OFF THE GRID

by Alex Kava

  He followed the guy for a while and knew the man was plastered or flying high. He’d listened to him talk to several people. He made less sense than the old woman with her imaginary friend. No, this guy would probably be thanking him for doing him the service of putting him out of his misery.

  Even earlier when the married couple had stopped the guy. They seemed to recognize him. Or thought they did. The man danced around. Slung out some curses. Then he ran off, almost getting run over in the street. He was hilarious. A total loser. Nobody would miss this fool.

  He watched him. Studied him. The streets were filling up with people. On one corner there was a four piece band, or rather four teenagers with instruments, clanging out their version of Christmas songs. Horse-drawn carriages were keeping busy, too. Police horse patrol was back. Same as last night. The lighting ceremony had taken place about fifteen minutes ago and everywhere he looked he was bedazzled by tiny, twinkling white lights.

  It was frickin’ beautiful. What a lovely night to die.

  He stepped out of a doorwell and found his target leaning against a rail, his back to an alley.

  He’d have to do him from behind. Not a problem. He knew where to insert the blade. Not in the middle. It’d ram against the spinal cord. It would need to be off to the side. Down below. He’d keep the same angle up. The back tissue would require more pressure but the blade was long enough. He’d still puncture the heart. The only thing he’d miss was meeting the guy’s eyes. Seeing the realization there.

  Oh well. Sometimes he had to change up a little.

  He headed in the other direction where he knew he could go around and up that alley. Soon, buddy. I’ll take you out of your misery.

  CHAPTER 9

  6:18 pm

  PAKULA HAD TO LEAVE Maggie after a phone call from one of his officers. He thought he may have found the Night Slicer. A desk clerk at the Embassy Suites claimed she recognized the driver’s license photo when the officer showed it to her. She said it looked a lot like the guy she checked in on Thursday.

  She remembered him because she had complained about her bursitis and he gave her instructions of how long to keep a heating pad on it followed by ice. His remedy really worked and she was pretty sure he must be some kind of doctor. According to the clerk, he was booked through tomorrow morning. The officer was waiting for Pakula before they paid him a visit.

  Pakula promised to call her. She wanted to be there if this was their guy. But it seemed too easy. Was it possible he’d be sitting in a hotel suite within ten blocks of where he’d killed Gino?

  Maggie decided to backtrack and see if she could find Nick and talk some sense into him. She saw the old woman with her shopping cart set aside. The woman was staring at something in the snow along the side of a building. She seemed fixated on it even to the point of shooing people to take a wide circle around.

  Then Maggie saw Nick.

  He sat on a rail that in warmer weather probably allowed bike riders to chain up their bikes. His feet dangled. His head wobbled to the music from the street corner behind him. Sometimes the foot traffic got too close and brushed against him, sending his whole body teetering. No one seemed to notice him. Even when they jostled him or bumped him. He was playing his role very well.

  She knew if she waved at him he’d ignore her. So instead, she started to walk toward him, walking against a crowd. She weaved her way through, taking her time and putting up with the occasion bump.

  This is how he does it, she thought. And suddenly she knew he was here. She could feel him. Gut instinct. It had never failed her.

  She looked at the faces coming toward her. Her arms came up across her chest and she walked like she was chilled and not paranoid that a knife would find its way into her chest. The flow of the crowd continued. She found herself pushed along the wall. And suddenly she felt a stab in her back. She spun around. But it was an elbow, not a knife.

  Paranoid. She needed to stop.

  Through a hole in the crowd she could see Nick, smiling, singing with the music. He was still sitting on the rail. Only now she saw a man coming out of the alley behind him. Well dressed. Alone. White ballcap. Focused on Nick. Walking directly toward Nick. His right arm down at his side.

  Oh, God, she could see the flash of metal.

  She started pushing her way through the crowd.

  “Nick, behind you.”

  But her voice got drowned out in the noises of the street, the music, the crowd, the traffic. She shoved at bodies. Got shoved back a couple of times.

