His flight boarded in a little over an hour, which would give him just enough time to wolf down a sandwich before heading for the airport. He folded the boarding pass, stuck it in his jacket and grabbed his mini iPad before joining Rachel in the kitchen.
He felt lucky to have found the resourceful teen to look after Pan while he was away and keep the house inhabited. Before now he had always boarded Pan and felt guilty every time he thought of his beloved companion being taken out of her comfort zone. One day he had been walking her and ran into Rachel’s mother outside her home a couple of blocks over. He had stopped to chat and learned that Mrs. Warren’s daughter had just graduated high school and was looking for a way to earn some extra cash over the summer. She added that Rachel loved animals and asked that he keep her in mind if he ever needed a dog sitter. Alan had taken her up on the offer when the Wilburn case came up and he learned that Rachel would be willing to house sit as well.
“I’ll give you a call as soon as I know when I’ll be returning, Rachel,” he said. “I may very well head right back down to Milldale, though. Are you sure you don’t mind staying an extra few days if necessary?”
“Not at all. I really like being here and Pan is super easy to look after. Besides that, I appreciate the opportunity to earn some cash. My parents have told me that I need to start saving up spending money for when I go to college in the fall. I’d much rather be doing this than babysitting.”
“Not so crazy about kids?”
“Not the kids I usually sit for. They drive me nuts!”
Alan chuckled and went about making a ham and cheese sandwich after cuing up the coffeemaker. When he was finished eating, he took out the largest size travel mug he could find and topped it off with fresh Kona before gathering up his things to leave.
“Be a good girl,” he said as he paused to pet Pan. “Take care, Rachel. I’ll call you some time tomorrow.”
“Okay, Mr. Swansea. Goodbye.”
The drive to the airport was surreal. Alan felt a knot in his stomach as he considered how everything had turned on a dime over the last few hours. One moment he was discussing the Wilburn case with Amanda in Milldale and the next heading to Boston to meet a total stranger about another case. Had he made the right decision leaving Amanda so abruptly like this? It had all happened so fast, it made his head spin. How had this all come to be, anyway?
The answer was simple: Ron Fleming. The guy had somehow talked him into this crazy diversion through his remarkable power of persuasion. Ironically, despite the thrumming in his head, Alan was actually looking forward to this meeting. Something—he couldn’t put a finger on it—was telling him to pursue this further.
He just hoped the cost of doing so wouldn’t be too great.
CHAPTER 11
Alan grabbed his bag and exited the plane. He entered the terminal and started looking for the tall, blonde-haired woman who was supposed to be meeting him. He’d been tempted to ask Fleming why he was sending somebody instead of coming himself but he’d held off.
He spotted a rather large but fit woman around thirty with blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail waving to him. She walked directly over and held out her hand.
“Mr. Swansea,” she smiled. “I am your ride to the Fleming house.”
“Nice to meet you, um—”
“Natalie. Natalie Slone. How was your flight?”
“Good. Read most of the way.”
“Ah, my favorite pastime. Got any favorite authors?”
“Many of them are long gone. Thomas Hardy, Dostoyevsky, Dickens. But you can only read Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Crime and Punishment so many times without going crazy so I read a lot of Michael Connelly, Stephen King and Ken Follett, to name a few.”
“That’s quite a broad list of genres—do you have any baggage to claim?”
“Nope, travelling light.”
Alan had to hasten his pace to keep up with the woman as she walked briskly toward the elevator.
“I’m parked on the second level. Ron is really looking forward to meeting you,” she said. “Have you been to the area before?”
“Quite a while ago. How far is Mr. Fleming’s place from here?”
“About thirty minutes, providing the traffic cooperates.”
“So he lives in the burbs?”
“He lives in a little town called Nahant that used to be part of Lynn until it was incorporated into a separate town in the nineteenth century. A tiny island that’s actually a peninsula that juts out into the bay southeast of Lynn.”
“I see.”
When they reached the parking area, Natalie led the way over to a shiny black BMW, pressed the remote to unlock the doors and motioned for him to get in.
“This is not mine, by the way. It’s the boss’s,” she said, apparently to make it clear she would never own a Beemer.
“So what may I ask is your relationship to Mr. Fleming?”
“I’m his aide” she replied simply.
“Do you live in Nahant as well?”
“No, Lynn.”
“Just out of curiosity, how did you know that was me coming off the plane?”
“Ron showed me a photo of you.”
“I see. Any idea where he got that?”
“Ron knows everything,” she replied matter-of-factly.
“Is that right?”
“He knows a lot—let’s put it that way.”
“How does he know so much?”
“Soon you’ll see.”
Alan wondered what all the hype and mystery was for. Who is this guy, anyway?
And what exactly was the job description for his “aide?”
“What can you tell me about Ron?”
“I’d prefer to let him speak for himself. I will say that he is a very private person and likes to lay low. He’s also a great person to work for and very likeable.”
“What can you say about his partner?”
