Three Degrees of Death

by Allen Kent

  “With pleasure,” she said and led me back to a display of tartan plaids.

  “Do you have Scottish ancestry, by chance? From a clan that might have a tartan?”

  “Tate,” I told her. “I think there are some Anglo-Scottish ties, but it’s originally Norse. I doubt there’s a Tate plaid.”

  “Not that I know of,” she agreed and walked me down the display, naming each as she passed it. I stopped her at a broad blue and green check she called a Barclay.

  “How about this one? Do you have some ready-made Barclays?”

  She steered me around the rack of samples to shelves that held kilts in every plaid, measured me with a critical eye, and quickly sorted through the stack of Barclay kilts.

  “Here. I believe this should be about right.” She held the length of wool cloth against my waist and leaned to check length. “We want this to be just above or below the knee. The trend now favors slightly below the knee. Yes. This is just right for you.”

  “So—how do I put it on?”

  “Step over here to the mirror—now, place the pleats at the back and wrap the front so it buckles just so . . .” She pulled the halves around me and lapped them in front, showing me how to get a tight waist without adding creases.

  “Perfect,” she said, stepping back to admire her work. “Will you be wanting a sporran?”

  “I have no idea. Will I?”

  “I would think so. That’s the pouch that hangs in the front. The kilts have no pockets—at least, not the true ones. And most gents want a place to keep their phones and keys.”

  “Then I definitely do,” I agreed. “But again, I’ll need your advice.”

  “Well, there is one for every occasion from plain to fancy. Is this affair you’re attending a formal thing?”

  “No. More of a country party.”

  “Then I would recommend a day sporran and kilt socks of matching plaid.”

  I was beginning to get the feeling that I was being up-sold, but didn’t want to arrive at whatever Claire and Jamie had planned inappropriately attired—and wasn’t ready to step back out onto the street.

  “Sounds good to me,” I said, and turned myself over to her experienced care. A hundred British pounds later, she led me to the door with my packages. When I paused and glanced across at the restaurant before leaving, she asked, “Is this a surprise of some kind? Can I look to see if someone is waiting before you step out?”

  The window at Bella Italia displayed two new faces. “It’s definitely going to be a surprise,” I assured her. “But I think the person I’m surprising is gone. I’ll just get a cab outside and should be safe enough now.”

  “I think she will be very pleased,” she said.

  Back in the relative safety of the hotel’s sunroom restaurant, I took a chance on a fish soup the menu called kullen skink and spent an hour fretting about the possibility that I was losing Grace. Three old couples, the men in plaid knickers and the women in long tartan skirts, played a raucous game of croquet on the carpet of lush grass beyond the front drive, shouting insults as they hit an opponent’s ball, then slapped it off into no man’s land. But it wasn’t enough to jar the image of Grace and her detective inspector from a mind I would once have labeled possessive, but now recognized as jealous.

  My first thought hadn’t been, “Don’t you dare try to lure her away from my team,” but “Don’t you dare try to pull her away from me.” At least on my part, absence had indeed made the heart grow fonder. It ate at me to be this close, but as far as she was concerned, still a thousand miles away. My mind should be on tonight’s highland fling and finding our missing teens. At a time like this, I shouldn’t be letting Detective Inspector Conall MacKay get under my skin. But he did.

  My kullen skink arrived with a half-loaf of crusty brown bread and I let my stomach divert my attention. I can’t say that I’m much of a connoisseur of fine foods. Certainly not a gourmet by any stretch of the word. In fact, one of my interpreting buddies with Language Service, amused by my willingness to try virtually any new food when we worked together in the Middle East, told me I had the palette of a Neanderthal. But I have to say that I liked kullen skink.

  The soup is chunks of smoked haddock simmered in a white sauce with onions and potatoes. It was clear from the first bite that it had to be served with the crisp brown bread. The perfect meal for watching over a croquet war while fighting the urge to call a woman you know you’re just going to have to lie to.

  Grace saved me the trouble and called while I was still at the table, figuring she would catch me before I hit the river for some dawn fishing.

  “I haven’t been able to reach you,” she complained. “Marti said you were taking a few days off to let your leg recover. You don’t take days off, Tate. Is it worse than you told me?”

  “No. It’s not the burn,” I said, sticking with the truth as closely as I could. “I needed some time to think. I’ve missed you, Grace.”

  She was silent for longer than was comfortable, then said, “I know what you mean. We really need to talk.”

  My heart nearly collapsed in on itself. “Well, we can talk now,” I suggested, not at all sure I wanted to hear what she had to say, but knowing it would eat at me if I let it pass.

  It was all I could do to keep from saying, “Tell me where you are. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” But I had no idea who was going to show up at this Outlander ceremony or who might be watching me at this moment. I had too much invested to have someone see me with a person I obviously knew—and worse yet, someone connected with the police. And truth be told, I dreaded what I was going to hear from Grace.

  “No. It needs to be in person, Tate,” she said, too seriously to be reassuring. “There are some things going on here I really need to talk to you about. Face-to-face.”

