Bloody Point (19 page)

Cassie sat down and forced herself to focus. KidFest was an
extravagant display of child-friendly products, games, fun rides, food,
hands-on art, and educational pavilions. The entire plaza would be taken over
by the organizers, who expected thousands of children and adults to attend.
Included in the event would be major displays on the Chesapeake Bay and the
environment, model sailboat races, and a touch tank of marine life native to
the Bay.

Digging around the Internet for background on Baltimore, she
learned that the city had been a seaport since the 1600s. In fact, it was the
western-most port on the Atlantic coast. The town thrived during America’s
early years, its mills providing a ready product for shipping. The city played
a crucial role in the War of 1812. The British, having already burned
Washington, D.C., turned their sights on Baltimore. But the able gunners of
Fort McHenry defended the town, and the victory against the British was
immortalized in a poem now familiar to all Americans—“The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Baltimore, Cassie learned, was currently the fourth-largest
port for container shipping on the East Coast. Which would explain the huge
ships she’d had to dodge when sailing up the Patapsco River and the many
commercial ports she’d passed on her way to the small boat marinas.

The Inner Harbor was part of a downtown revitalization
program begun in the 1970s. A finger of the Patapsco, the Inner Harbor was a
protected basin right in the heart of downtown. Surrounded by hotels,
restaurants, and attractions like the Maryland Science Center and the National
Aquarium, the Inner Harbor had become a mecca for tourists and families seeking
to experience Baltimore at its best.

Cassie would join the crowd on Saturday. And, if all went
according to her plan, Jake and Trudy and Jake’s kids would come, too. She was
looking forward to that! The kids would love the festival and Jake would love
seeing them. And yes, it would mean him being out in public but hey, it was all
the way up in Baltimore, there’d be huge crowds, and she was confident there
was nothing to worry about.

After work, Cassie drove to her father’s house. She had
called earlier to see if he’d be home because she wanted to pick up some things
from the garage. When she pulled up, she saw another car in the driveway, one
that she didn’t recognize. As she opened her car door and got out, she saw her
dad standing on the back walk, talking to Rick Maxwell.

“Hi, Dad!” she said. “Rick, what brings you here?”

“He was just asking about you,” her dad responded.

Rick flashed a boyish grin. It was her dad who had put Cassie
and Rick back in touch, all these years after high school. Sometimes she
wondered why: Her dad didn’t seem too fond of him. But they shared a lot in
common. Her dad knew an awful lot about boats and was frequently in the marinas
either working on one or going out with someone. And he loved to sail. She
supposed her dad was trying to reach out to Rick.

“Your dad was just telling me about your place. It sounds
neat. How’s the sailing up there? I assume you have your boat there too?” Rick
asked.

“Yes, yes I do. But I haven’t been out much. It’s a little
more than I want to single-hand right now. How about you? I heard you’re
getting a new boat!”

“Yes, a catamaran this time. I’ll take delivery in the next
day or so. And Cassie, that reminds me. Would you be interested in helping me
try it out?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m picking it up in Annapolis and eventually I want to sail
it to Baltimore, to the Inner Harbor. I’m going to introduce my girlfriend to
it there.”

Girlfriend? Cassie hadn’t been aware of any girlfriend. The
news struck her as odd. Still, Maxwell was good looking and had plenty of
money. Why shouldn’t he have a girlfriend? “I didn’t know you were dating.
Anybody I know?”

“No. Just a girl I met at a bar.” Rick shrugged his
shoulders. “She’s not much of a sailor, and I thought, if I could get her to
come to the Inner Harbor, and see it there … just sit on it and watch all the
people … have a nice, romantic dinner at a harborside restaurant, I think she
might buy into it. First, I want to test it, and I thought you might be
interested.”

“I’d consider doing that,” Cassie said. “I’ve wanted to try a
catamaran.”

“Well, and this is a nice one. Really luxurious.” Maxwell
bowed awkwardly. “My dear, you will be treated like a queen.”

She looked at him skeptically. “Yeah, well, I’d just be
crew.”

“Cassie is going up to the Inner Harbor this weekend, aren’t
you dear?” her father added.

“Well, tentatively.” For some reason, she was irritated that
her dad had mentioned her plans. Why? She wasn’t sure. Maybe she was getting
paranoid. She turned to Rick. “Let me know when you want to go out. Dad, I’m
going to get that stuff I wanted. See you later!” She quickly walked away.

† † †

 “You’re awfully quiet,” Trudy said, glancing over at Jake.
He was sitting in the passenger seat of her red Saturn sedan. They were
returning from the visit to the neurologist in Baltimore, and he was pensive.
“Are you thinking about what the doctor said?”

Jake adjusted himself in the seat. “Kind of. But mostly, I’m
thinking about my kids.”

“Have you talked to your ex-wife? Will she let us take them
to KidFest?”

