by Pat McKee
When I awoke it was twilight. Rebecca was shaking my knee.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been cleared for landing at the Slow River Fish Camp International Airport. The flight attendants will discontinue cabin service. Please bring your seat backs to their upright position and stow your tray tables. We’ll be landing shortly.”
Rebecca pointed at Melissa, still asleep on my shoulder. I rubbed her cheek, and she began waking, stretching as much as she could in the back seat of the plane. I pointed out the window to the river in the distance, the cabins, the dock with dozens of fishing boats tied up for the night. Grey traced a wide descending arc, lining up the plane with the river, broad and flat below, setting us down, and gliding in to the dock. Cutting the engine, only cicadas, frogs, and the occasional bull gator broke up the deep primordial silence of the camp. We grabbed what little we had on the plane and followed Grey down a gravel path to his cabin, a tin-roofed bungalow that looked from the outside not unlike his lodge on the Satilla. Inside, one large room served as kitchen, dining, and living room together, bedrooms off to the side. Cheap paneling covered the walls.
Grey fell onto the sofa while Rebecca searched the kitchen, pantry, refrigerator.
“We got a loaf of bread that looks OK, some sandwich meat, and a case of cold beer. Pretty much all we need. I’m famished. I think we all should grab something to eat. Grey, have a beer, and I’ll make you a sandwich—you’re ‘bout the only one’s been doing any work for hours.”
Rebecca tossed a beer across the room in Grey’s direction. He snatched it out of the air and popped the top in one smooth motion, as though the two of them had practiced and polished the move, a domestic ballet performed hundreds of times. But Grey was still in charge.
“After we have something to eat, I suggest we get some sleep. There’s plenty of beds and two showers. We’ll get going in the morning. I don’t think anyone will bother us. Least, not till then.”
Rebecca handed out cans of beer and bologna sandwiches slathered with mayonnaise. Things had the feel of normalcy. Each of us descended on our sandwich in silence. I made Melissa and myself another, Rebecca taking care of herself and Grey, then handing out another round of beers.
I volunteered to make the sleeping arrangements less awkward. “Melissa, you can have the back bedroom, I’ll crash on the sofa.”
Melissa responded, the weariness now showing in her voice. “The first thing I’m going to do is take a hot shower and then sleep as long as Agent Grey will let me.”
“It won’t be me who wakes you. Fishermen get started early. Before sunrise this place’ll be howling with the sound of every imaginable boat motor. But you should get a good eight hours. I know I need it. I’m heading to bed.”
With that, Grey and Rebecca disappeared. Melissa turned on the shower. I flipped off the light and was asleep as soon as I hit the couch.
Before daybreak the unmuffled sounds of men, outboards, and diesels came up from the river and reverberated through the trees. I stepped onto the porch, the welcome, cool air waking me. There were fishing guides rounding up their eager charges out of dozens of men appearing from campers and trucks; there were subsistence fishermen, gaunt, in beat-up trucks pulling rusted trailers with flat boats, men who fed their families from the water, lined up to back their trailers down the ramp; there were sport anglers smoking cigars, appearing from below decks on bill-fishing boats tied up at the dock, their diesel engines rumbling, loading ice chests of food and beer for the thirty-mile run to the Gulf Stream. The entire camp was awake. Nobody paid any attention to the airplane tied to the end of the dock.
Inside, a coffee maker sputtered and steamed and brewed a pot programmed the night before, the digital clock showing 6:05. I poured a mug. No one else in the cabin was stirring. I figured I had a few minutes to myself with Ariel.
“Placido found the tapes and Fowler’s last words are distinct. I am sending you an audio file. You need to get an external drive, download the file, and get it to the prosecutor in Brunswick.”
