Black Point

by Sam Cade

  Then everything went stone-still. Except for the rain and sleet.

  The video’s final fireworks arrived after Brian Peterson’s AV team re-edited an immediate re-run of the final impact of the crash. This time in extreme slo-mo. It stretched the actual less than one second into fifteen seconds that would bother people for years. Slow enough you could trace brain pulp from the boy’s head with your finger through the air. Blood snaked across the spidery broken glass. The faces of the girls were seen as they were upside down ready to smash their bodies into glass and steel. The change in their facial expressions was discernible as it morphed from fall carnival wonderment into the immediate stark realization this was the last moment of their lives.

  Discerning ears could hear a scream that deepened into a howl from Ella as her ribs cracked across the steering wheel.

  The courtroom spectators were horrified. This wasn’t Hollywood fakery. Ten seconds of video ran after the bodies ceased motion. Nothing but weather.

  Rain and ice splattering the bus.

  Then, like credits from a motion picture, scenes from some of the best moments of the Codger’s lives appeared in cheery color photos running from top to bottom.

  Bobby Carl, Jr., bright eyed and jubilant in his red Chargers jersey, leg in the air, cocked and ready to swat the soccer ball on the ground in front of him.

  Abigail and Carlie in pajamas in front of their Christmas tree smiling into the camera holding identical dolls.

  A straight-on shot of Ella coming into home base with both arms raised and the thousand-watt smile of a state champion blazing across her face after blasting the game-winning home run for the Black Point Pirates 6-A softball championship eleven years ago.

  Wild Bill looked at the jurors. Three were crying. Six dropped their chins down, staring at blank air. Everybody hoping to re-compose themselves. Then, fighting every bit of his DNA to keep a smug look off his face, Bill gave a side-eye glance to his right at his group of opponents, the defense lawyers. They were pale with stark, raving fear.

  Bill was almost positive he’d never felt better in his life.

  Burnham’s hired-gun engineers detailed how the wipers ceased operating ten seconds before the accident.

  A trio of private eyes dug up a former Gemini employee who was let go after complaining about recurrent unaddressed electrical failures of wipers and headlights on the Gemini A390. Twenty-eight episodes, in fact. She revealed where all the dirt was buried at headquarters.

  A former chair of pediatric neurosurgery at Duke explained the context of Abigail’s traumatic brain injury. And the enormous cost to maintain her comfort at a long-term care facility.

  And Burnham himself eviscerated Crede Hendrickson on the stand until the man was crying uncontrollably.

  Theo Fuller stood from his back-row seat and quickly left the courtroom when he saw Hendrickson’s tears. It was the damn phone. It wasn’t the wipers. It wasn’t the truck. It was a woman driver fuckin’ with her phone and losing control in an ice storm!

  Theo didn’t know it was Dude Codger was on the phone line. The call was from a payphone.

  Wild Bill did. Dude told Bill himself.

  I reached Ella right around 7:00 a.m. She answered. Then the call died.

  33

  Milton, Florida

  Late August 2018

  “YOU’RE THE RICHEST walking dead man I know,” said Bill, talking to Dude Codger. It was 11:17 on a hot night in the parking lot of Walmart on U.S. 90, just off I-10, an hour and ten-minute drive from Black Point. Bill didn’t figure any Mexicans would tail him out here at this time of night.

  “Okay, I’m rich. Now how do I get the money?”

  “Simple. I should receive $77 million into my trust account within sixty days. I cut my slice off, $25.4 million. Then I proceed into some very, very delicate financial surgery with the other $51 million. Remember, now, you’re dead. But I’ve spent lots of time creating the solution.”

  “Right, right, let’s hear it. I’m game for anything.”

