The Weight of Living Read online

“Garrettson uses people up and tosses them away,” he said. “He finds their weakness and exploits it. Jackson said he needed money — you’ll like this — to catch up his mortgage and set up a college fund for his kids.”

  “Jesus Christ. Is everybody that needy?”

  Nagler spun a spoon through his coffee.

  “I wonder if it’s more than that,” he said. “Tank creates the need, opens up the possibility there is a lack in a person’s life. Then, like any good salesman, he suggests ways to fill it. It’s exactly what Calista said about growing up in that incestuous home. Victims teaching victims. Creating the need, filling the need.”

  “So...” Dawson began.

  “So, what does Tank need?”

  ****

  Nagler called John Guidrey.

  “Guidrey.”

  “Hey, John, Frank Nagler. Reinstated?”

  “Yeah, Frank. Back at work.”

  “Good.” Nagler tapped his desk with the eraser of a pencil. “You said it was a captain, right?”

  “My captain, twenty-two years on the force. Had a string of girlfriends on the side, at least one kid.”

  “Question. How does a guy in Jersey find out about a police captain in Georgia who is screwing around?”

  Nagler’s ear filled with the sounds of a long breath.

  “Damn good question. And I ain’t got an answer. What do you think?”

  Nagler tapped the pencil faster. “Any past connection? We have a similar case of a cop accepting a bribe nearly twenty years ago who is now palling around with Garrettson. Trying to find anything from his past. We’ve looked at his financial records to see if he maybe invested in one of Tank’s phony companies and school records to see if they crossed paths then. And what was especially odd with this guy is that Tank handed him to us. Told me about it and the record of the bribe was just sitting there in the open.”

  “Same here,” Guidrey said. “I mean, everyone who knew the Captain had an idea about what he was doing on the side, but didn’t make much of it. But then the other daughter showed up. We’re just starting to look and the Captain ain’t talking. Hey, hang on, gotta take this call.”

  While Nagler waited, and listened to a Musak version of a country-western song he couldn’t quite name, he leaned back and felt the weight of something in an inner pocket of his jacket. It was the envelope that Sister Katherine had given him. Oh, man. Then, “Holy shit,” he yelled.

  Inside were two similar pencil drawings of an opening in a dark wall with the number “6” carved into the side.

  Nagler popped up a file in his computer and compared the new drawings with the copy of the frantic drawing the little girl had made when he had played her that tape of someone repeating, “She is six.”

  They were basically the same drawing.

  “This is what Tank wants,” Nagler said, just as Guidrey came back on the phone.”

  “What was that?” Guidrey asked.

  “This nun in the case gave me two drawings done by the little girl we found weeks ago. I think we can prove that it shows she was kept in the hellhole of a compound I told you about. That would connect her to that place and Tank.”

  “Good stuff, there, Frank.”

  “Tell me, John, was anything like that found in the evidence taken from Tank’s cabin down there?”

  A breath. “Not that I recall. Know what, though? A sheriff in that country called to say that someone bought Tank’s old place and while they were renovating it, found stuff, envelopes, small packages, stuck in the wall cavities. He’s sending it to us.”

  “Good, John.” He closed his eyes and muttered, “Oh, crap.”

  “What?” Guidrey asked.

  “That’s why he wants Calista. If your material is what I think it is, it will connect Calista to that cabin and that cabin to Tank.” Absently: “Gotta find her.”

  The phone was open, silent.

  “Makes me wonder, John. Maybe the reason your old records are such a mess is that Tank somehow made sure they were, pulling strings even back then.”

  A soft laugh. “Thought the same thing, Frank. How do you trust anything?”

  ****

  “What’s it mean, Grace?”

  In front of Grace Holiman were the two pencil drawings of the opening, the savage circle drawn by the girl with “6” in the center and several photos of the actual opening in the mine shaft.

  “Close enough?” Nagler asked.

  “Indeed. I was there when she drew the circle and I recall thinking she had reached down to find the anger in her soul after hearing that tape and knew she had to give us a clue. It’s possible that these drawings resulted from the crack in her memory that angry tirade had perhaps opened. These drawings of an actual place could mean she is ready to come back to us.”

