Killerwatt (4 page)

Eddie and Woody were discussing the merits of
refinancing Eddie’s house when Rhetta, acting as if nothing had happened,
strolled up to them. She was still brushing smudges off her pants.

“Sounds good, Woody.” Eddie shook Woody’s hand.
“I’ll stop by after work tomorrow to get started.”

“Are you ready to go now?” Woody asked. He looked
pointedly at her shirt then at her splotched pants leg, raising an eyebrow.
Following his gaze to her shirttail, she rubbed the dots of mud spatter that
decorated it.

“Yep, let’s hit it.” She veered toward Cami. Eddie
had already disappeared inside the office. “Let’s go, nothing left to see,”
said Rhetta, swiping at the mud on her shirt one last time before scrambling in
and closing the door. Woody climbed in and reached for his seat belt.

“You look like the dog that swallowed the canary,”
Woody commented while Rhetta shifted into second, pulled out onto Highway 177,
then shifted twice more. The speedometer tattled on her, the needle pointing to
65. She eased back to the speed limit of 55.

“Cat,” she said, peering in the rear-view mirror,
grateful that there were no blue lights flashing on top of the police car that
had pulled up right behind her.

“What?”

“It was a cat, not a dog that swallowed the canary.”
Rhetta favored him with a fleeting sideways glance.

“Whatever. What did you find?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know that look all too well. Tell me what you
found.”

She stretched out her left leg to withdraw the
folded paper from her pants pocket and handed it to him.

He whistled. “Should you have taken that?” He
reached for the paper, shaking his head in mock disapproval.

“Hey, you heard Eddie. The adjuster will probably
have the car hauled away at any time. Why shouldn’t we take this one lone piece
of paper?”

“We? I didn’t take anything.” Woody arched an
eyebrow. “Where did you find this?”

“It fell out of the owner’s manual.”

“Fell out?”

“Sure.”

“Where was the owner’s manual?”

“In the glove box. I found it.”

He raised both eyebrows. “Just happened to find it?”

“The whole front seat area was full of mud, but the
back seat was spotless. There wasn’t a scrap of anything personal lying around
either in the front or the back. All I found was the owner’s manual in the
glove box, and this strange paper fell out. I didn’t even find the insurance or
registration papers. Isn’t that odd?”

Before he could answer, Rhetta, who had slowed down
to approach the one lane bridge on 177, slammed on the brakes. A green SUV sped
around them. “Holy crap,” Rhetta shouted as she hit the accelerator and swerved
hard to the right. “That guy nearly hit us!” A glance in her rearview mirror
told her that, of course, the police car was no longer behind her. “Where are
cops when you need them?”

The Camaro rested precariously on the remnants of
the shoulder of the bridge approach.

“A few seconds later and we would’ve been on the
bridge! We could have been forced to hit the side of the bridge.”

She jumped out to inspect her car and shake her fist
at the departing SUV as it disappeared down 177.

CHAPTER
5

Ten minutes later, after her tirade at the offending
driver had subsided and they were downtown, Rhetta remembered the piece of
paper. She slid Cami into a quick left on to Spanish Street. “Let’s stop at
Dockside and get lunch. I can’t wait to look at this.”

After making two tours around the block, Rhetta
settled for a parking place in the courthouse parking lot two blocks away from
The Dockside Diner. She jogged down the hill to the restaurant, while Woody
ambled alongside her. By the time Woody pushed open the heavy wooden door, he
was pulling out a clean handkerchief from a back pocket to mop his brow.

Hungry patrons, eager for a speedy lunch, packed the
popular eatery. The din of clattering dishes along with numerous conversations
made the prospect of quiet conversation bleak. Most of the customers were
courthouse employees on their lunch break. Rhetta and Woody lucked into a table
for two in a quieter area near the back door.

Woody ordered a half-pound Dockside Burger and
double fries. The service was fast. Within minutes, the server arrived
balancing their steaming plates, along with several others, down the length of
her left arm.

The thick burger looked delicious and smelled even
better. Rhetta’s stomach growled. The breakfast shake that she’d gulped after
her morning run had dissolved by ten o’clock. Her passion for running increased
after she turned forty, as did her determination to stay in shape. Although her
weight hadn’t varied much from when she’d graduated from Southeast Missouri
State University, she was convinced that certain parts of her anatomy were
beginning to shift and relocate, mostly south, to her butt.

She dipped her fork into the ranch dressing that, at
her request, the server had poured into a small bowl alongside her plate of
grilled chicken salad, then stabbed at a chunk of lettuce. After each bite, she
repeated the dunking procedure.

