by Glen Carter
34
The knock was concussive, making her jump. Diana wiped her hands at the kitchen sink and looked out the window.
A man was standing at her door. He wore a baggy suit the colour of charcoal and was carrying a briefcase. Diana adjusted her glasses. He had thick features, a crewcut, and was hunched forward, like he was about to beat down the door.
Another pounding.
“I’m coming,” she yelled, heading to the door. When she pulled it open, a badge and an ID flew up to her face.
“Special Agent Frank Richard,” the man said. “Federal Bureau of Investigation. Diana Doody?”
The bona fides were snapped shut. The man stood there like a dog waiting for a bone.
She gave him the once-over and was quickly disappointed. In the old black and white movies, G-men were tall and handsome. Richard didn’t fit the part. Though he did look sort of official. Maybe it was the bad suit. Or the military haircut.
“What can I do for you?” she asked, wondering if he was packing.
“Would you mind answering a few questions?”
“About what?”
“One of your guests.”
“Which one?”
“Samuel Bolt.”
“What’s this about?”
“We’ll need some privacy.”
She didn’t much care for the cut of Richard’s personality but nodded anyway.
A minute later, in Diana’s living room, Special Agent Richard was on the couch. Trying to look pleasant, not doing very well at it. Diana sat with hands in her lap, close enough to catch a whiff of cheap aftershave.
“Nice place,” Richard said with a wooden smile.
“Thank you. I’m afraid I haven’t much time.”
“Then I’ll get right to it.” Richard sat forward. “You’ve been renting a room to a man named Samuel Bolt.” Richard waited for acknowledgement.
Diana simply nodded.
Richard opened his briefcase. He extracted a large photograph, which he placed on the coffee table between them. “You can confirm this to be him.” It was a statement, not a question.
Diana flashed at the photograph and nodded again.
“Can I ask what he’s doing here?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
A flicker of menace flashed on Richard’s face. He smiled thinly. “May I call you Diana?”
She nodded.
“I’ll try to be more specific. Has Bolt said anything about his business in Harbour Rock?”
“Not really.”
“‘Not really? Is that a yes or a no?”
“No.”
“As the proprietor, it’s something you usually ask, isn’t it? It would be the prudent thing to do.”
“It’s none of my business, Agent Richard. So, I don’t ask.” It was a mistake allowing the man in. Diana casually touched the cellphone in her pocket. Maybe she would make a call.
Richard caught it. Swept a meaty hand across his face. “It’s just you, correct? Your husband . . .” He took a file from his briefcase. Opened it.
“My husband passed away years ago.” She would not say more on the subject.
“So, just you and the B&B,” Richard said. “Business is good? Paying the bills?”
“I don’t think that’s any of the FBI’s concern.”
“You good with the taxman?” Richard continued without missing a beat. “Nothing to hide there, Diana? ’Cause we’re pretty tight with the IRS. Maybe I could make a call. Make sure your file is all up to date.”
Diana shot daggers with her eyes. “That sounds like a threat.”
Richard slumped back, adjusted his tie, and took his sweet time. “I expect it does.”
“Maybe you’d like to speak with my attorney?”
Richard held up both hands. “No need to get lawyers involved,” he said. “Some simple questions, that’s all. You’re not compelled to answer, but let me tell you, Diana. The Bureau appreciates any help you can provide.”
She gave him a closer look. Doubt building, even with the badge. The bad suit. “Why are you interested in Samuel?”
Richard was taking too long to answer.
Diana reached for her cell.
“You win,” Richard said. Fat fingers seized a second file in his briefcase, which he placed on the table. “What I say here doesn’t leave this room. Is that understood?”
She nodded again. The blowhard would be permitted his moment. If she played her cards right, she’d find out more than he would.
“May I trouble you for a glass of water?”
Diana disappeared into the kitchen, returning a couple of minutes later.
“Thanks,” said Richard, gulping half the glass. “Samuel Bolt,” he then said, spreading a handful of photographs from the file.
