by Brett Baker
“Forget it,” she said. “If you want to be one of those save-the-earth, be-kind-to-animals hippies then that’s your choice. I’m going to eat the hell out of that burger when it comes though.”
“Be my guest. I don’t expect anyone else to avoid meat just because I do.”
Migsy nodded her approval while also rolling her eyes. “Believe it or not, I didn’t come here to talk about your eating habits.”
“I hope not,” I said. “Do you miss the ice cream shop? Who’s still around?”
“Oh cut the bullshit,” Migsy said. “I didn’t ask you here to talk about the damn ice cream shop and you know it.”
“Then why am I here?”
“Your parents. What the fuck happened to them?”
Migsy’s directness shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. Most people would phrase that question a little more delicately, maybe even wait until after the funeral, or when I might be in a less emotional, vulnerable state. It fit perfectly with Migsy’s personality though.
“I don’t know,” I said. “The police still haven’t told us anything.”
“Fuck the police. If you wait for them to figure this out you’re going to be waiting a hell of a long time. They’re good people and they do good work. But this is above their pay grade. They can write you a ticket or get your cat out of the tree, and maybe even track down your bicycle after the neighborhood bully steals it, but do you know how many people were murdered last year in Eutaw? One. And that was a murder-suicide so there was nothing to investigate. Before that six years passed since the previous murder. People don’t kill each other down here. So the police don’t know what they’re doing. Nothing against them. We wouldn’t expect animal control to know how to capture a wild lion would we? Hell no, because we don’t have lions around here. Same thing with the police. Ain’t no murders, so how the hell are they supposed to find out who did this one?”
“I understand your point,” I said. “Whit’s got a lot of confidence in them though. He thinks they’ll do a good job.”
“What the fuck does Whit Watson know about anything? You could tell him Jesus Christ is coming to Greene County tomorrow and he’d believe you and start telling everyone in town. He’s a nice enough guy, but he’s a dipshit. Eutaw and Greene County cannot handle this case. Plain and simple.”
“So what are you suggesting? State police?”
Migsy threw her hands in the air, and said, “You are an asshole, aren’t you? How goddamn stupid can one person be?”
I leaned across the table, looked Migsy in the eye, and whispered, “You’re not suggesting that I get The Summit involved in the murder investigation of my parents, are you? Surely you don’t think it’s a good idea to take such a personal case and turn it into a mission. The Summit has a very narrowly defined purpose and we’ve always been clear about the sort of work it engages in. Investigating a murder as a favor to a member of The Summit doesn’t fall under that umbrella.”
“Don’t be so naïve, Mia. It’s unlikely this is just an everyday murder. It’s the sort of thing that The Summit excels at.”
“Why isn’t it an everyday murder? People get killed all the time. Innocent people who have nothing to do with anything. Shit happens. Death happens.”
“Of course it does. But two old people who never hurt anyone in their entire lives, who were pillars of the community, are brutally murdered just by chance? Stabbed repeatedly in their home with no sign of forced entry, and nothing missing from the house.”
“How do you know that?” I asked. “I’m their daughter and I haven’t even heard that.”
“Small town police, Mia. This is why they can’t handle the case. Information leaks, clues are missed, opportunities lost. I’d bet that the case is already ruined. Something has already happened or hasn’t happened that has made this case impossible to solve. You better get on it, and fast, just in case I’m wrong. Before it’s even too late for The Summit to do anything about it.”
“What makes you think The Summit can help here? Missions arise from known information, known problems. Very rarely are we given something that was completely unexpected. You can’t tell me that The Summit expected this.”
“You’re missing the obvious, Mia. It’s not as disconnected as you think.”
I sat back in the booth and looked at Migsy. She stared at me with an intensity that surprised me coming from a tiny old lady. If I didn’t know better I’d think she was about to attack. The waitress interrupted our silence with lunch. Migsy didn’t take her eyes off me. I smiled at the waitress, added some ketchup to my plate, sipped my Diet Coke, and looked at Migsy to see her eyes still fixed on me.
“What am I missing?” I asked.
