Unquiet Ghosts Page 20

  I saw no TV or media—I figured they probably didn’t even know about this heavily wooded track through the forest. Lots of private roads snaked all over the neighborhood, and most had “No Trespassing” signs. In these parts, people meant what they said—you trespassed, and you risked getting shot. Privacy was usually respected.

  Another tech in a white lab suit was searching my garden, and yet another was finishing up on the porch, packing up a bag. Tanner and Courtney went to talk to them, and then Courtney came back alone and guided me inside, leaving Tanner deep in conversation with the tech.

  “You doing OK?”

  I nodded but felt dazed.

  I checked my watch: 1:42. I had eighteen minutes until Jack’s call. I could still hardly believe I’d heard his voice. My hands were shaking, my throat dry.

  “Tanner said you found a notebook.”

  “We can talk inside, Kath.”

  Sergeant Stone followed us into the house, but Agent Breedon remained outside, by an unmarked Dodge.

  The kitchen looked in disarray, with overturned chairs. Spent cartridge casings no longer littered the floor, but the forensics techs had dotted the Spanish tile with round chalk circles. They looked like something Amy would have once drawn while playing at my feet in the kitchen.

  My throat felt parched. I grabbed a bottle of water from the pantry.

  Courtney said, “We’ll get the mess cleaned up once we’re done here. I’m hoping it won’t be too long.” She helped me tidy the chairs.

  “I really need to rest, Courtney.”

  “I got you. Tanner ought to finish up soon, once he goes through a few things.”

  Tanner appeared just as one of the techs came over and indicated the blue sweater and the purple hoodie. They were still on the table where I had left them. “Ma’am, are these yours? Did the intruder touch them?”

  “Yes, they’re mine. No, he didn’t touch them.”

  I picked them up and saw Tanner watching me, as if demanding an explanation. “Sean’s and Amy’s old clothes. I . . . I keep them in my bedroom. I simply want to feel them near me. They’re a comfort.”

  He nodded as if he understood. “Could I impose and ask you for another coffee?”

  I glimpsed the sweeping second hand. Sixteen minutes left. I shot a look at Courtney. She gave a tiny shrug that seemed to say, Just go with it.

  I folded the hoodie and the sweater and laid them in a cupboard drawer in the kitchen. “I’m really worn out, Mr. Tanner. Can we just get to the briefcase and the notebook?”

  “Sure.” But Tanner was already making himself at home again, moving to the coffee machine, popping a fresh pod into the Keurig.

  He looked at Sergeant Stone, who was standing there with his arms folded, trying to seem tough and older but in reality looking like a kid fresh out of college. “How old are you, Sergeant?”

  “Twenty-four, sir.”

  “Anyone ever tell you that you look nineteen?”

  Stone gave a sulky shrug, which made his jacket look a size too big, and he seemed to take the remark as an insult. “I guess it’s been said.”

  “Don’t look so unhappy. You’ll take it as a compliment as you get older, sonny. Hey, how about you go join Agent Breedon outside, keep my buddy from getting lonely? We’d like a little private time with the lady.”

  Stone looked at Courtney for approval. A tiny nod from her, and Stone moved out without a word, the kitchen door closing quietly after him.

  I glanced at the wall clock. Fourteen minutes. I was starting to panic again. What if Tanner was still here when Jack called back?

  He hit the button on the machine, and the coffee drained into a mug. “Any incidents or calls, anything that troubles you, just holler for the sheriff’s deputies outside, and you get in touch with me immediately, OK?”

  “OK.”

  “Is your house alarm working?”

  “Yes.”

  “You usually leave it on or off?”

  “It depends. Sometimes I disable the chime if it bugs me opening and closing the patio door.”

  “Keep the alarm on at all times, whether you’re in or out. Have you got a gun?”

  The kitchen wall clock told me thirteen minutes. I wanted to scream at Tanner, Please, just show me the briefcase and go! Just leave me alone! I was desperately curious about the case but even more desperate to hear from Jack.

