Ten days after Sam and Sarah had left, they had a little ceremony. He let her take the boat out, tie the bottle of phenobarbital to a large rock, and dump it over the side. The splash it made seemed a fitting and final end to one of her problems. Kelly stood behind her, his strong arms about her waist, watching the other boats traveling the Bay, and he looked into a future bright with promise.
‘You were right,’ she said, stroking his forearms.
‘That happens sometimes,’ Kelly replied with a distant smile, only to be stunned by her next statement.
‘There are others, John, other women Henry has … like Helen, the one he killed.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I have to go back. I have to help them… before Henry – before he kills more of them.’
‘There’s danger involved, Pammy,’ Kelly said slowly.
‘I know… but what about them?’
It was a symptom of her recovery, Kelly knew. She had become a normal person again, and normal people worried about others.
‘I can’t hide forever, can I?’ Kelly could feel her fear, but her words defied it and he held her a little tighter.
‘No, you can’t, not really. That’s the problem. It’s too hard to hide.’
‘Are you sure you can trust your friend on the police?’ she asked.
‘Yes: he knows me. He’s a lieutenant I did a job for a year ago. A gun got tossed, and I helped find it. So he owes me one. Besides, I ended up helping to train their divers, and I made some friends.’ Kelly paused. ‘You don’t have to do it, Pam. If you just want to walk away from it, that’s okay with me. I don’t have to go back to Baltimore ever, except for the doctor stuff.’
‘All the things they did to me, they’re doing to the others. If I don’t do something, then it’ll never really be gone, will it?’
Kelly thought about that, and his own demons. You simply could not run away from some things. He knew. He’d tried. Pam’s collection was in its way more horrible than his own, and if their relationship were to go further, those demons had to find their resting place. ‘Let me make a phone call.’
‘Lieutenant Allen,’ the man said into his phone in Western District. The air conditioning wasn’t working well today, and his desk was piled with work as yet undone.
‘Frank? John Kelly,’ the detective heard, bringing a smile.
‘How’s life in the middle of the Bay, fella?’ Wouldn’t I like to be there.
‘Quiet and lazy. How about you?’ the voice asked.
‘I wish,’ Allen answered, leaning back in his swivel chair. A large man, and like most cops of his generation, a World War II Veteran – in his case a Marine artilleryman – Allen had risen from foot patrol on East Monument Street to homicide. For all that, the work was not as demanding as most thought, though it did carry the burden associated with the untimely end of human life. Allen immediately noted the change in Kelly’s voice. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I, uh, met somebody who might need to talk with you.’
‘How so?’ the cop asked, fishing around in his shirt pocket for a cigarette and matches.
‘It’s business, Frank. Information regarding a killing.’
The cop’s eyes narrowed a bit, while his brain changed gears. ‘When and where?’
‘I don’t know yet, and I don’t like doing this over a phone line.’
‘How serious?’
‘Just between us for now?’
Allen nodded, staring out the window. ‘That’s fine, okay.’
‘Drug people.’
Allen’s mind went click. Kelly had said his informant was ‘somebody,’ not a ‘man.’ That made the person a female, Allen figured. Kelly was smart, but not all that sophisticated in this line of work. Allen had heard the shadowy reports of a drug ring using women for something or other. Nothing more than that. It wasn’t his case. It was being handled by Emmet Ryan and Tom Douglas downtown, and Allen wasn’t even supposed to know that much.
‘There’s at least three drug organizations up and running now. None of them are very nice folks,’ Allen said evenly. ‘Tell me more.’
‘My friend doesn’t want much involvement. Just some information for you, that’s it, Frank. If it goes further, we can reevaluate then. We’re talking some scary people if this story is true.’
Allen considered that. He’d never dwelt upon Kelly’s background, but he knew enough. Kelly was a trained diver, he knew, a bosun’s mate who’d fought in the brown-water Navy in the Mekong Delta, supporting the 9th Infantry; a squid, but a very competent, careful squid whose services had come highly recommended to the force from somebody in the Pentagon and who’d done a nice job retraining the force’s divers, and, by the way, earning a nice check for it, Allen reminded himself. The ‘person’ had to be female. Kelly would never worry about guarding a man that tightly. Men just didn’t think that way about other men. If nothing else, it sure sounded interesting.
‘You’re not screwing me around, are you?’ he had to ask.
‘That’s not my way, man,’ Kelly assured him. ‘My rules: it’s for information purposes only, and it’s a quiet meet. Okay?’
‘You know, anybody else, I’d probably say come right in here and that would be it, but I’ll play along with you. You did break the Gooding case open for me. We got him, you know. Life plus thirty. I owe you for that. Okay, I’ll play along for now. Fair enough?’
‘Thanks. What’s your schedule like?’
‘Working late shift this week.’ It was just after four in the afternoon, and Allen had just come on duty. He didn’t know that Kelly had called three times that day already without leaving a message. ‘I get off around midnight, one o’clock, like that. It depends on the night,’ he explained. ‘Some are busier than others.’
‘Tomorrow night. I’ll pick you up at the front door. We can have a little supper together.’
Allen frowned. This was like a James Bond movie, secret agent crap. But he did know Kelly to be a serious man, even if he didn’t know squat about police work.
‘See you then, sport.’
“Thanks, Frank. ‘Bye.’ The line clicked off and Allen went back to work, making a note on his desk calendar.
‘Are you scared?’ he asked.
‘A little,’ she admitted.
He smiled. ‘That’s normal. But you heard what I said. He doesn’t know anything about you. You can always back out if you want. I’ll be carrying a gun all the time. And it’s just a talk. You can get in and get out. We’ll do it in one day – one night, really. And I’ll be with you all the time.’
‘Every minute?’
‘Except when you’re in the ladies’ room, honey. There you have to look out for yourself.’ She smiled and relaxed.
‘I have to fix dinner,’ she said, heading off to the kitchen.
Kelly went outside. Something in him called for more weapons practice, but he’d done that already. Instead he walked into the equipment bunker and took the .45 down from the rack. First he depressed the stud and action spring. Next he swiveled the bushing. That allowed the spring to go free. Kelly dismounted the slide assembly, removing the barrel, and now the pistol was field-stripped. He held the barrel up to a light, and, as expected, it was dirty from firing. He cleaned every surface, using rags, Hoppe’s cleaning solvent, and a toothbrush until there was no trace of dirt on any metal surface. Next he lightly oiled the weapon. Not too much oil, for that would attract dirt and grit, which could foul and jam the pistol at an inconvenient moment. Finished cleaning, he reassembled the Colt quickly and expertly – it was something he could and did do with his eyes closed. It had a nice feel in his hand as he jacked the slide back a few times to make sure it was properly assembled. A final visual inspection confirmed it.
Kelly took two loaded magazines from a drawer, along with a single loose round. He inserted one loaded clip into the piece, working the slide to load the first round in the chamber. He carefully lowered the hammer before ejecting the magazine and sliding another round into place. With eight cartridges in the weapon, and a backup clip, he now had a total of fifteen rounds with which to face danger. Not nearly enough for a walk in the jungles of Vietnam, but he figured it was plenty for the dark environs of a city. He could hit a human head with a single aimed shot from ten yards, day or night. He’d never once rattled under fire, and he’d killed men before. Whatever the dangers might be, Kelly was ready for them. Besides, he wasn’t going after the Vietcong. He was going in at night, and the night was his friend. There would be fewer people around for him to worry about, and unless the other side knew he was there – which they wouldn’t – he didn’t have to worry about an ambush. He just had to stay alert, which came easily to him.