It was not until Hayden pulled Cousin out of the bed of the truck, however, that I was able to gain a full appreciation of hickory’s physical properties.
When Hayden stepped up, it was as if the Babe himself had been lobbed an easy one right down the middle. Hayden swung Cousin like he was batting clean-up in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded and the game tied.
He hit Agent Davis from behind – broadside starting at his ear, with wood finding its mark through his temple and across his eye socket and cheekbone.
For a split second, Agent Davis’s head dipped down into his neck in what was truly a grotesque display of physics, his face odd and misshapen due to the multiple acute craniofacial fractures. Several teeth flew out the other way, and when his head jerked back from the recoil, his body went limp, and he fell face first, timber style, just like a tree.
Hayden stepped up, sniffed, then wiped his nose off with the back of his sleeve.
“Got him.”
Chapter 93
I am not sure just how many cruisers the Gulfport Police Department kept in its fleet, but I am pretty sure every single one of them peeled into the Gulfport Lake parking lot in the seconds after Agent Davis hit the ground. There were more than a few unmarked cars as well, and eventually an ambulance showed up to tend to the carnage. Agent Davis was alive, but it was going to be a long time before he started forming syllables again.
The first thing I did was hug Emily and tell her what happened at Nate’s. The next thing I knew, I was in the back of a squad car with Gulfport Chief of Police Rick Papania and FBI Special Agent Kathryn Cooper screaming towards Nate’s house. We were accompanied by two escorts and tailed by a SWAT van. You would have thought the president was in town.
On the way over, I told them an abbreviated story of all the laws we had broken and why. Agent Cooper said we would clearly have to face the music – and were not eligible for any of the reward money – but she likely had some wiggle room considering our actions with regard to the capture of Ethan Davis. She could barely say his name when she spoke, and when I called him ‘Agent’ Davis she told me to never to address him in that context again.
The gate was still open when we arrived, and I was instructed to stay put as the SWAT van unloaded. Like a clown car, man after man dressed in black and navy blue filed out and surrounded the house. Within minutes, the premises were secured, and I was given the all clear to go inside.
The house was eerily silent when I walked in the front door. The only sound was coming from the game room, where pieces of conversations creeped out into the hall. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go down there, but Agent Cooper saw me and waved me over.
“Come in here, Matt. You’ll want to see this.”
No, I didn’t. If Nate was dead, I most certainly did not want to see that. “No thanks, ma’am. I am fine staying out here.”
“It’s okay. I promise.”
I eased my way in, and while Nate might not have been in the room, everything was most definitely not okay. Lying in the middle of the pool table was Doc Mayes, unconscious and bleeding. Next to him was the 9mm Beretta with a clip next to it. A cop was circling the table, taking pictures, and the strobe from the flash gave the room an ethereal feel. Before he could finish, an ambulance crew arrived and moved him and everyone away so they could start tending to his injuries. We stood around the table, all of us watching and wondering if he was going to make it.
Doc Mayes had been beaten to a pulp. His face had multiple bruises, bumps and cuts. The area around his eyes was puffy and purple. It was weird enough seeing him like that, but something about his wounds struck me as odd. They were uniform and looked like tracks or stripes. Some of the skin had split open, and blood oozed out onto the table, turning the felt from Kelly green to black. The EMT cut Doc Mayes’s stained shirt off, and his back and stomach looked similar – parallel strips of bruises and marks, some several inches long, some still bleeding, crisscrossed his torso.
I looked up at Agent Cooper and shook my head. “What happened here?”
“Looks like he was whipped or beaten with something.”
“With what?”
“Don’t know, but someone was very angry with this man.”
“You think? So, where’s Nate?”
She crossed her arms and stood between me and the pool table. “We were hoping you would tell us.”
I looked around. The cop next to her was watching me too. “You mean he’s not here?”
“No.”
“What about the gun?”
“Empty. Nothing in the chamber and not a single bullet in the magazine. Never fired.”
I stared at it for a second, thinking. “But if Nate isn’t here, then –”
“Mr. Frazier, can you follow me?” It was Chief Papania. He was wearing latex gloves and motioning towards Doc Mayes’s office, which, frankly, is where I thought we would start.
When I got there, I found the office in even worse shape than when I left. Nothing remained on the desk or the credenza, one end of the couch was moved out away from the wall, and shards of glass, two drawers, and a shoe were scattered about. Blood specks peppered the floor and furniture like a Jackson Pollock painting. But that wasn’t why Chief Papania called me in there.
Sticking out of the wall was a bloodied antique-looking sword. It had been jabbed through the canvas photo of Doc Mayes and Vicky, splitting him right between the eyes. Layered on the sword’s blade, like a grisly shish kabob, were several Polaroids of people who had been beaten, maimed or killed. Bunched at the hilt was a stack of bank slips.
All three of us studied his work for a few minutes before Chief Papania spoke up.
“Do you have any idea what this means?”
I looked his way. “Why, yes, Chief. I think I do.”
