Steel Breeze

by Douglas Wynne

  “He's safe, okay? I promise. There are police around him.”

  Desmond stared into Sanborn’s pale blue eyes and for some inscrutable reason believed him.

  “Now, why did you visit Harwood?”

  “I wanted to look him in the eye and ask him if he killed Sandy.”

  Sanborn tipped his hands to indicate he needed more than that.

  “I avoided the trial, it was too painful. But now the stakes are too high. Someone is after us, maybe after the whole family. I had to see Harwood, see if he seemed innocent.”

  “They found the weapon in his possession, Desmond. He confessed. The only thing casting doubt on his guilt now is you hiding a sword in your wall right after Phil Parsons was seen being cut down with one.”

  “There was a witness?”

  Sanborn shot a glance at the mirror. He had fucked up.

  “Who saw it? Wait, why didn't you put me in a lineup or something?” Desmond looked at the mirror again. “Is the witness in there?”

  Sanborn twisted his wristwatch as if the band were too tight and said, “We may do just that.”

  “Did this witness see the killer's face or was there a mask over it?” Desmond asked, sitting up straight, his eyes boring into the detective’s.

  Sanborn hardened his face as he leaned forward in his chair. “This is an interrogation, not a conversation. I'll humor you for the moment. Your gut reaction to Harwood was what?”

  “Not guilty. Confused. But not a killer.”

  “If you think you can muddy the waters by visiting him, you're mistaken. If you think that signing a log and having your ID checked by the infallible eyes of the criminal justice system gives you an iron clad alibi, think again. We have you checking out of Cedar Junction at eleven thirty. If you were speeding, that's enough time to get back here and kill Parsons. You have an active imagination, but you don't have an alibi. You don't have shit unless you can give me someone who can attest to being with you at twelve twenty today.”

  “I was driving at twelve twenty. It's an hour and fifteen minutes from Walpole doing seventy. I was barely home fifteen minutes when the cops kicked the door in.”

  “If you didn't kill anyone with that sword, why did you hide it in the wall?”

  “I wanted to make sure that whoever is stalking my family couldn't get their hands on it.”

  “Seems like a lot of trouble to take just to get rid of something. Why not sell it or toss it in the river?”

  “I don't know, because I'm paranoid? You sell something on the web, there's a record of it. Maybe the killer offers whoever I sell it to a crazy sum just to get his hands on it.” Desmond laughed. “Maybe the killer buys it from me and I don't know it's him. And you know we'd be having the very same conversation if I tossed it into the river.”

  “Why would this stalker of yours be so interested in your sword?”

  “He's obsessed with samurai culture. He killed with it once before. I wanted to make it impossible to find, and I knew the one place no one could spy on me while I hid it was in my apartment.”

  “But you were also making sure that it was close at hand.”

  “If I ever found a hole in the wall, I’d know it had been taken.”

  “But you made sure it was in the same building as your son. Isn't that asking for trouble?”

  “Trouble has been following us around. Confronting it seemed better.”

  “Most murder weapons get ditched in a place that can't be associated with the killer. When you hide one in your home, that's because you're attached to it, can't let it go. You keep it around for the memories?”

  “Fuck you, Sanborn. I think I'd rather talk to Chuck.” Desmond looked at the mirror.

  “Why did you kill Phil?”

  “Check the joint compound. It's been dry for twenty-four hours. I patched the hole in the wall yesterday.”

  “What do you think this is, an episode of CSI? You think this is a big city with a bunch of materials experts waiting around to look at crumbs from your wall under a microscope?”

  “Anyone who’s ever patched a hole would know that I didn't do the job right before you guys showed up. Even Fournier must know that.”

  “You know we do have DNA analysis, Des. The blade might look clean, but if they find so much as one molecule of Phil Parsons on it, you're fucked.”

  “Phil gave me the goddamned thing in the first place.”

  “They're taking apart the handle and looking at places where the blood might have run down inside the hardware. You should think hard about how well you cleaned it.”

