The Black Silent

CHAPTER 32

Rachael and Lew Stutz sat in a small conference room in the downtown Seattle offices of the Washington State Police. Apparently on a holiday weekend, the best they could do was provide a lieutenant, John Glendale, a blond fellow who did not seem to smile easily. He was young, thirty-five at most, and appeared earnest and sincere. Lew, the coast guard lieutenant, sat in with them. "Do you have any firsthand information about the shootings?"

"No," she said. "But Haley Walther and Sam witnessed it. I trust them completely, and I'm here to ask you to believe these people through me."

"And you want me to accept that an ex-police officer in the employ of the Sanker Corporation is going around killing people for a fountain of youth-pharmaceutical?"

Rachael suspected that was a question best unanswered.

"I'm not trying to be harsh," Glendale said, "but I've got to marshal the cold facts." He turned to Lew. "She really roped you in, huh?" For the first time Glendale smiled at the coast guard officer.

"Right or wrong, I'm a baptized true believer," Lew said.

"Okay," Glendale said. "I'm going to start calling people. Starting with Special Agent Ernie Sanders."

"He's probably on a plane," Rachael said.

"I'll leave messages. I'll call his colleagues. I'll go up the line here and get my ass shot off. I'll even call over to the attorney general and see if there is anybody on call tonight.

I'm in. We'll see where this takes us. But no way do I have authority yet to send anybody anywhere or to intervene, uninvited, in the county's case."

Rachael tried hard not to smile. It was more than she'd hoped for. no one was around. Yes, the Blazer was there at the Nisky home, but was probably left hours before. They had broken into the house and one man was still poking around.

Frick had seen enough after two minutes. Khan had swallowed the bait too easily.

As he ran into the beach house, he realized that he wasn't hearing anything. He pulled his gun, but was reckless in his anger. He forced himself to go more slowly.

In the kitchen the chair was gone and the line was on the floor. His instruments were just where he had laid them, the ball gag on the floor. He charged out onto the back porch, then again thought better of running to the beach and into a bullet. Stepping back inside, he started searching the house while he got on the radio.

"Get in here!" he screamed, not caring who heard him.

A quick run through the downstairs revealed nothing. It seemed unlikely that Sarah's rescuer would have stuck around. By the time he got to the back door, the three men had arrived.

"You"-he pointed at a burly, mustached man-"down the beach, to the left, patrol back and forth. If you find anyone, you call, check in every five minutes. You, the same to the right. Howell, you come with me. They had to have used the road."

Suddenly Frick stopped. He sent Howell on alone and reentered the house. He had three men here, and more on the way from San Juan to Lopez. His best hope was letting them search in the various directions until they caught a sign of Sam, Haley, and Sarah James.

Then he'd join them. More important than getting them was getting the goods. That meant keeping up with McStott, whom he trusted less and less as the night wore on.

He called Khan for an update, realizing that he had to keep a grip, keep moving and not become distracted over a bad turn of events.

"That was a massive screwup," he began. Explaining in some detail how stupid they had been; how it had all been a ploy to rescue Sarah James. Khan listened and said nothing.

"What's our little weasel found?" Frick finally asked.

"Well, Rolf's found a partial draft of some kind of allegiance document. Like a pledge."

"Belonging to?"

"Anderson was drafting it on his computer," Khan said, "but it reads like a government document." Khan voiced the pledge:

"Whereas we have been given by Providence a great discovery that might enhance the life of man and extend his time on earth;

"Whereas we have joined together to use this new knowledge for the good of all, with harm to none;

"Whereas we have enumerated certain goals and the manner of their achievement;

"By this document we commit ourselves…"

"That's it? Commit ourselves to what?" Frick asked. "That's all we found."

Haley moved the boat down the beach with the first load of files while Sam returned to the house. Sarah was in considerable pain just from the overtightened cuffs and it was hard on Haley to wait around with Sarah suffering.

Wondering if he was using more guts than brains, Sam emerged from the shrubbery near the door to the garage. He slipped back through the door, grabbed an armload of files, heard whispering, and turned to look back out into the garden. Two men were headed down the path with their guns drawn. Obviously they didn't expect anyone behind them in the house. Putting the files down, he went quietly after them, forcing himself to endure the pain of moving at a trot. They didn't see him coming, intent as they were on the beach.

