Stuart Woods Holly Barker Collection

by Stuart Woods

  Then, as he reached the outskirts of town, he saw a vehicle a couple of hundred yards behind him, lit by a streetlight but showing no headlights. “Why, I believe I’m being followed,” he said aloud. The vehicle followed him all the way to the turnoff to his little island.

  When he reached the house, he went inside, and instantly, he had the feeling that someone had been there. He switched on some lights and walked slowly around the place. The chair where he watched TV in the evenings had been moved. He knew, because there were indentations in the rug where the chair legs had formerly rested. A phone was on the table next to the chair. First, he switched on the TV and found a noisy cop show, then he picked up the telephone receiver and, while holding down the flasher, unscrewed the mouthpiece, then removed the disk that rested there. Behind it was a small electronic something-or-other that had been soldered into place. His phone had been bugged. He gently replaced the disk and screwed the receiver together again.

  He went into his little office, opened a desk drawer and found his portable cell phone. He unscrewed the cover and examined the insides. Apparently, they had missed it. He went back to the living room, then through the kitchen, and closing the door softly behind him, out to the little dock behind the house. He sat down on a post and called Holly.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me. You been home all evening?”

  “Yep.”

  “Didn’t leave the house?”

  “Only for a few minutes, to walk Daisy. How was your evening?”

  “Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” he said. “Lunch?”

  “Sure. Your place?”

  “No, not here. Your place, at noon. When I get there, don’t say anything until I’ve looked around.”

  There was a brief, puzzled silence. “Okay,” she said finally.

  “See you then.”

  “Good night.”

  Ham punched off, then returned to the house, turned off the TV and went to bed. When he had been asked to leave so soon after dinner, he had thought he’d somehow screwed up, but if they had tapped his phone, he was still in the game. He slept well.

  Twenty-seven

  HAM ARRIVED AT HOLLY’S HOUSE SHORTLY after noon, and there was a car outside he didn’t recognize. He let himself in through the front door and found Holly and Harry Crisp waiting for him. Holding a finger to his lips, he indicated that they could come outside through the beach door.

  When they were outside Harry shook Ham’s hand. “What’s up?”

  “I guess Holly told you I went to this little dinner party last night.”

  “Yes, that’s why I’m here. What did you find out?”

  “I found out they kept me there just long enough to tap my phone.”

  “No kidding?” Holly asked.

  “I kid you not, kiddo.”

  “What kind of tap?” Harry asked.

  “They soldered something inside the talking end of the receiver.”

  Harry nodded. “Was that the only one?”

  “I have no idea. They didn’t seem to mess with my cell phone, though. Would a tap on the phone let them hear anything in the house?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to get somebody out there to go over your place, so we’ll know exactly what we’re dealing with.”

  “Tell us about your evening,” Holly said.

  “We had a drink and chitchatted, then we had a good dinner. After that, the other men and I went into Rawlings’s den and had a brandy and talked.”

  “What did you talk about?” Harry asked.

  “They were looking into my politics; I pretty much told them I’m to the right of George Wallace, and they seemed to like that.”

  “What else?”

  “They were interested in my weapons experience. Rawlings had a copy of my service record, can you believe that?”

  “I can,” Harry said.

  “Harry should know,” Holly said. “He has your service record, too.”

  Ham laughed. “Everybody’s all over me. Does that mean they’ve got somebody in Records at the Pentagon?”

  “Nah,” Harry said. “All it means is they’ve got somebody who can hack his way into a Pentagon computer and print out your record. Mind you, it would take a pretty smart hacker.”

  “There was a computer in Rawlings’s den,” Ham said.

  “What else did you talk about?”

  “There was some talk of how my weapons experience might do some good for their cause, whatever that is, then it got cut short. The phone rang, it was answered in another room, then one of the wives came in and said everything was okay. Next thing I knew, I was being politely shown the door.”

