Janice had been sitting at the writing desk in Annie’s room when she caught a furtive movement out of the corner of her eye. Someone had stepped past the doorway. She called out to Kathy, asking if she was done, and heard her answer from downstairs. Puzzled, she rose from the desk, but then hesitated, scalp tightening as she wondered who else could be in the house. Moments later, still frozen in indecision, she screamed as two deafening gunshots thundered from just outside the room, followed by a drawn-out crash and the sound of running footsteps.
Billy Zick paused to run his hand lightly down the cheek of the dead woman at his feet, then sighed and moved to the foot of the stairs. He would have more time to spend with the next one. Moving slowly and silently, he ascended the stairs, pausing near the top to listen. The stairway ended in a perpendicular hallway, and hearing nothing, he stepped around the corner to his left, knife held low. Although Billy was proud of his lightning-quick reflexes, two bullets hammered into his chest before he even registered the danger. He took a stiff -legged step back and another to his left as the strength drained from his legs. He was dead before his body reached the bottom of the stairs.
Chapter 23
Clipper was in his truck, parked on Main Street watching a pair of Militiamen strutting through the downtown business district. He’d been watching them march importantly up and down the street for half an hour and was thinking about going home when his police radio and cell phone went off at the same time.
‘738, 714, ten thirty-two, ten forty-nine, 899 Summit Ave. Supervisor and ambulance en route.’
Clipper was processing the ‘man with a gun’ and ‘possible homicide’ codes when his cell phone chirped in his pocket. He dug it out and answered as he slammed the truck into gear.
“Clip.” Janice’s voice was a harsh whisper. “Someone’s shooting in the mansion. I…I think he shot Kathy.”
“I’m coming.” Clipper threw the phone on the seat and, hand on the horn and cursing traffic, made an illegal left onto Hammond and punched it, running hard towards the mansion on the ridge. Fishtailing into ever-narrower cross streets and lanes, he finally got to the mansion and tore through the gate to see two cruisers parked at haphazard angles in front of the main entrance. He slid to a stop and jumped out, and drawing his Kimber but ignoring the instinct that was screaming at him to grab the vest from behind the truck sea. He sprinted for the open front door.
Clipper entered the front hall to see one officer kneeling over a still female form, and a second coming down the wide staircase, pistol in hand. There was a male body crumpled at the base of the stairs in a small pool of blood. The two officers spoke simultaneously.
“She’s gone,” said the one kneeling in the hall while the other said, “She’s ok, Clip.”
“Janice,” screamed Clipper, staring at the familiar jeans and sweatshirt clad figure on the floor. He pulled the officer aside and stared down, uncomprehendingly, into Kathy Singer’s slack features for a long moment until the other officer’s voice penetrated his horror. “Clip. Janice is ok. She’s upstairs.”
Finally understanding, Clipper straightened and, automatically avoiding the blood and the male body climbed the stairs woodenly, adrenaline overload and overpowering relief robbing him of strength and coordination. He found Janice in the den and held her wordlessly as she sobbed while the uniformed officers finished clearing the house.
“William Zick,” said John Peters. “Nasty little viper, known to his friends as Billy the Blade.” He and Clipper were standing in the downstairs hall, watching Doc Church examine the bodies. Doc Church had been a pathologist in Bangor for as long as Clipper could remember and, although all criminal autopsies were handled in the State Lab by the State Medical Examiner, Church functioned as an on-scene Assistant Medical Examiner, and was someone Clipper had come to rely upon for his medical expertise.
Doc Church made a note in his battered ledger and pushed his ancient trademark fedora back on his head. “You can take ‘em when you’re ready,” he said. “I think we’ll find that’s the knife that did for her,” he said, pointing at a broad-bladed throwing knife that lay on a step about halfway down the staircase and nodding at Kathy Singer’s body. As Doc Church shuffled out past Dave Adams and his crime scene crew, John Peters touched Clipper’s arm.
“Why don’t you go home,” he said quietly.” I’ll take Janice to the station, get the interview done and bring her home after, and then I’ll come back here and keep an eye on things.”
