The Black Silent

CHAPTER 8

Haley was screaming, but not quite hysterical. In a second or two, Sam had made a calculated decision. He wouldn't kill Frick in cold blood or kidnap him. But since Sam's own pistol was now a murder weapon, it was time to go.

Haley was still shrieking. Taking her by the arm, he led her to her car.

"Wait here," he said, putting Frick's own cuffs on him. The keys to the cuffs were on Frick's key ring and he promptly hurled all the keys into the trees. Then he half-ran, half-hobbled, his bad leg aching, to the building as best he could. Right at the door he met Detective Ranken. For a second the officer stared, obviously trying to determine why Sam was headed toward the building. Sam punched him to double him over, grabbed his hand in a disabling hold, and drew his pepper spray.

"No," the officer choked as the noxious stuff went in his eyes and down his throat.

It was an unusually bad reaction; Ranken curled up in a ball, focusing on nothing but the next breath and the fire in his eyes. It was an unfortunate way for Sam to continue the afternoon, but the worsening situation required that he access Ben's office. It took only seconds to gather up all the whale papers on Ben's desk, then a minute or more to get back to Haley's car.

Haley was talking to herself softly, asking why Frick did it. Tears were running down her face.

"Haley, I need you to focus on saving Ben and put everything else out of your mind until that job is done."

She managed to stop rambling and accepted a tissue.

"Crew was my friend," she said after a moment.

"When we get done with this, we will mourn your friend."

"How many times have you had to do this?"

Sam started the car and accelerated rapidly.

"Too many. I'm calling a friend in the FBI." Sam flipped open his cell phone and called Special Agent Ernie Sanders's personal cell phone.

Ernie answered on the first ring. "What the hell are you doing not calling through the office?"

"I have a real problem."

"You're supposed to be resting on a quiet island and learning about nature."

"Supposed to, yeah."

"So you took on another job?"

"Actually, the job is taking me."

"What's up?" Ernie sounded concerned.

"A bad cop, the guy you looked up for me, one Garth Frick, just fatally shot a good cop, a local deputy. Frick's trying to frame me and a young lady." Sam went carefully through the part of the story Ernie had not yet heard, ending with his best guess at the situation: Haley, Ben, and he were now serious threats to Frick and the Sanker Corporation, and Ben's valuable research was the motivating item.

As he spoke to Ernie, Sam decided on a destination: Haley's house, which was an easy walk to Ben's.

"How the hell can you get into something like this just kicking back?" Ernie asked.

"Trouble always finds me, I guess."

"Sanker is a legitimate business, isn't it?"

"Don't know," Sam said. "But Garth Frick's as bent as you hinted."

"How much does it look like you did it?"

"Superficially, a lot."

"But forensics will support you?"

"Forensics may or may not help, but the truth is the truth."

Emie sighed. "You know I can't jump in and take over a local murder investigation, especially in a matter of hours. Let's see… to get federal involvement, you could file a civil rights complaint. Even then we'd have to follow procedures."

"You can call the local dispatcher and get one of the sheriff's deputies on the phone. Tell him it's crucial not to let Frick control the evidence," Sam proposed.

"I'll try, but I'm afraid it's a long shot. Had you considered just turning yourself in to the staties?"

"I'm on an island, Ernie. There are no state police, and Frick's running the locals.

Sheriff's gone, undersheriff too. I'm guessing the timing's no coincidence. That's why they took Ben Anderson this weekend."

Emie said nothing for a moment. "That could be a problem."

Frick's head hurt, and his face had taken some serious damage. His jaw was swelling out of control, but his mind was clear despite the pain. He made his way down the hall of the main office building and lab complex, hands still cuffed, headed for Ben Anderson's office. Jim Ranken walked along, helping to steady him, his pepper-sprayed face red, his eyes looking horrible and still runny. Frick's hands were still cuffed behind his back and he swore unremittingly about the whereabouts of the bolt cutters.

Supposedly there was a spare set of keys to the cuffs in the glove box of Frick's car, but they weren't there. An officer finally arrived with bolt cutters large enough to cut the tempered steel.

It had been almost thirty minutes; Ranken seemed to be breathing again.

"Make sure every available man's out looking for Haley Walther's car," Frick said.

"They are. I think maybe…"

Ranken seemed to be struggling for words and it irritated Frick.

"Spit it out."

"Maybe we should call the state attorney general."

"What the hell is the AG gonna do on a holiday weekend? Nothing. We've got two detectives working and about a dozen deputies."

"The AG could give us advice," Ranken said. "They could bring in the state police."

"I'm not gonna have the state police screwing up this investigation before I get the foundation laid."

"But we always-"

"I know what we always do," Frick said. "And I know why we're gonna wait until Monday to do it. In the meantime I can round up a bunch of cops from the mainland and some off-duty state police to help out."