“You.”
“What do I have to do with this?” I asked. I looked toward Migsy to await her answer, and then it became clear. “You think they were murdered because of me? Because of my involvement in The Summit?”
“You know as well as I do that it doesn’t matter how covert we are, there’s always a chance that our true identity will get out. That someone will trace us back to where we began. We can try to protect ourselves, and The Summit can try, but we can only do so much. Danger is in the DNA of the job. And not just for us. Anyone we know and love is at risk. You know there are people we’ve taken down that would stop at nothing to hit us. Maybe that’s what happened here. Someone found out about you, and your parents paid the price.”
I’d brushed off the idea that my parents’ murder might have been related to The Summit as soon as Stanley mentioned it. It’s hard to imagine that an unassuming couple in rural Alabama might suffer consequences because of international clandestine operations involving their daughter, but I’ve seen tendrils from The Summit reach far corners of the globe much more remote than Eutaw, Alabama. I suddenly felt sick to my stomach at the thought that my parents might have died because of me. Was a grisly murder their reward for their unwavering support and love toward me for my entire life? Had I missed a clue? A sign? What if I could have warned them? In analyzing completed missions with The Summit I frequently came across an obvious clue that would have made everything much easier had I recognized it from the beginning. If I came across a clue that would have prevented my parents’ murder I don’t know if I could ever forgive myself.
“What if you’re right?” I asked. “What if this is somehow connected to The Summit, or maybe even connected to me. Am I the best person to work on this? We’re always told that we need to be emotionally detached from our work. I’ve seen agents removed from cases because they’re in too deep. It doesn’t get any deeper than investigating the murder of my own parents. Isn’t it sort of like operating on your own kid? They don’t let doctors do that, and for good reason.”
“Maybe not, but you’re not a doctor, and ain’t no doctor in the world who can help your parents right now, so forget that line of thinking.”
“I’m not talking about being a doctor. I’m talking about being too emotionally invested in this. That’s how mistakes are made.”
“Stop making excuses, Mia. If you want to find out who murdered your parents you can leave it to the yokels in law enforcement down here, or you can put the best, smartest damn person you know on the case. And that’s you. No one’s better than you, are they?” I shook my head. “Then stop pussyfooting around and get to work. You owe it to your parents to at least look into it. Make some calls. Do some digging. Unless you want to leave it up to the same people who let an intruder into a murder scene.”
I took a bite of my grilled cheese and watched as Migsy gnawed off a piece of her burger with a primitive snarl. As she chewed she smiled at me as if to show how much she enjoyed the dead animal on her plate.
“Do you think this is related to The Summit?” I asked, trying to decipher whether Migsy knew something she wasn’t sharing.
“How the fuck do I know? No one ever really retires from The Summit, but I’m as close to retired as any person can get. You’ve got to remember
that back in my day it wasn’t as all-consuming as it is now. It wasn’t our life. It wasn’t who we were. It was what we did. I had a life outside of The Summit. It was just a part of my life. So it’s easy for me to step away. They didn’t expect me to continue missions until I die. You youngsters don’t have that anymore. They want their pound of flesh, and after they get it they’re going to take the rest of you, too. You’ll never get away from it, and they’ve probably got you so indoctrinated that you don’t even want to get away from it.”
“Believe me, I wouldn’t mind getting away sometimes. I’m supposed to be decommissioned right now, in fact. I was really looking forward to it, but it hasn’t happened that way.”
Migsy let out a single boisterous laugh and slammed her hand on the table. She wiped her face with a napkin and said, “See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. ‘Decomissioned?’ What the fuck is that? How nice of them to give you some time away. They steal so much of your life that now they have to give you permission to step away, to forget about it for a while. When I did it our lives were our lives. This was just something we did to help our country. I feel sorry for you.”
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” I said. “I love it most of the time.”
