J.M.J.
Author's note: Thank you for reading! Special thanks to all of you leaving reviews! The next chapter will be up tomorrow. God bless!
September 8 – Friday
"This is great!" Biff shouted from the inlet where he was paddling the raft around. They had taken it to the western side of the island to try it out, since the beach there was in almost an inlet which made the currents easier to deal with than the open ocean. The other boys had had the raft done two days before Biff's birthday, but not without several close calls on Biff catching them working on it. There was a debate about whether they should try it out to make sure it was seaworthy or let Biff have that honor. In the end, it was Biff who took it out for the first time.
The raft wasn't great, but it was balanced in the water. It was big enough for two people, and stable enough that they could move around without tipping it. The other boys insisted on trying it out once Biff had had his turn, and it wasn't long before they were standing on it like a paddleboard or diving off it to swim. Katina had followed them and she was watching the fun with interest. She wasn't willing to get on the raft with any of her fellow castaways, but when they offered to let her go alone, she accepted. She didn't seem the least afraid of the raft itself or the water, and the boys were impressed by how quickly she was able to paddle it and how well she was able to steer.
They spent all day at the beach, swimming and playing with the raft. They had brought the remaining fishing pole as well as Joe's homemade one. They took these up away from where they were swimming and managed to catch enough fish for supper. These were roasted over a campfire on the beach. As evening was coming on, they attempted some singing, but the only real success was Chet's cover of the BeeGees' "Stayin' Alive." That one received a request for an encore.
By the time it was getting dark, they were still on the beach and no one particularly wanted to walk all the way back to the cabin in the dark. One of the advantages to the island was that they weren't answerable to anyone else regarding their whereabouts, and so they just decided to sleep on the beach. They kept the fire burning in case of snakes, but it really was warm enough without it. The sand was hard, but it could be reshaped however necessary to sleep comfortably. As long as they kept above the tide line, they would sleep securely enough.
Sleep, however, didn't come swiftly. For an hour or more, the boys were too busy talking and laughing to sleep. Katina couldn't have understood much of what they were saying, but she would laugh, too, whenever the others were laughing. Finally, as they became more tired, they began to quiet down.
The night sky was brilliant, as usual. There was no moon, but it looked like there were a million stars shining in the firmament. The sight and the silence broken only by the waves gently lapping the beach and the ordinary nighttime sounds of the island was making Biff more thoughtful than sleepy. That was unfortunate for the other castaways if they were hoping for sleep, since Biff was the sort who liked to talk when he was thinking.
"It's so weird that I'm nineteen now," he commented.
"Yeah, you're really getting ancient there, Biff," Tony teased him.
"I guess it's not so bad for me as it is for you guys," Biff retorted. "Most of you are almost twenty. I've got a whole year before that. Do you think we'll still be stuck here a year from now?"
There were collective groans from the other boys.
"We don't have any way of knowing," Frank replied. "For all we know, we could get rescued tomorrow."
"Yeah. I just wish we would have gotten rescued before today," Biff said. "Not for me so much. It's just that it was probably a rough day for my parents and sisters."
HBNDHBNDHB
Iola practically fell on her bed when she got back home. She had gone to the Hoopers', thinking she might be able to help them out somehow, considering what day it was, but they hadn't been home. As she drove home, she came to the conclusion that that was probably just as well. She didn't know either of Biff's sisters very well—the one was several years older than her and the other was several years younger—and even if she did, she was probably the last person they wanted to see right now. Now that she was finally convinced, she could see how much harder she must have made it for everyone else, constantly stirring up that flicker of hope and them having to douse it over and over again with common sense. Besides that, she was cheerless enough that she wouldn't be able to cheer anyone up.
The last week had been so weird, like the world had ended but she was still stuck here. Yes, that's how it was. The world where she had a big brother and where she was going to marry Joe and they were going to live next door to Frank and Callie—that world was ended. And now she was left with the impossible task of finding a way to live with that.
While she was still thinking about all this with the bizarre emptiness of someone who was no longer able to cry, she heard footsteps in the hallway and then a knock on her door. She recognized the footsteps as her father's, and she told him to come in.
"How are you doing?" he asked as she felt the end of the bed sag as he sat on it.
