The Black Silent (34 page)

Not a good sign.

Hershman cleared his throat. "It's a lot easier to believe that your mysterious friend shot two officers in cold blood and stabbed another than to believe what you've been telling me."

"Wait a minute," Stutz said. "You should look at this FBI memo."

The sergeant read it.

"This is the kind of unsubstantiated rumor that ruins the careers of good men," said Hershman. "Classic FBI. It proves nothing."

Rachael took issue with that. "I admit it's not a criminal conviction, but it's hardly what I'd call gossip."

"Yeah, well, where's the agent who wrote it? According to you, the FBI knows all about this. So let them handle it." Hershman paused. "Lieutenant, could I talk to you?"

They adjourned to the officers' quarters, where she could hear all but the whispers.

Rachael knew what he'd be saying. After a couple minutes their voices grew louder.

"I'm sorry you feel that way," Stutz said. "Who would be the ranking officer for the Seattle area on duty tonight?"

"For Seattle, I haven't the faintest idea. You'd call main base Seattle to find that out. Do you want me to do anything about Ms. Sullivan here?"

"That's all right. Thanks for coming over," said Stutz.

"I suggest you be careful what you do with her," Hershman said. "She may have been an accessory. This could blow up in your face. The safe thing to do would be to have me get on the phone with San Juan County and find out if there are charges against this woman."

"There's nothing out on her on the wire. All she's done is run her boat a little carelessly.

I think it's a civil matter. The sheriff's taken the guys who were chasing her into custody."

"I hope you know what you're doing, Lieutenant."

"So do I, Sergeant. So do I."

Sam thought they still had a slim chance. Haley's arm was bleeding but unbroken.

"Probably metal. Not a bullet. Clean little cut," he shouted above the engine sound.

They were heading directly away from the beach.

"Hurts like a bullet hole," she said, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Sam knew that it was the loss of Grant that really hurt.

Fuel still poured from the wings. With power, the engine sounds and the wind tore through the rips in the metal, along with the cold. It was like a deep freeze—the last thing Sam's body needed. Full-blast heat kept them from hypothermia. As they moved away from the point, the chop picked up. They couldn't use the calm water of the inner harbor, now made dangerous by Flick's gunfire.

"Forty," he said, calling out the airspeed.

In the plane's spotlights the whitecaps looked murderous. "Fifty," he said as they suffered a jarring crash.

The plane skipped and Haley played with the stick, then,
wham,
they hit a big wave and were tossed into the air. The airplane came back down and Sam braced for another impact.

"Pleeeease,"
she said, trying to hold it off the wave tops.

"Sixty."

Now they were experiencing the "water effect," feet above the sea, gaining speed.

"Seventy."

She sighed. They were up in the air.

"We nearly bought it," she said. Sam found no response necessary.

The plane climbed, the ride surprisingly smooth.

"Okay," she said. "What did you find?"

"Aside from Detective Ranken hanging upside down and dead, a lot. There's a note Ben wrote: 'A few evil men with the right idea could take us down.' Also, in a hidden room, a freezer with vials. Did you know about it?"

She shook her head.

"Six colors for six groups of tubes. All were full, but the red tubes. I found some kind of a log concerning dosage amounts, I think."

"Wow."

"Ben might have been giving the drug to people—thirty-six of them—though I could be wrong."

"Double wow," Haley said, wincing from renewed pain in her arm.

He summarized what he'd read. As he did so, he noticed that the fuel was down to an eighth and dropping fast.

Haley's eyes followed his. "The question's whether we run out of fuel first or the plane falls apart from the bullet holes."

The original plan had been to fly to Lopez and Ben's beach house. That seemed to be where Haley was taking them.

"We have enough to get there?"

At that, she actually smiled. "We're there."

"Have you ever flown one of these before?" Sam wasn't sure he wanted to know.

"That should have been obvious."

Without warning, they dropped like an elevator. He looked to Haley.

"There's no time to set up a controlled descent. I got one try at landing."

She manhandled the trim, dropped the flaps, and tried to hold a descent of two hundred feet a minute.

