How It Happened

by Michael Koryta

  51

  George Kelly shut off the monitor after that video, but then he sat and stared at it, able to confront the blank screen but not the images of his son.

  “Do you understand that one?” he said.

  “They’re making plans for the last trip,” Barrett said. “The morning it happened.”

  “Do you understand the rest of it, though? The reason the file was called Confession when it was sent to me?”

  Johansson had turned away and was back to his pacing and jittery fidgeting. He looked as if he were on the verge of being sick. George wouldn’t look at either of them, just that blank screen. Barrett paused before he said, “I think they’re talking about breaking the news of her pregnancy.”

  “Why?”

  “The timing’s right. They’re stressed but not scared. Not like he was in the first video. They’re not talking about police, just family.”

  George Kelly stiffened a little bit.

  “The kind of trouble Howard had seen in life,” Barrett continued, “wasn’t drugs-and-jail trouble. It was family trouble. The unanticipated. Becoming a single father overnight. I think that’s why she believed he’d be understanding. If they were talking about drugs and dead people, she wouldn’t expect her father to be so supportive. She also wouldn’t be excited by the idea of a romantic sunrise walk.”

  “Very good,” George said softly. “I suspect you’re right. But do you know how you got there?”

  “Because I’m aware of her pregnancy.”

  George pointed at him without turning from the blank monitor. “Ah, there you go! You have the advantage of looking at the past with the knowledge of the present. That is one hell of an advantage, I can assure you.”

  Barrett didn’t say anything.

  “Now,” George said, “imagine that you saw this video without that knowledge. Imagine that you watched it on the day it was taken and that your only knowledge of Ian’s troubles involved deadly drugs. What would you have guessed then?”

  Barrett felt a cold fist open and close in his stomach. “Damage control,” he said.

  “Explain.”

  “In that case, it would sound like Ian was getting ready to seek help. She was there to support him, to offer her family as support, even. But you’d assume he was talking about the drugs.”

  George Kelly finally turned from the monitor and looked at Barrett with a sad smile.

  “Excellent work,” he said. “Really fine deductive reasoning. Where was that skill when we needed it?”

  “Where were those videos when I needed them?”

  “Fair enough. Fair enough.” George glanced back at the darkened monitor as if the video were still playing.

  “Mathias thought he was being threatened,” Barrett said. “He watched that video, and he thought he was being threatened.”

  George Kelly sighed with utter exhaustion. “You simply can’t let the girl’s story go, can you? You think too small, Barrett. You’ve got to remember that Port Hope is part of a bigger world. The problems of Port Hope come from outside in, not inside out.”

  “I’m growing tired of people withholding information and then telling me that I think too small,” Barrett said. “First the DEA, now you.”

  If George was startled to hear that the DEA was involved, he didn’t show it.

  “Mathias Burke is part of this—” Barrett began, but George cut him off.

  “Mathias Burke is absolutely part of this.”

  Barrett felt a momentary victory just before George added, “But only as an ally.”

  “Excuse me? An ally?”

  “That’s right. He was a help to me with Ian’s initial situation and with the aftermath. I have no intention of discussing his role with you. He deserves better than to be chased by you. He’s a man who understands loyalty and its rewards in the long game.”

  “The long game,” Barrett echoed, incredulous. “I always thought that was solving your son’s murder.”

  “You’re quite right about that. I’m getting closer all the time.”

  “I don’t think you are.”

  George Kelly ignored that and turned to Don Johansson. “Did you bring the camera?”

  Johansson looked confused, then blinked and nodded as if he were just rejoining them. “In the truck.”

  “I asked for the camera,” George said. “Rob deserves to see it.”

  “I’ll get it,” Johansson said, and left the room.

  “What camera?” Barrett asked.

  “The ones that were used to create these videos. Very sophisticated little things. Good resolution, good audio. They did a fine job.” George gave that disturbing smile. “I look forward to finding out who capitalized on them. I’ve learned they aren’t so difficult to hack. What people do in the name of security can so often become a weakness.”

