The Greater Good

by Casey Moreton

  Joel paused, halting the shovel in the air, midswing. Out of the corner of his eye, he took notice of something interesting: the man was nodding off. R’mel had slumped slightly forward, his elbows on his knees, and his head pitched forward between his thighs. Joel’s heart raced. He glanced at the shovel in his frozen hands. He could see the gun dangling loosely, resting against R’mel’s leg.

  Joel tried to swallow but could produce no saliva. He pivoted delicately in the loose dirt where he’d been working. The man was a good eight feet away. One false move, one poorly placed step on the crusty forest floor, and he would wake suddenly and put a bullet through him.

  He took one careful step. Then another.

  He’d come within five feet of the man. A small snore escaped R’mel’s nose.

  Joel needed closer.

  R’mel snored louder, then stirred for a moment in his sleep. Joel prayed for just another thirty seconds. His grip tightened around the wooden handle of the spade. He eyed its rounded blade. Then he wondered,Should I put the blade through his throat or slam it to the side of his head?

  It was a question he’d never dreamed would pass through his brain.

  But the thought didn’t have time to linger.

  His next step crunched down on a brittle tree branch hidden beneath the snow and leaves. The branch crackled and popped, snapping crisp and bright and loud. Joel’s heart stopped.

  R’mel jerked his head up, his eyes clear and wide.

  But the farming tool had already begun its arc. Joel held it in a two-fisted grip, both hands welded to the last six inches of the wooden handle. R’mel’s brain registered what was happening, but the message didn’t reach his hands in time to form a defense. The chipped, rounded metal spoon connected just beneath his jawline. It went three inches deep for the entire width of his throat.

  R’mel could do nothing but fall on his back and clutch his opened throat with both hands. Blood spouted up between his interlaced fingers. He floundered and bucked on the ground. His 9mm Glock fell to the snow.

  Joel dove for the gun. Then he stumbled backward, away from the man who was turning the snow red. R’mel lifted his head a few inches, just enough to lock eyes with Joel, conveying a look of shock and disbelief and horror. Joel hesitated for only a second, then raised the Glock and pumped half a dozen rounds into him.

  R’mel lay still.

  Joel dropped the shovel and stumbled backward in exhaustion. He turned and staggered through the woods toward the clearing. He emerged from the trees and spotted the Dodge. The engine had died. He climbed inside. The idiot had left the lights on. When the engine sputtered out during their jaunt into the woods, the headlights drained the battery. He turned the key but got nothing.

  He slammed the door shut and scrambled to the back of the truck. If the guy in the back was alive, he had to get him help. They would both need food and water and someplace warm and dry to spend the night. Joel clambered onto the tailgate. He shimmied into the bed of the truck and labored to peel the duct tape from around the blanket. When he could, he tugged a portion of the blanket down until he was able to expose the face. His heart stuck in his throat.

  It couldn’t be possible. But there was no doubt. None at all.

  He’d been digging the grave for himself and Megan.

  57

  AFTER FORTY-FIVE MINUTES OF BEATING A NORTHERLY PATHup Lake Michigan, the cabin cruiser cut its engine. The boat was two miles from shore. The cabin lights winked out. And the boat just sat there, a dark mass swaying in the waves.

  Desmond pressed his face against the window of the chopper. Something was wrong. The chopper made a wide arc, circling around and putting its spotlight on the vessel below them.

  Desmond spoke into his headset, “What’s he doing?” He shot a look at Porter.

  Porter shrugged, struggling to keep control of the Enstrom against the tug of a stubborn gale. “Has he cut his engine? Looks like he’s drifting.”

  Yes, Desmond thought.That’s exactly what he’s doing. But why?

  The vessel was now moving with the tug of the current, as if no one was at the wheel. It was not a good night for a pleasure cruise. Not a good night to be out on the water. And there was certainly no reason to be this far out from shore. It was well after 1A .M., and Jefferson Peel had taken his boat out into the stormy waters of Lake Michigan and cut the power to the engines for no discernible reason.

