by David Dun
"We need to talk."
"Well, I am terribly occupied at the moment trying to solve your problem."
"I need you to go to a public phone and call me now."
"This is interfering with my job."
"I've got to insist unless you are at this moment rescuing Ben Anderson."
"All right." He hung up, seething. "Divert back to the nearest public telephone." He still might need Sanker's money.
Sam and Haley rowed past Aleck Bay and a small island that was a faint shadow in the night, headed just outside the flashing beacon. Without incident they came around Iceberg Point, the sea calm but for gentle rolling waves a foot or so high. At the point they saw only occasional lights from the residences nestled in the shoreline trees. They were in the homestretch to Ben's.
Frick stood at Fisherman's Bay, at a pay phone. Frustrated. Angry. He was just about to make progress and they insisted on a stupid-ass phone call. He couldn't imagine what could be so important.
"What do you want?" he snapped at Nash. "What is so damn important? Just when I was getting someplace."
"We have a hunch that Sarah James might know something."
"That would be no surprise. She's missing. If I find her, I'll let you know what she says."
"You don't know where she is then?"
"I have a good lead. What about it?" Frick countered.
"You'll tell us if you find her? Tell us what she says?"
"Well, of course. I'm working for you, aren't I? When I'm not chasing murderers. Is that all you wanted?"
"Yes. We want to be informed," Nash replied.
"Why in the hell are you all of a sudden so interested in Sarah James? I thought we were trying to find Ben Anderson."
"She's his assistant. She might know how to find him."
This was a complete waste of Frick's time. "I don't know where she is. All right?"
"Just checking. We want her safe."
"Don't ever call me again about nothing. Ever."
He slammed the phone down. But it was unnerving. They knew something. He wondered who told them and why. Something was amiss. He jumped in the car and drove at top speed. The whole call was strange, as if choreographed. He told himself that they wouldn't be stupid enough to work with the government. And he told himself that he would find out all about what Sarah James knew and didn't know.
He ordered them to drive fast.
Frick knew some would say that he was a psychopath. That was patently untrue. He had feelings of guilt and he overcame them through an act of the will. Pyschopaths were immune to the irritations of the conscience. Sometimes he'd get a case of nerves after a killing, but with Ativan pills it dissipated. Usually it didn't return even after the medication wore off.
Khan had remained at Friday Harbor in the conference room to manage things, but Frick thought the guy had a weak stomach. Rafe was up the road at Anderson's, no doubt frying in his own lust. Having any witnesses to the interrogation was out of the question.
Frick would have to kill Sarah James, of course. South America was looking better and better.
After arriving at MacKaye Harbor Frick took a private drive to the Anderson family retreat. It was a large, old New England-style two-story home with blue-gray siding whose charm lay in the studied look of old and weathered. In fact, the seams and finish quality were nearly new. Once in the house he donned a black mask and a voice modulator. He knew that Rafe was trying hard not to give him a strange look. As instructed, Rafe went in the kitchen and sent the other men away. After they had gone, Frick walked straight in and found Sarah James sitting, handcuffed with her hands locked behind a straight-back chair. She looked grim but defiant, and her eyes shone with righteous anger.
Sarah James was gagged, but it scarcely muffled her scream.
It was as if she had peered into the bowels of hell. And indeed she perhaps saw hell in his eyes. Frick knew it was there to find. He would begin by tying her tighter than she had imagined possible. Then he would start with the drugs. And the rest.
They rowed hard down the rocky coast, and it was a sad surprise, though not unexpected, when Sam saw Ben's beach house lit up in the distance. They rowed silently past the house, which was located in the bite of a tiny cove. There were no other houses on this stretch of beach. When they spotted a good landing place, some one hundred yards past Ben's property, they hit the beach with only a whisper of an oar stroke and bumped aground in the fine gravel.
Above the high-tide line the foliage grew densely, as high as a man, between the house and its environs. After pulling the boat in the bushes, they crept slowly down the beach, listening and watching, much like nervous deer.
