A Champion for Tinker Creek, page 29
“Well done getting him down here so fast,” she said. “But you know, diabetic shock is caused by too little blood sugar, not too much,” she said.
“Yes, but I made a bet he wouldn’t know that.”
Once we reached the door, I set her down as it was too narrow to pass through while carrying her. We found ourselves in a tapered passage heading farther into the boat with a spiral staircase to the right.
“This must lead to the deck,” she said.
“Yes, but I want to see if I can find a cell phone or radio. He didn’t have one on him.”
As she waited by the stairs, I made a quick inspection down the passage. All I found was a tiny, filthy bathroom and some old sleeping quarters that looked like they hadn’t been used in years. I returned down the passage to the stairs.
“Nothing,” I said.
She shrugged.
“How weird is it that he didn’t have a mobile?” I said. “Not even a flip-top. I would have thought they wanted him reachable at all times.”
We heard a sound from the hold. I stepped up to the door and opened it a crack. In the shadowy light I saw him trying to get to his knees.
“Time to go,” I said. She started up the stairs as I followed. At the top, we stepped into the boat’s bridge and Caliban’s living quarters as well, as evidenced by the unmade cot, scattered fast food containers, and other trash. The staircase had a hatch at the top that I lowered into position, but no lock.
“Here,” Eva said, pointing to an office chair. I put it on top of the cover. By itself it was pretty light and wouldn’t prove much of an obstacle, but with its legs wedged under the stairway railing, it would be difficult to move.
I glanced over the boat’s helm. Still no mobile phone. He doesn’t use one? But there was a new-looking radio. I reached for it, but Eva grabbed my hand.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling for help,” I said. She shook her head vigorously.
“Marine radio is not like a cell phone or even a walkie-talkie. Anybody can hear what you say. People you want to hear, like the Coast Guard, or people you don’t want to hear, like the people who put us here. And they might be a lot closer than the Coast Guard.”
Then, as if to prove her point, the radio squawked alive.
“Admiral One to Katie Ann. Admiral One to Katie Ann. Do you read? Over.” A pause for a few seconds. “Katie Ann, this is Admiral One. Do you copy? Over.”
Eva grabbed my arm and pointed at one of the orange life rings mounted on a bulkhead. There, the name Katie Ann stood out in large white letters against the neon fabric.
“That’s us,” she said, her voice shaking a little. “And I think we can guess who Admiral One is.”
“What do we do?”
“Katie Ann, this is Admiral One. Come in. Over.” Admiral One had a little edge in his voice this time.
“We get off this boat. We have to find Caliban’s outboard.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Eva’s Photos Arrive
Another sleepless night that ended in a dream about a fire, complete with alarms, sirens, smoke, and death until I finally came to, finding my mobile ringing continuously. From the cracks around my window blinds, I could tell the sun was up. Parker was on the phone.
“Sorry to disturb you, boss, but it’s seven thirty, and I’m here with the cops. Manny and Eva are on the Record’s front page, and something came in FedEx yesterday the cops think you should see.”
“Ugghh,” I groaned. “Give them coffee. Make sure you pour some for me, and tell them I’ll be right there.”
I took a quick navy shower and headed down on the elevator. Agent Blake awaited me along with two others in suits, all sipping coffee.
“Agent Blake, so good to see you again after, um, five or six hours,” I said sarcastically.
“Likewise, I’m sure,” Blake said as I sat down behind my desk. “We would have given you more of a break if Parker here hadn’t drawn our attention to this in the mail last night.”
Parker passed me the paper first.
“Land Deal Thugs Kidnap Record Reporter, Freelance Photog,” the headline screamed, adding “Seek Victory in Large Tinker Creek Case.”
I scanned the article. Tommy had done a fine job of telling the story but withholding details the police didn’t want us to mention. Though a few hours had passed since the issue had hit the newsstands, Parker said the answering machine was full of tips from people who thought they might have seen something in relation to the abductions or thought they knew where Tommy and Eva were now.
He passed me a padded envelope I hadn’t noticed him holding. It originated in Savannah, and the writing on the front was clearly Eva’s. My heart jumped a little.
“This is Eva’s writing,” I said.
“Parker thought it might be. That’s why we figured you should open it sooner than later.” He pointed to one of the other agents beside him. “Agent Brindle here is one of our bomb guys. He’s already figured out it’s not going to explode.”
I grabbed the opening tab at the top of the envelope and gave it a sharp tug. It came away easily, revealing a piece of paper and two flash drives. I pulled out the note. It was written in Eva’s familiar, upward-slanting cursive.
“Lyle,” I read aloud. “These should make you happy. I wanted to send them safely because they’re too hot for me to keep until I see you again. Please shoot me a text to let me know you got them. Your friend, Eva. P.S. I trust you remember our signal from the Blue Moon.”
“Let’s see what’s on them,” Blake said eagerly. I sat at my desk and fired up my computer.
“What do you think is there?” Blake asked.
“I haven’t a clue, but I expect it could be something she discovered while doing surveillance for us at the Empire Cinema building.”