  “Mathias Burke put the cameras in, didn’t he?”

  “You’re a tedious man, Barrett. I have real enemies, powerful enemies, and I’ll admit they have real motivation to hurt me, and yet you never spoke to any of them. You remain obsessed with my caretaker.” He shook his head with disgust and got to his feet. “Let’s walk out to the deck. I can show you where the cameras were.”

  Barrett picked up his gun and followed George back down the hallway and across the vast open great room. The instant George rolled back one of the sliding doors, the smell of the sea entered the home. The fog seemed to give the smell a texture.

  “This is a truly stunning place,” George said, wandering onto the deck and surveying the granite cliffs and breaking water below, eyeing the drop onto the rocks as if it seemed inviting. “My grandfather found it. Paid fifteen thousand dollars for the property back in 1946. Right after the war. Built the original house two years later. I tore that down and built this one in 2001, when Ian was a boy.”

  He turned his back to the ocean and gave the house an appraising stare.

  “I suspect I could get six million for it today. Maybe seven. It’s time to sell, that’s for sure. There is nothing but pain here for me now.”

  Barrett thought of Howard Pelletier, who had to motor out past Little Spruce Island each morning to haul lobster traps.

  “Do you think you understand who killed them?” Barrett asked. “Are you actually equipped to tell me a believable scenario?”

  “Not yet. But I’ll get there. I pay the son of a bitch, but that’s fine, because it protects my family and makes him feel content. Whoever he is, I want him to feel content. Right up until the moment I arrive on his doorstep.”

  “You’re still making payments?”

  “Monthly,” George said. His level of calm was disorienting. “Through Bitcoin and Ether. I’ve learned a good amount about digital currency. It’s hard to trace, but not impossible. I’ll get to him. As I said, there’s real value in having him feel content, untouchable.”

  “You know who might have been able to help you trace digital currency? The FBI. You hid all this just to protect Ian’s reputation?”

  “You say that as if it’s nothing. But for his mother, his brother, his sister, it is worth an enormous amount. Right now Ian is a tragedy to the world. That’s as it should be. That’s the truth. But if those videos were shared? Then Ian’s no longer a victim. He’s a perpetrator. An overprivileged child who tried to play with drug dealers and got hurt. Then the lawsuits would start. I would face criminal charges, wouldn’t I? Obstruction or the like?”

  “Yes,” Barrett said. He was almost in awe of the clinical detachment with which George had broken this all down.

  “Then I’d say it’s a prudent investment, wouldn’t you?” He looked at Barrett with hard eyes, and Barrett wondered how many boardrooms he’d dominated in his day, how many deals had been handled in just this fashion.

  “There’s also Howard Pelletier to consider,” Barrett said.

  “He’s living like my wife—with the clean grief of tragedy. I hardly see how this knowledge would help him.”

  “I think he mig
ht disagree. And I don’t think he’s living with clean grief. He’s haunted, and broken.”

  “Our children are dead either way. Right now, they are remembered and they are loved. Why would you take that from them? What purpose does it serve?”

  “It serves the truth, you selfish prick. It serves justice for a lot of people who are still waiting on that and for a lot of people who believe it’s already been done!”

  George Kelly waved a disgusted hand. “I intend to serve justice, but I will also protect the things that matter to me.”

  Barrett looked back into the house, wondering if Johansson was listening, if this was the pitch that had caught him before he pulled the trigger on Jeffrey Girard. Johansson still hadn’t returned with the camera.

  “If you could move on from the Crepeaux story,” George said, “and listen to more reasonable theories, then we could make this an ideal situation for both of us. You are, in fact, a partner I would love to have. Your FBI position is an asset. You could do more for me than Don, certainly. In matters overseas, for example, where this extortion may have begun? You could be a valuable resource.”

  A resource.

  “I’m not joining the team, George.”

  George Kelly looked at him with sad contempt, nodded, and then stepped away and said, “Don,” in a sharp voice.

