by Blake Banner
He sighed. “You know I can’t…”
“We’re not going before the grand jury, Frank! I’m not going to hold you to it, but what I do next depends on your educated guess. Just call me or Dehan when you have an opinion, OK?”
He hesitated.
I said, “Goddammit, Frank! Might it have been a samurai sword or similar? Just call me and say, ‘It might,’ or ‘No way!’ Can you manage that?”
He scowled at me. “I can manage that. Where are you going?”
“I’ll tell you when you call me. Where the hell is Dehan?”
I looked around. She waved to me from my car. We climbed in the Jag. I reversed out, almost taking a patrol car with me, and accelerated up Castle Hill.
SIXTEEN
It took me all of twenty seconds to reach Lacombe Avenue. As we hit the intersection, Dehan said, “Are you going to tell me…?”
I raised a hand. “Don’t talk till we get there.”
She closed her mouth. I turned left onto Lacombe, drove six hundred yards, and turned left again onto White Plains Road. Another seven hundred yards, then left onto Gildersleeve and left again after just three hundred yards into Pugsley Avenue. I pulled up behind a green Chevy Spark outside Kirkpatrick’s house, checked my watch, and looked at Dehan. “That was two and a half minutes. Was that the longest drive of your life?”
“No, Stone, but tonight is going to be the longest night of your life if you don’t tell me what the hell is going on and what you are thinking.”
I nodded. “I know. I know. I am going to tell you. Just bear with me a moment longer. We have to act fast.”
I climbed out of the car and Dehan’s phone rang. She got out the other side. “Yeah, Dehan… Hi, Frank…. That’s what you want me to tell him? It might well be. That’s it? OK. Thanks.” She hung up and squinted at me in the afternoon sun. “Frank. He says to tell you it might well be.”
I sighed. “The weapon that killed and decapitated Jane.”
“A samurai sword.”
“Yeah.”
She shrugged, shook her head, and narrowed her eyes. “So what are we doing here? Why aren’t we going after Paul?”
“The reunion.” Her frown deepened. I pointed at the house. “I want to confirm nobody is here.”
She turned and stared at the house, then at me as I pushed through the gate. She looked like she wanted to slap me. I ignored her and said, “Get the back, would you?”
She disappeared around the side of the house. I rang the bell, tried the door, looked through the window, and called his cell phone, all with negative results. His car was gone. Dehan came back around the other side of the house.
“So you proved there is nobody at home. Shall we go get Paul now?”
I nodded. “Yeah. But he won’t be there.”
She climbed in the car and I got in behind the wheel. She sighed noisily as I closed the door. “He won’t be there.” She said it in a flat echo of the way I had said it. “Fine. Where will he be, at the reunion?”
“Makes sense to me.”
My cell rang. When I answered it, it was the sergeant.
“Detective, we’ve only canvassed a couple of neighbors so far, but I thought you’d want to know, somebody from the YMCA across the road says he saw a small green hatchback in her drive six AM this morning.”
I nodded. “Thanks, Sergeant. That’s helpful.”
I swung the car around and headed at speed up toward Randall Avenue and Paul’s gym. It was a short drive and we made it in just over a minute. I screeched to a halt outside the shopping mall, climbed out, and ran. Dehan was close behind me. The dojo was open and the first students of the afternoon were just beginning to trickle in, in twos and threes. Dehan smirked and said, “Looks like you were wrong, wiseass.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m not.”
We entered the school just as a big guy with Marine Corps written all over him stepped out of the office. He had a black belt and bare feet that looked like they could break bricks. He half smiled at us. “Can I help you?”
We showed him our badges. I asked, “Is Paul here?”
He shook his head. “He is away until early next week. I am standing in for him.”
Dehan was staring at me. In fact she was scowling at me. I asked him, “Did he say where he was going?”
“No, sir. He just told me it was a last-minute thing and he would be back Monday or Tuesday.”
We thanked him and walked back out into the sunshine.
“Tell me, Stone.”
