by Jean Thomas
They registered at a motel on the northern edge of Conch Beach. There was only a scattering of cars in the parking lot, an indication that the place had few guests. Clare understood why. This was not the high season for southern Florida.
“I’m going out again for a minute,” Mark said after they’d deposited their bags in the room. “There’s a newspaper vending machine outside the office. I think I’ll pick up a local paper. See what the weather is going to bring us tomorrow.”
“Not as hot as today, I hope.” Even long after dark like this, the heat and humidity outside were oppressive. “While you get your paper, I’m going to hit the shower.”
“I’ll take the key and lock the door behind me.”
* * *
Security is still a priority for him, Clare thought, picking up her bag and heading for the bathroom.
The shower, just as she’d intended, refreshed her. It also had her in a better mood when she emerged from the bathroom, belting her cotton robe at the waist.
That mood vanished when she found Mark seated on one of the two beds. He had the newspaper in front of him and the darkest of expressions on his face. Something was wrong.
“What is it?” she asked him. “What are you reading?”
He flipped the newspaper onto the spread, the forefinger of his left hand stabbing an article on the front page. Clare leaned over the bed, scanning the piece. Her heart felt in that moment as if a fist was squeezing it.
They were too late.
Chapter 17
It was a brief report, but the essentials were all there:
MAN ATTACKED AND LEFT FOR DEAD
Orlando Realtor Hank Kolchek was brutally attacked late last night outside the home he and his wife were occupying on Canal Lane. The assailant, who fled the scene, was not identified. There was no motive provided and no witness to the assault. Mrs. Kolchek was inside the house at the time and only discovered her husband in the street when the couple’s dog he was walking barked at the door. Kolchek was taken by ambulance to St. Andrew’s Hospital where he remains unconscious and in critical condition. The Conch Beach Police are asking anyone who might have further information to contact them.
Mark got to his feet, raking his fingers through his hair. “We don’t have to guess who that assailant was, do we?” he said, his voice as sour as the expression on his face.
Clare shook her head, sick at the thought of the vicious attack on Hank Kolchek. Wondering if the poor man would survive it.
“Or,” Mark added, “whether the bastard managed to get his hands on another pendant.”
“Providing Kolchek was wearing it.”
Mark nodded with certainty. “He was. Otherwise, this lunatic wouldn’t have left the scene. He would have invaded the house itself and not hesitated to take down Kolchek’s wife before tearing through the place in search of the pendant.”
He looked thoughtful as Clare gazed at him, hoping he wasn’t going to resurrect his familiar habit and start pacing restlessly around the room. Her nerves were already too strained by the situation to bear that.
To her relief all he did was stand there quietly for a moment before expressing an angry “What gets me is how he managed to find the Kolcheks.”
“We might never learn the answer to that. There’s only one thing we do know for certain. A lunatic he might be, but he’s a cunning one.”
“Yeah, he’d have to be to hunt down a couple who thought they’d reached a haven that was safe. Looks like we were right in thinking he’d stopped following us back in New Orleans because he’d switched his attention to Florida.”
“But he hasn’t given up on you, Mark. Now that he has Hank Kolchek’s pendant, he’ll come after you again.”
“He can try it,” he said, steel in his words.
The valor of warriors. You had to love them for it. And fear for them. Because as able as she knew Mark was, the prospect of another deadly encounter terrified her. “So what do we do now?” What, after all, was left for them to do? she asked herself sorrowfully.
Mark, however, was at no loss for a decision. “We get us a good night’s sleep. If that’s at all likely. Then first thing in the morning we go to this St. Andrew’s Hospital. Wendy Kolchek is sure to be there with her husband. If she’s available and willing, it’s possible she can tell us what he can’t. At least we can find out if the guy is still alive and has any chance of making it.”
Yes, Clare silently agreed, that much anyway was the decent, caring thing for them to do. Getting a night of solid sleep was another matter.
Just as they had the night before, she and Mark ended up sharing the same bed. But not for the same reason. There was no question of sex tonight. Not just because, with their minds on the Kolcheks, they couldn’t be interested in that kind of intimacy. Nor in permitting themselves to violate self-promises that involved guilt and an eventual heartache.
This was an intimacy that was strictly for the sake of comfort. A comfort Clare realized Mark understood she needed. It was why, when they climbed into bed, he held her snugly against his side.
They didn’t talk. There was nothing left to say. It was enough for them to be close together like this.
* * *
The unrelenting heat hung heavy in the air the next morning when they emerged from the motel after, fatigue finally overcoming them, they’d managed to get an adequate night’s sleep. Following a quick breakfast at a fast food restaurant, they went in search of St. Andrew’s Hospital.
There was no need to ask for directions. Blue road signs posted at intervals marked a clear route to the hospital. There was another blue that would not have been welcome. Both she and Mark were careful to watch for it, but to Clare’s relief there was no sign of the hated blue sedan. It could be, though, he was using another car now.
