5 - Choker: Ike Schwartz Mystery 5

by Frederick Ramsay

  ***

  The photographs were, indeed, on the kitchen table when Ike returned to his cottage. The messenger had picked the lock but forgotten to lock up on his way out. He’d have to mention that to Charlie. He didn’t want to rat out the guilty party, but sloppy spycraft could cost someone his life.

  He shuffled through the images, sorting them into piles chronologically. He paused and frowned. Something was not right. Why did Charlie tell him about the picked lock in the first place? If he’d come into the room and found the pictures on the table, he wouldn’t have been surprised. A diversion. Make me think that the messenger lacked finesse and I won’t look elsewhere. He let his eyes scan the room. Ike wasn’t the neatest person in the world, but he knew his own clutter. During his time with the Company, he’d learned to keep track of everything irrespective of its place in the apparent disorder. His messes had fooled more than one counterintelligence agent in the past.

  A chair had been moved. Not much. It sat almost exactly where it had been in the morning. Almost. There were small impressions in the carpet where the legs had been and the chair now sat a few inches over. The bedroom seemed to be undisturbed, but the phone with its layers of sunscreen felt suspiciously clean, as if it had been wiped down. Someone would have to do that to remove the mouthpiece and plant a bug. He turned his attention to the TV. So far he’d only been strolling about the place. If he were being surveilled, his watchers would soon know he’d tumbled to them when he turned the TV around.

  He swung the set on its stand, peered in the back, and saw the small box that converted the set into a sending unit. He did his best imitation of singing; tone deaf did not even begin to describe him, “Ye watchers and ye holy ones… Hey, I’m the good guy here, okay?”

  He draped a beach towel over the set and stuck a half of a banana into its concealed microphone. Then he lifted the air duct cover behind the chair and yanked out a second microphone. The phone bug he sent down the toilet. The phone rang. He screwed the mouthpiece back on and waited.

  “That’s very expensive government issue property you’re manhandling there.” Charlie said.

  “Tough darts. You want me to work your patch, you trust me.”

  “Sorry, Ike. As I told you, the brass upstairs got wind of your…um…unauthorized expense account and ordered the surveillance. I didn’t find out in time. Then I thought, let’s see if he still has the chops. I guess you do. I would have told you in an hour or so if you didn’t.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Now you know why I quit.”

  “I do know why you quit, and I know that wasn’t the reason.”

  “It helped. Now are there any more surprises for me?”

  “In the ceiling fan—little camera. Be careful, it cost a fortune.”

  “You’re lucky I don’t sell all this stuff to the Chinese.”

  “No market. They made all of it in the first place.”

  Ike hung up.

  He hung a pair of jockey shorts on the ceiling fan and turned his attention to the pictures. The blowup of the pier showed a scrap of flotsam that could have been part of a tail. The work boat moored to the pier showed a man on the deck. The comparison shots confirmed that the barge, if that is what it had been, had been replaced by the duck blind. Why a duck blind?

  He spent the next three hours studying the pictures, hoping for a pattern to emerge. He fixed himself a sandwich and a pot of coffee and retired to the porch to think. The ocean turned gray and then black as the sun sank in the west behind him. An offshore breeze picked up sending salty air across the beach. Except for the phone call to Charlie’s niece, death spiral still seemed to be the best answer for Nick’s sudden disappearance. Something, an image of something out of place, tried to push its way up from his subconscious. He waited. His subconscious stayed silent. At ten he shuffled off to bed.

  Chapter 14

  Frank Sutherlin read the ET’s report, turning each page with care. A methodical man, he wanted to be sure he hadn’t missed anything when he visited the site earlier. He had been correct. The stains on the stone table were blood—animal blood. The lab couldn’t be sure what kind or how many different, if any, without further, more sophisticated, tests. He called and told the director not to bother. He didn’t know what the kids were up to. He assumed they were kids, given the sinkhole’s traditional use, but he sure didn’t want to spend any more of his time and the taxpayer’s money just to find out the kids were parceling out raw hamburger to cook on the fires. He shoved the report in a drawer.

