Out of the Cold Dark Sea

by Jeffrey D Briggs

  “Lance Trammell.”

  “And what are you doing here?”

  “I told you. We’re reporters. Lance said this houseboat belonged to an old professor of his, some guy named Wilcox. Hewitt Wilcox. Said Wilcox had a big story for him, but then the old man disappeared.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere. So what was this big story about?”

  “No idea. Wilcox was supposed to tell Lance in person. Lance seemed to think it had potential.”

  “‘Potential.’ Interesting. So, again, Mr. MacAuliffe, I ask, what are you doing here?”

  “We thought the old man might be home.”

  “Right. That’s why you sliced through a police tarp and let yourself in? Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m telling the truth! Lance said the old guy sounded scared last time they talked. We thought he might’ve come back. And if he wasn’t home, we thought we might find something to tell us where he is.”

  “Like a note saying, I’m hiding at the Olympic Four Seasons for the night?”

  “People leave unintentional clues all the time. A copy of a boarding pass, a hotel number, a trip planner.”

  “You know they pulled Hewitt’s car out of the Sound this morning? Police divers were looking for his body.”

  MacAuliffe hesitated. “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “That’s interesting, because your friend here certainly knew. He was there. Nearly ran me over.”

  She pulled Trammell’s wallet from his pocket. His driver’s license confirmed what MacAuliffe said—at least about his identity. She glanced from his license to his face. He was maybe thirty-five; a thin, almost gaunt face made him appear older. She continued searching his wallet. A couple of credit cards, one in his name, one in the name of the Ballard Gazette, a couple of receipts, a little cash. On a business card, she noted that Trammell was “Publisher and Editor” of the Gazette, the free alternative weekly with a leftist social agenda and citywide distribution. People loved it or hated it. Once a regular reader, Martha now largely ignored it.

  She dropped the card into her pocket, returned everything else, and tucked the wallet back in Trammell’s pants. In her peripheral vision, she saw MacAuliffe move. She swung toward him.

  “Just trying to get comfortable with my leg.” The words rushed out of him. His eyes darted around the houseboat. “Fuck, what happened here?”

  “Good question. What do you think that police tape was for? It’s a crime scene. Or, aren’t you used to that kind of thing at the Gazette. Maybe you’re the criminals.”

  “Fuck. I told you. How about you tell me why you’re here?”

  “Same reason as you. Plus I came back to get Hewitt’s cat.”

  “Why should I believe you?” he said.

  “I don’t care if you do or not. And it looks like I’m in charge.”

  “Look, I’d feel a whole lot better if I saw him move. At what point do we call 911?”

  As if on cue, Trammell moaned, his body twitched. Martha didn’t expect him to rise up like Lazarus. She turned back to MacAuliffe. “What do you do at the Gazette?” When he hesitated, she added, “It was on his business card. Do you write that disgusting sex column?”

  “No. We prefer to think of it as kinky. It’s the most popular section in the paper. Why do you care?”

  The tarp lifted in the wind. Why did she care? She wanted to be done, done with those nightmares, those memories. Why did the bad ones linger sharp and crisp, and the pleasant ones fade away? Finally, she said, “You’re right, I don’t.”

  MacAuliffe’s head seemed too large for his body, but then she realized it was just an illusion created by the flashlight beam illuminating only his head. “If Hewitt was his professor, if Hewitt called him about the story, what are you doing here?”

  “He thought it would be better if there were two of us.”

  “Sounds like he was covering his ass, or expecting trouble.”

  “Yeah, well, it looks like we fucking found it. I’d have stayed on the sidelines if he’d warned me there was a chance of meeting Bruce Lee. He thought the story might be big enough that it would take two of us to track it down, okay? So he wanted me in from the beginning.”

  “He wanted you in on it from the beginning but didn’t tell you what the story was? And you’ve no idea what would make your boss risk getting caught breaking and entering? That’s an interesting management style.”

  “He’s my friend. I trusted him. And the answer is still the same—no, I don’t know.”

