Blood of Cain

16

After I disconnected from the man with the falsetto voice, I turned to Dave. He said, “You look like someone just said that you have three months to live.”

I said nothing, my thoughts racing.

“Who was on the line, Sean? What happened?”

“A man who goes by the name of Isaac Solminski. He works at the carnival. It was his phone that Courtney used when she called me.”

“What’d he say?”

“He told me that Courtney said I might have a small birthmark in the shape of an Irish shamrock on my left shoulder. Dave, there is no way that she could have seen it. I didn’t mention it, and very few people even know it’s there.”

“I’ve known you for five years, see you working on your boat many times in nothing but your swim trunks, and without my glasses I’d never see it.”

“It’s not much larger than a postage stamp. But the birthmark looks like a clover or a shamrock. Sherri used to call it God’s perfect little tattoo on my shoulder. How in the hell did Courtney know it was there? Solminski said she told him it meant that she was related to me.”

“Did she say how, as in a niece or a long lost daughter?” Dave grinned.

“For Christ sakes. You sound like the guy on the phone. I have no living family. Sherri was an only child. My parents died when I was in my last year of high school. I had no siblings. I lived with my uncle until age eighteen when I left for college and then joined the military. My uncle had no children when he and my aunt died. So I’m it — the last of the bunch. It’s just Max and me.” I reached in the topside cooler and lifted out a Corona, popped the top, and took a long pull from the bottle. “Now I know what Courtney meant in her voice message when she said there was ‘something else.’”

Dave nodded. “It’s a hell of a something else. What if she’d been stalking you from the beginning?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if all of this is some kind of an elaborate ploy to get you involved in her bizarre world, a place where the Mad Hatter holds the keys to her Wonderland?”

“But why? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s not supposed to make sense in the playground of a psychopath.”

“But we don’t know that’s what she is, do we?”

Dave grunted and sipped his drink. “My friend, Sean O’Brien, the timeless optimist, the man who sees good where evil hides in the shadows.”

“Evil couldn’t exist without the presence of good. I like to believe that good is a little more predominant and a lot more appreciated because of evil.”

Dave laughed and lifted Max onto his lap. “Maxine and the other critters don’t operate in either camp, it’s just us free-willed, vertical-walking mortals. So now that Courtney Burke has laid a bomb under your mental hood, what are you going to do?”

“I want to know how she knew about the birthmark.”

“Maybe some things in life should remain a mystery. Once the genie’s out of the bottle, it might become Pandora’s Wonderland.”

“Dave, at this point, I can’t think of anyone alive who knows that I have a tiny birthmark on my shoulder. Someone would have to get close to me without my shirt on, and then be looking for it. Otherwise it’s not that obvious. Who knows it’s there? Who could have told Courtney and why? Since Sherri’s death, I’ve only been with a few women. Two of them are dead, too.”

“Maybe a look at your birthmark is like looking into the face of Medusa, fatal, or dangerously rocky at best. Perhaps you’ll recall that Medusa was a mere mortal, too. I’ll remind you to keep your shirt on.” Dave smiled and sipped his drink.

“Something’s very strange here. I want to pay a visit to the guy who was just on the phone, the man with the falsetto voice.”

“Why?”

“He may know where Courtney can be found.”

Dave shook his head. “Let Detective Grant, the FBI, and whoever the hell else might be following this young woman, let them track her down.”

“You and Grant both mentioned Bandini’s brother, Carlos. What if he finds her before the police do? If he’s the real bad ass in the bunch, what would he do to her? If she vanishes, I may never know how she was aware of my birthmark.”

“Then let it go. Plan A is hoping the cops find her first.”

“What’s Plan B?”

Dave sipped his drink, watched the rotation of the light from the lighthouse sweep high above the tops of the sailboat masts and challenge the dark over the Atlantic Ocean. He lowered his eyes to meet to mine. “Plan B, unfortunately, Sean, is when somebody’s Plan A didn’t work out for them and you get involved.”

“Too bad I can’t design Plan B, only answer it. Maybe I’ll have a better answer when they arrest Courtney.”