  “You’re in a pinch, Dude. Fifty million bucks and no way to touch it.” Bill shook his head. “That’s pain, man. This might sound complicated. Might be over your head, but I’ve got a way for you to live with some big bucks in your hand. But, to the world, you’re dead.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Okay. I set up a philanthropic foundation with the fifty mil, your money. I go public, say this is what the family wants. Call it something like Codger Family Foundation for Traumatic Brain Injury Research...or something along those lines. Somewhere in the small print I’ll bury Dr. Doris Bell’s name. Say something like as a physician she thinks this is a remarkable time to make inroads into brain research with this money. We line up a few docs to sit on the board. We’ll say that Dr. Bell will leave it up to the neuro specialists to suggest the appropriate locations for the money. Let’s say we commit to spend one to two million dollars a year to research. But listen closely here, Dude, this is the beauty part. I will set up several bogus research entities that will write checks to Joe Blow, MD or whatever. That’s you. I can get you an ID. The bulk of the yearly donations end up in your hands. I will set up my secretary to oversee the main foundation. She will issue checks to the entities the board suggests, the legitimate research programs. Then I will be the only person writing checks to you, Dr. Joe Blow.”

  Dude slapped the dashboard like he was playing “Wipeout.” “Fuck, yeah. You’re a damn genius, Bill. A pure-T fuckin’ genius.”

  “It’s like the billboard, boy. Need a big kill, call Wild Bill.”

  “Damn right, Bill, damn right. Knew it was smart calling you.”

  “Now there will be a small administration fee for the service. Handling a foundation ain’t as easy as it looks. I think $350,000 per year to start should cover our time.”

  “THREE HUNDRED! Aw, hell, let’s do it.”

  34

  Fernandina Beach, Florida

  Wednesday, September 19, 2018

  SLEEP WOULDN’T COME. Not just last night but every night since the accident. And the enormous finding against Hendrickson Trucking? Right there Crede knew they were done. But it wasn’t the money, it was the battered bodies he witnessed moments after the crash.

  Forty-two pounds of weight melted off Crede Hendrickson’s body since that day. He was down to 153 pounds on a six-foot-one frame, twelve pounds lighter than he was as a tenth grader. Some who knew him thought he had cancer but was keeping the news quiet. Skin pale and drawn, eyes sunken, muscle wasted from his arms and legs. He tried to wear his same clothes. Crede looked like a baggy, well-dressed skeleton.

  Twice every waking hour for over 10,000 hours Crede’s mind screamed Why, Why, Why, Why, Why? Why in the hell would anyone park where he did?

  For nineteen months he didn’t know the one thing he needed to know. The critical thing.

  Ella Codger was driving the bus with her left knee, looking down distractedly at her cell phone, with her right foot pushing down on the gas.

  HENDRICKSON TRUCKING’S INSURANCE didn’t completely cover the jury award. His company assets didn’t either. Crede’s lawyer quickly filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy attempting to reorganize but was unable to obtain financing. A nationwide search couldn’t find a buyer for the company, either. Competitors found it far too easy to just poach customers with horror stories of their shipments never making their destinations.

  Chapter 11 went into a Chapter 7 liquidation. All assets sold. Crede’s biggest mistake came when he personally guaranteed the loans of the $25 million-dollar purchase of new tractors. Now his personal banking and investment accounts were being seized. The bankruptcy trustee had already been through his oceanfront home three times interviewing real estate agents who might provide a quick sale. Crede and Wanda Hendrickson were about to be displaced.

  CREDE FRIED ONE EGG, toasted a single slice of bread, lathered it with jelly, filled half a glass with juice, and took it out to the table on the balcony. The home sat high
on Amelia Island’s tallest dune.

  Crede didn’t see the sunshine, sea oats, sandy beach or the two-foot surf smacking the shoreline. The earth’s tranquil seaside beauty. He was wrestling thoughts that were strangling knots into his mind. He wasn’t sad. Normal people get sad, then they get un-sad. Crede was trapped in a hellish twilight zone of blackness that would never let up, a permanent state of exhaustion, but unable to get sleep to stave it off. Just like every morning for the past 500 days, he didn’t know if he could make another twenty-four hours.

  “Crede, what’s with the suitcase?” Wanda just got out of bed, padded in barefoot wearing a gown and spoke through the open balcony door.

  “Umm. Gonna run up to Atlanta today, see a regional vice-president at Suntrust. Geiger thinks we have a chance of getting some bridge loans with this guy. Quick trip. Probably come back late tonight. We’ll see. Brought a change of clothes just in case.” Crede stood, gave Wanda a quick hug

  His weak arm picked up the suitcase with ease. It was empty but for a clean t-shirt and a pair of socks. At the foyer he stopped, turned, “Hey, Wanda...”

