Facing the Storm (Brice Bannon Seacoast Adventure Book 1) Read online

  Floyd sat quietly at the far end of the bar, nursing his drink and playing his smart phone video game. The device beeped and pinged and played annoying music. As always, Bannon marveled at how well the old guy held his liquor. He’d been there since they opened over nine hours earlier, was still knocking them back, and was still upright.

  Kayla called back. “I found exactly one file on the incident. That alone makes it suspicious. I’ve uploaded the PDF to your email. It’s thin, a few after action reports, some CID investigative notes, and a handful of statements. But Brice, even those are heavily redacted. I don’t know how much help they’ll be.”

  “Any chance you can get the un-redacted file?”

  “You hear that?” she asked. “That’s me falling down, I’m laughing so hard. Um, no. But I did make a few calls, and I can tell you, there’s way more to this than a few dead soldiers.”

  “A couple more were injured, too.”

  “Injured?” Kayla said. “Brice, it was a massacre. Three dead U.S. soldiers, seven Afghan regulars, two private contractors, and seventeen local civilians.”

  Bannon ground his back teeth. Newkirk and Yarber had lied to him. “What about insurgents? The incident began with two suicide bombers.”

  “It started that way,” Kayla agreed. “But the scuttlebutt is that’s all there was. No other aggressors. No one will confirm this, but it sounds like the bad guys went boom, everybody started shooting, and a bunch of allied forces personnel and civilians ended up dead.”

  “And CID comes in to cover it up,” Bannon concluded.

  “You’re more cynical than I am. I like to believe they couldn’t find any evidence to refute everyone’s statements, which reported there were multiple attackers besides the two suicide bombers. Without any proof to the contrary, they chose to not open a can of international incident.”

  “Any halfway decent investigation would’ve poked holes in that story. If they’d wanted to. They covered it up.”

  On the other end, Kayla sighed, forced to agree. “Fine.”

  “Thanks.” He hung up and opened the PDF file.

  Kayla was right. He scrolled through the documents. Most of the screen was just thick, horizontal black marks. They were all like that. Just black.

  Tara came around from behind the bar to look over his shoulder. “Huh. Somebody sure likes their black marker.”

  Tired of looking at page after page of long black marks, Bannon stopped searching and sat back on his stool. He folded his arms over his chest. A dead end.

  Tara leaned in and continued to scroll the documents across the screen. She came to the section containing the written statements taken by the CID investigators. Like the rest, they were completely blacked out except for the occasional use of words like “was,” “this,” “is,” and “then.”

  Bannon reached out a hand and stopped her. “Go back.”

  She slowly scrolled back up as he sat forward, squinting at the headers of each statement. He’d caught sight of one name that wasn’t redacted. The name was in the top header section and had no rank. That meant civilian, and more than likely, Night Wing personnel.

  But that wasn’t what caught Bannon’s eye. It was the name itself. James Tennant.

  As in Detective “No, I never had the opportunity to serve” James Tennant.

  Bannon slapped the laptop closed and stood up, almost knocking his stool over. He looked down the bar. “Floyd, that’s it. Bar’s closed.”

  Floyd looked up from his smart phone screen. “What? But the lights ain’t even gone up yet.”

  Tara slid the bank of light switches all the way up and the bar flooded with bright, white light.

  Floyd shielded his eyes and squinted. “Damn it, girl. Warn a fella next time.”

  “It’s closing time, Cap’n. Time to get your sorry ass out.”

  He grumbled under his breath, threw down the last of his drink and hopped off the stool. He rapped his knuckle on the hard polished surface and said, “Put it on my tab.”

  “You don’t have a tab,” Tara said. “You’re a freeloader.”

  Floyd put a hand in the air and waved, ignoring her as he walked toward the door. “I don’t get treated like this down at the Purple Urchin.”

  “That’s ‘cause you’re banned from the Purple Urchin, old man,” Tara shouted after him as he shuffled out the door.

  He said something neither she nor Bannon could decipher.