  Don Johansson appeared around the side of the house, and though he wasn’t wearing a mask this time, the black pump shotgun was very familiar. He’d aimed it at Barrett’s blood-covered face through the cattails not long ago.

  The nine-millimeter was in Barrett’s hand but pointed down. He could lift and fire and probably hit Johansson. Johansson hadn’t pulled the trigger yet, though, and Barrett didn’t think he would here. Not on George Kelly’s deck. If it happened, it was going to happen somewhere else.

  “You didn’t pull the trigger last time,” Barrett said. “Don’t do it this time.”

  Johansson glanced from Barrett to George Kelly like a child checking for instruction. Barrett willed himself to keep his gun down. He didn’t think Johansson wanted a firefight, but it was one thing to think that and another to know it. If he was wrong, he was going to be dead very soon.

  “Nobody wants to kill you, Barrett,” George Kelly said.

  “Sure. That was a real love tap he gave me in the truck.”

  “You have options. We’re not in a different place right now than we were last year. Three men with a shared goal.”

  “It feels like a different place to me.”

  Johansson said, “Put the nine down, Barrett. Please.”

  The request sounded heartfelt. Johansson’s finger was on the trigger but Barrett was more interested in his eyes, trying to find the truth in them. The decision he made now was going to have to be right. There weren’t going to be any second chances.

  He lowered the gun and set it on the table.

  “Now you,” Barrett said, and Johansson shook his head.

  “Right,” Barrett said. “Somebody always has to keep one, don’t they? Otherwise there’s chaos.”

  “You were given opportunities,” George Kelly said. “You could have gotten exactly what you returned for and become a wealthy man in the process.”

  George looked legitimately disappointed.

  “You don’t know anything about family,” he said, “or what a man will do to protect his son.”

  “If I’ve learned only one thing in this life, it is that,” Barrett told him. “And I knew that long before I ever heard your son’s name.” He looked back at Johansson. “Well, Don? Why so slow? You’ve done it before. Just pretend I’m Jeffrey Girard.”

  “Down the steps.” Johansson gestured with the shotgun.

  Barrett turned from him back to George Kelly. “How much am I worth? Girard was a million. What am I?”

  “Get him out of here, Don.”

  “Yes, Don,” Barrett said. “Let’s not shed blood on the family estate.”

  Johansson walked up the steps. Barrett was still staring at George Kelly when the shotgun stock hit him high in the back and drove him to his knees.

  “You were a cop once,” Barrett gasped out. “Remember that, Don?”

  This time the shotgun hit him in the head, sending fresh pain through not-so-old wounds, and the combination threatened to pull him under. He was facedown on the deck when the world swam back into focus, pain radiating through his skull. He was barely aware of Johansson’s hand on his shirt collar, hauling him upright.

  “Give me his gun,” Johansson said, and George Kelly picked the Taurus up. Johansson traded him the shotgun for the pistol, which he jammed into Barrett’s back as he shoved him down the porch steps and into the yard. The ocean shone and glittered to their right as the fog raced across the top of it, hiding everything as quickly as it could. Barrett thought he was being walked to the cliff’s edge until Johansson redirected him toward the truck. Through the haze of pain, Barrett was hopeful. If they’d gone toward the cliff, he’d have known putting the gun down was the wrong choice. A ride was better. A ride meant time.

  When they reached the truck, Johansson slammed him against the hood so hard that Barrett gagged and slumped to the ground. Johansson let him fall, then grabbed his hands, and something sharp bit into Barrett’s wrists. Plastic flex cuffs.

  Johansson dragged him around the truck, pulled open the passenger door, and shoved him inside. Barrett fell against the seat, breathing in thin gasps. George Kelly stood directly in front of the truck, the shotgun held with familiarity, his eyes filled with the distant sorrow of an executioner overseeing unpleasant but required work.

  Johansson took the shotgun from him, opened the back door of the truck on the driver’s side, and tossed it inside. Then he pulled open the driver’s door. “He’ll be gone fast,” Johansson said.