  A sickening feeling began to swell in Desmond’s gut. Something was definitely not right. He motioned for Porter to take the chopper in low to the water. He wanted to get a closer look. There was nowhere to land, but they could put the spotlight on the vessel to try to find out what was going on. Had Peel spotted them and decided to play dead in the water? Would he wait until they’d left the area before he continued on? If Peel was out here to meet with the girl, what could he hope to accomplish by floating aimlessly? There wasn’t another vessel in sight for as far as the eye could see. This entire excursion seemed almost to have been a purposeless exercise—

  Bile rose in Desmond’s throat. How could he have been sostupid? His arms and legs felt suddenly numb. Then in a noxious blast of lucidity, he realized the truth: they’d been lured by bait, and they’d bit down fully and completely. Even without having yet seen the final physical confirmation, the truth was plain and clear.

  The boat listed in the water, waves crashing against the polished wood hull, spraying onto the cabin and the deck. It looked like a giant’s toy against the vastness of the great lake.

  “Bring her down close!” Desmond shouted, a fierce anxiety growing quickly in his chest.

  Porter fought the controls. The Enstrom tossed in the wind, shuddering and wobbling. It was hard enough trying to keep the machine upright and steady, let alone hold in tight in the vicinity with the boat. And it spooked the crap out of Porter to hold the chopper so close to the angry black waves.

  Suddenly, the cabin lights winked on and a floodlamp mounted on the outside of the cabin illuminated the deck.

  “Wait! Hold it steady,” Desmond yelled. “Hold the spotlight on the deck!”

  Just then, the cabin door tossed open in the wind, and a figure emerged, clad in a rain slicker and a boating cap. He grabbed hold of the railing, struggling to work his way to the forward deck.

  Peel?Desmond mused.What is he doing?

  The chopper reeled, its tail being jostled by a crosswind.

  The man wearing the rain slicker braced against the metal railing and looked up at the helicopter. Desmond stared down, waiting breathlessly. Then the man jerked off his boating cap.

  Desmond’s stomach dropped. He clinched his fists, barely able to contain his rage.“NO!” They’d been duped. Wanting desperately to do something, but knowing all actions would be in vain, all he could do was slam the side of his fist against the Plexiglas, and shout again,“NO!”

  The man standing on the deck was of Chinese descent. His name was Yong Chi, and he was the Peels’ groundskeeper. Yong waved his arm at the chopper, smiling brightly in the face of the strong gale, which whipped at his Fu Manchu mustache. He stabbed his fist into the air defiantly. He held an expression of pure delight. He released his grip on the railing and raised both arms high above his head, gesturing. The gestures were clearly not meant to be congenial. Then he flung his boating cap toward the chopper, and the wind from the rotors sent it sailing out across the water until it disappeared in the black waves.

  Desmond lost all feeling below the neck. They’d followed the wrong man halfway across Lake Michigan. How would he explain that to Mr. Stott?

  Yong Chi dipped back inside the cabin and fired the engine. Its warning lights sprang to life, highlighting the water ahead, and he pointed the bow due south.

  Porter glanced at Desmond, awaiting a command. Desmond simply sat there, facing out across the blackness of the deep night. Then a desperate thought pounded across the arid landscape of his mind.The car! The car!

  “Echo-Three!” he screamed into the ha
ndheld radio. He wasn’t even sure the radio could reach them at this distance, especially in this storm. But he screamed into the radio nonetheless. “Echo-Three! Return, I repeat, Return to the marina! Peel was in thecar!” He then slammed the radio to the floor of the chopper and pounded his fist to the seat. He muttered, “The car. He was in the car.” He put his head back and closed his eyes. Porter pulled back on the controls, now aware of where they needed to go, without being told.

  But Desmond knew there was nothing left at the marina to find. Peel was gone.

  He was gone, and they’d never find him in time. They wouldn’t find him at all. Not until it was too late. His face went slack. He was defeated. He’d lost Peel. He’d lost the girl. He’d lost the tape. He would not be returning to Belize. There was nothing for him there. If he went back to the island, Stott would have him butchered, and then feed his bloody carcass to the dogs.

