Authors: Ken Goddard
Awareness, when it came to Wilbur Boggs again, freed him from the stupor that enveloped him like a dank, impenetrable cloud.
The vague feelings of fighting the ropes and nets, struggling in the darkness, or trying to work himself free of obstructions trying to cover his nose and mouth vanished.
Instead, he awoke to a sense of freedom, and brightness, and general well-being marred only by the persistent dryness in his throat, the gentle numbness that didn't quite mask the pain which emanated from several parts of his body, and most unsettling of all, the confusion regarding where he was . . . and why.
Because of this, it took the federal wildlife agent several long moments finally to understand that the wires and tubes attached to his arms probably signified something important.
Monitors? IVs? Bright lights. Must be in a hospital. No wonder everything feels numb. Probably giving me drugs.
In that case, he decided, in order to figure out what happened, he needed to stop the mind-numbing flow.
Accordingly, Wilbur Boggs carefully reached around with his left hand — for some reason his right hand felt heavy and immobile — followed the thin plastic tubing with his numbed fingers until it ended under a strip of medical tape attached to the inner elbow of his right arm, peeled up the tape, then slowly pulled the IV needle out of his arm.
For reasons he couldn't quite grasp, he'd expected alarms to go off, and people to come running . . . and felt momentarily confused when nothing happened.
Supposed to happen, because that's what always happens on TV
, he finally managed to reason out, but with no idea why that bit of knowledge might be important, much less true.
But they wouldn't need to rig any kind of alarm on the IV, because they've already got me connected to at least four or five other electronic doodads and that big monitor over there . . . with the big ON/OFF switch . . . right next to the bed. Ah.
Special Agent Wilbur Boggs slowly sat up with his legs dangling over the side of the bed, after finally deciding it might be a good idea to make sure he was more or less okay before he disconnected himself from the monitor. However, then his tongue felt an unfamiliar empty space in his mouth.
What the hell happened to my front teeth?
He brought his right hand up to feel for his missing teeth — and saw the cast on his right hand for the first time. When he did, the memories began to trickle into his head.
Boat.
My boat.
All tangled up and broken, goddamn it, because they
. . .
They?
His eyes grew wide as he continued staring at the thick plaster cast on his right hand. What the hell . . . ?
Rustman.
Whatley.
And Smallsreed. That goddamned sleazy . . .
Wait a minute. Sleazy what? Congressman? No, something else.
Sleazy bagman. That's it. Political bagman, guy named Simon Whatley. Smallsreed's man. Him and who? The new guy Eliot said scared the shit out of everybody at Rustman's place?
Eliot? Who's that?
Something about Eliot's name made Boggs feel anxious.
Oh yeah, that's right.
Got to tell them about Lou Eliot.
The memories came faster now.
Gotta warn them.
Them? Who's 'them'? And why do I have to . . .?
And then the flood gates opened, and the entire day's events surged through the agent's dazed mind.
Shots fired.
Two shots, far apart, execution style.
Gotta warn them. Tell them about Lou Eliot... he never showed up . . . and the new guy. The one Eliot was afraid of. Sergeant somebody.
Somebody cold and empty, just like win —
Wintersole.
Sergeant Wintersole.
He knew he had it now — almost within his grasp — and Wintersole was the key. If he could just get a focus on that last murky element drifting around in the back of his mind. Something about help. Needing help. Calling for . . .
Was that it? Calling for help?
No.
He felt a cold chill start up his spine.
He didn't have to call for help because . . . why?
Because help was already coming.
That's right. They're already on their way, thanks to good old Halahan. Goddamned stubborn Irishman. He'll take care of everything.
But . . .
But what?
Got to warn them. Gotta tell . . . Charley?
He blinked again, then immediately felt dizzy and sick to his stomach as the spine-chilling awareness hit home.
Charlie Team. The kids. Oh Christ.