"I don't know," Iola admitted. "I just feel kind of numb."
Chester Morton gave her a loving smile. "So do I. And you were holding out hope a lot longer than the rest of us. I admire that."
"You do? I don't see why."
"It took courage."
"I was being delusional." Iola sighed. "I just thought, if there was some chance, however small…But I should have had enough sense to see that that didn't make any difference to the investigation. Mr. Hardy and the others were trying to get to the truth of what happened, and if it was true that they were still alive, they would have been found."
"It still wasn't easy for you. I'm sorry I didn't try very hard to make it any easier."
Iola shook her head. "I still don't understand why this happened. What did Chet and Joe and the others ever do to deserve something like this?"
"Things like this aren't always punishments, you know," Chester told her. "Sometimes bad things happen so that something better can come of it."
"What good could possibly come out of this?"
"I don't know. From where I'm standing, it doesn't look like any could. But I don't see the whole picture. There could be some reason I can't even imagine. But that's the thing. There is a reason for this, just like there is for everything that happens. We just have to trust that."
HBNDHBNDHB
If there was one thing Nancy was beginning to get used to in this case, it was running into dead-ends everywhere she turned. She and her father were back in Hawaii once again, trying to locate Chris Hammon, the FBI agent. Neither of them had expected to be successful, exactly. An FBI agent in good standing whom the Bureau didn't want to be found would be one of the hardest people imaginable to track down. It had been nearly a week, and Hammon had made himself completely scarce.
Don had offered to help them again, and so he had been along during all their fruitless efforts. At first, it had been uncomfortable for Nancy, but Don had given no hint of trying to bring up the subject of their relationship. But Nancy knew that the talk needed to be had, sooner or later.
It wouldn't be right now, in any case. Don was currently driving her and her father back to their hotel after more fruitless inquiries, and of course Nancy couldn't have a talk like this with Don with anyone else present. Doing it while he was doing her a favor would be classless, too. Besides, she was tired and frustrated and in no mood to have a difficult conversation.
"Thanks for all the help, Don," Carson said as Don stopped the car in the hotel parking lot.
"It's fine, Mr. Drew," Don told him wearily. "I just wish we could find something."
Carson nodded. "I know. Investigating is a game that requires a lot of patience. At least this trip hasn't been like the last time I was in Hawaii," he added with a wan smile.
"There's that at least," Don said without conviction. "That's a pretty low bar."
The Drews were saying good night to Don when they realized someone was approaching them. All three looked up with one accord to see a young man about thirty coming toward them. Even in the semi-darkness, they recognized him as the very man that they had been looking for. Carson and Nancy glanced at one another as they waited for him to reach them.
"Mr. Drew, Ms. Drew," the man said, nodding to each of them. "And Mr. Cameron. I understand you've been looking for me."
"Possibly," Carson said. "You're Chris Hammon?"
The man took out his wallet and showed them an FBI identification. "Would you mind if we all get in the car and drive? I'm taking a risk coming here."
"First, we've got one question," Carson said. "Did you call yourself Roger Stanley back in Montana?"
"I think we have something to talk about," Hammon replied.
Carson and Nancy got into the back seat while Hammon took the passenger seat. Nancy noted with disappointment that this would allow Hammon a natural excuse for speaking without looking directly at his audience, making it much easier for him to lie. At the same time, she told herself that she didn't know of any reason why he would seek them out only to lie to them, but nothing about this case was making sense.
"Why are you doing this?" Carson asked to begin with. "You obviously didn't want Fenton Hardy to know your real identity. Why reveal it to us?"
"Apparently, I didn't need to," Hammon said.
"We didn't know for sure that you were the one we were looking for," Carson pointed out.
"All right," Hammon replied. "I think you know that there are a few things that the FBI is trying to keep quiet in this case."
"No way," Don interjected sarcastically.
Hammon chuckled slightly. "I'm not supposed to be talking to all of you. When it gets found out, I'll probably lose my job, unless I can prove that I was right to disobey orders. I believe I am. Not only was the decision to keep Fenton Hardy out of it a waste of some potentially very beneficial assistance, it was outright stupid and caused this whole case to get as messy as it did. Besides that, having all of you blundering around this case blindly is dangerous—to you, to the agents working on it, and to our chances of getting it solved."
