Six Seconds

by Rick Mofina

  One day, Jake went with her to the supermarket where they’d bumped into Craig Ullman, Logan’s soccer coach. As they talked, something icy flitted across Jake’s face. A few nights later in bed, he turned his back to her.

  “I know you slept with Ullman when I was over there.”

  She was stunned.

  Not only was Jake wrong, he scared her because it seemed as if he was losing it. Then came the scene at one of Logan’s games. Jake had been out of town and arrived late. Logan waved from the field, Maggie waved from her place among the parents in lawn chairs on the sideline.

  Jake ignored them, marching up to Craig Ullman.

  “I know, asshole,” Jake said.

  Ullman looked up from his clipboard, bewildered.

  “Is something wrong, Jake?”

  “You were banging my wife while I was away. I fucking know it! ”

  “What?”

  Jake drew back his fist and Maggie grabbed it.

  “No, Jake! Stop it! We have to go home. Craig, I am so sorry. ”

  Jake stared at her, at Logan who’d watched it all, along with everybody else. Jake just walked off, drove away, and spent the night in his rig, parked in the driveway of their home, exiled from the people who loved him.

  She and Logan endured the humiliation and, in the days that followed, Jake refused to speak of the incident. He went on several long-haul jobs while Maggie called anonymous crisis lines to find a way to fix their lives.

  She did all that she could for her family.

  Maggie opened her eyes.

  There it is again.

  The noise.

  A bit louder this time.

  She got out of bed to check.

  She went into the hallway and looked around. Un ease rippled through her as she headed for the living room and the study area. Nothing obvious. Yet some thing felt wrong. She went to the bathroom, checked behind the shower curtain.

  Nothing.

  She went to Logan’s room. Nothing. She went back to the living room and this time she went deeper into the study area where she kept her computer and her records on Jake and Logan.

  The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

  Her papers had been shuffled, some had spilled onto the floor.

  Had someone been in her home?

  Maggie looked at the patio door just off the study at the back of the house. It was open by about four inches. She closed it. Locked it.

  Did she leave it open?

  She’d been careless before when she was lost in her thoughts.

  If she did, it would explain her scattered file. It was breezy tonight.

  What’s that?

  A faint trace of something. A lingering scent she couldn’t identify.

  Maybe it was nothing.

  Was she so stressed her mind was playing tricks on her?

  This is stupid. She couldn’t handle this right now.

  No. It was strange, but she could feel a presence.

  Maggie jumped as her phone rang.

  Who’d be calling at this hour?

  Hope fluttered in her stomach then fear clawed at her. “Hello?”

  Silence swallowed her answer. The incoming caller was BLOCKED, according to her caller ID. “Hello? Who’s there?”

  Nothing. No breathing. No background noise. Only silence.

  “Who are you calling, please?”

  Through the window Maggie saw a car whisk down the street with only its parking lights on.

  What’s happening?

  She hung up and thrust her face in her trembling hands.

  Was she losing her mind?

  8

  Washington, D.C.

  North of the White House, beyond the Capitol and the Washington Monument, Carol Mintz analyzed poten tial threats to the security of the United States.

  The pope’s upcoming visit to the U.S. made her even more tense.

  Watch for everything. Note anything, her supervisor had advised her.

  Sure. No problem. That’s what we do here twentyfour-seven. It never stops.

  Mintz’s keyboard clicked softly as she scrolled through the secret file from the U.S. Embassy in Libya.

  A French intelligence source listening to Algerian in surgent operatives had intercepted radio traffic out of Tripoli. The chatter indicated a possible shipment of hostile cargo from Africa was nearing the U.S.

  No other information was known.

  Mintz, an intelligence specialist, checked her ar chives, confirming what she’d suspected. This one had first surfaced a few weeks ago with an unsubstantiated report of a freighter steaming from Morocco’s Port of Tangier, the cargo thought to be drugs from Ethiopia. According to the latest information, that ship had navi gated the Suez, crossed the Indian Ocean and was now thought to be somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

  Still unsubstantiated.