  “Yes, a thirty-eight revolver I keep in my purse or my car. And my dad has several firearms. There’s a shotgun in a cupboard in the corner.” I had put it back in the cupboard when I’d tidied up the kitchen.

  “Can you use it?”

  “Yeah, she sure can,” Courtney interjected.

  Tanner said, “I’m asking her.”

  I jerked my head at the photograph of my father in uniform. “I’ve been around firearms all my life.” I didn’t mention the fact that they gave me the creeps since my mother’s suicide. No point.

  Tanner said, “Keep a firearm by you at all times. Leave the shotgun downstairs, maybe. But maybe out of the cupboard so you can reach it in a hurry.”

  I looked from Courtney to Tanner. “You make it sound like I could be in danger.” The man in the mask had said as much.

  Tanner pulled up a chair, sat. The wood creaked under his weight. “Always better to be safe than sorry.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “The danger’s real if I take the threat seriously. And I do.”

  “I just don’t get any of this.”

  “Join the club. But we’re back to Jack’s secret life, whatever it was. Right now, you need to protect yourself and not take any chances. Another thing. Any calls or any kind of contact from your ex-husband, you let me know at once. You got that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can have the house phone tapped so we can trace any calls. And we can have your cell phone monitored. I’ll need your permission for that. I’ll call you later and bring by the paperwork.”

  Tanner laid down his cup on the kitchen table. “Keep your doors and windows locked, and try not to go out alone. We clear on that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. The sheriff’s deputies will check on you intermittently.”

  Next time I looked at the clock, I had less than ten minutes. I felt as if a giant hand were pressing down on my chest, making my heart hammer even faster. “Can . . . can you tell me about the briefcase?”

  “Let me go get it.”

  Tanner stepped out toward the front door, and I heard it open.

  I looked at Courtney. She seemed uncomfortable as she came over, unease on her face as she put a hand on my back, rubbed it. “Won’t be long. Then you can rest.”

  “What’s wrong, Courtney?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing, honey.”

  But for some reason, I didn’t believe her. Why was she uncomfortable?

  I stared at her.

  She faltered. “Look . . . there’s a bunch of sensitive stuff we need to discuss. Some of it is going to seem weird. And we need to talk about that guy, Tarik, the creepy undertaker.”

  “What about him?”

  “We’ll get to that, just as soon as Tanner comes back.”

  I glanced at the wall clock.

  I had eight minutes.

  50

  * * *

  “Do you know what’s in the case?”

  I spoke to Courtney as I moved to the front window and saw Tanner step over to the unmarked Dodge. Sergeant Stone and Agent Breedon were standing there with folded arms, talking, or, rather Stone was talking while Breedon chewed gum and looked as bored as a blind man in an art gallery.

  “Yeah, I do, honey.”

  “What is it?”

  “Honey, it’s best if you wait for Tanner.”

  As Tanner approac
hed the Dodge, he said something, and I saw Agent Breedon raise the Dodge’s trunk lid, grab something, and hand it to him. I kept looking at my watch and then the wall clock, the seconds ticking away.

  Tanner returned, carrying a bulky blue zippered plastic evidence bag. He laid it on the kitchen table and took a pair of surgical gloves from his pocket and slipped them on. He unzipped the bag and carefully slid out the corroded aluminum briefcase.

  “You told me Jack hardly ever talked much about what he did in Iraq.”

  “Hardly ever. It was a no-go zone. Why?”

  Tanner shrugged and undid the clasps on the case, and they clicked.

  He didn’t open it yet, though. Inside the large evidence bag was yet another plastic bag, but clear. I saw a leather notebook inside, maybe eight inches by six. I recognized it as the kind of notebook Jack often used to make business notes.

  Tanner slipped it out of the plastic bag and opened it.