Sam reminded himself not to strike a lethal blow. Anger over Sarah would make it easy to put a nose cartilage into a brain.

Catching the first man unawares, he delivered a hard blow to the area of the seventh cervical vertebrae. The man spun. Sam slammed a fist into the chin and an elbow hard into the floating ribs. Something snapped and the man dropped. Without stopping his motion Sam kicked at the other man's right arm before he could pull his gun. The kick was a mistake. It hurt and, not surprisingly, it went wide, clipping the man's elbow. The man grunted and swung his firearm up. With one hand Sam clamped the gun while he used the other to deliver a hard, palm-up blow to the chin. The man staggered and Sam landed a harder punch to the point of the chin. It took three strikes and a badly broken jaw to bring the man down, but he would likely stay put for a few minutes.

Sam quickly walked back and grabbed another armload of files that he'd left in the doorway, then reversed toward the beach. His legs were getting worse and he was further degrading them with the kick fighting.

Once at the water he flashed the penlight and waded. In a couple minutes he was in the boat and rowing like his life depended on it.

No doubt it did.

Haley was comforting Sarah, and Sarah seemed in better spirits.

After he had rowed a good half-mile offshore, Sam used his cell phone to call Ernie Sanders. No answer. He left a voice mail message, instead. They tried Rachael. She answered and explained the difficulties she was having with the authorities. They told her about Sarah and she said she would relay it. There was desperation in Rachael's voice and Sam knew she was trying. It was only a matter of time and the government would listen and come.

The two women were now shaking from the cold. Although the temperature was probably about fifty-five degrees, there was a stiff breeze. They had no way to warm themselves out here. Sam was a little better off from rowing hard, and he was naturally hardy when it came to extreme cold. Nevertheless, they were all imagining the luxury of heat.

"Surely the FBI will come now," Haley said.

Sam kept rowing. "Consider that I never saw Frick in the house, nor did I see him with Sarah. Physical evidence takes a lab."

"To investigate, all they need is Sarah's story. True?"

"Jurisdiction. They need jurisdiction, like a kidnap across state lines. Or a civil-rights claim. Civil-rights claims usually move slowly. Otherwise, it's a job for the sheriff or the state police. It's a holiday, in the middle of the night, and there are supposed eyewitnesses to our murderous ways. Obviously Frick didn't steal the Opus Magnum. If the state or feds came, they wouldn't know where to come because Frick wouldn't tell them. We can't tell them where we are or what we're doing because it might get back to Frick. It'll get worked out, but maybe not in the middle of the first night."

"So what do we do?" Haley asked.

"We need to leave Sarah with someone. Is there anyone we can trust?"

"I know someone. Sarah knows them. Of all the people on the island they're the ones I would trust. The Harlasens. They've been here for years. They own rental properties on various islands. And they're close friends of Ben and me."

"Let's do it," said Sam. "Where do we go?"

"We can row there. Just past the Williamses', and then into McArdle Bay."

Haley called the Harlasens on her cell and spoke with Eugene Harlasen, explaining the situation in no-nonsense language. Then Haley started answering the obvious questions.

People on the islands were accustomed to an orderly world and law enforcement was usually right. The sheriff had been around for years, knew everybody, and nothing ever spun out of control. Haley's tale was disorienting, to say the least.

Haley paused to listen. "We're trying to find Ben before someone else does." Haley spent a few more minutes reiterating with slightly more explanation, then hung up.

"They'll help," she told Sam.

"When we get her there," Sam said, "you take a lot of swab samples. You comb through all Sarah's hair very carefully for any loose hairs that might belong to anyone else."

"Okay." Haley sounded exhausted.

She had her arms around Sarah, encouraging her to hang on and things would get better.

Haley promised lots and lots of aspirin.

Sarah actually smiled at that.

Haley took the improvement in Sarah's status to ask a question.

"Sarah, I know you're feeling awful, but we're having a hard time figuring out some things that Ben left us. He wrote something about Sargasso stew. We think he was trying to lead us to something. Does it mean anything to you?"

Sarah seemed sleepy, and her head was starting to loll. Sleep, Sam knew, was a natural escape from pain and extreme stress.