The hospital when they reached it was a large building, an indication it served an area much wider than Conch Beach. Parking the SUV in the expansive lot that adjoined it, they found their way into the entrance lobby where one of the two attendants behind the counter stepped forward to help them.
“We’ve come to ask about a patient,” Mark said. “Hank Kolchek.”
The woman didn’t need to consult her computer to answer him. Hank Kolchek was news, after all, Clare thought.
“Mr. Kolchek is in intensive care. You’ll have to make your inquiries at the nurse’s station outside the IC unit. Take the elevator over there to the third floor, turn right, cross the sky bridge to the next wing and proceed along the corridor.”
Thanking her, they caught the elevator, crossed the windowed sky bridge as she’d directed and found the nurse’s station midway along the broad corridor.
A male nurse behind the desk, redheaded and freckled, looked up from the chart he was checking. “Help you?”
“Any chance of our learning how Hank Kolchek is doing?” Mark asked him.
“Are you family or friends?”
“Not exactly, no. Just two people who care.”
“Then I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything other than he’s in ICU. Not without permission from his doctor.”
“What about his wife?” Clare said. “Is she here?”
“She’s with her husband in his cubicle. But you can’t go in there. Only close family members are permitted inside the IC unit.”
“Could you ask her to join us out here? Please, it’s very important we speak to her.”
The young nurse hesitated, then picked up a phone at his elbow and pressed one of its butto
ns. From the conversation that followed, Clare assumed he was speaking to another nurse at a desk inside the unit. A long pause followed, then another brief exchange of dialogue before the nurse at their end replaced the receiver.
“Mrs. Kolchek has agreed to see you,” he reported. “She’ll be coming out those double doors down there.”
Clare and Mark drifted in the direction he nodded. A moment later one of those two doors whisked open. Wendy Kolchek emerged and started toward them down the long corridor. She was a petite woman with neat, chestnut hair liberally sprinkled with gray.
Delicate features, Clare observed as she approached them.
And shadows under her eyes. Understandable, if she’d spent a sleepless night at her husband’s bedside, which she most likely had.
She might look fragile, Clare thought, but there was a strength there. That much was evident when she confronted them with a sharp “You’re asking about my husband, but I don’t know you. Who are you, and what is this all about?”
Clare waited for Mark to tell her. When he said nothing, she turned her head to gaze at him, expecting him to signal her to do the explaining. To her surprise, she found him raising the pendant from beneath the front of his shirt, lifting it by the cord over his head and silently extending it toward Wendy Kolchek.
The woman stared down at the pendant where it rested in the palm of Mark’s hand, then looked up into his face. There was no question when she spoke, just a soft statement of fact.
“You’re Lieutenant Mark Griggs.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, stringing the pendant back over his head.
“And you?” she asked, turning her attention to Clare.
“Clare Fuller. My brother-in-law was Joe Riconi.”
Mrs. Kolchek nodded, as if satisfied by that alone. Her husband had apparently shared everything with her, which should make their visit easier. That and because, after seeing the pendant, she seemed to accept and trust them without any further suspicion.
But Clare felt she deserved a better explanation. “I’m guessing you know that Joe was murdered.”
“Yes, we heard.”
“The thing is, my sister was arrested and charged with his murder. The police aren’t listening to any of us.”
“Which is why you’re here. You’re trying to prove her innocence. Is that right?”
“Exactly.”
“I’m sorry about your sister. Look, I need to stretch my legs after doing nothing but sitting for hours. Would you mind if while we talk we walk along the hall here?”
Clare and Mark fell into step with her as they strolled toward the far end of the corridor.
“I have a sister, too,” she told them. “That’s how Hank and I learned about the murders of your brother-in-law and Malcolm Boerner. I suppose it was on the internet, too, but Hank was so busy with listings we never looked at the news there. Anyway, my sister Angela lives in Baton Rouge. One of the papers there reported the murders. She called to let us know but didn’t mention anything about Joe’s wife being arrested. Maybe because the newspaper didn’t cover that part. Otherwise, Hank would have called the police in St. Boniface.”
“Because he knew who killed both men? Is that what you’re saying, Mrs. Kolchek?”
“Wendy will do. No, he didn’t have the proof you want. How could he? But he knew all right. ‘Two of them,’ he kept saying to me after Angela phoned. ‘He went and murdered two of them, just to get his hands on their pendants.’ That disbelief was still on Hank’s mind when I found him in the street. They were his last words to me before he slid into unconsciousness. ‘Two of them.’”
“Guess your husband must have figured he’d end up being the third if you stayed in Muretta,” Mark said.