  “Yes.” She held his plate, eighty percent of the egg uneaten, not a single bite on the toast.

  Crede’s look said he forgot what he was going to say. “Guess it was nothing. Don’t wait up.”

  CREDE DROVE HIS PICKUP HARD IN THE DIRECTION OF GEORGIA. He planned to take the route his mother likely took fifty-seven years ago. He remembered the day he last saw her like yesterday. His daddy was sleeping off a drunk in baggy under shorts and a stained wifebeater when she pulled off from their little dilapidated house. She had on one of the modest dresses she wore, likely from Goodwill or a church bazaar donation, with Clorox-bleached white canvas Keds on her feet. It was a hot day, just like today.

  A quarter of a century had passed before Crede started to understand something his mother told him that day. “Baby, my dumb old head ain’t thinking right.” She was going to a mental health facility in Milledgeville, Georgia for some experimental treatments for those without insurance. Something about a federal grant.

  Crede drove through the lonely highways of south Georgia pine forests, ran past the Okefenokee Swamp, drove through Waycross and hit I-75 at Tifton.

  Seventy miles later, just past Perry, Crede spotted a sign advertising The Big House, the Allman Brothers Museum in Macon. He thought back to the eight-track days, a long, long time ago. He played his Eat a Peach album for months at a time until the player ripped the tape out in shreds. He bought another copy the same day.

  Crede descended a gentle, miles long swale in the road after Byron and was rolling slightly uphill towards the bridge, two miles out. His foot began to bear down on the gas pedal. He hit eighty-five, quickly. The pickup veered over to the far-left lane. He started passing people. His foot was hard down on the pedal. He could feel the speed. His eyes hit the dashboard. Ninety. Now he was overtaking others in the passing lane. Everything a blur. He rode the ass of three cars drafting each other like a NASCAR race. Crede blinked his lights on-off until they shifted out of his way. Then he put the pedal all the way to the floor. One hundred and seven. The 6.7L diesel shot the truck past the three cars.

  Hartley Bridge was less than half a mile, straight in front of Crede, the interstate traveling right under it. Clear road. He pushed his right foot down like he was trying to punch a hole through the floor. At a quarter mile he was only seconds out. Speedometer said 122. Crede carefully eased the truck off the highway and down into a concrete embankment in the median like a surgeon, careful not to slingshot across into oncoming traffic. He could almost feel other drivers hitting their brakes or stomping the gas to get away from this madman. Nobody wanted to watch what they knew was coming.

  He controlled it, the truck. His forearms locked tight. He pushed back hard against the seat. His eyes ran wet with tears. Hot summer air stormed through the windows. Crede’s body rocked with adrenaline. His pupils blew up, drinking in the green structural steel and a skyscraper load of concrete that was about to swallow him alive.

  Mama.

  PART TWO

  35

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  Cambridge, Massachusetts

  Early November 2007

  I WILL NEVER FORGET THIS... EVER.

  Every single word of that thought burned with aggressive malevolence in Zeus’s head. He was lying on his dorm bed curled into the fetal position, shaking with anger. His belly felt like he was digesting ground glass. He fought the urge to vomit, scared that nothing but blood would spew out. It had before.

  Fifteen minutes ago, Zeus received the call from his mother. She was barely intelligible as she blubbered hysterically. But she was more than sad, she was angry. Two times during the call she moved the phone away from her mouth and screamed and cursed. She informed her son that her husband, Zeus’s stepfather, was dumping her to the curb after fifteen years of marriage. And the man guaranteed her that she would see little in the way of money.

  Eleven minutes after they hung up, Zeus’s laptop chimed with the arrival of an email. It was from Stepdaddy:

  Sorry, Champ. The money train is over. Time for the pizza delivery uniform.

  The problem? The man never met an argument that he would lose. He controlled people. He controlled situations. He controlled money to the single smallest penny. He was a caustically arrogant bully. Greed and guile were embedded in his DNA. He ran over people and never looked back.

