Authors: Cathy Perkins,Taylor Lee,J Thorn,Nolan Radke,Richter Watkins,Thomas Morrissey,David F. Weisman
He stripped next to the Jacuzzi and slid into the hot water,
punching a button to start the jets. He opened the Samuel Adams, closed his
eyes, and took a sip.
Yeah, Sandy,
he thought,
I don’t work there any more.
He reached over with his left hand and
touched the circular scar over his right nipple, where a bullet from an AK-47
had missed his lung by a fraction of an inch and shattered his shoulder blade.
He was in Afghanistan when he was shot. He wasn’t supposed to be
there. Not officially, anyway. No one wanted the CIA around. The Mossad rescued
him, which was another embarrassment to his department. The CIA took the bullet
out, and paid for a follow-up surgery to try to get more movement back into the
shoulder. When that surgery failed they retired him on disability. It was their
way of getting rid of an unnecessary reminder of their screw-up.
He opened the Red Hook.
Thanks Sandy
, he thought.
Thanks for reminding me
.
It was after midnight when the phone rang, waking him. He picked
up the receiver. “Hello?” he muttered. His tongue felt like it was coated with
cotton.
“Chase?”
“Hey, Sandy.”
“Hold on while I check the line.”
He waited patiently while she made sure that no one had patched
into the line.
“Okay. We’re clear.”
“Did you find something?”
“Um…”
He abruptly sat up. “What is it?”
“The file’s covered.”
His mouth opened and he rubbed his chin. His heart pounded.
A national security
case? Seventy years old and still not closed?
She spoke softly. “Are you there?”
“Just thinking.”
“I have the cover story for you.”
“Hold on.” He turned on a lamp and opened the drawer by his bed.
He moved the Glock out of the way and grabbed a notebook and pen provided by
the hotel. “Okay.”
“Sam Riley was working on a case involving insider trading or
fraud.”
He interrupted her. “It isn’t specific?”
“I’m reading between the lines, here. It actually says that he
investigated a complaint filed against a member of the board at the New York
Stock Exchange.”
“But it doesn’t give a name?”
“No. It says that Sam Riley died during the investigation.
That’s all.”
“That’s it? It says ‘died,’ not ‘murdered?’”
“Chase, it says he died during the investigation.”
“But it was never closed.” He spoke out loud, rehashing the
information as he tried to make sense of it. “Was another agent assigned to the
case?”
“There’s no indication that it was turned over to another agent.
Wait a minute. There is a CIA number associated to it.”
He could hear the clicking of the keyboard as she entered the
information into her computer.
“What makes you think Sam Riley was murdered?” she asked as she
waited for the file to come up.
He smiled knowingly, wondering what her reaction would be if he
told her the truth. “It’s just something that came up; nothing specific, just a
lot of unanswered questions.”
“Here it is. Nothing, Chase. It says that the case was returned
to the FBI.”
“Does it give an agent’s name or ID number?”
“No. It just says, case returned to the FBI.”
He exhaled. No help there. It only indicated that someone
thought this case might be international, and therefore the CIA’s. But they
declined it.
No. They returned it. What did that mean?
“You know what a covered file is, Chase. Please be careful.”
“Maybe it’s just been overlooked.”
“I checked on that. The cover was signed off again, only one
year ago. It’s good for nine more years.”
“Whose name?”
“Blanket. NSA.”
His heart beat so strongly that he could feel the blood being
pumped through the veins in his temples. This was not good news.
“Thanks, Sandy.”
“Hey, Chase? Really… Be careful.”
He hung up the phone and flopped back onto his bed. A seventy-year
old case should not be covered. He picked up the Glock and slid it under his
pillow. A seventy-year old case should be closed. A suspect might still be
alive in his late ninety’s, but that would leave the case open, and someone
else would have been assigned to it. Why not?
His thoughts darted back to the most obvious reason. National
Security.
Bowden’s thoughts wouldn’t let him sleep.
Why would National
Security still be an issue?
He swung his legs off the bed and stood up. What had happened
back then? The Stock Market crashed. World War II. The Great Depression.
He dressed, putting his gun in the holster under his left arm.
There were too many questions and only one person who could provide the
answers; the one person who had been dead for seventy years, killed while
working the case. He pulled his heavy coat on and stepped into the elevator,
punching the button for the garage before remembering that he didn’t have a
car.
He hit the lobby button and asked the doorman there to call a
cab. The guy picked up a phone and used a speed dial button. The cab arrived in
less than ten minutes.
“To the airport,” Chase said as he climbed into the back seat.
“Do you have any luggage, sir?”
“What? No. I need a car…. Never mind. Just take me to the
airport.”
Thirty minutes later, he slid behind the wheel of a black Ford
Escape. It was a small utility vehicle and he’d never been in one before, but
he didn’t have a lot of choice at the rental counter. He kept switching
companies. He’d let Vincent straighten everything out.
