by Wiley Brooks
“I think you’ll like it. Totally different experience than the beach. It’s about a mile above sea level so it’s a lot cooler, but it also gets a lot of rain. It’s beautiful up there. Good hiking. Lot of scenic vistas that match your green eyes.”
The ferry docked a little after seven o’clock. Jessica suggested they head back to the Holiday Inn for a hot bath and a night in a nice room. Joey pulled her closer and said it was a great plan. They had a leisurely dinner in the hotel dining room before heading up to her room. She started a bath.
“Listen, Jess, I’m going to run over to my place and pack for being away for a while,” he said through the bathroom door.
She noticed that he called her Jess, not Jessica. Her dad calls her Jess and it always makes her feel special. Joey had heard Melinda call her that and she seemed to like it, but he wasn’t sure why. He decided on the crossing that he’d work it in and see how she reacted.
It was about ten-thirty when he arrived at his apartment. He walked in and was surprised to find the light on over his dining table. He was pretty sure he had turned it off. He looked around. Everything seemed the same, otherwise. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had been in his apartment.
It didn’t take him long to pack. The last thing he did before leaving was to open a small safe he had secreted away in his closet. He removed twenty hundred-dollar bills, two hundred Malaysian ringgits and his Joseph Thomas Jackson passport and credit card. He debated bringing the drivers’ license. He didn’t think he’d need it, so left it. He stuck the ringgits in his pocket then added everything else to a money belt that he had taken from one of the girls. For a moment he tried to recall which one but couldn’t.
He took an additional three hundred dollars from the safe before locking it and securing it out of sight back in the closet. He walked to the kitchen where he had a drawer with paper and envelopes. He pulled a pen, a sheet of paper and an envelope, moved to the table and wrote a note to Mr. Chew telling him that he was taking a trip. The envelope, he wrote, contained the rent for the next two months. He signed it Yusof Zaina, Apartment 3.
Mr. Chew was in Apartment 7. Joey knocked on the door and Mr. Chew answered. He looked startled. His eyes darted around, looking up and down the street. He was frightened, no question. Joey had never seen him this way. He handed the manager the envelope.
“I didn’t know if I’d catch you, so I wrote you a note,” Joey said. Again he noticed that Mr. Chew looked increasingly nervous and was taking shallow breaths. “You okay? You don’t look well.”
“I fine,” Mr. Chew said. “Everything fine.”
“Okay. Well, I’m going to be gone a couple months. The envelope contains my rent for while I’m away.”
“Okay. Fine. Goodbye.” Mr. Chew closed the door.
That was weird, Joey thought, and left.
Inside his apartment, Mr. Chew picked up the card Bo had given him from his kitchen counter. He debated if he should call the policeman, then remembered the CIA was involved. His hand was shaking as he dialed the number on the card. The front desk rang Detective Jun’s phone. No answer.
After a half-dozen rings, the operator came back on the line. “Detective Jun is gone for the day. Can I take a message?”
“Yes. Yes. Important. Tell him that Yusof Zaina come home tonight but said he is leaving on a trip. Detective Jun will want to know right away, I think. Right away.” He left his contact details and hung up.
Five minutes later, Chew’s phone rang.
“Chew? Detective Jun here. He’s there?”
“No. He left. Was here a little bit. Where your man? I look but not see him anywhere.”
“No one there overnight. Listen, are you sure he left?”
“He walk away. I saw him.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“No. He said he was going to be away. He paid me rent for next two months.”
“I’m on my way.”
Bo called Mason.
“I’ll be out front in five minutes,” Bo said. “Be there.”
They put the flasher on the roof and sped to Batu Ferringhi. Bo had mobilized the force at the small Batu Ferringhi precinct. Three cars of uniformed officers were already at the apartments when Bo and Mason rolled up. They went straight to Chew. He let them back in Joey’s apartment.
An hour had passed since Joey stood in Mr. Chew’s doorway.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! He’s long gone,” Mason said in a muffled yell. “If he were leavin’ in the mornin’, he’d stayed here for the night.”
“We need to put people on the bus and train stations. Airport, too. He didn’t take his motorcycle, so he’s going to need a way to get out of town.”
Bo went to his car to radio headquarters. They needed all available officers at the terminals with Joey’s description.
Mason started going through everything. Soon, Bo returned and joined him. They didn’t know what they were looking for. Anything that would shed more light on who he was, where he was going and maybe what he was up to. Clearly, he was up to something new.
The living room and kitchen turned up nothing. Mason moved to the bedroom. He flipped the mattress off the bed, then turned the box springs over. Nothing. The nightstand and the dresser also revealed nothing. He opened the closet doors and started pulling stuff out. A new suit still in the bag with the Chirathivat name on it. Other new items, too. Even a new pair of wingtips shoes.
When the closet was nearly empty, Mason noticed what might be a false wall to the far left. He studied it closely and saw how to open it. Inside was a lockbox portable safe. Mason yanked it out and took it to the dining table.
“Bo,” he called. “A lockbox.”
Bo joined him and they discussed how to open it.
“I bet I can do it with a crowbar,” Bo said. “Got one in the car.”