  “FBI,” she yelled but nobody moved out of the way for the crazy woman in the red Huskers ballcap.

  She tore at her jacket’s zipper and yanked at her revolver. Ripped at the clasp to her shoulder holster.

  Damn it!

  The man was within three feet of Nick.

  She waved her arms at him and finally he saw her. He waved back. Smiled. Then he tumbled forward, face down into the snow with the man falling on top of him. Even before she got there she could see the snow turning red.

  “Oh God, no.”

  Then she saw the old woman. She pointed to the stiletto knife still clutched in the dead man’s hand.

  “That’s the bastard that killed Gino,” was all she said.

  That’s when Maggie saw the wide end of an icicle sticking out of the man’s back.

  CHAPTER 10

  10:00 a.m. Monday, December 5 Embassy Suites

  MAGGIE HAD GOTTEN five hours of sleep. For once she felt more than rested. She pulled on a pair of jeans and a favorite warm, bulky sweater and headed down to the lobby. Pakula already had a table. She saw him through the glass elevator. The same elevator John Robert Gunderson aka the Night Slicer had used for the last four days.

  “I ordered our coffee,” Pakula said, standing when she came to the table and pointing to the can of Diet Pepsi in Maggie’s spot. She was impressed that he remembered her wake-up drink.

  He had file folders piled up but pushed to the side of the table. She added one to his stack, information Tully had faxed to her late last night.

  “So is Gunderson even his real name?” Pakula wanted to know.

  “Yes.”

  They had found a small case inside his hotel suite that contained about a dozen driver’s licenses and credit cards with various aliases. All the same initials.

  “He’s a traveling salesman,” she said, taking a sip of the Diet Pepsi. “One of Bosco Blades top salesmen.”

  “Blades.” Pakula shook his head. “Unbelievable.”

  “He flunked out of med school. I suspected he might have a medical background. He knew too much about where to stab. I just talked to Lieutenant Taylor Jackson this morning. Turns out one of his victims was a classmate of his. Heath Stover. He killed him in Nashville. We think he probably didn’t want anyone to know he’d flunked out.

  “Also, we now know he was in Nashville for a medical conference. Was supposed to do a presentation but canceled. We think he ran into Stover at the conference. Didn’t expect to meet up with anyone who knew him or knew his past. Detective Killian told me there was a medical convention going on in New Orleans when he killed his two victims there. Kansas City was a conference for surgeons. And in Omaha—”

  “The sales conference at the Quest Center,” Pakula said, making the connection. “For medical devices or something, right?”

  She nodded.

  “How could he get away with it? Wouldn’t his coworkers suspect something?”

  “He worked out of a home office. Had a secretary at Bosco that he communicated with by phone, text and email. He met with his boss once a month. And he made all his travel arrangements on his own, so he could be whoever he wanted to be when he was on the road.”

  “He looked like an ordinary guy,” Pakula said. “Best disguise there is.”

  “What about the old woman? You’re not going to press charges are you?”

  “Hell no. She did us a favor. I did get her off the streets.”

  “H
ow did you manage that?”

  "I know a guy who handles security for about a dozen buildings in the downtown area. Seems he was able to find a nice little apartment for her in one of them.”

  Maggie smiled. Of course Nick Morrelli would want to take good care of the woman who saved his life.

  “And what about Lydia?” she asked.

  “Yeah, Lydia will be there with her. It appears this building even takes cats.”

  No one realized until last night that the old woman had an old calico cat that she kept bundled up and warm in the shopping cart.

  “I’ve got to head out,” Pakula gathered up his file folders and Maggie stood to walk him out before she went back up to the room. “Sure you can’t stay for a day or two? My wife makes some of the best kolaches you’ll ever eat.”

  “Maybe next time.”

  He shook her hand then muttered, “Aw the hell with it,” and gave her a hug.

  Just as he got to the door, Nick Morrelli came in. The two men exchanged greetings and then Nick’s eyes found her.

