Deepkill

by Michael Kilian

  But they were unavoidable.

  Joan dePayse was one of the bravest and smartest Coast Guard officers he’d ever known. He had been under fire with her in a dustup with a particularly nasty bunch of druggies in the La Perla section of San Juan years before, and she had been far cooler than he, except for one particularly unpleasant moment.

  But this quality of hers sometimes bordered on recklessness, and the previous night she’d crossed that line, oblivious to the ruin it portended for both of their careers. Years before, when they were young and new to the Coast Guard, that hadn’t mattered so much. Now it meant everything, especially to her. What she meant to him now was mostly frustration, aggravated by their inequality of rank.

  He reminded himself of the concerns of the day—all of them of infinitely more consequence than his relationship with Joan. The enemy was still out there. Maybe the worst bad guys they’d ever been up against.

  While his coffee was brewing, he watched the morning television news. They were running video footage from the day before. There was nothing new.

  He wondered if he’d be allowed to drive across the undamaged span of the Bay Bridge.

  His Coast Guard ID and Investigative Service badge sufficed. They waved him onto the southern span as though he were somebody important.

  Erik kept his speed at forty miles an hour on the bridge, slowing as he went past the crime scene.

  They’d removed what wreckage there’d been on the westbound span, but he could see yellow police tape marking off a large section of the bridge. No work appeared to have started on repairs. Looking below, he saw a dredging barge moored near the base of one of the bridge towers. Near it were two Coast Guard forty-sevens and some police patrol boats. There was no sign of the Manteo. He assumed Tim Dewey had taken the cutter on into Delaware Bay, as ordered.

  Driving across long suspension bridges had never bothered Erik before. He was glad when he reached dry land.

  Special Agent Payne had established a command post in a motel on Kent Island, not far from the eastern end of the bridge. A task force had been hurriedly formed—led, of course, by the FBI, and including investigative units of the Maryland State Police as well as uniformed cops from Annapolis and the local sheriff’s office. Erik was the only one there with any military authority.

  This assemblage of law enforcement filled a large corner suite and several rooms along the hall. Payne was busy on the phone in the main room of the suite. Another agent, Leon Kelly, an old friend, motioned to two chairs in the corner. They had worked a number of cases together over the years. Erik liked the man.

  “My admiral said I was to report here,” Erik said. “Provide whatever help we can.”

  Kelly nodded. “Not much stirring yet, Erik. Waiting on the medical examiner. And the forensics report. We have a lot of people interviewing witnesses.”

  “Anything I can do.”

  “Sure. I’ll tell Payne you’re here.”

  If nothing was stirring, there was still a lot of coming and going, and the telephones were constantly ringing, punctuating the chatter coming from several radio receivers. But it was obvious little was being accomplished. There wasn’t the sharpness, the urgency there should have been this far into a very major case. Except for the numbers of law enforcement involved, it was more like the second day of a routine murder.

  Erik got himself a cup of coffee and moved to another chair near a table piled with reports. He began to leaf through them as he listened to Payne’s men proceed with their work.

  FBI agents and police had fanned out all over Kent Island. Payne had made the sensible presumption that this operation had been mounted from the Eastern Shore, a logical conclusion, given that the Homeland Security adviser had been heading west.

  Little of consequence had thus far been turned up. There were reports of dark-complexioned men getting in and out of cars up and down Highway 50. A waitress at a shore-side restaurant at the foot of the bridge recalled serving a man who had lingered an inordinate time after getting his check and then left immediately after the explosion. Mysterious boats had been seen operating without running lights. A teenage girl had run out of a shopping mall, screaming. There’d been an unusually obstreperous barking of dogs in Easton, Maryland. A cabin cruiser on the Severn River had had Middle Eastern music playing on its stereo.

  “What are you looking at?” said Payne, looming over the armchair where Westman had taken a seat.

  Erik held out one of the computer printouts to the agent. “You’ve probably seen this one. A waitress in a restaurant at the east end of the bridge says there was something funny about a customer who was there before the explosion.”

  “She says he kept looking at the bridge,” Payne said, reading from the printout. He looked to Westman. “I know that restaurant. It’s got a wide deck in back overlooking the water. People sit there to watch the sunset.”

  “This was after sunset.”

  Payne said nothing more.

  Westman gently took the paper back. “The name on his credit card was Anthony Bertolucci.”

  “Not an Arab.”

  “Not an Arabic name,” said Westman.

  Payne snatched back the printout and put it with the others. “If you’re suggesting we check this out,” he said, “I can tell you that of course we’re going to check it out. We’re going to check everything out—like we always do. That’s the whole point of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We’re big enough to do that.”

  His not-so-oblique reference was to the Coast Guard Investigative Service—a miniscule outfit compared to the mammoth Bureau.

  Westman leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head. “Is there anything you’d like me to do?”

  “Just observe. For now.”

  Erik knew and had worked with some very fine and intrepid FBI agents in his time. Leon Kelly was certainly that. He knew a female special agent in New York who was as tough, smart, and effective as she was pretty and blond. She could have been a poster girl for law enforcement.