There was a covered porch, with white posts against the blue gray of the wooden siding.
At night only the white of the posts was discernible. Windows were lit like one of those intensive paintings. It was a neatly kept, older two-story structure with three dormers on the second story. Looking through a back window beyond the covered porch, one could see into the kitchen. Sam could see someone in a chair in the middle of the room. A redhead. Sarah. They crept a little closer.
It was obvious that Sarah was somehow tied to the chair. No doubt there would be guards around.
"That's Sarah, isn't it?" Haley asked in a hushed voice.
"Yes, it is," Sam said. "Somehow we've got to get her out of there. If I crash through a window and someone is in there with a gun, they are liable to get me before I get Sarah.
And even if I get them, there will be more. Sarah's trapped in a chair. Getting her without one of us getting shot will probably be very tough."
"What are you gonna do?"
Sam considered the options.
"Oh, my God, Sam. Look."
A man with a weird-looking hood over his face was putting a blindfold on Sarah.
"Damn," Sam muttered. "Makes it that much harder."
The hooded man approached her with what looked like a line.
"What's he doing?" Haley asked.
"He's probably binding her. In itself, it inflicts pain."
"We've got to stop him. Look, he's starting with the line."
"I have an idea," Sam said.
"Do something," Haley begged.
Sam input the code to conceal the caller ID on any phone receiving a call from his cell.
He didn't know if it would work with the sheriff or not.
"I need the name of the people where we left the Blazer," he said to Haley.
"I can't remember. Let me think. Let me think. Nisky, I think. I think it's Nisky."
Sam dialed the sheriff's dispatcher on San Juan.
"You looking for Ben Anderson?" Sam asked the dispatcher.
"We sure are."
"I just saw him on Lopez. I've known him for twenty years and there is no question.
Tall. White hair, dressed like a farmer. Southern end of the island on Mud Bay Road.
End of the road. Nisky is the name. He's at the Nisky house right now. Came in a red Blazer. Parked it out in back by the woodshed. Good luck." Sam hung up. If they could see his number despite his turning off the caller ID, they would know it was him and it would have only limited effect. Unless, perhaps, they were so excited, they got careless.
Still, they might know about the Blazer by now and that should intrigue them.
They watched through the window.
"Can't we do something?" Haley moaned. She was beside herself and he knew he would need to act soon or he wouldn't contain her. Frick kept wrapping the line.
"I can't stand this," Haley said. After a couple more wraps of the line, the man in Ben's kitchen went for his cell phone. "Stay here," Sam ordered in his biggest command voice.
"Get down." She did as he said. Thank God.
Sam focused like a stalking cat, staying low, watching the man that stood over Sarah.
The man was moving, looking impatient, and agitated. He dropped the end of the line.
Then he left the room.
T
hen Sam noticed that Haley was down, but staying right behind him.
"I need to go in alone."
"No."
"You don't want to go in there," he said. "We're going back out and put you on the beach." He turned on her.
"Okay, we're wasting time. I'll go back," she said.
Frick stood in front of Ben Anderson's beach house, speaking on his cell phone in the deep shadows thrown by the moon.
"I can't believe someone just called in to tell us where Ben Anderson is."
"It's detailed," Khan said. "They told us exactly where and they told us he came in that Blazer from the resort. We know Chase and Haley Walther took that vehicle. There's really nobody good over there yet. You better take your guys and go."
"James is going to spill her guts. I was just about to inject her and the mere thought of the chemicals was disintegrating her will. I had the instruments laid out and she was going to become hysterical just looking at them. I can't stop now."
"You do what you want. I understood that what we're doin here is finding Ben Anderson. What does it matter if you can break his assistant."
"Damn it. The timing sucks," Frick said.
"This Nisky place isn't far at all. Down near those three bays."
"Did you give the address to the guys?"
"One of them knows right where it is."
