by Ray Flynt
Brad paused, aware of the hum of several trains making their way around the track. He turned off the transformers. “Only about half the details ever made the papers. Speculation kept the story alive for months.”
“I remember first hearing about the case when I was in college,” Sharon said.
“Dad was never the same. He managed to cope through the funeral, but a big part of him died when they did. Six months later he had a stroke, which left the lower half of his body paralyzed. Dad will be seventy-eight in September.”
“This afternoon, what did Nick mean when he said he had to pull you back from the edge once?” Sharon asked.
“It's another long story, if you’re game?” Brad asked.
Sharon nodded.
Brad turned off the transformers, and display lighting on his miniature railroad. “I’m hungry. Let’s go make a sandwich.”
Sharon led the way to the kitchen of Brad’s estate, and then slid into a seat at the breakfast nook.
“Want to split a ham and cheese?” Brad asked.
Sharon nodded.
“In the first few weeks after their deaths the police department had three detectives assigned to the case,” Brad explained, as he laid a couple slices of wheat bread on a plate. “After a while Nick Argostino was the only one. I was determined to help find their killers, and even took some criminology courses that summer.” Brad found packages of deli ham and Swiss cheese in the refrigerator, and heaped the ham onto the bread. “But it took several months before I gained Nick’s confidence and he started sharing information with me. The clues the police developed, including tracing the location for the phone booth numbers Dad called, pointed to a West Philadelphia neighborhood as the most likely location of the killers.”
Brad felt his jaw tighten.
“You don't have to go into all of this,” Sharon said.
“It’s okay. I convinced Nick that we should collaborate, with his experience and detective talent, alongside my money. I started working West Philadelphia and offered money—big money—for details on the killer’s identities. Nick gave me tips on persons that I should contact.”
Brad remembered that Sharon liked spicy mustard, and found a container of it in the refrigerator. He cut the sandwich in half, applied mustard to Sharon’s half and mayonnaise to his own. “I’ve learned there is no honor among criminals that can’t be breached with a few crisp hundred dollar bills. On October 26th a paid informant told me that the killers were holed up in an abandoned house down on Carson Street.” Brad handed Sharon her sandwich and sat opposite her. “I called Nick to tell him where they were, and said I'd meet him there. I drove like a wild man.
“I slid the car into the curb about a block ahead of the address, and walked toward their hideout. Right in front of the house, I spotted Frank Wilkie exiting, carrying a garbage bag. We even passed on the sidewalk before he ducked between the buildings to deposit the trash out back; he never recognized me.” Brad took the first bite of his sandwich. “I surprised myself how cool I acted passing within a few inches of the man who had murdered half my family. I followed him to the backyard from the other side of the duplex, peered around the corner and watched as he dropped the plastic bag in the garbage can. I pulled my gun out of the holster, released the safety, and slipped my index finger around the trigger. At that moment I had only one thought on my mind: Revenge. The son-of-a-bitch didn’t even know I was there.”
Brad stared toward the bay window of the breakfast nook, noticing a tree in the corner of his lot bathed in a landscape spotlight. His hand gripped the imaginary weapon while the muscles tightened on his arm and his neck. He extended his arm, as if taking aim. Brad’s eyes refocused and he saw his own dim reflection in the glass of the bay window. He lowered his arm.
“I heard a voice whisper, ‘Don't do it.’ It was Nick. He was right behind me and I never even heard him. Next thing I know Nick shouted at Wilkie, ‘You're under arrest.’ Nick stepped out from the protection of the house; his service weapon raised, he confronted the killer. Wilkie lifted his hands over his head. I still had a clear shot at him as I crouched at the edge of the house, but an instant later I relaxed my trigger finger. At the same time other officers went through the front door and captured Eddie Baker.”
“I don't know how I would have reacted,” Sharon said.
“I know you. You’d have done the right thing,” Brad said. “The other night at the execution, when I saw Wilkie laying on the gurney, I didn't feel anything for him. The venom was gone. If there was a silver lining in attending Wilkie’s execution, it was that realization. Can you understand?”
