ADX Praxis (The Red Lake Series Book 3) Read online

  Harry got by. Barton grew rich. He could have retired anytime, but Barton was hooked by the adrenaline of danger. He grew up in the inner city where death and violence was all anyone expected from life. Sports, music, the military or a body bag were the only ways out of the ghetto.

  As a gang-banger, Barton was known as Ice, a shortened form of icicle, a weapon he made his first kill with by plunging one into another kid’s neck.

  He was never convicted, for that or any other crime, a surprising record that eventually made the gang leaders suspicious. Barton’s instincts told him to leave ‘the life’ before he became a victim.

  In the military and particularly in black ops he found people who appreciated his talents. Barton did not find joy in killing; it was what one did to survive. But he did thrive on the hunt, living on the edge, always one bullet away from becoming the fallen prey instead of the predator.

  Chapter 24

  Eddie Ames’s murder was suddenly more pressing on Harry, than it was before Zane’s death. He picked up where the explosion caused him to drop off, at the cemetery.

  Cars lined the cemetery’s drive. He parked on the street.

  Off to the right, a cluster of dark clothed people gathered around a raw new hole. An occasional muted sniffle or cry reached his ears. He turned left and walked the rows one at a time. In a matter of minutes he located the other two graves, William Stone was in the first row left, Carl Zimmerman was interned on the right, not far from where the funeral was taking place.

  Harry borrowed a few flowers from a wilting bouquet. He placed one on each of the two gravestones. At the high side of the cemetery he marked Clara Belson’s grave, then stood on the brass plate for James Tyler. He sighted toward the flower on Stone’s tomb. The line ran close to a tall obelisk near the center of the cemetery. From Clara’s grave he looked for the flower he left on Zimmerman’s stone but it was too low too see. However, using the funeral party as a reference he guessed his line and walked in that direction.

  As he neared the obelisk he was able to see the three gravestones that he marked with flowers. For the fourth, he eyed a notch he picked out in the hedge near the brass plate. Where the sight lines crossed he found three graves with low stones and brass vases for flowers. Harry looked at the names. They were unknown to him. He looked at the paper and saw the match, for the number 1,948. One stone was dated 1939, another 1968 and the last one was 1948.

  Eddie might have buried the flash drive but the grass seemed undisturbed. There were no hidey-holes on the granite stone. It had to be here, Harry thought, unless Eddie was just getting ready and died too soon. He looked inside the brass vase. It was empty. A metal stake held it erect; Harry pulled it out of the ground. It came out easily. The base of the vase was hollow. Glued to the bottom was a clear plastic case containing a SanDisk micro-memory card.

  *

  Harry drove back to Boyden Street. Instead of going up to his office he walked across the street and up to the public library on the corner.

  “You have Internet access here?”

  “Shh,” the librarian hushed him. “Over there. We have a thirty minute limit.”

  He found an available terminal and logged on using the public equipment. He linked into his office computer and accessed the video file for the wireless camera hidden behind the vent duct. Playing it on fast-forward he saw no one entering the office while he was out. It paid to be cautious. He knew men who died because they weren’t.

  Upstairs in his office Harry plugged the flash card into his computer’s USB port. He was hoping for a smoking gun but the disk left more questions than answers. There were several folders with strange names.

  Edwin Alec Darwin.doc

  Abdul-Alim Khalili.doc

  Zhou Zhengzhong.doc

  Harry clicked on the first file. Edwin Alec Darwin’s name was vaguely familiar but he could not place it. Whoever he was, he was deceased. The first page, which was a cover sheet for the Bureau of Prisons, made that clear.

  Other files in the folder were disparate sheets from what was obviously an inmate’s record, medical, dental, visitation, and legal counsel. The headings were on the forms but the rest was blank.

  Harry tried the other two. They were identical. They contained standard inmate record forms for Praxis but no information. Why would Eddie want these? Why bother to hide them? And why should he die because of them?