“We thought we’d be safe here. We weren’t. He managed somehow to find us anyway.” The thought must have occurred to her that Clare and Mark had also located them in Conch Beach. “And you? How did—”
“Jennifer Lu,” Mark said, and went on to explain how the agent had tried to phone them and got no answer.
“I must have been in the ICU with my phone turned off. Cell phones aren’t allowed to be active in there. They can affect the equipment, I suppose.”
Her words triggered a sudden guilt for Clare. Asking the woman about Hank’s condition should have come before anything else. “Your husband, Wendy. How is he doing?”
“He’s on life support, still unconscious and hanging on, but there’s no certainty he’ll make it. He took a pretty bad battering, a couple of serious cuts with a knife and blows from some kind of blunt instrument.”
No gun, Clare thought. Either Hank’s attacker hadn’t acquired another one since leaving New Orleans, or else he hadn’t wanted to alert the neighbors with the sound of gunfire.
They had reached the end of the corridor where the three of them turned and started back.
“Hank would be dead, if hadn’t been for Pepper barking at the door and my finding him in the street in time to get an ambulance.”
“Your dog,” Mark said. “Yeah, we read about that in the local paper along with the attack.”
“Pepper saved Hank. I hate having to board her in a kennel, only the situation being what it is...” She waved her hand, as if pushing the subject aside. “But this isn’t what you want to hear.”
There was a lounge area furnished with chairs and a sofa opposite the doors to the ICU. Wendy stopped here.
“I should stay close by in case they want to call me back to Hank’s side. Why don’t we get comfortable in there,” she suggested, “and I’ll tell you the whole story? I’m not sure it will be enough to clear your sister, but it should certainly help.”
Wendy Kolchek didn’t need to be this understanding, this willing to lend her support, particularly when her husband was at this moment fighting for his life. Clare was deeply grateful for that and expressed as much to the woman.
“It’s what I want to do,” she said. “For Hank’s sake as well as your own. I want his attacker caught and brought to trial for those two murders and his savage assault on my husband.”
The lounge was unoccupied. Clare and Mark settled side by side on the leather sofa, Wendy in a chair she drew up close to them. They watched her as she removed a wallet from her purse.
“This is Hank’s wallet,” she said. “I needed to keep it with me for the health insurance cards.” Opening the wallet, she withdrew a photograph from a protective plastic sleeve. “He always carried this picture inside. A memento of his younger days. He couldn’t have guessed how useful it would be now.”
She passed the photo to Clare, who held it close enough to Mark for him to share its subject. What it revealed was four men in fatigues posed against a barren background.
A bleak landscape that was familiar to Mark. “Afghanistan,” he murmured.
“Yes, Afghanistan,” Wendy said. “It was taken when the four of them were there all those years ago.” She leaned forward, her long nailed finger singling out a grinning figure with a broad, Slavic face, his arms draped across the shoulders of the two men who stood on either side of him. “This is Hank.”
Even though they had changed with the passing of the years, Clare needed no help in recognizing the other two men. “Joe Riconi,” she said for Mark’s benefit, pointing to the good-looking, distinctly Italian face of her late brother-in-law. “And the one on this side is Malcolm Boerner.”
That left the fourth one of the group. As if deliberately choosing
to be apart, he knelt on the ground in front of the other three, a rifle under his arm. His was a thin, unsmiling face. A predatory face. Nameless as he still was for Clare and Mark, she knew who he was. Who he had to be.
It was Wendy who gave them his name. “Roy Innes,” she said softly, bitterly.
Roy Innes. It was a relief for Clare to finally be able to attach an identity to this merciless killer. “He looks...”
“Yes, I know what you mean,” Wendy said. “Hank used to say that even back then, it was never about the adventure of being a soldier of fortune for Roy but always about the money.”
“I think we’re ready for that story now,” Mark prompted her.
Without any further urging, Wendy related the tale of the four comrades. A tale that Clare found riveting as it unfolded.
“They were working security at the time for an American construction company whose tools and materials had been disappearing from its site. That job ended, leaving the four of them stranded when the company abruptly pulled out of an Afghanistan that had become too dangerous.”
“The Taliban?” Mark asked.
“That’s right. It was back in the nineties, and the Taliban was gaining strength, getting ready to topple the existing government and take control of the country. That’s when Hank and his fellow soldiers-for-hire were approached by an Afghan named Hamid Zahir.”
“Think I heard that name mentioned,” Mark said. “Had to be the cousin of the man who strung this pendant of mine around my neck.”
“It was, but how did you—”
Clare interrupted her. “I think we’re going to confuse you if we don’t tell you we read the letter your husband sent to Joe, Malcolm Boerner and Roy Innes.” She went on to explain how her sister had discovered Joe’s letter and passed on its content to Mark and her.
“I see. But Hank didn’t name Hamid Zahir in his letter.”
“Then it must have been his cousin who mentioned the name,” Mark said, “and that Zahir had been an important man in Kabul.”