“What is it, honey?” Anna asks, her eyes quickly searching mine in the rearview.
“That the drugs are being shipped down the river to Apalach and put on boats to be sent to South Florida.”
They both nod. Merrill says, “Makes sense.”
“It’s obvious, I know,” I say, “but . . . what if the grower’s logo isn’t a hornet and has nothing to do with Cottondale or Wilson or Alec Horn? What if it’s a bee, and they’re hiding their product beneath bee boxes on the barges and shipping it down river that way?”
“Mo-ther-fucker,” Merrill says. “That’s brilliant.”
Anna smiles at me.
“I feel slow for not thinking of it before now,” I say.
“How you think that makes us who still haven’t thought of it feel?” Merrill says with a wide smile.
“If they’re hiding it in empty bee boxes beneath a top row of boxes with actual hives in them . . .” I say.
“Nobody gonna mess around with them,” Merrill says.
“If it’s not how they’re doing it,” Anna says, “it should be. Blend in. Be protected. It’s genius.”
“She-it. Nobody gonna mess with them. Scared of gettin’ they ass stung to death. Damn. Damn. Damn.”
“Still don’t know where they’re growing it,” I say, “but if we figure out how they’re shipping it maybe we will.”
“Then,” Merrill says, “let’s take a boat ride.”
75
Now
* * *
We enlist the help of Charles Masters, who brings his full beekeeper suit and smoke, and Carter Peak, who brings EpiPens and a big boat he borrowed from Search and Rescue.
Of course the boat would have to be big just to accommodate Peak, whose tall, big, thick body looks out of place in it.
The five of us launch the boat at Lister’s Landing, not far from where Reggie, Heather, and I were shot, and head down river.
Anna is on the bench seat beside me. My right leg is propped up on one of Carter’s Yeti coolers, my crutches lying on the bottom of the boat beside me.
Carter is driving. Charles is in the front with his gear. Merrill is in the very back, shotgun at the ready.
The overcast morning is gray, wisps of fog still clinging to spots along the banks.
The river is empty. Particularly this far down, and though there were two other trucks with empty boat trailers parked at the landing, we haven’t seen another human since we’ve been out here.
When we reach the first barge with bee boxes stacked on it, Carter slows and brings the boat alongside it.
Bees are buzzing about, flying to and returning from the swamp behind the bank the barge is moored to, and swarming all around us.
“What am I looking for?” Charles asks, as he suits up and climbs aboard.
“Just lift the lid off several of the boxes and look inside,” I say. “It’s okay to be quick. If everything looks okay, move to the next one. We want to check as many as we can. Especially in the bottom middle.”
He gets his smoker started and squeezes out several puffs of smoke around us, letting it drift back over us, to keep us from being stung.
Smoke calms bees and masks their alarm pheromones.
“That’ll keep ’em off of you for a few,” he says, “but you may want to back away and wait for me to finish before coming back to get me.”
“Cool with me,” Carter says. “Bees freak me the fuck out.”
Once Charles is on the barge, Carter reverses the motor and backs far enough away for the bees not to follow.
Charles goes to work, first laying a thick layer of smoke around the hives he’s close to, then lifting and looking, returning and re-stacking.
“We lookin’ for signs of poisoning, John?” Charles yells over. “’Cause these hives look good and healthy.”
“Good,” I say. “Just make sure you search all the way down—check the boxes sitting on the deck and in the center of the stacks.”
“Okay.”
He does. And only finds boxes filled with bee hives.
When he’s finished, we pull back up and pick him up, as he squeezes smoke around us again.
We repeat this process for two more barges and one set of boxes up on the hill above the banks, but it isn’t until the fourth barge that we find what, unbeknownst to Charles, we’ve been searching for.
“Son of a bitch,” he exclaims.
“What is it?” I yell from the boat about twenty feet away.
“Is this what we’re out here lookin’ for?” he says.
“Depends on what it is.”
“Dope,” he yells. “Lots and lots of it. Packed in boxes beneath the boxes with the bees in them. We’re talkin’ a shit ton.”
“That’s it,” I say. “Any idea whose barge it is?”
He shakes his head, his beekeeper’s hat shaking about.
I turn toward Carter. “You do, don’t you?”
Anna studies me for a second, then turns toward Carter, too.
“I do what?” he asks, his voice rising in nervousness and surprise.
“Know whose barge it is.”
“No. Why would I?”
He looks around a little like he’s trying to figure out a move—grab a weapon, hit the throttle, something. As he does his long curly hair waves about.
Behind him, Merrill jacks a shell in the chamber of the shotgun even though to do so ejected the one that was already in it. A small price to pay for a dramatic warning.
Carter stops moving. “Easy,” he says. “Why would you think I know who the barge belongs to?”
“You play this right and you can live to play with Mix Tape Effigies another day,” I say. “You don’t want to be making music in a prison chapel somewhere for the rest of your life.”
