The Crimson Vortex

By Monte Merrick

The last wish of a dying friend sends Tom Jessup to Sedona, Arizona. This secret mission leads him right into the heart of a series of murders taking place in this desert land of magnificence and mystery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483507910

Book preview

9781483507910

THE CRIMSON VORTEX

CHAPTER 1

*

Remind me never again to listen to a man in a coma. I don’t mean someone who’s a little out of it or a person who indulges in mind-altering substances. I mean, a man in an official medical coma.

Don March had been comatose for nearly three weeks, the result of a massive stroke. Though not declared brain-dead, he was not exhibiting a lot of signs of mental life. Doctors were optimistic about his chances of recovery, which, as you know, usually means it’s curtains.

His family was visiting less and less frequently, moving on, as people tend to do, involved in their own busy lives. Being retired, I was leading a profoundly unbusy life and had the liberty to visit Don daily: sitting at his bedside, talking to him about current events, reading aloud. I liked to think that, though insensible of my presence, he could nevertheless absorb my concern for his well-being.

So, imagine my surprise one day in mid-August after talking about the doings of mutual friends, the latest news of Boeing at which we had both worked, and having finished reading a chapter from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the current selection of my book group, Don suddenly turned his head and addressed me.

Tom… He drew the name out as if needing to pull it from some deep recess of his being, as from a dark abandoned well. I jumped a little in shock and my heart ripped into action with an awful pounding. Not a peep had been heard from this man for nearly three weeks, not a move had he made, and here he was, calling my name like the summons from a crypt.

Tooommmmm… he said or moaned the name again. You came.

His face had compressed since the stroke, shedding every excess millimeter of flesh. The skin was grayish-green. Pulled tight across his skull, it seemed more mask than face. His lips had disappeared altogether, leaving a gap rather than a mouth. Only his eyes, pinned on me from beneath convulsed eyelids, were recognizable elements of the Don March I had worked with, been friends with, and grieved with when we suffered the almost simultaneous loss of our spouses.

Please… The word was extended, a forlorn plea from a vault. Recovered somewhat from my alarm, I got shakily to my feet and walked the few steps to the bed. I put my hand on top of his. The veins were so raised as to seem outside his skin. A drip was attached to his forearm and wires led from various parts of his body to machines that did their monitoring with a hushed whirring sound. It was a private room and we were alone.

Don, I’m here, I said softly. His hand felt frigid. He smelled stale and sour, like my grandparents’ house when I was a kid. His chest heaved up and down as he struggled to say something. Don’t try to talk, I advised him pointlessly, as it was obvious he wanted to speak. There seems to be nothing one can say in this kind of situation that doesn’t sound lame and condescending. Thankfully, the ill person doesn’t resent your not coming up with gems of wisdom. In fact, each word is greeted as a blessing.

I know…you’ll figure it out, he rasped with an effort that I was sure would bring on another stroke.

Figure out what? I asked, leaning in closer. He gasped for air as if it was only accessible in huge chunks. You’re going to be all right, I murmured, another inane cookie-cutter consolation. Clearly, not everything was going to be all right, but what else do you say? Otherwise there are silences and those are worse than the platitudes.

Open… He huffed as if he was gathering the breath to summit Everest. …the envelope.

What…? What envelope, I started to say, but I didn’t want to encourage him to talk as it seemed to be using up his last remnant of life.

His hand leaped and caught my palm in a grip. It was astonishing, the strength still remaining in this emaciated man at the door of doom.

Don’t…fail me. He expelled this command on a jagged, odorous breath. His eyes drilled into mine. I had no choice but to look, though I was afraid I’d see some horrible preview of death itself.

Promise! he insisted. I felt vertigo as if caught in some unfathomable dream.

Yes! Of course, Don! I promise! I almost shouted. Anything to put this man at peace, to relax that intense grasp which threatened to pull me in after him. I promise with all my heart!