  He was clean-shaven this morning and dressed in crisp trousers and a bright red ski jacket. She stood in the archway to the restaurant area where only a few tables were occupied at this time on a Monday morning. She waited for him, watched him stride across the lobby. Last night when she thought he had been stabbed she had such a mix of emotions. Nick had a way of doing that to her.

  He wasn’t relationship material, she reminded herself as he got closer and she couldn’t pull her eyes away from his. He had called early this morning, asking if they could spend some time together. Maybe go ice skating. Take a carriage ride. She had agreed. Now as she got a whiff of his aftershave she wondered if perhaps that wasn’t such a wise decision.

  He pointed to something over her head.

  “You’re always giving me mixed signals, Maggie O’Dell,” he told her.

  She looked up to see the mistletoe hanging high above her in the archway. Before she could say a word he was kissing her.

  And suddenly she found herself thinking it might just be too cold to leave the hotel.

  ELECTRIC BLUE

  Gulf of Mexico Pensacola, Florida

  FBI AGENT O’DELL STARED at the helicopter. She stood so close she could feel the vibration of the engine even as it idled. The soft, slow whir of the blades already made her nauseated though she could barely hear them with the gusts of wind. She watched the crew methodically run through the last of their flight checks and she still couldn’t believe she had agreed to this.

  It had been a year since her last excursion and she had promised herself never ever again to set foot inside another helicopter. Yet here she was. All decked out in a flight suit. It was red-orange, what she knew the Coasties affectionately called “mustangs.” The suits were designed to provide flotation and were also fire retardant. Neither of which added much comfort to Maggie. This time her suit was complete with a helmet with ICS (internal communication system). The ICS was a step up. Last time they didn’t let her communicate with them.

  She glanced over at her partner, R.J. Tully. He stood back about a hundred feet from the helipad where he’d be safe and sound from the downwash when they lifted off. He gave her a forced grin and a thumbs-up. Maggie still felt like she had gotten the short straw, though of course, they hadn’t drawn straws. They were professionals. Although standing here with cockroaches gnawing inside her stomach she might offer Tully rock/paper/scissors or a toss of a coin and not care how childish it sounded. But she had been up with this aircrew before. Somehow that made her win – or lose – depending one’s perspective.

  She needed to block out how the clouds had turned day into dusk though it was barely noon. Was that a raindrop she felt? How much longer before the sky burst open? She needed to stay focused and concentrate on the reason she and Tully were here.

  A United States senator’s family was missing – somewhere out at sea. Maggie and Tully’s boss, Assistant Director Raymond Kunze, who never met a politician he couldn’t be manipulated by, had sent his two agents to play fetch.

  Okay, that wasn’t at all how Kunze had worded it, of course, but that was what it felt like to Maggie and Tully.

  Kunze had been sending the two of them on odd missions for about two years now. And just when Maggie thought the shelf life on his reign of punishment would expire, he came up with yet another assignment or errand.

  The storm added urgency to their mission. Maggie and Tully had barely escaped DC before the snow began falling. But they hadn’t escaped the storm front. The monster system looped all the way down from the Midwest to the Panhandle of Florida then back up the eastern coastline.

  Down here in Florida it was only just beginning, taking the form of angry, black thunderheads. It had rained all the way from the airport. Seventeen to twenty inches were predicted during the next forty-eight hours. They were in a lull. In the distance Maggie could hear a rumble of thunder, a reminder that the calm would not last long. As if on queue, the pilot, Lieutenant Commander Wilson, gestured for her to hurry up and come aboard. Then he climbed inside.

  Liz Bailey, the rescue swimmer, and Pete Kesnik, the flight mechanic, both waited for her at the cabin door. Bailey had already slipped Maggie a couple of capsules when no one was watching. She had done this favor for Maggie the last time even before she knew her. Who would have guessed it would become a ritual.

  The capsules were a concoction of ginger and other herbs that magically quelled her nausea. Maggie dry swallowed them now. Then she put on her flight helmet and climbed into the helicopter.