  The next file was a list of unrelated things.

  Shadow upper left corner.

  Glass gone.

  Shower dry.

  Toothbrush.

  Spot on floor.

  Shading shift.

  Button on cuff.

  “God would it have killed him to leave a few notes?” Harry said aloud to his empty office.

  He printed the file. Eddie might have thought it worth hiding but Harry didn’t think so. He could take it to the police but he suspected they wouldn’t touch it. Eddie was filed as an accident, case closed. The police never seemed to appreciate it when his work messed up their files.

  What to do? The Sheriff had told him to turn in anything he found, but Harry wanted the bomber for himself. He also intended to pay Zane’s killer in kind, not with a five-year, parole eligible, sentence. Besides, Harry began to suspect that whoever was behind the killings might be beyond the reach of the courts.

  He was stymied by Eddie’s list. Perhaps the names were a code. They were all three-word names. He went to a web site for the meaning of names.

  Edward Alec Darwin meant,

  Prosperous friend, protector of men, dear friend.

  Abdul-Alim Kahili meant,

  Servant of the omniscient, friend

  Zhou Zhengzhong meant,

  Careful-honest, loyal and upright, friend.

  Whatever message Eddie was sending from the grave it sure seemed scrambled.

  Harry tried Darwin’s name on the search engine. The first hit, much to his surprise, was an obituary for Darwin in the New York Times. The second was a Wikipedia article. At the bottom of the page the link to the Red Lake Clarion caught his eye. He clicked on the link.

  Once he began to read Lou Harding’s article he recalled the case though he had missed the column when it first came out.

  Afterward he tried Kahili and Zhengzhong. Both were convicted of federal crimes for espionage and both were inmates at ADX Praxis.

  What troubled Harry about the names was their similarity in meaning. It shocked him to find they were real people. Musing to himself, he thought it gave a whole new push to the theory that the name will make the man.

  Chapter 25

  “I told you to take care of our little problem.”

  “We tried.”

  “Perhaps you would like to be trying from a rendition site in the Mid-east?”

  “I thought we had him buttoned down, sir. He got lucky.”

  “He’s good Kurt, not lucky. Didn’t you read his service file? He’s done more covert shit than you!”

  Clemson heard the thinly suppressed ire in Van de Meer’s voice.

  “We closed the other door though, sir.”

  “Well the one you left open is letting in a very cold breeze. He’s been running names that I shall leave unspoken.”

  “Its tough, sir. If we try slamming the door again it might stir up local interest. As of now the problem is considered a mechanical failure.”

  “Do I have to wipe your nose and your ass Clemson? Find a pressure point and squeeze it hard.”

  The last sound Kurt heard from Washington was Van de Meer’s phone slamming down.

  Chapter 26

  Gavin Gaines liked a peaceable community. If he had his way people would drive sanely, be civil, stop fighting and obey the law. In forty years as a cop his dream never came close. Experience taught him if something smelled fishy it probably was.

  The report on his desk was about the explosion at Harry Grim’s house. The results were inconclusive but the investigators from the propane company and Grim’s insur
ance company failed to find any sign of tampering. Of course there was not a lot of evidence that wasn’t turned to ash. If Harry died in the explosion then they might all have needed to look harder but the payout was the same. The insurer wrote Harry a check.

  Gaines stroked his mustache. A habit he carried for years. It was an odd coincidence that Harry’s house blew-up after he began looking into an accidental death for a woman who adamantly claimed something was amiss.

  No new information presented itself, but the circumstance left a small question in Gaines’s mind. He decided to keep his ears and mind open.

  After lunch Gavin ran past the Ames’s house. When he pulled up she was loading boxes into her van.

  “Mrs. Ames,” he said dipping his hat.

  “Sheriff.”

  He thought her smile pleasant. Inside the van he saw boxes and bags of clothing.

  “Just clearing out Eddie’s thing.” Her smile faded on the words and her violet eyes crinkled up a little. She wiped away a tear with the back of her hand. “What may I do for you?”

