“When do you think they’re going to find that body?” he asked.
“Probably early in the morning. When one of the hotel residents drives out that way. I suppose around eight o’clock. I’m hoping they’ll think it’s a local murder and concentrate their search for the killer in the Brockhurst area.”
“You want to go straight to Logan?”
“Oh, I think so. Then I’ll get the first flight to Europe I can.” Not even Fausi was permitted to know her destination. And he knew it. Never even asked. He just said, “I’m going to miss you, Shakira. It’s been tense, but enjoyable.”
Shakira had never heard those two adjectives used together, and, as a student of language, she found herself laughing. “Very nicely stated, Fausi,” she said. “I think you are better at speaking English than I am. Which is important, because I am really good.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Rashood,” he replied. “I’ll accept the compliment.”
It was forty miles more from the I-95 junction up to Washington, which they made by 1:45 A.M. They avoided the city, because 95 swings sharply right on the southern outskirts of Alexandria and sweeps across the Potomac on the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge, straight into the state of Maryland.
From there it makes a huge easterly sweep, combining with the Beltway, right around the outside of the nation’s capital for about twenty miles, running directly past Andrews Air Force Base, and then, in Fausi’s case ironically, veering resolutely off-course, diametrically away from the National Security Agency at Fort Meade.
The Buick angled back to its northeasterly route at around 2:30 A.M. and headed for Baltimore. They were past that city by 3:15 and heading on up to the Philadelphia area. Shortly before first light, they crossed the Delaware River at Trenton and made the New Jersey Turnpike, toward New York and the long wooded highways of New England.
They stopped for gas and coffee somewhere north of New Brunswick, and kept going to the George Washington Bridge. Traffic was beginning to build even at 5:30 in the morning, but it was still flowing fast, and Fausi crossed the Hudson at high speed, gunned the Buick along the north end of Manhattan, and then straight up the New England Thruway.
Three and a half hours later, they were approaching Logan airport, and they pulled into the international building, Terminal E, at 9:15 A.M. Their parting was achieved in under five seconds; they shook hands, and Shakira grabbed a nearby baggage cart and walked into the terminal.
At precisely this time, seven states away in Virginia, the pace was less frenetic. Matt Barker’s body was discovered in the parking lot, not by a departing resident but by a member of Jim Caborn’s cleaning staff who always entered the hotel that way, and who almost tripped over the body.
She stood there in the parking lot and started screaming at the top of her lungs. It was never made clear whether this was because Matt’s cock was still sticking ramrod-straight out of his trousers, or because the hilt of the jeweled dagger did suggest he had been murdered. At any rate, Mrs. Price did some world-class screaming.
Jim Caborn, who was in his office, heard the commotion and came running outside, thinking someone was being murdered. Close. But the deed had taken place many, many hours before. Jim reached in his pocket for his cell phone and dialed 911.
Within ten minutes, the local police chief, in company with two officers, a detective, and the pathologist, arrived at the parking lot. An ambulance came five minutes later. The body was photographed and briefly examined by the pathologist, who took the temperature and pronounced that Matt Barker had died around midnight or before.
The detective in charge of the investigation considered that there would be no point in casting a police cordon around the town. If the killer had left, it was too late. If he was still in the area, he would almost certainly remain in place. There was no harm in having the body removed to the nearest mortuary, since it was obviously not a perfect advertisement for Jim Caborn’s Estuary Hotel.
“Thanks, Joe,” said Jim, as the ambulance pulled away. “Now come in for some coffee, and I’ll arrange for you to speak to everyone you want.”
All three of the principal men in this sudden, unexpected small-town saga on the banks of the Rappahannock had known each other since childhood. Detective Joe Segel had been at school with Matt Barker. Jim Caborn had played football with Joe at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, out in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in the western part of the state. This was a very local murder.
Inside the hotel, Jim made a list of everyone he thought might be able to throw some light on the final hours of Matt Barker, which had plainly been spent in the Estuary Hotel bar with his buddies. Top of Jim’s list was Carla Martin, who often talked with the big garage owner. He also gave Detective Segel the full names of Herb, Rick, and Bill, who were presumably the last people to see Matt alive.
“What time does Miss Martin show up?” asked Detective Segel.
“Five o’clock sharp,” said Jim. “And she’s never late.”
“I’ll be here,” he replied.
Shakira made a split-second decision not to use her Carla Martin passport to exit the USA. Instead, she went to the one copied from that owned by Michigan-born Maureen Carson, thirty. She walked to the Aer Lingus ticketing desk and asked if she could travel first-class to Dublin on the airline’s new morning flight, leaving at 10:30 A.M., arriving Dublin at 2240 with a stop at Shannon.
“Yes, I have seats available on that. May I see your passport?”
Shakira handed it over, and the Aer Lingus girl gave it a cursory look, checked the photograph of Maureen against the dark-haired lady who stood in front of her, smiled, and said, “How do you wish to pay?”
“American Express,” she replied, knowing the card had been issued to an attaché in the Jordanian embassy in Neuilly-Seine, Paris, and that she, Shakira, was a secondary signature on the card and in possession of the PIN.
She punched it into the machine, for a ruinous amount of money, more than six thousand dollars. “Is there anything else we can do for you?” asked the girl.
“I wonder if you could book me a room in the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, and tell them I’ll be arriving quite late?”
“Will you require them to meet you off the flight?”
“No. I’ll take a cab,” said Shakira, ever alert for the necessity of anonymity whenever possible.
She picked up her bag and walked to the first-class desk. One hour later, Shakira took off for southern Ireland. The Aer Lingus Airbus was climbing steeply out over Boston Harbor just as, six hundred miles to the south, Detective Segel was preparing to return to the police station.
By any standards, the Estuary Killer had well and truly flown the coop.
Detective Joe Segel had little to go on. Someone in the hour before midnight had plunged a dagger into Matt Barker’s heart, and, according to the doctor, killed him instantly.
The police search of his body had revealed a wad of twenty-dollar bills, adding up to over $300. His credit card wallet was intact, no one had taken his cell phone, and there was no sign of a fight save for a nasty bruise on the left-hand side of his face, which could have happened when he slid, face forward, down the wall.
And yet… someone had wanted to kill Matt Barker very badly. Detective Segel spoke to his close friends, particularly those who had been in the bar with him the previous evening. None of them had the slightest idea what could possibly have happened to him. They were obviously all extremely upset. Herb and Rick were both in tears at the death of their lifelong friend.