“Why don’t you pour the dressing over your salad?”
Woody wiped at his beard, which had trapped a generous dollop of burger juice.

Rhetta glanced up, interrupting a forkful of salad
on its way to her mouth. “By dipping your fork into the dressing, you don’t
actually consume much dressing. You still get the taste with half the
calories.” Her mouth closed over a chunk of iceberg lettuce.

Woody cut a glance her way. “Want some fries?” He
slid the plate across the table, tormenting her with the delicious smelling,
thick-sliced fries. She glared at him.

Rhetta dabbed her lips with a napkin after her last
bite of salad, then pushed the empty bowl aside. She unfolded the mysterious
paper and flattened it on the table where the bowl had been. She twisted her
neck first one way, then the other, and turned the paper around several times.
Each turn of the paper generated another neck twist.

She finally gave up guessing. “I wonder what this is
supposed to be?”

“Let me see it.” Woody pushed his own empty plate
aside and stirred a second heaping teaspoon of sugar into his sweet tea. He
swiped a napkin across his beard again.

“That’s already sweetened.” Rhetta jutted her chin
toward his tea. Woody ignored her, and continued stirring. “Here, look at it. I
give up. I can’t tell what it is.” Rhetta slid the wrinkled paper across the
table for his inspection.

Woody drained half of his beverage then reached for
the paper.

He took his time examining it, likewise turning the
paper several different ways. He finally settled on a direction and bent over
to scrutinize the seemingly meaningless lines and squiggles pictured there.
Rhetta waited, scraping her fork around the bottom of her empty salad bowl.

“There’s something familiar about this.” Woody
pointed to the paper. “But I’m not sure.”

“How do you mean, familiar? Have you seen this
before?” She craned her neck to look at the paper again.

“Not this particular paper, no. But I remember
something like this from the military.”

She looked up at him. “Military? Like what? What is
it?”

Woody held up the document. “I think it’s a
schematic.”

“What’s a schematic?” Rhetta grabbed the paper and
turned it around for a better view.

Woody pulled a handful of napkins from the dispenser
and resumed working on his beard. “A schematic is an electrical map, a
blueprint for an electrical appliance or motor. Anything wired has a schematic,
from a heating thermostat to a nuclear power plant. It identifies everything
about the unit’s circuitry and wiring.”

“What was our good doctor doing with something like
this?” She handed the document back to Woody.

Before Woody could answer, the server appeared with
an icy pitcher of tea and refilled his glass. He waited until she’d refilled
both their glasses before answering.

“Maybe it’s for something he wanted to get fixed.”
Woody studied the paper again, and pointed to the lines and boxes on the
diagram. “The writing is so small that I can’t make out any dimensions. I need
a magnifying glass.”

“Okay, then let’s get out of here.” Rhetta picked up
the sheet, refolded it carefully, and crammed it in her purse. Snatching the
check, she left a tip and headed to the cashier near the front door.

Woody scooted his chair back and gulped the rest of
his sweet tea.

Rhetta handed the cashier her credit card. “We’ll
use our copier to enlarge it. Maybe when it’s bigger, you’ll be able to
distinguish what it says.”

*
* *

After
enlarging different areas of the drawing by two hundred percent, as large as
the copier could accommodate on a legal sized page and still have a decent
image, Rhetta helped Woody tape several sections together, finally producing
one larger, but fuzzier version of the original wrinkled sheet. They spread the
photocopy out on the conference table.

They re-examined the schematic. “I can’t quite
identify what all this represents, Woody said. “Some of the characters are
numerals, but….” He stopped then, and looked at her. “I think this writing is
in Arabic. I can’t read it, but I saw a lot of it while I was in Kuwait.”

“Arabic? I guess that makes sense. Al-Serafi was
Arabic.” She squinted at the image, having left her glasses in her purse. “Do
you know anybody who can read Arabic?”

“Sure don’t,” Woody said, glancing up.

Rhetta left the table and went to her desk where she
rummaged through her purse in search of her iPhone. Not locating it quickly
enough to satisfy her impatience, she dumped the entire contents on the desk.
She snatched the packet of plastic gloves that also tumbled out and tossed them
back into her purse before Woody could see them. She’d meant to put them in
Cami’s console with her hidden emergency stash.

She plucked the phone from the pile and began
tapping. “Randolph knows everybody. I bet he knows someone who can read
Arabic.”

After several rings, her call went to his voice
mail. She slid her thumb across the END bar without leaving a message. He’d see
the number and return her call. She’d barely rejoined Woody at the table when
her phone buzzed.

