The Payback - Mike Lawson

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the chessboard back into Norton’s backpack and replaced the lunch bag he’d removed. To Norton, he said, ‘You have a good evening, sir.’ Looking directly into Carmody’s eyes, he added, ‘Both of you.’

      Carmody and Norton walked together for a block, neither man speaking. Norton was afraid to speak. When they reached the lot where Norton’s car was parked, Carmody said, ‘Did you get them?’

      ‘Yeah,’ Norton said, and he reached into the back of his baggy pants and pulled out two square plastic cases containing unlabeled CDs.

      ‘Give me the laptop, too,’ Carmody said.

      Norton quickly unzipped his backpack and handed the chessboard to Carmody.

      Carmody stared at Norton for a second, and then he put his face close to Norton’s and said very softly, ‘Somebody died today because you fucked up. The next time you fuck up, guess who’s gonna die?’

      

      Carmody stood in the center of an old steel bridge called the Manette Bridge. From where he was standing he could see the shipyard less than a mile away. The drydocks were lit by banks of lights – like those used for night games in old ballparks – so work could proceed around the clock.

      Carmody looked around, made sure there were no cars coming from either direction, and dropped the chessboard into the water below him. He had thought about just hiding the laptop but had decided not to take the risk. He’d get another when they needed one, which probably wouldn’t be for quite a while.

      He placed his forearms on the bridge rail and looked down into the water.

      This whole thing was coming apart; it was time to shut it down. But he knew she wouldn’t do that. He looked at his watch. He had to get going. The rendezvous was in less than two hours.

      

      She made him drive a long way from Bremerton for the meeting, past Green Mountain, up a winding road that changed from pavement to gravel and ended at a clear-cut section of forest surrounded by a lonely ring of still-standing trees. She also kept him waiting longer than normal before she approached his car, taking twice as much time to make sure he hadn’t been followed.

      She entered the car and he was surprised at the way she was dressed. She normally wore the sort of clothes a cat burglar would wear, dark jeans and a long-sleeved dark T-shirt. But tonight she was wearing a low-cut black cocktail dress, a dress which showed off very good legs. On her feet were sexy, impractical high heels that must have been tough to walk in in the area where they were parked. She even had on perfume. The rendezvous must have caused her to interrupt or cancel whatever plans she’d had for the evening, but Carmody couldn’t imagine her having a social life. He had no idea what she did when they were apart; he had always thought of her as a beautiful vampire lying in a coffin waiting until the sun disappeared.

      As usual she began without any sort of greeting. ‘What will you do now?’ she said.

      ‘Wait. Just lay back and wait.’

      She stared at him a moment then nodded.

      ‘Did he talk to anyone before he left the shipyard?’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘You have to control those fools,’ she said.

      ‘Hey! I didn’t recruit them,’ Carmody said.

      ‘They’re your responsibility,’ she snapped.

      She was right about that.

      ‘How long do you think we’ll have to wait?’

      Carmody shrugged. ‘Maybe a month.’

      She paused a beat then nodded. One thing Carmody liked about her – maybe the only thing – was that she didn’t waste time nagging at him, telling him that she wasn’t happy with the delay.

      Apparently having nothing more to ask him, or further instructions to give him, she opened the door and started to leave the car.

      ‘There’s something else you need to know,’ Carmody said.

       11

      Dave Whitfield had been stabbed to death.

      He had called DeMarco’s cell phone at exactly 8:10 a.m. and had left the shipyard twenty-eight minutes later. No one knew for sure why he had left when he did or where he was going, but DeMarco had an idea. DeMarco figured that when Whitfield had not been able to communicate with him by cell phone when he was on the fishing boat, Whitfield had left the shipyard to go to DeMarco’s motel, thinking that at that hour DeMarco might still be there, if not in his room, then maybe having breakfast.

      Whitfield’s car had been parked in a small lot three blocks from the shipyard. The lot had space for six or seven cars, and to reach the lot, Whitfield had to walk down an alley. The parking lot itself was the backyard of a private home; the home owner had concluded long ago that charging shipyard workers eight bucks a day for parking was more enjoyable than mowing a lawn. The parking lot was visible only to people walking down the alley and to the owner of the lot if he happened to be looking out one of his back windows.

      Whitfield had been killed in the parking lot, and based on the temperature of his liver and other factors that came to light later, the time of death was established at approximately nine a.m. He had been stabbed once and the weapon used, presumably a long-bladed knife, had entered his rib cage, slid between his ribs, and severed his aorta. After he was killed, his wallet and watch were taken and his body was shoved under his car. The body wasn’t discovered until noon when another shipyard worker went to the parking lot during his lunch break.

      In the two days following the killing, Frank Hathaway showed exactly how much muscle an angry Secretary of the Navy could flex. A squad of investigators from NCIS descended on the shipyard like winged furies and a large navy poker was jammed up the local police chief’s ass to prod him into action. Two FBI agents were also diverted from the Bureau’s Seattle office to Bremerton. The FBI’s jurisdiction was questionable as the killing had occurred on city – vice federal – property, but since Hathaway was the one demanding action they had decided to engage.

      DeMarco and Emma were interviewed several times. As they had no reason not to cooperate they told the assorted groups of cops what they knew. The last phone call DeMarco had received from Whitfield was naturally of particular interest but the only thing DeMarco could tell them was that he thought Whitfield had been talking about Norton and Mulherin, but nothing Whitfield had said, or that DeMarco had heard over the poor connection, had led him to conclude that Whitfield had discovered anything that would be a motive for murder.

      ‘Look,’ DeMarco told the investigators, ‘this whole thing with Whitfield was him thinking these two guys were doing a shitty job and making more money than they should have. I don’t know why he called me, but we didn’t find any evidence that anything illegal was going on, and we sure as hell didn’t find anything worth killing somebody over.’

      Norton, Mulherin, and Carmody were interrogated by navy and federal investigators and by city detectives. Alibis were asked for and verified. Whitfield’s coworkers and neighbors were questioned, evidence was collected from the scene of the crime, and the neighborhood where Whitfield had been killed was canvassed by teams of cynical cops.

      Norton and Mulherin were cleared almost immediately. At the time of Whitfield’s death, they had been inside the shipyard and were seen by approximately twenty people. On top of alibis provided by multiple eyewitnesses, the two men also had an electronic alibi: to enter or exit the shipyard, employees had to swipe their badges through bar-code readers installed at all the shipyard gates. The bar-code readers provided the exact time Whitfield had left the shipyard and verified that Mulherin and Norton had entered the shipyard at 7:00 a.m. and remained there all day, Mulherin leaving at 3:59 p.m. and Norton at 5:30 p.m.

      Phil Carmody was also eliminated as a murder suspect, although his alibi was not

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