The Lighthouse by Bill K

Chapter 5: "True Confessions"


        From her perch in a maple tree almost a half-mile from the lighthouse, Loharo watched the two women in the structure smiling at each other. Her finger pressed the shutter release on her camera and snapped several photos before they moved away from the window.

        The black woman had been sitting in the tree for several hours watching the lighthouse. She'd used binoculars until she'd spotted the strange woman with the thick brown hair and the owlish glasses, then had quickly retrieved her camera and the telephoto lens from her backpack. The entire time she frantically attached the telephoto lens Loharo prayed that the stranger wouldn't move away from the window. Now that her prayers had been answered, she was practically giddy.

        Loharo lowered the camera. Her hips ached from bracing herself in the bough of the tree. It had been more than a few years since she'd climbed a tree and her hands were scuffed, but it was all worth it. She had another piece to the puzzle, one that she hoped would lead her to her missing friend, Donna Young.

        Lowering herself to the ground, which had also been a lot easier fifteen years ago, Loharo gave a last look at the lighthouse. She was reluctant to leave, fearing she'd miss something else of even more significance. However, she was eager to get the film developed and figure out what to do from there. Stowing her equipment, Loharo slung her pack over her shoulder and, consciously avoiding the lighthouse, circled back toward town.

        Her circular route took her into the nearby woodland that was west of the lighthouse. It was a familiar area to her. Loharo and Donna had once toured the wild cluster of oak, cedar, maple and fir trees that had grown wild in that section of land since trees had been created. They both marveled at how pristine this little patch of forest was. They once spent a half-hour just reclining against two trees quietly, observing the occasional fox or rabbit as it went about its business with only a suspicious glance their way. Since then she had gone through this area many times, each time spotting something new, from the frightened dash of a white-tail deer to the unique shape of a fir cone that had crunched beneath her boots. This was why Loharo was with the EPA; to preserve things like this.

        Suddenly a noise stopped her, the sudden noise of weight cracking a dried twig and the rushed passage of something through the underbrush. Before she could look for it, it was on her. A red fox, darting in fear from something, had veered into her path. It pivoted quickly to avoid her and darted into the brush before she could react. Startled, Loharo leaned against a cedar to calm the sudden surge of adrenaline. That was when she heard something else. It was a muffled sound, like someone trying to speak through something.

        Senses on edge, Loharo carefully made her way toward the sound. As she got closer, she could detect another sound. It was a man speaking and, as she got closer, her throat went dry. She recognized the voice.

        "And ye, having been duly convicted of interfering in matters that were of no concern to ye," droned Dennis Flynn beneath his prisoner's gaze, "and furthermore having been convicted of offending the sight of that great and glorious power, namely meself..."

        "Mmmmmmf!" roared Faith Connally impotently as she stared down at the little weasel from her perch atop a milk crate, bound, gagged and with a noose around her neck.

        "Ye'll get yer turn, darlin'," he leered. "Do pronounce yer sentence to be as follows, in that ye be hanged by the neck until yer dead. Does the condemned have any last words?"

        Loharo watched from cover, her eyes wide as saucers. This man fully intended to murder this woman. He was enjoying it. Her head darted around, looking for something to arm herself with. She wondered for a moment if she dared confront him if no weapon presented itself.

        "MMMMMMMMMMP!" howled Faith through her gag, her face cast up to the sky in hopes that someone would hear her. "MMMMMMMMP!"

        "And a fitting epitath it is, too," mocked Dennis. His foot touched the milk crate. "Say 'hello' to all our friends on the other side, darlin'."