  “What have they done to her, Grace?”

  “They tried to destroy her, Frank. But maybe she is stronger than they are.”

  Nagler brushed the corner of each paper. If there was a way....

  “You know, Grace, Sarah Lawton in her diary and Bruno Hapworth — now there’s an unlikely pair — each said something about a story of men being contained in the children’s books. Bruno even listed the titles. Could you look at them? I’m thinking the stories are some trip into the lives of the girls at Appleton’s house, or something.”

  “Or something?” She smiled.

  “Hey. I’m a cop,” he said. “What do you make of Garrettson shedding all his associates?”

  “He apparently no longer needs them. He was merely using them. He’s clearly a sociopath. He had no real connection with those people. His family members were just objects for his pleasure and control, just as I would think he was the object of those same desires for another in his family. Just like the people he ripped off with his financial schemes. They weren’t people — just dollar amounts. And the other associates, I imagine he sees them as an old-time king waging war would. Cannon fodder. Exposing them? It’s the collapsing madness of his world. Use the king again — the city is burning, the walls are falling. He would sacrifice anyone and anything to save himself. You had captured his castle, so to speak, when the police took over the compound. His mind is reeling. This could be a very dangerous time, Frank.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Your last thought is that you died alone in the middle of nowhere

  The phone rang the instant Nagler hung it up; before he could speak, he heard Garretson’s voice on the phone.

  “You take mine. I take yours.” The phone went dead.

  Next, a video message arrived: Lauren with a thick hangmen’s rope draped loosely around her neck. The camera panned up to show the rope looped over the branch of a tree being pulled tighter. Then the video stopped.

  Garrettson on the phone again: “One step closer, Detective Nagler. Expect more.”

  Oh, God. Then Nagler shook the self-pity and fear aside. No, you won’t. He called Captain Mangan in Jefferson.

  “Hey Jim, you have a team at the compound who can head over the old elephant sheds at the golf course? Garrettson just sent me a video of Lauren Fox with a rope around her neck possibly tied to a tree near there. I recognized the background. Seemed live.”

  “On our way. It’s a mile, so ... know what? We’re also flying the drone. I’ll have it head over that direction. Get an idea about what’s going on.”

  “Great, I’m on my way.”

  The phrase neither veteran officer told the other: Don’t get your hopes up.

  Twenty miles was a long way to drive with your heart in your throat.

  It seemed to Nagler that it took forever to wind his way through city traffic to the Old Iron Bog, and then through the maze of ramps and turns where the valley road and the Interstate intersected. Then hoping his siren and lights would push the slow drivers out of the way on the twisting, narrow valley road only to arrive to see the flashing lights of an ambulance and a distant view of five people standing in a circle, eyes pointing at the ground.
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br />   Nagler slammed the car to a stop and left the door open as he limped/sprinted toward the ambulance where, very confused, he found Lauren drinking a bottle of water, none the worse for wear.

  “It was fake, Frank,” she said, leaning into his firm embrace. “It was fake,” her voice soft and shaky, her body trembling in shock and relief.

  Nagler brushed her hair from her cheek and held her face gently. “I’m so sorry, kid.” He turned and sat heavily in the back of the ambulance, his head spinning and heart pounding.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “Hey, little help,” she yelled.

  An EMT stepped over and after seeing Nagler’s pasty skin and sweaty face, laid him back and strapped on an oxygen mask. He checked his pulse and examined his eyes with a light. One flash, two flashes.

  Jefferson Captain Jim Mangan looked at Nagler and then at the EMT.

  “Hyperventilated,” the EMT said. “Pulse was racing, but it’s dropping now. Give him a couple minutes.”

  Mangan patted Nagler’s knee. “Take your time. We’ve got this.”

  After a few minutes, Nagler reached out his left arm and Lauren helped pull him to a sitting position. He took three deep breaths, then several shallower ones. He sank his chin onto his chest and closed his eyes until his head stopped spinning.

  Lauren wiped his face with a towel and stared into his eyes filled with more pain than she could ever recall. “It’s okay,” she whispered, her forehead pressed to the side of his head. “It’s okay.”

