Mike couldn’t stop himself from asking. “Your English is perfect. May I ask you where you learned the language?”
“My mother sent me to a Connecticut boarding school from the fourth grade. I was lucky.” Kim did her best not to sound snobbish.
“Well, that explains it. And then you came back here for college?”
She surreptitiously took the opportunity to study Mr. Jones. He didn’t look like a spoiled rich kid. That meant he made his own money. Struggled and worked hard.
“I argued with my mother about that. She won, and I went to college also in the states.”
“Is it okay if I ask you where?”
“Cooper Union.”
“In Manhattan? Isn’t that an engineering school?”
“Yes. But also architecture and humanities.”
“Not banking?”
She smiled at that. “Electrical engineering. You’re probably wondering how an engineer ended up in a bank.”
“Yes,” he replied quizzically.
Just then, he heard a tapping on the counter followed by a sharp ding sound. Kim pointed towards the girl waiting behind the register. “Looks like you’ve been saved by the bell, Mr. Jones.”
He ordered the mint and could perceive that the bank clerk was mentally broadcasting her approval.
Mike watched Ms. Manshu collect her own cup and head out the door with a brief wave of her hand. She turned to smile through the glass window and give him a thumbs up while pointing at his choice. Then she was gone.
“Alright, you green sad excuse for a snack. You get one chance to win me over.”
The girl with the scoop in her hand laughed. “Don’t talk to it; eat it.!”
He tentatively stuck a spoonful in his mouth—for the first time in his life. It was pretty good. Mike entertained the thought of eating it on a regular basis. If only life could be that simple.
His thoughts shifted to what lay ahead of him. San Pedro had been successful, but now it was time to head into the storm. It was time to book a ticket for New York and pursue his own personal vendetta.
*
At 11:42, Kim entered the bank after fist-bumping the guard and scraping the last bit of ice cream from the paper cup. She dropped it into the can inside the entrance and headed for her desk. Off to her left, the bank vice-president, in a dark and expensive suit, was waving to her. She went straight to him.
“Come in, Kimmy,” said her uncle. “Sit.”
She looked over at the other chair that was in front of his desk. The police chief of San Pedro, a dull, dogmatic, and balding man, sat looking profoundly unhappy. Kim desperately hoped this wasn’t about the little bits of information she’d shuttled to Kenny.
Her uncle closed the door and went behind his broad, maple desk. Two men she would prefer to avoid were staring at each other.
“Ms. Manshu,” began the chief. “I’m so sorry to have to tell you that your brother has been killed in New York.”
Kimberly’s world fell away beneath her, and she nearly fainted in her chair. Tears flowed involuntarily, leaving rivulets gliding down her cheeks to her collar. “What happened?” she barely verbalized between hysterical sobbing and panic.
The chief spoke. His voice was calm and soothing; he’d dropped a bomb on Kim but now rose to the bitter occasion.
“Detective Manshu was mugged in the city. The N.Y.P.D. doesn’t have the report back from the M.E., but he was stabbed near a construction site.
“Why did you send him there? Why?” She grabbed a tissue from the desk. “I told Kenny not to go there! Why didn’t you tell him to do a video meeting?”
Her pain was starting to penetrate his thick exterior. The biggest problems in San Pedro were drugs and theft. Now he had such a good, young detective gone. “Ms. Manshu. It was his case. He wanted to go and urge them to follow up. Your brother was very dedicated; Ken pushed when other cops would rather go home and watch the internet. I’m so sorry.”
“Uncle! I can’t stop shaking! Help me!”
“Chief,” said her uncle, “go ahead back to the station. I’ll sit with Kimmy.”
“Wait!.” She looked at the top cop. “How will I get him back here?”
“Someone has to go up to New York.”
She practically screamed. “I’m going. Don’t you even think about sending someone else.”
Her uncle rounded the desk and put his hands on her quivering shoulders. “Are you sure? Sweetie, you can stay here.”
“No. I’m going.” She turned to the cop. “When do I have to be there?”
