Flower of Heaven Omnibus by Julien Ayotte

Author:Julien Ayotte
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 2

Harry Esten, an FBI agent in Providence, busily attempted to complete the paperwork after the successful elimination of an assassination attempt on the lives of a foreign ruler in Boston and a son of the ruler’s wife in Medway, Massachusetts. Harry, recuperating from a bullet wound in the left shoulder, found that trying to do paperwork with the use of only one hand was virtually impossible. Esten had fatally shot Answa Talon, an assassin, as Talon tried to escape pursuit by Harry and other policemen in the Massachusetts General Hospital parking garage adjacent to the hospital laundry. Harry’s accurate shots pierced the side window and directly hit Talon in the shoulder, causing him to crash the confiscated laundry van into the parking garage wall, bursting it into flames upon contact. Talon was rushed into the emergency room operating area but never regained consciousness. Whether the cause of death was from Harry’s gunshots or the subsequent burns to Talon’s body, no one knew for certain, nor did anyone really care.

Harry had been informed by the doctors at Mass. General that he would recover completely from his flesh wounds. The Bureau had ordered him to take a few weeks off to mend his body and also to carefully document the incidences leading to the confrontation with Talon.

The case had included fake Interpol agents, disguised assailants, stolen aircraft, a murder in Dijon, France, and another attempted assassination in Medway, all related to an incident which occurred over thirty-five years earlier.

This had been the highlight in the Rhode Island FBI office, normally mired in white-collar cases in the area, or the continued pursuit of mafia criminals. Providence had been identified years earlier as the mafia capital of New England, and the local mob boss was as well-known as the governor or the ever-popular mayor of Providence.

Harry, at age forty-seven, had been married to his high school sweetheart, but she had died of complications from leukemia in 1985. They had lived in a lovely cottage along the Narragansett coast, in the southern part of Rhode Island. Harry found the loneliness here troubling, especially in these winter periods where the coastline was virtually abandoned by the summer residents who had long gone back home for the holidays. Such was the case with the neighbors on each side of Harry, whose summer homes were locked up and empty.

In late November, Harry’s recuperation therapy included long walks on the beach with his faithful golden retriever, Duke. Harry would toss a rubber ball, and Duke would retrieve it each time until the game ran out its welcome after about a dozen tosses. As he petted Duke gently after his last retrieval, he bent down and whispered in his ear, “God, how I miss Lucy.” For nearly twenty years, he would gladly drive the forty-five minute commute to Providence, always anxious to see Lucy’s captivating smile when he walked through the door each night, except that night three years ago, when he had entered, and there was nothing but silence throughout the house.

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