Ransom Beach (Stephanie Chalice Thrillers Book 2)

by Lawrence Kelter

"Ha," Thorne chortled. "That was the most obvious sign of guilt I've ever seen. Don't bother denying it. I know the two of you are a pair, knew it the first time I saw you together. Why do you think I didn't invite that lovely Mr. Ambler? As I always say, two's company and three's a pain in the ass."

  I looked at Lido. He looked at me. Neither of us knew what to say. There was no value in telling her that she and the pilot were exclusive members of the Thorne Mile High Club. Honestly I didn't think she'd care.

  "Don't worry," she continued, "I'll send him a present. I was thinking a big screen TV—Celia Thorne knows how to say thanks. I'll be in my office until dinner." I don't think her feet touched the ground as she walked by us.

  I rolled my eyes. Lido did the same. Thorne was a sharp lady, one I was liking more and more by the minute. I heard the whir of the jet's engines build into a roar and then we lurched forward and began charging down the runway. The sensation was very different from the commercial flights I had been on. There was a much stronger awareness of movement, more like being in a highly powered sports car during a jackrabbit start.

  Dinner was yum—lots of food and lots of wine. I looked out and saw nothing. We were over the Atlantic with about five hours of flying time ahead of us. I wanted to go back on the clock but my mind just wouldn't have it. The dark sky was soothing. I felt my eyelids lower and then...

  I didn't realize I had fallen asleep until the dimmed cabin light began to filter through. My eyes were mere slits. The cabin was completely still. Manny was still in his seat. He had stopped scribbling and was sitting quietly, staring out...

  But not like before.

  He was staring directly at me. I doubt he knew that I saw him because the lighting was dim and my eyes were mostly closed. I watched him as he stared at me, sitting motionlessly. Was it the shadows playing tricks with my eyes? Was I really seeing what I was seeing? There was something in his eyes, something I'd never seen before. It turned my blood to ice.

  I yawned and stretched, demonstrating that I was about to wake up. I opened my eyes fully. No more than a few seconds had passed but he was Manny again, simple, sweet, and unthreatening.

  But I had seen his other side.

  I looked around. Lido was asleep. Thorne was in her office and Alicia was probably passed out in the kitchen with a bottle of dessert wine.

  I unbuckled my seatbelt and walked casually up to Manny. He didn't budge as I approached or acknowledge me as I stood before him, so I kneeled so that I could see his eyes and I whispered, "I know."

  Forty-nine—AH HAH

  Daylight flooded into the cabin as we crossed the international dateline. We approached Paris and night became day. All seemed status quo. Alicia was preparing breakfast. Thorne was out of her office, chatting with us, and Manny was once again the simple and adorable youth everyone believed he was. He did not flinch or in any way acknowledge that I was on to him...nor did I. All I had to go on was my gut. My intuition told me that I was right but I didn't have a shred of evidence—not yet.

  I had spent the last hours putting it all together, sorting through the case's elements that had disturbed me so thoroughly. Davis Mack provided a convenient answer, one that everyone would've accepted, but he was not the perpetrator of the conspiracy. The pieces of the puzzle were laid out before me, edge-to-edge but not quite touching. All I needed was the information I had requested, the glue necessary to bond the individual pieces into one vivid picture. I'd get the information I needed upon arrival in Paris: phone calls from Tully in the crime lab, Interpol, and last but not least, Nigel Twain. Almost more difficult than proving the case would be breaking the news to Thorne. She was absolutely aglow, happy in the knowledge that her small family was once again together. How would I be able to tell her that she had been living with a monster under her roof, that she had been the victim of one of the greatest stings of all time? The blow would be catastrophic.

  Thorne, Lido, and I were chatting and laughing but behind the scene, my thought process was devoted to running the details of the case over and over. Manny had gone through several sheets of paper since takeoff, filling them with his frenzied stokes—no prophecies were forthcoming. His new work was largely scribble. There were a few French words thrown in at random, along with individual letters, but nothing cohesive, nothing that pointed to his ability to channel the quatrains of his famous ancestor. Thorne and Manny's physician both felt that the trauma of the kidnapping had knocked him off center, temporarily or perhaps permanently disabling his normal routine. This too was a convenient answer, one I would not accept.

