Onyx Webb 10 Page 17

  “Only one,” Clay said. “A trucker. Saw him at a place in town, Noah’s Grille. Used to be Spilatro’s Place on Main Street.”

  “You must get a lot of truckers passing through,” Maggie said. “Why did this one catch your attention?”

  “Maybe it was the outfit,” Clay said. “He was wearing a quilted vest and a John Deere baseball cap, and he had a big beard. It was almost as if he was trying to look like a trucker instead of actually being a trucker. You know what I’m saying?”

  Newt nodded. “Anything else about him? Did you see his legs? Did he walk funny?”

  “Not that I noticed,” Clay said. “Other than the fact that he wasn’t driving a truck.”

  “What was he driving?” Maggie asked.

  “Mid-sized vehicle of some sort. Honda, I think,” Clay said. “Oh, and he had a stutter.”

  Newt and Maggie gave each other another look. “Sounds like it could be our guy,” Maggie said.

  “Any way this guy might have known the lighthouse was empty?” Newt asked.

  Clay closed his eyes and shook his head.

  “What?” Maggie prompted.

  “I think that’s what we were talking about when he was there at the restaurant. That both Onyx and Noah were gone and wouldn’t be back for a while.” Clay said.

  “This is good. I have a good feeling about this,” Maggie said.

  “You want to take us out there?” Newt asked. “To the lighthouse.”

  “Sure, but I got the idea the SWAT commander didn’t want me involved,” Clay said.

  “That’s probably true,” Maggie said. “Local FBI guys are like that, but SWAT isn’t in charge—Newt and I are.”

  “Okeydokey,” Clay said. “Just let me grab my hat.”

  12:09 P.M. (PST)

  Clay Daniels was right. The unit commander of the SWAT team, who had been dispatched from the FBI’s Portland field office, was an idiot. Fortunately, Newt knew the best way to gain control of the scene was to emasculate the man in front of his team.

  That’s where Maggie came in.

  “I know my men,” the chisel-jawed, jarhead SWAT commander said when Newt informed him they were taking control of the scene. “They don’t like to take orders from little boys sent from DC.”

  “Yes, you’re probably right,” Newt said. “That’s why I’m asking my partner, Special Agent Margaret McCord, to run this operation. And Sheriff Daniels will assist.”

  Newt turned and glanced over at Maggie and Clay, who both looked surprised by the sudden delegation of authority. Especially Clay. But, as Newt knew she would, Maggie stepped forward and addressed the man.

  “We won’t be giving orders to your men. You will,” Maggie said. “But effective now, you report to us, Agent Bennington.”

  “That’s Special Agent Bennington,” the man said.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Maggie said, glancing over at the members of Bennington’s SWAT team. “We all know how special you are. Don’t we, boys?”

  Several of the men snickered and looked away. Bennington turned red as a beet and then spun on his heels and stormed off.

  “Too much?” Maggie asked under her breath.

  Newt smiled. “For this guy? It was perfect.”

  After a few minutes of licking his wounded ego, Bennington returned and briefed Newt, Maggie, and Clay.

  “At present, we’ve got twenty-two agents surrounding the premises,” Bennington began. “Five on each side of the perimeter, approximately a half mile apart, plus four out here on the main highway. We’ve also got three on the ground with binoculars, all eyes on the structure.

  “Structures,” Clay said. “There’s the lighthouse and the caretaker’s house. Three, actually, if you want to count the shed.”

  Bennington nodded. “That’s right. There’s three structures.” Then, turning to Clay, “Thank you, Sheriff.”

  Clay smiled and nodded. “Glad to be of help.”

  “If my count is right, that comes to seventeen,” Maggie said. “You said there are twenty-two?”

  “Yes. We have three down on the beach below the cliffs—dressed as civilians—in case he can see down there from the top of the lighthouse—and two in the trees with sniper rifles if that’s the way we decide to go.”

