Ghosts of the Past

by Mark H. Downer

  “Yes, and we’ll get back to you soon.” Ferguson replied, feeling the need to end the conversation for now.

  The line went dead.

  “Shit!” Shutt looked down at the phone and immediately punched up the incoming call list from the phone’s menu, and dialed Ferguson’s cell phone.

  Ferguson looked at the incoming caller I.D. and let it ring until the voicemail picked it up. Fifteen minutes of numbed silence later, he turned on his left blinker and exited Brownsboro Road onto Rose Island Road. Four minutes later, he turned into the driveway of Uncle Max’s house. He left Courtney in the car while he canvassed the exterior grounds and then disappeared through the front door. He returned to the car shortly, and determining it safe, he escorted her and their bags inside.

  He tossed his bags into the master bedroom, stowed Courtney’s luggage into one of the empty guest bedrooms, and returned to find Courtney clutching a bottle of Knob Creek Bourbon and dispensing ice from the refrigerator into two glasses.

  “I thought you might need one. I know I do!”

  “Thanks,” Ferguson said, “Most definitely.”

  They both fell onto the overstuffed leather sofa in the great room, and stared blankly at the large creek stone fireplace that stretched from the floor to the top of the vaulted ceiling. They sat in silence again for some time, the tinkling of the ice cubes the only sound, rolling forward and settling in the glasses with every sip.

  Courtney spoke first. “What are we gonna do?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know.” Ferguson sighed wearily, as he closed his eyes.

  Chapter 10

  May 21, 2001. Louisville, KY

  The smell of bacon permeated the morning air as Courtney shuffled down the split timber steps that led to the foyer and into the kitchen. Warm sunshine streamed in from the exhaustive supply of floor to ceiling windows that encompassed the east face of the log home’s great room. The woods that surrounded the house broke the light into radiant beams that projected an almost heavenly appearance as they danced around the room.

  Ferguson was busy over the island stove punching at the bacon frying in the skillet, and the browning pancakes on the rectangular built-in griddle.

  “Good morning.” Ferguson looked over his shoulder at Courtney as she entered the wide-open kitchen area. “How’d ya sleep?”

  “Very well… considering. Where did all the food come from?”

  Courtney was eyeballing the two sacks of groceries spread out on the eating counter that surrounded three sides of the cooking island.

  “I biked up to the Five Star on Brownsboro. It was a beautiful morning and I couldn’t sleep. It gave me some time to think, especially after I got a chance to check my cell phone mailbox.”

  “That sounds ominous.” Courtney caught a glimpse of herself in the large antique mirror that hung in the breakfast nook. She was still in a large Cleveland Brown’s t-shirt Ferguson had found for her to sleep in. Her hair was headed in about 15 directions at once, and she quickly ran her fingers through it to give it some semblance of clarity. It had been a while since she had woken anywhere with a man in close proximity.

  Ferguson had not failed to notice her either. She looked incredible in his eyes. Her long legs were beautiful, there were silhouetted hints of her unsupported breasts underneath the cotton shirt, and her hair had a wild sexy look to it. He was trying not to be too obvious as he caught glimpses of her in between his efforts to complete breakfast. He slipped her a cup of coffee across the tile counter and started to load up two plates of pancakes, bacon, and fresh blueberry muffins.

  “Would you like any orange juice?”

  “Yes, please! Sorry I did not dress up for breakfast, this was a little unexpected. I haven’t had a man fix me breakfast in…” Courtney hesitated, “I don’t think I’ve ever had a man fix me breakfast, except my father.”

  “You gotta have a good breakfast to get the day started right. And God knows we need to get today started right. As for the voicemails, yeah we got some more interesting news from our detective friend.”

  “Bad news?”

  “I wouldn’t call it good. I had three messages from him. The first one was insisting that we come in to the station and give him statements on what transpired last night. The third was more of the same, but with a little more vigor and some threats of issuing warrants for our arrest as material witnesses in a capital murder case.”