Clipper started to protest, by Peters cut him off. “One of us needs to be fresh tomorrow,” he said, “and she’s going to need you around when she gets home tonight.”
Clipper understood the wisdom of staying out of Janice’s interview, and he knew his people would be working the crime scene all night, so he nodded reluctantly and called the station to let dispatch know where he’d be.
Walking to his truck, Clipper tapped Peters hard in the chest with a ridgid finger. “You call if anything breaks,” he said grimly. “I’ll see you in the morning.” Clipper went home and put some frozen cookie dough in the oven and then sat with a glass of Glenlivet and ice, waiting for Janice and fighting suffocating feelings of helplessness and rage.
Chapter 24
Clipper got to his office at six-thirty the next morning to find Peters dozing in his visitor’s chair. He woke the burly sergeant by waving a container of Cleo’s coffee and a bag of donuts under his nose. Peters opened his eyes and, looking like he wanted to spit a bad taste out of his mouth, grabbed the coffee. “Munff,” he mumbled.
Thinking, ‘Ursus americanus’, Clipper grinned and opened his own coffee. “What have we got?” he asked.
Peters yawned. “Looks like Zick spent some time spying on the house from the garden, and then snuck in and killed Singer. He went upstairs, probably looking for Janice, but someone was waiting in the upstairs hall and plugged him twice in the chest. We got two 9mm cases up there in the hall, and the knife on the stairs, but that’s it for physical evidence. Janice caught a glimpse of someone moving past the door of the room she was in just before the action started. She called to Singer, thinking it might be her, and heard her answer from downstairs. Then there was nothing for about thirty seconds, and then the shots from just outside the door. The shooter ran off, down the stairs she thinks, and she made the calls.”
“Have someone talk to Pauline Ennis and her husband. Find out where they were last night.” Clipper thought for a moment. “What do we have on Zick?” he asked.
“Local boy. He was in a lot of trouble when he was younger,” Peters answered, “but he dropped out of the street scene and went to work for Sebastian Gaylord. Some sort of security-slash-troubleshooter job.” Peters saw a feral grin spread across Clipper’s face. “What?” he asked.
Clipper sat down at his desk and told Peters about Janice’s involvement in the forty year old Eleanor Gaylord disappearance. As he described the anonymous accusations against Sebastian Gaylord, Peters nodded.
“So Gaylord’s feeling some pressure and sends his pit-bull to put a stop to it,” he said. “Damn. Looks like we got us a real murder mystery here.” He grinned lopsidedly. “I was going home to crash,” he said, “but I have a feeling you’re going to need my fluent political-speak this morning.”
Clipper and Peters climbed the steps to Sebastian Gaylord’s front door and identified themselves to the woman who answered their knock.
“I’m sorry, but Mr. Gaylord’s calendar is impossibly full today. Perhaps we could arrange an appointment for tomorrow.” Missy Truman stood squarely in the front doorway, adamant in her defense of Gaylord’s privacy.
John Peters leaned in and fluttered his hands. “Oh, I know what you mean,” he said in a quivering falsetto. “It must be just so difficult for him, trying to fool all of the people all of the time.” He batted his eyes at a confused Truman and then leaned closer, his voice hardening. “The problem is,” he said coldly, “our calendar is impossibly full of dead people. The option
s are, we talk to Mister Gaylord here and now, or all day at the station. Why don’t you make the choice for him?”
Sebastian quivered with barely suppressed rage. “How dare you browbeat my employee?” he demanded from behind his desk. When Clipper and Peters had been escorted into his office, Gaylord had pointedly remained seated ignoring them while scribbled his signature on several documents. When he finally looked up and fixed them with a look of distain, his voice was icy.
Clipper met his look with one of his own. “Well,” he said, “seeing as at least one of your employees kills people, we figured they’d be tough enough to take it.”
Gaylord’s jaw bunched. “That’s insane,” he said. “He… If some got killed, it has nothing to do with me. What right do you have to come in here and…”
Peters interrupted. “He? Who’s he?” he asked
“What do you mean?”
