Pieces of the Puzzle (17 page)
Read Pieces of the Puzzle Online
Authors: Robert Stanek
Honolulu, Hawaii
Sunday,
23 January
It was a few minutes past midnight when Scott stepped into Room 1208, set his bag down and tossed the keys to the black sedan
onto an end table. The Outrigger Reef was a nice hotel. The room had two double beds and a scenic view—he had insisted on
both.
Outside the window, palm fronds swayed under a darkened sky, couples strolled along the beach, holding hands and letting the
warm water nip at their feet while gentle waves lapped at the shore. It was enough to make Scott yearn for something he couldn’t
have. Something he might never have, and for a moment his thoughts went to Cynthia.
Annoyed, he grabbed a fistful of drapes, yanked the drapes across the window, then turned to Helen. She was sitting on the
edge of one of the beds, hugging her knees and swaying back and forth. He said, “Tell me again everything Glen, I mean John,
said to you. Everything.”
She looked up at him, her eyes the eyes of a child. “He said he didn’t kill Jessica, but I know he did. I know he did.”
“What else did he say?”
“Besides the bad things?”
“Forget the bad things, Helen. I made a promise to you. I promised to help you if you helped me. I won’t let him or anyone
else hurt you.”
“He told me you worked for him, is that true?”
“That is the truth, Helen, I do work for him. I’m no saint, no white knight. I’ve done things in the name of freedom that
make me wake up in cold sweats, my heart pounding, my head throbbing. I’ve done things that I try hard to forget, but my conscience
won’t let me.” He kneeled next to her. “Did Jessica send you something?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I’m not sure what to believe anymore. So no, I don’t believe you. I don’t believe anyone… Think. A package, a letter, a postcard?”
She frowned. He continued. “Her diary says that she found something, something that was worth a lot more than anyone knew.
She told you it was worth a lot of money. She was planning on selling it to the highest bidder, was that John Ellis Wellmen?”
“What little I know came mostly from her diary, but I believe she went to Miami to sell it.”
“You told me once that you had proof Jessica had it with her and that it was worth a lot of money. That wasn’t in the diary.
How do you know she had it with her? What’s your proof?”
“I’m not proud of how I know, but I know.” She paused then said quietly, “Right before Jessica went to Miami, John visited—”Scott
was silent for a moment, then he grabbed Helen’s shoulders. “The date, what was the date?”
“The 27th, December 27. I’ll never forget—”“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. He gave me a black eye and I had to call in sick for a few days. I was there Tuesday night when Jessica packed
the suitcases. He insisted and—”“Samsonite, slate gray hardcases?”
“Bought them last Christmas for Pattie, Pattie told her she didn’t need them, and after one of her weekend visits, she left
them behind. Jessica put those three suitcases into her trunk on Wednesday evening, put a brown leather attaché case on the
seat beside her, and drove off. The gizmo was in the case because it wasn’t in the office and Jessica never let it out of
her sight. How did you know about the suitcases? They disappeared with Jessica, that’s what I told Pattie.”
He squinted and looked at her quizzically. “What do you mean by that?”
“I thought they were lost, that’s what I told Pattie.”
“Told Pattie when?”
“She came looking for them about a week after Jessica disappeared.”
Scott jumped to his feet and towered over Helen. “When did you see her and where was I?”
Helen edged away from him. “I didn’t see her. She left a note in Jessica’s apartment. She has her own key, you know.”
“When was that?”
“The day after we came back from Tampa, after the phone call, after I ran away. The first place I went was Jessica’s apartment.
I wanted her to be home, I really wanted her to be home, but she wasn’t. That’s when I saw the note and after I read it, I
called Pattie. I wanted to tell her what had happened. She and Jessica were very close, at least I thought they were.”
He closed his eyes and sucked at the air. His thoughts spun away. The pieces weren’t falling together as he had hoped, but
they were coming together. Pattie is Janet, Janet is Pattie, he told himself. In his mind’s eye he saw images of Janet and
Jessica from the video labeled 12-8. Janet’s presence at the hotel on that night was no coincidence. Her short black hair
in the wig was no coincidence. Her presence at Jessica’s apartment was no coincidence. Nothing was a coincidence. But everything
pointed to the fact that Glen didn’t have the box and didn’t know where it was, despite his elaborate scheme. The question
was, had Jessica known something was wrong? Had she figured out who Pattie really was in time to do something about it?
