So was Nadia. So was Aisha. Along with high heels. Elizabeth had never seen them in heels. They looked very nice, all primped and accessorized, but when one has only seen them in more careless attire, the effect is something like being costumed. They would look more Islamic at sundown, however, when the three of them covered their heads with hijab and knelt side by side on her oriental rug to say their evening prayers before dinner.
Jasmine said to Aisha, “No peeking at the presents.” She said to Elizabeth, “Doesn’t Aisha look hot?”
Nadia frowned. “The word is ‘lovely,’” she said.
Jasmine winked at Elizabeth. “Muslims aren’t supposed to say ‘boobs’ or ‘bod’ either. But that doesn’t mean she don’t have them.”
Elizabeth glanced at Aisha, expecting a blush. But Aisha was still looking toward the sound of the sirens, a far away expression on her face.
Elizabeth asked Nadia, “Well, what happened? Do you know?”
“A shooting,” Jazz answered. “In a bar outside the gate. A place called Jump & Phil’s. Do you know it?”
Elizabeth nodded. “I’ve had lunch there.”
“We couldn’t get very close with the car, but I spoke to one of the security guards. He said that several people were down.”
“It’s pretty awful,” said Aisha. “Three inside the bar and three more in the parking lot. At least four of them are already dead.”
Nadia’s lips had tightened again. She said to Elizabeth, “She knows that because she jumped out and ran over there. She’s lucky it’s her birthday or I’d spank her.”
“I…needed to see,” said Aisha weakly.
“What you needed, young lady, was to do as you’re told. If you ever…”
“Wait a minute,” said Elizabeth. “What kind of a shooting? A robbery? Or did someone go berserk?”
Jasmine shook her head. “Neither one. It wasn’t postal. The security guard said it looked like a hit. A man walked in, pulled a gun from his jacket, shot a guy who was sitting having dinner with his wife. The victim’s still alive, but the shooter is down. Some guy who was sitting at the bar took him out. He stuck the shooter in the head with a knife. Not a real knife. A table knife. But it was enough. The guy did a lobotomy on him.”
Nadia added, “Well, it wasn’t quite enough. The man with the knife in his brain went into spasm. His hand kept twitching and he sprayed half a clip while people were diving for cover. At least two more were hit before this man from the bar could finish the job with that knife.”
Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. “A bystander did that?”
Jasmine, too, was skeptical. “If that’s all he is. Could be he’s a bodyguard. The first man who got shot has his own TV show. Never heard of him myself, but they tell me he’s famous.”
“An actor?”
“Commentator. Political stuff. The kind where people call in. Those guys always have someone mad at them.”
Perhaps so, thought Elizabeth. Some nut acting on a grudge. It did not have the sound of a professional hit. She said, “Or maybe it was personal. An old boy friend. An ex-husband.”
“Pissed off boy friends,” said Jazz, “don’t usually have a getaway driver waiting outside, especially one with a shotgun. It seems this…bystander…picked up the shooter’s pistol and put a few holes in the driver’s windshield when he tried to take aim with the shotgun. The bullets missed him but the flying glass didn’t. The driver got away after plowing through pedestrians and bouncing off a couple of cars. He’s in a banged-up blue Buick with the windshield shot out. They’ll catch him. He can’t get it off the island.”
“Where’s this bystander now?”
“Still at the restaurant. Talking to the police. Aisha says he was there with a pretty young woman. She got a good look. She’s never seen him before. I had guessed that he might have been an off-duty deputy, but she says the other deputies
didn’t seem to know him either.”
Elizabeth looked at Aisha. Aisha wouldn’t meet her gaze. Elizabeth was beginning to understand why Aisha felt the need to get a look at this man. It did sound like something that Martin might do if he’d happened to be in that bar. They would need to have a talk, but that could wait. Whoever he was, he was no off-duty deputy. She felt sure that he wasn’t a bodyguard either. Bodyguards go armed. They don’t rely on restaurant flatware. They don’t count on using the shooter’s own weapon when more shooting needs to be done.