  I'd been troubled from the very start by the accuracy of the quatrains to portray the current case as it unfolded. True, this is supposed to be the essence of a prophecy, but the accuracy and detail seemed to me more taunting than predictive. The Gold Cage, Rousseau Brother's Garage, the authorities arriving too late, these correlations were too accurate to be mere prophecy. Manny was now reduced to scribbling. He could not channel the Quatrains of Nostradamus, not now or ever. He had studied them and deliberately matched the quatrains to the circumstances he had chosen. Now, without reference material available, he had no information to draw from. He had to have had access to the original quatrains, and the ability to communicate with someone on the outside—all of which was currently unavailable to him.

  My ears popped. I looked out and saw that we were only a few thousand feet up, presumably over the outskirts of Paris.

  "Welcome to Paris," Thorne said. She stood and walked forward to check on Manny just as the pilot announced that we were on our final approach.

  "Keep a close eye on Manny," I whispered to Lido.

  He looked at me as if I was insane. "What?"

  "Just do it," I insisted.

  He must have seen that I was dead serious because the grin he had sported for the entire flight disappeared. "What's going on?"

  I wanted to give him a quick heads up but circumstances didn't permit it. Thorne was on her way back to her seat. "We're cleared for landing," she said. "We'll touch down in a few minutes." She sat down and belted herself in. "You are going to have such a good time, just wait." She was absolutely aloft on high spirits. It was a shame that her champagne bubble was about to burst.

  Douglas came out of the cockpit. His beard had grown in over the Atlantic. He looked tired, perhaps bored with the routine of sprinting back and forth from the states to Europe. He whispered something in Thorne's ear and then approached Gus and I. "They're reporting strong winds at the airport so it may be a little bumpy on the way down." He checked to make sure our seatbacks were vertical. "Don't sweat it. You'll be on the ground in no time."

  Douglas made me feel safe, with his self confident manner and his flyboy good looks, but the jet began to bounce the second he turned toward the cockpit. I glanced over at Lido and tightened my seatbelt. He did the same and then the jet dropped like a stone. It leveled off in a second but not before my heart had traveled to my throat and back.

  Thorne glanced back at us. "There are always winds at de Gaulle. We're fine." She seemed unaffected by the turbulence, turning toward Manny with a reassuring face. Manny was in character. He was so convincing that for the moment I began to doubt myself. He knew I was on to him. He was either very cool or completely genuine. I'd know for sure very soon.

  White knuckles on the armrest as Douglas fought the winds on our approach to the airport, the jet rolling and pitching all the way down.

  It was a tremendous relief when the jet's wheels screeched on the tarmac and we rumbled to a stop. The winds were still strong as the jet taxied off the runway. I could feel it pushing the jet from side to side. It was just a few minutes until we arrived in the parking field and the jet's engines died to a whisper.

  The copilot came out of the cockpit and helped put Manny into his wheelchair, leaving Douglas at the helm. Thorne buttoned his coat.

  "We'll keep the plane sealed up until our limousine arrives," Thorne said. "It's brutal outside and it takes a few minutes to
get Manny down the stairs."

  I could feel fierce wind buffet the small jet the whole time, rocking it up and down. The black Mercedes pulled up outside almost immediately. The copilot cracked the hatch. I could hear the harsh winds immediately and a chill filled the cabin.

  The jet pitched, forcing me to grab a seatback to steady myself. I felt like I was on a mechanical bull ride.

  "Fifty mile per hour ground winds," the copilot said as he reached out to steady me. "Brutal."

  Thorne cinched the belt on her coat. "Here we go." She stepped off the jet first and then the copilot began rolling Manny toward the hatch.

  Without warning, Manny sprang from his wheelchair. There was a makeshift knife in his hand. He caught Thorne on the steps and pressed the knife against her throat. I expected him to rant and rave, to warn us to stay away or else, but he said nothing. Instead he glared fiercely as all watched in amazement. I don't know how Thorne kept herself up. I could see the horror and befuddlement on her face as Manny held her by the throat. The wind was fierce, strong enough to push the stairs from side to side.