She paused before continuing, “And, by the way, there is a little surprise on the recording. Before Fowler did away with Oliver, Fowler confided in him the secret of Oliver’s parentage. It appears that old man Fowler had a fling with a lovely young servant girl. She’s the one in the picture of him at his desk. Oliver was the result. The old man never took responsibility for Oliver, though he gave him a job at the house and made his grandson pledge to keep him, but only after telling him why. Sound familiar? It turns out Oliver was Fowler’s uncle, someone whom Fowler had resented his entire life and had reveled in the opportunity to kill, but not before telling Oliver who his father was and reminding Oliver that the old man had never claimed him. This information won’t do anything to bring back Oliver, but his descendants will benefit from a sizable inheritance.”
The story prompted me to wonder, was Ariel able to understand humor, to recognize irony? To understand human frailty, emotion, love, hate, anger? Ariel continued to advise me to keep my distance from Cabrini, but why? From the other information she was giving me, Cabrini and I were supposed to be on the same team. Of all the relationships that swirled around me, the one certainty I had was Ariel: Placido told her to help me, and she did without fail. So I would continue to follow her advice.
I had a lot ahead of me. I was still scruffy, dirty, and wearing a blood-spattered T-shirt, not what I wanted to be wearing when I showed up with the tapes at the prosecutor’s office. I jumped in the shower before Melissa woke, shaved and cleaned up for the first time in a week. When Melissa showed, wearing only a T-shirt, I was sitting on the couch in clean jeans and a button down that I pulled from my backpack. I was no longer a poor imitation of Grey, but back to Paul McDaniel. Melissa sat down and snuggled next to me, put her arms around me, brushed my just-shaved face.
“Hey, handsome. I remember you. I think I like you. As I recall, you like me, too.”
I scooped Melissa up from the couch and carried her into the back bedroom, both of us doing a poor job of stifling our laughter, the bed still warm from her body, her scent still on the sheets.
When we emerged again, the sun was up. Grey and Rebecca were sipping coffee on the porch. Grey tried to be coy, and I played along.
“So I guess you two slept well.”
“Very. Ready for another big day. I checked with Ariel before my shower, and Placido has found the tapes. All we need is an external drive to download the audio, you can take it to the prosecutor, and I can turn myself in.”
“I’m sure I have a thumb-drive around here someplace. We need to get movin’. It won’t take much time for someone to identify that floatplane as the one that supposedly went down in the Atlantic, and the FBI will be all over us. We’ll get the tapes to the prosecutor in Brunswick before you get caught. As soon as everyone is ready here, we can take the truck and drop you and Rebecca off at the lodge, and I will take Melissa to the Brunswick airport for a flight back to Miami before I go by the prosecutor’s office.”
The trip from Slow River to Grey’s lodge in the woods seemed all too short. Melissa and I said our goodbyes on the porch, Rebecca leaving on the four-wheeler she’d pulled up on, Grey waiting in the truck to take Melissa to the airport, to Miami, to Placido. And to Cabrini.
“Grey and I have this under control. Once we get the tapes to the prosecutors everything should be fine. Then, I’ll go back and get things straightened out with the firm.”
“So, when will I see you again?”
“As soon as I get things worked out in Atlanta. I think it’d be a great idea to meet back at the Abbey.”
And with that, Melissa was gone. Within minutes, the sound of Grey’s truck fading, Rebecca’s four-wheeler off in the distance, I once again was enveloped in the silence that surrounded me when I pulled my Porsche into Grey’s barn seven days ago and turned off the engine. With everyone gone, I had an unbearable pang of—o
f what? Nostalgia? Nostalgia for almost dying at the hands of a psychopath? Regret? Regret that I had not rescued Melissa on my own? I felt the sadness of having been through something extraordinary that I would never experience again, tinged with the levity of having dodged death, freed to live the life spread before me.
