The Blackbird Papers

by Ian Smith

  “Baby, you never told me you had a wall safe.” She sounded more disappointed than surprised.

  “Please, Ronnie, not now. Just listen. The safe is in the kitchen behind the microwave. Open the safe with those numbers and take out all of the money and the gun. There should be $50,000 in small bills.”

  “Fifty thousand? What are you doing with so much cash?”

  Sterling ignored her. “Take the gun, the cash, and the black book, pack yourself enough clothes to get through the week, and get out of my apartment.”

  “Then what?”

  “Stop by the store and grab some food that won't spoil. You won't be eating gourmet, but you'll be able to survive for a couple of days. There's a small hotel in the East Village. Not a nice one, but they rent rooms by the hour, mostly for local prostitutes. It's called the Hotel DeWitt. Tell them you want to pay for two days. Give them the cash. If they ask for identification, tell them you don't have any. They won't press the issue once they see the cash.”

  “Sterling, why do you know about a hotel like this?”

  “Goddammit, Ronnie! It's a long story and I don't have time to get into it right now. I need you to do exactly as I've said. Don't leave the hotel and don't use the phone. Wait until I call you. Do you understand?”

  “I'm scared, Sterling.”

  And so was he, but admitting it to her would only make things worse. “There's nothing to worry about, sweetie, as long as you follow my instructions.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I'm fine. Now go and get the hell out of my apartment as fast as you can.”

  “I'm already in your office.”

  “And one last thing. Don't go directly to the hotel. Someone might be following you. Make sure you take a cross-town subway to the West Side, then take the shuttle back. Take a cab downtown once you get back to the East Side, but make sure he drops you off a few blocks away from the hotel. The DeWitt is on the corner of Avenue B and Tenth Street, upstairs over a florist. There won't be a sign. It has a faded blue door.”

  “Be careful, Sterling.”

  He could hear the tremble in her voice. “Just do as I've said, and everything will be all right.”

  Sterling finally weaved his way to I-89 and opened the car's engine. He knew it wouldn't be long before they put out an APB, if they hadn't done so already. He drove west for thirty minutes, then took an exit marked with a gas station and lodging sign. He pulled into the brightly lit station and bought a bottle of water, a packet of Tylenol for the explosions ricocheting through his head, and a Rand McNally street map of upstate New York. The young attendant behind the counter asked where he was going so late at night, and Sterling, realizing the kid could be a potential witness, explained that he was going to Canada to visit his dying mother.

  Sterling drove down a few more exits before turning off at a rest stop and mapping out the fastest route to Harry Frumpton's cottage in the Adirondacks. Sterling couldn't recall the exact address, but he remembered the name of the street—Moody Road. The houses were few and far between, and most of them had been built around Tupper Lake. Harry's cottage was the last house at the southernmost point. It had been in his family for three generations. As a rambunctious child, he had hated the house's remoteness, but in his adult years it had become a great source of relaxation and spiritual fulfillment, allowing him to escape the intense pressures of his Bureau work and vacation anonymously in the wilderness.

  Sterling pushed through the two-hour journey, trying to make sense of this sudden turn in the case. He kept repeating to himself that there had to be a connection between Wilson's and Heidi's murders. There had been a lot more to this innocent-looking foreign graduate student than he had first thought. At the very least she hadn't been up front with him that afternoon in Mrs. Potter's house. At the very worst she had been deceitful. She knew a lot more about Wilson than that he walked the property and watched birds. She was the one, according to Kanti, who had brought Wilson to him when both had independently noticed dead blackbirds in the mountains. Heidi Vorscht had her hands in everything from Wilson's lab to President Mortimer's office. But no one could really define what she did in either place or the kinds of friends she had kept. Kelton had actually called her a loner, which seemed to contradict everything else Sterling had learned about her. Now she, too, was dead, murdered in such a way as not to leave a single clue why someone would kill her so savagely. They must have wanted more time. The decapitation was a perfect way to obscure her identity and give them a chance to plan their next strike or to get away.