“Yeah,” Sharon said, bobbing her head. “What did Nick say to you after they were arrested?”
“He never mentioned it again. Nick's a good cop. I owe him my life, certainly my career. I've often thought about what would have happened if I had fired that weapon. I surely would have gone to jail for shooting an unarmed man. Pulling the trigger would have put an end to my plans to serve justice. Nick said I had a detective's blood in my veins. I already had earned my undergraduate degree from Princeton, but Nick urged me to go to Penn and pick up a degree in Criminal Justice. Nick said that after I got training, and set up a corporation, he would serve as the licensed private detective for the agency. Later, the County Sheriff took me on as a deputy and after a couple of years I qualified to get my own license. Then I hired you so I barely have to work anymore.”
Sharon blushed. “I know your brother is in Houston. How has he coped with your family’s tragedy?”
“Andy is a workaholic. He took charge of the family business. I guess you could say his first marriage was a victim of the trauma we went through. His oldest son is in the custody of his first wife. He’s had two more children with his second wife. Since most of the government contracts now involve the space industry, he moved the corporate headquarters to Clear Lake City, near the Johnson Space Center.”
“You ever think of settling down and raising a family?” she asked.
“Now you sound like my mother.” Brad laughed. “When I turned thirty Mom pressured me to settle down. I’d been dating Christine for about a year before the kidnapping. We got engaged on Valentine’s Day and the wedding was planned for the following Christmas. She was a Main Line socialite—which meant she had good breeding. After everything that happened I guess I became more self-absorbed than she was. After the murders, all of the happiness drained out of my life. She and I ... Well, our relationship didn’t survive either. Call it another casualty of our family's tragedy.”
“Must be tough putting those experiences behind you?” Sharon said.
“As our meeting this afternoon demonstrated, I haven't been doing a very good job of that lately. I try to replace the bad memories with good ones.”
“Ah, I see. The trains.”
Brad smiled. “Yes, I have a lot of great memories.”
Sharon covered her mouth, and seemed to stifle a yawn.
“I think I better get some sleep. It's almost two o'clock, and I promised Mark I'd join him for early Mass and then meet his folks for brunch.”
“Sharon,” Brad wore a grave expression, “I hate to break the bad news, but it's almost three. This is the night we spring ahead to Daylight Savings Time. We lose an hour.”
“Ahhggghh!” Sharon groaned. “On second thought, maybe I'll skip Mass.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Nick called. He's on his way.” Brad heard Sharon yell as she ran across the patio to where he sat. He winced as she nearly crashed into workmen carrying a stack of eight-foot long two-by-fours through the open French doors, but she sidestepped them at the last minute. “He has news.”
“Great,” Brad said, leisurely turning pages of the morning’s Inquirer.
“You disappeared early this morning,” Sharon said, as she seized the sports section from the bottom of the newspaper pile. “I looked out my window at 6:45 a.m. and your car was gone.”
Brad only grunted.
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br /> With a deep sigh, Sharon slipped into a chair next to him, an idiosyncrasy that usually meant she had news to impart but was holding back for just the right moment. Brad poured her a glass of orange juice.
“Thanks.” Sharon fidgeted with the topaz birthstone ring on her right hand, but any significance of that was lost on Brad. He was too busy enjoying a front row seat on the season of renewal. Sun-warmed buds on the trees opened to a tender shade of green and crocuses poked their way out of the damp soil. The grass, still moist from the morning dew, needed its second cut of the week. On the opposite side of the patio a three-man crew was restoring his office. In less than a week they had removed damaged furniture and stripped drywall and floorboards from fire-affected areas. That morning the crew replaced wall studs, applied new drywall, and by week’s end the office would be ready for paint and carpet.
