by S. D. Tooley
Jake studied the names on the list. “What about lightning strike?”
“It was a play on the term the North Koreans used. According to what little Samuel Casey would tell Jackson over the phone, a soldier made a strike if he shot a black man.”
“And the Armed Services Committee chairman didn’t launch a full-scale investigation?” Jake tossed the pages back across the table. “Sonafabitch. He could have proved it.” Jake stalked over to the bar and popped open another beer.
“What would that have accomplished?” Carl snapped his briefcase shut. “Samuel Casey died and his witness disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“Wasn’t the chairman curious about Casey’s untimely death?” Jake moved to the arm chair, tapped his fingers on the beer can, the tapping increasing as his anger increased.
“Samuel Casey had been working on a number of stories, one of which was the sale of arms to Middle East terrorists and the Sanchez drug cartel. The police didn’t rule it a homicide, but if it had been, there were a lot of people who might have had reason to silence Casey.”
“Casey never mentioned Preston Hilliard’s name?”
“Never. He only said it was a high-ranking state official. With the death of Casey, the story, the leads, everything died.”
“I’m sure Jackson Whittier was thrilled.” Suddenly, the beer didn’t taste that good. Jake carried the half-empty can to the bar sink and poured out the remaining contents.
“Thrilled to avert a race riot? Absolutely.”
“And what is he trying to avert this time?”
Chapter 52
In the cloak of darkness, Lincoln Thomas checked into the Hampton Inn in Lansing, Illinois, a suburb just south of Chasen Heights. He had spent the morning explaining to his daughter and son-in-law exactly what he was planning on doing.
They gave him their full support. Nina cried and said she was proud of him. Raymond said he and Nina would keep the agency running smoothly and that he should take as much time as he needed. He hoped he wouldn’t need much.
Lincoln tossed the keys to his rental car on the table and peered through the curtains. There were a number of restaurants within walking distance. He needed a current local newspaper and could use something to eat. After he made a call to tell Nina he had arrived safely, Lincoln left his hotel room.
Chapter 53
“I’ve never seen you stumped before, Sam.” Tim sat on the floor in the study while Sam fingered the books on the bookshelf.
“I’m just going through cranial overload. I need a diversion.”
“You never told me why they changed your precinct.”
She saw a videotape leaning against one of the books and pulled it out. It was the tape Jake had brought after her visit to Preston’s. She popped the tape into the recorder, saying, “This is why.”
Tim joined her on the circular couch by the entertainment center. Pointing the remote at the VCR, Sam pressed the PLAY button.
“Wow.” Tim’s eyes widened. “Whose house did you break into this time?”
“State Representative Preston Hilliard,” Sam said proudly.
“The chief found out about this?”
Sam stretched out on the couch and propped her head up on one elbow. “No, not this one. At least not yet.” Her voice trailed off, not wanting to go into full detail. “He found out about another one and wanted to distance me from him so as not to jeopardize HIS promotion.”
They watched the video of Sam hiding in the closet, Preston entering, talking on the phone, then pounding on his keyboard.
Slowly, Sam lifted herself to a sitting position, then moved to the floor so she could be closer to the screen. “Did you see that?”
“What?”
She hit the rewind button. When she played it back, she pressed the pause button. “There. Do you see that, Tim?”
Tim crawled closer to the television set.
She pointed to an area on the screen. “The reflection of the computer screen in the window behind Preston. If we could enlarge that, I bet we’d find out his password.”
“I’ll get right on it.” Standing, Tim said, “By the way, did you notice the dark sedan that’s been parked on the street by the entrance to your house? It left when I arrived but I could swear it’s the third time I’ve seen it. It changes location each day, but it’s the same one.”
Chapter 54
Jake rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He was getting used to sleeping in Sam’s study. After his conversation with Carl the night before, he had an unsettling feeling that the closer Sam got to the truth, the more danger she was in. He was suspicious of the perimeter alarm that had been set off the other night.
Jake made his way toward the gazebo. It was eight in the morning and already eighty degrees. Wearing a pair of floral beach shorts and a short, cropped tee top, he looked as if he should be on an island somewhere. He was supposed to be on the road with Frank enroute to Elkhart, Indiana, but he told Frank to go on without him. There was something else Jake wanted to check out.
He walked up the two stairs to the screened-in gazebo, set his cup of coffee on the small rattan-framed, glass-topped table, and stretched out on the glider.
Closing his eyes, he replayed his conversation with Carl. Jake had a feeling President Whittier’s main concern right now was re-elections. To bring out information of a government cover-up would point a finger toward Whittier since he had been chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee back in 1977.
Jake didn’t like being a party to the continuing cover-up. Because now it wasn’t just the murders of three black men in Mushima Valley, it was the murder of Hap Wilson and the questionable death of an investigative reporter. Carl had agreed with Jake that Sam was going to dig until she got to the truth. Carl wanted him to head her off at the pass, and Jake hated having to do it. He had told Carl he wanted the bodies of the three men in Hap’s unit found. Carl said they were already trying to locate them. If they weren’t deserters and had been murdered, the first place to start looking was Mushima Valley.
