A Man Overboard (9 page)

His throat suddenly closing within the vice-grip of a last-ditch act of desperation, Jack tried turning the gun around, to shoot the trespasser in the head. But the man’s grip was so tight that he wasn’t sure he’d get the shot off before his larynx was crushed. So his hands dropped the gun and instinctively went to his throat. He tried to peel the strong, tattooed fingers away from his neck but couldn’t. So he started beating on the gunshot wound the bastard had taken in the shoulder, a cry of pain echoing back. But no relief to his neck. The man, despite his medium-looking frame, was strong as a bull and gave every ounce of fortitude he could muster into squeezing Jack’s head off.

Seeing through spots now, Jack could just make out a blue, one-liter bottle of kerosene lying in a stream of blood trickling lazily away from the heater-thief’s damaged face. Leaning down into the death grip and reaching out, Jack was able to get a finger on the bottle even while fighting against impending unconsciousness. He danced his finger over the cylindrical plastic and set its liquid contents sloshing about, helping to roll the container close enough to grab. The cap was off and kerosene was mixing with the blood, transforming the red stream into a pink, flammable lake. As Jack lifted the bottle, bringing it toward him, it leaked onto the face of the struggling man beneath.

The intruder coughed and finally loosened his grip as he fought the urge to bring one of his hands to his mouth. And that’s when Jack rammed the bottle right in there, jamming the nozzle halfway down the intruder’s throat, kerosene dumping into his stomach and lungs.

The tattooed hands immediately fell away from Jack’s throat and went to the bottle; the man gagged violently, trying to cough the poisonous fluid out of his body. Jack knew that ingesting half a liter of kerosene would be fatal, but he wasn’t going to sit around and wait for the Reaper to finish sharpening his sickle on this one. He grabbed the pistol off the floor and managed to stand. The definitive
boom
put the struggling criminal out of his misery by spreading the contents of his skull across the floor.

Jack couldn’t move, could only stare at his work as his chest heaved and the toxic fumes dizzied his senses. And just like that, the storm passed. Like Legion cast out of the graveyard robber by Christ, he was himself again, the insanity falling off and dissipating through the floor—maybe seeking a herd of swine and a steep cliff, he wasn’t sure. He stumbled backward up the stairs and fell into the kitchen. Hurrying back to his feet, he slammed the door shut, erasing from sight the horror of what had taken place in his garage. And yet, staring at the blank door, he found himself doubting the incident, that he—a
salesman
, for goodness sake!—had actually just killed someone.

His mind began computing again, processing. He willed himself back down into the garage and discovered that, yes, he had definitely shot the guy in the head. It seemed like a disturbingly excessive thing to do, didn’t it? And yet, part of him didn’t care at all, actually wished the guy had another head he could blow off. Though, if this
was
some type of Purgatory, he was fairly certain that such thoughts would only buy him another two thousand years of this crap.

Trying his hardest to ignore the gore coating his garage floor and the fumes that were nearly causing him to faint, he searched the guy’s pockets for some kind of ID. None. He stood and looked around. It was obvious now what the guy’s intent had been. Pouring gasoline from the red containers into the blue kerosene containers, he had planned on loading the heater with gas so that when he turned it on, the gasoline would explode, maybe even blow up the house. It would look like an idiot move by a homeowner who got his containers mixed up. Why anyone would use a heater this time of year, though, was a detail he was sure nobody would’ve paid much attention to.

Jack counted the number of red and blue containers and was surprised to see that there were none extra. The guy had broken into his house, planning to burn it down with what was already in the garage. But how could he possibly have known about the kerosene heater and containers of gas? A probable calculation? But then, there was also the front door. Why come in the front door where the whole neighborhood could see? Unless…

He left the garage, went through the kitchen, and searched the living room.

There. On the mantle.

Jack walked over and picked up two keys joined by a metal loop. One said GM, the other… He pulled his own keys out of his pocket, found his house key, and held it up.

A perfect match.

