It sounded as wrong as an upside down cup of coffee, Nia saying she must rush to history class. Nia had never been a huge fan of history class, though she once said Mr. Moore was cool. She finally said to Nia, “I love you, kiddo!” But Nia had already hung up.
Inwardly, Rae just knew that Nia’s soul still reeled over Rae’s brush with death not so long ago. Rae felt it in her every fiber. No amount of reassurance could dissipate this fact. Like a stout door closed between them, the issue was locked from discussion. So their talk had remained light fair by comparison.
Rae’s phone rang again. Again Nia. “Sorry, Mom, reception sucks in the girl’s bathroom in the sub-levels. Called back to say I love you, too, and watch out for Hammerhead.”
“ Hammerhead ?” asked Rae. “Is that what he’s being called among the young?” CNN, Fox, and others had covered the story extensively, so there lived few on the planet who didn’t know the nature of Charleston’s bizarre problem.
“Yeah, Hammerhead.” “Psycho is what he is.”
“Just you be careful at all times, and trust no one, Mom. That’s what got you in over your head last time.”
“Trust no one?”
“No one, ever.”
“What about me trusting you, kiddo?”
“That’s different.” “Ahhh…OK…good to know.” Rae kiss-kissed into the phone, and again they said their good-byes.
“Call me,” Nia cried out.
“Call you when I get settled somewhere in the Mountain State.”
TEN
Not long after speaking to Nia, Rae Hiyakawa sat in the company of Orvison and Kunati aboard an FBI jet bound for Charleston, West Virginia. The two detectives from Charleston didn’t make conversation as Orvison, obviously a man who hadn’t slept well since the first hammering murder in his city had occurred, had found slumber to the roar of the jet. Kunati remained aloof and wary, and whenever asked a question about the case, exploring what threads and patterns between and among the victims had been found, Amos Kunati gave out with one and two word answers, if not a grunt. As a result, Rae found herself quietly thumbing through the case files once more, and when she had seen enough, she went seeking out a warmer environment—the cockpit.
She was welcomed by the pilot and co-pilot, Nick Parsalls and a smiling Joseph Rosiek, both of whom she’d flown with before. On occasion, even before the miraculous CRAWL software was installed, Rae would be sped off to some crime scene location to join forces with the BSU personnel on a case, ostensibly to give them any ‘fresh’ perspective on the kidnapping or murder. Within an hour, she was looking down over a manmade plateau that’d been carved out of the mountainside and flattened into an airfield. Yeager Airport looked from the sky about the size of a postage stamp, and almost all the commercial flights going out of this place were propeller powered.
Rae had been standing, leaning in over Captain Parsalls’ shoulder here in the cockpit, so she easily saw what the pilots stared at down below. “Damn, is it safe to land this thing here?” she asked.
“Piece of cake,” replied Rosiek, the co-pilot even as the jet was turned over to him for landing in an
exaggerated, mock-ceremony between pilot and co-pilot, ending with Parsalls’ saying, “Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Not to worry, Nick,” replied Rosiek, eager to prove himself. “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt this baby.” “Ever land here before?” Rae asked, sensing it a rhetorical question.
“Strap in, Dr. Hiyakawa,” ordered Parsalls, indicating the jump seat. “I insist.”
Rae frowned at getting no answer, sat and pulled the jump seat straps over each shoulder. The harness style seat belt reminded her of a theme park roller-coaster ride.
“In answer to your question, Dr. Hiyakawa,” began young Rosiek who looked to Rae about as mature as the boy genius Copernicus, “no, I haven’t had the pleasure of landing on Yeager’s plateau before, but Nick’s done it a few times, right, Nick?”
Nick’s done it…. It sounded to Rae like a line from a Hemmingway novel. “That’s a comfort,” she half-joked.
“Nothin’ really to worry about, Doctor,” Nick reassured her, but again outside the cockpit bubble there did not appear much of an airport to land at.
Rosiek piped in again with, “And besides they land commercial jets here.” She saw the young co-pilot shrug in his seat. “And a commercial airliner takes almost twice the runway we do.”
“OK…if you guys say so,” she relented, “but please beware of stray elk and hunting dogs out there…please.”
This made the pilots chuckle. “Hey, this is the home of flying ace Chuck Yeager,” said the captain, “first man to fly into space, so please, a little respect, Dr. Hiyakawa.”
The landing went as smoothly as if they’d touched down on glass and hadn’t shattered a thing; it proved so smooth a landing, in fact, the pilot asked his co-pilot, “How’d you do that, Rosiek?”
The younger man said, “Don’t ask, ‘cause I don’t know.”
“A perfect landing,” agreed Rae, who’d developed a fascination for small planes and had been thinking seriously of taking lessons.
“Didn’t run over any furry animals, either.” The captain and co-pilot laughed as the plane taxied to the terminal.
