by Paul Heald
“Oh, I’ll be around,” she said cooly, “but you don’t need to bother coming.”
“What! You promised you’d fuck me!”
“Yeah, that’s true,” she said before she hung up. “Consider yourself fucked.”
XXVII.
FLIGHT
Stanley drove past Melanie’s townhouse and admired the perfectly manicured landscaping and the wisteria-covered arbor that connected the garage to her home. She had asked him to come over for a final debriefing around seven o’clock in the evening, and he was surprised that she was paranoid enough to avoid her office or any other downtown venue where they might be recognized. He regretted not seeing her in action in her office. His favorite part of law school had been the criminal law clinic, and he had often wondered what life would have been like if he had chosen her path rather than bailing out and going to graduate school. Nonetheless, the law kept coaxing him out of the ivory tower. His role in solving Jade Delilah’s murder two years earlier had led to a number of productive collaborations with various police departments, and now he was considering turning his scholarly attention to the complex sociology of law enforcement.
The traffic coming into Atlanta from Athens had been mercifully light, and he arrived in Melanie’s neighborhood forty-five minutes early. He found a parking space across from her townhouse and pulled out his smart phone to check his email and kill some time until the appropriate moment to knock on her door.
The street was a quiet cul-de-sac, and as he finished with his messages and looked up, he noticed a large red Chrysler driving very slowly past and then parking a hundred feet away on the far side of Melanie’s residence. After waiting for another car to pass, a bald man in an ill-fitting blue suit and running shoes walked up to her door and rang the bell.
The man stood, shifting his weight impatiently from foot to foot and eventually turning his back to the door to survey the empty street in the late afternoon haze. But for the sun’s reflection on the professor’s windshield, the visitor might have spotted him. As it was, oblivious to Stanley’s presence, he walked slowly away from the entrance to her house and along the sidewalk before ducking into the narrow alleyway between home and garage. Stanley watched the gap closely for a moment but the thuggish caller failed to reappear. Something was definitely wrong. This guy was no meter reader or delivery man. The professor was getting out of his car and dialing Melanie when the garage door suddenly began to open. He sprinted to his right and looked for the intruder in the garage, but his view was almost immediately blocked by a dark BMW pulling into the driveway. The prosecutor was arriving home.
“Shit,” he murmured, intuition telling him that she needed to flee, “answer your phone.”
On the fourth ring, she picked up.
“This is Stanley,” he said quickly. “Is that you in your car?”
“What?” She sounded confused. “Uh, yeah, I’m in my car.”
“Then you need to back out of the driveway and get the fuck out of the neighborhood.”
“Why?”
“Just do it!” he shouted. “I’ll be right behind you. Stay on the phone and get out of there now.”
She backed out of the driveway without further protest and accelerated down the street. He followed close behind as she exited the subdivision and headed toward a shopping center several blocks down the main artery that ran past her neighborhood.
“What’s going on, Stanley?” Her voice was tinny in the cell connection. She shifted in her seat and glanced at him through her back window.
“Maybe nothing,” he said, “if you were expecting a skeezy guy in a blue suit to ring the doorbell and then disappear behind your house.”
He saw her wave to the left.
“Crap. Follow me into the parking lot.”
They switched off their phones and stopped a moment later on the edge of a busy lot servicing a gigantic mall. Melanie slid into his car and thanked him for the warning. “Are we just being paranoid?”
“Maybe,” he shrugged, “but are you in the mood to take a chance?”
She shook her head, pulled out her cell phone and called the police. She placed an anonymous report of a break-in currently in progress at the address of her townhouse. “Maybe it’s the same guy who broke in to James’s place.” She thought for a moment and then continued. “I did just really piss off someone at the FBI.”
She explained how the gambit with her ex-lover had gotten her the location of the elusive Arkansas phone number. He could not help but laugh at her brush-off of the horny FBI agent, but the seriousness of her predicament quickly sobered him up.
“You know, it could be worse than someone just ransacking your house.” Stanley filled her in on what he had learned in the library. “You’ve been messing with some very powerful and well-connected people, and it’s not just about money anymore. There’s a string of bodies for somebody to worry about.”
“I’m a US attorney.” She frowned in disbelief. “Nobody’s stupid enough to fuck with me.”
“Are you sure about that?” He watched her closely. He could tell that she was not the type to scare easily, but events were escalating. “Tell me about the Arkansas number.”
“It belonged to a phone somewhere in a congressional office building in Little Rock—no surprise, given what you’ve just told me about the politics of cotton. I’m guessing that the initial notation in the FBI file was just a courtesy to some politician. The FBI is probably just an information conduit to people it doesn’t suspect are the real bad guys.” She shook her head and frowned. “Sammy probably ratted me out to his boss just to get me in trouble. He was pretty pissed, but given your description, it doesn’t sound like the prowler back at my house is some FBI agent. We need to find the real bad guy in the information chain.”
“Well,” he said grimly, “I think he’s currently lurking around in your backyard.”