“I’m going to call her when we get back to your house.” He
stared out of the window, trying to keep the bitterness at bay.

“You really love your kids, don’t you?”

Jake took a deep breath.

“I can tell by the way you interact with Jazz.”

“What do you mean?” Jake asked.

“The way you play with her, the way you talk to her, the way
you pet her. You’ve never had a dog but you obviously care about her. Usually
if men are good with dogs they’re good with kids, too.” Trudy exited on to
Route 2, speeding up to avoid a large truck moving slowly in the right lane.
“So my guess is, you love your kids and you’re a good dad.”

Jake drummed his thumb on his thigh and nodded. “It’s too bad
I couldn’t get Tam to see it that way. But yes, I do love my kids.” His
marriage to Tamara had gone well at first. But then the kids had come along.
After Caitlin was born Tam had gotten depressed. After a few months, she’d
insisted on returning to teaching. He still didn’t understand why. In his mind,
the stress of two careers and two kids had been a death knell for their
relationship. Tam insisted it was dead long before that. Jake sighed deeply at
the memory.

“Did what Dr. Harrington say bother you?”

Jake glanced toward Trudy. “About all the tests he wants to
do? No.”

“So what’s on your mind?”

“I don’t know. Just … stuff.”

Trudy moved left, passed a white delivery van, and moved
right again. “The other night, when Craig was here, you stood out in the rain
for a long time.”

Her voice was so gentle. Ordinarily he might have stiffened,
thinking someone had been probing him, but with Trudy, somehow, he didn’t take
offense.

“What were you thinking about then?” she asked.

“Would you believe me if I said, ‘I don’t know’? I mean, it’s
like … like I can almost remember something, but then, it’s gone.”

“Honey, that happens to me all the time!” She laughed.

Jake ran his hand through his hair. “I just can’t quite see
it.”

“Give it time, Jake. It’ll come back. Everything you need to
know will come back.”

†

Bloody Point

Chapter 19

L
ATER that night, Jake
stood in the kitchen, brushing a stray blade of grass off his pants, his head
pounding. He turned toward Cassie, who was sitting at the table. Aunt Trudy
stood nearby. “I’m telling you, it’s not going to happen! So forget about it!”

“What did she say? What exactly did she say?” Cassie
demanded.

Jake clenched and relaxed his fist over and over. “Apparently
Campbell told Foster everything. So Tam had some ‘visitors’ as she called them,
a couple of agents, and they asked her a bunch of questions. In the course of
it, the idea was conveyed that there’s some boogieman after me, and Tam got
scared. She even found out about the blue headlight thing! She doesn’t want the
kids to be out in public with me. So she said no.”

“How can she do that?” Cassie spit out the words. “Don’t you
have visitation?”

“Sure. Sure I have visitation! But you know what? If I fight
her on this, and she goes back to court and tells them the kids are at risk
when they’re with me … then
pow
! That goes away.”

“It’s so unfair!”

“Of course it’s unfair! That’s why I hate this … this whole
mess! You’re never really divorced if you have kids with somebody, you’re tied
to that person for life. You can’t just sever that.” He turned and slammed his
fist into the cabinet.

“I’ll call her … let me talk to her …”

“No!” he thundered, turning toward her. “Stay out of it,
Cassie!” He dropped his head and his face softened. “I’m sorry,” he said,
looking at her. “It’s just … please, let it be. Let me choose my battles. I’m
not totally incompetent.” And with that, he left the kitchen, walking out the
back door, Jazz padding behind him.

Cassie looked at her aunt as the back door slammed behind
him. “I didn’t mean to upset him.”

“It’s just one more frustration,” Trudy said. “That’s all.”

“What can we do?”

“Maybe Tam would let the kids come here. I could go pick them
up or maybe she’d like to come down.”

“Good idea! I’ll call her …”

Her aunt held up her hand. “No, Cassie. I’ll suggest it to
Jake. Let’s let him take the lead on this.”

† † †

The thud of the axe hitting the wood was something tangible
he could focus on. Something physical. Something he could control. Jake raised
it over his head and felt a trickle of sweat run down his back. He brought the
axe down hard, and the oak cracked under the blow. He wiped his brow with his
left forearm. Even this late at night, the air was humid and thick. The sky was
grayish black, a thin layer of clouds obscuring the stars, and from somewhere
off in the woods came the sound of a whippoorwill.

He worked under the glare of the back spotlight, his
movements making stark shadows on the lawn. The trunk of the fallen tree was
about twenty inches in diameter, and he was making eighteen-inch pieces that he
would then split. He would have used a chain saw to make the cuts. That would
be a lot quicker. But Trudy didn’t own one and so he worked at it the hard way.
The feel of the wood in his hand, the heft of its weight, the way it yielded to
his blows was satisfying to him, a relief from the otherwise unrelenting
frustration.

