by Wiley Brooks
“Here,” he said, handing it to her. “Put some wherever you have exposed skin. And make sure you put it around your ankles.”
The rain had introduced a freshness to the air. They got in the Toyota and headed to nearby Bharat Tea Plantation. Without question, tea plantations were the defining visual element of the Cameron Highlands. As far as the eye could see, carpets of tea created endless green stripes across the rolling hills.
They joined a tour at Bharat that walked them through the process of making tea. It starts with withering, where freshly picked tea leaves are exposed to hot air. It reduces their moisture content by sixty-five percent. The drier leaves are then put into machines that break the leaves to expose their juices. That allows them to ferment. It’s during this fermentation stage where the flavor is formed.
The crushed leaves sit exposed to the air. That’s when they change color from green to copper. Then comes three-hundred-degree temperatures to further dry them out. Finally, they are sorted by quality.
After a cup of tea, they headed to the nearby Big Red Strawberry Farm, where they picked a batch of the juiciest, sweetest strawberries Jess had ever tasted.
It was past time for lunch, so they headed back toward the center of town. Along the way, they passed the Orchid Food Corner. Jess insisted they stop.
The place had no walls. Joey said they should go to an actual restaurant, but the aroma of the Orchid pulled Jess in. Joey relented. They shared a large order of chicken skewers, murtabak with minced beef and fried rice.
“You up for a hike?” Joey asked as they finished lunch. “There is a network of trails around here. We could hike to Robinson Falls – believe me, it’s worth it. The whole thing should take three, maybe three and a half hours. What do you say?”
And so they did. It was a little harder than either expected. The morning rainstorm made parts of the path perilously slippery and other sections terribly muddy. Each of them slipped and fell more than once, so they were quickly covered in mud.
It was exhilarating to Jessica. She had never been in an actual jungle. Langkawi certainly didn’t measure up to this experience. They hadn’t actually hiked into the jungle there.
The path was enveloped in the dense jungle. There were no views, but that mattered little. When rays of sunshine would cut through the canopy above, the shafts of light produced a magical sense to their surroundings. They were surrounded by an explosion of green. Moss covered every inch of wood. So much green that Jessica began to think that perhaps she would sweat it out her pores. And sweat she did.
They saw no fierce jungle animals, though the sounds of what might lay just out of sight were ever-present. What she did see were giant millipedes. They were so huge that she knew no one back home would ever believe her. They left a trail behind them as they inched across the soil. The first one frightened her, but Joey insisted there was nothing to fear from them.
“Just try not to step on them,” he said to her. “Getting that stuff off your shoes would be disgusting.”
They were dog-tired when they arrived back at the hotel. Briefly taken aback by their appearance, the desk clerk recovered and asked if he could take their shoes and have them cleaned.
Getting all the mud that off their bodies was a two-person job.
“This is nice,” Jess said. They were sitting in a big tub, her back facing him. Joey used a soapy sponge to rub off her mud stains.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve never done anything like this?”
“You’ve never bathed with a woman?”
“No. First time.”
If he had thought about what giving a woman a sponge bath would be like, he would have gone straight to it being sexual. But this strangely was not sexual. He didn’t feel aroused. He felt content. It was a good feeling. A new feeling for him.
Later, over dinner in the hotel dining room, Jess said she wanted to just hang out at the hotel the next day.
“If the weather is nice,” she said, “I’d like to spend the entire day in one of those chaise lounge chairs in the garden reading my book. Would you be okay with that?”
“Maybe you have one packed away that I could read?”
“I bet I do. I brought four. One is a spy thriller that I think you’d like.”
Fitz called Mason at seven-thirty in the morning.
“Spears came through. Both American Express and Mastercard are on board. And some more good news. Some hotels are connected electronically to the credit card companies. If she uses the card at one of those hotels, we should know about it within a few hours.”
“Getting’ it right away would help,” Mason said in a monotone way that Fitz paused a moment to think about the response.