“In a minute. Try his cell. It will tell you it’s either switched off or is out of range or something. Try Don and Jasmine. You’ll get the same thing. I’m going to call Stuart and May. I’ll get the same result too.”
“If you know that, why are we doing it…?”
“To prove it, Dehan. To prove it!”
Her cheeks flushed and her eyes went bright. I raised an eyebrow and smiled. She dialed. A voice on my phone told me the number was not available. I opened the car. She was dialing again. I climbed in and she climbed in the other side. We took off up Rosedale Avenue, back toward the precinct.
Dehan hung up and stuffed her phone in her jacket. “OK, you were right. Now, are you going to tell me what the hell is going on or do I just run along at your heel with my tongue hanging out, feeling grateful for whatever crumbs of wisdom you feel like tossing my way?”
“Forgive me.”
She looked startled.
I smiled. “I just haven’t had a chance to explain, and it will take some explaining. I had to check on Don and Paul, and the others, before I could be sure. Now we are going to see the inspector, and then we have a four or five hour drive ahead of us. I promise I will explain everything to you as we go.” I shrugged. “I meant no disrespect, Carmen, but if you feel like running at my heel and drooling, you know, that could be fun.”
“Asshole.”
“Funny, that was my mother’s pet name for me.”
I pulled up outside the station in the shade of a London plane tree, loped across the street and ran up the stairs to the inspector’s office. Dehan was right behind me. I knocked and he opened the door.
“John, Carmen, come in. What’s this about? Sit down.”
I shook my head. “There is no time, sir. We need to go to Macomb Mountain and we need to go immediately. We haven’t time for the proper formalities, sir, or to clear it with the local sheriff. I’m not even sure what county it is. It might be Essex. Either way, it’s a vast area and it’s mainly forest, six million acres of the stuff, sir.” I shook my head again. “Putting it into the hands of the local sheriff’s department will take time, and frankly, the evidence I have is going to sound slim, at best.”
He and Dehan were both staring at me like they were worried I had taken leave of my senses. The inspector frowned and said, “If your evidence is slim, why would I be any easier to convince than the sheriff of Essex County, John?”
I looked him straight in the eye. “People are going to die, sir. Possibly tonight. The old UFO group are having a reunion. Jane didn’t want to go, she had evidence that might have convicted Danny’s killer. She was killed this morning, I suspect to silence her. All the other members of the group are out of town and we can’t connect with their cell phones. I have reason to believe they have returned to Macomb Mountain for a reunion. I am pretty sure Don has a cabin up there. You are familiar with the case and you know I don’t go off half-cocked for no reason. I need you to trust me, sir, because if we don’t get there in time, those people could die tonight.”
He was shaking his head. “Mount Macomb is not within the GOAE of the 43rd…”
Dehan cut in and interrupted him with a blatant lie. “Sir, we have worked the last seven days without a break. With your permission, we are taking a couple of days off. This case has got me fascinated by the whole UFO thing, and I need Stone to take me up to Macomb Mountain so I can see where the Danny Brown case started. I hope it will be a quiet couple of days
. However, under CPL section 140, we are authorized to act anywhere in the state of New York to prevent a felony, should we be unlucky enough to stumble across one during our time off.”
A flash of irritation contracted his face. “Detective Dehan, this is not a game! I cannot authorize…”
“Sir, people are going to die if we don’t act…”
He sighed and after a moment nodded. “All right. Take a couple of days off. And for God’s sake, if anything happens, call the local sheriff’s department! Keep me posted.”
“Yes sir, thank you.”
I glanced at my watch as we ran down the stairs. It was half past one. We’d get there around five or six. It would still be light.
Dehan was beside me saying, “What’s your plan? Where are we going? We can’t just drive up to Macomb Mountain and hope we find them. It’s a huge area.”