  So why was this flaring up again?

  Tripoli advised to stand by for an update.

  More information would be good. This was going to be another long day.

  Mintz worked in the old naval intelligence base known as the Nebraska Avenue Complex. Her office was among some three-dozen buildings on the thirtyeight-acre site, near the operations center of the Depart ment of Homeland Security, about fourteen miles from where terrorists had slammed a jetliner into the Pen tagon.

  The DHS’s mission was to prevent further strikes.

  Mintz’s job was to track cases and assess the threat with her counterparts at the CIA, FBI, DIA, NSA, Secret Service and various other agencies.

  Her team was responsible for distilling intelligence on incoming ships and planes.

  Mintz bit her lip as she glanced at her copy of the morning’s New York Times. A front page headline indi cated foreign intelligence agencies were detecting in creased levels of terrorist activity-activity that was aimed at heads of state.

  Ain’t that the truth.

  Earlier in the week they’d helped process a threat through Australian and British security services indicat ing that two men, suspected to be terrorist operatives, had boarded a 747 on a Hong Kong-to-Sydney flight connect ing to San Francisco. U.S. fighters were scrambled.

  58 Rick Mofina

  Fingerprints obtained covertly from their drinking cups in-flight by two American agents aboard and scanned in-flight to Washington, had confirmed the subjects’ identities and ruled out a threat.

  Everyone stood down on that one.

  Passengers had never known of the events that had unfolded around them.

  Mintz reached for a carrot stick just as her computer flashed with a new report.

  The embassy in Amsterdam had issued a classified threat. A jailed passport forger in Istanbul had told Turkish police interrogators that a ship was carrying several concealed containers of explosives that would be detonated when it reached Boston Harbor. Regis tered to a numbered company in Aruba, the vessel had left Rotterdam and was now approaching U.S. waters.

  Mintz grabbed her phone when her computer flashed with an update from the Central Intelligence Agency.

  The illicit Rotterdam cargo was a dozen mail-order brides smuggled out of Moscow. No explosives were located. No threat. It was common for criminal sources to inflate their claims to better bargain with prosecutors.

  Thank you, Langley, for sharing.

  Mintz massaged the knot of tension in the back of her neck as she looked at the National Threat Advisory displayed on the wall behind her.

  Today we are yellow-an elevated risk of terrorist attacks.

  Her computer flashed with an update on the African freighter.

  It was still headed across the Pacific to the U.S. The hostile substance was still suspected to be illicit drugs, possibly hashish or qat, a narcotic leafy substance, from Ethiopia.

  Fine, Mintz thought, the data seemed to be going full circle.

  Still, she directed it to her other agencies.

  Sharing information to connect the dots. Once more, over to you fine people at the Coa
st Guard, Customs, the DEA and the gang at CT watch, who’ve probably already handled this one.

  Then Mintz noticed that she’d just received a security look-ahead from the Secret Service’s Dignitary Protec tive Division-the guys who were protecting the pope during his U.S. visit in a few weeks’ time. Mintz scanned the updates on the papal travel agenda. Future destina tions and considerations of interest to all security agen cies.

  Tapping her finger on her desk, Mintz contemplated some of her recent files.

  She decided to share them with Secret Service Intel ligence Division.

  Mintz appreciated that they were going full tilt over there, given they had the lead to protect the Holy Father.

  She was sorry to pile up their workload, but her orders were to share everything.

  Even an unconfirmed shipload of drugs from Ethi opia.

  And let’s hope that’s all it is.

  9

  Calgary, Alberta, Canada

  Searchers in Sector 17 found Anita Tarver’s corpse entangled in a logjam along a stream that flowed off the Faust River.

  Less than twenty-four hours later, her naked body lay on a stainless steel tray in the autopsy room of the Calgary Medical Examiner’s Office, a few feet from the bodies of her son and daughter.