  58

  THOUGHJEFFPEEL DIDN’T REMEMBER, THEY’D ACTUALLYmet once before. Clara Hayweather described the occasion—a fund-raiser for the Nash School for the Blind—during the short flight to Detroit. But Peel encountered too many faces in his line of work to recall a suburban housewife/fund-raiser he’d met in passing nearly two years ago.

  The Learjet bounced through the cold front. Clara conveyed all that she knew. Her friend’s name was Brooke Weaver, she explained. They’d attended Harvard together, and Brooke had gone into journalism. For the last several years she’d worked for NBC News. Peel listened intently, nodding occasionally, and asked a periodic question. Brooke had woken her several hours ago, frantic and scared to death, Clara said. She hadn’t gone into details on the phone, saying mostly that she remembered a mention of Jefferson Peel from one of Clara’s letters. It was a matter of life and death that she be put in immediate contact with Mr. Peel, Brooke had said. Tonight, in fact. The only explanation she offered was that it involved the truth behind the deaths of Senator Peel and his wife.

  Clara Hayweather had an acquaintance with Dr. Eucinda Omheimer, a close friend to the Peel family. Dr. Omheimer had reached Jefferson Peel at home. Brooke had given Clara very specific instructions, which she’d passed on to Dr. Omheimer, who then passed them on to Peel himself.

  For the moment, the value of this meeting was tantalizingly vague. Jeff Peel knew only that a woman name Brooke Weaver was in danger, that she needed to meet with him immediately, that she had insisted that Clara Hayweather come along with him, and that he might learn vital information regarding the deaths of his parents.

  The intercom hissed, and Isaac Rosenblatt’s husky voice said, “Buckle up, folks. We’ll be landing in about three minutes.”

  The landing gear skipped on the asphalt strip and rolled to a stop on a narrow apron next to a large painted-blue hangar. It was a private airstrip that Rosenblatt used on occasion. He had phoned ahead, and a taxi was waiting outside the chain-link fence.

  As Peel and Clara deplaned, Rosenblatt shook his hand, and said, “Good luck.”

  “I won’t forget this,” Peel said.

  Rosenblatt just smiled, and patted his friend on the shoulder. “I’ll be here waiting.”

  The taxi sped them northeast on Edsel Ford Freeway. Near Gross Pointe, they turned west, passing Harper Woods. Clara had scribbled Brooke’s instructions on a piece of scrap paper. She read off the directions to the taxi driver one line at a time. They followed State Highway 102 due west for six or seven miles.

  “It’s the Hazel Park Motel,” she said from the backseat.

  The driver nodded, glancing in the rearview mirror. “Sure, I know the place.”

  The taxi veered off the highway, and slowed. The Hazel Park Motel was a quaint little stopover, with a green-shingle roof and a clean red brick facade. It was three stacked levels of rooms. Clara had a room number scribbled on the scrap of paper.

  Peel paid the driver and leafed off a substantial tip. “We were never here, and you never saw us,” he said to the man behind the wheel.

  The driver gawked at the hundred-dollar bill. “Neverwhere?”

  “Good man,” Peel said.

  The taxi sped off down Highway 102 toward Detroit.

  “Two forty-four,” Clara said as they hurried across the slushpattered parking lot. They found a flight of stairs leading to the second floor of rooms. “Room two forty-four should be all the way down the right side, and directly around the corner.”

  And there it was.

  Jeff Peel and Clara Hayweather exchanged nervous glances, then he reached out and knocked twice on the door. There was no answer for a long moment. They could sense someone watching them.

  There was the sound of the bolt turning, then the metallic scrape of the chain sliding from its bracket. The door opened just a crack, then slowly wider. Peel and Clara stared at the young woman standing in the light of the doorway.

  “You made it,” Brooke said with a weary half-smile.

  It was a five-mile hike, in the snow, against the driving wind, at night. Joel was carrying his grown daughter in his arms. He’d bundled her in the blankets they’d been bound in during the long drive. He’d walked the five miles, carrying her the entire way. His legs felt like jelly. He’d lost touch with his extremities several miles back. Pure self-will was the only force capable of keeping him in forward motion, but he had his daughter in his arms, and if he could just manage to keep her alive, it would be enough.

