The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 6 (New)

The Alibi – Chapter 6

 
Master Chief Sonar Technician Robin Boyd didn’t look old enough for her job. Her bristle cut around her ears and long blonde locks elsewhere didn’t help. She hadn’t learned the difference between a shipmate referencing her punked hairstyle or calling her “Punk” and when she was anywhere other than her sonar station she didn’t ask for clarification.

Chief of the Boat Torah Jensen had her back.

Which was why Boyd was on station now instead of in the brig.

COB Jensen spoke in a loud whisper. “Seaman Clive had no clue.”

“It helps if you don’t talk right now.”

Jensen folded her harms over her chest and leaned back against the station’s doorjamb.

Boyd’s eyes moved from one diagnostics screen to the next. Recumbrance? Check. Integration? Check. ABFAC Cones? Check. Towed Array? Check? Transform Analysis? Check. AI Separation? Check.

Boyd shook her head. One hand kept her headphones tight to her right ear, her other hand played over dials and switches.

Run another series check?

Why?

She turned to a second set of screen along a wall projecting from the sonar displays.

Jensen looked as well. “Anything on the ES-10?”

“Nothing. Unless somebody’s got something way beyond what we have, this is pure biologic.” Boyd ran diagnostics. “Or the most sophisticated ‘droppers DARPA can come up with suck.”

She turned back to her sonar panel. Two screens showed Sherlock’s – the Henderson James’ AI – progress analyzing the signals, one coming out of Boston harbor, the other out beyond the continental shelf.

It kept coming up blank and asking for help.

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“DeathSong” now on BizCatalyst360

The kind folks at BizCatalyst360 just published my DeathSong, an excerpt from my forthcoming The Shaman and offered at the prodding of Mark O’Brien who found meaning in my The Paraclete.

The Shaman came about because a good number of people kept asking me about my background and training. I’d meant to write a book for years, and have a really poorly written manuscript dating from the late 1980s to prove it.

Several times I’d take that manuscript out and massage it. Into a different yet equally poorly written manuscript.

Finally, I took it out in late 2019 and asked myself, “What would make this an interesting story?”

That, and getting permission from one of my teachers (who spoke for all of them) was what I needed.

Originally entitled “Shaman Story,” the graphic artist who did the interior and exterior artwork mistakenly wrote “The Shaman” on the bookcover and Shaboom! it was done.

You can also get an idea of an earlier version of the story at DeathSong here on my blog.

For me, it’s always interesting to see how a story changes over time.

And in either case, enjoy.

 
Enjoy!

The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 5 (New)

The Alibi – Chapter 5

 
Sean Davitty’s head still ached from Cousin Seamus’ all Irish wedding. He slept most of the flight back from Shannon, although Inis Mór to Shannon was a series of puddle jumpers and windups that hadn’t helped his hangover.

But Seamus was his favorite and he was Seamus’ Best Man and Dia could that man go on about his research and studies.

Archeo-linguistics. First Languages. Paleo-linguistics. Languages before there were languages. Going back before France’s Trois-Freres.

Sean smiled, nodded, and drank up another glass.

Besides, if he couldn’t dive in it, Sean wasn’t interested. Even while back home he twice brought his gear down to the harbor to practice. Seamus helmed his father’s boat out to deep water and Sean would go down down down, deep deep deep, and come up laughing at Seamus’ panic stricken face.

“It’s free diving, Seamus. I’m next in line for ONR’s DSEND testing and this puts me near the top.”

Seamus answered with a thick brougue. “I never thought my cousin would be working for the Yank’s Alphabet City.” But on Sean’s second dive, he drew some symbols on his tablet and told Sean to look for them when he was way deep. “Can you do that for me, Sean?”

“What do I get if I find them?”

“Ah, you’re too long among the Yanks, for sure you are.”

“Is this that Sheila Na Gig thing you use to do when we were kids?”

“Aye, them’s pretty stones we found as childrens were carvings of the Mother Goddess and we didn’t know. I’m still on the hunt, but now with the Uni backing me all the way.”

