Paradise (The Erotic Adventures of Sophia Durant)

by O. L. Casper

  “I read. Just not detective stories—and you’re not that old.”

  “Old at heart, Sophia. Old at heart.”

  “Weary already?”

  “Looking to retire. Perhaps even after this case.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Private practice.”

  “You’ll be a private detective?”

  “Yes. Is that strange to you?”

  He looked at me with interest.

  “I just picture private detectives like the little men you see in the movies with the visors and the Hawaiian shirts. The camera with the great, big telephoto lens. The cigarette holder.”

  “Like Hunter Thompson.”

  “Exactly like Hunter S. Thompson.”

  He laughed and looked at the ground as we walked along.

  “It’s good to have a little comic relief—no? It lightens the atmosphere a bit so we can then get down to business with greater ease.”

  “Yes. We could have used some humor last time,” I interjected.

  “I’m sorry. Things were rather tense. I suppose it was the pressure from above.”

  “From God?” I joked, but he looked at me seriously.

  “No. I mean from my superiors.”

  “That and your interrogation style questioning. And the other kind of tension.”

  “Other kind of tension?” he asked, fixing his eyes on mine.

  I smiled.

  “You know the one.”

  “The kiss,” he exclaimed at once, as though he had received a flash of brilliance from another world. “How could I forget? It was silly of me. Let’s try to put it out of our minds.”

  “I’m fully aware it could get you thrown off the investigation.”

  “Perhaps—perhaps,” he replied, seeming not to care.

  “If we’re not being listened in on, I’d like to ask you something.”

  I stopped walking and looked at him.

  “I really do not believe we are being listened to, but I cannot guarantee it.”

  “Fair enough. If we went farther than a kiss. If somehow you could get a break from your assignment and meet me somewhere…”

  “It would be difficult.”

  “Would you do it?”

  “It would be difficult,” he repeated.

  I leaned in like I was going to kiss him.

  “Not here.”

  “Where?”

  “I can’t. I’m sure I would be found out. And that, to say the least, would not be good for my career.”

  “But you could be persuaded. I feel…your resolve is not what you would like it to be.”

  “Whether or not it is, Sophia, is quite irrelevant to why we are here.”

  “Why are we here?”

  “We found something on Emily Mordaunt. I’m not at liberty to say what. I don’t really know much myself. So if I were to tell you something now, it would certainly be quite inaccurate, I can assure you. That being said, it must be something quite criminal and quite unusual too. In fact, the matter is being taken up by a separate agency entirely.”

  “The CIA.”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Who else? It has to be them. But of course it doesn’t really matter who it is.”

  “I need further cooperation from you, Sophia. More than we’re getting presently.”

  “Get to the point.”

  “And so I shall. Here it is: we need you to spy on her. We believe she may be involved in some secret collusion—more than there outwardly appears—with your boss, Mr. Stafford. We need you to find out what it is.”

  “And the reward?”

  “Ah—that of being an upstanding citizen.”

  He smiled.

  Emily met me on the dock a little after nine o’clock that morning. The fog had lifted and there was a cool breeze coming off Tarpum Bay. She greeted me cheerfully. She was full of questions about how I’d been. She told me she’d flown the Cessna the two previous mornings. She didn’t bring up Stafford at all.

  To be inside the Cessna again produced feelings of euphoria. As we lifted off the water, I felt I had a very short window in which to get my software into the plane’s computer and I was still curious as to how it would end up working or not. At least, I was convinced, this method would never be detected.

  “Where do you fancy going?”

  I shrugged.

  “To see another island?”

  “That sounds wonderful.”

  “We could fly down over Cat Island. It’s the next island to the south. It’ll take a couple of hours to get there, but the views will be spectacular.”

  “Let’s do it. I’d love to see it all.”

  She arced the plane around till we were headed south.

  “I brought some music if you want to hear it.”

  “I’d love to. Is it a CD or on your iPod?”

  “On my iPod. You can plug it into your computer, right?”

  “Yes. Of course. Here.”

  She pointed to a spot on the panel where a hidden USB connector was located. I plugged the iPod in, flicked through to Jane Says by Jane’s Addiction and tapped play.

  “Oh, I love this music. Haven’t heard it in ages.”

  As the song played, the virus entered the computer system. A small icon bearing the image of a stopwatch came up on the touchscreen. When the hand on the stopwatch made a full circle the virus was disseminated. This took about ten seconds. The stopwatch vanished. Mission complete. All the tension that went along with the act of getting the virus into the computer suddenly left me. How incredibly simple it was to do. Now it only had to work. This would be interesting, though not very suspenseful—mainly because I was so sure that the crime would never catch up with me. Though, if the method did not work, whatever else I would have to do would be a whole lot more difficult. I didn’t want to contemplate that potential outcome. I started to think about the long hours that had gone into the programming. The name I gave the virus: Minerva’s Wings.

