Deadly Star

by CJ Petterson

  Saint John turned in the chair to face the console and picked up a photo of a smiling Lisa. “And you will get something else I need.”

  “But — ”

  “Be quiet, Dr. Briggs. This time, listen carefully.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Mirabel studied the monitor and squinted at details then compiled files and printed pages. She stepped away from the computer only for bathroom breaks and coffee refills.

  The sun was a dim glow on the horizon when Griebe made a phone call. His voice, gravelly with exhaustion and pain, dropped to a level where Mirabel couldn’t hear what he said. When he ended the call, he turned toward her; his grin pushed apples into his cheeks. “Sully’s got a real surprise coming,” he said then shifted around to get comfortable and went back to pecking on his computer keyboard.

  Mirabel stood up and groaned. As she walked over to the wall switch to flip on the ceiling light, she rocked her head from side to side, squared her shoulders, and stretched her arms front and back to work out some of the stiffness. She reached for the document the printer was spitting out.

  “I’m through with your list.” She laid the still-warm sheet of paper on top of a thick deck of pages and held out the stack with trembling hands. “Here are the reports on Christina Hall, George Adkins, Mario Kleinfeld, and all the rest of the nefarious criminals in this town. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but what do I know?”

  He took the deck and leafed through the pages then his eyes focused on her shaking hand. He watched her for a moment. “You seem a little overly caffeinated.”

  She responded with a sound that was half chuckle and half grunt. “Coffee-holics can never drink too much coffee. Been sitting too long is all, got sea legs, and I’m starving. How are you coming on the photo?” She leaned over his shoulder. “That’s a big bunch of nothing.” There was nothing she could identify other than a mottled gray shape on the right side of a white background. Griebe had turned the photograph into a negative.

  “Right now it is. I have to put in the color and tighten the focus some.”

  “Can you tell who it is?”

  When he grinned he reminded her of a ten-year-old kid trying to keep a secret. “Oh, yes. The program popped with an ID. I definitely know who it is.”

  “Who?”

  “You’ll see in a few minutes.”

  Her eyes burned. She walked over to the window and twisted the wand to open the blinds.

  “Shut that,” Griebe snapped. “It’s certain the house is being watched.”

  She set her jaw, reversed the twist, and turned the clear plastic baton until the narrow, white vinyl slats were squeezed so tightly closed the bottom of the shade lifted. “I just wanted to re-focus my eyes on something at a distance.”

  “Stand in the doorway and look at the light switch at the end of the hall.”

  She held his stare for a few moments then wiped the heels of her hands across her eye sockets until everything disappeared into a white blur. She waited until she could see through the stars swirling in front of her eyeballs then looked blurry-eyed toward the light switch fifteen feet away. Her vision cleared as wetness washed the sandy feeling from behind her eyelids. She sniffled and headed to the kitchen.

  “I’m going to see if I can find something to eat.”

  “I saw some Gruyere and bread in the fridge,” he said without turning away from the computer.

  “Sounds like the makings of a grilled cheese sandwich,” she called over her shoulder. She pulled her cellphone out of her purse. While she checked the screen for missed calls, the phone went off in her hands with a vibration that made her jump like she’d stuck a finger in a socket. “I hate it when that happens.” She saw Ray’s cell number on the display. “Well, if it isn’t Benedict Arnold,” she said then toggled on.

  “Mirabel, where are you?”

  She glanced toward the computer room then turned to face the window. “That’s need to know, and you don’t.” She kept her voice as neutral as she could.

  “We need to talk.”

  “So talk.”

  “The people who sabotaged the plane … ”

  “What about them?”

  “I know where they are.”

  “Who you talking to?” Griebe yelled.

  Without bothering to cover the receiver, she yelled back, “A girlfriend. Christina.” I can’t tell Griebe who I’m talking to. Ray’ll hang up, and I won’t find out anything.

  “Don’t tell her where you are.”

  “I know, Frank.”

  “Who’s that?” Briggs asked.

  “An FBI friend.” She wanted to let Briggs know she was being protected.

  Briggs’s words came back muffled, as if he were talking through his hand.

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “I said I know where they are. I can show you.”

  “I’ll bet you can,” she hissed into the phone. “Forget it, Ray. I’m not going anywhere with you. Dan and Evan are dead because of you.” Her voice held as much edge as a razorblade.

  “Not me. I had nothing to do with their deaths. All I did was pass along information. I didn’t know what they were going to do. You’ve got to believe that. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.”

  “I called you my friend. What happened to you, Ray?”

  “Life happened. I got into debt, big time, and there isn’t enough money in this town to bail me out.”

  “You had to know Mendocito was a small town when you moved here. Why’d you come?”

  “To be the only orthodontist around.”

  “And you thought there was money in being the big fish in this small pond.”

  “Stupid mistake. I didn’t count on the pond being so piss poor. I don’t want to spend my career working on charity and Medicare patients. I can barely cover my expenses.”

  “I thought dentists swore allegiance to that quaint old Hippocratic Oath like doctors do.”

