In the Belly of Jonah

by Brannan, Sandra

  Sometime between his first and second pass around the house, William Tell had called it a night and turned off the lights in his room. In the moonlight, the fingers of his outstretched arms slid along the base of the windows for any opening and his strong hands tested the window locks. The house must have air-conditioning, since none of the windows budged in the kitchen, living room, and second bedroom. He avoided Tell’s bedroom since he was probably still awake.

  Lastly, he tried the basement windows, neither giving an inch. Trying both the kitchen and front door, he noted the knobs turned easily but the doors didn’t give way. Deadbolts. Everything was locked tight. So, they locked up after all three were home.

  He made mental notes of everything he had observed and decided to call it a day. As he passed under her window, he whispered, “Sleep tight, Awakening. Tomorrow will be a busy a day for us both.”

  MY SATURDAY MORNING RUN was spectacular.

  Four colorful hot air balloons were floating low in the sky at sunrise with the Rocky Mountains and clear blue skies as a backdrop. The typical afternoon winds and thunderstorms this time of year were nonexistent in the early morning hours. I ran down to City Park and back, stopping at the corner coffee shop a block from my house to buy a bag of fresh bagels for breakfast.

  By the time I’d come home, taken a shower, dressed, and made coffee, it was nearly six thirty. Lisa came padding down the hall, having been awakened by the smell of freshly brewed “breakfast blend.”

  “Morning,” I whispered.

  “You’re up early,” she mumbled, not quite awake yet.

  “I’m going to head up to work this morning for a few hours. Get out of your hair so you guys can work.”

  “Is Streeter here?”

  “I assume so. His Jeep’s parked outside.”

  “Good.”

  “I’ve got bagels and cream cheese for you guys whenever you’re hungry.”

  “Thanks, Liv. Brandt’s coming by at seven thirty, so I’m sure Streeter will be up soon.”

  “Did you get your report for him done?”

  She nodded and yawned. “Everything but what’s motivating this guy.”

  “Lisa,” I began, “I was thinking.” Suddenly I found myself feeling a bit silly. The idea had sounded so brilliant at two o’clock in the morning, particularly to Shaggy, but it seemed to have cooled in the warmth of my sunrise jog. “Like I told you before, after finishing at UW, I worked for Boeing for awhile.”

  She looked at me as I poured a cup of coffee and handed it to her, putting my empty cup in the dishwasher.

  “In Everett, at the 747/767 plant. Because I was with the Industrial Engineering group I was able to see a lot of the plant, unlike so many of the tens of thousands who work there. I mean, you wouldn’t believe how big this plant is. I don’t know how many city blocks it consumes, but I’d heard that at one time it was the biggest building in the world.”

  “Big enough to hold a 747,”Lisa quipped. She sat down at the kitchen table and sipped her coffee, never taking her eyes off of me as I paced.

  “Or two or three,” I countered.

  I swallowed hard and hoped that my idea wouldn’t sound as stupid as it was starting to sound to me. “One time I came upon the department responsible for cutting the carpet for all the planes. I had been following up on a concern that management had about some planes seemingly being expedited through the system at a faster rate than scheduled, and they wanted to know why. So, it gave me a chance to follow up on every aspect of building the planes. Long story, but my point is, I was fascinated to learn about how the guys in the carpet department worked so quickly with minimal waste.”

  Lisa put her coffee cup down and was leaning forward, intent on where I was headed.

  “Those pictures you showed me last night got me to thinking about Boeing and how those guys cut the carpets there.” I pulled out the chair next to her and sat down at the table. “I know it sounds silly, but maybe it could help you somehow. You’re the expert, not me. And I hate when someone tells me how to reclaim after mining when I do it every day of my life, so it won’t hurt my feelings if—”

  “How did they cut the carpets?”Lisa interrupted, placing a hand firmly on my forearm.

  “With water,” I said. “They used a super-high-powered stream of water. You know, like an air compressor hose and nozzle? Only smaller and more powerful.”

