Vacant Shore

by Jack Hardin

  Still, no reply.

  She looked over at Tyler. “Did you call the sheriff yet?”

  “Nope. I catch ‘em. You clean ‘em.”

  She smiled and went to get her phone.

  ____________________

  While they waited for the police to arrive, Ellie swapped out the Doc Martens for a pair of sandals. Then she went back into the kitchen and spent more time questioning Deneford about his gear and who he worked for. He wouldn’t talk. Surely he had a hotel room and rental car, a phone and a wallet somewhere. Something that would trail back to his boss. But Deneford remained silent. Just when she was beginning to regret calling the police, starting to wish she had taken the time to work the information out of him the way she had from Eli Oswald, the sheriff showed up.

  They had Deneford cuffed and sitting in the back of a cruiser within five minutes. The sheriff was in his early fifties, and stood slightly shorter than Ellie’s five foot ten inches. His Stetson hat made him look taller than he was. He wore jeans and an untucked department T-shirt. There were few people in Lee County that Donald Gaines would get out of bed for in the middle of the night. The O’Conners were on that list. He walked up to Ellie and wrapped a fatherly arm across her shoulders. “Don’t you worry about him walking out of a jail in my county. It won’t happen under my watch.”

  She felt a tightness slip from her shoulders. “Thanks, Don.”

  “You know, Ellie, the rumor around here is that you used to break heads for the mafia.”

  Ellie smiled. “Is that the rumor, Don?”

  “Yeah, darlin’. That being said, next time you guys don’t do my job for me.”

  “That’s a deal.”

  He gave her a fatherly wink as he started back to his cruiser. Tyler followed behind him. Don paused while the younger man spoke in a hushed tone. His brows lifted just before he smiled and gestured toward the cruiser. Tyler opened a back door, slid in, and shut the door.

  Deneford sat against the other door, his head sagging, his eyes fixated on the chair back in front of him.

  “Well, how ‘bout it?” Tyler said. “You look like the cheese just fell off your cracker.”

  Deneford ignored him.

  Tyler leaned toward him. “Listen here, bud. I don’t know who you work for. I don’t guess I care if it’s Satan himself. But if I ever see your face down here again I will kill you. I hope that’s as clear as that broken nose of yours.” He set a hand on the door and turned back. “Also, while you’re behind bars you may want to work on your mount. I can see why you’re not a SEAL anymore. They probably kicked you out. You fight like a girl.” With that, Tyler exited the cruiser and went back to Ellie.

  “What did you say to him?” she asked.

  Tyler put an arm around her and brought her close. “I’m sorry,” he said, “that all this happened.”

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “Well, I’m pissed off, Ellie.”

  “Yeah,” she said softly.

  Major’s Jeep Wrangler drew up behind the herd of police cruisers. His door flung open, revealing a face tight with worry. Ellie met him halfway, and he wrapped his thick arms around her. She laid her head on his chest, closed her eyes, and sighed.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  As he wiggled his toes he thought they moved against the sheets like sleepy grubs. At least his toes were working. Kyle Armstrong looked down at his left arm. It wouldn’t respond to any form of stimulation, and it hung stupidly at his side as if someone had yanked out its wiring. He couldn't feel the left side of his face, and saliva would pool in the corner of his mouth, overflow, and leak past his lips without him even feeling it, like the first few hours after a root canal. His mother would step over to his bed and wipe his mouth every few minutes to keep it from running down his chin and off onto the top of his hospital gown. She would wipe his lips and chin—dab at them actually—and would turn away again. She wouldn’t look him in the eye. Not once in the last two days had their eyes met. That was just fine with Kyle because when Carlene looked at him her face was filled with a mixture of anger, worry, and fear. Carlene hadn’t smiled at him once, not even the kind of pacifying smile that a loved one gives you to silently let you know things will be all right.

  He had woken late Tuesday morning with a headache that made him think his brains had spent half the night leaking out into his pillow. When he finally stirred and opened his eyes, he saw a room full of worried faces, all of them belonging to his near and extended family.