Once in the hangar-like small terminal, Rae dragged the large suitcase hauled from the belly of the Cessna—the big one she hadn’t wanted to bring. She followed at a distance as Orvison and Kunati searched for their ride. They’d walked through the terminal in less than two minutes and found the half-filled outside lot hugging the terminal. An unmarked police car took up a space below a sign stating that it was for Charleston police use only. A row of others signaled state vehicles only. Parking meters graced all the other outdoor spots, and the parked cars here proved sporadic at best. A nearby parking garage rose to four levels, a giant steel and concrete turtle if one used imagination, an overture to a sweeping architectural design, more a kind of wedding cake if Rae worked at it, but it appeared as empty as a wedding reception hall after the band had gone.
All the same, whatever Charleston lacked in the way of traffic to be seen hunkered down at the municipal airport, it did not lack for reporters greeting Orivson, Kunati, and the FBI newcomer. Word had gotten out. Kunati came in handy here, acting as interference for Rae and his boss, shouting in the most commanding voice she’d ever heard, “We have nothing new on the case! Please, as soon as we know something, we will call you!” He then proceeded to block and stiff-arm for Rae.
One of the reporters called Kunati by his first name. “Amos, haven’t you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“There’s been another Hammerhead attack. This one in Dunbar.” Obviously, the press preferred to call the killer by this moniker than to use Dream Killer.
Orvison’s cell phone was ringing at the same time. Obviously, it hadn’t been of any use in the sky.
They piled into Orvison’s cruiser, and he put his phone on a dashboard device that turned his cell into a speaker. As they drove toward the city, the report from one of Orivson’s men, a Detective named Ned, in deadpan fashion, relayed the horror of the discovery. “Forty two five Bluebird Way, cul-de-sac in Dunbar’s west side district. Vic is a retired RN, worked for years at CAMC, name of Amiee Wynn, Chief. Discovered this AM by her daughter. Vic’s daughter and grandchildren to be exact…had come to visit only to find grandma bludgeoned to death with nails protruding from her forehead and eyes, just like the others, Chief.”
“You men do like I told you?”
“Yes, sir, Chief.”
“Ain’t touched a thing?” continued Orvison.
“Daughter’s only one been in the bedroom, Chief. Poor woman. Us, we just stood looking in from the doorway when we got here, and that was ‘nough to keep us out, ‘long with your orders, of course.”
“Who’d you call first?”
“You, sir, but you didn’t answer til now.”
“What about the ME?”<
br />
“Well we got Dr. Hatfield on alert like always,” replied Ned, “but we told him what you wanted, so he just said to call him back when ahhh…whenever we should feel the need.”
“Said that did he?”
“Well yes, that and some other words.”
“Spit it out, Lowell. What’d Hatfield have to say. Word for word. We’re all grownups here. Ned…Ned?” “Said when you’re a-done with your a-circus and Tom foolery to let him know.”
“Is that all he said?”
“Rest of it was kinda garbled, you know, under his breath. Couldn’t quite make it out.”
“OK…hold everyone back from that room in Dunbar, Ned.”
“Understood, sir.”
“No matter if the Governor himself wants in, you understand me?”
“Understood.”
After Orvison closed the phone line, Kunati laughed a full, rich sound that filled the car. “What?” asked Orvison of his right-hand man.
“Just nothing…thinking.”
“Out with it, Amos.” “Just that you better hope the Governor’s busy with some rib festival or ribbon cuttin’ someplace.”
“Hold on,” said Rae, her brows arched. “I thought you had clearance for my input on the case from the top?”
“Mayor Daniels, yeah, the Governor wasn’t excited about the idea,” replied Orvison. “He’s a rather practical man, and appearances mean everything to him.”
“I see. And I happen to be the appearance of impropriety.” Rae had faced every sort of prejudice imaginable against her psi abilities. This development didn’t surprise her in the least. But being lied to was another matter, even if it was the lie of omission. “And you, Detective Kunati?” she asked point blank from her seat in the rear. “You think this is all a joke, too?”
“A police force is a paramilitary force,” Kunati dutifully and diplomatically side-stepped the question, “and it operates smoothly on commands from the top being followed and carried out.” That appeared the most concession she might get from Kunati.
“Understood.” It appeared the Chief and this Mayor Daniels were the only two in this paramilitary operation who had any faith that her coming to Charleston could have the slightest benefit.
Orvison ignored Kunati, and placing a strobe light on the roof of the car, he turned on his siren. They sped for I-64 where a huge capitol dome, gold and blinding in the late afternoon sun, looking like some Mayan seat of power, loomed over the river city. I-64 weaved through and looped around the city, snaking west for this neighboring place called Dunbar.
