Chapter Thirty One
Andrea knocked on the familiar storm door. It seemed like ages since she visited that Thursday night, just a couple of weeks ago. The morning was bright and sunny with chirping birds singing in the trees. The setting seemed to match the feeling she carried with her these days. Her friends were safe. The bad guys were locked away.
The two weeks since their return from Haiti had been very uneventful when compared to what they’d been through. She was still living in a hotel, one that allowed her to keep her dogs with her. She was more relaxed than she’d felt since the disappearance of the Michners.
Diane answered the door. “Andrea, come in. We were just sitting down for a cup of coffee. Join us.”
The four friends had arranged this time to recap all the events that had occurred over the past month. There was plenty of evidence for the conviction of the group they now knew were neo-Nazis listed already on the FBI wanted posters. However, the evidence proving who had killed Max Shuster was sketchy at best.
Andrea followed Diane down the hall leading to the kitchen. Her friend seemed tense. Diane looked towards every doorway they passed. She jumped easily these days at any sudden noise. She pushed the door open, and the two women joined Brian and Trent for their conference.
“Hi Brian. Hi Trent.” She looked toward Diane with concern. “We need to get more answers.” She took the chair offered her. “Max wanted me to prove who killed him. So far we haven’t got the proof that will convict anyone. Do you have any ideas?”
Trent was the first to speak. “Max was the one who contacted those men in the first place. I don’t know where or how he found them, but before I knew it, they began coming into the lab on a regular basis. At least until Walter found out about it.” Trent went on to explain that Walter, as the lab manager, controlled who entered and who left the section of the laboratory where secret research was done, the section of the lab where Trent and Max worked every day.
“Walter put a stop to their visits in a hurry, but Max took our research and sold it to them for all that money. The authorities found it in the Caymans, another bank account Max had. About two months ago, Max started making regular trips to Haiti.”
“Why didn’t you tell someone?” Brian’s curiosity was aroused.
“I couldn’t. Max said these guys were ruthless. If I said anything to anyone, Diane and Jeffrey would suffer. I assumed he meant they would kill them so I kept quiet. I hoped they would fail in their attempts to use our research. In the beginning, I didn’t even know what they hoped to gain by it. Max just kept saying it was worth more than we were getting paid at the lab.”
“I can’t believe the sweet guy who lived across the street was so greedy. I thought I was a good judge of character. I guess I was wrong.” Andrea shook her head totally disgusted with the tears she had shed over this man. The whole thing had been his fault.
Trent leaned over to pat her hand trying hard to reassure her that she had no way of knowing the real Max. “Max was two people. He acted one way when other people were around. In fact, in the beginning, I thought he was a great guy too.”
Brian had been quietly listening to his friend’s story but now interjected with an observation of his own. “Most people who fall into sin, hide it very well in the beginning. It’s when we become transparent to someone else that our true nature is revealed. That’s why the Bible talks about the need for us to fellowship with other believers, so we can be accountable to someone else.”
“That’s so true. When Max began to travel down this road, I didn’t suspect a thing. In fact, he kept me in the dark until he had already made the deal to sell our research.” Trent frowned in remembrance of that time.
Diane placed her arms around her husband’s shoulders. “Trent still blames himself for placing Jeffrey and I in danger.”
“If I’d told someone as soon as Max approached me, when those men began showing up… none of this would’ve happened. All those people…”He hung his head and a tear slipped from beneath his closed eyelids. He sniffed his grief back into hiding.
“The man who was helping feed the people in the cages told the police that it wasn’t you who killed those people. All you did was make them sick. Those creeps shot them when they got sick so they wouldn’t have to take care of them.” Andrea placed her hand on Trent’s shoulder. “You did all you could to stop them without getting Diane and Jeffrey killed.”
Brian looked toward his best friend. “Besides Trent, you just finished telling me there was no way of knowing how bad things were in the beginning nor how dangerous Jason and his buddies were.”
Diane choked on her own tears, for her husband and for the nightmares they still had every night, especially Jeffrey. “Trent, you never suspected, not at first anyway, how bad this was going to get. How could you?”
“Enough, already.” Brian’s voice raised a notch. “It serves no purpose for us to continue blaming ourselves for what happened. Andrea, Max played you and he played Trent. Trent, you aren’t responsible for his actions or your blindness to his alter ego. You are a victim here. Remember that.”
Diane removed a pot of hot coffee from the coffee maker and refilled everyone’s cup. Jeffrey was staying with a trusted friend, so the four of them could hash this all out before adding their input to the evidence that the police already had.
