Emerald Moon

by Rick Murcer

  “Do you remember calling her a bitch and saying she’s not going to use anyone for target practice again?”

  “No, not really. I remember saying something, then I went blank.” Josh rubbed his eyes and stared at his hands. “The real question here is do you think she was going to lay her weapon down and surrender?”

  Josh searched Manny’s face with the same unabridged honesty and steadiness that was the agent’s trademark. Still, there was a subtle request for absolution in his words. Manny gave it to him.

  “No. No way in hell. She might’ve tried to get us to think that way so we’d let down our guard, but her profile said no. I mean, damn, she was talking to herself. She’d gone way too far to think rationally.”

  “I agree with that. She wasn’t going to trust the system,” said Chloe.

  “Not to mention everyone heard her talk about the death penalty in Florida,” said Sophie.

  Josh sighed. “I agree with your assessments, but the fact is I’m going to have to go through the investigation.”

  “Yeah, but we’ve got your back,” said Manny.

  “Good thing.”

  At that juncture, Manny noticed Alex walking toward them carrying a small, red suitcase—and in a hurry. When he reached them, he was breathing hard, his hands on his knees. “I know . . . know . . . I ke . . . keep saying this . . . but . . . I got to get . . . in shape.”

  “Should we get you a personal trainer? He’d earn his keep getting your chunky butt toned,” teased Sophie.

  Alex gave her a pissy look and turned to Manny and Josh, flopping the case to the asphalt. “Anyway, you need to see what’s in this.”

  Josh’s cell phone rang. He glanced at the screen and frowned. “I’ll be right back, I have to take this.”

  Manny nodded, and Alex unzipped the bag and pulled out the first item, dangling the polyethylene evidence bag in the air.

  “What the hell is that?” asked Sophie.

  “It’s the branding iron these sickos used to burn the ouroboros into the hit victims. We scrapped some DNA from it but probably won’t get much because of the cross contamination of all of the burnt skin. It can’t hurt to try.”

  “What’s the point?” asked Chloe. “They’re both dead, and we know who the victims were.”

  Manny ran his hand through his hair. “Unless there are other victims we don’t know about. That might even make some sense. But I think Alex and Max are right, that’ll be a tough test to keep clean.”

  Sophie squeezed Manny’s arm. “That’s why you make all that money, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah, we do this for the money,” he said.

  Alex brought out two other evidence bags. “These are the two knives used in the Richardson killing, we think. There’s also a couple of guns with the barrels freshly bored, so ballistics will be tough, but we did find some ammo that could be matched up to the spent slugs in the other cases.”

  He turned Chloe’s way. “You’re right, this case is closed, but if we can use this info to add to ViCAP and CODIS, we might be able to help solve some cold cases. Ya never know, darlin’,” he said in his best Irish accent.

  She laughed. “You sound like the leprechaun from one of those cereal commercials. It also means you guys also get to play with your high-priced toys longer, right?”

  “There’s that too,” agreed Alex.

  Josh came back to the group just as Max strolled up.

  “I guess we’ve beat around this bush too long, so I’ll ask the million dollar question. Did you find anything that could lead us to whoever hired them and why?” asked Manny.

  Alex rubbed the back of his neck. “No. There were no journals, victim lists, bank account numbers, or anything else that we could find. We did see where she had a small fire in the main bathroom sink, then apparently dumped the ashes in the toilet. Whatever that was is gone. We went through everything else several times, and there’s nothing. We even pulled out drawers and checked for things taped to the bottom.”

  “And Miami PD found nothing at the house either,” said Max.

  “Yeah, not unusual for hit killers to have everything memorized, so not too surprising,” added Chloe.

  “Well, that’s it then,” said Sophie. “Anyone ready for a drink and a late dinner? Oh, and I’ll sit by Josh, to make sure he has someone to lean on if he gets queasy.”

  “You are an amazingly selfless woman,” said Manny.

  “Took you long enough to notice.”