"Sarah," Haley said again. "Do you know anything about Sargasso stew?"

Sarah's tongue had swollen from the gag and she had a slight slur to her speech. She nodded her head. She moved her tongue, as if trying to clear her mouth, then said: "Look on my laptop."

Sam and Haley stared at one another.

"Where?" Sam asked.

"My computer was in my car at Fisherman's Bay Dock."

"Did you tell Frick's people this?" Sam asked.

"Not at all."

"Do you know what Ben put on there?"

"I don't. It's password protected."

Haley gently took Sarah in her arms and stroked her hair as Sam rowed with renewed strength.

They absolutely had to get the computer.

"I want three cars driving MacKaye Harbor Road, I want one car on Aleck Bay Road, and a couple cars patrolling Mud Bay Road." Frick spoke calmly, having shed the anger.

His future depended on doing this right. "If you see anybody suspicious, you check it out. I want another airplane flying this end of the island."

"In the dark?" the dispatcher asked.

"Yes. These people that kidnapped Sarah James are in the water. They left marks from a boat on the beach. The plane's a quick way to sweep the area. Am I clear on all of this?"

"Yes, sir. And I've got the interisland ferry on the dock at Friday Harbor to make an emergency run," the dispatcher said. "But it will be about forty minutes before it arrives.

We've got men coming in boat one, and boat two is leaving in a couple minutes."

"We have no more cars over here, so hurry the ferry."

The dispatcher back at San Juan was excellent and had the latest equipment, so Frick was working through her. More significantly, the dispatcher was convinced that Crew and Ranken were killed by Robert Chase and his accomplice, Haley Walther. With the computer screens in front of him and the sophisticated mapping capability, he could monitor the location of every deputy and every special deputy and all the relevant action. Cars used by regular deputies had GPS locators and transponders, so their position was automatically tracked.

But it didn't matter which men Frick wanted in which location, there weren't enough men on Lopez and there wouldn't be for some time. There were three regular deputies stationed on Lopez Island and one special deputy. The sheriff's boat two, run by Frick's imported men, would be ferrying people and then watching for possible escapes from Fisherman's Bay. Volunteer residents were watching other moorages. Frick had had four cars before asking for volunteer vehicles and now he had nine. The four other men he had already moved to Lopez didn't do much to solve the shortage. So Sam was getting a freebie getaway. Smart of him to go by sea. It would take a lot more men to bottle him up at night.

For a moment Frick wondered how much help he was actually getting from the regular deputies. It was no secret that some of them remained suspicious about Haley Walther's guilt.

He got on the phone and called the local news station in Seattle. "This is Sergeant Garth Frick, of the San Juan Island County Sheriff's Department. We have a new development in the manhunt for Robert Chase and his accomplice, Haley Walther. They have escaped to Lopez Island and have apparently taken a hostage. We're withholding the name of the hostage for the time being, pending the notification of her family, who seem to live off island and are temporarily unavailable."

Next he got Rolf on the line. "Anything more on that written pledge or his fellow scientists?"

"Nothing so far."

"Let's look through his phone records and identify every call to a retired scientist. Look especially at his cell phone bills. Call every number you can. Tell them you're trying to get hold of Ben and you need the number of the place on Orcas. Any numbers you get, call the phone company and get the address. Got it?"

"You're the boss."

Smart-ass.

Frick got back on the radio with the dispatcher.

"How long to get a boat down here to MacKaye Harbor?"

"Boat three, forty-four knots, takes fifteen minutes from Fisherman's Bay in the daytime. At night forty-five," the dispatcher said.

"That's too long. Tell them to get their asses down here with the boat. Get men down along MacKaye Harbor Road."

"They can't run thirty knots at night." Deputy Freeman had picked up the microphone.

He was one of the guys who had questions concerning Haley Walther's guilt.

"The hell they can't run thirty knots. They can use a spotlight and keep a sharp eye."

"There're dead heads, logs, that sort of thing," Freeman said, making eminently good sense.

But Frick knew they weren't really arguing about dead heads and logs. They were arguing about the manhunt and murder charges-the rest of the acrimony was a proxy for the real issue. It angered him because in his view of the world he had provided sufficient evidence regardless of its truth or falsity.