Now he was certain that something was askew, some evil plot open, its guts hanging out and stinking in his nostrils. It was a stench he was never supposed to get a whiff of, not from the bottom of the ocean. That’s why the guy had been shocked to see him—he wasn’t
supposed
to be there, he was supposed to be dead. He found himself hoping that kerosene man was one of the people that had thrown him overboard.

Noticing a black backpack resting against the wall below the living room window, he placed the 9mm on the mantle beside the keys and walked over to it. He picked it up, acknowledged its light weight, and unzipped it.

A paperback and a bundle of letters tied together with string.

Reaching in, he pulled out the book and flipped it around so that he could see the title.
October’s Ghost
,
by Ryne Douglas Pearson.

Ryne Douglas Pearson—
Simple Simon
…
Knowing—
the author Stacey was reading on the boat.

Ignoring a subtle alarm sounding in some remote section of intuition, he dropped the book back in the bag and moved on to the letters. He pulled one out of the stack and unfolded it.

Russian. It was all in
Russian
.

He pulled out another one. And another.

All Russian.

Agent Johnson would want to see this, but Jack wasn’t convinced the FBI would be any help. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t. Regardless of what they would or wouldn’t
do
, however, they sure as hell wouldn’t let him take matters into his own hands. They’d order him to sit home, to watch some television and wait. But he wasn’t about to spend his days watching reruns of
Airwolf
while his family was out there somewhere. No way. So instead of calling Johnson or the police, he went back into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took out a beer.

14

Jack had all the windows open in the hopes that the kerosene’s potent stench might be exorcized by the night air. So far, though, his drowsiness and headache had not dissipated.

Think
. He took another gulp of beer, trying to recite what he knew for the hundredth time.

Masked men tossing him overboard
could
have been a case of mistaken identity as he’d first assumed. But the person trying to burn down his house having a key, aware of what was in his garage, and recognizing him? That was no mistake. So the question became one of relation: were the two incidents connected? If so, then it could be appropriately determined that the men on the boat knew exactly who they were sending to the fishes. Had Viktoriya arranged the whole thing, trying to free her daughter of the great American idiot and spare Joseph from a life of fart jokes and baseball games? He didn’t think so, but then again, her house was empty, and she was missing.

He leaned back in the easy chair, his eyes not on the living room around him but on the mental list he was again trying to assemble in his pounding head. He took a long sip of beer while simultaneously trying to keep the pesky image of the dead guy, still sprawled out in the garage, from distracting him. He’d deal with that later.

He constructed a list in his head and ascended its shaky ladder one fact at a time. Nearing the top, he suddenly paused. He’d forgotten about this rung, and he tested it with a suspicious nudge. It was something that Johnson had gotten out of him, something he hadn’t given much thought to before.

Stacey left the suite to send an email
.

His fingers were clicking away over the keyboard, logging in to Stacey’s email ten seconds later.

There was nothing in her sent folder younger than a week old.

He sat back and lifted the bottle again before bringing up the internet history. This time he was rewarded with road maps and directions to some place in upstate New York, email accounts he’d never heard of, and information on international flights.

Assuming the dead guy didn’t order plane tickets from the house he was planning to blow up, Jack knew of no other person other than Stacey and Viktoriya that could’ve used the computer. But what would Stacey or Viki be doing checking out road maps to New York? And that thought added something else to his short list.

The FOR SALE signs. They had declared “Sale by Owner,” and yet, thinking back, Jack realized that the number advertised was not Viki’s.

He’d have to drive back over in the morning and get the number.

Standing at the top of the ladder now, and with nothing but endless sky around him, he swiveled in the computer chair, picked up the Pearson book he’d taken from the backpack, and began thumbing through it. There, on the back page, was a block of Russian penmanship. Ryne Douglas Pearson… He stood, tossing the book back onto the desk, and revisited the contents of Stacey’s luggage still scattered across the bed. The other Pearson book was right beneath the top to one of her lingerie sets.
Simple Simon
. There were no notes in this one.