"I'll go over there for two minutes. If it's another wild-goose chase, it's the asshole Chase all over again. Listen, if we jump every time he gives us a false trail, we'll never get anything done."
Frick hung up without giving him a chance to reply. Ripping off his hood, he called for two men out on the road, who were already apprised. "Stay away from that woman," he growled at Rafe Black. "I mean it." Then he realized that he should shoot her up with a pentathol cocktail. He hesitated, then jumped in the truck. He would be fast.
He leaned out the window. "You assholes be sure no one steals her. This could be a trap." They all nodded.
Frick's mind was sinking into a warm, sensuous place and he was enjoying a certain feeling that came over him when he was about to start a job. Odd that the feeling came even when things were going to hell.
Sam kept calm, the only alternative to reckless rage. He had to work fast. Whoever was doing this-no doubt Frick himself-would be back shortly. Sarah was crying, even before the binding had started. She had been cuffed tightly to the chair, feet and hands.
Quickly he unwound the rope, which had been unmercifully tight. There was a weird ball gag in her mouth and he removed that. Then he picked up the entire chair with Sarah in it and walked out the door, down the beach trail, and through the shrubs. Sarah was a svelte woman; so despite his physical limits, he was able to carry her. His pumping adrenaline gave him strength he didn't know he'd had. In fact, he felt no pain at all as he walked out onto the beach, with Haley somewhat amazed at the chair business.
"Be quiet," he said, once on the beach.
Sarah managed to calm herself, at last convincing herself that she was in the middle of a successful rescue.
She was more or less in possession of her faculties. Haley tried to cover her with more clothing, against the cold November air.
"We can't leave without getting those files," Sam said. "Coming back will be impossible. You row down the shore. If I can make it to the beach with files, I'll bring you into the beach. If not, I'll do the best I can."
"Check the garage. I'm thinking those files are in the filing cabinets in the garage. Go right out of the kitchen, into the hall, then into the garage," Haley said.
Sam hobbled back across the beach and into the kitchen, recklessly hoping that Frick would come back so that he could kill him on the spot-or die trying. Quickly he slipped into the garage and, using a penlight, found the cabinets. They were locked.
Risking a lot, he flipped on the garage lights and observed metal storage cabinets standing along the wall. He turned the light off, went to the cabinets with a penlight, and began searching. The first had boots and rain gear, but the second had tools. He took out a small pry bar. Against the wall he found a pipe and fit it over the pry bar. With the added leverage he easily snapped the lock bars on the file cabinets.
Two entire file drawers dealt in one way or another with methane. Quickly he took a huge armload of files and ran out the garage's back door. Limping as best he could, he made his way to where Haley had rowed.
From behind he heard shouting at the house. Someone had discovered that Sarah was gone.
CHAPTER 32
Rachael and Lew Stutz sat in a small conference room in the downtown Seattle offices of the Washington State Police. Apparently on a holiday weekend, the best they could do was provide a lieutenant, John Glendale, a blond fellow who did not seem to smile easily. He was young, thirty-five at most, and appeared earnest and sincere. Lew, the coast guard lieutenant, sat in with them. "Do you have any firsthand information about the shootings?"
"No," she said. "But Haley Walther and Sam witnessed it. I trust them completely, and I'm here to ask you to believe these people through me."
"And you want me to accept that an ex-police officer in the employ of the Sanker Corporation is going around killing people for a fountain of youth-pharmaceutical?"
Rachael suspected that was a question best unanswered.
"I'm not trying to be harsh," Glendale said, "but I've got to marshal the cold facts." He turned to Lew. "She really roped you in, huh?" For the first time Glendale smiled at the coast guard officer.
"Right or wrong, I'm a baptized true believer," Lew said.
"Okay," Glendale said. "I'm going to start calling people. Starting with Special Agent Ernie Sanders."
"He's probably on a plane," Rachael said.
