[Jess Kimball 01.0 - 02.0] Fatal Starts

by Diane Capri

  “Hmm,” Mike said. “I found something.”

  “What?”

  “Ta dah,” he said with a theatrical flourish, turning the camera’s small screen toward her.

  In it, she saw Ben Fleming’s car leaving the mortuary. Mike’s shot had been close enough to capture the white Camry’s license plate clearly. Just as the men had told her, it read FLEMING.

  She congratulated him, pretended he’d made a new breakthrough, and Mike soaked up the praise. “Hmm,” he said. “A Manatee vanity plate, at that. Did you know that white’s the most popular color for passenger vehicles in Florida? They’re supposed to stay cooler in the summer. And the Camry’s—”

  Mike stopped mid-sentence.

  “What?” Jess asked, looking over to him.

  “There! Ahead of us. A white Camry!”

  Jess floored the accelerator, raising the SUV’s speed to ninety-five. The wind buffeted the top-heavy vehicle. She struggled to keep the tires on the road, hands firmly gripping the wheel and eyes watching every nuance of the roadway. She closed the gap between her SUV and the white Toyota. “Can you read the plates?”

  Mike looked at the sedan in the right lane just in front of them. “Not him,” he said. “But there’s another. Maybe not white, though. I can’t tell for sure.”

  She moved up to pass the green sports car and it swerved out into her lane to pass the Toyota before ducking back in front of the slower car.

  Jess pressed the brake and the SUV fishtailed. She struggled to right the vehicle, then moved up on the second Toyota, which wasn’t white but silver. Mike squinted. “It’s even got the Manatee plate, but nope. Not him.”

  A black truck was in the fast lane in front of her doing the speed limit. Jess slowed the SUV down as a second white Toyota moved further ahead in the right lane.

  “Can you see the plate on that one?” she asked.

  “Not yet.”

  She hit the accelerator, running up as close to the bumper of the truck as she dared. She heard a loud whining noise from the oversized tires on the truck. It was up in the air so far she could see underneath the chassis to the open air in front.

  The truck continued to travel in the left lane, doing the speed limit. Jess felt like the SUV was crawling at seventy. The third Toyota moved ahead of the truck, the big tires blocking their view.

  The green sports car had moved in front of the truck, and Jess hadn’t seen it. She pressed the accelerator to move around the truck on the right at the same time as the sports car decided to move into the right lane out of the truck’s path. Jess stomped the brake harder than necessary and the SUV swerved off to the right shoulder.

  The three vehicles were traveling almost side-by-side, Jess on the right shoulder, the sports car in the middle, and the truck in the outside lane. The whining of the truck tires echoed the tightness in Jess’s nerves.

  The SUV tires ran over the concrete ridges warning her she was off the road again. The added grating sound was almost as jarring as the ridges under her wheels. Jess glanced over at the sports car’s woman driver, who was slowing down and yelling at Jess. She couldn’t hear the words, but she was sure they weren’t polite. The driver of the truck was laughing, apparently having a wonderful time.

  Jess sped up on the right shoulder and moved into the right lane in front of the sports car. Her hands gripped the steering wheel hard enough to bruise. The white Toyota was about half a mile ahead.

  The truck continued to match Jess’s speed, as if he were racing her or something. He blocked the wind gusts enough to steady the SUV and Jess accelerated a bit more. Her heart pounded a rhythm that sounded as loud as the concrete ridges under the tires a few hundred yards back.

  When she closed the gap between her SUV and the third white Toyota, she saw the license plate was a standard Florida white plate with an orange in the middle. It wasn’t him.

  “I’d really rather not die in a car crash today, Jess,” Mike said.

  She glanced down at the speedometer. The red needle was pressing beyond the 100-mile-an-hour mark. There were no other white Toyotas within striking distance ahead. She backed off the gas and the black truck kept going. In a few seconds, the green sports car had come up on her rear bumper and pressed her horn before passing on the left. The woman shook an angry fist at Jess on her way by. The white Toyota widened the gap between it and Jess’s SUV.