  She took a chance. “What’d you do with the bottle of wine last night?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Your buddy bought a bottle of wine at Pete’s last night before coming down the dock. The 2008 Ruffino Chianti.”

  “You seem to know a lot for someone just looking for his cat. When the old man wasn’t home, we took it back to the office and drank it.”

  Martha waved the light across the debris. “This was done some time last night. I’m sure the police will want to talk with you two.”

  “I’d be glad to talk with them. I’m sure Lance would be, too—if he wasn’t fucking unconscious. People with nothing to hide usually are. Maybe we should call the police now.”

  “And you saw nothing amiss?”

  “I never left the dock. It wasn’t late, but it was already dark. Lance knocked on the door, no one answered, we left and went back to the office. We drank his bottle of wine and a couple more. We’re on deadline.”

  Martha didn’t know if this was a justification or an excuse. Before she had a chance to respond, Trammell moaned again. This time he also moved—first his legs, then an arm. Martha shined the light in his eyes. They blinked, even if they weren’t focused yet. Finally, he tried to struggle up. He failed and fell back onto the wet carpet. She helped him into a sitting position. She found a glass that wasn’t broken and filled it from the tap. Trammell sipped, then gulped the water. His eyes fell on Martha. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Martha Whitaker, Mr. Trammell. Let me buy you a cup of coffee. I think we may be able to help each other.”

  Dante continued to prove elusive. By the time Martha gave up the search, Trammell was feeling better, a lingering headache the only reminder of being knocked unconscious. A private conversation with MacAuliffe seemed to satisfy him, and Trammell agreed to join her for a cup of coffee. Trammell handed his keys to MacAuliffe. Side by side, they were a study in contrast: Trammell, all sharp angles and well-defined muscles; MacAuliffe, short and square, moving toward pudgy.

  “Hope to see you again,” MacAuliffe said in parting at the car. “Maybe some time when you’re not trying to kill me.”

  “I wasn’t this time.” She broke out in a smile, and handed him back his grandfather’s pocketknife. “Alternate heat and ice on that leg and load up on ibuprofen for the first twelve hours. Three every four hours or so. You’ll be out jogging with Trammell in a day or two.”

  She offered no apology. She didn’t believe in apologizing for things she didn’t regret. Survival.

  FIVE

  Most of the coffee drinkers were gone for the day. Only one young man sat at a table, laptop open, unblinking eyes staring at the screen, fingers tapping away. Flame from a gas fireplace flickered. Martha took the first sip of her latte standing inches from the fire, soaking up the warmth. She shuddered with fatigue and nervous energy. It was crazy to be here with Trammell. But she didn’t believe coincidence had put him at the boat ramp this morning. And she needed to know what had.

  She pulled a leather chair close to the fire. Trammell, latte in hand, pulled one up beside her. He shed his wet parka. Long, thin fingers curled around the coffee mug, warming his hands. He wore no rings or other jewelry. In a black fleece vest and black turtleneck beginning to fray at the neck, he looked like a cobra coiled in a basket. He wore his dark hair short. A few strands of silver were visible in his goatee.

  She sipped her latte and studied his eyes, a deep brown with lighter flecks near t
he pupils. They were tight with concentration. She was in no mood to waste time. “So, what were you doing out on the pier this morning?”

  It was a challenge as much as a question. If it angered him, she didn’t care.

  “I could ask you the same thing.” His lips barely moved. His voice was harsh, a challenge of his own.

  Good, he was pissed. She had been trained to watch for such moments—and to then pounce. Keep him off balance, press the advantage, don’t let him get comfortable. The lessons from Witness Interrogation flicked through her mind, as automatic as sipping her latte—which she now did. Then she responded with a harsh whisper of her own. “I’m not the one facing a B&E rap for breaking into a missing man’s home, Mr. Trammell. I’m not the one who showed up last night on his dock—when, by the way, someone ransacked his houseboat. No one has talked to Hewitt since, which means you may be the last person to have been in contact with him. Now he’s missing and presumed drowned. You can talk to me, or you can talk to the police.” She paused. The pause of being in command, the pause to let him consider how a conversation with the police might go. She waited, she watched. When his lips moved to form the first word, she interjected, “So, Mr. Trammell, what were you doing out on the pier this morning?”

