by Russell Fee
The island exerted an unfamiliar pull on him. Every place he’d lived or worked embodied overt or hidden hostility. He learned to be wary and alert for the signals of disguised or blind prejudice and the potential harm to him. But on the island, he was lowering his guard, relaxing his vigilance, experiencing a growing sense of peace. In a certain way, Jackson felt that Callahan had something to do with it. He had viewed himself as the other, the one who would never be fully accepted. But Callahan had trumped that view of himself. Callahan’s hideous and, despite the mask, blatant mutilation appeared not to matter to the islanders. Jackson wondered if perhaps it was because they saw themselves as outsiders and different.
But he had to be careful. Susan had accepted him—totally. Or so he believed. And he had equated that acceptance with honesty. He had trusted everything she had told him; had trusted that she had told him everything. Now that trust had been shaken. She had kept her relationship with the bent man from him. What had she been hiding and why? And what did that mean for him?
* * *
Jackson decided to walk to the station to meet Callahan. Located on the outskirts of town, the station was about a mile and a half from the motel. The walk would do him good and help him think. As he hiked along the sand shoulder of the paved two-lane road, drivers of the oncoming cars waved to him. This island tradition made him feel welcome, and, when another car approached him, he saw the driver lift a hand. It was still raised when the car slowed and rolled toward him. He didn’t see the gun or feel the bullets penetrate his chest and blow the bone and muscle out his back.
Chapter 39
Amanda peered through the glass partition of the ICU and into the snarl of tubes and the glow of screens from the machines that kept Jackson alive. The mass of medical paraphernalia enveloped Jackson who was all but invisible beneath it. Forty-five minutes had passed since the time the emergency medical facility received the call from the jogger who found Jackson to the time that the island medevac plane touched down on the mainland. It took another seven minutes from the waiting ambulance to the doors of the hospital’s emergency room. Amanda hoped the time was brief enough to save Jackson. She had heard the call on her radio and arrived at the scene seconds after the emergency medical technicians. She had stayed with Jackson all the way to the hospital, and she was not about to leave. Whoever had tried to kill him was not going to finish the job on her watch.
Her ring tone sounded, and she grabbed the phone from her back pocket.
“How’s he doing?” asked Callahan when she answered the call.
“I’m at the ICU. He’s alive, but his doctors haven’t yet told me his prognosis,” said Amanda.
“How are you doing?” added Callahan.
“Fine. I’m good here for as long as necessary,” said Amanda.
“Great. I’ve contacted the Charlevoix Sheriff’s Office. Sheriff Markos is sending a deputy to relieve you. I’ve also notified the FBI’s Detroit office. An agent will be there soon. Jackson’s assault is a federal crime, and the Detroit office has jurisdiction. I expect a team from the FBI to be swarming the island too. I’ll have to deal with that,” said Callahan. He then added, “Keep me posted on Jackson’s condition and if and when he can talk,” and ended the call.
* * *
Amanda sat down in a chair propped against the wall, leaned back, and listened to the steady hum and clack coming from the apparatus in Jackson’s room. It had been a long day, and she struggled to stay awake. To keep alert, she reviewed the scene as she remembered it from the moment she had arrived there.
The paramedics were attending to Jackson when she pulled off the road behind the ambulance. He lay on the ground on his back. His fully-opened shirt exposed his chest. Amanda saw the entry wounds as one of the paramedics rolled his limp body on its side. She knew then that he had been shot. She later learned that he had been conscious when the paramedics arrived but had not been able to speak. The paramedics informed her that falling on his back in the grass and lying flat had probably saved his life. The grass and slight rise in the earth staunched the flow of blood enough from the exit wounds in his back to keep him from bleeding out before help arrived. The extent of the wounds indicated someone shot him at close range. He was lucky, they said.
The jogger who found Jackson had remained at the scene, and Amanda had learned from her that she had been jogging facing traffic, so had been on the same side of the road as Jackson. Although the road was straight and the view ahead unobstructed, she had not seen Jackson ahead of her. She heard Jackson before she saw him. Two loud moans startled her and caused her to stop and look around. It was then that she saw Jackson in the grass just off the road’s shoulder. She called for help immediately. She didn’t know what was wrong with him or how to help him. She didn’t go near his body but waited on the road to make sure the paramedics found him right away. Before coming upon Jackson, she had jogged about two miles. In that time, only three cars passed her, all oncoming. She didn’t pay attention to the drivers, although she remembered each driver had waved to her. Also, she had no recollection of the makes, models, or colors of the cars. She was sorry, but a recent argument with her boyfriend occupied her thoughts as she jogged. Although, she did remember hearing a loud crack that could have been a gunshot. At the time, she thought it was a dead branch falling from a tree in the woods alongside the road. That was a common occurrence.
Exasperation replaced fatigue and Amanda sighed. There were no homes along the stretch of road where the driver shot Jackson, so there were no other witnesses she could question. Unless Jackson could describe who shot him, they were at a dead end.
Chapter 40
When Nick confirmed that Max had indeed discovered the hard drive of a laptop computer, Callahan’s instructions were succinct if not entirely naïve: retrieve the data from it. Nick responded that the outcome of that endeavor would depend on the extent of damage to the drive and how long it had endured the elements. From the look of it, Nick doubted a successful result, but felt up to the challenge.
