Choker
Choker
Frederick Ramsay
www.frederickramsay.com
Poisoned Pen Press
Copyright © 2009 by Frederick Ramsay
First Edition 2009
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008937737
ISBN: 978-1-59058-635-8 Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-61595-163-5 eBook
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
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Dedication
To Pastor Gary Hess:
You asked for it, you got it.
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Epilogue
Agnes’ Asparagus Roll-ups
More from this Author
Contact Us
Acknowledgments
Once again, my thanks to all the folks at Poisoned Pen Press, Robert, Jessica, Marilyn, Nan, Geetha, and, of course, Barbara, our demon editor, who makes us all look better than we really are. Thanks, also, to Glenda Sibley for her diligence in text editing, and to my wife Susan for her endless patience and support in this giddy business. Finally, a nod to the gang at Toshi’s Roast for their encouragement and friendship.
A caveat: I am not a pilot. I do not fly except in the economy section of large, anonymous, commercial aircraft. The few allusions in the book relating to flying and the death spiral were gleaned from articles and vetted by real pilots who affirm the descriptions are accurate—or close enough. My acquaintance with the occult, satanic practices and their dark ancillary preoccupations was gleaned from some limited experience in my previous life as a clergyman and from generally available information. I did consult secondary sources, had conversations with retired police officers on the subject, and am persuaded that the problems they present are real. I believe it is always a mistake to trivialize dangerous behavior simply because the odds may be against a bad consequence or, worse, because it is considered gauche to do so.
The terrorist program described is the figment of my overactive imagination, a necessary part of any novelist’s equipment. I have been assured, however, by Col. Max Newman and people who regularly deal in these matters that the plot hatched here is frighteningly plausible.
Finally, slavishly following the latest fad in mystery story writing, I append a recipe: Agnes’ Asparagus Roll-ups. Enjoy!
Chapter 1
The ancient freighter inched closer to the shore. Its depth finder beeped softly as the bottom rose rapidly toward its keel, with a nearly empty hold, twenty feet below. Any false move on the helmsman’s part would put them on the mud. That could spell disaster for all of them. An inquiry by the Coast Guard would not go well. People would have to die.
A gentle breeze blew in from the east, from the shore. He imagined he could smell honeysuckle over the stench of diesel oil, rusted steel decking, and sweat. He mopped his brow with a dirty sleeve and peered into the gloom. He could just make out the red flashing laser. When it stopped flashing and showed as a steady glow, he would have to stop the ship’s forward progress immediately—no mean feat for a rusted out World War II-era freighter with an iffy boiler, slack steering, and a displacement of nearly sixteen thousand tons.
He rang all stop, then reverse, and the ship churned to a halt. The anchor, heavily greased and muffled with sacking, bumped through the hawse and dropped with a splash. The steam ship Saifullah, its name painted in white on its stern and prow in both Arabic, and English, heaved to, bow into the current, and thumped against a barge moored some fifty yards from shore. Except for the binnacle’s glow, no lights showed—no running lights, all of its portholes painted over—nothing.
When the ship settled, a second anchor was let go aft. He peered off to the starboard. A series of intermittent flashes, this time green and difficult to see, were directed toward him. He murmured into the microphone attached to his headset. The forward anchor chain was allowed to play out. The one aft hauled in. The ship shifted toward the stern.
He signaled for the crew to complete unfastening the hold’s hatches and to swing the ship’s crane amidships. They would need lights now. The fog that allowed them to move in earlier had started to lift. They would have to work quickly.
***
Nick Reynolds had too few hours to fly at night with any degree of competence. That’s what his instructor had said. Nick conceded he might be right at some level, but he, like many thirty-somethings, had become a risk discounter. Six years in the Navy, four in nuclear submarines, made him confident, perhaps too confident. Flying an airplane provided fewer degrees of freedom for mistakes than say, sailing a boat, a skill he also possessed. He’d brushed off attempts to dissuade him from night flying.
“I can do it, no worries. I have my IFR rating, I’ll be fine.” He smiled at his instructor and finished his preflight walk-around. He handed in his flight plan and took off, serene in the knowledge that if he followed the channel buoys to a point two miles south of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, then swung southeastward, he’d raise Cambridge. From there he would have an easy final leg to Salisbury.
Nick’s bravado faded when, minutes into his flight, he ran into thick fog. Had the weather report mentioned it? If so, he’d missed it. A moonless but clear night did not intimidate him, but flying blind in fog under those same conditions brought him to near panic.
