“May I ask you why you believe the explosion was intended for Mr. Nyland?” Padillo asked.
“Like I told you on the phone, many of my people here at the hotel have spoken to me about that guest and his tendency to drop money around. They also talked about his strange appearance and how beautiful his companion is. I checked the reservation list for the fine dining room about 4:00 this afternoon, as is my custom, and found his name on the list for 7:00 p.m. Table 7 was being held for him and his lady friend. I blocked off Table 18 in the dining room, which is a private room rather than a table in the open and joined the Concierge at the desk to check him in, strictly out of curiosity, mind you.”
“Uh, huh,” mumbled Arias. “What happened next?” He was scribbling in his notebook as he spoke and barely raised his eyes to catch a glance at Mr. Vickers.
“Mr. Nyland and his friend, who is now his fiancé by the way, were right on time. The Concierge was going to show them to Table 7 but I interrupted and personally showed them to Table 18 instead. I had noticed a large diamond on Jessica’s left hand, she introduced herself to me, and I mentioned that must be the reason for their celebration that night. She told me she would soon be Mrs. Nyland and he told me he’d just asked her that afternoon,” Mr. Vickers continued.
“Why do you believe someone was targeting Mr. Nyland directly,” asked Padillo as he scribbled notes in his notebook.
“Like I said, they had reservations for 7:00 that night at Table 7. I changed them to Table 18 at the last minute. Table 7 is the one that blew up. I can’t think but someone must have wanted him dead,” Mr. Vickers answered. “I seriously don’t believe anyone wanted the couple seated at Table 7 dead. He’s a high-level executive for a major broadcasting network out of New York. They come down here a couple of times a year for a week to relax. They are well liked here in Nassau, and especially well liked at my hotel. They are very gracious people, good tippers, and easy to talk to. I can’t make myself believe someone wanted to do that to those nice people.”
“Who had access to your reservation system? Who would know that Mr. Nyland had a reservation that night and would be seated at Table 7?” Arias asked.
“Anyone on my staff would if it was important to know. Our reservation system is easy for the staff to access. When I talked to the Concierge who made the reservation, he said he booked the table for them at the second best table in the house hoping for some of the tips Mr. Nyland was known to hand out among the staff. They don’t usually reserve Table 18 unless it is for a VIP of some note. I blocked that table out myself when I looked over the reservations for the night and saw Mr. Nyland’s name for Table 7.”
“Okay. We know Mr. Nyland made a reservation for dinner in the fine dining room here at the hotel for 7:00 p.m. We know your concierge bumped him up to Table 7 in the hopes he’d make a better tip that night and he wrote that in the reservation. You saw the reservation and blocked Table 18 off but didn’t change the reservation chart until Mr. Nyland and his lady friend showed up to check in for dinner. You moved him to Table 18 yourself. At 7:30 p.m. Table 7 blew up and created a lot of destruction here at the hotel. Is that correct?” Detective Padilla asked, raising his head from his notebook and looking across the table at Mr. Vickers.
“Yes, that’s all correct as I know it,” Mr. Vickers said.
“Has anyone seen Mr. Nyland or his girlfriend since the blast?” Padillo asked him.
“That’s the odd thing. Everyone in the room ran out the double doors into the corridor to the hotel lobby and exited through the front doors to the parking lot. Many guests ran down the stairwells because they were afraid the hotel was on fire and wanted to get out of here quickly. I’ve not spoken to a single person who saw Mr. Nyland or his girlfriend. They were very distinctive. If you saw them, you wouldn’t forget them,” Mr. Vickers answered.
“How was that? Can you give me a description of the couple?” Arias asked.
“Mr. Nyland is about six feet three or four inches tall and weighs approximately one hundred seventy pounds. He is very tall and very thin. He was dressed in plaid Bermuda shorts and wore a loud print, loose Hawaiian shirt over that. He wore plain white socks and sandals. He has red frizzy hair with a large bald spot on the top of his head, a prominent Adam’s apple, and a nose that looks more like a bird’s beak than a nose. It’s pointed and overhangs his lip somewhat. He’s really rather goofy looking. His lady friend, Jessica, on the other hand, is a beautiful woman about five feet five inches tall, maybe one hundred twenty pounds, and in all the right places. She has dark brown hair that was put up for that night. She needs very little makeup to look beautiful. She was wearing a close-fitting short black dress that showed off all of her curves. She had diamond earrings and a small diamond neckless on. The only other jewelry she wore was a very large diamond ring on the ring finger of her left hand. Like I said, if anyone saw those two together they would not forget them.”
“If you were to speculate, where do you think they would go to hide?” Padilla asked.
“If I were them, I’d probably try to charter a boat to get me off this island,” Vickers suggested. “Their room has not been entered since they left to come downstairs for dinner. I checked the electronic lock on their suite door. They couldn’t have taken much with them but what they were wearing and they would stand out like a sore thumb anywhere.”
“That answers another one of my questions, then,” Arias said. “I wondered if they’d been able to get back into their room. Are you sure they didn’t?”
“Absolutely sure,” Vickers said. “Our key system records every entry and exit. They have not returned to their suite since the explosion.”