It irritated him that he had to ask permission to see his own
kids. Irritated him big time. And that Tam could say no so easily. And he didn’t
know what to do about it. So he split wood, blow after blow after blow, until
sweat poured down his face and down his neck, and his chest was heaving with
exertion.

Jazz was lying about fifteen feet away near an old lilac bush.
Jake fingered the axe again started to raise it. Then Jazz suddenly jumped up
and ran to him. She pressed her head against his knee and whined. He looked at
her curiously, then Jake felt his hand tighten on the axe, and he tasted
something metallic. “Oh, no,” he said, and his eyes rolled back and he
collapsed to the ground.

† † †

Early Saturday morning Cassie met Brett and together they
drove to Baltimore, her enthusiasm for the KidFest assignment dampened. Her
plan had failed and that was depressing. She couldn’t get Jake off her mind.
Jake and the kids. They should have been able to come. And those stupid
seizures. It had taken him twenty minutes to come around after the one he’d had
last night in the backyard. Then he had gone straight to bed, exhausted, the
lines in his face deep with sorrow.

They parked the car, and as they walked Cassie willed herself
to focus on her task. The Inner Harbor was the poster child for successful
urban revitalization. When the Rouse Company had taken on the task of refurbishing
Baltimore’s central waterfront no one realized just how popular it would
become. When Cassie was a little kid, Baltimore was a smoggy, blue-collar,
down-at-the-heels town. Now, it sparkled with activity and color and drew
tourists from all over the world. You could rent pedal boats, take a harbor
tour, watch sharks at the aquarium, or catch an Orioles game at Camden Yards.
Rain or shine, summer or winter, there was always something interesting going
on at the Inner Harbor.

The sun was warm and huge, puffy clouds dotted the sky. By
10:00 a.m. the Harbor was full of tourists and families and groups of children.
The organizers of KidFest had done their job well. Brightly colored plastic
slides and sandboxes, a huge, inflated moon bounce, and inflated sea monster
called “
Chessie
,” exhibits and information booths filled the plaza.
Jake’s
kids would have loved it
, Cassie thought.

One KidFest booth had a touch tank, populated by sturdy
critters that could be handled. A dad was daring his eight-year-old boy to pick
up a horseshoe crab. He finally did, and Brett grabbed a picture as the large,
ugly crab wiggled its legs and the kid’s sister screamed. Cassie interviewed
the family briefly for her story.

A few sailboats were in the harbor next to the plaza and half
a dozen pedal boats moved around among them. The sun glistened on the water.
Cassie shaded her eyes as she looked across the plaza, Brett clicking away
behind her. The staccato rhythms of a steel band punctuated the air. Families
strolled, scrambled, ran, and wandered through the exhibits. Kids seemed to be
everywhere.

Watching them, Cassie felt like an outsider looking in, a
person with her nose pressed to the glass of a beautiful scene, seeing it but
not being part of it. Nor would she ever be. And she was aware of an empty
feeling inside, one that she rarely acknowledged even to herself.

“Let’s head back,” she said suddenly to Brett, and the two
worked their way across the plaza, doing interviews, taking pictures, and
writing notes. They got some great shots in the large sand box of families
building sandcastles, and some colorful photos at the kite exhibit. Beach
kites, Cassie knew, had become a captivating hobby. She’d seen people flying
“theme” kites at Ocean City: barnyard animals, colorful butterflies or bugs, or
dragons of all sorts. Here, the proprietor of a nearby kite shop had set up a
display, and indeed, a red, green, and yellow box kite flew 50-feet above his
booth, it’s string trailing a collection of birds: an osprey, a heron, a brown pelican,
a goose, and, down at the bottom, just for fun, a pink flamingo.

Brett was having a field day, shooting little toddlers with ice-cream
smeared faces and ponytailed girls getting Chessie the Sea Monster painted on
their cheeks. A model yacht club was staging races in the water with their
remote-controlled miniature sailboats while nearby, Maryland’s Department of
Natural Resources put on a safety demonstration.

“This is great, Cassie,” Brett said, grinning. “It’s a lot of
fun.”

“Yes, yes it is,” she responded, but all she could think
about was Jake, and Justin, and Caitlin.

By early afternoon, she and Brett had all they needed for a
good-sized article. Best of all, Cassie had seven names and phone numbers of
people she met who might, just might, have some information she could use on
the marina fires or maybe even Jake’s assault. Either they lived in the area or
had boats in the marina. She had identified them as she did interviews for
KidFest, although they had no clue she was interested in anything other than
the event. She would call them later.

Cassie drove back to Annapolis and Brett sat in the passenger
seat, reviewing the pictures he’d taken on the digital camera. While he was
busy, she used her cell phone to call Aunt Trudy.

