The Highest Stakes

by Rick Reed

  “Me too,” Liddell remarked.

  “Bigfoot, you could live for a week on what you probably ate for breakfast.”

  Susan smiled. “Are we stopping somewhere along the way?” Susan asked.

  “Yes,” Jack said. It wasn’t a complete lie.

  “Well, it’s nice of you to take us out on the boat. So this is what you do when you’re suspended.” To Liddell she said, “Can you come with us? I thought you were working on a case.”

  Liddell said, “I am working the case. So is Jack. Let’s get going before you piss someone else off. It’s been at least a few hours since someone suspended you.”

  “He’s not suspended?” Susan asked.

  “Nah,” Liddell answered. “Double Dick tried to get him fired today. Twice.”

  Jack slipped the lines, started her up, and eased away from the pier.

  “Things haven’t changed,” Susan said.

  “Well, Captain Jack,” Liddell said happily and picked up the sack. “Where we heading for the picnic? That little sandbar across from your place?”

  Susan said, “You mean the one Jack’s always watching with binoculars? I call it Bikini Beach.”

  “Both of you just stop,” Jack said.

  “Where are we gonna eat?”

  “Sorry, Bigfoot. We don’t have time.”

  Ten minutes later Jack throttled back and eased into the entrance to a slough. The opening between fingers of land was barely wide enough for the MISS FIT. Twenty yards in the MISS FIT began to scrape bottom. Thornbushes covered the bank and an uprooted river birch had toppled into the water. Jack threw a line to Liddell and said, “Tie off to that tree.”

  Liddell tied a line to the birch and asked, “This is where we’re going to picnic? Are you kidding?”

  “You’re fishing if the river patrol or a conservation officer comes by. You two get out the fishing rods. If anyone comes by give a toot on the horn. But don’t leave me.”

  “Jack, this isn’t a good idea, pod’na. I mean you almost got fired once . . . twice today. This can’t be good. Tell him, Susan.”

  Susan said, “We’re at the back of Khaled’s property, aren’t we?”

  Jack took a pry bar and a flashlight from a compartment under the seat. “I’ll be back in ten minutes. Then I’ll take you both to Two Jakes for a real meal if you’re still hungry.”

  Liddell began unpacking the fishing gear.

  “Aren’t you going to stop him?” Susan asked.

  “Can anyone?” Liddell said.

  Susan picked up her handbag and took her cell phone out.

  “Don’t call anyone, Susan. If you want, Bigfoot will take you back right now. He can come back for me.” Jack stepped out onto the dead tree trunk and wove through the branches toward land.

  “I’m coming with you,” she said, put the phone in her pocket and stepped out behind him.

  “No. You’re staying here,” Jack said in a firm voice.

  “Try to make me?” Susan said.

  “Ah, ain’t you two cute? It’s your first fight. In a while at least.” Liddell said.

  “Shut up,” Susan said.

  “You even sound alike,” Liddell said and chuckled.

  * * *

  Jack walked the tree trunk and dropped off onto the ground. Susan did the same. “I think it’s straight ahead,” Jack said. “I remember seeing that big dead poplar from Khaled’s office window.”

  They pushed north through heavy brush to a clearing and stopped. Susan moved up beside him and whispered in his ear, “You still haven’t told me what the plan is.”

  “I have a plan,” Jack said. “You don’t have to get involved. This is on me.”

  “We’re just going to surprise him, right? So he can’t prepare for us like last time,” Susan said.

  “Absolutely,” Jack answered, not really lying. Khaled would be surprised.

  The undergrowth around the river wasn’t as heavy as Jack expected. They soon came to a clearing just behind Khaled’s white clapboard house.

  “I’m not stupid,” Susan said. “So don’t treat me that way.”

  “Why are you saying that?”

  “Well, you brought a pry bar for one thing. Why did you bring it if you aren’t planning to break in?”

  Jack hefted the pry bar. “It was a gift from my Aunt Lucy. I always carry it for good luck,” he said.