“Don’t get too excited,” Fitz said after the slight pause. “There aren’t too many hotels in Asia doing it yet, but if she stays at one of the big chains, the account gets pinged the moment the reservations people enter the data from the card. She chose a big chain hotel in Batu Ferringhi. Maybe she will at other places.”
Mason asked how much lag there would be if the hotel wasn’t connected to the card company electronically.
“Best case? Three or four days. And that’s from when they pay the bill. Some hotels will charge a deposit to the card on arrival, but not everyone does. Most just take an imprint of the card.”
“Damn. So, we’d find out that they’d just left a place. That’s diddly squat.”
“Not necessarily. Like you said earlier, if the charge happens in a town where they can catch a ferry to an island, you can just go straight to the island.”
Mason asked if they’d tracked down where she banked yet. Fitz said they should have that info tomorrow.
“Listen, Mason, I’m keeping all this very close to the vest. Makes me nervous. I haven’t even told my boss the full extent of it all. And I’m all but sure that the Secretary doesn’t know more than the barest facts. If I say something about Joey zeroing in on a new victim and we know who it is, people are going to go apeshit.”
“You got that right.”
“Normally, we’d inform the parents. I haven’t done that, but the time will come when I have to.”
“I know. Thank you, buddy, for sittin’ on it for now.”
“The way I see it, we don’t have much choice.”
“No sir, we don’t. Once they find out her folks will move heaven and earth to get her to safety.”
“And you know they’d tell her the next time she calls them. If Joey got any wind of it, he’d kill her right then and there. She knows too much. Hell, I bet she has even taken pictures of him.”
“We have to sit on it a little longer. I’m basically off-book. That gives you and Spears a little cover.”
“Not much.”
“No. But we’re makin’ progress and I’d hate to give this guy a do-over.”
“Agreed.”
Fitz said the Bureau had done a quick records check on her.
“Some interesting stuff. She had a high-paying job but came into a shitload of money last year.”
“Inheritance?”
“Yes and no. She was married to a hot-shot plaintiffs’ attorney who had a heart attack, died and left her millions.”
“No shit. I wonder if Joey knows.”
“You think it would change anything if he does?”
“He might wanna try to get more out of her. In the end, though, he only has one exit strategy.”
Fitz told him about Jessica’s job as a nurse anesthetist at a big hospital.
“So that’s a big deal kind of nurse?” Mason asked.
“Yep. About as high as a nurse can get. Not as much training as a doctor, but damn close. Spears told me it’s a high salary job.”
“So she’s a smart young woman. Let’s hope that comes in handy.”
“I suspect she’s traveling to try to get over the tragedy of losing her husband. No idea what their relationship was like. They were both workaholics. Her husband – name was Wallace Jamison…”
/> “Christ! Is that really his name?”
“Yeah.”
“Sounds totally like a lily-white Ivy League lawyer’s name, if I ever heard one.”
“The cracker in you is showing, Mason.”
“Oh shit, man. I forgot I was talkin’ to Mr. Blair Fitzgerald Fox, the Yale man.”
“Ha.”
Fitz got back to his notes. “Jamison was well enough known that the Seattle Times did a story about him when he had a heart attack at age forty-two and died.”
The story, he said, focused first on Jamison’s professional accomplishments. He had made a name for himself – and apparently tens of millions of dollars – in asbestos cases. The second half of the story, though, was about the odds of having a heart attack in your early forties.
“Jamison was a good seventy or eighty pounds overweight and smoked like it was going out of style. Two or three packs a day,” Fitz said. “The story quoted some public health people saying tobacco use and obesity are major contributors to heart disease. It was made worse in his case by long hours in a high-stress job.”
Mason asked if the story said anything about Jessica.
“Only that he was survived by his wife of six years, Jessica Stone. She kept her maiden name. No kids.”
Fitz asked if Mason wanted to have the Bureau do a broader background check on her.