Boggs fumbled for the phone on the monitor table, but he immediately gave that idea up when he realized he couldn't remember a single phone number. Not a one. He thought about asking someone for a phone book, but the door to his room was almost shut, and he didn't feel strong enough to yell. Instead, he simply reached over, shut the monitor off, ripped the rest of the electronic sensors off his head and arms, then staggered to the nearby closet.
And discovered, to his amazement, nothing but a pair of white hospital pajamas, a white bathrobe, and a pair of flat cloth slippers.
Wait a minute. What happened to my clothes?
He tried to remember how he'd wound up there, but the only memory he could dredge up out of his aching head had something to do with crawling toward his truck on his hands and knees, which didn't make any sense at all.
So lacking a better plan, Wilbur Boggs pulled himself out of the open-backed hospital gown, worked himself into the pajamas, robe, and slippers — trying, as he did so, to ignore the cast on his hand — re-taped the IV needle to his arm, and then did what he vaguely remembered seeing someone do on TV.
He got up and staggered out the door of his room and into the wide hallway, dragging the IV rack in his wake.
Incredibly, he made it all the way to the lobby, and then through the wide automatic door and across the covered entryway before anyone reacted to his presence — and appearance — with anything other than a brief, professional smile.
"Mr. Boggs?"
Wilbur Boggs blinked in the unaccustomed daylight.
"That's right," he replied in a raspy voice, trying to remember if the muscular yet attractive young woman standing in front of him was his nurse.
"Are you going somewhere?" she asked hesitantly.
"My office," he mumbled, wondering if he could muster the strength to shove her aside and make a run for it, or find a taxi before she called the security guards to drag him back to his room.
No, probably not
, he told himself glumly.
"Oh really?" The young woman smiled. "Do you have a ride?" He looked around the entryway. Except for a single truck parked at the far end of the driveway, it was empty.
"Uh, no, I guess not."
"Well then," she beamed at him, "may I offer you one?"
Chapter Thirty-six
Mike Takahara had based his time estimate for locating Wilbur Boggs on rough distance and the clearly marked speed zones through town, rather than the speed and mobility of the small Honda.
And the uneasy determination of Henry Lightstone.
Consequently, it took Lightstone five minutes less than the tech agent's estimate to find Boggs's office. But he then spent another ten slowly circling a four-block area — until he felt reasonably certain he hadn't been followed — before he risked entering the small office building through a door that opened into the back alleyway.
It took him another five minutes to properly identify himself as a federal agent of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and get the relevant information out of Boggs's secretary. No, she hadn't seen Wilbur since last Tuesday. Yes, she was worried, but she felt confident that the other agents who also were looking for Wilbur would find him soon. The names of the other agents? She paused for a moment to scan her notebook. Oh, yes. Gus Donato, Mark LiBrandi, and a young woman agent whose name escaped her at the moment.
Gus Donato, Mark LiBrandi, and Natasha Marashenko. Henry Lightstone smiled to himself. The offensive players of Charlie Team, scene two, sleazy congressman and bagman try to make a deal.
Bingo.
Fifteen minutes later, using directions provided by Boggs's eager-to-help secretary, followed by a good half-hour spent on the back-track, searching for any sign of an active or passive surveillance, Lightstone stood in the covered carport next to the resident wildlife agent's home, wondering what out-of-place element had triggered his mental alarms.
He'd done the standard things first. Rang the doorbell, and received no response. Then he carefully examined all the doors and windows — house and garage — and found everything securely locked with no sign of forced entry. A cursory search of the yard led him next to the carport, where he'd stood studying the backed-in pickup truck and boat trailer for a good two minutes now.
Then it finally hit him.
The boat trailer.
It was still attached to the truck.
And not just the bumper hitch, but the safety chains, trailer brakes, and electrical hookup, too.
