Dead Simple

by Jon Land

  “Maybe there’s more,” Liz said when she finished studying the records on the chance Blaine had missed something.

  “If there was, we’d be reading it,” he returned, massaging his eyes. “There’s no record of this Colonel William Stratton commanding any mission in early 1863. In fact, there’s no record of Colonel William Henry Stratton at all after late 1862.”

  “Could he have died?”

  “That there’d be a record of.”

  “You don’t look surprised.”

  “Because I don’t believe Stratton existed after early 1863.” He slid his chair closer to hers. “Let’s put together what we know. According to the manifests, Stratton took delivery of those wagons and keg chests on January 11, 1863. Assume whatever unlogged mission he was on took him into Virginia.”

  “A Union brigade heading south with heavy cargo?”

  “Say they were taking a back route in the hope they wouldn’t run into anyone from either side. Problem was the regiment ran smack into the teeth of that legendary blizzard instead and sought refuge in the nearest shelter they could find.” Blaine stopped and looked at her. “In a barn, maybe.”

  “The one you found remnants of under the lake …”

  “A lake that didn’t exist until Bull Run flooded the valley the day after the storm stranded them.”

  Liz nodded. “Swallowing up the troops, and whatever they were carrying, forever. Stratton never completes his mission, but since there was never any record of it …”

  “History pays no attention,” Blaine completed.

  “Until Maxwell Rentz, up to his eyeballs in debt and facing bankruptcy, somehow figured out the same thing we just did. Then he concocts a story about plans to build a resort and buys up all the land around the lake to keep anyone from realizing what he is really up to.”

  “But then his plans ran into a snag, didn’t they?”

  “Me,” said Liz.

  “And then Buck. Only problem is that Colonel Stratton wouldn’t need twelve heavy-load wagons to transport four keg chests full of gold coins.”

  “Meaning … ?”

  “Meaning he must have been carrying something else too.”

  Liz flipped absently through the last pages of Stratton’s military record, coming upon a grainy, tattered photograph of a powerful-looking man in a sharply pressed Union officer’s uniform. She lifted it closer to her tentatively, the color washing out of her face as she traced the line of the handlebar mustache that curled over Stratton’s upper lip.

  “You look like you recognize him,” Blaine said.

  “I do.” Liz finally looked up again, expressionless. “Maybe I did see a ghost, after all: it was Stratton who was watching us from that hill this morning.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “We had some FBI men here a few days ago,” the highway patrol detective named Huggins told Will Thatch outside the police station in Akron, Ohio, where the massacre had taken place. “Down from the Cleveland office,” Will said, thinking fast. “I’m in from Washington.”

  The detective looked him over. “By yourself?”

  “That’s right.”

  Huggins studied him closer, then just shrugged.

  Two hours after jotting down the license plate on the car belonging to the two men who had shown up at his hotel, Will had met with a man named Bob Snelling on a bench in Gramercy Park. He had gone through the Academy with Snelling a lifetime ago, and the two of them had come into the Bureau together. Snelling, the only person Will had any contact with from his former life, ran a successful security firm now. He had lent Will money a few times, which Will had never paid back, and on a few other occasions had kept tabs on Will’s family for him.

  Will had phoned Snelling and asked him to run a trace on the license plate. Ninety minutes later, Snelling had requested this meeting—on the other side of the city from his office.

  Approaching his old friend seated on the park bench, Will thought he had the look of a man already eager to leave.

  “Sit down, Will,” Snelling greeted, not bothering to rise or extend a hand.

  “What is it?”

  “This some kind of joke?”

  “God, no.”

  “Then are you sure you wrote the numbers on the license plate down right?”

  Well, Will thought, he hadn’t been wearing his glasses, but he’d gotten close enough to the plate to touch it.

  “Yes. I am.”

  Snelling looked jittery. “The combination makes it a government plate; I’ve been around enough to know that. And it’s not hard to track down the specific branch; I’ve been around enough to know that too. FBI, Justice, ATF—you name it. Each has its own distinct register for accounting purposes.” Snelling looked a little pale. “I made some calls, ran your plate through the system to see who it belonged to.”

  “And?”

  Snelling stopped fidgeting. “Nobody, Will. The plate doesn’t exist.”

  “You just said—”

  “I know what I said. It’s a government plate, but it doesn’t belong to anyone I can access, and I can gain access to everyone.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “These people you’re mixed up with are buried deep. You know how it works.”

  “Not really.”

  “The deeper they’re buried, the less people have access. Sometimes nobody has access.”

  Why would someone like that be protecting Jack Tyrell?

  “You say something, Will?” Snelling asked him.

  “Just thinking out loud.”

  “I’d do it quieter, if I were you, and I’d lay low for a while.” Snelling finally stood up, looking relieved.

  Will stood up too. “Wait a minute, you haven’t even asked me what this is about.”

  “Because I don’t want to know.”

  Will rummaged through his coat for the folded copies of the obituaries he’d accumulated in the library. “But I’ve got something else to show you.”

  Snelling started to walk off. “Maybe you didn’t hear me. I’m not interested.”

