Florida Key

by Neil Watson

  “I’m afraid you’ve lost me,” Hardy said, puzzled.

  Moores went on to explain. “I wanted Yakamoto dead. That’s terrible for me to say now, but at the time it was a fact. And when he was sent to jail, I celebrated the fact there was one less Jap on our streets. How shameful was that? Please, you don’t have to answer that question, because I’m well aware of the answer.” Moores paused for breath before continuing. “I didn’t know back then that one day, Yakamoto would in fact be executed. I had hoped for it, shame on me, but I couldn’t be sure. So, I tried to organise an execution of sorts myself!”

  “Go on,” whispered Hardy, hardly believing what he was hearing.

  “No doubt,” continued Moores, now with tears visibly formed in the corners of his eyes. “No doubt you’ve heard of M.J. Emanuele? The Assassin? Of course you have. It wasn’t by accident that he ended up sharing a cell with Yakamoto. When I became Governor, I had a lot of power in the running of Illinois prisons, including Joliet. You see, I could influence all the prisoners’ locations—who went where, who shared cells with whom, you know, that sort of thing.”

  Hardy continued listening, second-guessing what was coming next, and hoping that he was wrong. But he realised that he wasn’t when Moores continued: “First, I got Yakamoto and Emanuele put together in the same cell on the pretext of solving some overcrowding situation. And then I gave Emanuele one final contract to carry out. I thank the Lord now that he refused to go through with it, otherwise that would have been another burden I’d have had to bear for the remainder of my days.”

  This latest revelation filled Hardy with horror, if he understood correctly. To think that such a thing could happen in a prison in modern-day America beggared belief, as far as he was concerned. Moores carried on with his guilt-ridden tale: “Luckily for me, and Yakamoto, Emanuele had found religion by then, and didn’t go through with what I’d ordered.”

  With his hands shaking visibly and clearly very upset, Moores went on: “I heard from sources still loyal to me that your, err, friend Miss O’Mahoney recently paid a visit to Emanuele, and was a little, err, upset—yes that’s the right word—upset, to discover his trophy from our alliance in a jar. He tells everyone that he cut off his own ‘trigger’ finger. But who uses their middle finger to pull a trigger, I ask you? That’s a load of baloney, for sure.” The conversation was becoming more and more difficult to stomach for Hardy, especially when Moores then tried to bring some light relief to his disclosures. “Ha, ha! A load of baloney for O’Mahoney!” Moores joked, without smiling.

  “Cut to the chase, Moores. I’m feeling sick of all this,” demanded Hardy, now very irritated by Moores’ mixed signals—boastfulness on one hand, and sadness and regret on the other.

  “Okay, okay,” conceded Moores, as he got the message, with his weak voice faltering. “I was the one who dismembered Emanuele’s hand as punishment for not doing what I’d asked!”

  A shudder went through Hardy as he listened to Moores tell his guilty secret. “There! I’ve admitted it now for the first time,” said Moores. “You’re the only living soul who knows, apart from Emanuele himself of course.”

  “I’m honoured,” replied Hardy, sarcastically. Moores went on to elaborate further: “I’d got Emanuele alone in the kitchens at Joliet, picked a meat cleaver from the rack, held him in an arm-lock from behind and simply chopped the finger off that I’d forced him to splay upon the stainless steel work bench. I threatened Emanuele I’d get his life sentence moved up a notch to the death penalty if he ever let on, so he made up a story about doing it to himself. And this is now the first time I’ve admitted my actions to anyone.”

  Moores continued. “Even when I was in jail myself, I was still able to call upon so-called friends to pull certain strings for me, so when I could I tried to redeem myself by making Emanuele’s remaining life behind bars considerably more comfortable. A token of my sorrow, an apology if you like. That’s why when Joliet closed and he was moved to Stateville, he ended up living in more of a hotel room than a cell. He was lucky—he went on to find God, didn’t he? Maybe he even found happiness, whatever that is. I never found my God, or happiness, and I doubt I ever will. I’m now truly sorry for my actions, Mr Hardy. And now my fate rests in your hands.”

