by S. D. Tooley
“And we know what happened next,” Jake said.
Abby nodded. “It was a horrible sight.” She looked into Sam’s eyes, touched the back of her hand to Sam’s face. “You watched it all from the window, Sweetheart.”
“The newspaper said the police had ruled out a car bomb.” Jake told Abby.
“Yes. Nothing indicated that it was anything other than a freak incident, a gas leak, a spark from somewhere. I didn’t really understand the explanation.”
Sam tried to visualize the scene, search her memory, to no avail. “Why don’t I remember anything?”
“The last time you saw your father, you saw his head blown through the windshield and the rest of his body blown apart. Your mind has blocked out everything that happened that day. You were catatonic.” She brushed a wisp of hair from Sam’s face. “You didn’t speak for two years. That’s why I always thought it best not to ever tell you about that day.”
Alex said, “Abby did what she thought was best for you, Sam. Back then, clinics believed in shock therapy and drugs to bring patients out of catatonic conditions. She took you where our medicine could do you the most good.”
Abby reached across the counter and patted Alex’s hand. To Sam she said, “Your mind still blocked out that day but at least you started talking again.”
Sam hugged her mother. “I understand. It’s all right.”
“But you haven’t seen the pin before?” Jake asked.
“No. And I don’t remember ever meeting this Mr. Wilson.”
Frank walked in from the patio. They gathered in the study where Jake told him about his conversation with Sheila Ames, the daughter of Leonard Ames, one of Preston’s unit members who, two days before driving his car off a cliff, had drawn a shape of a lightning bolt on his calendar.
“Something occurred to me while talking to her,” Jake said. “Sheila told me her father was a trial lawyer before his sudden death.” He handed them a sheet of paper explaining, “Sheila faxed this article regarding a case her father had worked on that caught the national media.”
“I vaguely remember this one,” Frank said. “The Blalock wife who hired the hit man to kill her husband. The case was used in a law class I took. Ames defended her?”
Jake pointed to the date of the article. “What if Hap had been searching for Preston and his buddies all along, lying low?”
“And then he found Leonard Ames in 1976.” Frank skimmed the article. “This gives the name of the law firm, the city.”
Sam shook her head. “For the purpose of murdering him? I don’t think so.”
“I don’t either,” Jake agreed. “But maybe what he wanted from Ames was information on how to find the rest. Maybe getting one of the pins and finding out where Preston, Parker Smith, and George Abbott lived, he would have something substantial for an ace reporter like Samuel Casey to work with.”
Sam’s fingers instinctively ran up past her medicine bundle to the lightning bolt pendant. “Sounds probable.”
“Damn probable,” Frank echoed. He described his interesting visit with Amos Washington, the lively war veteran.
“And you don’t think he was just being overly sensitive about prejudice?” Jake asked.
“No. I believe Amos. He’s completely coherent. Still has a great memory. He’s seen a lot in his seventy-five years and I think he was pretty fair and honest with me.”
“Had he ever heard the term, lightning strike?” Sam asked.
Frank shook his head no. “And he wasn’t assigned anywhere near Hap Wilson in Korea.”
Frank’s cellular phone rang. It was Janet. When he hung up he announced, “Maury located Parker Smith, the last of the guys from Preston’s unit in Mushima Valley. He’s in a nursing home in Elkhart, Indiana.”
Chapter 51
Carl walked over to the window and gazed out at the night skies. Lights on the break wall could be seen in the distance. Turning away from the window, Carl said, “You look tired.”
Jake leaned back against the couch. “Didn’t sleep much.” Jake had stopped by Carl’s suite on the way home. A lot had happened since he had talked to him last. He handed Carl the list of Cain’s flights Tim Meisner had obtained.
“Cain Valenzio may look big and dumb but he knows how to cover his tracks. We’re keeping an eye on him.” Carl placed his briefcase on the coffee table and opened it.
“What I’m about to tell you has to be kept in the strictest of confidence.” Carl smiled a sincere smile. “But I don’t have to tell you that.” He took a seat across from Jake. “I had to get clearance first.”
“From?”
“Jackson Whittier.”
“The President?” Jake took a long swallow of beer.
“He was chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1977. I called him to brief him on what we’ve discussed. I thought he might be able to shed a little light on the case.” Carl placed his horn-rimmed glasses on his nose, pressing them tightly to the bridge. “When he was chairman, a reporter contacted him with information about some alleged murders that took place in Korea.”
“That reporter didn’t happen to be Samuel Casey, did it?” Jake watched Carl intently.
Carl nodded yes. “Those were volatile times back then. We had Minister Elijah mounting a march on D.C. for more jobs for blacks, better housing. He was promising blood in the streets if all his black brothers he felt were incarcerated in our prisons on trumped up charges weren’t released.”
“What does that have to do with a reporter reporting the news?”