"This bay is small at these speeds. I'm gonna just try a visual."

They were passing lights from the first marina on Lopez. The dock lights reflected off the water and made it slightly easier to see the surface.

She turned on the landing light. The inky surface appeared slightly rippled, but distance remained difficult to estimate.

He watched the rate of descent.

"Three hundred feet per minute. We're coming down fast."

"Not compared to a crash," she said, her lips tight.

"Eighty knots," he called out, so she could keep her eyes outside. "Still three hundred feet per minute."

She gave it a little power but was in danger of overshooting.

"Two hundred feet per minute."

"Dear Jesus." She pulled off the power with the shore in her face.

It dropped.

The plane hit, skipped once, then hit a cushion of air. She eased back on the yoke and it settled down on the water.

"Not according to the book," she said, "but we're alive."

Once down, the amphibian drove like a speedboat, turning well at high speed. Haley brought them up to the resort dock and jumped out, her arm bleeding again slightly.

Sam struggled mightily to rise. His limbs hurt more than they had in the ocean, but he could control them better.

On the deck he saw no holes in the plane below the waterline. After some thought they agreed not to put Grant's body out on the dock.

Haley looked at Sam, her face troubled. "I know we've got to get to Ben's, but first I need to get you warmed up and dry. I know where to do that."

He thought to argue, but his sopping jeans and shirt stuck to his skin and the wind whipped over them, refrigerating his body. He nodded.

The resort appeared nearly abandoned; he hoped she could quickly find someplace warm. Soon he would be incapacitated.

The main building housing the bar, the office, and the restaurant was long, low, and pastel. In late fall the festive-looking outdoor tables and umbrellas were gone. There were no bicycles in the bicycle racks, no badminton nets on the lawn, no canoes or kayaks on the grassy slopes near the beach. It seemed windswept and barren compared to the common jubilation of summer, and it matched the half-dead nature of Sam's own body.

They made it to the door and, thankfully, found it unlocked. Apparently the place was open, after all.

Haley disappeared into the office and returned with a key to a car and some blankets for him to sit on.

"Don't these people have television?" he asked. "Or are the cops on the way?"

"No television, no cops. The tube is in the bar and it's turned off."

"They figure you work in a butcher shop or what?"

Sam nodded at the blood-soaked sleeve of her shirt.

"We know these people. Relatives of Helen's. Our plane had a rough landing after we lost oil pressure. You're soaked. I'm wounded. That's the story. Let's just hope they don't look inside the plane."

"Where are we going?"

"Summer home for a UW faculty member with wealth from way back in his family,"

Haley said. "Friend of Ben's. Another scientist. The name is Williams. Ellis Williams."

She helped him through the building while they talked.

"This Williams hasn't cut his ties with you after the Sanker flap?" Sam asked.

"Of course, he has, but he doesn't remember—I'm hoping—that he told me where the key is, and I'm equally sure that he never thought I'd have the gall to use it without permission."

They climbed in a ten-year-old Chevy Blazer with leather interior and traces of mold. It had seen better days. She put down the blanket. "Belongs to one of the workers who's gone for the winter. They take turns driving it to keep it running. Tonight we're elected."

He had a spate of shaking from the cold that nearly amounted to a convulsion.

"They said the heat in this old Blazer works well."

"I hope so." He felt unbearably miserable. He forced his mind to work, to continue the conversation. It was difficult to focus on anything but the misery.

"I've got the important papers with me," he said through chattering teeth. "They're wet, but I think we can still use them."

He could feel the heating system start to work as Haley drove. It felt good.

"We may find more at the beach house. Grant told me Ben had used him to fly lots of people to Orcas. A bunch of people knew Ben was up to something big. Even Grant. He said there's some manifesto Ben worked up."

Sam's eyes widened at that.

"They had a big confab at the beach house. Now I see it in a whole new light.

Oceanographers discussing the bottom of the sea. I think the papers related to that get-together are in the filing cabinets in the garage. We need to look there."

Sam nodded, still pondering the word
manifesto.

