Steel Breeze (22 page)

“Did
Lucas seem anxious about being here? Was he withdrawn? Did he have an appetite?
You were watching him, weren’t you?”

“I…I
don’t know, that was like five different questions. He um, he seemed okay.”

“Do
you think he might have run away? Was he afraid of you and your husband?”

“That
was two again.”

Hot
damn, she was doing all right.

Pasco’s
phone rang. Saved by the bell.

“Pasco,”
he said and listened. Fournier watched him take a ballpoint and a flip pad from
his breast pocket. “Yup. Go.” Pasco jotted two names in an impeccable, feminine
cursive that filled Fournier with contempt:
Paul Tibbets
and
William
Parsons
. The last names Fournier already knew, but the first names were
unfamiliar.

“Both
are dead?” Pasco asked.

So
these are new vics?
Fournier wondered.

“What
am I looking for in the obits?”  

Fournier
strained to hear the faint metallic chatter emanating from Pasco’s phone. The
guy’s hair was too shaggy to let it through.

“Okay,
that it...? What else…? Could be a lot of convenience stores and gas stations. It
could take a while. You don’t sound like we have that kind of time.”

Pasco
listened with a frown. “What anniversary?”

An
unnerving silence passed in the kitchen while Chuck Fournier longed for a
louder phone, better ears, a sandwich.

“Alright,
I’m on it.” Pasco pressed END. His next question for Ginny was, “Can I borrow
your yellow pages?”

“Of
course,” Ginny said, opening the drawer below their wall-mounted landline. She
produced the floppy, seldom-used volume—so much thinner than the one Chuck had
grown up with in this same town—and placed it in his hands.

“What
are we looking for?” Fournier ventured, glancing over the agent’s shoulder at
the Cs, and wondering when Pasco would make it explicit that he was being cut
out of the loop.

“Convenience
stores,” Pasco said, flipping his spiral notepad closed and tucking it back in
his pocket. In Fournier’s experience, if you were hunting through a phone book,
you usually kept your pad out, and he figured Pasco had stowed it just to keep
it from prying eyes.

“Why
convenience stores?”

“And
tobacco shops. You want to stay involved in this case?”

“Which
case?” Fournier asked with trepidation.

“Let’s
say the kidnapping case. Wanna stay on the investigating side for a little
while longer, maybe redeem your ass?”

“Hell,
yeah.”

“Good,
because I have other research to do and I’m short a partner. I want you to call
every shop in town that sells smokes and ask if they sell clove cigarettes. Make
a list of the ones that do and tell them you’re looking for a suspect who
smokes them, a Japanese man. Ask if they know who you’re talking about. Let me
know if you get a hit.”

“So
we have a suspect?”

“Not
really. It’s a long shot. Something Carmichael asked Agent Drelick to look
into. But you can let the shop clerks think you have more to go on so it
doesn’t come off as ethnic profiling.”

Fournier
smiled. Maybe, just maybe, he could get to like this Pasco, if the wind started
to change direction. “What does this have to do with those names you wrote
down?”

Pasco
looked out the window at the back yard. “It’s just a theory.”

Fournier
nodded and tried to suck a piece of peanut skin from under his gum line. It
wouldn’t come.

“You
sure Lucas couldn’t reach that latch?” Pasco asked, turning to look him in the
eye.

Fournier
sighed. “Pretty sure. You think he ran away?”

“No.
But I hope he did.” Pasco headed for the door. “I want to hear from you soon,
Chuck,” he said, swinging it shut behind him.

Fournier
seized the marker from the magnetic dry erase board on the fridge. Below where
Ginny had written LIGHT BULBS, and EXT 237, he scrawled: PAUL T. / WILLIAM P. He
would Google them later, find out what Pasco had his nose in.

Then
he looked at Ginny, and solemnly shook his head. “Babe. How the hell did you
lose him?”

She
was shaking her head too, and he saw that tears were spilling out of her eyes. “I
don’t know. I was right here at the window, I swear, Chuck, I didn’t look away
for more than a minute. He just…he was gone…so fast.
So fast
.” He knew
he should embrace her. He knew, but he chose not to. Let that be enough. He
wasn’t going to rip her a new one. He didn’t have time for that, and what would
be the point?
He
had put this on her. She hadn’t asked for it, not
exactly. He’d wanted to make her happy. She had always wanted kids, but he’d
never been able to give her any. Her shoulders collapsed inward like the
support beams of a burning house, and she lifted her folded hands as if in the
gesture of prayer, covered her nose and mouth with them, and breathed into her
folded palms, looking at him as if over a mask.

