by Sean Black
He had spent the last few months doing dry-as-dust residential and personal-security reviews for Chinese nationals in the greater Los Angeles area. The work paid an absurd amount of money. Escorting a journalist was a low-level gig, with the pay to match, but he’d desperately needed a change of scenery, and the story she was investigating had intrigued him. His business partner, Ryan Lock, was on vacation with his girlfriend in Barbados, and Ty figured this was as close as he’d get to an actual vacation for a while. Once Cressida had what she needed here, he planned on heading back to Miami for a few days, meeting Lock and Carmen, and maybe doing some serious partying. Who knew? He might even persuade the reporter to come with him. Stranger things had happened, and their professional relationship would be over by then.
Ty’s window glided back up. He hit the button to crank the air-conditioning.
“So why did your boss hire me if you can handle this on your own?” he asked.
“I have no idea. Didn’t you ask him? I mean, isn’t that part of your job?”
Ty didn’t take the bait. “To be honest with you, the threat assessment was kind of vague. Until I collected you back there at Miami I half thought this might be a put-up job.”
Cressida looked genuinely confused. “What do you mean ‘a put-up job’?”
Ty immediately regretted saying anything. “Forget it.”
“No, what do you mean?”
“Well, I’ve had a lot of reporters and media folks contact me over the past few months.”
“Oh, yeah?”
Ty detected a hint of amusement in her voice. “Yeah, I had a little run-in with law enforcement back home.”
She shifted in her seat, pulling her legs up, and scooting round so that she was side on to him. She was smirking. “Huh. Now you mention it, I did see something about that when I background-checked you.”
Now Ty was really wishing he hadn’t opened this can of worms. This was why he was better rolling with Lock. His partner would have shut this down and stopped Ty digging himself into a hole. “You background-checked me?” He wasn’t sure whether or not to feel offended.
“Of course. Come on, private security? There’s a lot of strange individuals in your business. I wanted to make sure I’d be safe.”
That much Ty agreed with. “And?”
She took her time answering. Finally, Ty glanced at her. She was still sitting side on, her back to the door, studying him.
“Former Marine.”
“There’s no such thing,” Ty said pointedly. “Once a Marine, always a Marine.”
“Point taken.”
“Anything else?”
“You seem to have a thing for being naked in public.”
Ty laughed. “Come on. A thing? It was one time, and I was trying not to get shot by some trigger-happy cop.”
“You locked one of them in the trunk of a patrol car.”
“Again, I did what I had to do. Dude was fine. Anyway, I can’t be that bad.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“You checked me out and you’re here.”
“Correction, I did a background review. There was no checking you out involved.”
Ty shrugged his shoulders. Whatever. “Hey, do you have the address for the place we’re supposed to be staying?”
She held up her cell phone. Google Maps was pulled up on the screen. “About a quarter-mile down this road. Take a right. There aren’t any motels, so it was an Airbnb or nothing. Place looked nice, though.”
“There were a couple motels about ten miles back there,” said Ty, with a nod.
“A story like this, it’s better to be embedded properly in the community. Get a feel for the place. Y’know, who’s who. You’d be amazed at the things people let slip once they get used to seeing someone around.”
“You really think you’re going to find out what happened after all these years?” said Ty.
“We know what happened. A woman was lynched for the color of her skin.”
“I mean who did it. Why would someone tell you now?”
He glanced at Cressida. She had settled back into her seat. “I can be pretty persuasive.”
Ty thought it best not to say anything to that. Up ahead the trees thinned, the swamp receded to reveal lush countryside and, laid out below them, the picture-postcard little town seemed like the last place where anything bad would ever happen.
Ty pulled the Honda into a space at the front of the house, an old white colonial with a hipped roof and a deep porch that wrapped around three sides. He and Cressida got out, and walked up the steps onto the front porch. There was a bench and two rocking chairs. It looked like the kind of house where someone would shoot a lemonade commercial.
The front door opened and an elderly man with an impressive mane of white hair hobbled out with the aid of a walking stick. He stopped when he saw them and smiled, fumbling with his stick, then placing it next to a rocking chair and putting out his hand.
“Adelson Shaw, pleased to meet you.”
“Ty Johnson, and this here is . . .”
Cressida stepped forward and introduced herself. “Cressida King.”
“Nice to meet you both. I have your room all ready.” He turned and started back toward to the front door as Ty and Cressida exchanged a look, both thinking the same thing. Room?
“Oh, no, Mr. Shaw, I think there’s been some confusion. The booking I made on the website was for two rooms.”
Adelson Shaw stopped, and looked back over his shoulder at them.
“What’s the matter? Did you two have a fight in the car on the trip down here?”
“No,” Cressida protested. “We’re not a couple. Mr. Johnson here is helping me with something.”
Adelson grinned. “I know. You booked two rooms. I was kidding. Just wanted to see your reaction.”
Ty broke out laughing. He was warming to this guy. From Cressida’s expression, he wasn’t sure she felt the same, which kind of made it funnier.
