David Dun - The Black Silent

The dispatcher back at San Juan was excellent and had the latest equipment, so Frick was working through her. More significantly, the dispatcher was convinced that Crew and Ranken were killed by Robert Chase and his accomplice, Haley Walther. With the computer screens in front of him and the sophisticated mapping capability, he could monitor the location of every deputy and every special deputy and all the relevant action. Cars used by regular deputies had GPS locators and transponders, so their position was automatically tracked.

But it didn't matter which men Frick wanted in which location, there weren't enough men on Lopez and there wouldn't be for some time. There were three regular deputies stationed on Lopez Island and one special deputy. The sheriff's boat two, run by Frick's imported men, would be ferrying people and then watching for possible escapes from Fisherman's Bay. Volunteer residents were watching other moorages. Frick had had four cars before asking for volunteer vehicles and now he had nine. The four other men he had already moved to Lopez didn't do much to solve the shortage. So Sam was getting a freebie getaway. Smart of him to go by sea. It would take a lot more men to bottle him up at night.

For a moment Frick wondered how much help he was actually getting from the regular deputies. It was no secret that some of them remained suspicious about Haley Walther's guilt.

He got on the phone and called the local news station in Seattle. "This is Sergeant Garth Frick, of the San Juan Island County Sheriff's Department. We have a new development in the manhunt for Robert Chase and his accomplice, Haley Walther. They have escaped to Lopez Island and have apparently taken a hostage. We're withholding the name of the hostage for the time being, pending the notification of her family, who seem to live off island and are temporarily unavailable."

Next he got Rolf on the line. "Anything more on that written pledge or his fellow scientists?"

"Nothing so far."

"Let's look through his phone records and identify every call to a retired scientist. Look especially at his cell phone bills. Call every number you can. Tell them you're trying to get hold of Ben and you need the number of the place on Orcas. Any numbers you get, call the phone company and get the address. Got it?"

"You're the boss."

Smart-ass.

Frick got back on the radio with the dispatcher.

"How long to get a boat down here to MacKaye Harbor?"

"Boat three, forty-four knots, takes fifteen minutes from Fisherman's Bay in the daytime. At night forty-five," the dispatcher said.

"That's too long. Tell them to get their asses down here with the boat. Get men down along MacKaye Harbor Road."

"They can't run thirty knots at night." Deputy Freeman had picked up the microphone.

He was one of the guys who had questions concerning Haley Walther's guilt.

"The hell they can't run thirty knots. They can use a spotlight and keep a sharp eye."

"There're dead heads, logs, that sort of thing," Freeman said, making eminently good sense.

But Frick knew they weren't really arguing about dead heads and logs. They were arguing about the manhunt and murder charges-the rest of the acrimony was a proxy for the real issue. It angered him because in his view of the world he had provided sufficient evidence regardless of its truth or falsity.

"We've got a murderer on this island, Deputy Freeman. He's killed two peace officers and wounded another. He's killed a Sanker employee. Now get this straight. Until we get hold of the Sheriff, I'm Zebra One. It's my job to catch them. Get with the program or go home."

Rachael had been waiting for the Washington State Police captain for about twenty minutes. It was almost 2:30 a.m. and the diligent Lieutenant Glendale had managed to persuade Captain Roy Melrose to come into work. Captain Melrose was a twenty-five-year veteran of the state police and was not accustomed to being up in the wee hours, but he was a nice guy with a sense of humor, the sort who would make a great granddad.

And judging from the pictures on his desk, he was a grandfather several times over.

"When Lieutenant Glendale called me," said Melrose, "frankly, I thought he was nuts.

Until he told me something. You'd never guess what he told me."

"I won't even try," Lew said.

"Me either," Rachael said.

"He told me that when he saw that paper of Ms. Sullivan's, he decided to call the FBI and so he did. In about twenty-five minutes he was talking to people in Washington, DC.

They called back an hour later or so and now they want me to have you at the FBI field office, Third Avenue downtown, at seven in the morning. People are coming from Washington, DC, including Homeland Security."

"That's a long time," Rachael said, not caring about the rest. "People could die while we're sitting here waiting for well-intentioned bureaucrats."

Captain Melrose sat back in his chair. "I suppose we could take one of our choppers up there and try to find this fellow Frick. We could ask him what he's doing and he'd say he's chasing a murderer. I sure would like to get the sheriff on the phone; he's a good man. But that's not gonna happen. I already tried and he's someplace in the Swiss Alps, and nobody's gonna find him in a few hours. And for the moment there seems to be support among the deputies for what Frick's doing. They think your friend killed their own kind."

"He's told all the deputies that my friends shot two of their own and stabbed another," said Rachael. "What would you expect they'd say?"

But Melrose's mind was moving ahead. "Why the hell would Homeland Security be interested?"

"I don't know," she said. "Couldn't we discuss this on the way to San Juan Island?"

Stutz looked willing but uncertain.

"After the FBI, maybe," said Melrose. "And last my people heard, they were on Lopez, anyway."

Lopez Island was good news, Rachael thought. In all likelihood it meant that at least one of them, Sam or Haley or Ben, was still alive. "If you don't do something about Frick now," she said, "heroes will die on your watch and the secret of the century will be stolen. Think about that."

Melrose sighed. "I'll have a chopper at the fed building at seven-thirty and tell the feebies we gotta leave. That's the best I can do. I've told them you think Ben Anderson's in danger from Garth Frick. We'll be up to the San Juans by eight-thirty in the morning. I hope you realize how hard it would be to go up there on a stormy winter night in a chopper and do anything."

Lew patted her shoulder. Rachael bit her lip, wanting to cry in frustration. She knew it would have to be enough because it was all she was going to get.

When she and Lew left, a brief and slightly strained discussion followed about sleeping arrangements. In the little time that they'd been together, Rachael had learned that Lew was a Republican, idolized Ronald Reagan, loved Texans, Texas, barbecue, and catfish.

He could smoke a cigar with aplomb, drank Dewar's neat, was confident but not cocky, and treated his mother, kids, and older people well.

In turn, he'd learned that Rachael was a DNA-based Democrat and hated all of the aforementioned aspects of life that he held dear except the part about mother, kids, and older people. She hadn't told him about her penchant for nudism. The one love they shared was for fast boats.

Rachael and Lew went to the Four Seasons, where her father had an account, and with the help of a fastidious night manager, they rented a room with two double beds. One bed was in the east and one the west. She slept in the east but would consider rapprochement with the west. However, she made it clear to Lew that the Berlin Wall didn't come down on the first request. It was insane that they were even having the discussion. On that last point he seemed skeptical about the need for her reluctance and his confidence was troubling. Her growing interest in him, she decided, was a damnable affliction.