        At the last moment, though, both Faith and Dennis saw Loharo rushing up from his left, wielding a tree limb like a club. Dennis moved quickly and was able to block the blow with his forearm, a sharp gaelic curse spitting from his mouth. Loharo didn't wait to see if the first blow had done any damage. Her club was up in moments and slamming down on him again. Through a mixture of fear and naked outrage, Loharo was able to keep Dennis on the defensive with a shower of blows from the club. Faith could only watch as Dennis gave ground under the assault. She tugged at her useless hands and felt the rope tight and unforgiving across her throat, wondering if this was salvation or just a cruel delay to her execution. The tenacity of this black woman on her behalf, whom she barely knew and who didn't trust her, was both startling and heartening.

        But could she keep it up? Already, as they circled back toward her, Faith could see the initial surge of adrenaline was being exhausted. She clubbed with a little less fury. Though she had taken a toll on Dennis Flynn, the tide was beginning to turn. Just then, Dennis managed to catch the branch instead of block it and he wrenched it out of her hands.

        "Now where did we leave off last night?" Dennis asked humorlessly. A fist lashed out with the speed of light. It caught Loharo squarely on the chin and she crumpled to the ground.

        The situation looked grim. Dennis would be on Loharo in seconds. He would tie her up, gag her, maybe kill her, then turn back to Faith. A course of action flashed into Faith's mind and, before she could conjure up the drawbacks of the plan, she acted. The woman tensed the muscles in her neck. All of her weight then rested on the noose around her neck as she pulled her legs up and shot them at Dennis Flynn's back.

        Her heels buried themselves squarely between the man's shoulder blades and he pitched forward to the ground. Loharo was on him in an instant, seizing the limb and beating him with it. Faith swung her bound legs back down to the crate so she could get her weight off of the noose.

        Then, disaster: she misjudged the location of the crate. Her heels hit the corner of the crate and pushed it away. With nothing to support her, the noose jerked into the soft tissue of her throat. Faith gasped for air through passages already constricted by her gag and could get none.

        "Ghhhhhkkkk!" was the sound that snapped Loharo out of her fury. She turned to see Faith twitching helplessly at the end of the noose, her feet searching for purchase that was a foot too far away. Instantly she sprang to her feet and rushed over to the strangling redhead. Her arms wrapped around Faith's thighs. There was a rustle of brush and Loharo looked back as she lifted Faith up as much as she could. Dennis was fleeing into the tangled cover of the forest.

        Disappointed that he was escaping, and yet grateful that he was too preoccupied with his own hide to attack her, Loharo turned to more important matters. While she supported Faith to allow her to breathe, Loharo reached one foot over to the crate and nudged it back until it was under Faith again, not an easy operation. She eased Faith's feet down onto the crate and supported her as the woman sagged, trembling, against her body. When Faith regained her strength, Loharo undid the ropes around the woman's hands and arms, then undid her legs. Faith managed to release the noose with shaking hands. She stepped down off the crate; her legs buckled beneath her and she crashed to the ground on her bottom. Undaunted but with bowed head, Faith removed the smothering gag from her mouth.

        "I'll call the constable," Loharo said gently.

        "No," rasped Faith, her voice raw and distorted. "No authorities, please!"

        Loharo knelt down to the woman, then grimaced at the ugly bruise across her creamy white throat.

        "At least let me take you to Dr. Englehart," Loharo replied.

        "I'll be fine," she whispered. Loharo wanted to insist, but decided it would do no good.

        "So what happened here?" asked Loharo.

        "He took me by surprise," she whispered, her Irish accent making her barely intelligible now. "The murdering bastard!"

        "You two seem to know each other," Loharo observed. Faith's head shot up. She looked at Loharo, realizing she'd said too much and instantly regretting it.

Loharo remained unmoved by the guilty expression. "I also get the feeling you're not a reporter. Now since we're both on this guy's hit list, maybe we ought to work together from now on. But if we're going to do that, you're going to have to stop lying to me and tell me who you are, who he is, and just what's going on around here."

        Faith averted her eyes. She stared down at the ground and exhaled deeply, clearly torn by what to do.