  Someone—he thought maybe his brother—had shot into the hall and called the nurse. The nurse rushed in, followed by two more within a minute; two doctors a minute after that. They asked the family to wait down the hall until they had evaluated their patient. So, after repeatedly shining a penlight into his eyes, checking the monitors, asking Kyle a dozen questions, and finally speaking to each other in hushed tones, Kyle decided he had a few questions of his own. His first question, the only one to which he received a reply, had been, “What happened?”

  “You had an accident, Mr. Armstrong.”

  “What kind of accident? Car accident?”

  A nurse glanced anxiously at a doctor who said, “We’ll bring your family back in when we’re done. I’m sure they can help you with your questions. What is the last thing you remember, Mr. Armstrong?”

  That one was easy. He head was still pounding, so he spoke slowly. A nurse came in and handed him a cup of ice chips. “Carlene—my wife—she and I went out to dinner last night. We’re here for Christmas break, and we left the kids with my folks so we could have a final date before driving back home to Florida tomorrow. Oh God, is my wife okay? Did we get in a car wreck?” And then he remembered that he had seen Carlene leave the room a minute ago, trailed by his parents. Oh man, it must be bad if my parents are here, he thought. “We were supposed to leave for Florida,” he repeated, more to himself than to the staff at his side.

  That same nurse glanced anxiously at the doctor again. Kyle noticed that all of a sudden he felt very nervous.

  “What hospital am I at?” he asked.

  “Lee Memorial.”

  Lee Memorial? But that shouldn’t be right. They had been in Kansas last night. Why would they take him all the way back home? “Why did they bring me back to Florida?”

  The white coats and scrubs kept muttering to each other and jotting notes. “Hey,” he snapped. “Can I get some answers here, please?” Then he winced and breathed slowly. “And can I get something for this headache?”

  “We’ll see what we can do about the headache, Mr. Armstrong. In the meantime, we’re going to let your family speak with you. Afterwards, we’ll be back with additional questions of our own.”

  Then they left and Kyle’s mind wasn’t working fast enough to decide which of a hundred questions he wanted to ask next. The door opened again to Carlene, and only Carlene. No one had followed her in. She shut the door and walked over to his bedside. Her eyes didn’t meet his right away, and that only added to the anxiety that had started with the nurses’ distressed glances. Carlene stared at his hand. He followed her gaze and saw that he had a PICC line taped across the top of his hand.

  “What did you do?” she asked in a mild accusatory tone.

  “Do? What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what did you do, Kyle?”

  He blinked hard. “What are you talking about?” He looked up at her and her bottom lip was clamped between her teeth and her eyes were wet.

  “They found you with a bucket of concrete tied to you.”

  “What? Where? At the restaurant?”

  “You really don’t remember?”

  “I remember us coming home from dinner last night. We were in Dad’s neighborhood, driving past the huge oak tree on the corner we like so—” he stopped. “That oak tree that…” He couldn’t remember past that moment. He remembered dinner. They had gone to Gambinos and she’d had the filet mignon and he’d opted for the grilled salmon. It was wild caught and loaded w
ith capers. He loved capers. After dinner, and at his prodding, they made out in the car for a few minutes before she became too self-conscious that someone might see them. On the drive back to his father’s, they had talked about the distillery a bit more and how she and her mother were going shopping tomorrow. But there was nothing in the ol’ memory bank after that. No parking the car, going into the house, brushing his teeth. He was pretty sure he had only the one glass of wine. He surely hadn’t gotten drunk and crashed the car.

  “What is it?” she asked, her tone softer but still holding a temperature below freezing.

  He frowned. “I...can’t remember getting back to my Dad’s last night. Did we get in an accident before we got there?” But how did that fit with what she had just said about the concrete?

  “Kyle,” Carlene said. “A couple divers found you last night at the bottom of Gasparilla Sound. You had tied a bucket of—” her voice choked out and she brought a hand to her mouth to help keep back a sob. She wiped at her eyes as she struggled to keep her voice even. “Kyle, you tried...you tried to…” She closed her eyes. “Kill yourself.”