  “So the stream of water cut through carpet?”

  “And wallboard and plastic and just about anything. They had to design the room with really tough alloys or something because when they hung the carpet from the ceilings so the patterns could be cut from them, the water would shoot right through the carpet and hit the walls. At least that’s what I remember. But it’s been a while.”

  “Water,” she said, looking out the kitchen window.

  “And the cutting was in one direction. Like your victims’ skin and tissue,” I continued. The room was quiet. I could hear the morning birds chirping in the trees out front and in the backyard. I stood up. “Look, maybe that’s impossible, but I just thought I’d throw it out there as a possibility that might help you guys brainstorm.”

  Lisa nodded. “Water. Interesting.”

  I grabbed my keys and headed for the garage. “Good luck.”

  Lisa stood and said, “Liv?”

  I poked my head around the garage door.

  “Thanks. For everything. You’re a good friend.”

  “So are you, Lisa. And by the way, for what it’s worth, I could have sworn I saw someone outside my basement window around two o’clock this morning. Maybe it was my imagination, but I don’t think so. Just be careful.”

  It was a moment I would think back on often. I wasn’t sure what it was I saw in Lisa’s eyes. Premonition. Resignation. Something.

  She smiled. “And you have an incredible mind. You should really consider a career with the Bureau.”

  “Maybe in my next life.”

  Lisa laid the toasted bagels with cream cheese in the middle of the table. Streeter and Brandt both helped themselves. She took the one that looked the healthiest, if there was such a bagel. Tasted like a sun-dried tomato with whole grains or something.

  They had been at it for nearly an hour.

  Brandt explained what had happened at the station after the two FBI agents had left. The rumors were flying around about Chief Richardson wanting to fire him. Richardson was also protesting the jurisdiction of the FBI.

  “He just wants credit for catching this guy, if you do, and someone to blame, if you don’t. It’s an election year. Don’t take it personally,” Brandt said, wrapping his meaty hands and mouth around the gigantic bagel and making it look more like a Cheerio.

  “I don’t,”Streeter said simply. Turning to Lisa, he added, “I read your report last night. Great job. And the letter Liv found in Jill Brannigan’s locker. I agree with you about getting it dusted for prints immediately and running the prints through AFIDS. I left a message for my office to send a runner up this morning. They should be here within the next half hour.”

  She nodded. “How did that letter strike you?”

  “We need to find out who this Jonah character is.”

  Streeter was eating his bagel much more delicately than Brandt was, which was to say he needed no backhanded sleeve wipe for trails of cream cheese dribbling down his chin or out the sides of his mouth. She marveled at the differences between the two men and how one mountain of a man was so overshadowed by the other. She resisted a grin, thinking about how Liv had mistakenly thought she and Streeter were an item, then wondered why they couldn’t be. She watched him as he sipped his coffee, studied his eyes. She could have sworn they were green yesterday and now they were blue.

  “Jill’s sister and roommate weren’t able to shed light on who Jonah might be?”

  “Never heard of him. Neither had the parents,” he added.

  “Who’s Jonah and what letter are you talking about?” Brandt said, swiping at his lips
with his sleeve again.

  Streeter nodded at Lisa and she retreated to the living room, where she donned a pair of latex gloves. She returned with a pair of gloves for Brandt and the letter. After wiping his hands on his shirt, he squeezed his fingers into the gloves, pinched the corner of the letter, and began to read. Lisa offered Streeter another cup of coffee and bagel, but he declined. Brandt, on the other hand, looked up across the letter, nodded, and held his empty cup up to her. She filled it and toasted another bagel for him.

  “We’ve definitely got to find out who this Jonah guy is,”he agreed after finishing. “Strongest lead yet on this case.”

  “That, and the fact that both Julia Brannigan and Kari Smithson mentioned Jill was dealing with someone she had rejected,” Streeter added.

  “A stalker?” Lisa asked.