  As the exits flew by, Sterling shifted thoughts to the last e-mail. He and Harry had been friends since Sterling joined the Bureau. Harry had been an instructor for one of the evidence collection trainee classes. He and Sterling started chatting one afternoon and once they discovered each other's interest in anatomy, they'd spend hours after class discussing forensic pathology and the exciting new world of DNA that was making it easier to identify and capture criminals as well as prove the innocence of the wrongly convicted. Harry Frumpton was the classic middle-aged bachelor with little interest in activities that involved large numbers of people. Fishing was perfect for him.

  Sterling's heart wouldn't let him believe that after all these years Harry would try to implicate him in a murder. He thought about the message, then picked away at a small inconsistency he had previously ignored. If Harry was trying to set him up, why had he included such a friendly message about fishing and suggested that Sterling call him?

  He pressed on through the darkness, scaling the steep mountain roads before descending into their lifeless valleys. The roads were narrow and bumpy, at times almost sending the Mustang skidding off the embankments. He thought about Veronica. It had been almost an hour, more than enough time for her to be checked in.

  He dialed her cell phone.

  “Hey, sweetie,” she answered. She must've seen his number on her caller ID.

  “Everything all right?”

  “This place smells like an armpit,” she whined. “And there's all this knocking into the walls and strange noises.”

  “I never said it was the Plaza, Ronnie, but the most important thing right now is that you're safe.”

  “I don't feel safe.”

  “Did anyone follow you?”

  She exhaled loudly, out of frustration and exhaustion. “Impossible. I took ten trains and two cabs.”

  “That's my girl. What name did you use to check in?”

  “My high-school English teacher, Maureen Bierbower.”

  “Nice touch. What room did they give you?”

  “Five seventeen. At least I have a view of the park across the street.”

  “Are you near the window right now?”

  “The room's so small, everything's near the window.”

  “Well, pull down the shades and get as far away from the window as possible.” Sterling could hear the creaking of the shade's cylinder as she pulled. “Now sit tight. I'll be there tomorrow.”

  “What time?”

  “I don't know. Just wait for me to call.”

  “Are you in trouble, Sterling?”

  “I don't know right now. Something strange is happening and I'm trying to make sense of it all.”

  “I'm getting scared.”

  “Don't panic, Veronica. Sit tight and don't leave your room or answer the door. And don't use your cell phone. Understand?”

  “Yeah. Hurry up, sweetie. Being away from you is making me sick.”

  “Don't worry. I'll be there.”

  Sterling hung up the phone and looked down at the map. If the route had been marked properly, he'd be at Harry's in less than twenty minutes. His mind drifted back to the e-mail. Maybe Harry had been coerced into sending that picture. What had he really been trying to say in that message? He made a point of telling Sterling that he'd be fishing in the Adirondacks for a few days. He also said that the number hadn't changed. Why hadn't he included it with the message just to be sure Sterling ha
d it? Maybe he knew that someone else would be looking at the e-mail before he sent it and didn't want them to see the number. Was he reaching out to Sterling for a face-to-face meeting? It made a lot of sense. Harry knew the phones in his office would be tapped, but not the cottage. He had been around long enough and had witnessed firsthand the Bureau's internal surveillance of its own agents, so he had his line in the cottage configured so the number couldn't be traced. And if the line did get tapped, the number automatically rolled over to a scrambled line that changed on an hourly basis.

  Sterling had all of Harry's numbers programmed into his cell. He started dialing the cottage, but hung up before it rang. It had been almost two hours since he left Hanover. Certainly they had found Wiley and were out looking for him. If they hadn't already, soon they'd be tracing his cell phone calls. He pulled off the highway and found a small shopping center not far from the exit. He pulled up to a pay phone in front of a pharmacy. He dialed Harry's number and waited. The answering machine kicked on after five rings, so he hung up and tried again. No answer. It was two o'clock in the morning. Sterling couldn't remember if Harry had a phone in his bedroom. Maybe he just couldn't hear the ringer.