“Did Mr. Nyland use the lock box in the hotel to store anything that you know of, like maybe part of the cash he brought with him?” Padillo asked.
“Actually, no,” answered Mr. Vickers. “That’s also pretty odd. He always seems to have plenty of money on him because he peeled off American Twenty Dollar bills like crazy around here. One of the maids got an American Hundred Dollar bill as a tip. She had to exchange it here at the hotel. The other odd thing about the man was that he seemed a bit thick around the middle. I wonder if he was wearing a money belt of some kind under that Hawaiian shirt. Now that you mention it, I’m guessing he was,” Mr. Vickers mused. “That would explain his odd shape under his crazy mismatched clothes.”
Padillo looked over his notes then looked at the Chief of Police. “Chief Oxley, what’s your take on this?”
The Police Chief scratched his chin, obviously thinking about the situation. “My guess is this couple have their money with them and they are going to try and get off this island as quickly as they can. I have my people working with the fishing charter people now so they don’t slip off the island by sea. If they have money with them, they’ve probably already changed their clothes so they won’t look like they did at 7 p.m. last night. We are also watching the airports, both public and private ones to make sure they don’t charter a flight anywhere. That should box them in on this island. Mr. Vickers is well connected among the hoteliers here so I’m sure he can get the word out to them that we are looking for this couple. Mr. Nyland must have figured out the same thing we did. Someone is trying to kill him. Maybe that someone is the same person who hired him for the arson job you two are looking for him to solve as well. If someone is trying to kill him to keep him silent, we need to take him into custody as fast as we can. We will put him right in our lock-up, surrounded by guards. You can talk to him while he is under our protection. I understand your Justice Department has already made inquiries about him to our government. We know you want to take him back to the United States so he can stand trial for Arson, Murder, and Destruction of Property. We’ll work with your State Department people as soon as we take him into our custody.”
“Sounds to me like we are all on the same page here,” Detective Padillo said. “What can my partner and I do to help?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Stephanie Underwood was terrified. She accepted a lot of American money from the man on the phone. She answered the phone for her boss, Mr. Vickers. When she told the caller he was not available the man sounded dejected. He told her he was trying to confirm his friend had checked into the hotel because he planned to surprise him. She fell for it. She asked him who his friend was and checked the register. She confirmed David Nyland and a female guest were checked into The Reef Hotel. The caller thanked her profusely. He seemed genuine to Stephanie at the time. He asked her for her address so he could leave her a little something as a thank you for her help. He told her to check her mailbox when she got home. She found a large package in her mailbox. She and her husband opened it together and joyfully tossed American bills around the room while they dreamed how they would spend all that lovely money.
It was enough to put a nice down-payment on a home with a view of the ocean in the nicer part of town. It was enough to buy a new car. It was enough to buy her husband a new boat for his charter business. The only problem was they couldn’t convert it to local currency all at once. It would have to be exchanged over a period of time or she would have to answer some tough questions from the authorities. While her husband was very happy with the prospects of spending the money, she was not so sure. She thought about that and it was beginning to make her nervous.
She got another call from the man the morning before the explosion. He asked her if she found the gift he left for her. She told him she had and had not expected the gift to be so much. He assured her he was very grateful for her help. He told her there was a lot more where that had come from and passed it off as the least he could do for her help. He asked her to find out what David Nyland was up to. She’d checked the reservation sheets and found nothing for him. She suggested the man give her his phone number and she would call him if she found anything later in the day. She checked the reservation sheets after lunch and saw Mr. Nyland had a reservation for that evening at 7:00 p.m. in the fine dining room at The Reef. The reservation noted he was to be seated at Table 7. She called the number the mystery man left her and gave him that information.
She’d gone home last night after work not thinking one thing more about it until the news broadcast on TV said there had been an explosion at her hotel. She made her way back to the hotel immediately to see what she could do to help. The entire hotel was pandemonium. She made her way to her desk in front of Mr. Vickers’ office before she heard the explosion was in the fine dining room and Table 7 had blown up, killing that nice executive and his wife. Suddenly she knew what she had done! She went into shock but she couldn’t tell anyone at all. She had to hold herself together or give herself away. She was responsible for the deaths of several people and injuries to many more. She wasn’t even sure the hotel would survive. There was speculation that portions of the hotel may have to be rebuilt because of structural damage. She was responsible for all of this! What was she to do?
Stephanie sat at her desk and fielded calls for Mr. Vickers. He was called to different parts of the hotel to aid guests or staff during the crisis. She handled the calls she could and forwarded the ones she couldn’t to his portable radio. She knew before anyone else about the American Policemen coming from Denver, Colorado. Stephanie had never been off the island before and struggled to remember high school geography to guess where Denver was in relation to her island.
Then the two gentlemen from the government and the Chief of Police arrived to see Mr. Vickers before the Americans got there. Mr. Vickers stopped at her desk and asked her to get them coffee and something from the pastry chef in the kitchen to eat. Mr. Vickers had not been home all night. He looked weary.
