Bitter Legacy

by H. Terrell Griffin

  “I don’t know. My father contacted him somehow through some old associates. I don’t know how that was done. He’s known as the Hacker.”

  “Did you have any direct dealings with him?”

  “Only by phone. He thought my father was in charge, so that’s usually who he talked to.”

  “When was the last time you talked to him?”

  “This morning. Yesterday morning. Whenever. It was Friday morning.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He called to tell me that Baggett had disappeared.”

  “Do you know who Baggett is?”

  “Yes. He’s the man that the Hacker uses for his dirty work.”

  “Did the Hacker tell you that?”

  “In so many words, but I knew it all along.”

  “How?”

  “I’ve hired the best private detectives in the state to check up on people. I want to keep my skirts clean.”

  “I don’t think that’s worked out too well,” I said.

  “No.” A hint of desperation was creeping into her voice. “What are you going to do to me?”

  “It depends on what you tell me. If you lie, you get the needle. Where does Hawthorne come into the picture?”

  Donna was rattled, her eyes scanning the room, a dollop of spittle forming in the corner of her mouth. She took a deep breath. “I hired him to backstop the Hacker.”

  “How did you find him?”

  “I knew the Hacker was using Baggett, so I had some people keep an eye on the Marauders. They led me to Hawthorne. He was using the name Morton.”

  “Who killed the lawyer down in Belleville?”

  She looked away from me, her head down. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re lying, Donna. Do you really want to do that?”

  She shook her head, looked at the floor. She knew this was the question that could put her on death row. It was one thing to plan a murder, but quite another to actually kill somebody. “Hawthorne set that up.”

  “Did you order him to kill Blakemoore?”

  She mumbled something that I could not make out. I reached over and used my hand to raise her chin. Her eyes were downcast. She didn’t want to look me in the eye. “Look at me,” I said, loudly.

  She raised her eyes, said one word. “Yes.”

  “What about the sniper last week that went after Logan?”

  “Another one of Hawthorne’s people. He was the one who was killed in Osceola’s hospital room.”

  “And you ordered that?”

  She looked straight at me, a last bit of defiance. “Yes, you bastard. I ordered your buddy killed.”

  The vehemence of that last statement rocked me back on my heels. I was looking into the face of a middle-aged woman who had fought a very visible disability all her life. Had that turned her into a murderer? I wondered at the evil that ordinary people are capable of. I’d seen it before, but it always caught me by surprise. Was it desperation or necessity or just plain meanness that pushed otherwise sane people over the edge, over that knife-sharp border that separates the good from the bad, the righteous from the iniquitous? There was no answer here, and perhaps there was no answer anywhere.

  I stared at her, trying to discern some reason in her, find that spark of humanity that must reside somewhere in each of us. She stared back, her eyes hard, her pupils small pinpoints that seemed to probe my soul, her face a rictus of hate. I knew then that she would kill me without remorse, without hesitation. She was facing her own reality now, whatever that was. She knew she could not bargain her way out of this. But she tried.

  “Let me go, Mr. Royal,” she said, her voice flat, controlled, her breathing normal. “I’ve got more money than almost anybody in the world. I can set you and your friends up for life. You name the price, and I’ll pay it.”

  I laughed. The idea was so ludicrous in my mind that I found it humorous. It was much later that it occurred to me that some people, those like Donna Driggers, assumed that all people were like her, that there was nothing that wasn’t for sale. Honor was not a concept that she understood.

  “No way, sweetheart,” I said. “No fucking way.”

  “You’ll regret this, Royal,” she said, her voice low, defeated. “I don’t understand you. You can have millions and you want to put me away for trying to protect what is rightfully mine. It makes no sense.”

  I shrugged. “Final question. Why? Why all the deaths?”

  “I had to get hold of the document Osceola had and close out any chance of anybody knowing about it. Blakemoore knew about it, so he had to die. It was not in his office, so we searched Osceola’s room at the motel. He came in while Hawthorne’s guy was in the room, and got bashed in the head for his trouble. The guy didn’t want to shoot him because of the noise.”