  “Not quite,”Streeter said, “although the roommate said their room had been ransacked the day after Jill was last seen. When pressed, her story changed from her room being ransacked to the room ‘feeling’ like someone had been there and rifled through their belongings.”

  “She never told me that,” Detective Brandt argued.

  “It took several hours and a lot of tears to get to that point,” Streeter admitted.

  “I didn’t have the patience for it,” Brandt admitted.

  “If not a stalker, then what did Jill say to her roommate?” Lisa asked Streeter.

  “Kari Smithson says that last Friday night Jill went out after work with some friends, and she later complained that someone at the bar where they hang out hit on her. She told the guy she wasn’t interested, but he kept pressuring her and even kissed her. Jill got mad and came home early.”

  “Did the roommate get a name?” Lisa asked hopefully.

  Streeter shook his head. “Afraid not. Julia Brannigan told me a similar story, same time frame. She mentioned that the guy kept calling Jill’s cell phone for the next day or two and Jill wouldn’t answer his calls.”

  “We can get phone records,” Brandt said.

  “Already on it. Disposable cell. Whoever this is knows what he’s doing. Anyway, Julia said the guy left a letter inside some book for Jill last Saturday morning right outside her dorm room. Julia says it bothered Jill more than when he’d made a pass at her.”

  “But she didn’t file a police report,” Lisa concluded.

  “Julia said she told Jill to do that, but Jill didn’t want to. And she didn’t tell her roommate because she would have ‘freaked out’ about it, according to Julia. Apparently, Julia and Kari are not on the best of terms,” Streeter said.

  “We’ve got to find this Jonah,” Brandt repeated. “It’s the only lead we’ve got.”

  “Not the only lead,” Streeter said. “We have a match on the tire tread from Horsetooth with Platteville.”

  “And we might have another clue,” Lisa said. Both men looked at her. “Liv had a thought about the weapon. I jumped online this morning and sent a few e-mails. Jack Linwood answered me from Ops. You know him?”

  Streeter nodded. “Good, too.”

  “He’s working on it now. Then I did a little research of my own.”

  She pushed the computer-generated photo across the table toward the men, enjoying their expressions.

  “It’s the same as the marks on the victims. What did this?” Streeter asked of the cut marks on the material in the photograph.

  “Water,” she told them and explained what Liv had learned at Boeing.

  “We’ve got to get this to Berta immediately,” Streeter said. “And I’ve got to meet Liv Bergen.”

  To her surprise, Lisa felt a pang of jealousy.

  SHE WAS STANDING SO close to him, Jack Linwood could feel Dr. Berta Johnson’s breath on the back of his right arm. He had been working up the prototype for the last three hours. Ever since she had arrived an hour earlier, Dr. Johnson had been on him like flies on honey, waiting for the demonstration. He had told her he wouldn’t be done until after lunch, but that hadn’t deterred her from watching his every move.

  So, he had put her to work.

  Yes, he knew she was the chief coroner for the state of Colorado. Yes, he understood that by telling her to pick up the crescent wrench and hook up the canister to the frame he had built he might have been making a fatal move in his career. The delicate hands of a learned woman at the highest attainable surgical position in the state holding a wrench rather than a scalpel? Calvin Lemley was surely going to fire him.

  It probably was a sacrilege, but no sense wasting a perfectly capable pair of hands, strong back, and quick mind.

  Rarely had he seen the coroner grace the halls of the Bureau offices, let alone come down to Investigative Control Operations on the seventeenth floor. He had seen her picture in the newspaper numerous times throughout the past year since he had arrived at the FBI’s Denver office, and although she was probably close to his age, she looked closer to retirement, the demands and controversies of her job having aged her by twenty years. Some would say she was a handsome woman, but he found her attractive because of her drive and dedication.

  She hadn’t shirked her duties one bit in the past hour. And after all that work, they were about to make their first trial with this contraption. She hadn’t hesitated or indicated any resentment about following his orders. She stayed right with him and assisted in every way possible. And here she was, leaning over his right side to see the information he was studying.