  George Kelly offered only two words of instruction.

  “Deep water.”

  52

  You know he’s lying to you,” Barrett croaked from behind teeth gritted against pain.

  Johansson was backing down the long drive, and he kept his eyes on the mirror, cutting the wheel.

  “He got those videos before the bodies were found,” Barrett said, fighting past the pain for the last argument he might ever make. “He was compromised before it started. It’s the reason Ian is talking about his father being a fixer. He thinks the drugs have already been sorted out.”

  “Shut up.”

  “How many times did you search that house? You were there the day they disappeared, Don. You didn’t notice security cameras? George forgot to mention them or suggest that they be checked? Bullshit. He’d had them pulled down before his son went missing.”

  Johansson didn’t respond. The Taurus lay on his lap, and his eyes were on the mirror, but Barrett couldn’t try for the gun with his hands cuffed behind his back.

  “Were you involved that early?” he asked. “Were you working for George before they were even killed?”

  Nothing.

  “Deep water,” Barrett said, and almost laughed. “Kimberly was always right. It would’ve worked with deep water and the right tide. George learned that much from her.”

  Johansson was driving dangerously fast, and Barrett had the numb thought that he was in Kimberly’s role now, on the same ride, just pointed in reverse.

  They emerged from the long drive and out onto the lane that bordered nearly a hundred acres of oceanfront real estate but was home to only nine houses. No help would come out here.

  Don took them down the lane and turned right and then they were on a hard-packed dirt road leading down toward the water. Signs claimed it as private property and warned against beach access. Barrett remembered the stories of Ian Kelly’s private-beach bonfires and figured this was the spot.

  They went down the narrow lane and the trees parted and then the beach showed itself—a thin band of gravel and sand.

  There was a boat tied up just off the beach, a Boston Whaler with twin engines and plenty of horsepowe
r.

  Deep water.

  Johansson cut the truck engine. For a moment he sat in silence, staring out at the sea, and he did not look at Barrett when he said, “I didn’t think George would take it this far. Killing an FBI agent?” He shook his head. “I was supposed to run you off by any means necessary, but…I thought he’d pull up short of killing. But I guess all he sees is the cliff ahead of him now. However you can slow down when you’re headed right toward one, you take that chance, right?”

  “You can stop this,” Barrett said.

  Johansson laughed softly. “You got no idea what this even is,” he said, and then he got out, walked around the front of the truck, and opened the passenger door.

  “Make it easy or make it hard. I don’t give a damn.”

  Barrett made it easy. He stepped out of the truck and walked down the beach, past the cold remnants of a rock-lined fire pit. Johansson nudged him into the water. It got deep fast. One moment the water was slapping at Barrett’s knees, the next at his waist. He wondered how well he could swim with his arms behind his back, but then Johansson’s hand found his shoulder and the muzzle of the pistol found his spine. The tide was coming in and the water was clearly deeper than Johansson had anticipated—but struggling left the option of being shot, and it left all his questions unanswered. Instead of struggling, Barrett almost helped Johansson get him into the boat.

  Johansson started the fuel-injected outboards, sending a thrum under the boat. A winch cranked an anchor up, Johansson cast off the bowlines that had been tied off on shore, and then they were free and motoring toward the open sea.

  When they were about a hundred yards out, the Kelly estate took shape above the cliffs, visible for only a moment before the fog claimed it.

  Barrett sat in the stern, feeling the boat vibrate beneath him. “Do me a favor, Don. Someday, somehow, let Howard Pelletier know the truth. Do that much for him, you cowardly prick.”

  Johansson hit him so hard that Barrett’s head smacked back off the stern rail and he fell onto his side, gasping, on the bottom of the boat. Johansson knelt above him and pressed the nine-millimeter to Barrett’s forehead and leaned down. Their faces were only inches apart when he whispered, “You got a camera on you, so you sure as shit better make this look good.”