  Her words ran into him like an overloaded barge. “What?” She may have just as well told him that she was leaving him or that he only had one child. It just didn’t fit what he knew to be true. Kill himself? Why would he want to do that? That made no sense.

  “The doctors just told me that you have some memory loss. You were under for nearly six minutes before a couple of recreational divers got you to the surface.”

  “But the dinner and—”

  “Stop with the dinner, Kyle! That was nine months ago. It might be the last thing you remember, but it wasn’t the last thing that happened. You took out the Contender, tied a five gallon bucket full of concrete to your waist, and jumped off the boat. Two men had just surfaced from a dive, and one of them saw you do it. If they hadn’t been around, you’d be...you be…” She turned her head, closed her eyes, and sobbed freely.

  “I didn’t, you know, fall off by accident?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m...I’m so sorry.” He closed his eyes, try to command memory to surface, but there was nothing beneath a black sheet. “I just don’t remember.”

  Carlene huffed.

  He opened his eyes. “Where are Sophia and Chase?”

  “At home. My sister is watching them.”

  That conversation was two days ago now. Kyle still couldn’t recall anything from the current year, and Carlene had just left to get something to eat. The kids had come over twice. They had only been told that “Daddy had an accident on his boat and he’s going to be fine.” Kyle’s father was the only one who remained in the room with him, and he sat in the corner reading a copy of the Wall Street Journal. Kyle could sense that a conversation was imminent, that his father wasn’t really reading anything. He didn’t have long to wait.

  Kenneth Armstrong folded his paper and set it on his lap. His brows lowered over concerned eyes. “Son, I know the doctors don’t want me saying anything that might cause you to think too much or get you agitated.”

  Here it comes.

  “But it’s time we discussed what happened out there on the water.”

  Of course he wanted answers. He deserved answers. They all did. “Dad, I just don’t remember.”

  “That’s a little convenient, don’t you think?”

  “You’re saying I’m lying?”

  “I’m saying that I understand if you’re embarrassed.”

  “I’m not embarrassed, Dad. Freaked out, yeah. Why would I do something like that?” He tossed his right arm up—because that was the only arm that worked. “I don’t know what happened,” he said. “They say I tried to kill myself. That I tied a...something—” He tried gathering in his thoughts.

  “A bucket,” his father finished for him. “Filled with concrete.” His voice hitched, and a man that Kyle had only seen cry once before—when his grandmother had died—was now pushing back tears. “Why didn’t you come to me if you couldn’t deal with whatever it is?”

  “I don’t know, Dad. I can’t recall what was going on beforehand.”

  His father moved his chair closer. “Now look here. You have that precious wife and kids of yours to take care of. I know that Dr. Howlson said you’re drawing blanks, but, son, come now, surely you remember what would make you to do something so rash, so, so...final.” He removed the newspaper from his lap and leaned forward. “I know this is hard, Kyle. But you have to talk to me.”

  And Kyle wanted to talk with him. Wholeheartedly, he did. And he knew why his father wanted to talk too. It made perfect sense. You try and off yourself and, yes, of course, that would be one of the few things you should remember. But the last nine months, two weeks, and three days were a tabula rasa. Not even any smudge marks that revealed that at least something had been there. If Kyle’s life were a single page of college-ruled notebook paper, someone had just taken an x-acto knife and shaved off the last two lines.

  There was nothing there.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Ellie was to report to the nursery every other night. Her next two shifts were uneventful. Julip had moved on to something else, and Ellie and AJ continued working on the cellar behind the pavilion. It wasn’t much, just two-by-fours lining a large hole. When it was finished, they would cover it with a sheet of plywood that they would overlay with sod.