"I'll leave messages. I'll call his colleagues. I'll go up the line here and get my ass shot off. I'll even call over to the attorney general and see if there is anybody on call tonight.
I'm in. We'll see where this takes us. But no way do I have authority yet to send anybody anywhere or to intervene, uninvited, in the county's case."
Rachael tried hard not to smile. It was more than she'd hoped for. no one was around. Yes, the Blazer was there at the Nisky home, but was probably left hours before. They had broken into the house and one man was still poking around.
Frick had seen enough after two minutes. Khan had swallowed the bait too easily.
As he ran into the beach house, he realized that he wasn't hearing anything. He pulled his gun, but was reckless in his anger. He forced himself to go more slowly.
In the kitchen the chair was gone and the line was on the floor. His instruments were just where he had laid them, the ball gag on the floor. He charged out onto the back porch, then again thought better of running to the beach and into a bullet. Stepping back inside, he started searching the house while he got on the radio.
"Get in here!" he screamed, not caring who heard him.
A quick run through the downstairs revealed nothing. It seemed unlikely that Sarah's rescuer would have stuck around. By the time he got to the back door, the three men had arrived.
"You"-he pointed at a burly, mustached man-"down the beach, to the left, patrol back and forth. If you find anyone, you call, check in every five minutes. You, the same to the right. Howell, you come with me. They had to have used the road."
Suddenly Frick stopped. He sent Howell on alone and reentered the house. He had three men here, and more on the way from San Juan to Lopez. His best hope was letting them search in the various directions until they caught a sign of Sam, Haley, and Sarah James.
Then he'd join them. More important than getting them was getting the goods. That meant keeping up with McStott, whom he trusted less and less as the night wore on.
He called Khan for an update, realizing that he had to keep a grip, keep moving and not become distracted over a bad turn of events.
"That was a massive screwup," he began. Explaining in some detail how stupid they had been; how it had all been a ploy to rescue Sa
rah James. Khan listened and said nothing.
"What's our little weasel found?" Frick finally asked.
"Well, Rolf's found a partial draft of some kind of allegiance document. Like a pledge."
"Belonging to?"
"Anderson was drafting it on his computer," Khan said, "but it reads like a government document." Khan voiced the pledge:
"Whereas we have been given by Providence a great discovery that might enhance the life of man and extend his time on earth;
"Whereas we have joined together to use this new knowledge for the good of all, with harm to none;
"Whereas we have enumerated certain goals and the manner of their achievement;
"By this document we commit ourselves…"
"That's it? Commit ourselves to what?" Frick asked. "That's all we found."
Haley moved the boat down the beach with the first load of files while Sam returned to the house. Sarah was in considerable pain just from the overtightened cuffs and it was hard on Haley to wait around with Sarah suffering.
Wondering if he was using more guts than brains, Sam emerged from the shrubbery near the door to the garage. He slipped back through the door, grabbed an armload of files, heard whispering, and turned to look back out into the garden. Two men were headed down the path with their guns drawn. Obviously they didn't expect anyone behind them in the house. Putting the files down, he went quietly after them, forcing himself to endure the pain of moving at a trot. They didn't see him coming, intent as they were on the beach.
Sam reminded himself not to strike a lethal blow. Anger over Sarah would make it easy to put a nose cartilage into a brain.
Catching the first man unawares, he delivered a hard blow to the area of the seventh cervical vertebrae. The man spun. Sam slammed a fist into the chin and an elbow hard into the floating ribs. Something snapped and the man dropped. Without stopping his motion Sam kicked at the other man's right arm before he could pull his gun. The kick was a mistake. It hurt and, not surprisingly, it went wide, clipping the man's elbow. The man grunted and swung his firearm up. With one hand Sam clamped the gun while he used the other to deliver a hard, palm-up blow to the chin. The man staggered and Sam landed a harder punch to the point of the chin. It took three strikes and a badly broken jaw to bring the man down, but he would likely stay put for a few minutes.