  As Graham watched Dr. Bryce Collier, the patholo gist, and his assistant conduct the procedures, he imag ined moments in Anita’s life with her children. The birthdays. The Christmases. Getting them ready for school. Their excitement at the big plane trip for a vacation in the mountains. Anita kissing them goodnight under the stars.

  Had they known what was coming?

  Like most detectives, Graham disliked autopsies. But it was part of the job. In his years as a Mountie he’d seen the aftermath of fires, electrocutions, drownings, stabbings, shootings, hackings, hangings, strangula tions, beatings with hammers, bats, hockey sticks, pipes, car-wreck decapitations and lost hikers entombed in ice.

  But no matter how many autopsies he’d viewed, he could never adapt to the room’s frigid air, the multicol ored organs, the overpowering smells of formaldehyde and ammonia. Because they all signified the penulti mate defeat.

  And now, more than ever, it signified that he was to blame for his wife’s death.

  When the autopsies on Anita Tarver and her children were completed Graham joined Collier in his office. He liked Collier’s tiny Bonsai tree and the calming gurgle of his small feng shui fountain. Objects of optimism. What always gave Graham pause each time he came here was the large print beside Collier’s framed degrees and awards: Van Gogh’s Twilight, before the Storm: Montmartre.

  The worst is still to come, Graham thought.

  Collier opened a can of diet cola, poured it into his ceramic coffee mug and began making notes in his file.

  “I’m attributing cause as consistent with blunt trauma from the rocks and the manner as accidental. Noncriminal.”

  “Not a doubt in your mind?”

  “Unless you know something we don’t?”

  “Emily tried to tell me something before she died.”

  “Yes, Stotter mentioned that it was incoherent.”

  Graham exhaled slowly.

  “Isn’t that correct, Dan?”

  “It is. But we haven’t found the father yet and there’s every indication he was with them in the park.”

  “You think daddy did it?”

  “I don’t know what to think, Bryce.”

  “I see. Well, unless something concrete tells me oth erwise, what we have here is a wilderness accident.” Collier sipped from his mug. “We need dental records to make positive identifications. Do you have next of kin for the call?”

  Graham consulted his notes. On the park registration form, in the section on who to alert in case of emer gency, the Tarvers had listed Jackson Tarver in Belts ville, Maryland.

  “Ray Tarver’s father. I’ll make the call back at my office.”

  Graham wheeled his unmarked Chevrolet sedan out of the M.E.’s lot and headed east on Memorial Drive which hugged the Bow River across from Calgary’s gleaming office towers. After passing the Calgary Zoo, he took the Deerfoot Trail expressway, north to the Southern Alberta District headquarters for the RCMP.

  The Stephen A. Duncan building near the airport. In the Major Crimes section he saw no sign of Corporal Shane Wilcox, the file coordinator, or Prell. Good. Graham was a team player, but he liked working alone. He started a fresh pot of coffee then went to the washroom and studied the mirror.

  What the hell was happening?

  What was the use of going on? Without Nora, his life no longer held any meaning. Maybe that’s why he risked it, in his vain attempt to save the little girl. But who was he really trying to save? What happened to him in the water? He swore to God he’d heard Nora telling him not to give up.

  And the girl?

  Her dying words haunted him.

  Everyone believed it was a tragic accident but he remained uncertain.

  Maybe he was losing his mind.

  He splashed water on his face then went to his desk. It was neat and, unlike the desks of the other Mounties, it was bereft of framed photos of loved ones. No keep sakes or mementos to hint at his personality. Just a phone, a glass cup holding pens and pencils, a yellow legal notepad and the Tarver file.

  That’s all he had left in this world.

  He opened the folder and prepared to make the call to notify the Tarvers’ next of kin. Being the bearer of news that destroyed worlds was also part of the job.

  The worst part.

  As a traffic cop, Graham had been punched, slapped, and had people collapse in his arms as he stood at their door, cap in hand, to tell them what no one should ever have to hear.

  Ever.