All in all, however, an uneven performance. Parts were impressive. Cool and professional. The man had done this before. But he’d failed to kill quickly, not once, but twice and more people were hurt or killed because of it. He was more than a little bit reckless as well. Any professional who had just happened to be there should have lowered his head and stayed out of it. Especially when the victim had already been shot. This man didn’t hesitate. He jumped right in. Most professionals would not have. Martin certainly would have. And that was why she wouldn’t be too hard on Aisha for wondering if it might have been Martin.
Aisha had never fully accepted that Martin Kessler was dead. Martin had telephoned her from the boat, the one that the Algerians brought over. It was on a reef twenty-five miles out and surrounded, at a distance, by Coast Guard patrol boats. They couldn’t get closer. The boat was too hot. The radiation was such that no one could survive it. Martin knew full well that he hadn’t long to live, but Martin was Martin and he couldn’t resist making it a game even then. He was already planning a little surprise for those who would eventually board the boat.
He’d said to Aisha, “Don’t worry about me. If they tell you I’m dead, make them show you my body. If they can’t, then you shouldn’t believe it.” He’d said, “Ask Elizabeth. I’m like a bad penny. You can never get rid of bad pennies.” He was lying through his teeth. He knew he had no chance. Aisha knew it as well, but she knew it in her head. She just couldn’t accept it with her heart.
As for who that man was, the mysterious bystander, they could read all about it in the morning papers and find out who did what to whom. The best proof, thought Elizabeth, that it wasn’t Martin Kessler was that Martin would know better than to show up on this island with a new and younger girl friend in tow. She’d have showed him where to put that table knife.
Elizabeth forced a smile. She put an arm around Aisha. She said, “Our birthday girl is here. We have presents to open. Let’s go in and enjoy ourselves, shall we?”
Aisha asked Elizabeth, “Are you going to serve wine?”
“Well, I’ve chilled some for myself. And for whoever might like some.”
“Could I have just a taste? I’d like to know what I don’t drink.”
“Over my dead body,” said Nadia.
EIGHT
The morning paper came. It was full of the shootings. Among the dead were a tourist from New Jersey and a local real estate broker, a woman. They were the ones who’d been hit by random bullets. To Elizabeth’s surprise, the assassin still lived, although in a vegetative state. His accomplice, with the shotgun, still hadn’t been caught. Neither of the men had been identified.
Their intended victim, the talk show host, had undergone emergency surgery. His name was Philip Ragland. His show was called The Ragland Report. She had never seen the show or heard the name. Ragland, it said, was in guarded condition, but he was expected to survive. The man who interceded was one Adam Wismer. The paper identified the young woman with him. It gave her name as Claudia Kelly. The news report, oddly, minimized Wismer’s role. It suggested that several of the patrons were involved in subduing the man with the gun. Someone had stabbed him. It wasn’t clear who did. Some witnesses said that the knife had been thrown. Some thought that this Claudia Kelly had thrown it. Others said that it was already in the man’s skull before Kelly or Wismer had reacted.
The young woman threw it? Impossible, thought Elizabeth. No on makes a killing throw with that sort of knife. She knew a little something about knives.
Elizabeth didn’t know quite what t
o make of this confusion. She had given mixed reviews to this mysterious Wismer, but it now seems that he’d had a lot more to contend with than polishing off the two shooters. From what she’d heard earlier, there hadn’t seemed to be much doubt that Wismer was central to all this.
She’d understood that Wismer had finished the knife job, even if he hadn’t started it. The paper did mention that he fired some shots through the plate glass window at the getaway car. But that element of the story seemed almost incidental. He shot, he missed, and that seemed to be that. It said that he and Miss Kelly were visitors to the island. They lived on a yacht at the Palmetto Bay Marina. It said they’d only been here for two or three weeks and were in that restaurant purely by chance. This much had been gleaned from the police reports only. Mr. Wismer, apparently, could not be reached for comment. He and Kelly were in seclusion.