  “I went out on a limb to get my practice started in Mendocito. I tried to make it work, Mirabel. I really did. I got into the stock market. For a while, it was great. I had a portfolio worth a couple million dollars. Then it turned upside down. Tech stocks and dot-coms went in the toilet. I lost almost all my money in less than a year.”

  “Why didn’t you sell before it got that bad?”

  “I thought the downturn was an anomaly, that it would come back.”

  “Small fish, big pond there.” She heard a honk and knew he was calling from a car.

  “I’m dying in Mendocito, Mirabel.”

  “There’d be some justice in that. What about Dan? He was happy here.”

  “I needed money to make a fresh start.”

  “People are dead, and all you can think of is yourself! Geeze Ray, that’s what banks are for.”

  “I tried, but my credit is shot. Saint John came to me. I don’t know how he found me, but he did. He knew about my finances, and he knew about us.”

  “There is no ‘us.’”

  “He knew we were astronomy buddies. He wanted to know more about your sighting.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Only what you saw — ”

  “And what I was doing.”

  Briggs hesitated a beat. “He said all he wanted was a little information then he’d deposit money in an off-shore account for me. You’ve got to understand, Mirabel. It was a chance to solve my money problems.”

  “How do you like your new set of problems so far?”

  “I didn’t expect any of this. I’m sorry I got involved. Please. Let me make it up to you. Let me show you how to get to these people.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “We’ve been friends, good friends for three years. Trust me this one
last time, and I’ll get out of your life.”

  “You can’t run fast enough or far enough to get away from this mess, Ray. You’re going to carry the rotten stink of murder as long as you live.”

  She was trembling when she toggled off and dropped the phone back into her shoulder bag. “Dipstick,” she muttered and pulled a coffee filter out of a box next to the coffee pot and started looking for the coffee grounds. She was opening and shutting cabinet doors when Griebe yelled from the bedroom, “Sully keeps his coffee in the fridge.”

  “Sully keeps his coffee in the fridge,” she mimicked softly. “Why didn’t I think of that?” She stuck her head into the refrigerator and peered at a can of coffee, a loaf of bread, half a stick of butter, and a package of Gruyere cheese.

  The door alarm shrilled, and she heard Griebe shout her name. She straightened and banged her head on the freezer door handle just as a hand clamped a cloth over her mouth and nose. Not again, her mind screamed before her world disintegrated into darkness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “What do you mean she’s gone again?” Sully asked as he walked out the door of Mario’s Café with a plastic-bagged carryout.

  “Seven minutes gone, purse and all. She was making a pot of coffee when I heard the alarm. But this damned hole in my chest. By the time I made it to the kitchen, she had vanished. I checked outside. Nothing.”

  “She’s not dead. If Saint John wanted her dead, he’d have left her on the floor in the kitchen. He’ll call. Stay put. Get Pete to plug into the word on the street while I get to a land line. I need to leave my cell open for SinJen.” Sully spun on his heels and walked back into Mario’s. He dropped coins in the wall phone in the hall and called Griebe again.

  “I got Pete on it before I called you,” Griebe said without hello. “The alarm doesn’t go off until the door opens, but I can’t believe I didn’t heard them jimmy it. Had to be the noise of the printer cranking out stuff. She’d just gone into the kitchen. They had to get lucky to catch her out there alone.”

  “I don’t believe in luck. Something triggered the snatch,” Sully said.

  The line went silent for a few seconds. “She took a call on her cell while she was in the kitchen. Said it was a girlfriend.”

  “Did she say who?”

  “Christina,” Griebe said.

  “Christina’s not her girlfriend. She’s Thompson’s dispatcher and secretary.”

  “Tina. Sorry, I didn’t put it together.”

  “You’re not one hundred percent yet.”

  “She lied to me.” Griebe sounded disappointed.

  “Now there’s a surprise.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Okay, if not Tina, who?”

  “My guess is Briggs,” Sully said. “But he couldn’t use her cellphone to trace where she was without some sophisticated triangulating, and then he could only get an approximation. Saint John already knew she was here. The call was just to confirm. We have to wait for Saint John’s phone call. How about the bank video? Could you get anything out it?”

  “We’ve seen the driver before. He’s Yakuza and goes by the name of Kajiyama Toshiro.”

  “Japanese mafia is in on this?”

  “Kajiyama is nothing bigger than a freelancer, not clan-Yakuza,” Griebe said.

  “That sends up a flag.” Sully’s mind started searching for the memory just out of range.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I can’t put my finger on it right now.”

  “I called Marshall to confirm some things,” Griebe said.

  “Did you tell him about Mirabel?”

  “It was before Mirabel got snatched. Sully, the passenger in the back seat of the Mercedes is going to blow you away.”

  “I’m going to blow you away if you don’t spit it out,” Sully said.

  “Remember when we talked about the possibility of Esther Lee being a deep undercover agent?”

  “Yes?”

  “She’s deep cover all right, but not ours. She was in the back of the Mercedes.”

  Sully whistled softly. “Whoa. SinJen’s handler is masquerading as Sheriff’s Deputy Esther Lee.”

  “Wonder if your Sheriff Thompson knew that when he hired her,” Griebe said.

