Flutter (28 page)

Coltrain descended the stairs full of confidence. He had only agreed to the search after speaking with Diana the day before. She had given permission and was happy to cooperate. He saw Sanchez taking pictures and said, “Please, ma’am. Not out here.” He wanted to be discreet. Sanchez lowered her camera. He continued, “I’m Kasper Coltrain.” He stretched out his hand to Detective Brown.

Brown said, “I’m Detective Brown, these are Detectives Finch and Tammy and Sachez who will be assisting us.”

Coltrain shook hands with all of them and said, “This way.” They followed him up the stairs and through the front door. “I’ve been trying to keep the property up myself. I sent over some landscapers, but I need to do a better job staying on top of this.”

Once inside, Tammy and Sanchez walked off through the house taking pictures. Coltrain didn’t bother them. He was interested in helping.

“What discoveries have you made so far?” Coltrain asked.

Finch answered, “Unfortunately, most of what we know hasn’t given us enough to locate a body or find him. No one is speaking. He was extremely private; his wife has been out of the country, and his closest partner is dead. We have a few theories but nothing leading us to a direct answer.”

“We are trying to connect this case to another one,” Brown jumped in. Finch’s eyes widened. She felt it was too much information to share but she let Brown take the lead and trusted his decision to let Coltrain know a little more. “If we can connect him to that case, then we may even be able to connect him to Jiang’s murder. But as she said it’s mostly speculation.”

“Have you found anything at all?” Coltrain asked.

“Yes, we have; but we cannot say much more about it. I hope you understand,” Brown said.

Coltrain nodded, “Indeed I do.”

Finch asked, “When was the last time you heard from Benson?” Meghan had her phone open and ready to take notes. She started a new file in the ROBERT BENSON folder:

KASPER COLTRAIN

ATTORNEY

He answered, “About one week before he went missing. He called me about trying to look over some paperwork. I got the impression he wanted to start an LLC or a corporation. He wasn’t sure which did what so I wanted to remind him of the differences between the two and the tax benefits, protection of his personal assets, stuff like that.”

Finch asked, “Did he tell you what type of company it was?”

“No,” he said. “I wasn’t sure what it was about. I do know that he and Alan Jiang had had a disagreement about some investments, and I assumed he was ready to leave the company and do his own thing. I didn’t want to ask over the phone. We never got a chance to meet about it.” 

They walked into the living room and then into Benson’s study. Meghan went through some files on the desk. She opened a desk drawer and fiddled through a few files. She asked, “Did he keep a computer?”

“He had a laptop that he carried everywhere. I haven’t seen it. Maybe he took it with him on his trip.”

Brown said, “Trip?”

“Yeah. He said he needed to get away and do some work. He needed to be alone and sort some things out.”

“Did he say where he was going?” Finch asked. 

“He said he had to go to somewhere in upstate New York. It was around the same time Alan was murdered. Right before, actually.” Coltrain added.

Brown asked, “Do you remember the city?”

Kasper thought for a moment, “Oh it’s on the tip of my tongue. U– U...”

“Utica.” Brown asked.

“Yes! Utica! That’s where it was.” This caught Meghan and Sydney’s ears. “He said he was going to book a hotel room up there and take some time to himself. I figured it was bullshit, but what do I know? I figured he was covering for something else.”

“Covering for what?” Brown asked.

“I’m just speculating based on his behavior and the questions he asked. He was covering for whatever business he was investigating. Benson never takes ‘personal’ time. My hunch is that he was cutting a side deal with a company and may have needed to meet with them. I’m just not sure which one.”

“I think I have an idea,” Finch said. She opened the new file and typed in one last entry:

INDIGO, INC. UTICA, NY

Tammy and Sanchez returned after taking numerous pictures throughout the house. They took fingerprint samples and filed them away. They checked the beds, the bathrooms and the backyard. They checked the refrigerator, but Kasper had already removed the spoiling food. They would have preferred he left in order to get an accurate count of how long it had been since he left the house. Finch and Brown took a few files with the permission of Benson’s attorney. They stayed there for about five hours, sifting through everything. Finch and Brown left, parting ways with Coltrain, Tammy and Sanchez and decided to return to their plan to pay a visit to Eddie Cons. 

