Redheads (19 page)

On his way back, he took a left on 61
^st
Street and drove towards the bay. He’d seen a U-Haul rental shop down there when he first came into town. He pulled into its parking lot, limped to the office, and asked to rent a dolly. It was fifteen dollars a day. He filled out the rental form, used his credit card for the deposit, and waited for the clerk to bring a dolly out from behind the counter.

The van started on his second try. He drove back to the hotel, circling the parking lot until he could get the space closest to the hotel. After he set the parking brake he crawled between the seats to the back, to pull the futon from its box. The mattress came wrapped in a giant plastic bag. He pulled this off and put it into the empty box, then crawled to the side door. He opened it and tenderly let himself down to the asphalt. From here and for the next hour, he was going to have to go without the crutches. The one-hour limit was arbitrary. He’d given himself that much time, and no longer, to box the body, clean the room and haul everything back to the van. It was definitely time to get out of Galveston.

Chapter Twenty-One

Chris was sitting on the grass with his gun on his knee. He watched as Julissa opened the front door and surveyed the scene. She lowered her weapon, stepped over the body on the doorstep, and walked to him. She knelt on the grass next to him and put her hands on his shoulders.

“You all right?”

“Yeah.”

“Where’d he hit you?”

“He never got off a shot.”

She looked at Chris’s body and ran her hands along the sides of his torso to his hips.

“Thank god for that.”

“It won’t look much like self-defense.”

Julissa looked back at the body on the front step. Chris’s single shot had hit the delivery man on the bridge of his nose. The bullet took most of the back of the man’s head with it on its way through. Blood and brain tissue were spread across the front door.

“It’s all on video,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

“Probably bad.”

“Can you stand?”

“Yeah.”

She took his hand and they walked over to the body. With the corpse at their feet, they both instinctively looked across the front yard to see if there had been witnesses. The street was up the hill, obscured by trees and climbing vines. High rock walls and tangles of trees blocked the view to the neighboring properties. Someone may have heard the shot, but there were wild boars on this side of the island. People hunted them. A single loud bang wouldn’t draw any attention.

“Before we touch him, we should decide,” Chris said. “You want to call the cops?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

She nodded. “Think about it. The guy we’re looking for killed everyone at Intelligene. He probably sent this guy for us. We can’t reach Aaron or Mike, so he might’ve sent people after them. If we call the cops, he’ll get the advantage. We’ll be tied down for days answering questions. You might get arrested. He’ll know exactly where we are and what we’re doing. He’ll have all the time in the world to plan his next move. Right now, we’ve got the advantage. You killed the guy he sent, and he probably won’t know that for a few more hours.”

Chris gestured at the dead man with his Glock. “How do we know this isn’t the killer right here?”

“You think it is?”

“No. I guess not. From what we heard on the news, it sounds like he might’ve done Intelligene himself. And he had a reason to do that himself, because of what Intelligene knew. Which puts him in Massachusetts right now.”

“This guy was a hit man.”

They looked at him. There wasn’t much left of his upper face or his head. Chris knelt and picked up the manila envelope and the silenced pistol. He handed the pistol to Julissa and opened the envelope. It had a washcloth that smelled like ether or nail polish remover, a switchblade knife, and several large-sized plastic zip ties. He handed the envelope to Julissa and she looked through it without comment.

He patted the man down and felt a key in one of his pockets. He reached in and found a Dodge key on a Hertz fob. The man had no wallet or other identification. He’d sounded Russian on the intercom. He looked like he’d been in his thirties. His shirt was a brand Chris had never heard of, and his shoes were old and worn out. Deep cuts were healing across the knuckles of his left hand and on the outside of his left wrist. As though he’d been in a knife fight, days ago. He’d probably come out on top in a lot of fights before today. He had shaved that morning and there was a bit of dried shaving cream or soap on his right earlobe. Beyond that, there wasn’t much to conclude about him.

“He might’ve parked up the road out of sight, then walked back down here,” Chris said.