Blake’s eyebrows rose, and I remembered we hadn’t completely filled him on what Eva had been doing in the surveillance nest. I proceeded to tell him about the observation of the suspicious characters occupying 217 Breaker Street, along with the links between that house and Alex Deutsch and his FairWinds Development company.
“You know, there are almost certainly laws against what you and Ms. Almisra were doing at the Empire,” Blake said.
“Does that mean you can’t use what we found, if we found anything?”
“I’m not sure, but maybe not. For now, we’ll treat it as a tip and see if we can’t take it from here to develop evidence we can use.”
“Look, until we find out what’s on the drives, it’s all supposition, right?” said the ever-practical Parker. “Put the drives in and let’s see what we got.”
I inserted the drive into the port. The computer buzzed slightly and a window labeled “Magic Box 1” popped up on the screen. But when I tried to open it, all that appeared was a dialog box with the words “PASSWORD 1 of 5.”
“Damn, it’s password protected,” I said.
“What’s the password?” Blake asked.
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know? She’s your friend.”
“Try her dog’s name,” Parker suggested. “She talks about him all the time.”
I typed in “Kwanjo.” The screen blinked but the dialog box reappeared, this time reading “PASSWORD 2 OF 5.”
“Fuck. It’s password protected, and we only have three more tries to get it right.”
“Christ,” Blake said. “Okay, what else? Mother’s maiden name? Her middle name? Wait, doesn’t she speak other languages? How do we know it’s even in English?”
“She and her mom weren’t close,” Parker said.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I cried. “Shut up for a second.” The room fell silent. “Parker, please read the last line of Eva’s note again.”
Parker took the sheet out, cleared his throat, and read. “I trust you remember our signal from the Blue Moon.”
The Blue Moon…The Blue Moon was a bar where we first developed our pickup routine and included a phrase we used to let each other know if we were okay.
“I have it,” I shouted. “Or I think I have it. Parker, what horse won the Kentucky Derby this year?”
Parker’s fingers fairly flew over his phone’s keyboard. “A horse named Country House, boss.”
I turned to the keyboard and carefully typed “Country House” into the password box. Then I held my breath, closed my eyes, and hit enter.
My machine whirred, and when I opened my eyes they beheld a pop-up screen with “Magic Box 1” at the top and showing two folders. One read “217 Breaker Street Files 1-5” and the other read “217 Breaker Street Files 6-10.”
“We’re in!”
Blake looked at me. “The Kentucky Derby winner?”
“It’s a long story.” I opened the first file and there was a series of photos, all clearly visible, of a man I knew walking through the parking area at 217 Breaker and up the stairs.
“Wait,” I said. “I know him.”
“Who?” Blake said.
“This guy. The one whose photo Eva took at the house.” Emotions came back to me. Frustration. His smirk while he explained the Georgia Open Records Act to me without mentioning he was going to use it to keep me from getting the information I needed. “His name, at least when I met him, was James O’Hara, and he was the St. Michael’s Harbor city clerk,” I said.
At that point Blake asked to take the drives and I agreed. The GBI’s advanced technical and photographic analysis could wring every bit of useful information from the mechanisms more quickly and thoroughly than we could. Meanwhile, Blake was on the phone about getting a warrant to search the 217 Breaker house.
* * *
“Hold on, goddammit. I can’t take full steps, Mr. Long Legs.”
He looked at me as though I were simple, and I choked back my frustration for the fiftieth time since we left the hold.
“Eva, we need to get off this boat,” Manny said, as though I required to be reminded. “We don’t know how far away Admiral One is or when he might show up to find out why Caliban isn’t answering the radio.”
“I know that, you pup, but I can only go as fast as these metal anklets will let me!”
“Well, the deck’s too treacherous for me to carry you again.” He sniffed.
I breathed deeply. Lord, I lift mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my strength, I prayed.
“I know that. But if you’ll just slow up enough for me to hold your shoulder for balance, I’ll make much better time. We can only go as fast as our weakest link, right,” I said, even though I hated to admit slowing down the Manny and Eva Escape Show.
“Right. Sorry.” He came alongside me, and by my holding on to his shoulder, we made it to the stern where we found Caliban’s dinghy, but also a five-foot climb down a ladder to reach it. Under normal circumstances such a ladder wouldn’t make me pause a second, but without the use of my feet I wasn’t sure what to do.
I turned to him. “Any ideas?”
“This might be a time to move past women and children first.” He smirked.
“What?”
“I should go down first to pull the boat as close to the ladder as possible and to stabilize you as you come down. Then you can descend after me more easily. Thank God we have a calm sea.”
I had to admit that made sense, and he dropped to the little craft in about thirty seconds. He used the rope tying the boat to the ladder to pull the skiff closer and then looped it once to discourage it from moving.
“Okay?” he asked.
“I suppose.”
“Now, pay attention,” he said. “You’re going to back down the ladder, but from where I am it doesn’t look like your chains are going to let you have a foot on two rungs at the same time. You’ll have to come down one rung at a time.”
