by Pat McKee
“That’s a lot to swallow.”
“It’s the truth.”
“I ‘spect it is. No one could make all that up, least ways no one in his right damn mind.”
We had closed the barn and moved to the porch in case some fly-over got too curious and decided to take a closer look. Agent Grey had set his shotgun in the corner, and we both sat on rocking chairs under ceiling fans, which kept a cool breeze stirring all afternoon. A pleasant evening chill had settled in. For a few moments, talking to Agent Grey about the firm, the trial, and Melissa, I relaxed, allowing the solitude of the place to envelop me, forgetting I was a fugitive from a triple-murder charge, hunted by every law enforcement agency in the State. In these moments, through multi-paned floor-to-ceiling windows, I could see a comfortable, well-appointed lodge, with pine floors, walls, and ceilings, a deep-leather sofa and over-stuffed chairs, trophy-buck and lunker-bass lining the walls. Beyond the clearing of the house and barn lay trackless forests, tangled swamps, torpid rivers.
“Nice place.”
“Lodge was my father’s. I inherited it from him, as he did from his father. Most of the land around here was my grandfather’s farm. He sold all but a couple hundred acres to the paper company. The paper company used to clear-cut everything but our property ‘bout once every twenty years. Now Canadian logs are so cheap it’s easier to buy from them than it is to get up in here with all their logging equipment. They haven’t cut up here since I was a boy.”
“You live here full time?”
“Now I do. Was a time when I didn’t. That was ‘fore I got shot by a psycho holed up in an elementary school with thirty kids and a school teacher. I ‘bout had the guy holding the kids talked out of it when his partner snuck around behind me. FBI was ‘sposed to be watching my back. GBI gave me a commendation and made me retire. I moved out here.”
“You got a family?”
He looked in my eyes, then away, shaking his head, his look betraying a deep sorrow, a sorrow I felt best left further undisturbed. He turned back to me, the pain still in his eyes.
“So what you gonna do now?”
That was the question I had yet to answer, had not even begun to answer, my entire being focused for the last few hours on escaping. Having found temporary refuge, I was at a loss as to my next step. I needed time to think.
“How long can I stay here?”
“Not long, maybe a day, two at most. Probably take that long ‘fore a cruiser comes nosing up the trail to check out the place. There’s a bunk in the barn. You can hide out in there. In case anyone shows up looking for you, I’ll at least have a straight-faced excuse for not knowing you were here if they find you. I spend most of my time in the woods and on the river.” He tossed me my keys. “You can have your car back, but it’s not going to do you much good—every cop in the country is looking for it now. By the way, if you get any ideas about heading out on that four-wheeler, it’s booby trapped. You try to crank it, all your troubles will be over.”
“Anything else I need to know?”
“Don’t try coming in the house. Bubba wouldn’t like it.”
“Bubba?”
“Rottweiler. Electronic security systems don’t work out here.”
I remembered having seen a chain-link dog-run on the side of the lodge when I drove up, but no dog.
“I haven’t even heard him bark.”
“You won’t hear him. And you won’t see him until he has a big hunk of your ass in his teeth.”
Agent Grey rose and started to head inside.
“I’m gonna fry some fish and cook some grits for supper. Interested?”
Only then did I realize I hadn’t eaten since my breakfast with Fowler and Oliver long hours ago. The mere thought of food made my empty stomach growl. While I sat in the rocking chair on the porch, Agent Grey soon had two black cast-iron kettles fired up on a gas cooker in the yard, fish frying in one, grits bubbling in the other. The fish, filleted crappie caught this morning, breaded in cornmeal, Cajun-seasoned, deep-flash-fried in peanut oil, was served with buttery grits doctored with plenty of salt and pepper, and it tasted better to me than meals I have had at many a four-star restaurant.
“Agent Grey, thank you for what you’re doing. I know you can get in a lot of trouble for this.”
“I ain’t getting in any trouble over you. I never knew you was here.”
