“Do you think you’re going to marry me?” It just sort of popped out.
She looked at me and laughed. “I don’t know. I guess that would depend on if you ask me.”
“If you told me ahead of time, I wouldn’t be so nervous when it was time to actually pop the question.”
“And I get to take my time and think about it? And possibly say no?”
Damn. Tough crowd. “Okay, well, I was just taking a survey anyway. We’ll discuss this again in a few years.”
“Uh-huh.”
We walked and walked, eventually with our sandals in our hands as we let the saltwater roll in up to our knees. Boats were coming in from fishing. I looked at my watch. It was still early—not quite eleven—but maybe the weather had swayed them. I saw flags flying by the lighthouse and recognized them as small craft advisories.
Actually, that was total horseshit. Amanda, walking encyclopedia of miscellaneous facts, told me that, which led to a conversation about an old boyfriend who’d had a boat.
It started to drizzle, and we headed back toward the house. By the time we got home, the rain was getting heavier. We toweled off and changed into jeans and T-shirts. I suggested an afternoon delight, but she informed me that I was a nymphomaniac who was only interested in her for the great sex. I admitted it was in the top five reasons I was interested, but managed to save myself by having the other four reasons at the ready for recitation.
“So now what? Are you going to give the diary to Kim?”
“Not now. I need to hang on to it. I will let her see it, though. If she reads it, she’ll know exactly what kind of animal Earl Stone is.”
“You know he can just deny it, call it a forgery for political reasons and make you look like the bad guy. He’d get a lot of sympathy as the poor father of a murdered girl. We have to be really careful.”
“We don’t have a ton of options. I’m still thinking about trying to find a hook to get the FBI involved. No way I’d trust the cops in Carteret. Maybe Kim has some ideas.”
“Kim isn’t an investigative reporter, Cory. You should have called someone with more experience.”
The doorbell rang. I glanced at my watch. Too early for Kim. I looked through the side window and saw a mailman on my porch. I opened the closet, took out Ice and had Amanda open the door. She looked fairly terrified when she saw me level Ice toward the door and take off the safety. He asked her to sign for a certified letter, and he left.
As soon as the door closed she turned and looked at me, red-faced. “Jesus Christ, Cory! What were you going to do? Blow the mailman’s head off?”
She threw the letter at me.
“Sorry. I wasn’t expecting a real mailman.”
She stormed off into the kitchen, and I put the safety back on then picked up and opened the letter, which was from the Eastern Carolina Justice System, informing me that the Prosecutor’s Office was seeking a Grand Jury indictment into the deaths of three scumbags, and the aggravated assault of another couple of assholes. I am paraphrasing.
“Motherfucker!” I screamed at the letter.
Amanda walked back in. “What’s the matter?”
I held up the letter. “Guess who’s going to jail?”
She walked over and looked at the letter. “You aren’t going to jail. It just means they want to see if there will be a trial. I’m sure they’ll throw it out.”
“Yeah? You can bet Earl Stone will pick the names of the jurors himself. Fucker. I’m gonna pull the switch on him myself.”
Amanda gave me a hug. “Are you ready to go home now?”
“I told you, I am home. And I’m not being chased out of it by that sick fuck. Game on.”
“You aren’t in Afghanistan, Cory. Earl Stone is a very powerful man. This is nuts.”
“Bring it on.” I meant it. The phone rang. I figured it was Kim, and hit speaker. Instead of Kim’s ever-cheerful voice, I got a gruff man’s snarl with a Southern accent.
“You should have minded your own business, Cory Walker.” The line went dead.
Great. Just fucking great.
Amanda looked at me and started crying.
Chapter Thirty-Two
In from the Rain
I have to admit, Mr. Nasty on the phone had shaken me up. It was just so, I dunno, ‘unexpected’. So much for finesse. When Kim knocked on the door, we both jumped. I had Ice nearby, much to Amanda’s consternation, but put him back in the closet when I saw Kim through the side window. The rain was now coming down sideways. It was dark and blowing pretty good out there.
I opened the door. Kim stepped in, her game face on.
I greeted my visitor from the press and invited her into my house of horrors. She said hello to Amanda as she peeled off her wet windbreaker and sat down with us in the library, which was right off the entryway. After a brief exchange of pleasantries and weather observations, we got down to business.
“Kim, I’m giving you first crack at a story that is so big it will have major ramifications on a national level. It will also probably put Earl Stone in jail—or get all three of us killed.” That got her attention. “I bought this house out here to find some peace and quiet and learn how to relax again. I was really trying to leave the battlefield behind me. It hasn’t quite ended up that way. I was working downstairs and I found an old diary. Casey Stone’s diary.”
Kim stared at me wide-eyed for a second, unable to hide her shock. “She kept a diary?” She shifted gears from thunderstruck back to investigative reporter and began asking questions at a hundred miles an hour.
“Oh my God, Cory! She kept a diary and you have it? Do you know what this means?”
“Yeah. I know exactly what it means. Twenty years buried in that basement, and if Earl Stone finds out I have it, the three of us may end up at the bottom of the sound. I want you to read it. And when you get done reading it, you tell me who raped and murdered that girl.”