  “Well, I’m not quite ready to pack it in just yet,” said Max.

  Manny glanced at Max, who was wearing a gotcha grin. His heart rate jumped.

  “What?”

  The thin CSI reached into his pocket and brought out yet another evidence bag. Inside was an old-style flip phone. “I found this under the bed. It has a couple of inbound calls that are less than three hours old.”

  “From where?” asked Manny.

  Max shifted his feet. “One seems to be international, but the other is local.”

  Chapter-36

  “It’s done. She’s dead. One less loose end. It didn’t go the way we planned, but almost.”

  The silence on the other end always presented itself as a riddle. The man on the other end was accustomed to having things go his way. How well he knew that.

  He released a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

  “That doesn’t make me happy, but at least it’s done. What went wrong?” the man asked.

  “Let’s just say someone got trigger happy, but it may work to our advantage. They’ll be focusing more on the shooting than anything else.”

  “That is true, but she didn’t complete her final assignment,” grated the voice on the other end.

  He shivered. Not only at the words, but at the man’s demeanor. It had horrible connotations, even this far away. “Shit. I didn’t know she had another one,” he whispered.

  “It’s not something we broadcasted on the six o’clock news, but I had a contingency if she was caught or screwed up.”

  His tension escalated. “What contingency?”

  “All in due time, all in due time. We can go forward because Special Agent Franson will be flying to Ireland tomorrow, and by the next day, the rest of the plan will be in motion. Then we’ll talk about contingencies, got it?”

  He frowned and felt even more unsettled. “What do you mean ‘the rest of the plan’?”

  The voice on the other end grew more impatient. “Try to keep up. When I throw out the bait, they’ll have no choice but to come here. They’ll try the normal things to have me arrested. Local authorities, National Gardaí, Interpol, whatever else they think could work, but Williams and his cast of morons will know I’ll have anticipated those kinds of moves and that I’ll be ahead of them. They just won’t know where or how, as usual.”

  “I didn’t know, well, that you were going to step out so boldly.”

  The laughter on the other end of the phone caused him to jerk it from his ear. Finally, it ceased. “Boldly? You’re right. But that’s what it takes to get them to pursue Dr. Fredrick Argyle to the Emerald Isle, and I’ll be waiting.”

  The phone went dead. He briefly wondered what he’d gotten himself into. Then the voices of all of his previous life disappointments began to sing to him, like they had for the last six months, and he quickly sent his doubt packing. It was his time, and soon everyone would know.

  Chapter-37

  Josephine Charles knocked on the large, mahogany door and waited. She wasn’t totally sure of the hours some of her new clients worked, but many had a bugger of a professional schedule. Good for her. These types didn’t have time to clean their own homes, so she was able to put some bread and beans on the table.

  She shifted her weight and placed the bright-yellow bucket, overflowing with cleaning supplies, on the stoop. As she did, she trapped her image in the reflection off the small, rectangular window on the door. Her long, auburn hair was a little disorganized, and she wore no makeup, but her hig
h cheekbones and dark-brown eyes made her presentable, she thought, for a thirty-something looking for love. Maybe even to Paddie Harris’s partner, Detective Steve Shannon. She’d met him last week, and he was a good man—rare these days—and she wanted a good man. Nice body too. Not exactly a proper Catholic-girl notion, but she wasn’t dead for crying out loud.

  She thought the whole “love forever” thing had been handled seven years ago when she’d married Ian Berry, but like most things in her life, that fell apart after two years.

  “Bloody wanker,” she breathed. “Couldn’t keep his pants zipped . . . and with my sister, no less.” The heat began to crawl up her neck like a slow-moving lava flow, but Josephine closed her eyes and fought it. Her therapist said she had to forget the past and move on. God knew she was trying, but even after all this time, she felt betrayed.

  They can both póg mo thóin.

  But then again, she supposed they were too busy kissing each other’s arses to worry about hers.