  But Payne was hard to bear.

  Erik finished his coffee and stood. He waited a moment, then walked out of the room. No one paid him any attention.

  The waitress seemed anxious to speak to him, perhaps wondering why no one else had asked to talk to her. She was in her mid-twenties, a bit overweight—a real blond with sickly-looking pale skin to match. Erik could tell she was bright, but probably ill-educated. She was also scared.

  “I never would have expected it,” she said. “That bridge has been there like forever. I’m still scared.”

  They were seated in a corner table on the restaurant’s rear deck. Erik’s view was of the bridge. She was happy enough to be looking away from it.

  “No one from the FBI has contacted you?” he asked.

  “No sir. Just state police. A detective. Named Roger Poricky.”

  “Tell me about this man you saw.”

  She looked about nervously, as though he might be watching her.

  “Well, he just kept looking.”

  “Looking?”

  “At the bridge.”

  “Not just at the water.”

  “No, sir. People who sit out here, they look around. At the boats going by. At the bridge. At each other. He just kept staring at the bridge. He was looking out there for a long time—even after the sun went down.”

  “And then? After the explosion?”

  “He kept looking a little while longer. Then he left.”

  “What did he look like?”

  Her face went blank. She thought about the question for a long time. For a moment, Erik feared he’d been wasting his time.

  “I don’t know. Dark. Foreign. Something about him made me nervous.”

  Erik waited. He’d long before learned to push in interrogation, but not lead or steer. That’s what produced testimony that was later recanted.

  “Did you feel threatened by him?”

  “A little. I think maybe it was his voice. He
was real polite. More polite than what we usually get. But he wasn’t friendly. His voice was kinda cold. Like an undertaker or something. You’ve been to funerals?” Erik nodded. “Well, it was like that. His voice was cold—like an undertaker’s at a funeral. Very polite. But cold.”

  “And this is what scared you?”

  “His eyes too. He had sunglasses on part of the time he was here. He kept them on even after the sun went down. Then he took them off when the bomb went off. His eyes were like his voice. Cold. Kinda hard. My sister’s married to a cop in Baltimore. He’s got eyes like that.”

  Erik leaned back. A sailboat was approaching the bridge. One of the Coast Guard forty-sevens moved out to intercept it.

  “You get a lot of people in here,” he said. “How can you remember so much about him?”

  “I remember him because of the bomb.”

  “But the restaurant must have been full of people. No one else attracted your attention? Acted strangely?”

  “Some people were scared. Some jumped up. One woman tried to jump off the deck. This guy just stared.”

  Erik made a lengthy entry in his notebook.

  “Anything else?”

  “His voice.”

  “You’ve already told me about that.”

  “No. He had a sort of accent. He didn’t sound American.”

  “Middle Eastern?”

  “I don’t know what that would be like. Anyway, I don’t think so. He sounded Polish.”

  “Polish? As in Warsaw?”

  “Something like that. Over on the beach—Rehoboth, Bethany—they’ve got a lot of Eastern Europeans working there. Young people mostly—from Bosnia, Romania, Russia, places like that. Working jobs like mine. That’s what he sounded like. Maybe Polish.”

  “You didn’t tell the FBI about this?”

  “I talked to the detective from the state cops. He didn’t let me say very much. He was talking to everybody who works here. Talked to the manager here the longest.”

  “Did the manager see what happened?”

  “No. He didn’t see anything. He was in the kitchen, arguing with a chef.”

  “He didn’t see your customer—the hard, cold one?”

  She was fishing out a pack of cigarettes from her bag. “No.”

  “Would you be willing to talk to a sketch artist about this guy? They use computers now. It won’t take long.”

  She lighted her cigarette. “Okay.”

  Erik had already take her name, address, and phone number.

  “The FBI will take care of it,” he said, uncertain if that was true. “I’ll have somebody call you.”

  “They won’t use my name or anything, will they? I mean, I’m not going to be on television or anything?”

  He could tell she very much did not want to be. “The FBI doesn’t do that.”

  “But you’re in the Coast Guard? I didn’t know the Coast Guard had detectives.”

  “Just a few of us. For things like this.”

  “Are we done?”

  “I’d like a beer. Do you have Mousel?”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay, a Heineken’s.”

  Erik had forgetfully left his cell phone in his car. It rang the instant he turned it on. He had two messages, one from Joan dePayse, the other from Leon Kelly. The cop in Erik was interested most in talking to Kelly. The military man in him commanded otherwise. Chain of command.

  It took a while to contact her. She was in a meeting, but had left instructions to be informed if he called. Erik wondered what the admirals and captains thought of being interrupted by a warrant officer.

  “Admiral dePayse,” she said formally.

  “Westman,” he replied, trying to sound less formal.

  “Anything new?” she asked.

  “They’re still casting their nets.” He paused. “I did some independent investigating. I think I found someone who saw one of the suspects. Got a name on him. I’m sure it’s an alias, but it’s on a credit card.”