Sean was thrilled his cousin’s childhood fancies were financing his adulthood quest. And when he met his cousin’s bride-to-be, he smiled and nodded; his cousin’s found his Mother Goddess at last.

But Sean came up from the deep with nothing.

Now back in Boston and with a remedial throbbing head to remind him of his week in na hÁrainneacha, Sean practiced the techniques he spent a year learning from the Bajau. He didn’t have their genetic disposition, but he came close – his best dive was ten minutes at two-hundred feet. His teammates shook their heads at him. “You’ve already got all the certifications you need, Sean. You working at being a whale?”

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The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 4 (New)

As mentioned in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 1 (Redux), I work to nail down the opening of whatever I’m working on.

Here’s The Alibi – Chapter 4 and is a precursor to what was The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 11 – Mary Frances Cuccello, Rhinehold, Cranston at AirCon bomb scene


The Alibi – Chapter 4

 
Maria Francesca Cuccello sat at her top floor, corner apartment’s kitchen table and looked out over the harbor. A cup of coffee steamed in her hand, the coffee slightly beiged by a touch of cream. The steam brought a strong draft of Sambuca to her nostrils and she inhaled deeply. About an eighth of the cup was Sambuca, poured first, then just a splash of cream, just enough to swirl the Sambuca already there, then followed by coffee from a stovetop espresso maker her great-grandfather brought over from the old country.

She’d never been to the old country.

Her great-grandfather, Francesco Romeo Renaldi Fortesso Cucello came to this country the year the Wright Brothers claimed the skies at KittyHawk. He came with a box and no english save “Boston” and “Prince-a Commercia.”

Someone on the same boat, someone lost to her family’s antiquity, spoke English and got him to their cousin’s attic room and a job unloading ships.

Strong backs and a knowledge of ropes, those Italians.

Half a year later his Sicilian made way for Pidgen-English and two rooms with a shared bath basement apartment in the building in exchange for maintenance work.

Three years later he spoke without an accent and spent most of his earnings on good clothes, and language and etiquette lessons. Eight years into this country he started purchasing buildings nobody wanted in sections of North End people avoided, or walked through hurriedly, looking but never stopping, and made deals with other immigrants offering lodging in exchange for remodeling and maintenance work.

He leveraged the remodeled buildings until, in his fifteenth year, he owned the block where he started, no longer had to bang up his hands or suffer rope burns for his daily bread, and went back to Fortuna for a bride.

He arrived and people didn’t recognize him. Fathers entertained him and practically threw their daughters at him.

One caught his eye, Alessa Magdalena Montonori, third daughter of Don Carlo Vicenzi Montonori, full figured, blue-eyed, waist-length raven black hair pulled back into a punishing bun, and with a stutter that made speech a near impossibility for her.

Francesco took her hand in his, asked if she wanted to speak without fear, and wiped a tear from her eye as she nodded.

They wed. On the shipride home he told her of Demosthenes and began working with her daily. Her vocabulary swelled with her belly. Ten months later Rocco was born. Francesco arraigned for a radio-telephone call to Palermo. Don Carlo arrived later than expected and Francesco kept the line open despite the cost and angry Boston aristocats demanding time on the line.

Don Carlo and his wife, Simona Contessa, arrived via truck and heard the scratchy sound of a baby crying followed by a woman’s voice speaking in flawless English, “Shh, shh, shh, Rocco, listen. It’s your grandmother and grandfather come to say hello to you.”

Don Carlo spoke into the mouthpiece, “Chi ha detto questo?

Sono io, papà. Alessa Maddalena. Non riconosci il suono di tua figlia?” It’s me, Papa. Alessa Magdalena. Don’t you recognize the sound of your own daughter?

Don Carlo and Simona Contessa cried through the rest of the call.

Francesco offered to pay for them to come to America to see their grandson. He repeated the offer, in Sicilian then in English and again in Sicilian. Someone on their end had to help them understand they heard correctly.

In 1919, Francesco’s new homeland asked him to go back to Sicily, to help them. One storm passed, another was coming, and his knowledge was needed.

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The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 3 (New…Mostly Kinda…)

As mentioned in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 1 (Redux), I work to nail down the opening of whatever I’m working on.

