by Andy Straka
She smiled. “Nope. I was married a little over a year ago. A surgeon from Roanoke. Things didn’t work out though with him on call all the time and me trying to commute back and forth with the baby and all. He, umm … well, suffice it to say Kameesha and I finally just had to leave.”
“I’m very sorry.”
“Didn’t Jake tell you?”
“No, he never mentioned it.”
She gave a little grunt of disgust. “Figures … why I could never have a long-term relationship with the man. They must not teach verbal communication with all that security training and whatnot he does.”
I thought of stating the obvious, that here she was back in obviously some kind of relationship with Toronto, but figured I’d better keep my own counsel in that regard.
“Why are you here, Frank? And where’s Jake?”
I told her what had happened.
She listened, saying little. Finally, she said, “That man’s been living his whole life on the edge. Bound to catch up with him sooner or later.”
“That’s what makes it interesting though, isn’t it?”
She said nothing.
“Nicky is supposed to meet me down here. We thought we’d check in on the birds and look through some of Jake’s stuff before the FBI decides to come by and tear through everything. Have the Feds been here, or have you heard anything from them?”
She shook her head. “I’ve been taking a few days off work. You’re the first person Kameesha or I have seen or heard from in three days.”
Curious, if they were really considering Toronto a potential terrorist. “Well, maybe they just haven’t gotten around to serving the warrant yet.”
“Maybe,” she said, but I could tell she didn’t believe it.
“You checked on Jake’s babies yet this morning?”
“Yes,” she said. “They’re all fine. I fed them.”
“Good. Don’t suppose they’ll be doing any hunting for a couple of days.”
The sound of another vehicle approaching arose in the distance. Hercules gave a warning bark and leapt from the deck again.
“Let’s hope that’s Nicky,” I said.
It was. Her station wagon popped into view and she waved when she caught sight of us on the deck.
“There is one more piece of bad news I need to give you though,” I said to Priscilla.
“Really? What now?”
“I’ll explain it to you and Nicky both inside.”
After greeting us and the dog and the appropriate oohing and ahhing over the baby, Nicole followed me and Priscilla and the infant, with Hercules at our heels, into Jake’s kitchen area, where we all sat down around the small table. Priscilla laid the little girl down in one of those portable chairs that snap into car seats, where she smiled up at us and cooed softly. Hercules found his bed in the corner and curled into it. I quickly explained about the phone conversation I’d just had with Mr. Spook and about the dead birds Jason and I had discovered in the cave.
“So this man is supposedly working with the FBI, but now you think he may be up to no good, including trying to frame Jake?” Priscilla asked.
“That’s the way it looks to me.”
“But you have no idea who he is.”
I shook my head.
“Who do you think? Some kind of government agent gone bad or something?” Nicole sounded excited to be in on the chase.
“Do you think you could maybe ask around a bit—quietly, I mean—and see if you could find out who he was?” I asked Priscilla.
“I don’t know, Frank. I might make a call or two. But you know how the Feds can be sometimes.”
“So make up some excuse,” I suggested.
When it came to prosecutors, Priscilla Thomasen was about as straightlaced and conservative as anyone could be, a fact that had endeared her to her largely white and rural Virginia constituency.
“We’ll see,” she said.
“What about right now?” Nicole asked.
“Right now we may not have much time before the Feds decide to show up,” I said. “I want to check through Jake’s things to see if we can find anything that might help us. Why don’t you two check through the rest of the trailer. I want to have a look in the spare bedroom.”
Priscilla gave me a serious look. “But it’s locked. And that’s where Jake keeps some of his—”
“I know. I have an extra key Jake gave me once just in case, and I want to get there before anybody else does.”
She nodded.
“What’s in there, Dad?” Nicky asked.
“It’s just Jake’s little office. No time to go into any more detail now. Let’s get to it.”
I stood and headed toward the back of the trailer. The narrow passageway led past a small half bath and then a padlocked door before ending in the main bedroom in back. I went to the locked door and selected a small key from my key ring. The key popped open the lock. I swung the door open and stepped inside, closing the heavier-than-usual trailer door behind me.
The one window in the room was covered by a heavy drape that I didn’t bother opening. A small bit of light cracked into the room from around its edges, but I switched on the overhead ceiling fixture in order to be able to see better. There was a captain’s chair and a metal workstation in the center of the room with a computer and a large flat-screen monitor. A satellite linkup attached to an insulated cable on the wall gave Toronto a high-speed connection to the Web and other networks via a dish he had set up at the edge of the woods on the far side of the hill behind the bird barn. Jake did a lot of his work here. The desk was completely free of clutter or disorganization of any kind. There was a small notepad with nothing written on it, a wireless phone housed neatly in its cradle, and a small desk lamp.
In the top desk drawer I found a stack of CD-Rom disks, one of which was labeled with my name. Toronto had told me to use it in case of his death or incarceration or some other major disaster. The computer was running, although the screen had gone into a darkened power-save mode. I moved the mouse on the pad next to the keyboard and the screen flicked to life to a simple portal-like interface. I took the disk from its case and stuck it into the drive. The light blinked on as the mechanism whirled away.