Only then did he relent. His breathing eased; eased so suddenly I thought he had died right then and there. But no: his chest was slightly rising and falling, though there were long pauses between breaths, longer than I would have thought possible. His lids, delicate as rice paper, flickered over those piercing eyes. The tiny blue veins in the skin were heartbreaking. To think these delicate lines were carrying blood back and forth even at this late date.

It’s sunset, he whispered. I felt tears stabbing my eyes from behind. It was all I could do to stop myself from grabbing his frail shoulders and physically yanking him back to this side. Sleep, Don, I choked out. He went weakly on: …at sunset… The last words trailed off into silence.

Then all was as it had been before he spoke my name. It might never have happened. He was still and speechless again. No one but me had been there to witness. Did I fall asleep in the chair, a not uncommon occurrence, and dream the scene? No, I’d walked from the chair to the bedside where I was now standing.

How could a man nearly three weeks in a coma wake up suddenly for a minute – my guess at how long the exchange lasted – and deliver these semi-lucid instructions? No matter that I didn’t know what envelope he was talking about or what I was promising to do. What urgency propelled him out of the depths to grip my hand and demand a yes?

There I stood at his bedside, still touching his chilled and liver-spotted hand. The tinge of vertigo was departing, but I felt a bit uncertain on my feet. I backed to the chair and sat.

Don’t fail me, Don had said. What wasn’t I to fail at? You’ll figure it out, he insisted. Was it all ravings? One of those automatic reactions coma patients have that approximate real life? The order could have been part of his dream. He might have been reliving some episode from his past. The words could be random, stuck in his mind from long ago, lines from book he read or movie he’d watched. Nothing that just occurred bore any resemblance to any conversation I’d had in my thirty-plus years of friendship with Don. It was hard to take this seriously, and hard not to take it seriously.

The door opened and a nurse entered. She smiled at me and went to examine the IVs and check the readouts. I said nothing, just watched her dutifully going about her business. She might have been inventorying things in a store – checking to see if she had a size 9-1/2 running shoe in stock. She hummed a little under her breath. She smiled again, then started for the door.

Have you ever heard him talk? I asked suddenly. I didn’t know I was going to speak; it startled me more than the nurse.

Oh no, love, he’s deep under, she replied with a slight Southern slur.

Will he come out of it?

I’m not the doctor, hon. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. She gazed at my friend for a moment. Poor soul, she added with a kind of detached sympathy, a brand she must have learned in nursing school to dispense. Then she left.

I waited another hour watching Don, hoping for more instructions or a clarification of the ones he’d given, but he didn’t revive. There was just that almost imperceptible ripple of the sheet covering his chest. Finally, I rose, touched his shoulder lightly and left the room.

I was planning to visit him around five the following day, but at three I received a call from his daughter. I’m afraid my father passed early this morning. Thank you for your attention to him the last few weeks.

Her name was Natalie, a striking lady in her early forties with clipped dark brown hair, a body that saw the gym or Pilates classes daily, and a brisk manner. She had a tattooed string of roses on her left tanned arm, as if the flowers were falling down to land in her hand. It was a warm August and she wore bright halter tops the couple of times I’d seen her at the hospital. We did no more than speak pleasantries and she never stayed long.

I’m very sorry, Natalie, I said, the words sounding insincere, though I was sincere. I often wonder if sentiments of sorrow and condolence sound more eloquent in another language, say, Hebrew.

There’s something in his will for you, she said as soon as my words of sympathy were out; she almost cut me off. How would you like me to get it to you?

I… It was hard to form a response. Natalie and her brothers had already read the will? I’d say the body was barely cold, but Don had been pretty cool when I touched his hand the previous day. Then I recalled that hand gripping mine. Life biting the bullet to the end - its tenacity, its perseverance is sometimes almost cruel. I remember Ellie’s last days, her insistence on giving the pain one more day, then one more. Ellie was my wife.

What, what is it? I asked.

An envelope.

My heart began thundering. I was back there beside the dying man’s bed, his desperate eyes finding mine. Open the envelope, he gasped out at me. Promise! I thought of the ghost’s command in Hamlet: Remember me! I hoped whatever was in the envelope wouldn’t lead to any swordplay.

