Flight of the Scarlet Tanager

by Bevill, C. L.

  “Son of a bitch,” cursed Fitch. He turned back to the door. “Then shoot me in the back.”

  The man warned him, “Don’t think I won’t, kid.” He cocked the weapon he held.

  There was a loud crack that sounded like a bolt of lightning striking a tree.

  •

  Theron knew that Lapeaux had spent half the previous night setting up the incendiary devices that the deputy director had instructed him to use. The remainder of the chemical compound, tradaricious beloxide, which had been stolen by an employee of the Dallas company and used on the Howe jet, had been stored in a privately owned warehouse in Shreveport until the day before. Theron firmly believed in the ‘rainy day’ theorem, but he hadn’t dared use the compound to be planted as evidence in Teddy’s room because there was enough of the material that laboratories could have easily traced the make-up to its origin. Consequently, it would have been traced back to Gower, and Gower to Theron. That same employee had courteously, or self-servingly, given them a call, to inform them that the Army adjutant was nosing around, asking uncomfortable questions of his boss. Gower had retrieved it the day before and set about producing twelve little bombs that would systematically explode and burn every part of the mansion down to charred ashes. According to Gower it was a simple procedure. The material was very much like plastique. Formed into a solid brick, it needed only a detonator and a timing apparatus. It made a horrific explosion, casting fire and flammable material into whatever it touched. And it burned so hotly that oftentimes nothing but ash was left.

  Theron thought about it carefully, making a decision. He could wait for the helicopter to appear, or he could set off the explosives now, ensuring Teddy’s death, as well as the deaths of the young man and the retired professor she’d dragged into their affairs.

  Now, thought Theron. Now before it’s too late. No witnesses. No one left to carry tales. Furthermore, he knew whatever disks his niece had hidden in the house that Gower had not located would be summarily destroyed in the process. All he had left to do was to set the timers on each device in the house. He didn’t even need to do all twelve. Three or four would decimate the house into smoldering pieces of blackened concrete and molten metal.

  •

  Teddy found a phone in a maid’s room and discovered that it worked. She dialed nine-one-one, and talked to an operator for about thirty seconds. “The Howe mansion. Shots are being fired. People are dead. There’s a lunatic with a gun running around, killing people. His name is Theron. Send the police. Send an ambulance. Hurry.”

  “Who’s this?” asked the operator in a throaty Louisianan accent.

  “I think I hear him coming. I’m getting out of here,” replied Teddy without hesitation. “He’s going to kill us all. Please send help.”

  The operator said, “Are you...” and Teddy hung up the phone.

  She only hoped that she sounded scared enough that the operator would take her seriously. At the very worst they would send a car out to see what the problem was and who was messing with the telephones. As for sounding scared, she knew that she didn’t have to fake it. She was frightened and worse was that she remembered something that she should have retrieved, especially when she had had a golden opportunity.

  The book on her father’s desk. She could see it as clear as day lying there, where her father had left it, years before. One of his favorite books. Routen’s Birds of North America. Gower had lied, perhaps not on purpose, but he’d lied all the same. They hadn’t looked everywhere. And she had to have that book.

  Teddy let herself out of the maid’s tiny room, looking up and down the hallway. That was when she heard someone saying, “This man is dying. If you don’t let me go you’ll be a party to murder...” It was Fitch and he wasn’t talking to Bob.

  Still wearing Edana Lee’s canvas boat shoes that were slightly too big on her feet, Teddy rushed into the kitchen, making as little noise as possible. Agonizing fear had curled into a knot at the bottom of her stomach, making her believe that it was her uncle who was out there, threatening Fitch and Bob, who had tried to help her in their half-assed ways. She came around a corner and saw a gray haired man with a shotgun, a man she’d never seen before. She knew that it had to be one of the security guards that Theron or Lapeaux had hired. Men who were willing to look the other way while an adolescent child was mistreated in her third floor rooms.

  She had missed some of their words, but she caught the unknown man saying, “...If he bleeds to death, well, then that’s just his bad luck.”

