The Weight of Living Page 25

  Nagler scraped the chair across the floor and let the grating, itch-inducing sound settle.

  Then Jackson blinked and cast his eyes down to his manacled hands and the table. When he looked up again the arrogant glare was replaced by dark confusion.

  Sank in, did it?

  Jackson bit his lower lip and sighed. “I’m so embarrassed, Frank. I...”

  “I don’t care. Don’t you get that? You chose the wrong side, Rashad. You had a choice to be honest and forthright and you chose to be a crook.” Nagler leaned over the table. Slowly: “Chose to be a crook.”

  Jackson looked up sharply and saw the stone face that Nagler was wearing, then looked down again.

  “There’s one more player,” Nagler hissed. “Who?”

  “I don’t know, really, Frank. I don’t. I knew my piece.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Everyone is Sergeant Schultz.”

  Silence, then, “Alton Garrett has one more...”

  “One more what?”

  Jackson sat back.

  “One. More. What?”

  Jackson, skittish, weak voiced. “Um. A thing.”

  “What thing?”

  “I don’t honestly know, Frank. Something downtown. I didn’t hear...”

  “When?”

  Nothing.

  Nagler smashed the table with his fist.

  “Pay attention!” He slapped the table with his open palm. “When?”

  “Couple days.” Jackson leaned back and closed his eyes in defeat. “Couple days.”

  Nagler stood to leave.

  “Frank, is that good for something?”

  Nagler paused at the door, but didn’t look back. “Let you know in a couple days.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  A thing

  “A thing? That’s what he said?”

  “Yeah, Maria, that’s what he said.” Nagler leaned on the door to her office. “A thing in the downtown area. He likes showy things.”

  “Pretending to hang your girlfriend was pretty showy,” Ramirez said.

  Nagler closed his eyes and softly said, “Yeah. That could have been a lot worse.” He pushed away from the door frame. “But it wasn’t, was it? He tipped us off. He could have left her out there in the middle of the night and we would have searched for her the next day, maybe too late. And then this connection to Sarah Lawton. Lauren figured that out. It was the same spot.”

  “Isn’t he all about power and control?”

  “Yes, indeed. He’s not going to announce the next one. The ‘thing’ will just happen. That’s how he will exert what he thinks is power and control.”

  Ramirez, who had been scrolling through lists of events on her computer, asked, “What about something at the Catholic Sisters’ Home? Sister Katherine has cut him off, so to speak.”

  “They’ve beefed up security on the entire property. They are even checking IDs and appointments at the turn-off, before vehicles enter the site. Would be showy, but suicidal. His plan is not to have a glorious death, but possibly to create one for someone else.”

  Ramirez tapped the computer screen.

  “This could get his attention. The opening of the farmers’ market in a couple days. Lots of movement, people and noise, a ceremony. That’s a big thing.”

  “Gotta be it. Okay, we need to pull a Tom Miller on this, like we did during that big rally. Undercovers, pre-event sweep, rooftop surveillance. Everyone gets copies of their photos, and know what? Add Calista Knox, for good measure.”

  “Why her?”

  “Because no one has heard from her in a couple weeks.”

  ****

  “You still being followed, Jimmy?” Nagler asked as he scanned the street scene beyond Barry’s front window. The street seemed unusually busy for a Thursday.

  Dawson laughed.

  “No. Those two firefighters admitted they had been paid a couple grand by McCann to mess around. Got themselves fired. Just awfully petty stuff for what seems to be some larger plan.”

  “Seems so, doesn’t it?” Nagler stuck a cold French fry in his mouth and immediately regretted the decision, but swallowed it quickly. “What’s his game? Nebraska wants him for faking his death, six states besides New Jersey want him for financial crimes, and then there’s all the sex and family related stuff, and, oh, the multiple murders. And we can’t find him. He might have been staying at the compound, but it was such a wreck it’s hard to see that, especially in the winter. And, oh, I got word from Jefferson that no one was in the cabin, but they found a quad-four trail rider and a dozen weapons, including four long rifles and couple semi-automatics and rounds for all of them.”

  Nagler was distracted by an ever-larger crowd passing Barry’s window. “Something going on downtown, Jimmy? Lotta people out there.”

  “Some kids’ concert.” Dawson shrugged. “An after-school thing.”

  “Okay.” Nagler ate another cold fry, the salt and grease coating his lips. “So why did he come back to Jersey? Someone important had to be here. As far as we can tell, the majority of his sex crimes are more than a decade old, especially the situation in Georgia, if Calista and John Guidrey are right, bluntly, the family has apparently run out of children to abuse.” Except for the little girl, he thought

  Dawson drained his coffee cup. “Is he dying? Came home to spend his last days in his beloved New Jersey?”

  “Doesn’t seem so. That drone video showed him moving along pretty well, better than I do,” Nagler said, picking up and other cold fry and then dropping it back to the plate. “But there does seem to be something final about all this. It’s like he has a checklist and someone is at the bottom of it. And he’s close to the bottom.”

  “Are you at the bottom of the list?” Dawson asked.

