by Scott Blade
“Thanks,” I said.
I looked at the clerk and said, “I’ll take all of it.”
Gave him the card and paid for everything. Talbern signed. She didn’t even bat an eye at the price. I almost had a heart attack when I saw the number. I never bought a single set of clothing for three digits in an airport before.
I tore off all the tags that I could find. Talbern saw that I intended to wear it all out so she pulled off a couple of stickers that I didn’t see.
“What about your clothes, sir?” the clerk asked.
“Keep ‘em,” I said and turned and walked out with Talbern next to me.
CHAPTER 34
WE RANDOMLY WAITED by Gate D1, which was harboring passengers waiting on a flight to Jamaica. I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t tempted to forget this whole thing and get on that flight instead. The thought occurred to me to convince Talbern to come with me. We could spend out days, laying on the beach, rolling in the sand, and catching the waves.
I imagined Talbern in a bikini. I imagined her tanned to a bronze finish like a Greek Goddess.
I smiled to myself, but Talbern caught me.
“What’re you smiling about?”
“I was just thinking about you.”
“Thinking about me?”
“And Jamaica and bikinis.”
She asked, “Why are you thinking about that?”
I pointed at the flight information, posted on a digital monitor.
“Jamaica does sound good,” she said.
She paused, lowered her head into my shoulder, and whispered, “I never smoked weed. Not once.”
“That’s not a bad thing,” I said.
“Have you ever?”
Instead of a flat out answer I said, “Maybe.”
She smiled. She looked like she was going to say something else, but her phone rang in her pocket.
She sat up straight and pulled it out, answered it.
“Talbern.”
She listened.
“Yeah. We’re in the airport now.”
She listened some more.
“Okay, where does he want us to go?”
I got Talbern’s attention and mouthed, “Let me talk.”
She nodded and continued to listen for a long moment.
“Marksy, Widow wants to talk.”
She handed me the phone.
“What’s up, Widow?” Marksy said.
“Talbern told you about the postcards?”
“She did.”
“I know you disregarded them before, but there’s a new one. From Miami.”
Silence.
I said, “What if they’re for real?”
She stayed quiet.
“Someone is really sending them.”
“Right. What do you suggest I do?”
“First off, someone needs to confiscate them from Dayard. Send them to the lab. I know it’s a longshot, but you never know.”
“I agree. What did you think of Dayard?”
“Not sure. But something has been bothering me.”
Marksy asked, “What’s that?”
Silence fell between us. I thought for a long second about Dayard and the extra protection, again.
“Widow?”
“Listen, we need to talk in person.”
“I’m already sending you guys back down here to Orlando.”
I said, “No. Not Florida.”
Marksy paused and then she said, “Pawn wants us to stay down here. There’s still a lot of work to be down, with Dekker. There’s clues still here.”
“Kelvin can handle Dekker. I need to see you in person and we need to go to Portland.”
“Why the hell do you want to go there?”
“I’ll tell you in person.”
“Widow, when I tell Pawn about the postcards, he’s going to order us to stay down here. He’ll say what it looks like.”
I said nothing.
She said, “You know that there’s a real killer out there who has been living his life free in the Caribbean, while Dayard rots on death row. I’m telling you that he won’t let us go anywhere else.”
“Just do it. Meet us in Portland.”
Silence fell over the line again. I heard Marksy breathing. She was thinking.
“It’s almost six here. I won’t even meet you guys until Midnight.”
“Just get there. Call Talbern when you land.”
“See you there,” she said and hung up the line.
I gave the phone back to Talbern. She looked at the screen and exited the phone app.
“What the hell is that about?”
“First, let’s get tickets to Portland. We need to get there now,” I said. “What time is it?”
After I asked the time, I forgot that Marksy had just told me. Six on the east coast meant it was five here. Which Talbern told me.
“Get the fastest tickets. Nonstop. Okay?”
“Okay, want to tell me what’s going on?”
“After. Get the tickets first.”
She nodded and we walked back out of the gate area back to the ticket counters. She purchased two tickets to Portland. The only nonstop didn’t leave for another two hours. The flight length was four and a half hours, putting us on the ground in Portland just before midnight.
After we paid for the tickets, printed the boarding passes, and went back through security, repeating the whole official process of checking Talbern’s Glock in with the TSA and getting the paperwork in order, we sat at a different gate this time.
We were flying with Delta, not first class, which I had been secretly hoping for, but premium economy, which wasn’t that bad.
Instead of waiting on those airport seats, we found a Japanese restaurant and sat at a table.
Talbern had water and sushi.
I looked over the menu, found nothing that appealing, but they had coffee.
By the time she asked me to explain why we were going to Portland, I was starting on my second cup.
“What’s going on? Why back to Portland?”
“I was thinking about Secretary Dayard.”
“What about him?”