  “Why us?” I asked.

  “I thought you either had the document or knew about it. It wasn’t in your house or Hamilton’s condo, so we decided it would be best to take you out. If you knew anything, you couldn’t pass it on.”

  “I have the document and it will bring down your empire. And several others.”

  Donna smiled sadly and sagged against her bindings, her body taking on a posture of absolute defeat. She’d played the game and she’d lost because she hadn’t understood the rules. I suspected she had suffered a lot in her life because of her albinism. I’d never know the full extent of her pain because I’d never be able to fully empathize with the pressures that made her who she was.

  She would spend the rest of her life in jail. I think it was that realization that finished her off, sapped any remaining bit of hope. Her life, probably never very good, was over.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  I called the chief, woke him up. Told him I had Donna Driggers and Captain Hawthorne and their taped confessions. He said he’d send Steve Carey by to pick them up.

  When they were gone, headed to the central jail, Jock and Logan and I sat and sipped our drinks, Dewars and water for Logan, O’Doul’s for Jock, Miller Lite for me. I was unwinding from the past week, thinking that it had only been seven days since I was bedding down on Recess on Boca Grande Island with the beautiful Jessica, sorry to see our idyll end, but anxious to point the Grady’s bow north and head for Longboat Key and home. “Some week, huh?” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Jock. “I missed the tournament I was supposed to play in.”

  Logan laughed. “We probably saved you some embarrassment.”

  “Probably,” said Jock.

  There was a knock on my front door. I looked at my watch. Three a.m. This couldn’t be good news. I saw Jock and Logan tense, put their drinks down, stand. If there was trouble, they wanted to be ready for it.

  I went to the door, turned on the porch light, and looked through the peephole. I called over my shoulder, “It’s J.D.” and opened the door. “Come in,” I said.

  She was wearing white shorts that came to mid-thigh, a yellow sleeveless blouse with embroidered flowers around the neckline, white sandals. “I saw the lights,” she said, “and figured you were still up. I heard the radio call for Carey to retrieve two prisoners from your house. I thought I’d find out what’s going on.”

  “I thought you weren’t working nights?” I said.

  “I have a police scanner at home. When I’m bored, I listen to it. Heard our dispatcher call Steve. What’s going on?”

  “Sit down. I’ll get you a drink.” I went to the kitchen, poured a glass of Chardonnay and took it to her. Then I told her the story of the break-in at Drigger’s house, the run-in with Hawthorne, and our subterfuge to get Donna to come to us. I related the gist of the confessions without going into detail about how we got them.

  When I finished, we sat quietly. Then I asked, “How’re you doing?”

  “Oh, I’m fine.”

  “Except for being awake at three o’clock.”

  “I’m off today, so I can sleep in. I’ve been reading.”

  Jock stood. “I’m done,” he said. “Logan,
let’s go home.”

  “I thought you were staying here,” I said.

  “Nope. I’m going to Logan’s. His bed is softer.”

  I knew they were leaving me alone with J.D. I think they had more confidence in my charm that I did. They left and I got J.D. another wine, another beer for myself. “You want to sit on the patio?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  The night air was cool, comfortable. A slight breeze blew off the bay. The only noise was the water gently lapping against my seawall and the occasional call from one of the seabirds nesting on Jewfish Key.

  “I’m embarrassed about last night,” she said.

  “Why? You saved my life.”

  “I’m a cop, Matt, for good or bad. I took an oath and I fell way below the standard that oath requires of me. I wanted to kill Baggett. I wanted him to suffer as much as Jube and his wife. I wanted Jock to take his fingers off with the bolt clippers. One at a time. I wanted to hear him scream in agony, to beg for death. And then I wanted to be the one to shoot him. First in the knee and then the other knee, then the stomach and finally, after he screamed some more, in the head.”