I walked over to the roll-top desk, where I had shoved the diary prior to Kim’s arrival. I took it out and handed it to her. She looked at it with amazement, made sure her hands were completely dry and took it from me like I was presenting her with the Dead Sea scrolls.
“You go ahead and read. I’ll make us all a pot of coffee. This is going to take you a while.”
For the next two hours, Kim drank coffee and read page after page of Casey’s diary. At one point, she started sobbing uncontrollably. Amanda brought her some tissues and put her arm around her. When she got control of herself, she told Amanda and me that she had been raped in college and had never told anyone. This was the first time she’d ever said it out loud since it had happened. Reading Casey’s diary had brought it all back.
Amanda hugged her, and the two of them just rocked back and forth for a moment until Kim regained her composure. Kim blew her nose and wiped her face, apologizing softly.
“Don’t apologize. We’re way past apologizing. We all have to get this stuff out in the open.” Amanda patted her thigh. “I’ll get us some more coffee. Finish reading.”
Finally Kim closed the book gently and just held it on her lap, staring at it. “I don’t know what to say,” she said, still staring at the faded cover. Then she looked up at me. “I don’t know where to start. You’re right. This is huge. I need to call my editor.” She stared at the diary in her hands again, lost in thought.
“Do whatever you need to do,” I said.
“And see if your editor has any contacts in the FBI,” Amanda suggested.
“Somebody he trusts,” I added. “I don’t trust the local cops.”
“I think Stone owns the whole state,” Kim said. “There’s no way to know how far the police corruption goes.”
“What if you run the story as is?”
“No way my editor would run a story like this about Earl Stone without all kinds of proof. Those names you gave me? I found one guy—the medical examiner.”
“Greller? I talked to him. He was shut out of the daughter’s autopsy. And later,
when he questioned the findings, they dumped him. Same thing happened to a cop I told you about on the phone, Arthur McDade. They forced him out. He’s so scared of Stone he won’t say where he is. I’m telling you…this whole thing stinks.”
“Tell her about the phone call,” said Amanda.
“Yeah, right. Before you got here, someone called and told me to mind my own business then hung up.”
“This is extremely serious, Cory. Who would know that you were looking into this?” Kim asked.
“I went to see Benjamin McComb at Maury…”
“Oh my God. You spoke to McComb? When? Do you know he was just murdered in prison?”
“Yeah, I know. Right after I went to see him, a few guys worked him over real good and killed him. Just for talking to me, they killed him.”
That last sentence hung in the room like the dark clouds outside. My stomach felt the way it did after I had to write an after-action report explaining why one of my people had died.
“Then some guy said he was a reporter and was snooping around the house,” added Amanda.
“I asked about that at the paper. No one at our paper is doing a story down here. It doesn’t mean anything, though. Reporters from all over the country are covering Earl Stone. Can I take the diary and show my editor?”
“It stays with me for now, but you can make a copy to show your editor.”
Kim grabbed her purse and pulled out her phone and a camera. “This will be good enough for what we need.” She opened up to various parts of the diary and started taking pictures with both, using the cell phone camera to shoot off quick messages to her boss. I sat back and waited for her to finish. Life in the twenty-first century. Then she called the paper. I listened to her try to explain what she had just read to her boss. She was so excited. I could hear her editor yelling at her to slow down.
Amanda and I gave her some space. The rain had tapered off and we walked out back, admiring Anne Stone’s work in the colorful flower beds. In the eerie gold light of the stormy sky, the flowers seemed extra bright and colorful, and the angels glowed white and pure.
Amanda put her arms around me from behind. She whispered that she was scared.
I turned around and gave her a hug. “Kim is going to do a story, the Feds are going to arrest Stone and you and I are going to live happily ever after.”
Kim walked out after us and excused her interruption. “You said you wanted me to tell you who killed Casey. I assume you think it was Earl Stone.”
I nodded. “I think he killed his wife, too.”
“What?”
“The M.E. told me that Anne Stone didn’t die from being hanged. She was choked to death, just like her daughter.”
“My God! He killed his wife then made it look like a suicide?”
“Exactly.”
“And the medical examiner tried to report that?”
“He asked a few questions and got shit-canned.”
“It’s unbelievable. It’s like everyone knew and nobody did anything about it.”
A huge crack of lightning, followed by booming thunder, made us all jump. The rain started coming down again. We headed back into the house.
“Hurricane Eduardo is off Florida now, you know,” said Kim. “It looks like it might be turning north. If it does, you’ll probably get slammed in a couple of days. While I’m down here, I want to talk to some of the locals.”
“They won’t say much,” Amanda told her. “I tried the other night with the guy who found Casey’s body. He got kind of angry. They don’t like us bringing it up. You definitely can’t say you’re a reporter. They’ll never talk to you at all.”
“The islanders are a pretty tight bunch,” Kim acknowledged. “You could be here another hundred years and still be an off-islander. What about your neighbor? The one who told you about the reporter or whatever he was.”
“Agatha? She hates Earl Stone’s guts. She was friendly with his wife, and I think Casey used to hide from Earl over at her house.”
“She knew about the abuse?”
“Only suspected, I think.”