He
closed the phone book and tapped his pocket to make sure his car keys were
still there. He didn’t need a damn book to figure out where to start asking
questions in this town. Sherry down at Tradewinds would have clove cigs, and
she’d be able to tell him every other shop in town that carried them. Sherry
wouldn’t be shy about gossiping on customers, either. Tradewinds was right across
the street from the station, and Chuck stopped in most mornings to grab a ham-and-egg
sandwich before hitting his desk. He decided to leave the ‘vette at the house
and take Ginny’s car. Pasco might head to the station, and Fournier wouldn’t
mind if that guy didn’t know his exact whereabouts just yet.

“Chuck?”
Ginny said, looking a lot older than she had yesterday, when having a boy in
the house, even a boy who looked like he wanted to pee in a corner like a frightened
puppy, had flushed her with vigor. In time she would have coaxed Lucas out of
his shell, would have nurtured him and made him smile. He knew she would have
been good for him, and he for her. Now she was a frail bird of a woman,
clutching her teacup in both hands like she needed to draw every unit of warmth
it could offer, even in the middle of a hot summer day. “What that agent said
about a suspect, someone who smokes the cigarettes you’re supposed to be
looking for...”—she shot a glance at the names on the whiteboard—“does that
mean that Desmond isn’t crazy, that he didn’t kill Phil?”

He
almost said something noncommittal about not having all of the facts yet, the
kind of bullshit he could reel off without thinking when someone from WBZ put a
microphone in his face. Instead, he found that it felt better to just tell her.
“Yeah. Probably. Des tried to tell me about the cigarette thing before, and I
thought it was a red herring. I fucked up, babe.” He sucked on his teeth, and
the peanut skin came free. “But I’m gonna fix it.”

She
absorbed this, staring into her teacup as if it were an oracle.

* * *

Sherry
sold cloves but didn’t know of any Asians who bought them. She sent him to two
other vendors she thought might have them: a cigar shop in nearby Sayville and
a gas station/convenience store at the western edge of Port Mavis. He knew the
second place—it used to be an auto-repair shop run by one of his old high-school
football buddies. The minimart had been added when Mike sold it to a Pakistani
guy and moved to Connecticut. It was off the beaten path, out by the firehouse
and the big playground with the wooden castles.

He
aimed the car west and readied himself for the unhappy prospect of squeezing a
Pakistani shopkeeper for information about his customers based on ethnicity. As
it turned out, that wasn’t a problem.

“I
special order them for him,” Mr. Sharif said. “His name is Hashimoto, he live
in the neighborhood. This old man is criminal suspect?”

“I’m
afraid so. You know where he lives?”

Now
Sharif looked slightly uncomfortable, but it had still been a big win, and in
the first five minutes. “I couldn’t tell you his address, but it must be nearby
because he walks. No car.”

“What
direction does he come from when he walks?”

Sharif
waved his hand at the road. “That way.”

“Alrighty,
thank you, Mr. Sharif. You’ve been very helpful.”

Fournier
took a couple of steps toward the door, then turned back to face the counter. “That’s
a nice American flag you have out front. Big one. You buy that before or after
9/11?”

Sharif
suddenly appeared to take a keen interest in examining the scratches in his
glass countertop. “What does that have to do with your case?” Sharif said in a
quiet but steady voice.

“I
only ask because I saw some small business owners like yourself having to deal
with unfortunate acts of vandalism after 9/11. Just because some ignorant
townies questioned your loyalty. So I can see why a man in your shoes might buy
a big flag. Biggest one you could find, right? Profiting off the high price of
a barrel of oil…you want people to know which team you’re on. Am I right?”

Sharif
nodded.

Fournier
approached Sharif again and, in a conspiratorial tone, said, “Now this
Hashimoto, he’s a person of interest in what may turn out to be a terrorism
case.”

Sharif
looked up from the counter. “Does this have anything to do with the murder of
the policeman whose daughter was killed last year?”

“I’m
not at liberty to say.”

“Because
the papers are talking about a serial killer.”

“Let’s
stay focused here, Mr. Sharif. I need you to think carefully before you answer
my question. Did Mr. Hashimoto ever pay you with a credit card? Maybe sometimes
he bought more than cigarettes, maybe he gassed up his car one day. Think about
it.”

Sharif
looked Fournier in the eye and said, “No. Cash only.”

Fournier
tapped his meaty palm two times on the counter and said, “Thank you for your
time.”