  “You could have done that. We wouldn’t have stopped you.”

  “No. I couldn’t do that. I realized that when I was watching the arragance leach out of that murdering bastard out there in the woods. He was a pathetic little pissant.”

  “Most criminals are.”

  “I know. I’ve collared more than my share, put a lot of bad guys away, seen a lot of bad stuff. But I never, not once, wanted to do what I wanted to do to Baggett.”

  “You must be very upset with yourself to find that you’re just human.”

  “Those were inhuman thoughts.”

  “I don’t think so, J.D. The human part is what keeps us from acting on those fantasies.”

  “You and Jock seem to be able to do harm to those bastards and never let it bother you.”

  “Jock is different. He’s had to do a lot of things to protect his country. Every time, without exception, when it’s over, he gets sick drunk. He’s no good to himself or anybody else for days. He’s never finished an operation and just gone on to the next one. It eats him up, and one day it’s going to kill him.”

  “What about you?”

  “I don’t do the things Jock does. And I don’t always condone his methods. But I understand the need for men like him. I’ve killed people. I’ve watched Jock kill people. I remember every one of them. They come to me in my dreams. And after a week like this last one, they’ll be all over me. I won’t get much sleep for a while.”

  “You said Jock does these things for his country. Why was he here? This isn’t a national security problem.”

  “No. But he and I are the only family each other has. We’re brothers, and Logan is our first cousin. We take care of each other.”

  We talked and talked. And we drank. At some point the sun began to rise from behind Jewfish Key, the birds took flight, a slight mist rose from the water, a few low hanging clouds turned golden.

  “Let’s go in,” I said. “You’ve had too much to drink to drive home. I’ve got a new toothbrush my dentist gave me a couple of weeks ago and the guest room has clean sheets.”

  She looked at me, held my eyes, perhaps contemplating joining me in bed, or maybe deciding what her chances were of driving home without getting charged with DUI. Finally, she smiled. “Thanks, Matt. Where’s the toothbrush?”

  FINAL DAYS

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

  On the first Wednesday in April, Logan, Jock, Marie, J.D., and I sat at a table on the deck of the Sandbar Restaurant near the north end of Anna Maria Island. The tables were full, snowbirds enjoying the last days before they headed north, tourists storing up memories that would sustain them during the long days of work that beckoned them back to reality. The clink of silver and the buzz of conversation drifted over us, a pleasant din that did not intrude. The Gulf of Mexico was a flat expanse of green water stretching to the horizon. A beach of dazzling white sand separated the diners from the negligible surf. Two boats were anchored just offshore, close in, their occupants lounging on the sand enjoying the day. A pelican dove headfirst into the shallows, floated back to the surface and stretched his neck, swallowing his catch. Sandpipers trotted along the surf line, a frenetic pace that seemed to be perpetual. The sun was high and warm, the sky a deep blue and cloudless, the humidity low, a slight onshore breeze blowing gently at us.

  We were having lunch and saying so long to Jock. He’d catch a plane out of Tampa that evening, heading back to Houston, and what he described as his reality. He’d decided to stay on Longboat Key to see the end of the string of events that had roiled our world for a week and ended in the death of people that shouldn’t have died so young.

  Marie had returned to the key the day after we wrapped things up. Logan was relieved to have her back, and she seemed to have forgiven me for insisting that she go to Orlando. J.D. had spent that Saturday sleeping in my guest room and then joined me for dinner at the Bridgetender Inn on Anna Maria Island. We had been a bit hungover, but relieved to be sitting over fresh grilled fish and not worried about somebody trying to kill us. I called Logan and he and Jock met us at Pattigeorge’s for drinks with Sammy who was pouring them a bit stiff. Logan always appreciated that effort.

  The first part of the week had been quiet. We were settling down, getting used to living without adrenalin rushes. Life was returning to the slow rhythms that made island living so pleasant. The adventure was over, and I think all of us were in hopes that we’d never have to deal with such a thing again.