  Without saying another word, and without making further eye contact with Moores, Hardy got up, walked slowly and deliberately to the door, and left the apartment. As he walked along the hallway towards the care home’s exit he reflected on his highly irregular meeting, his mind in a spin. He’d heard some weird and abhorrent stories during his career, but none quite so bizarre as this.

  During his drive home, he considered what he ought to do next, wondering what advantage anyone would gain if he were to instigate new proceedings against Moores. Hardy was satisfied that Moores appeared genuine in his remorse, although he accepted that that fact alone was an insufficient reason for whatever action he decided upon taking.

  Hardy concluded he should wait till the morning after a good night’s sleep, just like his mother had raised him to do whenever there was a difficult decision to be made. This afternoon, for now at least, he would concentrate on simply getting home and taking a relaxing bath with a strong Bourbon whiskey by his side.

  CHAPTER 45

  (WEDNESDAY, 24TH JANUARY, 2018)

  Mitori Feels

  Compelled

  A fter Oliver had been shot, the situation thankfully had been quickly brought under control, and he was efficiently collected by air-ambulance and flown for specialist medical attention at Terre Haute’s Imperial Hospital. It was touch and go though, and the quick actions of Ashley and Wheatley, as well as of the air-ambulance crew, had almost definitely saved his life. The rapid loss of blood, coupled with the shock to his body’s system, had meant it was a close-run thing.

  It had been a whole 48 hours before Oliver became conscious again, while lying there in his hospital bed. When he did come round, at first, numb and unsure of where he was, it gradually dawned on him that he wasn’t actually dreaming—that in fact this was all very real. The last thing he had remembered was being inside the small room at the woodsheds, and the terror he’d felt at being pursued by Marc Ozborn.

  Now that he realised he was in the safety of a warm and comfortable hospital bed, he came to the conclusion that the whole scene could so easily have turned into a nightmare. He was aware, without being told, that he could easily have been killed.

  Once his grogginess had dissipated, his mind soon sharpened when he could hear that he was not alone. Luckily for him, he thought, the two girls present in the room hadn’t noticed the flickering of his eyes, squinting open very slightly, first the right one and then both. Oliver decided to shut them tight again quickly and to remain very still. The pattern on the machine to which Oliver was connected began oscillating in a different rhythm, but to the untrained eye that meant nothing. To the nurse in the other room who could monitor the machine remotely from where she sat, it meant that her patient was ready to be seen by the specialist to assess his wellbeing and undergo various tests.

  This could be a very awkward moment, Oliver realised, as the potential gravity of his situation sunk in, specifically his domestic situation concerning the two women at the side of his bed. Of course, it wasn’t as bad as being shot at by a crazed man, he knew that, but not far off. While listening very intently to the conversation going on around him, he tried to work out exactly how much Sam knew about Siobhan, and how much Siobhan knew about Sam.

  “He could have died, you know,” said the voice that Oliver recognised as being Siobhan’s. “It was so awful waiting for the ambulance to arrive, and the amount of blood he lost was staggering. Before the paramedics got there, we’d torn up every bit of rag we could find to wrap around his arm, but still it kept bleeding.”

  Oliver listened intently while Siobhan continued to describe to Sam what had happened at the saw-shed, leading up to Ozborn’s arrest.

  “Thank God!” Sam bega
n, somewhat in awe of Siobhan. “Thank God you had the brilliant idea to shout out to Ozborn that he wasn’t the killer.” Thinking back, Siobhan was rightly proud of what she’d done. By following her hunch, she may well have saved Oliver’s life, and she was looking forward to talking through the sequence of events with Oliver when he regained consciousness.

  Oliver just lay there in the hospital bed, eyes still shut tight, making a mental note to thank Siobhan for her quick thinking at the next opportunity. After all, he thought, how many Marks must there be in the world? It’s not exactly an uncommon name. He reiterated Sam’s sentiment under his breath. “Thank God!”