“Indoctrinated,” Migsy said. “You don’t even know what you don’t know. Anyway, in answer to your question, I don’t have the first damn clue as to whether your parents’ murder is related to The Summit. It sure-as-shit wouldn’t surprise me, I know that. But the days when I had my finger on the pulse of The Summit are long gone. They used to come to me for advice on missions that were particularly sticky, or if they had questions about some long ago case, but that’s dried up over the past decade or so. There’s not much that I’m privy to anymore.”
“But what’s your feeling on it? You did this a long time, Migsy. You have to have a feeling one way or the other.”
“My feeling is that it’s too much of a coincidence that you’re an agent and your parents were murdered. Nothing happens in Eutaw. It’s not like we’ve got some rampant meth problem and some teenager killed your parents in a robbery gone bad so he could score some cash for his next tweak. Everyone in town thinks Whit Watson was bedding your mom, but I doubt he’s the murdering type. He might be a suspect if just your dad was killed, but no way he’d ever harm your mom. And they didn’t have any shady business dealings, or outstanding debt, or family that hated them. They were the least likely people in town to get murdered. Yet…”
“Yet they were murdered,” I said. “And you think they were murdered because of me.”
“I’m saying it’s a possibility,” Migsy said. “On the list of reasons that might cause someone to murder Frank and Maggie Mathis, their daughter’s secret life has to be right at the top. And if it is, law enforcement will never find out about it, and the people who did this will never be caught. So it’s just like everything else, if you want it done right, do it yourself.”
“You’ve convinced me,” I said. “The least I can do is call Polestar and see if it’s on their radar. Considering the rules promoting emotional detachment I doubt they’d offer that information to me on their own. They might not tell me anything even if I ask.”
“Maybe they know all about it and they’re taking care of it,” Migsy said. “Don’t be surprised if they tell you that the suspects have already been eliminated. You’re not the only person in The Summit, so it’s possible someone else is already on it. And in this situation they’d want to keep you in the dark about how things were handled if they did know about it. You’re just a civilian on this.”
“Right. Thanks for the suggestion, Migsy. I don’t know if I would have pursued it if not for you.”
“I bet you would have come around on your own eventually. You’re a smart girl and you know how the world works. That’s why I got you involved in this to begin with.”
“That’s right. I have you to blame for all of this.”
Migsy laughed and tore off another bite of her burger. “So good,” she mumbled through a full mouth. “You’re missing out.”
We finished our lunch and ended up talking about the ice cream store and a few of the people who worked there after all. Migsy had great stories to tell, as usual. As we departed I thanked her for lunch, and for still guiding me, twenty years after she first began.
16
Chapter 16
Tradition in central Alabama usually dictated a small wake held immediately prior to a funeral service, which was then followed by burial, all of which happened as soon after death as feasible. The whole process might take just a few hours, after which mourners gathered for a lunch that usually lasted at least as long as the mourning activities earlier in the day. As a kid, I went to the grocery store with my mom one Wednesday evening and she stopped to talk to a friend. I tugged on her dress and rolled my eyes as she chatted with the woman, and I couldn’t understand her surprise when she discovered that the woman’s sister, a rotund older lady who reveled in pinching my cheeks every time she saw me, died suddenly and had been buried that morning. “We just had her over for dinner on Sunday,” my mom exclaimed, covering her mouth with her hand. Somehow, news of her death had escaped my parents until that moment.
The only thing in Eutaw faster than gossip is our funeral traditions.
Johnny and I rejected the usual mourning plan though. Our parents were well known in town, so we expected their wake and funeral to be well attended. Their violent deaths also sparked plenty of curiosity, so we wanted to make sure everyone had enough time to pay their respects, so we decided to hold an additional wake the night before the funeral.
Johnny, Justine, Whit and I rode to the funeral home together. We arrived an hour before we expected other mourners so that we had time to mourn alone. I’d never felt more nervous in my life than I did as I sat next to Whit in the backseat on the way to my parents’ wake. I sat stone silent, and took deep breaths to try to help calm myself. I could feel my stomach churn, and my palms began to sweat. The Summit had trained me to manage my nerves, to alleviate stress, to achieve pinnacle performance no matter how intense the situation, but no matter how hard I tried, no matter what techniques I employed, I couldn’t get myself to calm down. Justine offered a valium as we pulled into the parking lot, and I took it right away. I wanted to sit in the car until it kicked in, but decided that if Johnny and Whit could find the courage to go inside, I’d make myself go in as well.
