The Weight of Living Read online

  “Get the hell out of there, Dean. Now.” Mangan called.

  “Hey, Captain.” Dean’s voice was shaky. “You better call the coroner. I’ve got bones.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  God has given me many tasks, Francis. This is the last.

  Jimmy Dawson set the tablet computer aside and finished his eggs. He had written the story, and still didn’t believe it.

  “A century-old mine shaft with bones? Discovered while investigating a drug house? Can’t make this stuff up.”

  Dawson wiped his mouth with a napkin and leaned over the table toward Frank Nagler.

  “Except you did. A drug house?”

  Nagler smiled.

  “It’s possible. Besides, it’s Jefferson’s statement. The captain did tell us they suspected drug activity there. We had to hold back some information, Jimmy.”

  “Like the fact that you’re up there in the first place because they shot at you?”

  Nagler smiled slyly.

  “Welcome to the cat-and-mouse game. But you know that. It’s not any more unbelievable than a 1932 suicide made to look like a murder, which might be a clue in a possible case of generational incest fueled by illegal financial dealings. And you’re writing that story.”

  Dawson tipped his head forward and spread his hands in an act of contrition. He tapped the face of the computer and chuckled. “Four thousand hits, and a thousand comments, nine hundred of them complaints.”

  Nagler swallowed some coffee and asked, “You making money on that site yet?”

  “Yeah. Somewhat. Got a foundation grant last year and restructured the site as a non-profit. Keeps it afloat.”

  “Good for you,” Nagler said as he watched Dawson stare absently at Barry’s counter. “What?”

  “What’s really going on up at that place, Frank? What’s worth taking shots at you?”

  “It’s not just me, Jimmy. They put you in jail for three days and you have to fight a phony hit-and-run charge. They planted drugs on Del Williams and broke into Leonard’s warehouse and have made threats against Lauren. You said it before — these are dangerous crooks. And you’re right. There is something fundamental to Tank Garrettson’s dirty little soul tied to that house, and, honestly, Jimmy, if you are working on the Sarah Lawton story you might find it before we do.”

  Then Nagler exhaled a long breath and closed his eyes, remaining still for a minute or more.

  “But right now it is one more item crossed off the list of Tank Garrettson’s farewell tour. He can’t go back there. The town finally seized the property for back taxes and the buildings have been condemned. To top it off, the new owners, the town, have agreed to allow an Ironton College geology professor to conduct an historical examination of the old mine. That could take years, you know all that digging and sifting. That is, after the medical examiner gets done looking for bones. Tank ain’t getting anywhere near that place again. The downside is that we don’t know where he is.”

  “So what’s next?”

  “The city is posting a tax sale on properties tomorrow. You’ve seen those. Pay in ninety days or the city takes the property,” Nagler said. “Lauren told me there’s some big property owners who only pay their taxes after that notice is published. All the properties on this list are tied to the Mine Hill Foundation. We’ll see who shows up. Also, the foreclosure hearing on Lauren’s mother’s house.”

  He tipped his coffee cup, saw the black ooze at the bottom and pondered asking Barry for more, then changed his mind.

  “This was the stuff that Bruno Hapworth was doing for him. But Bruno is gone. Someone else? We’ll see.”

  Dawson gathered the computer and his case and started to leave. “Let me know.”

  “One last thing, Jimmy,” Nagler said, as he pulled out a folded piece of paper. “It’s a 1999 accident on 287. A drugged-up pregnant woman apparently walked into the path of a Freightliner doing seventy-five. Ruled a suicide.”

  “And you don’t think it was.”

  Nagler shrugged. “Lot of that going around.”

  Dawson picked up the paper, smiled and walked away.

  Inside Barry’s, Nagler sat with a half-cup of cold coffee and stale toast.

  Why is Tank giving up McCann? Is this the end? What did Churchill say? This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it might be the end of the beginning. The beginning of what, Tank? The purge, like some Communist dictator? Who, besides you, would be left standing?

  ****

  The angled morning sunlight flowing past gravestones cast oblong shadows like new receptacles for the departed, as if the need to make more space had to be hastened. Red buds from maple branches lined the edge of the roadway, swept there by a recent rain and mingled with the yellow blooms that had fallen from the towering willow, a sacrifice in life’s progress.

