Heartless: a Derek Cole Mystery Suspense Thriller (Derek Cole Suspense Thriller Book 1) (11 page)

As the plane rose through and then above the clouds, Derek turned his gaze to the horizon. In the distance, he could see nothing but a blanket of clouds falling ever further from him and a dark sky above.
 
He craned his neck, hoping to see something in the stars that were visible. Somewhere, off in the distance, he knew that the sky and clouds would meet. Maybe there, he thought, is where he would find a sign. A token of hope that she was waiting for him to notice.

She had been gone for over three years and for three years Derek had struggled to remember her face. Not the face he could easily remember by looking at pictures, but her face when her smile was not for a camera, but for him.
 

The only memory he could easily recall of her face was a poison to him. That final vision of her face, pressed against the glass, the consuming blackness of the pistol held against her temple and, behind her terrified face, his face. The face of the man whom Derek had never seen before and whose face he could recall in greater detail than the face of his own wife.

As he sat thinking about Lucy, he found his fingers tracing the scar on his left cheek, recalling the pain, the depression, the anger that caused the scar. He remembered the look on his mother’s face when she arrived at the hospital. How his father looked at him as he leaned against the far wall of Derek’s hospital room, seemingly wishing the room was five times the size but still glad he could be there for his son. He remembered the embarrassment he felt when he explained what had happened and how he knew the doctors didn’t believe his story.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” a flight attendant asked. She was leaning in close to Derek, closer than she did to any other passenger. She was attractive, no doubt, and she seemed to Derek to be the type of woman who understood the effects her appearance had on men.

“Scotch, on the rocks, please,” he answered, shaking the memories from his mind.

“We only have Dewar’s. Is that okay?”

“Fine. Dewar’s is fine.”

“Fourteen dollars, and we only take cash.”

“Make it a black coffee and a glass of water. No ice.”

Derek retrieved his moleskin notebook from his backpack and began reviewing his notes. It had only been a few hours since his first meeting with Thomas O’Connell and after accepting the case, yet he had heard and seen so much. He felt, as he studied his notes, that he was missing something. Something that he needed not to miss. Something that shouldn’t be missed.

Whether it was the fact that he was charged with the protection of a family from their own child, born without a heart, or the succumbing nature that Mark Rinaldo adopted as his punishment for his actions over twenty years ago, something was not adding up.

And why was Thomas not concerned about meeting him in a place as public as a park? Sure, the reason he gave was valid, but still someone truly in fear for his or her life would at least seem nervous or uncomfortable sitting out in the open.

“The killer could be anywhere,”
he thought, trying to dispel his suspicions.
“The fact is that someone killed three or four people exactly where Thomas said three people were killed. Fact. And the doctor who started this whole mess and who received a message from the assumed killer confirmed his story about his brother. Fact. And since the police are obviously looking for the killer, it wouldn’t make sense for the killer to walk around, looking for his next victim in a public park. Opinion.”

The flight attendant returned with two bottles of Dewar’s White Label in one hand and a plastic cup filled halfway with ice in the other.

“I don’t think anyone will miss two little bottles,” she smiled. “These are on me.”

“And if the pilot doesn’t get us out of these turbulence, they may be on me, soon. Thank you.”

She laughed a forced laugh and held eye contact with Derek a bit longer than what the joke deserved. “If you need anything else, you know where I’ll be.”

“Thanks again,” Derek said.

After the flight attendant moved on, Derek scribbled some notes in his book.

• Find William Straus. Knows more than anyone else.
  
• Contact O’Connells. Why did they leave and not demand that Thomas join them?
  
• Check in on Rinaldo
  

He closed the moleskin, pushed off the overhead light, leaned back as far as he could, and closed his eyes. He was thankful that his wife’s memorized face was not there to greet him as he closed his eyes.

“Where are you, Alexander Black, and what is your next move?”

The flight from Chicago to Albany, New York took just over one and a half hours. By the time Derek had sucked any remaining scotch from the melting ice cubes, it was time to return his seatback to its upright position. He didn’t have enough time to plan out his next move but knew that he would have time as he made the estimated two-hour drive from Albany to Piseco Lake.
 

As the plane descended back through the clouds, he looked out of the window and again searched in vain for her face. The clouds were soon above him.
 

Where they belonged.

 
When the plane landed and finished its taxi ride to the gate, the scotch-gifting flight attendant approached Derek.

“I hope you enjoyed the scotch,” she said.

“I don’t admit to this most people,” Derek said as he removed his seatbelt, “but I love free scotch even more than I love cheap scotch.”

“Well, if you’re don’t have to get to anywhere too quickly, I know a few places in Albany that have a whole shelf of cheap scotch.”

Being hit on was nothing new to Derek. Though it made him uncomfortable while the “hitting on” was happening, it always made him feel good about himself. He worked hard at keeping his body in shape and knew that so many men took a more relaxed approached to fitness when they reach their mid-thirties.

But flirting also made Derek feel guilty. Though he no longer wore the wedding band that he and Lucy exchanged on the altar, he still felt married. Connected. Obligated, though he hated to feel obligated to someone or to something that he loved.