“Shit,” she said suddenly. “James is on the radar screen too. I better give him a heads-up.” She grabbed her phone, managed to get ahold of the reporter before the call went to voice mail, and explained the situation as quickly as she could. “We need to meet. Stanley’s here, and we’ve got a lot to talk about.” She nodded her head several times before finally swiping her finger across the face of her phone.
Stanley looked at her expectantly and was rewarded with a cryptic expression that approximated a smile. “My newspaper dude has seen too many spy movies, but I agree with him that there’s no sense taking chances.” She opened up the back of her phone and took out the battery. “He’s worried about someone picking up our conversations or tracking us using the GPS on our phones. He said to meet at Secret Falls and to go silent before we left.” She held up her disassembled device and Stanley pulled his apart in solidarity.
“I assume you know where Secret Falls is?”
“Yeah,” she nodded with satisfaction, “and I guarantee you that no one else does.”
* * *
James Murphy was working late, and after Melanie’s call he decided not to find out what might be waiting for him at his house. He bolted from his office as soon as he had disabled his phone and walked quickly to his car, grateful that he had parked on a busy street in front of a popular diner. Remembering a story that his father had told him about escaping a carful of angry moonshiners he had surprised in the mountains, James drove through Clarkeston constantly checking for a tail in his rearview mirror as he covered the five miles to a police substation on the bypass. He drove deliberately, almost inviting pursuit, knowing that he could duck into the station and get help if necessary. By the time he passed the red-brick building surrounded by police cruisers, he was certain that no one had followed him to the edge of town.
He decided to drive immediately to the North Carolina mountains and the hidden waterfall that he had visited with Melanie the weekend they interviewed Diana’s father. He hoped she remembered how to get there, for on the spur of the moment he had been unable to think of another place he could reference
that would mean something to her but not to anyone else who might be listening. If he drove straight to the Forest Service road, he would arrive at the little parking area before her and wait there without actually having to navigate the trail to the falls in the dark.
James drove in silence and speculated about how much danger they might be in. He knew that Melanie’s friend had arrived from Geneva, and he wondered whether that trip had somehow set back in action the dark forces behind the disappearance of Jacob and Diana. In any event, whoever was stalking Melanie had the advantage of knowing far more about them than they knew about her pursuer. He made no apologies for his skittishness and momentarily wished that Sondra were with him. His wife had always been contemptuous of his quiet career and his apparent lack of adventure, but now here he was on his way to a perilous midnight rendezvous with an elegant and powerful woman who looked like Heidi Klum’s hot American sister. Imagining Sondra’s eyes bugging out in astonishment almost merited the trouble he might be in.
So, he pushed the Honda through the twilight, frightened and vaguely excited, knowing that some of the best journalism he had ever read had been produced by those two intertwined emotions.
It was dark when he approached Highlands, and he almost missed the small brown-and-yellow sign that provided the only marker for the Forest Service road. When he entered the woods, he rolled down his window and felt the coolness of the air with his hand as he picked his way slowly through the ruts and potholes and finally splashed through a small stream into the grassy parking area. When he cut the car’s engine and turned off the lights, he was instantly plunged into the heart of the forest night: chirping crickets, croaking tree frogs, rustling leaves, and the faint rumble of the falls in the distance. He got out of the car, and as he urinated against the trunk of a softly fragrant hemlock, he listened carefully for any pursuit. If anyone had managed to escape his detection, the crunch of gravel far up the road would alert him, and he would take off down the trail to the falls. Not even a native would be able to find him in the tangle of mountain laurel and rock along the streambed.
He sat on one of the stumps that marked the transition from the level glade to the steep slope where the trail began and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. He felt relatively safe. The woods at night had never been a scary place to him. People were scary, not trees and animals, and with a nearly full moon rising slowly over the foliage, his seat felt as familiar as the stool in his darkened study. Nonetheless, when he heard a car moving along the road, he scampered down the trail a hundred feet to watch its approach from behind a bush, ready to sprint farther if anyone other than Melanie and her friend emerged. The car stopped and the glare of the headlights prevented him from identifying its driver.
* * *
The last person that Thor expected to see at his door was Miriam. She had ignored all of his recent calls and his texts, and he had concluded that either she was still upset over Melanie’s mistrusting questions or, even worse, maybe she was still in love with the dashing and ill-fated photographer, Jacob Granville, and therefore had no time for a bumbling young priest.
Yet there she stood, looking vaguely apologetic and holding a bottle of wine.
“Come in!” He did little to hide his excitement at her surprise appearance. “I’ll get a corkscrew.” He motioned at the futon couch in his small living room. “Have a seat.”
Thor lived in a small two-bedroom apartment in a warehouse converted to lofts close to downtown Clarkeston. He liked the brick walls and the high ceilings, but his neighbors tended to be well-off students rather than fellow young professionals, and he had finally concluded that the hipness of the space did not offset the annoying party noise that started late on Thursday night and lasted until early Sunday morning. He also lacked the funds to furnish the place properly, and his battered coffee table and mismatched garage-sale couch and easy chair declared that he was not too far removed from his own student years.
“Here you go.” He handed her a generous portion of the pinot noir that she had brought and sat next to her. At least he had two good wine glasses.
