Cold Winter Rain

by Steven Gregory

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Wednesday February 1

  Boats at rest, like automobiles undriven, suffer from the effects of entropy at an accelerated rate. The only maintenance-free boat is the one you don’t own. Various inventions slow the decay: heaters, pumps, dehumidifiers, paint, caulk, epoxy, varnish. Winter maintenance for a boat that stays in the water requires running the engine once a week or, preferably, taking the boat out for a short cruise.

  For me the challenge was nowhere near as daunting as for the weekend or occasional sailor. The Anna Grace was my home, and maintenance on my boat did not also require commuting to the marina, chasing supplies, reinventing relationships with marina employees, and a thousand other time-wasters the part-time sailors had to endure.

  Below about thirty-nine degrees, the interior of a boat can frost over, creating even worse moisture problems than boats suffer from without frost. So when I’m away, I leave a little ceramic heater and dehumidifier running full time in the cabin to keep the temperature above the frost level and keep down the humidity. Maybe ten years old, the device had come with the boat. While I was away, the heater had malfunctioned, died, and tripped the ground fault circuit.

  I fired up the big propane heater I used for a heat source away from the dock to bring the temperature up quickly and dry some of the condensation. I packed up all the cabin bedding, damp from the humidity and on the verge of mildewing, in a couple of heavy black trash bags and carried it to the marina’s laundromat. I left the bedding with the attendant after asking her to run the loads with hot water and a little bleach. I’d do my own clothing later.

  Back at the boat, I spent the better part of an hour wiping down the interior, trying to get rid of all the excess moisture. Then I drove to Home Depot and bought a tiny ceramic heater and the smallest dehumidifier they had. I installed them in the cabin, checked out the electrical circuits, and got them running.

  Then I locked up and walked over to the marina restaurant for lunch. Green salad, then gumbo with crackers. I considered a beer, then iced tea, but defaulted to hot tea. Too cold for anything refrigerated or iced after a morning spent in a damp, cold boat cabin.

  After lunch I picked up the bedding, fresh, dry, and warm, from the Hispanic laundry attendant and left her too big a tip. I made up the berths in the cabin of the Anna Grace, now a balmy sixty-eight degrees and pleasantly dry, lay down in the V-berth and started rereading Michael Dibdin’s Dead Lagoon. I was tired, though, and the warmth of the cabin and the rocking motion of the boat soon put me to sleep.

  I was dreaming of jogging along a tropical beach with palm trees that grew almost down to the water, when my iPhone jolted me awake and I struck my head a glancing blow on the slanting bulkhead next to the berth in the boat’s bow. For a minute I couldn’t locate the iPhone until I remembered I’d left it in my shirt pocket. I dug out the phone on perhaps the fourth ring. “Yeah,” I said.

  “Slate.” Both the voice and caller ID told me it was Leon Grubbs.

  “Yep. You got him.”

  “Slate. Grubbs. Listen, uh, Slate, remember I told you the FBI was running the stills from the security video at Park Plaza through their facial recognition software?”

  I sat up and swung my feet to the floor. “Yes. I remember.”

  “Well, I just received the FBI’s report. They have a match.”

  I stood and crab-walked aft. I had to stoop to avoid the low ceiling. “That’s good. Are they sure?”

  “Yes. They’re sure. And I’m sure. We have a suspect under surveillance and will probably make an arrest today. Slate, I need you to come up here so I can go over the report with you.”

  “Why? What do you need me for? You haven’t asked for my approval for the thousand and one other arrests you’ve made. Arrest the guy.”

  Grubbs’ voice was flat and even. “Not the point, Slate. This is information I need to deliver in person. You need to come up. Today. Now.”

  “You’re serious.” It was both a statement and a question.

  “You know I am.”

  I stuck my head out of the companionway. The sun was out. “Okay. I’ll see you this afternoon.”

  “Call me when you get here. I’ll be waiting.”

  I arrived at the offices of the Birmingham Homicide Division shortly after three and walked straight into Leon Grubbs’ office. I knocked and walked in uninvited. A couple of officers, a lieutenant and a sergeant, were standing in the office. Grubbs, seated at his desk, spoke to them in a low voice. He stopped as I entered. “Slate,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d be here this soon, but I’m glad you are. You were at the coast, were you not?”

