Late one evening, Michael Mayes was about to leave the Simi Valley police station when a call had come in from an alarm company. Ingenious Corp had recently installed new security sensors, and they frequently registered false alarms, which had the police quite frustrated. Ingenious Corp was not far from Mayes’s house, but Officer Merle Carlisle had already been called to the scene, so Mayes had driven home. Mayes’ younger brother, Lyle, was a manager at Ingenious Corp, but given it was 11:20 p.m., he assumed his brother had long since left the office.
Several hours later, Mayes woke to a phone call that Lyle had been murdered. A man, Travis Moore Keith, a/k/a the “Managerial Murderer,” had broken into Ingenious Corp where Lyle Mayes was working late. When officer Carlisle arrived, he had gone inside, and a stand-off ensued when he came upon Keith holding a gun to Lyle’s head. Keith subsequently shot the officer then killed Lyle Mayes before taking his own life. Ballistics showed Carlisle got off two shots but had missed to the right of Keith. Even though Carlisle was a qualified marksman, he was known to have barely passing scores at the shooting range and had never discharged his weapon in the line of duty until then.
Keith’s motivation had been to murder those who had recently turned him down for employment after he had been released from Ingenious Corp for insubordination six months before by none other than Lyle Mayes. After killing the six managers at their homes, his swan song was to take the life of the very man who had sent him on the streets in the man’s own office.
Mayes, an expert marksman who had successfully survived two police-involved shootouts, was said to have been devastated by his brother’s death, blaming himself for not responding to the call that night.
After brief and unwanted notoriety—writers and movie producers alike had approached Mayes for exclusive rights to his story—Mayes sold his home and moved to Amelia Island on the far side of the country.
“He was trying to escape the memories,” Fawn said aloud. “Not much different from me.”
As she was about to call Detective Mayes, the phone chirped. She looked at the originating number and name.
Fawn felt flushed. She stared at the name in disbelief. All sense of reason evaporated, and she was paralyzed, unable to answer. As the phone rang, she could only stare at the name prominently displayed:
Lisa Fortney
555-8594
Fawn was suddenly struck with an overwhelming sense of hope, yet she was still hesitant to answer. Only with a great deal of effort did she push the button and hold the phone to her ear with a shaking hand.
“Listen to me,” a gruff voice started.
Fawn’s blood ran cold.
“You there?” the man’s voice asked.
“Yes,” Fawn responded weakly.
“I’m only saying this once. Listen closely.”
From somewhere deep inside, Fawn felt her anger break through. “Who are you?” she erupted. “What are you doing with Lisa’s phone?”
“Shut up, bitch. I’m talking.”
“You go to hell!” Fawn fired back. A single tear rolled down her cheek.
“You have no idea what I’m capable of doing. And who I’ll do it to. So shut your damn face and listen to me.”
Fawn snapped the phone closed, disconnecting the call. Then she opened it up, and quickly searched for Detective Mayes’ number.
The man called again. Fawn answered, boiling with hatred. “Listen you psycho bastard, I’m calling the poli—”
“Fawn, it’s me,” a softer voice said. The tone, the cadence, was strikingly familiar. She could hear the words in her mind, joining them with other familiar phrases, times from her past, memories that seemed so very long ago.
The man continued. “Fawn, please listen to him. He’s not kidding. He’ll kill me.” There was an awkward pause. Then the man continued in an excited voice. “Don’t do it, Fawn! He’ll kill us anywa–!”
“Father? Father!” Fawn cried. A torrent of emotions charged through her. How is this possible?
“Now that I have your attention, listen good.”
His body was never found! God, he is alive! “You bastard. You better not harm him,” Fawn said, gritting her teeth.
“Harm him?” the gruff voice chuckled. “He’s been dead to you for four months. How could I hurt him any more than that?” His sardonic laugh ripped a hole in Fawn.
“What do you want? Where has my father been?” The questions flowing through Fawn’s mind temporarily blocked her anger.
“Get me the three keys and the information for their use. I’ll call you before noon tomorrow. Do that and you can have your mangy father back.”
“I don’t have them.”
“Bullshit. I know you have them. This is not an optional request. Either you deliver them to me with the instructions for their use, or I slit your father’s throat and drape him over the tombstone that’s already planted in the cemetery, and leave him for you to find in his own pool of blood. Is that what you want?”
Fawn’s head pulsed. “I swear to you,” Fawn pleaded. “I don’t have them.” It was taking every ounce of energy she had to remain calm.
“FIND THEM!” The man shouted. “And do NOT involve the police. Trust me; I will kill your father!”
“But I swear, I don–”
Before Fawn could finish, the line went dead.
Fawn sat quietly. She could not allow herself to fall apart again. If she were to save her father, she had to keep a clear head. She realized Juan Cortez had most likely been held against his will for four months by someone else in search of the treasure.
