Steel Breeze (8 page)

Desmond
realized that he was studying the weapon that had killed his wife with the same
eye for facts and details that he brought to researching books when he was
avoiding the emotional commitment of writing. A defense mechanism. This object
in his lap had probably killed allied soldiers in the war. Most of the history
books and documentaries tended to focus on the technological advances of the
war—the fighter planes, napalm, and rockets…the hydrogen bombs. But it was a
lesser-known fact that more people had been killed by swords than by bombs in
World War II. The Japanese hadn’t worn their swords as ceremonial uniform
accessories. This was a weapon built to kill, and it had fulfilled its purpose
on the body of an unarmed woman in the dewy grass of a suburban backyard in the
early hours of a summer day. Desmond wondered what Arthur Parsons, Sandy’s
grandfather who had been shot down over Okinawa, who had brought this sword
home with him, would have thought about that.

Desmond
had found her body in the murky light of a foggy predawn. His mind had rebelled
against making sense of the shape, but there was no escaping the sight, or what
it meant…and what it would mean for Lucas. That was the first crushing weight
that landed on him—the unbearable fact that Lucas would be motherless and that
Desmond would be charged with having to tell him, having to somehow make this
make sense to his son. The poor kid didn’t even know the word
dead
yet
except in relation to batteries. How could you tell a three-year-old that his
mother wasn’t just gone but was never coming back?

Now,
staring at six inches of burnished steel, Desmond knew that he hadn’t done a
very good job of making sense for Lucas because it still made no sense to him. It
was the definition of senseless violence. All he’d been able to do was to tell
Lucas that Mama had a bad accident, that she didn’t want to go away, that she
loved him and was still with him, would always be with him even though he
couldn’t see her. But he could talk to her, he
should
talk to her when
he wanted to, and she would hear him. It was the best Desmond could do. He
never consulted a professional or a priest about whether these were the right
things to say, and for once he didn’t pick up a book to find out. He just knew
that he had nothing else to offer.

“I’m
trying, baby,” he said to her murder weapon, “I’m trying to do the things you
would do for him.” A tear landed on the gray metal and ran off the edge. “I
know I fuck it up sometimes, but I’m trying.”

She
had been lying in the red grass near the shed where he kept the lawnmower. She
must have bled out instantly. The dog was beside her, like they were napping
together on one of the hairy dog beds that they used to kick around the floors
of the old house. Sandy used to pick those beds up and move them around all day
to make sure Fenton always had a slice of sunlight to lie in, and sometimes she
would lie on the floor with him to stroke his head. And there his head was a
few feet away from his body and hers, attached by a thin strip of flesh.

Had
she found the dog like that and bent down to make sure her eyes weren’t playing
tricks in the foggy darkness? Had she been standing there, head bowed,
comprehending the horror and drawing breath to scream when the blade came down
and severed her windpipe? Desmond almost dropped the damned thing on the floor.
The killer had wrapped his hands around this very handle, but left no prints. Desmond
couldn’t conjure a face on the shadowy figure he saw in his mind’s eye, but now
he could put a mask on him.
A mad face
. A face distorted into the very
caricature of wrath, with fierce flaming thunderclouds for eyebrows. Maybe it
was best to think of that man as a force of nature, no different than if a
tornado or tsunami had swept his wife away. Equally senseless.

But
there were aspects of that night that were not meaningless, God help him. There
was guilt, there was failure, and there was the small betrayal that opened the
door to terrible consequence.

Desmond
had heard the dog whining at the door. He had opened his eyes to read the red
numbers on the bedside clock: 4:36. And now he would never again be able to see
those three numbers on a digital clock without a sharp pang of guilt, because
he’d pretended to be asleep when she whispered his name the last time she would
ever whisper it. He hadn’t wanted to get up at 4:36, not with the alarm set to
wake him for work less than two hours later, because he knew he wouldn’t be
able to get back to sleep. But if Sandy let the dog out, she could sleep in
until Lucas woke up. And so he sent the girl he’d fallen in love with in an
English Lit class to her execution so he could get a little extra shuteye.

When
he rolled over an hour later and found her side of the bed still empty, he was
confused, even a little scared. Was she in the bathroom? He listened for a
flush. He waited and listened for far too long.

She
wasn’t in the bathroom. His stomach sank when she wasn’t in Lucas’s room
either. He stepped into his shoes and went onto the back deck. He walked down
the steps and called her name. And then her form floated out of the murk and
changed everything irrevocably.

It
should have been him. He should have been the one to let the dog out. He should
have been the one cut down by a psycho.

Greg
Harwood.

It
didn’t make sense then and it didn’t make sense now. Chuck Fournier must have
known it too, or why would he still think Desmond had killed her? The crime
seemed random. Sandy didn’t have an enemy in the world, but whoever had used
this sword had broken into the house to take it without arousing Fenton’s
attention or the barking would have woken them. The killer must have entered
through the back end of the first floor where Desmond’s study was and taken the
sword from the wall. But he hadn’t simply killed them all in their sleep. Instead
he had gone back to the yard and waited for her. As if he knew their schedule,
knew Fenton’s bladder, and knew he could count on one of them going out there
alone in the wee hours if the dog didn’t come when called.

Desmond
had been the prime suspect until the weapon was found in Harwood’s possession. Desmond,
who had looked at the sword hanging above his desk every day. But neither
Desmond nor Greg Harwood was expert in the use of a samurai sword, and someone
had decapitated a woman and a dog with two clean, efficient strokes. Beginner’s
luck? Desmond doubted it now more than ever. Someone was very handy with a
blade.