Jake pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes. He didn’t hear Abby enter the gazebo and sit down in the chair across from him. She reached over and touched his arm.
“You are agonizing over something.”
“Agony is my middle name.” Jake swung his legs around and sat up. He studied her calm facade, her gentle, caring eyes. Everything in her world seemed to have meaning and order. “Why is it you were never able to tell…”
“That Samuel and Melinda were in danger?” She shook her head. “It was something I had a difficult time understanding. We can’t select what we want to see or what we want revealed. We don’t have the choice. For that reason alone I think our trip to the reservation after their death was as much for me as for Sam. I had to talk to my grandmother, get some answers.”
“Did you?”
“She said there are some things we can’t control. We may think we direct our future but fate controls our destiny. She told me to focus on my successes, not the failures.”
Jake reached across and grabbed Abby’s hand. It felt soft, yet strong. Sam had her strength. Each day he saw more of her in Sam.
“Why is it no man has dragged you off to the proverbial tipi with the picket fence?”
He saw a trace of sadness wash over her face.
“I was married once, briefly.” Abby smiled wistfully. “It was small and ceremonial.”
“Just you two and the spirits?”
Abby laughed, crinkling the tiny lines around her eyes. “We had a few more people but basically that’s all a couple needs. They just have to exchange a treasured possession, offer it to the four directions, and express their love.”
“So what happened?” he finally asked.
The sadness crept across her face again, washing away her warm smile. She studied her hands for the longest time. “I had an alcoholic husband, an alcoholic father, and a dead baby. That’s what happened.”
Jake saw t
ears push into the corners of Abby’s eyes. She inhaled deeply, lifted her head. The tears dried immediately. He was sorry he had brought up the subject. They lapsed into a comfortable silence, until Abby broke it.
“I believe our fathers were very much alike, Jacob.”
Jake looked at her sharply. He had never spoken of his father.
“Alcohol clouded his judgment. He wasn’t physically abusive, but he was easily manipulated by my husband. My father wandered around drunk one cold winter night and froze to death. He died the same way your father did.” She stared deep into his eyes. This time it really did feel as if she knew his every thought and could see into his soul.
Jake slowly straightened, a look of shock inching across his face. “How did you…?” He knew better than to ask. He remembered the day she had touched his back and the look on her face, of the times she would hold his hand between hers and stare into his eyes as though they were windows into his darkest thoughts.
“You keep a life of solitude, Jacob, because you believe you will end up like your father.”
“Like father, like son, the saying goes.”
“If that were true, then I would be more like my father, wouldn’t you say?”
Jake lit a cigarette and took a long drag. He studied her face, a slight grin turning up the corners of his mouth. “I hate it when you make sense.”
Even after she patted his hand and returned to the house, Jake was still staring at the empty rattan chair where she had sat. She never fully explained about her marriage or how her child had died. She just managed to turn the conversation to Jake’s father. How could she know about his father? No one knew, not even Frank. She had touched his scars. Was it true she could touch his soul?
Chapter 55
The elderly man behind the counter looked like a tall Yoda complete with pointed ears and wrinkled forehead. He squinted at the handwriting on the form Jake handed him. Charlie Buckmeister had retired from the police force ten years ago but couldn’t seem to keep himself busy at home. So he was hired on as a part-time records clerk.
“Nineteen-seventy-seven? You weren’t even born then.”
Jake laughed. “I assure you, Charlie, I was alive and driving my mother crazy.”
The Records Department archives were in the basement at Headquarters near Central Stores. The smell of paper dust mingled with subtle exhaust fumes filtering from the door to the underground garage.
Headquarters, Precinct One, was Sam’s old precinct and home to Chief Connelley. Being a weekend, there would be a skeleton crew upstairs but Jake had no plans on browsing the halls.
“They’ve been trying to get all the records on those new-fangled computers but they’ve only gotten as far back as, I think, about 1982.” He scribbled the name on a piece of paper. “Casey, Samuel. Okay, let me lookie-see what I’ve got.”
Jake watched Charlie shuffle off to the filing cabinets. A half-empty cup of coffee sat next to a chocolate donut with two bites out of it.
“Have to try the back room,” Charlie called out, having checked the dates on the cabinets in the front room. Several minutes later, Charlie returned. “Here you go. Need to sign out the file or do you just want a copy of something?”
“I’ll let you know.” Jake skimmed through the incident report on Samuel Casey’s death. Reading Abby’s comments made him conjure up a picture of a cute five-year-old girl, clutching a doll, waving to her father through the window.
The case was only investigated for three days. It seemed to have been thorough. Even the arson and explosive experts found nothing to point to a homicide. Jake wondered if the technology they had today would have come to the same conclusion. If he had been the detective on the case, he would have spent more than three days investigating it.
“Do you remember this case, Charlie?” Jake asked.
“That specific case, no. But I remember the date. June 6. That was the day before that letter bomb went off at City Hall. Injured three people. Killed the mailman.”
“Nice diversion,” Jake whispered.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Jake pointed to a signature at the bottom of the report. “Do you recognize these initials?”