  “It is fascinating, isn’t it, Francis,” Sister Katherine said. “In this place of death, each spring new life more abundant than the year before emerges.”

  “Yes, Sister,” Frank Nagler replied softly.

  “We had to fight quite hard to convince the Locust Hill Cemetery Board that Sarah deserved to lay here. Of course, I was not old enough to take part in those discussions, but I had heard them each year when my mother and I would visit the gravesite. It was because of the supposed nature of her death, you know. That somehow because, well, she was alone when she died, her body could not lie with others here. It was quite a scandal, you know. A young woman from the church found hanging from a circus tree.”

  The old nun had been kneeling. She bowed her head, offered a blessing and then rose. She gently brushed the top of the rounded gravestone.

  “It was Appleton’s friends who provided the opposition. We learned that one of his customers, if that was what they were, offered the board ten thousand dollars to deny Sarah a resting place. It was perhaps the nature of that offer that turned the board in Sarah’s favor; that, and I believe, there had been a leaking of details about Mr. Appleton’s recreational offerings. Either way. We could only afford an inexpensive limestone marker, and look what the years of weather have done. In time, her name will be erased.” She pressed the cross to her lips deeply and closed her eyes. “Ah, Francis, an old nun’s worries.”

  We should all be watched with such devotion, he thought.

  “Sister, there is a bench. Let’s sit,” Nagler said. “I have something to ask you about.”

  “Of course, Francis. How is Martha?”

  “I visited her this morning ...” his throat closed and he had to swallow hard to continue. “I come weekly.”

  “Bless you, Francis.”

  “Thank you, Sister. I have some photographs for you to look at. They were in a shoebox left for me by Calista at the Garrettson compound. Would you care to look?”

  A knowing smile briefly graced Sister Katherine’s face.

  Nagler’s shoulders slumped slightly. “You know what these are, don’t you?” Again.

  She patted his hand. “I believe I do. Show them to me and I’ll explain.”

  The first photo was of two girls standing in front the Garrettson house at the compound. One was roughly five and the other, in the arms of the first girl was, Nagler guessed, two. The older girl was wearing a simple sack dress and was barefoot. The infant wore a diaper. The photo was dim.

  “This is Sarah, isn’t it, Sister? And she is holding you, her sister.”

  Solemnly, “Yes.”

  “You are both Garrettsons.”

  “Yes, Francis.”

  “Do you know who your mother was?”

  Defiantly, back stiffened. “Mrs. Jeannette Lawton. I knew no other.”

  Nagler smiled, then asked, “Do you know if Sarah was raped at the Garrettson’s compound?”

  Sister Katherine drew in a deep breath. “I don’t believe so. When we left, the household was in such disarray that it was barely functioning. My mother — Mrs. Lawton — told me that she was shocked at the condition of the c
hildren, that she cried when she saw us. The social workers told her she should never tell us our family name because of the shame attached. But Mrs. Lawton believed I should know, especially after Sarah died. Oh, Francis, we were so dirty and neglected.”

  Nagler shuffled the photos. There was no need to review each one. “Just like our little street girl.”

  “Yes, Francis. My child.”

  “So, tougher question. Is Calista...”

  “She is some relation, Frank, as is Alton Garrett,” she plainly stated. “We were all tested when I became reacquainted with them when they were in high school. That part of Calista’s story is true. It was their eyes. I saw Sarah.” She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the slight breeze. Small tears gathered and ran down her lined, perfect face. “And yes, Frank, that makes — what do you call him, Tank? — a relative as well.” She threw her shoulders back and shook her head several times. “Imagine my pride.”

  She stood and faced Nagler, holding her small gold cross.

  “There is evil in that — my — family, Frank. Evil for generations and it has damaged the souls of so many and broken the bodies of others. I joined the church so those smeared by this blackness can be made pure.” She smiled. “Remember when I told you ‘get that bastard?’ Who did you think I meant?”

  Nagler stood as well and took her hand.

  “Tank. Randolph Garrettson.”

