Bloody Point (11 page)

“Right.”

She pushed open the door to the lobby and nearly ran into
Richard Maxwell. “Rick! What are you doing here?”

He smiled sheepishly. He had a piece of paper in his hand. “I
came to place an ad. Some old boat stuff I’ve been meaning to sell. Might as
well, now that the boat’s been burned. Hey, your dad told me you were working
here. How about that! Do you like it?”

“Yes, I do.”

“What kind of writing are you doing?”

Cassie was anxious to leave but she tried to be polite. “I’m
writing up festivals this summer, you know, like the Solomon’s Skipjack
Appreciation Days. Stuff like that.” She glanced at her watch. “As a matter of
fact, I have an appointment down there right now. I’d better run. See you
later!”

“Sure!” Rick said, and he gave her that funny little
half-salute.

Cassie pulled the Cabrio onto Route 2 and headed south for
Solomon’s. She glanced at her watch. It was 2:30 p.m. Her timing should be just
about right. The trip was a straight shot down Route 2 from Annapolis, through
some of the most beautiful rural areas in the state of Maryland. Green rolling
hills dotted with horse farms alternated with small villages full of charm.

Cassie never minded driving. To her, hitting the open road
was an invitation to relax. She could think, listen to music, or just drive.
This time, though, despite the beautiful scenery, peace eluded her.

The previous night, when she’d started to think about Jake
and Mike, she wanted to pray, but she couldn’t. What was stopping her? The
truth was, ever since Mike’s death the whole thing seemed like an irrelevant
exercise.

Mike had been such a strong Christian. He’d been raised in
the church and home schooled until high school. He’d been in a Fellowship of
Christian Athletes huddle his senior year. In college, he’d been in
InterVarsity. It had been relatively easy, even for independent Cassie, to follow
his lead because Mike truly lived what he believed. Cassie never doubted his
integrity.

When he died, it was like the universe had played a cruel
joke. Mike was one of the good guys—the best. Now, verses of Scripture Cassie
had once placed her faith in sounded hollow. “Those who wait upon the Lord will
renew their strength”? “Trust in the Lord with all your might”? How could she
reconcile those with what had happened to Mike?

Sometimes it frightened her to think how far she’d drifted
from what once had been so important to her—and to Mike. Even so, the only
thing she knew to do with her internal conflict was simply ignore it. Maybe
someday it would all make sense.

• • •

Cassie made it to Solomon’s by 3:30. She parked her car and
walked around. The village was built around an inner harbor area, a natural
deep anchorage. Marinas, restaurants, shops, and some private houses filled the
shoreline, along with a museum and the old Drum Point Lighthouse. The town had
flourished as an oystering center in the early twentieth century. In recent
years, it had shifted its focus and become a recreational boating center,
resort destination, and military community, home of the Patuxent Naval Air
Station.

Cassie parked her car and got out to browse through a couple
of shops. At 3:45 p.m., she walked to Skip Shelton’s office.

Skip was about five feet ten inches tall and wiry. His sandy-blond
hair and blue eyes set off a boyish face. When Cassie first met him, he was so
tan she thought he could be a California surfer, but his soft accent put his
hometown somewhere in the south, not on the West Coast. He had an easy grin,
and he greeted Cassie like an old friend, with a hug and a broad smile. “What
brings you all the way down here?” he asked.

She told him about her job at the newspaper and the story she
was going to write on the Skipjack festival. When she got him good and relaxed,
she invited him to dinner. Single, he apparently had no other plans and quickly
accepted.

They went to a waterside restaurant. Because it was a beautiful
day, they opted for eating outside on the deck overlooking the harbor. The
clanging of halyards and the lapping of waves was all the music they needed.
Boats filled with sunburned fishermen were gliding back into their slips, and
an occasional sailor could be seen working on his craft. Swallows swooped after
bugs and flitted between the masts and loud, brassy gulls demanded attention.

Skip wanted to hear about her boat and her father, whom he
knew from the many Save the Bay activities they were both involved in. Before
he’d finished his flounder, she had worked the conversation around to her
primary interest, the marina fire.

“I can’t tell you about that,” he said.

“Why?”

“Don’t you work for a newspaper?”

