Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (20 page)

 

Chapter 39

E
VERY TIME
I
'VE
gone over the Bible verses and the message on the garage wall, my mind has spiraled into a vortex of despair.

When Donovan repeated “three points,” though, something clicked. What if the “three” refers to the three women Anders Frank killed?

He killed all three women, or at least left all three bodies, in particular locations on purpose. As I race onto the Bay Bridge, I reach behind me for Donovan's map book. If I look at all three points on the map, I'll find what lies in the middle of the bay smack in the middle of those bodies. I already know, but am just going to confirm it. Yep, I was right.

The Phantom Fleet, the ship graveyard.

I hold the map page up to the orange glow made by city lights reflecting off the cloud cover. Yes. I'm right. With my finger, I touch each spot along the bay where a body was found. If you make a circle of the three bodies, directly in the center is the Phantom Fleet. Where the three points meet.

The navy flag on his grave was the other tip-­off. His son left the flag for us to see. He's hiding on an old navy ship.

Anders lured us to the cemetery to find the clue, but also to take Donovan out. He let me live. He wants me to find him at the Phantom Fleet. Alone. For a split second, doubt floods me. What if Grace is dead and he's luring me to the ship graveyard to kill me, too? I can't think that way. She has to be alive.

She's on one of those ships. But which one? He's been keeping her there, hidden, on one of the abandoned ships. Some of the articles I printed out about the fleet said some ships were surprisingly intact, with beds and linens and even canned food still onboard. They had to be at the ready in case they were commissioned for ser­vice. It wasn't just a ship graveyard; it was also a holding bay.

That would explain the boat we'd seen that appeared and disappeared—­once from Roe Island and once on Ocean Beach. Just like the Channel 5 TV photographer explained about his high school friends, Anders Frank could pull the inflatable boat onboard so nobody would be any wiser.

So how to find which ship? And how to get to it?

The Saint.

I punch in the number on my cell just as I exit the Caldecott Tunnel leading under the hills connecting Oakland to the greater East Bay.

“Santangelo.”

“I need a boat . . .” I scan the map for what looks like a place to launch a boat. There is a small roadway leading down to the slough. “At Suisun Slough. I need it there in thirty minutes. Can you help me?”

“It will be done. My men will meet you there in fifteen minutes.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. Thank God. I swerve around slower cars, punching the gas pedal and peering into the darkness ahead. I'm about to hang up when The Saint clears his throat.

“But there is a problem,” he says.

“What?” I'm impatient. I don't care what he has to say as long as he gets me a boat to the dock.

“Sam the Goat, he is under some heat. My men can give you the boat, but then they must leave to take care of some other business. I'm sorry. It is my fault. I didn't realize when we set out to help you we would be crossing paths with some old FBI friends. But no matter. It is a minor issue. It will be resolved soon. Is this a problem for you?”

“Nope. I just need the boat.” Cars in front of me are bunching up, so I slip into the emergency lane against the median and zip by, leaving an angry chorus of honking horns in my wake.

“I can come,” Santangelo says. “Alone. If you need my assistance, I will be there. I promised.”

I don't need him. “No. That's okay. I'm bringing in the feds after I hang up with you.”

“Is that wise? You know I can be . . . more discreet than the FBI,” he says.

Navigating a tricky curve, I take in his words. For a second I'm torn. He means we can kill Anders Frank and get away with it if it is just the two of us. If the FBI is brought into it, that's not going to be possible.

I notice that my knuckles are turning white from clutching the steering wheel.

As much as I can imagine myself looking down at Frank's cold, dead body, right now I'm more concerned with getting Grace back safe than seeking revenge. Before me, the cars clear as the 680 freeway heading north opens up into more lanes, and I floor it.

“Thank you,” I say softly. “I need to focus on getting my daughter back safe. I'll deal with the man who took her later. That's when I may need your help.”

“You have my word. I am at your ser­vice.”

I don't answer, only gently disconnect the call.

There is more to do, more ­people to call. I call Marco and tell him that Donovan has been shot and is heading to San Francisco General.

“Please go be with him. And call me if . . . anything changes.”

“Slow down. He's been shot? Where are you? What the hell?” says Marco, the brother who tries to never curse.

“I'm going to get Grace.” I hang up before he can answer.

I'm now crossing the Benicia-­Martinez Bridge. I can see the Phantom Fleet to my right, below me. It looks as eerie as ever, maybe more so in the low fog hovering on the water. I'll be at the slough in a moment, but I still don't know how I'm going to figure out which ship they are on. I vaguely remember a list of the ship names. I go over every so-­called clue Anders Frank has left me. The Bible verses he's left—­the same ones his father e-­mailed to me.