He
slid the exposed steel back into the scabbard with a
shuck
, then fished
his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed three digits. At the prompt he told
the voice recognition software what he needed: “Walpole Massachusetts. Cedar
Junction Correctional.”

* * *

Chuck
Fournier sat across the street from the Blue Fort in the maroon Honda Civic he
had signed out of the impound lot. He’d been waiting too long and was getting
antsy. His coffee was cold, and he was starting to wonder if the storage
facility was just a ruse Carmichael was using because he’d spotted the tail. Was
he even still in there, or had he just used his card to get into a private area
where he could ditch the car and continue on foot? Maybe there was another way
out of the lot during business hours. If so, Carmichael could be anywhere by
now, might have even called for a taxi from his cell phone. And if he was still
in there, just what was he up to? Checking on some piece of evidence they’d
never found? Burning some document that gave him motive for Sandy’s murder? Nothing
had ever turned up. But now, with the Parsons’ moving to take guardianship of
Lucas, Desmond might be nervous, and might be covering old tracks.

Fournier
climbed out of the car and trotted over to the guard booth at the entrance to
the storage lot. If his timing was bad, if Carmichael was driving back out,
he’d have to take cover fast. He nodded at the guy in the booth who operated
the gate, and then stepped into the little glass office cube where he found a
young lady in another blue polo shirt behind a counter adorned with colorful
brochures and silk flowers. She was looking at a smartphone, wearing a thin
smile of mild amusement, probably killing time on Facebook or sexting her
boyfriend. A little bell jingled on the door at Fournier’s entrance, and she
stashed the phone under the counter. Seeing that he wasn’t her boss, she
relaxed and put a fake smile on where the genuine one had been just a moment
ago. “How may I help you?” she asked.

It
was time for Chuck Fournier to make a decision. This little Saturday afternoon
fishing expedition wasn’t authorized, not by a long shot. He was doing his
surveillance on Desmond Carmichael for love, not money, and while there was no
law that said he couldn’t follow an acquaintance from a distance on his own
time, as soon as he flashed his badge things got a lot more complicated. Without
a warrant, he couldn’t ask this girl to do what he needed her to do. And if he
did find something incriminating here, it wouldn’t be admissible in court. But
his gut had more say than his brain in situations like this, and his gut was
telling him to go for it because this clerk would be too dumb and lazy to even
read the name on a badge. More important: his gut told him that he needed to
see what Desmond was up to in there. Knowing would give him a leg up when
things
were
authorized. No one needed to know where he got his ideas;
they would simply be attributed to his instincts. He loved that word. If you
had a reputation for good instincts, you could cut a hell of a lot of corners
without ever having to fess up to doing the homework off the clock.

He
flashed his badge and, instead of introducing himself, opened with a direct
question as he stepped up to the counter, getting in her face to throw her off
balance: “Is there another exit from the lot that can be accessed by
pedestrians besides this gate?”

The
girl straightened and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “No,” she said. “Is
there a problem?” Badges, words like
pedestrian
, they tended to
establish a tone of authority, especially with young people who thought
everything was about them, who immediately started thinking about some bag of
weed they had stashed somewhere when a cop got up in their grille. Might as
well seal the deal. “Ma’am, I need you to show me the video monitors for your
surveillance cameras.”

“Um,
okay. They’re back here.”

Fournier
was relieved to find no other employees in the back room, just a few storage
cubes for employee belongings, some posters of federal regulations, coat hooks,
and a bank of black-and-white video monitors on a cheap laminate desk with
wires running in and out of an array of hard drives beside a grimy keyboard. “We
only record at night,” the girl said.

Fournier
could see Desmond’s SUV blocking the open door of his unit. “That’s okay, just
need to confirm the whereabouts of a suspect.”

“I
should probably call my boss.”

“That
won’t be necessary. I’ll be finished here in just a moment.” He scanned the
room “Do you have a piece of paper and a pencil I can use?” It would keep her
occupied for a minute, keep her from making that call to her boss.

“How
about a pen?”

“Pen’s
fine. And was that a water cooler I saw out there?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Would
you mind? I’m parched.”

“Sure.”

He
stared at the screen, waiting for some sign of motion, listening to the
gurgling of water in a paper cup. The parking lights on the SUV flashed and the
back hatch popped open.

The
girl set the cup, pen, and sheet of paper on the desk in front of him. Fournier
kept his eyes on the screen. A noisy little grayscale Desmond Carmichael
stepped into blown-out sunlight, clutching a bundle under his arm—about the
length of a golf club and wrapped in a bath towel. Goddamn, if it didn’t look
like it could be the sword. The towel was a little too small, and it slipped off
as he placed it in the hatchback, revealing what looked like the hilt and
handguard. Of all the things to come here for when the heat was on…. Had they
missed something about it in forensics? Not likely. So why did Desmond want it
now?

Could
be he means to use it again.
Fournier watched Desmond fix the
towel and slam the hatch shut. Time to boogie. He almost knocked the clerk over
in his haste.

“What
about your pen and paper?” she asked, “and your water?”

Fournier
looked her up and down as if deciding whether or not he could trust her.
“You’ve been very helpful, but things are developing fast and this is a
sensitive investigation. Do you think you could keep my visit to yourself, not
even mention it to your boss? If the suspect were to learn that we were onto
him, it would jeopardize the operation and could put people in harm’s way. So
could you do that for me?”

“I
won’t say anything.” She smiled, Chuck thought, in a flirty sort of way. He
could tell this was the most exciting thing that had happened to her in a
while. He also knew that the chances of her keeping her gob shut were slim to
none; she’d probably be tweeting—or whatever the hell it was they did—within
two minutes. But if that was the only way she blabbed, it might not catch up
with him.

“Good
luck catching your guy,” she said.