“I have a room for each of you,” the old man continued.
They followed him into the front hallway, and up the stairs. The old man took it slow, using his stick for balance. Ty stayed behind him, just in case he lost his balance on the stairs and took a tumble.
They stopped about halfway up so that Adelson could catch his breath. “I’m sorry about this, folks.”
Cressida touched his elbow reassuringly. “Honestly, don’t worry about it.”
“Okay,” he said, having caught his breath. “Let’s do this.”
They reached the top of the stairs and he had another breather. “Not sure how much longer I’m going to be able to keep this place on,” he said to them. “You might just be the last guests I have here.”
“I’m sure you have a lot of life left in you yet.”
Adelson looked down at the dark wooden floorboards. “Maybe.”
He started down the hallway, and pushed a door that led into a large, bright bedroom with the same dark-wood floor, eggshell-blue walls, and three beautiful old sash windows. In the middle of the room was a king-sized bed with a floral comforter. There was a chest of drawers and a dark mahogany lady’s armoire with a padded floral seat.
“This will be your room, Ms. King.”
“Oh, it’s lovely. Thank you.”
She put down her suitcase and the bag that held her camera gear, notebooks and laptop. “Have you lived here your whole life?” she asked Adelson.
He was staring, with a beatific smile on his face, out of the far window to the lawn below. He didn’t respond. Something about his expression suggested to Ty that he’d heard the question but had decided to pretend he hadn’t.
Suddenly he turned back to face them. The smile was still there, but something about it was off. It took a moment for Ty to realize it was the old man’s eyes. They weren’t smiling. They looked narrow and irritated.
“Mr. Johnson, you’re just down the hall. I’ll show you.”
Ty caught Cressida looking at him. He shrugged in
her direction. He guessed she was trying to establish the same thing he was. Had Adelson Shaw heard her question or not? “Thanks,” said Ty, following him out.
At the other end of the corridor, Adelson showed him into a bedroom that was the mirror image of Cressida’s. Ty put his bag on the floor.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” said Adelson, digging into his pants pocket and pulling out two sets of keys. “Big one’s for the room, the little one for the front door. I lock it when I go to bed. Not that there’s really any need to lock your door around here.”
This last part took Ty back a little. It was a small town, and isolated, but he assumed crime was a problem everywhere, these days. At least to some degree.
“Pretty safe place to live, then?”
The old man looked straight at him. “If you’re from around here then, sure, I guess so.”
There was nothing unpleasant in the way he said it. No hint of threat or disapproval. If anything, his tone was a little weary.
Ty was about to ask him to expand on what he’d said, but decided to take another tack. “And you’re from around here?”
“May as well be. Moved here when I was a teenager.”
“You must like it,” said Ty.
“Guess I must. Or I’ve been too lazy to move. Place kind of takes a hold of you, I guess.”
Ty drew a breath. “You know Ms. King’s here to investigate the Carole Chabon murder?”
The old man leaned a little heavier on his stick. “Terrible business. I was away on a dental conference when it happened, but I don’t think this place was ever quite the same after.”
“You were a dentist?”
“Yes, started my practice here about a year before it happened. Strange way to spend a life, looking into people’s mouths,” he said wistfully.
“Not that strange,” said Ty, and tried to steer the conversation back to the Carole Chabon murder. “Funny that it never got solved either. No one brought to justice.”
Adelson glanced up at him. “Likely never will.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Stands to reason, doesn’t it? If no one’s come forward all these years, why would they do it now?”
Ty gave it some thought. “Maybe someone would want to make their peace with it before they went to meet their maker. Assuming they knew something.”
“Mr. Johnson, I’m far too old and I’ve made far too many mistakes in my own life to be handing out advice to strangers.”
“But . . .?”
Adelson’s entire expression changed. The kindly old man who’d struggled to make it up the stairs slipped away, replaced by someone younger with a little steel.
“Let your friend through there ask her questions, and speak to whoever she wants to speak to. But don’t spend too long here. That swamp back there, it has a habit of sucking people into it. And once you’re in it, it’s a devil of a job getting out again.”
3
Adelson Shaw watched from behind the shades in the living room as Ty and Cressida got into the Civic. He fumbled for his phone. It had an extra large keypad, and was for older people who had difficulty with their eyesight.
He punched in the number and waited for his call to connect.
“Yes, Mimsy, it’s me.”
Mimsy asked him if his guests had arrived.
“Yes, they’re here.”
Another question. The same question he was always asked, although it had been some time since he’d had this conversation. Thankfully there had been no call for it. It had been a long time since Carole Chabon’s name had been uttered by anyone he knew. He had hoped he’d go to his grave without hearing it again.
He hadn’t been kidding when he’d spoken to his guest. The swamp and the devil were real to him. As real as the people who lived here. It had taken his father to make him understand that. He had drilled into Adelson that the only way to be here was to mind what you said, be polite and avoid discussing anyone else’s business.
