“You can’t let people walk all over you, Lucy,” he would tell her. “They take advantage of you.”
But he knew that he couldn’t change her. And he knew that he didn’t ever want to. She made him want to be a better person. She allowed him into her own heaven, showed him around and showed him that what he was promised was already his.
“I wish I could,” he said to the flight attendant who was now sitting in the empty seat next to him. “I have a long drive ahead of me and ...”
“Okay,” she said and moved down the aisle as if the conversation hadn’t happened. “It’s your loss.”
The flight attendant’s response, sudden and swift as it was, caught Derek off guard. Though relieved, he wondered what he might have missed by rejecting her advances.
As he collected his overnight bag from the overhead compartment and began heading out of the plane, he felt his anger begin to build up. He didn’t understand why his anger was making itself known, or what prompted it. He just felt it rising much too quickly.
Soon after her death, Derek’s anger had a target, a place to call home. But three years after her death, his anger had lost its familiar target. It had no direction at times, no place to land.
He brushed past the flirting flight attendant and walked as quickly as he could up and out of the gangplank. He felt his anger building as he impatiently navigated past other passengers, all moving too slowly. His anger turned to rage when no one was manning the Hertz booth.
Then, as quietly and as quickly as his anger came, it dissolved as a fleeting memory of her face flashed in his mind. The face he wanted and tried so hard to recall. It was there, then gone before he could study it. Though he begged the memory to come back, all that he could see through his efforts was her face the moment before her life was finished.
“Can I help you, sir?” A young man, who had approached the Hertz desk asked. “Can I get you anything?”
Derek saw the clerk through watery eyes. He had grown used to his anger giving way to tears in an instant, but had yet to come up with a reason to give to compassionate others.
“Sorry,” he offered. “Long day. Damn yawning always makes my eyes tear up. I have a reservation under Cole. Derek Cole.”
“Yes, Mr. Cole,” the clerk replied. “Your car is all set for you.” The clerk reached for the keys. As he retrieved them, both the clerk and Derek noticed a note was taped to the set of keys. “This must be for you, Mr. Cole.”
Derek took the keys, separated the note that was taped to the key fob, and read the note to himself.
“Welcome to Albany, Derek Cole,” was all that was written on the note.
“Where did this note come from?” snapped Derek.
“I’m not sure. I just got here at 8:00.”
“Can you find out who wrote this note?”
“I could call the person who was working the counter earlier today but not sure if ...”
“Please call,” Derek said.
“It’s a little late to call now, don’t you think?”
Derek glanced at his watch, realizing the late hour.
“Listen, I’m going to leave my cell number with you. Please leave a note to have whoever knows who wrote this note to call me. Okay?”
“Okay, Mr. Cole.”
“Please make sure that you alert the person who relieves you of my request.”
“Okay. Shouldn’t be a problem.”
“It could be a big problem. A very big problem.”
************
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Derek thought about getting a hotel room to catch a few hours of sleep, and then heading out to Piseco Lake and the cabin of Doctor Peter Straus. But once he was in his rental car, he thought that arriving at the lodge well before most people would be up and moving around would be a better plan.
It was close to midnight when he punched in the address of the lodge that his client had provided him. Once entered, the Hertz Never-Lost system estimated his time of arrival to be at 2:17 AM. It had already been a long twenty-four hours for Derek, and as he started his drive to Piseco Lake, he started to realize just how much had been packed into the space of a single day.
“Let’s review,” Derek said to no one. “We have what appears to be a baby born without a heart who is whisked away to be cared for by a doctor who has been referred to as an ‘asshole.’ We have a triple murder that included two doctors who probably cared for the aforementioned heartless baby and another victim who I have no idea about. We have a missing doctor, that being one William Straus, the supposed killer, that being one Alexander O’Connell or Alexander Black, depending on who you ask. Finally, a stranger leaves a note at my car rental place, welcoming me to Albany. And me without a clue as to what I should do next. Sounds like one of my typical cases!”
The directions to the lodge that the Never Lost system provided were spot on. As Derek drove his rented Ford Taurus passed the lodge, he noticed a few lights were on, but he didn’t see any cars parked in or near the driveway. Yellow caution tape was stretched completely around the house.
He kept driving several hundred yards past the lodge until he noticed a small pull-off area on the right hand side of the road. Derek pulled his car as deeply into the parking area as he could, taking advantage of the low hanging tree limbs to serve as additional cover. He grabbed his notebook and a small flashlight from his backpack and decided to bushwhack through the woods to approach the lodge.