  She smiled. “How do you imagine that Calista obtained those photos?”

  “I imagine she found them at the compound,” he said.

  “No, Francis. Calista never lived at the compound, although she came to know of it and I believe explored it on her own. Look at the photos, how old they are. Would such things have survived in the decades-long exposure to the weather of that old place? I gave them to her, once I was sure.”

  “Sure of what?”

  “That we were family. I told her to keep them and use them when it was time to purge our family of its historic curse.”

  Nagler squinted into the horizon, the pain of that phrase worming through his being.

  “Is that what is happening now, Sister?”

  Her face became peaceful, and as he watched Nagler finally understood that old church word: Beatific. Life’s labors done; peace awaits.

  “God has given me many tasks, Francis. This is the last.”

  At her car, as the driver held open the door, Sister Katherine turned back to Nagler.

  “He bought her, you know. Sarah,” she said, turning back to Nagler. “He told the Lawtons that Sarah was being enrolled in a school at his factory, and paid them five hundred dollars for the loss of her companionship and labor. My mother said they thought it was odd, but it was the Depression and that amount of money was unimaginable for a poor family. Appleton told my parents that they would see Sarah monthly, but the truth was, they only saw her again after she was dead. I can still hear Mrs. Lawton’s wailing.”

  “But they sued him, right?”

  She winked. “He had given them a signed contract for Sarah’s enrollment. He apparently gave one to each of the families of the girls he ravaged. Not only was he a lecherous man, Francis, but a stupid one. Stupidity, blindness brought on by avarice and a lust for power. Those contracts were the path to the lawsuits that brought him down.”

  She reached into her jacket pocket and produced an envelope.

  “Don’t look at them now. We were cleaning and rearranging the children’s rooms at the home when we found them.”

  ****

  When Nagler arrived at Leonard’s store, Lauren, Jimmy Dawson and Dan Yang were poring over the remaining contents of the shoebox.

  Lauren met his eye as he entered and mouthed, “So?”

  He offered a half-smile in return.

  “You were right,” he said as he sat. “They are all in the same family, which makes this whole thing all the more creepy.”

  “This stuff help you?” Nagler asked Dawson.

  Dawson grinned the “I’m an ace reporter” grin. “Yup. I had found some more records, and even the children of chauffeurs and housekeepers who worked for Appleton and some of the other participants. Society in general might not have known about the activities, but the staff certainly did. They wrote coded notes and letters to one another. Lauren filled in the census information and we found the Lawton family of Paterson, New Jersey, who in 1928 adopted two girls from the Garrettsons.”

  “How was she?” Lauren asked.

  “Resigned to it all, but fierce. It’s been her whole life and for that life she has faced this head on probably every day,” Nagler said. “She has to be one of the bravest people I’ve ever known, and I never even knew it.”

  Dan Yang said, “We also found the rest of his off-shore accounts. He had a couple of Yankee yearbooks, you know the volumes with stats for the all the players. He had penciled in what he thought was a code, and we broke it. I gave the list to the chief. You know, I teach courses on encryption and robotic data theft, and this guy pencils in the account numbers in a Yankees’ yearbook. Wow.”

  “Yeah, but it worked for years, didn’t it,” Nagler said.

  “I guess. Found some other listings that I’m examining because they seem to be outside of the timeframe. How old is this guy?”

  “I’m guessing between forty and sixty.”

  “Interesting. When I find out what these other accounts are, I’ll send you the information.”

  “Good. So all that leaves is your mother’s foreclosure hearing tomorrow,” Nagler said. “We’ll see who comes in to represent the Mine Hill Foundation. She ready?”

  “Eh,” Lauren said.

  “You think someone will show, after all this?” Dawson asked.

  “Yeah,” Nagler said. “It’s because of what Dan described at the beginning and what we know about how conspiracies work. Your story on the compound? There are people doing Tank’s bidding who don’t know anything about that. The story had no names.” He waved both hands. “Yeah. This so-called organization is a loose mess. No one knows the boss. They’ll show.”

  Now we have to find Tank before something serious happens.

  “Hey, Dawson, so who killed Sarah Lawton?”

  “You gotta read the story, man.”