        "Yer pretty clever, I'll give ye that," Faith sighed, facing the black woman at last. "The truth is, I'm...was attached to the police force in Londonderry. It was a good job and I'd managed to make it to Detective Inspector. And I threw it all away over Dennis Flynn."

        "Who's Dennis Flynn?" asked Loharo.

        "Our little playmate," sneered Faith, brushing strands of matted copper hair from her forehead. "Dennis Flynn was a soldier in the IRA, but he was always a loose cannon. He's got a hair trigger and a love of violence that's truly scary. Ye've seen just a sampling of it. He was rapidly becoming a thorn in Sinn Fein's side. Then one day he went too far."

        "What did he do?" Loharo asked, uneasy at the haunted look she was seeing in Faith's expression.

        "He decided the peace negotiations needed a boost," she replied flatly. "Took it upon himself to bomb an apartment building in the Protestant section. Killed fifty-three people." Faith's voice began to shudder. "I was there, assigned to the case. I saw practically every one of them pulled out of the rubble. Fifty-three innocent people, mostly women and children," and Faith's lip began to quiver as a tear rolled down her cheek, "including me sister, Mary Catherine Boyle, and her daughter, Siobhan."

        "Oh no," whispered Loharo.

        "The girl was only twenty months old!" wailed Faith. "I saw 'em lying there, Mary staring up at me with her cold, dead eyes! And I knew it was Dennis that had done it! No one in all of Ireland could be that inhuman! I knew the way he worked from his case file! It could be no other!"

        "Faith," Loharo began.

        "So I started tracking him down," Faith continued, lost in her memory. "Only it turned out later I could have saved meself the trouble. Sinn Fein was so disgusted by him that they cut all ties with him. They actually gave him over! Called the precinct and told us where we could find him! Do ye know how much of a psychotic bastard ye have to be for the bleedin' IRA to turn in one of their own?"

        "What happened?" asked Loharo gently.

        "Chief Constable rounds up as many men as he can and goes to pick him up, fully expecting a gun battle. Only the bastard gets tipped off and gives us the slip. It was after that me supervisor found out about Mary and her girl being two of the victims. He brings me into his office and tells me I'm off the case. Procedure, of course; I'm too emotionally involved. Strictly by the book, as anyone could see."

        "So what did you do?" Loharo asked, seeing her emotional state leveling off.

        "Ignored him," Faith said remotely. "I kept looking for the little ferret on me own, to the detriment of me other cases and the repeated warnings of me supervisor."

        "Were you going to kill him?"

        "At first," admitted Faith. "Now I'm not so sure. I just have to know that he's put away somewhere, so he can't hurt anyone else. Especially since..."
        "Since what?"

        Faith sighed loudly.

        "The department had run him to ground again. They were about to arrest him. But I had to be involved. I disobeyed orders and showed up on my own." Faith began to look haunted again. "My unexpected interference let him get away again. Chief Constable sacked me, of course. He should have. Since that day, anybody Dennis kills is partially my fault." She glanced up at Loharo again, looking guilty. "Right after that, Dennis Flynn gets recruited to America. I don't know for what. The first thing I do is cash in most of me savings and fly here--so I can stop him."

        Loharo looked on, sympathetically.

        "Now ye see why I can't involve the authorities?" Faith asked. "Why I didn't want to involve anybody? Yer government'll ship me back to Ireland and I'm the only one who knows him well enough to get him and stop him! When I showed up at yer door last night, it was only because I was following him and seen what he was doing! I couldn't let ye be his next victim!"

        "And I appreciate that," Loharo said.

        "Hey," Faith grinned sheepishly, rubbing her throat. "We're even."

        Loharo returned the woman's grin with one of her own.

        "Well, it looks like your boy is involved with something very secret and potentially very big," Loharo told her. "Let me tell you what I know and maybe you can figure it out."