Renewal had penetrated Brad’s psyche, too. He had taken steps to unravel the conundrum he faced since Wilkie’s execution, and felt his emotional equilibrium return. It helped that the Inquirer hadn’t published anything about him in over a week. Mention of the fire had been relegated to a one-paragraph blurb on page 18 of the local section, reporting fire trucks responding to a blaze at his address, but omitting his name.
Sharon glanced in Brad’s direction as she brought the juice glass to her lips, but when their eyes made contact, she quickly averted her gaze. How could he cut through her reticence and find out what was on her mind?
“By the way, I got an e-mail from the mother of that missing kid,” Brad said. “She is extremely grateful to us for finding him and persuading him to return home. I told her that I would pass her praise along to you, since you handled the case.”
“Thanks,” Sharon said, “but it wasn’t hard to convince David to return home, especially with his mother’s offer to buy his airline ticket. He’d run out of money and spent two nights sleeping on the streets of a strange city—not to mention the embarrassment he suffered. LitleBitsch—the love of his Internet life—turned out to be a sixteen-year-old guy pretending to be a seventeen-year-old girl offering to make every one of his raging hormonal dreams come true. I located LitleBitsch online, and pretended to be a teenage guy. She,” Sharon made quote signs with her fingers, “quickly invited me into a private chat room. It didn’t take me long to figure out I was chatting with a guy.”
“Dare I ask,” Brad said. “What gave the guy away?”
Sharon blushed. “Well, I know women can be graphic, but in short order he used just about every slang word to describe a penis that I’ve ever heard.”
Brad nodded, declining to ask for more specifics.
“After I led him on for ten minutes—all the while he thought he was leading me on—I revealed I was an agent with the State’s Attorney General’s office and fully prepared to file charges if he didn’t cooperate. I said my partner had traced his IP address and we would dispatch an agent to his home in less than five minutes, unless we got his help with a case. He couldn’t type cooperation fast enough.” Sharon pantomimed her hands typing on a keyboard, and Brad laughed. “I gave him David’s screen name and said he was the person we were looking for. LitleBitsch spilled the whole scam, explaining how he got his kicks from stringing guys along, promising to satisfy their fantasies, and inviting them to Denver. David took the bait. He ran away from home and hopped the first bus for the mile-high city. Their plan called for him to show up at an apartment building at 8 o’clock on Tuesday night, at which time LitleBitsch would call his cell phone and tell him what apartment she lived in and David could ‘come on up’.” Sharon struck a pose: back arched, one hand on her hip, and the other behind her head.
“Wait a minute,” Brad said, “when we met with David’s mother she said he didn’t have a cell phone.
“Well, he didn’t have one, but there are few obstacles that a horny teen will let stand in the way of sexual fulfillment. He borrowed one from a friend. Talking on the phone with his victims—listening to their voices as they realized they’d been snookered—was how LitleBitsch got his kicks. So he wouldn’t arrange to meet anyone unless he could call him on his cell phone. Once LitleBitsch gave me the cell phone number David was using, I contacted him and arranged for his trip home.”
Brad sat shaking his head. “The government should round up a few guys like LitleBitsch and channel their creativity toward doublecrossing Al Qaeda. Good work, Sharon! What would I do without you?”
Sharon’s face flushed, simultaneous with a pained expression crossing her face. “There’s no easy way to say this. I have a job offer,” she said meekly.
Brad had anticipated a news bulletin from Sharon, but this one surprised him. He stared at her hoping for details.
“Nick made the offer,” Sharon said, in an apologetic tone. “He called me on Monday asking if I’d be interested in a job on the Philadelphia police force. He said they were desperate for qualified women in the department.”
“An entry level position?” Brad asked. Now he knew why Nick was on his way. He wanted to tell Brad about the job offer in person. Sharon was a great asset to his business, and he’d hate to lose her, but he had known before he hired her that being a cop was her career goal.
“Yes, I’d be starting as a rookie,” Sharon said, adding, “Nick said that with my experience I could move up fairly quickly.”
“Sounds like a good opportunity,” Brad said, unconvincingly.