  “Enough! I’m going to make myself bonkers,” she said, then covered her mouth, glancing to both her left and right. She’d spoken too loudly and hoped no one heard, but it’s not like she was in the middle of a crowded pub.

  Straightening her uniform, she knocked again, only harder. No answer. Maybe he and the missus had already left for work. Then she heard the scratching at the door, faint at first, then louder. The Harris’s had a Shih Tzu, Buster. Maybe he had to pee, but the dog worked the pet door well, so that couldn’t be. She felt the uneasiness breathing on her neck.

  She pulled her key ring from her green vest pocket, selected the proper key, and pushed the creaking door open about half a meter. Buster exploded through the opening, a small white-and-black streak blurring around the corner of the Harris’s house, heading for the small stand of trees that backed up against the rear of their home.

  “Buster, come back here!”

  The dog had always been a little frisky, but well-behaved. This, however, didn’t seem to be about being well-behaved. She could almost sense panic in the dog’s actions.

  Her anxiety level rose as she glanced back inside the door and noticed Harris’s worn umbrella in the foyer. He never went anywhere without that ratty, old umbrella—ever.

  Feeling like she had no choice, Josephine hurried around the corner to where Buster had disappeared and found him some twenty-five meters away, looking at something half-hidden from her view. Buster suddenly sat down, raised his face to the sky, and howled one of those forlorn, bone-chilling bays that only a dog in mourning could conjure.

  The hair rose on the back of Josephine’s neck as her blood ran somewhere near Arctic, but after a brief hesitation, she ran after the stricken dog.

  As she reached the edge of the tree line, she slowed, then stopped. The usually fresh air of Galway was alive with a scent she’d only experienced one other time in her life. That was when her uncle had died in his easy chair and hadn’t been found for twelve hours. She would never forget that smell. No one could.

  She desperately wanted to back away and call the police rather than take a look on the other side of the shrub that Buster guarded. In fact, she backed away and was about to do that very thing, but the dog let loose another pitiful howl that caused her to stop and cover her ears. The animal seemed to see inside her heart and was asking for help in a way she’d never dreamed possible.

  Taking in a deep breath of courage, she turned back to the dog. “I’m here, Buster, I’m coming,” she whispered.

  Moving slowly, she kept her eyes away from the south side of the bush. Finally, Josephine could stand it no longer and swerved her eyes to the ground in front of Buster.

  Her flight reflex slammed into full-force, but she held fast because unabridged fear said she must. Her Mum told her once that some things slide off you like you were made of Teflon, other things stuck to you, your soul, like the color of your skin. She knew in an instant that this image would be the sticking kind.

  Detective Harris lay spread eagle on a bed of dirt and leaves. His T-shirt revealed a dark maroon stain at the right side of his slim chest. Her eyes moved to his left side, where a gaping hole taunted her. White, frayed ribs protruded where his heart should have been, but then again, she knew it was missing—it lay between his pajama-covered legs.

  Josephine glanced to his face and the staring eyes were bad enough, but the Celtic ouroboros burned into his forehead finished her trip to revulsion. A moment later, she found Harris’s wife. She lay two meters to his left, in an identical position, the ouroboros welded into her forehead as well. There was one exception in her circumstance: half of her heart was missing.

  Instead of breaking down in a fit of insanity, (and who would have blamed her) she dropped to her knees and began to sob wildly. She cried for the detective and his wife, she cried for Buster, and most certainly, she cried for herself. But she realized, sometime afterwards, she’d been weeping for the whole human race. The comprehension that mankind was eventually doomed crawled through her mind and hung tight. The Harrises had been torn apart by another human. Any race that birthed a psychopath capable of that kind of butchery could hardly call itself civilized. Not in a million years.

