by Amy Gamet
It wasn’t until Julie threaded the rings onto the new paper towel roll that he realized what she was making.
The cipher wheel. She must have broken the code!
But when? She had trusted him up until this morning. If she had discovered the key before then, she would have told him. It must have been right around the same time as Barstow’s call, maybe even at Marianne’s house.
Hank dialed as he continued to watch the screen. “Ma. The notepad on the counter. Use a crayon or a pencil or something to see if you can read what was written on it last.”
“Hang on, let me find a pencil.” There was a long pause. “There are all these letters and numbers down the side… then the word ‘beautiful’ at the bottom with some numbers written under it.”
Hank bent his head in a moment of gratitude to the universe. “Read them to me,” he said to his mother.
His next call was to Chip Vandermead, though Hank hated to call him with Melody not doing well. He answered on the first ring. Hank told him it was the Leopold Cipher and that the keyword was beautiful. It took Chip only moments to plug the information into his computer.
I AM NOT DEAD
I CAN PROVE MY INNOCENCE
BUT NEED YOUR HELP
MEET ME AT UNCLE LEOS
Chip was even able to cross-reference McDowell with Leo, pulling up several hits in the case file of one Leo Basinski, an immigrant from Uzkapostan whose last known address was just outside of Washington, D.C.
~~~
The highway was virtually deserted, given the lateness of the hour and the holiday. Hank made his eyes wide and blinked several times to say focused on the road. His mind kept going back to the hotel room in Jacksonville, with a body in the bathtub that someone now wanted him to believe was not Commander John McDowell.
Why had been so quick to assume it was his body in the motel room in the first place? Without positive identification, it was a bad judgment call on his part to have jumped to that conclusion, no matter how obvious it seemed at the time.
Sloppy. That’s what it was.
One fact remained. Commander McDowell was involved in this case somehow. He might even have been the one to shoot the John Doe in the bathroom, or set the fire. Maybe both. And who was the dead man, if not the commander himself?
Hank thought of Julie, no doubt elated by her father’s miraculous rise from his assumed grave. For her sake, he hoped McDowell was innocent of any wrongdoing and would find a way back into her life.
He doubted it, but he hoped.
A black and white checkered flag on the GPS screen showed he was getting close to his destination.
Protocol said he should have called Barstow about Leo, but now that the admiral was flying blind without that GPS, Hank wanted to keep him in the dark. No way in hell was he tipping his hand until he knew for sure Barstow wasn’t a threat to Julie.
~~~
Leo wasn’t really her uncle. Julie vaguely remembered him from her childhood as a short, dark-haired man with glasses, who wore too much cologne. Their family would have brunch at Leo’s restaurant every month or so, with the occasional dinner at his home.
Her eyes scanned the row of brownstones, many decorated with Christmas lights for the holiday. The women walked in the road until they reached a shoveled driveway, allowing them access to the sidewalk without stepping through snow. Several doors down, a particularly frightening iron gargoyle sat atop a stone pillar, just as it had in Julie’s childhood.
“I always hated that thing,” she said, reaching it and pausing to consider its gruesome mouth and fangs.
“It really isn’t befitting the architecture, is it?” asked Gwen.
The women climbed the steps to the door and Julie knocked, exchanging a nervous glance with Gwen as she did.
“Maybe no one’s home,” said Gwen.
Julie shook her head. “I can hear the TV.”
“Knock louder.”
At Julie’s uncomfortable look, Gwen stepped forward and pounded on the door. A moment later, a bald man with thick glasses and a hunched gait opened it. He stood before them, staring at Julie for too long without speaking.
“I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Julie, John McDowell’s daughter.”
“I know.” Said the old man, coughing loudly. It was a thick sound, and it made Gwen grimace.
“Is my father here, Leo?”
He glared at Gwen.
“This is my aunt, Gwen Trueblood.”
Leo shook his head.
“Why not?” asked Julie.
He opened his mouth to speak and coughed several times instead. When he could manage, he said, “Just you.”
“It’s okay,” said Gwen, turning to face Julie. “You can do this without me.”
Julie nodded, taking strength from her aunt’s words.
“I’ll be in the car.”
Leo waited until Gwen was back inside the vehicle before he stepped back for Julie to enter.
The small room was stale with the smell of boiled vegetables and cigar smoke, its blinds closed to the outside. An overly loud, outdated television played Wheel of Fortune.
“In the basement,” he said, leading the way through a tiny dining room with a bowl of fake fruit and a built-in corner hutch.
Leo opened a narrow door, gesturing for her to go ahead.
The stairway was poorly lit, and Julie held on to the low handrail as she navigated the steep steps. Leo closed the door behind her, cutting the meager light in half and making her start. Her feet stopped moving as she gave her eyes time to adjust to the darkness. There was a smell of damp earth and something foul that Julie couldn’t place. She began to descend again, the temperature dropping with each step down.