  “Harry Grim find anything?”

  “About what?”

  “Your husbands death. What else is there to find something about?”

  Lisa seemed slightly flustered. “Nothing. He doesn’t work for me anymore.”

  “Would that have anything to do with his house blowing up?”

  “I don’t know anything about that. I decided I couldn’t afford him. Besides I think he was just after my money.”

  “That could be ma’am, some of these private eyes are not all that honest.”

  The thing that troubled Gavin was that he knew Harry. They worked an overlapping case in the past. Harry was never totally on the up and up, but he was not a man to lead a woman on if she were a client. Grim would rather go fishing or diddle with the blond bombshell who acted as his secretary. More than ever, he suspected something was up. But nobody was ready to start talking.

  *

  Three miles out, Barton began his descent into Red Lake. He crossed low over the Lazarus Mountains west of town and then dropped altitude until he leveled out at fifteen hundred feet over the lake. He banked north and followed the shore. The airfield was a narrow strip of asphalt, a little close to the base of the range that ran north and south. If a weather front were moving in it would be a treacherous approach. Cold air would roll down the mountains, tumbling as it descended and with enough force to flip any plane. Not today. The windsock at the end of the field hung limp in the languid air.

  Barton flew up the middle of the lake, easing down to five hundred feet. He set his flaps and dropped the landing gear. He felt the pull on the craft as the wheels created turbulence. He put the rudder over and banked left, dropping some altitude on the turn. Now the sun was out of his eyes as he crossed into the shadow cast by the mountains. He turned to the south and was on final approach to the field.

  His eyes darted around between the controls, the airfield and the sky. Alert for any craft that might drop down on him or pull out onto the runway. His actions were not much different when he was not in a plane, very little happened around Barton that he did not take in.

  The ground rose to meet him. He was over the fence at the end of the field. A moment later his wheels touched with the smallest of bumps. He let the plane run down the length of the runway, by the time he reached asphalt’s end the plane’s momentum was spent and he swung unto the taxiway without having to break.

  He found a place to park, while noting a few planes that bespoke money around the lake. Some of the houses on the shore were more like sprawling lodges than cabins. The airport was quiet. The flight services office was dark. From the cockpit called Enterprise.

  “Barton Dirk here. I have a reservation.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I am at the airfield, can you bring it out?”

  “Certainly, sir, but it will be about forty minutes. I am alone and can’t do it until we close.”

  The kid sounded young and eager to please.

  “Any places out here to wait?”

  “There is a bar across the road. Further up there is a motel.”

  “I’ll see you at the bar.”

  “How will I recognize you, sir?”

  “Don’t worry kid, you can’t miss me.”

  Barton locked up the plane. He let himself out the fence, most likely financed by federal funding from Homeland Security. He followed the airport drive out to the road. Across the highway he saw a Quonset hut he flew over minutes before. Over the door hung a wood propeller and a battered sign, ‘The Prop Shop’. The corrugated metal hut probably left over from the war years. On the outside the yellow paint was flaking and faded. Rust streaks bled through.

  A battered screen door sagged, propped open by a rock. He pushed the inner door open. Like the feral faces of sewer rats, a dozen eyes looked up in the room. Even in the dim light he saw their hostility.

  He surveyed the room. During the war it was probably a place where the Army Air Corps pilots hung out during their training. Photos of aircraft decorated the wall. Behind the beaten-up bar was a dirty, yellowed mirror, above which hung a large wooden propeller.

  Now days the bar appeared to serve drunks and wastrels, people who had nowhere else to be and were expected home by no one.

  The man behind the bar was gaunt, with sallow skin that looked brittle from age, too many cigarettes and not enough sun.

  “Give me a beer, please.”

  The old guy started to reach for the tap but a voice from the end of the bar said, “We don’t serve niggers.”