"We've got a murderer on this island, Deputy Freeman. He's killed two peace officers and wounded another. He's killed a Sanker employee. Now get this straight. Until we get hold of the Sheriff, I'm Zebra One. It's my job to catch them. Get with the program or go home."

Rachael had been waiting for the Washington State Police captain for about twenty minutes. It was almost 2:30 a.m. and the diligent Lieutenant Glendale had managed to persuade Captain Roy Melrose to come into work. Captain Melrose was a twenty-five-year veteran of the state police and was not accustomed to being up in the wee hours, but he was a nice guy with a sense of humor, the sort who would make a great granddad.

And judging from the pictures on his desk, he was a grandfather several times over.

"When Lieutenant Glendale called me," said Melrose, "frankly, I thought he was nuts.

Until he told me something. You'd never guess what he told me."

"I won't even try," Lew said.

"Me either," Rachael said.

"He told me that when he saw that paper of Ms. Sullivan's, he decided to call the FBI and so he did. In about twenty-five minutes he was talking to people in Washington, DC.

They called back an hour later or so and now they want me to have you at the FBI field office, Third Avenue downtown, at seven in the morning. People are coming from Washington, DC, including Homeland Security."

"That's a long time," Rachael said, not caring about the rest. "People could die while we're sitting here waiting for well-intentioned bureaucrats."

Captain Melrose sat back in his chair. "I suppose we could take one of our choppers up there and try to find this fellow Frick. We could ask him what he's doing and he'd say he's chasing a murderer. I sure would like to get the sheriff on the phone; he's a good man. But that's not gonna happen. I already tried and he's someplace in the Swiss Alps, and nobody's gonna find him in a few hours. And for the moment there seems to be support among the deputies for what Frick's doing. They think your friend killed their own kind."

"He's told all the deputies that my friends shot two of their own and stabbed another," said Rachael. "What would you expect they'd say?"

But Melrose's mind was moving ahead. "Why the hell would Homeland Security be interested?"

"I don't know," she said. "Couldn't we discuss this on the way to San Juan Island?"

Stutz looked willing but uncertain.

"After the FBI, maybe," said Melrose. "And last my people heard, they were on Lopez, anyway."

Lopez Island was good news, Rachael thought. In all likelihood it meant that at least one of them, Sam or Haley or Ben, was still alive. "If you don't do something about Frick now," she said, "heroes will die on your watch and the secret of the century will be stolen. Think about that."

Melrose sighed. "I'll have a chopper at the fed building at seven-thirty and tell the feebies we gotta leave. That's the best I can do. I've told them you think Ben Anderson's in danger from Garth Frick. We'll be up to the San Juans by eight-thirty in the morning. I hope you realize how hard it would be to go up there on a stormy winter night in a chopper and do anything."

Lew patted her shoulder. Rachael bit her lip, wanting to cry in frustration. She knew it would have to be enough because it was all she was going to get.

When she and Lew left, a brief and slightly strained discussion followed about sleeping arrangements. In the little time that they'd been together, Rachael had learned that Lew was a Republican, idolized Ronald Reagan, loved Texans, Texas, barbecue, and catfish.

He could smoke a cigar with aplomb, drank Dewar's neat, was confident but not cocky, and treated his mother, kids, and older people well.

In turn, he'd learned that Rachael was a DNA-based Democrat and hated all of the aforementioned aspects of life that he held dear except the part about mother, kids, and older people. She hadn't told him about her penchant for nudism. The one love they shared was for fast boats.

Rachael and Lew went to the Four Seasons, where her father had an account, and with the help of a fastidious night manager, they rented a room with two double beds. One bed was in the east and one the west. She slept in the east but would consider rapprochement with the west. However, she made it clear to Lew that the Berlin Wall didn't come down on the first request. It was insane that they were even having the discussion. On that last point he seemed skeptical about the need for her reluctance and his confidence was troubling. Her growing interest in him, she decided, was a damnable affliction.

As they were rushing from the hotel lobby with their coffees, she decided that she needn't mention about the nudity and that wearing clothes would really not be that big an imposition. Perhaps there was a Liberal Republican group. On further reflection, perhaps there was a Conservative Democrat group. Suddenly working it out seemed very important and she began to see all manner of opportunity for harmony. Some tunes one just didn't need to play around the house.