"Of course, Ben never bothered to give me the slightest hint about any of this." Haley set her jaw in the familiar expression and shook her head.

"I know that hurts," Sam said.

"Wait, don't tell me—it was for my own protection." She shook her head again and kept driving. After a moment she said, "You know what?"

"What?"

"I'm sure now that the beach house meeting had to do with Ben's secrets."

"It means we definitely need to check the beach house." Sam was feeling almost human again with the powerful blast of the Blazer's heat. "So what did these 'few good men'

talk about, then? The end of the world in a giant cloud of methane?"

"Something like that, I guess." She saw Sam's look and sighed. "Really, I'm trying not to be upset about Ben keeping me out of it. At least some things are making more sense."

"Do you know anything about a meeting with Nelson Gempshorn and Sarah James together on a Sunday? I found a note in Ben's pants at Sanker."

"Nelson Gempshorn and Sarah James together?"

"That's what the note said."

Haley shook her head. "Nope."

"You're sure. Not on a Sunday?"

"Not on any day."

Sam looked at her.

"Well, not with Sarah and not on Sunday.
I
met with Nelson Gempshorn. It was after that time when I found them with the IV I didn't mention it expressly because they asked me to pretend the meeting never happened."

"So tell me what
did
happen."

"I feel so stupid now," she said. "I believed the whole thing was about cancer and Nelson wanting to hide it from his family. But he spent half the time telling me what a great man Ben was, in epic terms, as if he were Julius Caesar. I couldn't relate cancer to the epic 'historical figure' stuff. Now, of course, a different possibility is emerging. But still it tells us nothing concrete. That's another reason I didn't mention it."

"I think Ben planned for you and Sarah to meet with Nelson today."

"You're kidding."

He showed her the piece of paper while she was driving. "See the bit about the flowers?"

"That's no surprise. Sarah would be elated, because I don't think Ben's been that overt, but it's hard for the rest of us to miss."

"I have a hunch that had everything unfolded as planned, he would have had you and Sarah go away from here today," Sam said. "We just never got there."

Haley thought about that for a moment.

"I think somebody may be following," Sam said. "Headlights behind us. Douse your lights. Before the next intersection, take the corner hard left and ditch him."

Haley did as he said. They could see almost nothing without the headlights. She turned and found the road, but slowed because of the visibility problem.

Traveling past the intersection, the car following, not a marked police car, turned hard, lost control, and slid off into the forest edge.

"Take off," Sam said.

She turned on the headlights, accelerated, and followed the road to where it made a ninety-degree turn to the right, and then after one more intersection, rejoined Mud Bay Road.

"Not good," Sam said. "They probably have the license number."

"We'll be at the Williamses' place soon. I'm going to take the long way around because the shortest route brings us near Ben's."

It took only about ten minutes to find the private gravel drive. Sam now had a steady blast of heat on his legs and torso that made it tough to leave.

As they exited the Blazer, lights came on overhead, from a motion detector, Sam assumed.

"That's not helpful," Sam said, hating the light and the signal it would give to anyone who might see the place from around the bay. It was unnerving and that, no doubt, was the purpose.

The Williams home sat on a flat nestled between a few trees to either side and overlooking the quiet bay. A quarter of a mile down the bay, Sam saw a trawler-design yacht riding at anchor. In the light of the full moon, he could see that she was a substantial little ship, maybe seventy feet long and probably a multimillion-dollar vessel.

"Do you know anything about that boat?" Sam asked.

"No. Maybe someone in for Thanksgiving?" She pointed inland. "There's a house up a bank there—you can see the lights behind a couple trees."

"We better hope they don't notice our lights and make phone calls."

"Those people keep to themselves; I doubt they'll be calling anyone."

The Williamses' two-story house had been well-designed and obviously built by a rich man. A lawn sloped toward the beach and above it grew well-groomed gardens fenced in to keep out the deer. A covered porch featured handmade balustrades; copper gutters that reflected gold in the night light. Houses such as this, on the waterfront, were either built long ago or recently by the wealthy.