It was early evening. Meghan and Sydney left Benson’s house, discussing their notes. Their biggest find was the possibility of a connection between Benson and the company called Indigo Inc, whose name had surfaced once again. Finch and Brown took another look at the pictures from MIT which only served to refuel their rage while on their way to Eddie Cons apartment. When they reached their destination, they parked in front of the apartment complex and looked up. They could see Cons’ lights were on. They went up the stairs and knocked on the door. Detective Brown banged on Cons door vigorously. No answer. They stood there for a moment. Brown banged on the door again.

Cons finally answered, “YES YES YES! WHAT DO YOU WANT?” There was a commotion on the other side of the door. He must have tripped over the clutter. 

Finch yelled back, “It’s Detectives Finch and Brown. We want to follow up with you. Can you please open the door?”

“Give me a minute please.” Cons shuffled around in his place for a while. Meghan was losing patience. Brown grabbed a piece of paper out of his pocket. After about a minute Cons opened the door. His apartment was a mess. He held up a sandwich on a plate and said, “I made lunch. Want a bite?”

Detective Brown was furious. He pushed a printout of the pictures of the severed arm into Cons chest and pushed him backwards into the apartment until Cons fell back onto the couch. He managed to keep the plate balanced and the sandwich intact. Brown asked, “What is this?”

“What are you talking about?” He didn’t understand until he saw the pictures. Cons inspected them and knew he was in trouble. “Ok… I can explain.”

Brown said, “You better have a damned good explanation for this one.”

Finch tried to calm the situation down, “What did you do with the ring, Cons?”

Eddie looked down in shame and saw the sandwich on his plate. He decided to take a bite of the sandwich.

Brown was so upset he slapped the sandwich out of his hand and yelled, “WHERE THE FUCK IS THE RING?”

Cons was terrified, “I uh… I pawned it,” he said, with a mouth full of turkey, grape jelly, cheese and wheat bread. 

Finch said, “You pawned the ring!? Are you stupid? You’re a real piece of work. All this talk about being sick and throwing up. You’re a fucking liar!”

Eddie swallowed the food in his mouth and said, “It’s true. I was sick, I just…”

Brown said, “Fucking idiot. You better give me a reason not to arrest you right now.” Brown reached in his jacket and pulled out his cuffs.

“I can explain. I can explain. Just give me a second,” Eddie said. He held his chest as if he was having chest pains. 

Finch said, “Cut the shit, Eddie. Start talking.”

Eddie took a hard swallow and said, “I saw the arm and freaked out. The guard just so happened to be passing by the room so I knocked on the glass in a full panic. I didn’t know what to do. We both looked at the arm and... It was the guard. He told me to take the ring.”

Brown asked, “Why would he do that?”

Finch answered, “To raise suspicion around Cons.”

“And not himself,” Brown continued. “Let’s go. And Eddie, you stay in town. Tampering with police evidence during an official investigation can mean some serious jail time. You’d better get a lawyer. A good one.” 

Finch and Brown walked out and slammed the door behind them.

Abigail sat in her room looking at the black bag which contained the suit. Abigail and Roger spent the afternoon looking up the keywords: Plum Island, Project Gray Scale, Alan Jiang and Indigo Incorporated. They printed page after page of articles and pictures, looking for connections. Abigail opened Dr. Paltee’s journal. Initially she hesitated, unsure of what she would discover, but her curiosity overpowered her apprehensions. She flipped through the pages of the first book, looking at notes and pictures of various children documented over a few years. 

She saw the man she remembered fighting until he let her go in the cornfield. There were pictures of him as well. “FLUTTER 14” was written underneath his profile picture. She flipped through and saw a few more faces of boys and girls. She suddenly began to remember more about her past but not everything. She remembered FLUTTER 25a and FLUTTER 25b– twin brothers with dark, short hair. They looked withdrawn. She flipped through a few more until she saw a black and white photo of herself. 

She felt her eyes meet the eyes of her younger self in the photo, expressionless and disconnected. She was younger. Her hair was cut off. Underneath the narrow figure, the title read “FLUTTER 43”. 

Roger walked over and removed the photo from the sticky flaps that kept it in place. He could tell that Abby was feeling a pain he could not understand. He said, “This is you.”

