Mark of the Devil (29 page)

Mingled with the distant sound of sirens, growing steadily louder, Matt heard the sucking scream of a man who had just lost part of his throat and would soon bleed to death.

Tuesday, 6 November 2001

“Goddamn it, Berkeley,” Hammersmith cursed, “you are a walking fucking bloodbath. You kill your wife and her lover—”

“Not true, and you know it,” Matt shot back. The palm of his hand slammed down against the empty paper cup in front of him, crushing it against the top of the table.

“And now, two more,” Hammersmith went on. “Out on bail not more than a week and you shoot one guy and rip the shit out of another guy’s throat so he bleeds to death.”

As the door to the interview room opened, Matt could see the clock in the hallway over Detective Sergeant Terri Good’s shoulder: 4 a.m. He’d been there since sometime before midnight. Even the overhead fluorescent lights and the bare, DayGlo yellow walls weren’t enough to keep him from yawning. Since this was his third visit to the same room since Sam Gravely’s and Ashley’s deaths, he guessed the old adage was right. Familiarity did breed contempt.

“This is getting to be a habit, Mr. Berkeley,” Good said, but if her remark was meant to be humorous, Matt felt no inclination to laugh. “This yours?” She placed a plastic evidence bag containing a mud-encrusted semiautomatic pistol on the table.

“If it’s a nine millimeter Beretta Cougar with…” He thought a moment. “If my memory serves me, with six rounds left—one in the chamber, five in the magazine—and the initials MWB engraved on the right side of the slide, it’s mine. How’d you find it?”

Terri Good’s feigned friendliness during their previous meetings was now a thing of the past. All business; no smiles. “Metal detector. If the bullets in this pistol match those in the man that was shot last night, we have a major problem, don’t we?”

Matt gave a soft laugh at the word
problem.
“Sergeant, my whole life has been one problem after another since I came down to fix my aunt’s roof and sell the house.” Matt leaned forward for a better look at the pistol. “Yes, that’s the pistol I shot the sonofabitch on the bank with. If I’d been a better shot, I would’ve hit the other guy before he attacked me in the marsh. Which, as I’ve already told you, wasn’t the first time he’s tried to get me.”

It was Hammersmith’s turn. This time, however, he was playing the good guy. “Look, Berkeley, we’re just trying to understand what happened last night.”

Matt threw up his hand. “Pretty damn simple, you ask me.”

“That’s what I’m doin’. I’m asking you. Tell us, and maybe we can help.”

Taking a deep breath, Matt said, “For the umpteenth time, they’d been following us since we got on Butler Boulevard off the interstate. Probably since the Omni Hotel in Jacksonville, but we didn’t notice. On top of the bridge over the intracoastal, I slowed to get them to pass. They passed, all right. Rammed us and tried to push us over the side. Fortunately, they didn’t succeed until we reached the foot of the bridge. Forced us off the road and into the marsh.”

“You’re sure it was intentional?” Good asked.

“Shot at us after the first hit. Two more times they rammed us, third time the charm. Check the brush bars on the front of the pickup for white paint. It’ll match the Jeep’s.”

“Whatever they did,” Good inserted, “you didn’t have the right to be judge, jury,
and
executioner.”

Matt shook his head in disbelief. “C’mon, Sergeant, you’ve gotta be kidding.”

“No kidding, Mr. Berkeley. Out on bail for a possible manslaughter charge, using a concealed weapon—”

“Told you the first time I was here, Sergeant, I have a concealed weapons license for the state of Florida. Copy in the glove compartment of the Jeep. Probably ruined, so you can check with the state.”

“You tell us those two men were trying to kill you after you went into the marsh,” Hammersmith said. “How do you know? Maybe the Jeep just exploded from the crash.”

Smoothing out, then again crushing the empty paper coffee cup to relieve his frustration, Matt said, “You just goddamn refuse to listen, don’t you? Pull the Jeep out of the marsh and check the underside, or what’s left of it. You’ll find rounds from the Colt three fifty-seven Magnum the big guy had. I gave it to that corporal at the scene. I don’t know how many shots were fired the first time. Must’ve reloaded and tried again. That’s when the gas tank blew.”

“And the man with his throat torn out?” Good demanded. “We know you were Special Warfare in the Navy, but do you make it a habit doing things like that?”