“Thanks anyway. I’m tired. I’m heading to the barn.”
The barn was now my refuge and my prison, my security from the helicopters and cruisers that had crisscrossed the swamp searching for me, but also a cell I dare not escape for fear of certain capture. That night I lay on the dusty mattress, listening to the squirrels and mice run the rafters and gnaw bags full of seed. I imagined the seed was meant both for feed plots and to cultivate habitat for deer and quail, the game that Agent Grey would hunt in season. I wondered where I would be by the fall, the leaves in the swamp turned golden, when the game, fattened on grain which now lay as seed in the barn, would be frying in Agent Grey’s blackened skillet. Fall was too long a time to consider; too many things could happen for me ever to think that far along. Tomorrow was as far as I dared go.
It was always two and three in the morning when my own mind tormented me, the looming deadlines, the hand-to-hand combat that litigation had become, the fears of loss and of failure taking palpable form, but nothing I had yet experienced matched the terror that overwhelmed me that night. Vast armies of troopers were arrayed, even at that hour, bent on my capture, equipped with all the power and intelligence the state can field against its citizens. I was nothing and had nothing in the face of all that the government could bring to bear. Yet I had to survive, if for no reason other than for Melissa. Maybe I was deceived, and maybe what Fowler said about her was true, but I chose to believe Melissa over a dead man who had killed himself and at least two others to keep his corporate crimes from being discovered. Having made my choice, I had to play it out. It was only the thought of Melissa—now thousands of miles away, sheltered in her own refuge, captured in her own prison—which kept me from walking out of that barn and flagging down the first state trooper I saw.
Ten
The graying of darkness just before dawn filtered through the upper windows of the barn, then brightened and woke me, for the time sparing me further torment. Morning brings hope, fresh thoughts, and new plans, no matter how dark, how dismal, the night. My mood rose with the sun. Now I lay thinking, my mind teeming, racing.
I had to get into the firm email system, to find out what my partners were saying, to see if anyone were trying to contact me, to gauge what was known publicly. If someone were trying to contact me, it might give me a chance to plant some disinformation concerning my whereabouts. I held out some hope that I hadn’t been tagged with Judge Richard’s death, a fact which would significantly simplify matters, for if it were just my word against that of a dead man, I might consider turning myself in and taking my chances with the DA.
I needed access to the Internet. From there I could get into the firm’s email system and into my email account without attracting suspicion. Though the firm’s security was severe, and it touted the faultless confidentiality of its systems to its clients, many of its lawyers were less than attentive to security measures. I know several passcodes belonging to other attorneys, and it wasn’t unusual for an associate to check a senior lawyer’s email and even monitor it for him. Hell, some of the older lawyers didn’t even know how to use a computer. The firm’s paranoid clients would pass out if they knew that anyone from a secretary on up could access their most delicate company secrets, take them home, and laugh about them with their friends over drinks. Like the time when a paralegal in the white-collar crimes section—euphemistically known as the “Special Operations Unit” so as not to scare off potential clients—downloaded a Fortune 500 CEO’s personal porn collection, including pictures of him and his mi
stress, and displayed it at a party. Security systems only go so far.
Once the lawyers of Strange & Fowler got the news of my imminent demise, there would be dozens of firm hackers—chief among them my “loyal” partners, my “dedicated” associates—from the merely curious to the thoroughly malicious, plundering my email. Each one would be searching for the gem that would further his own career, jumping on any opportunity to stand on my shoulders and push his own head above water, pouncing on any unprotected leads to increase his revenue share. In this regard, a major law firm is no different from law school, the closest thing to swimming naked with great whites one can do on dry land. With all the activity in my account, I would be just an unidentifiable face in the crowd, working someone else’s passcode.
The problem was finding some way to access the Internet in the middle of the woods. I had my doubts whether Agent Grey even had a computer, much less Internet access, but he was a start. Maybe he knew someone who did. As soon as I saw light in the lodge, I tapped on the screen door, wary of arousing Bubba. Agent Grey met me at the door, coffee mug in hand.
