Megan's Cure (36 page)

Chapter 65

“SO YOU DON’T put too much stock in it then?” asked Ming Wah Choy.

“What?” said Enzo Lee.
 
“Out of the mouths of babes?
 
That kind of thing?”

“Yes.”

They had taken Megan Kim to the San Francisco airport in the morning.
 
They said good bye to her just as she was being whisked through the security screening in the custody of an American Airlines ticket agent.
 
The agent would hand her off to the attendant on her flight to New Orleans.
 
Her mother and Police Chief Cliff Davidson would be waiting on the other end.

Megan had hugged them both goodbye.
 
Lee lifted her up and spun her around a couple of times, making her giggle.

“You’re making me dizzy,” Megan protested.

“I think you can handle it,” said Lee.

She promised to return late the next summer to attend the two-week science camp at the San Francisco Exploratorium that Choy had arranged.
 
She was paying for Megan’s plane fare and her mother’s if she would come as well.

Just before disappearing through the metal detector, Megan turned, flashed her brilliant smile and said, “You make a nice couple.”

“Well, she’s a perceptive kid, right?” said Lee.

“Yes.”

“And you probably had that glow,” he said.

“Hmm,” said Choy.
 
“
I
had that glow.”
 
She reached over and pulled the end of the belt in her white terrycloth bathrobe that Lee had squeezed into.
 
She had on a blue one.
 
They were lying on the plush carpeting of the living room floor in her condo with the gas fireplace turned on low.
 
Glasses of Silver Oak Cabernet were within reach.
 
They faced each other, both resting on an elbow.
 
The loose knot came undone and the white robe fell open.

Choy put her free hand on his neck and let it roam, first around his chest, then his stomach and further down his unclothed body.
 
The whole time she stared into his eyes and maintained a solemn expression until she made him gasp.
 
Then she looked up at the ceiling unable to resist a smile before locking eyes with him again.

“And what do you think she picked up from you?” she asked.
 

Lee slid his hand into her robe, being careful not to interfere with her hand which still was finding things to do inside the white robe.

“Intense desire,” he said.

Lee fondled Choy’s breasts and ran his fingers lightly up and down her stomach, going lower each time.
 
Her breathing got heavier and she chewed her lip until she couldn’t suppress a small groan.

“Ahhh,” said Choy.

Lee rolled her onto her back.

“What?
 
Again?” she said in mock surprise.

“I think we’ve got some time to make up, don’t you?” he said.

“Yes,” Choy said with a little yelp and a sharp intake of breath.
 
Then she ran her hands up from his buttocks to his shoulder blades, feeling his muscles as they settled into a comfortable rhythm.
 
“Lots and lots of…um…time.”

“Just do me a favor,” she added.
 
“No more leaping over tall buildings…or jumping into moving sailboats, okay?”

“Don’t know…if I can promise that,” Lee said through his panting.
 
“How about…if I promise…to always be…slower than…a speeding bullet?”

Chapter 66

Bayou La Batre, Alabama
April 2007

CHIEF CLIFF DAVIDSON was returning from an early lunch when he saw the two young boys playing on the edge of a large grass field outside the main church in town.
 
He pulled his patrol car over and watched.
 
One was a black kid he didn’t recognize.
 
He was pretty sure the other was Billy Kim’s boy, a year older than the last time he had seen him at the trailer.
 
He was out of diapers now, wearing cut-off jeans that ended at his ankles, a tattered T-shirt and blue flip flops.

The pair ran in a small circle in the middle of the field.
 
They still had the stiff-legged gait of toddlers.
 
Davidson knew that in a few months they’d have their running legs and there would be no holding them back.
 
Each carried a stick they must have found on the ground and used them to take dead aim at each other as they carried on a running gun battle.

“Pew, pew, pew,” said the Kim kid, sighting down his stick.
 

“Pew, pew,” replied his companion, returning fire as he ambled in an arc around the other boy.

Davidson watched for a couple of minutes from his car.
 
When he got out they ignored him until the door of his cruiser shut.
 
Then they turned toward him, two three-year-olds standing side by side in grass that hid their feet, sticks hanging down from their hands.
 
They watched him lumber across the grass toward them.
 
The black kid sucked his thumb.

When he was 10 feet away, Davidson suddenly dropped to one knee and held his right hand out, two fingers pointing at the boys with his thumb upright.

“Pew, pew, pew,” he said, giving his arm a slight shake to mimic the recoil.