  Barton glanced over through the bar smoke. An obese man in flannels and jeans glared at him from the last stool. His face was ruddy with the pattern of broken veins. As they made eye contact the man spit on the floor.

  “Get out boy!”

  “Oh yesss sir Maseah. I be going.” Barton broke out laughing as he finished. He knew it would rile the man.

  The guy stood up, he was half as tall as he was broad, but there was a lot of muscle carrying the folds of fat. The man grasped a beer bottle in his meaty hand and cracked the end off against the bar. Barton noted he was left-handed.

  “Very dramatic!” he said, clapping his hands slowly. After saying this he looked back to the bartender. “He won’t mind. Go ahead and give me a beer.”

  The old man seemed confused who to obey. Finally he whispered, “Look out, Toby’s dangerous.”

  Barton only pointed at the tap.

  Toby lumbered toward Barton who acted as if he did not even see him but Barton’s eyes followed him in the mirror. When he got close Toby drew back his hand with the bottle and with his right reached towards Barton’s shoulder to turn him on the stool.

  Before Toby made contact Barton spun away from him in a full circle. As he came around his right arm came up knocking Toby’s left up and away. He followed through with a left jab up into Toby’s throat. The fat man’s eyes bulged. The bottle fell from his hand as he clutched at his throat. He coughed and gagged and his face turned red.

  “Can’t breath,” he choked out the words.

  “You’ll be okay in a minute, Massah. A little harder and you’d be dead. But I don’t want no trouble, boss.”

  The fat man was too distressed to appreciate Barton’s theatrical efforts. He staggered off toward the bathroom. On the way he threw-up.

  “I’ll have that beer now. If no one else has a problem serving niggers.” Barton looked around but no made eye contact.

  The old man drew a beer. “On the house. It was worth it to see Toby put down.” The old man leaned forward and lowered his voice. “But watch yourself, Toby carries a gun in his truck. He’s mean enough to back shoot someone.”

  Barton smiled. “I’m sure I’ll be okay. I think Toby and I have reached an understanding.”

  A half hour later a sedan pulled into the lot. A young man got out. He opened the building’s door nervously, as if he seldom entered a bar. “Mr. Dirk?”

  Barton rai
sed one finger and finished his second beer.

  “Gotta pick up some gear at my plane before I run you into town.”

  “No problem, sir. You’re my last run for the day.”

  As they reached the car, Barton saw the kid’s mouth gape slightly, his eyes bulging in shock. Barton looked behind him. Toby stood next to his pickup truck with a pistol in his hand. It was aimed at Barton’s back.

  The kid hit the dirt, but Barton calmly turned and faced Toby.

  “You pull that trigger, you better kill me fat boy. Cuz if you don’t I will take that gun away from you, tear your dick and balls off with my bare hands, shove them down your throat and then piss on your face as you choke to death.”

  The man’s gun began to shake. If he pulled the trigger, he would likely miss even the car. Barton stared him down. Even drunk and angry Toby realized death was looking at him. His gun arm went down. He pouted like a petulant child as he walked away.

  Chapter 27

  Friday night was busy at Marie’s. There was an hour wait for a table and the tourist season was not yet begun. The bar was crowded. Later, tables would be moved back and people would dance. For now they drank and mingled.

  Harry and Paula were at a table in the middle of the room. They sipped red wine and greeted acquaintances while they waited for their food. Finally it came. His was the prime rib platter, hers the salmon plate.

  They talked softly as they ate. Marie came over,

  “How is everything?”

  Harry smiled, “Delicious as always.”

  “Sorry about your house.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Of course your loss is my gain, now that you have to eat out.” A smile of mirth wrapped her. After a few more moments of chatting she drifted off to greet another table.

  Throughout the meal they spoke in low voices and leaned in toward each other, looking intimate.

  Suddenly Harry hissed loudly, “Because!”

  Paula glanced around nervously as eyes turned their direction. “Keep your voice down Harry!” The words came out peremptorily. “People are looking!” It was Paula’s turn to hiss.