Flight of the Scarlet Tanager

by Bevill, C. L.

Teddy froze in place. “That what, Uncle? That you’re rid of me?”

  And suddenly he was aware that she knew. Theodora had used her clever facilities to understand who had been responsible for the plane crash. She had summed it up using her not-inconsiderable mental abilities and come to her own conclusions. It was not surprising to him but he should have counted on it. He should have realized that she was far too intelligent not to make the correct associations. The timetable had abruptly become moot. Theron had intended on waiting at least another year before formulating some sort of plan for her death. A staged suicide perhaps. A house fire was another possibility. Something that would be considered a tragedy, and leave the Howe monies in a state of probate, which would eventually pass to poor Theodora’s only living relative. He let go of her chin and saw that he had left stark white marks that would ultimately change into blue-green bruises.

  “You’re not taking your medication, Theodora, are you?” he asked silkily. “A pity. We’ll have to change from pills to something you can’t hide. An injection perhaps? Possibly I need to engage a psychiatrist to evaluate your mental status.”

  Teddy surged to her feet, forcing herself right into the shadow of his body, and spat in his face. “You stinking bastard!” she shrieked. “You think you’re going to get rid of me that easy! I’ll make sure you rot in prison for a thousand years!”

  And when he hit her again, Theron didn’t stop until she couldn’t speak anymore.

  •

  “That’s what you meant before,” Fitch whispered, appalled. “That was the worst of it.”

  “There were still bruises all over my face when Mr. Scott’s sister came to give me a lift. It was part of why she drove me all the way to Alexandria. It was why she gave me money, even though she knew exactly who I was, and what I was worth,” Teddy’s voice was a hoarse thread of noise. “But I had something much better than that.”

  •

  Teddy didn’t know how long she lay on the floor. Her ribs hurt. Her face ached with pain. She could feel blood dribbling from her mouth and from her nose, and she was quite sure that one of her eyes was swollen shut. After the door had slammed shut and the lock had been turned, she heard her uncle storming down the hall, violently cursing all the way.

  She dragged herself to her computer and logged onto her father’s mainframe, working her way into the security system. Minutes later she was watching as her uncle made a phone call from what had been her father’s office and library. He sat in a high-backed leather chair and lit a cigarette as he waited for the connection to ring through. “Yes, I need a secure line,” he said. “My authorization is as follows.”

  Teddy wiped blood out of her eye with the edge of her T-shirt and smiled grimly. She had accomplished many things, possibly too much of a gamble. Theron knew that she suspected his culpability, that he would attempt to eliminate her sooner rather than later, and that she was still very much unbroken.

  “Gower,” said Theron on the monitor. The screen moved shakily, the pixel quality was low-resolution, and her uncle appeared to move in fits and starts. He gestured at the phone and seemed to look almost directly into the camera lens. Teddy knew that it was a tiny lens mounted on the wall, inconspicuously, but something that he knew very well was present. In his anger, Theron had forgotten the elaborate system. “I want the girl eliminated now. I mean, now. She’s far too unruly and she’s making demands that we can’t possibly grant. It won’t be long before she starts talking to some journalist or television reporter about her theories. Thank God she doesn’t have any more type of access to the Internet.”

  Teddy wiped the blood from her lips and laughed. It was a rasping, harsh noise and it made her hurt. Fool. Fool. Fool, she thought. She loaded a cd-rom disk into her hard drive and began typing in the commands to record the entire episode as an M-PEG, or motion picture experts group, a digital television signal recording, which was compressed and encoded on a computer’s hard drive or in this case, a cd-rom disk. She hesitated before she put the information to task, and listened to her uncle’s rage-filled voice, talking smoothly now, but still underlined with the anger that Teddy had provoked.