He called the tower at BWI, Baltimore-Washington International, and felt better when they described the fog bank as only a few miles across. They also reported he’d drifted a few miles from his course. He’d need to correct it. He tried to remember what he should do in fog; rely on his instruments, climb, or descend? Climb seemed the most logical but he had an assigned altitude and climbing might put him in the path of a commercial jet on its approach to Baltimore-Washington International Airport. He deci
ded to drop down to five hundred feet, skim the water at that relatively safe altitude, and see if he couldn’t spot some lights from shore or ships out in the channel.
Moments later, he broke out of the fog bank. There wasn’t much to see. To the east and west he saw the flashes of bright lights and the spreading star shells from a half dozen firework displays. The headset and engine noise kept him from hearing them, but he could imagine the thumps from the explosions. Happy Fourth of July. In front of him and a little to the southwest he could just make out the dim outlines of a ship. He should be over Eastern Bay, he thought, south of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and not near the channel at all. As he drew closer he saw the ship had a loading crane positioned on its starboard side and in the process of offloading or retrieving something from a barge. What looked like a buoy dangled from the crane’s cable.
Funny, that. The Coast Guard usually handled buoys. And as far as he knew no ships’ channel came this far into Eastern Bay. The ship below him did not have the classic white hull and bright red-orange marker stripe of a Coast Guard vessel. It looked more like a tramp steamer from an old movie, barely showing either running or marker lights. And what would anyone be doing on the Fourth of July, in the middle of the night, and so close to shore? Not positioning a buoy, certainly.
He put his right wing over and started a lazy turn around the ship. The fog bank still lingered over most of the bay behind him. Nearby, a fireworks display had started, pop…hiss…flash…boom, pop…hiss…flash…boom—the last very close. Where would that have come from? When he had completed a little more than half of his turn he recognized the object suspended in the air beside the ship’s hull. He scrabbled for his cell phone, aimed the phone’s camera lens toward the ship and pressed the “capture” button repeatedly. He opened the phone and speed-dialed. One ring, two.
“Come on, come on .”
“Hi, this is Lizzy. I can’t come to the phone right now…”
“Lizzy, pick up…pick up.”
“…but if you leave a message…”
“Lizzy, pick up.”
“Beep.”
“Lizzy, call your uncle Charlie. Tell him that there is something really bad going on…” From the corner of his eye, Nick saw the orange trail of yet another rocket arc up and toward him. A very big rocket. Too big for the Fourth of July. The plane lurched. He dropped the phone. It slid under the pedals at his feet.
***
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
“I heard an explosion.”
A brief flash of light flickered through the port hole, just enough to light the tiny V-berth. A thump followed a second or two later. He rolled toward the girl, and the thirty-two foot Jeanneau sail boat rocked to port.
“Like that one?” he said.
“Yes, only louder, and then there was all this splashing outside.”
“Splashing?” More flashes and thumps followed the first one. “It’s the Fourth of July, Deedee. There’ll be explosions all night somewhere. The splashes were probably caused by a school of fish breaking the surface.”
“Hell of a big school, then. It sounded more like people doing cannon balls off a high board—louder even.”
“If a school of big fish, rock fish say, were after a bunch of smaller ones and they all broke at the same time—”
“You think?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I’m going on deck to see the fireworks. That’s why we sailed over here in the first place, isn’t it? If it hadn’t been for the fog…If we can see the flashes it must have lifted or something.”
“Stay here, I’ll show you some fireworks.”
She laughed and stood up on the berth. The forward hatch was open so her head and shoulders cleared the deck line.
“Wow, you should see this, Ralphie.”
She climbed on deck and he felt the boat rock as she made her way to the cockpit. He grabbed a torch, wrapped a towel around his waist, and climbed up after her. The fog had lifted. The flotilla he’d planned to join in the bay had disappeared hours ago when the fog bank rolled in. Watching fireworks from boats rafted up in Eastern Bay had become a local tradition, but fog had ended this year’s gathering. They were alone.
“Look at that,” she said and pointed westward in the general direction of Gibson Island. Flash…pop…thump. “Hey, let’s skinny dip.”
“No, not in the dark.” He noticed for the first time that his marker lights were out. He’d forgotten to run the generator and the battery must have died. He hoped there’d be wind tomorrow. There was no way he’d get the little diesel started if both the cabin and engine batteries were dead. “The tide is running out. If you go over the side you could be caught in it and with no light—”
“Don’t be such a wuss. Turn on the torch thing and we can home in on it.” With that she dove into the inky black water and disappeared. He swung the light around looking for her. No sign. The light arced back and forth as he looked for her head to break above water.
“Deedee,” he called, “where are you?” His heart began to race. Then he heard her laugh. She’d swum under the boat and surfaced on the other side. Idiot! With a four and a half foot draft under the keel and in the dark…
“Come on in, you big sissy,” she shouted and stroked away into the night.
