The Black Silent

CHAPTER 29

The voice spoke quietly and had the sound of an obvious disguise. That told Ben that his interrogator was most likely someone he knew.

"Make it easy on yourself," his captor whispered.

"I'd like to take a piss. That would be a real treat, make it very easy on me."

"We're gonna put a wire up there and shoot you full of electricity. How would you like that?"

"First it was my guts in a bowl. Then you were going to do it to Sarah. But there's no Sarah, is there?"

"You're making me angry."

"You're making me bored. We both know that if you haven't done it by now, you're not going to do it. What are you, a government interrogator?"

"You're a smart-ass. But if you're so smart and I'm a dumb fed, then you know that we have agreements with other countries and that those countries lack our scruples."

"The senators and congressmen on Intelligence Oversight say that no such agreement exists."

"First, most of them don't know. Second, the ones who do know are worried enough about terrorists hurting their friends, family, or constituents that they don't blow the whistle. Third, they want to get reelected. So nobody knows. You follow?"

"You're trying to tell me that the errand-boy orderly that wants to be a surgeon and talks like an Arab butcher is from one of those countries?"

"I'm not telling you anything. You're telling me."

"I gotta take a leak."

"If I let you relieve yourself, will you quit playing games and save yourself?"

"I could think a lot better with an empty bladder."

He could tell that lights were flipped on. Someone played with his manacles and unshackled him. Next he was led blindfolded up some concrete or stone stairs. He heard the sound of a door opening, and then came a new sound. An almost imperceptible mechanical sound, like a refrigerator's, followed by a truck barely audible in the distance. He was led another forty paces or so and into a bathroom. The man put his hand on a toilet and told him to sit to pee. Obviously hitting the bowl would be tough with a blindfold, so it was the only alternative.

As he began relieving himself, he moved the blindfold but did not dislodge it. Looking down at his feet, he could tell that he was in a very expensive bathroom. Marble floors and baseboards were accompanied by ornate wooden wainscoting of light blond bird's-eye maple. It was all he could see, but it was enough to know he must be in one of the most expensive homes on Orcas Island. His mind went to work trying to figure which home.

The man was gone only a minute. Ben finished urinating, pulled up his pants, and was walked back across what looked like a very expensive sandstone floor. They went down some stairs of rough-hewn stone through a very heavy door. He coughed and brought his manacled hands to his face and moved the blindfold up and turned in one motion. For just a second he saw the face of Nelson Gempshorn. A traitor, then, but working for whom? He swung both manacled hands as hard as he could and hit Gempshorn in the jaw hard enough to stagger him. Ben jumped back through the heavy door and closed it.

He ripped off the blindfold and found himself in a beautiful entryway. Suddenly he understood the mysterious quiet. He'd been kept in a wine cellar deep in the ground.

Running down a long hall toward the end of the house, he saw a bedroom with a sweeping view of the water, and beyond that a sliding glass door that might lead to freedom. But before he reached the bedroom, the strong arm of Ros-sitter grabbed him around the waist. An instant later, Len was on him as well. He was done with this escape. Moments later, Nelson Gempshorn came down the hall. A rather large bruise forming on his cheek marred his usual silver-haired, dapper appearance. Although calm, he did appear frustrated and angry.

"You killed all the Arcs," Nelson snapped. "And destroyed all the paperwork."

If they hadn't been putting all manner of shackles on him, he would have knowingly scratched his chin. Things were just starting to become clear. Now they really would kill him when they were finished.

"Rachael Sullivan, this is Sergeant Hershman of the state police."

Lieutenant Stutz introduced her to a man in his late thirties with dark hair. Hershman struck her immediately as the quiet, brooding type.

"What can we do for you?" Hershman asked Stutz.

"You can step in and take over a murder investigation."

"I've heard a little," Hershman said. "Why don't you tell me the whole story."

After laying out the basics, Rachael plunged right into the fountain of youth-tale, even though she could sense mounting skepticism. When she had concluded, the young sergeant looked at his watch.

Not a good sign.

Hershman cleared his throat. "It's a lot easier to believe that your mysterious friend shot two officers in cold blood and stabbed another than to believe what you've been telling me."

"Wait a minute," Stutz said. "You should look at this FBI memo."

The sergeant read it.

"This is the kind of unsubstantiated rumor that ruins the careers of good men," said Hershman. "Classic FBI. It proves nothing."

Rachael took issue with that. "I admit it's not a criminal conviction, but it's hardly what I'd call gossip."

"Yeah, well, where's the agent who wrote it? According to you, the FBI knows all about this. So let them handle it." Hershman paused. "Lieutenant, could I talk to you?"

They adjourned to the officers' quarters, where she could hear all but the whispers.

Rachael knew what he'd be saying. After a couple minutes their voices grew louder.

