Un-Connected (16 page)

Chapter 12

Detective Work

Deb and I were beginning to relax, but we
were still vigilant. We felt we were in a safe location, but we didn’t want any
new trouble, so we talked about security regularly now. I had a fanny pack with
me. In it were a copy of our passports, a small amount of cash, and a small
taser-type device that looked like a pack of cigarettes, Jim’s phone and my new
truck stop credit card.

Deb was carrying a purse that looked more like
a small backpack or hydration unit. There were straps over both shoulders, and
the pack was small for a backpack but larger than my fanny pack. I told her I
could carry more if she wanted to haul less weight, but she said no. She had
what she wanted, and it wasn’t heavy. She had copies of our passports, a small
amount of cash, her version of the taser cigarettes, her credit card, and some “girl
stuff” as she called it.

Later I added Band-Aids in case we got a
blister on our feet or whatever. We left nothing of value in our room when we
were out. Our room keys were in our respective packs or in a secure pants
pocket. If she was concerned about someone getting her backpack, she would wear
it in front.

Jim called and I was a little surprised to be
able to get his call out at sea.

“How far offshore should I be able to talk to
you?”

“I don’t know, but I’m sure you can use the
phone in Europe. You should be OK regarding fingerprints, and the Raines’s house
has been cleaned up, wiped down, and repainted where necessary. The flooring in
the den had been taken up, and the subfloor was showing. But the house had been
put on the market as Ben’s parents had asked, and when sold, the money would be
sent to them. So there will be no new fingerprints showing up anywhere around
there belonging to Bentley Raines.”

Ben was fading into history.

“What about the substituted fingerprints, and
where did they come from?”

“As long as you keep your mouth shut it won’t
matter. A body washed ashore above Miami twenty years ago, and atypical for the
era, there were several sets of fingerprints. All of them were poor quality
except one. We left all the sets in the John Doe file except the better set. We
cleaned it up a little and made it a little more modern and then scanned it
into a digital file. Then we burned the original.”

“Wow! So the fingerprints belonging to
Bentley Raines are not my fingerprints!”

“That’s right. So the next trip up would be a
facial recognition or dental.”

“The phone number of the other Seth who had
called had been redirected from Deb, and an elderly black man was now answering
her old number. The real Seth didn’t know her name or phone number, so she
should be home free as well.”

“Except someone got Deb’s phone number,” I
said. “How did they do that and what else did they know?”

I could feel the weight roll off my shoulders
as he was talking and the stress flow out of me. I asked if he wanted to know
where we were.

“Absolutely not, but I hope you’re having
fun.”

“Does the FBI have anything new on the
Phoenix shooting?”

“There wasn’t much new about it on the east
coast or even in headquarters, but the Phoenix branch of the FBI is not happy
with Otis. He’d told them they worked for him, and he didn’t have to take orders
from them. It riled them a little.”

We laughed at Otis’s brashness.

            “Do
you have any more information about who hired the men in black or who owned any
of the equipment?”

“Everybody is clammed up tight on that stuff.
Mostly everybody says they have moved on, and Phoenix is old news. Those who do
wonder out loud speculated about whoever owned the stuff not being happy and
scared to show it. Everyone is acting very nonchalant.”

Jim thought they were a little too much so. “But
I would be too if I had lost what was probably a $25 million bird. Can you
imagine strolling into your office and saying, “Oh, by the way, boss, we had a
little trouble yesterday morning. We lost a $25 million helicopter, and some of
our best operatives are dead. Also there are some high-definition pictures of
the newest high-tech airplane all over the internet. Want to go to lunch? …Yikes!”

“It was a brand new prototype, top speed,
climb, avionics, engines, frame, you name it. It was invisible to radar or
nearly so in stealth mode. The boys came in there with guns blazing instead of
asking questions first.  They had to have been totally taken by surprise. They
were a sharp outfit with lots of experience. They probably saw satellite images
of this rusty-looking, forlorn, and small-time truck stop and could not imagine
in their wildest dreams anyone would be ready for them.”

“Is the FBI still upset about not getting the
helicopter?”

“I am glad you brought it up. The FBI wants
the black box real bad. It would tell them where the bird had been. Are you
sure you can’t get it for me? It could help me out around here with my rep, and
it might help us put together a lot of information that looks random. I will
tell you this. There’s some funny business with old people dying. We can’t
connect the dots right now, but more info is coming in all the time. Anyway, the
box would really help. The Phoenix bunch is still trying to figure out how to
scare Otis into giving it up. I don’t think that will work. By the way did I
say please?”

“I’ll try. And you are right it won’t work.
How are the dead guys’ next of kin being notified and by whom?”

“It probably will not happen for a while
because no one wants to claim to know them right now.  And these guys commonly
are on assignment for months at a time so no one will start missing them for
quite a while.”

“OK, thanks for all the updates. It’s good to
hear from you.”

I hung up and called Otis to tell him about
the black box.

“We’re just about through with the box ourselves,”
he said. “We’re making other copies, which are sorted and rearranged so we can
make sense of it. It hasn’t been our highest priority, but we’re close enough.
It shouldn’t be long.”

“How much will you want the FBI to pay for
the box?”

“You mean with the information on it or not?”

I told him to give it to me either way if he
knew.

He laughed. “Of course I know. How can I sell
something if I don’t know what it’s worth? With the info on it, the value is probably
about a mill. Without the data it’s probably worth about a hundred thousand.”

“I’m pretty sure my contact at the FBI could
get the latter amount out of his budget, but they would want the info more than
the box, and that will cost them a lot more. Do you want to talk to Jim?”