“In two days, the flight from Belize City,” he confirmed.
She squeezed her uncle’s hand as it rested on her shoulder. “Please, put me on that flight.”
The chief nodded to her as he opened the door to leave. “Kim, the New York Police are the best. They will find the person who did this. I promise.”
She was too wrapped up in her own thoughts to concentrate on his assurances and just nodded mindlessly.
“What about your mother?”
“Please, uncle. Have you visited her lately? The Alzheimers is too much now. It won’t help to tell her.”
“Okay. I’ll take care of everything for your trip. Do you want me to send Manuela with you?”
“No. You need her here. Do you mind if I go home early?”
His eyes widened. Kim was so confused that she didn’t even know what she was saying. “Of course, you’re going home now. Do you have a friend who can stay with you?”
She stood up and dried her cheeks. Kenny would have wanted her to be strong even though she was shattered like glass. “I will have someone come over.”
“Listen. I’ve got a car outside for you, and I will come over in a few hours. He reached into his pocket, withdrew a small stainless steel cylinder, and twisted off the top. “Here. Her uncle handed her a couple of white, oval pills. Take one of these when you get home. It’s Xanax. You won’t get addicted, but it will help you get through the night. I know you hate pills, but sweetheart, just this once you can take it. Please?”
Kim nodded and managed to leave the office, hobbling to her desk. She’d gone from ice cream to hell in an instant.
The second Xanax was the only thing that relaxed her enough to sleep. Her friend from the bank stayed the whole night. By morning the drug had worn off, but surprisingly, Kimberly was no longer in a boiling, reeling nightmare. Instead, her suffering had eased to surreal misery. Jessa, her friend, held her but then zipped out the door to get to the bank. Kim got up and swapped out her sleepwear for a simple pair of jeans and a t-shirt.
She felt an urgency for food. The organized fridge was stocked well enough, so Kim grabbed a yogurt and dumped cereal in it. Her apartment was modest but decorated nicely. There was an office desk in the living room, along with a sofa, some wooden chairs, some other miscellaneous junk, and a fax machine with a paper jutting out.
“Now, what is this?” she mumbled while snatching the fax. Kimberly flipped it up. It was her itinerary from the bank. Everything was set up and ready. She was to take the 1 p.m. local to Belize City. The flight to New York was scheduled in the late afternoon with a stopover in Atlanta. Jefferson Town Bank was paying for the trip; that removed a fraction of her anxiety.
Kim switched on the local news to find them talking non-stop about Detective Manshu. The few seconds she could bear were a combination of praise and re-hashing the limited details about her brother’s murder. She sat on the couch with her hair a tangled mess and with a deep, dark well of emptiness inside.
At 12:00, she walked over to the airport dragging a large red carry-on. On TV, she’d seen programs where the relatives had to identify the body. The thought of seeing Kenny in a morgue was agonizing. Little flashes of their childhood invaded her mind. He was two years younger and all boy. She’d lied for him a dozen times to get him out of trouble. In those days, her father used to show up every couple of weeks. The excitement was short-lived because the man would end up playin
g with them for an hour and then head out to get drunk with his high-flying business partners.
Kim’s grandfather, with all his wealth, made sure that they were provided for. The man insisted that both grandchildren go to school in America, and her mother didn’t put up a fight because she knew the value of what grandpa was offering.
She approached the counter with her printout. The cashier looked up. “Ms. Manshu. I’m so sorry about your brother.” San Pedro was a small town—everyone knew the whole story by now.
“Thank you.” She looked at the name tag neatly pinned to Juanita’s blue uniform while she passed a barcode and printed a ticket for the commuter trip to Belize City. Then the girl looked up from her screen.
“I want you to know that your brother was at our house a lot. He was in the same class as my brother Jose. I asked Ken what he wanted to be when he grew up, and he said ‘a cop’ every time I bugged him about it. But there’s something else. The other kids were always beating up on Jose every day. Kenny defended him.”