  “Son of a bitch,” cursed Fitch with a vicious tone. He turned to the door, shifting the professor in his arms. “Then shoot me in the back.”

  The man warned him, “Don’t think I won’t, kid.” He cocked the weapon he held.

  Before the man opened his mouth to warn Fitch, Teddy picked up the largest cast iron skillet in the kitchen, and just as Theron’s man was cocking the shotgun, she was swinging the fry pan, using it like a baseball bat. It connected with a loud crack and the man collapsed onto the floor like a marionette whose strings had simply been snipped. The shotgun clattered to the kitchen floor next to the man.

  Fitch started and then looked over his shoulder to see Teddy holding the heavy frying pan in her hand. She said, “And that’s the way we do it in Louisiana, bee-yotch.”

  Bob groaned and Fitch was pretty sure it was because of pain, not Teddy’s dry sense of humor. “Come on,” he told Teddy. “The sooner we’re out of here, the better. Did you call the police?”

  “They’re on their way.” She held the door open for him and he passed into the mudroom. Teddy followed and held the back door open, dropping the iron skillet on the ground next to the door. It led into a different section of the garden than the one they had passed through previously. The exterior lights were on, and she realized time had passed so quickly, that it was only an hour or two since they had floated up to the back of the estate in the pirogue. She watched as Fitch half-trotted with F-Bob over his shoulder toward the gazebo, and turned to go back inside the mansion.

  Fitch made it all the way to the decoratively constructed gazebo with his burden. Bob was groaning again. He carefully put him on a bench seat, trying to keep from bumping the older man’s head again and checked the makeshift bandage that Teddy had put on. The blood seemed to be coagulating and the professor seemed to have a stronger pulse. The younger man was hopeful because Bob would be getting medical help very soon. If Teddy had called the cops, she must have also told them that an ambulance was needed.

  Bob settled into a state of semi-consciousness and Fitch sighed with relief. Soon. Soon. Bob was going to be okay. Then he looked up and saw that Teddy was no longer there.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  August 18th

  Greek mythology calls the Phoenix a great bird with magnificent purple and red plumage. It lives in Arabia, near a cool well. At dawn each day the Phoenix bathes in the chilled waters of the well and sings a beautiful song, so wondrous that the sun god, Apollo, would stop his chariot to listen to its radiant melody. Only one Phoenix exists at one time. It lives five hundred years and when it nears its death, it builds a great nest of the rarest woods, sprinkled with the most exotic spices. And Apollo himself helps the nest spark with the heat from his golden chariot. The flames arise to an immense height and consume the Phoenix, and out of the ashes, a new life arises, a Phoenix born of the death of the old...

  It didn’t matter to Theron that most of his people had fled, having sensed the last desperate motions of a failed plot. Lapeaux was dead or dying, crushed by one of Thomas Howe’s oversized birdcages, stifled by his predilection for all things relating to birds. Gower had been knocked senseless. The other two men in the library were either stunned or dead. And as Theron stalked through the halls of the mansion it occurred to him that he hadn’t seen another soul since. Like rats on a sinking ship they were scurrying away.

  Another few minutes and none of it would matter. He patted his jacket pocket and acknowle
dged his own success. He had the paperwork. A signature would be forged, although it would be scrutinized, it would pass muster. The bank would gladly transfer the monies to the offshore accounts, and that would be the end of that. Theron would follow up by having the privately chartered helicopter fly him to New Orleans, where he would get on a yacht he’d also chartered. A few hours later, he would be in International waters and consequently immune from prosecution. No one would be checking the docks at New Orleans for him. They would be looking at the airports, the train stations, and the international borders.

  Theron knelt by a small device located in the ballroom. Overhead half a dozen chandeliers sparkled in a bath of electronic light, fighting off the darkness that spilled in from the large windows that lined the exterior wall. The incendiary explosive had been placed so that the fires that it caused would run up one of the main load bearing walls of the mansion, creating a firestorm of massive proportions. He set the timer for ten minutes and armed it with a low chuckle. That would be more than enough time for him to get to several other of the devices that Gower had created.