“Not yet. Hard for guys in black suits askin’ questions to be subtle. We can’t risk word gettin’ back to her that the Feds are snoopin’ around, askin’ people questions about her.”
Mason turned the conversation to his immediate plans. He shared his thoughts about Joey’s two likely initial destinations. Mason said he thought Joey would either go to Pangkor Island off the lower southwest coast, or the Perhentian Islands, off the upper northeast coast. He’d read about both.
“No comparison, really,” Mason said. “Accordin’ to the guidebooks, Pangkor is okay, but not spectacular. The Perhentians are spectacular.”
“So, you’re going to head to the Perhentians?”
“Actually, I’m thinkin’ Pangkor.”
“You lost me. Why?”
“If I were this guy, I’d be wantin’ the trip to get better and better. You know – save the best for last. If they do the east coast first and then Pangkor, it will be a big letdown. I’m thinkin’ they do Pangkor first, then they maybe could visit Melaka – risky as that might be. From Melaka it’s an easy drive to Mersing and on to Tioman for their first east coast stop. Then just meander up the coast and end at the Perhentians.”
“I see your thinking, but it’s a big gamble. If you’re wrong, you are literally on the opposite side of the country.”
“Damn, boy, don’t you have any faith in my special powers? If I’m right, then I right there with ‘em.”
“I know you hate sitting and waiting, Mason, but I’d give it one more day. There’s a good chance we’ll have a credit card hit.”
“One day is good.”
Mason thought about what Fitz had told him about Jessica Stone. She’s a widow. Like him, she lost someone at the center of her life. People cope with loss in different ways. Maybe she tried to get on with her life, but just couldn’t. After nearly a year of trying, she probably thought that she needed to put geographic space between her pain and her life.
Had that worked for him, Mason wondered? Not really, but then he had moved quickly to revenge. He didn’t give the buffer of time a chance to work. And until last week, he would have said that the revenge thing worked for him. Now? Maybe not.
Mason was trying to figure out how to get through the nightmarish nights and the days that followed. Increasingly, he found himself recalling the images of the dead from his nightmares during his wide-awake days. He feared it would soon undermine his sanity.
He was drinking more, which he knew wasn’t good. He had bought a silver flask back in Penang and filled it with Jack Daniels every morning before heading out. If he didn’t keep busy focused on his work, the images would throw themselves into his thoughts. Whenever that happened, he pulled out the flask and took a swig. Maybe two.
It was a good day if he could get through the day and back to his hotel without emptying the container in his pocket. He was more likely to drain it by the end of lunch. The alcohol didn’t make him forget. No. It just deadened the intensity of his feelings. The amazing thing was that he was still able to focus and get work done.
Of course, one of the things he had to figure out was where, in a Muslim country, could he buy a bottle of Jack Daniels. Muslims not only are prohibited from drinking alcohol, they can’t serve or sell it either.
Fortunately, while Muslims make up a majority of the population, more than a third of Malaysians are of Chinese descent and another ten percent are Indian. No restrictions on those folks when it came to booze.
The Indians and Chinese run a lot of businesses. Most towns will have at least one small market owned by one or the other. Walk into an Indian or Chinese convenience store and you’ll find a decent liquor selection, often behind the counter or near the back of the store. And while they might not carry much American whiskey, a fifth of Jack seemed to always have a place on the shelf.
As he thought back on his life since Sylvie’s death, he acknowledged that he wasn’t the outgoing, good-natured man he used to be. He wasn’t a recluse, but virtually every night would find him sitting in his favorite chair in front of his TV watching pirated tapes of American TV shows. Alone. Always alone. His only companion was the bottle of Jack on the side table and the glass he poured it into. Had he become an alcoholic? He didn’t think so. He wasn’t a drunk. But he’d down three glasses of Jack a night. He figured he just had a high tolerance.
Drinking during the daytime was something new for him. He told himself it was to cope with the nightmares. But he knew it was a lie. He wasn’t coping. He was masking. He needed help. When this case was over maybe he’d get it.
