“We cleared to get in there, Deputy?”
“It won’t be cool to the touch, Sheriff.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
I followed Colt to Marty’s pickup. The door on the driver’s side hung on a single hinge. I saw blood and brains on the windshield.
Reminded me of Afghanistan.
“So much for safety belts,” I remarked.
“Marty didn’t use his,” Colt informed me. “Which makes me wonder if there ain’t something other than God’s mother was distracting him.”
The sheriff stepped up onto a buckled running board to inspect the Ford’s tin-can cab, squeezing past the passenger seat to check the glove box which I presume sprung open with impact. A couple of road maps were visible. A flashlight. When Colt pulled out, his deputy was waiting.
“Found a toolbox in the ditch, Sheriff. Marty’s name’s engraved on the box. Must of got thrown from the truck bed when he hit.”
“You opened it?” Colt asked.
“No, sir, I’s worried about custody.”
“Good. I’ll sign for it. Get me some forms and bags, you don’t mind. Gloves, too, you got a pair you can spare.”
Colt waited to formally establish a chain of custody for the evidence before slipping on a pair of latex gloves to attack the toolbox. A thick hasp and padlock secured the small vault, but of course there was no key, so the sheriff sent his deputy for a bolt cutter, which became the firefighters’ sole contribution for the day. Within seconds the keep was breached.
I peered over Colt’s shoulder to see what was inside.
A tangle of fishing lures and a pair of pliers. A spool of forty-pound tackle and a Barlow folding knife. But then Colt pulled those caddies aside to display the valuables beneath.
“Well, shit,” I exclaimed.
The sheriff seemed neither disappointed nor surprised to see a Ziploc bag filled with what looked like clumps of salt.
“Clara Sue, you got a pen?”
I handed over my ballpoint and he teased the bag open.
Took a quick sniff. “What I figured.”
Colt resealed the bag of methamphetamine with the barrel of my pen.
“You think Marty was using when he wrecked his truck?” I asked.
“Doubt it. But dollars to doughnuts it’s why he was using a throwaway phone.”
CHAPTER TEN
Crystal Meth Found in Guard’s Toolbox
The Clarion
The Tuesday following Marty Hart’s wreck, Randall and I were installed before a high-definition monitor to crop and copy photographs of the floats competing for honors in the homecoming parade.
“We need to put this to bed.” Randall was complaining about the pace of our work and I agreed, but there was not a damned thing I could do to speed things along.
Running a newspaper is a little like running a dairy. You get up early, there are no days off, and if you quit squeezing teats your enterprise will just plain dry up. I’m not talking about running out of copy. We get more stories than we can handle. We’re still in the middle of hunting season and so besides the floats and the parade and all that mess, we’ve got a dozen camouflaged hunters looking to get their guns and trophies splashed in the paper. Next week we’ve got Heritage Week, and the week after that the marching band’s heading for a performance in New Orleans—can’t let that recognition go unheralded.
And then there are the nasty-grams. I’ve got enough “Letters to Editor” to stuff a landfill, folks pissed off with the federal government, every conspiracy theorist expecting to see his special take on reality featured in the paper. And, of course, there are the Obama haters. That’s a well that never runs dry, even though the man is out of office! The FBI actually requires threats against any president to be reported, but if I forwarded every e-mail or letter I get that promises violent retribution against our commanders-in-chief, I’d have feds banging doors day and night.
We are definitely not hurting for things to print. What we’re hurting for is subscribers and advertisements. A paper can’t survive without readers and ads, and if you don’t drum up new business you die. It’s a constant process of hanging onto the old as you court the new, and lately we’ve had very few newcomers to the Clarion.
Randall left me fiddling with jpegs and tiffs as he checked the week’s classified ads against our expenses.
“We’re short,” he announced.
“How short?”
“Well, if Hiram renews his ad for the cement plant we’ll just about break even.”
“He’s late.”
“He’s testing you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he’s waiting for you to take some position on Butch’s place, Clara Sue. He wants readers to believe you’re on his side.”