  “Do I even want to know about the second?”

  That one was a little more disturbing. When they arrived at your apartment, they discovered the dead Latino, but… but our other friend was nowhere to be found.”

  “You’re kidding… right?”

  “I obviously didn’t hit him hard enough. He must have regained consciousness and found a way out of there. I knew I should have killed him! If I only I could have found a gun in time, I would gladly have put a bullet in him.”

  Courtney was shaking her head. She could not believe that all this was happening. When she woke this morning, she was hoping against all hope that this had all been a dream, a nightmare. Unfortunately, it was a real-life nightmare, and it was getting worse.

  Ferguson broke her train of thought. “I had pretty well convinced myself last night that we could turn ourselves in and tell Shutt what had happened. I was hoping to talk about the art, but not give away that we knew where it was. Just tell them we knew of it’s existence and leave it at that. They had the dead guy and the murderer, and they could track down the origins of both. Who and where they came from, and in the case of our gunman, who he worked for and how many others were involved. His disappearance changes everything now!”

  “How’s that?” Courtney inquired.

  “Well… if we turn ourselves in now, I think we have a pretty good chance of getting out from any significant charges. Shutt knows we didn’t kill anybody. We would have to come clean on the art, but, just maybe, we could still get by without telling him we know where it is. But even if we get that far, the charges dropped or minimalized, we still have our killer out there. As soon as we’re out on our own again, he, and more likely he and his friends, will come hunting for us. I’m convinced there are definitely more of him from whatever rock he crawled out from under.”

  “Yeah, but the police could protect us!”

  “Yes they could, but for how long… months, years. Look, as long as the questions never get answered, the information that I have, that we both know, puts us in danger. If we keep what we know to ourselves, we would have to stay under protection indefinitely. If they never find them, would we have to go into hiding, change identities, or something crazy like that? I don’t know about you, but I do know I’m not ready for that kind of change in lifestyle. On the other hand, we could give up the crash location, wash our hands of the whole thing, and have somebody else get the opportunity to discover the find of a lifetime. The downside to that is there are still no guarantees they may ever catch the people who are after us.”

  They both interrupted their thoughts and hungrily started in on the plates of food Ferguson had sat before them.

  “The only other option I see is this,” said Ferguson as laid his fork onto the plate. “We’re still in control. We still have the advantage of being the only ones to know where the art is, and if we find it for ourselves and do it quickly, we can reap the rewards and end the whole thing. There will be no need for anybody to pursue us once we have made the discovery and everything’s out in the open. It would be over!”

  “You keep saying ‘we’. Does that mean I’m going with you?” Courtney asked.

  “If you want to go. If you want to turn yourself into Shutt, I would certainly understand. Just give me a few days head start and I’ll have this thing ended soon.”

  Courtney stared at Ferguson in silence as they returned to breakfast. She felt a tinge of exci
tement. What he had said made sense, and the expectation of the adventure that lay ahead was more than she could stand.

  “Hell yeah I’m going with you! When do we leave?”

  “You’ve got about one hour to get ready. We need to get to the bank for some money and my passport. I took the liberty of going through your purse this morning for a credit card number to book you a ticket with me to Switzerland.”

  “Pretty confident I was willing to go with you?”

  “No, only hoping. Besides, I saw you packed your passport in your purse. Pretty confident you were going?” Ferguson chuckled.

  “There was never a doubt in my mind.” Courtney smiled.

  Chapter 11

  May 21, 2001. Louisville, Kentucky.

  The homicide division office at the JCPD was alive and kicking bright and early this morning. Truth be told, it had not stopped humming since late last night. Shutt’s phone had been ringing incessantly since he arrived at 6:00 a.m. Four murders, all connected, within 48 hours of each other, undeniably gets the attention of a department that usually sees that many over the course of several months.