  “The call was from whoever bugged your phone,” Harry said, “reporting that the coast was clear. Why do you think they might have bugged Holly’s place?”

  “I don’t know that, I was just being careful.”

  “I’ll have somebody here before the day is out to go over both places.”

  “Oh, they followed me all the way home, too. There was a car behind me with no headlights.”

  “I guess they wanted to know if you were reporting to somebody when you left,” Harry said. “Did anybody follow you over here today?”

  “I didn’t spot anybody, and believe me, I looked. These folks have a way of making me paranoid.”

  “Just play it straight ahead; lead your life the way you usually do, and ignore them. Sounds to me like they’re interested enough in you that they’ll be in touch.”

  “Tell me about the town and the house,” Holly said.

  “Looks like something that Walt Disney might have designed. A general store and a couple of other little businesses on Main Street. The house is ordinary-looking, fairly new, middle-of-the-road furniture. Rawlings has the biggest collection of guns I’ve ever seen off a military base, and believe me, I’ve seen some collections.”

  “What kind of guns?”

  “Everything from antiques to handguns to military automatic stuff.”

  “Where does he keep it?”

  “In plain sight, on the walls of his den.”

  “Be interesting to plow through it and see how much of it is illegal.”

  “Is it legal to own a Barrett’s rifle?”

  “What’s a Barrett’s rifle?”

  “It’s a fifty-caliber sniper’s piece that can take out an armored personnel carrier.”

  “I’ve never heard of it, but I’ll check it out.”

  “We saw it fired the first time we were out there,” Holly said. “It was scary.”

  “Anything else they talked about?” Harry asked.

  “They sort of implied that somebody with my shooting skills could make a difference in the world.”

  “You think they want you to shoot somebody?”

  “The first thing they asked me was what I thought of the president.”

  “And you said?”

  “I just held my nose and expressed my preference for George Wallace. I thought Adolf Hitler might be going a little too far.”

  “Ham, did you come away thinking that they wanted you to shoot the president?”

  “It’s hard to say, Harry. Asking about the president might just have been their way of asking about my politics. Still, they were awful interested in how well I shoot.”

  “And how well is that?”

  Holly spoke up. “As well as it can be done,” she said. “And with anything.”

  “I don’t like the reference to the president,” Harry said.

  “Harry,” Holly said, “do you think we ought to bring the Secret Service into this?”

  “Not yet,” Harry said quickly. “They’d be all over it, going in there with a search warrant, and we’d lose any hope of penetrating this group.”

  “That sounds a little like interservice rivalry to me,” Ham said.

  “Well, I guess it is, but it’s my call on when to bring them in. Don’t worry, I’m not going to let the president be put in jeopardy.”

  “O
r Ham, either,” Holly said.

  “Of course not,” Harry said quickly. “I wouldn’t be using Ham at all, if I didn’t think it was the only way into this group.”

  “Actually,” Ham said, “I’m kind of enjoying this. I’ve taken a real dislike to these people, and it would tickle me to blow them out of the water, whatever they’re doing.”

  “Any other impressions of last evening?”

  “Well, I got the idea that they weren’t hurting for money.”

  “Of course not,” Holly said, “they just robbed a bank.”

  “I guess they could be making good money from this gun show of theirs,” Harry said.

  “You’d have to move a lot of weapons,” Ham replied. “But I bet they could move a lot of weapons, if they felt the need. I bet if you wanted a couple hundred assault rifles or fifty Uzis, they could find them for you in a hurry.”

  “Anything else about last night?”

  Ham thought for a minute. “Something they said,” he replied.

  “What?”

  “It was when the brandy was poured, kind of a toast.”

  “What was the toast?”

  “They all said, ‘On the day.’ ”

  Twenty-eight

  HOLLY WAS ON THE WAY TO WORK WHEN HER cell phone rang. “Holly Barker,” she said into the instrument.

  “It’s Hurd,” he said. “Franklin Morris’s car has been found.”