  “No,” Newt said. “We’re taking him alive. Do you understand me? We’re taking him alive.”

  “The differences between us matter less than the ways in which we are the same, for in the end we come to understand we were all connected by the same frail web called life.”

  The 31 Immutable Matters

  of Life & Death

  Episode 32

  Sunset

  CRIMSON COVE, OREGON

  FEBRUARY 25, 2011 – 6:29 P.M. (PST)

  SIX DAYS HAD passed since the woman had entered the caretaker’s house unannounced, forcing Stan Lee to take drastic measures—drastic for the woman at least. Whoever Tara Schröder was, it was obvious she knew Onyx well enough to have a key to the place.

  After Stan Lee strangled the Schröder woman with the phone cord, he dragged her body out to her car and placed it in the trunk. Then he pulled her vehicle into the woods and parked it next to the Honda Pilot, covering it with branches and leaves as well.

  Stan Lee considered packing up and going, but Kara talked him out of it. “Relax, Stan,” Kara said. “No one’s going to miss her for a few days at least.”

  Stan Lee decided Kara was probably right.

  Then the local sheriff showed up looking for her the previous afternoon. Again, Stan Lee felt the urge to run. And again, Kara talked him out of it.

  But now—twenty-four hours later—Stan Lee found himself in a state of total panic.

  Something told him he had to go.

  Now.

  Stan Lee shoved the last of his clothing into the suitcase on the bed. Then he went down the hall and gathered his toiletries from the bathroom.

  “What about the paintings?” Kara asked.

  “What about them?” Stan Lee said.

  “You like them,” Kara said. “You should take them with you.”

  She was right, Stan Lee thought, looking over at the stack of canvases in the corner of the room. He should take them with him—not just because he liked them, but because he knew he could sell them if he ran out of money.

  Stan Lee crouched down and began flipping through the canvases, sorting them into two stacks—one stack for the paintings he thought would sell best, and a second stack for those—

  “Jesus, dumbass,” Kara said. “Take them all—you can sort through them later.”

  Stan Lee nodded. Kara was right, as usual.

  Stan Lee grabbed the entire stack of canvases and carried them down the hall and placed them on the floor next to the front door.

  And then he saw the bag.

  The bag with the Ferris wheel on it was sitting beneath the table in the entryway.

  How long had that been there?

  Was it there yesterday when the sheriff came by and looked in the window?

  If it was…

  A feeling of dread overwhelmed Stan Lee, the panic building inside him. If the sheriff saw the bag, then he might know…

  What if the radio call saying there was nothing out of the ordinary was just a ruse? What if he knew? What if the sheriff made a call to the FBI?

  “What if, what if, what if,” Kara said. “Jesus, Stan, get a grip.”

  Stan Lee walked over to the window and peered out. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

  If they were there, they were there.

  There was nothing he could do about it now

  CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

  FEBRUARY 25, 2011 – 9:37 P.M. (EST)

  KODA AND KRISSY sat in the McLaren, gazing at the heavy metal chain in the headlights. It wrapped around each side of the mansion’s front gate, holding the gate closed. Next to the chain was a sign that read:

  Warning! No Trespassing!

  Federal Bureau of Investigation.
/>
  “We can always climb on the hood and jump the fence,” Krissy said.

  Koda glanced up at the sharp metal spikes along the top of the wrought-iron fence. “Uh, I don’t think so.”

  “We could go in town and get a ladder?”

  “In a McLaren?” Koda said.

  “Well, we’ve got to get the eggs out of there somehow,” Krissy said.

  She was right, of course. Leaving priceless Fabergés in a house that was about to be destroyed was out of the question. So was asking the FBI for permission to go in and get them.

  “Wait. I have an idea,” Krissy said. “Isn’t there supposed to be some kind of tunnel running to the mansion from the house next door?”

  Yes, Koda thought.

  There was indeed.

  Koda pulled the McLaren to a stop in the driveway outside the house next door and turned off the engine.