It seemed to Elizabeth that if she were a reporter, she would damned well have reached him for comment. Was he being protected? If so, by whom? How could a man do what he’d apparently done and be allowed to fade into the background? But she put the thought aside. It was none of her business. Except that it had made her friends late for dinner, it did not touch their lives in any way. She had some shopping to do, then a golf lesson later. After that, she would spend some time at the gym to work off the effects of last night’s feasting.
Her day did not go as planned because the island went crazy. She heard sirens all afternoon. She ignored them at first, but then Nadia started calling. Nadia kept a police scanner in her office. She’d acquired it after the terrorist attack along with several other early warning devices. First she’d heard on her scanner that a woman had been kidnapped. The victim was the young woman who’d been tending bar when the shooting erupted in that restaurant.
Nadia said, “There’s got to be a connection.”
“One would think so,” Elizabeth answered, “but what?”
“Well, she was a witness.”
“So were forty other people. And that’s why the newspaper account seems so
muddled. No two people saw quite the same thing. It never fails.”
“Well, the people who saw her get kidnapped all agree. She was walking toward the dock. Three men snatched her in broad daylight.”
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. “The dock? What dock is that?”
“At Palmetto Bay Marina.”
Where the man with the knife keeps his boat, thought Elizabeth. Coincidence,
probably. She chose not to comment. This still wasn’t any of her business. She said, “Let me know what develops.”
Nadia called again about two hours later. She asked, “Elizabeth, is Aisha there with you?”
“No, she isn’t. I haven’t seen her.”
“She took off on her bike. I don’t like her being out. I hope she didn’t ride down to that house. I can see all the smoke from my window.”
“Um…what house is that?” asked Elizabeth.
The house in question was in North Forest Beach and the scene of a new round of violence. The house had gone up in flames and exploded. This was only within the past hour. Someone, according to what Nadia had heard, had driven a fuel truck through the front wall after some sort of bomb had gone off. The fuel truck, she said, had been stolen earlier from its depot at Hilton Head Airport.
Elizabeth felt the hairs of her neck start to curl. Aviation fuel? Someone used
an airport truck as a battering ram? Once again, thoughts of Martin entered her mind, but Nadia said the driver was a woman. She was described as having red hair, cut short, and as being very petite. Neighbors reported that shots had been fired before, as well as after, both explosions. Several people, men and women, were seen running from the house just after she drove the truck into it. A van ripped its way out of the burning garage. It was followed by an older green Pontiac. The redheaded woman then emerged from the flames. She was carrying what looked like an automatic weapon and seemed in no particular hurry. She climbed into a car that was waiting for her. That car was a light brown Ford Taurus. Another man and woman were in the front seat. They drove off before the fire trucks arrived.
A redhead, thought Elizabeth. Petite. Cool and deadly. And as reckless as Martin if not worse. Elizabeth’s mind gave the redhead a face, the face of a woman
whom she’d known by reputation before meeting her, sort of, in Europe. She had come to Chamonix with Paul Bannerman’s crew. But no, she decided. That’s too much of a leap. That was not Carla Benedict in that fuel truck.
She had enough trouble envisioning the scene that Nadia had been trying to describe. It was hard because Nadia had pieced it together from the squawking
reports on her scanner. A Taurus, a van and a green Pontiac. All being hunted by too few police cars, half of which were still at that burning house. Elizabeth had almost expected to hear that an older blue Buick had been there as well. One with its windshield shot out.
She said, “I’ll go out and see if I can find Aisha.”
“Bring your cell phone,” said Nadia. “Let me know.”
Elizabeth drove up to the Tennis Center. From there, she took the route that Aisha would have taken if she’d ridden her bike toward Forest Beach. She followed the still-rising smoke. All streets leading to that house were blocked off by police cars. She doubted that Aisha could have gotten through even if that had been her intention. The police were letting cars and bikes out, but not in.