  “Where?”

  “At the Pirate’s Cove Marina, in Sebastian.” Sebastian was the next town north of Orchid Beach, on the Indian River. “He didn’t go far, did he?”

  “Nope.”

  “Grab the tech and meet me there.”

  “You know the place?”

  “I know it. It’s near that seafood restaurant, Captain Hiram’s, isn’t it?”

  “That’s the place.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” she said, then punched off.

  The Pirate’s Cove Marina had fallen on hard times and had been closed for the better part of a year, not having found a buyer who would rescue it from bankruptcy. Holly remembered it from when she had first arrived in town, and, she thought, it had gone downhill fast. There was a chain at the entrance, with a sign saying, Strictly No Admittance. Trespassers Will Be Shot. The chain was lying in the dirt road.

  Holly parked and got out of the car. A small group of people were standing down at the water, next to a boat ramp. A Sebastian police car was there, too, and a wrecker. Holly walked down to the ramp.

  “Good morning, Sergeant,” she said to the Sebastian cop. “I’m Chief Holly Barker from Orchid Beach.”

  “How you doin’?” he asked, looking her up and down.

  Holly was used to that and ignored it. “I hear you found a car we’ve been looking for.”

  “There it comes,” the cop said, nodding toward the water. The wrecker’s cable stretched down the ramp and into the water, and the machinery was making terrible groaning sounds. A foot at a time, the Chrysler convertible backed up the ramp, leaking water. “That’s too nice a car for somebody to do it that way,” the cop said.

  A man wearing a wet suit walked over, a set of fins in his hand. “That ain’t all that’s down there, Sergeant,” he said. “There’s a van and a trailer, too.” He pointed. “Right about yonder.”

  “Well, that’s the damnedest thing I ever heard of,” the cop said.

  “We’ve been looking for all three,” Holly said. She looked down at the rear end of the convertible. “Sergeant, would you do me a favor?”

  “If I can,” the sergeant replied.

  “Will you run the plate on that convertible for me?”

  “Sure,” the cop said and went to his patrol car.

  Holly watched the car continue its progress up the ramp. Finally, it was high and dry enough for the wrecker to tow it to one side. The man in the wet suit unhooked the cable from the convertible’s rear bumper and began pulling the hook toward the ramp. “One down, two to go,” he said, half to himself. A moment later, he pulled down his mask, put on his flippers and walked down the ramp until he disappeared underwater.

  Hurd pulled up in his unmarked car, with the tech beside him in the front seat. He got out and walked over to where Holly stood, glancing at the convertible. “It got wet, huh?”

  “Yep,” Holly said, “and the van and the trailer are still out there.” She turned to the tech. “See what you can find in the convertible,” she said. “Sergeant, you mind if my tech goes over the car?”

  “Well, if you’ll share information, that’ll be all right. Save our man a trip down here.”

  The horse trailer was backing up the ramp now, spilling water from between its slats. “Fully loaded with furniture,” Holly said. “Now, I wonder where Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Morris could be?”

  “Afoot, I reckon,” Hurd said.

  The sergeant came back from his patrol car. “The plate on the convertible belongs to a Buick in Fort Lauderdale,” he said. “Reported stolen eight months ago—the plate, not the car.”

  “Thanks, Sergeant.” She turned to Hurd. “Morris took a pretty big chance driving around with that plate on his car. If he’d been stopped for speeding or a broken taillight, he’d have been in trouble. Tell our man to get the VIN off the convertible, and let’s run that. I’m sure the convertible must have been stolen, too.”

  The diver was going back into the water with the hook again.

  “I don’t get it,” Hurd said. “If they were going to ditch the vehicles, why didn’t they just walk away from the house and leave everything there. Why go to the trouble to pack everything up, then dump it all in the river?”

  “Doesn’t make any sense, does it,” Holly said, half to herself. She was starting to get a bad feeling about this.