As she slowly made her way to the basement, she couldn’t help but feel she was headed underground like the damned. This was not a place of resurrection, fresh and new, but a place of desperation and despair. She realized with fear that her father might not be here at all, and resisted the urge to turn back.
In her mind she saw a picture of her father, dead in a motel room. She hadn’t been able to really believe he was dead until this very moment, when she was just steps away from the promise of him alive.
What the hell’s the matter with me?
Ahead of her, the staircase ended on a square wooden landing. A wall of packed earth faced her, a thick invasive root visible in the densely packed clay. Julie neared the bottom step and her head lowered enough to see the basement. Time itself stopped moving, the air around her fixed and still.
A slick smile spread across his lips. “I knew you’d come,” he said.
Chapter 9
Gwen sat in the green minivan staring at the light over Leo’s door. The bulb was yellow, making his doorway standout from every other on the street in an odd display of color. Another person would have thought nothing of that light, but it bothered Gwen like an ice cube that doesn’t float to the top of the glass.
Something isn’t right inside that house.
She considered knocking back on that door and attempting to talk her way past Leo, but her gut told her to stay put—at least for now. She tapped her foot with uncharacteristic nervous energy and waited, whether for Julie to return or for the decision to go in after her, she didn’t know.
Her mind wandered over her beloved niece. Gwen was fiercely protective of the woman she had become, and knew Julie’s heart was fragile where her father was concerned. John McDowell had never worked especially hard to spare his daughter pain, and it was with great effort that Gwen had kept her dislike of the man a secret from Julie.
She remembered with lucidity the teenager she had taken in when John abandoned his daughter. Gwen had been on her own emotional journey after David’s death, unsure at the time if she could provide the girl with what she would need to heal.
Julie had been devastated, grief for her mother still oozing and raw, before her father left her as well. In his wake, a formal investigation followed that soon focused ex
clusively on her as a potential colluder, or at the very least, a threat to national security.
Gwen stood steadfast by her side, fending off Navy investigators and media reporters like wolves at the door, working to help Julie keep from shutting down emotionally. Teaching her to trust her own instincts, rely on herself again. Together they spent hours just talking, often walking through the Vermont hills that surrounded the farmhouse.
On one of their walks, a year after Julie’s arrival, they came across a mother deer and her fawns grazing in an open meadow. Gwen’s big yellow dog was grazing in the grass alongside them.
“Well, would you look at that,” said Gwen. “It looks like Zeke has made some new friends.”
The women watched the scene in silence for some moments.
“It’s like us,” said Julie. “You’re the deer, and I’m the dog.”
Gwen tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
Julie looked at the ground and frowned. “You took me in like I belonged with you.”
Gwen had thought she might weep for this brave girl who felt so alone. “You do belong with me, sweetheart.” She put her arm around Julie’s shoulders. “We’re family.”
The memory brought a tight smile to her lips as she stared at Leo’s brownstone. John McDowell was also Julie’s family.
He hadn’t always been so selfish. Gwen remembered when he first married her sister, he had been charming and strong. He loved Mary. It was her death that had changed him, made him angry and bitter.
Why did you bring us here, John?
Gwen bowed her head before the divine, praying for guidance and the safety of those she loved. When she raised it again, the yellow light over Leo’s door had begun to flicker irregularly. She drew her lips into a pucker and curled her fingers around the steering wheel. Slowly and deliberately, she filled her lungs completely with air and focused all her energy on her niece.
~~~
The gun was the first thing Julie saw, her eyes drawn to its shiny metal butt sticking out of the holster.
John McDowell stood before his daughter in a dirty T-shirt and green sweatpants, the weapon held by leather straps that were meant to be concealed beneath a jacket.
“Dad?” Her voice was ragged, her throat constricted.
“Julie-girl,” he said, his arms open wide to receive her.
It was a scene she had imagined so many times before, it felt surreal when she finally ran the few steps into his arms. “I thought you were dead,” she choked on a sob.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Julie released him, stepping back and wiping away the tears that wet her face. “I can’t believe you’re really here,” she said. “It’s so good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you, too.” His tone was placating, as if he had simply left the room for a few minutes, rather than disappearing for ten years.
Julie took a good look at her father. His hair, once a salt-and-pepper black and gray, was now completely black, like it was when she was little. The youthful color contrasted with the deeply set lines around his mouth and the sagging of the skin under his dark-colored eyes.
She took in his clothing, her brow furrowing at his bare feet.
Where are his shoes? He’s always so meticulous about his shoes.
He was at once both comfortingly familiar and unsettlingly strange. Julie ran a trembling hand through her hair as she looked at the room around them. It was set up like a small studio apartment, its dirt floor covered with a braided rug. A sagging couch was draped in tired pink fabric, next to a bed with striped yellow and brown sheets.
A power strip hung in mid-air, suspended from an orange electrical cord reaching down from the ceiling above. Julie’s eyes followed the lines to a small refrigerator and a computer on a makeshift desk.
The overall feel was one of a bomb shelter or tomb, the earthen walls enhancing the sense of being buried alive. Julie shivered and wished for a window or door.