  Donna was in jail awaiting trial. We had recorded everything she’d said to us in my house on Saturday morning. She’d never see freedom again. She had grabbed for the brass ring of great wealth and power, and, as Logan said, been hit in the mouth with it.

  Steve Carey had transported her and Hawthorne to the Manatee County Jail in Palmetto and segregated them from the rest of the prisoners until other arrangements could be made. From there, Donna was transferred to the Sarasota County jail to await trial.

  Gus Hawthorne was taken to a jail in north Florida for his own protection. It didn’t work out. He’d been there for three days when somebody used a homemade knife, a shank, to end his life. I didn’t think he’d be much missed, and I suspect the Hillsborough sheriff’s office breathed a collective sigh of relief at his passing.

  Turk was in jail with his cousin in Collier County. He’d been turned over to Lieutenant Charlie Foreman, who had arrested the cousin. They would be tried for the blowing up of the as yet unidentified car.

  Nobody had been able to find the Hacker. He was a ghost, a wisp of smoke that dissipated in thin spring air. All the digital trails had petered out in dead ends. The best of the tech guys at DEA and even in Jock’s agency were powerless to run him down. He was just gone and there was no hope of finding him.

  My friend Abraham Osceola was still in the hospital. He was slipping inexorably toward death, his ancient body responding more and more feebly. The man had done his best for his people and the cruel irony was that it was all for naught.

  That morning, shortly before we left for the Sand Bar my cell phone had rung. I wasn’t going to answer, but the caller ID announced Professor Newman.

  “The chemistry department took a look at the protocol. It’s a forgery.”

  “How did they figure that out?” I asked.

  “The ink. The document was written with a black ink that contains an organic compound called aniline. That wasn’t discovered until about 1864. It’s not a permanent ink. It can be dissolved by water getting on it and nobody would be able to retrieve the words written there. It was never used in permanent documents, such as government treaties.”

  “Can you put a date on the forgery?”

  “We could, but it would include destructive testing and take a while.”

  “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. If the protocol couldn’t have been written in 1832, then it
’s a forgery. Could it be a copy of an original?

  “Could you prove that in court?” he asked.

  “Hell, no.”

  “Besides, even if there was an official copy, it wouldn’t have been done in a nonpermanent ink.”

  “Okay, Professor. I’ll stop by next week and pick up the document.”

  “Sure.”

  I’d told my companions about the call. It was a sad denouement to the frantic events of the last week in March. All that death and pain, all for a forged document.

  J.D. paused, a forkful of grouper halfway to her mouth. “I’ve seen people killed over a lot less.”

  Marie looked at Jock. “Would you have used that syringe on Donna?”

  Jock smiled. “It wouldn’t have made any difference even if I had.”

  “Why not?”

  “The stuff in the syringe was tap water.”

  Marie laughed. “You’re kidding. Why didn’t you use a truth serum? Surely your agency has the stuff.”

  “There’s really no such thing. At least if there is, nobody’s discovered it yet.”

  “So you were bluffing.”

  “Yep. And it worked.”

  Marie turned to me. “Any word on Abraham?”

  “Nothing new,” I said. “He’s still slipping.”

  “What a shame,” said Marie. “He was trying to make things better for Black Seminoles. He thought he’d found the way to do it. A legacy for his people.”

  “It turned out to be a bitter legacy,” said Logan.

  “That it did,” I said, raising my glass of beer. “To Abraham Osceola, the last Black Seminole warrior.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

  The sun was high, beating down on us from a cloudless sky, searing the land and the people in it. Pine trees stood silently, no movement because there was no wind. There was a taste of salt in the air, the faint whiff of brine. Humidity permeated the atmosphere, a wetness that you could feel and smell. The grunts of the men hand-winching the coffin into the open grave rode the air, punctuated by an occasional sob from a mourner, a mixture of physical effort and emotional pain.