  The van started up the ramp now, water pouring from an open driver’s-side door.

  “Come on, Hurd,” she said, then started down the ramp. She approached the vehicle, taking care not to touch it. “Raymond!” she yelled, “get over here.”

  The tech trotted toward them, carrying his bag.

  Holly stuck her head inside the van. The front seat was empty, but a woman’s foot, wearing a sock, but shoeless, rested on the back of the passenger-side seat. Holly looked into the rear seat. “Mr. and Mrs. Morris, I presume.”

  An hour later, the tech had finished. “They each took two in the head,” he said, “small caliber, probably a twenty-two, maybe a twenty-five caliber. No exit wounds, so the ME will recover the lead. A lot of trauma about the head and shoulders, too—both of them.”

  “How long have they been in the water?” Holly asked.

  “The ME will give us a final answer, but my best guess is, since the night they disappeared. They’re pretty soggy but well preserved. The water is cool, down by the bottom, I reckon.”

  “I guess that tells us that Franklin Morris wasn’t working independently,” Holly said. “Whoever he was working with must have thought he was too much of a liability after the robbery.”

  “And who do you think that would be?” Hurd asked. “The folks out at Lake Winachobee?”

  “This doesn’t add up at all,” Holly said.

  Twenty-nine

  HOLLY, IN A PHONE CONVERSATION WITH THE Sebastian chief of police, arranged for her department to take possession of the two bodies and three vehicles, then she had the bodies removed to the Orchid Beach medical examiner’s offices and the vehicles taken to the police garage, with orders that no one was to touch them until she arrived. Then she went to her own office and called Harry Crisp.

  “We’ve found Franklin Morris and his wife,” she said.

  “Locally?”

  “Next town up. Both cars and the trailer had been rolled down a boat-launching ramp at a defunct marina. Both bodies were in the van.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “My tech says two each in the head, but the ME hasn’t done his report yet. You want to send somebody up here?”

  Crisp thought for
a moment. “How long have the bodies and the vehicles been in the water?”

  “My tech says since the couple disappeared.”

  “Have you been over the vehicles yet?”

  “No, I wanted to talk to you first.”

  “If they’ve been in the water for that long, we’re unlikely to find anything useful. Why don’t you have your man go over the vehicles, then send me his report, along with the ME’s.”

  “Glad to do it,” Holly said, relieved, as she didn’t want to wait for Harry’s people before starting on the vehicles.

  “Get back to me,” Harry said.

  As she hung up, it occurred to Holly that the FBI wasn’t much interested in the Morrises; they were small potatoes.

  Holly went to see the medical examiner. The two bodies lay side-by-side on stainless-steel tables in the lab, with a sheet over each. On a smaller table nearby, two piles of clothing and possessions lay.

  The ME took a deep breath and started. “Cause of death is easy: two gunshot wounds to the head of each.”

  “How long have they been dead?”

  “Probably since soon after they left their rental house,” he replied. “Before they were shot, their hands were secured behind them with duct tape, and they were pretty badly beaten up; you might say, tortured. Both show evidence of lots of blunt trauma, probably from fists and boots.”

  “Anything else you can tell me?”

  “Not much else to tell,” he said. “You might look through their effects over there.” He nodded toward the small table.

  Holly slipped on some latex gloves and went through the clothing first. The couple had been dressed nearly identically, in jeans, knit shirts and sneakers. One of the woman’s shoes was missing and so was her purse. The man’s wallet was on the table, and Holly emptied it. There was more than a thousand dollars in cash, credit cards in several names, and three driver’s licenses, all with different names, but each bearing the photograph of the man the bank employees had known as Franklin Morris. There was also a Rolex wristwatch and a signet pinky ring, both of which were engraved with the initials S.C.L., which did not match the names on any of the credit cards or licenses. Holly dropped all the effects into a plastic bag and gave the ME a receipt for them.