“Don’t you think I can keep things confidential?” She flashed
what she hoped was a winning smile. “C’mon, Skip. I was there! I almost lost my
boat! Tell me what’s going on. I won’t say anything. I don’t even work the
crime beat.”

“I can’t do it.”

She laughed. “Sure you can! Here, let me help … I think it
was arson.”

He leaned forward, his eyes crinkling in amusement. “What
makes you say that?”

Cassie didn’t answer him. She just sat quietly, smiling at
him.

Eventually he broke. He shook his head and grinned. “Yeah,
you’re right, Miss-Know-It-All. It was arson.”

“Really? Now how do you know that?” Cassie was toying with
him.

“There were signs.”

“Signs. Like traces of accelerants?”

Skip exhaled loudly.

“No, seriously,” Cassie said, changing tactics. “I’ve always
wondered about arson investigation in boat fires. I took a course at the FBI
Academy and learned a little about arson in general, but, you know, with boats,
it’s a whole different thing.” She took a sip of water. “But that’s okay. I
mean, I understand that you can’t tell me anything. I was just interested and
the rumor is that Loughlin doesn’t have a clue how the thing got started and
that he’s stalling and keeping the insurance companies from paying off the
claims …”

“That’s wrong,” Skip said emphatically. “We found the cause.”

“You did? Oh, then I guess you do have an idea where it
started …”

“We knew the fire started with the
Lady J.
, the sloop
near the lift.”

Cassie raised her eyebrows. “Really? Because rumor has it
that it started at the fuel dock.”

“That’s completely wrong! Gosh, where do people get these
things?”

Cassie smiled. “Who knows? In any case, they’re saying that
Loughlin isn’t capable of finding out what caused it.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Skip dropped his voice, and looked
around before continuing. “The
Lady J.
burned to the waterline, but Loughlin
and I climbed into what was left and started poking around. First thing I
noticed, the seacocks were half open. No sailor’s going to leave those valves
half-open like that. Next thing, we found a piece of hose that had been filed
down. By this time, we’re all hyper. Sure enough, we look, and the bilge pump
has been tampered with.”

“Wait a minute. That’s the same …”

Skip tapped his forefinger on the table. “The same MO as the
single boat that burned the month before. Somebody fixed it so that when the
automatic bilge pump triggered on, it would ignite propane we think had leaked
into the bilge.”

Cassie responded, “Wow.”

Suddenly Skip seemed overcome with remorse. “Listen, none of
this is public information and it’s certainly not for print. I’m just telling
you because … well, I don’t know why I just told you.”

“Don’t worry,” she assured him, “I won’t say a thing.”

• • •

An hour later she was headed north, back to Black Duck
Boulevard and her boathouse apartment. She rolled the information Skip had given
her around in her head. So, the first fire was connected with the marina fire.
Most likely it was the same arsonist. Was Jake’s assault connected, too? Or
Schneider’s murder?

The moon was high in the sky and there was a surprising
amount of traffic on Route 2. Lost in her thoughts, she drove in silence,
without radio, but before long she started thinking about Mike. How she missed
him!

When the monologue in her head became oppressive, and her
loneliness threatened to overwhelm her, she threw in a CD and hit “play.” Dave
Matthews was a better companion.
Dave Matthews!
When Mike was alive it
was always Third Day or dc Talk. Always some Christian group. Now …

A bright light reflected in her rearview mirror blinded her
momentarily. She glanced up. The right headlight on the car behind her was misaimed
and the bright blue halogen light seared her vision. Irritated, she flipped her
mirror to the side, and focused on the road ahead, waiting for her eyes to readjust.

Soon her exit approached and she swung off the highway and
into the darker side streets. Threading her way through the exclusive
neighborhood toward the Turnage house, she pulled into the driveway, parked her
car, and walked wearily up the stairs to her apartment. The burdens she carried
were not physical, but they were heavy nonetheless.

She slipped into her flannel pajama bottoms, a tank top, and
a light zip-front sweatshirt, poured a glass of water, grabbed a quilt, and
went out on her balcony. It was pleasantly cool outside. Nestling into a white
wicker chair, she pulled the quilt around her and watched as Orion stalked across
the heavens while boats below silently slid over the black water. Off in the
distance, the lights in houses on the far shore of the cove winked off, one by
one, and somewhere a loon called out for its mate.