        Dennis gained the cover of the lighthouse, then slammed the door and sagged against it, panting wildly. Only when he knew he was safe did he allow himself to become angry. Where had that black woman come from? Was she following him? Hadn't last night made any impression on her? And then there was Connally. Did her presence mean the Londonderry police knew where he was? Was she working perhaps with Scotland Yard or Interpol? Was she working with the black woman?

        And most importantly, why weren't either of them scared of him?

        "What's the matter, Irish?" asked Joshua Halberstam, the local tough Dennis was forced to work with on this operation. "Look like you've seen a spook."

        "Go to the devil," muttered Dennis, trying to push past him.

        "Looks like you got the worst of whatever it was," Joshua chuckled derisively.

        "Aye, perhaps I did," snapped Dennis, whirling angrily on the man. "But I could still take you, you great prancing pouf! So sod off! I've got to tell her majesty about those two women."

        "A woman did this to you!" Joshua roared, his laughter assaulting Dennis.

        It was like waving a red flag before a bull. Dennis Flynn lunged at the man, murderous intent in his angry eyes. In a second his hands found Joshua's throat. Despite the fact that he had three inches and thirty pounds advantage, the fury and momentum of the Irishman's charge shoved Joshua Halberstam over backwards. They both landed hard on the wood floor of the Lighthouse fourier. Dennis straddled him, his elbows locked and his shoulders hunched, and squeezed the man's throat in a fit of blind rage. Halberstam struggled to throw the man off, but he had no leverage and, when they both felt the cartilage in his throat crack under the stress of the assault, he had no life to accomplish his goal. Halberstam gasped unsuccessfully for breath a few more times, then died with Flynn still gripping his throat in venomous anger.

        "Well, that was brilliant," commented Daria Morgan. Dennis released his grip and turned around to see the bespectacled brunette standing in the doorway to the storage room, her poker face unchanged as if he'd just tracked mud on her carpet. "Remind me again that you're on our side."

        "Forget all that," scowled Flynn, hauling himself off of the already forgotten body of Joshua Halberstam. "That black woman's still sneaking about, only this time she's got a police constable from the old sod helping her."

        "I'll handle it," Daria replied, unblinking. "You clean up your mess and make sure nobody finds it, then fill me in on this Irish policeman."

        "And what if I just slit yer throat so you can't identify me and forget I was ever in this place," Dennis replied, cutting the distance between them to a menacing few inches with an easy, unhurried step.

        "Leave and you don't get paid," Daria replied with detached coolness. "Kill me and my superiors turn you into a ketchup stain."

        Dennis stood there. He hated this woman. He hated her because she could be beautiful if she tried, but she didn't try. He hated her because she acted like she knew everything and always talked to him as if he were a dog on a leash. He hated her because nothing seemed to bother her or throw her off stride and that made him uneasy. And he hated her because he couldn't seem to intimidate her, either.

        "It might be worth it just to see the look on yer face," Dennis said over his shoulder as he walked off, leaving the body lying in the front hall.

        Daria watched him walk off, allowing him his juvenile act of defiance so long as he backed down from his bigger threat. The only thing that betrayed her feelings was the trickle of sweat that skittered down her right temple. She entered the storage room, where "Donna" was waiting for her by a laptop computer.

        "I've got to make a call," Daria stated blandly, sitting down at the computer.

        "That psycho is going to pull this operation down around our ears," hissed "Donna". "Or maybe stab us in the back just for the fun of it."

        "Just do your job and let me worry about Dennis."

        "And the Reeves woman?"

        "And her. Meanwhile, I've got to get Joshua disposed of and replaced. One thing I don't intend to handle is the heavy lifting." Daria's mouth curved almost imperceptibly into the vaguest hint of a smile. An eyebrow arched. "Maybe I should ask for two replacements, though."

        "Donna" caught her glance and returned it with a grim smile of satisfaction.

Continued. . .


Story is (c)2000 by Bill Kropfhauser

Chapter six.

Back to chapter four.

The Lighthouse Index Page

Back to What's New