Collateral Damage A Matt Royal Mystery - By H. Terrell Griffin Page 0,102
you to look into his son’s murder. Anderson is one of them.”
He was using his fingers to tick off his points. “He lives in Decatur. He’s Desmond’s lawyer. He probably knows about Marsh LLC and the house in the Abacos. He’s been a close friend of Doc’s for many years. They’ve built a company together. He wouldn’t do anything against Doc’s interest unless he thought it was better for Doc if you knew about the house.”
“The answers are in Marsh Harbour,” I said. “Logan, you up for another trip to the islands?”
“Can I take my gun?”
“I think that’d be a good idea. I’ll call Cassidy and let him know where we’re going.”
I called Bill Lester as I was walking out the door. “Bill, Jock and I are on our way to the Bahamas. We have a lead on J.D.”
“Talk to me.”
“We think she’s safe and hiding out with some friends near Marsh Harbour.”
“You think she’s okay?”
“Yeah. She’s with Doc Desmond.”
“Okay. Keep me posted. I’ve found out something else that is very odd.”
“What’s up, Bill?”
“I followed up on the list of names you gave me. The Thanatos group. We know about Desmond, Brewster, and Fleming, but there were four more still alive. One of them owns a small garage in a town in North Dakota up by the Canadian border. His only son was shot to death a few months back. Another member of Team Charlie lives in Northern California. The sheriff there told me that there’d been no murders in the county in the last couple of years. I asked him if he knew the team member. He did. Then he told me that the guy’s daughter, an army officer, was murdered in Charlottesville, Virginia last month.”
“That pretty much seals it. Somebody is definitely targeting the children of the members of Team Charlie.”
“There’s more,” the chief said. “The other two men and their families have disappeared.”
“Shit. Are you sure?”
“Matt, J.D. had already talked to each of the cops I spoke to. They’d looked into this thing for her. They were kind of curious as to why I was calling them.”
“When did J.D. talk to them?”
“Sunday. The day before she disappeared.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
The islands lay like brown amoeba floating on an ocean of ever-changing hues. Dark blue over trenches, light green covering the sandbars and shallows, brown where the reefs poked toward the surface. Puffy clouds dotted the horizon, cotton candy daubed on a cerulean backdrop. A kaleidoscope of pastels imprinted on a tropical canvas. This was the Bahamas from twenty thousand feet, a country of seven hundred islands and twenty-five hundred islets and cays covering a hundred thousand square miles of Atlantic Ocean.
We landed at the Marsh Harbour Airport and checked in with the customs officer stationed there. Like most things in the Bahamas, the arrival procedures are relaxed and cursory. Logan had been apprehensive about bringing our weapons to the Bahamas, but Jack had assured him that the authorities were not likely to examine our bags. They didn’t really care what we brought in as long as we paid the fees. Jock was right.
We showed the man our passports, paid the arrival fee in cash, got a signed document attesting to the fact that we’d cleared customs at a government port of entry, and were told to enjoy our stay. Our pilots were headed for a hotel they knew that catered to executive aircrews laying over while their bosses enjoyed whatever it was they did on the island.
Jock, Logan, and I retrieved our bags from the plane and took a taxi to a marina that rented boats. I’d made a reservation online before we left my house.
J.D.’s interest in the other dead children of Team Charlie members was another anomaly in our theory of what was going on. We’d only gotten the information on Team Charlie from the director that morning. How did J.D. find out about it before we did? How did she know to start making calls on Sunday? Did she have a source that she wasn’t sharing with us? The facts just kept getting fuzzier. One minute I thought we were on the right track and the next minute the fog of doubt rolled in and obscured the picture that was taking shape in our minds. It was maddening, like a jigsaw puzzle that was beginning to come into focus and suddenly some of the pieces changed shape, causing me to rethink what I’d begun to accept as truth.