  Sterling got back into the Mustang and found his way onto the main road. There were almost no streetlights and the farther he traveled into the wilderness, the fewer street signs he passed. People in this small lake community had lived here long enough to know their way not by street names but by landmarks like the old synagogue in the center of town that had been founded more than a hundred years ago by Yiddish-speaking peddlers from Eastern Europe. There was also the no-frills Rotary Track and Athletic Field behind the L. P. Quinn School, which had been paid for partially by the 140,000 pennies collected in one week by the elementary-school students.

  Sterling had visited the cottage only once, but the quaint charm of the village had left a deep impression. The streets slowly started coming back to him, especially the long road with a hundred-yard stretch of perfectly manicured tall hedges. Harry had told him that the adjoining property had been owned by a German industrialist by the name of Volgezang. The family had been a pillar of the small community until the father had an affair with a maid half his age. She eventually had his child, and when he told her that she would have to leave, she poisoned his wife. Harry had played with the children, but once the scandal hit and the maid had been convicted, the father packed up their bags, moved the family back to Germany, and sold off the estate in smaller parcels.

  Sterling turned at the end of the Volgezang hedges and found the small dirt road that weaved around the lake. Harry's cottage was hidden beneath an arcade of evergreens and tall birches. He slowed the car once he approached the driveway and could see the house. All the lights were off. He drove closer, parking the Mustang fifty yards from the house. Harry had left his old station wagon with the chipped wood paneling in front, something he did only when he was home. Sterling scaled the front steps and looked into the living room windows. Darkness. The porch wrapped around the entire house, so Sterling quietly slipped to the back, lifted a window, and let himself in. Once inside, he pulled his gun from his waistband and tiptoed into the kitchen.

  “Harry,” he called out. “Are you here?”

  No answer. The floorboards creaked under his steps. “Harry Frumpton,” Sterling called again. He stood inside the doorway between the kitchen and small living room. Silence.

  Sterling didn't like it. He readied himself with the gun, then looked into the living room. The two bedrooms were tucked away upstairs in the back of the house. Sterling made his way to the front hallway, then suddenly stopped.

  “Oh shit!” he whispered. A man's body was stretched out in the front hallway. Sterling knew right away that it was Harry. He could tell by the beard and the gray ponytail. Sterling knelt beside him and felt the carotids in his neck for a pulse. Nothing. His skin was cold. He had been dead for at least several hours.

  Sterling walked quietly into the other two rooms on the side of the house, then took the back steps to make sure no one was upstairs. He checked both bedrooms and a small TV room, but nothing looked like it had been touched. He replaced the gun in his belt slide holster and returned to Harry's body. Harry was dressed in oversized striped cotton pajamas and slippers. Sterling grabbed a pen from his coat and moved Harry's head to the side. There was the bullet wound, no bigger than a pencil eraser. A small stream of blood had dried on its course down his face before collecting in his ear. Sterling figured it was probably a .22, small but powerful. There was no exit wound. He searched the rest of Harry's body but found nothing else.

  Sterling opened the front door with his sleeve pulled down over his hand. He checked the lock first, then the frame, looking for splintered wood or scraped metal. No signs of forced entry. Sterling figured Harry had known the shooter. There must have been a knock on the door late at night. Harry gets out of bed, comes down to greet the visitor, and opens the door. The shooter pulls out a gun and fires at point-blank range, hitting Harry with one bullet to the head. Harry falls a few feet from the door and dies instantly.

  Sterling searched first the porch, then the yard and driveway for footprints. Close to a row of bushes, he picked up what looked like motorcycle tracks. They were too narrow to be a car, but too deep to be a bike. They ran several feet alongside the house, but disappeared where the driveway ended. It was difficult to make out much in the dark, but Sterling guessed by the depth of the grooves and how intact their borders remained that the tracks were fresh.

