Flight of the Scarlet Tanager

by Bevill, C. L.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she said at last, staring at him, wondering why he felt the need to support someone who was a virtual stranger, someone who had embroiled him in what was inevitably going to cause him a great deal of trouble. “You can fly back with Jerry.”

  One of his hands touched one of her shoulders and she almost shivered as his fingers lingeringly moved over her collarbone. “Why? So you can have all the fun?”

  “It won’t be fun. I don’t want to go back to that place.” She didn’t want to put all the fears she was keeping locked up tightly into words. Once a happy place, full of love and people who genuinely cared about their child, the Howe Mansion had become a prison, a cage where a bird’s wings had been systematically broken and re-broken in an effort to control her.

  “Then why didn’t you...” Fitch’s fingers held her shoulder, but stopped their skillful movements on her flesh, the heat of his body evident against hers. He trailed off uncertainly as some form of certainty abruptly came to him. “You did bring the evidence with you when you escaped. That was the man that you talked about. The one you said they killed and made it to look an accident. Morris. You gave it to him. And they killed him for it.”

  “He was an author,” she explained. “An author who wrote about me and about my parents’ so-called ‘accident.’ He interviewed a couple hundred people in the process of writing the book. He got a lot of it right, except that he never named the person who was really the murderer. He and his editors didn’t want to get sued, so they danced around that, and implicated that all was not as it seemed. I read the book later and decided if anyone could handle the evidence without bias, it would have been Eddie Morris. Because he stayed objective in his book. It was called The Flight of the Scarlet Tanager.”

  “Because your father had called you that, his little scarlet tanager. He likened people to birds,” Fitch said slowly.

  “It was a compliment to other people. My father believed that birds were the noblest creatures on earth. Coming in every color, in so many sizes, and each with their own special appeal, to be bird-like was something he considered was almost to be god-like.” Teddy’s voice started to grow a little hoarse. “He believed that every man could learn something from studying the habits and traits of birds. But I didn’t appreciate that...until much, much later.”

  “Because you were a child,” exclaimed Fitch defensively. “You weren’t supposed to know that your time with them was limited. How could you know that?” And stark realization of what she had been doing for an indeterminate period of time washed over him, a tsunami of immeasurable knowledge suddenly roaring over him in immediate understanding. “How could you judge yourself so harshly? Is that what you’ve been doing to yourself all these years? Keeping yourself separate from people, just in case they get taken from you?” He put his other hand on her other shoulder and gave her a little shake. “Punishing yourself for living?”

  Then Teddy couldn’t keep the words from breaking loose. They poured from her mouth even while she tried to bite her lip. She said, her voice was a harsh cord of noise forced up from her throat, “Punishing myself for not dying with them.”

  Fitch was aghast. He stared at her with those odd, perceptive eyes. A moment lost in time, endless, raking fingernails over the chalkboard of their souls because the abrupt understanding of what had transpired was so jarring and complete. He finished what she didn’t dare say, “And so you’d deny yourself any kind of friendship, with anyone.”

  “How can I have a friend, when they might...”

  “Die? They might be killed because of you?”

  “It would be my fault!” she suddenly shrieked and Fitch flinched.

  Then he gathered her up in his arms and saw that behind her the mechanic from the hanger had his head out of the engine compartment and was watching them intently. He rocked her back and forth in his arms like a child and waited for Teddy’s shaking to stop. Then he said softly into her ear, “It wouldn’t be your fault. It’s never been your fault. You’ve never done anything wrong. It’s been your uncle and your uncle’s paid assassins. Don’t forget that. Ever.”

  Teddy tucked her head into the side of Fitch’s chest and tried to regain control. The words had never come out of her mouth before. No one had ever stopped to wonder how she felt about the matter. She was just the heiress. Or the plane crash survivor. Or the suspect. Or the one who might have been responsible for her parents’ deaths. She was never a child who grieved for her loss or was helped to understand why this could have happened. There had never been closure for her. Because she had been running for her life, and running from any kind of ending, good or bad.

  “How could you say it’s your fault, when another man pulled the trigger, gave the orders, did some absolutely wretched thing that caused your parents to die, caused your parents’ pilots to die, and whoever else was on the jet? When this man is still giving those same kind of orders? He’s the one responsible for the man you shot. If that man hadn’t broken into our house, illegally, don’t forget that, and pointed a gun to my head, had every intention of murdering me, then this wouldn’t have happened. Your uncle is responsible. No one else.”

  “And the two men in the hospital...” she added into the material of his T-shirt.

  He tilted her face back, gently touching her cheek. “Two men?”

  “When I was running out of the hospital, away from the one that spoke to me on the police band, the one with the blonde hair, he had just killed two men in front of me. One who was trying to protect me, another who stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time. Before he had done that, he was just one of my uncle’s paid lackeys. After that he’s a cold-blooded murderer, and...”

  “He was threatening me on the radio. He said, ‘Who can say what innocent people will die?’ And he meant me. That bastard. He was trying to manipulate you, then and there. Tit for tat. If you turned yourself in, then he wouldn’t have to kill me.”

  Teddy nodded.