  “The last time anyone handled that blade out of the sheath, it was you guys and your geeks. They cleaned it up after Sandy's death, and they're not going to find anything new but sheetrock dust.” As he said this, Desmond remembered the phone call in the car at Cedar Junction, the FBI agent. In the whirlwind of his arrest, he'd forgotten all about it. She’d wanted to know if he ever oiled the blade. What was that about? Sanborn didn't even seem to know about the call. Was it a coincidence that she'd contacted him on the same day? Was she even who she said she was? He felt a creeping awareness that he was standing in a minefield.

  The fact of Phil’s death was sinking in now, too, and Desmond was surprised to find that it hurt. Despite their differences, he had loved the guy in his own clumsy way. Staring at the tabletop between his hands and watching the faux wood grain blur and distort as water welled up in his eyes, he said, “How did Phil die, exactly?” He could hear the thickness in his voice. “Was it the same as Sandy?”

  Sanborn sighed. “I'm going to give you a minute to collect your thoughts and reconsider putting them on paper, Des.”

  Sanborn got up and left the room. When the door had swung shut and locked behind him, Desmond took up the pen, wrote on the paper, then walked over to the mirror, and slapped the paper flat against the glass: PROTECT LUCAS.

  Chapter 15

  Desmond felt sand sloshing around in his sneakers as he crested the ridge of dunes. He was climbing the thin path that wound up through the beach grass behind the apartment, the beach where they had scattered Sandy’s ashes. He could smell the ocean before it came into view, the crisp salt breeze pure and clean, untainted by the dead fish smell that often accompanied low tide in the coastal marshes. He heard the surf loud and close and, sure enough, when he came to the top of the dunes, he could see the waves flooding toward him, foamy breakers churning and roiling and reaching for the wire and picket barrier fence that jutted from the dunes in a wavy line down the shore. He walked across the boundary of reed fragments, hollow crab shells, and driftwood that marked the high tide line, his sand-laden sneakers stepping over a salt-encrusted condom and a headless Barbie doll wrapped in black strands of kelp.

  The wind was blowing hard, sweeping up grains of sand and stinging his hands with them. The sky darkened as a wave of ravening black clouds swept inland, mimicking the tide. The beach was empty except for a solitary dark figure wading into the surf, clothed and oblivious to the waves soaking his black jeans at the knees and splashing brine onto his indigo hoodie—no, two figures: walking beside the man in the hoodie and holding his hand was a boy with brown hair and a green shirt. Lucas.

  Desmond ran to the waves, his sneakers plunging into the water, the cold ocean sluicing through his jeans. But somehow, despite the height of the tide, the beach had grown longer and no matter how fast he ran, he couldn’t reach them, couldn’t get to the deeper water where the stranger was now up to his waist and Lucas was bobbing on a swelling wave, beyond the breaker line. Desmond shouted with all the force he could invoke, a long holler that mutated into a ragged scream as if the grainy wind had shredded his voice in the air, perforated it with mica shrapnel, “LUCAAAAAS!”

  The boy, who must have heard his cry, didn’t turn to look, and Desmond felt a cold certainty, a lung-crushing fear, that if the boy in the water did turn to look at him, something would be wrong with his face, some mutilation, some deformity that would mark him as
irretrievable and yet undeniably Lucas. The man, however, did turn to look at Desmond, and the face in the hood was a battle mask, an arch-grimace of rage, a kabuki horror of alabaster-white, ash-black, and blood-red lines.

  Desmond lunged forward into the crashing waves, dragging his hands through the glistening water, dripping silver threads of it from his fingertips with each lumbering stride and yet coming no closer to the pair. Gulls cried on the wind, wheeling overhead, and diving from the bruised underbelly of the rippling black storm front. He traced the arc of one as it plunged and skimmed the silver sea and saw it come up with something white and angular in its beak.

  The surface of the water was scattered with origami birds—swans, cranes…ducks? They bobbed and glowed in the diffuse light of a hidden sun, and Lucas bobbed among them, his head dipping below the dark water.