“We’ve gotta get in touch with Mike. Or go find him. Aaron, too.”

“We need to get this guy off my doorstep first,” Chris said. “In case a real delivery man comes. I’ll do it, if you want to keep calling Mike and Aaron.”

She nodded and went back inside. Chris trotted around the side of the house and unlocked the gardening shed. He stepped past the lawn mower and the workbench and reached to the top of the shelves to pull down the insulated fish bag that had come with the boat. It was a blue canvas bag, six feet long and three feet wide, with a zipper opening on the long side. The inside was insulated with an inch-thick layer of silvery plastic-coated foam. It was perfect for keeping a freshly caught tuna cool on a long sail back to port. But it would fit other dead things.

Back on the porch, he dropped the bag alongside the man, unzipped it, and rolled him inside. Then he zipped the bag closed and dragged it into the grass along the side of the house. He came back to the front, uncoiling the hose from the front flowerbed.

So little time had passed between shooting the man and cleaning up, it was easy to spray the blood off the door and the porch. It would show up under Luminol and black lights, and if he ever had the chance, he intended to get out here with a bottle of detergent and a scrub brush. The bullet, upon exiting the man’s head, had lodged itself in the door just below the peephole. He had no immediate way of taking care of that, so he ignored it. He thought it was pretty likely that after today, he wouldn’t see his house again for a long time.

Julissa came out as he was using the high-pressure stream of water to chase bits of skull and brain matter off the porch and into the flowerbeds where the ants could take care of them. She’d been gone about two minutes.

“Any luck?”

She shook her head. “Mike’s phone just rings and rings, and Aaron’s goes straight to voicemail. You done here?”

“One more minute.”

He turned off the hose, then dragged the fish bag to the garden shed. Inside, it was ninety degrees and humid. If he didn’t come up with a more permanent solution soon, the smell would take over. He had no idea when the gardeners were supposed to come next, but the lawn looked recently mowed. He hoped they weren’t coming today. He dragged the bag to the back of the shed, grabbed a pair of cotton gardening gloves off the shelf, then went out and locked the doors. Julissa was waiting by his car.

“Mike’s house?” he asked.

“We’ve got to.”

He nodded and opened the passenger door for her. She was carrying her purse, which was unzipped. She had kept the silenced pistol and the manila envelope. Undoubtedly her Sig Sauer was in there somewhere, too. His pistol was tucked into the back of his pants. He hoped they had enough.

A quarter mile up the road they came to a red Dodge Caliber parked in the ditch. There was a sticker with a rental company’s bar code on the back bumper. Chris slowed and stopped. He took the man’s key from his pocket and hit the unlock button. They saw the Dodge’s tail lights flash twice.

“You drive my car,” Chris said. “Follow me. I’m going to leave it in the parking lot at Shark’s Cove. I don’t want it anywhere near my house when the rental car company reports it missing and the police pick it up.”

“Okay.”

Chris got out of his car and went to the Dodge. He opened the trunk, but it was empty. He put on his gardening gloves, opened the door and got inside. There was an envelope with the rental contract in the console between the seats. He took that and put it in his pocket. There was nothing in the glove compartment or under the seats. Then he started the car and pulled onto the highway, checking behind for Julissa.

Mike lived in Pupukea, above Shark’s Cove on the rural north shore of Oahu. The way to get there from Chris’s house was to follow the Kamehameha Highway, a two-lane, curving road that clung to the thin strip of flat ground between the mountains and the ocean. It ran up the east side of the island to the shrimp farms in Kahuku, then turned west to follow a string of surf beaches to Pupukea. On big surf days in the winter, traffic could back up for miles in both directions. In the summer, the ocean was calm and the crowds stayed away. The drive took forty minutes, winding around horseshoe-shaped bays and down stretches of road that came so close to the turquoise water that in winter, when storms came, Chris had seen waves surge all the way across the road.

