by Jack Hardin
His pupils were dilated with concern. All he said was, “Have a seat, kiddo.”
He took the chair next to her. Tyler rubbed his eyes and leaned forward.
“What’s going on?” she asked. Something was wrong; that much was clear. “Where’s Oswald?”
“That’s why I’m here. That Oswald. He’s...uhh…”
“What?”
‘Well, he’s gone.”
Her stomach clenched. “What? Gone? What do you mean?”
“Well, he got away—Ellie, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think he would make run for it.”
“A run for it? He escaped?”
“Yeah.”
Ellie closed her eyes, heard Tyler whisper, “Oh, no.”
“I took him back to the house with me to get a few things, and then, on the way back out, he just bolted for it when I was leading him back to the truck.”
“Bolted? Where?”
“Toward Manatee Bay. With all the rain I lost sight of him almost immediately. He could have doubled back.” He shook his head. “I just don’t know.”
Ellie slicked her hands down her face and moaned. “Okay...Okay…” She sighed long and slow.
Tyler put a hand on her knee. “He can’t get off the island, not in this weather.”
“Well, that’s what I want to talk with you about,” Major said. He took in the empty room and then turned back to his niece. “I need to call the police, Ellie, and let them know. They need to know that guy is out there.”
She nodded pensively.
“But first...” he said, “I was thinking the three of us could come to some sort of agreement.”
She cut her eyes back to him.
“What do you mean?” Tyler asked.
“Ellie, you...took that man’s thumb off, didn’t you?
“Yes.”
“Anyone see you do it?”
“No, we were at Jean’s cabin.”
“And if memory serves me right, law enforcement tends to frown on that kind of thing.”
“Major, I’m fine with taking responsi—”
“No.” He said it flatly, as if what Ellie was trying to say wasn’t an option. “Tyler, son, correct me if you feel differently here, but I want to propose that you and I have no idea how that man lost his thumb. I don’t recall Ellie ever saying how it happened.”
Ellie sat up. “Major, I—”
“I’m game,” Tyler said. “I don’t have the foggiest clue what happened. Could have lost it changing his bicycle chain for all I know.”
“No, you two.”
Major, ignoring her, said to Tyler. “Maybe it was penance for what he did to Ronnie’s friend.”
“No, you two. Once they find him, he’ll just tell them the truth.”
“And who’s going to believe him over you?” Tyler said.
“I don’t want to lie. I’m not sorry for what I did.”
“I’m not sorry for what you did either,” Tyler said. “I would have done the same thing had I, you know, tracked down a psycho on the front end of a hurricane.”
Major slicked a hand across his still wet face. “Ellie, you did the right thing. I’m not going to see you have to lawyer up because you went and saved Ronnie’s friend's life.”
“I’ll have to anyway. Oswald isn’t going to forget this anytime soon.”
“It’s going to be Oswald’s word against yours. Let him try.”
“I don’t want you guys lying for me.”
“Well,” Tyler stretched his arms out and yawned large. “I don’t guess you have a choice there, Julie Jangle.”
She slapped him on the shoulder. “Major, they’re going to wonder why you came here first.”
“Sentries are gone from the bridge now. All the phones are down. Cell and landlines. I knew the hospital would have some phone or radio system operational.”
“You’ve really thought through this.”
“So we’re agreed.”
“Warren, you’ve got my ballot,” Tyler said.
“Thanks, you guys,” Ellie said softly.
Major put an arm behind her and brought her in close, kissed the top of her head. “All right,” he said, “I’m going to make the call.”
When he was gone, Tyler said, “He’s a good man.”
“Yeah. The best.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
The storm was over.
Hurricane Josephine had, in the late evening hours, continued a turn out into the Gulf of Mexico, the outer edge of its eye missing Lee County’s barrier islands by thirty miles. Before moving out to sea, it had torn across Marco Island and up into southern Naples, leaving nothing of Major’s Marco Island marina but piles of fractured pine, naked pilings, and punctured fiberglass.
Ellie, Tyler, and Major had spent all night in the hospital’s waiting room, wind and rain lashing at the windows and making the lights flicker, and Tyler being the only one to find a couple hours of sleep. As soon as the winds began dying down, the FBI and the Sheriff’s Office initiated a systematic search of the island, allowing no residents to return until Eli Oswald had been found. No one seemed to mind the inconvenience, as they were all a little wary of the idea that a high profile madman might be hiding in one of their attics or boathouses. Just as the sun was coming up, and with tailing winds still reaching upwards of fifty miles an hour, the Coast Guard had, at the bequest of the FBI, undertaken a search for Eli Oswald, focusing their attention on the eastern side of the island near Manatee Bay, the general area that Major had seen him run off toward. Less than an hour into the search, they found his body in a cluster of Rag Island mangroves.
Ellie, dog-tired and without cell service all night, was startled when her phone rang. It was Garrett, calling her personally to inform her that Eli Oswald’s body had been found. Garrett said someone had relayed that it had been her who had located and grabbed both Oswald and Montgomery. “That’s the kind of thing that made me bring you on in the first place,” he’d said, and then added that when the FBI brought her in for questioning later that day he planned on being present to ensure they let her off easy. When Ellie hung up and informed both Major and Tyler of Oswald’s fate, they all sighed in collective relief.