  He returned to his car, now assured that his suspicions about Harry had been correct all along. Harry must have known something, maybe the identity of the killer. Sterling was convinced of a leak on the inside. Was it someone working for Harry? Was it someone in Hanover who was part of the investigative team? Sterling started the car and was halfway down the street when a thought came to mind. What if Harry knew all along that someone was trying to frame Sterling? So he sent the message figuring Sterling would pick up the subtle hint that they meet at the cottage. That would also explain why Harry was taken by surprise and the shooter gained easy access. He had let the shooter in, expecting Sterling. Harry had something to show Sterling, otherwise he wouldn't have gone to the trouble of driving all the way up from Virginia.

  But someone had definitely altered the message. Harry had said the fish were “biting like hell,” but how could that be when the serious fishing, according to their past conversations, was still another month away? Harry never would have said that, but someone who had tampered with the message and knew little about the fishing season could easily have made that mistake.

  Sterling pulled back up to the house and went in again, this time through the front door. He checked the ground floor first, pulling out drawers and opening cabinets. Nothing. He climbed the steps and entered the master bedroom. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he kept searching. He checked Harry's desk, then opened his closet. His suitcase had been tucked in the back corner. Sterling pulled it out and sat it on the bed. The key was still in the lock. Sterling unzipped it only to find that it was empty. All the same, he rummaged through the pockets and sleeves along the inner lining. He ran his hand across the vinyl floor of the suitcase, and suddenly he felt it. A flat oversized envelope.

  He opened the hidden pocket and immediately recognized the gray confidential FBI envelope typically used for evidence transport. He ripped open the flap, and pulled out the contents. Two pictures. One of a man entering a building, presumably the “janitor” who came to clean Wilson's office. The resolution was almost perfect, showing his entire face, including the long scar that wrapped down from his hairline to his left ear. The second picture was even more surprising. It was a black-and-white of Heidi Vorscht and Kanti. They were sitting in the grass speaking with each other. Like everything else so far in this investigation, the new evidence only confused matters. How the hell had Harry gotten his hands on that photo and what exactly did it mean?

  36

/>   The body count had already risen to three and Sterling was convinced that whoever was behind the murders wouldn't stop until everyone who knew the truth had been silenced. But what was the truth? He needed to go back to the basics and sit down and map everything out. Luckily, he had copied the time line they had constructed in the pit inside his black book. Every road led to Heidi Vorscht, then turned into a dead end. She was front and center in the picture on Wilson's desk, on friendly terms with President Mortimer, living on Potter's farm where most of the dead blackbirds had been found, trusted by the Algonquin Indians, and now in a picture in Harry's suitcase.

  Sterling needed to get back to New York, where he could move around by getting lost in the crowd. Harry's death was a clear signal that not only was someone out there watching but they were one step ahead. Sterling pulled off to another rest area and parked next to a pay phone. He dialed information and had them connect him to the Hotel DeWitt.

  “Room 517,” he said to the receptionist.

  “Name of the guest?”

  “Maureen Bierbower.”

  Veronica sounded uncertain when she picked up. Sterling could tell that she hadn't been asleep. A feeling of deep guilt engulfed him and he regretted that she had been dragged into this mess. Veronica had been nothing but good to him, and now she was running from a pack of professional killers who wouldn't think twice about hurting her to get to him.

  “It's me, Ronnie. How's it going?”

  “As best as can be expected, I guess. I'm sitting here in this filthy room, afraid to touch anything. Every time I start falling asleep another couple starts in the room next to me and the sound of a vacuum cleaner begins in the room above me. Like they're on a timer. Everything begins and ends exactly on the hour.”

  Sterling knew her nerves were frazzled. “I'm sorry, baby, but this is the best place I could think of right now. It's under the radar and the front desk is trained not to ask questions. It's only temporary till I can get my bearings.”