Charlie squinted again, studying the curly letters that looked like an ampersand with a line through it.
“Naw. Can’t say that I do. He would have been the supervisor on the case.”
“Why does it say revise on the top page?” He flipped through the back pages. “Where’s the original?”
“Should be in there.”
Jake checked the file again. Only the revised report was there. “What about the two men who investigated the incident?”
“Simms and Beransky?” Charlie rubbed his dimpled chin. “Simms I believe was killed in a high speed chase several years after that. Beransky quit the force not too soon after. Beransky had been driving the squad car.”
“Could you make two copies of this sheet for me?” Jake handed the file back to Charlie with the page to be copied on top. He wanted one of the copies for Carl.
Chapter 56
“You’re lucky you came today, Sam,” Benny said as he opened the door to the smaller examining room. “We’re shipping the body to his sister in D.C. this afternoon.”
“So soon?”
“I’ve delayed it for too long as it is.” Benny looked through the glass window to his office where an assistant stood with a stack of papers for him to sign. “You have fun. Let me know when you’re through.”
Once Benny left, Sam took her necklace off and looked down at the mummified remains that now lay on a metal gurney. Hap probably had been filled with a lot of hope when he had spoken with her father. If that truck driver hadn’t hit the overpass, Hap’s body might never have been found.
She pushed the necklace into Hap’s hand, the one that had held Hap’s pin. Immediately a sea of lightning bolt shapes floated in her mind. All shapes and sizes. She sensed fear. Hap’s fear. Then bodies, falling in succession. She heard footsteps running, ragged panting. She saw the smiling face in the picture, Hap’s face. She saw a man’s hands, lifting her onto his lap. She saw the shapes again, and this time, a hand drawing them. A small hand. A child’s hand. Her hand.
Chapter 57
“I wish you had called first, Detective.” Mrs. Leland led Frank down the tiled hallway to Parker Smith’s room. Her uniform fit snugly over her robust figure. Frank could hear the sound of her nylons rubbing together as her inner thigh’s collided.
“I did call. The front desk told me Parker Smith was a resident here at Shady Pine Nursing Home.”
She made a face that said likely story. “If you had asked his condition, we would have told you Mr. Smith had a stroke three years ago. He hasn’t spoken a word. I don’t know how you plan to question him.”
They stepped into the sterile room. A poor attempt had been made to give the room some semblance of home… floral paintings, potted plants, a quilt thrown over a rocker. Nurse Leland walked over to the picture window and turned the wand on the mini-blinds to let in more sunlight.
“I don’t know why the nurse’s aide closes these blinds. Sunlight rejuvenates a person.” She motioned with her arms as though pumping iron. “Now, Mr. Smith. How are you doing today?” Her voice had increased in volume when she spoke. Walking over to the frail figure lying on the bed, she said, “You have color in your cheeks. Yes, you do.” She plumped up his pillow, cranked his bed to where he was more upright. “You have a visitor.” She motioned toward Frank.
Parker Smith showed no response. His glassy eyes stared straight ahead. The thin blanket covering him rose and fell with each breath.
“He’s not on a respirator?” Frank asked. He saw the wires leading to a machine that registered his heart rate and blood pressure.
“He eats, breathes. We’ve had a therapist work with him on speech, but, no luck. He does have some movement in his right hand. Recognizes his daughter… some days.” Looking down at Parker, Nurse Leland said, “I�
��m going to leave you with Detective Travis for a little bit.” She patted Parker’s arm and left the room.
Frank studied the man in front of him. The skin lay in folds where his muscles used to fill out his form. His gray hair was cut short. Pale blue eyes seemed bright against his pallid face.
Frank pulled up a chair and introduced himself. He watched for telltale reaction as he mentioned Hap Wilson’s name and Mushima Valley. There wasn’t a twitch, no flicker behind his vacant stare, no hint that Parker was understanding, much less hearing, what Frank was saying.
A cart rolled along the corridor stopping in front of the room. Visitors talked quietly as they passed, some pushing relatives in wheelchairs.
Frank stood up and pulled Hap’s pin out of his pocket. He held it up in front of Parker’s eyes, let the sunlight glisten off the shiny metal.
“Have you ever seen this pin, Mr. Smith?”
He thought he saw Parker’s right finger twitch. The monitor on the cart next to the bed showed an increase in Parker’s heart rate.
Second’s later, Nurse Leland came running in. “Is everything okay in here?”
Frank slipped the pin back into his pocket. “Sure. I did notice a change in his heart rate.”
“You betcha. The damn machine lit up like a Christmas tree.” She watched the monitor. “I don’t like the way his blood pressure is rising, though. I think you better leave now. This is a little too much excitement for one day.”
Moments after Frank left, Nurse Leland watched in awe as Parker started to cry uncontrollably. He emitted no sounds. His good arm shook, his hand clenched the side of the bed. His heart rate reached one hundred and ten. She made a frantic call to Doctor Chan, who prescribed a mild sedative.
An hour later when Nurse Leland checked on Parker Smith, she noticed he had pulled a pen off the nightstand and scrawled a simple note on his bed sheet. It said,