“Sergeant, if somebody tries to kill you, you do what you’ve gotta do to stay alive.” Matt zeroed in on Terri Good’s eyes and then on Hammersmith’s. “Yes, like I was trained to do, I killed him in selfdefense. Probably still some of his skin and whatever else under the fingernails of my right hand. I killed him so Steve Park and I could live. And in your business, you would do the same. End of story.”

Matt sat back and studied the ceiling, the glare of the fluorescent lights creating tears in his eyes. Snapping his eyelids shut to flush the moisture and wiping his cheeks with the sleeve of the shirt he’d been issued, he said, “Speaking of Steve, what have you done with him? He had nothing to do with the guys that hit us, and he busted his ankle in the crash.”

“Not busted,” Good said. “Sprained. X-rayed, wrapped, and on his way home. Son picked him up after we took his statement.”

“Must be nice to have friends on the police force,” Matt said, a sarcastic chuckle in his voice. “Since I apparently don’t, looks like it’s time I found myself a good lawyer.”

At that moment, the door opened and a uniformed policeman with lieutenant’s bars on both shirt collars said, “Detective Sergeant Good?” He motioned for her to step into the hallway. As she turned and walked through the doorway, something clicked in Matt’s brain. Good’s hair, the back of her neck, the solid but shapely build of her shoulders and waist. Not in the day-to-day civvies she normally wore. Something more formal. From the rear, something familiar about the way she looked, the way she stood as she closed the door behind her. The Omni Hotel? It was almost on the tip of his tongue when Hammersmith leaned across the table and half-whispered, “If you’ve got any real evidence that AFI and Shoemaker are behind this, evidence that—”

As the door opened and Good stepped back in, Matt asked Hammersmith, “What are you saying, Detective?”

Hammersmith jerked back in his chair and blasted, “Evidence—that’s what I said. We get the evidence, and I’m gonna personally see you rot, not
in
the jail, but
under
the jail.”

“But you mentioned—”

With a peripheral eyeshot at Good, Hammersmith cut Matt off with a rapid, “Shut up! I’ve heard enough of your crap.”

“You have become an unmitigated nuisance, Mr. Berkeley,” Good said, moving around the room, shaking her head, but keeping her eyes glued on Matt. “Quite honestly, like the detective here, I’m getting damned tired of it. At this point, if I had my way…”

Good stopped in front of Matt and propped herself, knuckles down, on the table. Pushing her face forward toward Matt, she said, “Apparently you’ve got friends in higher places than the Jacksonville Beach Police Force.”

“Whatta you sayin’?” Hammersmith asked, his right eyebrow cocked in Good’s direction.

“I’m saying, Mr. Berkeley is free to go.”

“No way,” Hammersmith blurted.

“You can go, Mr. Berkeley,” Good said, straightening up and walking to the door. Pulling the door open, she added, “Under no circumstance are you to leave Duval County. You will report your whereabouts every six hours to my office, commencing at noon today. Understood?”

Standing, but in shock over what was happening, Matt answered, “Understood, but who the hell—”

“No buts,” Good ordered, jabbing an index finger in Matt’s direction. “Report, or your ass will be grass and I’ll be the lawnmower.”

The crime scene tape had finally been removed from Aunt Freddie’s house at 617 Fourth Avenue North when Matt arrived in the bright orange and white Gator City Taxi at a little after five that morning. The driver gave Matt a quizzical look when he handed him a still wet ten-dollar bill.

“It’ll dry,” Matt said as he stepped from the taxi. “Keep the change.”

“Big deal,” he heard the driver say as he shut the door and made his way beneath the empty carport to the front door. He was hungry, but he needed sleep. Sleep to erase the previous night, to erase Ashley’s death, to erase everything—at least for an hour, two hours, three.

Using the key Detective Sergeant Terri Good had returned to him, he made his way into the living room, shut the door behind him, and stopped. Silence, but he knew the house was alive with Ashley’s presence, her pain, her last moments. He could hear the walls crying, “Ashley died here. Your love, your life,
your
fault. If you hadn’t…” But it wasn’t the walls, he knew. It was his conscience. It had nagged at him constantly. He’d been able to move from one thing to another, to keep the thoughts pushed into some remote corner of his mind, but here, alone in this house, there was no escape.

He could still smell the mud from the marsh. He needed a shower. Maybe that would wash away some of the stench and some of the memories, if only for a few moments. Forcing back a deep yawn, he made it as far as the living room couch.

The door to the bedroom. He swung it open. In front of him, a bed, two figures, a man and a woman. His eyes centered on a gaping hole in the woman’s left cheek where a bullet had entered.