Night enveloped her, but she received no comfort from it.
Dawn was a long way off. The noise in her head could not be stilled. Mike was
gone. Jake was gone. The grief was like an anchor weighing on her soul.

†

Bloody Point

Chapter 11

H
E hated the
probing,
which began early each morning. The poking and pressing, the endless needles,
the tests. They analyzed his movements, his speech, his vital signs, the
read-outs on the EEG, and even his mood, which was most often described on his
chart as “agitated.”

He put up with it for a while, but then he would lapse
into a stony silence which was only one step removed from an eruption of fierce
anger.

Often, just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse,
it would begin. His right hand would curl, imperceptibly at first, and then he
would get a metallic taste in his mouth.

After that, came the blackness. Sometimes it was brief, a
simple emptiness he would quickly pass through. At other times, though, it
would go on and on. On those occasions the Pit would open in the back of his
mind and once again he would have to fight terror and scramble to keep from
sliding into despair.

When he eventually opened his eyes again, it was always to
a pounding headache, confusion, and an oppressive fatigue. Retreating, he would
sleep. And then, the whole process would begin again.

He was trapped. He was angry. He was afraid. He was alone.
And he hated it.

† † †

The next day the newspaper office was filled with noise.
Frustrated and unable to concentrate, Cassie decided to do some research
elsewhere. Around 11:00 a.m. she told her editor she’d be on her cell and
headed for Annapolis.

Cassie slid into a seat at Cap’s Grill on Main Street in
Annapolis, near the City Dock. It was a favorite haunt of hers, a place where
copious amounts of good food attracted cruising sailors, midshipmen from the
Naval Academy, legislators, and retired Rotarians. She’d been frequenting Cap’s
since she was a teenager, since before she was allowed to, as a matter of fact.
The place was a touchstone for her, a nesting ground of sorts.

She had come armed with books on the historic vessels, and on
Solomon’s Island itself, prepping for her story on the Skipjack Appreciation
Days. Hours of reading might only net a sentence or two in her article, but it
was time well spent as far as she was concerned. She hadn’t been happy with her
first piece, although Len seemed to like it. She wanted more, and better.
Why
am I being so obsessive?
she asked herself.
This job is just a cover!

Cassie ordered a chicken pomodori sandwich. The waitress
brought her a pitcher of sweet tea, and a glass filled with ice. Cassie sipped the
tea while she poured over her book.

Skipjacks were the traditional workboats of the Chesapeake
Bay. Built between 1900 and 1956, their graceful lines, deck-sweeping booms,
and huge triangular sails made them beautiful, and their design made them
perfect for the Bay. They had wide decks for working and shallow drafts so they
wouldn’t run aground, and they were constructed of heavy oak, so they could
take the pounding of the storms and handle the heavy dredges used to harvest
oysters.

Skipjacks fell out of favor as the oyster population
declined. As wooden boats they were hard to maintain, and expensive as well. Of
the one thousand or so built, only about a dozen now remained, and a major
restoration and conservation project had been organized to save them.

One of the few skipjacks afloat had, in fact, recently sunk
during a storm. The
Rebecca T. Ruark
was considered precious enough to
save, and had been brought up from her watery grave by a small group of
determined men and a heavy crane. Her story, published in the Baltimore papers,
had caught Cassie’s interest soon after she had taken on the Alberg.

Engrossed in her book, Cassie almost didn’t hear her cell
phone ringing. She answered it and heard Craig Campbell’s voice.

“I need to talk to you,” he said. “Can you meet me
somewhere?”

Her heart leaped. She didn’t even know Craig was back in
town. “Where are you?”

“I-97 south, coming from Baltimore.”

Cassie’s mind raced. “Have you reached the Crownsville exit
yet?’

“No.”

“Take that exit, Rt. 178 I think it is, south and east.
There’s a marina down there called Carl’s Cove. It should be pretty deserted
today.”

“Okay, right.”

Cassie stood up. Her heart was racing now. Craig was back.
She could find out about Jake. She quickly gathered up her books. “I should be there
in about fifteen minutes.”

“Got it.”