An envelope? I asked innocently.

We can mail it, Natalie said efficiently as if she had other urgent matters to deal with, which she probably did.

Well… I was still having trouble getting my feet under me. Don March, my dear friend, dead. We were exactly the same age. Our wives had died one after the other. Mortality seemed so imminent and threatening. I felt targeted. What deathbed commands would I utter at the end? Absurdly, I told myself to think up some to have on hand, just in case. This is the way my mind works.

How big is it? I finally managed a complete sentence.

It’s just an envelope. I’ll mail it. Give me your address. This taking care of business was admirable in a woman who had just lost her father, but somewhat unsettling. I gave her my information.

What kind of arrangements are there going to be? I inquired. There was nothing specific in her words, but her tone implied that she wanted to get off the phone as soon as possible. I knew from pretty recent experience how difficult these calls are.

Cremation. No service. We’ve decided not to have a memorial, she informed me. We included her brothers Brad, Ricky and Soren. I did not have much interaction with Don’s children and, aside from Natalie, never saw them at the hospital.

Well, if anything changes… I began, but she predicted what I was going to say.

Yes, we’ll let you know. Bye, Tom.

An envelope. My first impulse was, when I received it, to put it in the back of a closet. Maybe a year from now I would have the courage to take it out. But there was Don’s urgent command: Open the envelope. What could possibly be inside? My next reaction was, Why me? The whining voice inside my head, which in everyday life I mostly keep shut up, began: He has four kids. Why can’t they handle it, whatever it is? Why do I have to be bothered? It’s humbling to realize that for all your admirable qualities, you’re deep down just a selfish bastard.

Then I thought: what if it’s something illegal? But Don led a thoroughly honest life, and, anyway, I doubt he’d burden his close friend with a vendetta. I was not a hit man. One of the reasons I valued Don as a friend was his easy-going, gentle nature. Nothing seemed to ruffle him except the occasional family issue. When Jane passed away, there was some heated discussion among his children about money. I didn’t remember the details and am not sure Don ever went into it in detail, but isn’t there always some inheritance issue after someone dies? Other than that, he lived in content retirement: watching games on his big screen TV, building furniture in his basement, even the occasional date, though nothing led to anything. He’d worked hard, had a happy marriage, was comfortable and pleased to do nothing of importance for a while. He thought my buying an RV and roaming around the Western states rather eccentric and risky.

Something, though, had roused Don from death’s embrace to charge me with a final duty. I couldn’t get his rasping voice, that look in his sunken eyes out of my head. I both dreaded and couldn’t wait for the envelope to come.

I didn’t have long to wait. It arrived by FedEx the next morning. My fingers trembled as I pulled the little cardboard tab that unsealed the packet. Inside was a business envelope, the security kind with interior blue markings. In a firm hand across the front was written, In the case of my death, deliver immediately to Tom Jessup.

In the case of my death… The words seemed engraved on a tombstone rather than a simple envelope. That Don was seriously thinking about his death before it happened – who knew how long ago he prepared this envelope? – was chilling. Sure, you make your will, but you never think you’re going to actually die. It’s just a document. That I’ll not be around someday, but the world will merrily roll along without me…no, no, impossible. Yet here it was the day after Don’s demise and nothing had come to a halt. FedEx still delivered.

The envelope had the weight of finality, despite that it was practically weightless. In case of my death… To my eye, the hand that wrote the words seemed sure and in full control, in Don’s familiar broad, looped handwriting. On the reverse side, the flap was sealed with a dozen stamps. These were commemorative stamps featuring entertainment figures, Vice Presidents, notable Hispanic leaders. All dead, of course. Don collected stamps, among his other hobbies, though his major interest was in stamps from exotic locales, like Fiji. These American stamps were pasted across the flap to insure its complete security.