  Fitch continued to study her lovely face. “You’re forgetting all that you said, Teddy. Every bit of it. He could threaten all he wants and he’d still have to kill me, too. Because I know too much.”

  “Almost from the beginning, at your house, just when I was changing,” she said. “I realized that they would think you were different, that you might be more than someone I forced to take me somewhere in the Jeep, that your presence couldn’t be accounted for by happenstance. If I had left you, I think they would have murdered you, no matter what you said. Because they’d never been so close, and I had never been forced to run without sufficient warning before.”

  “And so when you told me to lie, told me to tell them that you forced me with the gun to do the things I did, you were trying to protect me. I thought you were being...”

  “What?” she whispered.

  “Melodramatic. I thought that they would think, ‘Why bother with him? We’re after her.’ But I didn’t even stop to think that not only were you completely innocent, but that you were being unjustly persecuted.” He rubbed the side of her face and she couldn’t help turning her cheek into his hand. “When F-Bob told me who you really were, I still didn’t stop to consider what it meant.” He slowly raised his other hand and took her face in a gentle grasp and lowered his face to hers, pressing softly against her lips once. He retracted for a moment and said, “I’m sorry I misjudged you, Teddy.” Then he kissed her again.

  Teddy jerked in his arms, and he used the movement to draw her closer against his body. The thought of the mechanic or anyone else watching flew out of his mind. He deepened the insistent pressure of his mouth against hers and felt her mouth yield to his silent demand, sending an electric frisson of desire along his body, and a reciprocating desire in hers. With his head almost swimming he slowly pulled his head back and was pleased to find Teddy’s arms still wrapped around his neck, a certain expression on her face that made his mind swim. “Is that the way you always apologize?” she murmured.

  Fitch
swiftly pecked her nose. “This time, anyway. How old are you anyway?”

  “My birthday is the day after tomorrow.”

  “Imagine that. I’ll have to think of something worthy of giving to you.”

  “You could live through the week?”

  “I think I can come up with something better than that.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  August 17th

  A Greek legend tells the story of Heracles, the son of Zeus and the strongest man who ever lived on earth. Zeus’s wife, Hera, was jealous of all of her husband’s liaisons and issue from those so she brought her wrath down against Heracles, causing him to go insane. In madness he killed his own children and was made to atone for his crimes. Serving the King of Mycenae, who was Heracles’ cousin, and who also hated him, he was sentenced to perform ten impossible labors. He battled against monsters that had been the issue of Mother Earth herself, which had been sent out eons before to battle Heracles’ father, Zeus. He fought the bloodcurdling Nemean Lion and he vied against the chilling Lernaean Hydra. The terrible Hind of Ceryneia and the horrifying Erymanthean Boar followed. Heracles’ next labor was to rid the Stymphalian Lake of a great swarm of fierce, ruthless birds. It was the Stymphalian Birds that had feathers of brass that were so sharp when a single feather fell to earth each would instantly kill a man where it fell. They caused a great din of noise about the lake and viciously ate the elderly and children of the nearby village, attacking with their deadly claws and monstrous beaks that could easily break a man’s bones into tiny bits. Worse was that the Stymphalian Birds were of barbarous temperament and assaulted without provocation...

  Jackson Theron listened to the dial tone and carefully replaced the receiver into its cradle. He analyzed the phone for a moment, allowing his thoughts to run rampant. The situation could still be controlled. It was possible. He turned his glance to the newspaper lying across his desk. The media had discovered the identity of the fugitive, although there was speculation about why exactly it was that federal agents were pursuing a runaway, instead of local law enforcement. The death of a federal agent seemed secondary to the identities of the runaway teenager and the young man who was apparently aiding and abetting her escape.

  This phone call had been wholly unexpected but a boon to both him and to Gower. What should have been a simple matter of eliminating a loud and aggravating problem had escalated into a media event. If the girl hadn’t gotten away to begin with...

  His secretary buzzed him and announced, “The Director is on line two, sir.”

  Theron sighed. It was early afternoon and he was aware that the proverbial shit was about to hit the fan. He gathered his thoughts into tight rein and pushed the handless intercom button on his telephone system. “Theron, here.”

  “Jack,” said the Director amicably. His name was Stephen Urban and he was a stickler for protocol. A genial Texan with quicksilver reflexes and an acidic tongue when crossed, he’d existed through three presidents and a systematic cleansing of the FBI. Presently he was suffering the backlash of two recent spying events. It was abundantly clear that he wanted no more high-publicity cases for the time being and they were teetering on the edge of another one. “It’s Stephen, fella, and we’ve got to talk.”

  “Yes, sir,” Theron answered. He knew that he needed to toe the line and get past this. Once he had a handle on the issues at hand, eliminated all the key elements, then he would be billions of dollars richer and he wouldn’t need to continue in his capacity as a deputy director. The long-time career had proved invaluable to the murder of his sister and brother-in-law and it was only a passing blow that his niece had survived the plane crash. A problem that he intended to resolve at his earliest opportunity, an opportunity that was coming faster than Theron could have anticipated.

  “I got the Post in front of me,” said the Director calmly. “And it says that our boys are out in Oregon, hunting down your niece and the son of the Director of the NSA.”

