by Tim Garvin
Then Glenda confessed her affair. She wasn’t in love either, she said, and maybe never had been. Anyway, he was changed, she said, and what did he expect? He was behind a wall.
After they divorced, to free himself from the combat cycle, he applied to the Marine Criminal Investigation Division, and his last deployment had been stateside at Camp Henderson, just outside his home county, where he had been a CID sergeant under Henry Rhodes, now the new sheriff. He moved back to the barracks, unmoored. When his enlistment was up, he left the Marines to finish college.
To supplement his income, he formed a rock band. He began to take long slow walks in the woods around Raleigh, and on the walks began to sing, not rock songs, but hymns and slow-cadenced folk ballads that his mother, a music teacher, had taught him as a child, songs in which human emotion had been purified and distilled. Feeling began to reemerge. He thought more and more of his near-death experience, learned it was called an NDE, that thousands had had them, in the past and especially now, since the sixties, when cardiovascular resuscitation became possible. They were the same in every era and culture—a tunnel or river, dead relatives, angels or Jesus or Krishna, and always love and welcome. He eventually saw the indifference of the world that had tormented him more evenly and recognized it in himself as well. He graduated and took a job with his old commander. Battle fever was a jacket now, a dangerous jacket, no doubt, but you could take it off, and there was a closet for it, and you could close the closet.
His mother, who was then dating Squint Cooper, the famous Silver Star–recipient hog farmer, sensed the change in him, and invited him to dinner, and also invited Squint’s daughter, Charlene. Seb hesitated. After all, when Seb was a Marine MP, he had sent her brother, Cody, to the brig. But she was bright-minded, and it hadn’t mattered. Charlene was pretty and willing, and they’d dated for a few months. It was like a movie though, his front self saying the words, his behind self watching and wanting solitude, sometimes wanting to run.
Then he met Charlene’s pottery instructor, Mia Fairchild. Something in him thawed. Something woke and wanted. He picked Charlene up at the studio three times, then told her he needed a break. He was not ready, he said, and hoped he was lying.
The M416
When the storm neared, Cody left the sand chair and lay on top of his sleeping bag to watch the lightning strikes out over the water. Next thing, a seventy-five knot wind was raking his campsite. Seventy-five knots, he learned from his sister the next day, was hurricane force. The tent went flat and started flapping like a pinned bird. Which meant he had missed a tab or grommet in the stoned tent erection he had been so proud of. Or else his dad had bought a cheap tent. If Cody hadn’t had the foresight to get his body flattened on the floor, the tent would have kited into the night.
When the rain started, it was horizontal and bullet-hard, and, since the net window was blown tight across the top of his head and bald spot, it stung like crazy. This was the point, he would think later, that fate started.
He wrestled the window sideways, so that now it came down beside his face. That was when the first chopper blasted over, the engine noise almost blending into the storm, but lower pitched and noticeable. Then the twin lightning strikes came, big-time fatefully, and the glare showed the blacked-out chopper and also something big tumbling from the underslung cargo net. Then blackness again.
It was super vivid, so maybe a hallucination. He had toked two bowls that evening, but he didn’t hallucinate on weed, unless it was laced, and he did not lace his weed. But he had anointed one baggie with a sprinkle of nicotine from Charlene’s e-cig stash—product research—then got the baggies confused. So maybe he had just made a discovery—hallucinogenic nicotine marijuana. Five seconds later, still wondering whether he had hallucinated or seen something amazing, a chopper dropping its load into the drink, he saw a second chopper roar over, also blacked out. A few seconds after that the campsite was bathed in pearly white, and he heard the whumping concussion of the explosion. And he saw, very clearly, twenty yards out in the creek, wheels down, the load sticking up like a timber snag, the M416 trailer that had dropped from the net.
A Hanging
The Honda had climbed back to sixty, and now a massive gust slapped it into the opposite lane. Seb corrected and slowed again. The wild, brave wind matched his mood. He started the song “Four Strong Winds,” holding the wheel with his right hand and cupping his ear with his left to hear above the racket of rain.
“Four strong winds that blow lonely …”
Then the sky on the ocean side blossomed amazingly white yellow and brightly endured, so definitely not artillery or a lightning strike. An instant later, even over the rain crash, he heard the rolling thumps of explosions. The green rectangle of mile marker six flared past in his headlights. He lifted the radio mike.
“Lori, how copy?”
A female voice crisped through the speaker. “Lori. Go ahead, Seb.”
“I’m on mile six of the Marine cut. I just observed a major explosion on the sea side. In the swamp. I think it’s an aviation crash. You better call the base.”
“You stopping?”
“No. It’s hell and gone in the swamp. I couldn’t see it, but the sky lit up, and I heard it. Call the Marines. Tell them mile six.”
“It’s not artillery?”
“It was fuel.”
“Copy that. Out.”
It would be an accident. They wouldn’t waste that much fuel in training. Unless they might. Some battalion commander gets an idea. So maybe an exploded fuel dump for some wild-hair reason. But likely choppers. It would be choppers. And violent flaming death.