The hard drive now rested on a table in the corner of his office at the biological station where he prepared a clean and, he hoped, uncontaminated space for the work he needed to do. He had previously removed the remains of the system board and unscrewed the plastic from the case. Wearing a surgical mask and latex gloves, he first lifted the hard drive and gently swept a brush over the case until he was satisfied that he had removed any sand granules that remained on the surface. Next, using a small battery-powered vacuum, he suctioned the table around and under the drive before detaching the cover. He held the cover up to the light and examined it. It was gouged and dented, but the metal had not been pierced—a good sign.
Then, using a magnifying glass, he peered into the guts of the drive. They had been exposed to lake water, but, as far as he could tell, no sand or dirt had penetrated the chassis—another good sign. Lake water contained no salt. Therefore, the moisture had dried without leaving any salt deposits in the drive. From what he could see, the chassis was intact. Although the hard drive sustained a scratched platter clamp and a dented actuator, the spindle and platters weren’t damaged; and, if the disks were uncontaminated, he was in luck.
Nick touched the side of the actuator arm with the tip of his finger and nudged it a few millimeters. It moved easily. He applied more pressure, and the arm slid from between the platters and over to the parking ramp. All he needed to do now was to remove the platters and place them into a compatible drive. If platters rotated at 7,200 RPM when he installed that drive into a working laptop, he should be able to read whatever was written on them.
* * *
Nick placed the laptop on Amanda’s desk at the station. He sat in her chair as she kneeled beside him, her hand on the back of the chair for balance. Callahan and Julie stood behind them both, leaning over Nick’s shoulders, and looking intently at the computer screen.
Nick swept the palm of his hand over the screen. “These are the files on the drive, or some of th
em. I wasn’t able to retrieve all the data, but I got a good bit of it,” he said.
“Are they encrypted? Are they in some sort of code?” asked Callahan. All he could see were what looked like row after row of groups of letters followed by numbers.
“The script consists of random letters and makes no sense at all. So, it’s probably encrypted. The numbers also may be part of a code.
“Do you have any idea what we’re looking at then?” said Callahan. He and Julie pulled up chairs on either side of Nick and leaned in to examine the screen.
“This is just a sample from the drive, but, essentially, it’s a spread sheet. The columns aren’t labeled, but the first appears to be a list comprised of random letter groups. None of the groups form known words but may identify something. Some of the groups are repeated,” said Nick. “The second column is a list of five and six-digit numbers. I’m not sure what the numbers represent. Maybe they too are identifiers or amounts of something. The third consists of six-digit numbers that correspond to the numbers in the second column. If I had to guess, they represent dates. The fourth column lists groups of letters that also don’t appear to form words. It is followed by a fifth column that also appears to specify dates that correspond to each identifier in column four. The sixth column is a catalog of groups of letters that may also be identifiers of some sort. The columns end there.”
“So, what do we make of this? if anything,” said Callahan.
“Well, when I worked at the NSA, I began as an analyst. Based on my training there and put as simply as I can, this looks suspiciously like a data flow chart. The numbers in column two flow from the identifiers in column one. Column one is long but repeats only three identifiers. Those three are the source of the flow. Column three dates the flow. The identifiers in column four are numerous. However, there are only four identifiers in column six, and they are where the data terminates. If you make a chart from this analysis, this is what you get.”
Nick reached into his back pocket and removed a folded sheet of paper. He unfolded it and swiveled his chair around so that his audience could view it. To Callahan, it looked like a depiction of those Fourth of July fireworks that explode in a ball of flaming trajectories that each explode again, forming their own veined orbs of fire.
“Any idea of what the identifiers represent?” asked Callahan.
“None,” said Nick. “We’d have to break the code to know.”
“What about the data, the numbers?” said Amanda.
“It could be numbers of emails, or texts, or items of some sort,” said Nick.
“Or money,” said Julie.
“Or people,” said Amanda.
Callahan stood up. “Can you take the hard drive out of that computer?” he asked.
“Sure,” said Nick. “You want me to do it now?”
“Please,” said Callahan. “I want to keep it in the station’s safe for the time being. Susan Gibbons may have been protecting what is on this drive when she died. We need to find that out, and until we do, we’re going to protect it too.”
* * *
Callahan left the station saying he wanted to follow up on Mrs. Hannity’s complaint about cars encroaching on her lawn when they parked in front of her house. The Back Door Pub squatted at the end of her road. Her house was the last house before the pub, separated from it by a long grove of trees. The pub had become very popular and drew a large crowd, especially on Friday and Saturday nights. When the front lawn of the Back Door filled with cars, the overflow spilled onto the road in front of Mrs. Hannity’s house, and some of the pub’s patrons weren’t too careful about how far over the shoulder they parked. The parkers disregarded Hannity’s warning signs, and the pub’s owner ignored her entreaties to curb the offenders. Callahan figured he’d talk to Mrs. Hannity first and then to the pub’s owner to see if he could resolve the problem amicably.