* * *
We sat down on the couch, and while his assistant wrote, I told them everything I knew. About the photos, the bank accounts, and about Nate’s tortured history with his old man. As they inventoried and tagged each Polaroid, I noticed Nate’s mom wasn’t one of them. I kept that little nugget to myself.
A half hour later we walked outside. Multiple news crews were by the gate doing live feeds, and the lights from the rigs blew up the yard like a Friday night football game. The SWAT van, cop cars, two ambulances, and a few unmarked Crown Vics were parked all over. There must have been at least fifteen vehicles out there. I stood on the stoop with Agent Cooper and Chief Papania.
“Matt, do you have any idea where Nate could have gone?”
“No sir,” I said, surveying the scene. I saw the two exchange looks out of the corner of my eye, and I knew I was in for some more questioning.
“Are you sure?” Agent Cooper asked.
“Of course, I’m sure. I don’t know where he is. I wish I did, actually. Why do you keep asking?”
“Well, Dr. Mayes’s car is still in the garage; his stepmom has not yet returned from Destin, and we found Nate Mayes’s truck parked at Gulfport Lake, which is a pretty strong indicator as to his last known location. Since Gulfport Lake happens to be precisely where we found you and the rest of his friends, let me ask one more time. Do you have any idea where Nate Mayes went when he left here this very afternoon?”
As they talked, my eyes found a spot on the driveway, right in front of the little building Nate referred to as the potting shed. It is where I had parked earlier that day, before Nate gave me the keys to Ferris.
“Matt? Did you hear me? Do you know where Nate Mayes went when he left this afternoon?”
“No, ma’am. I do not.”
I put my hands on my hips, checked the yard one more time, and smiled.
The Milk Wagon was nowhere to be seen.
Chapter 94
Three weeks later, police were called to investigate a 1980 white Suburban that had been abandoned at the Gulfport-Biloxi
Regional Airport. It had been parked right in the middle section of the main lot, close to the terminal, and had remained virtually unnoticed until a cop moonlighting as a security guard pegged it as the one they had been looking for. The detectives combed through it, dusting it for fingerprints and looking for anything to tie it to the investigation and, specifically, to Nate and his possible whereabouts. They used a clean set of prints of Nate’s from his house as a reference, and got multiple hits off the steering wheel, the back seat, the console, the door handles, the radio knobs, and numerous other places between the bumpers. Much to their frustration, his fingerprints were intermingled with what one detective estimated to be at least ten, possibly fifteen others – also scattered from one end of the vehicle to the other – and after a day’s worth of documenting what they could, they moved on.
As for hard evidence, in addition to a few blood streaks smeared on the mat and on the bottom of the steering wheel, they found what the report described as a “worn pair of black and white slip on shoes – Vans brand, size eleven” and a “bloodied and torn light blue screen printed t-shirt” tucked under the drivers’ seat. Rolled inside the shirt were eleven Winchester 115 grain 9mm bullets. Further inspection of the ammo garnered two matches: some faint latent prints from Dr. Ford Mayes, and some more recent ones from Nate. This got them all whipped into a frenzy, yet despite doubling up their efforts, it was the last piece of hard evidence they retrieved from the vehicle. After keeping it impounded a few extra days for good measure, they cut the Milk Wagon loose, and Chief Papania himself delivered it to my front door.
But that didn’t mean they were done. Both state and federal authorities spent several days grilling me, Lance, Mark, and Hop, presumably looking for inconsistencies in our stories. They even spent half a day interviewing Marty Deen. All told, they were sorely disappointed. Each and every story matched; each and every story was factually consistent, none of us knew anything about where Nate might have ended up – and we certainly didn’t know anything about the bullets they had found. The one theme that surfaced through all of the interviews that even remotely pointed to a motive was Nate’s desire to end the criminal activity of his dad by avenging his mother’s death – which eventually came to light, even though her Polaroid was never discovered.
It helped that our stories were corroborated by a second, concurrent investigation relating to the other Polaroids and rogue bank statements. Ballistics matched Ethan Davis’s gun as the one used on Tom Chrestman, and the account information lined up to the dime with the missing transactions from Cape Island Compounding. Ultimately, new indictments for Ethan and Doc Mayes were served. Vicky left town the same day she gave her statement. Since she was still a potential person of interest, she wasn’t allowed to leave the state, so she moved back in with her parents in Jackson, where she wasted no time filing for divorce.
There was not a whole lot we could tell them about Nate, although they certainly tried to squeeze it out of us. No one knew any more than Nate had chosen to let us know, and after several unsuccessful attempts to pin us down, they finally quit asking.
The six million was another story. Multiple rounds of interrogations took place on that front, culminating with a visit from the IRS.
“How much money did you withdraw from Magnolia Federal?”
“Fifteen thousand dollars. I told you already. We were all instructed to take fifteen thousand out of the banks we were assigned to, and that’s what we did. At least Lance and I did. Mark and Hop didn’t get that far.” The guy was a supernerd.
“By my count, that puts the cash withdrawals at seventy-five thousand dollars. What happened to that money?”
“No idea. We gave it all to Nate.”
“Do you know what happened to the remaining money in the accounts?”
“I didn’t know there was any remaining money.”