“Absolutely not. He probably doesn’t care for
me all that much and it would be against my ability to negotiate. The FBI believes
you, or they would not have worked so hard to clear your name. You are the one
to haggle with them.  They aren’t very good judges of character because they
like you.”

“Ha-ha!” I replied. “Ok, then help me with my
selling points and how we want to be paid. Getting money from the government
might not work as well as getting money from someone who asked no questions and
gave no answers.”

“You got that right!”

We talked it through a bit, and then I went
looking for Deb. She wasn’t far, but I wanted to keep her up to date and in the
loop, and she thanked me.

When I finished telling her everything I had
learned from Jim and then about the conversation with Otis, I was almost out of
breath. But I asked her opinion, especially about talking to Jim.

“Few people would care about the info on the
box,” she said. “The ones who did would be law enforcement or the would-be
killers. The latter we wanted nothing to do with, so we needed to sell to Jim. If
Otis is correct and the box with memory wiped clean was worth about a hundred
thousand, it should be worth more than that to the FBI. But we couldn’t expect
them to pay top dollar for it.”

I agreed and got a kiss to boot.

Jim winced when I told him we needed money
for the box. “They have an offer for just under a million, but they don’t want
to sell to those people. They’re willing to come down a lot to do the right
thing.”

“I have an idea,” Jim said. “Maybe we could
get the bad guys to buy the box. Then we could catch the bad guys with the box
and take it away from them.”

I was not comfortable with being part of his
new plan and told him it sounded as if someone might get hurt or killed.

“I know what you’re saying. With what you told
me, you have given me a lot to work on. I’ll have to raise funds. Only another
FBI agent would understand how hard it can be. I’ll see if there’s any interest
in trying a little extra maneuvering to catch some bad guys and maybe save some
money in the process. But most important of all, we cannot lose track of the
box.”

He would let me know and said I should have
fun until he heard from me. I texted Otis and told him not to lose the box
because we had an interested buyer.

We went to the hot tub almost every day.
Watching Deb put on that bikini or take it off was always one of the highlights
of my day.  It usually put me to sleep for a short nap.

We had drinks on deck looking out over the
ocean and the islands we passed every now and then. It was beautiful and
relaxing, and we were having a good time. Just about the time we thought we
would get a little bored, we were in the Mediterranean. One of our stops was on
the French Riviera. There were some beautiful women there. Deb got a little mad
at me for
taking in too much of the scenery
as she called it. I told her
she was the only thing on my menu.

She was mad at me and that explanation didn’t
help enough.

“Why would you gawk at those women and act
like I’m nothing?”

“I didn’t act like you were nothing. I didn’t
do anything to you good or bad.”

“You did. You stared at them like you hadn’t
seen a woman’s breasts before or like mine weren’t enough for you. You acted
like you couldn’t get enough. And that is insulting to me.”

“My looking at them had nothing to do with
you. I wasn’t comparing or wishing for them or anything.”

“Why do you need to look at them? I will show
you mine anytime you want. I am very good to you and love you and give you what
you want just about any time.”

“It wasn’t about us. They are pretty and I am
a man who enjoys the female figure and they were out in the open and maybe
showing off or not but I wasn’t trying to talk to them or get close to them. I
was just appreciating how good they looked.”

“It made me feel that I am not enough for
you. That you want something more than me. That who I am and what I mean to you
are no more than what they are.”

“That isn’t true. They don’t mean anything to
me except that I recognize their beauty.  I don’t want them. I don’t want to
meet them or talk to them or anything. I don’t want to get any closer than I
was then. Do you not want me to be inspired by the female figure?”

“Yes, but by mine and only mine. I don’t
appreciate it. I feel put down. I feel like you put me down to a level equal to
them or maybe even less.”

“You can’t be serious. What I appreciate and
love about you cannot be demonstrated by a few seconds of looking. I didn’t
want any more than a look.”

She was upset and my logic was not winning
the day. I sat down on one of the deck chairs and pulled her to me. She let me
pull her closer but not too close. I pulled her down on my lap and hugged her.

“I am really, really sorry I hurt your
feelings. I wouldn’t trade you for the entire beach full of them. I didn’t
intend to slight you even a little.”

I apologized for looking so long. She said
emphatically I had my hands full keeping up with her, and I agreed.

I said I would be more careful next time. She
was ready to move on, but she was not happy about it.

…

We met other couples from all over the place.
Several were from Texas, a few from Florida, a few from the Northeast, maybe
New Jersey, New York or New England. One guy commented on Deb’s Cherry Hill
attire, and she admitted she had lived there. We mostly avoided talking about
the Northeast. I kept up my tan and the highlights in my hair and my close-cut
beard. I was always aware someone would think I looked like the guy from
Virginia that killed his wife even though he was not a suspect any longer. And
the age-adjusted picture out there of him didn’t look like me at all. We were
having a good time, but we knew better than to take that for granted.

Our Mediterranean stops came and went all too
quickly, and then we were headed out over the ocean to the coast of Florida. I
hadn’t heard from Otis or Jim in a while and didn’t know if it was because they
couldn’t reach me or they had no news yet.

Once we were closing in on the Caribbean, I
called Jim to see if he had been trying to get a hold of me. He hadn’t, but he
did have some news. The bureau would pay $200,000 for the box, but that was top
dollar. They were still talking about trying to catch the other buyer. It would
be complicated. The buyers would want to power it up and see if it worked and
was readable and if the data were on it. Then there would be the matter of
getting the funds without them running off with the box and of wanting to kill
the messenger rather than put out that much money. A lot of people had been
killed for less.