Diana glanced casually at the table. One of the photographs showed Samuel on a sidewalk full of people. Bright lights. Big city. In a second, he’s with a priest, somewhere. A third showed Bolt getting aboard a bus. There were more, but Diana had seen enough.
“We’ve been on his trail for a couple of months now.”
“Oh my. What has he done?”
Richard shook his head. “Let’s just say he’s good at what he does. He’s left a trail of victims across the country. The priest runs an orphanage in New Mexico. They needed help with a fundraiser. Bolt set up the bank stuff and advertising and then drained the proceeds.”
“Oh my,” Diana repeated.
“Oh my is right. A widow in Reno hired him to straighten up her dead husband’s estate. Lost her life’s savings, couldn’t make her mortgage payments, so the bank took her home.”
“That’s terrible. If he’s hurt so many people, why haven’t you arrested him?”
“The widow has Alzheimer’s. Diminished capacity. Any two-bit defence attorney would rip her to shreds. The other victims are too embarrassed to admit they’ve been taken.” Richard tapped one of the photos. “With so many kids in his care, the priest is trying to protect the reputation of his orphanage. The last thing he needs is benefactors getting wind of charlatans and misappropriated funds. Our hands are tied. Bolt knows it. Picks his victims to minimize blowback. Piece of bat guano. Mind if I take a look at his room?”
“Absolutely not, Agent Richard. Not without a warrant.” Her estrogen-fed intuition told her all she needed to know about Samuel, whom she considered good as gold. Richard, in her book, was a liar and a man who bullied old ladies. “And the reason you’re here?”
Richard paused in theatrical fashion. Leaning forward. “Because the Bureau is convinced you are his next victim.”
Diana brought a hand to her mouth. “Oh my,” she said again.
35
Bolt had his hands in his pockets, standing on the dock where Abe’s boat was tied up. Abe was stomping around down below, singing. Really belting it out. The rustbucket bobbed as if keeping ragged time.
The harbour was a floating gridlock. Tour boats were tying up. The whale watchers were spilling down gangways and herding onto restaurant patios. Watercraft buzzed everywhere, within easy sight of huge floating signs that said no wake.
Bolt climbed aboard the boat and picked his way to the stern. He knocked on the cabin door. A moment later, Abe appeared, bleary-eyed, mid-lyric, and smiling broadly.
“Just in time for your ration.”
A bottle was thrust through the opening, which Bolt waved away. “The last time I saw that bottle you were passed out, and I was not much better.”
“Just before your tour of the local boneyard. Meet anyone interesting?”
Bolt shrugged.
Abe stepped onto the deck. “Sully’s still wigged out.”
“Should I talk to him?”
“Naw
.”
Abe surveyed the dregs of a sunny afternoon. “A pod of humpbacks is feeding a couple of miles out,” he said, following the progress of another tour boat. “They’ll be talking about it the rest of their Michigan lives.”
Bolt had the faintest of recollections then. The breach of a whale on a glistening sea. The spray of icy cold water on his naked body. A woman’s squeal. Him laughing.
You’ve got an audience, babe.
Let’s get below.
Mystic Blue rolled on an ocean swell. Her skin was silky cool. She moaned softly.
“Are you all right?” asked Abe.
“Fine. How about that drink?”
Abe fetched two glasses from below. Poured.
Bolt cleared a spot at the transom and sat. They spent a few minutes catching up, and then there was a little tour.
“I had to replace those sails last year. Got caught about ten miles out. Storm came out of nowhere, tore everything to shreds. Nearly got swept overboard.”
“Any survival suits on board?”
“Don’t make me laugh,” replied Abe. “The Lord wants you, He takes you. On to the next life.”
“You believe that?”
“You mean like seeing yourself on a gurney, doctors pumping your chest, seeing Nan at the end of the tunnel?”
“Yup.”
“It’s my default position,” Abe replied. “I tend to believe things do exist, unless you can prove they don’t.”