  Megan was breathing, and her pulse seemed strong, both good signs. But this extreme cold couldn’t be a good thing for her. She needed warmth, solid food, and plenty of clean water to drink. He figured they were both severely dehydrated.

  Over the next ridge, he spotted the outline of a farmhouse on down the road, perhaps a mile or more. He could hold on for another mile, easily. Easily. When he got closer, he saw that there were no lights on in the farmhouse. There was a large, somewhat decrepit barn in back.

  The house stood a few hundred feet off the dirt road, connected to it by a meandering gravel strip. A rust-eaten mailbox sat atop a wooden post at the head of the driveway. Peeling letters on the mailbox spelled out the name GERRARD.

  Joel mounted the front steps and gently lay Megan on the porch. He rang the doorbell, and then clanked the iron door-knocker a dozen or more times. There were no sounds from within, and no lights shone. The Gerrards had likely gone to spend Christmas with family. Joel couldn’t help but indulge himself in a small grin, because he also would be spending Christmas with family.

  He found a woodpile around back, hurled a piece of firewood through a bedroom window, and carefully cleared away the jagged shards around the edges. He went through headfirst. Easing from room to room, he crossed to the front door and carried Megan in out of the cold. He found the thermostat, and heard the furnace click on as he spun the dial.

  Megan lay on her side on a heavy quilt in one of the bedrooms. Joel pulled back the bedspread, and tucked her in beneath the quilts and blankets. The house was already beginning to warm. They must have drugged her quite heavily, he thought. But she was breathing, and her pulse was still strong. She’d pull through.

  The Gerrards owned a television but lived too far out in the sticks for cable, and there was no dish outside or on the roof. He adjusted the rabbit ears and managed to pick up the all-night news on ABC. He turned on a light in the kitchen, and put on a pot of coffee. There was food in the cupboard, and he filled a plate.

  He sat in a rocking chair in front of the TV and watched the news through dense static interference. The muscles of his arms and legs were bruised and achy. Nothing a good night’s sleep couldn’t go a long way toward mending. There was a news report about a shooting in Syracuse. Joel leaned forward and turned up the volume a hair. It had happened at a residence on the outskirts of the city. Three men were dead. Each of them had been armed. The residents of the house had been home at the time of the shooting, but none of them had been harmed. Police weren’t releasing many details at this time. Joel sat back in the rocker.Syracuse, he thought.Syracuse.
Something in his gut spoke to him, telling him, unequivocally, that the man who’d attacked him at the Waldorf was one of the dead in Syracuse. And that same small voice told him that the man had been an important part of Megan’s life. If this proved true, she would need her father now more than ever.

  He finished his meal and set the plate on the floor beside the rocker. He put his head back, and TV light flickered on his face. Sleep washed over him without a moment’s hesitation.

  59

  Saturday morning

  THE FIRST LIGHT OF DAWN PIERCED THE STAND OF TREES ONthe east side of the Hazel Park Motel. The snow had stopped. The wind was still brisk. Though daylight had only broken within the past half an hour, the highway had already swelled with commuters heading into the city. Birds huddled in their nests, and a lone fox bounded through the field on the far side of the parking lot.

  Clara Hayweather was fast asleep, balled in a fetal position beneath the thin blanket of one of the twin beds in room 244. Bundled snugly in the other bed was Brooke. She’d finally slithered between the sheets less than two hours earlier, and had slumbered restlessly in that time. She woke with a start every twenty minutes or so, her internal defense mechanism still on high alert. For the moment, though, she was out cold, her chest rising with every breath.

  Jefferson Peel was seated on the floor between the beds. He had yet to sleep. And he had no plans to sleep, at least for the foreseeable future. He had too much ahead of him this day to care about rest. He’d sleep once his parents’ deaths were avenged.

  He was currently on his third viewing of the videotape. Tears had come and gone. The face of Vice President James Ettinger transfixed him, and he hung on every word. What he was hearing seemed utterly impossible. But Ettinger spelled out the details. Those names—Bertrum Stott, Julius Albertwood, H. Glen Shelby, Clifton Yates—they were names he was plenty familiar with, some more than others. But Clifton Yates, especially.