Steel Breeze

by Douglas Wynne

“Samurai methods, old-fashioned sword oil. It wouldn’t surprise me if you found strands of silk traceable to Japanese clothing manufacturers at one of your crime scenes.”

  “Well, we didn’t. Listen to me: Desmond is a writer, okay? A fantasy writer. You're from L.A., so you're probably familiar with what a fantasy convention looks like? I've seen clips on E.T. The people who read and write that crap are obsessives. They’re all about props and costumes. Role-play. And a big brain with a lot of time on his hands, like Des? He’d do the research and get those kinds of details right.”

  “Or a fan of his might. But I can't find any overt Japanese references in his books. You called him Des. Did you know him before his wife was murdered?”

  “It's a small town. We all went to school together.”

  “So you knew Sandy Carmichael as well?”

  “I said we went to school together. I knew her dad, too, him being a cop who coached football. Phil had an influence on me going into police work.”

  “So these cases are deeply personal for you.”

  “I wouldn't use the word deeply. It’s a small town.”

  “Detective, I make a habit playing devil's advocate. Carmichael probably did kill Phil Parsons, but I am going to dot every i and cross every t. The first of those is the phone call I had with him. Did it prompt him to rush in and kill Parsons or does it give him an alibi? That's what I'm looking at.”

  “Whoa, wait a minute. How could your call give him an alibi?”

  “I left a message on his phone while, unbeknownst to me, he was visiting Harwood. When he called me back, there was torrential rain in the background that made it hard for me to hear him. He said he was in his car. Now, I've checked the weather history, and the storm you had on Sunday moved south over Boston to the Cape. It cleared up over this area well before it did in Walpole. So even if Carmichael was driving while talking with me, the time and duration of the call might help us pin down a time range when he was south of the precipitation line.”

  “That sounds pretty weak. I wouldn't dream of hanging my hat on something that flimsy.”

  “It's just one dot to connect. A better one is—did he have an EZ pass in the car? That would give you an exact time for him going through the Tobin Bridge toll on Route 1.”

  “No, he didn't have one. Used to, but let it lapse when he lost his job.”

  “There still might be video of his car at the toll.”

  “You really think he didn't have enough time to get to the golf course?”

  “It's tight. He'd have to drive like a demon.”

  “It's enough.”

  “I also wonder how he knew exactly where to find Phil Parsons and kill him with opportunity. Does Parsons golf every Sunday at that time? Was it a pattern that Carmichael would have been aware of?”

  “That sounds feasible, likely even.”

  “But you don’t know. You haven't looked into it with his wife, the club, or his golf partner who witnessed the murder?”

  “It's Monday, Agent Drelick. We're just getting started building a case.”

  “I'd like to see Mr. Carmichael now.”

  “What for?”

  “What do you mean, what for? I want to interview him.”

  “As I understand it, you're not taking over the case at this time. Isn't that what you said?”

  “Yes, but I came here to investigate connections. I can't do that without questioning the suspect.”

  “So with you not having jurisdiction, this falls under the category of a favor? I'm doing you a favor?”

  “It falls under cooperating with the FBI. I'm sure your boss wouldn't expect anything less.”

  Chuck Fournier sucked a sesame seed out of the gap between his canine and molar, and said, “I'll set it up.”

  “When?”

  “We're transferring him to county later today, so soon. Sit tight.”

  “You have enough to transfer him to county? No chance of having to let him go when lab results come in?”

  “We have everything we need, Agent. We have him with the murder weapon.”

  Chapter 17

  “You have a visitor,” Fournier said through the bars.

  Desmond was sitting on the cell floor, craving a writing implement. It was a hellish joke to have nothing but time and nothing to write with. He had been scouring his memory, trying to recall every detail he could of the old man at the playground, when Fournier snapped him out of his fugue by jingling the keys. For a second Desmond looked at him uncomprehendingly; then the words took on meaning. “Who is it?”

  “The FBI agent you talked to on the phone yesterday—thanks for mentioning that, by the way. She came from California to see you.”