“But I can’t see the rungs!”
“Take the toe of your shoe and trace it down the ladder until it hits the next rung.” I stretched out my right into a huge void but kept my toe touching the frame.
“Yeah, like that. Now start lowering your foot. Keep in contact with the frame. Yeah. Okay, now your right foot is over the rung, like one inch away. Start sliding your left foot off the deck slowly.”
I did, and as my left foot left the deck, I felt my right come to rest on the rung. I quickly brought my left foot to match it there and paused, breathing hard.
“Excellent!” he crowed. “Now just do that six more times and we’re home free.” On the last three rungs he was able to reach the small of my back and my belt, and this helped stabilize me further, so in just a couple of minutes we were together in the dinghy’s little space.
“I didn’t know they even made boats this small,” I complained, while trying to find a place for my legs that would be out of his way.
“Neither did I,” he admitted. “I’m not even sure this qualifies as a rowboat, though I see it has oars.” He pointed to paddles, one on either side of the craft.
“Since you’re closer, can you get the painter untied and we can get out of here,” he said. I looked at him blankly.
“Sorry, the rope. Please untie the rope from the ladder so we can go.”
I quickly discovered the knot was easily mastered and we were free of the Katie Ann.
He got on his knees near the small but new-looking outboard motor and grabbed the pull rope handle. I held my breath. “Here goes nothing.”
He yanked the pull cord, and the motor made a whrrrr chop noise but didn’t start. He tried it again, same result.
“I think you might have to pull that green button on the right,” I speculated. “This looks like my lawnmower at home, and that’s what I have to do to start that.”
He pulled the button, which came out from the motor on a metal stem.
“Now try it.” This time the engine coughed once and then roared to life.
“Woohoo,” he said as he turned the engine and started propelling us away from the Katie Ann. I leaned close to him to make myself heard over its roar.
“One question,” I shouted. “Where are we going?”
He slowed the throttle until we were creeping along and the motor was much quieter.
“That’s a good question,” he admitted. “Where should we go? I was going to aim us for the first private or public pier we saw, but we don’t know where these bastards are. We could pull right up to their dock!”
“Exactly,” I said. “I think we have to head for the public dock at St. Michael’s Harbor. We know there’s a Coast Guard office and dockmaster there.”
“How far is that?”
“I have no idea.”
We fell into a brief silence as we contemplated our options. And as we drifted about one hundred or a hundred and fifty yards from the Katie Ann, she startled us. A sort of whooshing noise came from her and then, as we watched in horror, she blew up. A loud crump filled the air as a tower of flame arose out from about where the engine must have been. We ducked our heads and yelled in fright as pieces of the doomed boat, some large, plunged from the sky to splash into the ocean around us. The Katie Ann became a floating platform of flame that, in a few minutes, began to sink beneath the surface.
“Oh my God,” I said. “That could have been us!”
“Did we do that?”
“Of course not. How could we have done that? All we did was leave.”
“Poor Caliban,” Manny said.
“What do you mean, poor Caliban? If we hadn’t left, it would have been poor us and poor Caliban.”
“Do you think it was a bomb?” His voice was subdued.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But if it was a bomb, it was one that would kill us and their guy,” I added.
“I know.”
At that moment, as if in sympathy with the Katie Ann’s violent end, our own outboard motor gave two brief sputters and stopped.
“What the fuck,” I swore again. We needed to catch at least a couple of breaks.
“I might have idled it too slowly,” he said. “Let me get it started again.” He knelt by the outboard, pulled the button to its full extension, and yanked the cord. The motor coughed, sputtered to life, then died again.
He growled and repeated the procedure. This time the motor coughed twice but never caught. He muttered under his breath. Then he reached down the machine and unscrewed a red cap on the side.
“Fuck! We’re out of gas.”
“No!”
“Yep. He must have been planning to refill it from the Katie Ann before he left.”
“Shit. What do we do now?”
“Well, I still don’t think it’s a good idea for us to just sit here until the kidnappers come looking to see what happened to Caliban.”
“Except maybe what happened to Caliban was supposed to happen to him—and us. They won’t come back for that. But maybe somebody else will.”
“Do you think we want to just sit here until that happens?” I asked. “We’re drifting now and,” I looked over my shoulder, “there’s no sign the Katie Ann was ever here except for the debris.”
“Okay, so we row. Have you ever rowed a boat before?”
“Nope. I’m great on the rowing machine at the gym, but I don’t know if that translates into rowing a boat.”
“It doesn’t,” he said. “My dad and I used to take out a boat when I was a kid, so I sort of know how to do it. First,” he reached down and grabbed the closet oar, “we have to get these up and on these posts here.”
Together we hefted the oars off the hull of the boat and got them into place. Then Manny turned around in his seat and faced the other way.
“I apologize for turning my back on you,” he said over his shoulder, “but you really have to sit in this direction and on this seat to do it.”
“Okay,” I said. “Trust me, no offense taken.”
“Which way?” he asked.