It took him a moment to find the lights and a few more seconds
to find the windshield wipers. He drove out to Issaquah and wondered at the
stupidity of his actions. The plan in his mind didn’t make any sense. He was
going out in the woods on a cold, rainy night to see if he could locate a
ghost.
He backed the Escape into the clearing where he had parked his
first night out. He shut off the engine and listened to the rain pound on the
thin metal roof. He looked out at the rain and wondered how hard it would be to
contact a ghost.
He put his thumb on the horn and pressed it down for a full
second. He released the pressure and then pressed it again and followed it a
third time. He looked around as he waited. He couldn’t see anything more than
twenty feet from him.
The rain and darkness blurred the tree line. He could make out
the round shape of a trunk here and there, but could see nothing beyond that.
Glancing at his watch, he saw that five minutes had passed, so he honked three
times again.
He cracked his window an inch to listen but all he could hear
was the wind. He closed it quickly as water ran down the inside. As he
reached for the horn again, he realized he wasn’t alone. Sam Riley sat quietly
in the passenger seat.
He stared at him for several seconds. “How’d you do that?”
“What?”
“Get in here.”
Riley stuck his arm through the door, raised his hand above the
window and waved.
“Very cute.”
Riley pulled his hand back in. “And what are you doing out here?
Don’t you sleep either?”
He tugged at his ear, then let out a big sigh. “I had a friend
check your file.”
Riley sat forward, his eyes blazing out from under the rim of
the fedora. “What file?”
“The case you were working on, when you were killed.”
“How’d you find out I was with the Bureau?”
“A little girl told me.”
Riley’s eyebrows flicked upward.
“Tara,” Bowden explained. “She’s grown up now, but she remembers
you. I think she would like to see you again.”
Riley slowly eased back into the seat. “Okay. So I’m with… or
was with the FBI. And you?”
“Well, I was with the Agency.”
“Really? We aren’t supposed to cooperate with each other.”
Bowden grinned. “I thought you’d be interested in knowing the
outcome of your case.”
Riley twisted so that his shoulders were square to the driver’s
seat. “Did they solve it?”
“They never tried.”
Riley’s head dipped forward, then snapped back up. “What about
my murder?
Did they solve that?
”
“I’m sorry,” he answered. “They never tried. They didn’t assign
anyone to the case after you were shot. They, um—they didn’t even call it
murder.”
Riley stared hard at him.
He went on. “The case you were working on was covered, so I
don’t know much about it. I kind of hoped you might fill me in.”
“They covered my case?” Riley patted his pockets then stopped
and looked at his hands. “Do you smoke?”
Chase shook his head. “I had to give it up with the Agency.
They’ve got this thing about habits, you know? Habits get you killed.”
Riley nodded. “I haven’t had a smoke in seventy years, and
suddenly I’m craving one.”
Having had the same thing happen to him, Chase could only smile.
“They didn’t call my death a suicide, did they?”
“It just states that you died.”
“But you want to know about my case?”
“Yes.” He noticed that Riley’s clothes were dry.
“Why?”
“I’m curious. I also wonder if it ties in to my case.”
Riley took the fedora off and ran his fingers around the rim,
spinning the hat slowly in his hand as he thought. Bowden looked at the hole in
Riley’s forehead and wondered what kind of condition other ghosts might be in,
ghosts that had been run over by trains, smashed in cars or burned in fires. He
grimaced as he thought of the last one.
Riley saw him and shoved the fedora back on his head. “Sorry
about that. Another habit I have when I’m thinking.”
Bowden didn’t respond. The best way to solicit a response was to
wait.
“You know the 1920’s were very good economic times for most
Americans, and that nearly everyone invested in the stock market. In fact, rich
and well-connected investors were buying stocks with little or no money down.
Pierre Fonck was both of these.”
Chase took out his notebook and wrote the name down. “Who’s
Pierre Fonck?”
“Kay’s grandfather. He was rich and well connected. On October
24
th
, 1929, over 13 million shares were traded.”
“Black Thursday.”
“Yes. Some bankers, under pressure from the Federal Government,
put up money to prop up the market. Then on October 29
th
, 16 million
shares were dumped. There were no banks left to bail out the market because
they were broke, too. This plunged us into the Great Depression.”
Bowden’s eyes narrowed as he pictured the chaos. “Millions of
people were broke, but a few made millions of dollars.”
The ghost nodded. “I was part of a task force to check out the
few who made millions of dollars. The idea was to find out if insider trading
had affected the stock market. I discovered that a small number of people with
several million stocks between them, dumped their stocks on those two days. I
was trying to find out if these people were connected to each other in any
way.”
“A conspiracy theory.”
“A very simple one.”
“And Pierre Fonck was one of these men?”
“Yes. The trail led to him. He always had plenty of money, but I
never could find it. The trail was a dead end, in more ways than one,” Riley
said, pointing to his forehead.