We stepped back into the sunshine and started across the blacktop toward the car. “I know, but we are pretty short of options, as everybody who might know where the cabin is is either dead or there right now; and by the looks of it, they either have their cells switched off or, more likely, there’s no signal up there.” I opened the door and we climbed in. “The way I see it, we have two options.” I fired up the engine as she slammed the door, and took off toward the expressway. “Go on Google Earth, find Macomb Mountain, draw a circle around it with an eight-mile circumference and see what buildings, cabins, holiday resorts—whatever—falls within that area…” I glanced at her. “It won’t be much, it is a very remote area. Or…” I pointed at the glove compartment in front of her. “Get my copy of Heaven’s Fire and check the foreword. I am pretty sure at the end it has the date and place where he wrote it. I am not one hundred percent sure, but I have a feeling I saw something…”
She had the book and was leafing through the first few pages. She stopped, “Foreword, yadda yadda…” She turned the page. “Yadda yadda… Here, Elk Lake, 2001. You’re a smart man, Stone.”
She pulled out the GPS and punched in the coordinates. She spoke as she did it. “We need to stop on the way for toothpaste and toothbrushes, and for lunch. And while we’re at it, you can explain to me why the hell it is so important that Donald Kirkpatrick has a damn cabin near Macomb Mountain.”
I turned off Storey Avenue onto the Bronx River Parkway and started accelerating north. I thought about it for a few minutes, then said, “I’m pretty sure it tells us how Danny was killed.”
She took her shades off so she could stare at me better. “I really don’t see how, Stone.”
“It doesn’t tell us who, but it does tell us how. And, here’s the thing, Dehan, whoever killed him has started to panic. They were scared that Jane would give us information that would lead us to them. So, we need to be asking ourselves, what did Jane know? What could Jane have told us? What did Jane see, hear or witness…?”
“Hold on, hold on, hold on… Stone, what are you talking about? Jane was killed with a samurai sword.”
I glanced at her. The sun made a luminous halo of her hair as the wind whipped it about her head. I said, “So you conclude from this that it must be Paul?”
She made an ‘isn’t that obvious’ face and spread her hands. “Who else?”
“Do you know for a fact that Stuart is not an expert in kendo? Or his formidable wife? Do we know for a fact that the person who has summoned them for this reunion in the mountains is someone known to us? How many of the UFO research group became Paul’s pupils? Do we have any of this information?”
She sighed. “No.”
“Then we must not jump to conclusions, Ritoo Glasshopper. Also, a samurai sword or a similar blade.”
“No, Sensei. Yes, Sensei. So you believe that this as yet unidentified killer has gathered the group so that he can eliminate everyone who has incriminating evidence. Jane refused to go, so he killed her, and now he is going to kill the rest of them all in one long weekend.”
“That seems to me to be the logical conclusion.”
“So it has to be somebody who knows that we were skeptical of the UFO explanation and were interested in Paul and Jane’s relationship.”
“Yes.”
She half-shouted in exasperation. “That’s Paul, Stone!”
I smiled at her and nodded. “You may well be right, Dehan. Either way, I think we are about to find out. Do you think if we just knock on the door they’ll put us up?”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah, why not?”
“How will you explain that you knew they were having the reunion?”
I beamed at her. “Simple. We tell them Jane told us, and see whose eyes pop out of their sockets.”
She smiled and looked out the window. Then she laughed. “You’re a slippery son of a bitch, Stone. I’d hate to have you as an enemy.”
“Funny, that’s another thing my mother always used to say to me.”
“That she’d hate to have you as an enemy?”
“No, that I was a slippery son of a bitch.”
We sped on, ever north, with the big Jaguar engine growling, and the great golden orb of the sun slipping from the mid-heaven toward afternoon.
SEVENTEEN
We passed Albany and Saratoga Springs, following the I-87. At Glen Falls, we crossed the Hudson for the second time, and at just past Queensbury began steadily to climb. At Lake George, we veered slightly west of north, toward Warrensburg, and suddenly we were ascending into the mountains and into deep forest. On the GPS, it looked like we were close, but the miles kept rolling by and we kept plunging deeper into forest that sprawled, impenetrable, over mountains in every direction.
