Chapter 4
The next morning Devine walked into a private care facility in northern Virginia with Emerson Campbell to visit Curtis Silkwell.
“Clare still visits him every week here,” said Campbell as he held the door for Devine.
“Not so heartless then,” replied Devine, drawing a tortured scowl from the other man.
“Heartless enough,” Campbell shot back.
A nurse led them to a room in a secure “memory care” unit. The space was small and sparsely furnished and held, at least for Devine, a sense of marching in slow motion, a wait for the inevitability of death.
After the nurse left them, both men turned their attention to the frail figure in the bed. There were no tubes hooked up to him, though there was a machine monitoring his vitals.
“He’s comfortable, in no pain, so they tell me. They’re going to have to put a feeding tube in soon,” said Campbell grimly. His voice carried a level of distress Devine had never heard before. “He’s not eating. He doesn’t think to when he’s awake. Just stares at the offered food and then goes back to sleep. And when they do get some food in him, things get clogged and he has to be aspirated. He has a DNR in place and pretty soon they will wind things down.”
They looked down at the shrunken, sleeping patient.
“I remember a six-two, two-hundred-and-twenty-pound wall of a man,” added a hollow-voiced Campbell. “Leading his men into one hell after another and coming out victorious on the other side. Won every medal and commendation the Marines offered. He should have had a shoulder full of stars but he refused to play the necessary games.”
“Same as you,” noted Devine.
“He was more deserving,” replied Campbell.
“To my mind, every person who puts on the uniform and picks up a weapon in defense of their country is deserving.”
Silkwell stirred under the sheet and his eyes opened. He looked at neither of them, his unfocused gaze playing across the ceiling for a few moments before the eyes closed once more.
“He stopped recognizing me months ago,” said Campbell. “The doctors say the progression is accelerating. No chance of recovery. Fucking disease.”
Campbell led Devine out and quietly closed the door behind them before facing off with the younger man.
“I brought you here, Devine, because I wanted you to see a true American hero. And he deserves to have his daughter’s murderer brought to justice.”
“You have no confidence in the police up there?”
“Since it’s a two-person department with few resources, no, my confidence level is not high. And if Jenny’s death is connected to her work at CIA it comes under the feds’ umbrella, not the locals’. But you have to snoop around first and find out something we can hang our jurisdictional hat on.”
“So I’m to find the killer and ascertain if any secrets have been stolen?”
“If you find the killer we have lots of experts who can help us determine the secrets issue, or whether her death was retribution for something having to do with national security.”
“The sister and brother who live up there in the old homestead, I suppose they’re suspects? I told you Clare informed me Jenny was going up there to finish some old business.”
“Yes, family, friends, strangers, foreigners — everyone is a suspect right now.”
“And what if the killer is long gone by now?”
“We’ll attack that bridge if we come to it.”
Outside the facility, Campbell shook the younger man’s hand. “I have no higher priority right now. Good luck. Many things tell me you’re going to need it.”
Campbell was driven off in a government SUV.
Devine stood in the parking lot for a few moments glancing back at the building where a doomed man didn’t even know his eldest daughter had not survived him.
He knew this was personal to Campbell. And while Devine had to maintain a professional objectivity, he knew a certain element of this mission was now personal to him as well.
In his book a dying warrior deserved no less.
Chapter 5
After a short, pinballing flight in high winds, the plane thudded onto the tarmac in Bangor, Maine. After deplaning, Devine grabbed his rental Tahoe and commenced the two-and-a-half-hour drive east to Putnam. The tiny hamlet was located on the rocky Atlantic coast and had fewer souls than the passengers on the United Airlines jumbo jet flight Devine had taken back from Italy.
The leaves had long since turned color and abandoned their respective trees and bushes. Devine’s memories of a scorching summer in New York City and a mild fall in Europe had all been extinguished by the bitter cold here. His cable-knit sweater was underwhelming in its warmth factor.
He reached Machias, turned onto Route 1, and kept going north for a while until he turned off onto another road that took him east toward the world’s second biggest ocean. He could already smell the briny air and feel the bite of the punishing wind that kept rocking the Tahoe. He looked at a long inlet the ocean had cut into the rocky shore and, despite the mission he was on, the serene view lent Devine some calm.
Before the storm?
Devine glanced at his gear pack. Inside, among other things, was his Glock nine-millimeter, a backup pistol, and extra ammo for both.
As Devine drove he went over in his mind the briefing details.
Jenny Silkwell had been an operations officer at CIA. Her focus for the past few years had been on the Middle East. Before that her area of involvement was the Russian Federation, and before that, South America. A gifted, natural linguist, she spoke fluent Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and Polish, and through immersion classes she had learned Arabic and Farsi before moving on to the Middle East region. Her job had led her to travel all over the world to meet with the human intel on the ground that she had recruited to work with America.
And maybe that had placed a wicked bullseye on the back of Jenny Silkwell, because the Russians, as well as factions in the Middle East, were not shy about striking back against perceived enemies. The answer to her murder might well lie in Moscow, Tehran, or Damascus rather than Putnam, Maine.
He had read both the national and local accounts of the murder. The national news had sent crews up here and broadcast stories for a few days until they moved on to newer stories that would capture more eyeballs. He supposed if the killer were tracked down and arrested, the big guns would be back up here to report on it.
In contrast, the local news, such that it was, had continued to go full bore with the story. Devine could imagine that the unsolved murder of a CIA officer and daughter of a war hero and former U.S. senator, who was himself a scion of a prominent and formerly wealthy Maine family, would be the most newsworthy thing that had ever happened in Putnam.
Along the way he had passed signs that said he was on the Bold Coast Scenic Byway. And it fit the bill. As his journey brought him closer to the Gulf of Maine’s shoreline, Devine, at intervals, saw narrow strips of sandy and pebble beaches as well as towering granite bluffs standing sentry along craggy coves filled with rock-strewn headlands and stout, robust greenery holding purchase on the saltwater-slicked rock wherever it could. There were also vast forests that reached to the horizon, and old orchards of fruitless trees leading right up to rocky cliffs standing firmly next to the water like silent sentries.
Finally, a weathered board on a rotting post announced the legal boundary of Putnam and stated its official population to be a few shy of 250. They must be hardy souls, thought Devine. The rugged topography and raw weather did not look like it was designed for the fainthearted.