"I'm sorry you feel that way," Stutz said. "Who would be the ranking officer for the Seattle area on duty tonight?"

"For Seattle, I haven't the faintest idea. You'd call main base Seattle to find that out. Do you want me to do anything about Ms. Sullivan here?"

"That's all right. Thanks for coming over," said Stutz.

"I suggest you be careful what you do with her," Hershman said. "She may have been an accessory. This could blow up in your face. The safe thing to do would be to have me get on the phone with San Juan County and find out if there are charges against this woman."

"There's nothing out on her on the wire. All she's done is run her boat a little carelessly.

I think it's a civil matter. The sheriff's taken the guys who were chasing her into custody."

"I hope you know what you're doing, Lieutenant."

"So do I, Sergeant. So do I."

Sam thought they still had a slim chance. Haley's arm was bleeding but unbroken.

"Probably metal. Not a bullet. Clean little cut," he shouted above the engine sound.

They were heading directly away from the beach.

"Hurts like a bullet hole," she said, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Sam knew that it was the loss of Grant that really hurt.

Fuel still poured from the wings. With power, the engine sounds and the wind tore through the rips in the metal, along with the cold. It was like a deep freeze-the last thing Sam's body needed. Full-blast heat kept them from hypothermia. As they moved away from the point, the chop picked up. They couldn't use the calm water of the inner harbor, now made dangerous by Flick's gunfire.

"Forty," he said, calling out the airspeed.

In the plane's spotlights the whitecaps looked murderous. "Fifty," he said as they suffered a jarring crash.

The plane skipped and Haley played with the stick, then, wham, they hit a big wave and were tossed into the air. The airplane came back down and Sam braced for another impact.

"Pleeeease," she said, trying to hold it off the wave tops.

"Sixty."

Now they were experiencing the "water effect," feet above the sea, gaining speed.

"Seventy."

She sighed. They were up in the air.

"We nearly bought it," she said. Sam found no response necessary.

The plane climbed, the ride surprisingly smooth.

"Okay," she said. "What did you find?"

"Aside from Detective Ranken hanging upside down and dead, a lot. There's a note Ben wrote: 'A few evil men with the right idea could take us down.' Also, in a hidden room, a freezer with vials. Did you know about it?"

She shook her head.

"Six colors for six groups of tubes. All were full, but the red tubes. I found some kind of a log concerning dosage amounts, I think."

"Wow."

"Ben might have been giving the drug to people-thirty-six of them-though I could be wrong."

"Double wow," Haley said, wincing from renewed pain in her arm.

He summarized what he'd read. As he did so, he noticed that the fuel was down to an eighth and dropping fast.

Haley's eyes followed his. "The question's whether we run out of fuel first or the plane falls apart from the bullet holes."

The original plan had been to fly to Lopez and Ben's beach house. That seemed to be where Haley was taking them.

"We have enough to get there?"

At that, she actually smiled. "We're there."

"Have you ever flown one of these before?" Sam wasn't sure he wanted to know.

"That should have been obvious."

Without warning, they dropped like an elevator. He looked to Haley.

"There's no time to set up a controlled descent. I got one try at landing."

She manhandled the trim, dropped the flaps, and tried to hold a descent of two hundred feet a minute.

"This bay is small at these speeds. I'm gonna just try a visual."

They were passing lights from the first marina on Lopez. The dock lights reflected off the water and made it slightly easier to see the surface.

She turned on the landing light. The inky surface appeared slightly rippled, but distance remained difficult to estimate.

He watched the rate of descent.

"Three hundred feet per minute. We're coming down fast."

"Not compared to a crash," she said, her lips tight.

"Eighty knots," he called out, so she could keep her eyes outside. "Still three hundred feet per minute."

She gave it a little power but was in danger of overshooting.

"Two hundred feet per minute."

"Dear Jesus." She pulled off the power with the shore in her face.

It dropped.

The plane hit, skipped once, then hit a cushion of air. She eased back on the yoke and it settled down on the water.

"Not according to the book," she said, "but we're alive."

Once down, the amphibian drove like a speedboat, turning well at high speed. Haley brought them up to the resort dock and jumped out, her arm bleeding again slightly.

Sam struggled mightily to rise. His limbs hurt more than they had in the ocean, but he could control them better.

On the deck he saw no holes in the plane below the waterline. After some thought they agreed not to put Grant's body out on the dock.

Haley looked at Sam, her face troubled. "I know we've got to get to Ben's, but first I need to get you warmed up and dry. I know where to do that."

He thought to argue, but his sopping jeans and shirt stuck to his skin and the wind whipped over them, refrigerating his body. He nodded.

The resort appeared nearly abandoned; he hoped she could quickly find someplace warm. Soon he would be incapacitated.