  “We might need a flashlight if the electricity is off,” Krissy said.

  “Yeah, maybe,” Koda said.

  “The FBI has signs up here too,” Krissy said.

  Koda nodded. He knew they were going to be trespassing no matter which way they got in. But they had to do it. “Come on.”

  As expected, the front door was locked, so they went around to the rear of the house. The back door was locked too. “We’re going to need something to break the window,” Koda said.

  Krissy reached down and pulled off one of her shoes. “Here, use this.”

  Koda took the shoe and hit the window. The pane shattered easily. He handed the shoe back to Krissy and reached through the broken window to unlock the door.

  “Stay behind me, just in case,” Koda said.

  “In case of what?” Krissy asked.

  “Just do it, okay?”

  Krissy worked to hide a smile. Koda was doing the protective big brother thing, even if he didn’t realize it.

  Krissy thought it was funny.

  It also felt good.

  “With any luck, the electricity is still working,” Koda said as he reached out for the light switch.

  It wasn’t.

  “We’re going to need a flashlight,” Koda said.

  “Told you,” Krissy said.

  “Yeah, whatever. Come on.”

  Koda and Krissy turned around and stopped cold. There was a man standing in the doorway. He was wearing a pair of brown canvas pants that ended just below the knee and was without a shirt.

  “What do you want?” the man asked.

  “Uh, we—we were just looking around,” Krissy said.

  “There’s nothing here,” the man said. “They came and took it all away. The plantation too. Most everything is gone.”

  Then Koda understood.

  “You work here, right?” Koda said.

  “Used to. Long time ago.”

  “What are you doing?” Krissy asked quietly. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “What’s your name?” Koda asked the man.

  “Jemmy.”

  “Jemmy,” Koda repeated. “The truth is we’re looking for the tunnel.”

  “Over to the plantation house?” Jemmy asked.

  “Yes,” Koda said, nudging Krissy in the arm with his elbow.

  “Uh, yeah,” Krissy said. “We’d really appreciate it if you could show us the way.”

  Jemmy remained quiet, looking them over.

  “The tunnel is downstairs,” Jemmy said. “It’s dark down there. Wait here. I’ll fetch a lantern.”

  Jemmy disappeared from the doorway, and Krissy spun around and glared at Koda. “Holy crap—is he what I think he is?”

  Koda nodded.

  Jemmy was a ghost.

  CRIMSON COVE, OREGON

  FEBRUARY 25, 2011 – 6:51 P.M. (PST)

  AGAINST EVERYONE’S BETTER judgment, Maggie insisted on getting a look at the lighthouse. “Where can I get a pair of binoculars?” Maggie asked.

  The SWAT leader removed the binoculars from his neck and handed them to her. “I wouldn’t get much closer than thirty yards,” Bennington said. “There’s not a lot of foliage this time of year. And take my radio.”

  While Maggie went on her recon mission, Newt and Clay sought refuge in the front seat of the patrol cruiser.

  “That Maggie is a ball buster,” Clay said.

  “Yeah, tell me about it,” Newt said.

  “I mean that in a good way, of course,” Clay added.

  “I assumed that.”

  “You mind if I ask you a math question?”

  “Shoot,” Newt said.

  “What is the probability of a man dying on his seventieth birthday?” Clay asked.

  “What year are we talking about?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes. Life expectancy at the time of Christ was thirty to thirty-five years, so dying at seventy was extremely rare,” Newt said. “Today it’s 76.2, so the odds increase significantly.”

  “Early 1940s,” Clay said.

  “Height and weight?”

  “Average.”

  “Suicide?”

  Clay stopped to think about the answer, knowing Hell Daniels had asked Onyx to take him on his birthday. He decided not to go there. “Cancer,” Clay said.

  “Assuming there is an equal chance a person will die on any given day from birth until age one hundred, the chance of dying on an individual day is one in 36,500,” Newt said.