“Brad, I think it’s in my blood. As you know, my dad was a Philadelphia cop. I’ve always wanted to follow in his footsteps. As long as I can remember, there was something about a uniform and badge that made my heart skip a beat. I think that’s why I married Ken. He was a cop, too. Later, I discovered I was more attracted to the badge than to Ken. After the divorce I moved back with dad until his…” the word caught in her throat. “…his suicide. It’s funny how things work. I hated moving back home, but it drew my dad and me closer. And after he died I was so glad that we’d had that time together for what turned out to be his last few years. And then you gave me the chance to work with you, for which I will always be grateful. When Nick asked me if I’d be interested in a detective position I jumped at the chance. I don’t want to turn my back on you—especially with what’s been happening lately—but how do I know if an opportunity like this will ever come along again? I’m torn, I really am.” Brad could see the conflict in her expression and hear the anguish in her voice. “But I may be jumping the gun,” she cautioned, “I’ve got to be able to meet the physical requirements. The first test is next week.”
“You’ll pass. I don’t have any doubt about it.”
Brad’s cell phone chirped.
“I’m standing at your front door,” Nick Argostino said when Brad picked up, “but no one is answering. I’d hate to have to beat it down.”
“We’re on the patio, Nick.” Brad pocketed his phone, and went to the kitchen to get a mug, returning in time to see Sharon pulling out a chair so Nick could sit.
“What’s up?” Brad asked, perching on the edge of his chair, anticipating Nick’s apologia for luring Sharon away from his agency.
A self-satisfied look crossed Argostino’s face. “I got the list of Scripture references that was in Wilkie’s Bible.”
“My God! How?”
“Harry Schaeffer, a cop I worked with fifteen years ago, is a shift supervisor at Rockview. I called him and explained the situation and he said he would do some snooping around. He got back to me that everybody in the prison’s administration knew about the list, but that it was locked in the Warden’s office. He said there was no way he could get in there without raising a lot of suspicion. I told him to forget it.” Two birds squawked noisily as they flew from a nearby beech tree, momentarily distracting them. Nick continued, “Then last night he called me back to say he had decided to check Wilkie’s file in the main records’ room. As a supervisor, he has unlimited access to the records’ area, but he waited until after the secretaries went home, just to be sure. Right on
top in Wilkie’s file—there’s a reason the government does everything in triplicate—was a photocopy of the same list the Warden had. Harry didn’t have access codes for the copy machine in the records’ room, so he hand-copied all the Bible references and faxed it to me this morning. Now all we need are the pages you copied from the Bible and maybe we can figure out the message.”
“They’re up in my bedroom, I’ll go get them.” Brad pushed back from the patio table and bounded through the garden toward the kitchen entrance of the mansion. He took the stairs to his bedroom two at a time. Standing in front of the safe, Brad hesitated before his fingers touched the lock. Was he prepared to learn Frank Wilkie’s final message to him? Sensing he would soon pass through a gateway from which there was no return, he twirled the lock cylinder in sequence, opened the safe, and retrieved the pages he’d copied from the Bible. Brad rushed back to the patio, stopping by the library to get a tablet and pencil.
Brad handed the tablet to Sharon. “Will you copy down the words as we figure them out?” She nodded. “Okay, Nick, give me the scripture references in the order you’ve got them and I’ll find the corresponding page from Wilkie’s Bible.”
“The first one is Luke, Chapter 8,” Nick said.
Brad sorted through the photocopied pages from Wilkie’s Bible several times. Frustrated at not finding it, he said, “I don’t have a Luke, Chapter 8.”
Nick held his list at arm’s length. “A three ... maybe it’s a three instead of an eight.”
Brad raised an eyebrow. “Time to visit your eye doctor, Nick.” Brad thumbed through the stack again. “Here it is, Luke, Chapter 3.” Brad spotted the word scrawled in childlike print between the columns near the bottom of the photocopied page, and announced, “The first word is ‘me’.”
The early going was tedious, taking at least five minutes to decipher the first seven words of Wilkie’s message.