  Lido seemed to be stunned momentarily. He looked at me in amazement as if I was an extraterrestrial and then he stepped up, past the copilot and yanked the empty wheelchair out of the way. "Take it easy," he said to Manny. "Put the knife down and no one will get hurt."

  I was way beyond negotiation, whipped up into a frenzy from thinking about the scheme this animal had executed. This thing, whoever he was, was desperate and I knew that a hostage was his only way out—I wasn't going to let him have one.

  Douglas was on his way out of the cockpit. I cut him off, pushing him back inside. It took just seconds to give him instructions and then I was back out, moving straight to the hatch. Celia Thorne looked desperate. Her eyes reached out to me. We connected. She read my gestures and knew exactly what to do.

  "Hey, moron," I screamed. "You're not getting away. You'll be in a cell within the—" On cue, the jet's engine's kicked and roared. The jet surged against its blocks. Thorne grabbed hold of the handrail. Taken off guard, Manny tumbled down the stairs. Lido leaped toward him but missed, rolling on the tarmac and away from the jet. The wind surged at that moment, lifting the jet. Before Douglas could kill the engines, it rolled over its blocks.

  Manny was trapped at the base of the stairs, his coat caught under the wheels as the jet rolled out of control. Vicious inhuman sounds shot from his mouth but no words. He struggled to free himself as the jet dragged him along the ground, its wings rocking in the fierce wind.

  Lido was back on his feet. He wanted to go back after Manny but the jet was rocking in the wind, making it dangerous to approach. Thorne was still huddled on the base of the stairs, her grip locked around the railing. Aboard the jet, the rest of us pitched back and forth as the wind tossed us around.

  "Stay clear, Gus," I yelled, hoping he could hear me above the howling winds.

  Leaning out of the hatch and holding on for dear life I could see that Manny still had his knife and was cutting himself free. The wind died and Manny took off.

  I jumped down the stairs. Lido and I gave chase.

  Manny was hell bent on escape, running blindly away from the terminal toward the runway. He didn't see the jet on final approach headed straight for him, split seconds away from touch down.

  The pilot must have somehow seen him. The jet veered right at the last second. It missed Manny but was half on the runway and half off, its right landing gear off the tarmac. Manny dove for the ground as the jet rumbled and pitched past him, fighting for control. The right landing gear leg snapped off as the pilot forced the jet back on the runway. Manny was back on his feet. We were almost on him when the jet spun a one-eighty and came back at us like a crippled behemoth. Gus and I made eye contact and without saying a word we dove, hitting Manny and taking him down. The three of us were sprawled on the ground. The jet was still coming toward us. I took one last glance at Lido, perhaps my last. The jet was coming straight for us, too fast to avoid. It looked like the end when the wheels on the jet's front landing gear turned. It was going to be close. I closed my eyes...

  I was still alive when I opened them. The jet was a few hundred feet past us, finally at rest. I could hear the sound of emergency equipment trucks racing toward us.

  Gus had Manny pinned to the ground. He was still moaning and grunting inhuman sounds that I was sure I'd remember forever. Joe Douglas and the copilot were racing toward us.

  I looked around for Thorne. She was by the jet, still huddled at the base of the stairs, clinging to it for dear life. Her jet had been stabilized but Celia Thorne, pillar of strength, captain of industry, and woman of the world was weeping like a baby. I raced over and threw my arms around her. "Shush," I said. "It's going to be all right."

  Fifty—MOTHER

  Madness reigned for the next few hours. Seeing Manny led away by the French authorities proved too much for Celia Thorne to bear. She required sedation and spent the afternoon sleeping under the watchful eyes of Alicia and the house physician at the George V. She'd been in no condition to hear the details...why the most important person in her life was not who she believed him to be or how he had hidden a fabricated shiv within the armrest of his wheelchair and had used it to threaten her life.

  Matters only worsened from there. The grizzly truth about Manny's impostor and the elaborate scheme he had masterminded to bilk Celia Thorne of her money, her pride, and her heart.