He dashed out and was back in a minute. It took some prying, but they had it open in a minute. Inside was a stack of hundred-dollar bills with a rubber band around them, the registration for the Honda and a North Carolina driver’s license issued to Joseph T. Jackson with an address in Bentonville, NC. Like driver’s licenses everywhere, it included a nice color photo.
“I’ll be damned,” Bo said. “There’s our guy.”
“Sure as shit,” Mason said, “but where the hell is he goin’?”
Little did they know that he had just showered less than a half mile away. At that moment, Joey was wrapped in a white towel, having just stepped from the shower in room twelve-thirty-one of the Holiday Inn. He approached the room’s queen size bed. Jessica, just Jess now, was lying there with her red hair spread across the pillow. She held out her arms and pulled him to her.
After they made love, Jess quickly fell asleep. Joey’s mind, though, kept going back to his strange encounter with Mr. Chew. He and the manager had a fun, easy-going relationship. Joey pondered what might have caused the man to be so spooked. And why was he looking up and down the street so anxiously? What had Mr. Chew gotten himself mixed up in? Or, did it have something to do with Joey himself? No, Joey told himself. Only he and Big Willie knew his story. Chew had somehow gotten himself in a jam. Too bad for him, Joey thought. He liked Chew. Joey was finally able to roll over and snuggle up to Jess. Soon, he, too, was sleeping.
Day 17
Joey and Jess were up early. They had a big, American-style breakfast of steak, scrambled eggs, hash browns and toast with coffee in the hotel restaurant. Over breakfast, Jess suggested that they rent a car.
“I don’t think I can,” he told her. “My driver’s license is expired. I didn’t even bring it.”
“I can do it,” she told him, “We can put it on one of my cards. And I can do the driving. Or we can both drive, as long as you don’t get pulled over for speeding or anything.”
He gave her a smirky grin.
After breakfast, Jess arranged to get a Toyota coupe from Hertz through the concierge desk. When asked how long she would need the car, she look
ed to Joey. “How long?”
“I don’t know. I paid my rent two months in advance last night.”
She turned back to the concierge. “Two months.”
The concierge said someone from Hertz would be there with the car in about thirty minutes. They’d have to go back to the Hertz office to finish the paperwork and pay, but it shouldn’t take long.
Jess then stopped at the front desk and said she would be checking out within the hour and would they please prepare her bill. They returned to the room and finished packing.
It did go quickly at Hertz. By ten o’clock, Jess was driving across the new bridge toward the mainland. They had stopped at a market for snacks and bottles of water. The drive to Cameron Highlands would take about five or six hours. Jess drove while Joey fished through his backpack for cassette tapes.
“Okay. We have some choices here,” Joey said. “If I’d known we were driving I’d have brought more. Let’s see, I have Madonna, U2, Huey Lewis, Prince, Genesis, oh yeah, some Smokey Robinson, Ben E. King. What are you in the mood for?”
“You came prepared. How about a little soul.”
“Ben E. King it is. Stand by Me.” He loaded the cassette into the player in the car’s dashboard and they sang along with the master.
When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we'll see
No I won't be afraid, no I won't be afraid
Just as long as you stand, stand by me
“I loved that movie,” Joey said, as Jess drove on. Next up, Save the Last Dance for Me, had them both crooning the chorus. So darlin, save the last dance for me.
It had been another bad night for Mason. He was up for about two hours after his latest nightmare. This time it was of the husband of the young girl with the baby. The unsettling thing about this dream was that, for the first time, it didn’t start at the scene of the bombing. He knew, though, the connection.
He was in a small room somewhere. There were pictures of the man, the woman and baby on the walls. The man was sobbing uncontrollably, then he raised a pistol to his head. Mason’s mind watched as the man pulled the trigger and blew the top of his head away.
Mason awoke to overwhelming grief. He felt dead inside but knew that feeling dead inside was not the same as being dead. If he could just sleep through it. He never remembered dreams. But there was no sleeping though these night terrors.
God, he hoped Bo’s doctor friend would come through today with the sleeping pills and that they would knock him out. He knew that was a big if.
But he was on a case, so by eight in the morning he was up faxing copies of the driver’s license and note to Boonsri and told her he’d check in later in the day. He also put together a more detailed fax to Fitz.
Fitz,
We now have a full American-sounding name for Joey to go with his Malaysian birth name. I also have an address in Bentonville, NC on what I’m sure is a fake driver’s license. The address might be as bogus as the license, but it might actually be the address for Pastor Johnny. I’m betting that you find out that Pastor Johnny’s last name is Jackson.
I’d like for you to see if you can find the pastor based on this information. It aligns with the last info I sent you about him being in North Carolina. Here’s the info (copy of driver’s license attached).
Joseph Thomas Jackson
Rural Route 3, Box 17
Bentonville, NC 27524
DOB: 3/15/1961
5’ 9”; 175 lbs
Brown hair; brown eyes
If you find the pastor, find out the last time they spoke or even exchanged letters. Get as much as you can about Joey’s background. It’s your call how much you want to share with him.