Except the envelope had been opened. Carefully and surreptitiously, but definitely opened. An almost invisible slit had been made across the face of the stamps, following the line of the flap. A razor blade or X-Acto knife was used. It was done with skill and if I hadn’t been staring at the stamps, thinking how all these personages were lying in graves or urns or scattered to the winds, if I had just ripped the envelope open, I would not have noticed.

The stamps were current releases. I always ask for commemorative stamps at the post office in order to make paying my bills slightly more entertaining, and I was certain the Hispanic heroes had been issued in the past month. Don sealed this envelope recently. It had not been sitting in the safe for a year or more; it had been prepared more or less in the nick of time. Did he have a premonition of his death? He’d not complained of feeling poorly. But do you always tell? Maybe he’d had a warning and made preparations in secret. The envelope was fresh in his mind, so no wonder he careened out of the tomb to give me a heads-up.

Whoever had carefully opened it had sealed it just as carefully. I used a sharp kitchen knife, slipping the point under the edge of the flap and carefully working it across the top crease of the envelope, leaving the stamps intact.

I found myself holding my breath as if this was a letter bomb about to explode in my hands.

The top edge open, I spread the envelope with my fingers. I was naturally expecting a letter inside, Don’s testament or final wishes or maybe a secret memoir, and I was unprepared for what I found: five playing cards. They were common blue Bicycle cards. They were a little worn and may have been from the deck Don obsessively played solitaire with. Whenever I came to his house to watch a game together, to pick him up to go to a movie or the rare occasion when I persuaded him to hike with Buster and me, he would be playing solitaire. He had to finish his game, growling when the cards beat him and crowing when he won.

Don had become a bit of a couch potato in his retirement. He worked hard all his life, been innovative and successful, provided for his wife and four children so they had every advantage. There was no reason he shouldn’t become a couch potato, if that’s what he wanted. Still, I felt it a waste and a sadness. I got together with him at least once a week and, much as he would let me, took him out of the house. We’d go to a museum or drive into the mountains or attend a collectors’ show at the convention center. He didn’t unburden himself to me much, but I sensed his depression due to the squabbling among his four children.

What did these five playing cards represent? None were face cards. There was a six of hearts, threes of clubs and diamonds, and a six and eight of spades. What in the world? I knew Don was distracted and downhearted before the stroke, but had he really gone around the bend? He seemed lucid enough the last time we’d been together, a few days before he was stricken. We went to a comedy club and he seemed to enjoy himself.

Don was a methodical person, an engineer, and I had to believe there was a purpose and plan in leaving me these five cards. I searched my memory of conversations with him over the past six months or so, but could find no clue that revealed their secret. I was so disconcerted that I didn’t notice till a few minutes later that there was something else in the envelope.

A key, a small silver key with a round head. It was slightly tarnished, so not newly made. Not a safe deposit key, as those have a distinctive character. Nor was it a door key. A key to a small lock, perhaps a drawer in a desk or cabinet or locker. The possibilities were endless. On the reverse was a number: 819.

Had Don March been a mystery guy, a man who relished intrigue, I would have been taken less off-guard. But my friend was an open book, as much as any of us is an open book. True, we don’t know our fellows as deeply as we assume we do. This much I’ve gathered in my 62 years. The most unassuming person could probably tell us something surprising, even shocking, about himself or herself. I’ve learned this the hard way.

Five cards and a key. This is what all the deathbed dramatics were about? I don’t know what I expected, but at least something along the lines of the instructions in Mission Impossible. I know you’ll figure it out, Don had croaked out. He was taking a lot for granted. I was baffled and a little irritated, too. If I was on my deathbed, I’d be direct and clear. The time for pussyfooting was over. It was the moment to tell it like it is. You might not get the chance to say, Hey, I was just playing with you. What I really mean is… This was endgame. You were checked.

Don was not enigmatic; he was as straightforward a man as I knew. He liked games, games of all kinds: football, basketball, baseball. Also Monopoly, chess, checkers, Jeopardy, Risk. I have limited patience for these sedentary pursuits. I like to be up and about and outdoors as much as possible. But I indulged his whims.