their boats during hurricane season, and they had a lot of clout in the islands.

  Now Kiersted realized he’d made a huge mistake when he’d threatened the two boaters. They were standing at the lab door and he knew it was not a friendly visit.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  The big muscular guy held a gun.

  “You’re just too environmentally conscious for your own good, and you’ve seen too much. Besides, I don’t like being threatened,” the other said.

  Kiersted had been so distracted by his grant and Redding’s recommendations that he hadn’t taken the time to think it through—Frett’s death, the fact that they’d been out in the mangroves with him. Now he put it all together. The garbage he’d seen being thrown over the side had been a body—Frett’s body.

  “That’s right,” the other said, seeing understanding and then fear cross Kiersted’s face.

  Of all things, Kiersted found himself distracted by the shoes, wondering why anyone would wear purple shoes. He started to laugh. He knew he was losing it. Near hysterics. There wasn’t much question about what was going to happen.

  “Think something’s funny?” the big guy asked, moving toward Kiersted.

  “Don’t mark him up,” the other said. “We need this to look right.”

  The big guy pushed Kiersted to the front office and into his desk chair. Then he handed Kiersted a pen and paper and told him exactly what to write.

  “Not a chance,” Kiersted said. The words were hardly out of his mouth when the guy grabbed him and held him down while the other jammed fingers under his ribs and twisted. Searing pain shot through his body. It felt like every organ was on fire.

  By the time they were finished, Kiersted was begging for the pen.

  Chapter 26

  O’Brien was gone when I woke up. I lay there for a while trying to figure out what last night on the beach had meant. Where did it leave us in terms of our relationship? Had it just been an intermission from the boxing match we’d been having, a truce because we were so attracted to each other? Neither one of us had conceded defeat or shown any willingness to make compromises. We’d made physical contact without ever moving out of our corners.

  O’Brien had left coffee on the stove. I poured myself a cup and went up top to a day that was gray and overcast, the sun a white blurry disk behind slate clouds. The wind whistled through the boat’s rigging and raised whitecaps in the harbor. On the shore, coconut palms clattered and bowed in the gusts.

  Simon was already up, running into the wind with Sadie at his heels. Nothing like the resilience of a kid. I was tired and edgy. When I’d stood in the galley a moment before, things had felt off, slightly out of sync—a book not exactly where I’d left it, my Birkenstocks kicked under the table. I’d shaken it off, reasoned that both O’Brien and Simon had been up before me, rummaging
around the boat.

  Simon and Rebecca were waiting for me when I got to the car. Simon had told the teacher about his photography and today he was doing a “show-and-tell” about digital technology. I’d agreed to take them to school so we could stop at the camera shop. Simon talked all the way into town about how he was going to take pictures of the kids in his class and then show them the photos on the little camera screen.

  I’d been working with Gus’s Camera Shop since I’d started at the Tortola PD. Gus was the best in town and he did all my developing and printing. He’d learned to steel himself against the grizzly images that emerged on the prints. He was way up to speed in terms of digital technology and sold the newest and fanciest in his shop.

  Simon showed him the camera. I told Gus we wanted a couple of the photos enlarged and printed but that we couldn’t leave the camera. Simon needed to be able to show the photos at school today.

  “No problem, mon,” Gus said, popping the card out of the camera. “Give me ten minutes.” We watched as he downloaded Simon’s photos onto his computer. He snapped the card back into Simon’s camera, explaining that he had copied all of the photos and that he’d save them onto a CD as well.

  “It be a good idea to have dem stored on a disk,” he said. “Dat way you be havin’ a backup. And den you can be deletin’ all dem photos from da camera and be makin’ room for more. And you can be fixin’ and changin’ da photos on da computer with Photoshop. You come by sometime dis week, I be showin’ you,” he said to Simon.

  I described which photos we wanted printed and we were out of there with a promise from Gus that he’d have the prints done this afternoon.

  We were just in time for the school bell. Simon and Rebecca tumbled out of the car, raced across the playground, and disappeared behind the front door. Suddenly the Rambler felt empty. The two of them had been jabbering all the way. Rebecca giving Simon a lesson in Creole.

  “If you be hearin’ a man say ‘de longes’ prayer got amen,’ he be meanin’ dat nothin’ last forever,” she explained.

  “What’s a ‘jump-up’?” Simon asked. I wondered where he’d heard that in his short time in the islands.

  “Dat be one big party da folks drinkin’ plenty of rum,” Rebecca said knowingly. “Dey say, ‘we be jammin’, mon.’”

  I could just hear Simon telling his aunt what he’d learned while in my care.

  ***

  Conrad Frett’s office was in the government building next to the courthouse. His secretary was going through his desk and filling cardboard boxes.

  When Stark tapped on the open door, she looked up, startled. Blotches of mascara marred her high cheekbones, a sure sign that she’d been crying. I wondered if Frett’s housekeeper had been right—that Frett and his secretary had been romantically involved.

  While she went to get us coffee, Stark and I snooped, looking for anything that might tell us more about the man or why he had been murdered. His office was like his home—no personal photos on the desk. A framed diploma from the Grenada School of Business and a certificate from the governor for ten years of government service broke an otherwise long expanse of empty wall space.

  “Can you tell us what Mr. Frett’s job entailed?” I asked when his secretary returned.

  “He was responsible for all the land-use issues related to development in the islands. He made recommendations for building and approved land transfers and applications for land holding licenses from non-belongers.”

  “Sounds like a huge responsibility,” Stark said as he dumped half a bowl of sugar into his coffee.

