A Knife Edge

by David Rollins

  My voice: So… why did you kill Sergeant Wright?

  Butler: Wright killed himself. I thought I'd get angry denials, maybe a little outrage. Butler, though, was cool and self-assured. It was the reaction you'd expect from a man used to high-pressure situations.

  My voice: Maybe it was an accident. You didn't mean to kill him.

  Butler: Guv, I was just as shocked as any of the lads to find Wright dead.

  My voice: What happened to your flashlight?

  It got broken.

  How?

  Gear gets broken. A knock here, a bump there.

  Take off your shirt.

  I'd seen Butler without his shirt on back at the hacienda, but there had been a towel draped around his shoulders at the time that masked any injuries. Now he knew for certain someone had talked.

  Through the small speaker, I heard the sound I knew to be that of his chair creaking as he stood, the slap of his webbing slipping its buckle, the faint rustle of fabric as he opened his buttons and removed his shirt. I'd seen bodies in a similar condition to Butler's, but mostly they were in a morgue. His torso carried numerous ugly scars, two of which I recognized as the entry scars made by bullets. He'd also been badly burned at some point. The skin at the base of his neck and around across his left shoulder was red and purple like boiled rhubarb. His left nipple had been completely sliced off by shrapnel—an old wound. Beneath the skin under his right arm was the yellow, purple, and black puddle of a deep bruise on the mend—the specific injury I was hoping to find.

  My voice: How many ribs you got broken, Staff?

  Butler: Two.

  I was impressed. Butler moved easily, each movement economical and fluid, like he was in peak condition. This was one tough hombre.

  My voice: Been to the hospital for an X ray?

  Butler: What, and get sidelined?

  You want to tell me about how you got it?

  I know what you're thinking.

  What am I thinking?

  You reckon I plowed into Wright intentionally, and cut through his harness.

  Is that what happened?

  I'm not sure I know what happened. We all jumped together, but we all didn't walk away together. I didn't kill Wright. I reckon he knocked himself off.

  Take me through the jump.

  Will it help?

  That depends.

  On what?

  On whether you're convincing.

  The recorder picked up the sound of Butler putting his shirt back on. A night HALO drop. We were high—twenty thousand feet. A clear night, free of cloud, but black as a black cat's crotch. We planned to make the drop in close formation, which meant coming out the back of the C-130 in a packet. The formation was to be arrowhead, with myself at the lowest point and Wright at the highest so he could keep our reflective strips in sight and check that the formation was tight and right. Anyway, that was the plan. Coming out of the plane, Wright tripped. Looking back, he might have done it on purpose. In regaining his footing, he pushed a couple of the guys off the ramp. No big deal—we're all wearing parachutes. The rest of us tumbled out to try to make something of the drop anyway. When I looked down, I could only see two of the reflective strips. The formation was a lost cause—I had no idea where the other guys were. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I got rammed in midair. I'd been hit by one of my own people—and hard, hard enough to break ribs. And then I saw it was Wright. I recognized him right away—he was a lot bigger than any of the lads. I also saw he had his knife in his hand. As we dropped side by side, I watched him hack through his own thigh strap, saw him pull his rip cord. I was watching when he went one way and his chute bag and harness went the other. There was nothing I could do.

  So it was Wright who rammed you?

  That's right, mate.

  Do you think this was intentional, or an accident?

  Dunno.

  I remembered wondering as Butler told me this whether Wright really had rammed into him intentionally, whether he wanted the SAS sergeant to see him cut his own thigh strap. This thought was strengthened as I listened to Butler again. But what would Wright's motive be for doing that? What would he hope to gain? Did he want Butler to witness his suicide, if that's what really happened? And, if so, why would he want Butler to watch?

  Wright had made thousands of jumps under extreme conditions. This was a calm night, a training jump, a low-stress walk in the park for a man with Wright's experience. I found it hard to believe that he would just fly into Butler. Unless he had a damn good reason for doing so. And, of course, Butler could be making all this up to hide the truth that he killed Wright.