  Just then, as Sam looked towards Oliver with grave concern, the nurse entered the room. “Hi there, girls, I’m going to have to ask you to leave us now. The Doctor wants Mr. Markland over for an MRI scan right away.”

  “Okay,” responded Siobhan, standing aside to let the nurse through. “I’ve got to get over to my aunt’s newspaper to write today’s update,” she said to Sam.

  “And I need to get home now, anyway,” replied the other voice who Oliver knew to be Sam’s. “It’s been real nice meeting you, Siobhan, even though the circumstances haven’t been good. I sure am looking forward to Oliver getting back home with us—my mom and dad and me. Especially me, to tell the truth—he’s recently been so preoccupied with all this Bike Radio Murder stuff, that we really haven’t had much time for each other, and I can’t wait to have him back to how things used to be before all this started.”

  Siobhan raised a quizzical eyebrow, but decided this wasn’t the time or place to delve deeper into what things Sam was referring to. She’d be bound to find out later. Both girls turned towards their man, who they assumed was fast asleep, and blew invisible kisses through the air to him. “He will be alright, won’t he?” asked Sam to the nurse, looking at her expression for any signs of reassurance.

  “Please tell us he’s gonna be okay,” pleaded Siobhan. Without making any commitment, the nurse just did her job, and with positive compassion simply said that it was for the doctor to assess, and that was where she was now taking the patient.

  For now, Oliver made sure he kept his eyes closed until he was safely half way down the hospital corridor. The nurse pushing his bed was clearly a very perceptive lady. “You can open your eyes now, Mr. Markland,” she said, checking behind her in time to see Oliver’s two visitors walking towards the exit in the other direction. “But I think you might potentially be in a spot of trouble there later, young man, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  “I think you may be right,” Oliver agreed, rolling his eyes. Half an hour later, he was being wheeled back to his room following what he was told had been satisfactory test results, with a doctor reiterating how lucky he had been to survive the shooting. Oliver looked up to the ceiling and contemplated what he ought to do next with his life. The contemplation was easy, although coming to a conclusion was a little more difficult. Nevertheless, he made a decision, one that both his head and heart agreed on.

  During the previous week’s dinner with Siobhan at her aunt Ursula’s, it had been bandied around by Ursula that they might be able to find Oliver a permanent position at the newspaper, and Oliver had been very excited about exploring that prospect further. But, what with the traumatic events of the past few days, the thrill of remaining in America had lessened somewhat, and the return to the comfort and safety of Wivenhoe, as soon as he was able, was now a much more appealing proposition.

  But for now, he knew that as soon as he was well enough, he had work commitments that he was obliged to fulfil, contractually and morally. In fact, as it happened, he decided he was feeling well enough right now to get on with them. No time like the present, he thought, so with a burst of energy that surprised him, he reached down to the side of his bed and opened the cabinet’s door to retrieve his laptop that he knew Siobhan had thoughtfully brought in with her. Making himself comfortable by propping three pillows behind him, he began writing. He knew his readers at the Terre Haute Daily Times and the East Anglian Chronicle would be waiting, and he had an awful lot to tell.

  Despite his tiredness, a whole three hours went by before he typed the final full stop of the last paragraph, fired off his work by email, and closed the lid down on his MacBook. Seconds after he’d safely returned the machine to the space inside his bedside cabinet, and even before flattening the pillows down, Oliver fell fast asleep, exhausted, while still in his sitting position.

  ***

  (SATURDAY, 27TH JANUARY, 2018)

  Being the sports fan that he was, Paul Copeland had once again been flicking through the Terre Haute Daily Times in the way he usually did from the sports pages at the rear towards the news pages at the front. It was when he’d eventually reached page 3 that he gasped and called out to his wife. “Katie! Take a look at this!”

  Katie was in the kitchen preparing their evening meal, with a pot of Bolognese sauce on the stove and a glass of crisp Chardonnay in her hand. “What is it?” she asked, as she came through to the lounge, enjoying a few sips of wine along the way.