  He stood up and checked his watch, keeping an eye on how much time he had before he needed to be out of the mansion. Then he chuckled again and thought how the helicopter would have little problem finding the house in the darkness because it was going to hardly be that. Instead, it would be seen for miles around, a conflagration not unlike Dante’s inferno, with every bit of evidence being burned to ashes inside, including his niece. He didn’t doubt that she would still be in the house. She wanted the proof of Theron’s criminal actions too badly. She would be searching for the other missing disks, wherever she thought she had put them.

  Glancing at his watch again, Theron judged that she had about nine minutes to live.

  He strode through the halls and there was a winkle of movement that he caught out of the corner of his eye. Did I see a flash of...scarlet?

  •

  John Henry got the squeal about thirty seconds after Teddy made her call. He had been walking around the outside of the Bronco wondering about whether or not this was going to be one of those newsworthy situations that was going to bring undue notice on the sheriff’s office in general. Probably. Dammit. Sometimes I hate being a moral man.

  He listened to the police operator relate the information, and he replied by reaching through the passenger window to the microphone. On some level he knew that Bishop and the corporal hadn’t had time to make it to the house yet, thus eliminating them as a source of the gunfire. Not to mention that he hadn’t heard a damned thing that would indicate there was gunplay going on. Of course, he knew that he was almost a mile away from the house, and if shots had been fired inside, the sound might not carry.

  Dropping the mike, he went around to the other side and jabbed the intercom button with an insistent finger, receiving no reply. But then, he hadn’t been expecting one. He took a look at the gate in front of him, and ascertained that it was held together with an electronic lock. A signal from elsewhere would open the gate and a motorized mechanism would open it and then close it.

  John Henry glanced over his shoulder at the large SUV and decided that its mass might just break through the heavy gate. It didn’t actually need to break it, just the electronic apparatus. “That’s gonna do just fine.”

  •

  Teddy threaded her way through the kitchen. She stepped over the man she’d knocked into unconsciousness with a cast-iron frying pan and traversed the length of the area that had once sported two chefs working in unison to prepare meals for the Howe’s guests. Random lights had been left burning throughout the mansion, but there were also deep pools of black shadows. Shadows that made her feel as though each hid her uncle or Gower within them, malevolently waiting for her to pass, waiting to reach out and grab her.

  Of course, they could be other men there. Fitch’s little booby trap might have taken out one or two of Theron’s people, possibly Theron himself, I wish, but she couldn’t count on it being a fact. Teddy ignored the pantry, knowing that she would make too much noise coming through the racks of coats in the armoire, and followed the long hall down the length of the mansion. Doors were mostly closed on her left, but the door to the library had been forced open with a chainsaw, one side of the double doors lay on the floor, a battered testament to her father’s use of solid materials in the building of his home.

  Teddy tipped her head around the corner and saw no movement. She looked again and lingered. Somehow she didn’t think that Fitch would be pleased with himself if he’d actually seen the results of his handiwork, but she could hear his voice in her head, ‘They were going to kill us. A simple choice, Teddy. Them or us.’ For that, Fitch was right. Lapeaux was almost certainly dead. A pool of blood attested to that fact. Another man appeared dead, as his upper body was almost entirely covered by another ornate birdcage, but he was wearing jeans and she knew that it wasn’t Theron. A third, unidentified man lay unconscious against one of the walls, blood trickling from his nose and mouth.

  Damn, she cursed silently. Why not my uncle? Why not... Teddy started. Gower was gone. His body had lain close to the oversized desk that her father had once used, but it was missing now and only a few splatters of blood remained to indicate where he had been. She trembled as she warily looked over one shoulder and then cast her gaze over the extent of the room. She and the three men were all that were left. Gower and Theron were gone. She wove her way through ruined piles of gilded craftsmanship that had once graced the high ceilings of the room. The birdcages had been only a means to an end.