“The police were pretty angry with us for following the leads we had without telling them where we were going.” Andrea admitted her own sense of guilt. “I thought Lieutenant Kurshner would throw his coffee mug at me when we arrived at the police station to give our statements.”
“Max had made it clear we couldn’t trust the police. I told Kurshner that.” Brian recounted his own conversation with the angry officer. “I told him we weren’t sure that meant the police in Haiti, or the U. S. , or both. And I told him about seeing Jason bribe that police chief in Port Au Prince.”
Andrea relaxed a little. “It felt really good when the lieutenant laid the suspicions we had about our police department to rest. I kind of wished we would have trusted them in the beginning. Ironically enough, Jason was the one who suggested just that. I just didn’t know who we could count on.”
“Max had thought of everything. He was the one who didn’t trust the police, and of course, they would have thrown him in jail had they known what he was up to. He had his plan in place a long time before he was killed.” Trent’s face displayed the anger he felt for his former colleague.
“I know that now.” Andrea leaned her elbows on the table and looked earnestly into the faces of her friends. “I still find it strange that he was able to get my signature on all those bonds. I wonder if, in the end, he had a touch of conscience or something?”
Trent smirked. “I doubt it. He was just making sure that no one got away with anything. I guess they had threatened to kill him too somewhere along the way. Anyhow, that money will be put to good use, won’t it?”
“Can the police prove that Max’s murder is tied into all this, aside from that thug’s statement of course?” Diane sat on the remaining chair, her interest evident in the tilt of her head.
•
Trent glanced with great respect toward his wife. “They will follow the trail until they do. I’m sure.” His admiring glance was not lost on his friends. “After all, this town has had very few unsolved crimes. But then, they’ve had very few murders as well.” His thoughts continued in the direction of their recent ordeal. Diane had surprised him with a strength he never knew she had. She’s my best friend, someone I know I can count on when the going gets tough. What a woman!
•
“I have a feeling that someone in Port Au Prince saw Max with Jason or one of his buddies.” Brian added his own opinion. “And it’s also possible that someone saw that black Mustang he drove here all the time. I noticed it following us, so I’m sure someone else did too. The police just need to find that person.”
“Max lived a lie and died because of it
.” Trent had the habit of turning philosophical once in a while. “When those guys insisted that I was needed for their plot to succeed, that ended Max’s anonymity. I was one more person who knew how corrupt he was. Diane was kept away from their experiments, so she never met Max. I knew enough to put him behind bars for a long time. Once Max figured that out, he tried to kill me.”
“He did?” Diane was as surprised by this revelation as everyone else. “You never told me that.”
“It happened while we were still working together here. He wanted me to join him. He promised me a lot of money, but there was no way I wanted any part of his plan, especially since he was working with people so filled with hate for the black race. He threw a fit when I said no way and came at me with a knife.”
“What did you do?” asked Diane.
“Walter came in, and Max pretended that he had dropped the knife. The next day we were taken to Haiti, and I was forced to participate. I slowed them down as much as I could. I didn’t know then that those people were being used as guinea pigs. They were dying.” Trent bowed his head in sorrow for the part he had been forced to play in so many people losing their lives.
Silence filled the space of the next few minutes, and each one thought about the conditions in Haiti leading up to the atmosphere where people could disappear. No one did anything about it. Their ceremonies, hidden in the trees and under the mask of night, were the catalyst needed for evil to succeed.
“This afternoon, the district attorney will take our statements again. He’s working very closely with the federal authorities, hoping for his chance to prosecute Jason for the murder of a citizen of this town. Jason and his men will also be charged with arson since they probably set fire to my house.” Andrea recapped for the group the entire conversation she’d had with the D. A. yesterday.
“I’ll be glad when all this is completely behind us, so we can get on with our lives.” Brian pursed his lips in a thoughtful manner. “It’s hard to concentrate with so much happening around us.”
“I agree. I can’t wait to put Max’s money to good use.” Andrea smiled for the first time since arriving at the Michners.
“When will they begin work on your house?” Diane had been instrumental in the decision to build Andrea’s home on a piece of land nearby. “I’ll bet you’re anxious to get out of that hotel and into your own home again.”
“You’ve got that right. The dogs and I are alright, but they have no place to wander free right now. The new place will have a large fenced back yard for them. And I would like to make the announcement. Brian and I are going into business together. We decided to open our own detective agency.”
Diane and Trent squealed in delight, not so much for the business relationship as for the personal relationship they hoped would develop between their best friends. They hugged Brian and then Andrea while congratulating them on their decision. Questions rolled off their tongues, but Diane’s matchmaking genes were about to explode. Her husband knew that look all too well so just rolled his eyes, happy that something pleasant was occupying his wife’s mind again.