She ran through her options. Contacting the police was out. She would not risk having her father killed for violating the kidnapper’s directive. Involving Ralston, something she desperately wanted to do, was not possible. She had already put him in situations that could have gotten him deported. She would not put his life in mortal danger, too.
She would go at it alone.
The man on the phone had asked for the three keys and the protocol for their use; but not the location of the treasure. There can be only one reason: the treasure exists, and this man knows where it is!
First things first; she had to understand how the keys were to be used.
Fawn picked up her cell phone and found the number, but her battery was low, so she walked to the kitchen and called from Mike’s land line.
“Dr. Lohan? This is Fawn Cortez.”
“Hello, Fawn. If you don’t call me Curt, I’m hanging up,” he replied with an easy chuckle.
“I need to know what the Spanish writing on the fort’s wall means. It will save someone’s life,” Fawn pleaded.
“Someone’s life?” Curt echoed.
“Please. I can’t explain,” Fawn begged.
“Fawn, you’re talking about a mystery historians have pondered for years. You expect me to solve it upon your request? You give me too much credit.”
The man was right. It was an unrealistic expectation, except that she might have more information than anyone else who had ever tried to interpret the poem.
“Curt, I can give you something to go on.”
“Such as?”
“Please don’t ask me to explain, but I believe the writing was placed on the wall in 1820 by an American emissary not fluent in the Spanish language. Also, consider the letters MH. I believe they figure into the poem.”
“MH?”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?” Curt asked.
Fawn relented. Her father’s life was held in the balance and this was no time to withhold facts. “I believe the poem refers to three keys, two of which open an iron box. One key has the letters MH. The keys, and the box, have to do with the payment to purchase Florida from Spain.”
“You’re still asking for a miracle.”
“Please, Curt.”
&n
bsp; “1820…three keys to an iron box…letters MH…purchase of Florida from Spain,” Curt summarized. He audibly exhaled. “I’ll do what I can. I’ll call you back if I turn up anything.”
“Thank you. I can’t impress upon you enough how important this is,” Fawn uttered, hanging up.
Whether Mike was somehow involved with the murders—or was the murderer himself, and for the moment disregarding the fact he had never confessed Elizabeth Courtland was his mother—she needed the MH key. She had given it to Mike on the way to Elizabeth Courtland’s funeral on Monday. He had placed it in the industrial safe in his bedroom. She walked to the back to try the handle. As expected, she found it securely locked.
Fawn quickly dialed Mike’s cell number and listened to the distant ringing. Like the previous night, it went unanswered, and she hung up without leaving a message. He was scheduled to fly back this evening, on a red-eye flight. If he were really in Connecticut, that is.
Fawn felt her body, and spirit slump.
There was nothing she could do until nightfall, when, under cover of darkness, she would go after the other two keys.
CHAPTER 38
In St. Augustine, Dr. Curt Lohan sat before his computer running through the popular search engines – Google, MSN, Ask.com, Bing, Yahoo! – keying for the year “1820,” with the word “keys,” the phrase “purchase of Florida from Spain” and the letters “MH”.
Nothing.
He turned to read the guard room wall poem from a printout on the desk beside the computer.
Where men become mountains
Second time in a row.
Remove the first joined in house.
Offspring raised to go.
The male will proceed to right
The female given turn.
A window opens deftly
A payment will be earned.
Curt considered how often he had tried to crack the poem: hundreds, easily thousands of times. He had to confess, he had never had a starting point, although, whatever Ms. Cortez was basing her information on sounded somewhat hollow.
Yet he had heard the concern in Fawn Cortez’s voice. She had made the bold statement that someone’s life was at stake. He had not pushed for an explanation, and her sense of urgency was now driving him. Curt sincerely wanted to help but was skeptical about what he could uncover that countless others had failed to discover before him.
He reduced his next search, using limited combinations of the four words and phrases. None of the returned information seemed to relate to the poem or had any particular relevance to the Spanish or, specifically, the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine.
Discouraged, he nevertheless continued. He flavored in key words from the poem—the actual Spanish text—into combinations of the previously attempted four words and phrases.
Time after time, Curt read diligently, looking for the smallest morsel of a connection. Each time he came up empty.
****
At 8:50 p.m., as darkness settled upon the island town of Fernandina Beach, Fawn left Mike’s house. Before leaving, she had tried calling Mike again to no avail. She had also not heard back from Dr. Curt Lohan. Regretfully, she had to leave her cell phone at Mike’s house to charge. If she was successful at the first stop, she would return and check messages before proceeding.
The hunt was under way. If what she and Ralston had uncovered was accurate, the locations of two of the three keys were known: one in the Amelia Island Lighthouse and the other lodged inside the skull of Osceola, which she and Ralston believed to be interred in a plot once owned by Dr. Frederick Weedon in the ancient cemetery in St. Augustine.
