The Woman (14 page)

* * *

More than three thousand miles to the west, as Linda Darby walked home from Clark’s house she decided she would no longer be a sitting duck. They—whoever in the hell they were—had come for her in the alley and a mysterious stranger had saved her. Soon thereafter they came for her again and she had been ready, well somewhat ready, warned at least, thanks to the same mysterious stranger. She couldn’t indefinitely count on luck and the shadowy man she thought of as Captain Ahab. She had to take more control and change things for herself. To continue to follow her routines, to live as she had, would only help them through her behaving as a reliable sitting duck.

Could Ahab have left the new gun? He had said he was out of town. But who else?

By the time Linda got to the intersection where Main Street split off to form Ocean Street she had decided she would leave in the morning. She didn’t know where she would go, but then, if she didn’t know, whoever wanted to torture and kill her wouldn’t know either. In the end what mattered was going. The simple act of being on the move would provide some sense of safety. It just had to.

One thing was certain. Sea Crest was no longer the quiet, sleepy ocean hamlet she had embraced. The town had become the murder capital of America, at least on a per-capita basis, and, insane as it seemed, somehow these murders all revolved around her. After walking another block, she changed that thought to somehow these murders all seemed to revolve around Cynthia Leclair, and an innocent friendship with Cynthia had sucked her into its vortex.

She unlocked her front door and stepped inside, the new gun held with two hands as she had seen done in the movies. After being sure no one was inside, she drew the drapes and turned on all the lights. She felt exhausted, but knew she couldn’t sleep.

She got out her travel suitcase, the smaller one she took to Cynthia’s on Friday evenings, and experienced a melancholy moment realizing she would never again do that. The travel size would be enough to hold her toiletries and a couple of outfits, anything else she could buy on the move. Her bills were mostly utilities, and her bank credit card which she used to pay for most everything else. She got those statements online so she could pay them no matter her location. She had paid the homeowners’ association dues through the end of the year. The cash in her purse, augmented by the five-thousand dollars Ahab had left in the clothespin bag, totaled just more than fifty-two hundred. Not enough to run very far, but enough to get started. She could have her investment brokerage house sell some shares. They had an office in Portland and in most principal cities. It wasn’t much of a plan, not yet anyway. She would customize it as she went.

In addition to not knowing where she was going, she had no idea how long she would be gone. She would monitor the happenings in Sea Crest, and maybe not return until things quieted down. The FBI was another possibility, although there had been no crime, as she understood it, that would qualify bringing in the FBI. Chief McIlhenny seemed more appropriate, but then Ahab had warned her against him. Those decisions would come in due course. For now, she just had to stop waiting patiently in her home by the sea for the next visit by the grim reaper.

She put her travel case on the cedar chest at the foot of her bed and opened it to see a large manila envelope, the kind with a red string wrapped around a little disk. On its face were two words in hand printed block letters: LINDA DARBY. Just below her name a ring of three keys had been taped to the envelope. Inside the big envelope she found a smaller envelope with the caption: TO BE OPENED ONLY BY LINDA DARBY, AND ONLY IN THE EVENT OF THE DEATH OF CYNTHIA LECLAIR.

Chapter 21

Police Chief Ben McIlhenny couldn’t sleep. The killings troubled him for he knew somehow his bugging of Cynthia Leclair’s company had contributed to her death, as well as the deaths of the others employed there. He was also coming to realize that somehow Linda’s friendship with Cynthia had drawn Linda into it. He had thought the surveillance he had arranged had been connected to some kind of industrial espionage or perhaps off-the-books government work, not something that would result in killings and chaos.

The morning after the first call McIlhenny received from the person who had demanded that he carry out the unlawful surveillance, he had found in the backseat of his official car the most sophisticated audio-visual surveillance equipment he had ever seen. His government theory was further supported because that caller had possession of the tape that had been playing inside the home of a person relocated under the Federal Witness Protection program. As it turns out, the house had been equipped with an audio system that allowed the former federal witness to record any suspicious phone calls or people at her door or on her property that made her suspicious. That recorder had been engaged the night Newark police detective McIlhenny killed the mob hit man after that man had brutally killed the woman being hidden by the Feds.

Over the past two years Chief McIlhenny had, at various times, received phone calls identifying a new dead drop where he was to cache the spent audio-visual discs from Smith & Co., to be picked up by a person unknown to him.

* * *

Since his days in the military, Ryan Testler had been unable to sleep in an airplane. Despite the obvious dangers of military missions, the scuttlebutt back then said that Ryan Testler would sleep on his way to hell, a place no worse than some of the deeds he had carried out for Webster.

He had started with Alistair Webster after Webster had resigned from a deputy director’s chair in the Central Intelligence Agency. Webster believed America had enemies that needed to be eliminated. At first, Ryan had believed that Webster’s retirement was orchestrated so he could handle black ops outside the watchful eye of the congressional committees with oversight of the agency. The first two years, the targets assigned to Testler had all been foreign, after that the assignments increasingly became domestic. And it became increasingly obvious that his missions had nothing to do with the goals and objectives of the government’s intelligence network.

A year ago, Testler began to mentally review each of his assignments. Foreign military and political targets had quickly been replaced by missions centering on compiling information about selected Americans. The kind of information Webster could use to threaten bureaucrats into doing Webster’s bidding. And, on occasion, Testler had been ordered to eliminate individuals. A few of Testler’s missions had included cleaning up, one way or another, soured love triangles from which Webster clients had been unable to comfortably withdraw. For all this Testler had been well paid. He had no gripe on that account.

