Steel Breeze (16 page)

Chapter 16

Agents Drelick
and Pasco flew into Boston’s Logan Airport on the Monday morning red-eye. The
murder of Phil Parsons had set the stage for the Lamprey case to go national. They
hadn’t yet been granted jurisdiction, but the fact that Parsons had been killed
within an hour of Drelick’s phone call to Desmond Carmichael was enough to
convince the Deputy Director that Drelick’s hunch about the
choji
oil
merited further investigation. They were getting close now; she could feel it. She’d
had a fluttering in her stomach since LAX, and her inability to sleep in flight
didn’t help to settle it. Neither did the miniscule bag of pretzels the flight
attendant had given her.

She
closed the book in her lap (an introduction to samurai culture) and removed her
reading glasses. As she folded and stowed them in the seatback pocket, she was
reminded of the pair they had found sitting on the monument at Manzanar. Those
glasses had been gazing east, the direction she was now flying in. The blood on
the obelisk had been Geoff Lamprey’s.

Shikata
ga nai.
It
must be done.

Pasco,
for his part, wasn’t having any trouble catching some shuteye in the seat
beside hers, but then he didn’t have a phone call to Desmond Carmichael on his
conscience. The very real prospect that her call had spurred Carmichael to take
quick action and kill Parsons before the net closed around him was one big
reason for the butterflies in her stomach. Her concerns wouldn’t have been lost
on Pasco if she broached the subject, but he’d seemed willing enough to leave
the topic alone for now, burying his nose in one of Carmichael's doorstopper
paperbacks until he dozed off.

With
her partner snoring on her shoulder in the darkened cabin, she turned on her
tablet and made a list of questions:

1. Was Carmichael verifiably in
Massachusetts at the time of Lamprey's murder?

2. Does Carmichael have a web search
history that involves swords or Japanese culture preceding his wife's death?

3. Did Carmichael ever order sword oil
from an internet provider?

4. Is there a Japanese American
community in the Greater Boston Area with significant ties to Manzanar?

5.  Did Carmichael suspect his wife of
infidelity?

6.  Any evidence of psychosis in Carmichael's
past?

She
wanted to look the man in the eye and get a sense of him, and it perturbed her
that the cop she had spoken to on the phone, Sanborn, told her that Desmond
Carmichael had used almost the same words to explain why he'd visited Greg
Harwood in prison just an hour before his father-in-law’s murder. That was
another one for the list:

7. Did Harwood say something to
Carmichael that set him over the edge? Did they conspire to murder Carmichael's
wife? Harwood just a patsy?

None
of it made sense without motive.

The
only thing the murder of Phil Parsons had convinced her of was that Harwood was
probably innocent. The locals would not love her for that opinion. She would
need to keep it close to the vest for a while, emphasizing her interest in the possibility
that Carmichael had killed Parsons. If the Port Mavis police were wrong about
the first murder, it would certainly make it easier for them to admit it if
they thought they had the killer in custody now. She looked again at number 4. To
introduce an unknown variable, a serial killer at large, would not win her any
allies at this stage of the game.

She
closed the cover on the tablet and stuffed it back in the bag between her feet.
She reclined the seat and closed her eyes, but sleep continued to evade her
like a crafty killer.

* * *

At
the car rental counter, she handed the keys to Pasco and said, “Do you mind?

“You
know I never mind driving. Noticed you favoring your foot, though. You trying
to avoid putting it on a pedal?”

“Sometimes
you are a real Sherlock Holmes,” she said with a smile that was sixty percent
false mirth and forty percent genuine admiration.

“You
should really see a podiatrist about that, you know.”

“It
was a foot doctor that messed me up in the first place, if you recall my tale
of woe.”

“No,
you digging in your nails like some OCD archaeologist when you were a little
girl what fucked you up.”

She
turned on her heel away from the rental counter, letting her hair swing around and
veil her blushing face.

“You
know I'm right.”

“Can
we have this conversation in the car?“ she said, walking away from him and
trying not to favor the foot, which made her ingrown toenail hurt even more. She
didn't know if she was heading in the right direction to pick up the car, but
rolling her suitcase away from Pasco was all that mattered right now, in any
direction.

He
strode beside her and in a quieter tone said, “I'm not just nagging you for the
fun of it. You think I want you hopping down some dark alley trying to draw
your sidearm if you need to save my ass from a sword-swinging ninja? I don't
want you limping for anything less than being shot in the leg.” He smiled, and
this time she couldn't help reciprocating with a higher content of genuine
humor.

“I'll
have you know I was never a little girl.”

“Never
ever? Hey, the car's this way.”

“Never
ever. Tomboy to the core.”

“Boys
don't care if they get dirt in their toenails. Don't even notice.”

“Well
my mother noticed. I wasn't going to stay out of the dirt, so I began trimming
them too low. That's how it starts.”

“And
this doctor your mom brought you to botched the job, I know. But I bet foot
work has probably improved in the past twenty some odd years. At least get a
consultation.”

“I
will think about it. Now where's our car?”

The
digital thermometer on the dashboard read seventy-seven, but the humidity was
stifling compared to California’s. They rolled up the windows and turned on the
AC just to get the wooly feeling out of their heads. There wasn't much to see
from I-95, but Drelick wanted to drive through the town of Port Mavis just to
get a feel for the area. Within minutes of taking their exit, the cow pastures
had given way to a cosmopolitan seaside tourist town with brick-faced shops
selling a mix of nautical and New Age knick-knacks, skateboard kids idling in
the concrete basin of a defunct fountain, and hip looking thirty-somethings
toting laptops and book bags between the Starbucks, the news stand/cigar shop,
and the library—an eye‐catching, newly renovated building across the street
from a dilapidated Masonic hall. The police station was also downtown, but
Drelick asked Pasco to swing by Carmichael's apartment before they made their
entrance.