“They ask about her?” came Mimsy’s question.
“Don’t worry, I didn’t say anything, and I’m not going to.”
He hung up before Mimsy could say anything else. He had done what was required. He could only hope that silence would be sufficient, and that this was the last time he’d have to make a call of this nature.
He hobbled over to his old armchair and eased himself into it.
His mind drifted back to what the tall man had said about making peace with your maker. It wasn’t a new idea to Adelson Shaw. He had thought about it a lot over the years. But thinking was one thing, and doing was another.
His eyelids grew heavy and before he knew it he was asleep in his armchair. A few minutes after that he was all the way back to the bad place where he could hear that young woman pleading for her life as she was dragged towards an end that no one should have to endure. The terror wasn’t in death. Death was the release. The terror in her shrieks must have come from realizing what would happen before she died.
4
Ty had to give credit where it was due. To look at, Darling not only lived up to its name but also its advertising. The billboard they’d seen on the way into town was a fair approximation of the place. Neat, tidy, charming and, apart from the cars, clothes, and hairstyles, like a snapshot of post-war American life.
He was sure he’d read somewhere that Disney had a town in Florida. He half remembered it was called something like Victory or Celebration. Looking around he wondered if this was where he had gotten the idea from. It was hard to imagine anything too bad happening here. And yet it had. Not just bad. Horrific. This was where a young black woman, who had come into town to sell Bibles and spread the word of Jesus, had been lynched and dumped a few miles away in the swamp to be eaten by alligators.
If it hadn’t been for the sheer coincidence of a visiting botany student from the University of Florida, who’d been out in an airboat, collecting samples of indigenous plant species, stumbling across the body, it was unlikely anyone would have known what had happened. As it was, when the FBI were sent in to investigate, they were met with a wall of silence.
On the night that twenty-two-year-old seminary student Carole Chabon went missing, a lot of people in Darling were either visiting relatives out of town, or had their drapes pulled shut and their television sets turned up to full volume. Finally, after months of obstinate silence, and despite intense press interest, the FBI agents were recalled to Miami. No one was ever arrested for the murder of Carole Chabon, never mind put on trial or convicted.
Then, slowly, as the months and years rolled by, what happened was quietly forgotten. The victim’s mother died. So did her older brother, killed during a botched robbery at a convenience store in Detroit where he was jockeying the register.
Ty couldn’t imagine that anyone was likely to talk now, not after all these years, but he guessed that Cressida King had the optimism of youth on her side. He admired her for being prepared to take a fresh swing at it. That was another reason why he’d agreed to take on this close-protection gig. Although now, looking around the small town, he wasn’t sure her editor back in New York had anything to worry about when it came to her personal safety.
Then again, maybe Carole Chabon had figured the same, and look what had happened to her. But that was over forty years ago. The world had moved on. Hadn’t it?
They turned onto what Ty guessed was the main street, a three-block run of small stores, a diner, an upmarket restaurant with a French name, a church, a public library, and a scattering of offices that included a couple of lawyers and an accountant.
Ty had spent enough time in what people in LA patronizingly referred to the fly-over states to be suitably impressed. The main streets of a lot of small towns had been decimated by the likes of Walmart and Amazon. It took a genuine civic spirit to keep local businesses up and running. Folks might like to say they wanted to buy locally until they succumbed to the lure of free shipping and lower prices. It was one thing to talk the talk about supp
orting local business, something else entirely to match it with your pocketbook.
“Drop me over here, would you?” said Cressida, pointing toward the library.
“Sure thing,” said Ty, spinning the wheel, and pulling into a spot out front.
He put the car into Park, and started to get out. Cress reached into the back to get her bag. “You’re coming in?”
“That’s usually the deal with bodyguards. I go where you go.”
“You know this was Gregg’s idea, not mine.”
“You already said. However, he’s the client, and you’re what we call the principal.”
“The difference being?”
“Shouldn’t you have your notepad out for this?”
“Funny.”
“Difference is, the client is the person who pays my fee. The principal is the individual I’m tasked with protecting. Sometimes they’re the same, and sometimes they’re not. In this case, they’re not.”
“So the client calls the shots. That what you’re saying?”
Ty smiled. “You’re a quick study.”
“Well, this particular principal doesn’t need some huge-ass bodyguard cramping her style. It’s a library. The worst that could happen is I get a paper cut.”
“Okay, I’ll wait here,” said Ty.
“I’m going to be a couple hours. There’s a diner over there. Why don’t you go get a cup of coffee or something? I’ll call you if a shelf of books falls on me. How about that?”
Ty figured she had a point. “Bodyguard” didn’t necessarily translate to “shadow”.
“In any case,” she continued. “People are way less likely to talk to me if you’re hovering about in the background like a bad smell.”
Ty lifted his arm, and took a sniff. “Subtle.”
“I didn’t mean literally, smartass,” she smiled, “but you look like a cop or something, and people tend not be quite so open.”