  He removed the oxygen mask and handed it to the EMT, nodding a thanks.

  “I thought...” he said.

  “I know,” she said, and then leaned into his shoulder weeping. “Me, too.”

  Mangan was standing next to his cruiser staring at a computer screen. He nodded toward the screen “Drone footage. Take a look.”

  The view included the sheds, parts of five golf holes and the wooded hills to the south of the course. Two men were walking quickly toward the woods.

  The tall, husky one was wearing a tweed hat.

  “This was taken about ten minutes after you called. The woods are maybe three-quarters of a mile away, Mangan said, pointing to his left. “There’s a path off the fifth green that leads to a former iron mine railroad that is one of the main hiking paths in the park. It connects with a couple of other paths and goes for miles. A couple golfers saw them, yelled, and then the pair took off. No telling what else they had planned.”

  Nagler showed Lauren and Mangan the video Garrettson had sent him. Eight seconds, Lauren with the rope on her neck, the rope being pulled over the branch.

  “So this was faked?”

  “My feet never left the ground, Frank.” She wiped away tears and held herself. “I was waiting... Damn it.”

  “Seems Garrettson held the phone and the big guy was hidden behind the tree,” Mangan said. “The rope’s in the car. It was twenty-five feet or so. The big guy pulled it to make it appear she was being lifted off the ground. They just wanted to scare her.”

  “And send a message,” Nagler said. “That no one is safe.”

  Nagler squeezed his aching head. “Where did they find you?” he asked Lauren.

  “The county real estate office. I was looking up that odd 1932 land sale I told you about. The company that sold it was owned by Warren Appleton. Remember, he sold it to a Garrett? For a dollar, Frank.” The words she could spit out; the anger remained. “Appleton sold the land for a single... dollar. The same year that Sarah Lawton was hanged right here. That’s not an accident.”

  Mangan said, “The property was an old mining hut or hunting camp up on the backside of the mountain from here, up against the arsenal boundary. It was absorbed into the park decades ago, probably why the real estate listing trail went cold. It’s about two miles or so. I’ll get a couple of my guys and a couple park patrol officers to hike in.” He chuckled and smiled. “I can even get the army and marines involved, if you want.”

  “What?” Lauren asked.

  “The arsenal is a military facility for weapons research and development. It shares a boundary with the park, and military personnel are always watching the border for illegal entry. It’s been high security since 9/11,” Mangan said. “What? There is the possibility that the cabin contains weapons. They might be interested in that.”

  ****

  Lauren wrapped Frank’s body tightly. Arms at his chest, a leg across his stomach; if she could have crawled inside his skin, she would have.

  “I’d never been so afraid,” she said, her voice flat and distant. “His eyes, Frank. He was suddenly in the seat across from me, with the darkest, burning eyes. I was afraid to move, because he made me feel that if I did he would kill me somehow. Then he just tipped his head and I followed him. As we left the real estate room, I thought for a second that I might be able to run into the clerk’s office, but then he put a hand on my back and the creepiest smile on his face I have ever seen.”

  “I’m so sorry, Lauren.” Nagler pushed his head into the pillow and sighed. “I have to do a better job. I ...”

  “No,” she said. “You’ve given us all the warnings. We know the danger. But then it shows up, you know, right in front of you and your legs turn to jelly and you think they won’t walk and you think about everyone you love and maybe that you’ll meet someone who knows you and think it’s odd that you are walking through the courthouse with such a strange man, and maybe they’ll call over an officer.” The words poured from her, the terror rising, seeking exit. “Then you think that he had raped and killed children and even the elevator is not a safe place because he could stab you silently and leave you there as he got off at the next floor. And then he puts a rope around your neck and tugs at it a couple of times, pulls it against your throat and chin, and then he runs a dirty finger across your cheek and smiles with those dead eyes, and you want to throw up and I almost did, but he jerks the rope hard and then throws up the loose end over the branch and the other guy pulls on it until you’re standing on your tiptoes and he takes a video, and you’re waiting for the last, sudden jerk, thinking whatever you can and you don’t want your last sight to be of this filthy, evil creep, your last thought is that you died alone hanging from a tree in the middle of nowhere, and then he laughs. And you’re so stunned at the sound of his throaty laugh that you can’t move. You’re not tied or anything, but you can’t move.”