  Steve Stewart, Toby Shutt’s partner, was back on duty, and was in early to join Shutt in beginning the nuts and bolts investigative work and theoretical postulation surrounding the killings. Shutt towered over Stewart’s 5'5” thin, but solid frame, as they both stood at the easel-supported bulletin board that Shutt had erected in his office.

  Stewart ran his hands through his full head of dark brown curly hair, taking time to scratch the back of his head. This was turning out to be the first multiple homicides case he had been involved with in his second year in homicide, and most certainly the largest.

  At 32, recently divorced, and without any children or current love interest, he was ready and eager to tackle this case head on. He was already lamenting the fact he had taken a day off and missed the crime scene from the Karl house.

  The photos from those murders, as well as the photos of Courtney Lewis’ apartment, were arrayed before them on the large board, held in strategic groupings with pushpins, accompanied by 3 x 5 index cards containing notes that he and Shutt thought pertinent to the investigation. Directly behind the easel was an even larger, solid white, dry marker writing board that consumed nearly one entire wall in the office. It looked like an abstract maze of names, geographic locations, and all forms of miscellaneous subject matter, all connected with a haphazard alignment of arrows stretching to and from the different word groups. It made sense to Shutt and Stewart, but more than likely, to no one else.

  Shutt had begun an exercise of pulling connective information from all the murder victims. There was quite an array of open files and paperwork of all kinds laid out on a 4’ x 8’ portable table erected flush against the back of Shutt’s desk. Shutt had Karl’s file in his hand and was scribbling with a black marker on the writing board.

  Under a heading titled Karl, the first connection he was looking for materialized. As he wrote down the words language/university professor, bachelor/no family, German heritage, ex-nazi???; he stepped back and noticed under the heading Nieron, he had written White Supremacy/Aryan, and one column over under Syron, the same description.

  “Do you see what I see?” He looked back over his shoulder at Stewart.

  “No. Enlighten me.” Stewart replied.

  “We’ve got a combination of Skinheads and a possible Nazi. That bears some further looking into.”

  Before Shutt could finish writing, Shawna Hammer entered the office with one large and one small manila envelope and two file folders.

  “Hot off the presses gentlemen. Here’s the Willow’s video masters,” she tossed the oversize envelope on the table, “with black and whites of your imposter detective. The security geek on duty that night has already been in this morning and verified that that’s your man.” She added the smaller envelope on top of the larger, “That’s what little they found on the person of your dead Latino. And here are files on both.” She set down two files next to the envelopes. “As of now, there’s nothing coming up on either one of them.”

  “Thanks Shawna!” Shutt stopped his scribbling, picked up the files and handed the envelopes to Stewart.

  Stewart sat in one of the two well-worn wooden chairs accompanying the table, and examined the 8 x 10 black and white photographs reproduced from the Willow’s garage and front desk security cameras. Shutt took the files.

  With no positive identification on either one of them, the files were sparse. The Latino’s file had a few more tidbits than the white John Doe, due to the fact he was physically left behind. An autopsy report, a complete physical description, duplicate photos of the crime scene with him as the star, and a neck up mug shot from the morgue that was currently making it’s way through police and F.B.I. databases.

  John Doe’s file was worthless at this point. More duplicates from the security cameras, with one extremely grainy reproduction of a close-up of his face. It had been doctored and retouched, and was as good as it was going to get given what they had to work with. Again, this one was already surfing the electronic databases for any kind of hit.

  Stewart had dumped the contents of the smaller envelope on the table and was scattering them about to examine them individually.

  “This guy traveled light.” Stewart remarked sarcastically. “No wallet, no identification. Let’s see… a wad of cash, two peppermints, a single car key with a Hertz key chain, and a folded city map with a Hertz logo. I’d say we have an out-of-towner.”

  “Sorry this one just arrived also.” Shawna leaned around the doorframe again and handed another file to Stewart as he popped out of the chair.

  Stewart opened it up and leafed through a couple of pages.

  “You’ll like this.” Stewart said.

  “What do you have?” replied Shutt.