“Why do I have to take sides at all?”
“You took sides at the Globe all the time. Hell, it was your stock-in-trade.”
“It was my stock. But now that I’m the one responsible for paying the bills it’s not trading all that well.”
“If it’s important, there’s always blowback,” Randall rejoined.
Too true. I remember an occasion at the Globe when the staff was debating whether to bump a story about a young marine who left military service after lodging a formal complaint that he had to constantly fake his sexual orientation in order to avoid harassment for being gay. I was still in college when Bill Clinton signed his “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. This latest allegation of mistreatment didn’t seem newsworthy to me. The issue had been worked to death. But my editor at the time disagreed.
“This marine is saying that the only way he could be accepted in his chain of command was to lie. What the story is about is whether we as Americans are okay with any military environment that forces any young man or woman to lie in order to serve our country. The lying’s the thing. That is the story you ought to care about.”
And now, years later, I am faced with another lie and another story.
“Hiram means to get Butch out of the way and he doesn’t much care how,” Randall said as we butted heads over what to do.
“It’s Butch’s property,” I said, digging in. “Hiram can’t make him sell if he doesn’t want to.”
“Clara, you saw what Hiram tried to pull in that school board meeting over the summer. You think he won’t try again now there’s money at stake?”
“You have a point,” I allowed.
“Readers need to know what’s bullshit and what’s not. Whatever happened to ‘Speak Truth to Power’?”
“The Quakers gave us that one in 1955.”
“Still works for me.”
“Jesus, okay,” I relented. “Tell you what—the school board has to report progress sometime next month. When the discussion goes public, I’ll sort out the pros and cons, how’s that?”
“Fearless,” Randall replied and before I could tell him to go fuck himself, the bell tinkled on our rowan door.
“Mornin’ folks!”
In waddles Rep. Bull Putnal, that Rotary pin trapping a clip-on tie to his ample belly, slacks bunched up so loose on his shoes you’d think he’d trip on himself. State Representative Putnal reached the counter smiling like he’d just won the lottery, or at least another election, thumbs tucked inside a brand-new pair of suspenders wide enough to haul an Airstream.
“How you doin’, Clara Sue? Randall.”
“Mr. Putnal.” I offered a smile that I hoped was ingratiating. “How may I help you?”
“Well, you know I got an election comin’.”
Jesus, with all the other things competing for attention, I’d damn near forgotten the November races. Putnal gave me a second to recover before pressing his case.
“I know it’s a frantic time o’ year for you all, but I need to get some of my record noted in your paper.”
“Yes, sir. Certainly. How many columns would you like?”
He seemed surprised. “Well, as many as you can give me, I reckon.”
It was my turn to be discomfited.
“I thought we were talking about advertisement, here, Bull. Political ads.”
He gave me one of those jelly-bowl chuckles. You know the kind. There’s no sound. Just that big ole belly shaking along with the triple chin.
“You—! You a pistol, Clara Sue!”
“Oh, I am that.”
A final quiver of mirth died.
“I’m sure you want your readers to be informed,” he said, smiling grandly.
“I do, absolutely.”
“You got a concern, say so, Clara Sue. We can reason together.”
This could be tricky. I leaned onto my counter as casually as I could.
“Bull, when President Obama was in office, you were telling your constituents that the prez was a Muslim. I’m just curious—do you actually believe that? Or was that just red meat for your constituents?”
“President has to be a citizen, Clara Sue. That was my point and my only point. And besides, it’s water under the bridge.”
“I’m just saying that if you wanted me to address your campaign in my paper, I couldn’t ignore your record, Bull.”
“Voters know where I stand, Clara Sue. That’s the fire gets me elected.”
“Then you don’t need the Clarion for kindling.”
Bull’s smile looked awfully tight in that pale of flesh face.
“Awright, fair enough,” he broke off abruptly. “Sounds like you aren’t willing to volunteer an endorsement. But you will run ads for me, won’t you?”