  “What are we going to do if he’s home? Are you going to hit him over the head? Please, Jack. Let’s go back to the boat and feed that partner of yours a real meal.”

  Jack started into the clearing.

  “I should have known you—” She stopped talking and wrinkled her nose. The wind had shifted and a distinct odor was in the air. “Something’s burning.”

  Jack smelled it too. “Shit!”

  They ran to the back of Khaled’s house. A steel fifty-five-gallon drum was being used as a burn barrel. Jack could see flames rising from inside. “We’re too late,” he said.

  “Maybe not,” Susan said. “You know we’re on camera, right?”

  “I can always say I smelled smoke and was checking to see if the house was on fire.”

  “Yeah. You just happened to be walking from your boat to the back of Khaled’s house. He might be home,” Susan said. “Let me go up and knock.”

  “And say what? Excuse me, are those s’mores on the fire?” He didn’t want to tell her that he knew Khaled wasn’t home. He had been calling Khaled’s home phone every ten minutes or so.

  He kicked over the burn barrel and looked around for something to put out the flames. He couldn’t find anything. He saw something in the fire and kicked it into the grass. It was a laptop computer. “Is that Khaled’s computer?”

  “Looks like it,” Susan said. “It’s ruined.”

  “See if there’s anything else.” He used his foot to roll the barrel around in the flames to put most of the fire out. Then he noticed a picture frame in the ashes. He kicked it to the side and turned it over with the toe of his shoe.

  “Look, Susan.”

  She pulled the frame farther away from the hot ashes and saw it was a photograph of some kind. The glass was broken, but part of the picture had been spared the flames. She carefully lifted it from the frame and held it up for both of them to see. There were four men in the photo, all squatting by a military vehicle. All four were holding rifles. Three of the men had holes where the heads should have been. One man was smiling into the camera.

  “Recognize anyone?” Jack asked.

  “Is that Khaled?” Susan asked.

  “Yeah, that’s Khaled,” Jack said. “And these look like bullet holes where the other heads should be.”

  ” What could that mean?” she asked.

  “Listen, Susan, if Khaled’s in the house, surely he’s seen us by now,” Jack said. “Why isn’t he out here screaming at us?”

  “What are we going to do?”

  Jack lifted the pry bar and headed for the back door.

  “What if he’s home?” Susan whispered.

  “If he’s home, yell ‘Surprise!’ and hope it’s his birthday.” He thought Khaled had gotten spooked by their visit, burned everything, and was on his way to Oman.

  As it happened, he didn’t have to pry the door open. It was unlatched. They entered and went to the office. The desk drawers were scattered around the floor. The American flag hung by one corner, the engraving had been pulled from the wall, and the monitors had been smashed.

  “It looks like a tornado touched down in here. Khaled must have gone crazy,” Susan said.

  Jack pulled back the drapes covering the window. Chips of drywall were on the floor behind the desk, and there was a large hole in the drywall behind where the cheap paintings had hung.

  Jack examined the drywall and said, “Someone put their fist through the drywall.”

  “Maybe Khaled did it and used the paintings to cover it up.”

  Jack didn’t think so. The chips weren’t there on their earlier visi
t. He pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and shined it inside the hole in the wall. “Look. Someone was digging in the studs.” He used the pry bar to make the opening bigger.

  “See that,” he said putting his finger over a round hole in the wall stud. “Have you got a knife?”

  “I must have left my utility belt at home,” Susan said.

  Jack focused the flashlight beam down inside the wall but he couldn’t see much.

  “Look, Jack,” Susan said. “The house was burglarized when we got here, and there was a fire outside. We were just making sure Khaled was okay. We can leave now and come back with the sheriff’s department.”

  “Well, now I’m checking to see if Khaled’s in this hole,” Jack said and stabbed and pried at the wood with the pry bar until he opened the tiny hole and pried loose a small metallic object.

  He put it in his pocket and said, “Okay. Let’s go.”

  She was more than agreeable. When they got outside Jack sifted through the ashes again. From inside they heard a loud popping and then a whoosh, and flames billowed out the office window and the back doorway. A split second later Jack heard an engine start up.