• • •

A warm wind ruffled Cassie’s hair as she led Craig Campbell
down a long dock at Carl’s. There were few people around, which is what she had
expected to find on a weekday.

The dock ended in a “T” configuration and there were benches
on the end that Cassie was headed for. The sailboats rocked in their slips,
halyards clanking, and fishing boats pulled at their dock lines. Gulls shrieked
and swooped and chattered. The rough wood of the dock looked like any weathered
dock anywhere.

She sat down on a bench by the water, and so did Craig. No
one would hear them out here. “When did you get back? And how is Jake?” Cassie
asked. Her stomach was nervous, almost like a schoolgirl on a first date. What
was she stressed about? What Craig would say? What he wouldn’t say?

“I got back a couple of weeks ago, actually,” Craig said.

“A couple of weeks? You didn’t call me! Why didn’t you stay
with him?” Anger flared up in her, an anger she neither wanted nor expected.

“I couldn’t. It’s just too far away from my family, and my
job.”

“So he’s out there … wherever he is … by himself. Is that it?

“No. A local agent is keeping an eye on him.”

“But nobody he knows.”

“No.”

Cassie bit her lip and tried to calm down.
Craig’s not the
enemy
, she told herself. “Where is he?”

“I can’t tell you. You know that.”

“How could me knowing hurt Jake?” Cassie’s voice shook.

“I don’t know that it could, but Cassie, I can’t fight Foster
on this. Jake’s location is classified. I can’t divulge it.”

Cassie crossed her arms and stared out across the Severn
River. Framed by high, green hills, the river flowed down toward Annapolis and
into the Bay. At its mouth was the Naval Academy. Up here, pricey homes and
lovely riverside restaurants edged the banks. She could see a man in a
fourteen-foot Catalina Capri out on the river, obviously a novice sailor,
fighting to keep the small sailboat under control in the wind. Furious, she was
fighting for control herself. “Well, how is he? Can you tell me that?”

“He’s okay. He’s in a rehab hospital where he can get the
help he needs. I stayed for a couple of days to make sure he got settled.”
Craig grew silent, as if collecting his thoughts. “When I left he was awake and
talking. His speech is hesitant, as though he has trouble coming up with the
right words. And he still can’t grab things with his right hand.”

“Oh, great.”

“There’s something else, Cassie.” Craig paused. “He’s having
seizures.”

“Seizures?” A shimmer of alarm ran through her.

“He’s having blackouts, and they don’t know why. They think
they are some kind of petit mal seizure, from the head injury, but they’re just
not sure.”

“What are they doing for him?”

“Medication.” Craig drew in a deep breath.

“What about MRIs? CT scans? EEGs? What are they doing to find
out what’s going on in his brain?”

“I’m sure …”

“You’re sure of what? How can you be sure? Nobody’s there
advocating for him, Craig! You know that’s what it takes to get good medical
care.” Cassie kicked a shell off the dock. Her frustration was quickly building
in velocity and power. Blood was pounding in her head. “I can’t believe that
you left him alone and that you won’t tell me where he is!”

Craig sat silently on the bench, his elbows resting on his
knees, staring down at the dock.

“You know, I’m beginning to wonder if the Bureau cares a rip
about its agents. My husband gets killed and they do nothing about it. They
call it an accident. Jake gets attacked, and he’s shelved. Put out to pasture.
Left alone. And they won’t tell his one friend in the world where he is.”

Craig looked up at Cassie. Lines of concern formed at the
corners of his eyes. “Before you completely trash the FBI,” he said, “may I
remind you that whoever attacked Jake is still out there. And, you were the
last person to see him, and you admitted the two of you were arguing.”

Cassie’s face grew red. Rage, like hot lead, poured through
her.

“Now, I know you, and I know you aren’t the person who
assaulted Jake, but the supervisors are, in fact, operating out of Jake’s best
interest by not releasing his whereabouts. It’s not their fault he has no close
family members to look after him.”

Cassie turned away from him. His words were like flaming
arrows, but yet, deep down, she had to admit there was some truth in what he
was saying. Many times as an agent, she had played her cards close to her chest
with a trusted witness, sometimes even with other agents.

