A Dredging in Swann

by Tim Garvin

  His phone rang. On the screen he saw Sheriff Rhodes’ name.

  “Hey, Sheriff.”

  “You still on the scene?”

  “I’m about to log out.”

  “What do we got?”

  Seb described the scene, the approximate times, the tobacco box, his inconclusive conclusions. “The empty tobacco box and no fingerprints on the ladder, those are the main crappy clues for murder. Plus a missing phone. Maybe it’s an accident, but there’s plenty of motive. The house and land alone have got to be worth a bunch of millions. I’m at the puzzling stage. Also, I found a second phone in the bedroom. He had a receipt for two of them.” As he reported about the video of Leo speaking to the camera, he realized he should not have mentioned the second phone. Kate and Ernie had not found it. He said, “It’ll be a long siege for Kate and Ernie. You talk to them?”

  “Kate gave me a verbal. She also told me about the fight. Now you tell me about the fight.”

  Seb gave the details, the handcuff swipe, the kick, the door. He said, “I know you notified SBI. I’m good.”

  “You’re good?”

  “I am.”

  “Well, I’m not. I’ve become a politician, you know.”

  “I know it.”

  “The press will be snarling.”

  Seb let a moment pass. He said, “Well ...”

  “I’m not throwing you to no damn dogs, Seb. I left you on the case, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “You know why?”

  “Because nobody’s going to push you around.”

  The sheriff laughed. “And also, I trust you. Except it would have been good had you not struck him with your goddamn handcuffs.”

  “Well ...”

  “I heard you reported the chopper crash.”

  “I did, yeah.”

  “I’m on my way out there right now. The FBI called me.”

  “What are they doing in it?”

  “Remains to be seen. Can you get me something this afternoon? I got reporters calling.”

  “I’ll get you something, but it’s going to be investigation ongoing. It’s a whodunit and also a what-is-it. Fernando did the notification last night. I’m seeing the daughter today.”

  “He called me.”

  “How’d she seem, did he say?”

  “You mean did she confess? She did not.”

  “I’m seeing her around ten. But first I have an important romantic meeting. Coffee at the Inlet Café with my future wife.”

  “Really? Jennifer will be happy and disappointed at the same time.” In April, at the all-department picnic and softball tournament the sheriff’s wife had taken a motherly interest in Seb’s love life, or lack of one, and made suggestions.

  Seb said, “I’ll come in after that and do my report. Kate and Ernie are finished and gone.”

  “Okay. Go fall in love.”

  “I hope I do. By the way, do you know the history of all this business at the lodge? I mean the murder back then? You being my considerable elder.”

  “Not really. There was a will dispute, and the Sacklers had to move. I only know that because it was in the newspaper after Germaine gave him the lodge. Leo Sackler lived at that lodge when he was a kid, you know.”

  After the phone call, Seb entered the bathroom. The mirror had been dusted and several strips of prints removed. A large white towel hung over the shower bar. Inside the cabinet were a toothbrush, toothpaste, a bottle of aspirin, a bag of safety razors, deodorant, two bars of unopened soap, and a second toothbrush, still in its packaging. He hesitated, but not long. He removed the new toothbrush from its packaging, ran a line of toothpaste across the bristle, and brushed his teeth. He lathered with the bar of soap, washed his face, then dried with toilet paper. He undid his short rubber-­banded ponytail, finger-combed, and refastened it. He sniffed his pits, wiped the deodorant bar with toilet paper, and applied it through the neck of his T-shirt. He inspected himself. To avoid the hassle of a daily shave, he kept his beard stubbled. It could have used an electric razor pass but would do.

  As Seb began to leave the bathroom, he stopped, returned to the sink, laid his hands on it, lowered his head, and willed a pulse of half-fake gratitude for the use of the toiletries. Leo Sackler’s face swam up, the face he had consciously imprinted, a black, sweat-streaked, playful face, saying little friend to the camera. The gratitude trued. The person inside the face was gone. But the seeds in the freezer and red clay pots on the porch and the bicycles in the great room remained and yearned. They could not be satisfied but could be quieted. He could tell Mia when they were old, on a beach, I am the sandman.

  As he walked down the long hall, he felt the urge to sing, and he sang in his timbrous tenor:

  “Oh, all the money that ere I had,

  I spent it in good company.

  And all the harm I’ve ever done,

  Alas, it was to none but me.

  And all I’ve done for want of wit,

  To memory now I can’t recall.

  So fill to me the parting glass.

  Good night and joy be to you all.”

  He finished the song on the manure-and-planter cluttered porch in the new bright day. A patrol car rolled up the gravel drive, Randall’s relief.

  A Bundle of Sticks

  Cody lived behind his sister’s house on Loman Creek. A year ago, Charlene had hired a private detective to track him down in Phoenix where, after being released from military prison and a stint working his dad’s hogs, he had been homeless for two years. She sent him a bus ticket and settled him in a trailer near the garage.

  She came down the walk from behind the house while he was pulling the boat onto the dock.

  She said, “Damn, Cody, you’re going to hurt yourself.”