  Chapter-38

  Haley Rose gripped his hand and ushered him to the cast iron bench near Dunguaire Castle’s old, worn, but robust exterior stone wall. The Irish flag flapped in the breezy morning atop the seventy-five-foot, steepled tower rising high above the rustic link to Ireland’s long past. But Irish history wasn’t on Argyle’s mind. He watched her every move as she pulled him to the bench, giggling like a school girl. In all of his life, he’d never met a woman like this. She actually wanted to be around him, and to add icing to the cake, she was totally oblivious to the fear that would reduce her world to a living nightmare in less than twenty-four hours. Again, that thought caused him pause, and again, he pushed his momentary appreciation aside. She was nothing more than a pawn in the elaborate and final game between him and Manny Williams. Haley Rose would serve his purpose nicely. He smiled. Soon, very soon.

  “What was that smile for?” she cooed.

  “Why Ms. Franson, can you not guess?”

  She moved closer and whispered in his ear. “Did it have anything to do with a hot Irish cougar straightening ya out?”

  The scent of her hair was pleasant, and the playful tone of her voice was genuine.

  “And straighten me out, you did. You have an amazing talent for that.”

  “Oh and there’s plenty more where that came from . . . twenty years or so worth of neglect, if I recall.”

  “I’ll look forward to the next . . . session.” Part of him actually did.

  She stood and walked to the front gate of the castle, motioning for him to follow.

  “Do ya know the folk stories told about what will happen by standing in front of the castle’s gate?”

  Of course he did, that’s why he was who he was, but he’d let her tell him anyway. No reason to weaken the facade.

  “I’m afraid I don’t. You’ll have to enlighten me.”

  “Enlighten ya, I will. It seems that the previous lord was generous and a good man, he was. So much so, that after his death and having gone to the other side, he continues to show his generosity.”

  “And how, pray tell, does he do that?”

  “Well now, it seems if one moseys up to the front gate and asks a question, they’ll get the answer before the day is over.”

  “Interesting. Does it work?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never tried it, but I can’t think of a better time to give it a whirl.”

  He watched her move closer and whisper to the reinforced steel gate, then come back to him.

  “There. We’ll know tonight if the old lord makes good on his word or not.”

  “And what was your question?”

  “Oh, I’ll not tell . . . unless, of course, you can figure out a way to get it out of me,” she said, eyes twinkling.

  “I think that could be
arranged. I have my ways.”

  “Aye. That you do.” This time she laughed out loud.

  She’d see more of his ways soon enough.

  A moment later, a young couple emerged from the south side of the castle and walked within a few feet of him and Haley Rose. He reached out his long arm, and they abruptly stopped, both blinking in surprise.

  “I’m sorry to be so bold, but would you be so kind to snap a couple of pictures of us with the castle as the background? We would be grateful.” He flashed them that almost-irresistible smile, the one used to fool the world.

  “Of course,” said the young woman. Five minutes later, there were several pictures of Haley Rose and him on his digital camera.

  As they walked side-by-side into the castle’s courtyard, Haley Rose gripped his hand.

  “Now what are ya going to do with those pictures? Post them on the Internet to one of those face space or whatever they are websites? Because I wasn’t looking my best and—”

  Argyle put his finger on her pouty lips. “You look wonderful, and yes, something like that.”

  Chapter-39

  “Shit. I thought we might have had something,” moaned Alex. “Neither one of these calls will help much. Tracing international calls can be done from location to location with the right phone, but this one had the GPS disabled, making it impossible to triangulate.”

  Manny looked at the five cops—five friends—standing in a semicircle around the front of the Feds’ black SUV and was reminded for the third time in three cases how tired they all were. They could have gone back to the hotel and waited until morning while the FBI’s research division gathered what they could on the phone numbers, but they’d opted to wait.

  Good cops were rare; good people that were good cops were even harder to find.

  Before he’d made the decision to wait it out, he’d called Jen. She was enjoying Destina’s company, and apparently, the rest of the security folks from Carousel had decided to unofficially adopt his seventeen-year-old daughter, spoiling the hell out of her. Good. She deserved a little spoiling. She reminded him not to stay out too late because they had a cruise to do, together. Just like her mom.