The main building housing the bar, the office, and the restaurant was long, low, and pastel. In late fall the festive-looking outdoor tables and umbrellas were gone. There were no bicycles in the bicycle racks, no badminton nets on the lawn, no canoes or kayaks on the grassy slopes near the beach. It seemed windswept and barren compared to the common jubilation of summer, and it matched the half-dead nature of Sam's own body.

They made it to the door and, thankfully, found it unlocked. Apparently the place was open, after all.

Haley disappeared into the office and returned with a key to a car and some blankets for him to sit on.

"Don't these people have television?" he asked. "Or are the cops on the way?"

"No television, no cops. The tube is in the bar and it's turned off."

"They figure you work in a butcher shop or what?"

Sam nodded at the blood-soaked sleeve of her shirt.

"We know these people. Relatives of Helen's. Our plane had a rough landing after we lost oil pressure. You're soaked. I'm wounded. That's the story. Let's just hope they don't look inside the plane."

"Where are we going?"

"Summer home for a UW faculty member with wealth from way back in his family,"

Haley said. "Friend of Ben's. Another scientist. The name is Williams. Ellis Williams."

She helped him through the building while they talked.

"This Williams hasn't cut his ties with you after the Sanker flap?" Sam asked.

"Of course, he has, but he doesn't remember-I'm hoping-that he told me where the key is, and I'm equally sure that he never thought I'd have the gall to use it without permission."

They climbed in a ten-year-old Chevy Blazer with leather interior and traces of mold. It had seen better days. She put down the blanket. "Belongs to one of the workers who's gone for the winter. They take turns driving it to keep it running. Tonight we're elected."

He had a spate of shaking from the cold that nearly amounted to a convulsion.

"They said the heat in this old Blazer works well."

"I hope so." He felt unbearably miserable. He forced his mind to work, to continue the conversation. It was difficult to focus on anything but the misery.

"I've got the important papers with me," he said through chattering teeth. "They're wet, but I think we can still use them."

He could feel the heating system start to work as Haley drove. It felt good.

"We may find more at the beach house. Grant told me Ben had used him to fly lots of people to Orcas. A bunch of people knew Ben was up to something big. Even Grant. He said there's some manifesto Ben worked up."

Sam's eyes widened at that.

"They had a big confab at the beach house. Now I see it in a whole new light.

Oceanographers discussing the bottom of the sea. I think the papers related to that get-together are in the filing cabinets in the garage. We need to look there."

Sam nodded, still pondering the word manifesto.

"Of course, Ben never bothered to give me the slightest hint about any of this." Haley set her jaw in the familiar expression and shook her head.

"I know that hurts," Sam said.

"Wait, don't tell me-it was for my own protection." She shook her head again and kept driving. After a moment she said, "You know what?"

"What?"

"I'm sure now that the beach house meeting had to do with Ben's secrets."

"It means we definitely need to check the beach house." Sam was feeling almost human again with the powerful blast of the Blazer's heat. "So what did these 'few good men' talk about, then? The end of the world in a giant cloud of methane?"

"Something like that, I guess." She saw Sam's look and sighed. "Really, I'm trying not to be upset about Ben keeping me out of it. At least some things are making more sense."

"Do you know anything about a meeting with Nelson Gempshorn and Sarah James together on a Sunday? I found a note in Ben's pants at Sanker."

"Nelson Gempshorn and Sarah James together?"

"That's what the note said."

Haley shook her head. "Nope."

"You're sure. Not on a Sunday?"

"Not on any day."

Sam looked at her.

"Well, not with Sarah and not on Sunday. I met with Nelson Gempshorn. It was after that time when I found them with the IV I didn't mention it expressly because they asked me to pretend the meeting never happened."

"So tell me what did happen."

"I feel so stupid now," she said. "I believed the whole thing was about cancer and Nelson wanting to hide it from his family. But he spent half the time telling me what a great man Ben was, in epic terms, as if he were Julius Caesar. I couldn't relate cancer to the epic 'historical figure' stuff. Now, of course, a different possibility is emerging. But still it tells us nothing concrete. That's another reason I didn't mention it."

"I think Ben planned for you and Sarah to meet with Nelson today."

"You're kidding."

He showed her the piece of paper while she was driving. "See the bit about the flowers?"

"That's no surprise. Sarah would be elated, because I don't think Ben's been that overt, but it's hard for the rest of us to miss."

"I have a hunch that had everything unfolded as planned, he would have had you and Sarah go away from here today," Sam said. "We just never got there."

Haley thought about that for a moment.

"I think somebody may be following," Sam said. "Headlights behind us. Douse your lights. Before the next intersection, take the corner hard left and ditch him."

Haley did as he said. They could see almost nothing without the headlights. She turned and found the road, but slowed because of the visibility problem.

Traveling past the intersection, the car following, not a marked police car, turned hard, lost control, and slid off into the forest edge.