The authorities’ initial conclusions held that, due to the lower water levels brought about from the reverse storm surge, Oswald had fled into the empty bed of Manatee Bay and had possibly tried to skirt around Dobbs Preserve. When the waters quickly returned, Oswald had probably been caught up in a rip current, the handcuffs making it difficult to swim. That was the preliminary assessment, and no one expected any extended investigation to conclude otherwise.
Early that afternoon FBI had brought in Ellie, Major, and Tyler and questioned them in turn.
Ellie, leaving out any mention of the paperwork Mark had provided her, claimed that she had recalled something Drew Oswald had told her and followed it up on a whim. She had grabbed Oswald and utilized previous training to question him and get him to give up Dawson’s Montgomery's location.
Did you torture him? Was taking his thumb a part of that?
“It was not.”
What happened to it?
“It was like that when I found him.”
Did you ask him about it?
“I did. A couple of times. He wouldn’t tell me, and honestly, at the time that was the least of my concerns.” Reminding herself that Dawson was alive mitigated against the opprobrium she felt about lying to the good guys.
You couldn’t stop and use a payphone to alert us you had Oswald as well as a lead on his kidnap victim? You couldn’t use someone else's cell phone?
“I figured if mine wasn’t working no one else’s was either. And I wasn’t going to spend precious time trying to locate a payphone.”
What about the sheriff deputy at the Matlacha Pass Bridge? You couldn't have notified him when you went back on the island?
“I didn’t see him out there.”
What about coming back out? On your way to the hospital.
They questioned her for two hours, Garrett sitting beside her the whole time.
They believed her.
There was no CCTV footage from the gas station where Ellie had picked him up. She had checked before Oswald came out with his Funyuns and his Jim Beam, before she escorted him to her truck. He had been under the bed cover all the way back in to Pine Island, so there was no way for a traffic camera to pick him up. There would be no way for them to confirm that his thumb had already been severed and wrapped in gauze when she grabbed him.
One of the FBI agents, an Agent McLusky, who smelled a little like Funyuns himself and sweat too much, wanted to charge Ellie, claiming she had not followed a citizen’s protocol for handling a wanted fugitive and that she had been reckless and maverick.
Ellie had liked that last one. She had been a maverick. It had been her who had saved Dawson Montgomery's life, so that moniker was just fine with her.
After they had Ellie’s statement, it had been Major’s turn. He spent over an hour with the FBI. He had, after all, been the last person to see Oswald alive and had taken responsibility for a known fugitive. Major had been clear that it had been his own suggestion to take Oswald off Ellie’s hands, and he had done so with the conviction that doing so would be the best the thing for Dawson Montgomery.
Why did you stop at your house? Why didn’t you go straight to the police?
I wasn’t expecting to have a criminal riding back off the island with me, and there were a few sentimental things I wanted to get from my house.
Why were you even on the island at all?
So Major told them the truth about why he had been at the bar that afternoon, that he hadn’t emptied the safe since Mango Mania and it held a fair amount of cash he didn’t want to be out of.
Did you have anything to do with the death of Eli Oswald?
No, of course not.
They believed him too.
Tyler stood up under questioning as well, relying how Ellie had called her and asked him to prep the Bertram for her. He hadn’t known until she arrived at the marina just what was going on and by that point felt it his civic duty to help get Mr. Montgomery.
You could have called the Coast Guard at that point. They could have gone out.
“With what phone? They were all down by that point.”
There would, of course, be additional questions over the next few weeks from other agencies and lawyers who drew their paychecks from Uncle Sam. Other than that, the ordeal was behind them.
Pine and Sanibel Islands had seen wind gusts upwards of a hundred miles an hour that left trees and telephone poles strewn about like discarded pencils. Watercraft were found festooned in mangrove swamps and coves throughout the county, and a few of the boats at The Salty Mangrove’s marina were no longer in their slips, having broken free of their mooring lines. Major’s Bertram, as it turned out, remained in its slip and made it through without any more damage than that caused to the propellers as Ellie brought it back across the sound in receding water.
For those who had re-entry decals, entrance back onto the island occurred late that afternoon, with county cleanup trucks leading the way, removing trees and fallen branches from the roads and checking for loose and fallen electrical wires.
The peaceful quiet that typically held Pine Island in a sleepy trance was replaced with the constant buzzing of chainsaws cutting into fallen trees and the groan of Bobcats clearing debris into towering piles. Palm fronds and string lighting had been ripped off The Salty Mangrove’s tiki hut, and the backside of the restaurant was now missing, but, overall, Major was happy to discover that the damage hadn’t been any worse.
As fate would have it, Hurricane Josephine had docked a center console Cobia in the Berensons’ living room. Two months ago, after a Cessna loaded with cocaine crashed nose-first into the Norma Jean pier, one of its wings had ended up in the exact same spot, taking the place of the Berensons’ Pottery Barn coffee table.
