Red Rock Island (Damian Green Book 1) (20 page)

Chapter Thirty-two

   Damian was approaching his island having left Pete’s bar a short time ago. He’d checked his security system repeatedly through the evening and there had been no more breaches. He did a slow circle around the island with night vision goggles on and saw his cats, but no other movement in the darkness. He circled around to the watercraft garage, opened the door, and folded out the dock.

An hour later, he searched out everything he could find on Angus Walsh and it all seemed legit. He didn’t like the coincidence of the man walking into Pete’s bar just when he was looking for help, but he was everything he said he was.

Could he be living the non-gang life in disguise? Could Damian have gotten the same acting job that Angus mentioned in regards to the gang? Could Angus be the gang’s leader on the outside? Damian studied the guy’s finances and thought that if he was, he was sure hiding the money from criminal enterprise well. Of course that could be on an all cash basis and perhaps it was buried under another name. Maybe he’d hack into the prison system for his fingerprints then see if there was any match at any time with another crime. Then he’d follow the guy from home to work, and then anonymously call him at work to see if he could handle a logistics problem. He would also ask Natalie to do a little research on the guy; sometimes she had invaluable word of mouth resources.

It was late, but he was having a hard time relaxing; probably no surprise after his day. It wasn’t every day that an average Joe had an attempt on his life by a notorious prison gang, and lived to tell about it. The score was presently prison gang zero, Damian eight men defeated. He was very curious to know if the first three made it ashore alive. He sure hoped not. He dropped an email to Natalie summarizing his day and his question about Angus. To his great surprise, he heard his phone ring, and noted the caller ID said it was Natalie.

“You’re awake late!”

“Back at you! I saw your email arrive and decided to call you. If we’re both sleepless, we may as well get some work done. I haven’t heard anything about the idiots after you or me. It’s frustrating being on the outside of law enforcement now.”

“Gee whiz I thought you might at least have the inside scoop.”

“So you would hope. Tell me more about Angus Walsh.”

Damian explained how he met him and added, “Trevor can tell you about Pete and his bar. He did some small legal work for him and I designed his alcohol dispensing system. He had great wait staff but he was always having to fire them as they couldn’t seem to stop giving away free booze. Pete will do anything for Trevor or I as a result. So Pete is above suspicion for introducing me to Angus. I’m also not surprised that he made friends with Angus and knows his story as he did the same with me. I’m simply bothered by the timing of his walking in the bar.”
 

“I don’t blame you, Damian, as it was highly convenient, but you’ve done your research on him and he’s everything he said he was. Give me a few hours to check with my sources, you do the fingerprint search, and then let’s sit down and chat with the man.”

“Exactly what I was thinking. Perhaps there are another couple of email accounts that the leadership uses that I could access. Then we try his tactic of exposing their thoughts and behavior to the gang.”

“Sounds like a plan. Have you found anything else on my unsolved cases?”

“I thought I provided you with some really good leads.”

“You’ve provided me with nearly all the information on the case. I’m stuck on the DNA analysis delay. Do you have any ideas on how to get around that?”

“When we first started the cold cases, I looked at the process and decided there wasn’t much I could do to speed things up. By design, testing is supposed to take about between fifty and sixty hours and there were good reasons for those times. However, I didn’t realize there was such a shortage of human beings for the human side of the processing. So I was thinking about designing equipment that can automate that, but that is at least two years off from getting FDA or FBI approval to process specimens if I had a nearly finished product today. I’m back to the private lab suggestion. It’s about eight thousand dollars per trace specimen. How many specimens did they get out of the car?”

“I’ll ask in the morning but I would think there would be a lot. Hairs alone in a thirty year car have to be forty to fifty and with a pet add another fifty.”

“What if we prioritize the hair to Debbie’s color and require a hair follicle to be attached to the strand and asked the crime lab to prioritize that first. Would that reduce the turnaround time for results?”

“It would and it might reduce the numbers sufficiently enough that the department might be willing to send it to a private lab. I’ll contact the crime scene folks in the morning and see if I can find an inventory of all the specimens.”

“If you get me all of the fingerprints collected, I can at least run those for you,” Damian offered.

“Sounds like a plan. Let’s both hope we can get some sleep now.”