  Jess gave up. She relaxed her grip on the wheel and waited for her heartbeat and breathing to return to normal. “I guess he was too far ahead of us. You don’t have a number for Frank Temple, do you?”

  “No. I thought you took it, so I didn’t write it down.”

  “Before you close the laptop down, can you send a picture of the car with the plate to your cell phone? And then see if you can reach Sheriff Green again. We need to get someone out looking for Ben Fleming.”

  “Yeah, but wouldn’t you rather I sent the picture to your phone?”

  Sheepishly, she admitted, “My battery’s dead.”

  Mimicking her tone earlier, he said, “Well that’s great.”

  She grinned at him and all was forgiven.

  “Okay,” he said. “I sent the photo to my cell. I’ll call Mac.”

  A roadside sign invited her to stop at Starbucks at the next exit one mile ahead. While Mike called Mac Green, she moved into the exit lane. She was parked before Mike reached Mac and handed her the phone.

  Jess got out of the car, motioning for Mike to wait inside the SUV. She didn’t want him to overhear.

  She spoke quickly into the crackly connection. “Mac, I think Ben Fleming had something to do with Vivian Ward’s murder. He’s missing. It’s urgent that we find him. Can you put out a bulletin or something?”

  “What evidence do you have to support that hunch?”

  Jess squirmed under the penetrating question, because she didn’t have much more than a seriously bad vibe. “He’s always on the scene when something big is happening in the Taylor case. All of these people have been his patients since before Mattie Crawford was killed. He was with Vivian in the right time frame before she died today. When we discovered Vivian was dead, he booked out of here faster than a kid after an ice cream truck. He’s smarmy, Mac. He’s not right. I know it.”

  Mac’s silence was so lengthy that Jess wondered whether the call had been dropped. “Mac? Are you there?”

  “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but what you’ve told me amounts to nothing more than opportunity, nothing specific that I can work with. That chapel was full of people with opportunity to kill Vivian today,” he said.

  “But—” She started to speak into the slight delay in the static-filled transmission. Mac talked right over her protests.

  “We’ve got a lot of things going on here, Jess, and we’re spread pretty thin already.”

  “You want me to call the locals, then,” she said, not waiting for an answer. “Because I will.” She forced herself to slow down. “Have you ever investigated Fleming at all? Checked into his background? Do you know he’s not capable of murder?” She walked around the parking lot, seeking a stronger signal.

  “We’re right in the middle of a bunch of forensics tests,” he said, parrying her question. “That may give us something to confront him with.” Mac’s tone was reasonable, reassuring. “Let people do their jobs and then we’ll see where we are.”

  “I hope that won’t be too late. If he’s a killer, he’ll go after someone else. Maybe that’s where he is now.”

  “What you’re doing is dangerous, Jess.” Mac paused as if considering whether to tell her more. Then he said, “Don’t over-focus on Fleming. Whoever killed Vivian Ward won’t hesitate to hurt you. You’ve left the protection we assigned to you and I can’t get someone else to cover right now. Can you go back to the mortuary and wait for Prescott and Burger?”

  “Can you send someone to find Ben Fleming?” she insisted.

  Mac’s sigh traveled plainly over the static.

  “That’s w
hat I thought. As soon as I find Ben Fleming, I’ll call you back.”

  Before she could end the call, Mac yelled into her ear. “Hey!”

  “What?”

  “Helen Sullivan will have my ass if anything happens to you. Frank Temple’s too. She already chewed us a new one when you ran out on Prescott and Berger. I’ve got enough to do here and I’m short staffed as it is. Give me a break, will you?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to do, Mac,” she said and ended the call. She flipped the phone over and pulled out the battery. With Mike’s phone dead too, Mac wouldn’t be able to track her movements or call her until she was ready.

  Jess hustled back to the SUV and opened the back hatch. “Mike, you drive, okay? I’ve got some work to do.” She grabbed her fully charged laptop, her car charger, and her own dead cell phone to jerk the battery out of it as well. In less than five minutes, they were back on the road.