  This man was an attorney. An imperious, shitass lawyer. And damn proud of it.

  Zeus was seventeen years and eleven months old and a college student for two months when the news hit.

  ZEUS, THE MASTERMIND OF THE SCHEME he’s crafting with Lucky, arrived on MIT’s campus thirteen years ago and he could not have been more relieved. He was 1400 miles away from a man he despised throughout his childhood.

  It was a twenty-five-minute ride from Boston Logan to 3 Ames Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Zeus’s new home was Building 62, an East Campus dorm at MIT, arguably the most rigorous engineering and technological college on the planet. Only the brightest young minds from around the globe were in attendance.

  His sparse belongings were quickly unloaded. A smattering of jeans, tee shirts, and sneakers, one skateboard, two Apple laptops, one Dell PC, two gaming consoles, and a heavy winter jacket that had never been worn.

  There was no poignant goodbye dinner that day. There was no firm handshake and the wish of ‘good luck’ from his stepfather. Stepdaddy had client phone calls to return, and clients were more important than his wife and stepson.

  There was a long lingering hug with his mother. Tears ran down her cheeks, sadness on her face. But there was something else. Zeus didn’t realize it until years later as he thought about that moment. There was fear in his mother’s eyes.

  FIVE YEARS LATER, ZEUS GRADUATED WITH MASTERS’ DEGREES in both Computer Science and Mathematics. His brain was swollen up like a kickball with the kind of rocket fuel Wall Street was begging for. The Street wanted quants, basically math geniuses.

  One of the major investment banks lured him to the City with a starting salary of $250K, a rent-free furnished loft apartment in Tribeca and the use of partners’ vacation houses four weeks a year. The Hamptons, Jackson Hole, Aruba, Aspen, Italian Riviera.

  Zeus created algorithmic trading models from financial data. On his own time, he pursued an undergrad finance degree and a MBA from Carnegie Mellon. All online.

  Over three years, Zeus was the fuel behind annual returns of thirty-four percent on the Street. Outrageous success. His reputation meandered across the Atlantic into the lap of a Russian oligarch with a hedge fund based out of London. Arkady Gerashov. Forbes pegged his fortune at $21 billion dollars. Oil. Mining. Steel. He seduced Zeus overseas with an even more lucrative contract.

  London went fantastic for two years. Twenty-four percent return the first year. Twenty-seven percent the second year. Both after fees sliced off the top. Gerashov told
everybody to get out of this kid’s way, he knew what he was doing.

  Within eight months on the job, Zeus snagged an interest in Anatomia Pharmaceuticals whose stock was racing upwards. Based in North America, they sold branded niche drugs worldwide in areas of eye health, gastrointestinal disorders, neurologic disease, and their own Anatomia brand of generics, about twenty extensively prescribed medications.

  Anatomia’s business plan was very simple. They acquired any and every other pharmaceutical company they were able to swallow. They slashed research and development funding and wholesale fired high income scientists. They consolidated accounting and HR and advertising. And then placed the cherry on top. They jacked up drug prices into the stratosphere.

  It was outrageous, an outfit run by pirates without a soul. But it was profitable, exorbitantly so.

  Zeus steered Gerashov in like a pig at a feast. His first buy was $300 million. Then another $700 million. On average, Anatomia was buying a company every three weeks. Zeus, feeling bulletproof with this outfit, shot in another $900 million of Gerashov’s money, closing in on two billion-dollar investment in a single company.

  Then the storm hit. The public outcry over the price gouging was deafening. American congressmen were inundated with screaming constituents. Please do something! They did. Medicare stopped covering Anatomia’s products. The FTC launched a vicious investigation. Anatomia’s share prices imploded. The company’s valuation declined ninety percent.

  Gerashov had $1.7 billion of his investment disappear in an instant. Zeus blew himself up, too. He personally threw every dime he had into Anatomia. He maxed out a personal credit line to invest even more.

  Zeus raced out of London stone cold broke. He was on the hook personally for $3.8 million to the Bank of London.

  He went to the last place he ever wanted to go. Back to his stepfather, the shitass lawyer.