What Rae actually saw of the city itself proved a blur; she caught very few details as they sped about the highway system. Their direction took them away from the downtown district, but the little she did see spoke of struggle and spirit, as the small city without a skyline to speak of, had cropped up along a wide tributary of the Ohio River, the Kanawha. The river from all accounts—as she’d also seen it from the sky—displayed a series of man-made scars in the form of refineries and coal loading ports, not to mention miles of coal industry derricks, platforms, staging areas, docks, trains, and mines.
Mining—coal mining in particular—defined this city and state. Everything and everyone here relied on the black mineral in one fashion or another. Area billboards depicted coal miners in full miner garb dancing with stunning models at a black tie event. Other billboards brought to ‘you’ by Friends of Coal proclaimed coal mining and the coal mining industry as a friend of the people without which they’d have nothing, leaving the area a helpless welfare state. When Rae needlessly asked, “Can I assume that coal is King here?”
Orvison joked, “You kidding? The state bird is coal.”
Where the river was dotted with coal ports and refineries, train tracks followed. Coal trains ran day and night as did huge coal trucks like so many thundering pachyderms. From the air, the activity around these sites had recalled to Rae’s mind a beehive or an ant farm, even that old TV program that Nia had loved in reruns, Fraggle Rock.
The city, too, was crisscrossed by an array of bridges spanning the Kanawha River and the train tracks used primarily for freight with the occasional commuter train wailing in and out of a downtown station.
Nestled as it was in a valley with tree-covered mountains on every side, the highways snaked about like ropes and ladders designed by madmen, as the roads must adhere to the contours of the mountain valley. Nature was not always the best architect, and surely the custodians of the roads here knew that truth.
Rae marveled at how Chief Carl Orvison’s cruiser flattened out turns that required two and three minutes to entirely find an end to. And now, for a second time, they crossed the river that ran through it all, a green metal bridge, rusting with age taking them across at this juncture. The river below looked like a flood wash, gray and fast moving.
In a moment, they were exiting the main highway that tore through the bustling small capitol city of West Virginia. Big rigs had for a time penned them in despite the flashing orb atop the car. Semi-trucks had surrounded them so long that she wondered if they’d ever make the exit. As they slowed to a stop sign, siren and light still flashing, yet another semi-trailer stood in their way without any sign of pulling over.
“Damn truckers,” grumbled Orvison, dangerously maneuvering around the truck at the stop sign and out into Dunbar traffic. “Used be a time when they knew something about road etiquette.”
“Road what?” asked Kunati, confused by what he thought an oxymoron. “Etiquette? Maybe you oughta write a book, Chief.”
A GPS on Orvison’s dash spoke in the soothing feminine voice heard on Disneyland rides and hotel elevators. The GPS voice said, “Take a left at the next light.”
“We can get there faster if you take the second left, Chief,” suggested Kunati.
“The damn GPS system cost the department a mint. We follow it to the letter.”
“But Chief, I grew up here, and I know—”
“We use the damn satellite!”
Rae closed her eyes, thought of Nia, wondering what she might be doing about now, and the thought crossed her mind that she, Kunati, and Orvison could be killed trying to get around the locals here who seemed to be deaf and blind to a strobe and a siren.
A UPS van pulled out in front of them, making Orvison hit the brakes and curse. “Get that license plate number Kunati. I’m going to make a complaint against that asshole.”
Amos Kunati jotted it down moments before they careened around the van. Rae closed her eyes again. She so wished that Gene Kiley was here with her to help her prepare for what was to come. Copernicus was set to take a later flight; something to do with time required to do some retooling on the remote CRAWL.
Rae, by comparison, was here in the back of a careening police cruiser, fearful they might run into something like a fire engine. To get the moment off her mind, Rae began considering why the killer had changed his MO—or rather his victim type and his time-table. “None of the others have been grandmothers,” she said to the men.
“If the guy’s asleep when he kills— sleepwalking— like he wants everyone to believe, then how could he select a victim type?” asked Kunati. “He’s obviously stalking them, and they all had similar features.”
Rae piped in. “And they were all close in age. Until now. I mean, a grandmother.”
“Hey, grandmothers are getting younger all the time,” countered Kunati.
“This is West Virginia,” added Orvison, taking the first left now.
“You saying our new victim isn’t an old granma type?” asked Rae.
“The answer to your question, Doctor,” shouted Orvison over the noise of his siren, “might have no bearing whatsoever is what we’re saying,”
“Grandma Wynn could be in her late twenties or early thirties like all the other victims.”
ELEVEN
They arrived at the death house moments later, and Orvison turned in his seat to look at Rae, asking if she were all right.
&nb
sp; “Just a little flustered. Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride I hadn’t expected.”
“Oh…that. I’m asking are you OK to go inside, stand in the room with the victim, see what you get?”
She realized he wanted a kind of John Edwards show here. Revelations on the spot that would identify a killer without fail. Or at least the killer’s initials and half a license plate number. But it only worked that way in the movies and crime fiction. Still, she said, “I’m here to do my best, and that much I can promise you.”
Deja Blue Page 7
