by Dale Mayer
“Yes.”
The cops stepped inside.
“You’ll need something to cover your feet if you’re walking through here,” he warned them. Colton held out an arm, and she ducked under it to take a better look and gasped. He looked at her, nodded and said, “Please, just go sit back down.”
She complied. The whole floor was covered in blood. She figured they’d found the man they were looking for, or his wife, she wasn’t sure.
When they finally stepped back outside, she looked up at him. “Was it Andy or Andy’s wife?”
“It was Andy,” he said, “and he was shot in the head.”
“Ouch,” she said. “That was a lot of blood.”
“Yes, it wasn’t a very good shot. He didn’t die immediately.”
“That’s even more awful,” she said, gasping.
“It is,” he said sadly.
“Are we connecting this to the base?”
“It’s definitely something we have to look at.”
“What about his wife?”
“According to his cell phone, his wife was visiting her mother on the other side of town.”
“Interesting,” she said, “so she hasn’t been home yet.”
“No,” he said. “We’ll go there next.”
“No,” the officer said behind him. “This is our case, and we’ll take it from here.”
*
Colton nodded. They had crossed into a different jurisdiction here, but, as soon as he had a chance, he’d contact the base and see what the commander wanted to do. As they stepped down to the sidewalk, he already had his phone in hand. When the commander answered, he explained the problem.
“Shit,” he said. “I’ll contact the police chief.” And he hung up on him.
“Well, he’s efficient,” Colton said to Troy. “But not so good with explanations. He didn’t say if he wants us to stay and work this or if it would just revert to a police investigation.”
“I suggest that, before we run out of time,” Troy said, “at least one of us heads off to the last three names.”
“Let’s stick together,” Colton said. “And then we’ll hear what the commander has to say.” With that, they quickly and efficiently went through the last few names. But no surprises were had, and, of course, nothing but more alibis came. As they returned to the house with Andy’s dead body inside, they saw a forensic van and more cops. Just as they approached, Colton’s phone rang.
“You can go to the hospital now to visit George,” the commander said, his voice sounding tired. “The police chief has taken over the investigation, but he’ll keep us in the loop.”
“Good enough,” Colton said, “I would like to know if the wife has been found alive and safe.”
“That I can confirm,” he said. “Did you get a look at the bullet wound?”
“Yes,” Colton said. “And, yes, it could easily have been army-issued.”
“Of course.” And the commander hung up on him.
On that note they headed toward the hospital. Colton pulled up his GPS and said, “It’s about a mile to walk there.” He looked over at Kate. “Are you up to walking, or do you want me to call for a ride?”
She shook her head. “A walk would be good. Something to shake off some of that heavy emotion.”
“I get it,” he said. “Let’s go.”
He exchanged hard glances with Troy. All this did was bring up more questions. What they needed to do was find a link back to either George or Kate. As they walked toward the hospital, they compared notes. “Absolutely nothing is here,” Troy said in frustration.
“It could be a website or something, like a murder for hire?”
Both men turned to look at her. She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe the best answers will come from George himself.”
“Maybe.” Colton had his doubts though. Too much was going on that they didn’t know about. He knew the answer would be simple, and they just had to dig deep enough to find it.
“Did you guys get into George’s emails?”
“Coronado is checking that,” Colton said. “So far I haven’t had any answers.”
“Poke Mason again,” Troy said.
Colton nodded and pulled out his phone and sent a text.
“What did we ever do without a cell phone?” Kate said, watching him.
He smiled and said, “I’m sorry that we don’t have one for you.”
“I presume the commander gave you one?”
He nodded. “It’s a burner phone.”
She nodded. “I hope somebody told my family that I’m alive and well.”
“I believe Mason took care of that,” he said. “He contacted your girlfriend anyway. She would have done the rest, I presume.”
Kate nodded. “Not that they would have known there was a problem. I doubt the plane crash even made headlines.”
“Do you ever look at the manifest or check over the cargo?”
“No, only if there’s a problem,” she said. “The manifest is checked over by the ground crew, then loaded and secured, and we just fly it from point A to point B.”
“You don’t get to know what’s in it?”
“Don’t get to know, don’t get to argue, don’t get to refuse,” she said.
“Right, so military.”
She laughed at that. “Isn’t it always?”
“Minions are supposed to do as told, to not question, ours is not to know the reason why,” Colton misquoted badly.
She nodded. “Are you really thinking maybe it was supposed to go somewhere else?”
“Maybe. And when George passed the point where they realized he wasn’t following the new route, they blew it up. It’s a theory.” Colton shrugged. He wasn’t sure it was the right one, but this was a process that wouldn’t end until they found the proof to take them in the right direction.
“Well, somebody needs to get out there and start diving for that then.”
“If we get proof that’s what was going on, they will,” he said. “But, until that point, it’s an expensive recovery operation to avoid if at all possible.”
She nodded and didn’t say anything.