  Details poured in from the NYC crime lab and from Interpol. Using facial identification technology developed to identify terrorists passing through international airports, Interpol was able to match the photo of Manny's impostor to that of a young French confidence man by the name of Daniel Fauchon.

  Born mute, Fauchon had lived with his gypsy family in Paris and had reluctantly moved to an orphanage at age twelve when his mother died. His birth records did not list the name of his father. He was, of course, incapable of speech but he was certainly capable of writing in French and no, he was not in any way autistic. He was, however, a very able faker, a confidence man supreme, who'd been taught to pick pockets before he was six. He'd honed his skills by playing on the sympathies of American tourists. Wearing a sign around his neck that read, Dumb Mute, the young Fauchon would detain tourists along the Champs Elysees, breaking their hearts while his mother bumped them on the crowded street and lifted their wallets.

  The records at the orphanage chronicled his transgressions over the three and a half year term he had lived there until disappearing soon before turning sixteen. His transcript listed several petty thefts and stated that he had fought with many of the other boys. Academic records were spotty but one notation in particular caught my attention. It read Bright but without interest. It was written in French of course but I'm not going to bore you with the translation.

  I didn't buy the doctor's explanation, which had proposed that Manny had stopped penning quatrains because he had been traumatized. Two new quatrains had purportedly come from him during his abduction, the one found in the abandoned truck and the one delivered with the ransom requests—so much for the medical experts.

  I had noticed that there was a computer in Manny's room back at Thorne's penthouse. It was loaded with infantile programs designed to illicit Manny's curiosity. We hadn't thought to check an autistic child's hard drive before, but now...the computer had Internet access and the hard drive had on it, among other things, music videos, porn, and a complete list of Nostradamus' quatrains, along with their English translations.

  I'd continually wondered how the ransom money had disappeared at the catering hall. Reading between the lines, Fauchon must have sprung from the kitchen and grabbed the bag during the few seconds that I'd been distracted when the two-ton van came crashing through the cinderblock wall. Manny, or rather Fauchon, had been in the kitchen at the time of the drop but there was no sign of him when I finally arrived in the kitchen and the only plausible way to explain his quick escape was that he folded up his whee
lchair, picked it up, and had hightailed it across the field behind the catering hall to a waiting car.

  Interpol had identified the girl as well. Her name was Moira Ryan, an Irish citizen. Connecting the dots would take time but I theorized that she had met Fauchon in France, somewhere in the vicinity of Manny's village and had heard from locals about his adopted mother's death and that Celia Thorne, an American billionaire was coming to take him back to the states.

  Aside from being very, very dead, Moira had been found naked. A postmortem rape kit revealed that Moira had culminated some successful ransom sex not long before being murdered. At my request, Tully had gone back to Moira's apartment to perform a Luminol test and to dust for fingerprints. Semen found on the bed sheets and on some of Celia Thorne's ransom money had been typed. It matched Fauchon's. There were only two sets of recent fingerprints in the apartment, again, Moira's and Fauchon's.

  Davis Mack was not an accessory. As I surmised, Mack had been, well...Mack, a man with a dedicated heart, working outside the law to recover the child he'd felt responsible for losing. He was a man of pride who had risked it all to complete his obligation. I hoped that wherever he was now, he knew that justice had been served and that it had only been through his assistance that all had been set right.

  Perhaps most amazing of all was the phone call I received from Nigel Twain. My stouthearted friend was calling, not from London, but from la Ferté Milon, a small village outside Paris. Acting on my instructions, Twain had ventured across the English Channel to do a little research on my behalf and what he discovered was most revealing.

  It was early evening by the time we were able to get Thorne mobile and drive into the countryside. Gracious to a fault, Twain met us outside the orphanage but refused to venture inside and intrude on what was about to be a very special moment for Celia Thorne.

  They'd just finished dinner at the orphanage when we arrived and the small home smelled from cinnamon and freshly baked dessert. Three autistic children sat around a table playing a card game of their own creation. I knew the real Manny the second I saw him. He was grinning and jabbering away in French, some of his words were intelligible, most were not, but he was happy with his little family and in his expression I could see the warmth and vibrancy Thorne had spoken of the first time she'd told me the way her sister had described him. Thorne saw it too and burst into tears.