  Will caught up with him. “It’s Jackie Terror, Bob. He’s back. You’ve got to help me find out why.”

  Snelling laid a forceful hand on Will’s shoulders and pushed him from his path. “No, I don’t.”

  “Someone’s protecting him. I don’t know how, but the answers are in these somehow,” Will insisted, flapping the obituaries before him. “I can’t find them alone.”

  Snelling stopped and swung around. “Then don’t look.”

  “Bob—”

  “And don’t call me anymore. People like the ones who own those cars tend to know when you’re looking into them. That means they’ve probably already got tabs on me. I let things cool down, maybe they figure it was an innocent mistake.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Drop this, Will. Whatever it is, drop it.”

  This time Will had let Bob Snelling walk off without a fight. He thought of him again as he faced Detective Huggins. Will had had a thousand dollars to his name at the start of today, a significant chunk of which went to pay for his plane ticket to Cleveland and the rental car that had gotten him to Akron.

  “I thought you boys traveled in teams,” the detective said now, an edge of suspicion creeping into his voice.

  “Task forces, you mean.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m advance. We’ve got some leads. If they play out, you’ll get your task force and then some.” Saying just enough to make Huggins figure there was more on his mind.

  Satisfied, the detective moved toward a padlocked door erected as part of a temporary repair job on the ruined front of the police station. Will breathed easier when Huggins fished a key from his pocket and popped the lock open.

  “I got the case file in my car,” the detective said. “Photos too. We moved all the prisoners. Sons of bitches are the only witnesses we got left alive. Bastards that did this killed six cops for no reason. I been over the security tapes a dozen
times. You can’t see much, but you can tell they were smiling the whole time.”

  Will didn’t know what he expected to find here. Not revelations certainly, nor clues as to where Jackie Terror headed off with Mary Raffa in tow, ready to get their garden of death going. He was looking for a feeling, a scent. Something to follow after all these years away.

  The inside of the station had been cleaned up for the most part, but there were still plenty of bulletholes dug in the walls. The glass security wall hadn’t been replaced, and the desks looked as though they hadn’t been touched since the massacre; turned sideways or spilled over by men seeking cover desperately.

  “Here’s the file.”

  Will hadn’t noticed Huggins enter. He took the manila folder from him and drew out the eight-by-ten still photos that had been produced from the security tape.

  By all accounts Jack Tyrell had proceeded to the cells alone, leaving the Yost brothers to finish up the slaughter. The still shots caught them only from behind, but that was enough for Will to recognize Earl and Weeb in different poses, leaning over the desks where the outgunned cops had hidden. A few of the pictures showed the twins with submachine guns in their hands. At least two showed a smoke trail burning from their muzzles, the slight blur caused by the motion of the barrel firing.

  Will suddenly stopped amidst the toppled and turned desks, having involuntarily retraced what must have been the Yost brothers’ murderous path.

  It’s your fault, you dumb son of a bitch! All this happened because you let Jackie Terror get away … .

  He felt the old hate welling in him, self-loathing as much as detestation for Jack Tyrell. Will was dead too; nobody had gotten around to burying him yet, though. All chewed up inside, the world eating away at him. Will blessed at last with his chance to bite back.

  “You got an office I can use?” he said suddenly to Huggins.

  “Yes.”

  “Computer?”

  “Sure.”

  Will Thatch made for the door, shoulders high, suit no longer looking like an old sack draped over his frame. “Then let’s get going.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  From the Archives, Blaine and Liz went straight to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, specifically the annex building across Fourteenth Street from the sprawling complex commonly known as the “Money Factory,” where all paper currency in the country is printed. Since they didn’t have an appointment, the receptionist was adamant in refusing to send them upstairs in search of someone who could help them identify the origins of a specific rare coin. All such requests, they were told, needed to be filed in writing, with a tracing included in lieu of the coin itself. A response, or certificate of authenticity, could be expected within three to four weeks.

  “Maybe I can help,” a collegiate-looking young man, who must have overheard their conversation on his way out of the building, said from behind them. “My name’s Evan Reed. I’m an intern in the Records Department.”

  “Congratulations, Evan,” said Liz.

  “I’m also writing my graduate thesis on rare coins.”

  “How are you on the Civil War era?” Blaine asked him, while the receptionist shook her head in dismay.

  “Depends on the minting. What have you got?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?” Blaine said, and produced one of the gold pieces he’d found under the lake.

  Evan’s eyes widened. He took the coin and handled it gently, checking one side and then the other. “Where’d you get this?”

  “The bottom of my piggy bank.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?” Evan asked both of them, clearly not amused.

  “If it is,” Liz told him, “it’s on us.”

  “It’s just that …”

  “What?” Blaine prodded.

  “Let’s go upstairs to my office,” said Evan, steering them toward the elevator.

  “You’ll have to sign in first,” the receptionist snapped before they could leave, and shoved the registry across the counter toward Blaine and Liz.

  The office to which Evan referred was more like a lab, shared by a number of interns, the others of whom had left for the day. He inspected the coin under a binocular microscope, rummaged through some books, and then scanned some files on a computer.