  Theron waited. He knew from past experience that the Director was long-winded, preferring to talk things out, before asking for explanations or deference. But this time he was more abrupt, and it gave Theron pause to wonder if there was more information available than the Texan was letting on about.

  “I’m wondering why it is that I’m not up to date on this...shall we call it...a situation?” the Director continued and Theron knew that he was waiting for the younger man to hang himself with the rope that he was given.

  He can hang me in absentia. Theron’s thoughts were pieces of icicles formed on frozen metal that would peel the skin even from the coldest human flesh. “You were briefed on Thirteen August on the recent update on the explosives used in the attack on my sister and her husband’s plane. Recent forensics work from Quantico points to a supplier in California. Trace evidence has narrowed the point of origin dramatically. Special Agents Gower and Redmond were following up on standard leads, systematically constricting the amount of suspects. And these men report to Special Agent-In-Charge Mark Thorne.” What he didn’t tell the Director was that Mark Thorne had been on his own wild goose chase in rural Ohio, chasing down supposed leads to more information on the same case, leads that had been fabricated by Gower. Gower reported directly to Theron, because the man was paying him too much to do anything else.

  Urban considered the information. Theron could hear him shuffling papers around his desk until he found the pertinent report. He waited while the Director spent a moment skimming the material. Then Urban said, “An informed source? And don’t forget, Jack, SAIC Thorne reports to you. I’ve entrusted your section with this investigation because I felt that you would relegate the project to your men and keep well away from it.”

  “And SAIC Thorne has kept me in constant report of the germane matters. They located a potential witness and went after her. Whereupon she shot and killed a security guard and Agent Redmond.” Theron’s voice was quietly neutral. “The agents have had full approval from Thorne and myself to proceed, organizing and managing a fugitive pursuit. SAIC Thorne is en route to the location to head up the operation.”

  Urban digested the material. Theron knew that this was nothing he hadn’t heard about beforehand, but wanted to listen to Theron’s perspective. Urban encouraged his deputy and assistant directors to act independently as long as they did not make the Bureau appear foolish, and here was a potential ass-kicking in the media’s world. They could put a spin on it that would make the FBI look like witless buffoons and very likely would do so, if given the opportunity. “I’ve had another call from Bishop Lee,” said Urban mildly.

  Theron waited again.

  Then Urban continued, his voice blithe, but the other man knew that he was anything but, “He tells me that his son couldn’t possibly be involved in a murder.”

  “With due respect to General Lee, this is still his son, and such biases are known to occur. I’ve heard from a hundred parents that their children couldn’t possibly be guilty of the crimes they are accused of committing.”

  “And do you have the same bias against your niece?”

  “I have always believed that Theodora was a troubled young woman, and when she ran away from home and from the necessary medical care she was receiving, I knew it would be a matter of time before her state of mind deteriorated.” Theron inserted the correct amount of concern into his voice. “Certainly the child has demonstrated that scenario is very real, unfortunately for the men who were killed.”

  “And the reporter whose neck was broken? Did your niece perform some kind of jujitsu move on him? Something you taught her when you were trying to be the good uncle?”

  “It’s my understanding that the sheriff’s department of that county is still investigating the death of the reporter. There are continuing questions as to the cause of his death.” Theron kept his voice modulated and level. “There is no reason at this time for the Bureau to be involved in the homicide investigations of the two men at the hospital, insofar as it correlates to the pursuit of T
heodora and Fitch Lee.”

  “Uh-huh,” was the Director’s only comment.

  “Sir, if I believed that I could not continue to handle this case in the most professional manner I would be the first one to ask to be taken off and reassigned elsewhere.” Theron straightened his suit on his lean, wiry frame, peering out his window at the top of the Washington Monument. With each moment that passed he became more certain that he would be successful and that come this time the following year he would be in control of his late-brother-in-law’s wealth and not ceaselessly arguing with the bankers who had to approve or disapprove each expense as they occurred.

  When Theron had finished convincing Stephen Urban of his serious regard for procedure and the public appearance of the institution to which both belonged and had served long years, he smiled to himself. Then he contacted his secretary and told her to arrange travel plans for him to reach Louisiana as soon as possible.

  With his latest information he could put all of this behind him, and enjoy his ill-gotten gains with all the alacrity of a man who felt little if any guilt. But there was another phone call to be made, to a man who was heading a fugitive search in Oregon, and who hadn’t realized how far his prey had gotten from him. In a very real way, Theron thought that he would enjoy telling John Gower that he had fucked up and that Theron, himself, knew exactly where Theodora and Fitch were going to be. Courtesy of the phone call he’d received prior to Director Urban’s call.

  A dove flew past his window. Theron was reminded of his late brother-in-law’s affinity for birds and thought, Birds. I’ve always hated birds.

  •

  Captain Randall Judd connected to Lieutenant General Bishop Lee on a secure line and waited until the communications protocols were completed. There was a laptop settled across his legs and the pertinent information was displayed so that he could view it as it became necessary. The satellite link-up was formed within thirty seconds and the security protocols were enabled. As he would have expected Bishop was taciturn to a point. His only question after the captain identified himself was, “Well?”