  Essie sailed by on her way to the restroom looking triumphant. His brother Billy sauntered in and flopped down in the corner chair.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be on patrol?”

  “Made one loop, thought I’d check in on momma-to-be ’fore I took another. My coffee tank’s a little low, too, and I don’t want to pay some Seven-Eleven guy two bucks for a cup of burned coffee. I got to be saving up.”

  “So you come in here for your burned coffee instead.”

  “Essie made us a fresh pot. You should try some instead of that herbal tea you drink. What do you see in it anyway?”

  “It’s green tea and it’s good for you. It’s got antioxidants that have been shown to reduce the risk of cancer, arthritis, high cholesterol, heart disease, and to pump up your immune system.”

  “Yeah, but will it wake you up in the morning after an ‘all-nighter’?”

  “Get out of here. Essie, make your husband get back on the road before I dock his pay.”

  Essie rounded the corner and gave Billy a smack on the back of his head.

  “You heard the man. We can’t afford no lollygagging around. Baby needs shoes.”

  “You wasn’t so flaming conscientious before.”

  “Yeah, well back then I wasn’t married, pregnant, and looking at real estate neither.”

  “You’re looking at what?”

  “You can’t expect us to be raising children in a trailer park, Billy. First off, there ain’t room enough to swing a cat in that place of mine, as you most surely know. Second, even if there was, there’s the other kids we’re having, and schools and—”

  “Other kids? Whoa up there, Missy. Let’s us just take them one at a time.”

  Frank stood and pointed first toward the door and then to Essie’s desk.

  “You two, you can have this out at home. Billy, git. Essie, sit.”

  The phone rang. Frank picked up before Essie had reached the dispatch desk. Blake Fisher asked for Deputy Sutherlin.

  “You got him.”

  “I guess this will sound like a strange request, but can you tell me more about that sinkhole place?”

  “I can tell you a lot. I had the evidence techs photograph it and map the site. It’s in a report in my desk. You’re welcome to have a look. What’s up?”

  “I’m not sure, but there is something going on at the high school, and since that has been a place where the kids meet, I thought I might get a hint if I looked it over.”

  “I’ll put a copy of the report in an envelope for you. You can pick it up any time.”

  Frank hung up and shook his head. First the college guy with his bones, now the Reverend. Funny he didn’t ask about his silverware.

  ***

  Blake read the report twice. The bloody stone disturbed him. What kind of activity called for blood? And then what about the bones and the dead cat—Esther Peeper’s cat more than likely. The map showed the location of the fires and the stone construction in the center. The lab techs referred to it as a bench. A bloody bench? The distance between the fires had been measured at eighteen feet. Why eighteen? Why not twenty? There seemed to be plenty of room. Why eighteen? A number like twenty seemed more usual unless there was some significance in the number eighteen. Eighteen feet was two hundred and sixteen inches, six and two-thirds yards, about five and a half meters. So what did any of that mean? Frank had paper clipped a sheet of paper to the report with directions to the sinkhole. Blake scanned the report again. Maybe
he should go look at the place. It was nearly three, time to pick up Mary and look at the leaves on the Drive.

  ***

  Mary stepped out of her door just as he pulled up to her house.

  “Do you mind if I make a little side trip before we head for the hills? There’s something I want to check out.”

  “No, of course not. Where’re we going?”

  “There’s a sinkhole out in the park I want to look at.”

  “The Passion Pit?”

  “The what? What did you call it?”

  “Passion Pit. It’s what we called it in high school. It’s where the kids went to…you know.”

  “I can guess. I suppose you know the place well?”

  Mary punched him in the arm. “I went there once. I was a sophomore and the football team’s captain asked me out. I was so flattered I didn’t think why this hunky guy would ask a gawky tenth grader for a date.”

  “I can’t picture you as a gawky anything.”

  “Well, I was. You should see my high school year book. I was a nerd, first class.”

