Chapter 18

No Time to Waste

With his pants still on the bed, wearing his dress shirt, underwear, and socks only, Burke sat at the desk in his motel room, flicking cigarette ashes into an empty soda can as he held his old cell phone to his ear. The phone on the other end of the call rang on but no one answered. Burke ended the call as he heard the voicemail pick up yet again on what was his third try in the last hour. He had hoped that by now, Jin had found his cell phone and he would be able to reach him to find out exactly what he was up to.

Burke put his cell phone in his breast pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Unfolding the paper, Burke scanned it over, desperately looking for a potential clue he might have missed the other times he had read it. The note must have been wedged in his door when he left that morning. Perhaps it had been tucked under his door. He wasn’t sure, but he had missed it. He found it pinched into the door when he returned to his motel room, after lunch at the Old Mill. He had to have closed the door on it when he left as that was the only way it could have been in the door the way it was. Then again, maybe it was the chambermaid who put it there, he thought as he looked at his cigarette with a twinge of guilt for smoking in a non-smoking motel. He was getting rusty, his best detective days behind him.

The paper contained no other evidence and so Burke pushed up his glasses and read the note again.

Burke

Meet me at Ocean’s Edge Road near the Stuart’s house. You’ll see my SUV parked on the side of the road near the place where Danny’s remains were found. Meet me there and hurry. There are things you need to see for yourself to understand why this is more important than solving an old case.

There’s no time to waste as I need to do this now before it’s too late.

Jin

It was obvious to Burke that Jin felt strongly about this. Burke was obsessed with solving the pile of mysteries from this damned island. Jin had also wanted to solve many of the same mysteries but now he spoke of dangers that were of greater importance than solving past crimes, no matter how brutal. The longer Jin remained on Oakwood Island, the more convinced he was the fungus was spreading. The more convinced he was that it was becoming a real threat to all life on the island.

Burke put on his pants in a rush, zipped them up and grabbed his keys and shoved the note back in his pocket. As he was rushing out the door, Burke remembered an old saying his mother had used many times when he was growing up.

“Time to shit or get off the pot,” Burke said aloud. With the motel room door closing behind him, his cell phone started ringing. He answered it without hesitation.

“Jin?”

“Are you out of your friken mind, Burke?” Coroner Harold Randolf blurted excitedly. “You want to exhume decomposing bodies to look for mold?” The coroner had obviously received his message requesting exactly that.

“Not me… Jin Hong. He’s a plant scientist that used to work with Danny, the dead kid. He’s got a Ph.D. in ecophysiology or some shit like that.”

“More like eco-dum-ass-ology if you ask me,” Harold Randolf blurted, clearly frustrated. “If you think I’m going to go to the families of the deceased and ask if we can dig up their loved ones to look for mould because a former detective who’s half out of his mind and his sidekick are asking me to, you’ve seriously overestimated our friendship.”

“So, is that a no?” Burke asked with a slight grin as he flicked the ash from his cigarette and took a drag. “Hello?” Burke added as the line went dead. “I guess that’s a no then.”