Up ahead Colton saw the large hospital. “Still a few blocks, but that looks like it up there.” And he pointed.
She nodded. “Sounds good,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself. “There’s a definite chill to the air.”
“I’ll go past saying there’s a chill to saying there’s a real bite.”
She glanced around. “Doesn’t it feel like we’re being watched?”
“I imagine everybody in town is watching,” he said. “We’re strangers, and now they’ve heard about the murder.”
“Surely not,” she asked, horrified.
“Oh, I’m pretty certain their great friends are well and truly on to this one by now. Andy’s neighbor was mighty interested.”
“True,” she said sadly. “Everybody likes a good story, don’t they?”
“Wonder if Andy had anything to say?” Troy asked.
“We’ll never know now,” Colton replied.
She nodded.
Finally they came to the hospital. Colton opened the front door, and they all walked in. At the reception the woman looked at him, smiled, nodded in recognition and said, “Last I heard he was awake.”
They nodded, and Kate asked, “Do you know an Andy? Used to be at the base?”
She nodded. “I heard about something happening at his house.” She lowered her voice. “Is it true he’s dead?’
Kate nodded and whispered, “Do you have any idea who might want to kill him?”
She shook her head. “No. He hung around with a rough crowd some of the time. You know what I mean? A little bit of recreational drugs and stuff, but I don’t think it was anything major.”
“Any idea who we could ask to find out more?”
The receptionist looked down the hallway both ways, then grabbed a little scratchpad and wrote down a number. She slipped it over. “Don’t tell him where you go
t it.”
“I won’t,” Kate said with a beaming smile and turned to join the men.
“That was smooth,” Troy congratulated her.
She handed over the number. “Figured we might as well figure out what kind of a person Andy was.”
“True.” As they walked forward, Colton dialed the number. When a voice answered at the other end, he said, “Hi, I’m a friend of Andy’s.”
“What about it? Are you looking to score too?”
“Maybe,” Colton said. “I just don’t know the town very well. I wouldn’t know where to meet up.”
“Where are you now?”
“Just around the hospital.”
“Meet you out in the parking lot in five.” Then he hung up.
“Shit,” Colton said. “This guy wants to meet in five out in the parking lot.” He glanced at her and then over at Troy.
“Take Troy,” Kate said. “There’s one dead guy already. I’ll go sit with George.”
From where Colton stood, he could see George sitting up in bed with a cup of tea. He nodded. “Don’t leave this room.”
She smiled. “Go before you miss your appointment.” She walked in toward George and smiled at him. The two men turned and headed for the elevator.
Chapter 12
As Kate walked in, she smiled at George, who looked so much better than when she’d seen him last. “There’s a sight for sore eyes.”
George’s beaming smile flashed. “Didn’t think I would pull through. Looks like I’ll keep most of my fingers too.” He held up his hands. Two fingers were bandaged and looking pretty rough, but the others were fine.
“Toes?”
“I’ll lose most of them,” George admitted. “But I’m alive, thanks to you guys.”
“It was pretty touch-and-go,” she said with a smile. “Honestly I wasn’t sure I would make it either.”
“That ocean,” he said. “Man, was it ever cold.”
“A full-scale investigation is going on into what happened.”
George rolled his eyes at that. “Good luck.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, nothing.” But something cagey was in his voice.
“Will their investigation do no good?”
“No idea.” But his gaze slid to the windows.
“Did you have anything to do with it?” Kate asked quietly.
He turned and looked at her, startled. “What do you mean?”
“I’m asking if you were trying to commit suicide.”
His eyebrows shot up. “No,” he said. But his voice broke. He glanced at the doorway, where a nurse was coming in. She checked his temperature and his blood pressure, then clucked like a mother hen and disappeared.
“Are they still coming in every fifteen minutes?”
“They’re coming in too damn often as far as I’m concerned,” George muttered.
Kate walked closer until she stood right beside him. “What’s going on, George? We can’t tell if you’ve been blackmailed, if you were following orders or had ditched orders, or you were trying to take us all out with you.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to say. Enough people are in trouble over this already.”
“Someone’s dead now,” she said and filled him in on Andy.
“It’s related?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but it seems too coincidental not to be.” Then she stopped, looked at him with a smile and said, “You don’t know you were attacked here, do you?”
His eyebrows shot up as she explained about their last hospital visit.
“Holy crap,” he said, reaching over and grabbing her hand. “What about my wife? My boys!” His voice was suddenly demanding and hard.
“I don’t know. I would presume that somebody—”
George abruptly let go of her and sank back, but she could see he wasn’t in any way at peace.
“I need to get out of here,” he snapped, trying to sit back up again. “I have to find my family.”
“Is your family in danger, George?” she asked, pulling his hand back.
He stared at her with anguish in his eyes.
“Tell me,” she cried out. “We can’t fix it if we don’t know what we’re supposed to fix.”