He
left Ginny’s car in the gas-station lot and headed down the sidewalk on foot. He
knew he could use a walk, both for the exercise and to get his brain working on
a different wavelength. On foot he’d be more apt to notice details in the
neighborhood. Since he didn’t know exactly what he was looking for—other than
an old Japanese man or an unlikely mailbox with the name on it—he wanted to
just take it all in, see what caught his eye. If Hashimoto really was an old
man, he probably wasn’t walking more than a mile. But if this cigarette thing
was leading him to an old‐timer, Japanese or not, what were the chances he had
successfully murdered all of those people with a sword? A gun, maybe, but
swinging steel and butchering people without getting caught? That was a young
man’s work.

The
day was hot and humid, with gathering curtains of black clouds threatening in
the north. Maybe evening thundershowers would break the stifling heat. His shirt
was already wet with perspiration by the time he reached the first stop sign…and
the first decision: keep going straight on the main route or branch off into
the residential streets? He was regretting not taking the car and considered
going back for it. In the car he would have air conditioning and shelter if the
sky decided to open up. In the car he could also have a bag of Fritos and a
Coke.

Too
many distractions and too much speed. Yes, he could cover more streets in less
time, but he might miss something. And the car felt like more comfort than he
deserved. If Lucas was being held bound and gagged by the madman who had killed
Sandy, then he owed it to her to make his best effort. Back in high school
before Desmond had sealed the deal, Sandy had wounded Chuck with the f-word:
friend
.
He’d never wanted to be her friend, but if ever there was a day when she needed
him to be one…today was that day.

“Don’t
kid yourself, Chuck,” he said aloud. Redemption might be the main dish on the
menu here, but if he was going to be honest with himself, there was also a side
of glory. If he found the killer before the FBI did, if he single-handedly
rescued Lucas, then it wouldn’t matter what missteps he’d made before, he’d
come out of this a hero.

Mulling
over the potential effects of success—in the department, in the papers, hell
fuck the local papers,
COP SAVES BOY FROM KATANA KILLER
was one for the
cable news tickers, interview at eleven—he looked up from the pavement…and
providence smiled on him. There, in front of a little pale yellow cape cod, tucked
between two rows of neatly trimmed shrubs, was one of those raked white gravel
gardens with a squat, black Asian lantern stained green with oxidation from the
rain.

Chapter 22

Shaun Bell set
the paper crane in the center of the kitchen table like a folded linen napkin,
then abruptly knocked it over when an assertive triple knock thundered from the
front door. There was a doorbell, but whoever was on the step had decided that
a chime wouldn’t convey the urgency of their needs. He looked at the clock in
the den. Sensei would be home in less than an hour, would find the crane in
less than an hour, and would come for Lucas soon after. There was no time for
diversion.

He
crept to the door as quietly as he could, sliding his feet on the wood floor in
the way that he had been trained to do for stealth and stability. He crouched
low when he reached the bay window, and peered out through the slit in the
white curtain without touching it.

The
street was easy to see from this vantage point. There were no cars parked in
front of the house. No police cruisers, no vans marked or unmarked. The body at
the door was a man in a polo shirt and khakis, heavyset with big arms. It was
impossible to see his face. Bell considered moving to the window in the master
bedroom to get a wider view, but moving would burn time he didn’t have.

He
had already given Desmond a head start by setting the first bird to fly in the
back pocket of a teen on a bike. For a twenty dollar bill the kid had promised
to deliver the crane to Desmond’s beach house mailbox, and had ridden like the
wind, at least for as long as Bell could see him. Carmichael was a free man
now. He might be at home or he might not. He might decipher the message quickly,
or not. That was as it should be. Bell felt he owed the boy a chance, but only
a chance. He wanted to see if Desmond Carmichael would do what his own father
had never done: act with the urgency of love, be in the right place at the
right time. The man lived in a fog of selfish fantasy. Bell had hoped that the
steel breeze blowing through his life would wake him. So far it hadn’t, but
people could change.

Sensei
was a more reliable force. He would arrive with the gravity of a guillotine
blade. Sensei carried no cell phone because the police could track the GPS
chips, so his every move had been planned in advance, from here to Ohio and
back. Flying back to Massachusetts wasn’t an option after yesterday’s massacre,
and the drive was fourteen hours without roadblocks. Very soon he would be
back. He would expect to find Lucas Carmichael, the last name on the scroll,
waiting in the basement for him.