From the cover of the dense forest that surrounded the lodge, Derek could clearly make out the details of the two-story lodge. The lodge looked like it had been modified from its original build, with the main part of the lodge being a well-crafted log cabin and the modified section being shaped like a two-story, dormitory that stretched 50 feet from the main cabin. He counted a total of three windows on each floor of the dormitory, assumingly bedrooms or offices.
One particular part of the dormitory structure was noticeably different from the rest of the structure. While the other windows were full-sized, the section that most interested Derek had very small windows, no more than one foot high. And while Derek couldn’t be sure, it looked like the two small windows were barred. He also noticed that there were no windows on the second floor directly above this one area.
As he moved closer to the dormitory, Derek could see bushes were planted around the entire bottom of the structure. A quick flash of his light showed that the entire dormitory was elevated around ten inches off the ground.
He paused to listen to anything that might indicate someone being in the lodge or walking around outside. Hearing nothing, Derek got flat on his stomach, crawled through the bushes and under the dormitory. Once under, he clicked on his flashlight to see if anything looked peculiar. Immediately, he saw that a piece of the aluminum flashing, probably used to keep forest critters out of the dormitory, was partially opened.
He continue his crawl towards the open flashing as his mind began to wonder how many raccoons may be living under the dorm.
When he reached his target, Derek noticed that the aluminum flashing was cut into four by four squares and fastened into the floor joists. But the area of the flashing that was his target, was without screws.
“One of three things happened here,” he thought. “One, a talented and gifted raccoon learned how to use a screwdriver. Two, the builders forgot to secure this one piece of flashing. Or three, someone removed the screws.”
He flashed his light across the entire bottom of the dorm, noting that every other piece of flashing was securely in place.
He pointed the light from his flashlight to the ground beneath the hanging flashing and noticed a few scattered droppings of wood dust in the ground.
“Whoever removed these screws did so from exactly where I am right now,” he thought.
Derek carefully pulled back on the flashing and saw that the insulation that had certainly been in place was removed. A quick shot of his flashlight to the ground revealed some remnants of the removed in
sulation. He reached his hand up the twelve inch, empty space and pushed gently on the floor boards.
An area of slightly more than two square feet lifted easily from his push.
“Easy access in and out of the dorm,” Derek thought. “Maybe this is how Alexander got out and was able to surprise his victims. But how the heck did he remove the screws from the flashing? He couldn’t have done that from inside. Either he got out without being noticed to make his own modifications or someone else helped him.”
As quietly as he could, Derek pulled himself through the opening in the floor and into the dorm. He stood motionless for several seconds, his ears trained on any noise coming from the lodge. After hearing nothing, he clicked on his flashlight.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ralph Fox wished that he could sleep. His insomnia was a repetitive challenge he had faced several times during the last ten years of his life. He knew that staying at the lake-front-lodge-turned-crime-scene wouldn’t do much good at ending his insomnia, but he also knew that this was exactly where he needed to be.
He had spent the better part of the last few days reading every note and medical record he could find in the doctor’s small office. Most of the notes he read made no sense to him, but Ralph had learned not to doubt things he didn’t fully understand.
As he made his way through the lodge’s rooms, each decorated in the way one would expect an Adirondack lodge would be, Ralph carried a handful of papers and read them out loud, hoping some trapped memory in one of the rooms would explain the mystery contained in the doctor’s notes.
Several times, he tried sleeping in one of the six guest rooms, only to be disturbed by a pressing need to “read that last note one more time.”
“What we have here, ladies and gentlemen,” he said openly to a vacant room, “is a mystery of the highest degree. And like any other mystery, this one has a puzzle piece that, once found, will unravel this whole thing.”
But no matter how many times he reread the notes, the puzzle piece remained hidden.
Ralph was a loner, a man more comfortable being spoken about than spoken to. Though he didn’t dislike people, he felt that there was an unbridgeable gap separating him from most others. His ex-wife often told him that he lived “contrary on purpose. Always trying to see things differently. Never just getting along just to get along.”
And that’s what Ralph could never understand: Why people would agree with what others were saying, doing, believing just to have something, real or imagined, in common. He felt lonely at times but also secure in knowing that the few people he called friends were true friends. People he liked because of who they were and who liked him for what he was.
His move from Texas to rural upstate New York was easy. Ralph didn’t attach sentimental feelings to things and people who, he believed, would remain the same no matter the distance between them. In upstate New York, as Chief of Police in a small town, Ralph felt that he would be just another face in a scarce crowd. Someone who people would recognize but not feel compelled to speak to. He believed that moving over a thousand miles away wouldn’t represent a fresh start, just a continuation of his life, but in a different climate.