Chase sat silently thinking. With that kind of money in the
family’s history it made the theory about the painting’s value even more
credible.
Riley watched him for a moment. “So what are you thinking?”
“It’s very likely that the two cases are related. I’m wondering
if the money has been passed through the generations, and that when Vincent’s
father died, he tried to pass the secret of the wealth to his children via the
painting.”
“And now Adam is dead.” Riley wrinkled his brows. “If that money
was reinvested in the market in 1940, how much would it be worth today?”
Bowden whistled. He looked over at Riley and said, “I’ve got to
find that painting. Maybe he taped some shares of stock on the back of it.”
“I don’t think so, but I never could look behind it. Any ideas
where it might be?”
“I’ll talk to Detective
Cooper and Andre Fonck today. Maybe you should talk to Tara.”
Sam Riley passed out of the rented Ford and stepped into a
puddle. The rain fell through him and splashed onto the soggy soil. He watched
as Chase Bowden drove away, heading for Andre’s house in Kirkland.
The Bureau had cut him loose, covered his case, and buried him
without an investigation. The painting that he had looked at so many times
without really seeing, could turn the whole case for him. Find the painting and
work backwards. Riley smiled. After seventy years he finally had a break.
He stepped into the tree line and picked his way around the
large trunks. He didn’t have to. He could have walked right through them, but
that wasn’t natural to him, and so he went around as he had done all his life.
His old habits manifested themselves again when he reached the house. He moved
around to the front door and passed through it.
Riley floated up the stairs and paused outside of Tara’s
bedroom. It had been a very long time since he had spoken to her. He hesitated,
turned and moved away. A very long time.
He remembered her laugh and stopped. The little girl.
He returned to her room, stuck his head through the door, and
saw that she was asleep. He passed through and watched her, wondering if Bowden
had told the truth when he mentioned Tara.
She slept on her side with her knees bent slightly. Her blond
hair piled up on the pillow behind her head. Her eyes were closed and she wore
no makeup. The heavy blanket rose and fell with each breath.
Riley stepped closer and reached his hand out towards her cheek.
His fingers curled as he thought about touching her soft, warm skin, but he
knew that there would be no sensation. He sighed, shaking his head sadly.
He bent over, putting his lips inches from her ear, and called
softly. “Tara.”
Her eyelids flickered and Riley stepped back. She smiled and
pushed herself up to a sitting position, pulling the blanket around her.
“Hi, Tara,” he said gently.
She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand.
“You haven’t changed,” he told her.
“It’s been so long. Why did you stop coming to see me?”
Guilt flooded through him. He dropped his head and looked at the
floor. “I’ve come every night that you slept here,” he answered, “but I thought
you had… well, grown up, and didn’t need to be bothered by a ghost. So I didn’t
wake you.”
Tara stretched out her hand as if to take his. But Riley didn’t
respond and she drew it back.
“You still won’t touch me?”
“It’s not that I won’t, Tara. I can’t.”
They were silent a moment, staring at each other, and Riley
wondered if the ten or eleven years of “absence” had ruined their friendship.
“Why did you wake me tonight?”
Riley looked at the floor again. “I spoke to someone, Chase
Bowden, who suggested that you might like to see me. I hoped that he was right.
I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.”
“No. No. I’m glad you came. It’s been such a long time. I began
to wonder if you were an imaginary friend. I’m…. I couldn’t talk to anybody
about you. I had no way to look for you or contact you.”
“I’m sorry.”
Riley moved over to the bed and sat beside Tara. The minutes
ticked by in silence as a comfort level was found.
“I’m glad you came tonight,” Tara said. “Adam is dead. He was
murdered.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Riley folded his hands and placed them in
his lap. He stared at them and then at Tara’s hands and wished he could hold
them, or that he could hold her and let her cry.
She looked at him. “That is why you’re here tonight, I think.”
“Partly.”
“Just tell me the truth, Sam.”
Riley glanced into her eyes, shocked. “You know my name?”
“Chase told me. How come you never did?”
“I didn’t want you getting too close. I didn’t want to hurt
you.”
“But you left me anyway. When my grandfather died, I wished
every night that you would come. I stayed awake some nights just watching for
you, and praying that you would come and talk to me.”
Riley rubbed his hands together. Whenever he had seen her awake,
he hadn’t come in. He hadn’t realized she was staying awake to see him. “I
didn’t know.”
Tara lifted her hand and reached toward his. He pulled them away
and stood up.
“There is nothing here, Tara.” He gestured at his body with open
hands. “You can see me and hear me. But there’s nothing here.”
“You’re wrong, Sam.” Tara sat up, the blankets falling free,
exposing a long white nightie. “There is something there; the kindest, gentlest
friend a girl could want.”
Riley stood silently and watched Tara’s face. There was a
pinkish tint to it that glowed as she smiled at him.
“You have not solved your case?”