In the meantime, Callahan felt happy to be alone. Brainstorming with Amanda and Julie was good as far as it went, but sometimes the whirlwind of ideas kept spinning until he could only slow it down in solitude. He needed this alone time to process things. He still had no answer to his question about the significance of the hard drive’s data to Susan Gibbons’ case, if any. Where and when Max found the hard drive on the beach and the fact that it was entangled in the shreds of a woman’s bathing suit, all led to a strong suspicion that Susan had died clutching a computer that depicted the flow of encrypted data: people, money, or products perhaps. So, what might have she been doing with the computer? Where did she get it? Who did it belong to? And why didn’t she let it sink when she faced death in the lake? He didn’t have the answers to these questions, nor any idea how to find them.
Callahan passed the sign advertising the turn-off to the Back Door two-hundred yards ahead. When he came to the big white arrow pointing down Mrs. Hannity’s road, he turned left. As he approached Mrs. Hannity’s house, he saw that the grass on the front edge of her lawn was flattened and rutted with tire tracks. He also saw the hand painted sign that said KEEP YOUR FUCKING CARS OFF MY LAWN. Amicable may have been the wrong term for a solution to this problem, he thought.
Chapter 41
Gallagher was celebrating, at least internally. From the outside, he appeared as taciturn as a bronze statue in a courthouse square. Inside, his stomach churned with excitement as he ate a second sugar-encrusted dollop of fat that passed for a donut at the Dock Café. The stars had aligned over the Ledger yet again. Zakaryan, from the biological station, had told him of the governor’s threat to terminate the station’s funding if it published its annual ecological evaluation of Lake Michigan shoreline tracts. Zakaryan wanted this information made public, very public.
Gallagher received this intelligence at the same time he learned that there were eleven other secret test wells along the Michigan coast. His story of drilling on the island had stirred up interest on the mainland, and investigative reporters from a major news agency had discovered other secret wells. Citing Michigan law, the Department of Environmental Quality steadfastly refused to reveal any information concerning the wells. The press had so notified the public. The oil spill woke up the environmental groups, and the uncloaking of the secret wells alerted them that the lake might be further threatened. Rumblings about Big Oil plundering the lake had already begun.
Gallagher’s reportorial instincts told him that Zakaryan’s news and the drilling of secret wells were connected, and he sensed another scoop for the Ledger. He grabbed his recorder and digital camera from his desk drawer and lifted the false bottom. He then counted out one hundred and fifty dollars from the hidden roll of cash before he headed for the door.
* * *
Gallagher planned to talk his way onto the rig’s worksite on Egan’s property in order to find out what he could from the workers there, paying for information if it came to that. What he found when he got there surprised him. There were no workers. Instead, a high chain link fence topped by razor wire surrounded the rig. Inside the fence paced a large German shepherd. Outside, a hut with a stenciled sign that read SECURITY blocked the entrance. A man emerged and approached Gallagher.
“Is there something I can help you with?” said the man whose tone and demeanor indicated that he was not about to offer any help. Gallagher noticed that he wore a blue uniform with no insignias of any kind. Trim, fit, and muscular, he was not the type of security guard Gallagher usually saw: flabby, out-of-shape, and in an ill-fitting uniform.
“I’m with the Nicolet Ledger, the local newspaper,” said Gallagher. “’I’m interested in who’s drilling here and for what.”
“Can’t help you there,” said the man. “I’ve no idea.”
“Then who do you work for?” asked Gallagher. “Perhaps they could tell me.”
“That’s none of your business. And you’d best be running along now,” said the man.
“When was this fence put up?” said Gallagher.
“I said run along.” The man made a lunge toward Gallagher who in
stinctively jumped back, almost falling. “Now get going,” he said.
The dog had stopped pacing and was standing stock-still, its teeth bared and its eyes locked on Gallagher.
“Okay, no problem. Have a nice day,” said Gallagher. He began walking away. He took six steps before turning around and snapping three quick pictures as the man entered the hut.
* * *
Gallagher downloaded the three photos of the hut to his computer at the Ledger’s office and examined them. He had taken all three pictures on full telephoto. The man blocked the doorway in the second and third pictures, but in the first, he could see the interior of the hut. Someone had propped a plastic three-ring binder on a shelf on the back wall. The cover of the binder read, Roundtree Security, Guard Manual.
“Bingo,” said Gallagher out loud.
Chapter 42
Michigan State’s student touring troupe had just completed a seven-day run of Our Town on stage at the island’s community center. Each summer, the island community anticipated the troupe’s arrival, and Julie and Callahan were lucky to get tickets for the final performance. The students’ level of acting amazed them, and both agreed that they couldn’t have seen finer performances by professionals. The play had taken Callahan’s mind off Jackson’s shooting, but now, as he and Julie walked to O’Malley’s, the shooting crept back into his consciousness.
“I’m worried I missed something,” said Callahan.
“You’re talking about Jackson?” said Julie.
“Yes,” said Callahan. “What didn’t I see? What am I still not seeing? Who targeted Jackson and why? I didn’t see it coming—not even a hint.”
“Maybe you didn’t see anything because Jackson intentionally blinded you,” said Julie.