  “Where are we going?” Mike asked.

  Jess pulled Ben Fleming’s business card out of her laptop case where she’d stuffed it. She glanced down at the business address and read it off to Mike.

  “Okay. I know where that is,” he said, as he reentered the Southbound Interstate.

  Jess powered up her laptop and logged onto her magazine’s secure server. While Mike drove, she pulled up every hit she could find on Ben Fleming. His home address was listed in the telephone book. She read that off to Mike, too. “Are the home and office addresses close?”

  “Yep,” he said. “It’s Sunday. Want to try home first?”

  “Sounds good.”

  Scanning through the information she pulled up on Granted’s private subscription services, she learned more about Benjamin Fleming, Ph.D. than he’d want anyone to know. She was only moderately surprised to read his long list of accomplishments and testimonials. The early articles were the most interesting to her. She read them more closely. She found two names that seemed promising and within a few moments, their telephone numbers. She put her headset on and using her Internet connection, made the first call to Ben Fleming’s Brownsville, Kansas, high school history teacher.

  Mrs. Raines sounded old, but still with it. Of course, she remembered Benny Fleming. Such a sweet boy. The longer Jess talked to Mrs. Raines, the more convinced she became that sweet Benny had been a killer for a long time.

  40

  Thornberry, Florida

  Sunday 3:00 p.m.

  Inside, with Frank Temple and Mac Green, Helen rubbed her hands together to warm them by the fireplace and let Frank tell her what had happened at the Taylor funeral.

  “Locals have the scene secured,” he concluded. “Coroner’s come and gone. Vivian Ward’s body has been moved to the morgue.”

  “Cause of death?” Mac asked.

  “Looks like oxygen overdose.”

  “Seriously?” Mac asked.

  Frank nodded. “Looks like someone knowledgeable of her condition and how to kill an oxygen dependent person flooded her system with more oxygen than she could metabolize.”

  Helen asked, “Are we talking about a killer with medical knowledge, then, or at least some special expertise?”

  “Could be,” Frank said, “although it’s not that uncommon a way of dying. I checked. More patients die of oxygen overdoses in hospitals than oxygen deprivation.”

  Mac asked, “How long does it take to die of too much oxygen?”

  “Varies. In her case, about ten minutes to slip into an irreversible coma. Death followed about twenty minutes after that, the coroner figures. Witnesses say Vivian was awake and talking after she arrived at the chapel, which means the killer did his work on the premises. The bad news is that the funeral home was pretty crowded by the time they figured out Vivian wasn’t breathing.”

  “What’s the good news?” Mac asked, “besides the murder not being in my county?”

  “There were a lot of reporters there shooting video, and the locals confiscated all the footage. We’ll be able to see most of the potential suspects on at least one of the recordings. But it’s going to take awhile to analyze. They’re going over that now.”

  Mac nodded, chewing his toothpick. He was still wearing the Rays cap and he reached up, pulled it off his head, swiped a broad palm over his crew cut, and put the cap back.

  Helen remained at the fireside, hands stuffed into the pockets of her jeans, watching the men, knowing what they were thinking.

  Mac was processing what Frank had told them, puzzling things out. Mac was analytical to the point of being Talmudic sometimes. But once he’d thought things through and settled on a plan, there was seldom anything wrong with it. His conclusions were always worth the price of her patience.

  Frank waited for questions, but he’d have a plan in place already. He wouldn’t offer it up until she felt she had enough information; then they’d compare notes and finalize.

  “And Jess?” Helen asked. “What happened to her? Prescott and Berger were supposed to keep her within sight at all times. Those were their orders?”

  Although her tone was reasonable, anger simmered beneath the words. She had indulged Jess’s plan to approach Vivian herself because Helen knew she’d do whatever she wanted regardless.

  Helen had covered her bets by asking Frank to send along two experienced agents to protect Jess. Now, no one knew where Jess was and she couldn’t be reached on her cell.