He signaled at the Shark’s Cove parking lot, turned in, and found a space. He rolled down the Dodge’s windows, left the keys in the ignition, and got out of the car. His best guess was that a rental car in a north shore lot with the keys in the ignition would last about half an hour. By nightfall it would either be stripped and sitting on its axles at Kaena Point, or parked behind a surf shack in Haliewa with a tarp over it until the kids figured out what to do next. Either option was fine with Chris. Julissa pulled in behind him and he got into the passenger seat. He directed her back onto the highway, and then they took a left onto Pupukea Road. They followed the road up a series of switchbacks until it leveled and ran flat along the ridge overlooking Shark’s Cove. Mike’s house was at the end of the road, across the street from an old Boy Scout camp.

There were always cars parked on the street in front of Mike’s house, because a hiking trail and boar hunting area began where the road ended. Three of the cars looked like rentals. Julissa parked at the end of a row of cars and killed the engine.

“How do we do this?” she asked.

“If we walk down the trail, we can cut through the forest to the right and circle around to Mike’s backyard. There’s a spare key taped under a picnic table back there.”

Chris had seen the key two months earlier while eating barbecued chicken with Mike and talking about the files.

“So we sneak in through the back door.”

“Then we check the house. If we find Mike and he’s okay, we get him and his family out.”

Julissa nodded. She got out of the car and put her purse over her shoulder. The hiking trail began as a dirt road, muddy in the tire ruts from recent rains. They climbed over the locked gate that spanned the road and kept car traffic out. Then they walked a hundred yards through the forest of ironwood trees until Chris led them off the trail. They walked without speaking until they reached the slight ridge behind Mike’s house. A fawn-colored dog was hiding in the bushes at the edge of Mike’s yard. It heard them approach and slinked into the forest.

“Mike’s dog,” Chris whispered. “One of them, anyway.”

Mike’s picnic table was in the middle of the back lawn, next to a brick barbecue pit. The back door was at the end of a wide porch.

Chris started for the picnic table at a run. Julissa followed him. They had both taken their pistols out and held them low, pointed at the ground. Chris dropped to one knee by the table, reached underneath it, and came out with the key. He wasn’t sure it would fit the lock in the back door, but it seemed like a reasonable guess. They reached the house and Chris opened the screen door, then slipped the key into the lock. It turned easily and the door opened into the kitchen. They stepped inside and let the screen door shut behind them on its rusty spring. It batted back and forth for a moment and then stilled.

A TV was on somewhere, playing what sounded like a cartoon. The lights in the kitchen were off and there were dirty dishes from lunch on the counter. There was a shattered glass on the floor, a pool of what might have been Coca-Cola, and a few ice cubes that hadn’t melted yet. Chris held his pistol with both hands, still aimed at the floor, and walked around the kitchen counter into the dining room. Julissa was behind him, checking the corners. They went towards the sound of the television.

The living room couch faced away from the door Chris and Julissa came through. From behind, the family looked like it was watching a Donald Duck cartoon. Mike’s wife and his two youngest children were on the couch, facing the TV. They didn’t move at the sound of footsteps. Their heads were rolled forward, but they weren’t asleep. Chris looked at Julissa. She was wide-eyed but not panicking. She turned her back to the scene in front of them and raised her weapon, covering the two doorways that entered the living room. Chris moved around the couch to see the rest.

Mike was on the floor where the overturned coffee table had been. He was handcuffed at his wrists and there was a leather belt buckled around his ankles. His eyes were gone, cut out. Chris couldn’t tell whether that had happened before or after his throat had been slit. His wife had been garroted and his kids had been shot, once each in the forehead. The couch and the hardwood floor beneath it were soaked in blood. Mike’s laptop computer was open on the floor next to him, turned on. The screen showed a security dialogue box that prompted the user for a password. Chris recognized it as the screen that Mike went through to access the walled-off files associated with his work on the redhead murders. The prompt on the screen said,
Incorrect login or password. Please try again
.