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

  He opted for the latter.

  Twenty minutes later he pulled into the entrance of the Terrace Suites apartment complex. On the other side of town from the homeless shelter where Sadler died, but just a few blocks away from Nashua’s bustling commercial district, Daniel Webster Highway, a thoroughfare full of strip malls, gas stations, car dealerships, and fast food restaurants.

  He drove around the complex.

  There were seven clusters of two-story buildings, four apartment units per building. The buildings were gray vinyl with white trim. Each unit had either a patio or a balcony. The patios were slate tile and had low evergreen privacy bushes around them. The balcony railings were white vinyl: functional and cheap. TV satellite dishes were bolted to a number of the upper level balcony railings. The grounds were covered in snow, the piles higher along the shoveled walkways and the edge of the parking lots.

  Most of the parking spaces were empty. No surprise, considering it was midday in the middle of the work week. He pulled into a space and got out.

  The entrance stoop was gritty with salt and sand. The concrete stained a chalky white. Bannon pressed the intercom for unit 42.

  “Who is it?” a woman’s voice asked.

  Good. She’s home.

  He leaned closer to the speaker. “My name is Brice Bannon. I’m a friend of Richie Sadler.”

  He waited.

  An old woman walking a Scottish terrier and wearing a heavy wool coat over a housedress and fur-lined black boots gave him a suspicious look as she passed. He smiled at her.

  Must be the neighborhood busy-body.

  She snorted and kept walking.

  He glanced at the intercom, about to ring again, when he heard the buzzer. He pulled the door open and stepped out of the cold. Inside the small foyer stifling heat blasted out of an overhead vent. He took the ugly brown carpeted stairs to the second floor two at a time.

  Cindy McKinnon’s unit was in the back. He knocked.

  The door opened immediately.

  A short, blond-haired woman greeted him. She wore a pair of black-framed glasses. She’d been crying.

  “Ms. McKinnon?”

  “No. I’m Ellen. A friend.” She stepped back. “Come in.”

  The front door opened directly on to a large living room with a combined dining-kitchen area to the right. The room was neatly furnished with functional, but nice, discount furniture. Stock artwork hung on the beige walls. A short hallway on the opposite side of the room led to two doors, presumably the apartment’s single bedroom and bath.

  A thin woman stood with her back to the room. She stared out a sliding glass door past her balcony. Her view was of a forested green space between units. Snow clung to the dark bark of bare trees. She held a glass in her hand.

  “Cindy?” the woman said, stepping up beside Bannon after shutting the door.

  Cindy McKinnon turned. She wiped a tear from her cheek, trying to appear presentable. A brunette, her hair was a tangled mess, as if she’d run her hand through it. Repeatedly.

  “Ms. McKinnon, I am so very sorry for your loss,” Bannon said.

  “You knew Richie?”

  “Yes. We served together in the Gulf.”

  “They called you?”

  Bannon assumed she meant the police. “Yes. I was in his emergency contacts,” he added, “on his phone.”

  “I see.” She looked at the glass she held in her hand, a wet paper napkin curled up around the bottom of it. The liquid it held was clear, but Bannon suspected it wasn’t water.

  “I recognized your name, Mr. Bannon. Richie mentioned you,” Ellen said. “It’s the only reason I let you up.”

  “And you are?” Bannon asked.

  “Dr. Ellen Appel. I am, was, Richie’s psychiatrist.”

  “He never said he was seeing a psychiatrist.”

  “My services were made available to him through the VA.” She looked sad. “Unfortunately, he didn’t take full advantage of the benefit. I was trying to help him.”

  “Well, you failed.” Cindy downed her drink and marched toward the kitchen. She drilled Bannon with a look of contempt as she passed. “Whoever you are, too. You both did.”

  In the kitchen, she grabbed a bottle of Absolut vodka and filled her empty glass. She banged the bottle down on the counter, took a gulp, and leaned against the counter, remaining there, drinking.

  Stung by the verbal assault, Appel looked away.