Helen started to say something. Scott cut her off with a wave of his hand. He paced in circles, tried to think. What if Jessica
knew enough to be cautious? What if she had two cases: One Janet believed Jessica was taking to Whuthers and one Jessica tried
to skip town with?
He put a hand to his mouth, turned and glared at Helen.
“Jessica had a brown leather case on the seat next to her?”
“The beat-up case my father used to carry.”
He swallowed hard, paced for a moment, then turned back to Helen. “The note, you said something about a note.”
“Pattie left a note. That’s why I called her.”
He grinned. He had found that one piece of the puzzle to which all the pieces of a night sky attached. He asked, “What did
the note say, what did it say exactly?”
***
By 8 a.m. Sunday, Scott had already been trapped in Keneke Kawena’s tiny corner office in downtown Honolulu for nearly an
hour with Helen pacing in nervous circles behind him. The office, a windowless eight by eight cell, was icy cold, nearly cold
enough to see his breath when he exhaled. Ken talked the entire time, even as his fingers rattled the keyboard. “So you want
I hitchhike the ether for you, find you your own cuckoo’s egg?”
“My guns, you said you could get them back from airport security. Did you—”“Email, no worries, a friend. But he knows you
not a plainclothes air marshal, pretty obvious when you leave guns in a carry-on, trigger locks or no trigger locks.”
“I had all the proper paperwork when I checked through.”
“I’m sure you did, Mr.
Miller
.” Ken paused, turned to Helen.
“How is Mrs.
Miller
by the way?”
Scott sat down on the corner of the desk and slid a list of names to Ken. “Can you do it?”
“You’re lucky I needed the overtime this week, otherwise Sunday’s I’m out fishing or surfing with my boys and you wouldn’t
catch me here until Monday.”
“Can you do it?” he repeated.
Ken grinned. “Strap on your seat belt and we’ll surf our way in. Ever surfed across the highway before?”
Scott tried to be cheerful. “Sounds interesting.” He didn’t say that if Ken just moved away from the keyboard, he might have
gotten the information he was looking for by himself already.
Ken’s fingers tapped away at the keys. He glanced at Helen as she stooped down to eye a photograph pinned to a pegboard. “Good-looking
woman,” he said to Scott.
Scott looked at Helen. She was bent over further than necessary and that, together with the open neck of the loose-fitting
dress, left little to the imagination. She winked at Scott when she saw his eyes on her.
Ken continued, “Not exactly on the up and up but I figure what the hell, I need the practice. That’s how I catch them, you
know, have to beat them at their own game. The latest craze, get this.” Ken tossed a floppy disk at Scott. “Fuzzy mutants
I call it. Got an advanced logic protocol from the realm of AI, but it’s still your basic computer halting virus, only it’s
more of a plague than a virus…”
Scott didn’t say anything; his eyes watched Ken’s fingers tap away at the keyboard.
***
It was late in the afternoon when the Hawaiian Airlines flight from LAX docked at the arrival terminal. Scott watched from
the shadows. He hoped all Ken’s information was accurate, but didn’t know why it wouldn’t be. Ken had been too excited, too
eager to help, and too thorough to have made a mistake. The only distraction was Helen, who had been flittering about the
room, enjoying it when Ken’s eyes were on her.
As Scott watched for passengers to begin deplaning, Ken’s buzzwords circled his thoughts. When the doors to the gate opened,
he put his back to the wall and buried his nose in the
Star
Bulletin.
He watched a flood of tourists, ready for the sun, race eagerly into the terminal.
He chuckled to himself because he didn’t share their enthusiasm and because he thought if he concentrated on them, he wouldn’t
see that it wasn’t only tourists, there were wives and husbands and lovers and family, all being reunited with one another.
As the tide of disembarking passengers ebbed, Scott still didn’t see Glen, but wasn’t worried because he knew Glen well enough
to know he’d probably take his time exiting the plane. Glen liked to make an entrance, especially if he thought there was
an audience.