“Of course we will, Mr. Putnal,” Randall interjected cheerfully. “Freedom of speech is what we’re all about. And we’ll give you a good rate too.”
Bull grunted like a bullfrog. “I’ll let you know.”
Putnal turned for the door, but then pulled up short like Colombo, thumb extended from a hand suddenly filled with a cigar.
“Oh, and Clara Sue, one other thing. ’Bout the school? I’m countin’ on you to help me get those monies. Be a damn shame to let a candy store get in the way of four million dollars.”
“From what I hear, Butch is not inclined to sell,” I replied.
Bull’s smile was suddenly brittle. “Cain’t have a simpleton posing a risk to our children, Clara Sue. Surely our children have to be the guiding priority.”
And with a tinkle of our brass alarm he was out the door. Randall leaned back in his chair.
“ ‘Simpleton posing a risk’?’ ‘Guiding priority’? Was that a threat?”
“To Butch, certainly.”
“This is a no-win situation,” Randall glowered. “If we don’t print anything, Butch McCray will be tarred as a pedophile, but in the absence of any evidence we can’t refute the rumor. Butch loses either way.”
“But a lot of other folks win big, including Hiram and Roscoe Lamb.”
“So what can we do, Clara Sue?”
I turned back to a computer screen glowing with pixeled images of floats and football players and hunters in camouflage grinning over guns and antlers and tusks.
“Going to need a shovel,” I answered my husband as I exited the screen. “I’ve got some digging to do.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Royal Ambassadors Edge Seniors for Best Float
Harvey Sykes Kills Monster Hog
County Commissioners Engage Architect for School
The Clarion
It’s frightening to think that with a handful of affidavits, a pliant judge, and a cooperative shrink you can commit almost anyone to a crazy house cum “care facility.” The Lamb brothers had already decided what sort of care Butch McCray would receive, and though I did not know it at the time, the machinery to establish their foster brother as a pedophile or merely incompetent was well under way. But it turned out that Butch was not the only obstacle threatening the Lambs’ already rigged bid, and it was this latter impediment that took Hiram Lamb for a long drive to a fallen woman in a failing mansion on Pepperfish Keys.
I believe I have mentioned that Barbara Stanton returned to her home on Pepperfish Keys a couple of years after her famous husband’s spectacular demise. Senator Stanton’s homicide, terrible enough, was preceded or perhaps even anticipated by his daughter’s brutal murder. The family’s fall from grace got international play, a US senator laundering money for a drug lord, his only child faking abuse in a foment of scandal only to be slain herself. It was easy in all that froth to forget that there was a wife involved, and mother.
It was Barbara Stanton who discovered her daughter’s mutilated corpse in a bedroom shower. Weeks later, Babs saw her husband hauled off in handcuffs only moments before he was blown to bits. You can still see the crater left by the explosion—right beside the cattle gap at the front gate. The threads leading to those twin disasters are too tangled to unravel here, but for sure it knocked Barbara Stanton off her rocker. Unless you believe she was off her rocker to begin with.
A stark reversal of circumstance, by any estimation. Time was, and within easy memory, when Barbara was the envy of all her Tri Delt sisters, a nouveau riche catching the eye of a North Florida cracker who was destined to become a United States senator. Now she’s just an eccentric pauper, a has-been in rustication with an unsellable house and a sagging porch in a place isolated from any normal commerce. Of course, I remember when there were no homes of any kind on Pepperfish Keys and no commerce apart from the modest forays of hunters and fishermen.
There wasn’t even a road would get you to the Keys in those years. To reach that backwater, you came by boat, and if you were running an inboard you had better watch the intakes. People unfamiliar with Florida’s northern littoral come to our shores expecting to find beaches of blinding white sand identical to those encountered at Pensacola or Sanibel with well-defined margins offering an unspoiled view of the gulf beyond.