Fawn felt relatively certain about the first key’s location in the lighthouse, but the assumptions and speculations about Osceola’s skull, with the key inside, was a tremendous gamble. The whole ordeal was too staggering to consider in totality. She had to remain focused on the immediate task before her, and right now, that task was finding the key inside the Amelia Island Lighthouse.
****
Curt pored over his notes and the information displayed on the computer screen.
“What does this poem have to do with keys to an iron box?” Curt said aloud. “She said something about an emissary.”
Emissary implied government; but Spanish or American? The Castillo de San Marcos was a Spanish fort prior to Spain selling Florida to the U.S., but considering the poem, although written in Spanish, only rhymed when translated to English, this implied American origin. Therefore, she must have been referring to an American emissary.
His focus returned to the government. Curt again studied the words:
Where men become mountains
Second time in a row.
Remove the first joined in house.
Offspring raised to go.
The male will proceed to right
The female given turn.
A window opens deftly
A payment will be earned.
Curt thoughtfully listed synonyms for mountain. High, peak, the top, upper echelon, leader. Leader, Curt repeated in his mind. Government, he thought, considering the term related to “emissary.” He merged the two: Leader and government.
President, he thought, relating the two words.
Where men become presidents. Washington D.C.
He proceeded to the next line: Second time in a row. He deduced this referred to the second president: John Adams.
Curt stared into space. John Adams was one of his favorite men in history; not well understood or appreciated, the Federalist Adams had once said during his time as second in command under George Washington that his current office as vice president “was the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”
Remove the first joined in house. House…he thought, placing a hand to his chin and drumming it lightly. Curt wondered if this referred to being joined in the White House. John and Abigail Adams were the first President and First Lady to occupy the White House. Everything was tying to the second president, John Adams, in the White House. Curt felt a stir of excitement.
Offspring raised to go. It appeared to be a reference to children. Or perhaps the term offspring was symbolic for someone in the same political field of Federalists, as was John Adams? Curt pondered the line for a moment then moved on when nothing seemed apparent.
The next four lines only brought frustration.
The male will proceed to right. The female given turn. A window opens deftly. A payment will be earned.
Following the political nature of the early lines, these made absolutely no sense. John Adams was elected president in 1796, and it would be over a hundred years before females were allowed to delve into politics.
The penultimate line mentioned a window. Ms. Cortez had mentioned an iron container holding treasure. It was possible window was a metaphor for the opening into the container.
Of these last four lines, only the final one could be correlated to what she had said. A payment will be earned seemed to address the purchase of Florida from Spain by the U.S. The purchase was done by politicians, but Curt was not sure what John Adams would have had to do with the transaction. While he was alive when the deal was struck in 1821, he had left the presidential office in 1801. It was unlikely the then-86-year-old Adams had been involved with the deal. Finally, none of this explained where the keys fit into the equation.
Curt looked at the sheet of paper again then rubbed his eyes. What had at first seemed like a promising line of reasoning and headway to decipher the poem had quickly evaporated.
****
When Fawn arrived, the Amelia Island Lighthouse was in total darkness except for the blazing light stabbing into the distance, cast by the Third Order Fresnel Lens as it slowly revolved overhead. The lighthouse was automated. Unless there was a problem, no one would be inside
, and the outer door at the base would be locked.
Several years ago Fawn had done a news report on the crime of Breaking & Entering. A Tallahassee police officer had shown Fawn the fine art of picking simple locks using nothing more than a metal nail file and a pair of tweezers. It had fascinated Fawn, but she had never attempted the feat on her own.
That would change tonight.
Nearby, homes were lit, but she saw no movement. She parked her car at the bottom of the drive and walked toward the lighthouse, keeping to the shadows. Dressed in blue jeans, black tee shirt, and dark baseball cap with her hair pulled in a ponytail, she blended into the night.
She carried a hammer, flat head screwdriver, and penlight, along with tweezers and a nail file in her pocket. She was also wearing latex gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints. If seen, there would be little doubt she was up to unscrupulous activity.
This was no time to consider the implications, and she stole her way up the hill along the edge of the road. To her right was an open field with the stubby white lighthouse. A small shed stood nearby. She remembered the doorway to the lighthouse was away from the road, so she quickly cut across the field and arrived at the base. A muddy smell met her, sweeping in from the ravine, drawing air from Egans Creek.
Above, the beacon spun, sending out a forceful beam. It did so with a low, stirring hum that Fawn found strangely consoling. The sound would help mask any noise she made.
Fawn arrived at the door and wasted no time. She knelt down upon the granite step, switched on the penlight, and placed it in her teeth to aim. With the lock visible in the light, she went to work. The Tallahassee police officer had been an excellent instructor, and Fawn had been the apt pupil. Working the metal nail file and tweezers, she soon sprung the lock.
The metal door clicked and eased outward. She grabbed the handle, looked around to ensure she had not been seen, and went inside, closing the door behind her.
Three Keys to Murder Page 27