I wrack my brains again, thinking of commonalities in the women. Nothing clicks.

I'm so close, but I'm petrified I'm not going to find her in time.

As soon as I hang up with Marco, I dial Agent Noah West.

Before I can leave a message, I lose cell ser­vice as I dip into the hills north of the bridge. I keep hitting redial. As my car dips down to the slough and out of the hills, I finally get West's voice mail.

“I know where he has Grace. The Phantom Fleet in Suisun Bay. He's holed up on one of the ships. He knows we're coming for him. He said if I bring cops, Grace dies.” I take a breath. “As soon as I figure out which ship she's on, I'll call you so you can send some backup. Maybe have your men meet at the entry to Suisun Slough. That's where I'm going to launch my boat. But make sure they are covert. He sees backup, Grace is dead.”

A
T THE WEEDY
entrance to the slough, a black Escalade is the only vehicle on the dirt road. My lights briefly illuminate the front seat, and it appears empty.

Down near the water, I see dark figures moving. The cherries of their cigarettes glow in the night and bounce around, showing the men's movement. I tuck my gun, a small flashlight, and my phone in my trench coat pocket and walk down in my bare, duct-­taped-­wrapped feet.

At the water, I stop. Both men nod. It's hard to make out their features in the dim light coming from the orangish light reflecting off the clouds above.

“Want us to start the motor?” one man asks. “It's an electric trolling motor.”

“Are there oars?” I lean over the boat and peer inside.

“Yes, but you are going to have to use the motor to get most of the way out there,” the same man says. “It is quiet. Purrs like a kitten. You can kill the engine—­like this.” He takes my hand and has my fingers feel the switch in the semidarkness. “See?”

“Okay. Then show me how to start it.”

The noise of the electric motor seems extraordinarily loud, but I know it's my paranoia that makes me think that, since we can still speak in low voices near it.

Stepping into the brackish water, I put one foot in, gain my balance, and put the other in. Once I'm sitting, they push me off.

I point the boat toward the ship graveyard, navigating through some reedy plants. I glance back once in time to see the taillights of the Escalade disappear up the dirt road.

Now that I'm alone, I notice the smell of the marsh—­a combination of wet dog and dead body smell. I pat my pockets to make sure I still feel the flashlight, gun, and phone. Taking out the phone, I silence the ringer, pausing over the call button. I dial West again but still get his voice mail.

“I'm heading out to the fleet in a small rubber boat.” I'm not sure what else to say, so I hang up. All I know is that I need to find Grace soon. If it means searching all seventy-­five ships one by one, I will do it. If only I have enough time. Dawn is only hours away.

He's going to kill her on the sixth day. Just like it was for Caterina and those three college women.

A small splash startles me, and I realize a river otter is floating on its back, staring at me in the dark. After the chill settles off my spine, I smile. “I'm going to take you as a sign of good luck,” I say.

The otter just watches me, floating on its back and using its paws to try to crack some type of shellfish on its belly. He floats off as thicker fog rolls in.

The fog is a blessing. Even if Anders Frank is looking out for me, he won't be able to see me until I'm right up against the fleet.

After a few minutes, I'm near the first row of ships. I blow right past. They are too close to the Coast Guard station and the shore. Too risky for him to hide out there. I'll try the second row of anchored ships out. As I round the last ship, I see the blinking red and green lights of a boat coming near. Shit.

I glance at my phone. No calls. Did Noah West get my message and warn the Coast Guard I'd be out? I lunge back and kill my motor, drifting along, ducking. A huge spotlight from the patrol boat shines on the sides of the ghost ships, traveling the length of the one near me and then seemingly shining on my tiny inflatable boat. I'm caught. My only hope is to get them on my side. I reach for my phone to dial Noah West so he can explain what I'm doing. I have the phone in my hand, ready to dial, when I hear voices carrying faintly across the water. I freeze, but I can't make out what they are saying.

I lie down in the bottom of the boat and wait for them to discover me. The boat is filled with about an inch of water. I hold the phone on my chest so it won't get wet. After a few seconds of silence, I peek my head up.

The patrol boat is gone.

Peering into the night, I try to see the patrol boat's lights again through a haze of fog that is rolling in, but the lights have disappeared. How did they not see me?