Abigail said, “Yes. I think I remember a few of these kids.” She flipped back and showed him the twins and the man who had let her go. The one who saved her and sent her on her way was probably killed for doing so, yet here she was. She remembered. 

“You look so drained. How old do you think you were here?” He asked.

“I look about 14... 15... I’m really not sure.”

“Are you okay?” Roger asked. He was getting better at reading her. He didn’t want her to withdraw again. He saw that she was making progress and didn’t want her to slip back into an anxious or depressive state. He could tell her heart was heavy.

“Killing and dying is so easy, Roger. It’s giving life and living that costs so much. I am a killer, Roger.” She wasn’t sure why she said that, but it came out amidst an influx of memories resurfacing. Memories of different elimination assignments she had done in the past.

Abigail had once killed a lawyer to keep him from filing a case against a company in Arizona. She had entered his office undetected and slipped poison into his coffee. By the time he reached the parking lot of the courtroom he suffered a seizure. His brain exploded and leaked out his mouth and ears. His files mysteriously disappeared. She took out the witnesses and a few others disappeared. Another time, she had killed four executives who were set to testify against a Wall Street banker who allegedly ran a multimillion dollar Ponzi scheme. She killed another in his office late at night. She broke his neck in the men’s room. She had suffocated two others as they shared a hotel room, hiding under the protection of the FBI. Her last victim had disappeared without a trace.

Abigail was also a keen shooter, the best they had. Many of her cases involved killing closely guarded men and women whom she would have to kill within a window of opportunity of seconds and inches. She once had 15 seconds to shoot a 30.06 rifle bullet through a hole the size of a quarter after running for six miles straight. Then, after successful elimination of the target, she had to run another four miles to the rendezvous point, undetected, where her ride awaited her. She was always given the most difficult assignments.

She had no fear of heights. Abigail would scale buildings and trees and leap from them without hesitation. She could leap ten feet in the air without a running start. Her senses of smell and hearing were highly developed. Abigail was fast, poised and disciplined. She trained four hours a day, running, shooting, archery, and strength training. She would spend an hour a day in meditation. She also spent a significant amount of time learning computer programming, some electrical engineering, lock picking and working with explosives. She outperformed most of the other
Ezekiel
candidates in training and could not be taken down lightly in hand–to–hand battle. 

Abigail once fought a security detail of 26 men. She killed the first 11 within the first 30 seconds and fought the rest of the armed men until they were all eliminated. She ripped them limb from limb. Her target was a woman named Iris Campbell who had hidden in a panic room. Abigail placed bombs on the weakest wall, set the charges and walked away. When the bombs failed to get through, Abigail cut the communication wires to the room. She piled the dead bodies against the rear wall and began to wait. She was cut above her eye going through her eyebrow. She let the blood run and drip down her face. She sat Indian style outside of the room and did not budge or speak for four days. She sat without food, water and only walked away to urinate in a bucket. Her cold eyes stared at the opening, waiting for Iris’ inevitable surrender. Iris watched her every move from a camera inside the panic room. Abigail stalked Iris from outside. Iris was afraid for her life.

On the fourth day Abigail was feeling dehydrated and began to feel dizzy. Her dizziness was visible to Iris through the screen. The dead bodies were beginning to smell, but this didn’t bother Abigail. Iris had water and food. It was enough to last for two, maybe three weeks. She pressed the speaker and asked, “Are you hungry?” Abigail snapped out of her delusional state. She realized that she had missed her pick up and no one had checked on her. No one was coming until she made the call, and she was not ready to make the call because Iris was still alive. She was on her own and determined to complete her mission. “Are you hungry?” Iris asked again. 

Embarrassed, Abigail nodded. It was the first time she remembered feeling an emotion other than satisfaction. The blood flushed to her cheeks. Suddenly an orange fell from an opening in the side of the panic room. Then a bottle of water. Without thinking Abigail ate the orange without peeling it and drank the water quickly. Then another orange fell out of the opening. Abigail grabbed it and tucked it close to her side. She didn’t understand how the target she wanted to kill could have compassion for her potential murderer. She never knew what compassion was or had ever felt it before. She didn’t understand this target’s actions. She was intrigued.