Reckoning and Ruin

by Tina Whittle

  “The part about not volunteering anything. If you know of a crime, report it. If you’re just supposing there might be a crime, or imagining a crime, then you need to zip it. Now and until the final gavel, the one at Judgment Day. Deal with the civil matter as you must. But as for the rest—”

  “I know, I know. Stay out of it.”

  “Correct. I am putting your name on Jasper Boone’s ‘no contact’ list. If you try to see him again, the captain will sequester you until I get there. There’s a lot of lawbreaking and wrongdoing going on, and a lot of room in the Chatham County Detention Center. You want to stay on this side of that line, on the side of the angels. Do we understand each other?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  She hung up on me. I dropped the phone back into my bag, put my head in my hands.

  Trey stopped chewing. “What did she say?”

  “Exactly what I expected her to say.” I sat up, put my shoulders back. “But we’ll deal with that later. Right now you need to finish eating. And then we’re gonna go back to the hotel and do something that will make us both feel better.”

  He raised one eyebrow, and I flushed with relief. Coming back to himself, my boyfriend was.

  I smiled. “I know what you’re thinking. And yes, eventually. But there’s something else you need first. Something with a different kind of zoom.”

  ***

  We drove to the DeSoto, the red brick Grand Dame of Savannah hotels, where I made him lie down for a while. And eventually—freshly showered and shaved and wearing clean gym clothes, with his shoulder newly re-taped—he followed me downstairs to the front entrance, where I had the valet bring round the Ferrari.

  He eased into the driver’s seat. “Where are we going?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Just drive, Trey. Just drive.”

  He wrapped his fingers around the wheel, double-checked the mirrors. No matter how confusing the rest of his world got, the Ferrari always made sense. Steering and throttle, physics and response, these things he could comprehend. Most importantly, it cared not one whit about anyone’s intentions. It did not look out for you, caution you, worry about you, or warn you. It simply responded.

  I fastened my seatbelt as Trey revved the engine, releasing that familiar decibel-rich growl. I had a flashback to my first car chase with him, the gleam in his eye as he switchbacked us through the Atlanta streets. I had other flashbacks too, more carnal ones, and felt the blood rush. I’d never driven his most prized possession—yet—but it worked like a steel and leather aphrodisiac regardless.

  We took the Talmadge Bridge first, all the way into South Carolina. The river flowed, and the night fell, and the sunset burned a hole in the western sky. And with every mile, I could feel him quickening, returning, coming together again.

  I dropped my head to the side, the amber dazzle of Savannah in the rear-view mirror. “Trey?”

  “Yes?”

  “We’ve got a lot to do tomorrow.”

  “I suspected as much.”

  “But before we get to any of it, I need to see Boone.”

  “You said he has confidential patient status.”

  “I know.” I rolled my head sideways to look at him, silhouetted against the night. “But I watched you work the rules on Hope, watched you finesse that whole encounter.” I reached over and put my hand on his thigh. “I want you to work the rules on the patient coordinator at Memorial Medical Center. Can you do that?”

  He didn’t look at me, or my hand. He kept his eyes on the road, his own hands on the wheel. But for a second, the speedometer trembled a hair past fifty-five.

  “I can do that,” he said.

  Chapter Thirty

  When I got out of the shower the next morning, Trey was ironing. He was barefoot, clad in freshly pressed slacks, his single dress shirt splayed on the ironing board while he attacked the cuffs, which the hotel laundry had not crisped to his satisfaction. There was a freakishly healthy breakfast set up on the side table, with both tea and coffee, and every scrap of my dirty clothing had been picked up from the floor and refolded in tidy stacks. I grinned and plucked my day-old jeans and red La Perla bra out of the pile. Things were getting back to normal.

  I rummaged in his gym bag and found a black cotton tee. “Can I borrow this?”

  “Of course.”

  “And maybe some underwear?”

  He raised his head. “What?”

  “I didn’t have time to go back to Billie’s yesterday and get my stuff. A pair of your boxer-briefs is the best I can do this morning.”

  He waved a hand in acquiescence and returned to his ironing. He was back to the Trey I knew—sharp, capable, mission-oriented. He had only the suit he’d worn down and the contents of his gym bag, but he was making do. And making do quite well. I wondered how much of this had to do with keeping me in sight, wondered how much of my own renewed equilibrium was due to his being right beside me. Decided I’d ponder those things when we didn’t have investigating to do.

  I pulled on his briefs. “You left early this morning. You didn’t try to go for a run, did you?”

  “No, I was in the business center.”

  He pointed toward the desk. A stack of file folders sat on one corner, a stack of yellow legal pads on the other. A concept map covered the middle of the workspace, an intricately linked hierarchy of multiple hubs and clusters, circles and lines. I recognized the names of everyone I’d spoken to over the last three days, even my cousin Billie, their relationships to each other charted and calculated, annotated and footnoted. And in the center…John Wilde.

  I paged through the first folder, Shane Cook’s 302. It contained only three items, the first a copy of his résumé from an online job hunting site, the second a bit of HR department legalese. The third was an article about him from the detention center newsletter—it included a photo of Shane grinning for the camera, his pants leg hiked, his prosthetic on full display. He’d peeled back the flesh-toned silicone to reveal an impressive piece of engineering under the faux foot, gears and pistons, pneumatics and hydraulics. He could even run with it, the article explained.