  Once he was out the door, Tara lowered the lights to a reasonable level. “You’re on to something. What’s up?”

  Bannon took his Sig from the cooler where Tara had put it behind the bar. He checked the magazine though he knew it was fully loaded and slapped it home again. He returned the Sig to its holster at the small of his back, ignoring the chill of the cold metal.

  “We need to take a ride. I need you to keep an eye on Detective Tennant.”

  “And you?”

  “I think I know where Sadler’s evidence is. If I’m right, Sadler was murdered and I know who did it.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  AS HE DROVE back to Nashua, Bannon put in a call to the police station. He asked to speak with Detective Tennant, but was told the cop was on the road. He asked that Tennant be contacted, requesting a call back from the cop.

  Tennant called ten minutes later.

  Bannon didn’t even have to lie to the man.

  “I’ve got information that indicates Sadler didn’t commit suicide. I think he was murdered.”

  “I’m all ears,” Tennant said. “What is it?”

  “We need to meet. In person,” Bannon said, thus laying the trap.

  It would not be Bannon lying in wait for the detective, but Tara instead. She would stay on the cop while Bannon headed for the evidence.

  “I have to show you.” Bannon gave him a location, hung up, and called Tara who was already at the proposed meeting site, a Shaw’s supermarket parking lot off Spit Brook Road and Daniel Webster Highway. “He’ll be there in twenty minutes. When I’m a no show, he’s gonna be pissed. Tail him until I have I a chance to collect the evidence against him.”

  “Copy that.”

  Bannon closed the connection and continued driving. The truck barreled along well over the posted speed limit. Bright halogen headlights pierced the darkness, illuminating the ruler-straight pavement.

  He didn’t understand everything, but he knew enough to figure out what had happened. Tennant had worked for Night Wing and had been part of the friendly fire incident in Kabul, perhaps responsible in some way. Bannon didn’t know how, but somewhere along the way Sadler and Tennant must have connected. Tennant learned about Sadler’s evidence, evidence that maybe could implicate the detective in wrongdoing. So he killed Sadler to keep him from talking, from exposing him.

  It fit, and explained the detective’s concern over Bannon being a private investigator, except for one thing. How’d the detective get himself assigned to investigate the murder he’d just committed? It was a neat trick, but how?

  Bannon dismissed his concerns. It didn’t matter. He didn’t have the information at the time, but he should’ve followed up anyway. Where was the one place, the only place, a homeless vet living in a shelter could securely hide something of extreme value?

  Bannon pulled into the Terrace Suite apartments. He checked the time. Not yet nine o’clock. The lights in Cindy McKinnon’s apartment were still on.

  He got out and rang Cindy’s intercom buzzer. A cold, icy breeze whistled past and scraped the skeletal branches of a tree against the building’s siding. Fingers on a chalkboard sound. The woman walking the Scottish terrier shot him a dirty look from the far end of the parking lot where her dog squatted to do his business.

  “Yes?” Cindy’s voice.

  “It’s Brice Bannon again. I’m sorry to bother you, Cindy, but it’s important.”

  He waited. The silence grew long.

  The buzzer sounded and the door lock clicked open.

  Bannon jogged up to th
e second floor. There he found the door slightly ajar. He pushed in and called out, “Cindy?”

  “Kitchen.”

  He closed the door shut and flipped the thumb latch on the deadbolt.

  In the galley kitchen, Cindy stood leaning against the counter. She wore a pair of blue sweat pants and a gray UMASS hoodie. She held a glass filled with vodka and ice. The ice rattled as she drank. Her eyes were smudged, red, and swollen from crying.

  A bottle of Absolut on the counter was almost gone.

  An empty one lay on top of an open garbage can full of Chinese takeout cartons. The apartment smelled of Kung Pao, ginger, and soy sauce.

  “I didn’t think it would be this bad.” She took another swallow of her drink. Her eyes rimmed with tears. “We weren’t even together anymore. We never would have been.”

  Bannon stepped forward and took the glass from her. “I think you’ve had enough of this.”