“Didn’t know?”
“No. Nate didn’t tell us.”
“Didn’t tell you?”
“No, sir.”
That was the honest truth. Nate never told me exactly how much money was in the accounts, although he had alluded to it being rather large. The only inkling I had of any amount came from the exchange I had with the Magnolia Federal manager, but the nerdman already knew about that. Our withdrawals did trigger the IRS to take action – just as Nate had said they would – and agents were waiting at the bank offices when they opened the doors Monday morning. Much to their surprise, a heck of a lot more than seventy-five thousand had been moved.
What Hop, Lance, Mark, and I didn’t know was that while we were making our merry way through South Mississippi doing our best Nate Mayes impersonations, someone else from a number originating from Nate’s house called the banks and collectively wired $5.5 million dollars to a private, secure account in Nassau, Bahamas. The following Monday, the money was wired from Nassau to Vienna, Austria.
Two days later, the money taken from the banks disappeared, never to be seen again.
Most of it, that is.
Chapter 95
I had not put on a tuxedo since homecoming, and while the thought of getting monkeyed up again did not appeal to me, I have to admit that when the cufflinks went on without too much cursing, I kind of got excited. It was New Year’s Eve; the night was cool, crisp and clear, and I had a date with Emily Miller, the most beautiful girl in the world.
She was pretty on any day, but something about the way she looked that night left me speechless. She had her hair drawn up and clasped in the back so it cascaded around the nuzzling part of her neck. Her dress was amazing – black, classy, and tailored right down to the last hint of lace that bordered the collar and sleeves. She was wearing her mother’s pearls and her grandmother’s fur stole. She looked like she should be walking the red carpet.
And walk it, she did.
The Holden Gallery went all out for Marty’s exhibit, and it was the social event on the Coast that night. There was, in fact, a red carpet out front, and although getting out of the Milk Wagon was not nearly as exciting as slipping out of a limousine would have been, we did our best. Marty had a say-so regarding the guest list, so for better or worse, all of us involved in the great bank caper – including Hayden – were invited.
By eight-thirty, everyone had shown up with dates in tow. Mark and Wendy mingled like they had done this a hundred times, and Hop and Kristin – much to everyone’s surprise – behaved somewhat like a normal couple, even holding hands as they perused the art. Lance and Elizabeth were together, as were Hayden and a different NASCAR girl. We all cleaned up remarkably well, and put on at least a pretense of good behavior, which was a nice departure from our usual routine.
Agent Cooper and Chief Papania were there, looking very much unlike two officers of the law. Like Emily, Agent Cooper also had her hair pulled up, but hers was affixed with what looked like some kind of sparkly thing laced through flowers in the back. She was working the crowd, making sure everyone’s drinks were full, and that everything was where it needed to be. Chief Papania wore black cowboy boots with his tux, and while it was a look most couldn’t have pulled off, he actually succeeded, even if he seemed somewhat ill at ease amongst the mucketys. The two looked happiest when they were together, and more than once I spotted them pawing at each other when they thought no one was watching.
We spent a good twenty minutes listening to Marty tell the story of when he was abducted and how he and the A-Team took down the bad guys. Hayden was Marty’s reluctant hero, and more than once, Marty made Hayden recreate that final moment with the ‘big stick’ that saved all of our lives.
After we had heard the story twice, Mark pulled me aside on my way to the food table.
“Hey, where are y’all going to be at the stroke of midnight?”
“I don’t know; hadn’t thought about it.”
“Why don’t you meet us out at the Lake? Hop’s on board and I already talked to Lan
ce. He and Lizzie are in, too.”
I looked across the room at Emily. “Okay. If she’s up for it, I am.”
“Good. You got any libations?”
“No. You?”
“Yep,” Mark said, “I picked up some champagne mini bottles. Just enough for two.”
“Save me one, okay?”
“Why don’t you come and get it now? In case y’all don’t make it.” He looked back over at Emily and raised one eyebrow. “Believe me, brother, I won’t fault you. Come on.”
Mark had the bottles in a cooler in his trunk, and after the handoff, I made my way down the street. I had purposefully parked a few blocks away from the gallery. The exhibit was a highfalutin event, and my vehicle stuck out like a sore thumb next to the Lincolns, Mercedes, and other old rich-people cars. Dropping off was one thing; parking that behemoth front and center was another.
Even though cops were out in force downtown, they were mainly directing traffic, so I didn’t do too much to cover up the bottle as I walked. I knew that once we left the party, however, there would be roadblocks everywhere like there always were on New Year’s Eve, so I needed to hide it. I hadn’t used the Trapper since I retrieved those Polaroids for Nate. I felt around under the dash until I found the trigger. As expected, it popped open.
The ambient light from the street was just enough for me to see shadows, and I blinked at something tucked way down in the bottom. I reached over and pulled out a wrinkled manila envelope. Written on the front were four names: Matt, Mark, Hop, and Lance. I couldn’t figure out what it was until I clicked on the dome light and saw Magnolia Federal’s return address preprinted in the top left corner.
The Milk Wagon Page 27