"Are you going to explain everything or make us keep guessing?" Carson asked.
"I'll explain. The criminal organization operating out of this city has been around for about fifteen years. It started small, but it grew quickly. Its tactics weren't great. By the time it had only been around a few years, we already had several members identified. They were too sloppy, and too ready to kill anybody who could be an obstacle to them. Murders, of course, are hard to conceal. The problem was that we couldn't identify the leader. We arrested a few of the smaller fry, but they were always quickly replaced. We decided to plant one of our agents in the organization, but what we didn't expect was that our undercover agent would be made the acting head of the organization."
"Dallas Ermington," Nancy said.
"Right. She's one of ours."
"Wait. Hold on," Don objected. "You mean the FBI has spent fifteen years investigating a criminal organization headed by an FBI agent?"
Hammon shook his head slightly. "I said the 'acting head.' The 'figurehead' might be a better description. Everyone in the organization is told that their orders come from her, but no one speaks to her directly. Needless to say, the orders don't come from her. They don't even go through her. She's completely a figurehead with no power whatsoever, and she's been unable to discover who holds the power."
"Why haven't you abandoned this project then?" Carson asked. "It seems like a lot of risk and a lot of wasted time for nothing."
"It takes time for uncover operations to pay off, although I agree this one has gone on too long. The problem is that the moment we pull her out, she's as good as dead. Whoever's really behind this will know she was one of ours and have her killed. Then there's always the possibility that she'll finally get something."
"None of this makes any sense," Nancy objected. "You said that they're sloppy and then the next breath, you say you can't get anywhere on the case after years of working on it."
"I know," Hammon admitted. "It doesn't add up. There's something big that we just can't get at involved here. We have several theories, none of which are particularly encouraging. The most obvious is that Dallas has been bought and paid for by the very gang we're trying to stop. But even if she is, our chances of learning anything are slightly better letting her remain in place and not letting on that we suspect her. But I'm afraid there's something more sinister here. The other option is that this gang has a, shall we say, larger than ordinary financial backer."
"You mean a government," Carson guessed. "Our government?"
"I don't think so," Hammon said, "but then it never pays to make presumptions. However…" He paused for a longer than normal time. "We learned eleven years ago that this gang is heavily involved in human trafficking. In fact, that's their main enterprise. One of their methods is to kidnap children of tourists and immigrants—especially ones who aren't in the country legally and so are afraid to come to law enforcement—but the possibilities there are too small for what they've built up. They must have a larger network, especially since a few of their presumed victims have turned up in other countries. I don't think I need to explain how badly we want to put a stop to this."
"But you're going against orders in telling us this," Carson pointed out. "Why? Do you suspect corruption in the FBI?"
"It's more a disagreement on how this should be handled. Fenton Hardy's sons have been murdered. He's worked with the FBI enough that everyone would suspect that he would be helping on this case, or more likely, taking a lead in the investigation. However, the Bureau has their reasons for not wanting him involved. They're not completely unwarranted, but his lack of involvement tipped the gang off that we had a plan that we didn't want anyone interfering with. When they recaptured Reese, they leaned on him and they got a lot of information out of him. We caught a lot of the small players in this, but the big ones are hidden so deep who knows if we'll get to them."
"How does Reese fit into all this?" Carson asked.
"He was one of the more important members of the gang. Dallas persuaded him to defect. Incidentally, her cover has been blown. Reese got cold feet about testifying. He gave the marshals watching him the slip and managed to get to Hawaii where he intended to get his things together and then leave the country. However, his old friends caught up to him before we could. Incidentally, they recaptured him in more or less the way I described to Mr. Hardy."
"Okay. So you said that the FBI's reasons for not wanting Fenton involved weren't unwarranted," Carson continued.
"No, not entirely. First, the operation was already in serious jeopardy. Bringing in new people could have made matters worse. Secondly, we learned about the human trafficking angle of this case from a civilian investigator. I think you've heard about him and what happened to him. His name was Dylan Larson."
"Mark's brother."