  The book was still lying on the desk, the desk had moved minutely, having been clipped by another of the huge hanging creations that her father had enjoyed so much. But the book was still there. She touched it reverently. Routen’s Birds of North America. A large, heavy volume in hardback. A white jacket enclosed the work, covered with the most colorful of North American birds flying across the front, birds trapped at the moment that most captivated their many fans. Teddy enfolded the book in her arms and for a moment she didn’t dare open it. She was afraid for what she might find. Or what she might not find.

  With only herself to occupy her mind, Teddy had had much time to consider where she could hide the disks. Insurance policies for the future. If her plan to simply get away from her uncle’s grasping claws had worked, then she would have been happy to live her own life. But there came a point where she wanted revenge. She wanted Theron to pay for what he’d done to her, to her parents, to the pilots and crew of the jet. And she used it. But Edward Morris had screwed up and then it had become more urgent than ever that Theron and Gower capture the young heiress. Once they knew about the M-PEG recording then it was critical that they regain control, and Teddy had been content to simply work any job she could and exist, until they showed themselves to be more ruthless than she ever would have imagined. More cutthroat and more insane than she would have guessed. Brazen. Greedy. Desperate.

  Teddy slowly opened the book. She had hollowed out the pages, cutting a rough square inside the book. She knew that no one would ever open it. It had sat on her father’s desk for a year, dusted by the housekeeper or the maids, and never budged. She knew because in the two years she had spent imprisoned in this house she looked every time she had a chance to be in the library. It never varied more than a half-inch from its original position. No one ever replaced it in the stacks and it struck her that hiding a cd-rom in her father’s musical cds might be fine, but if someone thought to look for more, then they might search high and low, but why look on the same desk for another copy of the M-PEG? In plain sight, the book lay, and that was where it stayed for three years.

  Her uncle had sat at this very desk and virtually confessed to murder. So what more appropriate place to put it? Gower had thought to search through the cds in the holder on the desk, but why open all the books when a cd-rom would clearly bulge out and be seen?

  A sigh of relief flowed effortlessly from her mouth. The copy of the M-PEG wa
s there. Teddy had even labeled it, written in purple ink with her own handwriting, in case some idiot opened the book and saw it, ‘North American bird calls.’ No one had removed it, and it was possibly the last, hard proof she had that her uncle had murdered her parents.

  “Thank you, God,” she murmured and closed the book, clutching it to her breast.

  “Oh, my dear,” said her uncle behind her. “I wouldn’t have thought that you still believed in Him. After all, what has He done for you lately?”

  •

  Bishop found the front door locked and bolted. He was loath to break and enter the stained glass windows. He turned to Corporal Hannah Rose. The young black woman was examining the mansion intently as if terrorists would fly from the interior at any moment. “Why don’t we split up?” Bishop suggested. “Go around the sides, look for someone else or some window that’s open?”

  Rose gave him a studied look of exasperation. “You climb over a big-ass wall, but you don’t want to break in a door pane? With all due respect, sir, that’s really stupid. And by the way, the Chairman’s edict was very specific. Where the general goes, I go.”

  Bishop went around the southern side of the mansion. Some of the windows were lit, but each time he looked inside he didn’t see even a hint of movement. He reached a row of large, grandiose windows and stood on his tiptoes to peer inside. It was a ballroom, lit by enormous crystal chandeliers, illuminating a polished marble floor, but no one was there. He would have turned away but he saw a little device sitting near the far wall. It was too distant to see exactly, but he’d seen something of the like before. Recognition of those kinds of devices was ranked high on an Army officer’s skills list in survival. He’d seen many similar devices in the last months in Iraq and he hadn’t forgotten what they looked like.

  Judd’s earlier words floated back to him, ‘I have been assured by the owner of the company that six ounces of tradaricious beloxide is enough to level an office complex. Properly used, the amount could burn down a ten mile square area.’ Five pounds of the substance was stolen. Five pounds. And how much would have been used on the Howe jet? A half-pound at the most?