"I–I don't think the sheriff ever conceived of a situation w-where you would be in charge of full-time regular deputies," Ranken stammered.

"Let's review." Frick's words came out like bullets. "A special deputy has whatever powers the sheriff confers. In my case I have full powers. This is logical because I'm an ex-homicide detective. Further, all Sanker matters are assigned to me. This involves a Sanker scientist disappearing from the Sanker facility. Two-oh-one would be next in charge after the undersheriff. He called dispatch and said I was in charge until he returns. So what don't you understand?"

"But you were involved in a shooting," Ranken said. "Crew's dead, for God's sake. And how are you getting off-duty cops in here that fast?"

Frick stopped cold, realizing he was going to have serious trouble with Ranken. "What the hell are you saying?"

"I'm saying you… we are parties to this shooting. You're a material witness. We can't just continue to pursue this case alone. Another jurisdiction should be keeping the evidence, not us. That's procedure. Bringing in outsiders to work for us is not."

Frick got directly in Ranken's face. "Robert Chase killed a San Juan deputy! You want me to stop pursuit of a murder suspect?"

"I'm just saying-"

"You heard Sergeant Finley on the phone. It's my investigation and that's an order. Go outside and help get it done."

"You're not going to take those papers from Anderson's desk without a warrant, are you?"

"I'm gonna take any damn thing we need." Frick realized he was losing it. He stepped back. He needed to be careful. "I'm going to follow the law, Detective. Now get the hell outside and help."

Ranken did as he was told, but he had Frick worried. Frick was pretty sure Ranken had questions about who had really shot Crew. He might have even seen part of the scuffle.

Frick began looking for the papers from the model blue whale. It took about ten seconds to realize that they were gone.

He closed his eyes and tried to breathe. Sparks, like fireworks, streaked across the inside of his eyelids. He felt a sort of anger like he hadn't felt since the day he'd beaten the commissioner with a baseball bat. As the commissioner writhed on the floor, in his bloody gray suit, Frick had turned him into a bag of broken bones.

Frick heard himself cursing, then bit his tongue to stop himself. He realized he was becoming incoherent in his rage. His eyes were wide open, but only now was he seeing.

He'd moved down the hall from Anderson's office. For a moment he had to remind himself that he was a person very much in control. He was deliberate. He was strong. He was intelligent. He had been a detective. He was the most formidable industry security man in the country. He could put it all back together.

Christ, his face hurt.

Just then Ranken walked back in and came up the stairs.

"I want to register an objection here," the detective started. "I don't think you should be leading the hunt for Chase and Walther, and I don't think we should be searching the doctor's office or wall safe without a warrant. The whole thing looks bad. We don't even know that Ben Anderson's-"

Ranken stopped as Frick's eyes sank into him. "What exactly are your concerns?"

"I just told you. And this Chase or Sam fellow or whatever? He apologized to me on the way back out after spraying me. I mean, I'd like to kick his ass personally, but he wasn't acting like a cold-blooded murderer. Maybe we're talking about manslaughter here."

Ranken fidgeted under Frick's cold stare. "I don't know. Maybe we're pushing this thing too hard. We don't want more people getting killed needlessly."

"Robert Chase made an ass of you. He went right around you and stole the papers that were in the whale."

Ranken didn't respond.

Still holding Ranken with his gaze, Frick swept up the giant tweezers from the surface of Ben's desk. His hand was gloved. "I need to show you something else. It's down in the workshop in the basement."

Fifteen minutes later, Frick walked back to the conference room near his office in the Sanker Main Building. The expansive conference room, which overlooked Friday Harbor from the northern rim, had the best water-view seats in the house.

Frick dialed the phone.

"This is Doris," came the familiar voice from Vegas.

"Garth Frick. Give me Strope."

"Just a minute."

It took her about thirty seconds.

"Give me a number where Strope can call you," she said.

A few moments later, the phone rang.

"You must have a problem."

Typical Strope-already starting to gloat.

"I do," said Frick. "I want them now. Khan, Rafe, and the others, like we talked-ten crude, ten smooth."

"Yeah, yeah. I got eight crude, nine smooth for you. They're on your island as of yesterday. I'll call Khan and-"

"That wasn't our deal," Frick interrupted.

"Take it or leave it. I can't control when guys get sick or leave town. You're only down three. I'll make the price thirty grand less."

"Get me Khan now," Frick said, "and we're good."

"He'll be there within the hour," Strope said. "Two days max on location, right?"

"That's right."

Frick hung up, thinking about the total price. He would need more money. Except for Rafe Black and Khan himself, Strope's people didn't whack anybody as part of the plan.

The deal was that Khan could kill and Rafe could kill, but he had to make a separate deal for that with Khan. The only exception was self-defense and, of course Frick would label any inadvertent gunplay as just that: self-defense.