  I watched her smiling as she piloted the small aircraft, tiny individual strands of hair aloft in the cabin air, glowing in the rays of sunlight pouring in behind her. I imagined this moment in time was the moment of her greatest happiness, her greatest triumph—her satisfaction in flying. It was bittersweet. For I knew that she was, as are all people, a projection of the mind.

  Chapter 20

  Sophia Durant’s Diary

  December 12, Eleuthera Island, Bahamas

  borderline personality disorder – A condition in which a person suffers patterns of turbulent, unstable emotions, usually regarding feelings about themselves or others. This interior experience connotes highly impulsive behavior and scattered relationships.

  —MADU Medical Encyclopedia

  sociopath – An individual given to three or more of the following tendencies:

  1. failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts which are grounds for arrest:

  2. deception, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;

  3. impulsiveness or failure to plan ahead;

  4. irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;

  5. reckless disregard for the safety of self or others;

  6. consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;

  7. lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another

  —Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition

  On the morning of the eleventh Emily Mordaunt had gone for a joyride in the Cessna. It was her first flight since flying with me a few days before. She had invited me to come but I turned her down with the excuse that I had lots of business to catch up on at the villa. I monitored the position of the plane through Minerva on the MacBook. It was an early morning
flight, about an hour after sunrise. As I watched the pulsating dot on the computer screen, I imagined what she was doing, how she was dressed, her movements, and what she saw. I will recount the imagining here in hopes of painting a more vivid and illuminating picture than the mere recital of facts would provide. I trembled with nerves and excitement (though not the joyous kind) as I watched the little dot traversing the map in Minerva.

  Emily put her headset on, peering through her aviators at the coral blue sea all around her. She smiled as she scanned the marina for any takeoffs or landings. Clear, she positioned the plane for takeoff, and, after gaining speed, she lifted the small plane off the sun-flecked waters of Tarpum Bay. Quickly gaining altitude, she decided to head south again to look at Cat Island. She pointed the plane in a southerly direction before sitting back and letting it take course. Changing her mind twenty minutes into flying south, she headed west—I don’t know why.

  She headed toward a cloudbank and reduced her altitude. Cue misdirection. The computer told her she was headed southwest instead of west and therefore by correcting the trajectory she actually put herself in line for Abaco Island to the northwest. Before reaching Abaco Island, her plane gently changed course between the island and Nassau putting her en route for the northernmost tip of Great Stirrup Cay. Then, once there, sending her into the stormy seas toward Miami—the heart of the Devil’s Triangle. I watched the dot pulsate along the entire route. After reaching Great Stirrup Cay I saw that she decided to try to turn back. The plane’s controls were unresponsive. She made a futile attempt at radioing for help, but said nothing into the mic. She saw that the radio was dead.

  In the mind’s eye I saw her pounding the dash, hitting the unresponsive, seemingly autonomous computer. I imagined her horror. She panicked and tried everything she could to override the computer. But to no avail.

  I see all this in silence like a beautiful, slow motion film. There’s a storm ahead of her. Helpless, she flies directly into it. The indicators on her computerized dash go haywire. Perhaps she’s passed out by now from sheer terror. But I imagine she hasn’t. Fifty miles off the coast of Great Stirrup Cay the plane makes her final descent into a watery grave. The pulsating dot on the map of the sea ceases to move in any direction before it disappears entirely. I don’t imagine any more of her journey. The last mental image is of the plane descending into turbulent waters like a pebble tossed by a child into the sea. I close the MacBook and exhale slowly. A surge of adrenaline courses upward from my feet as I stand up.

  Next morning—I met Carter at d’Artegnan’s. It was as crisp inside the restaurant as without and I pulled my windbreaker tighter as I looked out on BoneFish Bay waiting for him to arrive. As soon as he entered, I knew he knew what had happened to Emily. I knew he was going to study my body language with increased intensity. Outwardly mellow and relaxed, I was ready for him. The disappearance of Emily Mordaunt was spreading like wildfire in the media. It was known that she had left Governor’s Harbour, Eleuthera Island at about seven on the morning of December 11 in her seaplane. There was some hope that she might have crash-landed on one of the smaller islands and had yet to be discovered, but the truth was quickly setting in.

  “So you have heard the news?” he said in rapid exhale as he sat down.

  He was fidgety and nervous. I was unsure why, but determined to find out.

  “You’re referring to the disappearance of Emily, no doubt…” I voiced it with concern.

  He sighed impatiently, but looked away, as though somehow guilty.

  “Yes. It’s so strange. Throws us into a bit of a tailspin with the investigation, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m surprised you’re not out there searching for her.”

  He looked at me as if to catch some hidden meaning. Seeing there was none to catch, he looked down.

  “Believe me, we have men out there from my very department—my team—looking into it.”

  “Meanwhile, you’re here with me to see how I react; to see if there’s any unusual reaction in the Stafford camp; to see—”

  He cut me off: “Indeed, to see. But if you’re behavior is anything to go by, it’s as strange to you as it is to me. And completely unexpected.”