“You said, ‘that’s insane, he’, and stopped. Who were you talking about?”
“I… nobody. I just assumed…” Gaylord’s voice trailed off.
Clipper stepped into the silence. “Do you have an employee named William Zick?” he asked.
“I employ Mister Zick as an aide and security specialist,” Gaylord said regaining his composure.
“What exactly does he do for you?”
Gaylord tried a smile that struck Clipper as patronizing, and made an expansive gesture. “Campaigning for a State Senate seat is an enormous undertaking, as I’m sure you can appreciate,” he said. “Mister Zick is uniquely qualified to anticipate problems and coordinate solutions, sometimes even before I see them coming. He also sees to our overall security.”
Clipper made a non-committal noise in his throat. “When was the last time you were in Gaylord Manor?” he asked.
“I was there some weeks ago for the reading of my father’s will,” Sebastian said. “Prior to that, it was probably several years ago.”
“Where were you last night?” asked Peters
“I was right here all night.”
“Anyone who can verify that?”
“I was in a meeting with my staff from seven to about nine-thirty, and then I was reading until I went to bed at eleven.”
Clipper hesitated. “Mister Gaylord, what if I told you that new information has come to light pertaining to the disappearance of your mother?” he asked. “Information in a letter from someone who was apparently there at the time that suggests you were involved.”
Gaylord sniffed. “Sounds like hearsay to me,” he said, “and not something you’re taking seriously or you wouldn’t be here asking about William.”
“Perhaps,” Clipper said with a smile, “but maybe we’ll get another letter or find a reason to take it seriously. Speaking of Zick, would you happen to know his present whereabouts?”
“I employ dozens of people,” Gaylord said, getting to his feet, “and I do not waste my time keeping tabs on them. Look, officers, I’m a busy man and I have no more time for this interview. If you must speak to me again it will be in the presence of my counsel, and I can assure you, the same will go for Mister Zick.”
Peters chuckled, “That would be a pretty good trick,” he said, “but who knows, with the miracles of modern medicine and all, maybe after the autopsy… we’ll be back.”
They left Gaylord standing open-mouthed behind his desk.
Clipper dropped Peters off in the parking lot and went up to his office to find Dave Adams pacing outside his door. “Clip, you need to see this,” Adams said, excitedly.
Clipper took the evidence envelope and opened it over his desk. “We found it in a downstairs room off the front hall,” Adam said as the letter and envelope slid out. “No prints, like before. I figured I’d better open it, just in case.”
Clipper saw Janice’s name on the envelope and the same copy-paper, pen and ink style letter as before. He squared it up to read.
‘Janice
By now you understand what happened. There’s just one more thing you need to know. Eleanor is buried under the floor of the bunkhouse at the old Gaylord number seven logging camp on route nine. Make him pay. He must suffer as I have.
God bless you.
Annie’
Chapter 25
“What do you mean leave?” Jennifer stared at Dautry and Kashif. “I’m just getting started. They haven’t even begun to pay,” she said, slapping her hand on the table.
Dautry grinned. “I like the attitude, but this is still bigger than you think. Bigger than killing a couple of hick cops, or even a dozen. It’s almost time to close this operation down. We have a shipment to get together for transport, and we’re out of here.”
“Shipment of what?” demanded Jennifer. “Don’t tell me you guys are really just drug runners.”
Kashif laughed. “Drug runners,” he said animatedly. “We’re the future of America. Right here and right now.”
Dautry shook his head tiredly. “Let me show you,” he said rising.
Dautry and Kashif led Jennifer outside and onto a path that headed away from the firearms training area. After a short walk, Dautry veered off the path and stepped over a fallen tree onto another much less conspicuous path that wove seemingly at random deeper into the forest. After a few minutes he stopped in a small clearing. “The real Infidel Army camp,” he said bending down and lifting a trap door concealed in the ground at his feet.
