What Comes Around

CHAPTER 10

After the service, Hawke told Brick Kelly they needed to talk. Something that couldn’t wait until next morning. At first light, Hawke was giving the Director a lift down to Washington in his plane. He would drop him off at Andrews Air Force Base before heading out over the Atlantic to his beloved getaway cottage on Bermuda.

That evening, after the funeral, the two old friends strolled down into town from the Hooker place. Gillian had been kind enough to put them up for the night, in two tiny bedrooms up on the third floor, and they’d enjoyed spending the extra time together.

They were quiet, admiring the lights coming on in the little village of North Haven, and the old boatyards and the casino before climbing the hill to the Nebo Lodge. The inn overlooked the sailboats swinging on their moorings in the tranquil harbor. Nebo was the only restaurant on the island, and it was a damn fine one by Hawke’s lights.

They ate in the bar. It was packed with mourners drowning their sorrows. Hawke had once asked an old islander why folks seemed to drink a lot around here. “Because, boy, there ain’t nothing to do and we spend all our time doing it” was the fellow’s response. Every face Hawke saw there that night he’d seen earlier at Hook’s funeral. No one paid the slightest mind to the two off-islanders talking quietly at a corner table. Hawke had discreetly given the hostess a substantial gratuity to ensure no one was seated near them.

Their drinks came and Brick solemnly raised his glass of amber whiskey.

“To Hook,” the Virginian said. “None finer, and many a damn sight worse.”

“We loved you, Hooker,” Hawke said simply, and downed his rum.

“We sure as hell did,” Brick said, and signaled the waitress for another round.

He looked at Hawke, glad of his company. It had been far too long since they’d been able to spend a quiet evening together in a place like this. Something they used to do all the time. Just bullshit and drink. Small talk would come later, they had business to discuss first.

The tall and lanky Virginian settled back in his chair toward the window, his red hair aflame in the sunset’s last rays, his sea-blue eyes alight. Brick had always had an old-fashioned, almost Jeffersonian air about him; he even looked a good deal like young Tom Jefferson in the prime of his life. He looked at Hawke and smiled.

“Well, old buddy? You said you had something to tell me,” Brick said.

“I do,” Hawke said, “And you said you had something you wanted to tell me. You first.”

Brick Kelly laughed.

“All right, Hawke, that’s how you want to be. There was a message waiting for me up in my dorm room after the funeral. The deputy director at Langley. Are you listening?”

“Fire when ready.”

“Okay. My guy. CIA Chief of Station, Paris? You know him?”

“Nope.”

“Guy named Harding Torrance. A lifer. Old friend of the Houston oil crowd, Bush forty-one appointee.”

“I remember him now, yeah. Big, strapping fellow. Real cowboy, as I recall.”

“Yeah, well, the real cowboy’s real dead.”

Hawke sat forward.

“Another one? Tell me what happened, Brick.”

“Died with his boots on, apparently. In bed in a suite at the Hotel Bristol in Paris. This was… what… roughly six hours ago now. Harding was with a woman, married, whom he’d just met in the hotel bar. Her room, she was a registered guest. All legit. You should know that this was not unusual behavior on his part. Torrance considered himself quite the swordsman. Neither here nor there, he never let it interfere with his work.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning he saved a whole lot of innocent lives in the aftermath of 9/11. That gets him a bit of a pass in my book.”

“Cause of death?”

“Coronary. Big-time. Massive. Happened in the sack. According to his newly acquired inamorata, Mrs. Crystal Saxby of Louisville, Kentucky, they were having sex when the event occurred. She says she immediately called for a house doctor and administered CPR while she was waiting, but it was too late. He was gone by the time anyone got there.”

“So sad when love goes wrong,” Hawke said, sipping his rum.

Brick smiled.

“Yeah. Apparently the husband walked in while she was still nude. Sitting on his chest and attempting mouth-to-mouth, but that’s only hearsay. One of my guys on the scene provided that picturesque grace note.”

“What do you think, Brick? Foul play?”

“Tell you this. The gendarmes and the Paris M.E. guys have already called it. Natural causes.”

“No sign of succinylcholine in his bloodstream? Or, that new heart attack dart?”

“I ordered my own autopsy. Nada on the drugs, so far. No denatured poisons, and no sign of a dart entry.”

“The heart dart leaves a mark? I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, a tiny red dot on the skin. Easy to miss. Goes away quickly, though.”

“So? Clean?”

“Yeah, maybe. I still don’t like the timing, but yeah, I suppose he just had a heart attack brought on by excessive sexual exertion. Happens all the time. I guess.”

“You guess? You never guess. What’s wrong, Brick? Tell me what you really think.”

“Hell, I don’t know, Alex. Maybe nothing. Maybe it is what it is. But a couple of troublesome details. My guys found heart meds in his pants pocket. Little silver heart-shaped pillbox from Tiffany, monogrammed. So. This coronary was no surprise attack. Nitro pills and beta-blockers in his pocket? We checked. He’s under the care of the top cardiac specialist in Paris. He feels a heart attack coming on, first thing he does, he tells the woman to call his doctor and to go get him his damn meds, right? Like, right now?”

“Anybody ask the woman that question?”

“They will tomorrow morning. I’m having her brought back in to the Prefecture for another interview. So, anyway. Who the hell knows? That’s my latest tale of mayhem and mystery. Let’s order some dinner and you tell me yours.”

Hawke took ten minutes and told Kelly everything Ben Sparhawk had said about Cam Hooker’s death while they waited for their food.

“What are you thinking?” Hawke asked Brick after a few minutes of contemplative silence from his friend.

“Question,” Brick said.

“Go.”

“Let’s be realistic here. Could someone commit a fairly sophisticated murder here in Maine on Sunday and then pull off another one four days later in Paris? Even more elaborate?” I mean, seriously. Who the hell is good enough to pull that off?”

“Cam was a pretty tough act to follow, all right.”

Hawke waited a beat and said, “Maybe we’ve got it all wrong. Can you connect any of these dots, Brick? Between these two most recent guys and the other ones? Because I’m telling you right now that if we can’t… well… mere coincidence starts to look pretty good again.”

Brick took a bite of his steak and said, “Don’t go there yet. Stay open to it. But I hear you. I’m on the connect-the-dots issue as soon as I get back to my office tomorrow. I’ll call your Bermuda number if and when I get any positive hits. Correlations, I mean.”