Things
would be a little different, however. Instead of the boy, he would find a
message—mysterious to the police but quite clear to him—telling him where to
find his prey. If the cops were onto their scent, the change of scene for the
execution would make sense. If this was a cop at the door, then it could be an
auspicious turn of events, a broom across the tracks of the betrayal Bell was
flirting with.

The
man on the front stoop shielded his eyes with his hand and tried to peer into
the house through the curtains. It was Fournier, the detective from whose house
Bell had seized Lucas. How could the cop have found him so fast? He had been
practically invisible during the abduction, had spent less than a minute on the
property, and had used stolen plates on the car. Fournier must have found the
house by other means. Was the cop alone? Did others know where he was? Bell felt
the urge to run out the back door and disappear, race back to the corn maze and
kill the boy before the cruisers and SWAT vans swarmed the place, before Sensei
even found the note. But he knew that flight would guarantee pursuit. Better to
confront the threat here, to sever this loose thread and pray to Fudo Myoto
that it wasn’t tied to a larger net.

The
face withdrew from the window and the knock came again, followed by the door chime.
Shaun Bell looked down at his clothes. His black jeans were dusty from the
Palace of Pain, but there was no theatrical blood from the exhibits on his
knees or shoes.

He
inhaled, opened the door, and presented a puzzled expression with raised brow.

Fournier
held up a leather wallet, flipped it open and displayed a badge. “Detective
Charles Fournier,” he said, looking first at Bell’s hands and hip pockets, then
past him at the room beyond. “I’m looking for Mr. Hashimoto. Is he here?”

“He’s
out of town visiting relatives. Should be home tomorrow. Is there anything I
can help you with?”

“Who
are you?”

“I’m
house sitting and looking after his cat. I’m actually on my way out.”

“I
didn’t ask what you’re doing. I asked who you are. Name.”

“Shaun
Bell.”

“You
mind if I come in for a minute, Shaun? I’d like to ask you a few questions
about Mr. Hashimoto. He may be in trouble, and it’s important that I reach
him.”

“Okay,”
Bell said, taking a step backward, and attenuating his posture and body
language in countless small ways to create the illusion of a scrawny, graceless
teen with no training whatsoever in martial arts. He almost tripped over a
footstool as he made way for Fournier, who seemed satisfied with his own
intimidating presence as he stepped into the room and gestured for Bell to sit
on the couch while he picked up a wooden rocking chair, spun it around to face
both the couch and the door, and sat down with his back to a wall.

“Just
a sec,” Bell said. “Let me just close the cellar door, so the cat doesn’t get
out. I was scooping the box when I heard you knocking.”

“I
thought you said you were leaving.”

“Almost.
I’ll be right back.”

“He
keeps his cat locked in the basement?”

“Only
when he’s away. She acts out, scratches the furniture. Let me just make sure
she didn’t follow me up, shut that door,” Bell said, already walking toward the
back of the house without waiting for permission. As he passed through the
dining room, he brushed his hand across the table and swept the origami crane
up. He could hear Fournier following, the big man’s heavy footsteps creaking on
the wood floor, then squeaking on the linoleum, but by then Bell had reached
the cellar stairs and descended the first few steps into darkness.

Fournier
stood in the doorframe, a silhouette, drawing his weapon. “Hey! Get back here!”
he yelled. “Back the fuck up the stairs with your hands on your head.”

Bell
stood in the shadows just below the last stair that the light from the kitchen
windows could reach. Silent and motionless except for his left hand, now taking
a
katana
from the stairwell wall where it hung beside a calligraphy
scroll—a sword that could pass for decor if the house was ever searched or
could serve the purpose at hand.

Fournier
took cover around the corner of the doorframe, pointed his sidearm low in both
hands, and shouted, “Now! I want to hear you stomping up these stairs right
now, or I will start shooting into the dark.”

The
light switch was inside the stairwell, close enough to the top that Bell knew
Fournier could see it. Was the detective brave enough to reach for it? Bell
hoped so, because the other cop move to make right now was to call in help. It
was the smarter move and the one that he might not be fast enough to prevent
against a man with a gun on higher ground.

Bell
centered himself with three cleansing breaths. He slid the scabbard through his
belt and unlocked the sword with his thumb. If Fournier shot into the
darkness…was the man really that impulsive?

Bell
resisted the urge to scurry down the stairs or to flatten his body against the
wall. Impulsive moves driven by fear, they would commit him to a path based on
actions his opponent had not yet taken. Far better to remain alert yet empty,
ready to allow his body to move spontaneously in the living moment.