“Thank you for sharing that with me,” said Kim suppressing her tears.
The short flight to Goldson Airport was a blur. A few tourists crammed into the small prop plane, having no clue who she was. They bantered back and forth, obsessed with the gifts and knick-knacks purchased for their relatives in America. Fortunately, the flight was short and on time.
Mike’s two days in Belize City were meaningless. He was alone, and going back to New York wouldn’t be about sharing stories of a vacation with friends. During the last couple of days, he’d promised himself to avoid all newspapers, newscasts, and radio, which didn’t mean much because outside of the airport and some tourist traps, everything was in Spanish. Instead, food was his entertainment—Belize city had it all.
After half a day watching cruise ships and tour boats, it was obvious that until he settled things with Claire Clemp, pleasure in the simple things were likely unachievable.
“Can you take me to Goldson Airport?”
The old Toyota taxi looked in bad shape but sounded functional. A local driver with a chipped front tooth smiled and repeated “Airport,” followed up with “Si, Senor.”
It didn’t matter to Mike how much it was going to cost. He was happy that the guy didn’t talk. The last cabbie tortured him with a nightmarish twenty minutes of non-stop machine gun Spanish and bouts of awful English. Casper thought about offering the guy an extra twenty Belize dollars to shut up.
After a short trip, he could see the airport up ahead. He once again saw the “Welcome to Belize Sign.” Every letter was a different color—the whole city was like that. If there was a Belize sign at the waterfront, it was six different colors. “Must be a cultural thing,” he mused without caring if the driver heard him.
The entry hall was semi-crowded. Security was tight, but the passport got him in without trouble. Once again, his threat alert brain was active as he glanced in different directions. The place seemed to be 90% Americans and a handful of Europeans. Casper’s flight wasn’t leaving for two hours. Rows of wooden slat benches lined the back wall. Shops were bustling in last-minute attempts to lure visitors. He mentally logged the row of pillars, all different colors, just like the signs all over the country.
The desire to buy a newspaper was strong—he resisted it. But then finally gave in and purchased a copy of Amandala, the newspaper of record. Mike folded it under his arm and headed to a nearby seat. The slats were hard on his butt. That was the first thing he noticed.
He slid his carry-on under the bench and flipped open the paper. On the front page was a photograph dead-center of a medium-complexion black man in a suit. The guy had a nice smile and looked like an up-and-coming politician.
Investigation continuing into the murder of Belize Detective Kenneth Manshu.
Casper tried to comprehend what he was reading. The name Manshu was the same as the pretty woman at the bank—the mint ice cream pusher. He read on.
New York police continue their search for clues in the knifing of the detective who was following up on two murders in San Pedro.
He kept reading. The key points were the relatives of the detective, most notably Kimberly Manshu, sister and employee of Jefferson Town Bank in San Pedro.
“Holy shit,” Mike said that a bit too loud and got a scowl from an elderly couple nearby.
There were other details. The detective was on special assignment to work with the N.Y.P.D. to track down a murder suspect. It was unconfirmed that the potential perpetrator might be an American woman who traveled to San Pedro and stabbed two victims in separate incidents.
He read through the piece again. There were a bunch of “No comments” from the chief of police, and the response from Manhattan was, “We have an ongoing investigation.”
After reading the story for the third time, Casper thought about Kimberly Manshu. She must be in a world of hurt. Cassie was different, but evaluating the pain of a tragic loss? It was stupid to quantify how torn apart losing someone to murder must be—it was close to the top on the scale of suffering.
Casper didn’t have the strength to read the rest of the paper. He shoved it into his bag and saved it for the flight. Instead, Mike nodded to the couple who were still scowling at him periodically and began walking through the terminal. It made sense to confirm his seat and get a boarding pass.
The American Airtransit counter was just ahead. He noticed a guy with a large camera taking photos of a woman standing in line. A few steps closer, and it was clear from his vantage point that she was waving at him to stop. Mike was close now. The tile floor rumbled under his feet as a large aircraft began its take-off run. The woman raised her voice a bit and said a sharp word in Spanish. In doing so, she turned enough for him to see that it was Kimberly Manshu.