“He doesn’t have a partner that I know of.”
“But he mentioned a colleague who was working on a case with him. Got shot in the line of duty.”
“Ron doesn’t share his business with me. So I suppose there are plenty of things I don’t know about.”
“I see.”
Alan stared out the window, wondering how this woman could work for Fleming yet know nothing of his business dealings. If she didn’t help him with the paperwork, or schedule appointments or perform tasks of that nature, what the hell did she do to aid him—cook and clean the house?
They were travelling at a decent speed along Route 1A and before long Alan noticed the ocean on his right. He studied their present location on the car’s GPS and saw that they were following the coastline to the north. In another ten minutes Natalie turned onto Nahant Road and entered the town of Nahant. It didn’t take long to realize that this scenic road virtually ran the entire length of the tiny peninsula.
“Here we are,” she announced, pulling into the driveway of an enormous white three-story home. They got out of the car and walked around to the front, which faced the rocky shoreline of the Sound that literally skirted the other side of the two-lane road. He could almost throw a rock and hit the surf from where they stood. Beyond the coastline was a stunning panorama as far as the eye could see.
“Wow, this is beautiful.”
“It is. That’s Castle Rock out there,” Natalie said, pointing over at a large rock formation jutting out from the coast.
“No relation to Stephen King’s Castle Rock?”
“Not hardly.”
She led the way over to the front porch and they entered the house. Alan’s first impression of the interior of Ron Fleming’s home was how classic New England it looked with its antique decor and rustic furnishings. Rich, well-worn hardwood floors ran throughout, illuminated by the natural light pouring in through the uncovered floor-to-ceiling sized windows. The view of the bay was virtually omnipresent from this side of the house and he could only imagine how beautiful the sky must look at daybr
eak.
Natalie resumed her fast pace through a doorway into the foyer, not allowing him any time to enjoy the view. He did a double-take when he noticed an elevator off to his right. Natalie went over and pressed the UP button and he immediately heard the rumbling sound of an elevator car descending. He stared at Natalie, expecting some kind of explanation.
“Ron is on the third floor,” she said simply.
“I see,” he replied.
The door opened with a whoosh and they entered. Natalie pressed the button for three, the door closed and up they went. Alan tried to recall ever seeing or hearing of a house this old having a built in elevator but couldn’t. He began wondering how many more surprises lay ahead.
The elevator stopped, the door promptly opened. Before him stood a study/computer lab that took up the entire floor. It was like a melding of the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries in a single room—antique chairs with matching desks supporting a staggering array of state-of-the-art electronic equipment. Adjacent to this technological arsenal was a bird’s eye view of the bay through a semi-circular turret window.
Near the turret sat a man at a desk. He looked up from the computer monitor as they emerged from the elevator. The man smiled and came out from behind the desk on an electric wheelchair.
“Greetings, Mr. Swansea. We meet at last!”
Alan walked over to Ron Fleming, joined by Natalie. The man looked to be in his early seventies and wore a plain blue button-down shirt, khakis and house slippers. He shook Alan’s hand.
“Nice to meet you.”
“I trust you had a good flight?”
Alan nodded. “Especially the first-class accommodations. Nice touch.”
“My pleasure. Natalie, would you mind getting whatever Mr. Swansea would like to drink? Coffee, a beer?”
“Coffee would be nice if you don’t mind.”
“Of course. Ron?” Natalie said.
“I’ll have the same. Thanks.”
As Natalie headed back to the elevator, Fleming gestured toward the picturesque view.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes it is.”
“I never get tired of it. This house has been in my family for nearly a century and every day I feel blessed to live here.”
“How long have you had the elevator?” Alan asked.
“About as long as I’ve been in this wheelchair,” Fleming replied. “I caught a bullet in my spinal cord ten years ago—paralyzed me from the waist down.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. Becoming a paraplegic has been a life-altering event. I‘ve tried my best to appreciate the positive aspects of it, and you know what? I can’t think of a single one!” he grinned.
He shrugged. “But once I finally relinquished myself to accept the unfortunate card I’d been dealt, it got a little easier to deal with. I had to make changes of course, adapt to the limitations to my mobility and everything that goes along with it. That’s been the biggest game changer for me. Having to hire somebody to help me with the most basic things I used do for myself has been very difficult. Not to mention humbling. There’s a certain loss of identity that goes along with losing the use of your legs—you feel vulnerable and impotent if you don’t keep your guard up. Living becomes a game of sorts, such as trying to act like this wheelchair doesn’t really exist and I’m not really a cripple. You win some, you lose some.”
“What exactly happened, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“’Going right for the jugular—I like that! I wish I could tell you some heroic story of how I was trying to escape from a bunch of bad guys and one of them suddenly shot me in the back, but that would be a total lie. It was nothing dramatic like that.