  “She’s far too clever. Lapeaux tells me that she’s been hooked into the Internet for months now, he yanked the connection today, and God knows what she’s told anyone.” Theron took a drag on his cigarette and waited for the other person to reply. “She has no proof, of course. What could she have? You’ve already terminated our confederate. There’s no connection that could be made with the incendiary device that was used on my dear brother-in-law’s jet. Of course, we’re clear. Honestly, it’s been three years. It’s time for young Theodora to join her parents, wherever they might be.”

  Gotcha, you sorry son of a bitch, she thought.

  •

  “It was simple,” she said carefully. “Enough proof to hang him. Maybe not a notarized confession, but enough that he could never be a threat to me. He told his man to wait until the end of the week. He wanted the bruises to fade away. And I couldn’t quite walk in a straight line until it was almost too late. But I took all the writeable cd-rom disks I had and made five copies. I would have e-mailed them to every human being with an account in the world, if he hadn’t cut my access. My uncle suspected that I was far more mobile than I would have let on.”

  “And you took one with you, the one you gave to the writer, the one who was killed?” asked Fitch. He thought about it like some great game, another cliff to climb, another spectacular x-sport to accomplish, this thing with Teddy, but it was her life. Her very existence at stake and he was meddling in it like a kid with checkers.

  “Yes, I found the book he wrote about me a few months after I escaped. Eventually, I thought he would handle it. I thought he could present the evidence to someone else, but he must have contacted Theron for his comment on the subject. He must have either been trying to sell me out or get my uncle’s side of the story. He didn’t know that they couldn’t let him live. He got a copy of the disk.” She turned her eyes on the Howe mansion, with the sun settling behind its stately walls, causing an array of colors seeping all around it. “The rest are in there.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  August 18th

  Excerpt from Picken’s Survival Guide, written by Don ‘Colonel’ Pickens, Millennium Press, 1998, page 96: Bird snares are amazingly easy to construct. The nooses are attached to the stick and the stick is placed noose-side up, tied securely to a shrub or a small tree where birds are readily observed. They alight on the stick and then become entangled. Many birds will become hopelessly snarled within a matter of minutes. This is an extremely illegal snare. This is typical of an efficient bird snare, some are simply not very ethical, but the truth is that when a man’s hungry he doesn’t care about ethics...

  “I’ve talked to Stephen Urban,” snapped Bishop. “I’ve talked to the man he and I work for, as well. You do know who that is, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir, I surely do,” patiently answered the sheriff of St. Germaine Parish. His name was John Henry Roque and he was genial and polite, but as stiff as a board glued to the side of a large, flat rock. A man in his forties, he stood over six feet and stared back at the Director of the National Security Agency, giving him an equal measure of himself.

  They stood in his private office, both declining to sit, both like rigid, immobile caricatures of men, each steadfastly determined to have the last word on the subject. John Henry went on, “But the matter remains the same. There may be a warrant issued out of the state of Oregon for this FBI agent, Gower, isn’t it? There very well may be just that, but there’s hardly proof that he’s taken up residence in St. Germaine Parish. Consequently, the constitution doesn’t allow me to ram down the gates and go smashing in doors.”

  John Henry wasn’t in the best mood. When he had shown up at his office just outside LaValle, Louisiana on a bright and sunny Tuesday morning, having spent a pleasurable evening with a woman he had fallen in love with not long before, he ha
d a complete parade of military officers waiting for him and his receptionist was pulling her orange-colored hair out by the roots.

  A brief conference with the Director of the NSA took place, which was followed by a conglomeration of telephone calls to people all over the United States. Then another conference with the general ensued, where Bishop attempted to persuade John Henry to meander out to the Howe mansion and speak with the people out there, specifically concerning Jackson Theron and John Gower. Another round of phone calls passed. One was made to the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Another was made to the governor of Louisiana’s office. Then by late afternoon, he got back to Bishop again. John Henry felt like pulling out some of his receptionist’s orange-colored hair himself.