Something clicked in Casper’s head. Not thinking, he stepped forward and put himself in between the photographer and Kim. The journalist tried to side-step, but Mike moved with him, blocking his view.
“Look, man,” said the twenty-something with the big camera in broken English. “I’m working here.” He tried to push Mike to the left so he could get a close-up. That was a bad idea.
Casper had a sizeable portion of suppressed rage to unleash. He leaned forward and said quietly, “Fuck off. Do you understand that English?”
The guy ignored the warning and went sideways to get even closer to Kimberly. Bad idea. An overloaded carry-on bag with wheels slammed into the photographer’s legs. He went down hard. To Casper, it was exhilarating, but a security guard was already racing over to deal with the confrontation.
The jerk got up off the floor, considering his options. He took a good look at the bottled-up fury in the American’s eyes and chose to back off. The guard moved in and gripped Mike’s arm, intent on holding the tourist for the Belize police.
Kimberly raised her voice and shouted out a series of phrases in Spanish. The security guard let go of Casper’s arm while Ms. Manshu shouted out a blistering series of what sounded like deliberately harsh language.
The rent-a-cop stepped back. He knew who she was; he’d also seen the newspapers. The photographer didn’t take it so well since the expensive lens on his camera had taken a good whack.
Mike was an observer now. The threat level had dropped. Another sharp comment from Kim finished it, as both the guard and the miserable photojournalist walked away looking like their teacher just suspended them.
“Thank you,” she said. “Do you know how close you just got to thirty days in a Belizian jail?”
He straightened out his bag. “That bad?”
“Yes, Mr. Jones. The police really, really don’t like tourists making trouble in Goldson Airport.”
“Thanks. Why did he back off? I mean, besides the fact that you sounded like you were going to sprout fangs and eat them.”
“Did that surprise you?”
“Consider how nice you are at the bank? Totally.”
“I told the cop that the reporter hit me with his camera and th
at you came to my defense. Mr. Jones, I just lost my brother—there’s not a lot of mercy in me for someone trying to use my face to sell papers. Do you get that?” Her tone was pointed.
“Ms. Manshu—”
“Call me Kimberly or Kim.”
He sensed her internal raging storm. “Alright, Kim. I do understand. I know that you may not believe it, but I know how you’re feeling.”
Her expression was utter scoffing. “Do you?” She controlled herself, lowered her voice, and simultaneously inched forward as the line moved very slightly. “Did you lose someone you love to a murderer?” Kim’s voice was barely a whisper.
She squared up on him and waited for his no doubt wimpy response. Instead, Mike stood his ground, recognizing that behind her soft eyes was an inferno—telling the truth could backfire on him.
“Yes, Kim. I did. And it’s torture.”
Kimberly glared at him. How could this stranger understand what she felt? Still, her contempt melted away after a fleeting moment. She pondered his claim. One of the most important things she’d learned in that stuffy boarding school was to give others the benefit of the doubt. Maybe rich Mr. Jones had suffered a loss, perhaps even a brutal one.
“I’m sorry if it looked like I was minimizing what you’ve been through by the way I reacted.”
He was dumbstruck. For the first time since Cassie was taken from him, Mike was face to face with someone who could identify with the desolation that coursed through his veins. Not thinking long-term, he blurted out, “Would you mind sitting next to me on the flight?”
Strangely enough, Kim wasn’t taken aback by his request. Maybe she could learn about how to carry on—the intensity of Jones’ declaration that he knew very well about her loss rang true.
Kim involuntarily shrugged her shoulders like a kid. “Alright.”
When they approached the counter, Mike asked if the two of them could get adjacent seats.
The ticket agent had her rules. “Sorry, I can’t move you from your assigned seats.”
“What about an upgrade? Is there room in first class?”
Cold Dead Hands (A Mike Casper Thriller Book 1) Page 18