“Internet? Sure. I’ve got a dish in a pine tree locked on to a satellite feed I’ve hacked into. No one can even trace the signal.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“You don’t think I’m some dumb-ass redneck do you? Hell, how do you ‘spect I get along out in the woods? I cross-trained in electronic surveillance while at the GBI. My undergraduate degree is from Georgia Tech.”
“Your undergraduate degree?”
“I’ve got a master’s degree in psychology from Vanderbilt. That’s why the GBI used me in hostage negotiations.” Agent Grey betrayed a slight smile. “Have some coffee and a biscuit and I’ll get you hooked up.”
After two cups of strong coffee and a couple hot, buttered biscuits, Agent Grey took me inside and opened a pair of doors that appeared to be a hall closet, but instead revealed a small room with a desk, server, large flat screen monitor, and laser printer—all the latest equipment, newer even than what I had at the firm. Agent Grey rattled off some computer-geek talk about how fast and good it all was, but as far as I was concerned, he might as well have been speaking in tongues. I looked around the lodge.
“So where’s Bubba?”
“Out back.”
I turned my attention to the computer.
“You sure this can’t be traced?
“Hell, I’ve hacked into the FBI from here. No one knew it happened.”
Relieved, I pulled up a chair, grabbed the mouse, circled it once, and the desk top appeared.
“So how do I get on? Any special protocol?”
“Just click on the browser.”
The Google homepage popped up immediately. Agent Grey drifted away, leaving me to my investigations. I typed a few lines of instructions, and within seconds I was connected. A press release on William Fowler’s significant life and unanticipated death was posted at the firm’s home page.
Atlanta, Georgia. For Immediate Release.
William Fowler, 72, son of the founding partner of the firm Strange & Fowler, was found dead at his cottage on Frederica Island this morning. He is survived by his wife, Sarah, three children, all of whom are attorneys, and six grandchildren.
Mr. Fowler was well-known for his civic accomplishments. . . .
I scrolled down. The press release mentioned a private graveside and memorial service at St. Phillips Cathedral. But there was no cause of death, no mention of the judge, no mention of Oliver. And there was no mention of me, only that “Fowler had spent the evening before dining at his favorite restaurant in the Abbey with friends from the worlds of business, law, and the arts.” I looked further for a separate press release, something that might mention the judge or Oliver or me. Nothing. I got into my email account using the password of an associate whom I had authorized to monitor my account during a recent trial. Though there was still an email account with my name, there was nothing in it. I had not one single email in my inbox or deleted files, though I received, sent, and deleted hundreds a day; by now I expected it to be close to overflowing. Someone had performed a security erase on my account and was diverting all my emails to another user. My email account was nothing but electronic bait. All my other accounts were shut down.
I had to find out what the official word at the firm was about me, whether they were still trying to keep my name out of the discussion of the three deaths, or if they’d already elected to let me hang for them. But I had one backdoor left to the firm.
Tracey.
Tracey is the once drug-addicted first child of my secretary, Lillian, the result of a teen-aged indiscretion. Lillian had never married Tracey’s father. At the firm Lillian presented the image of the perfect mother of the perfect family, and she did everything to keep it that way. Husband a middle-manager for BellSouth, two children, boy and girl, in seventh and eighth grades in the public schools, soccer, baseball, softball, church, scouts. No mention of an illegitimate child, and never was such a thing suspected. She was always proper, never out of control, except one day.
Lillian came into my office and closed the door, crying. My immediate thought was there had been a death in her family. But she told me her daughter Tracey had been arrested, a daughter no one outside her family knew about, a child she had while in high school. Lillian’s parents had raised Tracey. Always defiant, now she’d been arrested for possession. Lillian feared that if it got out there would be trouble for her at the firm. There was already trouble at home.