Lucy was dead. That he knew. He also knew she wasn’t going to make a triumphant reintroduction. But she was still there. There in his heart, in his thoughts, in his mind’s eye most every time he closed his eyes. He looked for her everywhere at first, not fully believing that something as simple and as abundantly manufactured as a gun could actually steal her away. To rip her out of this life and into whatever comes next.
 

After a while, he stopped looking for her, knowing that she was truly gone. To where, he didn’t know. He often would wonder about what happens after. He hoped for the heaven he learned about in church and the heaven that he was promised from his priest. As the days that separated him from her grew greater, he began wishing that the decision of whether or not a soul is granted residence in heaven was up to the person to whom an individual caused the most harm to when alive. He imagined the bastard, standing before the pearly gates, knocking and waiting for the gates to swing open wide. He loved to picture the bastard’s face when Lucy walked out and how he would respond upon learning that his fate now rested in her hands.

But he knew her heart. He knew she would let the bastard in through the gates. Even show him around the place, buy him dinner, and introduce him to her parents if he asked. She was too forgiving.

“You can’t let people walk all over you, Lucy,” he would tell her. “They take advantage of you.”
 

But he knew that he couldn’t change her. And he knew that he didn’t ever want to. She made him want to be a better person. She allowed him into her own heaven, showed him around and showed him that what he was promised was already his.

“I wish I could,” he said to the flight attendant who was now sitting in the empty seat next to him. “I have a long drive ahead of me and ...”

“Okay,” she said and moved down the aisle as if the conversation hadn’t happened. “It’s your loss.”

The flight attendant’s response, sudden and swift as it was, caught Derek off guard. Though relieved, he wondered what he might have missed by rejecting her advances.

As he collected his overnight bag from the overhead compartment and began heading out of the plane, he felt his anger begin to build up. He didn’t understand why his anger was making itself known, or what prompted it. He just felt it rising much too quickly.
 

Soon after her death, Derek’s anger had a target, a place to call home. But three years after her death, his anger had lost its familiar target. It had no direction at times, no place to land.

He brushed past the flirting flight attendant and walked as quickly as he could up and out of the gangplank. He felt his anger building as he impatiently navigated past other passengers, all moving too slowly. His anger turned to rage when no one was manning the Hertz booth.

Then, as quietly and as quickly as his anger came, it dissolved as a fleeting memory of her face flashed in his mind. The face he wanted and tried so hard to recall. It was there, then gone before he could study it. Though he begged the memory to come back, all that he could see through his efforts was her face the moment before her life was finished.

“Can I help you, sir?” A young man, who had approached the Hertz desk asked. “Can I get you anything?”

Derek saw the clerk through watery eyes. He had grown used to his anger giving way to tears in an instant, but had yet to come up with a reason to give to compassionate others.

“Sorry,” he offered. “Long day. Damn yawning always makes my eyes tear up. I have a reservation under Cole. Derek Cole.”

“Yes, Mr. Cole,” the clerk replied. “Your car is all set for you.” The clerk reached for the keys. As he retrieved them, both the clerk and Derek noticed a note was taped to the set of keys. “This must be for you, Mr. Cole.”

Derek took the keys, separated the note that was taped to the key fob, and read the note to himself.

“Welcome to Albany, Derek Cole,” was all that was written on the note.

“Where did this note come from?” snapped Derek.

“I’m not sure. I just got here at 8:00.”

“Can you find out who wrote this note?”

“I could call the person who was working the counter earlier today but not sure if ...”

“Please call,” Derek said.

“It’s a little late to call now, don’t you think?”

Derek glanced at his watch, realizing the late hour.

“Listen, I’m going to leave my cell number with you. Please leave a note to have whoever knows who wrote this note to call me. Okay?”

“Okay, Mr. Cole.”

“Please make sure that you alert the person who relieves you of my request.”

“Okay. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“It could be a big problem. A very big problem.”

************

Derek thought about getting a hotel room to catch a few hours of sleep, and then heading out to Piseco Lake and the cabin of Doctor Peter Straus. But once he was in his rental car, he thought that arriving at the lodge well before most people would be up and moving around would be a better plan.

It was close to midnight when he punched in the address of the lodge that his client had provided him. Once entered, the Hertz Never-Lost system estimated his time of arrival to be at 2:17 AM. It had already been a long twenty-four hours for Derek, and as he started his drive to Piseco Lake, he started to realize just how much had been packed into the space of a single day.
 

“Let’s review,” Derek said to no one. “We have what appears to be a baby born without a heart who is whisked away to be cared for by a doctor who has been referred to as an ‘asshole.’ We have a triple murder that included two doctors who probably cared for the aforementioned heartless baby and another victim who I have no idea about. We have a missing doctor, that being one William Straus, the supposed killer, that being one Alexander O’Connell or Alexander Black, depending on who you ask. Finally, a stranger leaves a note at my car rental place, welcoming me to Albany. And me without a clue as to what I should do next. Sounds like one of my typical cases!”