  Paul had folded the newspaper to the appropriate section and handed Oliver’s ‘Young Sherlock’ report to her. She took it, sat down and began fully digesting its content. “That poor young man. He was so nice when he came here with that girl. What was her name now? Siobhan? She was a beauty if ever I saw one. Thank goodness Oliver survived. What an ordeal he must have gone through! I wonder if she was his girlfriend.” she went off at a tangent. “It certainly looked that way.”

  “Yes,” said Paul, amused at how his wife’s scientific mind mingled with her romantic one. “But have you read the piece at the bottom? Look!” he pointed over Katie’s shoulder while she was reading. “They’re really going to town with this. It says there will be another instalment in the Sunday supplement tomorrow, along with a full pull-out section. And he says he’ll be working on writing a book about the whole Bike Radio Murder story. You’re bound to feature in it. You’ll be famous!”

  “Hmm, we’ll see about that. I can’t imagine anyone being interested in reading about me,” said Katie with a smile. “But for now, I’d better get back in the kitchen. We need food, and the sauce needs stirring.”

  ***

  (MONDAY, 29TH JANUARY, 2018)

  It was a little past six in the evening when Phil Booth rode home from work on his most recently acquired Harley Davidson, a superb 2004 Super Glide Sport, up the drive outside his house near Cincinnati, Ohio. This was the model he’d wanted to own for many years, and now, nearing retirement, he’d finally got one. He still enjoyed his job as a traffic cop, and today was excited to tell his wife Lou about the talk of the precinct that day.

  As usual, she heard the bike coming towards the house a mile away, and switched the garage door open so that he could ride straight in as he turned onto the drive.

  “Hulloo, little Lou!” Phil said, as he took off his helmet and leant down to give his wife a kiss. Their current dog, Bert The Third, came bounding up, slobber dripping from its mouth as usual. Phil, who rarely read a newspaper, especially now that he had become elected to sit on the local community council and had even less free time than previously, surprised Lou by taking a copy of the Cincinnati Herald from his luggage box. “Look at this!” he exclaimed, waving it in the air. “I’ve got something to show you. But it’s all over the internet as well, so let’s go inside and I’ll show you online.”

  Puzzled, a curious Lou followed her husband indoors to their study and pulled up a chair next to him while they waited for their Dell table-top computer to come to life.

  A short while later, she watched on as he scrolled up and down the website pages that Phil’s colleagues had told him about at work. “It was all such a long time ago,” Phil began to explain. “But after the boys at the precinct helped to prod my memory, everything came back to me.”

  “Lou, do you remember me telling you about a guy with a Japanese name who I picked up for riding his cycle on the I
nterstate? I don’t expect you to, as it was over thirty years ago now. But anyway, I’d let him off with a warning, and gave him a lift with his bike over to Cincinnati. His handlebar-radio fell off in the trunk, and I took it over to his youth hostel on the way home from work.”

  Lou nodded, slowly at first, then faster. “I do remember, vaguely,” she said. “What of it?”

  “I’d helped them catch the guy back in ’81 . . .” Phil continued explaining. “. . . when it turned out they’d got the wrong surname. Well, look, it says here he’s been in the news again with some English guy calling himself ‘Young Sherlock’, coming over and reporting on the whole story. “I remember now that the bike radio had been used as the murder weapon.” Lou grimaced while Phil continued: “And they’re talking about making a movie about it now. Who would have thought? I wonder if they’d like to use the Harley in it!”

  “Come on,” laughed Lou, ever the realist, and affectionately bringing Phil back down to earth. “I think you might be getting a little ahead of yourself, don’t you? Come on—Bert needs taking for a walk. That’s more important right now.”

  ***

  It was certainly true that Oliver’s column had escalated in readership far beyond the local confines of Indiana and Illinois states, ever since Ursula O’Mahoney had convinced her boss, Steve Borowitz at the Indianapolis Daily Times, to syndicate the articles nationwide. It had been a great suggestion, thought Borowitz, and had definitely paid off. His media company had quickly become the talk of the publishing world. Hints of books and films may have been a little hyped up, he admitted, but other newspapers all across the country were now clambering to jump on the ‘Young Sherlock’ bandwagon.