Here’s The Alibi – Chapter 3 and borrows heavily from what was The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 5

I’ve learned to live with my rewriting. Hope you can, too.


The Alibi – Chapter 3

 
Dev Surely remembered The Farm recruiting her in high school. It was Friday, her last day of detention – the last day this time, anyway – everybody else had bugged out early, and the clock was sweeping towards five-pm. Special Assistant Blah-Blah-Blah Cam Connelly came up to her in detention hall, sat at the desk next to hers, gave her a once-over, and smiled.

She gave him the finger.

He chuckled but said nothing.

She decided to give him a once-over, too.

No idea what he was doing at McLouth, Kansas, high school. His clothes were too nice – light blue suit with a navy blue stripe on cream shirt, tie matching his suit – his face too clean shaven and with absolutely no stubble at all even though it was closing in on five in the afternoon, his dusty brown hair too well groomed, his hands nicely manicured and almost graceful if you didn’t notice the veins and tendons sliding over each other as he clasped them together, and an amazing smile under bright gray eyes, and he didn’t smell of farm. Everybody around here smelled of farm. Wheat, corn, cattle. Lots and lots of cattle. Some pigs. A couple of sheep. Hay.

Who was this mud-fucker?

She checked out his shoes. Everybody around here had cowshit on or under their shoes. You couldn’t help it.

But this guy had clean and recently polished black patent leathers.

With laces neatly tied and even.

He smiled when she caught his eyes.

Smiled and nodded, like he watched her evaluate him.

That’s when she knew he let her inspect him.

She turned her head away, didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

He sat without talking for a full three minutes.

She knew because she timed him.

Finally she turned to face him full on, one hand flat on her desk and the other holding the back of her chair. “What?”

He kept on smiling. “That’s pretty good, Devorah. Most people your age won’t last thirty seconds. Hell, most people your age won’t last three.”

“Don’t call me Devorah.”

“Right, right. Dev. I saw that on your record.” He held his hand out. “So, Dev, nice to meet you. I’m Cameron Connelly. Most people call me Cam.”

She didn’t take it. “So what’s this about?”

Cam Connelly kept his eyes on hers and didn’t blink unless she did. “Your school’s star linebacker makes a pass at you and you knacker him? Impressive.”

“Knacker?”

“Kneed him so hard in the balls he won’t play this weekend. Maybe not even next.”

“He picked me up.”

“Not much else to do in McLouth?”

He made it rhyme with cloud. “It’s McLouth. Like your teeth after getting punched in the face.”

He nodded. “How tall are you?”

“Five fuck off.”

Cam Connelly laughed. “Okay. I have a favor to ask you. Give me this favor, it might change your life. Don’t grant me this favor, you’ll never see me again.” He cocked his head slightly left. “He picked you up? You mean off the floor?”

“I was at my locker. He tapped me on the shoulder. I had my pack in my hands. He grabbed me by the elbows and lifted me up to his face level.”

“Maybe he wanted to ask you out.”

“Maybe he’s an asshole. Maybe the two of you are related.”

His eyes obviously ran down her body. “You’re what, five-one? Five-two? You’re basically a perfectly – some might even say wonderfully – formed woman in a tiny body. What’s not to like?”

“You looking to get your balls knackered, too?”

His head rocked back and he laughed, loud and unashamedly. He sounded like some African tribal leader bragging about the wealth of his people. “So how about it, grant me the favor?”

“Why should I?”

“No reason, really. But it could change your life.”

“No thanks.”

“Okay. Still, I think we could use you. With the proper training and education, you’d be outstanding.”

“Who’s we? What training and education?”

“You have to grant me the favor.”

“You haven’t told me what it is.”

“Meet me here tomorrow, nine o’clock sharp.”

“If I show up – and I won’t – I’m bringing my dad’s handgun.”

“Exactly the kind of attitude we’re looking for.” He held out his hand again. “See you tomorrow?”

Her eyes went from his face to his hand and back. She took it. He had rough hands but they didn’t feel like farm-roughened. “Guess you’ll have to wait and see…Cam.”

The clock rang five.

He held the door for her on their way out.

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