“Prison? Rest of my life? The fuck you talkin’ about, John?” His voice climbs even higher this time. “I save lives. I’m the fuckin’ emergency services director. I save lives and make music. That’s my life.”
“You were the first on the scene after everyone was shot,” I say. “You came from the land side, not the river. You moved Remington’s camera trap. Gauge and all his men were dead. They hunted Remington all night. Never had a chance to go back to the trap. You moved it. You were the only one who could have. Then later to really sell it, you put cards and flowers at the spot to memorialize it.”
He shakes his head but doesn’t say anything.
“We’re not just talkin’ obstruction or producing and selling large amounts of an illegal substance,” I say. “We’re talking murder and attempted murder. You really want to go down for all that?”
“This is worth a shit ton of money,” Charles yells from the barge.
“Even more in Miami,” I say.
“I told those old fucks the cards and flowers and shit was too much,” Carter says. “But . . . any egotistical idiots who’re gonna put a damn logo on pot . . . are gonna find other ways to fuck up, too.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Y’all’ve operated a long time without getting caught.”
He shrugs. “Not long enough.”
“Whose barge is it?” I say.
“The barge, the bees, or the Gulf County Green?” he says. “’Cause the Green belongs to all of us, but the barge and the bees belong to two different individuals—the big bosses. You want them, I want immunity in writing from the state’s attorney.”
76
Now
* * *
“Boy, do I have a story for y’all,” I say.
Heather, Anna, and I are in Reggie’s hospital room, Heather still in the wheelchair we used to bring her over in.
Reggie, who is still very weak, widens her eyes and in a soft voice says, “Let’s hear it.”
“You know the old man Remington saw out in the woods?” I say. “Who was later killed by one of Gauge’s men? Randal Collins. He moved up here from Central Florida with Gainesville Green cuttings because two of his old acquaintances told him they could
make a fortune together up here growing good, cheap weed in the swamp and shipping it other places where it sold for more—like Miami. And Gulf County Green was born.”
“Who were the two men?” Heather asks.
“An old grower recently out of prison and a respected businessman and county commissioner,” I say.
“Hank Felty,” Reggie says.
“And Mike Thomas?” Heather asks. “Really?”
I nod.
“No,” she says. “No.”
“He’s sitting in the Gulf County jail right now,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“He and Cole were such good friends for so long.”
“It was his idea to grow on Cole’s land,” I say. “He knew Cole wouldn’t be doing anything like that on it and that he only hunted part of it part of the year, so . . .”
She shakes her head. “I still can’t believe it. He’s behind what happened to Remington.”
“Says he had nothing to do with that,” I say. “Says that was all Gauge, that he didn’t even know about it until it was over and he had to scramble to clean up the mess and change their operation. And I’m inclined to believe him because he never would have approved of Gauge killing and burying his victim out there, not that close to where they were growing. And he wouldn’t have had them kill Randal. They didn’t even know who he was. Just thought he was a witness like Remington.”
“Why would Gauge take her out there then?” Heather asks.
“I think he knew about the operation, think he was being paid off to keep quiet about it, maybe even run some interference once they got it down near Apalach to transfer and ship out. I think they thought it was a safe place to do it, that because of the operation, it was being guarded and that even if she was discovered, they wouldn’t want any attention drawn to them, so they wouldn’t do anything. But that’s a guess. We don’t really know what Gauge was thinking or why he was doing what he did. He may have asked for a bigger payout and was refused and that was his way of retaliating—bury a body on the land near where they had this huge operation going. Just don’t know for sure.”
“Whose idea was the bee boxes and barges?” Reggie asks.
“Hank Felty’s. It came to him while he was in prison.”
“Had a lot of time to think,” Anna says. “Put it to good use.”
“This is all coming from Carter Peak,” I say. “From his statement and interview. So far Felty and Thomas are saying very little.”
“Mike tried to have us killed,” Heather says. “Almost did. Does Jean know?”
“Not sure. I don’t think so, but . . . She was involved in the operation, so she knew all about it, but . . .”
“Wait until you hear about the operation,” Anna says. “It’s as genius as transporting the stuff on the bee barges.”
“Let’s hear it,” Reggie says.
“Know how only too happy Mike and Hank were willing to show us their old grow site?” I say. “Well, it wasn’t just because they had moved their new site farther downstream and inland. That’s now the smallest part of how they grow. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still huge, but they have a whole new system that works better than . . . perhaps any anywhere.”
“What is it?” Heather says.
“Old people,” Anna says. “Carter Peak kept saying he was doing it for his grandparents.”
“They use retired seniors to grow the crops in their homes,” I say. “Spare bedrooms of elderly couples all over north Gulf County are filled with pot plants. Not just any pot plants. Gulf County Green. Carter says they treat them like grandchildren—just the right amount of TLC and UV and several of our senior citizens are supplementing their meager retirements and social security by producing some of the best weed around—completely under the radar.”
Heather’s eyes widen. “That goddamn dinner club,” she says.
“Exactly,” I say. “They actually came out and served us lunch while we were looking for them, for their crops.”