Blood ran like a river over the woman’s chin and along her throat, flowing crimson toward another hole in her lower left breast as she begged, “Matt, help me!”

“Ashley-y-y-y!”

The sound of his own voice, shouting Ashley’s name, jarred him awake. “Oh, God,” he moaned. Bolting upright and opening his eyes, he quickly covered them from the afternoon sunlight that poured through the window. He sat for a moment, allowing the tears to flow and slowly shaking his head back and forth. “I’m sorry, Ashley. So sorry.”

Except for the plywood sheets having been removed from the windows, and the sandbags carted away, Monkey’s Uncle Tavern, for the most part, looked the same as it had the last time Matt had entered. It took a moment for Matt to adjust his eyes to semi-darkness, having just come in out of the afternoon glare. Once acclimated to the change, he saw Steve Park at the far right end of the rectangular bar, beer in one hand, hamburger in the other, deep in conversation with an elderly black man. Thin as a rail and with white hair, the man appeared to be in his late sixties or seventies.

“There you are,” he said to Park, seated on one of the green vinyl-covered bar stools. “Checked at the dive shop. Steve Jr. said you had a message for me, and you’d be over here nursing a beer and feeding your face. How’s that ankle of yours?”

Park swung around on the bar stool, held up a walking cane, and shoved his left foot, soft cast and all, in Matt’s direction. “Cast makes it look worse than it is. For sympathy purposes. Two or three days and it’s off. And you? Terri Good said you’d been released and gone to your aunt’s house to get some sleep.”

“Yeah, roofers came while I was in the shower this afternoon and started ripping off the old shingles. Hopefully, the beginning of the end…of a lot of things. Already been chewed out by Good for not checking in with her on time.” Matt pointed to the cast. “Hurt?”

“Like hell, but at least it’s not broken. How’d you get sprung?”

“Good wouldn’t say. Just said it was somebody with more pull than the Jax Beach Police Department. I was so wrung out, I didn’t argue.”

“What’d you do to get here?” Park asked. “I know damn well you didn’t walk.”

“Believe it or not, remembered my aunt’s old bike in the back store room, pumped up the tires, and here I am. But you’re right. Beats walking, if some idiot doesn’t run over you.”

The bartender moved from another customer on the other side of the bar and stopped in front of Matt. “What’ll it be?”

Matt nodded toward the half-eaten hamburger on Park’s plate. “A burger with everything on it, an order of fries and onion rings, and a draft Killian’s Red.” Pointing, he added, “Beer now, hamburger at the booth over there. And mayonnaise for the fries.”

“Mayo with fries?” Park asked, the sides of his mouth drooping in disgust. “Gross!”

“Old European custom,” Matt answered with a laugh. At the same time, he reached for the frosted mug the bartender plunked down on the counter. “If you can make it to the table without me carrying you, I want to know, what was the message Steve Jr. talked about and who’s it from? I will, however, carry your plate.”

“No sweat.” As Park slid off the stool, beer mug in one hand, walking cane in the other, he nodded to the elderly man sitting next to him. “Roland, time for you to meet my friend here.”

Matt watched the man get off the stool, a short man, not more than five foot six, if that, but lean and weathered. “Think we need to talk privately, Steve,” Matt said. “Just the two of us.”

“Don’t worry,” Park said, again nodding in the man’s direction. “I read the message Steve Jr. told you about, and decided it’s time we brought a real pro on board.”

“Whatta you mean?”

As they reached the booth, Park said, “Roland, Matt Berkeley, former Commander, Navy Special Warfare.” Roland Davis extended his hand. “Matt, Roland Davis, Lieutenant Commander, U. S. Navy retired, and to be more specific, Submarine Force.”

Setting Park’s plate and his own beer mug on the table, Matt took Davis’s hand. “Submarines, huh?”

“Long time ago, but there are some things one never forgets. And you were SpecWar?”

“For most of my career. Moved over to Surface Warfare in my later years. Instead of ships, found I was driving too many desks for too many admirals who had forgotten how to think for themselves.” Sliding into one side of the booth, Matt turned his attention to Park as the other two men, first Davis, then Park, slid in opposite him. “Now, what is this all about?”

Taking a sip of his beer and clearing his throat, Park pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “One of the secretaries in Tallahassee called over for a fax number. From Dr. Mason. For you in care of the store.” He gave the paper to Matt.

Matt unfolded the paper and read, then asked Park, “You read this?”