  Something bumped Desmond’s hip, the flank of an animal; he felt submerged fur glide across his skin. Fenton? He was almost sure it was his lost dog, his dead dog, not swimming now as he had loved to do at this very beach, but floating, drifting toward Lucas, toward the rip tide, trailing a cloud of blood from his severed neck.

  There was a ringing sound now, like a metal clamp clanging against the mast of a sailboat at anchor. It grew louder, and Desmond woke on the bunk in his cell, the armpits of his t-shirt soaked with sweat. An officer was rapping his wedding ring against the bars, and Desmond almost fell to the floor as he scrambled to regain reality, composure, lucidity. How had he fallen asleep, and so deep? Shame welled up with a flush of blood to his ears, and he remembered just how little sleep he’d had over the past few days. His body had finally shut down while there was nothing he could do.

  “Your lawyer,” the officer said. Desmond recognized him as one of the two who had accompanied Fournier on the raid of his apartment.

  Desmond’s court-appointed lawyer was a short, stout man with salt-and-pepper hair and a cheap suit that looked like it could use a trip to the dry cleaners. He introduced himself as Stephen Janvrin as the cop locked the cell door behind him. Janvrin sat down at the end of the wall-mounted bed with an ease and familiarity that told Desmond he was used to meeting with clients in cells. Desmond rubbed the heels of his hands across his eyes and wondered how many of those meetings had led to verdicts of innocence.

  Janvrin placed his briefcase in his lap and drummed his fingers on the lid. “So,” he began, “You're the only suspect for the murder of your father-in-law, and they are awaiting some forensics results—”

  “Stop right there,” Desmond interrupted. “Do you know where my son is?”

  “Son?”

  “I have a four-year-old son. His name is Lucas. I need you to find out where he is and if he's being protected.”

  “Okay, but I don't know if they'll tell me. It's not the kind of thing that I need to know to defend you.”

  “I need to know it to defend him. Whoever killed Phil Parsons is coming after our family. My son was in the care of Phil and Karen Parsons last night after they took him from me and started a custody battle.”

  “I'm a criminal lawyer, Mr. Carmichael. I don't do custody battles.”

  “I’m innocent. If the police do their job with any competence, they’ll figure that out and let me go. When that happens, I need to get my son back immediately. So I need to know if they…if Karen has a leg to stand on with this guardianship move. It was going before a judge tomorrow, but now that Phil is dead and I'm in here, I don't know if I'm still supposed to appear in family court on Monday morning. I need you to find out where Lucas is.”

  “I think you're putting the cart before the horse. Our first order of business is to get you out of here. And that may be harder than you expect.”

  “I didn't kill Phil. They'll know that as soon as they check out the sword they found at my apartment.”

  “It's not that simple. They have checked it out.”

  “And?”

  “Edged weapons can't be identified with the same precision as firearms. When a bullet exits the barrel of a gun, there are marks left on it that are unique to that weapon. Swords and knives are a different story. Unless a little piece of the blade chips off, a sword can't be identified with a particular wound. Not unless the victim's blood is left on the weapon, like in your wife’s case. This is good and bad for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Without blood they can't prove that your sword made the cut, but we can’t prove that it didn't. No traces of Mr. Parsons’ DNA have been found on the weapon as of yet, but an expert can still testify that by its shape and size, your sword could very well be the murder weapon. And the fact that the same weapon was used to kill your wife when it was in your possession will not help a jury to have doubts. After all, most folks don't own a samurai sword, Mr. Carmichael.”

  “What about the wall, the spackle? It was dry because I hid the sword in the wall yesterday.”

  Janvrin was shaking his head before Desmond could finish the sentence. “It won't be admissible. No one preserved a sample, and now it's too late. It's your word against that of the arresting officers.”

  “But Chuck Fournier's shoe would have wet spackle drying in the treads if I only just finished the patch right before he kicked the wall in.”

  “That may be true, but I’m afraid it doesn’t help us. Evidence won’t save you. You need an alibi, my friend. Do you have one?”

  “Not really.”

  “You’re in the CJ visitor log. What time did you leave and where did you go?”