After they disconnected the call, Damian went back to look at Barbara Watson. The Medical Examiner could not confirm that the knife with Mr. Watson’s fingerprints was the one that killed her. Where was it postulated that she was killed? Her home, somewhere else? Stabbing someone was not a quiet affair unless you drugged them first. He pulled up the file on Mrs. Watson to see what was said regarding the details of her death. The police report stated she wasn’t murdered at the scene where her body was located. Inside the file was a list of alternatives. Damian read it and thought it felt like a brain-storming session to him rather than actual suspicion of possible murder sites. He yawned and realized his adrenaline rush had finally ended. He crawled into bed soon after much to the dismay of his two cats that had staked their own territory out on his bed.

Chapter Thirty-Three

He awoke late the next morning to the delightful news that the Warriors had pulled out a final two minute surge and victory in their play-off series. Now for the final game, they were returning home to determine who would advance to the NBA finals. Damian visited a few different news sites to read up on the game. He visited the Warriors site contemplating buying tickets for the final game. At least if he was inside Oracle Arena, the Brotherhood would be unable to kill him. Then he looked up Hermione’s swim schedule and realized there was a swim meet that night. He’d take a pass on the tickets and content himself with checking the score of the game on his phone.

The phone rang and he saw that it was Ariana.

“Happy Sunday morning,” she said. “Would you like to join me in giving Hermione her first scuba diving lesson?”

“Given your penchant for forgetting your air tank pressure, count me in if only to save you two. What time?”

“Why don’t you come over for lunch and we’ll start after that. I downloaded the guide from the PADI website used by dive instructors to teach novices. It’s for ten years old and up, so I thought we’d start there, then go out to my pool to practice with the tank and regulator, and then if she’s doing good, we’ll go out in the bay. If she likes scuba diving, then I’ll enroll her after school ends with an official PADI instructor so she can get certified.”

“Sounds like an excellent plan. I’ll bring over my equipment. Do you have lots of air in your tanks or do you need me to bring over extra gas?”

There was a pause and then Damian could hear the chagrin in her voice, “I actually haven’t looked at the gas level of my tanks since my adventure going to your island. I can run out here and get the tanks refilled.”

Damian had been checking the internet as they talked and said, “The dive shop closest to you is closed today. I’ll bring over my own gas.”

“Will the gas cylinder fit in your boat?”

“Yes and when it’s full it weighs about sixty pounds. I just have to make sure I don’t bounce on the water and break off the regulator. If that happens it will turn into a torpedo and go through my boat into the bay and I’ll be swimming ashore.”

“I’d worry about you doing that, but I’m sure if that happened you’d find a way to repair the boat and resume your journey here.”

“Thanks for the faith in my engineering abilities,” Damian said with a laugh not at all sure he could repair that large a hole while the boat was upside down and he was treading water in the bay.

“I assume the Brotherhood didn’t bother you yesterday.”

Damian paused debating whether to tell her, but since they were co-parenting Hermione, he supposed he should say something in case she ended up with sole possession of the kid.

“Actually, I guess I should have called you last night. They attacked around mid-day. I had help from two different police agencies.”

“Oh my gosh Damian, you should of called and updated me. Did the police catch them?”

“I don’t know and no. A boat came over with five presumably gang members. Two got on my island and three drove away with a copter chasing them. I didn’t hear if they found them, but I don’t know why they wouldn’t have, but they didn’t call me to let me know.”

“How about the two guys on your island?” Ariana asked urgently. “Surely they caught them?”

“No actually they didn’t. Apparently they had wet suits on under their clothes and carried mini-scuba units and masks. You’ve probably seen them; you can carry them on your shoulder in case your own unit fails. They’re good for like five minutes of breathing. They dove into the water and disappeared. They must have come by earlier and buried a regular scuba set near some landmark under water as we never saw them again.”

“Maybe they bled to death and a shark ate them.”

“If only I could be so lucky. Anyway, I’m safe and I’ll tell you more about my evening later. I’m completely unharmed.”

“You live a dangerous life. We need to do some planning on what I’m going to do if you fail to defend yourself. We have Hermione now and I don’t have your expertise to create identities. If either of us dies, the other person has to completely assume care and legal guardianship of her and we need to make sure all of our ducks are in order.”

“Ah, good point, Ariana. I’ll think about your issue and you do also and we’ll talk to make sure it’s all set up. Do you want me to come over about noon?”

“Yeah, we’ll see you then.”

They ended the call and Damian thought ‘whoops’ he should have thought of the very issue that Ariana brought up. They had taken control of the teenager without any legal approval. If Ariana died, he needed a legitimate legal course to care for her. Likewise if he died, Ariana needed enough of a paper trail that her right to the kid would never be challenged by anyone other than Hermione’s real parents.

