Without Remorse

  “I had to go out of the country. Business,” Kelly answered. It was clear that he’d go no further than that.

  “Fair enough. Be around for a while?”

  “I plan to be, yeah.”

  “Okay, maybe I’ll stop by next week and you can tell me some lies about being a Navy chief.”

  “Navy chiefs don’t have to lie. You need some pointers on seamanship?”

  “In a pig’s ass! Maybe I ought to give you a safety inspection right now!”

  “I thought this was a friendly visit,” Kelly observed, and both men became even more uncomfortable. Oreza tried to cover it with a smile.

  “Okay, I’ll go easy on you.” But that didn’t work. “Catch you next week, Chief.”

  They shook hands, but something had changed. Oreza waved for the forty-one-footer to come back in, and he jumped aboard like the pro he was. The cutter pulled away without a further word.

  Well, that makes sense. Kelly advanced his throttles anyway.

  Oreza watched Springer continue north, wondering what the hell was going on. Out of the country, he’d said. For sure his boat hadn’t been anywhere on the Chesapeake—but where, then? Why were the cops so interested in the guy? Kelly a killer? Well, he’d gotten that Navy Cross for something. UDT guy, that much Oreza knew. Beyond that, just a good guy to have a beer with, and a serious seaman in his way. It sure got complicated when you stopped doing search-and-rescue and started doing all that other cop stuff, the quartermaster told himself, heading southwest for Thomas Point. He had a phone call to make.

  “So what happened?”

  “Roger, they knew we were coming,” Ritter answered with a steady look.

  “How, Bob?” MacKenzie asked.

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “Leak?”

  Ritter reached into his pocket and extracted a photocopy of a document and handed it across. The original was written in Vietnamese. Under the text of the photocopy was the handwritten translation. In the printed English were the words “green bush.”

  “They knew the name?”

  “That’s a security breakdown on their side, Roger, but, yes, it appears that they did. I suppose they planned to use that information for any of the Marines they might have captured. That sort of thing is good for breaking people down in a hurry. But we got lucky.”

  “I know. Nobody got hurt.”

  Ritter nodded. “We put a guy on the ground in early. Navy SEAL, very good at what he does. Anyway, he was watching things when the NVA reinforcements came in. He’s the guy who blew the mission off. Then he just walked off the hill.” It was always far more dramatic to understate things, especially for someone who’d smelled gunsmoke in his time.

  That, MacKenzie thought, was worth a whistle. “Must be rather a cool customer.”

  “Better than that,” Ritter said quietly. “On the way out he bagged the Russian who was talking to our people, and the camp commander. We have them in Winchester. Alive,” Ritter added with a smile.

  “That’s how you got the dispatch? I figured SigInt,” MacKenzie said, meaning signals intelligence. “How’d he manage that?”

  “As you said, a cool customer.” Ritter smiled. “That’s the good news.”

  “I’m not sure I want to hear the bad news.”

  “We have an indicator that the other side might want to eliminate the camp and everyone in it.”

  “Jesus ... Henry is over in Paris right now,” MacKenzie said.

  “Wrong approach. If he brings this up. even in one of the informal sessions, they’ll just deny, and it might spook them so much that they’ll try to make sure they can deny it.” It was well known that the real work at such conferences was done during the breaks, not when people had to address the issues formally over the conference table, the very shape of which had taken so much time.

  “True. What then?”

  “We’re working through the Russians. We have a pipeline for that. I initiated the contact myself.”

  “Let me know how it turns out?”

  “You bet.”

  “Thanks for letting me talk to you,” Lieutenant Ryan said.

  “What’s this all about?” Sam Rosen asked. They were in his office—not a large one, and the room was crowded with four people in it. Sarah and Sandy were there, too.

  “It’s about your former patient—John Kelly.” That news didn’t come as much of a surprise, Ryan saw. “I need to talk to him.”

  “What’s stopping you?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know where he is. I was kind of hoping you folks might.”

  “About what?” Sarah asked.

  “About a series of killings,” Ryan answered at once, in the hope of shocking them.

  “Killing who?” This question came from the nurse.

  “Doris Brown, for one, and several others.”

  “John didn’t hurt her—” Sandy said before Sarah Rosen was able to touch her hand.

  “Then you know who Doris Brown is,” the detective observed, just a little too quickly.

  “John and I have become ... friends,” Sandy said. “He’s been out of the country for the past couple of weeks. He couldn’t have killed anybody.”

  Ouch, Ryan thought. That was both good and bad news. He’d overplayed his hand on Doris Brown, though the nurse’s reaction to the accusation had resulted in a little too much emotional response. He’d also just had a speculation confirmed as fact, however. “Out of the country? Where? How do you know?”

  “I don’t think I’m supposed to say where. I’m not supposed to know that.”

  “What do you mean by that?” the cop asked in surprise.

  “I don’t think I’m supposed to say, sorry.” The way she answered the question showed sincerity rather than evasion.

  What the hell did that mean? There was no answering that one, and Ryan decided to go on. “Someone named Sandy called the Brown house in Pittsburgh. It was you, wasn’t it?”