  Cindy McKinnon’s anger was palpable.

  After a time, Bannon broke the uncomfortable silence that followed. “Doctor, my I ask—”

  “Yes?” She seemed grateful for the distraction.

  “The last time Richie and I got together, he seemed to be doing better.” Bannon glanced at Cindy. “He said the two you were talking again.”

  “We were,” she swirled the vodka around in her glass, “talking. But we weren’t getting back together or anything like that. Richie knew that.”

  She sighed. “Look, I hurt Richie. I know that. He and I were high-school sweethearts, ever since junior year. I didn’t like it, but I supported his decision to join the Army. I moved down to Virginia to be close to him while he was in training. So we could spend every minute of his leave time together. I even stuck with him through his first tour. Those were the longest years of my life. But, then…”

  Dr. Appel crossed the room and took the glass from her hand. She put it on the counter and rubbed Cindy’s back.

  “When he re-upped for a second tour, I couldn’t take it. Do you know what it’s like to live like you’re with someone, but you’re not? Have a fiancée, but you don’t? Not really. Afraid every time the phone rang or I heard the doorbell. My heart would jump. And I knew, I got this painful sickness in my stomach every time telling me the person on the other end of the line or on the other side of that door was a Family Readiness Officer. There to inform me Richie’d been killed in action. That he was coming home to me in a flag-draped casket.”

  She lowered her head and cried, her fist pressed against her trembling lips. Tears fell in a steady drip from her eyes.

  Cindy sniffed and picked her head up again. “I broke it off with a Dear John e-mail. I told him I couldn’t take it anymore, that we were through, finished. Done. It wasn’t the right way to handle it. I know that. I was stupid and it hurt him terribly. But he hurt me, too.”

  “Why are you here, Mr. Bannon?” Dr. Appel asked, protectively. “What do you want?”

  Bannon extracted one of his PI business cards, like the one Tennant found on Richie’s body. He handed it to her. She and Cindy both looked at it.

  “I have concerns.”

  “What kind of concerns?”

  Rather than answer the psychiatrist, Bannon asked another question. “When was the last time you saw him?” He hesitated before adding, “Professionally?”

  “About six months ago. And before you ask, doctor-patient confidentiality extends beyond death. I can’t discuss diagnoses or treatment.”

  Bannon nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind. I didn’t know Richie before the Gulf, so I can’t say how the experience—over there—affected him. I do know some people come back on edge, hyper alert. They can’t turn it off. The way they’ve been trained to interact with others, they’re full of suspicion. Paranoid even. It’s not suited for a civilian world. They have a hard time readjusting to the real world, back into regular society. I get that. Experienced it myself.”

  “What you describe is textbook PTSD, Mr. Bannon.” Dr. Appel frowned. “And while I can’t say this applies to Richie, hypothetically speaking, a person ill-prepared to go into that environment in the first place, might come back home and suffer from flashbacks, vivid memories, bad dreams. He’d have difficulty sleeping. That would lead to irritability, outbursts of anger, even paranoia. As you say they’d come back changed.”

  “And have difficulty fitting back in. Trouble holding down a job.”

  Dr. Appel nodded. “Unable to concentrate. Complain of splitting headache
s. Without violating privilege I can tell you Richie had altercations with co-workers. He’d fly off the handle at the slightest provocation. He accused them of undermining him, trying to get him out of the way. Do him in, as he put it. That made it impossible for him to hold the jobs he did get.”

  “When I first met Richie,” Bannon said, “it was in a combat situation. It was hairy, but Richie handled himself well. He single-handedly saved several lives that day. He was a good soldier.”

  “It’s not about how they handle the stress situation at the time, or even immediately afterwards,” Appel said. “Again, hypothetically, often symptoms might not surface for years, even decades, later. Being in that state, killing another human being, it affects you. I don’t care who you are.”

  Bannon could attest to that. He’d killed. Been forced to kill, many times. The nightmares didn’t come every night, but they did come. “Are you surprised by his suicide?”