  “Shit!” Jack said, and tossed Susan his cell phone. “Call 911!” he said, and ran around the side of the house. He made it to the front yard just in time to hear an engine screaming away. He could make out the outline of a small car, maybe white through the cloud of dust it had raised. It may have been Khaled’s.

  Susan came up beside him. “Was that Khaled?”

  “It wasn’t Khaled.”

  “Are you sure? Did you see?”

  “It wasn’t Khaled,” he said again. “He wouldn’t have left his disco ball.”

  * * *

  Liddell piloted the MISS FIT back to Two Jakes while Jack and Susan examined the partially burned picture and melted mess that was once a laptop. They had climbed back on board while Liddell stowed the fishing equipment and had barely spoken a word to each other or to him.

  “So, are one of you going to tell me what happened back there?”

  Jack handed Liddell the picture. “The guy that still has a face is the one we talked to this morning. Khaled Abutaqa.”

  “These look like bullet holes,” Liddell said.

  “We found that and the computer burning in a trash barrel out back. We saw the computer on Khaled’s desk when we were there earlier and he was very protective of it.”

  “You think he burned it?” Liddell asked.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t know. But I found this,” he said, and handed Liddell the bullet fragment he’d dug out of the wall stud. “I found it in a wall stud behind his desk. Someone had knocked a big hole in the drywall. I think they were trying to recover the other bullets.” He held up the picture again. “I don’t think Khaled would burn his computer, or shoot a picture he was in. I think someone was sending a warning to Khaled.”

  “Or maybe he’s dead,” Liddell offered.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Quinn had parked the Toyota in the side yard, and now sat at the kitchen table. He had found the car in the “for sale” advertisements in the Courier & Press newspaper. The recently widowed owner had asked more than the ten-year-old Toyota was worth, but he hadn’t planned on paying.

  The house was secluded, probably early 1900s, surrounded by fields of corn and soybeans and wheat. The nearest neighbor, Khaled Abutaqa, lived less than a mile away.

  He’d come to see the car early this morning and the owner had made him coffee and offered him a slice of freshly made zucchini bread. It was delicious. Maybe the best he’d ever tasted. He told her so and she’d smiled and cut him another piece. She chattered on about her dead husband, her son who had been killed in Iraq, her arthritis, and other uninteresting things. He felt sorry for her. So alone. So abandoned by the advancement of time. He snapped her neck like a dry twig and dropped her down her basement steps.

  He’d removed the DNR decals, but he’d needed a place to store the rented Suburban. It had been a bitch to unload Khaled’s van and fit the items in the back of the Suburban, and he’d barely been able to manage it alone. He hadn’t realized how heavy and bulky some of the things would be. That was his second mistake. The first was in shooting the picture behind Khaled’s desk. It had given him momentary pleasure to see the Arab squirm, but then he’d had to go back and remove all traces of his earlier visit.

  After he killed the old woman he’d driven the Toyota and parked it in the trees a short distance from Khaled’s house and walked the rest of the way. When Khaled’s body was found, the authorities would come to his house. Quinn thought to make it look like a home invasion robbery, or a burglary gone badly. When he got inside Khaled’s he found the computer. He also found the remains of the picture of Khaled with his brothers. He couldn’t leave these behind.

  He had noticed a burn barrel behind the house. He’d dumped Khaled’s trash can in the barrel, poured gasoline on the computer, and threw it in. The picture went in after that.

  With that done he’d turned his attention to the bullets he’d fired into the wall behind Khaled’s desk. Shooting the picture was a mistake, but one he could correct. Khaled wasn’t a person of interest to the police yet. At least he didn’t think he was. The police wouldn’t look at the house very hard to try and solve his murder, but if they saw the bullet holes in the wall they would get nosy. He tried to dig the bullets out of the wall, but he had just gotten started when unexpected company had shown up. A man and a woman. The woman was cute. She reminded him of Pamela, from his days in D.C. It was a shame he’d had to kill Pamela.

