The Dead Room

30

‘Forgive me for asking the obvious question,’ Darby said, ‘but you’re positive Special Agent Alan was on the boat?’

‘I am, but you don’t have to take my word for it,’ Jennings said. ‘Read the FBI transcripts. That is, if the FBI will let you. It took me, oh, I don’t know, three months of visiting their office every morning before they finally produced the transcripts of what happened that night.’

‘Did you ask to listen to the audio?’ Darby knew the Feds recorded the communications between the boat and the command post.’

‘As a matter of fact, they did,’ Jennings said. ‘Sadly, they wouldn’t allow me to listen to the tapes, citing that they were part of an ongoing Federal investigation.’

Darby grinned. ‘You don’t trust the Feds?’

Jennings laughed. ‘I know, I know. I should place more faith in our government officials. But I’m a stubborn old man, Miss McCormick. I’ve seen too many things here in Charlestown – things that would make the hair on the back of your pretty neck stand on end. I’ll tell them to you sometime, but right now I want to know how a Federal agent has somehow resurrected himself from the dead only to wind up being shot to death inside Kevin Reynolds’s basement – which is full of human remains, no less. If you have any ideas or theories, I’d love to hear them.’

For the next twenty minutes she led Jennings through her brushes with the unidentified men in the woods, the driver of the brown van and the cameraman with his laser mike.

‘Now that is an interesting development,’ Jennings said after she finished. Then he glanced down at the body. ‘And this man is Peter Alan. I’ll bet my salary for the entire year on it. But don’t take my word for it. His prints will be stored in the database.’

Darby nodded. All federal and state employees – all law enforcement personnel – had their fingerprints stored inside the national fingerprint database, IAFIS. ‘I’ll print him here,’ she said. ‘I’ll call someone from the lab to get the fingerprint card so we can get a head start.’

Footsteps moved to the top of the basement steps.

‘Hey, Stan,’ the patrolman from the kitchen said.

‘Yeah, what’s up?’

‘Is there something wrong with your phone?’

‘I don’t think so. Why?’

‘Tim’s been trying to call you and said he keeps getting your voicemail. He’s got a lead on Reynolds.’

‘Coop called you earlier but couldn’t get you on the phone,’ Darby said. ‘I tried calling you from the road and kept getting your voicemail.’

Jennings took out his phone and examined it. ‘That’s odd.’

‘What?’ Darby asked.

‘It’s dead. I thought the battery was charged when I left the house. I’ll have to grab a spare.’ He turned to the stairs and shouted, ‘Get Tim on the phone; I’ll be right up.’

Jennings reached into his pocket, came back with a business card and handed it to Darby.

‘These gentlemen you mentioned seeing in Belham today: if you see them again I want to know. I might be able to help you identify them.’

‘How will I get in touch with you?’

‘Talk to Jake – that’s the patrolman upstairs in the kitchen. He’ll be able to track me down.’

‘Before you go, post someone at the front door. If these men I mentioned are lurking around, I don’t want them to gain access to the house. I’d also like to call Detective Pine from Belham and bring him into this, as the two cases are related.’

‘As long as everyone shares, I don’t have a problem.’

‘You won’t have a problem.’

‘Good. Keep me in the loop.’

‘Will do.’

Jennings ran up the basement steps. Darby turned her attention to the cardboard box packed with bones.

Two skulls stained brown from their time buried in the soil. Judging by the smooth cheekbones and shape of the foreheads, both skulls belonged to Caucasian females.

‘Darby.’

She turned to see Coop standing just a few feet away.

‘While you were talking with Jennings, I tried calling the ME’s office,’ he said. ‘I kept getting static.’

She took out her phone. It turned on fine but the screen kept flickering.

‘All of our phones aren’t working?’ Coop said. ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’

She thought back to what she’d seen earlier on the hospital video. The man posing as Special Agent Phillips – Peter Alan, according to Jennings – had brought with him some sort of high-energy radio frequency device that fried the circuitry inside the hospital’s security cameras, computers and phones. Was there some sort of HERF device down here?

Darby looked around the basement. A small black plastic device sat on the top of a chest-of-drawers. The unit was the size of a pack of cigarettes and had a tiny glowing green light. No buttons, only a switch. She turned it and the green light disappeared.

She checked her phone. The screen had stopped flickering.

‘Try your phone.’

He did. ‘It seems to be working. No interference. That device, is that the HERF thing Teddy C. told you about?’

‘I don’t think so. If it was, our phones would be dead. My guess is it’s some sort of jamming device.’

‘Then why is Jennings’s phone dead?’

‘Don’t know.’ She crouched again and searched the rest of the man’s pockets.

Inside the suit jacket she found another black device – this one flat, maybe half the size of a paperback book. It had a thick rubber antenna and a blue LED with a frequency number. I think I found your HERF device, Ted.

The device didn’t seem to be turned on – if it had been, their phones wouldn’t be working at all.

Darby looked at the spent rounds scattered across the floor.

‘There’re nineteen of them,’ Coop said.

A normal nine held sixteen. An extended mag could accommodate the number of spent shells lying on the basement floor. Given the tight pattern of shots on the body, she guessed the Glock eighteen had been set to semi-automatic fire.

Coop had moved to the dusty four-drawer oak chest lying at an angle next to the Asian armoire. He sidled up to an old mattress and dismantled bed frame leaning against the wall and turned on his flashlight.

‘Take a look at this,’ he said, and shined the beam of light behind the chest.