“It really is brilliant,” Anna says. “Even if they happened to get busted, it looks like one small operation—an elderly couple growing to help with their own medical needs or to supplement their income. And they’re old. No jury is going to be very punitive with them. And that’s even if it gets to court. It probably won’t. What prosecutor’s gonna put grandma and grandpa on trial? Plus, pot has such a low priority now. Be legal soon. Everybody’s concentrating on the opioid epidemic.”
Reggie shakes her head slowly. “It’s true. I know our department is. It’s a brilliant operation. No wonder they’ve gotten away with it for so long.”
“It’s diabolical,” Heather says. “Growing and selling pot is one thing. Killing people and trying to kill people is another.”
We all nod.
“So what role did the previous sheriff play?” Heather asks. “Wilson and his men who were killed with their own guns. Did Mike and Hank hire this same guy to take them out too?”
Even in her weakened state, I can see Reggie tense up and prepare herself for what’s coming next.
I look at her, our eyes locking.
“No,” I say, “shaking my head. “That case has nothing to do with this one. I was wrong to think it did.”
“So who killed them?” she asks.
“I can’t say, but it wasn’t related to what happened to Remington or what happened to us yesterday. The truth is . . . with that level of corruption, it could have been anyone. My guess is they crossed the wrong person, but . . . I doubt it will ever come out. But . . . who knows? Given the type of men they were, what happened to them may have been in its own way a certain type of justice.”
Reggie blinks back tears and nods at me, her eyes filling with pure appreciation.
“So what happened to Remington wasn’t directly connected to Sheriff Wilson and was only tangentially connected to the drug operation,” Heather says. “So it all comes down to the woman Gauge murdered and we’re still no closer to knowing who she was than we were. Who was she? Why was she out there with him? Why did he kill her, bury and burn her?”
“Remember what we said about most days as an investigator yielding far more frustrating questions than any kind of answers,” Reggie says. “We’ll keep working on finding those answers, but . . . it’s possible we may never know.”
“I can’t accept that,” Heather says.
“We can’t either,” I say. “It’s why we do what we do. We won’t stop.”
77
Now
* * *
Questions.
Obsessive, relentlessly repeated questions nagging mercilessly at the edges of everything else.
Open wounds.
Seeping, susceptible-to-infection lacerations incapable of healing without intense treatment.
They haunt me.
Who was she? Why did she die like that? Why did Gauge kill her that way? Because he was a sociopath like Alec Horn or for some other reason? Where was she from? Why does no one miss her? Why isn’t her DNA in the database? What am I missing? What am I doing wrong? Will we ever know who she is and why she was where she was when the light went out of her eyes?
And those are just the questions about that case? What about just a few of the others?
Where is Daniel? Is he okay? Where is Randa Raffield? What is she up to? What is the best way forward with Chris? How serious a threat is he to our family? What could I have done differently to stop Sam from getting shot? Who really killed all the children in Atlanta? How many victims did Bundy really have? How many are still out there somewhere? Did I do the right thing with the Stone Cold Killer? Who really killed JonBenet? Should I be spending less time investigating and more time ministering or more time investigating and less time ministering? How can I prevent more suffering? So much suffering. How can I protect Anna and Johanna and Taylor?
And on and on and on.
These relentless questions and my obsession with them is in conflict with life itself.
The thing about life is how rare
ly there are answers.
Life is a mystery. It is filled with both general unknowns and specific unknowables.
We know and understand so little. We ask, but we seldom get answers.
There is very, very little that is certain—nearly nothing. And that which is—death, say—isn’t particularly comforting, and brings with it a whole new set of questions.
But comfort with questions, with not knowing, with ambiguity and uncertainty, is essential for serenity, for a peaceful and positive life.
Not knowing, having far more questions than answers, is so maddening that we too often accept shallow, incomplete, even erroneous answers in an attempt to silence the questions. And unfortunately we far too often succeed.
As a member of the human race I have accepted uncertainty, embraced not knowing, but as an investigator I can’t.
I am a seeker of truth. A finder of facts. A solver of puzzles. An answerer of questions. A collector of unsolved cases. This is not just what I do, but who I am.
Open and unsolved cases come with the territory, but I don’t have to like it. Don’t have to accept it. So I have found a way to both accept them and refuse to at the same time. I accept that they are, but I refuse to accept that they have to remain that way. I have found a not insignificant amount of peace by accepting what is while still working to change what will be.
Remington died without knowing who Gauge killed or why. Will I? Will Heather?
78
Now
* * *
I spend the next several weeks searching for Gauge’s victim.
Merrill, Anna, Heather, Merrick, and a host of other people help.
All we have to go on is part of a bracelet—a charred, partially burned bracelet that spent the past few years tarnishing, corroding, degrading underground.
We hunt for it online and in jewelry stores, but can’t find anything exactly like it. We post pictures of it and drawings of what we think it may have looked like at one time, but nothing comes of any of it.
The Remington James Box Set Page 40