But there’s nothing like a strand at Pepperfish Keys, and even on a good day, you can’t be sure you’re seeing the gulf. What you do see coming over oyster beds and shallow brine is a vast prairie of turtle grass bounding the last vestiges of Florida’s hardwood forest. You see the trees from a distance, modest sentinels of tidewater cypress and loblolly pine. Sometimes an osprey will roost atop some lightning-shattered bole, scouting for fish along with squadrons of pelicans.
Once off the saltwater and past the boundary of stubborn grass, you reach a terrain that is mostly below sea level, the sammy earth riddled by spring-fed creeks and sloughs that make the place a perfect refuge for turkey and quail and hunting ground for gators and lynx and bear. Last I heard there might even be a panther or two out there. And hogs, of course. Hogs run wild through Pepperfish Keys in sounders that mix feral swine with stock as old as the conquistadors.
Harvey Sykes got his three-hundred pounder on the Keys; I just ran the photo.
I have never hunted the Keys, but I have certainly fished there, just a tomboy with her father and a Zebco reel in a flat-bottomed boat fashioned from plywood and glue and urethane varnish. Imagine sliding off the gulf in that bark, a sinking sun still warm on the back of your khaki shirt, your neck burned red unless you were smart enough to wear a bandana which native Floridians, as a matter of pride, never do.
You’re riding the tide in water that might only be waist deep, alert to the threat of oyster beds and to any grass or line that might foul your prop, surprised always at the faint detonation of scallions, those ancient crustaceans breaking the surface for that one inestimably meager sip of oxygen, then to descend trailing bubbles beneath your homemade voyager.
I can still see the rainbow of oil trailing our two-stroke outboard, still smell the gasoline burnt off that overworked Mercury. Other aromas compete for memory, the chum in the bait box mingling with odors of fecundity and decay, a disemboguement of roe contesting the rot of a gutted heron. And of course we fishermen bring our own aromas to the wilderness in pheromones pungent and intimate, a rut of piss and perspiration.
We ended our days thirsty, filthy, and spent, but somewhere
past the armor of oyster shells and razor-sharp grass a spring boils ice cold and with my father’s gnarled hand at the tiller we navigated channels marked with cypress poles stuck into the silt by generations of fishermen to find our campsite. There to debark, bivouac, and feast.
Sound mixes with smell in my recollection, the sizzle of mullet and bass and bream in cast iron skillets, the explosion of resin from fat lighter kindling. I gorged with my father on the catch of the day. We drank mugs of steaming coffee and I begged for stories. Yarns of thieves and pirates. Of runaway slaves and Billy Bowlegs and Osceola. Fantastic, convoluted narratives!
People see all kinds of things in Pepperfish Keys. Always have. Folks will swear, for example, that they have seen the elusive pepperfish. Caught them, even. In fact, some of the best stories I ever heard as a young girl detailed the wiles and savvy of that fish for whom the Keys are named. Best eating fish you ever had, people said, and they believed it too, believed it all. But as a matter of cold fact there are no pepperfish on Pepperfish Keys because there are no pepperfish anywhere.
The species does not exist.
There is no such thing as a pepperfish, but that obdurate barrier does nothing to shake the testimony of those already convinced. There is something about the Keys that spawns imagination and invention and transmogrification. So Hiram Lamb should not have been too surprised when visiting Senator Stanton’s widow to learn that she had received a visit from the dead.
The account that Babs related to Hiram matched the broad narrative I printed in the paper, but with some elaboration. Babs told Hiram that she had fallen into a fitful sleep in the master bedroom below her dead husband’s study but woke from a nightmare dizzy with the certainty that some presence filled the room. The Stanton mansion, if you haven’t seen it, is ideal to host these sorts of visitations. It rises on sagging piers three stories of confused architecture straddled on three sides by a gingerbread verandah that looks over a failing pier and a channel of silver water cut through a plain of turtle grass. The only smart thing about the house is its respect for prevailing wind; there are french doors at every opportunity, clever passages to encourage cross ventilation, and balconies on three sides of every floor. Of course, the rooms are mostly abandoned, now, the furniture thrown with sheets or plastic.
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