  John Henry knew exactly who Theron was, and he had had the misfortune to speak with the man several times. The deputy director had called the sheriff’s department on numerous junctures to complain about a lack of support for the mansion, about his missing niece twice, and once about intruders on the estate after the publication of that book by that hack writer, Morris. Lately, there had been one call from the head of security, a man named Lepeaux, about journalists camped out at the gates. John Henry had sent a deputy out to clear out the reporters.

  One crew of television people had been so desperate they’d tried to get comments from John Henry himself, irritating his receptionist so badly that she’d threatened to retire right on the spot.

  Then the Director of the NSA had presented himself to John Henry, accompanied by an entourage of military advisors, drivers, and private security, and made more demands. Finally, John Henry asked, in a tone that well conveyed his weariness of the ongoing state of affairs, “Well, sir, what does Director Urban have to say about his deputy director?”

  “That proof is lacking and that until such a time presents itself to him, then Deputy Director Theron remains that.”

  “And where is Deputy Director Theron at the time?”

  Bishop’s expression was positively sulfuric. “No one seems to be able to tell me. His secretary has related to the director that Theron made arrangements to travel to LaValle. A jet chartered by the man did land in Shreveport yesterday. Another one seems to have been ferrying Gower and an unidentified man.”

  John Henry folded his arms over his chest, attempting to maintain some neutral aspect to his facade. On one hand he wanted to know where Bishop was receiving his information, even if it was simply bullying the information out of some airport official over in Shreveport, by flashing his not-inconsiderable credentials. On the other hand, he wanted to lament his lot in life, and reconsider running for office the next election. If it wasn’t one set of wealthy people messing with trouble in the parish then it was another group. Only months had passed since the news had died down about the last homicides in St. Germaine Parish, and now there was Lieutenant General Bishop Lee, who was positive that some missing heiress, who might very well be a murderess, was going to show up, somewhat magically, in LaValle, bringing the general’s eldest son with her. John Henry sighed finally, and said, “I’ll allow as that might very well mean that the deputy director is in residence at the time. But the truth is, it isn’t really his home. It’s his niece’s home and he’s just her guardian. Perhaps it’s just a matter of parental concern over her well-being, after all, she’s been missing for quite some time...”

  Bishop grunted with impatience. He wanted to clench his fists and throw them up in the air like a child. Each minute that passed seemed like a death knell was ringing for his son. It started off slowly but became exponential, growing louder at a rate that multiplied and multiplied. He was afraid for Fitch, in a way that he never had been before. “We need to go as soon as possible. It’s been over forty-eight hours since they got on a plane. I don’t know why Teddy wants to come back to this place, but she does, and she’s got Fitch with her.”

  “And Jackson Theron is going to kill her.” John Henry didn’t smile, but he wanted to smile. He had never liked the deputy director. However, the sheer enormity of what Bishop Lee was trying to impart was incredible. It was like the worst soap opera that he could possibly imagine. “For the money?”

  “He already got away with murder,” Bishop snarled. “His own sister. His brother-in-law. He had the explosives planted on the plane, as surely as if he had placed them there with his own fingers. He’s had access to the worst criminals and the best law enforcement officers. He knows exactly how to get away with it. He can pull records that indict him or his people. But the problem was Teddy. She survived. And then to top it all off, she escaped from underneath him, and he’s had his dogs on her ever since. But I’ve come to this conclusion. She’s just as smart as he is. And she’s got something that he wants. He wants it desperately or else he wouldn’t be making such reckless mistakes. Whatever it is, it’s in that house.”

  John Henry’s lips flattened as he considered the facets of the scenario just presented to him. “Some kind of conspiracy, then. My goodness. Tell you what, General Lee. They ever kid you about that, your name, General Lee? Never mind, don’t answer that. We’ll run out to the Howe mansion, you and I, and we’ll have a chat with Mr. Theron, if he’s home.” John Henry retrieved his favorite Stetson from a shelf and carefully placed it on his head, every inch the southern police officer. “If you’ll promise not to do anything rash.”