  “Doubt it. SinJen had Thompson in his pocket, but even SinJen wouldn’t know who his handler is. Esther Lee, or whatever her real name is, probably killed Evan to send SinJen a message to complete the contract or he’d be next. I have to call Marshall.”

  Sully dropped in more coins and dialed Marshall’s private line.

  “Marshall.”

  “Saint John got Mirabel,” Sully said.

  “Is she dead?”

  “He grabbed her — he didn’t kill her.”

  “Sounds like he’s going for a two-fer,” Marshall said. “Use her to get to you.”

  “I’m waiting for a call. This little off-the-books op of yours gets uglier by the minute. How long before Procyon’s orbit decays enough to make it visible?”

  “The nanosat has maybe two weeks of life left but it won’t matter. Intel says Itoh will go to the media sometime in the next day or so. That’s when he’ll initiate an attack on the world’s rice crops.”

  “There go my Rice Krispies treats,” Sully said.

  “I’ll ignore that.”

  “Thanks. Do we know how he’ll do it?”

  “He has options. He could blow his nanosat by remote control during reentry into the earth’s atmosphere. Winds and rain would disperse its payload. Another wrinkle would be to use it to create some kind of artificial lightning strike.”

  “I’ve seen advanced weaponry, but that’s a new one on me.”

  “Our analysts are still working out the possibilities,” Marshall said. “The use of artificial lightning in large-scale genetic engineering is in the natal stages of research, but it’s possible Itoh has acquired the wherewithal to beat the learning curve.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Biological time bombs. Planted in strategic rice fields waiting for a signal to activate or detonate them. They could be in Malaysia or in Arkansas.”

  “Can NASA retrieve the thing?”

  “Possibly, but Itoh would reveal our nanosat before we could bring it down. We’ve got to neutralize that maniac’s threat on both fronts. With any luck,” Marshall said, “you’ll get good intel out of Saint John.”

  “Optimist.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Mirabel was watching Ray Briggs walk out of his bedroom when Saint John slapped her hard enough to knock her off the black leather sofa. She sprawled on the cool blue marble floor of the living room, gasping and blinking back tears.

  Dressed in a tropical lemon-yellow silk shirt and white linen pants, Briggs had slipped his bare feet into cream, woven-leather loafers and carried a suitcase. “Did you have to do that?”

  “I want to be sure I have her full attention.” Saint John jerked Mirabel back up onto the cushions and sat down next to her.

  She covered her mouth to stifle a sob. She had a booming headache from the chloroform. If she let herself cry, the pain wasn’t going to go away anytime soon.

  Saint John draped his arm around her shoulders. “Shh, shh,” he whispered. The sound escaped his lips like the sibilant hiss of an asp. An involuntary shiver went through her body. He looked in Briggs’s direction. “Your driver will be here momentarily, Dr. Briggs. I suggest you get ready and leave Dr. Campbell to me.”

  Her cheek was on fire, and her temples throbbed. She gritted her teeth and pushed her fear and pain under the anger.

  “Better do as you’re told, Ray,” Mirabel said. “Run along now like a good little boy.”

  “None of this is my doing, Mirabel. You have to know that.”

  “What I know
is that you’re a real son-of-a-bitch. How’d you know where I was, anyway?”

  “Wasn’t me. Mr. Saint John knew.”

  A car horn sounded. “My cab,” Briggs said. “You’ll transfer the rest of the money to the Nassau bank account, right?”

  “You doubt me?”

  “No, no, of course not. Just — ” He brushed his fingers across the still-raw cut through his eyebrow. “Sorry, Mirabel.” The impatient horn beeped again, and Karadzic opened the door. Briggs picked up his suitcase and hurried out.

  Saint John pushed an errant twist of hair away from her forehead and sighed. “This may surprise you, Dr. Campbell, but in my line of work, it’s best if things run according to plan. I do so dislike problems. I must say, however, I have learned to be flexible where circumstances require. Right now,” he said, “I want you to arrange a meeting with your ex-husband.”

  She inhaled a stuttering breath. She knew Saint John was planning to kill her whether or not she called Sully. “Burn in hell.” She tensed for another blow.

  “I’m sure I shall, but not in the immediate future.”

  “Perhaps Sully will improve on that time frame.”

  His laugh was brittle. “Perhaps, perhaps not.” He rummaged through her purse, found her cellphone, and held it out to her. “Call him.” When she turned away, his slender fingers overlapped her wrist and squeezed. “I said, call him.”

  “He’s going to kill you, you know.”

  “I’m sure he’ll try.”

  “How can I be that important? There are a lot of astronomers, professionals, even amateurs better trained than I am. They’ll find your satellite, if they haven’t already.”

  He shrugged. “Future sightings are not my concern.”

  “Then why don’t you let me go?”

  The Jamaican uncurled his fingers and let her arm drop. “You’re a contract. Other than that you’re of no consequence.”

  “No consequence? You killed people, took all my research material, destroyed my lab, and all because of a satellite I spotted?”

  “My employer didn’t want its presence known before the proper time.”