Earlier that year and because he needed some serious physical exertion to cut the cobwebs away from some of the darker corners in his mind, Ike had cleared a wide pathway down the mountainside from his A-frame to the state park that borders his property. Ike described it as “exercise to exorcize.” The remark received a puzzled look and a raised eyebrow. He never repeated it. He’d had to stop at the edge of the state park. Three months later a state forestry crew asked for an easement through his land in order to access the meadow below. He’d agreed and that is how the path he’d started had been widened and wandered deep into the state forest before exiting out onto the open grassland to the east.
Charlie called with his “wrong number.” Ike and Ruth, he said, needed to vacate the premises for two or three hours while the cleanup crew relocated Frank Holloway’s Buick to Norfolk. Ike told him where the license plates were hidden. Then he and Ruth packed a picnic of ham sandwiches, chips and dip, a bottle of Merlot that the liquor store guaranteed was not too dry, and set out in his Jeep, now painted a dull olive drab with streaks of black and tan. Ike had made a stab at camouflage. A bad stab, as it happened, but even so, parked in the brush it nearly disappeared. The Jeep bounced down the path toward the foot of the mountain. Near the point where the path broke into the open, Ike had created a small picnic area. He’d tidied up an existing clearing by removing the scrub and brush from the center and hauling the fallen tree trunks to its edge. Then he’d applied a chainsaw to the stumps to make places to sit. Assuming you didn’t mind a seat full of pine sap when you stood, they worked fairly well. He parked the Jeep and unloaded their supplies.
“This is idyllic, Ike. Just smell that air.”
“Pine sap.”
“Whatever. Why haven’t we come here before?”
“I don’t know. I guess neither time nor opportunity ever came together.”
Ruth spread a blanket in a patch of sunshine and proceeded to shed her clothing. Ike watched, curious to see if, or where, she stopped. Finally, clad only in her panties she stretched out on the blanket.
“Don’t get any ideas, Sheriff. This may be the last of the summer sun we will have and I am interested in having only it on my body this morning. Read your book.”
“Right. In case you are interested, there are two of those round Band-Aids in the first aid kit that you might consider applying…um, strategically. I don’t know, but I imagine a burn there would be pretty uncomfortable.”
“Coconut butter, Bub, and mind your own business.”
“I like to think they are my business, but I won’t press the point—no pun intended.”
“Read your book.”
“Reading my book.”
***
Charlie Garland sat at a picnic table in the park on the north side of Picketsville. He’d arranged his laptop and papers on the space in front of him. Passersby would assume he was a salesman, maybe between appointments, taking advantage of a warm fall day to work outside. The other three arrived within five minutes of each other in separate cars.
“You called and I came,” Frank Sutherlin said. “I assume you called Sam and Karl as well?”
“I did and you are wondering why.” The three took seats on the bench opposite Charlie and waited. “Okay. I called you because Ike said you were the three who could be trusted, at least at first.”
“Ike said that? When? When did he say that to you and why? I mean, sure we want to get to the bottom of this damn thing, but why you and why bring it up now?” Karl frowned and drummed his fingers on the table’s rough planking. Having the CIA poke its nose in at this point could not be good news. The Bureau, when it found out would have a fit.
“Okay. It’s good you’re sitting down because—”
“Why didn’t he include Billy and Essie, for crying out loud? Those two are closer to him than any of us.”
“Stay with me for a minute, please. There is a reason he left those two off the list and he said that you, Frank, would be the one to make the decision when and if to break the news to them.”
“Break what news, Mr. Garland?”
“Ike is not dead.” He waited for the words to sink in and then continued. “The car that took the bomb was his, but he wasn’t in it.”
“He wasn’t…Wait, if he’s alive, who’s dead?”
“A state NARC named Holloway and before you ask, Ike stays dead until we find out who ordered the hit.”
“Because?…I don’t understand.”
“The hit was too much, way over the top. If someone had just wanted Ike dead, a sniper could have just popped him or, I’m assuming it’s a ‘he,’ could have arranged a drive-by shooting. There are too many easy ways to kill a cop and you three know that better than anybody. That bomb…well, you all saw what it did. That bomb shattered the car and a half block of storefronts on both sides of the road. That was not just a hit. That was a declaration of war.”
“Sent by whom? Why?”
“If I knew that, we would not be having this chat, would we? That is what you all need to find out. I am CIA. As you know, Karl, having the Agency involved in a domestic murder will cause all kinds of not-nice, spiky memos to sail back and forth from the Bureau to the Agency. I can help, but only you people can be up front, you see?”
“But you can use CIA resources on this? That’s against—”
“The Picketsville Police Department, cooperating with the FBI will crack this thing. If asked, you may concede that you had the help of a private consultant who, because of the delicacy of his position, may not be identified.”
Karl sat back and scratched his head. “Does your director know you’re doing this?”
“The director feels a certain obligation to Ike for his past services.”
“Is that a yes?”
“That is an evasion. Anything else before we get down to cases?”
“I guess not. What have you got so far?”
Charlie told them about the radio repeater tower in Idaho and the death of the only suspect they had so far. Karl already knew about the shooting at the motel. He said he could probably requisition a team from Boise to check out the tower but would need a plausible reason to do it. Charlie smiled, pulled a burn phone from his pocket, and called him.
“You don’t know me, but if you want to find the guy that killed the cop down there in Virginia, you should check out a radio tower in Idaho.”
Charlie clicked off. “There you go. You just got an anonymous tip. It sounded real enough, don’t you think? Hey, it’s worth checking. Now, Sam, with that bit of information shared by the FBI with the local police, do you think you can zero in on some possible names in the general area covered by the transmission, assuming Karl’s buddies in Boise can determine it? You have NSA files that you can access. Somewhere in them there has to be a list of people you are tracking for whatever reason—good, bad, or political.”
Sam thought a moment. She absently picked some lint from the pocket of her leather jacket and gave Charlie a half smile. “We don’t do political.”
“Of course you don’t. Just look anyway.”
“What do we do?” Frank asked.
Charlie thought of Frank as a workhorse, strong, steady, and untiring. Also, he hoped, not like Orwell’s Boxer, but smart, intelligent, and aware. “There has to be something that everybody has missed so far. I don’t care how good the killer was, somebody saw something, heard something. There is evidence the FBI and the State Police have overlooked. You go find it.”
“We can look, sure. Why not Billy and Essie?”
“Ike said that if I were to include Billy in this conversation, no matter how much Billy promised not to, and to stop Essie from crying herself sick, he’d tell her.”
“So?”
“Essie, he said, hasn’t a disingenuous bone in her body. The minute she found out, she’d be grinning all over herself. If anyone is watching, he will guess why. Is Ike right?’
“He’s right. The trouble is, I need Billy on this. You think we have watchers?”
“I don’t know, but when in doubt…Figure something out about Billy. Are the rest of you straight about keeping the fact that Ike is alive quiet for a while?”
“Ruth knows, right?”
“She does.”
“Okay. How do we get in touch with you, Garland?”
“Sam will know how. Okay, we’re done here.”