It was close to 2:30 in the morning when he heard the sounds. Defying his body shape and his physical condition, Ralph moved with cat-like movements towards the sound. Silently retrieving his Colt 45 from the kitchen counter where he had placed it while eating the rest of the sub sandwich he had ordered for dinner, he moved without a sound towards the rooms where the dead bodies had been just a few days prior.
He made sure to not assume what or who was making the noise; just find the source and take action as needed. The room’s darkness was cut by a well-aimed and trained flashlight, at times covered by a hand, then revealed in an intelligent and targeted pattern.
Ralph, knowing that the person directing the flashlight was unaware of his presence, held his Colt out two feet behind the flashlight and reached for the light switch on the wall.
Derek was unsure of what he noticed first: the overhead fluorescent lights filling the dark room or the sound of a revolver’s hammer being set back into ready position.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“If you could explain to me what the hell you think you’re doing here, and if your explanation is good enough, why, I may just decide not to put a .45 caliber bullet into the back of your head.”
“That’s a lot of pressure to put on a guy,” Derek said as he instinctively raised his hands above his head.
“Maybe so, but since I am the one with the gun, and you are the one with the Maglite, I have to believe that I hold the cards in this situation. That means that I call the shots. No pun intended, said the man holding the gun.”
“My name is Derek Cole. Thomas O’Connell, who I believe is the brother of the perp you are looking for, retained my services. If you look in my wallet, you will see a card with the names of four detectives from four different police departments who will vouch for me.”
“And I bet that wallet of yours in tucked neatly into your ass pocket?”
“Afraid so. I will use two fingers and will slowly remove it.”
“Go ahead, but if I see something shiny and black come out of your ass, I’m not going to wait long enough for you to turn around and spoil my evening.”
As Derek slowly removed his wallet, he was thankful that his wife had chosen the brown wallet instead of the black one for the birthday gift she bought for him. He tossed it over his shoulder and heard it hit the floor. Ralph bent over, keeping his Colt fixed on Derek, picked up the wallet, thumbed it open, and saw the glossy business card tucked in between a few hundred dollar bills.
“So far, so good, Derek. Now I want you to turn yourself around and give me your undivided attention.” Derek turned slowly around, his hands still in the air. “So, let me ask you, what do you mean by ‘your services?’”
“I am a Freelance Detective. My clients hire me to assist them in locating and resolving issues.”
“Freelance Detective, you say? Now, I’ve been in law enforcement for a lot of years. But I have to admit that I’ve never heard of a ‘freelance detective’ during those my years.”
“I have some experience in the detective field. Eight years as an MP with the Army and three years with the Columbus Ohio police department.”
“Yippee for you. But that still doesn’t explain what the hell a freelance detective is.”
“I am retained by private clients to assist them ...”
“Yup, I kind of deduced that part already,” Ralph said, cutting Derek off mid-sentence. “Let’s try this a different way. Are you one of them private eyes?”
“Not really, but sort of.”
“Well, that certainly clears up this whole situation.”
“Sorry to be so vague.”
“Is that what you call it? Being vague? I’d be more likely to say you are monkey punting around the truth. To me, ‘freelance detective’ sounds like something an assassin would call himself or herself, depending on the particular assassin. You an assassin?”
“Not at all. I don’t kill anyone. Just locate them, isolate them, render them powerless if needed, and then alert local authorities. Basically, I do what a detective does, but I don’t have to worry about following all the protocols.”
“When I was down in Texas,” Ralph said, pointing the Colt directly at Derek’s chest, “I was the fire chief in my town’s volunteer fire department. I always use to say there are two types of firefighters: one who follows the rules and listens to the officers, and the other type, who may or may not be as well trained, hell, may even be better trained, but goes off and does things the way he thinks they should be done. Come to think of it, I think I actually called that second type of fire fighter a ‘freelancer.’
“Now, here is the problem as I see it, Derek. Freelancers get themselves into situations way more often than do those who follow the rules. And when a freelancer gets himself into a situation, me, as fire chief, wou
ld have to send someone else in to get the freelancer out of the situation. That means that I have to risk injury or death for one of my rule followers to save the freelancer’s ass.
“Derek, I have to tell you that I don’t like saving a freelancer’s ass by putting my own ass or the ass of someone else at risk.”
“I don’t blame you at all. But let me tell you how I see things,” Derek said.
“I can’t wait to hear your side of things, Derek.”
“Let’s say that that freelancer’s wife is trapped inside a burning building and the other fire fighters won’t even try to save her because of protocol. Would you blame the freelancer for running in and at least trying to save his wife?”
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