  He turned to the two officers. “That’s all for now, guys, and thank you,” he said. “Close the door on your way out.”

  Turning to me, Grubbs said, “Sit down, Slate.” He picked up a folder from his desk. “Move your chair closer so we can both see this report.”

  I pulled up my chair, and he turned the folder sideways and opened it. “This is my reading copy, not the official file.” The cover page of the report was printed with the legend “FBI — Confidential.” Grubbs turned the cover page. “I’ll show you the entire report and explain the methodology behind it if you need me to, but I’ll spare the suspense. Slate, this is not going to be easy, but here it is. The person in the stills from the video at Park Plaza has been identified by the FBI’s facial recognition program.”

  I suppressed a sense of dread. “Right.” I shrugged. “You told me that on the phone.”

  Grubbs nodded. “The person identified is the women’s soccer coach at Alabama Southern. Sarah Kronenberg. Also known as Sally.”

  I stared down at the report, uncomprehending. After maybe thirty seconds, I said, “It’s a trial program. Obviously it makes mistakes.”

  “Believe it or not, that was my first thought as well. But I was on the phone for an hour with one of the men at the FBI who worked on the development of the NGI program. He explained that the software is actually now more accurate at recognizing faces than human beings are.

  “Thing is, normally the FBI uses only the mug shot database. The software reviews that database in a few seconds, they say. When that came up with no match, I asked them if they could expand the search to other databases, military records, lawyers, other people whose fingerprints and identification photos have been taken.

  “Like you said, it’s a pilot program. NGI. Next Generation Identification. FBI gave the stills to some state agencies that participate in the pilot. Illinois State Police got a match from an Illinois database of high school coaches. Sarah Kronenberg. Coached high school soccer in Oak Park, Illinois, ninety-seven through ninety-nine.”

  “It has to be a mistake.”

  Grubbs looked up at me and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Slate. We arrested her this afternoon after I called you. She’s already signed a confession. It’s not a mistake. Sally Kronenberg killed Don Kramer.”

  I shook my head and flipped through each page of the report. The print had begun to blur, forcing me to concentrate; the report explained the methodology of the facial recognition software and ended with a printout from the Illinois database that included a photograph. I looked closely. Though she was years younger, there was no doubt. It was Sally.

  I looked back at Grubbs. “Okay. Thanks. Thanks for doing this in person. I appreciate it.”

  I stood and looked at Grubbs for a moment. “The body was moved,” I said.

  Grubbs nodded. “I understand what you’re thinking. But she’s young, and she’s an athlete. She’s strong enough.” He appeared to want to say something but stopped himself.

  I turned, groped for the doorknob, found it, then turned back. “The soccer player,” I said. “Akilah Ziyenga. What about her?”

  Grubbs shook his head. “We don’t know. Still working it. But for what it’s worth, we know it wasn’t Ms. Kronenberg. She was with other people continuously around the time of death.”

  “So you looked at it that
way too?”

  Grubbs just turned both palms up and nodded. I turned to the door and a few seconds later found myself standing on the First Avenue North sidewalk.

  I started walking. Down to Twentieth Street, then south. South past Morris Avenue and the railroad district not far from where Don Kramer’s body had been found. Further south toward UAB and the area called Five Points. Where Sally and I had dinner that first night. But before I started up the hill toward Five Points, I turned right along Seventh Street and realized where my unconscious mind had been taking me. Smolian. The psychiatric clinic. Bev Adams.

  I rode up the old elevator, its cables rocking the car back and forth gently. A family of three rode along. The man seemed defiant, the woman resolute, their son, of perhaps fourteen, sullen. When the doors opened, I walked to the registration desk and told Renee I needed to see Dr. Adams.

  “Mr. Slate, how good to see you,” Renee said. “But, did you have an appointment today?”

  “No,” I said. “I need to see her now, please.”

  “Well, she is pretty busy today, so I’m not sure if you can see her… .”

  “She’ll see me,” I said. I walked around the partition that separated the reception area from the waiting room and headed down the hall toward Dr. Adams’ office. Just as I started, I saw Bev Adams’ door open, and a man in a white coat with a stethoscope around his neck emerged from her office, turning for some last remark as Bev Adams stood leaning against the door jamb. Dr. Adams saw me out of the corner of her eye and broke off her conversation. “We’ll have to finish this later,” she said to the other doctor.