We passed Schroon Lake and eventually, shortly after four o’clock, we passed a sign for Paradox Lake, which for some reason, at that time, did not seem to bode well. Six miles later we came to an intersection. The I-87 continued north toward Plattsburgh, North Hudson was on the right, and Blue Ridge was on the left. I turned toward Blue Ridge and passed under the freeway. It was like going through some kind of portal into a different world. We were on County Route 84, the forest seemed even denser and closer, the road narrower with more bends, and the only sign of life was the occasional cabin glimpsed through the trees.
The sun was slipping, and though back in the Bronx there would still be several hours of sunlight left, here, among the high peaks and the trees, you had the feeling evening was closing in. We climbed steadily, past Palmer Pond, a large body of black water on our left, and eventually drove through Blue Ridge. Blue Ridge was a town that seemed to consist of two houses, one white and one dark wood, facing each other across a road, surrounded by silent, windowless white barns. We saw no people.
After another two miles or so, we came to a junction. There were no road signs, only a turning to the right. The sun was a couple of inches above the horizon. Everything was motionless and silent. The GPS said it was right, so I turned right and we began to climb again.
Now I realized that what we had seen until now was not dense forest. This was dense forest. The road was blacktop – more or less – but it was cracked, pitted and crumbling at the edges, where roots and undergrowth encroached on the path. This was Man losing the battle against Nature, and, as I drove, I smiled. I looked at Dehan and saw she was smiling, too. We were both rooting for nature.
The road wound and twisted, yielding at every turn to the imperative of the trees, and climbing constantly. Finally, after almost ten miles of steady climb, we broke suddenly out of the trees into an esplanade on the edge of a large lake. I pulled up and climbed out. Over on my left, the sun had touched the tops of the trees. Ahead of me, the dark water stretched out for at least a mile, and on my right, half concealed among tall pines, was a large lodge with a raised veranda. I checked my watch. It was half past five. There was chill air coming off the lake.
Dehan got out of the car. We crossed the esplanade and climbed the steps to push through a door into the reception. The floors, the walls, and the ceiling were all made of wood. The fur
niture was heavy and solid, and also made of wood, and leather. A fire was burning in a rugged stone hearth. There was a pretty girl behind the reception desk who was smiling at us expectantly.
“Good evening, have you a reservation?”
She said it like she knew we hadn’t, because they were all booked up.
“Actually,” I said, “We’re looking for a friend. He’s a writer and he has a cabin up here. He’s having a house party with a few guests for a long weekend.”
She was very polite. She waited for me to finish and smiled throughout. “Well,” she said when I was done, and remembered to smile at Dehan, too. “There are not many people around here, even in the summer, so, unless they are new to the area, I am pretty sure I’ll know them. What’s the name?”
“Kirkpatrick…”
Her face lit up. “Oh, you mean the flying saucer guy! Donald and Jasmine! Sure, we know them. They’ve been here for years. They don’t get out as often these days, but they used to go rambling all over the place, right up to Macomb Mountain, even went as far as Blake Peak one time. Known them since I was a kid.”
We all stood smiling at each other. Finally, I said, “So you can tell us where to find them?”
“Well, sure! You’re practically there! In fact…” And here she turned to Dehan with a smile that was almost conspiratorial. “You passed it! Ain’t it the way? They think they have a great sense of direction, but they ain’t!”
Dehan actually gurgled.
The girl said, “You want to go back down the track for like half a mile, and you’re going to see a track on your left. Actually, you won’t see it. You’re probably going to miss it, because it is like just a gap in the trees. You don’t want to be looking for it in the dark, I can tell you that! Half a mile, and it’s there, where the road bends a bit to your right. It’s a dirt track, and you follow that through the woods for two hundred yards, maybe a little more, and you come out to a clearing. And there it is, big old cabin on two floors. You tell them hi from Debbie for me!”
“We’ll be sure to do that.”