  She was a short, wiry woman, in her early thirties, a counselor at one of the county high schools. She wore jeans and a white T-shirt under a red lumberjack shirt, unbuttoned and tied at the waist. Her brown hair was bundled beneath a Duke Gardens baseball cap.

  He gave a last pull. The boat came out of the water and onto the dock with a metal clump. His sister came to stand by his side. They gazed at the sandy bilge and the bulge of orange tent crammed in the bow.

  He said, “No school today?”

  She cocked her head. “There’s no school on Sunday. I thought you might a got blown away. Looks like you about did.”

  Cody said, “The tent blew down right around me. I barely got my traps inside.”

  “Traps? What are traps?” She disapproved of his poaching—she was unaware that it had gone felony—but permitted it if undiscussed. Mainly, it wasn’t dope. “I thought you were going to be out a few days. You get wrecked?”

  “Pretty much. The boat blew right up on the sand.”

  “You probably didn’t hear. Two helicopters crashed last night on the base.”

  He said quickly, automatically, “I didn’t hear them.”

  She looked at him curiously. “I mean hear about them. Why? You weren’t on the base, I hope.”

  “No.”

  “They were all killed. It might have been some of my kids’ parents. I’m waiting to find out. What are you doing with the boat?”

  “I’m going to clean it. I’m going to pull it back to the hose.”

  “The hose will reach the dock.”

  “I know, but I’m wanting shade. I’m fixing to work on this boat, Charlene. I’m fixing to paint it.”

  “You’re going to paint my boat?”

  “I’m going to paint it and sell it.”

  She smiled and punched his shoulder. “You’re in a nice mood for getting wrecked.”

  “Yes, I am. This day I have turned the leaf, Charlene. For some goddamn reason, I have, and I believe it.”

  He did believe it, in a way
. As he drove the boat up the inlet toward his sister’s dock, a massive fear knot had tightened in his chest. Somehow they would track him. They would be ferocious in pursuit. They would comb the campsite. Satellite cameras might have followed him. They would ask fishermen, people in the shore houses. They would find him, detain him, and put him in a room. They would stalk and loom. They would slam the table. They would glare and shout. And then, as he imagined it, as he felt their hatred flash around him, he began to relax. Something in him rose and became calm and calmly withstood. Their hatred was a test and initiation. And he thought, maybe in the back of my mind that’s why I took the missiles, to draw down a big chunk of purpose and stand inside it and let the world fall away harmless. It was fate, in a sense, that had selected him to find that launcher, that had plunked it down in front of Cody Cooper, of all people, who could recognize it, whose life had gone bad from childhood violence and war and drugs and thousands of wasted days, and who had now wakened in an unexpected and exalted way. He had come into possession of a Stinger system, and the entire United States military and police would rise in fury to seek him. He was in the eye of a hurricane and felt its strange, wild calm.

  So what to do? Keep the missiles for a week, then return them. Leave them somewhere, send a note. Except how to reach the island again? There would be searchers. Sell the missiles. Which was how to get caught. How would you sell a Stinger missile anyway? Put an ad on the dark web, stinger for sale, north carolina? You would probably get inquiries. It was bad thinking. He could contact the base today. Not by phone, even public phone, because of all the cameras these days, so email through a tor client, which he had used during his weed-selling days. Except after Silk Road went down in an international bust, there were rumors that the NSA or CIA or both were buying tor exit nodes in Romania and Bulgaria and the stan countries to track the Russians and ISIS, and were now able to follow server bounces, whatever the fuck that meant, and, main thing, the dark web was maybe not so dark anymore.

  Then just leave them buried. Hide the boat in the garage. If they got him in a room, be calm and strong. He could sit unmoved while they uselessly frenzied. He could be reborn in their hatred. Let that happen if it was happening.

  His sister said, “Cody, if you have turned the leaf, I am so happy. I don’t believe it for a minute, but in case it’s true, here’s a congratulations hug from your sister.” She embraced him, laying her brow against his chest. She said, “You smell like marijuana, so this leaf turning must be recent.”

  He returned her embrace, then held her at arm’s length and smiled down. He said, “Do you have to give up grass when you turn the leaf?”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Reach into my jacket.”

  She patted his jacket pockets with both hands, then twisted a hand into one of them. She drew out a baggie of grass and thrust it under her tied shirt. “Is this the one you sprayed with nicotine?”

  He said, “You know what I thought at first? I thought that nicotine had made me …” He stopped. He had started to tell her that he thought the nicotine made him hallucinate, then realized that led to witnessing a trailer fall from one of the helicopters, then realized that he could have casually told her about that and about the missiles, just talking on the dock, making conversation, and suddenly the bright confidence he had felt a moment ago was replaced with terror.

  She said, “What? Did you just see a ghost?”

  He tried to shake his head but was only able to jerk it a little. He was enclosed in terror. He shut his eyes and said, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  She slipped an arm around him and drew herself into him. She said, “Honey, don’t fret. Don’t do it. You know what? I’m going to make us breakfast. I’m going to make us bacon and eggs, and I got these great croissants at the store. And no, it’s not Dad’s bacon. C’mon inside with me. You just went white. C’mon inside.” She gently pushed, but he was rigid.