  Appel paused, giving it obvious thought. “Let me put it this way, its unexpected news.”

  “You thought he was getting better?” Bannon asked.

  “We’re getting dangerously close to privilege again, but I was…encouraged by his progress.”

  “Cindy?” Bannon looked at her.

  She stood staring at the kitchen floor, not listening or just lost in her thoughts. She looked up.

  “You said the two of you were talking again, friends. And Richie accepted that…status. Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely!” Cindy slammed her glass down on the counter. “We were friends. We were only ever going to be friends. I worked really hard to make sure Richie knew that, to not give him any other ideas. I loved him, Mr. Bannon, and I would do anything to help him, but we could never go back…to the way we were. He knew that.”

  “I understand,” Bannon said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply—”

  “That this was somehow my fault. Well, you did.” Cindy grabbed her drink from the counter and pushed away from her friend. “Excuse me. I need some air.”

  She stormed across the room and threw open the sliding glass door to the balcony. A blast of cold air blew through the room. Cindy ignored it and walked out onto the balcony. She rested her arms on the railing and stared at the trees.

  Dr. Appel stared at Bannon.

  He tried to interpret her expression and couldn’t.

  She turned his card over in her fingers, looking down at it. “You said you had concerns about Richie’s death. What did you mean?”

  Bannon frowned. “It’s a feeling, nothing more.”

  “If it wasn’t a suicide, it has to be,” she hesitated, “murder.”

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” Bannon said. “I have no proof, but something’s nagging at me. Something I can’t shake.”

  “How did he do it?” Cindy was back at the sliding door, facing into the room.

  He gave Cindy the same answer Tennant had given him. “You don’t want to know.”

  She gave him a hard look. “If you think there’s something more to this. If there is even a possibility Richie didn’t…do this, I need to know.”

  Bannon looked at Appel. She looked unhappy but she nodded. Tell her.

  “He shot himself.”

  “He didn’t have a gun.”

  “According to the police, he did. An old Army issue .45.”

  “A Colt 1911 .45?”

  Bannon raised an eyebrow. “You know guns?”

  “No. But Richie had a gun like that. He showed it to me. Big, ugly thing.” She shuddered.

  Bannon wondered if that was from the cold outside or something more.

  “But he was very proud of that gun. It was his father’s,” she said. “No, his grandfather’s. He brought it back from Vietnam. His grandfather did. Richie’s dad passed it down to him when he joined up. Some third generation, Army man, macho thing I never understood.”

  “Sounds like that might have been it.”

  “But it can’t be,” Cindy insisted. “Richie sold that gun. After he got evicted from his apartment, and was living on the streets, he pawned the gun for food money. It broke his heart and made him angry. He only got like seventy-five dollars for it. He said it was worth much more than that.”

  If that was true, how’d Richie get his hands on the gun again? Had he bought it back from the pawn shop, perhaps with the intention to use it in just this way?

  Could be it’s not the same gun.

  Bannon felt that itch of uncertainty grow. More than ever it called out to be scratched.

  An icy breeze stirred the trees across the way. Cindy shivered.

  “Come inside, Cindy,” Bannon suggested.

  She stepped back into the apartment and Dr. Appel closed the door, cutting off the cold.

  “So he sold everything?” Bannon asked.

  Cindy nodded. “Everything he could. I told him he could leave things here. I’d store them for him, but he said no. He needed the money. And he wouldn’t take any from me. He sold everything he could, except a cardboard box of old crap nobody wanted. I have that here if you want to see it.”

  Bannon said that wouldn’t be necessary. “What about old Army buddies? Anyone Richie keep in regular contact with?”

  “No. None of them live around here. The closest was a guy lived in western Mass. But he didn’t like him very much.” Cindy looked at her glass and noticed it was empty. Then she looked up. “Wait. There was one person, a man named Douglason.”

  “Kenny Douglason?”

  “Yes. You know him?”

