Shattered Shell (16 page)

As he shut the door behind me I said, "I'm sorry we barged in without telling you first. You were right to call. I'm just glad you're not into making citizen's arrests."

"Excuse me?" he said. "You might have to speak a bit louder --- my ears aren't as young as they used to be."

So I repeated what I said with a louder voice, and also added the comment about making a citizen's arrest, and he laughed and waved his hand. "Christ, maybe when I was younger, but not now.  Listen, can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Tea?"

"Tea would be fine," I said, and I took off my winter parka and tossed it over one end of the couch while he went into the adjoining kitchen. The room was big, but it felt cramped because of the furniture ---large, black antique dressers and bureaus with ornate columns and mirrors. Built into one corner and with clear glass shelves was a floor-to-ceiling display case. Each shelf was jammed with figurines, shot glasses, statuettes, and other stuff that looked liked it could be sold at Tyler Beach in the summer. I could see Jason as he moved around in the kitchen, a steaming kettle in his hand.

"You're in luck, you know," he said. "I just had the water on when you knocked. I was about ready for my morning routine."

"Sorry about disturbing the routine."

He laughed. "No problem. Guy like me, sometimes I need to knock the dust out. I'll be there in a sec."

On the walls were framed photographs of ships, but they weren't old clipper ships or modern war vessels. They showed working craft, cargo vessels, and container ships. Nothing sexy about them, except many millions would starve if they were all to sink overnight. Jason came out of the kitchen, carrying a wooden tray, which he set down on a coffee table. I took my mug of tea and added a spoonful of sugar, and he took his own steaming mug and sat across from me. On the tray was a blue dish, cracked on one corner, and carefully laid out were a handful of Pepperidge Farm cookies.

"Well," he said, settling himself in. "Let me tell you about last week, it was ---"

I held up a hand. "Please," I said. "I appreciate that, but let's just sit for a bit, all right? Let's enjoy the tea and chat, and then let's get to the topic."

"All right, whatever you say," he said, and I smiled and said, "So, what morning routine am I disturbing?"

He crossed his legs, laughed again. "Oh, nothing major. It's just that I like to have a leisurely cup of tea and midmorning snack while I go through the day's papers. When I was younger and working, I never had the time just to saunter through a morning. I was always on watch somewhere, working."

"Merchant marine?"

"Yep, the same," Jason said, blowing some air over his cup.  “'Damn near forty years of my life, from Hong Kong to Sydney to the Panama Canal and Durban and every place in between and around the world a dozen or so times, and you know what?"

"What's that?"

He shook his head ruefully. "I didn't get much chance to see anything. Worked a lot below, in the engines, and you don't get topside much when you're on duty, and when you're not on duty, there's always sleep to catch up on. And then one wonderful side effect is that with all that engine noise, you don't hear as well as you used to."

I nodded over to the display case. "You managed to come home with some souvenirs, though."

He looked over and said, "Yeah, and I'm glad I did. Some guys thought stuff like that was a waste of time, but I bet you as they got older, they wish they had something except some thin memories and a bad bladder. Other guys took so many pictures and movies they didn't do much 'cept wander around with a camera plugged to their head, and what kind of fun is that? Me, I found that if I picked something up like a glass or little statue, man, I can remember things. I can remember what I was doing and what cargo we was shipping, and where I bought the damn little trinket. Almost like magic."

"Sounds like it," I said, enjoying a sip of the tea. "And then you came home."

He nodded. "Right. Saved most of my money and invested some and bought this house and another one in Salisbury that I rent out, and I do all right." He held the cup in both of his large hands. "Not like some of the guys I was with, they whored and drank all of their paychecks. I was raised right, and so here I am, homeowner and landlord."

"Tenant problems?"

"Hah," he said, slurping loudly. "I tell ‘em they have one shot with me, and that's it, out they go. Word gets around. I don't have many problems."

"How is Kara Miles as a tenant?"

"Just fine, just fine," he said, moving the cup down to his large lap. "Never any problems, rent on time, always something nice to say to me whenever I saw her."

I picked up one of the butter cookies and decided my cholesterol level could take a hit this morning. "Many visitors?"

He cocked his head. "You said you're a friend of hers, right?"

"That's right," I said, munching on the cookie. "And I'm also friends with Diane Woods."

A quick nod. "Just checking. It's none of my business who Kara is and what kind of friends she brings in. She and her lady friend are damn nice people."

"Other friends you can remember? Other people who come by for a visit who might not have been so nice?"

"Nope, not really," he said. "Her parents might have been by once or twice, and her brother, but that's about it."

"They from around here?"

"Her parents live in town. I don't know about her brother."

"And nothing's been out of the ordinary the past few weeks?"

"Like what?"

I finished off the last Pepperidge Farm product. "Like phone calls where the other party hangs up. Attempted break-ins. Odd guys, hanging around. Kara saying her mail is missing, or someone's been bugging her at work."

He seemed to think for a moment, staring at the far wall, and slurped again at his cup of tea. "Nope, nothing. Nothing at all."

"All right, then. What happened last week?"

He nodded, gave me an exaggerated wink. "My, you're a slick one. You start way back there and work your way up and get your questions answered, nice and smooth, and then you go right to the core. Not bad."

"I was once trained well. Were you here that night?"

He looked down. "You know, I wish I had been more awake. I could have felt something was wrong, something wasn't right, and I might have stopped it."

"Were you sleeping?"