  “No. I just seem to be conveniently in the way.”

  “Hey, Frank, you remember that hat you told me about? The tweed one?” Barry entered the diner from the rear kitchen holding a pot of sauce.

  “Yeah.”

  “Think I saw it,” Barry said after he put the pot on the stove and approached Nagler’s table. “Yeah, leaving my bank, a block the other side of city hall. Big guy in a tweed hat, that between you and me, looked stupid on the guy, but he was heading down Bassett, then cut in behind the church.”

  “When? The church next to the theater?”

  “Yup, couple of hours ago.”

  “Shit,” Nagler said, as he pushed away from the table and headed into the street where the rising sound of fire sirens filled the air. As he watched, two trucks lurched out of the fire station at city hall and blared down the street to Bassett.

  Nagler answered his phone as he turned the corner at Blackwell and saw the street filled with wheezing and coughing high school aged kids.

  It was Ramirez.

  “Frank. The theater. Some kind of fire. A lot of smoke and maybe teargas.”

  “I’m there,” he shouted. “How close is rescue?”

  “Block away.”

  “Get more. General alarm.”

  Nagler waded into the crowd and slammed his fist on the hood of a car whose driver was honking his horn and waving at the kids to get out of the street. The driver yelled back, but stopped when Nagler flashed his police badge and pointed to the curb.

  In the middle of the gagging crowd were Rafe and Dom, from Leonard’s store.

  “Get these kids as far down the street away from the theater as you can,” Nagler told them, shouting to be heard above the screams and wailing. “On the other side if possible, rescue is on the way. Did you see anything?”

  “Not much,” Dominique yelled back. “Band was playin’, then smoke started risin’ from under the stage and an alarm went off. Everybody ran.”

  “Okay. Let’s move them away. Thanks, guys.”

  Ambulances pulled up at end of the street and patrol cleared space for a ladder truck in front of the theater and the competing sirens echoed and re-echoed off the stone fronts of the building, the street ringing with noise. Nagler found
Fire Chief Bill Demers.

  “We’ve got men under the stage. Found canisters of tear gas and smoke bombs. This was designed to cause panic, Frank, not to burn the place down,” the chief hollered. “You better use one of these,” and handed Nagler a face mask.

  “Got it, Chief.”

  Of course he’s not going to burn it down. He owns the fucking place.

  Half a block away he saw Ramirez deploy three officers to assist the EMTs.

  “Is this the ‘thing,’ Frank?” Ramirez asked when they met in the street.

  “I want it to be,” he said. “But I doubt it.”

  Then they stared. “Unbelievable,” Ramirez muttered.

  “Doesn’t make sense,” Nagler said. “What does he gain by scaring the wits out of a bunch of high school kids? This was just noise.” He gazed into the teeming street and watched the fire chief remove his helmet and scratch his head in wonder, watched as kids cried in the arms of others, breathed wide-eyed behind oxygen masks or sat on the cold curb and clutched their knees; watched the panic of hands to mouths and shaking heads, or hard glares cast toward police officers, heads bobbing and arms flailing as frustration and fears were vented; as the fragile frame of order collapsed. “We have to stop the noise, Maria.”

  ****

  Nagler sat on the hood of his car and let the rising frog and insect chorus dull the thunder of the Interstate traffic as dusk settled. A few sparrows jumped from tree to tree, occasionally landing on the roof of his car, before darting off. The Old Iron Bog back to life.

  Back again, you old swamp, he thought, laughing softly. The water was deeply gray-green and shallow. Tree and grass roots showed their blackened bottoms; at least, he thought, the place had not yet developed that mid-summer eye-burning stench of rotted vegetation and hot oil that boiled out of the mud.

  He placed his hands behind him and leaned back with his eyes closed swapping the screams of frightened teenagers for the swamps sounds.

  I would like to not care about all this, he thought.

  The states that are investigating the financial crimes will put together a case, nail your ass and send you to jail for fifty years. And the feds would want a piece of that, interstate commerce and all that. Georgia wants you for murder, Nebraska for faking your death, but in New Jersey, until yesterday — until we find more evidence — you were just a pain in the ass. We would like very much to put your sorry butt in shackles and send you off to the highest bidder.

  But then you kidnapped Lauren and pretended to hang her. And then, what, just for fun? you set off smoke bombs in a public theater and scared the crap out of hundreds of kids. So, creating a public nuisance, and maybe attempted arson.

  “So why are you here?” he yelled into the darkening swamp. “And why are you threatening me?’ he said quietly with a grab in his voice. “I’m just a cop. I do my best.” And then you and your screwed-up family came along — you know, I was perfectly fine not knowing about you all—and I know that you all hurt and you are all dealing with that pain differently, but now you’ve spread it all over. Other people hurt, other people are scared. The pain makes Calista erratic, and in that state, she hurts others, and then plays with their pain, like Leonard’s. And Sister Katherine is God’s archangel, showing mercy, but seeking vengeance, offering shelter to the wounded while being perhaps the most wounded of all. Then Garrett, don’t know, maybe just ruined and angry.