“I should never have done it,” he said. “If I hadn’t turned in my coworkers, my life would be normal, and I’d be happily looking toward retirement.” So much pain was in his voice, as if this was tearing him apart.
“So what happened? Was somebody pressuring you?”
“They wanted me to stop,” he said. “They threatened my sons. Said they wouldn’t make it home from school one day, and I’d never know when.”
“And what were you supposed to do? Withdraw your accusations?”
“I tried to recant. I did try,” he said, “but the military wouldn’t let me.”
“And then what?”
“The blackmailers said I had to bring this shipment in here—drugs for Greenland. But I didn’t dare. Because, once I did, then I would be just as guilty as they were,” he cried out in agony. “How can people be like that?”
“Did you ditch us into the ocean?”
“Kind of. But I wasn’t trying to kill us. I was hoping to come in for a crash-landing, and that would get us out of it and would burn up the cargo,” he explained. “But it went badly.”
“What did you do?”
“It’s pretty easy. I just put some C4 inside the engine and triggered it from the cockpit. Only I used a bit too much. I’d hoped to bring the plane down, not have it blow up mid-air. I had a burner phone set to call yours to trigger the blast. It was in my pocket, all I had to do was push the talk button.”
“Oh, my God,” she said, staring at him. “You could have killed all of us.”
“I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t desperate, and if I didn’t think I could crash land close to the base,” he said quietly, “and if I wasn’t terrified for my sons and my wife.”
“So, if they couldn’t make the runs, then you were going to?”
“Yes,” George said. “Didn’t you ever wonder how I ended up taking over this run?”
“Since we were both new on the run at the same time, I wasn’t really thinking about it. But I guess it was after you turned them in, wasn’t it? What happened to the guy who I replaced on that fateful flight?”
“No clue. He called in sick. And yes,” he said. “The thing you don’t understand is that somebody here on the base is involved.”
“Well, somebody local,” she said, “was having a heyday attacking you. They actually took out the security cameras in the hospital so we’d have no idea who it was.”
George fretted in bed. “That means I’m not safe,” he said. “And, if I’m not safe, my family isn’t safe either.”
“We’ll make sure your family is safe, and then we’ll make sure you are too.” Kate sat back for a moment. “Did you realize you were tearing apart my life? Colton keeps wondering if it was somebody I knew.”
“That ex-boyfriend of yours is a piece of shit,” George said, “but nothing like these guys.”
“The two being charged aren’t even on active duty, and I was told they’re in custody and have been for weeks,” she said. “So who else are they working with? And how are they communicating?”
“They used emails and mail and text, all kinds of ways,” he said with a wave of his hand. “They could be working with anyone and everyone. It’s likely a big operation and easy enough to cut ties with a few to keep everyone else safe.”
“Like you?”
“Yeah, like me,” he said. “I just couldn’t do it though. I kept thinking about my sons and all the young men like them here on the island.”
“Why Greenland, I wonder?”
“They were trying to stay under the radar, so to speak,” he said. “Then they moved the drugs from here.”
“Jesus. You’d think they’d fly into Germany.”
“Sure, but the base here is much easier t
o get things in and out of. It’s a small island. Nobody would ever think of it as a major drug center.”
“Of course not,” she said, “we don’t even know how major is major here.”
“All that cargo,” he said. “I’d bet at least 50 percent of it was hard drugs.”
Kate sat back with a thunk. “That’s not good. And chances are, if they are doing that here in Greenland, they’re doing it other places too.”
“That was the impression I got. I don’t know where it goes from Greenland, but it goes. A big population isn’t here, so I highly doubt too much of it gets sold here. But all they have to do is get it to one of the major centers, and then, of course, the whole world is their oyster.”
“Unbelievable.” Kate sat there, not sure what to say. “The blackmailers would check your emails too, I bet. Trying to make sure you were toeing the line.”
“Good,” he said. “The emails will back up what I’m saying.”
“But we still have to keep you safe.” She looked around and said, “You don’t even have any clothes here, do you?”
He snorted. “No. Not likely. I think they cut everything off me on the navy cruiser.”
“Yes,” she said, and then she thought about the other ships that called this base home. “They could have even moved drugs in through them and other ships.”
“Anything is possible,” he said. “Even small planes fly out from here. I mean, it’s pretty easy to start moving it in different locations, once you break it down. The hard part is getting in a big shipment, and we just delivered it.”
“Yeah, but we delivered it to the ocean,” she said. “Hopefully it’ll be thoroughly ruined, and nobody can salvage it.”
“I’m not sure it’s safe to leave underwater though,” he said. “It probably poisoned the ocean.”
So much bitterness remained in his voice that Kate reached out and stroked the back of his hand. “Remember why you did this,” she said. “Keep your boys in your mind.”
“I get it,” he said. “But I’m not out of danger, and neither are you.”
Kate sat back and said, “And here I was thinking I wasn’t in danger now.”
“No,” he said. “Because you were with that shipment. If I go down for transporting drugs, it’ll mean you go down too.”