The Ilium Obligation (A Matt Savage Adventure) Chapter 40

[seymoure]

The Clock is Ticking

 

“The ultimate inspiration is the deadline.”
-Nolan Bushnell

 

I had the box on my lap for the rest of the trip.

The thing was beginning to pile up, and it was time to do the laundry. We needed to start picking off the single pieces of this thing. The sum of them was far too much to deal with, it became over whelming. The total was daunting, but if I could solve one aspect, it should be the beginning of the dominos falling.

That, at least, was my hope.

What to solve first?

Perhaps the kidnapping was the obvious first target, since it would have the enforced deadline of the ransom and its delivery.

Now it was officially a kidnapping. It was an assumed kidnapping until there was a ransom. When we got that ransom demand I could ask for the official help of Rusty and the FBI.

Somehow that was not as comforting as one might think.

The FBI doesn’t like to share information. So we would have to gather as much in the way of clues as we could, before the FBI stepped in.

I felt sure I could depend on Rusty for help in that area.

I took out the note again.

“What do you think about this thing?” I asked Hugo.

“I just see a box that is empty when you take that note out of it, Boss,” he deducted with a shrug.

“I was thinking that this box is kind of big for a note,” I mused. “Why wasn’t it delivered in an envelope?”

“Well,” Hugo was up for this, “they couldn’t have soaked the bottom half in blood if they did that.”

“That’s true; they would have had a real mess trying to send a blood soaked envelope,” I said, “but my point was that you might have thought that there would have been something more included in the average ransom note.”

It struck him right between the eyes.

“Yeah, know what, Boss? When I worked with the Finley mob, ah, I mean business, we had occasion to see more than a couple of kidnappings. Two of those they sent fingers to let people know they were serious. Another one they sent an ear.”

“That is a real message,” I agreed.

“Once they sent a toe,” he said with distaste. “Not the big toe, a pinkie toe. It was creepy.”

I didn’t argue with this being singled out as the “creepy’ one. Everything is perspective.

“I wonder what the message is if they don’t cut off anything?” was my question.

I got on the phone with K.C. first. I made sure that Gerald would be at the airport to pick up the box and take it back to his lab. I didn’t know what he could give us, but anything would be a step forward.

Then I called Rusty. I updated him on the whole case. I pointed him to Sentalia as a prime suspect. She had kidnapped me, so I didn’t think she was beyond the pale as suspects go.

Burton told me he would be on the next flight out, and his people in New York, D.C. and Kansas City would be on the look-out for the woman and her thugs. Whatever happened, we would be gathering on my home turf to settle up.

I also told him that Anderson and Gaspion were targets and/or suspects and warranted surveillance. He replied that he already had teams watching them.

Too bad this wasn’t the 1930’s. I would love to bring them all together in the parlor and expose the killer before them all.

Of course, to do that, I would have to know who was guilty.

Where are Sam Spade or Philip Chandler when you need them?

I would have even taken Philo Vance.

© C. Wayne Owens
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