  “Ballistics matched up the slugs from Jose here,” Stewart lifted a picture of Garagua, “and the two punks from the Karl house.”

  “So we’ve got the same shooter from both scenes.” Shutt walked over to the bulletin board, stuck a pin through the close-up of Mr. Jones and added it to the collage. “My guess would be this is our gunman!”

  “Looks like it.” Stewart walked over to the board.

  Shutt scratched the back of his head, “Who the fuck is this guy, and why does he want these three people dead?”

  “I’d say the secret lies with Ferguson and the girl.”

  Shutt somberly stared at the writing board and saw only two names listed as actors under both crime scenes… Matt Ferguson and Courtney Lewis. “I’d say you’re right on the money.”

  The gulfstream taxied to the private hangar on the west side of Barbados’ Bridgetown airport. The jet stopped short of entering the building, long enough to let down the fuselage door and expel Julio Bolivar, before slowly penetrating the large double doors that had just completed retracting open.

  Bolivar walked across the open tarmac to an idling Land Rover, taking in the incredible orange, blue and purple pastel sky rising from behind the island’s mountain backbone. A large, native black man opened the back door to the vehicle and closed the door behind Bolivar as he eased his tired body into the leather seat next to Guillermo Rocca. The vehicle shifted into gear and slowly pulled away from the airport.

  “Good to see you Julio. I’m sorry about Carlos.” Rocca said matter-of-factly.

  “Good to see you Mr. Rocca. I’m sorry for the screw-up.” Bolivar replied, knowing full well the conversation was going to be a subtle ass chewing, with punishment masked as pleasantries.

  Rocca crossed his right leg over his left and shifted his body position to face Bolivar. He reached out and touched his shoulder, as if a father would his son. “Tell me what happened.”

  For the third time, the first face-to-face, Bolivar explained the sequence of events
from the time they first got to Louisville, to his aborted attempt at trying to recover Garagua. The story never changed. Bolivar knew that Rocca was testing him, trying to find a crack or inconsistency that would indicate something other than the truth. He was okay with that. He would do the same if a subordinate had screwed up as badly as he and Garagua had.

  Rocca listened patiently, and then said, “And you have no idea who the other man in the apartment was?”

  “Not a clue Mr. Rocca. We never paid any attention to anyone going in other than Courtney Lewis and her man friend.”

  “Well, I have to believe he knows what we know, and he is willing to kill for it. A very dangerous development. Have you given any thought to damage control?”

  “Yes, I have some ideas, but I’m afraid that we’re not going to be able to keep the company out of this mess.”

  “I didn’t think we would,” Rocca’s voice reflecting some of the anger that was bubbling under the surface. “Let’s hear some of your thoughts.”

  “Well the biggest problem we have is they have Carlos’ body. I have his I.D. and other personal stuff he had with him, but I couldn’t find the keys to his rental car. I have to assume he had them on him and the police have them now. We made the mistake of using the corporate card to book the cars, so that will undoubtedly allow the authorities to discover Carlos’ identity and lead them back to us. That means they will eventually get to Juan, or quite possibly you.”

  “Go on.” Rocca casually nodded his acceptance of the predicament. He had already informed Juan Sanchez, president of Rocca International, of the situation and given him some direction on how to handle any inquiries that might come his way. However, he was still interested in where Bolivar was headed.

  “I’ll take the blame. I will say that Carlos and I had gone to meet Miss Lewis on your behalf to discuss an exhibition of a part of your collection at her museum. I went to meet her at her apartment, but two men were there. She asked me politely to leave, but there was obviously something wrong about her guests. After discussing it with Carlos, he decided to go back in to see if he could help. I told him to leave it alone, but he was adamant. I will say I think he was infatuated with her. He paid off a local pizza delivery boy for the hat and delivery bag, took a gun and went back up to the apartment. The next thing I knew, the place was crawling with cops. When Carlos did not come back out of the building, I knew something was wrong. I got scared and ran.”