Not an unusual situation if you planned to go on a trip, or left everything hooked up for a quick run out to the lake; but hardly the way a wildlife agent would leave his personal truck and trailer when working twelve-hour patrol duty shifts with a government truck and trailer. Lightstone moved in closer . . . and then immediately went on the alert when he saw the blood splatters on the boat's windshield.
What had Boggs's secretary said? Something about the other agents checking Boggs's home every evening?
Which made as much sense as anything else, he decided as he cautiously moved to the rear of the carport — where the back of the boat trailer nudged the back wall — because if Mark or Gus or Natasha had checked the house during the day, at least one of them should have noticed the blood splatters on the windshield . . . or at the very least, the damage to the back of Boggs's boat.
Pretty hard to miss, guys, even in the middle of the night,
Lightstone thought as he knelt and surveyed the external damage sustained by the small watercraft.
Okay, Wilbur, let's hope for your sake this isn't what it looks like.
Alert for the slightest movement, Henry Lightstone cautiously approached the near side of the boat, looked over the railing, then breathed a small sigh of relief.
No body.
But more than enough blood for a body to have been here, Lightstone decided as he carefully stood up on the trailer, eased himself into the boat, and began to examine the scene like he'd done so many times when he and Bobby LaGrange had worked homicide investigations together.
Yeah, you do like to play, Bobby
, Lightstone smiled to himself as he made a cursory examination of the damage sustained by the outboard engine, then furrowed his brows in concentration as he turned slowly— watching where he stepped, carefully avoiding any potentially latent-fingerprint-bearing surfaces with his bare hands — and began methodically to work through the cause-and-effect aspects of the blood splatter patterns around the windshield . . .
And I can see you and Susan hooking up with Halahan to have some fun with Bravo Team.
. . . the instrument panel . . .
Problem is, though, I know you too well.
. . . the steering wheel. . .
You were scared when I called last night because you were worried about Susan.
. . . the seat cushions . . .
And you wouldn't have been worried about her, or pulled out that old pistol of yours, if you knew the whole deal was a setup.
. . . and the flooring.
So that cuts you and Susan out of the grand conspiracy theory, leaving me to hook up with Sage the soothsayer on my own . . . however and whenever that might have happened. But not . . . uh oh, what's this?
Lightstone reached down under the driver's seat, came up with a bloody front tooth — and then another one under the cowling — sat down on the front passenger seat to consider this latest bit of evidence for a few moments, then moved to the back of the boat to re-examine the damaged transom and outboard motor.
Only when he began a detailed examination of the outboard motor shaft did Henry Lightstone notice the rope fibers and fragments of nylon netting. That discovery led him to the prop and the protective skeg, where he made another interesting discovery — which caused him to reexamine the damaged transom with a decidedly different perspective.
Boat's traveling at a high rate of speed, gets caught up in nets, rope, something like that, and comes to a sudden stop, causing Wilbur Boggs's face to smash into the steering wheel, knocking out a couple of his front teeth, and sending blood all over the place. Wilbur cuts the boat loose, tries to fix the engine — getting blood all over the cowling — but never gets it running again because there's still a bunch of netting wrapped around the propeller shaft, and finally ends up paddling to shore. Easy read. Trouble is, judging from the damage to the motor skeg and some — but not all — of the damage to the transom, the boat was going backwards at a fairly high speed at the time of impact.
Hell of a trick, Wilbur my man.
Unless . . .
Then Lightstone noticed the truck's broken rear window.
Ten minutes later, after expanding the scope of his search and placing several more very intriguing pieces of the puzzle at least within reasonable proximity to each other, Henry Lightstone walked across the street, rang the doorbell, and waited.
This time, to his amazement, he got a response.
"Yes?"
"Hi, I'm a friend of Wilbur Boggs, your neighbor across the street," Lightstone began.
"Oh, I'm so glad you stopped by. How is he?"
"Well, we think he'll be all right," Lightstone replied hesitantly, "but I was examining his truck and boat trailer just now, and happened to notice your mailbox . . ."