  Blake looked out of the corner of his eye at the beautiful woman beside him and decided she was being modest. No one that gorgeous could ever have been described as a nerd, much less gawky.

  “So what happened?”

  “You don’t want to know. Let’s just say it’s a long, long walk from that park back to where I lived, especially in heels. Why do you want to go to the Pit?”

  “Well initially I just wanted to look at some things that have me worried, but now, well…”

  “Don’t get any funny ideas. I’m not a sophomore anymore.”

  “But I was the captain of my high school football team. I want to show you that all of us hunks are not alike.”

  “Sorry, captain, not today…at least not in the Pit. I can think of better venues for what you have in mind.”

  “Okay. The real reason I want to see it has to do with this.” He handed her the report and filled her in on his conversation at the school. “You remember the kid with the cross, the satanic avatar. Well, Lanny mentioned it to the principal, who called me in and told me, in no uncertain terms, I was to keep my opinions about evil, sin, and everlasting perdition to myself.”

  “He said that?”

  “He thought that. What he said was, and I quote, ‘I know your kind would like us to quiver in our boots at the thought of some old codger in a red union suit carrying a pitchfork taking over our lives, but this is the twentieth century—’”

  “He said twentieth?”

  “He did. And he went on at length about the enlightenment that has visited the country, the state, the county and, most importantly, the school board.”

  “Roger DiComo is an idiot.”

  “You know him?”

  “You could say. We went to school together. You two have something in common.”

  “I doubt it. What could we have in common?”

  “You were both captain of your football team.”

  “Ah. And we both want to take you to the Pit.”

  “I’m wearing my running shoes, so don’t get any ideas.”

  They pulled up in the graveled parking area and walked to the sinkhole. Blake had to steady Mary on the rock crossing at the stream. They stood at the edge. Mary turned to go.

  “This place gives me the creeps. I’ll wait for you in the car.”

  “Bad memories?”

  “No, not that. Looking back on that night, I remember it as funny rather than scary. No, there is something else, something not quite right, about this place. It gives me goose bumps.”

  Blake pointed to the stone construction at the bottom. “Was any of this here when you—”

  “I don’t think so. Is that where they found the blood? It looks like an altar, doesn’t it? A shabby, lopsided altar.”

  “An altar, of course. And the fires don’t form a pentagon…you connect them to make a star—a pentagram. Six and two-thirds yards is six-point-six-six yards.”

  Chapter 15

  Ike rose early and once again savored the salt air blowing in from the ocean. He could get used to that. He spread out his road map and planned the day. Innumerable inlets and creeks would make it impossible to move directly from one point to another. He would have to travel down one road, backtrack and drive down another. The aroma of fresh brewed coffee pulled him back to the moment. He drowned a biscotti in his cup, scarfed it down, and headed for the car. He snatched the jockey shorts from the ceiling fan. He assumed the surveillance system had been shut down, but you never knew, so he gave the camera a quick one-fingered salute on the way out. He expected the equipment would be gone, or perhaps repositioned, when he returned.

  He left the main highway just east of the Bay Bridge and turned south. The local names, Chesapeake, Matapeake, Mattapex, Romancoke—native American names—juxtaposed against neighboring towns with old English names: Wye, Kent, Cambridge, Oxford. A lot of colonial history tangled up in that mix. He passed by the Bay Bridge airstrip. He’d seen it on the aeronautical map but not up close. He tucked the visual away against some possible future use. His marine chart showed a pier of some size at Romancoke. From it he’d have an unobstructed view of Eastern Bay looking north, south, and east. By day’s end, he hoped to be in Claiborne, where he’d have the reverse view of the same shoreline. It would also put him close to that oddly positioned duck blind. He passed another airstrip. He nearly missed it. Only the Day-Glo windsock and a small sign announced its presence. Kentmoor Airpark.

  At Romancoke the road dead-ended at the pier. Ike strolled its length and took in the expanse of Eastern Bay. Charlie had sent him a digital camera with a telescopic lens.

  “It’s the least I can do,” he’d said.