  At times they’d see his police car pull up, watch through the living-room window as he got out and ap proached their home. They’d refuse to let him in. Because they knew. They knew that as long as they never heard what he was going to tell them, their world would remain intact. If they didn’t hear the words then their daughter, their son, sister, brother, mother, father, husband or wife would not be dead.

  No one knew how much he feared the day it might happen to him.

  Then it did happen.

  “We couldn’t stop the bleeding. We did all we could for her. I’m so sorry.”

  After five rings, a woman answered the phone in Maryland.

  “I’m calling for Mr. Jackson Tarver.”

  “One moment please, he’s in the yard.” Footsteps on a tiled floor, a back door creaked. “Jack! Phone! I think it’s that salesman again!” A man far off grumbled some thing as he approached the phone. Graham squeezed the handset, grateful he was alone in his office.

  “Hello.”

  “Mr. Tarver? Mr. Jackson Tarver?”

  “Yes?”

  “Sir, Corporal Daniel Graham with the Royal Cana dian Mounted Police in Calgary.”

  “Police?”

  “Yes. Sir, I’m sorry to disturb you at home, but it’s important that I confirm your relationship to Raymond, Anita, Tommy and Emily Tarver of Washington, D.C.”

  Silence hung in the air as realization rolled over Tarver and he swallowed hard.

  “Anita’s my daughter-in-law. Tommy and Emily are my grandchildren.” Tarver cleared his throat. “Ray mond is my son. Why are you calling?”

  When Graham delivered the news, Jackson Tarver dropped his phone.

  10

  Calgary, Alberta, Canada

  Dental records confirmed Anita, Tommy and Emily Tarver as the victims.

  Ray Tarver’s body had still not been recovered. The tragedy landed on the front pages of Calgary’s newspapers with the headlines RIVER HORROR CLAIMS FOUR AMERICANS and U.S. FAMILY DIES IN MOUNTAINS. The Calgary Herald and Calgary Sun ran pictures of the Tarvers, the scene and locator maps. Through interviews with shocked U.S. friends of the Tarvers, the papers reported that Ray

  Tarver was a freelance journalist, Anita was a part-time librarian a
nd that Tommy and Emily were “the sweetest kids.”

  Not much more in the Web editions of the Washing ton Post and Washington Times either, Graham thought before he met Jackson Tarver at the Calgary airport.

  From the passport and driver’s license photos, Graham saw the father and son resemblance, except the elder

  Tarver had thin white hair parted neatly to one side. Jackson Tarver was a sixty-seven-year-old retired high-school English teacher. His handshake was strong for someone whose world had been shattered. He insisted on “taking care of matters right away,” so Graham drove him to his hotel where they found a quiet booth in the restaurant. Tarver never touched his coffee.

  He sat there twisting his wedding band.

  “Since your call, I’ve been praying that this has been some sort of mistake,” Tarver said. “I need to see with my own eyes that this has happened. I hope you under stand?”

  Graham understood. He opened his folder to display sharp color photographs of Anita, Tommy and Emily

  Tarver, on autopsy trays.

  Pain webbed across Jackson’s face and he turned away.

  After giving him time, Graham took Tarver’s fore arm to ensure he was registering their conversation. “Our services people have contacted the U.S. Con sulate here. They’ll help you with the airline bookings and the funeral-home arrangements and they will assist you in getting them home with you,” Graham said.

  “They’ll also help you get the belongings shipped home later when we’ve finished processing them. Here’s some paperwork you’ll need.”

  Graham slid an envelope to Tarver who took several moments to collect himself.

  “Do you know how it happened?”

  “At this stage, we believe their canoe capsized in the

  Faust River.”

  “And they weren’t wearing life jackets?”

  “No.”

  “I just don’t understand. Ray was so careful. When things were good, he’d taken Anita and the kids to Yel lowstone. He was no stranger to the outdoors. For goodness’ sake, he’s an Eagle Scout.”

  “You said, ‘when things were good.’” Graham was taking notes.