"Oh, I was in bed and I had dozed off, watching my TV in there. Then I had woken up and heard some sounds, and I was in that half-awake state, you know, when you're not sure what you're listening to? And then the voices got loud and there was some, well," and I think he blushed, "the sound of the bed, you know how it is... "

I gave him a smile. "Something you've probably heard before, right?"

He nodded a bit too eagerly, like he was pleased to be talking to another man of the world or something. "That's right," he said.  “I mean, Kara's a healthy young woman, there's nothing wrong with what goes on up there.... "

"I see," I said, suddenly curious about something. I made a motion of rubbing my fingers together. "Mind if I take a moment to wash my hands? Those cookies tasted great but my fingers got sticky all of a sudden."

"Sure," he said, gesturing over to one side of the house. "Go over to the kitchen, take a right, and it's the door on the left, right by my bedroom."

"Thanks." I got up and went through the kitchen. It was neat and orderly and quite smalL The hallway was narrow and the door to the bathroom was on the left, as promised, and I went in and turned on the spigots and then went back out into the hallway and ducked into the bedroom. I had a minute, maybe more, and I half-remembered the old exercises I had to do when I had joined up with the DoD, when you had ten seconds to stare at a photograph and ten minutes to tell an examiner what you saw.

Right now I saw a bedroom with a large single bed. Magazlnes on the floor, bookshelf on one side, windows that overlooked the yard. Near as I could figure it, this room was right below Kara's bedroom. There was a bureau near the foot of the bed, with a small TV on top. The bureau was filled with knickknacks and coins. I looked up at the ceiling. It was white plaster, cracked in some places. A faint black smudge about the size of my hand was near the center of the ceiling. Two doors that looked like closets. A chair near a nightstand, with a large mirror. I went over to the chair. Two shiny spots in the center of the chair, where the red fabric in the seat had been worn away.

Then, like a little click inside my head. Time was up.

I went back to the bathroom and splashed water on my hands, and then, as an afterthought, I sprinkled a few drops on my pants leg. I wiped my hands down with a towel and walked quickly back

out to the living room, where Jason nodded as I came in and said, "Ready to hear the rest of the story?"

I settled back down in the couch, hoping he couldn't tell that my heart was thumping along with the exciting, scary feeling of almost getting caught. I picked up my cup and took another sip of the tea.

"Sure," I said. "What happened after you heard the sounds in the bedroom?"

Another gaze back in the cup, like he was looking for tea leaves to tell his fortune. "Like I said, I heard sounds from upstairs. And then I woke up a bit more, startled I guess, 'cause something didn't sound right. There was sobbing."

He looked at me, his expression bleak. "Sobbing. And then it stopped. And then I heard the footsteps on the stairs coming down, and the laughter and voices."

"Then what?"

"Then the door slammed, and a car from the side parking lot started up," he said. "Sounded like one of those muscle cars the young guys like to drive, the rough-sounding ones that sound like they have a bad muffler. Then a while later, I don't know how long, I guess I heard her take a shower. Then the door up at Kara's place opened up and she ran downstairs and, well, that's when I guess she went to the hospital."

"The car that you ---" and then I stopped, the teacup halfway up to my mouth. "Hold on. You said voices on the stairs. What did you mean by that?"

"What?"

"What kind of voices were on the stairs?"

"Just like I told the cops," Jason said, and what he said next damn near made me drop my teacup.

"There were two men coming out of her place."

Back at home I had a fire going and I just stared at the flames and tried to bounce around what I had learned. It was a little past three o'clock in the afternoon and already the shadows were lengthening through the windows of my home. It was days like this when I wished winter was only a month long.

Years ago I had done well in my own little world in the Marginal Issues section of the Department of Defense, but in many ways it was like any other workplace. You had your routine, your boring meetings, and your own set of code words. A "fire drill" was when we were busy responding to a threat that never materialized.  A “rocket report" was a document that we prepared that was sent right to the top, either with the SecDef or to the White House.  And being "knee-deep in rodents" was our own fond expression, a way of saying we were being overwhelmed with squirrels --- meaning a case that was too squirrelly for its own good.

With what I was now doing, the damn furry creatures were up to my waist.

First there was the discrepancy between what Kara had told the police and what she had told me about the rapist being clean-shaven. Then there was her apartment --- signs of a struggle in the bedroom, but no sign of a break-in. No broken lock, no splintered doorjamb. And then there was the little tactical nuke that Jason Henry had tossed my way. Voices. More than one man was in the apartment that night, maybe helping or looking, but definitely there. That was something that even Inspector Dunbar had failed to mention in his preliminary report.

I tossed another chunk of wood onto the fire. What had happened to Kara that night, and what was happening with her now?

Then there's the landlord. Something about him didn't seem right, not right at all, and I thought about that as I picked up the phone and dialed Felix's number.

He was home, which was a surprise, and I got to the point.

“Want to get together tomorrow, get a sense of where we're going with things?"

"Sure," he said. "How about breakfast at the Ashburn House?"

I said that sounded fine and hung up, then stared again at the flames, watching their little dance as the shadows grew longer in my house.

Chapter Eleven

When the breakfast dishes had been cleared away and we were left with our second cups of coffee, Felix looked at me and said, "So where do we stand?"

"Right now, it feels like we're standing on quicksand," I said. "Nothing is making sense, and nothing is fitting together."

The Ashburn House on this Sunday was doing reasonably well, and the post church crowd had arrived, men and women and kids dressed in their goin'-to-meetin' clothes. Felix and I were sitting against a table at the south wall, the windows freshly washed, the beach a fresh white, and the ocean bright blue.