  “Looks like he was telling the truth about his injury,” I said.

  Trey shook out the shirt and examined the sleeves. “That much, yes. The rest of his background is unverified. I won’t be able to complete it until I can access LINX again. Or until Marisa lifts my suspension and I can get into the Phoenix data bases again.”

  I ran down the information, which repeated what Shane had revealed in the parking lot—two tours in Iraq before the mortar took off his foot. Physical therapy certification on the GI Bill to supplement his combat medic training, which had focused on the trauma of blast injuries, expertise he now shared with the incarcerated. On paper Shane looked like a hero, practically star-spangled.

  Except for one thing.

  I held up the second paper, the HR report. “What’s an Other Than Honorary Discharge?”

  Trey returned the shirt to the ironing board. “It’s a service characterization following termination of a military contract. OTH is given when overall performance was satisfactory, yet there was conduct considered problematic. You can find the details in the Uniform Code of Military Justice directives and regulations, but—”

  “Just explain why it matters that Shane got one.”

  Trey put down the iron and gave me his patient face. “That’s what I’m trying to do. Because if you’ll look at his résumé, you’ll see that he eventually received a General Discharge. Any record of the OTH discharge was supposed to have been expunged, but I found the original designation as an addendum to a previous application package.”

  “So it got changed.”

  “Apparently so.”

  “But why was it issued in the first place?”

  “Conduct unbecoming
. That’s all I could find. For now.”

  That was certainly fodder for further speculation. I put Shane’s 302 aside and picked up the second folder, which belonged to Ivy Rae. Her file was considerably thicker. Trey had discovered that in addition to the usual social media presence, Ivy Rae maintained her own webpage—Friends Behind Bars.

  “This is the site where she met Jasper! Are you telling me she runs the freaking thing?”

  “She does.” Trey adjusted the iron, tested the steam. “For non-romantic correspondence only, the website insists. I suspect this disclaimer resulted from the lawsuit.”

  “What lawsuit?”

  “The one against her previous website.”

  He motioned for me to keep reading. I found the second item, a newspaper article about the case against Hearts Behind Bars, a site devoted to matching inmates with lovelorn free citizens. After her match-ups resulted in a slew of frauds and scams, the entire operation was shut down. Ivy settled the case out of court without ever acknowledging that it had been used as a sophisticated victim pool. But apparently she was at it again. Sort of.

  “I don’t get it. If registration at this site is free, how does she make any money?”

  “Look up the web address.”

  I tapped it into my phone and figured it out instantly. The website itself was amateurish, but the ads running in the side columns were slick and professional. And every single one featured either buxom young women of various ethnicities eager for a real American boyfriend or shirtless young men longing to “conversate” with special ladies. All of them one phone call away.

  “So now she serves as a porn, sex talk, and maybe even soft prostitution portal, with Jasper acting as her word-of-mouth, behind-bars spokesperson for the actual correspondence part of this, which is really just a cover?”

  Trey took the iron to an especially stubborn wrinkle. “That is a valid assessment.”

  I tossed the folder back on the desk. “So is Jasper scamming her? Or is she scamming Jasper?”

  “Perhaps both. Perhaps neither.”

  “Meanwhile Shane the less-than-honorably-discharged is offering medical testimony to the highest bidder.”

  “We’ve little evidence of that.”

  “He made it pretty clear in the parking lot. And we did see him driving off in a car that had to be Ainsworth Lovett and company.”

  “Allegedly. I haven’t been able to run the plate yet.” He pulled the shirt from the ironing board and inspected it. “One more thing—Rico called while you were in the shower. He was unable to pull any meta-data from the photograph.”

  “It had been stripped.”

  “Yes.”

  “Damn it. That means we’re dealing with a professional, doesn’t it?”

  “Most likely. Rico said he couldn’t help you as much with the second quotation, except that it was from Charles Dickens. I told him you’d figured it out yourself, and he said that was good, and that perhaps for your next trick you could listen to me when I told you to get yourself back to Atlanta.”

  “Except that you’re not telling me that.”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “Why not?”

  He kept his eyes on the shirt. “Because your original assessment was correct—you need to be here, in Savannah, to resolve this situation. That much is clear. And yes, it may be dangerous, but Atlanta may be dangerous as well, which is why I’m here in Savannah with you. As you said yesterday, we’re a team now.”

  Trey delivered this pronouncement calmly, which made me think he’d overdosed on his medication. Or inhaled too much starch. He’d been incredibly productive while I’d been snoozing away, and I had to admit, he seemed back to his old self. But our investigation was going off-road real fast, and we were going to have to go with it.

  I sat on the edge of the bed. “Are you sure you’re up for this? Because—”

  “I’m okay.”

  “But—”

  “Tai. I’ll tell you if I’m not.”

  He held his cuff links in my direction. I opened my hand and he dropped them into my palm. Up close, I caught the scent of his aftershave, faint but delicious against the smell of starched cotton. His jacket lay at the foot of the bed, his tie next to it. Only one thing was missing—his weapon.