  She turned to me. “Slate!” she said. “Is it about the Kramer family? We have a couple of crisis counselors working with those children.”

  “Sort of,” I said. “May I come in? It will just be a minute.”

  She caught my expression and frowned. “Of course.” She held the door for me. I sat in one of her client chairs, and she closed the door and went to sit at her desk. “What is it?” she asked.

  I reached down and unstrapped the little Ruger from my ankle, pulled it from the holster, popped out the magazine, ejected the round from the chamber, replaced the magazine, pushed the gun back into the holster, and laid the holster with the gun inside on Bev Adams’ desk. Then I took off my coat, unsnapped the Bianchi shoulder holster, and went through the same operation with the big Glock. I put the coat back on before I spoke.

  “You told me not long ago that if I felt suicidal, you would want me to give you my guns. Here they are.”

  “Slate.” She shook her head once sharply. I’ll find a place to keep your guns if you want me to. But obviously this means you aren’t feeling well. What’s happened?”

  I told her, sparing no details.

  When I had finished, she said, “I see. Will you go to see her?”

  I had thought about that a little on my walk. “At some point, probably yes. But not right now.”

  “You should remember that this relationship was a tentative step back into close relationships. You should also realize that the way it ended is no reflection on you. This happened. But it happened only once.”

  I nodded. “Thanks.”

  She gestured toward the guns. “Is there any likelihood that you could be tempted to harm yourself through some other instrumentality?”

  I’d thought about that too. I shook my head. “No. Not a chance.”

  “All right.” She stood. “I will keep these until you ask for them back. And I’ll give them back if your reasons for wanting them back are the right ones. Now I have other patients to see.” She came around the desk and gave me a quick but firm embrace. “Call if you need me.”

  “I will,” I told her.

  I saw myself out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I’d meant what I’d said to Bev Adams. No other means of harming myself other than one of those guns would ever occur to me. Aircraft, for example, should not serve as anyone’s instrument of personal destruction. Disliking my life enough to harbor thoughts of ending it was no reason to destroy a machine as fine as the Albatros.

  Flying lore teaches that in addition to preflighting your aircraft, you should preflight yourself. No doubt every flight instructor in the world would have advised me against flying back to the coast. But they weren’t me, and they wouldn’t understand. I needed to spend the night on the Anna Grace, not in some hotel. I had a perfectly fine airplane sitting on the ramp, and that airplane would get me back to Gulf Shores in thirty minutes. Once the preflight started, the pilot — I — would become a technical-minded stranger with my hands. Detachment. Compartmentalization. These brothers would serve as my co-pilots for this flight.

  I walked back to First Avenue North, retrieved the car I’d borrowed at the FBO, drove to the airport, preflighted, taxied out and took off.

  I was sitting at my desk in the Lost Lagoon Lounge with a tumbler full of ice and Maker’s Mark, my first but probably not my last. I wasn’t quite ready to head back to the marina and begin this solitary night.

  The days were lengthening in lower Alabama. Reds and purples streaked across the western sky out past the Fort Morgan peninsula and Mobile Bay to the west, the sun a point or two below the horizon but still providing enough light to see out past the sandbar to the open Gulf.

  A late-fishing pelican skimmed the surf, its head swiveling in a desultory search for supper, the coming evening darkening the water underneath the pelican’s wings, the wind blowing the water white and black. Sandpipers made their usual mad rushes at the foamy edge of the surf. Over across the jetty on the lighted stage at the Pink Pony Pub, a couple of blonde girl singers in flowing white dresses appeared to be warming up, but the wind snatched away the sound. I did not think that they would sing to me.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to express my gratitude to my family: Janet Hill Gregory, my wife, reader, editor, and supporter; and Sam Gregory, my son, reader, assistant editor, and cover designer.

  Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint previously-published material:

  Everett Eaves, author, AAPG Special Volumes, Volume M 24: North American Oil and Gas Fields, AAPG (1976). Reprinted by permission of the AAPG, whose permission is required for further use.

  About the Author

  Steven P. Gregory earned B.A., M.F.A., and J.D. degrees from the University of Alabama. Gregory has practiced law since 1991, concentrating on complex litigation and alternative dispute resolution. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama, where he is working on Spring Thaw, the sequel to Cold Winter Rain.