  He said, “The boat …”

  “You really want to paint it?”

  “Why not?” Cody saw her startle and realized his voice was too loud. He made his voice normal and said, word by word, “You go up, and I will come after I unload the boat.”

  She briefly tightened her arm around his waist and released him. “Okay, honey. Give me ten minutes.”

  She crossed the dock, glancing back once with a cheery worried smile, and went up the stone walk to the house. He was in robot mode now. He had been this way before in his homeless period, where life is dark, and each dark force means to starve, infect, or rob you, and you have to ox forward and not flinch.

  He unscrewed the motor mounts, detached the gas line, hoisted the motor onto the dock, then heaved the five-gallon gas can beside it. He carried the motor and can, one in each hand, back to the detached garage, lifted them over his head, and slid them onto a piece of plywood in the rafters. At the dock, he laid the bow rope over a shoulder and trudged the boat up the path, through an ivy-covered trellis, and left it beside the coil of hose. Now he had the scrambled tent to deal with. And he had to get the traps out of the pillowcases and cover their roots with wet paper towels for transport. His passion for the flytrap business had withered to a chore. Terror had faded, but confidence was gone too. He was a bundle of sticks now, moved by invisible strings.

  It was possible he would live the rest of his life in prison.

  Sponging in the Yurt

  He said, “You know why I’m a cop?”

  Mia perked her eyebrows, which meant, you think I’m already interested? Or it meant, how did you know I’m already interested?

  They were sitting on the outside dock section of the Inlet Café, formerly Frank’s Seafood Collective, where the shrimpers, crabbers, and netters had off-loaded only a few years ago, before the fishing went bad from imports and a souring inlet. The fishermen, many elderly and without boats now, continued to collect in the mornings around an inside corner table.

  She was tall, only a hand’s width shorter than his six-two, and wore her auburn hair in a ponytail with a front ruff to cover her broad brow. Her nose was generous and straight, her mouth expressive, her cheekbones high and precise. It was an attractive, intelligent, patient face and why he was here.

  The rising sun was still low over the inlet marshes, haloing her hair, and in the shade of the umbrella her expression was, I know what this is, this start and trial, and I’m comfortable, so be comfortable. They drank coffee, both declining something to nibble. After she had sketched about her family in Ohio—her older brother, her amiable divorce—he had sketched too—his mother a music teacher, currently guiding a group of retirees around Italy, his perished father, his New York librarian sister, then a skim of his three deployments, his divorce, his new career with the sheriff.

  Then: “You know why I’m a cop?”

  “Why?”

  “Damn, I hoped you could tell me.”

  They smiled.

  He said, “I majored in criminal law at State.”

  “But why?”

  “I took an elective when I was a sophomore. And also I had been a cop in the Marines. And I thought, hey, that could be a job.”

  “What was your major before?”

  He looked briefly into her eyes, showing her he valued the question. “Kind of a mix, but a lot of music courses. In college I was in a band.”

  “What kind of music did you play?”

  “Well, when I had my own band, it was music that you could get your voice into. Creedence, the Stones, Springsteen. And Dylan. We were a cover band and played for money. Lounges and weddings.”

  She nodded.

  He said, “You’re thinking, does this guy write songs? Is he a creative man?”

  She smiled. “He reads minds, at least.”

  “I do write songs. And one day, if there is another day for us, I will play one for you. On my trusty Gibson.”

  “I bet you mis
s it.”

  “Well, I still sing. I’m director of the Pass the Salt singers.”

  “Oh, my. That was you. I heard you sing ‘Danny Boy’ at the high school. I was too far away to really see you. I actually cried. That was lovely.”

  “That was a good night for me. I just happened to be in voice, and I … I was …”

  “You were feeling emotional?”

  “I was.”

  “Anything in particular?”

  He saw she was prying. He was glad. He said, “Nothing in particular, just feeling deep. So then, in good voice, feeling deep, and ‘Danny Boy.’ All good.”

  “That’s a nice way of saying that. Do you ever cry when you sing?”

  “The eyes may wet, but the throat must ignore. But we don’t discourage tears. Just the opposite.”

  Her head lifted a fraction as this settled. She said, “I read the handout. So everyone in the group has PTSD?”

  “Yes, they do. Me too, so no sudden moves.”

  They smiled again.

  He said, “I can talk about it. I don’t mind. So, sometime. But I was always into singing. My mother’s a singer. After I left the service and went back to school, besides singing in the band, I started to sing by myself again. But only songs with feeling. That’s what we sing in Pass the Salt. To slow down the savage energy. The Mongol warriors, after they got home, the women would take them into a yurt and sponge them down. Talk softly to them. I bet they sang to them.”

  “Good God, I just feel like crying myself.”

  He saw she wanted to touch him but was shy. He reached and lightly touched the back of her hand with one finger.

  She puffed a sigh. There was a pause while she considered. In the end, she changed the subject. She said, “And now you’re a detective.”

  “Right.”

  “You must have made detective fast.”