Lori called him back three minutes later.
“Sebastian. How copy?”
He lifted the mike. “Go ahead.”
“It was a chopper, or two choppers. I spoke to the provost watch over there. They’re going frantic.”
“Jesus.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m about to leave the cut. Going home.”
“Well, you got to turn around.”
“They want me out there?” He began to slow, looking for a turnaround.
“This is unrelated. I just got a call from Deputy Garland. He was on patrol out near Twice Mile and went to check on Leo Sackler, which he’s been doing, I guess.”
“That got the Ford place?”
“Right, that got the Ford place. And he found Leo hung by the neck in a hole. Randall’s securing the crime scene.”
“He’s dead?”
“Randall says he is definitely dead.”
“It’s not a suicide? It’s a crime scene?” Seb had stopped the Honda and now backed into a chained-off gravel road, then swung back onto the asphalt in the opposite direction.
“Well, you’re the detective. It might be Randall’s wishful thinking.”
“What do you mean, a hole?”
“Randall says Leo’s been digging a hole out there. I guess it’s real deep. And now he’s hung in it. From a ladder or something. Randall was talking fairly fast. I called Lieutenant Stinson, and I’m fixing to call the rest of the squad. And the sheriff. I had you as on call, which the lieutenant said was right. By the way, he thinks you’re going to be on courthouse duty for a while because of your fight. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. And, just so you know, I did not violate the man’s civil rights. I’m turned around. ETA in ten minutes. Tell Randall to stay out of the hole. Tell him to get out his plastic sheet and cover everything he can. Is it raining in town?”
“It stopped. It’s probably still raining on Randall though. The sheriff will love that. About the plastic.”
“I know he will.”
Seb crossed the Fleming Ferry gate in the rapid-pass lane, went eleven miles west along Sable River Road to Twice Mile Road, then a short stretch to the Ford farm gate, a rust-covered arch of ornate blac
ksmith-twisted iron. The gravel road made a soggy crunch, but the rain had stopped. He passed under the straight-line canopy of oaks, the typical Southern passage to the manse, which was a two story, many windowed erection of peeled logs and copper roofing, a hundred feet wide and half as deep, set on the bank of the once pristine Sable River inlet. The inlet was currently being despoiled by farm, lawn, and parking lot runoff, and also, three years ago, it was inundated with twenty-five million gallons of Cooper Farms hog shit, which flowed down Council Creek past the lodge and into the inlet, resulting in a million menhaden and spotted trout deaths and an uproar of lawsuits.
He turned left in the gravel parking area, and his headlights jounced at a brown Swann County cruiser parked beside a red Ford pickup, shiny and ancient, the swollen rear fenders like matronly hips. Randall emerged from the cruiser with his leather investigation logbook and hailed him. He was an early twenties black man, a six-month deputy, just released to his own patrol. His gym-bulked size was evident even under his slicker.
He was at the door when Seb’s car stopped, backstepping as the door opened.
As Seb got out, his flashlight glanced Randall’s large-jawed face, which seemed to Seb intent with first-murder excitement. He would not know about the chopper crash then. Seb considered mentioning it, but that would mean exchanging rue, which he was not inclined to do with this eager youth.
Seb said, “Randall Garland?”
“Right.”
They shook hands and said it was nice to meet each other.
Seb said, “You tape it off?”
“Well, I started. Then I thought I better get that plastic down. I was halfway into it and here come the rain and wind. What we need is stakes too.”
The new sheriff had used part of his welcome money for replacement items for the patrol car trunks: flares, tape, and blankets, plus—the sheriff’s innovation—a roll of four mil plastic for outdoor crime scene preservation, just in lucky time to protect the death scene of the mysterious Leo Sackler.
“Did it blow off?”
“Half of it did. It’s plastered all over the trees.”
“We going to be in the woods?”
“No, just the side of the house. You won’t need boots.”
“I was thinking chiggers and ticks.” It was middle May, and Seb had seen the unmowed grass on the lawns as he entered.
“Oh, man. I been in there already. You got any bug spray?”
Seb retrieved a spray can from his door panel, sprayed his cuffs and ankles, and handed the can to Randall.
Seb said, “Anybody in the house?”
“No. I knocked, then I went in and made a sweep. It was unlocked.” Randall sprayed his cuffs, then wrote briefly in his logbook. “I got you in at ten thirty-four.”
Seb replaced the bug spray in the door, retrieved his flashlight, then rummaged for a pair of latex gloves, and slid them on. He calculated. Ten hours before his coffee date with Mia. Give him a few hours at the scene, he might get home to sleep and shower. Or sleep in his car, get a toothbrush at a 7-Eleven. They started across the gravel.
Seb said, “That’s his pickup?”
“Yep.”
“Looks like a high-priced antique.”
“He paid twenty-five thousand for it. It’s a ’54 F-100. He and his dad used to work on them.”
“Lori said you were out here checking on him. You get to know him?”
“A little. I’m on area two patrol, and I think, well, what if he gets victimized? Maybe those Coopertown boys think he’s got some of that money in the house. So I wanted to show the cruiser for visual deterrent.”