  Bannon did. He was Richie’s platoon sergeant. “You know where I can find him?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ALL CINDY COULD recall about Douglason was that he had a wife, no kids, and lived and worked in Manchester. She knew he and Richie had gotten together a few times since they got back, but that they weren’t particularly close.

  Bannon thanked them both. He extended his sympathies again and headed for the door.

  Dr. Appel offered to walk him out.

  He climbed into the cab of his truck. She stood by his door and wrapped her sweater tightly around her waist. She hugged herself against the cold.

  “It’s cold out,” he said, starting the truck up. “You should get back inside.”

  “Do you really think Richie was murdered, Mr. Bannon?”

  “I think it’s possible.”

  “Can you find out? Your card said you’re a private investigator. Does someone need to hire you? If so—”

  He cut her off. “There’s no need, Doctor. Richie was my friend. I let him down. I won’t now.”

  “You can’t blame yourself. You don’t even know if he killed himself or was murdered.”

  “Either way, I wasn’t there for him. I should’ve been. If he was murdered, finding out who did it and why, it’s the least I can do.”

  “And ease your conscience at the same time,” she offered.

  “Not even close,” Bannon said. “The dead’s still dead. If they’re that way because of something I did, or failed to do, that stays with me forever.”

  “Then what does it matter?”

  “You’re talking about guilt, Doctor. Nothing eases that. But if someone did this, then there is a price to pay and I’ll make sure they pay it.”

  “Revenge.”

  “Justice.”

  She was quiet for a moment.

  When she spoke again, she said, “There are a lot of Richie Sadlers out there. Servicemen and women who’ve come back and are struggling, who could use someone to talk to.”

  “I talked with Richie, thought he knew I was there for him. I was wrong. It didn’t help.”

  “It might help others,” She suggested.

  He thought about that. After a moment he said, “If you know someone could use my help, Doctor, call me.”

  “You’re not just saying that? The guilt talking.”

  Bannon dropped his truck into gear. “You have my card.”

  She stepped up on the sidewalk.

/>   Bannon backed out of the space and drove away.

  Another Internet search told him Kenny Douglason worked for the City of Manchester, a Chief Facilities Manager for the Department of Public Works. It took a few phone calls to verify he had the right Kenny Douglason. He did.

  He found the man on Elm Street, a block away from the Verizon Wireless Arena, leaning against a parked white sedan with the city’s emblem on the door, a yellow emergency vehicle light bar, and a dent in the rear quarter panel.

  City traffic buzzed by, not heavy, but picking up as the afternoon had grown long.

  Ahead of Douglason’s car was a DPW utility truck with its yellow lights flashing. From the rear of the truck cables were being reeled off large wooden spools down into an open manhole where chipped yellow safety fencing was set up, along with orange traffic cones forming a wider perimeter. Thin strips of red reflective tape were strung from cone to cone. The tape and red, triangle-shaped flags attached to each cone snapped in the gentle but biting winter breeze.

  Bannon parked the big, black F-350 behind the city car. He got out and walked toward Douglason.

  The former platoon sergeant wore a yellow reflective traffic vest over his coat and a white hard hat. He held an electronic tablet in his beefy hands.

  “Hey, Sarge, long time,” Bannon said.

  Douglason lifted his head. He showed no sign of recognition.

  Bannon couldn’t blame him. It had been nearly five years since they’d last seen each other and their current surroundings couldn’t have been more different than the hot, sand-swept deserts of the Middle East.

  A master sergeant with the Army’s 112th Transportation Battalion, Douglason had been responsible for overseeing the redeployment of assets in support of Operation New Dawn. A fancy way of saying they were removing equipment from Iraq where the war effort was coming to an end and moving it to support the buildup in Afghanistan.

  As Bannon had explained to Tennant, he’d been stationed at the Coast Guard’s Persian Gulf headquarters in Manama, Bahrain, attached to the USCG Patrol Forces Southwest Asia command and assigned to the Deployable Operations Group (DOG) as a Maritime Security Response Team (MSRT) team leader.