“Yeah. That’s why Roland’s here.”

Matt nodded in Roland Davis’s direction. “And you told him?”

“Yes, damn it, I told him. Dr. Mason says Starla Shoemaker admits there’s some kind of valuable document on the sub. The woman also admits they haven’t found it yet. That being the case, if I know you, you’ll try for it, won’t you?”

Matt sat very still, maneuvering the beer mug by its handle, back and forth, considering what he’d just learned. “Maybe.” Again nodding at Davis, Matt asked, “But why bring him into this?”

Park took a bite of his hamburger, chewed for a moment before swallowing, then said, “Roland joined the Navy just after the end of Second World War. Ended up in submarines.”

“Torpedoman’s Mate,” Davis threw in.

“Came up through the ranks,” Park added.

Matt studied the man. The set of his jaw lines seemed chiseled from a bar of stone-hard milk chocolate. His eyes deep set, piercing, each a pool of brown surrounded by a ring of off-white. Not an ounce of fat anywhere; only hard muscle and bone.

“Your commission, where?” Matt asked.

“Officer Candidate School, Newport, Rhode Island. First black enlisted man to go through and make it.”

Matt paid little attention to the cheeseburger, fries and onion rings that suddenly appeared before him. “Back to subs after you got your commission?” he asked.

“Right, but it’s a lotta years before then that I think you might find interesting.”

“Okay, guys, enlighten me.”

Davis looked at Park, who was washing down the last bite of his burger with a swig of beer. “Ball’s in your court, my friend.”

Park burped into his hand, settled back in his seat, and explained, “I knew Roland was Navy and in subs most of his career, but what I didn’t know…I told him about what we found out there.” Park nodded toward the east and the Atlantic.

“Why not? Everybody else seems to know,” Matt said, shaking his head in disgust.

“Don’t shake your head at me, goddamn it, ‘til you hear the rest.”

“So tell me.”

Park looked at Davis. “Your turn.”

Davis chuckled before leaning forward, his elbows on the table. “Ever hear of the U-Twenty-five thirteen, Mr. Berkeley?”

Matt set his cheeseburger down and, with his face knotted in a question mark, met Davis’s eyes with his own. “Yes. Why? Class Twenty-one German U-boat. Brought to the States after the war and used for tests and evaluation.” To Park, he said, “The one Sam Gravely told me about.”

Davis leaned back, arms folded. Matt read confidence in the man’s face, as well as certainty in his own intelligence and abilities. “Fall of nineteen forty-six. By then I was a Third Class Torpedoman’s Mate. Not knowing much what to do with a black sailor in those days, Navy stationed me with the Operational Development Force down in Key West when they brought the Twenty-five thirteen down from Charleston after an overhaul. I worked on her for six months of design evaluation of the boat itself in conjunction with development of submarine and antisubmarine tactics. Beat hell out of anything we had.”

“So?” Matt asked.

It was Park that answered. “So he knows that submarine like the back of his hand, damn it. Ashley said, and your friend in Germany as much as agreed, there’s something on that submarine besides gold. If there is and the AFI people haven’t found it as Dr. Mason says, Roland here is the man to do it.”

Matt chuckled in disbelief. “You might know your way around this thing,” he said to Davis, “but what good’s that gonna do Steve and me?”

“I’ll go down with you.”

Looking at Davis with a
you’ll-do-what?
frown on his face, Matt asked, “How old are you?”

“Seventy-seven, and I just got back from diving Truk Lagoon last July and the Jap ships we sunk there in ‘forty-four. Went down a hundred and thirty feet. If it wasn’t for all the trouble after Nine-eleven, I was headed for the Red Sea. Instead, decided on the Caymans. Going next week.”

“Satisfied?” Park asked with a chuckle.

Matt sat for a moment, savoring his French fries and mayo before answering, “I’m sold. As my favorite detective once said, ‘the game’s afoot, Watson,’ or in this case, gentlemen. This time, however, we approach our quarry a little differently.”

“How’s that?”

“We’ll be there, but then again, so far as Eric Bruder and his AFI friends are concerned, they won’t see us.”

“Clarify.”

Matt downed the last of his beer, wrapped what remained of his cheeseburger in a paper napkin to take with him, and said, “Let’s get back to the dive shop, and I’ll explain what we need. If we don’t have it or can’t get it locally, I’ll have NAARPA fly it down from Charleston tomorrow morning. This time, my friends, we do it right.” Looking at Park, he asked, “Weather?”