Steve Martini - Undue Influence

Two miles on the other side, he turns down a road to the right, onto the flat plain leading to the airstrip. A second right and a few hundred feet up a dirt road he comes to a stop behind another police car and two unmarked vehicles. A small group is gathered, talking in the headlights. I see Dana, and Jessie Opolo. They’re both wearing blue nylon jackets with the letters FBI emblazoned on the back.

As soon as Dana sees my car, she moves quickly toward me, a tight expression on her face.

I kill my lights, and before I can get out she’s posturing at my door.

‘Where have you been?’

‘Pursuing a lead,’ I tell her.

‘You had us worried sick,’ she says. Dana’s face is a map of fury at this moment, but her voice is restrained. ‘We didn’t have any idea where you’d gone. Taking off like that.’

‘So you sent the troops?’ I point to the cop car that brought me in like I was on some kind of tractor beam.

‘Jessie had them put out an all-points for your car,’ she says.

‘Discreet,’ I tell her.

‘Well, you should have told us where you were going.’

‘What’s happening?’

‘Jessie and his men got a lead on the Merlows. One of the mail carriers saw them driving to a house up the road here. We think it’s where they’re holed up.’

‘Wonderful. What are they waiting for?’

‘Jessie wants to go in carefully. We’re not exactly sure what we’re dealing with.’

I’m trying to move toward Jessie and the agents. She’s got her hand on my arm.

‘What did you find?’ she says.

‘Nothing. Dead end,’ I tell her.

There is little sense telling her about meeting with Kathy Merlow or my close call with the netherworld at the hands of the courier. It would only make her more angry. If they have found the Merlows, Dana will know the story soon enough. We can get them on a plane and I can grill them both for five hours to the drone of jet engines.

We’ve made our way to where Opolo and the cops are standing.

‘Hey, man, we were worried about you. She chew your ass good?’ A big smile on the Hawaiian’s round face.

I don’t answer.

‘Where’s the house?’ I ask.

‘Up there. About a hundred yards,’ says Opolo.

Just then one of agents comes down the road, a steep incline. He holds his voice until he reaches us.

‘Lights are on, but no movement. If they’re inside they must be sitting down doing something. We can’t see a thing.’

‘Should we go?’ Opolo quizzing his men. There’s a debate.

‘We don’t have a warrant.’ One of the agents is worried.

‘Hell, we’re not looking to arrest them,’ says Opolo.

‘I’d like somebody to hold them,’ I break in. ‘At least until we find out what they know.’

‘No problem,’ says Opolo. ‘We got cause to hold them. To talk to them about the bombing at the post office. If what you say is true, they know something about whoever sent the bomb.’

‘Yeah. We just want to talk.’ One of the agents chiming in. ‘If it turns out they’re witnesses, we’ll bag ’em and ship ’em,’ he says. ‘We’ll hold ’em until you can get a subpoena or an order of extradition if they’re involved.’

‘Well, let’s do it,’ I say.

Opolo looks at me, makes a face like okay.

With the appearance of the courier, the shooting at the cemetery, the longer we wait, the greater the risk that Kathy and George Merlow are going to run. My biggest fear at this moment is that we will find an empty house, the Merlows and their bags gone.

A minute later we’re up the road, cars screaming to a halt in front of the house, a small bungalow built off the ground on pilings, a corrugated metal roof. What the locals call a plantation house.

The cop cars have their light bars blazing. Opolo and the two agents are up the front steps. One of them is carrying a small battering ram from the trunk of the car.

The cops hoof it around the house to cover the back.

Opolo pounds on the door hard enough to cause it to bow in its frame. His gun isn’t drawn, but he’s holding it inside his coat by the grip.

Dana and I have been told to stay at the foot of the steps.

‘FBI. Open the door.’

No answer.

He pounds one more time and waits just a few seconds.

He tries the doorknob. It’s locked. He motions to the other agents.

They take the battering ram, a four-inch-diameter metal pipe loaded with concrete, and swing it between them. The forces of momentum send the door flying in an arc on its hinges, splintered wood and broken metal at the lock.

Caught up in the rhythm of the chase, Dana and I move to the top of the steps.

Opolo looks at us. ‘Stay here.’

He and another of the agents are inside, guns drawn.

‘FBI. Federal agents. If you’re in here, let’s hear it.’

They’re moving through the rooms, flipping on lights. Through a window on the porch I can see them edging for angles with drawn pistols in doorways. A few seconds later one of the cops comes through from the back of the house.

‘Nobody,’ he says. A lot of frenetic movement as they hit the last few cubbyholes where anyone could hide.

Opolo waves us in, holstering his pistol.

‘If they were here, they’re gone,’ he says. ‘And it looks like they left in a hurry.’

My worst fear.

He leads us into the kitchen. One of the cops has turned off the burner on the stove. A pan of rice is burned to a crisp, long grains charred the dark color of some exotic African ant.

One of the agents comes down the hall. ‘I don’t get it. If they left, why didn’t they take their clothes?’

I look at him.

‘Closet’s full,’ he says. ‘Their bags are on a shelf, up in the closet, empty.’

‘I may have the answer.’ A voice from the other room, deeper in the house, down the hall. We move toward the sound. One of the cops is in the doorway to a small room at the end of the hall, the door half open.

He steps aside and lets us through, Opolo first, followed by Dana and myself.

I hear the guy whispering to the other cops outside. ‘No bodies,’ he says, ‘but lots of blood.’

The room is streaked with it, what forensics would call spatter evidence, on the walls and the ceiling. The bed has a dark pool at the low point where the mattress is worn in the middle. This has yet to congeal, though most of it has soaked into the mattress.

At the foot of the bed is a single item of clothing, stained with blood. One of the arms is ripped, jagged tears in the upper back, like maybe it has been punctured by a knife or some other sharp implement. It is a coat of many colors.

Besides the brown hue of drying blood there are specks of pastel and dried blue acrylic on the silk kimono, the duster worn for painting this afternoon by Kathy Merlow.

It was only by my plea of ignorance to things domestic in the law that I was allowed to remain on the spectators’ side of the bar in Laurel’s brawl with Jack over custody. This morning I find myself in the unenviable position of being dragged to the other side and up onto the witness stand.

The veins in my eyes look like threads of red dye that someone spilled into egg whites. I’ve been back three days from the islands, but with little time to sleep. Harry and I have been burning the oil trying to piece together a defense. It is a patch quilt of theories, what we know from my conversation with Marcie Reed, and what I can surmise from the facts as we know them.

This without the critical information that might have been obtained from George or Kathy Merlow. According to the FBI, their best guess is that the Merlows are now serving as fish food, somewhere at the bottom of the Pacific. I have been given little information other than this.