Their faces exploded into huge grins and they were quickly moving again, dancing around the big man with their stick-guns pouring out a steady stream of noise bullets.
 
They were relentless as they circled him.

Davidson was on both knees now, his arms outstretched toward either side.
 
He twisted his head from one side to the other, alternating shots at each of the boys, tracking them in their gyrations.

“Pew, pew, pew!
 
Pew, pew, pew!”

The gun battle went on for a ridiculously long time until Davidson decided he’d better die before exhaustion set in.
 
He clutched his chest with one hand and his stomach with the other, made a long groaning noise and slowly slid down to the grass.
 
He twisted onto his back with a pitiful gurgling sound that ended when he flung his arms out.
 

The noise fusillade had peaked when they saw him going down.
 
Once he was prone, they drew closer and tapered off to a few desultory shots.
 
They came nearer still, curiosity mixed with concern.
 
Had they actually killed the big man?

Davidson popped open his left eye halfway, just enough to see the Kim boy. The kid looked down at him.
 
Then up and across at his friend.
 
He smiled and gave Davidson a wave.
 
Then they both took off trotting across the grass away from the police chief.

Davidson rolled on his side to watch them.
 
They headed toward a brick building on the other side of the large field.
 
He knew it was used by the nearby church to store extra furniture and equipment.

For the first time, he noticed the pair standing on the concrete pad next to the windowless end of the building.
 
Grass grew up through the many cracks in the concrete.
 
A pole protruded at the other end of the pad, holding a rusty metal basketball backboard with a slightly bent hoop affixed to it.
 
The police chief couldn’t remember it ever having a net attached to it.

Walter Novak wore shorts that exposed his long pale legs and a polo shirt faded to a dull blue.
 
His white hair was in its usual state – swirling uncontrollably.
 
Megan Kim looked half his size.
 
Her hair was a couple of inches longer than the last time Davidson had seen her.

They faced the brick wall.
 
In unison, their left arms swung into the air, releasing yellow-green tennis balls upward toward the sky.
 
Their right arms lifted upward, rackets dipping behind their heads and then rising to meet the balls just past their zenith as they began to fall.
 
The balls flew forward in a downward arc, hitting the concrete at the base of the brick wall and then bouncing up on the wall before settling to a stop a few feet away.

Then they reached into a wire basket on metal legs that stood between them with a pile of balls inside.
 
They looked at each other, making sure each was ready.
 
Then, up into the air again the balls flew, followed by the sweep of the rackets, the serves bounding off the strings, the balls hitting concrete, brick wall and concrete again before finally stopping – coming lazily to rest.

Davidson watched a couple more serves while sitting in the grass.
 
He heard them both laugh at a shared joke.
 
He thought about walking over to them but decided, finally, to head back to his patrol car.
 
He had reports to complete.
 
Maybe he’d track down Novak later and see if he wanted to accompany him to his favorite peach pie spot.
 
He was pretty certain he was seeing something important in progress.
 
And he didn’t want to disturb it.

The End

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Megan’s Cure
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Learn more about the world of Megan’s Cure and Enzo Lee!
Go to
www.robertblowe.com
where you can see real-life settings from the book
and get the background on the story.

Other books by

ROBERT B. LOWE:

Divine Fury
and
Project Moses

Enzo Lee Mystery Thrillers

Preview of

DIVINE FURY

An Enzo Lee Mystery Thriller

Isaiah 59:17

“He puts on righteousness like a coat of armor and a helmet of salvation on his head. He wears clothes of vengeance. He wraps himself with fury as a coat.”

Chapter 1

Montana, 2004

THE RAGGED, HIGH-PITCHED strains of the hymn drifted through the hardwood floor of the main church sanctuary above.

“On-ward Christ-ian sol-diers, march-ing as to war…”
 

More than a dozen kids. All fourth graders or younger.
 
He had watched them march in the dusk through the spring snow and up the stairs of the church.
 
They wore snow boots, puffy pint-sized parkas and ski caps in reds, blues and pinks with tassels hanging from the earflaps and bouncing off their shoulders.
   

Then – silence.
 
The muffled sound of the choir leader saying something unintelligible.
 
Her strong soprano started the next song followed fitfully by the children as they jumped in at different spots in the first stanzas.

“Mine eyes have seen the Glo-ry of the Com-ing of the Lord…”

 
Walberg focused on the hardware in front of him illuminated by the flashlight lying on the portable table.
 