  “It is, but day to day it’s a lot of red tape and paperwork. He used to complain about too many people with their hands in his work, looking over his shoulder. He didn’t like it. Wanted to be autonomous.”

  “Was he?” I asked, eyeing Stark as he added just one more heaping spoonful of sugar into his cup.

  “For the most part, yes,” she said. “Though I’ve taken a couple of messages from the chief minister in the past week. He’d been going over the quarterly report and was upset about the increased number of land purchases by non-residents. Mr. Frett was avoiding his calls.”

  “Do you know what Frett was working on lately?” Stark asked.

  “Same as always. Nothing unusual, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Was he having any trouble with anyone besides the chief minister?”

  “People are always coming in here mad because Mr. Frett rejected a transfer or mad because he approved one. No matter what, someone was unhappy.”

  “What about Enok Kiersted?” I asked. “He’s the new environmentalist working for the Society of Conservation.”

  She knew exactly who Kiersted was. “He’s been here several times in the past couple of weeks. The last time he was extremely angry, started arguing and accusing Mr. Frett.”

  “What about?” Stark asked.

  “Oh, you name it—the approval of condos over on Scrub Island, the destruction of seabeds, turning mangroves into beachfront property. There wasn’t much that man wasn’t angry about. Mr. Frett actually called security and had him escorted out.”

  “Did you see him again after that?” I asked.

  “No. I think he knew better than to show his face in this office again. Mr. Frett said he’d have him arrested.”

  “When did you see Frett last?”

  “It was Friday. He had an appointment to meet that senator, Westbrook. Then he said he had some personal business to attend to.”

  “What time did he leave?” Stark asked, tipping back the last of what had to be all sugar from the bottom of his cup.

  “Right after lunch. He said he’d be back in a couple of hours.”

  “So he never came back to the office?” I asked, thinking that Frett was probably dead in the mangroves that afternoon.

  “That’s right. When he wasn’t back by five, I locked up and went home. He had his own key if he came back to the office. But he never did.”

  “How do you know?” Stark asked.

  “I’d left some papers on his desk to sign. They were still there Monday morning. When he wasn’t in by ten, I called his house. The housekeeper said he wasn’t there and then she realized he may not been home since Friday morning. That’s when I got worried. Mr. Frett never misses work. The one time he did, he called in with the flu. I waited till noon, then called the police.”

  She shuddered as she thought about it. “I can’t believe he was dead all that time and laying in those nasty mangroves.”

  “Were you involved with Frett socially?” I asked, seeing the emotional opening I needed.

  “No,” she said, glaring now. “I’d never consider getting involved with my boss. You must have been talking to that maid. I’d dropped some documents off at his house. I saw the look. That woman is always searching for something to talk about.

  “Look, Mr. Frett was a nice man and a good boss, but not particularly my type, if you know what I mean.” I figured she meant a guy with just a tad of sex appeal. That definitely wasn’t Frett.

  “Why all the tears then?”

  “I’ve worked with him for five years. He was a good boss, fair. Wouldn’t anyone be upset to learn someone you work with every day has been murdered?”

  She had a point.

  “We’ll be in touch if we need to talk with you again,” I said as I headed out the door, Stark right behind me.

  Outside, I ran right into Westbrook, who was just about to come through the door. The papers he’d been holding ended up scattered all over the hallway.

  “Detective Sampson, Stark. I’m surprised to see you two here,” he said, annoyed.

  I knelt and helped him scoop up the paperwork. He obviously didn’t want me to see the stuff and tried to pull it out of my hands before I had a chance to look at it. He was too late though. It was copies of his application for the transfer of the property near Soper's Hole.

  “So, you decided to go ahead on that house after all,” I probed, w
ondering why he should care whether I saw the application.

  “Nothing is definite yet. I just want to make sure that the license is in order if I do decide to buy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got business to conduct.” He yanked the documents out of my hand and went into Frett’s office. I could hear him giving Frett’s secretary grief when we left.

  “What do you make of that?” Stark said as we headed back to the car. “He sure didn’t want you to see that application.”

  “Yeah. When I spoke with his wife, she said he’d been looking for a place to retire but that he could only afford to buy a place because of her money. Maybe he doesn’t want her to find out he’s going ahead without her. That guy’s a jerk. It’s possible that he’s involved in all this.

  “My money’s on Kiersted,” Stark said. “I think he brought down the plane because Redding was going to ruin his research. And according to the secretary, he threatened Frett. I think we get him, we get both—the man responsible for the crash and for Frett’s murder. Let’s go back over there and invite him down to the office for a few questions.”

  ***

  When we got to Kiersted's office, the door was open. You know how you get that feeling right away that something’s not right? I had it now. So did Stark. We’d pulled our guns. Stark toed the door open, and we waited. Nothing happened. No flurry of bullets zinged past. No one charged us. Finally, we went in. Stark moved right. I went left. I guess what we’d felt was death. Enok Kiersted was lying on his desk in a pool of blood. He held a 9 mm Beretta in his right hand. The entire side of his face was missing. All that remained was a mass of bone fragments and brain tissue.

  The place felt empty, but Stark checked the bathroom as I moved toward the back room and into Kiersted’s lab, gun raised. It looked like he’d been working in the lab. Specimens were spread out all over the table in petri dishes. A slide was under the microscope. The microscope light was still on. I took a look through the lens. Just a lot of brown specks as far as I could tell, but then I’d been more interested in the hunk who taught my college chemistry course than in anything under a microscope.