"Take off," Sam said.

She turned on the headlights, accelerated, and followed the road to where it made a ninety-degree turn to the right, and then after one more intersection, rejoined Mud Bay Road.

"Not good," Sam said. "They probably have the license number."

"We'll be at the Williamses' place soon. I'm going to take the long way around because the shortest route brings us near Ben's."

It took only about ten minutes to find the private gravel drive. Sam now had a steady blast of heat on his legs and torso that made it tough to leave.

As they exited the Blazer, lights came on overhead, from a motion detector, Sam assumed.

"That's not helpful," Sam said, hating the light and the signal it would give to anyone who might see the place from around the bay. It was unnerving and that, no doubt, was the purpose.

The Williams home sat on a flat nestled between a few trees to either side and overlooking the quiet bay. A quarter of a mile down the bay, Sam saw a trawler-design yacht riding at anchor. In the light of the full moon, he could see that she was a substantial little ship, maybe seventy feet long and probably a multimillion-dollar vessel.

"Do you know anything about that boat?" Sam asked.

"No. Maybe someone in for Thanksgiving?" She pointed inland. "There's a house up a bank there-you can see the lights behind a couple trees."

"We better hope they don't notice our lights and make phone calls."

"Those people keep to themselves; I doubt they'll be calling anyone."

The Williamses' two-story house had been well-designed and obviously built by a rich man. A lawn sloped toward the beach and above it grew well-groomed gardens fenced in to keep out the deer. A covered porch featured handmade balustrades; copper gutters that reflected gold in the night light. Houses such as this, on the waterfront, were either built long ago or recently by the wealthy.

They walked along the path from the parking area and intermittent shallow steps formed of rock. Haley went to a man-made garden pond, which had a ceramic frog in it. In the bottom of the frog was a key. They opened the door to exquisitely planned, early-American decor. Haley went straight to a thermostat and turned on the heat. Then she went out the back onto the covered porch.

"Hopefully, the caretaker won't come around for the few minutes we're here," she said when she came back in. "We are really in luck. He's left the hot tub on. Either that or the local teenagers have figured out a good thing."

"First get me some bandages to fix your arm. We need antiseptic," Sam observed.

"Fair enough."

She disappeared again.

Haley found a bathroom and switched on the light. As she did so, she realized that anyone near the house might have seen it come on. A momentary glance took in a frightened, bedraggled woman. Her hair was a mess and it got worse from there. She tried to rub some of the dirt from her face as best she could and then used warm water and soap to finish the job. She wished there were time for a shower.

Quickly she looked in the cupboard under the sink and came up with a large first-aid kit. She switched off the light and looked out over a back porch rimmed with forest.

She audibly gasped. Standing five feet from the window and to the side was a shape that looked like a man. She looked closer and in the moonlight saw him back into the shadow of the house.

She ran back to Sam.

"Someone's out back, just standing there."

Immediately Sam seemed to come to life. He slipped out the front door, still sopping wet. For a moment she stood there in shock, wondering if they should flee. Then, determined not to be left behind, she followed him around the front corner of the house.

Before she arrived at the back, she heard struggling.

"Stop it!" It was a kid's voice. "Let go!"

Sam appeared, holding the hand of a teenager in some type of fighting hold where the boy's hand was scrunched to his side and behind.

"Tell the lady what you were doing."

"Going for a walk. Ouch!"

"You got one more chance to tell her what you were doing," Sam said. "If you don't, I'm taking you to the sheriff."

"I was looking in the window. I'm sorry."

"Go home," Sam said. "Think about whether you really want to be known as a lizard who sneaks around spying on women in the night. The neighborhood pervert."

Sam let him go and the kid disappeared like a wild trout from the hook.

"He came around the corner and ran right into me, otherwise I never would have caught him," Sam said. "Now we have to decide whether to stay here."

"I don't think he'll be bringing this up at home, but you never know." Haley shivered.

"It's a chance I'm willing to take to get warm."

They walked back toward the front door.

"Let's get in the hot tub and then put a bandage on your arm," Sam said.

"I'm not getting in the hot tub."

"Then just let me do your bandage."

"We'll get you out of your wet clothes and in a blanket first," Haley said. "Then we do the bandage."

She was already undoing the buttons on his shirt.

She stripped off his clothes about as fast as a man could peel a banana and she used speed and efficiency to cover for her nervousness. When she got to his undershorts, she hesitated, gave him a towel, and decided she should turn her back. He groaned from the pain of moving as he got the underwear off and the towel on.

"What's bothering you? Surely not a naked man."

"Nothing is bothering me," she said with clipped certainty.

Sam was close and massive and she felt like she very much wanted to put her hands on his body. For her it was an uncommon urge. For a second she thought about just letting go and doing it. There was the matter between them. Some things could not be left to fester unresolved for over a decade.