  “Why would anyone expect it?” I cleared my throat.

  “The question, my dear, is why would anyone not?”

  He eyed me carefully. I felt the full intensity of his mental energy concentrated on me.

  “You didn’t.”

  “Yes. This is true. I did not. But why? Am I such a failure? So old in my work? So unobservant?”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself. No one would have seen that coming. It was an accident.”

  “Oh—but I see, clearly it was not.”

  I looked at him in question.

  “Yes. It was meant to look like an accident. But I have a hunch. Pure intuition you might call it. But my inner voice—in matters like this—my gut is never wrong.”

  He pulled on his tie as he said it, as though he was pulling the noose tighter around his neck in case of the off-chance he actually was wrong.

  “I hate to break it to you, Sophia.” He coughed. “But these are orders from on high—I have to take you in for questioning. It is purely voluntary on your part. But don’t make this difficult. If you don’t work with us…well…”

  “I’ll come in—but you don’t have to make empty threats.”

  I smiled in an effort to lighten the fairly tense atmosphere. Inside I was trembling.

  “When do I need to be there?”

  “You may come this afternoon, after one o’clock.”

  He slipped a business card across the table with some small handwriting on the back.

  “The address…I’ve got nothing more to say to you now. I’ll see you then.”

  With this he stood up. His demeanor seemed forced. Almost like he was overacting on purpose. He wanted me to be aware of something. I suspected two things. First, the fact that he was telling me we were being watched. I already knew that. Perhaps, though, he was indicating we were being watched now more heavily than before. Two, it told me that he was somehow acting against his own wishes. As though he was reinforcing what he had said about the orders. I didn’t trust any of this act. Just like I didn’t trust any of the acts he had put on before. This was undoubtedly part of the “good cop, bad cop” routine they employ throughout all branches of law enforcement.

  My palms already clammy, I had half a cup of coffee left. Absentmindedly, I stood up and left without paying the bill.

  One o’clock—I arrived at the address on the card about five minutes past. It was a sunny beach bungalow tucked away in a forest of palm trees off Queen’s Highway. I’d taken five 450 mg capsules of Valerian root to calm my nerves. I wiped off my sweaty palms with a few tissues before exiting the Cayenne and heading for the door.

  I was taken into a dark corridor by two men in poorly fitting black suits, digital watches, and cheap, Italian, leather shoes, smelling badly of five-dollar aftershave. All the hallmarks of America’s federal elite. I was let into a room with one small window, a two-way mirror, and a solitary lamp burning far too brightly for any practical purposes where I was left alone. This was supposed to be intimidating, but I found the opposite to be true. It allowed me to relax and unwind before what I rightly believed would be an intense and exhaustive interrogation. After an indeterminate period Carter entered with another man I hadn’t seen before. He spoke first as they sat down across from me.

  “You’ve met Special Agent Carter. I’m Special Agent Jeb Haverstock.”

  “You’re his partner,” I interjected calmly.

  They looked at one another.

  I looked around the room.

  “What’s the matter? You couldn’t find a room with no windows?”

  Carter smiled.

  Haverstock snorted.

  “Now’s not the time to be smart, Ms. Durant.”

  “Call me Sophia like you usually do.”

  I put on a c
ommanding voice, I don’t really know why. I suppose I was grasping at any remaining sense of power I could given the circumstances.

  Haverstock looked at Carter who looked out the window.

  “So…we have some information that may implicate you in a murder…” Haverstock started.

  My internal reaction was one of horror. My heart beat faster. It suddenly felt much hotter in the room. But externally I was cool. At heart, I knew it was mere routine—good cop, bad cop.

  “I know this is a matter of routine for investigators during an interrogation.”

  “Do you have any idea why you are here today, Ms. Durant?”

  “I have several. But do I have to discuss them with you? Certainly not.”

  “Yes. It is your fifth amendment right,” Carter chimed in.

  “Are you going to arrest me?” I asked at once.

  They looked at each other while making grumbling noises of hesitation.

  It was all I could do not to laugh at the absurdity of the scene. But I was also terrified and so was very careful of how I acted. My immediate logic was to be distant and aloof, but I knew this was wrong. That would seem contrived and guilty. So I played it warm and surprised. I also pictured various sex experiences with Stafford to distract myself from the seriousness of the situation and to appear more at ease. It worked.

  “I’ll be frank with you, Ms. Durant,” Haverstock’s voice rang out across the tiny room. “The information we have—potential evidence—implicates another even more than it implicates you. What we have to establish are the details surrounding the events. That will help us clear away any doubt and possibly free you up from what at least could be a very embarrassing situation—at most…” My heart pounded in my throat. “…a very long time in prison.”

  I had visions of being stuck behind bars in a dark, decaying prison on an island like Alcatraz—my mind deranged from years of depravation, many failed suicide attempts, sleep deprived, weary and wishing for death, but somehow unable to achieve it.