Breacher (Tom Keeler Book 2) by Jack Lively (reading well TXT) 📕

I said, “What kind of other stuff?”

“Maybe something falling. You know. A low bang.”

“And then?”

“I waited. I got my clothes on, and I came out. I saw the guys first, dead, in the games room. Then I found Jane.”

“And then what did you do?”

Chapman looked at me uncomprehending. “Do? I got out of there. I didn’t even think. I came down to the boat house and then you found me.”

“How long were you down there in the boat house?”

“I don’t know. Less than an hour, I guess. I had nowhere else to go and I was flipping out, Keeler. To be honest, I’m still flipping out.”

Not really, I thought. But I said, “So you didn’t see whoever killed them.”

“No.”

“What were you drinking, before you went into the sauna?”

She said, “Huh?”

“In the games room. You were there and you were drinking with the others.”

Chapman nodded. “Yes. Jack on the rocks. That’s what I drink. Why?”

I said, “No reason.” She looked at me weirdly. I pointed to the sweatshirt. “Harvard. That where you went to school?”

“No. I went to MIT.” Then she understood. She said, “Yes. This is George’s sweatshirt. He’s still at MIT. It’s close to Harvard, you know.” Chapman pulled her knees into her chest. “Jane told you about George. This is all about George, Jane’s son. He’s missing.”

I said, “She told me. Who are you to George?”

“He’s my boyfriend. Or at least he was, before he just disappeared.”

I looked at Chapman. She was wearing just the sweatshirt and nothing much else. I said, “You’re uncomfortable and cold. It isn’t going to get better.”

She said, “I know that.”

I stepped over to the free seat and sat myself down, right next to Amber Chapman. I turned to her. “Alright, take it from the top and go slow. Tell me the story so far. Beginning with your arrival in Alaska.”

She took a deep breath, then looked me straight in the eyes. “Keeler, I know what Jane told you. She discussed it with me before going out to the airport to try and get you on board. But I don’t mind telling it again.”

“Thank you.”

She nodded. “We flew out here from Boston. Me, Jane, and the guys. Jane is a money person, affluent. She took care of the car and the house from back east.”

I said, “Take it slow. You arrive on an airplane. They don’t do direct flights from either Boston or New York, so you transferred through another city. Portland or Seattle, or maybe Chicago.”

Chapman bit her lip. She said, “Seattle-Tacoma. Then up here to Port Morris.”

“And what did you do first? You went out to eat, you started asking questions?”

She said, “No. First thing we did was go to his apartment building. He wasn’t there, and we couldn’t get in touch with the super or the landlord. Still can’t.”

I said, “Alright. What then?”

“We were hungry. Jane refused to eat on the plane because she said the food sucked, so we were all starving when we got here. First thing we did was go eat at the New York café, because Jane liked the name. She’s a snob, okay?”

“No doubt. And in the New York café, did you start asking around? Showing photos of your boyfriend to the locals?”

Chapman looked at me for a moment, like a deer caught in the headlights. “Yes. Shit. Jane had a bunch of pictures printed out. We showed them to the people in the restaurant. Then we went straight to the police station, me and Jane. The guys went down to the waterfront. Same thing, they had copies of the pictures.”

I said, “What time was this?”

Chapman said, “Late afternoon. I think we landed at 4:00 p.m. The flight was really long.” She looked down at the zodiac deck. “That’s it, right? We started poking around too obviously, so the bad guys got wind of us right away. So stupid.”

I said, “Only problem was you weren’t prepared for them. It wasn’t stupid. In some ways it was smart, because now you know. You brought them out of the woodwork.”

“Know what?”

“That something happened to George. He didn’t have any kind of an accident. Didn’t get eaten by a grizzly bear in the woods, or fall into the water while pissing from a boat.”

“Right. But Jane and the guys are dead.”

I said, “Yes, and now you move on. What happened next?”

Chapman spoke slowly and carefully, as if recounting what had happened was important. She said, “The morning after we arrived, we went to the New York café for breakfast. When we came back to the car, the front left tire had a flat. While we were changing the tire, two men came. I think they punctured the tire in order to delay us.”

“A reasonable assumption. Describe the men.”

“One guy had a mustache, the other guy didn’t. The mustache guy did the talking. He assumed that Jason and Adam were in charge, not me or Jane. Typical macho asshole. He straight up ordered us to get back on a plane and get the hell out of town. Said that if we didn’t, then things would go badly for us. Then our men sort of reacted, you know, aggressively. But the two guys knew more about fighting than Jason and Adam. So, the guy with the mustache got Adam’s arm behind his back and broke the finger.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that, like dry wood. And after that we got back in the car, but they were laughing at us because the tire was still flat.”

“Nice guys. You and your crew were like fish out of water. That’s for sure.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

The night had cleared up. The light rain had blown out to sea and now the water was still. The cover on Carolina Island was rocky, with big trees swarmed in thick greenery. Giant trunks leaned over the waterline. Over on the other side of a spit of land was Port Morris, a haze of electric light above the trees.

I