“Timing, Jake. We would have had all-out race riots if the story leaked that white soldiers shot and killed black soldiers in Korea. It happened in a war that was already twenty-five years old at the time,” Carl explained. “It wouldn’t have served any purpose to dredge it up.”
Jake’s brow furrowed. “Except clear the name of a man accused of being a deserter.”
“You have to believe me when I say Jackson wasn’t proud of what he had to do,” Carl said. “The President and I have always been close. We went to college together. Samuel Casey was well-known in the media. When he asked to speak confidentially with the chairman, Jackson made time for him. They arranged a meeting time and place. All Casey told him was that he had a source who would confirm that blacks were murdered in Korea by white soldiers. He was going to bring the witness with him to Washington.”
Carl pulled several sheets of paper from his briefcase and passed them across the table to Jake. “These are the names of the other three men in Hap’s unit.”
“You knew their names all along?”
“No, Jackson knew their names. I can understand Jackson’s reasoning. He’s a fair man, Jake. He’s very concerned about all this surfacing.”
Jake studied the names on the list. “What about lightning strike?”
“It was a play on the term the North Koreans used. According to what little Samuel Casey would tell Jackson over the phone, a soldier made a strike if he shot a black man.”
“And the Armed Services Committee chairman didn’t launch a full-scale investigation?” Jake tossed the pages back across the table. “Sonafabitch. He could have proved it.” Jake stalked over to the bar and popped open another beer.
“What would that have accomplished?” Carl snapped his briefcase shut. “Samuel Casey died and his witness disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“Wasn’t the chairman curious about Casey’s untimely death?” Jake moved to the arm chair, tapped his fingers on the beer can, the tapping increasing as his anger increased.
“Samuel Casey had been working on a number of stories, one of which was the sale of arms to Middle East terrorists and the Sanchez drug cartel. The police didn’t rule it a homicide, but if it had been, there were a lot of people who might have had reason to silence Casey.”
“Casey never mentioned Preston Hilliard’s name?”
“Never. He only said it was a high-ranking state official. With the death of Casey, the story, th
e leads, everything died.”
“I’m sure Jackson Whittier was thrilled.” Suddenly, the beer didn’t taste that good. Jake carried the half-empty can to the bar sink and poured out the remaining contents.
“Thrilled to avert a race riot? Absolutely.”
“And what is he trying to avert this time?”
Chapter 52
In the cloak of darkness, Lincoln Thomas checked into the Hampton Inn in Lansing, Illinois, a suburb just south of Chasen Heights. He had spent the morning explaining to his daughter and son-in-law exactly what he was planning on doing.
They gave him their full support. Nina cried and said she was proud of him. Raymond said he and Nina would keep the agency running smoothly and that he should take as much time as he needed. He hoped he wouldn’t need much.
Lincoln tossed the keys to his rental car on the table and peered through the curtains. There were a number of restaurants within walking distance. He needed a current local newspaper and could use something to eat. After he made a call to tell Nina he had arrived safely, Lincoln left his hotel room.
Chapter 53
“I’ve never seen you stumped before, Sam.” Tim sat on the floor in the study while Sam fingered the books on the bookshelf.
“I’m just going through cranial overload. I need a diversion.”
“You never told me why they changed your precinct.”
She saw a videotape leaning against one of the books and pulled it out. It was the tape Jake had brought after her visit to Preston’s. She popped the tape into the recorder, saying, “This is why.”
Tim joined her on the circular couch by the entertainment center. Pointing the remote at the VCR, Sam pressed the PLAY button.
“Wow.” Tim’s eyes widened. “Whose house did you break into this time?”
“State Representative Preston Hilliard,” Sam said proudly.
“The chief found out about this?”
Sam stretched out on the couch and propped her head up on one elbow. “No, not this one. At least not yet.” Her voice trailed off, not wanting to go into full detail. “He found out about another one and wanted to distance me from him so as not to jeopardize HIS promotion.”
They watched the video of Sam hiding in the closet, Preston entering, talking on the phone, then pounding on his keyboard.
Slowly, Sam lifted herself to a sitting position, then moved to the floor so she could be closer to the screen. “Did you see that?”
“What?”
She hit the rewind button. When she played it back, she pressed the pause button. “There. Do you see that, Tim?”
Tim crawled closer to the television set.
She pointed to an area on the screen. “The reflection of the computer screen in the window behind Preston. If we could enlarge that, I bet we’d find out his password.”
“I’ll get right on it.” Standing, Tim said, “By the way, did you notice the dark sedan that’s been parked on the street by the entrance to your house? It left when I arrived but I could swear it’s the third time I’ve seen it. It changes location each day, but it’s the same one.”
Chapter 54
Jake rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He was getting used to sleeping in Sam’s study. After his conversation with Carl the night before, he had an unsettling feeling that the closer Sam got to the truth, the more danger she was in. He was suspicious of the perimeter alarm that had been set off the other night.