“I want to apologize for my behavior the other day.” She took a sip of the wine and then frowned. “That bitchy attorney pissed me off, but I shouldn’t have just run. Probably just confirmed her suspicions about me, whatever they are.”
Thor was so happy to see her that he would have forgiven far worse transgressions. “There’s nothing to apologize for! She was being pretty confrontational. She is a lawyer, after all.”
“The thing is,” she paused and frowned again, “she was right. I have been sort of carrying a torch for Jacob. I know it’s stupid. He’s either dead or long gone and not coming back.” She finished her glass in one long swallow. “You know what they say: you never forget your first love until the next one comes along.”
“Ouch,” the priest blurted out.
Her face initially read curious but soon blushed as she backpedaled. “No, I didn’t mean …” She looked down and kept her eyes on the wine bottle as she topped off her glass. She swished the fluid around for a moment and then gave Thor a skeptical look. “Are you really interested in me?”
“Well, of course!” God, how bad was he at this! How could she not have noticed the way he looked at her? The longing and soul-searching expression? Maybe her failure to read him meant that he came off suave and aloof? Doubtful. And anyway, the hell with subtlety. “You’re totally awesome. Any guy would be lucky to be with you!”
“That’s debatable,” she murmured, before her face brightened and she raised her glass. “Well, let’s consider this our first date, then.”
“First for you,” he smiled. “The fifth for me.”
This turned out to be the right thing to say, because she laughed and kissed him on the cheek. “Now, I’ve got even more interesting stuff to tell you.”
“Well, that was pretty interesting.”
“No,” she laughed again, “I mean it. I’ve been talking with my mother about Giles Keefe. When I left you all, I was so pissed that when I got home I told my mom that I knew she was lying about Washington and that Keefe’s wife had told me to say hello to her.”
Thor had no trouble imagining fireworks between the two strong-willed women. “What did she say?”
“Pretend this is the confessional, because you cannot tell anyone. Ever. But Giles Keefe was her lover! She had an affair with him while they lived in Washington, and my dad never found out.”
“Holy crap.”
“You bet.” She filled his now empty glass. “And Keefe was my dad’s connection in the government. Dad told her that he called Keefe about Jacob.”
“Have you contacted Keefe yet?” He wondered whether Miriam’s desire to find her former lover still compelled her curiosity. He could see why it might, given the circumstances under which Granville disappeared.
“Not yet,” she sighed. “I’m thinking that maybe I just need to let some of this stuff go.”
* * *
“James?” Melanie’s voice was unmistakable, and the reporter emerged from his hiding place and strode into the car’s lights with a little wave of his hand.
“Sorry to be so dramatic,” he apologized as he approached her, “but I couldn’t think of a less obvious place to meet.”
His heart leaped as she gave him a quick and unexpected hug before responding. “You’ve definitely achieved not-obvious. Kinda creepy, but definitely private.” She stood aside and made room for her traveling companion. “This is Stanley Hopkins, sociology professor and globe-trotting cyber-sleuth.”
James gave the man’s hand a firm shake and asked Melanie to switch off the lights. “Even if you weren’t followed, this road technically closes at dark, and there’s no sense getting the attention of a forest ranger.” He gestured to the line of stumps in front of the vehicles. “Why don’t you guys sit down and tell me what you know.”
The professor began by revealing what he had learned in Mallorca and Geneva, and as he explained his t
heory of how a plan to expose an attempted bribe had gone horribly wrong, James’s mind wandered back to the mysterious picture of the two girls taken by Jacob Granville. So, one of them was gone, too, brushed aside as easily as Diana Cavendish. The African farmer and the Mexican textile worker in Jacob’s YouTube library came into focus, too, their suffering no longer so disconnected and mysterious.
Stanley then outlined his research at the University of Georgia library and explained how billions of dollars provided plenty of motivation for the violent silencing of the English girl and later Jacob and Diana.
“Shit,” James murmured, “I wish we could prove some of this.” The moon had risen overhead, and he could easily see his companions nodding in agreement. “What I don’t understand is why Melanie’s getting suspicious visitors now. There’s nothing to tie you two together.”
He heard the attorney sigh. “I asked my friend in the FBI to track down that Arkansas number again last week. I think he got pissed and told somebody that I was digging around in the case.”
“Fuck,” James replied. He almost never swore, but, according to the professor, either the FBI or some politician or some cotton planter or some Mexican factory owner was coming after Melanie, and he was the next most likely target since his name was already on the books. “You got a plan?”
“Sort of.” She pulled a rubber band out of her pocket, ran her hands through her hair, and gathered a small ponytail behind her head. “I need cover, so I’m going to tell my boss everything. As the head US attorney in Atlanta, he’s got a great working relationship with the FBI, and getting everything out in the open should make us pretty untouchable. There’s no sense silencing people who’ve already talked.”
James had been keeping half an ear on the conversation and half on the road behind them, and now he heard the faint crunch of gravel in the distance. He reached out and grabbed Melanie’s hand. “Someone’s coming. It’s probably just a ranger or some kids, but let’s get down the trail a bit. It takes a hard turn to the right, and we can look through the leaves and see who shows up. Given what you guys have just said, I’m not in the mood to take any chances.”