Instead of risking the noise of the motor again, I take the paddles down from the sides and begin to skate across the water, slowly but surely, the only sound the muffled dipping of the oars into the water.

I'm not too surprised that the muscles in my upper arm burn after only a moment of exertion. Even though I'm in the best shape of my life from the last few years of martial arts, I've been slacking for the past year and haven't made it to the dojo in months. I've been too busy juggling mommyhood with being a reporter.

The first ship I come across is suddenly so close I nearly run into it. Risking a bit of light, I shine my small flashlight up and see that it is called the
Gettysburg.
Clicking the light off, I round the nose of the ship and see that right beside it is a smaller ship, called
Iris.
It's not a navy ship, so I paddle on. The next ship is called the
Santa Ynez.
It definitely looks like a navy ship. How do I know which ones to search, though? I'll look around more. Without stopping, I paddle on and see the next one is called the
Comet.
The
Comet
isn't a navy ship, either.

I shine my flashlight up on the other ships in this row. The SS
Green Mountain State
—­what state is that?—­the USS
Iowa,
the SS
Cape Jacob,
the
Merrimack,
the
Adventurer,
the
Kansas City.
None of them have names that mean anything.

How am I ever going to find which one Grace is on? I list all the names in my head over and over.

I'm about to paddle on to the next row of ships, which feels miles away even though I know it can't possibly be that far, when something jars me and my arms stop their stroke in midair.

Santa Ynez.

In a flash, I remember reading about Saint Agnes in Sunday school.

Thank God for Rosa Inez Martinez, who was in my Sunday school class. I was always jealous of her because she lived in the biggest house in our neighborhood and always had the best and most expensive toys. The ones I always wanted but never received. She was also a know-­it-­all. On the Sunday we studied about the saints, we passed around prayer cards with different saints on them. Someone commented on how cute the lamb was that Saint Agnes was holding. The teacher went on to tell us something about how we should pray to Saint Agnes for our future husbands.

I ignored most of the lecture until Little Miss Know-­It-­All beside me raised her hand, like she always did. I quickly tucked the drawing I was doodling into my Bible and looked like I was paying attention when the teacher called on Rosa Inez.

Rosa Inez Martinez told the class that in Mexico, Saint Agnes was called “Saint Inez.”

I think I rolled my eyes at the time, but now I would kiss her on both cheeks if I ever saw her again. Thank you, Rosa Inez Martinez. I'm sure she's an aerospace engineer at NASA or something now.

Agnes was the name of Ander Frank's first victim, on Roe Island. Agnes Clark.

Saint Agnes—­or Saint Inez—­is the patron saint of young girls. “Inez” is also spelled “Ynez.” Frank Anderson is holed up on the
Santa Ynez.
With my daughter.

 

Chapter 40

D
RIFTING IN THE
low tendrils of fog, I peer up at the huge gray hulk of a ship before me. It rises up and nearly blots out the night sky. As the water sloshes my small boat into the side of the behemoth vessel, I put my palm out against it and feel the cold steel hull. There has to be some way to get onboard.

I miss Donovan so much. He would know how to get onboard. My stomach sinks imagining him at the hospital, maybe in surgery, maybe worse. But I can't worry about him right now. I can't help him. The only thing I can do is help Grace right now.

I paddle around the bulkhead of the ship, examining the gray body that seems to go on forever. If I'm right and Anders Frank is on board this ship with Grace, he has to have had some way to get her up that didn't involve scaling the huge chains hanging down the pointy front of the ship, where they dip into the water. It isn't until I paddle between the ship and the
Comet
beside it that I see it tucked into the shadows—­a small rope hanging down the side of the ship into the water.

My small boat sloshes against the big ship as a wave rolls in. The hulk of the
Comet
is about ten feet away, so I feel like I'm in a small canyon.

Instead of a brisk, crisp, salty ocean smell, a musty, rotten smell rises up out of the water of the bay. A light breeze carries with it the rotten cabbage smell of the refineries in the distance. If I squint, I can see the smokestacks rise like birthday candles in the darkness, flames periodically spurting out the tops.

I need to try West again. I prop the oars on the sides of the boat and fish for the phone in my pocket, looking down. Sheltering the light from my phone with one hand, I am dialing West when I notice the
Comet
is veering my way. Small ripples of waves have sent it careering toward me.