  My voice: So what are you thinking as you land?

  Butler: Well, I know Wright's dead. Cutting his harness like that? He might as well have sucked off his Beretta. I counted the lads as I flared. All present except one. At this stage they had no idea what had happened.

  You didn't raise the alarm. Why not?

  I knew Wright had bought the farm and I knew how. I also knew I had broken ribs. Put these things together and it looked bad for me.

  Yeah, it did then. And, as far as I was concerned, it still did.

  When Wright didn't show, the lads got nervous. They started checking around with their flashlights, looking for him. I was going to do the same, only I discovered my flashlight was broken.

  Were you and Wright's girlfriend, Amy, having an affair?

  An affair? Who told you that?

  Is that a yes?

  That's a definite no. Again, Butler had been cool and calm, his face giving away no clues as to what he might be thinking.

  The recorder picked up the knock on the door—Mortensen's untimely entrance. I clicked off the recorder, took a left turn, and slotted the SUV between a pair of white lines painted on the blacktop outside the OSI building. I killed the ignition and listened to the engine ticking. The thing with Amy McDonough was more than a little interesting. Wignall said Butler was having an affair, Butler said he wasn't.

  Wignall said Butler tripped into the stick on the C-130's ramp the moment before the jump, but Butler said it was Wright who'd done the stumbling. Either Wright or Butler broke up the formation, but which one?

  There was no doubt, however, that a midair collision between Butler and Wright had occurred. Whether intentional or not, the impact of them crashing into each other as they dropped through the thin, high-altitude air at over a hundred miles per hour was substantial enough to crack Butler's ribs and shatter his flashlight, a piece of which dropped out and tumbled to earth.

  * * *

  “Here's the details of that vehicle registration you asked for.” Lyne wandered in with a large Post-it note hanging off the tip of his forefinger. “The phone company said they'd fax through the details of those calls.”

  I said thanks and stuck the Post-it in my notebook.

  The paperwork of Ruben Wright's recent life was spread out on the table and across the linoleum floor, a little like the way the man himself ended up. Wright had been reasonably good with record keeping, saving receipts for things he bought—mostly for warranty purposes. There were quarterly reports from his bank, and he'd also made some pretty good investments in a couple of funds over the years. I was envious. The only thing I'd made over the last few years were bets—most of them bad. He had a couple hundred thousand dollars sloshing around in various accounts. The money was unusual—there weren't a lot of rich sergeants in the armed forces. If I hadn't known about the inheritance, I might have wondered where the zeros had come from.

  I rubbed my chin and then scratched my head. Wrong Way had turned into a gadget man, and, according to the dates on the receipts, the conversion had been a reasonably recent event. Over the past two months, he'd acquired a new sound system, a new iPod and cell phone, a new digital camera, home gym equipment, a massage chair, a Harley-Davidson, new cutlery and dinner set, a new iron, new furniture, new clothes, and so on.

  “You need anything else?” Lyne asked.

  �
��Yeah. I don't see a copy of his will anywhere here. I also want access to his effects.” I stretched, arching, pushing my hands into the small of my back. A couple of vertebrae gave way with a crack.

  “Here's the will.” A thick envelope landed on the desk beside my elbow with a heavy slap. “And no problem getting his effects. Which ones do you want? As you can see, there's a truck-load of stuff.”

  “I'll make a list,” I said, opening the envelope. It contained documents for various investment funds and life insurance. The will itself was straightforward. To start with, the date made it a couple of years old. I was surprised it wasn't a little more recent. According to the document, he had the standard airman's Servicemen's Group Life Insurance Policy with a $400,000 payout, another policy obtained through American Express with a $300,000 payout. He also had around $750,000 under management. I scanned both policies—neither payout was affected if the policyholder committed suicide. So the guy was worth way more than a million. The amount surprised me. According to the will, there were two beneficiaries—the relative in Gainesville, though what was coming to him looked to be nothing but family memorabilia. Everything else went to Amy McDonough.