  He reviewed the diagram on the computer screen one last time to make sure everything was in its proper place. It had taken him no more than twenty minutes searching the Internet to locate a source for the water tool and to place the call to the engineers who constructed it for Boeing. Within half an hour, the blueprint was alive on his computer screen and soon thereafter he was assembling the parts that he had sent a runner to pick up. Twice, actually, and both times the businesses were open even though it was Saturday.

  Linwood scanned top to bottom, right to left, glancing at every major component of his prototype and comparing it to the blueprints and notes. When he was confident they had followed the diagram to the letter, he said, “Ready, Dr. Johnson?”

  “Ready,” she said. “And call me Berta or I’ll have to clock you with this wrench, Jack.”

  Linwood offered a rare grin. Boy did he admire this woman.

  He stepped away from the computer and into the padded room reserved for ballistic testing, snapping off the pads from the back wall. He handed the pads to Dr. Johnson, who scuttled them out of the room. He yanked a frozen dog carcass into the room and hung it on clips from the ceiling.

  “How much does that thing weigh?” Dr. Johnson asked as she stepped in behind him, studying the large dog.

  “About a hundred ten pounds. It was the largest carcass in our freezer. I could probably find a cow somewhere if you think it’s important, since Jill Brannigan probably weighed more than this dog did.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Jill was solid muscle. It’s just a guess since we didn’t have all of her, of course, but we’re estimating about a hundred and seventy pounds. So the dog is close in size.”

  “Shall we try this?” he asked, attempting to change the subject before Dr. Johnson pressed further.

  He didn’t wait to get her answer before retreating from the room and hauling the frame into the ballistics room. Then he waved, signaling her to follow.

  “Are you okay with lifting this thing with me?” Linwood asked.

  “I’ll try,” Dr. Johnson said.

  It must have weighed at least two hundred pounds, Linwood thought, as he and Dr. Johnson struggled with the awkward contraption. They had to set it down three times in the short distance to the ballistics room. Hearing Dr. Johnson’s heavy breathing, Linwood decided to leave it where they had set it down for the last time, just outside the door.

  “The hose will reach,” he said, handing Dr. Johnson the rubber hose and wand as he hooked up the hose from the lab sink to the contraption.

  “You w
ant to try it?”

  Dr. Johnson’s answer was to hand the wand back to the FBI agent.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s see what it can do.”

  Linwood cranked the release two full rotations on the air compressor and the hose stiffened and hissed. As if he were watering his lawn, he pointed the wand toward the dog carcass at the other end of the room and squeezed the trigger. Water shot from the nozzle in a constant stream, knocking the dog toward the ceiling. The wand broke from his grip and tumbled to the ground with a clatter, the flow of water stopping abruptly as he released the lever. The dog swung back and forth at the other end of the room. Linwood rubbed his wrist.

  “Why do you think I made you try it first?” Dr. Johnson grinned as Linwood continued to massage his wrist. “Haven’t you ever heard of the axiom that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction?”

  Linwood regarded her. A challenge might be in order, but he decided to make things interesting. “Full throttle, Doc,” he said with a nod toward the compressor release.

  “Lean into it this time,” Dr. Johnson offered.

  He pulled the wand with him as he closed the distance between himself and the dog carcass. He came to within six feet.

  “Wait!”

  Linwood turned to see Dr. Johnson approach him with a pair of safety goggles.

  “If you’re going to stand that close, at least put something over those brown peepers of yours,” she said with a wink.

  She tiptoed back across the wet floor to the doorway and gave Linwood a thumbs-up.

  He braced himself by angling his tall, lean body forward, one leg bent in front of him, the other anchoring him from behind. He gripped the wand securely with both hands, pointed it at the center of the large dog, and pulled the trigger. This time the water went straight through the dog’s side, leaving a hole the size of a dime.