“It’s all right,” Trudy said. “He’s had two seizures today
and he’s pretty down.”

“Should I come over?” Cassie asked.

“Only if you want to. He’ll be okay, honey.” Trudy hesitated.

“What’s brought this on?”

“I think it’s the stress. The conflict with Tam, and Craig
Campbell was over here this morning.”

“What did he want?” Cassie bristled.

“He was asking Jake a bunch of questions, and Jake was
getting frustrated, and then I heard them arguing over what happened with Tam,
how the agents scared her.”

“Oh, great.”

“I just think it stressed him out. He had his first seizure
right after Craig left.”

That was irritating. “If you need some help, I can come
over,” Cassie said.

“No, honey. You’ve had a long day. You do what you need to
do.”

Cassie said goodbye and clicked off the phone. She really
wanted to get going on this article so she could follow up on her leads.

“Trouble?” Brett asked.

“No, no,” she said quickly. “How are the shots?”

Brett turned back to his camera. “Did you ever notice that at
some of these events you see the same people, over and over, all day long?”

“What do you mean?” she asked. They were traveling south on
the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, and the joints in the pavement made rhythmic
thumps, like her heart when she was anxious. Which she was now.

“I kept seeing this guy everywhere we went today. He had on a
yellow shirt and a floppy white hat. And sure enough, he’s in a lot of these
pictures. I don’t know if he was trying to be, or if it was just coincidental.”

She worked to keep her voice calm. “What’s he look like? His
face?”

“That’s the ironic thing. I never can quite see his face.
He’s always in the crowd somewhere, half-covered.”

“Then how do you know it was the same guy?”

“His shirt. And that weird hat. It’s definitely the same
person.”

Cassie digested Brett’s words all the rest of the way to
Annapolis. She didn’t want to clue the photographer in that something might be
amiss, that it could actually have been someone following them. And probably
that wasn’t the case, probably it was just a couple of guys with similar
shirts. Why would someone be following them? But when she dropped Brett off at
the paper, she asked him for a CD of the photos he’d taken.

“All of them?” he asked.

“Yes, please. The kids were so cute! I’d just like to see
what you got.”

“Will do,” he said. “I’ll put it on your desk.”

Cassie returned to her boathouse apartment, poured herself a
glass of water, put some ice and a slice of lemon in it, and took it plus her
laptop out on the balcony. The late afternoon was beautiful, clear and bright,
and boats were beginning to parade back in from the Bay. She watched them for a
little while, letting the scene calm her thoughts. Then she opened her notes on
the table beside her and began to write her story.

“Back off, Barney, kids in Baltimore have a new hero:
Chessie. And if painted faces are any indication, he’s in for a long run as
Maryland’s most popular monster … ”

Gradually, sentences formed paragraphs and paragraphs formed
an article. Sometimes writing was like pulling out thorns; sometimes words just
flowed. Tonight, the process was a mixed bag: The words came easily, but in the
back of her mind, Cassie kept thinking about Brett, and the photos, and the man
in the yellow shirt. Distracted, she was having trouble coming up with a sharp
ending.

“Nuts to this,” she said finally, and she closed up her
laptop, and took it inside. She’d finish the story later. Cassie stared at the
phone, then picked it up. She’d better check on Jake.

Trudy answered. “Two more,” she said in a low voice, in
answer to Cassie’s question. “He’s had two more seizures, and the last time he
fell and he may have hit his head, although he won’t admit it. I really think
we should call the doctor, but he doesn’t want to.”

“Do you want me to come over?” Cassie asked.

“No, no. He says he doesn’t want to see anyone. He’s pretty
much sticking up in his room, by himself.”

Cassie could hear the sound of clinking through the phone.
“What are you doing?” she asked her aunt.

“I’m just making him some dinner. Crab Imperial, which he
loves, Silver Queen corn, and peach pie.”

Cassie smiled. “Oh, Aunt Truly, you are the best.”

“Oh, not really … ”

“Yes, yes you are. Whenever I was having a bad time at
school, I knew you’d be home, making something good. Remember those oatmeal
cookies you used to make? Or those banana-peanut butter sandwiches? And how
we’d have tea together?”

“Why, yes, yes I do.”

“People make fun of that now days, but Aunt Truly, those
things meant so much to me. Thank you for taking care of Jake.”

“I only wish I could help him more.”

Cassie said good-bye, and hung up the phone. She thought back
to Brett and the photos, and she wondered if he had made the CD for her. She
grabbed her purse and headed for the office. She had to see those photos. She
just had to.

As she drove, Cassie wrestled with the questions that were
bouncing around in her head. Why was Scrub considered a suspect? Why did he
think Schneider deserved to be killed? Who was the man in the yellow shirt? Was
he following her? Why? What about the blue headlights? Who was that? What did
that have to do with Jake’s assault? What were the connecting threads? Or were
there any?