  His first thought was to kill them, shoot them both, but he didn’t know if they were alone or if others were coming. And that would leave even more evidence behind. He decided to wait and watch.

  He hid in the bathroom, leaving the door cracked. If they discovered him he could dispatch them easily enough. He heard them come in and go to Khaled’s office. The woman called the man “Jack” and he discovered the man was a police detective. That was the deciding point. He would have to kill them now. And what better way than another fire?

  He made his way quietly out of the front door, set the timer on the incendiary device for thirty seconds, and tossed it into the front room. He was in his car and backing onto the road when he saw the fireball behind him. Now there would be no evidence, and no nosy detective.

  And now, sitting here in the old woman’s kitchen, he was even more curious why they had come to Khaled’s. Quinn didn’t think they were looking for him—or even aware he existed. These weren’t Agency people. But he hadn’t expected some local yokels to interfere, whether intentional or not. Maybe they were looking for Khaled for some other crime. He hated loose ends but there was nothing to be done now.

  He knew the owner wasn’t expecting any company. The house would just set empty. He decided to stay the night. Why not? He had an early meeting in the morning.

  Chapter Twenty

  Jack tied off the port lines, and Liddell and Susan stepped onto the dock at Two Jakes.

  “What do we do now?” Liddell asked.

  Jack said, “Ballistics on the slug. The computer’s probably a waste of time.”

  Liddell said, “If you ask for that they’ll need to know where this stuff came from, pod’na.”

  “I know someone who’ll do it off the books,” Jack said. Sergeant Walker would do the comparison without asking any questions.

  “Jack, you should turn the computer and the bullet over to the sheriff’s department.”

  “Not going to happen,” Jack said. “Khaled’s house wasn’t a crime scene. As far as anyone is to know it was just a house fire.”

  “I agree with Susan, pod’na. If Khaled’s the guy, we don’t want to lose the case. What if the bullet fragment and the computer are the only pieces of evidence that could have convicted him?”

  “Point taken, Bigfoot. I need a ride downtown.” Now that he wasn’t suspended he would need to collect his department Crown
Vic.

  Liddell didn’t argue with him. “I’ll wait in the car,” he said and walked toward the parking lot.

  A smile played at the corners of Susan’s mouth. “Is Liddell under the impression we’re dating again?”

  “The mind of a yeti is a mystery,” Jack said.

  Susan turned away, looking out over the river. “I’ve got to say, Jack, there’s not a dull moment when I’m around you.”

  “Yeah. I guess this has been stressful.”

  “What are you thinking about, Jack?” she asked.

  He had forgotten how perceptive she was. “I was thinking about us. The way we used to be and the way we are now. I’m assuming you’re still dating your dentist, and I’m still in love with my ex.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” she asked.

  “Well, for one thing, Katie won’t talk to me.”

  “Have you even tried, Jack?”

  “Look. I’m sorry I brought it up. I’ve still got a lot of work to do, so . . .”

  “Oh no. You’re not getting off that easy. If I know you, Katie hasn’t answered your telephone calls and you’re pouting.”

  She was right. He was pouting. It was his duty and right as a man.

  “Take her flowers. Take her candy. Take her in your arms and tell her you love her, Jack.”

  “I understand what you’re saying. But I don’t even know where to start. You know me. I’m a klutz when it comes to that kind of stuff.” She should know. When they were living together, he had bought her a jogging outfit for her birthday and left it on the kitchen table. No note. No box even. Being the person she was, she had thanked him, kissed him, and then . . .

  “Jack, I’m going to talk to you like a shrink. You’re attracted to me. Hell, who wouldn’t be,” she said. “But you have always been conflicted between anyone you’ve dated and Katie. You push everyone you date away from you. You use Katie as a convenient excuse to not have a real relationship, or, God forbid, think about getting married. Hell, remarry Katie if that’s what you want, but do something. Police work can’t be your whole life. It will destroy you.”

  She turned her head away. “Sorry, Jack. I didn’t mean to say all that.”