“How many times?”
“This is my fourth trip.”
“You shoot the shit with him?”
“Sort of. Nice place, nice view, that kind of stuff. Nice truck.”
“You usually come after dark?”
“No, just this time. I had come in the daylight, and I wanted to slow roll Coopertown in the dark.”
“Did they see you?”
“In the daylight they did. This evening a few guys had fires going under the bathtubs in Elton’s yard. Before the storm.”
“You ever run into visitors out here?”
“Never did.”
They left the graveled lot and crossed through the knee-high grass of the side lawn. A mound of red-brown earth came in view, coursed with rivulets. Beside it was a round hole, six feet in diameter, and above the hole a multipurpose ladder was cocked in a V. At the top of the V hung three lines of thin nylon rope. Two were relaxed and led to the handles of five-gallon plastic buckets upended near the mound. A third bucket lay on its side some yards away. One rope was taut.
Randall said, “Last time I come out here, he was down there digging. He said he was going to dig out the old well.”
A handled rod with some type of clamp at the end leaned against the ladder. In a moment, Seb placed it. A selfie stick. Which likely meant a phone somewhere. The top of another ladder emerged from the dark of the hole. Beside the hole, a stepladder lay across a sheet of clear plastic. Another plastic sheet made a pearly cummerbund around the trunks of a stand of pines twenty yards away.
The woolly white top of a head came in view. Seb circled, flashlighted the dark-brown face, slack jaw, brown tongue, open eyes. The face and clothes glistened with rainwater. The rope looped around his neck and under his right armpit, so that the arm was erect over his head, elbow bent, the wrist and hand dropped near the opposite ear, like a dancer’s move. Below, a shovel lay crosswise on the uneven mud. He wandered the light methodically over the bottom. There was no phone visible.
Randall said, “It’s brick on the sides down there.” The deputy shined his flashlight on the wall. “You can make out the bricks.”
Seb said, “Why was he digging out the well?”
“I asked him, and he said, ‘Everybody needs water.’”
“How did he say it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did he say it sly, like that’s not the real reason, but I can’t tell you the real reason?”
“He said it more friendly. He wanted the whole family to move in with him, so maybe he needed water. Or maybe he wanted something to do, like a guy glad to be out of prison. Like why he bought that old truck. That’s what I thought.”
“Did he say how old the well was?”
“No, but it was grass on top. He had to cut through the sod.”
Seb said, “Did you check for a pulse?”
“Well, I couldn’t get down to him, and I didn’t want to pull him up in case I would mess things up. I laid down and touched his cheek, and it felt like cold putty, so I thought, well, I guarantee he’s dead.”
“I suppose you laid that ladder on the plastic.”
“Yeah, because a while back, man, the wind was—”
“It would have been better just to have gone back to the cruiser, Randall. If it’s a crime, I’m going to need clues.”
Randall threw his arms halfway wide. “Well, I wondered. But the rain was coming hard, and I was thinking, maybe I’ll save a footprint. There’s some dirt under there.”
Seb raised the light slightly so that Randall’s face emerged from shadow. The face was strained, earnest for fairness but ready for blame.
After a moment, Seb said, “Maybe you’re right.” When the flashlight gleamed Randall’s face again, Seb saw the strain had relented to relief. He said, “I was on the cut going home, and I witnessed two choppers exploding in a fireball over the swamp.”
“Oh, my God!”
“That’s all I know. Lori says they’re responding over there. About fifteen minutes ago.”
“Oh, man.”
“We need to start a grid search. We’re looking for a phone.”
Misfortunate Find
Cody scrunched in his tent,
waiting out the wind. He didn’t want to catch a flying branch in the face and also didn’t want to wade the creek with busy lightning. Ten minutes later the lightning stopped, and the wind was down to a thirty-knot gale. He shrugged around under the sodden nylon until he found his flashlight, then backed out the door and beamed the light around. Several of the tent pegs had come out of the sand and some of the cords were whipping around, but most still held. He saw that Charlene’s aluminum boat, which he had tied to a bush, had come completely out of the water, five-horse motor and all, and lay streamed on its bowline a few feet from the tent. If he had tied it looser, the prop could have bashed him in the head.
He crossed to the water and aimed the flashlight across the canal, and there it was, the M416, standard little military trailer, crisscrossed with straps, and under the straps its cargo, two six-foot-long cases stenciled with fim-92.
The fate part of his finding the M416 had started years ago, in Kuwait, when he and Kenny Bartol had been the only two guys in his company selected for Stinger training. A squad of low-altitude air defense guys had driven them into the desert and let them each shoot down a drone, so that now, standing on the water in a wild gale, Cody knew exactly what he was looking at.
His heart raced, and he was instantly full of prickling danger and panic hurry. He would have time, since those choppers had crashed, definitely, and that’s where the Marines would be, swarming the wreckage. Then again, the pilot might have radioed, lost my cargo, heading back. That right there was why they crashed, probably, one guy turning and the other guy right in his face.