  He put the glass down on the counter.

  She didn’t seem to notice. “I honestly thought he was doing better. I really did.”

  “I think you were right.” Bannon took hold of her arms and held her with his gaze. “Cindy, this may be hard for you to hear, but Richie didn’t commit suicide. I have reason to believe he was killed.”

  She blinked. The tears welled up in her eyes fell. They tracked down her flushed cheeks. She let out a held sob. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  She leaned into Bannon and put her hand on his chest. She wept and he held her.

  After a time and without looking up, she said, “Why?”

  “I don’t have all the answers yet. That’s why I’m here.”

  Before he could explain, his cell phone buzzed.

  He looked at the number. Tara. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Peachy. Just here having a lovely conversation with your friend, the detective.”

  Bannon winced. Tara’s encounters with combatants were seldom gentle. “You were supposed to keep an eye on him, Blades. Not interrogate him.”

  The plan had been to keep Tennant under surveillance giving Bannon a chance to recover, and maybe review, the evidence Sadler had against him, against Night Wing. Few were better at clandestine surveillances than Tara.

  “What went wrong?”

  “He made me,” she said.

  “What?” Bannon asked, not angry but shocked. He couldn’t remember a time Tara got spotted on a surveillance.

  “Don’t make me say it again. He’s good, okay. So we had a chat instead.”

  “Was he a willing participant in this conversation?”

  “Eventually.”

  Bannon winced again, envisioning the assaulting-a-police-officer charge to come.

  “Relax,” she said. “He’s fine. And he’s not your big bad.”

  “He’s not?”

  “Nope. He admitted being in the sandbox at the time of the Night Wing incident. But he wasn’t with Night Wing per say. He was there as part of an international police training exchange program thing. He was on the other side of the compound when the would-be martyrs went boom. He gave a statement that pretty much said he didn’t know a thing.”

  That explained why the name slipped through un-redacted. He’d offered nothing useful or incriminating. Who could’ve guessed he’d end up investigating Sadler’s suicide all these years later.

  “He didn’t even connect Sadler to that mess until he got a copy of Sadler’s military file, saw he was with the 112th. That was when he started to put it together.”

  “Coincidence?” Bannon asked. Cops didn’t believe in coincidence. Bannon didn’t like them either.

  “It happens,” Tara said. “If they didn’t, there wouldn’t be a name for them.”

  “So you believe him?”

  “I do,” she said. “Truth is, he suspected you were involved in murdering Sadler, called you a person of interest. I told him you weren’t.”

  “He believes you?”

  “I can be quite convincing,” she said.

  Bannon smiled. He knew that to be true.

  “But he’s still pissed you’re interfering. You told him you wouldn’t.”

  “My bad,” Bannon said, not losing sleep over Tennant’s bruised ego.

  “What now?” Tara asked.

  “Head over here,” Bannon said. He gave her the address. “Bring Tennant. I’d like to know his take on Night Wing and what the hell happened over there, if the detective’s still in a sharing mood.”

  “He will be if you want him to be,” Tara said. “See you in ten.”

  Bannon broke the connection and pocketed the phone.

  “Is everything all right?” Cindy asked.

  “Earlier you said Richie had left some things here with you. Would you mind if I had a look?”

  “No. Sure. It’s just a cardboard box of old junk. It’s in my bedroom closet.”

  She led him through the apartment to the back bedroom. She grabbed her glass of vodka before leaving the kitchen. As she walked, her path to the bedroom wasn’t exactly straight.

  The bedroom had two windows and was large enough for a queen-size bed, a low six-drawer dresser and a makeup table against the wall next to the door. On the table a small candle in a molded glass holder burned, filling the room with a lavender scent. Hairbrushes, makeup, jewelry, and other cosmetics littered the oval table top.

  Once in the room, she had to close the door to open the sliding doors into the closet.

  “It’s that box right there.” She pointed to a somewhat battered cardboard box on the floor under a row of her hanging clothes.

  Bannon pulled it out.