Jake made his way toward the gazebo. It was eight in the morning and already eighty degrees. Wearing a pair of floral beach shorts and a short, cropped tee top, he looked as if he should be on an island somewhere. He was supposed to be on the road with Frank enroute to Elkhart, Indiana, but he told Frank to go on without him. There was something else Jake wanted to check out.
He walked up the two stairs to the screened-in gazebo, set his cup of coffee on the small rattan-framed, glass-topped table, and stretched out on the glider.
Closing his eyes, he replayed his conversation with Carl. Jake had a feeling President Whittier’s main concern right now was re-elections. To bring out information of a government cover-up would point a finger toward Whittier since he had been chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee back in 1977.
Jake didn’t like being a party to the continuing cover-up. Because now it wasn’t just the murders of three black men in Mushima Valley, it was the murder of Hap Wilson and the questionable death of an investigative reporter. Carl had agreed with Jake that Sam was going to dig until she got to the truth. Carl wanted him to head her off at the pass, and Jake hated having to do it. He had told Carl he wanted the bodies of the three men in Hap’s unit found. Carl said they were already trying to locate them. If they weren’t deserters and had been murdered, the first place to start looking was Mushima Valley.
Jake pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes. He didn’t hear Abby enter the gazebo and sit down in the chair across from him. She reached over and touched his arm.
“You are agonizing over something.”
“Agony is my middle name.” Jake swung his legs around and sat up. He studied her calm facade, her gentle, caring eyes. Everything in her world seemed to have meaning and order. “Why is it you were never able to tell ...”
“That Samuel and Melinda were in danger?” She shook her head. “It was something I had a difficult time understanding. We can’t select what we want to see or what we want revealed. We don’t have the choice. For that reason alone I think our trip to the reservation after their death was as much for me as for Sam. I had to talk to my grandmother, get some answers.”
“Did you?”
“She said there are some things we can’t control. We may think we direct our future but fate controls our destiny. She told me to focus on my successes, not the failures.”
Jake reached across and grabbed Abby’s hand. It felt soft, yet strong. Sam had her strength. Each day he saw more of her in Sam.
“Why is it no man has dragged you off to the proverbial tipi with the picket fence?”
He saw a trace of sadness wash over her face.
“I was married once, briefly.” Abby smiled wistfully. “It was small and ceremonial.”
“Just you two and the spirits?”
Abby laughed, crinkling the tiny lines around her eyes. “We had a few more people but basically that’s all a couple needs. They just have to exchange a treasured possession, offer it to the four directions, and express their love.”
“So what happened?” he finally asked.
The sadness crept across her face again, washing away her warm smile. She studied her hands for the longest time. “I had an alcoholic husband, an alcoholic father, and a dead baby. That’s what happened.”
Jake saw tears push into the corners of Abby’s eyes. She inhaled deeply, lifted her head. The tears dried immediately. He was sorry he had brought up the subject. They lapsed into a comfortable silence, until Abby broke it.
“I believe our fathers were very much alike, Jacob.”
Jake looked at her sharply. He had never spoken of his father.
“Alcohol clouded his judgment. He wasn’t physically abusive, but he was easily manipulated by my husband. My father wandered around drunk one cold winter night and froze to death. He died the same way your father did.” She stared deep into his eyes. This time it really did feel as if she knew his every thought and could see into his soul.
Jake slowly straightened, a look of shock inching across his face. “How did you ...?” He knew better than to ask. He remembered the day she had touched his back and the look on her face, of the times she would hold his hand between hers and stare into his eyes as though they were windows into his darkest thoughts.
“You keep a life of solitude, Jacob, because you believe you will end up like your father.”
“Like father, like son, the saying goes.”
“If that were true, then I would be more like my father, wouldn’t you say?”
Jake lit a cigarette and too
k a long drag. He studied her face, a slight grin turning up the corners of his mouth. “I hate it when you make sense.”
Even after she patted his hand and returned to the house, Jake was still staring at the empty rattan chair where she had sat. She never fully explained about her marriage or how her child had died. She just managed to turn the conversation to Jake’s father. How could she know about his father? No one knew, not even Frank. She had touched his scars. Was it true she could touch his soul?
Chapter 55
The elderly man behind the counter looked like a tall Yoda complete with pointed ears and wrinkled forehead. He squinted at the handwriting on the form Jake handed him. Charlie Buckmeister had retired from the police force ten years ago but couldn’t seem to keep himself busy at home. So he was hired on as a part-time records clerk.
“Nineteen-seventy-seven? You weren’t even born then.”
Jake laughed. “I assure you, Charlie, I was alive and driving my mother crazy.”
The Records Department archives were in the basement at Headquarters near Central Stores. The smell of paper dust mingled with subtle exhaust fumes filtering from the door to the underground garage.
Headquarters, Precinct One, was Sam’s old precinct and home to Chief Connelley. Being a weekend, there would be a skeleton crew upstairs but Jake had no plans on browsing the halls.