  Bishop smiled grimly to himself. One man with a sidearm. One man who seemed to be doubtful but had a sterling reputation as a law enforcement officer. According to Judd, John Henry Roque had never had a single complaint against his character registered, not in LaValle, and not in New Orleans, and he was a West Pointer to boot. Accordingly, he had just successfully wrapped up an infamous case concerning decades old murders and a famous New York artist, going up against an old-monied, southern family. “I’d like to hurry, Sheriff.”

  John Henry didn’t know where the day had gone. It had slid by faster than a cottonmouth in the water. He glanced out the window and saw that the blue sky was changing to ripening purples and glowing reds. He wondered idly if he’d be able to get back to his woman, a creature who was so utterly captivating, anytime soon on this particular day.

  One of the deputies tapped on the door before he had a chance to open it, and stuck his head inside. “They found some guy’s stolen Chevy out by Twilight Bayou,” he said, handing the report to John Henry.

  John Henry took the papers in his large hand and glanced down. He looked up curiously at the deputy, “And?”

  The deputy looked at Bishop and then back at John Henry, before replying, “Well, it was stolen up to Coushatta. You know, out of a little airport there.”

  Bishop made an inarticulate noise.

  “The owner, guy named Homer Chenier, is a crop duster. Said he saw a single-engine plane land at the strip just as he was taking off this morning. Bright colors, too. Green and yellow, he said. Had something written on the sides about jumping. He thinks it was, ‘Jump or Die!’ like somebody who likes to parachute, I reckon.” The deputy backed out, adding, “Thought you might like to know, and all.”

  “And what do you think now, Sheriff?” asked Bishop. “That’s the plane out of Oregon that went missing.”

  “You know I wasn’t impressed by generals when I was in the service, sir.”

  Bishop’s expression softened. “Neither am I, but I don’t have the luxury of time to attempt to convince you. Perhaps that will sway your decision. Perhaps you’ll bring more than yourself to the Howe mansion. It will be necessary, perhaps even critical.”

  John Henry paused at the door. “So who was the unidentified fella on the second jet?”

  Bishop wrinkled his face into a fierce frown. “There’s a pickle of a deal. He was supposed to call me and he hasn’t.”

  •

  Pitch-black darkness in the bayou wasn’t the same as any other place on earth that Fitch had been. There were the sounds there that sent a chill quivering down his spine, and he had been particularly proud of some of
the asinine stunts he’d pulled. From snowboarding down the side of a mountain from the very top, dropped off by helicopter, to free-falling from 20,000 feet, to free-soloing down a thousand foot high crevice in South America, he had done things that would quake the knees of the bravest man. But none of that compared to the swamp. The crickets called and popped against each other. Cicadas wailed their mysterious music. Bullfrogs croaked inanely, crying out their messages to one another. The waters sizzled and crackled with insects and other nocturnal creatures that were as active as the streets in a downtown of any large city. There was the looping call of some night bird, hunting for its prey, whatever that was, as it circled above them, invisible in the night sky.

  And Teddy had shut up, slowly pushing the pirogue toward the shore of the estate with a long, oddly shaped paddle, leaving Fitch to ruminate silently on the way the darkness seemed to encroach over them. In a way, her silence bothered him more than anything. He wanted to know what she was thinking, what she was feeling, so that he could better understand his position.

  “You have to follow me, exactly,” she whispered when they were close to the shore, just a black line of darkness. Only the white shape of the wooden gazebo was visible in the murky night, a pale shape that anchored them. Her voice was low and almost sultry. Fitch was almost surprised. Teddy was not only frightened, but she was excited. “You need to go where I go,” she went on, a sigh of rippling undertone. “The cameras are everywhere. Well, almost everywhere. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get inside.”

  Fitch touched her shoulder, leaning forward. He put his mouth up to her ear, his lips nearly caressing her flesh, and Teddy almost shivered with the touch of his breath there. “You’re sure you want this...”

  “Don’t get all chicken on me now, Fitch.”

  “Chicken, who me? No one here but us chickens.”