“How long have you been living here?”
“I don’t know. A few months.”
She tried to imagine anyone choosing to stay in this place a single moment longer than necessary. “Where did you live before that?”
“What?” He squinted at her.
“Where did you live before that?”
He began to pace between the desk and the couch. “What difference does that make?”
“It’s okay, Dad. Never mind.” Julie rubbed her eyebrow. “Your message said you could prove your innocence, but you needed my help.”
A smile graced his face, brightening his features as he brought his chin up. “I do need your help, Julie-girl.”
“Anything, Dad.”
He blinked repeatedly. Julie saw little dots of sweat collecting on his forehead.
“You have to believe me.”
The urge to run out of the basement and away from her father appeared suddenly, frightening in its intensity. She could see herself darting around him to make it to the stairs, clay walls under her fingertips as she raced up the steps, reaching the front door before Leo could even stand up from the couch and Wheel of Fortune.
Can opener.
“What is it?” she asked instead.
“Do you remember when your mother told you she had cancer?”
“Yes.” She took a step backwards, increasing the distance between them. Her father stepped forward.
“You asked me that day, ‘Why did she get sick?’ Do you remember that?”
“I remember being upset,” Julie swallowed against the dryness in her throat, an image of her beautiful mother forming in her mind.
“You asked me why she got sick. And I didn’t tell you the truth.” He was standing so close to her, she could smell his sweat.
“It was a rare form of cancer.” Julie said, mechanically repeating the words she’d been told.
“Yes. A rare form of cancer that you only contract if you’re exposed to ionizing radiation.”
“Ionizing radiation?”
“Yes.”
“Where would she be exposed to that?”
“At Camp Harold.” He stepped away from her, cool air rushing in to fill the space he had occupied.
Julie’s mother had been a Navy structural engineer, working at the same base as her father. The two had married on the base. Her mother had died on the base.
“When she was diagnosed, that goddamned Navy doctor said it was just one of those things that happens. Bullshit. I looked into it. It’s caused by ionizing radiation from TENORM in the concrete on the worksite. They knew it was there.” His body contorted in rage. His nostrils flared with each breath and his clenched arms shook. “They knew all along.”
He turned to the fridge and grabbed a beer, opening it and drinking it down in one long gulp before pitching it into a tall white garbage can. The sound of it hitting other empties punctuated the silence before he opened the fridge and found a replacement.
“You want to know why your mother’s body is rotting in the ground? The U.S. Navy killed her, sure as I’m standing in front of you.”
Julie recoiled from the image he painted. “One or two people made a bad decision…”
“Not one or two,” he said derisively. “It ran all the way up the chain of fucking command, right to the Pentagon. Nobody said diddly! That’s what killed your mother. The U.S. Navy, and the absolute authority it holds over the people enslaved by it.”
He stood shock-still, staring at one of the electrical cords hanging from the ceiling. “They killed the only person I have ever loved.”
I love you, Daddy.
The words rang out in her head, unbidden.
“But I got those fucking bastards.”
She watched him suckle at the can of beer as a light humming began to sing in her ears. Then it clicked.
He really is a traitor.
“The Dermody.” She wasn’t asking for confirmation. She knew it now. For ten long years she had suffered for him, believing this man was an innocent vict
im. Eighty-eight men had perished when that ship went down.
John McDowell had killed them all.
A cold sensation trickled down from the top of her head to her abdomen. Julie stole a peek at the stairway, now seeming so much farther away. It was too late to make excuses and leave unquestioned; the opportunity for safety had passed untaken.
Her father was waiting. Julie said a silent prayer. Please get me out of here. Help me get back to Hank. I think I love him. I shouldn’t have doubted him.
Julie heard the drip of water nearby. She listened as she counted the drops, one, two, three. Her lungs filled with air, calming her, and she knew what she had to do.
“Thank you, Dad.”
“For what?”
She reached out to him. “For taking good care of mom,” she said, squeezing his arm. “For getting the people that did this to her.”
A proud smirk appeared on his face. He lifted the beer can and finished the rest of the brew. Tilting it toward Julie, he asked, “Oh, I missed you, Julie-girl. Do you want one?”
“Absolutely.” Her palms were soaked with perspiration. “You said you needed my help. What can I do, Dad?”
“I’m still working covert ops for Uzkapostan.” He puffed his chest as he spoke. “Been living there since I left the states. Once the Navy fucked me, I figured there’s no place like home, right?”
Julie tried to keep up with his quick change of mood.
“So anyways, they’ve been getting weapons from the Navy for years. They had a backstage all-access pass to the U.S. Navy supply arsenal, via their own invisible account on the network.”
The technology maven in Julie was horrified. “That’s awesome.”
“It was, it truly was, until somebody shut it down six months ago. I need you to get us back into that database.”
Only a handful of people in the world could do that, and Julie knew she wasn’t one of them. “Anything for you, Dad.”
“I would do anything for you, too. Do you know that?”