  I reached for his wrist. “If you’re okay, why is your H&K still in the safe instead of holstered up and ready to go?”

  His forehead creased. I knew this wasn’t about his injury, wasn’t about getting his professional carry permit pulled. He could still ride strapped just about anywhere in the state of Georgia with his retired law enforcement officer permit.

  He kept his eyes on his wrist. “After what happened Sunday morning, in Marisa’s office…I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right. Carrying a firearm.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. It’s too…something. Or perhaps I’m too something. Either way, it’s not a good idea.”

  I finished with the cuffs, started on the buttons. “Okay. This is me trusting you to make the right decision. And reminding you that should we need a gun, I’ve got mine.”

  He nodded. “Okay. Tell me if we do.”

  ***

  Savannah rush hour was nothing like Atlanta’s smog-choked gridlock, but it came with its own hazards—horse-drawn carriages, one-way streets, tourists lurching into the crosswalks. Despite the usual traffic inanities, I got us to Memorial in a reasonable amount of time. Inside the cool sterile lobby, Trey went straight to the information counter.

  “Ms. Anderson?” he said.

  The woman looked up. “May I help you?”

  “I’m Trey Seaver, formerly with Atlanta PD, currently serving with the FBI Major Offenders Task Force. I’m here concerning a patient placed under confidential admittance, a relative of Ms. Randolph’s.”

  “I’ve already explained our procedures to her.”

  Trey nodded in professional commiseration. “So she told me. And of course I’m not asking you to compromise those. As you know, to even acknowledge the presence of said patient in this facility is a violation of the patient’s confidentiality and terms for prosecution under HIPPA.”

  The woman blushed furiously. I suppressed a grin. Trying to out-rule Trey was like trying to out-rule gravity.

  “However, hypothetically speaking, should said patient be housed in this facility, said patient needs to be apprised of certain…developments.” Trey gave her the serious look. “Developments of an urgent nature that said patient may wish to discuss with me further. Or if not, developments that at minimum need to be discussed with your head of security, whom I will be happy to speak to.” He pulled a pen from his pocket and wrote something on the back of his gold-and-navy-embossed AMMO card. “Pass this along, please, to whomever you deem most appropriate. We’ll wait for the response.”

  She stared at the card. “I’ll have to check your credentials.”

  Trey inclined his head. “Of course. My immediate superior is Detective Dan Garrity. You can call the FBI Field Office in Atlanta and ask to speak to him. He’s away from his desk, but if you tell the operator the call is on behalf of Trey Seaver, they’ll put you through.”

  I didn’t look his way. Garrity was in Alabama probably covered in preschooler stickiness. But Trey was correct. He’d vouch for him. There would be hell to pay afterward, but he’d vouch nonetheless.

  The woman examined the card. “Wait here.”

  She marched her high-heeled self through a door marked PRIVATE. When she’d disappeared, I turned to Trey. “What did you write on that card?”

  “Your phone number.”

  Ten minutes later, my phone rang. When I answered it, Boone said, “What kind of mess have you gotten yourself into now?”

  “Let me come up, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  A grumbling resignation. “Room
767. And bring me a Dr Pepper and some of them cheese crackers. You know the ones.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  I plunked the last of my change into the vending machine while Trey fielded a text from Garrity, who, as expected, was demanding to know what was going on. He thumbed a quick reply, then pulled a bottle of herbal relaxants from his pocket and threw two tablets in his mouth, crunching them into powder.

  “Uh oh,” I said. “That can’t be good.”

  “It’s a prophylactic dose. Sometimes hospitals trigger an association response. Those memories can be…difficult.”

  Five days in a coma difficult, plus six months rehab with tubes and pain and crashing terror difficult. And now the smell of disinfectant and industrial laundry and institutional food, the beeping of monitors, all of it combined to trigger it all over again. He didn’t seem on the verge of collapse, though. There was no trace of the Trey of the previous day, the shaky, badly-shaved, hollow-eyed version. This Trey was scimitar sharp.

  “So Garrity’s cool?”

  “He said that I’d better not be aiding and abetting you in some dubious and borderline illegal scheme, because if I were, he would be very pissed off.”

  “His exact words?”

  “Exactly exact.”

  The elevator opened, and Trey held the door for me. I gathered Boone’s snacks and held out my hand.

  “Can I have a couple of those herbal thingies? For purely prophylactic purposes?”

  He shook two into my hand.

  ***

  Boone was on the pulmonary wing, the halls silent save for the hisses and beeps of lung machines, the soft-shoe tread of nurses and therapists. Trey stopped, double-checked the room number. Then he assumed the “post up” position—back against the wall, arms folded—right beside the door.

  “You go ahead,” he said. “I’ll keep watch.”

  I wiped the sweaty soda can on my jeans and pushed open the door, knocking as I did. Boone lay in bed. He didn’t try to get up, just turned his head in my direction. He looked like a ghost, like everything solid about him was collapsing and the only thing holding him together was the outline of who he’d been, the shape of his personality. His breath came shallow and raspy, his silver-shot green eyes fierce above the oxygen mask.