At 7 p.m. – that would be seven in the morning in D.C. – Mason called Fitz at his home. He knew Fitz would be up and getting ready for work by then. He told him that he had gotten a pager and how to send him a message. Mason stressed to Fitz that he should page him anytime day or night if they got a hit on one of Jessica’s credit cards.
Day 20
The clock next to Mason’s bed said it was three-thirty-five when the phone jarred him awake. He clicked on the light, scooted up in the bed and answered the call.
“Hello,” he mumbled into the phone.
“Mason, it’s Fitz. We got a hit on the American Express card. She used it to fill up at a Shell station in Ipoh three days ago. Looks like they’re heading south.”
Mason tried to recall where Ipoh was, but couldn’t. Still half-asleep, he turned on the light next to his bed, then fumbled with the phone to put it on speaker.
“Hold on. I put a map on the wall. Let me get my bearin’s.” He approached the map, followed the main highways south out of Penang. After a bit, he found Ipoh.
“Doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said to Fitz. “Yeah, he’s headin’ south, but it’s way out of the way if he’s gonna take her to Pangkor.”
“Maybe he’s taking her to one of the highlands,” Fitz said. “I visited the Genting Highlands a few years ago. Really beautiful place. It’s a mile above sea level.”
Mason studied the map some more. It was a direct route south from Ipoh to the Genting Highlands. The route did make sense for Genting. It also made sense for Kuala Lumpur, but there was no reason he’d want to take her there.
Genting would all but rule out Pangkor. Where would he go from Genting? Melaka was pretty much due south.
“Do you think he’d risk takin’ her to Melaka?” Mason asked Fitz.
“I don’t know. Can’t rule it out, but people know him there. I think he’d want to avoid that, don’t you?”
He backed up to Ipoh again, then used his finger to trace routes out of town. Where else might Ipoh be on the road to, he wondered.
“Hmm, looks like it’s where you head into the mountains if you are goin’ to the Cameron Highlands. What’s that like? Do you think he might take her there?”
“Yeah,” Fitz said. “Maybe. I don’t know a lot about it, but a lot of tourists go there. It’s big on tea plantations and nature walks. A lot cooler up there. And green. It’s probably less crowded than Genting. Genting is only about an hour from KL. It’s why I went to Genting. I was visiting the embassy and had a day to kill.”
“I’m lookin’ at the map. I wonder if I should head to the Cameron Highlands. From there I could still head to Pangkor or drive east across the country to the east coast.”
Mason asked Fitz to fax him the location of the Shell station. He’d stop and see if anyone remembered Joey and Jessica and perhaps – a long shot, for sure – where they were heading. He told Fitz he was going to try to get a little more sleep. His alarm was set for seven-thirty. He hadn’t had a nightmare yet and wondered if he would be spared this night. His mind was racing, so he used a meditation technique that Sylvie had taught him years before. It always helped him clear his mind. It took a while, but eventually he was again asleep.
Jess and Joey slept in until almost nine o’clock. After breakfast, they stepped outside and discovered there was still a chill in the air. Back in the room, Jess pulled Murder in Georgetown from her backpack, then turned to Joey.
“Book time for me,” she said. “Did you decide if you want to read one of my paperbacks?”
“Yes. I thought I’d try A Matter of Honor.”
Jess dug into her pack again, found the book and pulled it out.
“Here you go. Jeffrey Archer. I haven’t read anything of his before, but this one sounded good. It was a bestseller.”
He plopped down on the bed next to her. They lay side by side for the next hour, reading quietly before she broke the silence.
“I was thinking that maybe we could head out tomorrow.”
“I’m good with that. You have a place in mind?”
“No, not really. The east coast sounds good. I wouldn’t mind doing some more snorkeling.”
“Then we should definitely go to the Perhentian Islands. The coral and sea life there are even better than Langkawi.”