  “I left the prison at eleven thirty after about twenty minutes of talking to Harwood. I drove right home and started packing some of Lucas's things to drop off at Phil and Karen's house. That’s when the cops showed up.”

  “Did you talk to either of your in-laws on the phone about dropping by?”

  “No. I didn't want to take the chance that they might say no.”

  “Did you talk to anyone on the phone? Did you stop for gas or food? If you were on the phone at twelve thirty, or filling your tank on some surveillance camera, you couldn't also be killing a man at a golf course.”

  “It happened at a golf course?”

  “Yes. Phil was golfing with a judge friend, and he sliced it into the brush. He went in to retrieve the ball and staggered back out with gashes in his chest and abdomen.”

  “That's horrible.”

  “The judge didn't see the killer, just some black clothing.”

  “Do you know if he saw a mask? Like a samurai war mask?”

  “I don’t know.” Janvrin looked perplexed, but intrigued. Desmond thought maybe the lawyer had assumed he was guilty and was beginning to reappraise that suspicion.

  “Wait, I did get a call…I got a call on my cell phone from an FBI agent in California while I was at the prison. I called her back from the car before I drove home.”

  Janvrin blinked. “Why didn't you mention that before?”

  “I figured everybody knew by now. Haven't the police been through my phone records yet?”

  “They're working on it. What did this agent want with you? Did you get her name?”

  “She said she was working on a case with similarities to Sandy's. I forget her name. She wanted to know if I’d ever put oil on the sword because a particular kind of oil was found on it, and she found the same kind of oil in her sword murder case. I told her no, I never did.”

  “Hmmph. So she's thinking…what?”

  “I don't know, ask her. She said I wasn’t a suspect in her case, but I’m guessing that may have changed by now.”

  “Okay, I need to talk to this FBI agent. I’ll see if I can get access to your cell phone.”

  “Don’t entangle me any further, Mr. Janvrin. It’s going to be much harder for me to protect my son if I have the feds looking at me as a bicoastal serial killer.”

  “If you're innocent, it might be better for you to have them on it than a pack of townies with an axe to grind.”

  “If?”

  Janvrin shrugged. He took
a Blackberry from his jacket pocket and said, “You don't remember the agent's name? Try for me. First name, initials, something to go on.”

  Desmond tried to put himself back in the car. Rain on the windows. The female voice in his message box reminding him at first of Sandy's voice as if, impossibly, she had called him from the great beyond while he was visiting the man convicted of killing her. “Relic?” It sounded something like that. “I don't know…. She told me the name of the victim in her case. That I do remember because I was going to look into it: Lamprey.”

  “That does sound familiar. Probably getting more coverage in California. I'll look into it.” Janvrin typed the name into his phone. He got up off of the bunk and straightened his suit. “Do you have anyone who would post bail for you? It’s unlikely that they’ll set one, and if they do, it could be quite high.”

  Desmond shook his head.

  “I'll see you again tonight if it turns out they don't have enough to hold you.”

  “What if they do? I'm just stuck in here?”

  “If you're the prime suspect and the evidence precludes bail, they’ll transfer you to a more secure facility.”

  The notion was jarring; Desmond felt the ground shifting under his feet. Then he remembered the only thing that really mattered before his one link to the outside world walked out. “Please find out where Lucas is. If you do nothing else for me, make sure that he and Karen are being protected.”

  Janvrin looked like he wanted to say something, maybe wanted to protest. But he must have read the intensity in Desmond’s eyes because he only nodded, then called for the guard to let him out.

  Chapter 16

  Agents Drelick and Pasco flew into Boston’s Logan Airport on the Monday morning red-eye. The murder of Phil Parsons had set the stage for the Lamprey case to go national. They hadn’t yet been granted jurisdiction, but the fact that Parsons had been killed within an hour of Drelick’s phone call to Desmond Carmichael was enough to convince the Deputy Director that Drelick’s hunch about the choji oil merited further investigation. They were getting close now; she could feel it. She’d had a fluttering in her stomach since LAX, and her inability to sleep in flight didn’t help to settle it. Neither did the miniscule bag of pretzels the flight attendant had given her.