Over time, Testler had been forced more and more often to listen to Webster rant about the government’s drunken-sailor spending. The hollow election-time promises of more and more government largess. These promises were accompanied by another falsity, all this would not cost Americans anything, or that the needed funds could all be obtained by increasing taxes only on America’s wealthy. Americans liked to say there was no free lunch, yet their gullibility at the polls said they would still believe in free lunches when promised within smooth campaigns speeches. Webster had said on two separate occasions, in Testler’s presence, that the elected government needed to be replaced by industrialists and financiers who would, free of the whoring decisions of politicians, make the cost-benefit-balanced decisions necessary to deliver, not just promise, a comfortable, safe and controlled life for all citizens.

Testler had not yet decided when and how he would openly oppose Webster, but he had grown certain that one day he would. He could simply kill Webster as he had killed others on Webster’s behalf. The issue was never the difficulty of killing a rich soft man, although killing any powerful protected person was not all that easy, particularly one who had become paranoid. The real issue was how the death of Webster would drastically alter Testler’s life. According to military records, Testler had died in Desert Storm, at least he had under his real name. Since then, he had lived in the shadows using false driver’s licenses and passports, all of which checked out in government data bases, all courtesy of Webster’s connections. In addition, Webster always provided Testler with witnesses who could, if needed, confirm Testler was elsewhere at the time he was carrying out Webster’s assignments.

As for money, Webster had generously rewarded him and Testler had secreted funds in the U.S. and Europe, enough to allow him an adequate lifestyle. However, if he stayed with the current plan for another two or three years, he could have the lavish retirement that fuels the dreams of most Americans.

He had to decide. He would be back in Sea Crest by noon tomorrow. If he wanted to retire in luxury, he needed to stop fooling around and interrogate and eliminate Linda Darby.

Chapter 22

The letter began,

Dear Linda:

First I must tell you what you already know. After my daughter was killed in Iraq, I replaced her in my heart with you, loving you as a mother loves a daughter.

I know you have a thousand little questions like how did I get this package into your travel case. You gave me a key to your home and I know that you jog each morning. Other questions of similar magnitude don’t matter. And there is no time. A short while ago my company discovered things we were never expected to know. I should have shut down the operation and disappeared. Instead I decided to hang on, hoping to bluff it out for a few more weeks. That would have provided the time I needed to blow the lid off this entire mess. Your reading this now confirms I did not get those few additional weeks.

I am dead, likely a violent death, probably during questioning. You are either under threat or not. My guess is you are, your friendship with me has put you there. Had I only imagined such an outcome, I would have long ago ended our relationship, even though my time with you was the only loving, warm part of my life. If you are not under threat, you must decide what to do, if anything, with the information that will be made available to you. From this point forward, what I have written assumes you are under threat and have opened your travel case to pack and run.

Inside the big envelope are a state driver’s license and a passport in the name of Nora Jean Larick. Also, a birth certificate that is real. Nora Jean and her parents are all dead. She had no brothers or sisters. You will see your picture upon these documents. Yes, you look different, thanks to face-altering software. You were always good at changing hair styles and good with cosmetics so I doubt you will have trouble capturing this look. As Larick, you should carry a large colorful purse. It will draw people’s eyes away from your face. The information shown on the enclosed documents is real, the rest you will need to make up. Choose bits of background information which are as difficult as possible to be confirmed. Spend time on this background detail until it becomes you. Oh, the signatures are obviously forged as Nora Jean Larick died at age two.

The signature is an expert’s rendering. I had accumulated many things you had written, thus the expert was able to approximate how you would sign Nora Jean Larick. The first time, simply sign your new name without even looking at the forged signatures on the documents. Then compare, make changes as needed and practice until it is second nature. You will be surprised how alike your signing will be to the signatures on the documents.

I have not provided credit cards. Do not use your own. I realize you will not walk away from the amounts you have in stocks. Fly to the national headquarters of those brokerage firms, taking all the statements and documents you will need for identification and have them release all that money to you. Tell them you plan to take their check to their bank and cash it. Given the amounts you have in those accounts, be sure to get the name of a brokerage executive since the bank will likely want to call that executive for confirmation. Then go immediately to the brokerage house’s bank, the exact branch on which the broker’s checks are drawn, and cash them. Cash only. No check. Then put the cash in banks you choose using deposit boxes, not checking or savings accounts. For now, maybe forever, you must consider Linda Darby to be dead. Those who will hunt you will know that is not true, so you must act as if it is if you do not wish to be found.

This envelope also contains twenty-five-thousand dollars. I have provided considerably more cash as you will see when you go to the bank in Portland, Oregon. The bank where you stopped in to have something notarized when you and I last went there for a weekend of shopping. The safe-deposit box is in your new name along with a phony name I used for myself, the name of my favorite movie actress from the 1930s, you know that name. In that box you will find several additional sets of identification and further explanation about what has brought this evil upon you.

I pray you forgive me for getting you in the middle of this thing. I guess I should have seen it coming. I am so very sorry.

The keys: One is to the safe-deposit box in Portland. One of the other two is for a padlock on number seventeen in the you-store-and-lock garages on the corner a couple of blocks from your condo. Inside the garage you will find a used car, the last key is the ignition key. The car registration is in the glove box as well as an insurance card. Both are shown in your new name, Nora Jean Larick. Use them. You are no longer Linda Darby, at least not for the foreseeable future.

Leave now. Every minute you remain in Sea Crest you are in grave danger. Do not return for my funeral. They will watch for you there.