  “Why?”

  Fournier flashed a tight, condescending grin. “That's her hand, and she'll decide how much she wants to tip it.”

  “She thinks I might be innocent,” Desmond said, getting to his feet. “She thinks it might be an interstate killer.”

  “Don't get your hopes up. Best-case scenario, from my point of view, they tie you to somebody else's sword crimes because you're already in custody with blood on your hands, and I get to watch you die by lethal injection in California, which sadly, we don't have here.“

  “Tell me where Lucas is.” Desmond said. He wasn't going to let Fournier bait him into a fight. That would be a waste of precious time, a waste of another rare chance to get an answer out of someone who knew.

  “Lucas is somewhere safe…now that you're in here.”

  “Is he with Karen?”

  Fournier paused, puckered his mouth, and said, “No.”

  “Then where? He's my son, you have no right to keep me in the dark about who’s watching him. He's my son, and until a judge—“

  “You sure about that, Des? He's your son? You sure?”

  The question didn't make any sense, not until Desmond read the suggestion on Fournier's face. “The fuck are you implying, Chuck?”

  “Just that he doesn't look a whole lot like you. And I doubt that you can say for sure that Sandy never had a fling. You know, four years ago, that was the first time you got a little too cozy with alcohol. Maybe she sought solace in a friend.”

  Desmond tasted iron and noticed he had bitten the inside of his cheek.

  “I know she never did that.”

  “But it's not like you can ask her now, can you?”

  “I knew her better than you ever did.” Desmond could hear the acid in his voice. He was taking the bait, couldn't help it.

  “When having a kid snapped you out of your drunken stupor, you might have got to know her again, but I always knew her.”

  The sound of a truck engine amplified by the narrow corridor of buildings behind the police station thrummed through the bricks at street level, a low unsettling drone.

  “Who is Lucas with? Why isn't he with Karen?”

  “Karen is in shock. She's in no shape to be parenting, and she agreed that Lucas should be shielded from the loss of his grandfather for as long as possible, while everything else is unstable.“

  “What…is he in a foster home? I swear to God, Chuck if you had anything to do with placing him in foster care—“

  “He's at my house.”

  “No. No, no, no.”

  “Don't worry, Des. My wife is good with kids. We always wanted kids of our own, but you know, we weren't blessed.”

  “You have no right!”

  “Hey, calm down. I can't just bring home a kid like a confiscated bag of weed that didn't end up in the log. This is all going to go through the proper channels. For right now, I'm just doing a favor for a friend's widow. Pitching in to help a fallen vet by taking care of his grandson. That said…when the smoke clears, I may want to get a paternity test. Just so I'll know the truth.”

  “Fuck you, Fournier. I swear to God, when I get out of here….”

  “What? You'll kill me like everybody else? Go on, say it, say it loud.”

  Hydraulic brakes hissed in the alley.
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  Desmond pressed his face to the bars and whispered, “You would be my first, but if I lost him because of you, I would find it in me, you fat fuck."

  In a voice so low it was barely audible, Fournier said, “Tell you what, Des. My task right now is to open your cell and escort you upstairs to one of the interrogation rooms you've come to know so well. When we get to the top of the stairs, we’ll be in a hallway. At the back end of that hallway, our water-delivery guy will be propping open a door that is usually locked. A door to the back-alley access road.”

  Fournier’s eyes darted toward the ceiling. There was a sound of clattering metal. Desmond took a step back from the bars.

  “If you were to try anything when we get to that point, I would have to shoot you. Understood?”

  Desmond's mind was reeling. Did Fournier want him to make a break for it so he could gun him down in cold blood? Of course he would like that. Why was he telling him this? “It would be suicide,” Desmond said, his mouth curling in horror.

  “And it would really shame me if you got away. But if you knocked over a handcart stacked with five-gallon bottles, it's possible that a serial killer like you could actually slip out of our grasp.“

  “What do you want? You want me to make myself look guiltier with every move? I won't do it. I’m not playing your game.”