  “You’re just feeling guilty for the snooping your playmates are doing in my cottage. You know, if I get any action, I’ll have to book into a motel.”

  “When have you ever sought or received any ‘action’? You wouldn’t know a hottie if she danced naked in your hot tub.”

  “You’re the one to talk. Besides, I don’t have a hot tub, but thanks for the camera.”

  “Any time. Ike, find out what happened to the kid.”

  “You were fond of him, weren’t you?”

  “My niece needs to know.”

  “I’ll do what I can, Charlie.”

  “If anybody can do it, you can.”

  Charlie wasn’t one for sentimentality or compliments. That was as close as Ike had ever heard him come to either.

  Through the camera’s lens, the shoreline looked lush and green. The myriad inlets and creeks that cut in from the main part of the bay were effectively masked by trees and shrubbery. Unless you looked straight up one, you’d miss it. He swung the camera slowly in an arc snapping pictures. He hoped they would augment the satellite images he’d received from the CIA techs. The last was a long shot to capture the duck blind. He’d take a closer shot of that later.

  He trained the lens at the beach where the tail section washed up. He could make out the workboat at the pier, The J. Millard Tawes. It didn’t seem to have moved. Wouldn’t a boat like that be on the bay fishing, or crabbing, or oystering? September had an R in it. Oysters were in season. He ran off a half-dozen shots with close-ups. A careful scan still revealed no signs of the tail section. He had had only the biscotti for breakfast. His watch said eleven; his stomach said lunch.

  He wanted to have a look at the larger Chesapeake Bay, so he turned in at the second air strip he’d seen. The road led west toward the Chesapeake but then turned abruptly south close to the shore. Ike found himself at a dead end and the Kentmoor Restaurant, which had the view he wanted. Two birds with one stone.

  “Yes, sir, what can I get you to drink?” The waitress looked to be about seventeen. She wore her hair in a ponytail and smelled of soap. His mother would have described her as “perky.” She laid a menu on the table in front of him.

  “Iced tea, thanks.”

  Ike watched h
er “perky” backside as she retreated to the kitchen to fill his drink order and then shifted his gaze to the menu. Seafood mostly, but with the obligatory burger section as well. She returned and placed his tea at his right hand.

  “You have soft-shell crabs today?”

  “Yes, sir, we do.”

  “Are they the really big ones? I can’t remember what they were called…”

  “Whales?”

  “Whales…right. Do you have any of those?”

  “Lord, I haven’t seen any of those in years.” Ike wondered how many years she could possibly have experienced—with or without whales.

  “No?”

  “No, not them and not even any pretty big ones either.”

  “Why not?”

  “Like they’ve cut the crab harvesting way back and most watermen have had to get other jobs or try their luck down in Virginia waters, and that don’t sit too well with them, I can tell you.”

  “New wars like the oyster wars?”

  In the 1880s, Maryland mounted an Oyster Navy to enforce the boundaries between Virginia and Maryland. Shots were exchanged and some deaths recorded as watermen worked the beds hard. The fleet lasted well unto the twentieth century. While it seemed to manage the territorial disputes, it had no effect on the dwindling harvest, and now the bay, which once produced fifteen million bushels of oysters a year, has harvests of a paltry fifty thousand or so. Aquaculture and management techniques had thus far failed, and the famous Chesapeake oysters have been displaced by those shipped in from Louisiana and New England and as far away as Washington State.

  “I don’t know about that, but what with the limits on the harvest and all, the watermen are up in arms. It’s a shame. It seems like the bay is just dying a slow death.”

  “The soft shells on the menu?”

  “We ship them in from someplace. That’s why they’re so expensive.”

  She left to fill his order, and he turned his attention to the view across the bay. To the north, the twin spans of the Bay Bridge arced gracefully to Anne Arundel County. To the south, a half-dozen container ships rode at anchor waiting for a bay pilot to take them into Baltimore harbor. From the ground, they seemed enormous. The images on his satellite pictures made them seem Lilliputian. But from twenty-two miles up, he guessed they would.