“When we were at the house, what did you see?”
She used a pair of chopsticks without any problems, like a professional. I did see the appeal of chopsticks. I used either my fingers or a fork. I didn’t have an opinion on sushi. I didn’t hate it like many people. I just didn’t think much of it.
“It was pretty lonely.”
“What else?”
“It was bleak?”
“And?”
“I don’t know. What else is there?”
“What about Dayard himself?”
“He was very sad.”
“What else?”
Talbern took another bite and waited until she swallowed it to speak.
She said, “I don’t know. What else is there?”
“Why did he have all that security?”
“He’s a former politician?”
I said, “Not really. Secretary of Defense is an appointed position.”
“There’s still campaigning involved. Most choses have to campaign for the job.”
“True, but why would he need all those guards? And they’re former Secret Service which means they are the best of the best.”
Talbern shrugged, said, “I don’t know?”
“Fear,” I said.
“Fear of what?”
“I stayed quiet.”
She said, “He’s afraid of something.”
“He’s afraid of someone,” I said.
“Who?”
“What else did you see in the house?”
She looked down at the table and then back at me.
“He lost his family.”
“His whole family,” I said.
“His wife died giving birth. His oldest son killed himself.”
I took another pull from my coffee and asked, “How did he do it?”
“He,” she started to say, but then she stopped
. She started thinking.
“I don’t know how. He drowned himself. I guess.”
I took a last pull of the coffee, drain it.
I repeated, “Did he?”
She looked at me.
“Are you saying he’s not dead?”
“They never found a body.”
“You think John, Jr. is alive? He’s the AWOL killer?”
I stayed quiet.
“Is that possible?”
“Anything is possible.”
“Why are we going to Portland? Are we going to ask Secretary Dayard to his face?”
I said, “One thing at a time. First, we need to see the weather reports from the times of deaths of the other three victims. Precisely, I need to see when their bodies were found?”
“What for?”
“Can you get that for me?”
“Sure. I’ll call Marksy back.”
“No. Call Pawn directly. I don’t want her getting distracted from meeting us. I need to speak to her in person.”
“What do I tell him it’s for?”
“Just the truth.”
“Do I tell him that John, Jr. might be alive?”
I nodded.
“Don’t tell anyone that part. We don’t know anything. Just tell him that I’ve gotta hunch. Okay?”
“Okay. What else do we need?” she asked and paused.
I was about to speak, but she interrupted.
She said, “There was a transmission from John. Before he killed himself. The Coast Guard recorded it. We should get a copy of that.”
“It can’t hurt. But I will need something. When we land.”
“What’s that?”
“A gun.”
CHAPTER 35
HOURS LATER, Talbern was fast asleep, next to me on the plane to Portland. She had offered me the window seat this time. She insisted on it. I didn’t fight her.
I stared out of the window. We were nearing Portland, about a half hour out, I figured.
The sky was dark, and pouring rain. Lightning crashed in the distance, below the clouds.
Talbern hadn’t said a word about getting me a gun, but I decided to think of how to get one without her. If I had to.
We were going up against an unknown enemy. The John, Jr. theory seemed farfetched, but Dayard had said that he had flunked out of the Army due to psychological reasons. If he had faked his own death, and was killing women, all while blaming it on his younger brother; then John Jr. was a little crazy.
That made him very, very dangerous. A psychotic killer was one of the worst kinds of suspects to try and catch. They’re unpredictable. And so far, John Jr. had had the upper hand on everyone else.
If he was alive and was guilty of the AWOL murders, then he had fooled everyone for a long time. He fooled his dad, his brother, the Army, and the FBI. He wasn’t to be underestimated.
I needed a gun.
Talbern had fallen asleep and was laying her head on my shoulder, which felt nice.
I didn’t wake her. But the pilot had come over the intercom and announced that we were descending.
She woke up. Her eyes were groggy.
“Did I fall asleep on you?”
“For a little bit.”
“So sorry.”
“I liked it,” I said.
She said nothing to that.
She had uncrossed her arms and sat up straight. She raised her seat to the upright position and we both looked out the window as we came in for a landing.
The wind and rain pounded outside as the landing gear came down and rolled to a stop on the runway.
CHAPTER 36
WE WAITED AT Gate C10 in Portland Airport for Marksy’s plane to arrive.
She was scheduled to land just ten minutes after us.
While we waited, Talbern called Pawn. She explained to him what was going on, but she left out the possibility that John, Jr. might be alive. She just made it seem like I had a hunch and wouldn’t give it all away just yet.
He sent the reports on the weather, like I asked for.
Talbern came over to me, said, “Take the phone. I downloaded the weather reports for the days of the murders. You can read over it over there. I’ll wait for Marksy.”
“Okay,” I said. I took the phone and found an empty chair, near a huge window.