  “Okay,” Clay said. “Now, let’s say that man had a son who died on his sixtieth birthday.”

  “How?”

  “Hunting accident,” Clay said. “And then his son died falling off a cliff on his fiftieth birthday.”

  “Seriously?”” Newt asked.

  Clay nodded.

  “Your father?” Newt asked.

  Clay nodded again.

  “I’d say about one in fifty trillion—give or take ten trillion,” Newt said.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “So, when do you turn forty?” Newt asked.

  “I just did eleven days ago,” Clay said.

  “Congratulations then.”

  “A pine tree did fall on my car, though,” Clay said. “Completely totaled the thing.”

  “Maybe it was the car’s time to go, not yours,” Newt said.

  “Well, it did have a lot of miles on it.”

  A moment later, Bennington approached the cruiser and rapped his knuckles on the window. Newt lowered the window, letting a brisk blast of cold wind into the vehicle.

  “Here,” Bennington said, handing the radio to Newt. You’ll want to hear this. It’s Special Agent McCord.”

  Newt pushed the button on the side of the radio. “Maggie, it’s Newt. What’s happening?”

  “We’ve got a couple of cars out here,” Maggie said on the other end of the radio. “A light blue Honda Pilot with Illinois plates, and a lavender-colored, mid-‘50s model Chrysler with plates from New York. Both are covered up with branches.”

  “Okay, get me the plate numbers, and we’ll run them to see who they belong to,” Newt said into the radio.

  “I can save you some time on one of them,” Clay said. “The lavender Chrysler Imperial belongs to Tara.”

  Newt nodded and placed his hand on Clay’s arm. Both men knew what finding Tara’s car meant.

  A moment later, Maggie’s voice came over the radio again. “Uh, we have movement here.”

  Bennington reached in through the window and took the radio back from Newt. “Say again,” he said.

  “I said, we have movement. The suspect is on the move,” Maggie said. “He’s out of the building and headed toward the woods.”

  CRIMSON COVE, OREGON

  FEBRUARY 25, 2011 – 7:04 P.M. (PST)

  WITHIN SECONDS OF receiving Maggie’s call over the radio, Newt and Clay were out of the cruiser and making their way toward the woods. “I know these woods like the back of my hand,” Clay said. “Let me lead.”

  Newt nodded and fell in behind Clay, the two of them weaving their way th
rough the trees toward the lighthouse.

  “I said, we have movement,” Maggie said again over the radio.

  Newt pushed the button on the radio. “Maggie, it’s Newt. How far away is he from you?”

  “A hundred yards,” Maggie said. “He’s headed directly toward me.”

  “Are you still where the cars are?” Newt asked.

  “Yes,” Maggie said. “He’s getting closer. I’m turning the radio off.”

  “No,” Newt said. “Maggie?”

  There was no response.

  Maggie turned off the radio, laid it on the ground, and knelt behind the back of the Honda Pilot. From her position, she could see the man was carrying something—and he was coming straight toward the vehicles.

  The man was too close for Maggie to go anywhere. She’d have to stay put behind the Honda.

  At least she had her gun.

  Stan Lee had as much as he could carry—suitcase in one hand, and a mound of painted canvases under his other arm. He knew it would take at least two more trips and realized it would be easier to pull the car up to the caretaker’s house.

  Stan Lee got to the spot in the woods where the vehicles were hidden and wondered which of the two he should pack up. The Honda Pilot was probably the better choice since it was more non-descript than the Chrysler convertible—though the convertible would certainly be more fun.

  No, the Honda was the better choice. Besides, the woman he’d strangled—Tara Schröder—was in the convertible’s trunk.

  Yes, it had to be the Honda.

  Stan Lee walked around to the rear of the Pilot and was just about to set the suitcase down when he saw something lying on the ground.

  It was a walkie-talkie.

  Then he heard a sound behind him, off to his right.

  Without turning to look, Stan Lee swung the suitcase as hard as he could.