She greeted him before he could speak. “Hi, Sweets.
Do you know anyone who can read Arabic?”

CHAPTER
6

Randolph sipped his drink. He smiled at how Rhetta
always got right to the point, especially when she thought something was
boiling over with importance.

“Possibly,” he said. “Why do you need someone who
can read Arabic?”

Most of Randolph Scott McCarter’s family suspected
his mother had named her son after her favorite actor, screen cowboy Randolph
Scott. No one could ever get her to admit it. The only person who ever dared
abbreviating his name to Randy was his grandmother, whom he’d feared and
revered. Rhetta always called him Sweets—unless he forgot to lower the toilet
seat.

She told him about her trip to the impound yard, and
her discovery in the owner’s manual. His stomach boiled like he’d swallowed
bleach at hearing she removed the paper from the car. “You took it? That may be
evidence. You need to call the authorities and give it to them.” He massaged
his tightening stomach.

“What authorities? I told you about the time Woody
called the FBI. They weren’t interested in hearing about Al-Serafi then. Why
should I give this to them now?”

Randolph groaned. He knew better than to attempt to
persuade her, especially when she took a stand, but he tried anyway. At least
this argument wasn’t about politics. On one of their first dates, their talk
had turned to politics. That discussion became their first and last political
discussion. He was a staunch conservative while Rhetta was as strong a liberal.
He had to admit he admired her courage in standing up for her beliefs while
living in a tight-knit, politically conservative region.

“Perhaps you should call the FBI again.” Randolph
waited for her to answer. She didn’t. He clicked his tongue in disapproval. Finally,
he caved. “All right, you win. Doctor Peter LaRose at the university probably
can. He’s my anthropology professor friend who’s made several trips to Saudi
Arabia. I’ll call him, and then call you back.”

“Was he that really nice professor I met one
afternoon when you first started the gallery?”

“Yep, that’s him. I’ll let you know what he says.”

After disconnecting, Randolph pondered what he
should tell Peter, whom he’d known for several decades. They hadn’t seen each
other in over a year. The last time he saw the eccentric professor, the already
rail-thin Peter had lost even more weight; something Randolph couldn’t believe
possible. The gaunt teacher had never married. He told Randolph he still lived
in the same second floor walk-up apartment in the downtown area that he’d lived
in for thirty years.

Randolph’s gut told him the scrap of paper that
Rhetta had removed from the car was significant, even though he hadn’t seen it
and didn’t know what it was. When Woody received the weird phone message from Doctor
Al-Serafi, Rhetta was sure the doctor was a terrorist. He told her that she was
overreacting. He couldn’t imagine what, if any connection this paper had to the
phone message. The doctor did end up dead, though. That was more likely a
coincidence. Still, he knew he’d never convince his wife of that. 

When Rhetta called, he’d been in his studio
painting. While still on the bench, Randolph planned on retiring and becoming a
law scholar. Instead, his life had forged a new direction. Although he’d never taken
any formal art training, he was a naturally skilled sketch artist. He’d loved
drawing the characters that appeared before him in court. One day, on an
impulse, he sat in on an outdoor painting class and became hooked on painting
landscapes.

After retiring, he’d thrown himself into his art.
His landscapes were selling briskly on the Internet. He and three fellow
artists had organized Rivers West Creative Group, a local co-operative art
gallery on Main Street in Old Town, on the banks of the Mississippi River.

He set his drink down, wiped his hands with a
turpentine soaked rag, and picked up the phone book.

Peter answered on the third ring. Even though
university classes had been out for several weeks, Randolph figured that Peter,
like most of the professors, would still be working in his campus office. Not
having Peter’s cell phone number, Randolph had called the office number listed
in the phone book.

After initial pleasantries, Randolph dove in.
“Rhetta has a document that she thinks is in Arabic. Could you translate it for
her?”

Peter chuckled. “My written Arabic isn’t the
greatest. But for you, I’ll be happy to take a stab.”

After agreeing to meet at Rhetta’s office in an
hour, Randolph called his wife to give her the good news.

Rhetta cheered. “That’s why I love you, Sweets. You
know everybody.” He heard her put her hand over the mouthpiece to shout to
Woody, “Randolph found somebody.”

“I told Peter I’d meet him at your office. I’ve been
working in the studio. I’ll clean up and come over.” After he disconnected,
Randolph headed upstairs to shower. He could imagine her high-fiving Woody.
Peeling off his painting shirt and jeans, he emptied the rest of the whiskey
sour down the toilet. Before showering, he brushed his teeth vigorously and
gargled. He counted on the medicinal tasting mouthwash to cover up the two
drinks he’d had since lunch.