  And you, you just laugh, that empty, hollow, soulless laugh. You laugh at the world because you hate it and think it hates you. And it probably does. So you try to crush it. And maybe Calista was right: Victims teaching victims, not how to overcome and survive, but how to churn the foulness of each of your lives into a weapon.

  Then his mind stopped rambling, the raging stilled, replaced by the fear in Lauren’s eyes as she was held against the tree with that rope around her neck, all the sorrows of her life gathered in tears.

  You fucking asshole. You did the one thing you should never have done. What did you say? You take mine, I take yours? Well, Tank, that’s not how it works.

  His phone rang.

  “Not now, Tank!” Nagler yelled.

  But it was Calista in a video.

  Where the hell was she? The background showed a murky darkness beyond the faint light of her phone camera.

  “Hi, Frank. I know I’ve been gone. But I had to be. I’ve been hiding. I told you I was good at that. Maybe you’ve figured this out, but there are a few things Garrettson had on his mind when he came back to Jersey. One was the little girl. Second was something that was buried on the compound. That will explain why he wants the little girl. I found it and now Sarah has it. The third thing he wants is me. Dead. Killing me completes what he failed to do in Georgia. I understand you have some video of me running naked from the house at the compound. I know what it looks like, but it was me escaping. I got careless and Garrettson caught me. If he wasn’t such a flaming narcissist, I’d be dead. But he wanted to lecture me on what family means to him. He was going to dump me in the woods naked like he did the girls in Georgia. Oh, tell your Atlanta cop friend that if that camp is still standing there is something in the kitchen wall near the sink that will tell them what they need to know. Um, you won’t believe this, I know, but I miss Leonard so much. My heart aches from the pain I have caused him. There’s two things I need to do. This is the first. If I survive the second, I’ll be back.”

  The phone was placed at an angle on some stump or something facing the dark. At the corner of a screen, a faint light like a flame appeared, and then grew brighter. That light shifted out of the camera frame and a second flickering light appeared. The both were apparently collected in her hand.

  She lifted the phone to her face.

  “The only way to excise the pain is to burn it out.”

  She ran, the flames waving in the center of the camera frame. Then they were flying, one after the other. A burst of light filled the camera frame the first light exploded, followed by a second explosion.

  Jesus, Molotov cocktails.

  For a moment, Nagler wondered where she was, and at the same moment figured it out. The compound.

  Her face in the center of the camera framed by the fire.

  “No little girl will ever be raped in that place again.”

  The video ended.

  He sat heavily behind the car’s steering wheel to let the pain in his foot subside before digging a flashlight out of the glove box. He had a trip to Sarah Lawton’s grave before heading home.

  He started the car and drove slowly to Mount Pleasant, and after scanning the road, began to pull out.

  Then he stopped.

  How did she know about the drone video?

  And how did she know about Guidrey?

  ****

  The package was wedged inside a plastic flower pot, wrapped in newspaper and then double wrapped in plastic.

  She might have guessed about an Atlanta detective when I sent her the three photos of the iron bar. That made sense.

  But the drone video? Who knew about that? And how would its existence get back to Calista?

  He sat at the kitchen table and carefully opened the plastic wrapping. He told himself he should do this at the office, but with the knowledge that there was at least one more unknown Garrettson ally around, the office was not a safe place.

  The first package was a pocket-sized note pad with a green fake-leather cover. The word “Ledger” had been embossed into the cover and the indentations still held flecks of white ink. The green-tinted pages were marked with red and black ink, creating columns. Underlined headings were marked at the top of some pages: Sheep. Ponies. Bulls.

  Nagler found a few dates, some as distant as the 1930s and one as recent as 2006.

  A farmer’s ledger book of animal sales, he thought.

  Okay.

  Before he could open the second parcel, Lauren entered the kitchen from the outside. “Hey. How was the swamp?”

  “Calista burned down the compo
und,” he said sternly.

  Without taking off her jacket or dropping her pocketbook, Lauren thumped into a chair. “She what?”

  “Look,” he said and played the video.

  “Do you know where she is now?” Lauren asked.

  “No.”

  “Gonna look? You should arrest her, you know.”

  “Yeah.” Nagler laughed. “I’m a cop.”

  Lauren reached over to touch his arm. “No, I mean get her off the streets. If Garrettson wanted to kill her before this, what do you think he wants to do now?”

  But that was complicated, he thought, complicated by the drone video. Only three people knew about it.

  “She sent me to Sarah Lawton’s grave for this,” and nodded toward the open ledger and the other packet.

  “Can I?” she said as she reached for the ledger.

  Lauren flipped through a few pages and then reached into the pile of paper on the corner of the table. “These dates aren’t right, Frank.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You asked me to search Census data about that family? Well,” she pointed to the piles of paper. “Census data.” She flipped over a few pages and then nodded as she pulled out a sheet.

  “Just what I thought,” she said, her eyes puzzled. “There were no animals on that compound after 1913, Frank.” She opened the ledger to the last page to contain a date. “And certainly, none in 2006.”

  “So, what are they talking about?” he asked.