  “Who exactly are you?”

  “I told you, my name is Martha Whitaker.”

  “That’s like telling me the sky is blue.”

  “I’m a longtime friend of Hewitt Wilcox—and his attorney.”

  “I was jogging. Like I do nearly every morning.”

  “Very informative. Next you’ll tell me it’s a wet January.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  “That’s the first good question you’ve asked.”

  His momentary surprise passed, and he held her gaze.

  “The next good question is why should I trust you?” she said.

  “That’s easy. You want to know what I know. You want to know why Hewitt called me. You have to trust me to get it. But I still don’t know why I should trust you.”

  Martha stood up abruptly. “Fine. Maybe the police were right. Maybe Hewitt was just a tired old man who decided to take one last drive into the Sound. God knows he had reasons enough.”

  “You can’t believe that line of bullshit.”

  “No, I can’t. The cops don’t either, by the way. But I’m really not interested in this little cat-and-mouse game you’re playing. I thought maybe we could help each other.”

  “Oh, I’m not playing. And neither should you.”

  “Thanks for the warning.” She set the mug on the coffee table. Fatigue hit her like an open palm to the forehead. She took out a business card and scribbled her cell number on the back of it. She dropped it on the table beside the empty mug. “If you decide you want to talk, give me a call.”

  “Just sit down,” Trammell said, motioning to the vacated chair. “Let’s start over, shall we?”

  “Okay. What were you doing on the pier this morning, Mr. Trammell?” She made no move to sit back down.

  When he didn’t answer, she started to walk away. That hot bath beckoned like a siren’s lure. She needed time to think about a key, a torn postcard, and some fishing line. Mostly, she just needed sleep—deep and dreamless sleep.

  “I was supposed to meet Hewitt on the pier this morning. Please call me Lance.”

  Martha paused, and turned around. “What time?”

  “Seven thirty, on the end of the dock. I’m thinking you were too.”

  “Yes.” She didn’t bother to add that she and Hewitt had planned a seven o’clock rendezvous. Why the difference? “Why were you meeting him there?”

  “He had a package to give me.”

  “What was it?”

  “I’ve been working on a big story. Would you please sit back down?”

  The notebook and pens in his pocket, the business cards, the corroboration from MacAuliffe—everything, right down to the frayed turtleneck, indicated he was speaking the truth . . . or an elaborately constructed lie. She chose to believe the simpler explanation. Occam’s razor.

  “What story?” Martha asked.

  “Suppose you tell me why you were meeting Hewitt this morning?” Trammell countered.

  “I don’t know,” she said. They were doling out honesty like chips in a poker game. Her turn to ante up. “He called me yesterday and left a message. He asked for the meeting, but didn’t say why. I think he was scared.”

  “He should have been scared,” Trammell replied.

  Martha remained silent. She lowered herself into the leather chair and faced him.

  “What do you know about the Mormons?” Trammell asked, leaning forward.

  “Just the usual stereotypical stuff. Polygamy. A great choir. One of their own ran for president and lost. More to do with being a conservative asshole than a Mormon. Anything deeper is a remnant from Hewitt’s classes. He loved to talk about them because they are obsessed with their own history and genealogy.”

  “Good, sounds like we took the same classes,” Trammell said. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You know I run a newspaper.”

  “If that’s what you want to call it.” Martha arched an eyebrow.

  “Whether you like it or not couldn’t matter less to me. We’re not for everyone, but we’re not controlled by corporate media either. Yes, we’re political. Yes, we have an agenda—be the social conscience, speak up for the person whose voice is lost amidst the money, speak up for the environment, freedom of the individual. And freedom of the press. We expose things the big boys won’t cover and do it on a budget smaller than the sports department at the Seattle Times, okay?” He took a breath. “So a couple of weeks ago, Hewitt called me, claiming he had uncovered evidence of a longtime church scandal. Why me? Maybe because I had been a student of his and over the years we’ve stayed in touch. Maybe because I wasn’t the Times.”