A message from Toronto immediately appeared on the screen.
Hey, dude. If you’re reading this, it must mean I’m dead or in jail or something. I have something important to ask you to do.
I need you to find a secure client-list file on this computer and delete its entire contents. I’ve made it easy for you. This disk has a utility that will automatically open the correct file. But in order to get there you have to type in your own password, which is the name of that bar on the Upper West Side where you and I used to always go after work when we were first together on the force.
You remember the place. It’s the one where the bartenders were all women and I used to drag you there even though it made Camille hysterical. At the bottom of this message, you’ll find a password box. Once you’re through reading this, you go ahead and type in the name and the program will do the rest for you. It will erase the file in question. In case I’m not already dead, don’t worry, I have a backup copy of this file at a more secure location with its own safeguards, so erasing the one here won’t do any permanent damage. But if you don’t delete it, there are some people on this list who might end up in serious jeopardy if the work I do for them ever comes to light.
Oh, I almost forgot … if you can’t remember the name of the bar or type in the wrong pass code, you’ll hear a very loud hissing noise. If that happens, get out and get out fast. There’s a Claymore mine wired from the base of this desk to the computer and it’s about to explode. The device is on an eight-second timer so I know I don’t need to tell you to be careful.
Good luck, Frank. Sayonara. … And oh, yeah, thanks for taking care of this item for me. Hope you were paying attention. By the way, you probably already knew this disk was encrypted and will only work on this machine.
>
At the bottom of the message was a small box with the caption FRANK’S PASSWORD.
Paying attention? You’ve got to be kidding. The FBI might show up at any moment and Toronto wants me to break into his private, encrypted files and, oh yeah, by the way, maybe just get myself blown up in the process.
I remembered the name of the bar, Gilheaney’s, and typed it into the box. His message didn’t say whether it should be upper- or lowercase. Would it make any difference? No time to worry about it. I took a deep breath before hitting the ENTER key.
The hard drive on the computer spun to life and the drive light began to blink rapidly. Thankfully no loud hiss. A brief message appeared then disappeared on the screen: DELETING ENCRYPTED FILES. What would have really made things interesting would have been if I could have taken a look at that client list, but obviously Toronto wasn’t about to let that happen. Could it mean he was deeply involved in illegalities he didn’t want me to know about? The kind the FBI now alleged?
1 pushed the thought from my mind and began checking through the desk. Inside the drawers, which were all much longer and deeper than I’d expected, I found a small cache of weapons: three Glock .45 autos and two Russian-made Saiga semiautomatic shotguns along with ammunition to last a daylong battle. Enough weaponry to arm a small police force. I checked the loads on each of the weapons, emptied all the chambers for the time being, and then carefully placed all the firearms and ammo in an empty suitcase I found in the closet.
That finished I took a final look around the Spartan room. Not much else to see, except a fine layer of dust on the thin metallic windowsill. The walls were bare. There was nothing else in the desk drawers—no scraps of paper, no stray business cards. Apparently, the truly paperless office had actually made its long-heralded arrival as far as Toronto was concerned. No doubt, the Feds would take his computer apart and find or reconstruct anything they could from his hard drive, but knowing Toronto, they wouldn’t find much. Just to be safe, I slipped the disk from the CD drive and wiped down the keyboard, desk, and anything else in the room I’d touched to remove any prints. If they found any fibers or hairs or any of my DNA, I could always claim I was merely here discussing business with Toronto a few days before.
I met Nicole and Priscilla with the baby back down the hall in the kitchen.
“Find anything?” Nicole asked.
I held up the suitcase in my hand. “Enough firepower to help us win a small battle if it comes to that. Let’s hope it doesn’t. What about you guys?”
“Just some, um, personal stuff I already knew about in the bedroom,” Priscilla said. She looked at Nicole and the two of them giggled.
“I won’t ask.”
“But, Dad, behind some old shirts in the little closet in the living room we also found this.” She went to the couch and hoisted something in her hands. It was a twelve-gauge Mossberg, the exact same make and model I’d been struck with in the woods. Not the same weapon, of course, since that had been turned over to the sheriff’s department, but there was more. Along with the weapon she held up a dark green ski mask, the exact type worn by my assailant.
“Isn’t this the kind of getup the creep you took the gun from the other day was wearing?”
I nodded.
“Are you saying you think Jake might’ve been involved with that?” Priscilla asked. “Why that’s impossible.”
“It’s a plant,” I said. “Same as the rifle the Feds found at Felipe’s. Who else has been here in the last several days besides you and Jake?”
“Like I said, no one.”
“Then—”
“Wait a minute. Just before Jake left to head out to Nitro for the funeral, a man stopped by briefly. Another falconer. He said he was on his way back from a trip to Roanoke. Jake showed him some of the birds out in the barn. A young guy.”
“What was his name?”
“I’m trying to remember … Damon something?”
“Damon Farraday,” I said.
“That’s it.”
Farraday. Whom I’d also just seen hunting up at Felipe’s. Who’d been present at the bombing that killed Gwen Hallston. Hadn’t he gone back to his truck for a while then while we were still in the woods?