  I saw lots of figures. Scrawled words. Illegible, all of it, pretty much. Jack often couldn’t read his own writing. Tanner flipped to a page near the beginning. Both sides of the page had a series of figures written in blue ink. But at the top of the left page, above the figures, was the one word I could make out, the unmistakable three-letter word, Red, underlined with a single stroke.

  “That notebook look familiar?”

  “Jack often used a similar kind. He used to buy them at Staples.”

  Tanner gave Courtney a look and said, “We’re not done examining it yet, but it’s mostly figures in there. Very few words, it seems.”

  Courtney said delicately, “That word, Red, does it mean anything to you, Kath? I mean, aside from the obvious?”

  By the obvious, I knew she meant the scrawled word my mom had left the day she died. Courtney and I had talked about that in the past.

  “No.”

  She pursed her lips and jerked her head to Tanner, as if they’d discussed this moment in detail beforehand.

  Then Tanner nodded, and he lifted the case’s lid . . .

  51

  * * *

  I gasped, took a step back.

  Inside four thick protective plastic bags were thick wads of cash—hundred-dollar bills—a sheaf of water-stained business envelopes, and something . . . weird.

  A face mask, evil-looking. Like some eerie Inca god or devil. Bulbous eyes and an ugly, sneering expression. The mask was inlaid with gold and turquoise. I looked from Courtney to Tanner. “What . . . what’s that?”

  Tanner took out his cell phone and wiggled it in front of me. “I took a pic, downloaded it, had it checked it out by headquarters in D.C.” He jerked his chin at Courtney. “Agent Adams had it confirmed by CID.”

  “What is it?”

  Tanner pointed to the money and the stained envelopes. “First, just in case you’re wondering, there’s a quarter million in cash. Looks kosher, not counterfeit. The envelopes contain what appear to be bonds originating in the Cayman Islands, with a value of more than three million dollars.”

  “Three . . . million?”

  His rubber-gloved finger pointed to the mask. “Nothing compared to this thing. Could be worth maybe ten times that, even more.”

  “But what is it?”

  Courtney said, “One of a collection of three Persian death masks from the fourth century B.C. that once belonged to the National Museum of Iraq. This one was made for a senior officer in a special battalion of the Persian Army called the Immortals. I guess you might say the battalion was like a special forces, a bodyguard unit, with a religious aspect, secret rites of initiation, that kind of thing.”

  Courtney studied the mask. “The Immortals fought against Alexander the Great, the Byzantines, the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan that invaded Persia. They earned a mystical, fearless, aggressive reputation. Mystical because every time one of their number was wounded or killed, another took his place, no matter how depleted their ranks.”

  Tanner rubbed his jaw with one hand and with the other pointed to the inlaid turquoise and gold. “The turquoise comes from the historical Khorasan Province of Persia. The gold is said to have come from King Solomon’s mines. We know this thing used to sit among Saddam Hussein’s private collection when it wasn’t displayed in the museum. Sometime after our troops invaded, the three masks were plundered and went missing. Who actually took them is anyone’s guess. They’re probably priceless.”

  “What happened to the other two masks?”

  “Good question. After I close this briefcase up, this one’s going into a safe at FBI headquarters until we find out who rightfully owns it. At a guess, probably the National Museum of Iraq.”

  “Jack . . . Jack stole the artifact?”

  “Don’t know if he did. But the mask wasn’t his, that’s for sure. Let me show you something else.”

  Tanner removed an envelope from his pocket. He opened it, spread out maybe a dozen colored photographs as if they were a deck of cards. The objects in the photos looked no bigger than a human hand. Some were miniature human figures made of silver and gold, and others were of some kind of gods, with rams’ horns on their heads or men with strange-looking beards or headdresses. They looked like images I’d seen before, at a guess from ancient Persia. A couple were photos of gold amulets, earrings, and bracelets.

  “What we’ve got here is just as valuable,” Tanner remarked. “And I mean all of them. Every one of these objects is irreplaceable.”