  I gave the Post-it that Lyne had passed me a closer look: Amy McDonough, 42 West Lincoln, Pensacola. Lyne was catching on fast—there was an employment address, too: Elmer's Sports Store. That name rang a bell. I checked the receipts from Ruben's gym equipment. It had all come from Elmer's, where Ms. McDonough worked. I wondered what sort of discount she'd given him.

  Pensacola was a long drive, roughly seventy miles, from Laguna Beach where I'd seen her last night. A long way to drive for a margarita, no matter how big they made it. I remembered the conversation she was having with Butler, like they were having a lovers' tiff.

  “Here are those calls,” said Lyne, placing a couple of sheets of paper on the desk, pulling me out of the daydream. I put my feet on the desk and looked them up and down. The animal growling in my stomach told me it was feeding time. Dinner. I'd run out of pencils and my mouth tasted of number two lead. I tried not to think about food and concentrated on the list of calls instead. Wright didn't use his cell much. Over a period of two and a half weeks he made just eighteen calls. There was nothing in the cell's SMS in-tray or out-tray. Most of the calls were made to McDonough, the balance to phone numbers in Pensacola. One of the numbers looked familiar. I picked up the will again. It was drafted on letterhead from a law firm in Pensacola called Demelian and Partners, and there it was—the familiar phone number. The call he'd made was a brief one: fourteen seconds—long enough to listen to an answering machine, perhaps. So maybe Ruben had called his lawyer, and the guy wasn't in. I checked the receivedcalls folder in the cell's memory against the phone company's records. Most had come from McDonough, her home phone or cell. Ruben's lawyer had called back twice, and there was a call from a number with an area code that placed it in Atlanta. It was after eight p.m.—too late to get anything other than a recorded message, but I thought, what the hell, and phoned anyway. Thirty minutes later I was more puzzled than when I started.

  “I said, are you taking calls, Vin?”

  “What…?” I snapped out of it. Lyne's head was craned around the door.

  “Calls,” he repeated. “Are you taking any?”

  “Is it my ex, her lawyer, or her new husband?”

  “It's Colonel Selwyn.”

  “Then sure.”

  “Line three.”

  I pressed the button.

  “Agent Cooper?” said Clare Selwyn.

  “Ma'am, how you doing? What's up?”

  “Oh, you know… blood, guts—the usual. Actually, it's pretty quiet here, for a change. How're you doing?”

  “Good. Nice climate, holiday atmosphere, a little murder…”

  I heard a feminine snort. “Those lab results came through. But getting them out of me is going to cost you dinner.”

  “I thought the results were going to take a week?”

  “Seems the lab's not too busy. It's coming up on New Year's… Maybe all the local killers are on vacation.”

  “So where do you want to meet for this dinner I owe you?”

  “You know The Funkster, the place I told you about in Destin?”

  “Yeah. Friendly tourist crowd.”

  “There's a restaurant two doors down called Salty's.”

  “Sounds bad for the arteries.”

  “Actually, for seafood it's the pick of the bunch around here. They do these amazing soft-shelled crabs. Just do me one favor?”

  “Name it, Colonel.”

  “For Christ's sake, lose the shirt.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  The restaurant was jammed. Fortunately Colonel Selwyn had left a reservation with a guy at the front desk who could have been Mr. Salty himself—beard, squint, tattoos. Popeye the Sailor had a doppelgänger. I was ten minutes early, the colonel was twenty minutes late. I ate my roll. Then I ate hers.

  “Hey, sorry I'm late,” said the voice behind me.

  I felt a light hand on my shoulder as Clare Selwyn surfed past on a wave of French perfume and took the seat opposite. Her blond hair was loose. She wore a green top tied at the waist over a white T-shirt, a swishy white skirt that ended below her brown knees, and leather sandals. Her toenails were painted red. Selwyn's makeup was minimal, the way I liked it, and she glowed with life.

  “No problem. I passed the time with your roll.”