*
* *

Ten
minutes later, Randolph slipped a T-shirt over his damp, silver-streaked black
hair, pulled on a clean pair of faded jeans, and slipped into canvas deck
shoes. Glancing at the full-length mirror, he reflexively sucked in his
stomach. Although still trim, the six-foot tall Randolph knew he should be
exercising to keep fit, but always procrastinated. He was grateful for the
great genes he’d inherited from a family of thin people.

The good genes, however, didn’t extend to eyesight.
He had to remember to grab his reading glasses. He found he needed his cheaters
more and more to read or paint with each passing year. He tucked them into his
shirt pocket and went off to find his keys.

After searching the bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom,
Randolph finally located the keys to his pickup truck where they were supposed
to be—on a hook by the back door. With the keys jiggling in his hand, he jogged
to the three-car detached garage that Rhetta christened the Garage Mahal,
because it was built and finished out as nicely as the house.

The 1999 Ford F-100 pickup fired right up. Normally,
it stayed hooked to an enclosed utility trailer filled with his paintings. The
truck had needed gas when they came home from the last art show. He’d unhooked
the truck from the trailer as a reminder to fill the tank the next time he went
to town.

Thankfully, none of the three cats was asleep under
the truck. Rhetta’s cats were supposed to be barn cats, inhabit the Garage
Mahal, and catch mice. “Barn cats, indeed,” Randolph said, shaking his head. Of
course, since Rhetta regularly fed them canned cat food on the deck, he needn’t
have worried about them being anywhere near the truck.

He smiled and waved at Mrs. Koblyk, their senior
citizen neighbor, as he pulled out of his driveway and turned on to the gravel
road. Mrs. Koblyk and her husband, a retired railroad engineer, watched all
their comings and goings, and were the epitome of nosy neighbors. However, Mrs.
Koblyk often redeemed herself by bringing him home-baked Hungarian poppy seed
bread.

Life was idyllic for Randolph McCarter these days.
He was thankful for the blessed change from the chaos his life had become when
he found himself widowed ten years ago. His wife, a dedicated oncologist, died
in a plane crash coming home from an overseas conference. They had no children.
Anger and loneliness carried him directly to a whiskey bottle.

Arrowing down their lane and on to the gravel county
road, he wondered how differently his life would have turned out had he not met
Rhetta. Judge Rosswell Carew, a fellow bachelor and drinking buddy, introduced
them at a Humane Society fundraising dinner auction six years ago. Rhetta, a
sworn single, promptly informed Randolph she wasn’t interested in marrying
anyone. That suited Randolph just fine. Rhetta and Randolph struck a major
chord together, marrying two years later.

Randolph’s wedding gift to her was his promise to
quit drinking. Her gift to him in return was a promise to quit smoking.

Although he did quit bingeing and meeting friends
for drink fests, he hadn’t quite managed to stop drinking completely. He didn’t
always tell Rhetta when he had a drink or two, although he suspected she always
knew. Privately, he feared being lulled into his former pattern of excessive
drink.

Alcohol had nearly killed Carew last year. After a
night of heavy drinking, he fell asleep at the wheel. Fortunately, Carew had
had sense enough to fasten his seat belt. That saved him from flying headlong
into the windshield when he missed a curve and plowed into an oak tree.

*
* *

Randolph
edged the pickup into a slot outside Rhetta’s office a half hour later. Rhetta
had christened his truck The Artmobile. She had a nickname for everything.

He spotted Peter LaRose bent over the conference
table alongside Rhetta and Woody. They were all absorbed in studying several
sheets of paper and hadn’t noticed him entering. Randolph ambled over to join
them.

“We’ve introduced ourselves,” Rhetta said after
brushing her lips against her husband’s cheek. She gestured toward the angular
professor who was still examining a document.

“Thanks for meeting us on such short notice,”
Randolph said, shaking hands with Peter.

“I’m not sure what you have here,” Peter said
without preamble. He motioned to a paper spread out on the table. “This is
definitely written in Arabic.” He furrowed his brow. A strand of thinning grey
sandy hair fell across his wide forehead. “I translated the best I could. It
appears that the writing is identifying different components in the drawing. As
I said, my written Arabic isn’t that great.”

Randolph glanced down at the document. He couldn’t
decipher it. He pointed to the sheet. “What’s your best guess?”

Peter scratched his chin, taking a moment to answer.
“Looks like it could be some kind of schematic. Maybe a transformer of some
kind. It’s pretty large, bigger than what’s in the short wave radios I work on
in my spare time.”

CHAPTER
7