In addition to the basic fee of $350,000, actual dead bodies were $100,000 per head for the first two and $50,000 thereafter, regardless of who killed them or why. Any dead body that made it into the press added to the fee. He'd have to raise the price with Nash.

Frick shook his head. That meant another call to Sanker Corporation.

"I need more money," Frick opened with Nash. All negotiations regarding the project went through Nash.

"I'm afraid that's not possible," Nash said.

"Making sure Ben Anderson is safe is costly. Finding a kidnap victim is always costly. I don't have time to argue. Either you're with me or I have to resign." Frick reminded himself that it was necessary to maintain the fiction that any kidnapping that might occur would be done by someone else-certainly not Frick and certainly not Sanker.

"We already paid one hundred thousand to protect Ben Anderson."

Frick knew that saying nothing was the quickest way to end this session. He rubbed his sore jaw, but didn't speak. After a long pause he heard a sigh.

"All right," Nash said. "I suppose the one hundred grand was just to get people in place.

How much?"

"One million." Frick said it as if there were no room for negotiation. He wanted plenty for dead bodies, if it came to that. Already there were two-thankfully not on Khan's bill

— and more were likely on the way.

This time the sigh was bigger.

Frick placed his next call to Griffith, one of two men already on Frick's personal payroll. Grif had no formal connection to the sheriff's department except that he'd been arrested plenty in his life.

"Go to Ben Anderson's. Wait there for me. If the fellow Sam or the woman Haley shows up, call me immediately and stay out of sight. Got it?"

"I got it."

Frick slammed the handset down. All the talking had his jaw throbbing and the job had turned bad. His life was on the line and there wasn't enough money in Nash's coffers for that kind of risk.

There was no way this would end cleanly. His only hope of ending it quickly was finding Ben Anderson's secret in the safe-and then finding Ben Anderson.

Sam made his way toward Haley's place by a circuitous route, starting on Beaverton and then cutting down to San Juan Valley.

Haley had stopped crying, but she hadn't said a word for several minutes.

"If you're ready to look at this," he said, handing her a piece of paper, "I found something interesting that Frick and his men never saw."

The message, in Ben's writing, was cryptic:

Together they make more than they consume and they waste very little. We do the opposite and we are inefficient to boot. It's the by-products of inefficiency that they avoid and that we do not.

There is a reason Mother Nature has not given us the same gift and in due course I will reveal it. If we take a lesson and get the gift for ourselves, we 'II have a rain check on individual deaths, save ourselves collectively, and solve the biggest problem of our discovery.

Perhaps the second phase of "creation," if you will, is for intelligent life to make choices that supercede natural selection. Intellectual life wants to preserve consciousness as an end in itself. Now there's a thought. Check where the ocean cleanses itself.

"I think he wrote it for you," Sam said. "Someone he trusts and who knows something about science. At the end he seems to be telling us where to look. Does it mean anything to you?"

Haley thought for a moment. "He's discovered a creature, something amazing, apparently. The 'cleansing' thing rings a bell."

Sam was glad her mind was off Crew's death, for the moment at least. "How so?" he asked.

Haley explained that deep in the sea, oceanologists had discovered that the oceans did have a sort of self-cleansing mechanism. Miles below the surface, fracture lines occurred on the ocean floor, where the earth's crust's tectonic plates rammed each other like slow-motion bumper cars. The collision of the plates created geographic features like the mid-Atlantic ridge. They also created cracks, which allowed seawater to flow down into the earth's crust. Water forced into the crust was superheated to seven hundred degrees or more, then returned, under great pressure, back into the ocean through vents. Over the course of 6 to 8 million years, every molecule of seawater would have traveled, at least once, down into the earth and back out into the oceans.

"Okay," Sam said. "Where would that mean he's leading us?"

"I don't know. Vent sites are found a mile beneath the sea and lower. We won't be seeing them any time soon, so he must either be referring to studies or photos of the fissures or vents. He has plenty of pictures."

"Where?"

Haley took a moment to think about it. "One of his friends was on the team that took the deep-diving submersible Alvin down to the Snake Pit. A couple of miles deep, if I recall.

The pictures would be in his house."

"We've got two things to do," Sam said. "Ditch this car, and send Frick some place other than Ben's house. Did Ben have a safe-deposit box or any place a person might logically keep papers?"

"He had a box at the local bank," Haley said.

"We need to talk with Sarah. She'll be frantic about Ben." He thought for a moment.

"Maybe we can tell Sarah to let Frick know about the bank."

Haley grasped the idea immediately. "Okay."

Sam hastily outlined a plan. They would have Sarah call on the phone and ask Frick about Ben's disappearance. When Frick asked the obvious questions, she would tell him about the safe-deposit box. Then she would disappear to ensure her safety.