Elizabeth called Nadia. “I don’t think she’s here.”
Nadia said, “Keep looking, okay? I know that she’s not likely to have been kidnapped, but it’s happened once and now that other young woman has been snatched…”
“I’m sure Aisha’s fine. We’re going to find her.”
“Have you heard what just happened at the airport and the hospital?”
“How would I hear? You’ve got the scanner.”
“You should get one. Another bomb went off at the hospital. They just made another try for that talk show host, Ragland. What’s the name of that real hot explosive? It sounds like the name of a bug.”
“You mean thermite?”
“Thermite. Right. It cooked the man who tried to use it. They think it’s the getaway driver from last night. They’re not sure yet because all that’s left are his feet. But they’d already identified both of those men. They’re wanted for a series
of bomb attacks and murders. They’re terrorists, but they’re yours for a change.”
“They’re mine?” asked Elizabeth. “What does that mean?”
“Well, sort of yours. They’re fundamentalist Christians. They belong to something called the Reconstructionist Church. These two have fire bombed a number of abortion clinics and at least one gay bar as well. Last night’s shooter had stoned his ex-wife to death after catching her with some other guy. The theory is that they went after Ragland because Ragland had blasted their church on his program. You want to hear a hoot? Ragland called them Shiite Christians. Sort of blasphemous, maybe, but it’s funny.”
“Ragland’s safe?”
“Just wet. The bomb set off the sprinklers. On top of all this, a private jet has gone down after taking off from Hilton Head Airport. They think the jet is registered to a government agency, some Washington think tank or other. I don’t know whether it’s connected to the rest of this mess, but that fuel truck that came from the airport makes you wonder.”
It did make her wonder. “What brought it down?”
“Not another bomb, if that’s what you’re thinking. Witnesses say it nosed over and dropped like a stone as soon as it got over the ocean.”
Elizabeth took a breath. “I’ll keep looking for Aisha. I have an idea where she might be.”
It was only a hunch, but it seemed worth a try. Last evening, Aisha had felt compelled to get a closer look at Jump & Phil’s. She did not see, of course, what she hoped she would see. Even so, she’d acted strangely for the rest of the evening. Not withdrawn, exactly. She’d certainly gushed over her birth
day presents and mugged for the camera when the snapshots were taken. She’d held up her end of the dinner conversation, but the effort did seem forced from time to time. And she also got just a tiny bit looped on the one glass of un-islamic wine that Jasmine gave her.
They’d had their talk about Martin at the end of the evening. She’d taken Aisha aside and Aisha knew what was coming. Aisha asked, “Elizabeth, don’t you feel him near you sometimes? I mean, aren’t there times when you’re sitting by yourself and you find yourself talking to him?”
“I try not to, but I do. And then I can’t shut him up.”
She smiled. “You admit it. So you don’t think that’s crazy.”
“It’s not crazy at all. It’s perfectly normal. But I know that I’m talking to a memory, Aisha. I know that I’m not really hearing him.”
“You’re sure?”
“It’s the same as when you talk to your parents.”
She said, “No, that’s different. They’re in heaven, but they’re real. I know that they can’t be just a memory, Elizabeth, because they know all about you.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t. You think I’m only talking to myself. But they tell me lots of things that I couldn’t have known. Especially when they come to me in dreams.”
“Such as?”
Aisha hesitated. “I’m not sure I should say.”
“And why not?”
“Because you won’t believe it. Or you’ll try to explain it. Or you might even think I’ve been poking through your closets if I tell you things that you don’t think I know.”
“I…guess I’d like to hear one example,” said Elizabeth. “For the record, though, I know you wouldn’t poke.”
Aisha hesitated. “Do you still have your blue duffel? The one with your weapons and things?”
“What about it?”
“Elizabeth, I was with you when you threw it away. You carried it out back and threw it into the lagoon. Did you change your mind about not needing that stuff? Did you go back and fish it out later?”
Bannerman's Ghosts Page 9