“One day I was I was walking along Forty Steps Beach—that’s the tiny pocket beach right down there—when suddenly I felt a sharp burning in my lower back. An instant later I fell flat on my ass, wondering what in the hell had just happened. Turns out, I’d been shot by somebody with a high-power rifle—the kind a hunter would use. Or a sniper. At any rate, I lay there for quite awhile until a neighbor finally spotted me from the road and called 911. I was lucky they came along when they did. The doctors said I’d be more than just paralyzed from the waist down otherwise, if you know what I mean.”
“Did they ever find out who did it?”
“No, and that’s the strange thing about it. The cops investigated but never found a single trace of a shooter in the area. So they figured it was either a stray bullet from a hunter, which is very unlikely since nobody hunts in Nahant, or somebody onboard a watercraft out in the sound fired the shot. All I knew for sure is that it had to have travelled quite a distance because I never heard a sound. Nor did anybody else in the area.”
“What do you think happened? I mean, do you know anybody who might have wanted to shoot you at the time?”
He shook his head. “I hadn’t a single enemy I could think of. Back then I was just a moderately successful investment banker. I may have made a few bad decisions from time to time but nothing drastic enough to warrant a hit on myself. I think it was just plain bad luck—a random case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“At any rate, becoming a paraplegic suddenly threw my life into a tailspin. While struggling through physical therapy and feeling sorry for myself, I realized that I no longer wanted to continue my career as a banker. To be blunt, I come from a wealthy family and had inherited enough to last me the rest of my life after my father passed so I had the luxury of making such a decision. I never liked my job anyway—commuting to the city every day just to try and make rich people even richer. It was a pointless, unsatisfying way to exist. I did have other interests though, my favorite being software development.
“I have always been fascinated with computers and I learned how to write code as far back as the early eighties. I had developed several programs over the years in my spare time—ranging from video games to investment how-to apps. So while I was sitting around with all of this time on my hands, I decided to quit my job and equip this room with all of the latest technological equipment that suited my needs. Since I’ve always spent most of my time up here and wasn’t about to give the place up just because of my infirmary, I had the elevator installed.”
Fleming reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a photograph and handed it to Alan. It was a photo of a young girl around nine or ten with brown curly hair and big brown eyes.
“This is Gracie Mueller when she was ten years old. Gracie is my closest friend’s granddaughter and an only child. Around five years ago, Gracie was abducted by human traffickers. She had been literally plucked from the street while waiting for her mother to pick her up after school. Shortly after the abduction an Amber Alert was issued and the police began an intense search for the child that ran into the late night. The next day, having had no luck finding her, my friend’s family huddled around the phone with a wiretap, awaiting a call from her abductor demanding a ransom. They were well aware that the alternative to kidnapping was even more frightening, so they half-hoped that would be the case. At least there could be hope for Gracie’s safe return. But nobody ever called. My friend’s son and daughter-in-law then went on live TV and offered a reward of thirty thousand dollars for any information leading to Gracie’s whereabouts or return. The police received a slew of tips afterwards but not a single one panned out at the time.
“Then one day nearly three months later, somebody thought they recognized Gracie riding in the backseat of a car in downtown Boston. They called the cops and gave them the car’s license number. Later that week they were able to track down the owner of the car—a pimp named Darrell who had been working the streets for the last several years. The police arrested him, took him to the station for questioning and eventually worked out a deal with him in exchange for handing Gracie over to them.”
“So they got her back?”
“In the physical sense—yes, but not in spirit. What Gracie’s family got back was a li
ttle girl that was a wasted shell of her former self. She weighed only thirty pounds, was addicted to crack cocaine and hadn’t bathed in over a week. She was examined by a doctor who discovered that she had cuts and bruises all over her body, a cracked rib and an STD. Ten years old, and she may just as well be dead.
“The physical harm was nothing compared to the emotional trauma the poor child had endured. She was unable to talk about what she had been subjected to since her abduction. Although she was now safe and would never have to go back to the life she had been living, she was still in mortal fear of her pimp and refused to incriminate him. It was pathetic.
“In the span of just a few months, Gracie had become so damaged she’ll never be able to live a happy normal life. All because of the heartless bastards that stole her from her loving family, imprisoned her, robbed her of her innocence and subjected her to a world of unspeakable atrocities.”
“Jesus,” Alan muttered. He took another look at the photo and handed it back to Fleming.
“I was so appalled by all of this that I felt compelled to do something about it. To do anything in my power to keep other kids from being subjected to this sort of nightmare. It didn’t take me long to realize that I potentially had a powerful weapon to use against these low-lifers right here in this room. It just had to be developed and perfected in order to work.”
Just then they heard the elevator door open and out came Natalie carrying a tray.
“Let’s go over there,” Fleming said, motioning toward the desk he’d been working at.
Alan followed him over to where a pair of long desks came together and made an L formation. Natalie sat the tray on top of the least cluttered desk and poured coffee into two ceramic mugs.
“Please, have a seat,” Fleming said to Alan as he positioned himself before a twenty-six inch computer monitor.
Alan pulled over an office chair and sat down in it.
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