  ****

  Jimmy Dawson read the last words on the computer screen and folded his hands in front of his face as if the shield could block out the horror. “The life of Sarah Lawton” might have been the most difficult story he had ever written.

  The jitter of diner noise flitted around Barry’s. A spoon tinning the side of a coffee cup, a cough mid-sentence, “but then he said...” The slap of a spatula turning eggs, a plate sliding across the counter top, the thump of the cash drawer closing; “Thanks. You bet. See ya again...”; The rattle of a paper bag, the metal scrape of the door opening; street noise car engine shouted voice — “Hey, Ray!” — the roar of a bus at the corner floating on the dusty, gassy vapor, a soft clank as the door caught, then vacuumed away.

  “She had the gentlest hands, long fingers, elegant.”

  That’s what her mother Jeannette Lawton said as she gazed at her daughter in her casket. She used to dig in the dirt of the back yard for that last potato, scraping her knuckles and being cut by the thorns of the brambles.

  She tried to cover with a scarf the tan stain on Sarah’s neck, the now-faded rope burn that the mortician refused to cover with cosmetics because he was judging how the young woman died. “What a horrible thing they did to you, my girl.”

  And it was horrible, Dawson thought, amazingly horrible, in fact.

  The story unfolded in the diary that Sarah Lawton wrote and in letters her family wrote to the church before she was killed and after; letters seeking solace, venting anger. It dripped from notes written by staff at the Appleton home that were found tucked in the books delivered to Leonard’s store and leaked from the hundreds of photographs Appleton saved. Scene after scene, page after page connected.

  Those rich soulless men
taking the joy and lives of the girls they decided they owned, using them, discarding them; choosing more.

  “July 7. More girls arrived today,” Sarah wrote in her diary. “They delight in the grandness of the place, the marble floors, wide sweeping staircase, soft pillows on chairs and couches. They know not that this is the gate to Hell. They know not that soon their souls and dignity will be stripped away, grist for the pleasure of heartless men who will laugh at your pain, the pain they cause and take such pleasure in delivering. Learn you will soon that no one hears your cries. Learn, too, as have I, that it is best to hide your heart to save it. If you show it, they will devour it.”

  It was also a story that raised the most anger, Dawson thought. The powerful, brazen in their authority making no secret that they thought the lives of the poor workers they employed were nothing, and then proving it by taking their daughters for their own pleasure.

  And here we are today, Dawson thought, with circumstances so similar, only the names have been changed. See what our money can buy? they proclaim. See what lies I can get you to believe?

  Sarah Lawton understood this.

  “Aug. 12. What do these fine men tell their families of their repeated absences? Do they not carry the stink of our forced union home with them? Do they not carry some scent of me, of my skin they have kissed and fondled? But I detect you. Your flowery bodice spray, the sea mist in your hair that your husband carries on his fingers as he touches my mouth. What do you say when those same fingers touch your tongue and you sense the unmistakable taste of me?”

  The details of Sarah’s life filled Dawson’s mind. Daughter of an unknown mother, born into a house of incest, rescued by a poor but loving family; then the factory girl, but soon the sexual captive; finally, the hero.

  Yes, she brought them down, Dawson thought, at the cost of her life. And yet, here is the dusty tale of her brief life at the center of another more current scandal. Her death perhaps the apex upon which the new mysteries unravel.

  But nothing would end her sadness or pain, Dawson knew.

  “Sept 13. No one hears me. My family is distant and thought I was happily working at Mr. Appleton’s factory, when in truth I am a slave at another type of factory. And now, here again, the sterile joyless farm home. How cruel is this circle of time. My mother once rescued me from this place, took me away from these cold quarters. How saddened she would be to find me here again. The smell of death rises here; such is Mr. Garrettson’s desperation. Nothing he can do would satisfy Mr. Appleton’s demand for revenge. Not even the deaths of the two young girls dispatched last week, killed for not being me. What depths we have reached in this world? There is no one to call to, no god, no savior, no friends to speak for me. This is the darkest day. They will come for me soon. The stiff rope will encircle my neck and the platform upon which I stand will be kicked away and I shall die. And none will know it.”