As of a couple hours ago, Ted Berenson had left a voicemail at Pine Island Center asking for the first available realtor to give him a call.
Now, a full day after the storm had passed, with pockets of sky beginning to clear, Ellie and Tyler were moving sandbags from her back porch to Tyler’s truck. The waters hadn’t reached over the canal’s seawall, but the sandbags were heavy with rain water. Tyler paused at the corner of her house.
“Hey, Ellie?”
“Yeah?”
“You did good. You know that, right?”
“Sure, why?”
“All this about Oswald and how it all went down. You being let go from the DEA, him dying.”
She shrugged. “Oswald made his own choices. What happened to him is a sad ending to a sad life, but I’m not going to feel guilty about it.”
“Well, I’m not either but,” he looked down on a thumb and rubbed at it. “I just hope I’m never on your bad side.”
She smiled and they both reached down and grabbed up a couple more sandbags. Tyler winced.
“You all right?” she asked.
“Yep. Just a little sore.” He started walking to his truck.
“From what?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
He set the heavy load on his tailgate and mumbled something.
“What’s that?” She chucked her sandbag into the truck.
He mumbled a little louder, still not enough for her to hear clearly.
“Geez, Tyler. What’s the deal?”
“My stomach muscles. Okay? They’re sore.”
“Sore? What, did you start doing sit up—” and then she smiled. “You’re sore from throwing up.” It wasn’t a question.
“Can we talk about something else now?”
“Certainly not.”
“You’re a pain sometimes.” He winked at her.
They returned to her backyard which was littered with debris: roof shingles, branches, leaves, a rogue panel of corrugated steel, a splintered two-by-four, and an unopened, but punctured can of Folgers dark roast. Ellie’s house had fared well, only suffering a fractured window pane at the front and a fallen line of gutter at the back. A brown and white koozie lay half-tucked beneath a fallen palm frond. Ellie reached down and picked it up, examined it.
“Oh, look. It’s a koozie from The Perfect Cup.” She held it out to Tyler. “See, this is how you do a koozie. Notice how it doesn’t say ‘The Perfect Coup.’”
Tyler rolled his eyes and grabbed up another sandbag.
When Tyler left an hour later, Ellie took a long, hot shower and changed into comfortable cotton shorts and a Salty Mangrove t-shirt, then poured herself a glass of merlot and put Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks on her father’s old vinyl record player. She tucked herself into the corner of the couch, and Citrus jumped up and laid his head on her lap.
She pet his head as she enjoyed her wine and thought over the events of the past week. Her sister and niece were back, she had been asked to turn in her contractor’s badge with the DEA, and then, through sheer tenacity and persistence, she had found both Eli Oswald and Dawson Montgomery. From what the doctors were now saying, it looked as though Dawson would be keeping both his hands and would be out of the hospital in the next few days. He was going to need a lot of therapy though.
Oswald had been served up a plateful of justice by Mother Nature. Ellie didn’t expect to shed any tears over ol’ Jimmy Jangle. No, but she might shed some for Ryan Wilcox. Quite literally, the last few days had been a whirlwind, and Ellie had hardly made time to think about the fact that Virgil had reconnected with her and dropped a bomb in her lap. Now as she sat in the comfort of her living room, his words echoed, chilling her. I think I’m being framed for something. I think...well, I think we al
l are.
For three years now she had wanted to be wrong in thinking that some of what TEAM 99 had done was unsanctioned, and she had tried to convince herself over the last few years that the hit in Saint Petersburg had been an isolated event. But she couldn’t do that any longer. Not after what Virgil had said, not after she witnessed that unalloyed fear in his eyes and after she learned that Ryan Wilcox had been killed. But now, as Dylan intonated “Idiot Wind” and Citrus slept beside her, it was beginning to look very much like she had been right.
Her father was alive, doing something for someone, somewhere.
Ryan, her only line back to her father, had been murdered.
Virgil had gone off to Arizona to see what else could be known.
Someone was setting them up to take a fall.
And so, with Virgil's disconcerting words on the forefront of her mind and the last of the merlot on her lips, Ellie decided it was time to start finding some answers.
Chapter Fifty-Five
When Chewy entered Ringo’s office and stopped in front of his boss’s mahogany desk, Ringo asked him what life coach he was listening to. Chewy, who wasn’t one to manifest anything that could be deemed emotion, took pause, mildly surprised by the question. “Actually...it’s music.”
“No kidding?”
Chewy shrugged.
“What band?”
“Not a band. Vivaldi.”
“Now you’re talking.” Ringo pulled open his center desk drawer, removed an envelope, and handed it to Chewy. “Take this to the post office if you would.”
“Of course.”
Ringo shut the book he was reading and leaned back in his chair. “Chewy, what made you come work for me?”
Chewy and Ringo didn’t get personal very often; their engagements, for the most part, remained business-related. Not superficial, just business. Chewy considered the question. It had been ten years since he came on with Ringo. Initially, he received small shipments—Ringo didn’t do big ones back then—and took them to a buyer on the other side of the state. That was it. Pick up, drive, and hand off. A caveman could have done it. But it had been steady work, and Ringo paid him well.