He went down to his lab to pack his scuba supplies and air canisters thinking about what he’d done to create Hermione’s background to get her into school. He felt really good about the set-up and didn’t think there was anything more he could do. He would leave the kid perhaps half of his large estate. Ariana could easily cover the kid’s expenses including college, but perhaps that half of his estate would give her the financial freedom to do whatever she wanted.

He turned back to the location for Barbara Watson and dropped Natalie a note asking her if she could tell from the police report if they used Luminol on her house or car. Some of the police abbreviations were hard to decipher, so he couldn’t always understand a report.

He then sat in front of his computer terminals and put some thought into how he would increase his security. He had cameras around his island looking out onto the water. Perhaps if he put some kind of facial or object recognition software in place, it would sense the approach of the men that had attacked his island. Trouble was he doubted that the same ones would be back. He studied the men on board the boat and those that made it ashore.

They were so convinced that they could conquer his island that they failed to try and hide their identity. He would have thought that they would at least wear balaclavas. He studied their images and wondered what he could program into the alarm system? Search for white and heavily tattooed individuals that were on a direct course for his island. Looking at the film of both attacks, the men were indeed Caucasian. Most of them you could see had many tattoos. Not one of them had a naked arm free of tattoos. It was a vague description but better than nothing. He bet he’d get a lot of false alarms. How many sailors out in San Francisco bay had tattoos? A lot he’d guess. He would set the alarm to ring at a distance of one-hundred yards and see how many alarms he got. If the bells were going off hourly that would drive him nuts and he would reduce the range. So far they had strictly gone for daytime attacks. Maybe he would have to add some night vision lenses to the cameras at night for better detection in the dark.

He was out of time so he set his system, made sure the cats kibble and water bowls were full, than took off for Ariana’s house. He decided to take a fast and circuitous route around Alcatraz Island. He hadn’t seen anyone following him on the water and they didn’t know where his watercraft garage was so in theory they were watching the wrong side of his island, but it never paid to be careless with his, Ariana’s, and Hermione’s security.

Despite his detour he was soon pulling up to Ariana’s dock. The little two seater was a joy to drive and ever so quick. Miguel greeted him as he pulled up, ball in mouth. He flung the ball up on the sand as it wasn’t time yet for him to get wet. He pulled a chair up at the island to watch Ariana put the final touches on their meal. Hermione was watching and duplicating Ariana’s motions where possible. They both seemed relaxed and content.

“How’s it going? Need any help with your homework?”

Hermione rolled her eyes and replied, “I do my homework while I’m sitting in class.”

“Really, how do you listen to the teacher and respond if you’re concentrating on homework?”

“You must be really old or not as smart as I am when you attended school. I can do all three at once. I’ve always gotten good grades for class participation.”

“I think it’s that I’m old. I grew up in foster care so no one paid attention to whether my homework was done, but I guess I probably did what you’re doing.”

“Wow, you grew up in foster care. That sucks!”

Then as though a switch had been turned on, out of nowhere it seemed, Hermione sobbed, “Oh my gosh, I’m in foster care. I’m an orphan just like you Damian.”

Ariana and Damian hugged the girl as a unit. Ariana was tearing up and Damian thought great I’m hugging two water pots.

“You know, I never got to stay with anyone as smart and cool as Ariana. I stayed with one boring couple after another. I was never an only child in a household. Your situation may be temporary or it may be permanent until you leave for college if we don’t find your parents by then. They could be looking for you right now, but we’ve done such a good job creating a new identity that you’ll be hard to find. Let’s hope they see your Facebook post to know that you’re alive.”

They could feel her rub her face on Damian’s shirt to dry her tears and then she leaned back a little embarrassed.

Ariana saw the look and said, “Sweetie, you’ve had an amazing week adapting to a new school and swim coach. At your age you are also raging with hormones so I’m surprised you haven’t been overwhelmed by your situation before now. Now let’s finish making lunch and we’ll sit down and eat and listen to Damian describe his second go round with those terrible thugs.”

Soon they were all munching on a delicious salad filled with four kinds of greens, nuts, strawberries, chicken, and numerous other colorful things. It was topped with a creamy goddess dressing and very delicious. They washed the food down with a variety of iced teas. Dessert was chocolate chip cookies that Hermione baked.

Once Damian took the first bite from the cookie, Hermione said “Tell us about the thugs. Did you blast them with the water cannons again?”