Five more tables lay stacked against the wall, resting on the faded green linoleum covering the basement floor.
 
Folding chairs were piled nearby.
 
They awaited the next Sunday’s pancake breakfast when they would be packed with God-fearing members of Christ Episcopal Church, the largest house of worship in the small town of Bliss, Montana.

It was cold in the basement and he could see wisps of his breath in the limited light of the flashlight.
 
But it was still much warmer than outside and his fingers worked the pliers and wire cutters easily.

He had chosen an alkaline six-volt battery as the power source because he knew it would set off the detonators without any problem even in cold or wet conditions.
 
The wire was 18-gauge, solid copper sheathed in black PVC.
 
Strong enough to tolerate jostling but easy to work using either the pliers or his fingers.
 
The key triggering mechanism was cannibalized from a device that worked similar to a garage door opener but with a longer range of operation.
 
He’d
 
picked it up in Salt Lake City the weekend before.
     

He stripped the insulation off the end of the wire, exposing an inch which he hooked around the second terminal of the battery using the pliers.
 
He screwed the plastic cap down until it clamped hard on the copper wire.
 
He was finished.
 

He carefully put the tools back in his jacket pocket, picked up the flashlight and inspected the table surface and the surrounding floor to make sure he’d forgotten nothing.
 
Then, he moved to the outside door.
 
It was sturdy metal with an automatic closing mechanism.
 
He searched in the snow outside the door, spotted a small twig and jammed it against the frame so the door looked closed from a distance but remained unlatched.

Walberg only donned a ski cap when the thermometer dipped into the single digits.
 
Tonight, he wore his usual dark brown cowboy hat.
 
He’d done this since high school to distinguish himself from newcomers to the area.
 
Walberg had been born and raised within 50 miles of Bliss and was happy if everyone knew it.
 
Aside from three years in the U.S. Army, this had been his home his entire life.
 
With the hat and his old, suede-leather jacket, he looked like a thin, down-on-his-luck version of the Marlboro Man

The parking lot had been plowed earlier in the day, but the few inches of fresh snow completely muffled his footsteps.
 
In the quiet, he could hear the children clearly now, nearing the end of their song.
 
He moved toward the far end of the lot and the singing grew faint until he could barely hear it when he reached his 1998 black Chevy Blazer.

He opened the driver’s door, reached into the left cup holder in the center console and found the remote switch that he’d left there.
 
It fit easily into the palm of his hand. Still standing outside the Blazer, he closed the car door and found the button on the remote.
 
He stared at the church until he found the center basement window that was just a few inches above ground level.
 
He estimated the distance at 120 yards.

Suddenly, he noticed that the singing had stopped.
 
He heard the children’s voices again.
 
But they weren’t joining together in a Church hymn.
 
The sound was altogether different.
 
He recognized it as the excited chatter of young kids at the end of something.
 
The end of class.
 
The end of school.
 
In this case, the end of choir practice.

“Dammit,”
 
Walberg muttered.
 
He had expected the practice to last at least another 20 minutes.
 
As he watched the church, he saw the main doors thrown open on the far right side of the building and the kids scamper down the stairs – a few in the front, then the main surge, and finally the stragglers who moved slowly and carefully down the steps.

Two of the children ran across the parking lot, heading directly toward him.
 
In the front was a girl, tall for her age with long blond hair bouncing outside of her baby blue ski cap.
 
Behind her ran a younger boy with his jacket hanging open.

They slowed when they got close to him.
 
The girl veered, keeping some distance.
 
She looked at him warily.

“Hi, Uncle Steve,” she said.

“Hi,” Walberg replied without emotion.
 
“Get in the truck.
 
I’ve got something to do.”

He heard them start to bicker as the rear doors closed and they grabbed their seatbelts.
 
Walberg turned his attention back to the church.
 
It was quiet now with the children out and scattered, mostly on the other side of the building where their parents had parked.

He moved his thumb over the remote until he felt the raised button.
 
Watching the dark basement window, he pressed the button.
 
He saw a faint light go on inside the window.
 
He pressed the button again, and the light went out.
 
He waited five seconds and pressed the button a third time.
 
The light came on again.

Walberg was satisfied.
 
The switch worked as expected.
 
With the right explosives, he was confident that he could plant and detonate a bomb remotely.
 
He pulled a cloth bag out of his jacket pocket and walked back across the parking lot to retrieve the hardware from the darkness of the church basement.