  “Officer,” Sarah said, “I’m not sure I understand why you’re asking all these questions.”

  “I’m trying to develop some information, and I want you to tell your friend that he needs to talk with me.”

  “This is a criminal investigation?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “And you’re asking us questions,” Sarah observed. “My brother is a lawyer. Should I ask him to come here? You seem to be asking us what we know about some murders. You’re making me nervous. I have a question—are any of us under suspicion of anything?”

  “No, but your friend is.” If there was anything Ryan didn’t need now, it was to have an attorney present.

  “Wait a minute,” Sam said. “If you think John might have done something wrong, and you want us to find him for you, you’re saying that you think we know where he is, right? Doesn’t that make us possible ... helpers, accessories is the word, isn’t it?”

  Are you? Ryan would have liked to ask. He decided on, “Did I say that?”

  “I’ve never had questions like this before, and they make me nervous,” the surgeon told his wife. “Call your brother.”

  “Look, I have no reason to believe that any of you has done anything wrong. I do have reason to believe that your friend has. What I’m telling you is this: you’ll be doing him a favor by telling him to call me.”

  “Who’s he supposed to have killed?” Sam pressed.

  “Some people who deal drugs.”

  “You know what I do?” Sarah asked sharply. “What I spend most of my time on here, you know what it is?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I do. You work a lot with addicts.”

  “If John’s really doing that, maybe I ought to buy him a gun!”

  “Hurts when you lose one, doesn’t it?” Ryan asked quietly, setting her up.

  “You bet it does. We’re not in this business to lose patients.”

  “How did it feel to lose Doris Brown?” She didn’t reply, but only because her intelligence stopped her mouth from reacting as it wanted
to. “He brought her to you for help, didn’t he? And you and Mrs. O’Toole here worked very hard to clean her up. You think I’m condemning you for that? But before he dropped her off with you, he killed two people. I know it. They were probably two of the people who murdered Pamela Madden, and those were his real targets. Your friend Kelly is a very tough guy, but he’s not as smart as he thinks he is. If he comes in now, it’s one thing. If he makes us catch him, it’s something else. You tell him that. You’ll be doing him a favor, okay? You’ll be doing yourselves a favor, too. I don’t think you’ve broken the law to this point. Do anything for him now except what I’ve told you, and you might be. I don’t usually warn people this way,” Ryan told them sternly. “You people aren’t criminals. I know that. The thing you did for the Brown girl was admirable, and I’m sorry it worked out the way it did. But Kelly is out there killing people, and that’s wrong, okay? I’m telling you that just in case you might have forgotten something along the way. I don’t like druggies either. Pamela Madden, the girl on the fountain, that’s my case. I want those people in a cage; I want to watch them walk into the gas chamber. That’s my job, to see that justice happens. Not his, mine. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I think we do,” Sam Rosen answered, thinking about the surgical gloves he’d given Kelly. It was different now. Back then he’d been distant from things—emotionally close to the terrible parts, yet far away from what his friend was doing, approving it as though reading a news article on a ballgame. It was different now, but he was involved. “Tell me, how close are you to getting the people who killed Pam?”

  “We know a few things,” Ryan answered without realizing that with his answer, he’d blown it after coming so close.

  Oreza was back at his desk, the part of his work that he hated, and one reason he worried about striking for chief, which would entail having his own office, and becoming part of “management” instead of just being a boat-driver. Mr. English was on leave, and his second-in-command, a chief, was off seeing to something or other, leaving him as senior man present—but it was his job anyway. The petty officer searched on his desk for the card and dialed the number.

  “Homicide.”

  “Lieutenant Ryan, please.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Sergeant Douglas?”

  “He’s in court today.”

  “Okay, I’ll call back.” Oreza hung up. He looked at the clock. Pushing four in the afternoon—he’d been at the station since midnight. He pulled open a drawer and started filling out the forms accounting for the fuel he’d burned up today, making the Chesapeake Bay safe for drunks who owned boats. Then he planned to get home, get dinner, and get some sleep.

  The problem was making sense out of what she said. A physician was called in from his office across the street, and diagnosed her problem as barbiturate intoxication, which wasn’t exactly news, and then went on to say that they’d just have to wait for the stuff to work its way out of her system, for which two opinions he charged the county twenty dollars. Talking to her for several hours had only made her at turns amused and annoyed, but her story hadn’t changed, either. Three people dead, bang bang bang. It was less funny to her now. She’d started remembering what Burt was like, and that talk was quite foul.

  “If this girl was any higher she’d be up on the moon with the astronauts,” the Captain thought.

  “Three dead people on a boat somewhere,” Trooper Freeland repeated. “Names and everything.”

  “You believe it?”

  “Story stays the same, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” The Captain looked up. “You like to fish out there. What’s it sound like to you, Ben?”

  “Like around Bloodsworth Island.”

  “We’ll hold her overnight on public drunkenness ... we have her dead-bang on possession, right?”

  “Cap’n, all I had to do was ask. She handed the stuff to me.”

  “Okay, process her all the way through.”

  “And then, sir?”

  “Like helicopter rides?”