  “Just as I thought,” he said finally.

  “What?” Blaine asked him.

  “Simply stated, this coin doesn’t exist.”

  “You saying it’s a forgery?”

  “No, I’m almost certain it’s real, but there’s no record I can find of a coin like this ever being minted.” Evan adjusted a large magnifying glass set on a swivel, so Blaine and Liz could get a better look at the coin. “At first glance, or to the novice, this is an ordinary ten-dollar gold piece. On the head side here we have the goddess Liberty.” He flipped the coin over in his fingers. “And on the tail we have the eagle.”

  “Sounds familiar,” Blaine said.

  “Only on the surface. Notice anything missing on the tail?”

  “No.”

  “How about ‘United States of America’ in a rim here?” And he traced the empty space with his finger. “It’s on every coin ever minted by the Treasury, which means whoever made the mold on this one must have screwed up.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “A mistake that big? Not if the coins ever got out of here, no.”

  “Is there any way to find out for sure?” Liz asked him.

  Evan thought briefly. “Maybe.”

  Only elevators reserved for staff use could reach The Tombs. The three of them emerged on a dimly lit basement hallway. Evan led the way down it to a solid wood door he opened with a key.

  “Coins aren’t minted in Washington anymore,” he explained, ushering Blaine and Liz in ahead of him. “But all records have been consolidated here for years. Not that anybody cares. Most of them aren’t even important enough to be transferred onto a database or microfilm.”

  The Tombs was actually a series of rooms, each cavernous and lined with shelves. The wooden desks and chairs placed amidst the shelves were all heavy and dull. The books stacked carefully around them looked like massive ledgers with broken and tattered bindings. The rooms smelled of paper, antiseptic, and stale, untouched air.

  “The date of the issue is 1862, according to what’s imprinted on the coin, and the lack of an identifying letter means that they were minted here in the capital,” Evan explained. “Is there any way you can narrow it down further?”

  “Try December,” Liz said, recalling that William Henry Stratton had taken delivery of the keg chests and wagons on January 11.

  Evan located the proper logbook for the Washington Mint on the shelf and lugged it over to the heavy wooden table. He began turning the pages rapidly, scanning the precise inventory of which coins were minted when and in what quantity. He stopped suddenly and flipped back to a page he had already checked, obviously perplexed.

  “I guess the records weren’t as complete as I thought,” he announced. “There must be a page missing.”

  He spun the book around for Blaine and Liz to look at.

  “See?” Evan resumed. “The bottom of this page ends on December 15. But the next page picks up with December 27.”

  “Maybe they closed for Christmas,” Liz suggested.

  “Let’s find out,” said Evan.

  He moved to a different section of the storage shelves and brought another book back with him.

  “These are the inventory logs listing shipments both incoming and outgoing. Let’s see what it has to say … .”

  He worked the tattered pages carefully, afraid of tearing or crinkling them. He seemed to find something that interested him, studying a number of entries before speaking again.

  “Major gold shipments from San Francisco were logged in on December 14, 17, and 21.”

  “I guess they stayed open, after all,” noted Liz.

  “How much gold?” Blaine wondered.

  “Roughly, I’d say enough t
o mint as many as a quarter million of your mysterious gold pieces.”

  “Enough to fill about four keg chests,” Blaine calculated. “What would their value be today?”

  “Impossible to calculate,” Evan explained, “because you can’t factor in collector’s value. We’re talking about a huge minting of coins in perfect condition, never placed in circulation. But without an actual history to lend authentication, you’re looking at a substantially deflated price if you intend to sell.”

  “And if such a history existed?”

  “Wow. Then we could be talking in the range of twenty thousand dollars per coin.”

  “That’s five hundred million dollars!” Liz noted disbelievingly.

  “That’s right,” said Evan.

  “So what was Stratton doing with them?” Liz wondered out loud. “Where was he going?”

  Evan came slowly out of his chair. “Stratton? William Henry Stratton?”

  Blaine and Liz looked at each other. “You mean you’ve heard of him?” Blaine asked.

  “You mean you haven’t? Stratton’s Folly doesn’t mean anything to you?”

  Together, they shook their heads.

  “How much do the two of you know about the Civil War?”

  “The North won,” Blaine quipped.

  “Not for the first two years,” Evan responded. “The fact is we were getting our butts kicked right up until mid-1863, to the point where Lincoln was under a lot of pressure from Northern industrialists to cut his losses and accede.”

  “Where does Stratton’s Folly come in?” Liz asked.

  “After northern losses at Vicksburg and Fredericksburg, with the South moving on Washington, Lincoln ordered the North’s gold reserves moved from the capital. Legend has it that he sent the gold in a heavily armed convoy by train to Mexico for safekeeping until after the war.”

  “Under the command of Colonel William Henry Stratton,” Liz surmised. “What happened?”

  The snow had been falling for hours, a white blanket growing beneath the convoy as it trudged through the valley.

  “Hold up,” Colonel William Henry Stratton called to his men when he saw the rider approaching along a narrow trail that cut between the hill-sides.