I'm right in the middle of two massive hunks of metal, and there is nothing stopping them from crushing me between them. I scramble to grab an oar to try to push the boat away. As I do, my phone slips from my hand into a small puddle of water in the bottom of my boat. The blue light is on for a second, and then it grows black. Fuck. Kneeling so I don't capsize, I hold the oar toward the smaller vessel, the
Comet.
The wood touches steel, and for a few seconds, the oar bends slightly under my weight and then releases. The prow of the boat has stopped on its own right beside me. A whoosh of air escapes me. So close. If I'd been a few feet farther down between the boats, I would've been crushed between the two masses, which are only separated by a few feet from buoys hanging over the smaller boat's deck.

If I lean one way and then the other, I can touch the
Santa Ynez
with one hand and the tip of the
Comet
with the other. Then another wave arrives, rolling the smaller ship gently away from me.

For a second I look back the way I came. Without the phone, I have no way to tell Noah West—­or anyone else—­where I am.

Should I head back to the shore and wait for West and his men? But I'm not certain he got my message. What if he didn't and I'd just be wasting time? Valuable time before dawn?

When I see a small light on the water—­the patrol boat back at the Coast Guard station—­it gives me a plan. The Channel 5 cameraman said the patrol boat makes rounds every thirty minutes. That gives me thirty minutes to find out if Anders is on this boat. Thirty minutes to sneak up on him before there is outside help.

I'll leave my little inflatable boat in the open as a signal to either West's men or the Coast Guard patrol boat. This will give me enough time to find Anders and surprise him and get Grace. I'm too afraid to cross him and not come alone. Plus coming alone is my only advantage. He thinks if I come alone, he can take me. He does not understand the extent of my desire to seek revenge on him for taking my daughter. My only advantage is him underestimating me.

Rather than wait for the
Comet
to come back on another wave, I get close enough to grab the small rope hanging off the side of the massive ship. There is no way he scaled the ship's side with this rope. Climbing up the anchor chains would be easier. So what is this rope for? I tug on it and it gives slightly, so I yank it with all my might. It gives so much that I fall back into my boat, feet up in the air, as a small rope ladder with wooden planks skitters down the side of the ship and comes to rest near the water.

My heart is pounding, and I'm certain the noise woke the dead that must haunt this graveyard. I hold my breath, peering up at the top of the ship, waiting for a head to appear overhead, looking down at me.

After a few seconds, when a giant spotlight and bullets haven't hailed down on me, I paddle closer to the ship and grab hold of the ladder. With my other hand, I reassuringly pat the gun in one trench coat pocket and the small flashlight in the other. Grabbing a rope that is tied to one of the boat's handles, I quickly knot it around the bottom of the ladder.

Peering up, the deck of the ship seems impossibly high, but thinking about Grace being up there somewhere sends an adrenaline rush through my limbs and I am seven rungs up before I even realize it.

Don't look down. My hands are cold and trembling as they clutch the rope ladder. I can feel the skin on my palms chafing and chapping on the rough rope as I continue up. The parts of my body that got wet in the bottom of the boat now feel icy cold as I climb in a breeze that is streaming in from the open ocean a few miles away.

About halfway up, my arms burn from the exertion, and I have to take a break. Looking around, I see I'm above the boat beside me and can see across its deck. No movement. Taking a deep breath, I continue on. Every once in a while I look up, expecting to see a head looking down on me, cutting the rope ladder loose, sending me plunging to my death below. But the night remains empty above me.

Finally, still riding the rush of adrenaline, my head pops above the deck. I freeze, slowly turning my head in both directions. At first I don't see it in the darkness, but then a gust of wind blows a flap up, revealing what lies beneath. It's an inflatable boat like mine, loosely covered with a tarp.

He's here.

Grace is somewhere nearby. A rush of fear and excitement and hope surges through me, making me want to leap onboard and rush to her, but I know I need to be careful. I need to move with caution and think things through. I need to think like a chess master, plotting my strategy, luring my opponent out of hiding. This time, the stakes are the highest they've ever been. My daughter. My heart walking around outside my body. I think about that invisible cord they say connects a mother and child. She's here. And she's alive. I know it.

Anders has lured me here for a reason. He obviously thinks he is smarter than me and that I am no threat. That I'm a victim.

Well, I'm no victim, Anders Frank.

With my arms trembling from fatigue and my muscles on fire, I pull myself up onto the edge of the ship and swing my legs over, landing with a soft thud on the deck.

Digging into the deep pocket of my trench coat, I slowly take out my gun. I hold it loosely at first, crouching and listening intently for any sound in the night.

I'm coming for you, Anders Frank.

This will be the last time you ever make the mistake of underestimating me.