  Garrett Cage had called her the morning after Deneford’s arrest, angry that someone his office arrested a couple months ago was let go in the first place, angry that he had returned for Ellie. She found herself wanting to tell him what she had stumbled onto at the nursery, but she knew she couldn’t. She had already brought Mark up to date, and for now, that had to be enough. Before he hung up he said that he looked forward to catching up with her at Jet’s party the next week.

  Ellie had also spoken with Nathan Price, her old friend at Langley. He informed her that the Agency was aware of what occured in Flagstaff and had tasked an internal team with finding who was behind her teammates’ murders and the attempt on her. When he told her that one of the people sent to kill Cicero had been none other than Faraday, Ellie had nearly dropped her phone. She had started out trying to get answers, and all she was getting were more questions.

  Nathan said that someone would be reaching out to her within the next couple of hours to get her to a safe location until they found out who was behind the attacks. Ellie declined by saying that she was already set up somewhere. The rental was working out fine, and it’s where she planned to stay until the truth began to surface. When Nathan went on to inform her that he could find nothing out of the ordinary about her father, he sounded a little disappointed himself. From all he could find, Frank O’Conner had worked with the Department of Justice as a resource specialist. There was no indication that he was still alive, and he had never worked for Langley.

  Now, Ellie sat on the couch with her feet on the coffee table, Netflix up on her laptop, working through Breaking Bad for a second time around. The laptop chimed, indicating an email had come through. She paused the show, just as an angry Walter White was slinging a pizza onto his roof, and clicked over to her email. The message was from an encrypted sender. It would be from Eugene Ripley. The subject line read “EO” (Eyes Only). She opened it and saw two file attachments: one a PDF, the other an MP4 video file. Eugene had written one, just one, short line of text. “I’m sorry.”

  Ellie clicked on the MP4. Whatever she was about to see, she knew it wouldn’t be easy. The video was ninety-eight seconds long: a traffic camera feed in black and white. The old building that lined the street in the background looked to be of a commercial nature. An empty shopping cart was turned over on the sidewalk, next to the building. She watched as a Volkswagen Polo stopped at the red light. A newspaper page drifted down the sidewalk and blew into the shopping cart.

  A couple men came into view, strolling along the sidewalk. Suddenly, one darted into the street and ran around the front of
the Volkswagen. He approached the driver’s door. His back was to the camera, but from the way he held his shoulder Ellie assumed he was holding a gun toward the driver. The second man was on the passenger’s side. He broke the door window, reached in, and unlocked the car. The man on the driver’s side opened the door.

  A man that Ellie could just make out to be Ryan Wilcox was dragged from his seat and out into the road. His accoster tripped him and Ryan fell forward, landing in the street at the same time the second man got behind the wheel of the car and backed it up out of view of the camera.

  The man in the street straddled Ryan from behind and grabbed his head. As Ellie watched him repeatedly slam Ryan’s head into the concrete, her fingers went to her lips. Suddenly, the Volkswagen slid through the right side of the picture and turned a sharp right into the building set along the sidewalk. The front end of the car crumpled like a can and the airbags discharged. The door opened and the driver stepped out.

  The man in the street slammed Ryan’s head into the road one more time and then lifted his limp body up. His dazed accomplice helped him set Ryan's body back into the driver’s seat. They buckled him and leaned him forward so his bloody forehead was resting on the steering wheel.

  A dark van pulled up, temporarily blocking Ellie’s view of the car. When it sped away, the men were gone. The video ended and Ellie glared at the screen, her nostrils flaring. She clicked over to the PDF. It contained close up police photos of the event, as well as official paperwork from the local investigator and police chief. Ellie was fluent in speaking Russian and could read the language moderately well. The lead investigator had written up Ryan’s death as a car accident. There was also a document in English from the U.S. Bureau of Consular Affairs, agreeing with the investigator's findings.

  Even without the video footage, Ryan’s death was clearly not related to a car accident. The trauma to his forehead would not be consistent with hitting the steering wheel or even the windshield. He would have no marks or bruising from the seat belt, no airbag dust across his body. Virgil had been right. Ryan had been murdered, and someone in Consular Affairs was in on it.