The rain poured down, echoing a steady static sound that raindrops made on glass.
I looked through the weather reports in Talbern’s email.
There were three-days’ worth of reports around each murder and when the bodies were found. The total was twelve days of weather.
I saw right away the pattern that I was expecting.
I got up and walked back over to Talbern.
“Her flights late,” Talbern said, looking down at her watch.
“How long?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“She’ll be here. Check this out,” I said. I handed her the phone with the weather reports open.
She sifted through it and asked, “What am I looking for?”
“What do you see?”
She looked at the first two murders and then the third.
“Every time AWOL killed a someone it was during a thunderstorm.”
“Yep.”
“What does that mean?”
“He kills in cycles. Weather cycles.”
“Okay, but what does that prove?”
“Dekker,” I said.
“What about her?”
“This is just one more thing that the killer did exactly the same.”
She asked, “Did it rain when Dekker was murdered?”
“Yes. I know. I was only miles from where she was found. It had been raining at sea for a couple of days. It rolled up on the beach while I was there. I saw it.”
“So this just adds another layer to it. Does this prove that John, Jr. is our guy?”
I shrugged and said, “No. It just proves that whoever killed Dekker has intimate knowledge of the exact circumstances of whoever really killed those others.”
“Marksy is going to look like she fumbled everything at the end of this.”
I stayed quiet.
“Is that why you want her here?”
“I just want to ask her something.”
Talbern didn’t press me about what.
We waited and a few minutes later, people started to pile out of the gate.
Marksy was near the front. She walked over to us. She looked tired, but didn’t complain about it.
“I’m here. Let’s get going to wherever we are supposed to be going, Widow.”
I nodded and we left the airport.
We waited for a taxi. We found one and got in. Marksy sat next Talbern in the back and I sat in the front, with the driver.
“Where to?” He asked.
“The old Portland Harbor?”
“Which side?”
“The private docks.” I said.
“You got it,” the driver said and he drove away from the curb.
“Why are we going to the docks?” Marksy asked.
Talbern spent a good part of the ride explaining to Marksy about Secretary Dayard. She told her about the dead son, the postcards, the weather, and about how it seems possible that John, Jr. might not be dead.
Marksy listened. For a moment, she stared out the window, making me a little nervous because I thought maybe she wouldn’t buy it.
“So why are we headed to the harbor?”
“We’re going to see the family boat,” I said.
“What?! Why?”
She was upset. Which was understandable because the boat was where her husband had been shot.
“The boat was where you thought you caught Dayard. It’s where you confronted him, right?”
“Yes.”
“And then he got away?”
“Yes. You already know this.”
“When’s the last time the FBI set foot on it?”
“I have no idea. I’m sure it’s been two years.�
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“So it’s not under protection?”
“No. Why would it be? The trial’s been over. Dayard was convicted.”
I asked, “What did you guys do with it after?”
“We returned it to Dayard. The father.”
I nodded, said, “We met him.”
“I already know that.”
“Did you know he’s dying?”
She was quiet.
“Secretary Dayard is at the end of his life. He’s got cancer. Said it was terminal.”
“Sorry to hear that. What’s that got to do with his boat?”
“We saw him. We saw him up close.”
“So?”
“He’s not faking the cancer. I’ve seen sick people before. He’s really got it.”
“So?” Marksy repeated.
“So, he’s not using the boat.”
“And?”
“And I doubt that he’s even been to it since the FBI returned it.”
“Okay?”
“Somebody might be.”
Marksy said, “You think that John, Jr. is there?”
I shook my head, said, “No, I think that if he really is still alive, then he’s in Florida somewhere or back in the Caribbean or at sea. He’s probably been living on a boat.
“Dayard told us he killed himself out on a boat. Said that he was a good sailor. Which means that if he faked it, he might be hiding out on a boat somewhere. What better way to avoid detection than just going from country to country?”
Marksy said nothing.
Talbern asked, “What’s the question that you wanted to ask?”
“Wait till we are there.”
Talbern nodded and Marksy looked at me with an expression that I could best describe as estrangement.
She wasn’t the kind of FBI agent to wait for things, I gathered.
About forty minutes later, and we were driving into what looked like an abandoned port.
I looked out the window and realized that it stopped raining. It was still bleak and dreary out. Off in the distance, I saw a crackle of lightning. It reminded me of that day on Cocoa Beach.
We had passed the normal Portland Harbor and the business end of shipyards, until we had driven through an old, forgotten neighborhood. Most of the houses looked either abandoned or damn close to it.
The driver pulled in and stopped at the gate.
“This is it,” he said.
Marksy leaned forward and handed the guy two twenty dollar bills. At first, he seemed happy about it, but then he saw she was waiting for her change.
He gave change and she tipped him less than ten percent, by my calculation. That seemed to make him unhappy because he grunted at it.