Without telling anyone where I was going or what I was doing, I was on the next plane to Dallas. I called a law-school classmate who was the chief prosecutor where Tracey was arrested. I was able to get her first-offender treatment on the condition that she’d attend a twelve-step program. Tracey was one of their successes. After a year, I got her a job with a friend in a small firm outside Dallas. I’d stayed in touch with Tracey, befriending, encouraging, counseling her. Now she’d step in front of a bullet for me with a smile on her face. So would her mother.
Tracey’s great utility at this point in my life was the fact that no one at the firm knew of her other than Lillian and me. I could risk a call to Tracey, have her call her mother, then call me back. It was worth talking to Grey about.
“I have a couple of drop phones you can use to call her, but use each phone only once, no more. For their sakes make sure they don’t use your name; at least it will give them some deniability. Tell Tracey not to contact her mother on a firm line under any circumstance. I’ll leave the phones in the truck so you can steal them. There’s no cell phone reception here. You’ll have to walk down toward the road ‘bout a mile before you can pick up the cell tower in Nahunta, but stay in the woods in case someone comes nosing around. When you finish with them, pull the batteries and throw the phones into the river.”
Keeping off the trail toward the river, I picked my way through brush, over downed trees, on the lookout for sunning snakes, dozing gators. By the time I picked up a cell tower, I was close enough to the road to hear the occasional logging truck. I buried myself deeper in the woods to make my calls.
Tracey’s cell rang several times. I imagined her, hearing her cell ring, seeing a strange number on the screen, debating whether she should answer. Please pick up.
“Hello.”
“Tracey, don’t hang up. I hope you recognize my voice. I can’t use my name and you can’t either.”
“Well, this is a little strange, but I think so. You’ve got just a few seconds to assure me you are who I think you are or I’m hanging up.”
“I helped you a few years ago with a small legal matter.”
“O.K. So why are we talking in code?”
I told her only that I had a problem with the firm, was concerned about security, and needed her to contact her mother to find out if anyone at the firm was looking for me. We hung up. I waited for
her to call back on the other phone.
Sitting still in a primordial swamp even for a few minutes makes you the target of all manner of creatures. I was fending off a swarm of mosquitoes, hoping I had not attracted the attention of something more immediately lethal, when the other cell rang.
“No one in the firm has any information about you, and the fact that you’re not there hasn’t been noticed. Everyone is so shocked about Fowler’s death. The managing partner has told Lillian to direct all questions about you to him. You’re not in trouble, are you? You know I could—”
I cut Tracey off. The last thing I wanted her to do was to start aiding a potential felon. She had enough to overcome on her own.
“Nothing else? No other contacts?”
“One other. Lillian said your mother left the rehab facility and showed up at your office yesterday. Says she’s got a lease on a trailer but has a week to come up with next month’s rent or she’s going to be on the street again. Your mom needs a utility deposit, too; needs a thousand dollars.”
Mom.
Before I got my job at Strange & Fowler and had a steady income, Mom had made her last disastrous reappearance in my life on the day of my graduation from high school. Somehow my mother made her way to Thornwood, a well-meaning matron finding Mom, telling her I was graduating at the top of my class and had won a scholarship to college. It turns out her interest in my graduation had nothing to do with pride in my accomplishments.
She stumbled into the auditorium just as I was starting my valedictory speech. At first I didn’t recognize her—hair matted, dress immodestly askew, loud and awkward, red-faced, finding a seat in the back, pointing toward the podium.
One significant irony about Thornwood Orphanage was that most of the kids there weren’t orphans. Like me, the majority were sent there because their parents were unfit. So we were often dealing with a peculiar form of embarrassment: an unfortunate parent who, by merely being alive, kept you from being an orphan, from being someone who could create themselves, from being free of their past. My mother was that person to me. But, unlike other parents of children at Thornwood, she never tried to make contact with me in all the years I was there, never a birthday card, Christmas present, or visit. By the time she showed up the day of my graduation, I had willed her dead. I was an orphan.