  He picked a different marina this time. It turned out to be pretty easy, with so many boats always out fishing or partying, and this one had plenty of guest slips for transient boats which in the summer season plied up and down the coast, stopping off on the way for food and fuel and rest much as motorists did. The dockmaster watched him move in expertly to his third-largest guest slip, which didn’t always happen with the owners of the larger cruisers. He was more surprised to see the youth of the owner.

  “How long you plan to be here?” the man asked, helping with the lines.

  “Couple of days. Is that okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Mind if I pay cash?”

  “We honor cash,” the dockmaster assured him.

  Kelly peeled off the bills and announced that he’d be sleeping aboard this night. He didn’t say what would be happening the next day.

  34

  Stalking

  “We missed something, Em,” Douglas announced at eight-ten in the morning.

  “What was it this time?” Ryan asked. Missing something wasn’t exactly a new happening in their business.

  “How they knew she was in Pittsburgh. I called that Sergeant Meyer, had ’em check the long-distance charges on the house phone. None, not a single outgoing call for the last month.”

  The detective lieutenant stubbed out his cigarette. “You have to assume that our friend Henry knew where she was from. He had two girls get loose from him, he probably took the time to ask where they were from. You’re right,” Ryan said after a second’s thought. “He probably assumed she was dead.”

  “Who knew she was there?”

  “The people who took her there. They sure as hell didn’t tell anyone.”

  “Kelly?”

  “Found out yesterday over at Hopkins, he was out of the country.”

  “Oh, really? Where?”

  “The nurse, O’Toole, she says she knows but she isn’t allowed to say, whatever the hell that means.” He paused. “Back to Pittsburgh.”

  “The story is, Sergeant Meyer’s dad is a preacher. He was counseling the girl and told his son a little of what he knew. Okay. The sergeant goes up the chain to his captain. The Captain knows Frank Allen, and the sarge calls him for advice on who’s running the case. Frank refers him to us. Meyer didn’t talk to anybody else.” Douglas lit up one of his own. “So how did the info get to our friends?”

  This was entirely normal, but not particularly comfortable. Now both men thought that they had a breaking case. This was happening, it was breaking open. Not unusually, things were now happening too fast for the analytical process that was necessary to make sense of it all.

  “As we’ve thought all along, they have somebody inside.”

  “Frank?” Douglas asked. “He’s never been connected with any of the cases. He doesn’t even have access to the information that our friends would need.” Which was true. The Helen Waters case had started in the Western District with one of Allen’s junior detectives, but the Chief had turned it over to Ryan and Douglas almost immediately because of the degree of violence involved. “I suppose you could call this progress, Em. Now we’re sure. There has to be a leak inside the Department.”

  “What other good news do we have?”

  The State Police only had three helicopters, all Bell Jet Rangers, and were still learning how to make use of them. Getting one was not the most trivial of exercises, but the Captain running Barracks “V” was a senior man who ran a quiet county—this was less a matter of his competence than of the nature of his area, but police hierarchies tend to place stock in results, however obtained. The helicopter arrived on the barracks helicopter pad at a quarter to nine. Captain Ernest Joy and Trooper 1/c Freeland were waiting. Neither had taken a helicopter ride before, and both were a little nervous when they saw how small the aircraft was. They always look smaller close up, and smaller still on the inside. Mainly used for Medevac missions, the aircraft had
a pilot and a paramedic, both of whom were gun-toting State Police officers in sporty flight suits that went well, they thought, with their shoulder holsters and aviator shades. The standard safety lecture took a total of ninety seconds, delivered so quickly as to be incomprehensible. The ground-pounders strapped in, and the helicopter spooled up. The pilot decided against jazzing up the ride. The senior man was a captain, after all, and cleaning vomit out of the back was a drag.

  “Where to?” he asked over the intercom.

  “Bloodsworth Island,” Captain Joy told him.

  “Roger that,” the pilot replied as he thought an aviator ought, turning southeast and lowering the nose. It didn’t take long.

  The world looks different from above, and the first time people go up in helicopters the reaction is always the same. The takeoff, rather like jerking aloft in an amusement-park cable-car ride, is initially startling, but then the fascination begins. The world transformed itself before the eyes of both officers, and it was as though it all suddenly made sense. They could see the roads and the farms all laid out like a map. Freeland grasped it first. Knowing his territory as he did, he instantly saw that his mental picture of it was flawed; his idea of how things really were was not quite right. He was only a thousand feet above it, a linear distance his car traversed in seconds, but this perspective was new, and he immediately started learning from it.

  “That’s where I found her,” he told the Captain over the intercom.

  “Long way from where we’re going. You think she walked that far?”

  “No, sir.” But it wasn’t that far from the water, was it? Perhaps two miles away, they saw the old dock of a farm up for sale, and that was less than five miles from where they were heading, scarcely two minutes’ flying time. The Chesapeake Bay was a wide blue band now, under the morning haze. To the northwest was the large expanse of Patuxent River Naval Air Test Center, and they could both see aircraft flying there—a matter of concern to the pilot, who kept a wary eye out for low-flying aircraft. The Navy jocks liked to smoke in low.