Jennifer accepted a flashlight from Kashif and descended cautiously down a set of seven wide, wooden steps into the pit below. Although she could just barely stand upright, she was amazed to find herself in a room that must have stretched twenty feet away into the darkness, and easily as wide. And it was full. Flat wooden boxes were piled from floor to ceiling with narrow walkways in between. She recognized some as ammunition crates, and other as rifle boxes, but had no idea of the contents of others. She felt Dautry’s hand on her shoulder.
“This is the finest collection of military small arms, outside of a government arsenal, anywhere in the world,” he said, proudly. “Assault rifles, handguns, grenades, demolitions, ammunition - the real mission of the Infidel Army is to arm the hundreds of Constitutional militias that are rising up to save this country. In the past year, we’ve trained and placed a network of patriots across the country who will use these weapons to build a cohesive, Constitutional resistance, and we will take our country back.”
Jennifer was stunned. “Where…how…” she stuttered.
Kashif laughed. “After Joe Taxpayer buys these nice weapons with our tax dollars,” he said gesturing around the room, “Uncle Sam thinks nothing of just giving them to third world insurgents who leave them scattered on battlefields all around the world. We have agents in Iran and Afghanistan who’ve just been helping us pick them up and bring them home.”
“And the whole anti-Muslim thing,” said Jennifer, “just an act?”
“That accomplished two purposes," Dautry said. “It explained our presence - provided an easy explanation for the cops and our local recruits - and it brought Homeland Security onto the scene. We have a special event planned for them when we leave.”
Jennifer looked shrewdly at Dautry. “How much…” she began.
“Millions,” he interrupted. “For the past year we’ve been training and equipping three or four militia organizers per month at fifty thousand dollars a pop. They came from all over the country, and we showed them how to organize and recruit, gave them some basic firearms, demolition, and tactics training, and sent them home with a half dozen rifles and a couple cases of ammo. Their jobs have been to raise the money to purchase the rest of this ordinance and organize the militias to use it. Everything you see here is on its way to our compound in Idaho, where it will be distributed to the end users.”
Kashif reached out and took Jennifer’s hand. He had completely shed his college student persona and was now almost a caricature of a radical freedom fighter. “You’re too good to waste yourself on killing a few local cops,” he said fervently. “There’s a
new order coming, and we will be at the center. Your place is with us…with me.” Jennifer looked into his fevered eyes, then beyond into the slightly amused gaze of Dautry, and suddenly, chillingly, realized that there would be no place for the young zealot in Dautry’s new order. She gently disentangled her hand from Kashif’s sweaty grip and nodded her understanding and tacit acceptance to Dautry.
Clipper was eating lunch at his desk when Cameron Shibles and the two Homeland Security agents showed up. All three were dressed in business suits. “We’re going to pay a visit to the Infidel Army,” Agent Fowler said. “Care to join us?”
As Rick Fowler drove them out of Bangor in a government issue black Suburban, Rebecca Sousy briefed Clipper on their operation. “As of this morning, we’ve added two agents and video equipment to your observation post in the farmhouse by the camp entrance,” she said. “We’ve also conducted daytime and nighttime flyovers with standard and infrared photography. This appears to be a carefully crafted and highly defensible military training compound.”
Fowler chimed in. “We ran the names your guys have collected through our data bases, and it turns out that there’s been a steady trickle of known and suspected homegrown terrorists running through this camp. These are men, mostly from the rural midwest and northwest, who are established military-style survivalists, or out-and-out anti-government fanatics.”
Shibles turned in his seat. “Couple that with the rumors we’ve been hearing about increased weapons trafficking in this area of the country, and your Infidel Army becomes very interesting.”
They passed the observation post and turned into the entrance road, the Suburban bouncing on the rutted surface. After a hundred feet, the road turned to smoother gravel and Clipper could see evidence of recent grading. A half-mile in, the road dumped them out into a large clearing with a cluster of buildings and several vehicles neatly parked. A reception committee, led by Kempton Dautry, stood in front of the largest building as they exited the Suburban. He was clad, as were all the others, in military dress, and Clipper grinned inwardly as he suppressed a ridiculous urge to salute as Dautry stepped forward.
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