  Chapter 2

  THE WIND WHIPPED AND SHOVED at the Coast Guard H65 Helo. Bruise-colored clouds threatened to burst. Maggie could see flickers of lightning rippling through the mass that, thankfully, continued to stay in the distance for now. But it was definitely moving their way. It looked like the storm was rolling in on waves of clouds and in layers of gray and purple. Below, the gulf water swirled and churned up white caps.

  Sane people would be starting to take shelter, moving inland and grounding their flights in preparation for the storm. Wind gusts of forty to sixty miles per hour were predicted along with the rain. Yet, this aircrew had not flinched at the order to take flight.

  Within fifteen minutes they found what they believed to be the senator’s houseboat. Maggie knew from the file she and Tully had been given that the boat was eighteen feet wide by seventy-five feet long. It was a luxury widebody named Electric Blue and worth almost a half million dollars. From two-hundred feet above it looked like a toy rocking and rolling in a sea of boiling water.

  Maggie watched Liz Bailey prepare to deploy. No one else appeared to think this was an absolutely crazy idea. Wilson and his copilot, Tommy Ellis, couldn’t keep the helicopter from pitching one way and jerking the other as they tried to hover above the boat. And yet, Bailey was going to leap out into the gusts, tethered to the helicopter by a single cable. Maggie had watched her do it before but it still astonished her. Was it bravery or insanity?

  Maggie had been impressed with the young woman from the moment they met. Liz – Elizabeth Bailey, AST3, RS (rescue swimmer) – was a Coastie veteran at twenty-eight years old. She had told Maggie stories about how she had scraped her knees on sinking rooftops during Katrina and waded through debris-filled sewage left by Isaac. Despite having more rescues than many of her male counterparts Bailey was still considered a novelty, a rare breed, one of less than a dozen women to pass the rigorous training and earn the title “rescue swimmer.”

  That was one thing she and Maggie had in common. Both of them had clawed their way to garnering respect in fields that were still male dominated. But Bailey had done so under extreme circumstances, propelling herself out into the elements, literally hanging by what Maggie considered a thread. Having watched her do that a few times, Maggie was convinced she had the less dangerous job of hunting killers.

  Now Bailey was ready. She sidled up to the cabin door but she had put off changing out her fligh
t helmet with ICS for her Seda swim helmet. Maggie knew she was waiting while her aircrew tried to assess the situation below. Once she switched out helmets she would no longer be able to communicate with them except through hand signals.

  “No one’s responding,” Tommy Ellis, their copilot said. He had been trying to make radio contact with the houseboat.

  “Keep trying.” Lt. Commander Wilson told him. “Who the hell takes a houseboat out in the Gulf of Mexico with a monster storm in the forecast?”

  “It was supposed to be just a few thunderstorms,” Pete Kesnick said, while he checked the cables.

  Kesnick, the flight mechanic was also the hoist operator. Maggie remembered that he was the senior member of this aircrew with fifteen or sixteen years, all of them at Air Station Mobile.

  “Ever been on one before?” Kesnick asked no one in particular. “Like a floating condo. Pretty sweet.” He adjusted and worked the cables that would lower Bailey down.

  Wilson slid back his flight helmet’s visor and turned to look at Bailey. He waited for her eyes before he said, “I don’t like this. Dispatch claims six on board. We can’t rouse anyone and I sure as hell don’t see anybody.”

  The last time Maggie had been on board with this crew the men had all but ignored Bailey. Sometime during a nasty rescue flight in the vicious outer bands of Hurricane Isaac, Maggie had watched this same aircrew go from calling Liz Bailey “the rescue swimmer” to “our rescue swimmer.” She was glad to see the attitude had stuck.

  From what Maggie knew there had been no distress call from the boat. That was one of the reasons the senator had gone into full panic mode. And Wilson was right. Maggie couldn’t see anyone down below. Empty lounge chairs and a putting green that looked the size of a postage stamp occupied the upper deck. The lower couldn’t be seen from above, but if anyone was on board and the radio was out, they’d be coming out into view, at least, to take a look at the noise above.