“Looks
like the kinda town a writer would live in,” Pasco remarked. “Kinda yuppie,
snobby….”

From
the passenger seat, Drelick’s eyes flicked over the buildings. “There sure are
a lot of churches in New England.”

“Leftovers.”
Pasco said. “It's just because it's the oldest part of the country. Do you know
if Carmichael belonged to a church? A priest or minister might have some
insight into his character.”

“I
don't know. I'll ask the detectives. What do you make of his book so far?”

“Well,
you know I'm not very highbrow, and neither is he, I guess. Lot of weird names
that make it hard to follow, but he’s good at monsters.”

“Sword
and sorcery?”

“Yeah.
I don't think I'll finish it. I like Westerns. Give me guns over swords any
day.”

“Does
he specifically mention Japanese type swords? Or anything about Asian culture,
you know, calling it by imaginary names, but describing samurai type stuff?”

“Hard
to say for sure, but I don't think so. It's more like
The
Lord of the
Rings
.”

“
You
read
The
Lord of the Rings
?”

“Saw
the movies. You make calls to his agent and editor yet?”

“No.
I'm starting with his old boss—the high school principal—after the police.” Drelick
typed a search into her phone. “After we take a look at the apartment, how do
you feel about sushi for lunch?”

“Yuck.”

“You
could probably get fried rice or something. I figure if we have to eat anyway,
we could use the time to start asking sushi chefs about their customers. If
there's a real Japanese serial killer living around here, or even just someone
obsessed with the culture, he's likely to be into the food as well.“

“So
you want to dive right into the racial profiling, huh?” Pasco said with a
smirk.

Heading
out of town now, following the GPS in Drelick’s phone to the Ocean Road
apartment, they passed seedy motels with burnt-out letters in the signs,
swimming pools of cracked pale blue concrete cordoned off by chainlink fences
mere feet from the road, collapsing and boarded up houses deteriorating into weed-choked
lots, and a well-kept trailer park struggling to hold its chin up with small
lawns and PVC picket fences.

She
had the feeling that the beachfront community had at one time been an
attractive location for a bygone middle class but had been reduced to a summer
amusement struggling to draw vacation dollars with tawdry arcades and scrubby
campgrounds. Strip clubs had sprung up amid the five-and-dime souvenir shops
and pizza counters. Signs advertising a summer festival with live music,
fireworks, and sand sculptures shouted colorfully over the low hum of failure
and vice that seemed to waft from every concrete alley and peeling doorframe.

When
they arrived at the Carmichael address, there was a car in the driveway: an
aging Honda that for some reason she doubted belonged to a detective. She’d
expected to find the place locked, had come out here only to get a sense of
where this struggling single parent, this author with a cult following, was
raising his kid. But the interior door was wide open, and through the storm
door window she could see most of the vacant living room and a carpeted
stairway. She raised her hand to rap on the glass, but Pasco touched her sleeve
and shook his head. With his other hand, he clicked the handle quietly and said,
“Let's just see who's here before we announce ourselves. Shouldn't be anybody
but cops, right?”

Pasco
stepped inside and unsnapped the button of his holster. Drelick followed,
whispering,
“It's not a crime scene.”
The open door and car in the
driveway were a little too bold to suggest nefarious activity in the stark
light of day, but then, smart criminals knew that.

Pasco
moved into the living room, treading softly on the carpet and peering around
the corner into the kitchenette. He nodded toward the stairway. As Drelick
climbed the first few steps, Pasco swept through the remainder of the scant
first floor and then came up behind her.

At
the landing, she turned to look back at him, wanting to tell him that they
should either go back outside and call in the plate number on the car, or just
announce themselves. She hated it when he made snap decisions and conveyed them
with body language. They should have talked about their approach while they
were still outside.

Hesitating
on the landing where the angle of the ceiling cut the second floor from view
and trying to communicate her reluctance to him using only her eyes, she heard
a piercing whistle from above. It started out low and long, but then began to
glide around and take on the shape of a lazy, lilting melody. Within seconds,
she recognized the tune as “Take It To The Limit,” by the Eagles. She exhaled,
tugged her suit jacket over her hip holster and climbed the remaining stairs
with less caution.

The
narrow hallway at the top of the stairs ended at a man kneeling on the floor
with his ass crack framed between faded dungarees and a paint spattered
t-shirt. A bucket of joint compound took up most of the floor space to his
right. To his left, a full-length mirror leaned in a bedroom doorway, angled to
keep it from falling. She could see herself and Pasco in the mirror; black-clad
lurking shapes, rising from the stairwell. But the kneeling man hadn't yet
caught sight or sound of them.

“Sir?”
Drelick said. The guy startled, spun around to look at her, and dropped a
dollop of putty onto the carpet as he did so.

“Shit,”
he said, scooping it up and tossing it in the bucket. He stood up, knees
popping and crackling, and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Scared the piss outta
me. Who're you?” He had bushy ginger hair and densely freckled arms, a medium
build, and a backward baseball cap.

“FBI.”
Pasco said. “Who are you?”

“I'm
the landlord.”

“Again,
sir. Who are you?”

“Bob
Haggerty. I'd shake your hand, but I’d get mud on you. What can I do you for?”

“We're
here to see the scene where a weapon was found,” Drelick said, pointing at the
patch. “Was that the hole in the wall where they found it?”