  “Terrific! Did you tell the FBI?”

  “I’ve only just left the witness. The Bureau had a report on her, but didn’t follow it up.”

  “Send them a memo and send me the copy. You have your laptop?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Soon as you can.”

  “Right.”

  “They treating you all right?”

  He sighed. “Not really.”

  “We’re hearing that some members of Congress may try to blame us for this.”

  “Blame the Coast Guard? Did they expect we’d have a cutter patrolling Highway 50?”

  “The bridge is marine infrastructure—which we’re supposed to be protecting.”

  “We did. No terrorist vessel got near it on the water.”

  “Erik. I just want us to be doing everything we can.”

  “Well, I’d like them to talk to my witness.”

  “I’ll bring it up—with Intel.”

  “Okay.”

  A pause, and then a continuing silence. He supposed it did for words. Talking about the previous night was as dangerous as the night itself had been.

  “Erik?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do what you want. Do what you can. But watch out for sharks. They’re not all in the sea.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And keep me informed.”

  “Of course.”

  Another pause. She was contemplating saying something else, but then thought better of it.

  “Take care.” She clicked off.

  Erik called the number Kelly had left. It was the agent’s cell phone. He was in a car, heading east on Highway 404 in a hurry.

  “Things are moving, Erik. Moving fast. They found the wreckage of the truck. There’s a recovery barge on scene. And the medical examiner came through on the male victim you brought into Annapolis. They got an ID. It’s a phony, but he sure wasn’t the lady’s husband. Most likely one of the perps off the bomb truck.”

  “That’s great news.”

  “There’s better news. There was a fire in a farmhouse south of Denton. Three victims. All male. Pickup truck, stolen from Kent Island shortly after the event. It’s got to be them, Erik.”

  “What’s the location?”

  Kelly gave him the particulars. “I’m heading there now. Payne thinks we’ve got them all.”

  “May I join you?”

  “Sure. You’re part of the task force.”

  “Thanks, Leon.”

  Erik had been based in the Washington area for many years and knew the Eastern Shore roads well. He arrived at what was left of the farmhouse not long after Kelly. There were at least a dozen marked state police cars, plus nearly half that many of Bureau vehicles, identified solely by their “U.S. Government” plates.

  Special Agent Payne welcomed Erik with a boast. “We got ’em all, Westman! There were four men seen on the bridge and they’re all accounted for.”

  “Any names?”

  “Working on it. But it’s got to be all of them—with these three and the one you guys fished out of the bay. We got a positive on the truck. Witnesses to their stealing it.”

  “Congratulations,” Erik said.

  “We’ve got a lot of work still to do. Tie all this together.”

  “Where are the bodies?”

  Payne pointed to the ashy ruin. “Right there in the middle. Don’t contaminate the crime scene.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it,” Erik said.

  He walked toward the remains of the house. Payne followed. The FBI agent kept just behind Westman as they stepped gingerly through the ash to where they could closely view the three corpses.

  “You think this wraps it up?” Payne said to Erik. “I mean, we’ve got them all. One was blown off the bridge. The other three ran off and now we’ve found them.”

  Erik took a step closer. “Cause of death?”

  “Unknown. Until we get an examination.”

  “Not fire.”

 
“How do you know that?”

  “Too relaxed. Burn victims writhe. You find a lot of them in a fetal position.”

  Payne shrugged.

  “What if they were shot?” Erik asked.

  “What if?”

  “It would mean there were at least five,” said Kelly, who had joined them. “Counting the guy who did the shooting.”

  Payne looked at the corpses thoughtfully, then moved away, saying nothing. Erik went to his car and activated his laptop, using the satellite phone he’d been issued for the first time. He typed and then filed his report on the waitress, sending an e-mail copy to Admiral dePayse.

  He was driving back to Kent Island when his cell phone rang. He pulled off to the side of the highway to answer it. The bean fields stretched to a tree line. Off to the right were the lights of a house.

  “Westman.”

  “It’s Leon Kelly.”

  “Long day.”

  “Gonna be shorter for you. How close did you get to the farmhouse?”

  “I don’t know. Close enough to see the bodies.”

  “Payne says you disturbed and contaminated the crime scene. He put a request through to Washington asking the Coast Guard to reassign you.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Sorry, Erik. I’m not.”

  “Okay. I’ll go independent. I’m authorized.”

  “Just steer clear of him.”

  “That’ll be easy.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I mean to find this fifth guy.”

  Kelly waited before answering, perhaps moving to a more discreet location. “Let me know.”

  “Sure.”

  “Erik?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ll be talking to you soon.”

  Westman reached the intersection with Highway 404 and pulled off to the side. Behind him, to the west, was Highway 50, Kent Island, the Bay Bridge, Annapolis, Washington, DC, and his base. To the east was the rest of the Delmarva Peninsula.

  He took out his cell phone again and called Joan dePayse’s office number.

  She wasn’t there. He waited to leave a message.

  “Ground effort not working out,” he said. “Am going to sea.”