  “They lost her in the chaos.” Frank’s posture said that he wasn’t dodging her criticism. “That Jess is—” he paused to find the diplomatic word to describe someone who was a pain in his ass “—resourceful. I’ve sent another team to assist. And we’ve issued an alert for her vehicle.”

  Helen had to accept this solution for the moment. “Can we trace her cell?”

  “We’re working on that. It’s new enough to have a locator chip of some sort, although we haven’t found it yet,” Frank said.

  “So she’s done something to the phone.”

  “Looks like that. It’ll ping off a tower at some point. But she hasn’t used her phone since we lost her.”

  Mac thought a minute, then asked, “What about Mike’s phone? Have you tried that one?”

  “We’re searching the databases for his number,” Frank said.

  Mac reached into his windbreaker pocket and pulled out his own cell phone. Mike had called him twice in the past four days. He scrolled down the call log until he located what he wanted.

  “Try this one,” he said, reading the number off to Frank. “Once you locate him, I’ll call. I’m guessing he’ll answer.”

  Frank moved over to another part of the room for better reception as he placed the calls and gave the orders to put Mac’s suggestion into place. While Frank was occupied, Helen asked her old friend, “What do you think?”

  Mac removed the toothpick from his mouth and tossed it into a nearby trashcan. “I think Jess was right. The only reason to kill Vivian Ward now is because she knew something the killer didn’t want her to reveal. It could be the evidence she gave Jess. Or it could be about the killer himself. I’ll give him this, though: He’s one ballsy S-O-B.”

  “Amen.”

  “I’m gonna call about that Crawford DNA. It’s too soon for results for another—” he glanced at the oversized wristwatch on his left arm “—twelve hours, but maybe they’ve got something we can use now.”

  “Good plan,” Helen said. “While you do that, I’m going to check on Oliver. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” She turned and moved into the private wing of the house, the soles of her boots sounding unnaturally loud on the old pine floors.

  When she reached the master bedroom, the heavy door was open and four white-coated men were gathered around Oliver’s bed. One was the neurosurgeon she’d met at the hospital. The others were specialists newly arrived from the Florida facilities of Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins. She couldn’t see her husband’s face. Were his eyes still open?

  Since Stephen had told her Oliver was awake at 5:00 a.m. this morning, Hele
n’s emotions had whipsawed constantly, from wild hope to futility, defeat and back. One thing remained consistent: Each passing hour failed to reveal whether Oliver was lucid inside his unresponsive body.

  The dilemma was unambiguous: If Oliver was alert inside his body, his world would be an all-consuming hell; if he was instead hovering in a “vegetative state” as one of the doctors believed, the hell was Helen’s alone. Either way, contemplating her husband’s condition reduced her to pure terror.

  If she were lying in that bed in a truly vegetative state, then she would want Oliver to terminate her life as quickly as possible. They had discussed this subject many times and they both had executed living wills, durable powers of attorney, and patient advocate forms reflecting their wishes. But was that Oliver’s condition? She feared it would only be a matter of time before she was asked to make that choice and she needed to be absolutely certain before she agreed to any course of action.

  At Oliver’s bedside, she picked up his limp hand. She squeezed hard, but he did not respond. His eyes were open. He seemed to look into her soul, but perhaps his gaze was an empty stare. She tried to discern which; the answer eluded her.

  Helen leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “I’ve got to get some work done, sweetheart. I’ll be back later, okay?” She might as well have been talking to a warm-blooded statue.

  Huddled in the corridor with two of Oliver’s doctors, Helen asked once more, “Is there really no way to know his mental condition?”

  “We aren’t sure yet,” came the consensus, along with the usual doctor’s mantra: There was nothing she or they could do now.

  The frightened girl she’d been so long ago had heard different doctors say the same words, first about her mother and then her father and then her friend Ruby. Nothing more we can do. Helen knew where that phrase usually led.

  She abandoned the futile inquiry to return to the one thing she could help with: finding—and quite possibly saving the life of—Jess Kimball.