He
heard Sensei’s voice:
You must accept your death, embrace it, get it out of
your way, and then make every cut with such conviction that it is your final
move, your only move. The true warrior ends the conflict before he has even
drawn the sword because he has killed his fear. Everything that follows is
merely writing a poem you have already composed in your mind. The verse arises
in the moment, and the blade, like a brush, merely paints the strokes in your
opponent’s blood. Every cut is the killing cut.

Fournier
was looking around for something he could flip the light switch with—a broom
handle or any kind of pole that would keep his hand out of range of that
terminus of shadow beyond which razored steel might lie in wait. For a man with
a firearm, he looked nervous. Was he crazy enough, reckless enough, scared
enough to discharge his weapon at someone who might be a mere cat-sitter?

The
question was answered with barking fire. Three shots, deafening in the narrow stairwell.
Before the first was fired, Bell saw the trajectory of the cop’s arms rising
and committing to a direction as if in slow motion, saw the wrists twisting
inward as the hands tightened their grip on the gun’s handle, and saw the predictable
pattern emerging, left, center, right, the shots sweeping across the shadowy
void. Somehow Bell had intuited the mind of his enemy, and without thinking, rolled
his body into the first shot, moving toward the flash of orange light, toward
the cloud of plaster dust felt like mist from a waterfall on his cheek. He
ducked under the first shot, and was clear of the second and third when they
followed fast in its wake.

Fournier
stepped into the stairwell and fumbled for the light switch. Bell rose on his
haunches and squeezed the silk braid of the sword hilt gently, his wrist
limber, ready to draw and cut Fournier’s hand clean off before the light could
come on. But before Fourier could find the switch plate there was an explosion
of splintering wood followed by the thunderclap of the front door rebounding
off of the wall in the foyer. Fournier swung around and pointed his gun at the
den.

“Jesus!”
He said, and then knowing he had lost the advantage unless his shots had
wounded or killed (and there had been no cry, although Bell now thought maybe
he should have faked a yelp of pain to lure Fournier forward), he threw his
bulk around the outside of the doorframe again, pointing his gun at the floor.

Bell
doubted that the new body on the scene really was Jesus. Had to be another cop
alerted by the shots. Sensei certainly wouldn’t enter his own house by kicking
the door in. If Sensei had come home to the sound of shots fired, Fournier
would already be in pieces on the kitchen floor.

“Suspect
fled to the basement,” Fournier said.

“Just
one?” A low, calm voice that did little to put Bell at ease.

“Yeah.”

“Armed?”

“I
don’t know. Have you been
following
me?”

“Thought
you might pull a dumb stunt like this. You don’t know if he’s armed, but you
shot at him?”

“He
fled questioning.”

“Did
he threaten you?”

Fournier
shook his head.

“You’re
gonna take me down with you,” the other cop said in wonder. “The only cause I
have for busting in here is your shots. You trying to kill a man for his brand
of cigarettes or did you find something?”

“We
can discuss it later, Pasco. Are you gonna help me catch this shifty fucker or
not?”

Pasco
said, “I circled the house and there’s no basement door, just small windows. Is
he thin enough?”

“Might
be.”

Pasco
reached for his belt, but what he drew wasn’t a gun or a radio. It was a
flashlight.

Bell
danced down the stairs, light-footed and silent, careful not to knock the
scabbard against the wall. At the bottom he slipped out of range of the searching
beam but lingered near enough to hear their voices.

“You
see that statue in the front room?” Fournier asked. Pasco must have indicated “no”
because Fournier said, “Some kind of Buddhist demon with a flaming sword and a
chain. This be the place, Mac. This is our guy.”

“Call
in backup.” Pasco said, then in a loud, clear voice, “Sir, we just want to talk
with you. I’m going to turn on the light, and I want you to come forward with
your hands up.”

When
the light came on, Bell was already in the far corner of the basement. He
pivoted on his heel to face the wall, and then lowered himself into
seiza
position on one of the
tatami
mats, kneeling with his buttocks on his
heels. He heard only one set of footsteps, first on the stairs behind him, and then
on the concrete floor. The other cop would be hanging back until the first one
got a read on the room.

“Put
your hands on your head,” Fournier said, sounding more confident now that he
had a partner and a clear shot on a well-lit target. If, that was, he decided
to shoot a kneeling man in the back. “Forget the windows, I’ve got him
covered!” Fournier shouted at the stairs, and Bell could tell from the way the
voice bounced around the room that Fournier had turned his head about 45
degrees to the right to call for Pasco. “Hands on your head, motherfucker!” Fournier
yelled, now facing forward again.