Bolt imagined where the conversation could go. How crazy it would have sounded.
Abe sat. Balanced the bottle on the gunwale. “Speaking of which. Did I tell you I was in the Navy once?”
“You never said.”
“The USS America. In 1967 we got caught up in the Six-Day War. Anyway, an Israeli torpedo boat screwed up and mistakenly attacked one of our fleet. The Liberty. Dozens aboard were killed, plenty wounded. I was assigned to the sick bay.” Abe straightened and seemed to gain half a foot in height. “We started taking on sailors. They came in waves. The dead and the barely living. I remember this one kid. His liver was basically Swiss cheese with the shrapnel he took. He bled out right on the gurney. The floor was soaked in his blood, and I had this mop, so that the doctors and nurses wouldn’t be slipping and breaking their necks.” Abe suddenly stopped. Locked somewhere in another time. “That kid died. He was gone. No longer in residence. Trust me on this. But they wouldn’t give up on him.” Abe took a swallow, licked his lips. “Fucking miracle.”
“Miracle how?”
“They got him back.”
“Happy ending.”
“Yeah,” Abe replied. “Anyway, a couple days later, I’m on mop duty again in the ship’s hospital, and that kid. He’s sitting up now, right as rain, and he sees me and he’s just looking at me with this stupid smirk on his face. I smile and ask how he’s feeling.” Abe shook his head, continued. “Better than you, he says. Then the kid starts to laugh, and it’s got him in pain because he’s all sewn up, but he’s laughing away. Then he says, I ain’t never seen anyone vomit and shit at the same time.”
Bolt smiled.
“Yeah, funny. Not at the time. Here’s the thing. That day in sick bay, after the Israeli torpedo. Seeing all that blood, I got sick as a bastard, so I run to the head, lock the door, and all hell breaks loose. Puked so hard my bowels emptied right into my skivvies.”
Bolt had a good laugh.
“Glad you’re enjoying this. No one has ever heard that story, Bolt. No one knew it happened. Except for that kid and me, and now you.”
“Dead men do tell tales.”
“Yup. Fucker’s soul must’ve floated into the head and laughed so hard his heart restarted. Do I believe in life after death? Goddamn right I do.”
“Great story.”
“How about you?”
Bolt held out his glass, while Abe poured. “You’ll think I’m nuts.”
“I shit myself in front of a ghost. How nuts is that?”
Bolt began to speak, and when he was finished, Abe sat there, a man of stone, an empty bottle hanging from his fingers. “You’re shittin’ me.”
“I shit you not, Abraham.”
* * * * *
Abe cracked another bottle. “I’ve heard about this stuff,” he said. “There’s this kid who claims he was some fighter ace during the Second World War. Everything checked out. The kid actually reunited with his old wingmen.”
“Sort of like that. But more complicated.”
“Okay, I’m an open-minded arsehole. But no fool.”
“I’d never make that mistake.”
“And that’s quite the war story.”
“Not the whole story,” Bolt said. “Just bits and pieces. Kinda like the trailer for some war movie.”
“Maybe something you watched as a kid. That stuff sticks to a small brain, can give you nightmares.”
Bolt allowed him the logic. “Sounds about right, except these weren’t nightmares. I’d be in school or sitting around in my dorm. Just being a kid. It didn’t matter. Bang, bang, blood and bodies out of nowhere. The smell of cordite. The zip of a bullet.”
“Your little buds must have thought you were a real nut job.”
“I didn’t fit in.”
Abe nodded an outcast’s understanding.
“I hit puberty, and things calmed down,” Bolt said. “No more visions. That’s what happens. The young brain kind of crusts over. No longer pink and sensitive.”
“The imaginary soldier buddies disappeared, and your little war movie faded to black.”
“Nice way to put it.” Bolt put his drink down and tugged at the buttons on his shirt. He traced a finger around the birthmark over his heart. “I’ve even got the war wound. Any more questions?”
“Nope.”