  He put it on the foot of the bed while Cindy returned several pairs of shoes Bannon had displaced dragging the box out. He opened the top flaps which had been folded closed. From the carton he extracted one item at a time: a full box of ammo, .45ACPs; an old chrome Zippo lighter with a U.S. Army emblem on it; an American flag, folded into a military triangle; a pair of Army fatigues, neatly folded; a journal or log book of some kind; several files with military paperwork inside, including Sadler’s discharge papers. A small jewelry box, inside it were his medals and ribbons.

  That was it.

  Bannon flipped through the journal (the pages were blank) but several photographs fell out onto the bed. They were creased and dog-eared, a mix of posed and candid shots; some with Richie in them, some with his Army buddies in them. They mugged for the camera. Guys wrestling or with their arms around each other or in playful headlocks. Guys sitting on the hoods, tailgates or step-ups of sand-colored camouflage half-ton trucks, polishing their boots, or drinking contraband booze, or playing cards.

  Bannon recognized many of the men for the 112th, most noticeably a younger Newkirk and a few of Kenny Douglason. As he shuffled through them, he handed them off to Cindy.

  She took them with trembling fingers. She fanned out the ones with Richie in them. Her eyes shimmered with tears. “He looks so happy.”

  “The Richie Sadler I knew then was,” Bannon said. “Guess the bad stuff hadn’t been bad enough yet.”

  Bannon set the Zippo on the makeup stand and pulled the uniform out of the bottom of the box. He looked to see if there was anything else underneath.

  There was nothing more inside the carton.

  Disappointed, Bannon began to return the desert-colored camouflage fatigues to the box. As he did, a cell phone slipped from the folds of the camouflaged clothes and tumbled into the carton. The model was a few years old.

  Bannon picked it up. “This Richie’s?”

  Cindy shook her head. “I’ve never seen that one.”

  He tried to turn it on but the battery was drained. “Do you have a phone charger?”

  “Sure.” Still looking at the pictures, Cindy pointed to the makeup table.

  Bannon spotted a black wire plugged into the wall outlet. With the end in his hand, he was pleasantly surprised to discover the cord and phone were compatible. He connected the phone and was rewarded with
a ping, indicating it was receiving juice.

  He returned his attention to the carton and its contents but found nothing that could remotely be considered incriminating evidence in some horrific friendly fire situation. Not even the photos.

  Puzzled, Bannon re-boxed the items. He’d been sure it would be here. He looked to Cindy who still held the photos with Richie in them.

  She pulled them toward her body, protecting them from being snatched away. “I’ll keep these out.”

  “Okay.” He’d have done the same.

  With the box returned to its place on the closet floor, Bannon picked up the phone.

  It wasn’t fully charged, but plugged in, it had powered up.

  Luckily, it wasn’t password protected. He scrolled through the contact list. Bannon knew a lot of the soldiers from Richie’s unit. None of those names appeared in the phone’s contact list. Nor did Bannon recognize any of the names in the list—all of the numbers were out of state. Most of them were from the Boulder, Colorado area—except for Iannuzzi.

  He frowned. The soldier killed. This was his phone.

  He swiped the screen with his finger. He found the message icon but there were no messages, read or unread. Back at the main screen he found the camera icon and tapped it.

  The last entry was a video. He played it.

  The screen revealed the video had been taken at night. Bannon saw sand and truck tracks and the glow of lights. There was a jumble of voices in the background. An Army vehicle rumbled past the screen. Bannon’s heart began to race. More voices, then an explosion.

  Suddenly the screen jumbled chaotically. People were screaming. There was gunfire in the background. More screaming. A second explosion.

  “What’s that?” Cindy cocked her head to see the tiny screen.

  Bannon looked up. He heard a banging noise. At first he thought it was coming from the phone. He shut the video off and the banging continued, followed by shouting. “Open up! We know you’re in there, Bannon!”

  “Who could that be?” Cindy asked. She reached for the bedroom door.

  Bannon touched her arm. “Don’t.”