I was sad and happy, relieved that Melissa would be in the safety of her father’s presence, but apprehensive that she’d still be with Cabrini. Now uncertainty plagued me more than anything else, uncertainty about the firm, about my mother, but mainly about Melissa. Did I have real feelings for Melissa, feelings that would outlast the rush of adrenaline that fueled my time with her? Did Melissa have feelings for me beyond gratitude for a loyal family hireling who was just doing his job? The danger was now over; my job, now complete. It was difficult for me not to default to the feeling of inadequacy that flowed just below the surface of my psyche, the feeling that Melissa was way out of my class, and that, no matter my accomplishments, I just did not measure up. That feeling, I had to admit to myself, was the source of my unease with Cabrini: as bad as I thought he was, Milano blood flowed in his veins.
I turned my attention past what had to happen in Brunswick to what I needed to do in Atlanta. Now with the magic of Placido’s audio tapes and assurance of his loyalty, I was in a position of favor unimaginable a week ago, not just with regard to the distant possibility of criminal prosecution, but with regard to the firm. The partners, ever vigilant of the firm’s image, would do anything not to have the last few minutes of Fowler’s life become public. To move beyond Brunswick to Atlanta, I needed Ariel. Her beautiful image appeared as soon as my laptop powered up. “I have some more good news for you. Your friend Tracey has solved your mother’s problem.”
“What? How do you know about Tracey?”
Even with Ariel’s apparent omniscience it was shocking to realize she knew about Tracey. I’d taken extraordinary efforts to shield her actions from detection. It was not Ariel I was concerned about, but the police. Tracey was still on probation. Assisting a fleeing felon—even one who may never get indicted—would look very bad.
“I listened to your phone conversations. I needed someone to carry out my plan to take care of your mother in your absence. I wanted to have this problem resolved for you by the time you returned to the firm, so you could focus on other matters.”
“Resolved?”
“I called Tracey. She thinks I am a concerned associate of yours. I suggested that you and I had been in touch and she needed to come to Atlanta to help your mother while you were away tending to other matters. I assured her the plan had your blessing.”
“How could you do that? I didn’t—”
“I told her your mom kept trying to get in touch with you, showing up at the firm’s headquarters and being run off by security; they did not believe your mom’s story that her son is a lawyer at Strange & Fowler. She showed them the card you had given her, but they still didn’t believe her. Tracey intercepted your mother one morning before security ran her off, told her she is a friend of yours, and was happy to give her the $1,000.00 to pay her back rent and avoid eviction.”
I was resigned to the fact that at least this problem was one less I’d have to worry about.
“It’s taken care of. I’ll pay Tracey back as soon as I get to Atlanta.”
“There will be no need for that. The morning your mother showed up to get the check from Tracey there was a rather fortunate coincidence, and Tracey took full advantage of it.”
“I don’t know if I can handle another surprise.”
“Your mother appeared in the lobby at the same moment as the Chairman of the Management Committee. He told the security guards he expected her to be removed. Just then Tracey came in and assessed the situation. She stopped the security guards in mid-track, grabbed the Chairman, introduced him to your mother, and shamed him for having security run her off. Tracey made it clear to the Chairman why she was meeting your mother there, and she made a point of handing her the check. Tracey said your mother sniffed at the security guards as she walked out.”
I was just relieved she’d gotten out without attracting further attention.
“Good thing she didn’t call them names. She had taken to referring to them as ‘Gestapo’ with me. That might not have ended well.”
“It gets more interesting. The Chairman seemed truly astonished to realize the person he had mistaken for a homeless beggar was indeed your mother. He told Tracey so: that finding out you have a mother and you aren’t really an orphan was one of the best pieces of information he had heard about you. And he was so happy to hear it, he wrote Tracey a check to repay her on the spot.”
Now he had his ready-made excuse to fire me as soon as I returned, discrediting me, and with me anything negative I had to say about Fowler and the firm.