"Right. We suspect he was killed to keep him quiet about that. This gang's so trigger-happy, the brass doesn't want to take the risk of getting any more civilians killed. It tends to erode public trust in us."
"But Larson was the one who first brought up Brock Garret's name," Carson said. "How does he fit in?"
"I'd like to know that myself, especially considering that Garret was lying about Dallas getting him into show business—she hadn't started on her undercover assignment until he'd already been acting for a few years—but more than that, I'd like to know because wasn't killed to keep him quiet."
"How do you know that?" Nancy asked.
"Because we've identified the victim of that crash," Hammon replied. "It was Garret's agent, Reynolds, not Garret."
There was silence as this revelation sank in.
"Then what happened to Brock?" Nancy asked.
"We don't know," Hammon admitted. "He seems to have vanished. He could have done that on his own, either to hide from his old partners in crime or because he didn't admit everything and knows that he could still be arrested, so he's hiding from us. Or he might have been kidnapped or killed by his old confederates. They may have had their reasons for not wanting him to be found in that car. We'll have to continue investigating to know for sure."
"Speaking of investigating, you still haven't explained why you set this entire thing up or why you're explaining it to us now," Carson said. "I assume you're the one who spread the rumor about Dallas being in Montana."
"Yes, that was my doing," Hammon replied. "I thought it would be enough to get Mr. Hardy there."
"And why did you want Fenton in Montana?" Carson asked. "To get him out of the way?"
"Those were my orders, yes," Hammon said. "However, I had other thoughts. As I said, I thought it was futile and a waste of a resource to try to keep Mr. Hardy out of this. I wasn't quite ready then to straight up disobey orders, but I thought I might be clever enough to find a way around those orders. You see, we came across evidence that there may be a link between this gang and the cartel that Mr. Hardy was investigating before this all started. That cartel uses forced labor to harvest their opium. We recently found evidence that the Hawaiian organization supplies some of their labor. Investigating that angle, however, would require greater cooperation with Mexican authorities than we have at the moment. Mr. Hardy has a good relationship with them, and so he would be in a better position to investigate than we could. I thought by steering him in that direction, I could satisfy both my superiors' order and my own convictions."
"Are those clues even real or were they all manufactured by you for your owns ends?" Carson asked pointedly.
"No, they're real," Hammon maintained. "I personally recovered all of them from one of the apartments that we raided while arresting the various members of the gang. Believe me, it was a very big act of faith in Mr. Hardy and the rest of you for me to not turn them over as evidence. If it turns out that his involvement really will be detrimental to the investigation…Well, in any case, the notebook and the ring belong to Gaspar Santana, a member of the cartel known to Mr. Hardy. The knife was also in the apartment. One of the kidnappers must have stolen it and kept it for himself."
"And what about that recording?" Carson asked.
"Yes, the recording," Hammon said slowly. "That was the one item that wasn't in that apartment. Dallas got that to us before we lost contact with her. That's why we're keeping it under wraps. She was the only one who could have gotten it to us, so if any news about it leaked out, then it would essentially be the same as advertising that she was one of us. Obviously, we didn't want to do that in case she was still alive. However, I felt that Mr. Hardy ought to know about the existence of that recording and what it contained, in case there were any lingering doubts as to whether the boys had been killed or were being held prisoner. That was an error in judgment on my part. Mr. Hardy shared it quite liberally and now it's known that we have that recording. That's why we're having this conversation. My superiors are going to see this as a prize example of why they don't want civilians involved. Personally, I feel it's a prize example of what happens when you intentionally hamper communications, but as I said, I have a lot of differences of opinion with my superiors."
"Then what is the point of this conversation?" Carson asked, trying not to show anything of his thoughts on the matter.
"To let you know what's going on so that you can help bring this entire mess to a close, hopefully without any further incidents like the recording."
"You're very dismissive about that incident," Carson noted.
"It was my own fault. I should have been clearer from the beginning. Besides, it still may not be for nothing."
"What do you mean?"
"Coswell's and Sherman's voice were identifiable on that recording. We don't know the identity of the person that they were speaking to. Whoever it is, that's the one we're all looking for. If one of you manages to hear his voice, you'll recognize it now."