  “You know where to find Lucas, but no one knows you know. If you got out of here, most people would expect you to run from the law, not to it. And if you showed up at my house with a blade, you can bet I’d be ready to take you on like a man. Otherwise, it's nothing but lawyers from here to the end. That what you want?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither. I'm gonna unlock your cell now.”

  Fournier slid the bars open and stepped aside, giving Desmond room to exit and walk in front of him. He didn't cuff Desmond, but his gun was easy to see on his hip. Desmond took a few uncertain steps, then glanced back over his shoulder at Fournier. Fournier tipped his chin toward the stairs, “Go on. Chop, chop.”

  Climbing the stairs, Desmond’s legs felt like they were connected to his body by frayed strands of corroded wire, incapable of receiving the full strength of the impulses from his brain. Each step felt like an insurmountable obstacle as his body tried to shut down into whatever survival mode was the opposite of an adrenaline-charged burst. At the top of the stairs, a wedge of sunlight glided across the dirty, black-skid-marked wall of the corridor. Was that light from the back door? He heard a sloshing thud and imagined the water-delivery guy setting a bottle down against the metal door to hold it open. The heavy, hollow, metallic respiration of the truck idling in the alley reached his ears now with a crisp clarity that the brick walls had previously masked, and he felt himself shifting out of shut-down mode into fight-or-flight. It was true, what Fournier had told him. This move was designed to give him the opportunity to run. But it was engineered against him. Fournier, armed and trained, would be ready to gun him down, whether here or at the house where Lucas was. And maybe Lucas was safer in that house, where Fournier's wife might also be prepared to pick up a gun if she needed to.

  If Lucas is even there…if the whole thing isn’t a lie.

  But there wouldn't be another opportunity to slip out of the snare that was closing around him. If he had a shot, however desperate, to take Lucas on the run and protect him from a threat no one else believed in, didn't he have to take it?

  He did. But then Sandy's voice spoke up: Lucas doesn't need two dead parents.

  When Desmond reached the top of the stairs, he could see a uniformed officer and a shirtsleeves detective at the end of the corridor where it opened into an office. They were staring at something he couldn't see, near the ceiling. He knew that posture from waiting in line in coffee shops and banks with wall-mounted televisions tuned to the news. They were watching TV with rapt attention, their coffee cups momentarily forgotten. And Desmond knew that this was his moment.

  The water-delivery guy rolled past him, obstructing his view of the cops down the hall. He saw himself raising his leg, bent at the knee, and kicking out at Fournier behind him. A good kick would send him flying backward down the stairs, robbing him of the chance to draw and shoot. He saw himself rounding the corner while the delivery guy and the heavy, bottle-laden cart stood between the distracted cops and the back-alley exit.

  But something about the demeanor of those cops he had glimpsed made him hesitate. He wanted to know what they were watching. Something in their body language. People had watched TV like that on 9/11. Who cares? Even if it's a terrorist attack, it's not in this town. Use the distraction, whatever it is, to get Lucas.

  The moment passed. The water guy rounded the corner, and now a new body was striding down the hall toward Desmond and Fournier. He'd missed his chance. The loss spread through him, a sickening visceral mixture of relief and regret.

  He recognized Jay Twomey, the Chief of Police coming up to him, slowing, and gazing past him at Fournier, who had now reached the top of the stairs.

  “Fournier,” he said, shaking out a sheet of paper in his hand like a wet dishrag, “This transfer to county is bullshit. Since when do you not run them by me?”

  “I was about to, boss. I'm bringing him to talk to the agents first.”

  “No you're not. They're gone. Ran outta here like their asses were on fire when the news broke.”

  “What news?”

  “There's been a massacre in Ohio. A sword massacre. Might have happened last night. Bodies were found this morning. We barely had enough to hold you in the first place,” he said to Desmond. “At least now, I won’t have to lose sleep over letting you go.”

  “Wait…what? How can you be sure?” Fournier’s voice sounded weak.

  “Take a look at the TV and ask me again. Whoever is out there chopping heads off is doing it across state lines, which means it's no longer our problem.”