The sun kissed a perfect sea. A broad shaft of warm light stretched from the horizon to where they sat. Bolt soaked it in. Abe, too. He was still chewing what Bolt had served up. Eventually, he’d have to swallow, or spit it out.
“Let’s just say you’re the genuine article,” said Abe. “And I’ve just fallen into a goddamn rabbit hole.”
“Okay.”
“And believe me when I say I can’t believe I’m even saying this.”
“Go ahead.”
Abe laid it out. “Just saying, Samuel. Seeing as how we’re both believers. I’d be blind and stupid not to point out the obvious about you and Kallum.”
Bolt picked up his glass and swirled the liquid. “Doody and his friends. They were ambushed.”
“Yup.”
“There was a firefight.”
“Yes, there was.”
A murky shape formed in Bolt’s brain. A sneering face that quickly dissolved.
“It’s your movie, Samuel,” Abe said. “Tell me how it ends.”
Bolt shook his head in frustration. Then, “Do you think that kid sailor ever forgave the Israeli numbskulls who torpedoed his ship and killed his Navy buddies?”
“Hell, no,” said Abe. “He’d want some serious payback.”
“As strange as this sounds. I kinda know the feeling,” Bolt said.
* * * * *
Bolt would never have known he had an audience of two. Joe Ryan sat in his rental, well within the transmitter’s range, with earbuds tucked in tight, a digital recorder on his lap. When Ryan boarded Abe’s boat the night before, he’d left two listening devices. One was planted beneath a step leading down below, a second on the underside of the ship’s compass on the stern. He had also stuck one under Diana Doody’s dining room table while she was fetching his glass of water.
Ryan listened intently, satisfied with his handiwork aboard Abe’s boat. He checked the recorder’s advancing time code and settled back. Bolt was telling qu
ite the tale, and Ryan wondered how much alcohol was in his gut. The tape would have to be checked to confirm he’d heard him right.
Ryan’s earbuds crackled.
Bolt’s buddy was speaking now, laying something down that made Ryan’s ears tingle. He thought about the greasy Coke bottle and where it had led. The prints of a man who was dead and buried for several decades. How was that possible? There was clearly a resemblance between the two men as well, but that, when compared to the rock-solid forensics, was a novelty at best. Clearly, Bolt had orchestrated some kind of trickery that Ryan would eventually figure out. Both men had spun quite the tales, especially Bolt.
Ryan had earned his pay, and now a lot more. How many hours had he spent with his ass numb, hunkered down like this? A fucking voyeur on people’s shitty little lives. He deserved better, and he would have it. But first he’d have to figure out whether Bolt was a charlatan or a nut job. It didn’t matter which, Ryan decided. Both could be extremely dangerous.
Bolt was speaking again. The signal was strong.
36
Sarah Rutter stood at the door, hand raised, still trying to decide whether to knock or to head back to the SUV, where two Secret Service agents were standing in the dark, waiting for her to do something.
How much time had passed since she was last here? Too long, Sarah decided. There had been more than a few years when Diana could not forgive Sarah for marrying Billy Rutter. Of course, she had not attended the wedding. How could she? Kallum was her son, and Sarah had been his wife. Sarah reached out afterwards, but Diana would have nothing of it. Until one day, when they stumbled into one another at some flower shop. They stood there for a stubborn rock-faced moment, before the tears burst forth, arms flung around each other, and the resentment wilted upon the fragrance of spring blooms. They stayed in touch. There were the scattered lunches and afternoons of shopping, and too much wine, but they never spoke of Kallum, or Billy. That truce was never declared, but wisely observed. And like sometimes happens, the friendship slipped into a convenient dormancy.
Sarah’s heels wobbled on the stone step. She wore jeans and a comfortable long-sleeved cotton blouse. Her hair was pulled back tightly, revealing the entirety of her smooth, beautiful face. She had lied to Rebecca about where she was going. A dinner date with friends in town. Rebecca had looked sourly at her. “The chef would like to finalize the menu.”