Momentarily Scott wondered how Helen fared in the new room at the Sheraton Moana. They had checked in early that morning as
Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Greenburg of Kansas City, Missouri. Glen would get a laugh out of the suite’s single king-sized bed,
that is if he ever traced Scott and Helen to the room, which he wouldn’t because Scott was still registered at the Outrigger
Reef with their baggage and all their clothes still in the room, and the rented black sedan parked in the hotel’s parking
garage.
Scott saw stewardesses and other flight personnel passing through the gate. The muscle above his right eye started twitching
and unconsciously he wadded up the Sunday edition of the
Star
Bulletin
.
He waited, growing more agitated by the second. When an attendant closed the doors to the gate, he gulped at the air, tossed
the mangled newspaper in the trash and raced for the parking garage. Suddenly all he could think about was that Helen was
alone in the hotel room and that there was a gaping hole in his oh-so-clever plan.
***
Scott leaned down, checked the Beretta in his boot, then wrapped his hand around the doorknob. He twisted the knob and slowly
opened the door. The double beds were made up and unoccupied. The curtain was drawn. The bathroom door was open. The room,
empty.
Instinct drew him to the closet. He removed the gun from the shoulder holster, took the safety off, slipped his finger across
the trigger. An instant later, he took the Beretta out of his boot and did the same, then slowly slid open the closet door.
His heart skipped a beat as he saw a dark silhouette. He slapped the muzzle of the gun in his right hand against it and it
slid away freely.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement. He spun around, leveled the gun; a woman screamed. His heart beat wildly as
he stared at the familiar face. The face wasn’t Helen’s, but it was familiar all the same. Still, he didn’t lower the gun
or remove his finger from the trigger.
He shouted, “Did Glen send you?”
Janet looked nervously at the guns, stepped farther into the room.
Scott closed the door behind her. “How did you find me?”
Janet offered a tense smile. “Followed you from the airport, you were driving like a madman.”
“Why are you here?”
“Glen was going to kill me, Scott. I didn’t know where to run, but I knew if I could find you, everything would be all right.”
He directed her to a chair. He kept one gun aimed at her, the other toward the door. “Tell me about Jessica?”
“Jessica, I don’t understand.”
He spun the chair around to face the window, ripped back the drapes to let the sun pour into the room. He stood behind her,
gripping the chair firmly. “I think you do. I think you know exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t you, Janet? Or should I
say Pattie?”
“Pattie?”
He spun the chair around so that she faced him. “Did you kill her?”
“Kill who?”
He stuck the Browning to Janet’s temple. “Jessica, Jessica.”
“God no, not Jessica. I fell in love with her, Scott, and him. I loved them both and still don’t know why. Glen, Glen was
different, dangerous, ambitious. He brought me into the Agency, and taught me everything I know. But being with Jessica, it
was magic, like living in Oz. It wasn’t supposed to happen like it did, but it happened.”
He lifted his leg up, jammed his foot onto the edge of the chair as he stuffed the Beretta back into his boot. He kept the
Browning pointed at Janet as he sat down on the edge of the bed across from her and stared out at the waves breaking on the
beach. “Go on.”
“You and I both know that if you want to stay alive in the game, you have to hold out. You see, I learned a few tricks from
the old dog.” Janet stood and led Scott to the window. The ocean was in front of them. Diamond Head was off to the left, the
whole of Waikiki Beach below and to the right.
Janet said, “Scott, if we hurry, we might catch Helen before Glen does. If not—” Janet cut short as Scott stuck the muzzle
of his gun against her bosom, then kicked the chair back so that it crashed against the wall and the window.
He said, “Tell me what you know about the box.”
“I’m on your side, Scott; I’m the one who told you about Cynthia.”
He glared at her. “Don’t waste any more of my time.”
“You’re not like him, Scott, that’s not you talking.”
“There’s two things in this world that I cared about, Janet.
One of them has already been taken from me…” His voice trailed off.
Someone rattled the doorknob.
He watched Janet’s eyes dart to the door as the knob turned and then the door started to open. “It’s Glen, Janet, tell me
where the box is. Tell me now, and I won’t let him hurt you!”