Collapsing onto the bed and into the pile of his wife’s lingering scent, he stared at the ceiling. Why would the intruder have a backpack filled with Russian letters and a novel—a Pearson novel no less. Even if his wife had been reading the most popular authors in the world, Stephen King or John Grisham, and he’d discovered one of
their
books in the backpack, he still would’ve been suspicious…

And then the coincidence set the suicide note drifting across a territory of mysterious implication, and he decided that he would pay a visit to Stacey’s doctor, too. And with that thought, he slipped into sleep, a myriad of images chasing after him—smashed faces, moonlit water, Stacey’s naked body, Joseph’s twinkling eyes…

15

He kicks as hard as he can, but his legs are burning, and slowly, he begins to lose the ability to command them. Inky waters wash over his head, plunging him into the liquid abyss. He can sense the black eyes of finned predators watching him. His head breaks the surface again, but there’s nothing in any direction. Only more waves. He is alone. His arms are prisoners shackled by fatigue and do as it demands—nothing. And this time, as he sinks beneath the choppy barrier that separates the two worlds, he knows he will never taste fresh air again. He sinks. And sinks. Lungs burning for the unreachable. “Stacey!” he screams.

It took a few moments for the world around him to focus, and only when it did could he finally catch his breath. Panting, he noticed the 9mm resting on the bed beside him. So
that
hadn’t been part of the dream. And it all came rushing back. Stacey, Joseph, Viktoriya, the man in the garage, and what he’d planned to do today…whatever day today was.

He cocked his head to the side and looked out the window to see that rain was falling from an ash-gray sky. It made him sigh, and he stood up, walking unsteadily to the nearest window offering a view to the street. He leaned against the frame and looked past the reflection of him scratching his stubbled jaw. It was still there, parked in the same spot—the black van.

He swore under his breath, understanding more clearly now that he had to call Johnson. This, whatever it was, was too much for him. Yes, the FBI would make him sit on his hands, but they were hands familiar with the keys of a calculator, so what chance did he really have at solving anything anyway? Running around looking for clues might make him feel better, but what was he supposed to do with the dead body in his garage? And the van it came in?

He undressed, picked out a clean pair of jeans and a red T-shirt from the pile on the bed, and dialed Agent Johnson. As the phone rang, he grabbed the pistol and stuck it into the belted waist of his pants. The clock hanging on the wall above his dresser read 10:30.

Voicemail.

“Agent Johnson, it’s Jack Green. I, uh…”
blew a guy’s brains out in my garage…
“Just call me as soon as you can. Thanks.”

Then he took the long trip downstairs and back to the gruesome scene of what had been a savage moment.

He opened the door, noting that the smell of kerosene was almost gone and—

Ah, crap…
He had hoped the whole thing was a dream. The contents sticking to the concrete floor, however, were as real as the thunder that was tumbling across the sky. He shut the door on the corpse, never wanting to see it again, and walked to the kitchen window. Staring into the fenced-in back yard, and trying not to see Joseph’s tiny body operating the vacant swing set, he let his mind wander back to the worn shovel lying beside the hole of missing clues. After a few deeper scoops, it found the letters.

The letters
…

Jack pulled out his phone again, this time dialing Ivan.

“Ivan, it’s Jack. You free at all today? I want to show you something. It’s important. That’s fine. Thanks. See you then.”

Then Jack went and retrieved the stack of letters and the Pearson novel. He was almost to the front door when the mind-shovel, still working, struck something. Pausing, he brushed the dirt away from the subconscious discovery, anxious to know just what it was that was tugging at him.

The House of Thunder.

And he was running back to the bedroom.

Taking it from the pile on the bed, he flipped to its last page. A scribbled message in black ink stared up at him—one he remembered seeing but hadn’t thought anything of at the time. It was the same Russian style from
October’s Ghost
. But… He paused.
The
House of Thunder
wasn’t his novel—he’d found it lying around somewhere and had just tossed it in his bag for an escape on the cruise. It had to be Stacey’s. But what would the intruder be doing with a Pearson book containing a Russian note penned by the same person who…