  “That's OK—I don't do carbs,” she said.

  An old woman arrived and poured glasses of water. She might have been Salty's wife, or maybe his twin sister. The beard gave it away. “Get you folks drinks?” she asked.

  “Thanks,” said Selwyn, looking up at her. Candlelight danced in her eyes. I cleared my throat.

  Mrs. Salty placed menus for food and alcohol on our table and walked off to baby-sit a rowdy table nearby.

  “You've changed your shirt,” said Selwyn as she picked up her napkin and smoothed it across her legs.

  “It was about time. The girls were starting to play their ukuleles.”

  “I like the one you're wearing better.”

  “This old rag?” Actually it was new, bought from the BX. It was fitted and vaguely khaki.

  Selwyn smiled approval, then said, “I know what's good here. Should I just order for us?”

  “You're a colonel. I'm a major. I'm not arguing.”

  “Good,” she said.

  The bearded lady returned to get our order. Selwyn chose a Napa Valley Chardonnay. I had a glass, for the sake of politeness, then switched to Moosehead. The food came fast—a couple of clam chowders followed by soft-shelled crabs, plus scallops and prawns. Selwyn ate her fair share. Nice to know her trim figure didn't come from eating with a calculator, counting calories. Nice also to have dinner out with a woman, any woman, even one who outranked me. It had been a while. Months, in fact, not including the surprise take out with Anna in my apartment. Suddenly, thinking about Anna made me feel uneasy. Why? This was just dinner, wasn't it? And Anna and I were … well, what were we? On the rocks, foundering, a hole in the keel, great whites thrashing about for the pickings, our relationship's blood in the water? I snapped out of it. The colonel was talking.

  “…Selwyn's my maiden name, by the way. As I was saying, Manny stays with his grandparents, my parents. He goes there every second Thursday night—overnight. They moved to Panama City from Seattle when Dad retired. They said they always intended to settle down there, but I'd never heard them mention the place—ever—and then suddenly they're living there.”

  “Any other grandparents helping out?”

  She hesitated. I sensed that if not for the wine, Selwyn would have left it at that. “You really want to know?”

  “Only if you want to tell me.”

  She took a breath and let it out. The flames on the candles twitched and swayed, shifting the shadows across her face.

  “Getting married was the one truly dumb thing I've done in my life. Now I realize it was
just an attack on my parents. They resented the fact that I took my medical degree and joined the Air Force. My dad was a thoracic surgeon, and pushy about me following in his footsteps.”

  She took a sip of her wine.

  “Anyway, the guy I married was a developer. My folks had visions of me marrying a doctor, of course, or at least a dentist. I met him on vacation in the Caribbean. We flew to Vegas at the end of it and tied the knot. Three months later I was pregnant. We both knew it wasn't going to last forever. We weren't talking much toward the end, but he loved Manny. We were pretty much done when he was killed in the plane crash. His parents were divorced and remarried and didn't want to know about their grandchild.” Selwyn lifted the glass to her lips again. “What about you—I notice you're not wearing a ring. You single, or just traveling in disguise?”

  “Divorced six months ago. We just ran out of steam.” I was happy to skip the details.

  “What about a girlfriend?”

  “I'm not sure. We've been bouncing around. She's in Germany.”

  “Oh, right, one of those relationships.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Long distance. It's a killer.”

  I was anxious to move on and I was unlikely to get a better opportunity. “Which reminds me, you had a toxicology report for me?”

  “Yeah, that pill. I can tell you what it is and what it's for—but I can't tell you whether it was medication Ruben Wright was taking. Unfortunately his remains have been cremated and we don't have the appropriate tissue samples. As for the dead roaches, they weren't significant. The sugar coating on the pill wouldn't have killed them. They might have recently checked out of a nearby roach motel and come to die where it was nice and warm. And, like I said, an earlier tenant could have dropped it.”

  “I get you. There are caveats. What is it?”

  “A four-milligram serving of Tizanidine hydrochloride.”