  Chief Twomey made a sweeping gesture with the paper in his hand, and Desmond followed him into the lobby with Fournier still at his heels like a dog that doesn’t trust his owner’s judgment about a visitor, still sniffing warily and ready to bite. Desmond couldn’t hear much of the TV audio over the chatter of the cops commenting on it, but the camera lingered on a shot of a yellow strip of police tape stretched between tree trunks. Beyond it, cops could be seen milling around near a small turquoise house in the woods. Sunlight on water sparkled in the distance. A tarp was draped over what had to be a body lying on the pine-needle-strewn ground.

  A cell phone rang, and Desmond cocked his head as Fournier answered brusquely, “If you’re calling about what’s on the tube, I’m lookin’ at it…. Calm down, I can’t understand a word…. No…. How? Jesus, Ginny, weren’t you watching him?” Fournier was turning a deep, purplish-red. The hand holding the phone dropped from his ear, and Desmond could hear a thin, distant, wailing plea coming from the little speaker. Fournier stared at Desmond’s chest, moving his jaw like it was dislocated and he was trying to reset it, trying to make his mouth work so he could talk, but Desmond already knew what he was going to say, and when he heard it he wouldn’t be able to help himself; Chuck Fournier’s jaw would indeed be dislocated very soon.

  “Lucas is missing,” Fournier managed to spit the words out, quick and dry.

  Then Desmond was on top of him, choking him with both hands and crashing into a metal desk in a torrent of profanity, cops swarming and pulling at his shoulders and legs until the juice of a Taser lit him up and burned the fight out of his sinews.

  Chapter 18

  He was James Hashimoto on the flight to Ohio, but thankfully no one called him by that name. James was the name on the driver’s license he carried, the name his mother had given him, but he kept it in his wallet with his currency, where it belonged. He despised his legal name almost as much as he despised the custom the younger generation had of calling their elders by first names. He had endured this at banks and stores from time to time when presenting a card. Apparently when formal dress had van
ished from the workplace, so too had proper manners. But the workplace was far behind him now. What a long and humiliating game that had been—pretending to share the same ambitions as his fellows, all the while saving every dollar he could for the mission. Now he was a retiree who liked to travel. He was Mr. Hashimoto at the car rental counter and at the Pakmail location where he picked up the long, narrow box he had shipped to himself a week ago. But by the time he was driving south on U.S. 23, he was Sensei again, rolling down the windows and breathing in dusty, baked air that reminded him, almost, of Manzanar.

  He had never again truly known dust like the dust of Manzanar. The closest thing was to open a bag of flour and breathe it in. The film that would cover your nose and mouth would resemble the texture of the air in that forsaken place, but the smell would be too pleasant. Manzanar dust smelled of desolation and despair, of vegetation ground to the finest granules, of human will caught like a piece of gristle in the teeth of the jagged Sierras, gnashed and spat out onto the cracked desert floor, then burned by the Mohave sun to an ash so fine it would slip through any sieve.

  Sensei wanted this Ohio dust to remind him of that, but it failed.

  He glanced at the package on the passenger seat beside him. The trail he was leaving would soon be picked up. After all the years of waiting and training, of reclaiming what his father had abandoned when the man boarded the boat that would carry his seed to Hawaii and then on to California in search of a new identity, a new opportunity, after a childhood spent struggling to survive in the spectacular ruins of that promise and an adulthood spent pretending to have embraced it, he had finally opened his samurai eyes and fixed them on his targets. In the course of only five years, he had found them all.

  Had it already been five years since he had taken his first head? Action had flowed so quickly from research. Research had followed so easily from predatory instinct. The first had been a farmer in Arizona, heir to an estate seized by white vultures when the Japanese farmers were rounded up and bussed to the internment camps. Strawberry farmers like his father. That first kill had initiated him into the company of Spirit Warriors long dead, and for a brief moment it had quenched the thirst of the sword he had been sharpening and polishing in his secret heart since his boyhood in the dust of the Owens Valley.