  “I want us to,” I assured her. “Soon.” On the lawn beyond the drive, one of the old warriors drove his ball through a wicket where it ricocheted off another with a green stripe. “Ah! Take that, you old sod!” he shouted loud enough to turn every head in the dining area.

  Grace paused, then asked, “What was that?”

  “Ah, some old couples playing a game out on the grass outside the place I’m staying. You’d think it was the Super Bowl.”

  “They sound like the people here,” she muttered.

  “They could be. They do have accents.” I made a quick change of subject. “Are you making any more progress on the kids?”

  “We did find another witness who saw them with the couple at the café and got a better description. Man with dark, wavy hair that was longer than average. Woman—also with long, dark hair. Both in sunglasses. The witness guessed them to be between thirty-five and forty.”

  “They didn’t happen to be dressed in old-time Scottish outfits?”

  “No,” she said hesitantly. “I think I told you before. Shorts and casual clothes.”

  “So the witnesses decided they must be tourists?”

  “Yes. they thought so.” She chuckled. “American tourists. One man said, ‘Americans have a certain way of walking.’ What he called a ‘confident strut.’ He was pretty sure these two were Americans.”

  I think he’s right,” I thought and wanted to say, Please give me until tomorrow, Grace. Don’t agree to anything with your detective inspector until I can talk to you. Instead I said, “Thanks for being there for us, Grace. Call me tomorrow—or if you learn anything, call earlier.”

  “I will,” she said, her voice soft enough to give me a glimmer of hope. “Good luck on the river.”

  30

  I didn’t have to wait until the next day to talk to Grace again. I spent the afternoon practicing getting the pleats, buckles, and sporran all in the proper places on my new Barclay tartan and listening on the phone as Marti none-too-subtly counseled that I’d better get my butt in gear or I was going to lose more than two Crayton teenagers. She was still having trouble understanding why I hadn’t yet let Grace know that her boss was almost within s
houting distance.

  “Marti, I think I know where the kids are,” I told her.

  “You do? Then why not get the police to them?”

  “Well, not where they are. But who has them. And tomorrow, I think they will take me there if they don’t suspect I’m anything other than a new recruit to their cult. I can’t risk blowing my cover. And when I do call Grace, she needs to know I’ve been here doing some serious work and not just checking up on her.”

  “I’m just saying, Tate, that I want Grace coming back here after this is all over. And I know that Conall MacKay is working hard on her.”

  “Tomorrow,” I told her, trying to hide the desperation in my voice. “I think this will all come together tomorrow.”

  Just before 10:00 p.m. I ventured into the shadowy backwaters of the web for a final check of the Gleidhidh Doras site before turning in. And there it was on the message board.

  Gather tomorrow night, July 14th, at 10:00 p.m. in the parking area at the Stevenson Road entrance to Inshes Park. Please come by taxi, even if you have your own transportation. Those who have celebrated with us before know how exhilarating and exhausting the evenings can be. You will not want to drive back to your lodgings. We will travel to the ceremonial site in three vans. Women, wear long coats over your dresses so as not to attract unwanted attention. Men, kilts with shirts and jackets until we reach the site. We are expecting perfect weather and you can leave extra clothing in the vans before the procession to the ceremonial ground. The rules are as they have always been. Tell no one about the ceremony. No cell phones. No cameras. No one with you other than those specifically invited. We will record the ceremony and place it on this site for your future enjoyment. Return time will be sometime after 1:00 a.m. We have arranged for taxis to meet us at the park to take you back to your lodgings. This will be the most remarkable and memorable evening of your life! Expect the door to be opened!

  Jamie

  I grabbed the hotel notepad beside the phone, copied the details, and sat back, working through what I needed to tell Grace. Should they try to follow the vans from the park? My guess was that this would be a late-night procession to some remote spot out on the moors. If I were planning it, I would have a trail car to watch for unwanted company. Trying to follow the vans was risky.

  From the time I decided to imbed myself into this group, my thought had been that it would not be smart to wear a wire or tracking device. Once I learned the dress code, I was certain. If Jamie didn’t have someone checking people over as they arrived at the departure location, it looked like we wouldn’t get very far into the evening before anything I had hidden would be uncovered.

  The solution I’d come to was to have the Scottish authorities track my cellphone signal, thinking that even if I couldn’t carry it on me, I could leave it somewhere under a van seat or taped to the underside of a bumper.

  But now, no cellphones. And a pretty good chance our jackets, pockets, and the ceremonial sporrans would be inspected before leaving the parking area. I needed something from Grace and her inspector—something small and magnetic—that I could stick to a van when I arrived. We then needed to count on the vehicles staying close enough to the ceremonial ground that the police could find us.

  The bedside clock read 10:25. I walked down into the dim path lights of the front garden and called Grace. She didn’t answer. I texted a message. “Please answer my call. VERY important.”

  I called again.

  This time she answered immediately with a, “What’s wrong? Has something happened?” In the background, I could hear the low murmur of nearby voices.

  “Are you where you can talk?”

  She hesitated. “It would be better if I could call you back in an hour. Can this wait?”

  “No. This is critically important to what you’re doing there. It sounds like maybe you’re at dinner somewhere.”

  “Yes. I’m with some people from the department.”