Twenty-Two
Turning in a suspect for a capital offense is a complex match between a prosecutor and defense attorney shrouded in the fog of attorney-client privilege and prosecutorial discretion. The defense postures, the prosecution threatens, each party keeps his cards close, and all moves are played out by proxies. The defense attorney ventures a hand, his client out of sight, the assistant prosecutor counters, his boss in the background with the final say. The suspect doesn’t show his face until everything is worked out, and the DA never appears until the cameras are rolling, the suspect in custody. But for all the exotic maneuvering and byzantine intrigue, when it’s over it’s much like a high-stakes version of buying a car. The manager shakes your hand, you write a check, and he gives you the keys—or in this instance, the prosecutor holds a press conference, the suspect does the perp walk, and he’s bonded out the back door.
On my side I had Grey, not a defense attorney, and there were no subtleties, there would be no posturing; the plan was to walk in, tell the authorities who I am, and hand over the recording. The only question in my mind was to whom I should turn myself in, the Glynn County DA or the US Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, but it was not an open issue for Grey.
“I told you when I first saw you that I hate the feds and wouldn’t turn you in to ‘em. We’ll go to the DA. He’ll get credit for bringing you in, and he can let the US Attorney know the case is resolved. After all, murder is a state offense, even if you are accused of killing a judge.”
I walked into Glynn County Courthouse without a lawyer. Any defense counsel would accuse me of insanity for showing up as a criminal suspect with three potential murder charges hanging over my head without a lawyer. But Grey doesn’t hold with the artifice of defense lawyers, and he appeared with me and the tape and acted like he expected me to be treated fairly. He had me sold on that approach, but even though I felt I had my innocence proved in an external memory device no bigger than a stick of gum, it still scared me to walk into a courthouse I might well not walk out of. I went through the metal detectors just like everyone else, not showing my bar card to pass, not wanting to set off alarms when the county computers registered who I am. I wanted the chance to turn myself in, not to be wrestled to the ground by the officers manning the doors to the courthouse, handcuffed, and dragged to jail before the DA heard my story.
Inside the courthouse, just past security, were two dark doors with “Raymond Ravenel, District Attorney” stenciled in gold over the pediment, where the letters were chipped and faded. We entered an open room with a counter running the length of the opposite wall. Behind it were a half-dozen clerks dealing with as many lines of citizens, who were plying their claims and responding to the notices that were the daily grist of the office. Behind them were a score of gunmetal desks where an army of investigators, lawyers, and their assistants, many with shoulder holsters visible, were scanning files, yelling on phones, menacing supplicants, and cajoling witnesses. A steady file of police officers pushed through a low-swinging door beside the counter that slammed at each pass. The din was disorienting.
To one side, there was a reception desk in front of a single, unmarked door. It was closed. Grey addressed the receptionist by her first name and asked if he could speak to “Big Dog.” She cracked the door, and before she closed it behind her the DA had bounded out and grabbed Agent Grey’s hand. I could see how he got his nickname. He looked like he had been spending too much time sitting at his desk. He was about 300 pounds, a couple inches over six feet, and the way he was stuffed into his suit, he hadn’t lifted anything much heavier than a double cheeseburger in a while.
“Grey, where the hell’a ya been! I thought I’d have to send someone to that lodge of yours and drag you down to the coast to do some fishin’. Got me a new boat.”
“Been doin’ a lot a fishin’ myself here recently, mainly with Rebecca down at Slow River.”
“Can’t say I blame you on that.”
“My friend and I have something to talk to you about in private.”
The DA held out his hand. “I’m Raymond Ravenel. And who have I the pleasure to meet?”
Grey grabbed the DA’s hand himself and maneuvered him back toward his office. “That’s what we’re here to talk to you about.” Grey motioned me in behind him and closed the door.
“We have a recording to play for you.”
I powered up my laptop and plugged in the thumb-drive. There was no video, at first only the voice of a dead man, his admission of bribing and killing the judge, influencing Wimp, killing Oliver, then framing me for all of it, the threat to Melissa, the struggle and then the gunshot, sirens in the background, the sound of the Porsche screaming off just seconds before the Frederica Island police arrive, hammering on the door, breaking into the room.