He dropped his towel and positioned the light so he could see it from the water. He’d lowered the swim ladder and started down when she screamed.
“What?”
“Ugh, I think something touched me,” she said and swam back to the boat. “I’m done here. Yuck.”
He pulled her aboard. He could feel the goose bumps on her body. She took a towel from the boom and dried off.
“Rockets red glare in the forward bunk,” he said and she giggled. He doused the flash. In the dark he scanned the horizon. A hundred yards out he thought he saw the outlines of a small freighter. He frowned and then shrugged.
Their lovemaking caused the boat to rock gently, bow to stern. They were too absorbed in it to hear the gentle thump as a Zodiac came along side, or to hear the muffled footsteps aft. Only the flash of light in their eyes told them they were not alone, but by then it was too late.
Chapter 2
A brisk wind blew out of the east and across the deserted beach. Late September in Dewey Beach meant few people, except for the weekenders down from Washington or Baltimore to winterize their properties before the big nor’easters blew down the coast, tossing beach equipment and sand against the sea walls and jetties. The chilly early morning air smelled clean and salty. Months before it carried the cloyingly sweet smell of coconut-scented sun block and the voices of hundreds of people trying to squeeze one more day, one more hour, of vacation from the time allotted them. Ike Schwartz placed his coffee cup on the deck railing, propped his feet up next to it, and watched, fascinated, as the sun struggled to clear the horizon.
Sunsets he knew. Sunrises were a relative rarity for him. In the Shenandoah Valley, sunrises were screened by the mountains to the east. The sun didn’t make a sudden appearance as it did at the beach. It seemed to just materialize and then the day began. But this…this was spectacular. The sky reddened, turned orange, and golden light bathed everything. Looking at it one could believe that every day arrived clean and innocent in that brilliant bath. Clouds trailing southward glowed pink and orange against a lavender sky, and then, pop, “Here comes the sun, here comes the sun…” I should do this more often, he thought. His only regret? No Ruth.
“A month’s vacation is what you need,” Ruth had said. “When was the last time you just kicked back?”
“I had that long weekend with you in Toronto.”
“That doesn’t count.”
It didn’t. They had spent the days talking about where they were headed. How could they blend two widely divergent careers and still make a go of it? She had a college to run, she’d said. President of Callend College, now Callend University, or not, she had to p
itch in with the rest of the faculty. Next year would be a “make or break.”
“You will not always be the president of Callend,” he’d said.
“And what about you? Will you always be the sheriff of Picketsville? We have a way to go, Ike. We should take time out,” she’d said. “We are not in a place or at a time when either of us can commit to anything permanent.” Her voice had nearly cracked then. He’d let it pass.
He watched as the sun continued its ascent. The gold light faded to pale ginger ale and then flat daylight. He wished he’d persuaded his father to come to the beach with him. But Abe Schwartz’s ebullient and garrulous nature seemed to have died with his wife in December. Theirs had been a storybook love affair, and with her no longer a part of his daily equation, Abe looked old and worn. Nothing Ike could say would convince his father to accept his help.
“You go on down there, Ike,” he’d said. “I’ll be all right. I just need to say goodbye to your Momma my own way.”
He’d been saying goodbye for nearly ten months.
So, Ike, who had not had a vacation in years, rented a cottage off-season at Dewey Beach, Delaware, and now sat contemplating the stretch of deserted sand and the Atlantic Ocean beyond. Somewhere across the horizon he imagined an Irish fisherman might be staring back at him.
He missed his routine, missed his friends, and missed Ruth. She had said, barely glancing up from piles of paper on her desk, “Maybe a weekend, Ike. I’ll try for a weekend. No, I can’t say which. Send me your address after you settle in, and if I can, I’ll surprise you. I’ve got your cell number.”
Grains of sand danced across the porch decking, urged along by the steady breeze and collected in miniature dunes beside his empty boots. He shivered and folded his arms across his chest. His coffee started to cool, and he still needed to make a decision about breakfast. Breakfast was his favorite meal, but he had never acquired the skills to make a decent one. He could fry eggs and bacon; who couldn’t? And making coffee only meant measuring the correct amount of grounds and water in the basket and pot, respectively. After that things became more complex. He tried to make those crispy diner hash browns and ended with greasy mashed potatoes. And you can forget fried tomatoes. His grits were invariably lumpy and had the consistency of Portland cement so, back home in Picketsville, he ate breakfast at the Crossroads Diner, where regulars gathered to be fed and abused by its proprietor.
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