While the Americans were meeting with Mr. Vickers, the Police Chief and the representatives of the Bahamian government, she got another call from the American voice on the phone. She wanted to throw up and hang up the phone and run home but she didn’t. “What do you want this time?” she snapped at him. “Haven’t you done enough damage?”
“I do what I’m paid to do,” said the man on the phone. “You, on the contrary, gave me bad information. I was very specific with you. I asked you where David Nyland would be and you told me. Now I find that your information was not accurate. Have you thought about what you will do without a husband?”
Stephanie was in mortal terror. Was this voice on the phone now threatening her? What was she going to do now? What could she do now? She pulled herself together and asked, “What do you want from me?”
“Do you know if David Nyland has been found? Is he wounded and in the hospital? If so, which one? I need to know now!” the voice on the phone said with emphasis on the word “now”.
Stephanie was shaking so hard she could barely hold the phone. She steeled herself before she answered the man. “Not that I know of. Mr. Vickers told me no one has seen him or his companion since the explosion. They did not come out the front of the hotel with the other guests. We don’t know where he is. There are policemen here from Colorado trying to find him now that they know you are trying to kill him. Yes, they figured that all out already. You might want to lay low yourself. They are looking for you too. Murder is a capital crime here in the Bahamas.”
“Thank you, Stephanie. You’ve been very helpful,” the voice said before hanging up the phone. Stephanie shook and began to cry. She was responsible for this horror. What was she going to do?
The tall man had it all figured out. David Nyland took a job from Henry Babcock. He was supposed to burn down four trees. Instead, he caused the second largest forest fire in the history of Colorado, burning more than 91,000 acres with an untold number of homes included. The damage was severe and not over yet. When the spring thaw began in the mountains and water rushed over hills denuded of foliage, mudslides could take whatever was left standing. He’d been sent to eliminate David Nyland. He knew full well Mr. Babcock would send someone to eliminate him too.
He decided to act like any normal tourist. He brought his scuba gear with him because he wanted to look like a tourist when he arrived. He would charter a boat for scuba diving. He wanted to explore the canyons beyond the reefs circling the island. He actually loved diving so this would be an easy diversion for him.
He hired a boat to take him to the reef off the coast of the island. He was the only passenger on the boat that day. He paid extra for that privilege. It was just him and the captain of the boat. He told the captain he would dive alone and brought several spare oxygen tanks with him when he loaded his gear on the boat the morning after the bombing at The Reef. He was pre-occupied during the cruise to the spot he wanted to dive on. He was trying to figure out his next move. He knew Mr. Babcock most definitely knew he failed in his assignment. That kind of mistake was fatal for the one who made it. He had to stay on the island for a few days and maintain his tourist appearance before he could safely leave. He knew all flights off the Island were being watched. Where did he want to go? Should he try to go back to the States or should he head for Europe? South America? The Orient? Could he lose himself in Australia? He needed to make a plan and make it quickly. He decided a long private dive would help clear his head so he could make that decision and plan for his future.
When the boat engine suddenly shut down, he jerked himself back to his present location and began tugging his dive suit on. He pulled on his breathing gear, put his dive computer on his left wrist and pulled flippers over his dive boots.
“I won’t be too long,” he told the Captain just before he slipped beneath the smooth clear water. He remembered why he loved diving as he began swimming across the top of the coral reef with it’s brightly colored fish and coral animals. He concentrated on the beauty of the underwater world for a while before noticing a canyon beyond the reef. He checked his dive computer and it said he had plenty of time left to give it a view. He surveyed the canyon and noticed a cave down the undersea cliff that wasn’t too far down. He swam down to explore it.
The cave mouth was wide enough for three divers across and
two divers high. It wasn’t too deep but there appeared to be a few aquatic creatures in there he wanted to take a good look at. He didn’t realize he brushed against an outcropping of rock on the way into the cave. It sliced through one of his air hoses like a razor. A trail of bubbles from the rip in the hose followed him inside the cave. He was losing oxygen fast. Without a buddy around to notice it, he failed to discover the error. When he turned around to exit the large chamber, he finally noticed the large bubble formed on the roof of the cave by his escaping oxygen. He blanched at the sight and swam outside the cave quickly.
He knew he had at least one mandatory three minute stop to make on his way to the surface to prevent nitrogen bubbles from forming in his tissues, a condition called “the bends” in dive language. They could kill him. He hoped he had enough oxygen left in his tank and swam to the reef again. He was still too far down to reach the surface when his oxygen ran completely out. He fumbled with his dive weights but could not get them loose enough to drop them as he struggled to stave off unconsciousness. He lost that battle and the weights temporarily held his body on the reef. As he lost his battle with the sea, the last thing that ran through his mind was his original instructor’s voice telling him it was a fool’s errand to dive alone.
He was dead long before his body surfaced and washed up on one of the most beautiful beaches on the island.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The morning came early for families in lodges down the highway from Cold Water Creek Ranch. The first lights went on a 2:30 a.m. The final packing of personal items was completed. Everyone got dressed for the drive. The first vehicles drove through the ranch entrance by 2:45 a.m. Younger children were excited about the drive for the moment.
Desperado Page 12