  He sat back. Martha nodded. She leaned in slightly, encouraging him.

  When Trammell continued, his voice had softened a bit. “When Hewitt and I met, I was skeptical. Most so-called scandals are just people seeing boogey men that don’t exist. Conspiracy theories started by people bent on discrediting something or someone. I’ve followed enough of them down the rabbit hole to be cautious. But Hewitt’s story was different. He showed me this old letter. It was from a guy named Samson Avard and addressed to ‘Brother Port.’ Avard was the leader of a Mormon secret militia known as the Danites, a group willing to do the church’s bidding, right or wrong. Ever heard of them?”

  Martha shook her head.

  “Few have. This was back when the church was still in Missouri and Joseph Smith was still alive. There was this huge tension between the Mormons and the state of Missouri. That tension led to what’s called the 1838 Mormon War. And that ended with Smith a martyr at the hands of vigilantes.”

  “Okay, so there was a guy named Orrin Porter Rockwell who was known as ‘Old Port,’ aka ‘The Destroying Angel of Mormondom.’ He was Smith’s bodyguard and later Brigham Young’s. Basically, he was a thug, an assassin, fast with a gun and not afraid to use it. He was arrested for an assassination attempt against the Missouri governor, a guy named Lilburn Boggs, but Rockwell was acquitted for lack of evidence. At the trial, he testified he couldn’t be guilty because if he had shot at Boggs, Boggs would be dead.”

  “Sounds like a nice guy,” Martha said.

  “But exactly the kind of guy you’d want heading up your hit squad. For years, people have speculated that Mormon leaders had a secret vigilante group. They’ve been called a bunch of names—the Danites, the Army of Israel, and later, the Destroying Angels or the Avenging Angels. Mormon hit men.”

  “Those rumors have been around as long as the church. No one’s ever proven any of them.”

  “And the church, of course, denies their existence. But a lot of people swear they exist. A Mormon named John D. Lee said Brigham Young gave the order for the Mountain Meadow Massacre. Do you know about that?”


  Again, Martha shook her head.

  “Over 120 settlers—men, women, and children—were killed, guilty of nothing more than being on a wagon train traveling through Utah.”

  “God,” Martha said.

  “I know. So, another Mormon, Wild Bill Hickman, not to be confused with Wild Bill Hickok, confessed to several murders and said he’d been working under the direct orders of Young. But there’s never been any direct evidence linking Smith or Young or any of the church Elders to a church-sponsored death squad.”

  “How does this relate to the letter that Hewitt showed you?” Martha asked.

  Trammell sat back and offered her a faint, almost shy smile. “Sorry, I get carried away sometimes. But trust me, it’s a complicated, violent history, a part of what made the Wild West wild. So, the letter from Samson Avard to ‘Brother Port’ basically said ‘the Prophet,’ which always means Joseph Smith, had a vision from God in which Orrin Porter Rockwell would be the ‘Sword of Zion against the Gentiles,’ and that he would be safe from all bullets as long as he never cut his hair.”

  “And apparently ‘Old Port’ never questioned the prophet about how this sounded suspiciously similar to the story of Samson and Delilah?”

  “But it worked. Despite being in many gunfights, Rockwell died of natural causes. No one knows exactly how many people he killed, but it was a lot. There’s an old Mormon proverb that goes ‘God could use a thunderstorm. Or Porter Rockwell.’ In his own defense, Porter said, “I never killed anybody that didn’t need killing.”

  “Oh, Christ, that’s a false logic as old as the oldest religious war and as new as the latest terrorist attack.”

  “No kidding. So, Rockwell, as ‘The Sword’ of Joseph Smith, was supposed to bring the Lord’s wrath down on those who sought to, quote, ‘exterminate God’s chosen people.’ A direct reference to Governor Boggs. In 1838, Boggs issued ‘Extermination Order 44,’ calling for all Mormons to be exterminated or driven from the state of Missouri.”