  Courtney said, “A lot of priceless artifacts like these went missing during the Iraq War. They’re small and transportable. We know some of the missing objects were sold to private collectors on the black market, and some of them are probably hidden in private vaults all over the world. It’s not the only thing that disappeared. Estimates suggest about eight billion in U.S. dollars disappeared back then.”

  “Did you say eight billion?”

  “Yeah, you heard me right. Much of it was U.S. money meant for funding the rebuilding of Iraq and to buy off tribal chiefs, get them on board against the insurgency. Except a lot of dirty, crooked hands dipped in and helped themselves.”

  “Jack’s, too?”

  “I don’t know for certain, Kath. The suspicion persisted that one or more of the men in his unit were involved.” Courtney nodded to the briefcase’s contents. “So that’s a problem right there that raises a big question mark. And it brings us to our undertaker friend, Tarik.”

  Tanner said, “Courtney tells me you met him?”

  I nodded. “What about him?”

  “He and his family were given refugee status and admitted into the U.S. He was part of the Iraqi insurgency but switched sides to help our military by informing on a couple of Al-Qaeda cells in his own tribe. Later, the U.S. rewarded him with a fistful of dollars and a green card. Next thing you know, he’s running an undertaking business and a bunch of others. He’s set himself up pretty nicely. Bottom line is, Tarik’s a rat who’d sell out his own mother and probably did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Soon after he informed on the Al-Qaeda cells, a whole bunch of his relatives got totaled in a car-bomb revenge attack. Then a convoy he was in got ambushed by our troops, and a truckload of the tribe’s money went missing.”

  “How much?”

  “I can’t talk about details, but besides the money, there were a bunch of priceless artifacts from the Baghdad museum. Suspicion fell on Tarik, and there were rumors that he had help from someone in the American military. But no one could ever prove a thing. The word from military intelligence was that Tarik’s as slippery as a snake and cunning as they come. The truck that vanished that day, he could have driven it over the border into Iran and stashed it away with relatives or arranged for it to be banked abroad. His tribe had relatives there, some of them involved in banking. Or he could have headed west to Syria and done the same thing. CID suspects he did the dirty d
eed or played a big part in it, but no one can prove it.”

  Courtney continued, “Most of what we’ve told you falls under the category of classified information. You repeat it to no one. Got that, Kath?”

  I nodded.

  Tanner said, “What you probably don’t get is why they let people like Tarik into this country.” He shrugged. “Why did they ever let all those Nazi scientists into the country at the end of World War Two to work at NASA? Tarik’s no scientist, but I guess in politics, the end always justifies the means.”

  Tanner rested his hand on his jaw. “The real question is, what’s all this stuff doing in a case in an aircraft that Jack was on?”

  I stared at the death mask’s ugly, evil face. It seemed to stare back at me.

  Tanner broke the moment, closing the lid and snapping shut the clips. “Jack may want it back.”

  “What?”

  “It may be important to him.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Just my gut, again. And like my old grandma used to say, always trust your gut. And right now, it’s heaving.” Pause. “Has he contacted you, Ms. Kelly?”

  “No,” I lied. I tried to make it sound convincing. I think I did.

  I looked back at Tanner, his eyes searching my face. Then he let his stare go. “We’ll be checking out the pilot, Hernandez, too, in that regard. In case this stuff has anything to do with him. We’ll check it for prints.”

  This time, it was Tanner who looked at his watch. I shot a glance at the wall clock. Distracted by the aluminum case, I had forgotten about the time.

  1:56.

  Four minutes until Jack’s call. My nerves felt raw, scoured with steel wool. Please leave.

  To my relief, Tanner slid the case into the evidence bag and zipped it up. He shot Courtney a look before he said to me, “We’ve got to go. We’ll talk again soon.”

  Courtney said, “Try to get some rest. You need me, holler.”

  I walked them to the back door. Tanner said, “I think the guy on the bridge was right. Jack will try to contact you. The big question is why. You’ve really got no idea what any of this is about? Something in his past? Lies and secrets he kept?”