  Not what I wanted to hear, but helpful. “Good. They need to hear this too. Can you find a quiet place and put me on speaker with whoever’s important to your case?”

  “Tate, what is this? I thought you were off fishing.”

  “Please, Grace. Just find a quiet place where I can talk to you and whoever needs to be part of this.”

  She muffled the phone for a moment, then said, “We were about to leave anyway. Give us a minute to get to the car. Conall is just taking care of the check. Do you want to stay on the line, or call back?”

  “Call me when you can talk privately,” I said, glancing again at the time and wondering what the hell she was doing at dinner at 10:30.

  “Do you want to talk just to me? Or both of us?”

  “Both of you. I’ll be waiting.”

  She called ten minutes later. “What’s this all about, Tate? Did the kids show up somewhere?” I could hear that she was on speaker.

  “No. I believe they’re still near Inverness.”

  “So, what’s the emergency?”

  “Well—I am in Inverness too.”

  There was an audible gasp.

  “Grace, I need you to just listen to me for a few minutes. Then we can decide what needs to be done.”

  She ignored my request. “You’re in Inverness?”

  “Yes. I’ll explain all that in a minute. But I just need you to listen. Can you do that?”

  There was a long silence, then an extended “O-kaay. Shoot.”

  Beginning with my contact with Special Agent Warren Rosario, I explained how I had learned that the Bureau followed Gleidhidh Doras, how I had created my own access to the dark web, and managed to become a clansman. “They are real,” I assured her and her date for the evening. “They have something big planned for tomorrow night. It may involve the kids.”

  “Why haven’t you contacted us about this earlier?” a deep Scottish voice asked.

  “I knew something was planned, but not when or where. I learned the details just before I called Grace.”

  “You should have tied us in as soon as you knew about the cult,” he said irritably. “We could be tracking the website and looking for them more specifically.”

  I bit my lip, resisting the urge to say, “Listen, Detective Inspector MacKay. I’ve learned more about this in three days than you’ve uncovered in two weeks. Now, shut up and listen!” But for Grace’s sake I said, “They’re a suspicious lot. For one thing, you have to be recommended by a member to join.”

  “Perhaps we could have arranged that,” he argued.

  “Not likely,” I said with my own note of irritation. “And every time someone signs onto their website, they get a notice and can watch your activity. I’m a latecomer to the group and am already under suspicion. If they had even a hint that I was connected to you—or with Grace—they would disappear in a heartbeat.”

  I paused, expecting an objection. He said nothing.

  “Plus,” I added, “I’m here on my own dime and don’t have anything other than a very strong hunch. I’m bringing you in now because, if they do have the kids, I can’t handle this alone from here on out. I need your help.”

  “Tell me what you know,” Detective Inspector Mackay demanded.

  I read him the details of Jamie’s message. “From what I know of the group, they’ll pat everyone down and check for any kind of listening or tracking device,” I told them. “I thought maybe I could pick up a magnetic transmitter from you somewhere tomorrow and stick it to one of the vans when I get to the park. Then, if they frisk me, I’ll be clean, but you’ll have some way to follow us. You’ll have to drop the device where I can get it without them seeing an exchange.”

  “A better idea,” MacKay offered. “We have a drone that is virtually silent. It has night vision capability and can follow you after you leave the vans. We can control it from four or five miles away. They’ll never know they’re being watched.”

  “Much better,” I had to agree. “I assume it can fly without lights.”

  “They’ll
never know they are being followed,” Mackay repeated.

  “Can it record what it’s seeing?”

  “Yes. We’ll have a record of everything. High definition.”

  “If they don’t have the kids, there probably won’t be any criminal offense. Unless it’s public nudity and possible use of some kind of hallucinogens.”

  “If we don’t see any sign of the teens, we will back off and leave you to your party,” MacKay promised with enough of a trace of sarcasm to stir my blood again.

  “If the kids are there, don’t wait too long,” I said testily. “I have no idea what these people are up to, and I wouldn’t put anything past them. This Jamie is a typical cult leader. Big ego. Manipulative. And a little nuts.”

  “Understood,” the Scottish voice said, this time more evenly.

  “Well then—until tomorrow.”

  There was silence for a moment, then Grace said, “Where are you, Tate? Can I come see you? Like I told you earlier, there are some things I need to talk to you about.”

  I swallowed hard and said what my head told me needed to be said.

  “I’d love to, Grace. But this is a suspicious lot. I even left my room to make this call, in case they have somehow learned where I am and have the room bugged.”

  I heard what I thought was a soft sigh.

  “Listen, Grace. If they have Danny and Miriam, I’m sure they know they’re being hunted. And they probably know who here on the force is looking for them. For all I know, they may be watching you and Mackay right now. Until tomorrow, I think the only safe thing is for us to stay away from each other.”

  “I understand,” she said quietly. “Don’t you do anything crazy.”

  If you only knew, I thought.

  31

  A drone. I should have thought of drones. That’s what comes from being part of a small rural sheriff’s department where we couldn’t even come up with the magnetic tracking device, let alone an eye in the sky. Grace had to be impressed with a department that could just think drones and make them happen.