Kim bit her lip.
“Let’s go talk to her.” We stood on the back porch, watching the torrent, and decided to forego the visit.
When we walked into the kitchen, Amanda was saying, “Wait. He just walked in.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Early Signs of Trouble
Amanda handed me the phone.
“This is Michael Greller.”
To say I was surprised to hear his voice would be a major understatement. I put him on speaker phone. “I thought you said you’d never talk to me again unless I got Stone in court.”
“Did you talk to anyone about our conversation the other day?” He sounded agitated.
“Why?”
“Yes or no? You tell anyone I gave you information on that case?”
The only person I had spoken to about him was Amanda then Kim, just a couple of minutes earlier. There was no way anyone else could know what we’d discussed. I told him so.
“Are you sure?” he asked, sounding very upset.
“What’s wrong, doc?”
“I got a phone call. You been asking a lot of questions down there?”
“I’ve been asking around a little. I didn’t mention you.”
“Listen to me real good. Do not fuck with these people. You hear me?”
“What’s going on? What did the caller say?”
“Mind my own business or I was a dead man. And I’m giving you the same advice. He told me to go look at Benjamin McComb if I needed any reminders. These people are connected, Walker. They know everyone. They hear everything. Whatever you’re doing, drop it.”
“But—”
He hung up on me.
Kim smiled.
“You think that’s funny?” I asked her.
“No. This is scary as hell, but this will be the biggest scoop of all time, and it’s mine!”
I shook my head. Youthful exuberance. “Watch for the tripwires, kid.”
“Look… Since I’m not talking to the locals right now anyway, I want to get back and start working on this. Obviously, Dr. Greller won’t talk to me. But what about that cop? Can you give me his number?”
I mulled that over. I guess she’d find it without my help anyway, the same way I had. I gave her the number. She gave Amanda a hug and left, excited to start working on her Pulitzer, and told us she’d call. I hid the diary back down in the crawlspace.
She ended up calling a lot sooner than we’d expected.
* * * *
Amanda and I were contemplating a grocery store run to stock up before the hurricane hit—if it did—when my cell phone rang. We just looked at each other. Another psycho ready to threaten me? Instead, I saw Kim’s number on the caller ID. When I said hello, she started shouting so loud that Amanda could hear her without the speaker on. She sounded furious.
“Kim?” I could hardly make out what she was saying. “What’s wrong?”
“He fucking stole it! Right out of my briefcase!”
“What are you talking about?”
“That cop! He pulled me over as soon as I crossed the bridge and told me to get out of the car in the pouring rain. I went to get my license and he pulled out his fucking gun and told me to freeze, like I’m a drug dealer or something. He said he was going to check my briefcase for a weapon! A weapon? Are you kidding me? So he made me get back in the car, took my briefcase back to his car and rifled through all my stuff. He stole my camera and took all my notes from today. Can you believe this shit? The balls of this guy! I’m a reporter! He can’t do that!”
“Did you get his name? A badge number?”
“I demanded his badge number. He has to give it to me, but he refused! He just threw my stuff at me, walked back to his car and took off at a hundred miles an hour. With the rain, I couldn’t even get the license plate number.”
“Tell her to come back here,” Amanda said.
�
�You want to come back here?”
“No, I’m going home. That son of a bitch! He can’t do that! He’s gonna be pretty shocked when this hits the papers! Thank God I emailed those pictures to my editor! Listen… Put the original in a safe deposit box. The banks are closed now. Do it first thing in the morning.”
“Okay. Just get home and call us when you get there.”
Amanda looked scared shitless.
“It’s gonna be fine,” I assured her. “As long as we all don’t get killed.”
Amanda stared at me. “That cop who stopped her…?”
“What about him?”
“What if he wasn’t a cop?”
Great. Just great.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Visitors
Amanda and I decided against the grocery trip. Leaving the island with dirty cops on patrol—or Stone’s guys dressed like cops—didn’t seem like a great idea, even with all the doors and windows locked. We opted for a quick drive around the block to Tuckers for pub grub and a beer. Amanda didn’t even argue when I wrapped Ice in a beach towel and shoved him under my seat.
Tuckers was fairly crowded. It was raining again, and the wind was blowing pretty hard. The temperature had dropped a bit, and honestly, the cooler salt air smelled clean and refreshing.
I said hello to Mike and his dad. He and Caleb were sitting on stools at the bar, drinking beer, when we walked in. Amanda and I slid into a booth and ordered the catch of the day, which I was figuring was probably the catch of yesterday, since no boats would be out in this mess.
“Your boyfriend’s not here,” I said to Amanda as I scanned the bar for Thomas. She looked around, same as me, and shrugged.
The door to the bar opened and a sheriff’s deputy in a rain poncho walked in. He took a slow walk through the place, like he was looking for somebody, but ignored us. I saw him stop and talk to Caleb for a minute, then he left. Caleb left not more than five minutes after he did. Mike appeared troubled as he sat by himself at the bar.
I couldn’t stand the suspense. I told Amanda that I was going to try to get him to join us so I could ask him who the cop was. I walked over to Mike. “All by yourself? Want to join us for dinner?”
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