  She reached up and brushed his face and he kissed her fingers, and then the palm of her hand and held it against his mouth.

  “I need to protect you better,” he coughed out, his throat dry and constricted.

  “Frank, you can’t keep me in a cage. I need to be out in the world.”

  He closed his eyes. “I know.”

  Lauren settled back into her body embrace.

  They lay quietly for several minutes.

  “That’s how Sarah Lawton must have felt,” she said softly, distantly; alone. “What her last minutes were like. God, how horrible. Knowing that no one would come.”

  “Yeah.” He stroked her hair. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. “How did you get out of the courthouse?” he suddenly asked. “Walk out the front past the security station?”

  Lauren pushed herself up to sit. “No. We took the elevator to the parking lot. That’s where McCann was with, guess what, a black SUV.”

  “See a plate?”

  “No, only a side view. It was in the driving lane parallel to the elevator exit.”

  “And no one stopped you?”

  She shook her head, no.

  “We have these guys’ photos spread all over the place.” He slapped the pillow. “There has to be another member of this crew, someone inside, tipping them off. Fuck! That’s why they’re one step ahead of us, and,” his shoulders slumped, “Why they won’t find anything when they raid that cabin.” After a minute, he asked, “How much Census data can you get ahold of?”

  “As much as you need. Why, who?”

  “Garrettsons. Modern marriage
s, in-laws, new generations with different names. Most of those kids who were taken from the compound survived. They probably married, had kids, and those kids had kids. And his name from Georgia. What is it? Arthur Harrison. So there’s second cousins and distant aunts and uncles, all sorts of them. There’s someone else who knows all this. Why else did Tank come back here? Because someone told him it would be safe.”

  ****

  The happy shine was gone from the eyes of Rashad Jackson, replaced by a dull, defiant glare.

  “Not gonna help you, Frank. Nothing I could do would make me feel better about what I did, even helping you nail Garrettson.”

  “Well, earth to Rashad, it’s not about you,” Nagler snarled. “It’s about the kids who Leonard and Del are talking off the third-story ledge because you took their dreams and spit on them. It’s about the residents of this city whose trust and cash you stole with your shining smile and happy talk about progress.”

  Jackson’s face remained unchanged, flat. He rolled his neck and hunched his shoulders against the weight of restraints that were pulling on his wrists.

  “The city will get over it, too, Frank. Ironton has such a proud history of crooked politicians.”

  Nagler stood and slammed his chair into the metal table.

  “Why are you proud of yourself?” Nagler yelled. “You’re just one more ...” then he stopped. “You think somehow that you have something to trade. But you don’t. You’re the guy who closed the bedroom window because shouting was heard and maybe a gun was fired outside, the guy who turned up the volume on the television to drown out the screaming coming from upstairs where someone was getting their head bounced off a wall. You’re the guy who walked away. The guy who walked away because it was not your business and no one really got hurt.” He leaned in and smiled. “But you’ve got nothing for us, Rashad. We knew someone was going to walk into that courtroom to replace Bruno Hapworth. And it was you. Garrettson’s sucker. We knew the scheme.”

  “But you let Bruno leave.”

  “Did we? We have the paper trail. Bruno was just like you. Thought he’d get away with a piece of the riches. But he gave us the data. All we had to do was connect the dots, and wherever that boy is, he’s learning that his money’s no good. He’s going to find himself sitting in that chair one day as bewildered as you are. Because Hapworth, just like you and McCann, got used. And for what? And by whom? A double-dealing financial crook, who, oh by the way, happens to be a sexual predator. Nice company you keep, Mr. Mayor. You think that you will be able to come to us at the last minute and say. ‘Oh, wait, I have something for you.’ You thought that none of this would come back to you, but, my friend, you can’t trade what you don’t have. And you can’t seem to admit that or acknowledge that your chair is tipping at the edge of a terribly deep chasm and there is no rope for you to grab because no one is offering it.”