I’m pretty much in my room at the Straits Hotel in George Town today. We don’t know where he is. Hopefully, if we can find his fence again, he’ll have more info. Try to call me when you get this fax. I’d like to bring you up to speed. I’m getting ready to call Bob Anderson for my weekly check-in.
Mason
Mason thought through his upcoming chat with Amanda’s dad. He had a lot of good news to provide, but also wondered how he would tell him about the current – current what? Clusterfuck? Situation. There was nothing he could do today except wait. He didn’t want to say that. At the designated time, Mason picked up the phone in his room and called Bob in Tampa.
“Hi Mason,” Bob answered. “You know it is hard for me to get through the last day when I know you’re going to call with an update that night.”
“I bet it is,” Mason said.
“So, what’s new with the case? Are you closer to finding that motherfucker?”
“Yes, we are.” Mason gave Bob everything they had learned in the past day or two. They now know who he is and where he lives. They have a current photo of Joey and last night came within an hour of catching him.
“Holy fuck!” Bob said. “That’s incredible. Could today be the day?”
“Fat chance. As great as all that is,” Mason continued, “today is a day for sittin’ on our keisters and hopin’ for a break. It could come from one of two places. One of Bo’s officers might catch him at a terminal Joey would use to get out of town. To be honest with you, I’m not holdin’ much hope for that outcome. Besides, if that happens, you and I won’t be able to personally make him pay the price for what he did to your sweet girl. If I had my druthers, I’d like for us to find the Thai who slid the note under the door.”
“You think that Thai guy knows where Joey’s going?”
“He might. But I’d bet dollars to donuts that he knows who this Jessica woman is. If we find her, I bet we find him.”
“What are the odds?”
“I don’t like to do that, Bob. These kinds of investigations can be so fuckin’ unpredictable. Like when I was havin’ lunch in a random restaurant and the waiter takes a gander over my shoulder and recognizes Amanda’s picture. I mean, really. What were the odds of that happenin’?”
“Trust me, Bob,” Mason continued. “We will find this guy. It might seem slow as molasses. It could take a few days or it might take weeks. But we know too much about him now. Besides, he left his prized motorcycle and a few thousand dollars in his apartment. You know he’ll be back for the bike and the money.”
Mason said he would call the same time next week. Before they disconnected, Bob told him how much he appreciated what Mason was doing.
“I know I’m paying you for this work,” Bob said. “I can tell, though, that it’s personal for you. I just want you to know I appreciate it.”
They hung up.
It is personal for me, Mason thought, as he lay back across his bed. Why is that, he wondered. Was it all related to Sylvie?
The nightmares were screwing him up and they started after he took this job. Mason didn’t believe in coincidence. That means, he reasoned, that the two events – the case and the nightmares – were likely related. But how?
He thought back to Sylvie’s death. It had changed the trajectory of his life forever. The senseless brutality of her death pushed him to a moment of extreme revenge. He knew how compelling the need for payback could be. He understood Bob’s motivation as only someone who had been there himself could.
But with these gruesome flashbacks in his dreams, he was questioning for the first time if he had done the right thing those many years ago. Now he was on a course for revenge again. Not his own revenge. But a revenge that he had bought into, lock, stock and barrel. Did hearing the story of Amanda’s murder and seeing the bloody crime scene photos of Amanda prompt the nightmares? Was his subconscious mounting an attack on the whole notion of revenge?
Mason had learned in the past week that revenge is only sweet in the moment. In that instant, revenge plants a seed of regret. That seed took years to blossom in his case. How could he now not regret what he had done to avenge sweet Sylvie? How this might play out for Bob, though, escaped him. What he had figured out was that his pursuit of
Joey had somehow become a stage for his own demons.
Mason hated thinking about it.
If he were to be honest with himself, though, Mason’s deepest agony was no longer on Sylvie not being in his life. Yes, that still hurt. He felt – would always feel – cheated. If he thought about it, a sadness would sweep over him.
No, the deeper pain today was on how he had responded to her death. Sylvie no longer graced his thoughts and the few dreams he remembered. She had been pushed aside by the lingering, violent images of others. When his sleeping mind would wander there now, it served up the faces of the innocent victims of his extreme moment of payback.
Could he live with those images? It was getting hard.
He knew the one that troubled him the most was the young woman and her baby. Their deaths were so senseless. His heart ached to think about how, with no thought whatsoever, he snatched them from life. He did that. Not the general. Him.
He recounted the scene for the hundredth time. When he was about to detonate the bomb, he stood so that the general could see him. He held the detonator in his right hand, raising it to get the general’s attention. But raising his hand also caught the woman’s attention. She was looking directly at him the instant the explosives went off. She knew. Her lost hopes were written all over her face. And the worst part of all was the baby strapped to her back.
Everything about that day now weighed on him. He didn’t have an issue with taking life on the battlefield. A soldier knows when they become a soldier that death might be part of the deal. His own and his enemies. What kept him awake at night or snatched him violently from sleep was that he had killed so many innocents that day.
In his gut, Mason was sure that his fervent quest to find Amanda’s killer was caught up somehow in his own story. He didn’t know how. But he just knew it was true. And he didn’t have a clue whether he would ever again find peace.
Day 18