“But why, Dad?” Nicky asked. “What would Damon have to gain by trying to frame Jake?”
“I don’t know. You said you checked everything out with his background, right?”
“Yes. Like I told you.”
“Can you go deeper? Can you try to find out more?”
“I can try.”
“What do you need?”
“I’ve got my laptop, but I could use a broadband connection to speed things up.”
“We can’t use Jake’s connection here—I don’t know how he has it wired and he already has the computer booby-trapped to keep anyone from tampering with it.” I said.
“How about my apartment?” Priscilla suggested. “It’s in town and no one’s there right now. I put in a cable modem last year when I was going back and forth with the baby to Roanoke so I could do cases at home.”
“Perfect,” I said. “After we visit your mom, Nicky, you can get right to work. Whether you find anything or not, you can drive your own car and catch back up with me later out in Charleston.”
“What should we do with the shotgun?” Nicole’s slender hands were dwarfed by the weapon.
“Take it with us. We need to get out of here in case the Feds do decide to show up.”
“Amen to that,” Priscilla said. “Obviously, then, from my perspective, you were never here.”
“Exactly.”
“So we are going to visit Mom next, right?” Nicole asked.
“Right,” I said. “But we can only spend a few minutes. We’ll head over there now. Priscilla, you feel comfortable with you and the baby being here? I mean with the guy I talked to on the phone and everything. He might decide to make a run at anybody having anything to do with Jake.”
“Looks like you’re the one he has to worry about for now,” she said. “I can take care of Kameesha and myself. And if the FBI shows up, don’t worry, I’ve dealt with them before.”
29
Here are what expensive lawyers, a fifteen-thousand-dollar-a-month disability policy from your dead second husband’s estate, and a brain almost morphed to mango buy you: A get-out-of-jail-free card (probation leniency of the court since you won’t be running around anywhere); a master bedroom decorated with bouffant blue curtains and semifresh flowers; dark silk sheets—better to hide the stains from drool, sweat, and urine; and all sorts of expensive medical equipment and an oversized color television. Not to mention an around-the-clock battery of nurses, the current version of which looked as though she’d made it about half-way through her stack of People, Time, and a mixed bag of fashion magazines.
At least, I thought, she knows how to read.
Since most of the money went to my ex-wife Camille’s continuing care, Sweetwood Farm looked in the same state of general disrepair as the last time I’d accompanied Nicole on a visit. Her mother still lay in a customized Suntec full electric rehab bed with a permanent bemused crease to her lips, her eyes staring wide and wondering at the world, as if they’d only just discovered it.
More than three years had passed since Camille’s addiction to crystal meth, and the legal fallout from her involvement in Dewayne Turner’s murder had turned her life to this. The sky outside was gray and the winter cold uninviting.
“How’s she doing today?” Nicole plunked herself down in a chair next to Camille’s bed opposite the nurse, who occupied the Barcalounger in front of the darkened television.
I hung back in the doorway for a moment. I wanted to see both Camille’s and the nurse’s response.
“She ate Oreos for breakfast,” the nurse said, crossing her arms with a look of disgust on her face. “Wouldn’t eat nothing but Oreos.”
For maybe just an instant I thought I saw a tiny smile crack across the placid mask of my ex-wife’s fa
ce. Same old Camille.
“Mom.” Nicole reached across the bedsheets and took her mother’s hand in her own. “You have to eat. You have to keep up your strength, you know that.”
Camille looked on impassively.
“I don’t know,” I said, stepping into the patient’s line of sight. “Oreos sound pretty good to me.”
The container with cookies still lay on the bedside stand.
“I fix her a perfectly good breakfast of oatmeal, toast with honey, and orange juice,” the nurse said defensively. She looked to be in her thirties, dark brown skin, about fifty pounds overweight but with a proud chin and a determined stare.
“I’m sure you did,” said Nicole.
“How you wanna play this, Camille?” I asked. “You going to make your own daughter have to spoon-feed you?” I was remembering an image of Nicole in a high chair in our kitchen in New York and Camille trying to feed her a jar of baby food squash, or maybe it was peas. Nicole had grabbed the glass jar and tossed the entire contents on the floor.
A darker look crossed the patient’s face this time, accompanied by a slight shaking of the head.
The nurse roused herself from her chair. “I’ll warm up her cereal again.”
She disappeared out the door.
Nicole lifted her mother’s hand a little and patted it gently. “I’ve missed you, Mom.”
The placidity returned to Camille’s face. She reached with her free hand for a small white board with a large felt marker on the bedside stand. Nicole anticipated this move and helped her retrieve the board and uncap the marker. Then we waited while Camille slowly scratched out a barely decipherable message. When finished she shifted the board toward Nicole so she could read.
MIS U 2, it said.
“This is a new daytime nurse. What happened to your old one?”
Camille took the board again and slowly wrote.
MOVE 2 SC
“She moved to South Carolina. Too bad, I know you liked her. Her name was Josephine, wasn’t it?”
YES I MIS HER
Another pat of the hand.
The new nurse returned. “Need to get Miss Rhodes set up for her meal,” she said.