When we went inside I was startled to see their caskets next to each other. We don’t often mourn two people at once. Funeral rituals are well-defined and we usually know what to expect. But walking into a room and seeing two caskets unnerved me. I’m certain I would have felt just as shaken if my parents didn’t inhabit either of the caskets. Two bodies, two collections of flower arrangements, and two forests of burning candles took my breath away. Johnny and Justine followed me into the room and I looked back to see Johnny standing with his arms at his side and staring straight ahead at the caskets. He raised his eyebrows and his mouth fell open slightly and I knew he felt the same thing as me.
I’ve always assumed that few jobs are as challenging as that of a mortician. Part of the job requires them to deal with grieving families, and the other part requires presenting a deceased person using techniques that are part art and part science. I’d worried how my parents would appear in the casket. My dad had been stabbed so many times, and my mom had been cut in the face. When we met with the funeral director I expected him to recommend closed caskets, but the idea never came up. But in that second, standing above my dead parents, seeing how they would spend the rest of eternity, I couldn’t have been more relieved. They looked as natural as heavily-embalmed, deceased people could look. No one could have guessed that they’d been stabbed. I’d never realized how important a mortician’s work would be until that moment, and then I couldn’t remember a time I’d felt more appreciative.
Johnny, Justine, Whit and I took a few minutes alone in front of each of the caskets. I�
�d never felt like I had more things I wanted to say, yet felt so incapable of saying them. The entire wave of my life washed over me, and I felt every age all at once. I felt gratitude, sadness, appreciation, anger, wonder, and even an infinitesimal amount of joy as I looked down at my parents. Standing in front of them I forgot all about the way they died, and The Summit, and my encounters of the previous days, and the lingering questions, and all I could think about was how fortunate I’d been to have them as my parents. I couldn’t imagine two better people to raise me, and I hoped that before they died they understood how much I valued and loved them.
Other mourners began arriving, and I soon became so busy that I almost forgot the reality of the situation. People flooded into the funeral home, and I became reacquainted with people I hadn’t seen in years, and Whit introduced me to friends of my parents whose names and stories I’d heard, but whom I’d never met. Everyone shared anecdotes and seemed genuinely delighted to see us, and heartbroken about what happened to my parents. They’d lived in Eutaw so many years, and the town was so small, that it seemed everyone came out to pay their respects.
After a couple of hours I needed a break. I told Whit I’d be right back and I asked Johnny to cover for me if anyone asked about me. I just needed some fresh air and a few minutes to myself. Most problems are easier to solve, and difficult situations are easier to handle, with fresh air and a few minutes alone. I went outside and found a quiet spot around the corner from the entrance that looked as though it had been specifically designed for moments like this. A wooden bench sat on a brick patio that was surrounded on three sides by privet hedges.
I sat on the bench, took a deep breath, and without warning, began to sob. I leaned over and put my head in my hands, and could only see my parents in their caskets, their eyes permanently closed, their hands folded, their heads slightly propped up. I’d never talk with them again. My mom would never send me another care package. My dad would never tell me another bad joke. Although I hadn’t lived at home for almost two decades, it felt like my childhood had ended with the death of my parents. It felt like I’d forever refer to things in my life as to whether they occurred before or after the death of my parents. I began to hear my mother’s screams as the attacker turned his attention to her, and I felt my father’s sad helplessness as he lay in a pool of his own blood, dying, knowing what was happening to the love of his life in the next room, but unable to do anything about it. I wept for their fear, I wept for my loss, I wept for the cruel, nonsensical inhumanity. I wanted to curl up on the bench and never leave that patio. I wanted to deny that anything bad had happened, I wanted to undo it all. I wanted Whit to be waiting on their front porch with his shotgun. I wanted to have declined Migsy’s invitation all those years ago, and to have never left Eutaw.