But if anyone was harboring even a smidge of an idea that she
had hurt Jake, it was all the more reason why she had to find the true
attacker.

She forced herself to calm down.

“Cassie, I called you because I wanted to see how you were
doing. I felt bad that I hadn’t called you. I thought you might want to get an
update on Jake.”

“I’m fine.”

He looked at her like he didn’t believe her.

“I’m fine. I’m only concerned about Jake.” She worked to
control her temper. Every muscle in her body was tingling with anger. She had
to focus on Jake to calm down. “How is he handling the seizures?”

“He’s very frustrated.”

“What can I do for him?”

Craig looked off into the distance. “I don’t know what we can
do for him. I guess the only thing we can do is pray, at this point.”

Anger, again. This time it was a furious flash that began at
her heart and spread outward until her very fingertips grew hot. “To pray? You
want me to pray?” Cassie paced back and forth, adrenaline coursing through her.
“That’s it? Pray?”

Craig just looked at her in confusion.

“I cannot believe …”

Campbell stood up and held up his hand, as if to hold off her
thoughts. “What’s happened to you, Cassie?” He sounded irritated, now, for the
first time.

She stopped short.

Campbell continued. “When Mike and I used to run together we
would talk about faith, about God, about all the things you were doing at your
church. He loved God with his whole heart. I thought you did, too.”

She flashed hot, then cold, then hot again. Her fists
clenched.

“Was I wrong? What’s happened to you?” he asked again.

What had happened? To her? Nothing! Nothing … and everything.
And oh, man, she was not going to deal with this. Not here, not now. “You’re
over the line, Campbell,” she said. “That’s a personal issue. I don’t need to
talk to you about that.”

“You don’t need to talk to me about anything,” he retorted
softly.

Why was he so … intrusive? Cassie put her hands to her head.
She was getting a headache, a bad one. She couldn’t deal with this. No way!

“Look, I’m sorry if I upset you,” Campbell said.

“I came here to find out about Jake, not to have my spiritual
condition analyzed and judged!”

“I’m sorry.” Craig sat down on the bench again.

“I’m sorry if I don’t measure up to Mike’s hero status,
Campbell. Some of us just don’t make the grade!”

“Sorry.”

She turned away from him and looked toward the river. Leaning
up against a piling, the wind in her face, the sun on her back, she watched as
the small sailboat jibed suddenly. She saw the sailor spill into the river,
grabbing the boom and pulling the boat over as he did. The Capri capsized and
turned onto its side, its mast and sail on the surface of the water. The sailor
swam around to the centerboard protruding from the bottom of the hull, and
reached up to try to pull the boat upright again.

Cassie began to focus on the sailor to get her mind off
Campbell, and in her heart she began coaching him.
Don’t let it turtle
,
she pleaded silently.
Don’t let the sail get under the water. Don’t let the
boat turn upside down. Grab on to the centerboard … that’s it. Pull with your
weight. Pull!
But the man in the water could not swing the boat upright.
There was too much water in the mast, too much over the sail already, holding
the boat on its side. He’d have to swim around, empty the sail and the mast,
swim back to the bottom where the centerboard was and try again, all the time
hoping the boat wouldn’t go totally upside down.

It was hard to recover from turtling.

Cassie bit the inside of her cheek. She turned toward Craig.
He was staring straight ahead, rubbing his wrist with his right thumb. “What
progress, if any, are you making on the investigation?” she asked him.

Campbell hesitated.

“Craig, you owe me that much!”

He sighed. “You didn’t hear this from me.”

“Okay.”

He looked at her, his blue eyes clear and bright. “DiCarlo
doesn’t have a clue who assaulted Jake. We haven’t found his SUV. We have very
little physical evidence. We’ve been checking all the cases he was working, not
just that murder. We’ve checked out his ex-wife, her boyfriend, Jake’s friends
and coworkers, his bad boys … nothing’s clicking, nothing’s adding up.”

“And the man Mike killed?”

“Tyson Farnsworth was a street thug. A druggie who’d spent
more time in prison than out since he was thirteen.”

Cassie rolled her eyes. “There’s a pattern, Campbell, even
though we can’t see it. Jake was on to something. He was attacked because he
was getting close. I know that.”

“How do you know?”