But he knew her heart. He knew she would let the bastard in through the gates. Even show him around the place, buy him dinner, and introduce him to her parents if he asked. She was too forgiving.
“You can’t let people walk all over you, Lucy,” he would tell her. “They take advantage of you.”
But he knew that he couldn’t change her. And he knew that he didn’t ever want to. She made him want to be a better person. She allowed him into her own heaven, showed him around and showed him that what he was promised was already his.
“I wish I could,” he said to the flight attendant who was now sitting in the empty seat next to him. “I have a long drive ahead of me and ...”
“Okay,” she said and moved down the aisle as if the conversation hadn’t happened. “It’s your loss.”
The flight attendant’s response, sudden and swift as it was, caught Derek off guard. Though relieved, he wondered what he might have missed by rejecting her advances.
As he collected his overnight bag from the overhead compartment and began heading out of the plane, he felt his anger begin to build up. He didn’t understand why his anger was making itself known, or what prompted it. He just felt it rising much too quickly.
Soon after her death, Derek’s anger had a target, a place to call home. But three years after her death, his anger had lost its familiar target. It had no direction at times, no place to land.
He brushed past the flirting flight attendant and walked as quickly as he could up and out of the gangplank. He felt his anger building as he impatiently navigated past other passengers, all moving too slowly. His anger turned to rage when no one was manning the Hertz booth.
Then, as quietly and as quickly as his anger came, it dissolved as a fleeting memory of her face flashed in his mind. The face he wanted and tried so hard to recall. It was there, then gone before he could study it. Though he begged the memory to come back, all that he could see through his efforts was her face the moment before her life was finished.
“Can I help you, sir?” A young man, who had approached the Hertz desk asked. “Can I get you anything?”
Derek saw the clerk through watery eyes. He had grown used to his anger giving way to tears in an instant, but had yet to come up with a reason to give to compassionate others.
“Sorry,” he offered. “Long day. Damn yawning always makes my eyes tear up. I have a reservation under Cole. Derek Cole.”
“Yes, Mr. Cole,” the clerk replied. “Your car is all set for you.” The clerk reached for the keys. As he retrieved them, both the clerk and Derek noticed a note was taped to the set of keys. “This must be for you, Mr. Cole.”
Derek took the keys, separated the note that was taped to the key fob, and read the note to himself.
“Welcome to Albany, Derek Cole,” was all that was written on the note.
“Where did this note come from?” snapped Derek.
“I’m not sure. I just got here at 8:00.”
“Can you find out who wrote this note?”
“I could call the person who was working the counter earlier today but not sure if ...”
“Please call,” Derek said.
“It’s a little late to call now, don’t you think?”
Derek glanced at his watch, realizing the late hour.
“Listen, I’m going to leave my cell number with you. Please leave a note to have whoever knows who wrote this note to call me. Okay?”
“Okay, Mr. Cole.”
“Please make sure that you alert the person who relieves you of my request.”
“Okay. Shouldn’t be a problem.”
“It could be a big problem. A very big problem.”
************
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Derek thought about getting a hotel room to catch a few hours of sleep, and then heading out to Piseco Lake and the cabin of Doctor Peter Straus. But once he was in his rental car, he thought that arriving at the lodge well before most people would be up and moving around would be a better plan.
It was close to midnight when he punched in the address of the lodge that his client had provided him. Once entered, the Hertz Never-Lost system estimated his time of arrival to be at 2:17 AM. It had already been a long twenty-four hours for Derek, and as he started his drive to Piseco Lake, he started to realize just how much had been packed into the space of a single day.
“Let’s review,” Derek said to no one. “We have what appears to be a baby born without a heart who is whisked away to be cared for by a doctor who has been referred to as an ‘asshole.’ We have a triple murder that included two doctors who probably cared for the aforementioned heartless baby and another victim who I have no idea about. We have a missing doctor, that being one William Straus, the supposed killer, that being one Alexander O’Connell or Alexander Black, depending on who you ask. Finally, a stranger leaves a note at my car rental place, welcoming me to Albany. And me without a clue as to what I should do next. Sounds like one of my typical cases!”
The directions to the lodge that the Never Lost system provided were spot on. As Derek drove his rented Ford Taurus passed the lodge, he noticed a few lights were on, but he didn’t see any cars parked in or near the driveway. Yellow caution tape was stretched completely around the house.
He kept driving several hundred yards past the lodge until he noticed a small pull-off area on the right hand side of the road. Derek pulled his car as deeply into the parking area as he could, taking advantage of the low hanging tree limbs to serve as additional cover. He grabbed his notebook and a small flashlight from his backpack and decided to bushwhack through the woods to approach the lodge.
From the cover of the dense forest that surrounded the lodge, Derek could clearly make out the details of the two-story lodge. The lodge looked like it had been modified from its original build, with the main part of the lodge being a well-crafted log cabin and the modified section being shaped like a two-story, dormitory that stretched 50 feet from the main cabin. He counted a total of three windows on each floor of the dormitory, assumingly bedrooms or offices.