Isle of Dogs

by Patricia Cornwell

  “I see. A bluff.”

  “Of course. Now, you go to work on that right away.” The governor needed to end the discussion instantly. “Get back with me on the proposal and we’ll issue a press release before the day is out.”

  “Using aviation to catch speeders is not a good idea,” Trader warned him. “It’s going to hurt your rating in the polls and create an explosive situation . . .”

  Governor Crimm’s gut was already creating an explosive situation, and he shot up from his leather chair as he ordered Trader out. Moments later, as Crimm sat behind a closed door with the fan going, he wondered who Trooper Truth really was and if there might be a way to influence what he posted on the Internet. How helpful it would be if the governor could get a thoughtful, philosophical person to disseminate Crimm’s ideas and beliefs. Crimm reached for the portable phone on the shelf near the toilet paper.

  “Who’s this?” Crimm asked when a man answered.

  “Trooper Macovich,” came the hesitant reply from the Executive Protection Unit’s outpost in the basement of the executive mansion.

  Thorlo Macovich recognized the governor’s voice immediately and hoped the governor didn’t recognize his. Or maybe if he was lucky, the governor had already forgotten the incident that had occurred in the mansion’s billiards room the other night. It was also possible the governor hadn’t seen it, because he couldn’t see much of anything these days. But that youngest Crimm daughter would remember Macovich, all right. He had never seen anyone pitch such a fit over losing a game of pool—yelling obscenities and ordering Macovich to stay in the basement and never come upstairs again, which was seriously interfering with his duties.

  “Trooper Truth . . .” Crimm started to say as a cramp doubled him over.

  “You all right, sir?” Macovich was surprised and alarmed. “Woo, what’s that noise?”

  “You got any idea who this Trooper Truth person is?” The governor could barely talk.

  “No, sir. But everybody’s sure talking about him. What’s that? Sounds like somebody ripping bubble wrap. You sure you’re all right, sir? Wooo, it sounds like somebody’s shooting a gun in the Capitol! It ain’t safe! I’ll be right there . . . !”

  “No! Don’t come here,” the governor blurted out as gasses pushed against his organs, struggling to escape. “Find out who Trooper Truth . . . who he is. Make that your mission, you hear me? And tell the kitchen staff I want a light supper tonight. For God’s sake, no apples or ham. Maybe seafood.”

  “From Virginia, I guess, sir.” Macovich was relieved. Clearly, the governor didn’t remember him.

  “As long as it’s not shad roe.”

  “Don’t believe they catch shad roe this time of year. I can fly a state helicopter to Tangier Island and pick up fresh blue crabs, if that would please you, sir,” Macovich added with reluctance because he hated going to Tangier Island. “And maybe trout.”

  “That’s it!” the governor said, startled both by an idea and what sounded to Macovich like a deflating hot air balloon. “We’ll start with Tangier Island! You troopers can put the first speed trap over there. Did you know they used to welcome Blackbeard on that island? Bunch of pirates, that’s what they are. Well, I’ll show them.”

  “They don’t have posted speed limits on Tangier,” Macovich pointed out, and he wasn’t clear on what speed traps the governor meant. “Most of them Tangierians ride around in golf carts, sir. Or in little boats. And they already don’t get along with the rest of Virginia. You mind if I ask what speed traps you’re talking about?”

  “We don’t have a name for it yet.” Governor Crimm mopped sweat off his face as his gut continued to play against him in a loud, painful percussion. “Forget the seafood. You can just pick it up when you paint the speed traps on the island first thing tomorrow. Now listen here, Trooper, get up with Trader and he’ll brief you. We’re going to make life’s highways safe again, just like Trooper Truth said in that riddle on his website.”

  MACOVICH did not recall noticing a riddle on the Trooper Truth website, or anything at all that might have compelled the governor to decide that speed traps should be set on a remote island in the Chesapeake Bay with a population of less than seven hundred people. Macovich sure didn’t want to be dragged into anything that had to do with Tangier Island, where there wasn’t a single African American resident. In fact, when he was ordered to fly there to pick up seafood, he got the distinct impression that he was the only African American the Islanders had ever seen, except for ones on TV and in the catalogs the mail boats brought in.

  Macovich left the mansion and lit up a Salem Light as he walked around Capitol Square, not especially eager to have a word with the press secretary about this or anything else. That son of a bitch Major Trader couldn’t be trusted, and everybody knew it except the governor. Wooo, Macovich worried from inside his cloud of smoke. If the state police started picking on those Tangier people, there was going to be nothing but trouble.

  “Let me ask you something,” Macovich asked as he walked into Trader’s office. “You ever been to Tangier Island or even met a Tangierian?”

  “It’s not the sort of place I would visit.” Trader was perched over his keyboard and eating a chili dog that one of his assistants had brought him for a snack. “How many times do I have to tell you to take your sunglasses off when you’re inside a building or it’s after dark? I’ve worked very hard to change the image of all you troopers so the public doesn’t perceive you as a bunch of thickheaded brutes.” He gobbled up half of the hotdog in one mouthful and dribbled mustard on his stained, unfashionable tie. “Just because you’re plainclothes EPU and fly around in helicopters doesn’t mean you can go against protocol and make everybody look bad.”

  “Wooo, we’re gonna look bad, all right,” Macovich retorted, leaving his sunglasses on. “We go roaring into that island with our big helicopters and start handing out speeding tickets, those people are gonna do something about it.”

  “I believe that would be a mistake.” Trader wiped his flabby lips with a greasy napkin and strategized quickly. The governor had yet to inform him that the first speed traps would be set on Tangier Island, but he wasn’t about to let Macovich sense as much. “We’ll lock every one of them in jail,” he added as if he had already given much thought to the consequences should the Islanders rebel.

  “Oh, now that’s a good one, Mister Press Secretary,” Macovich said, sarcastically. “Let’s lock up the entire island of fishermen, women, and children. Not to mention all the old folks. We’ve got highway pirates running around loose out there beating the shit out of innocent truck drivers and smuggling dope into Canada, but we gonna make sure none of them Tangierians go too fast in their golf carts.”

  Trader licked his fingers and wiped them on his voluminous trousers. “I wouldn’t push my luck, if I were you,” he snipped. “Not after you cheated at pool the other night. Naughty, naughty.”

  “I didn’t cheat!” Macovich bellowed so loudly that other state employees poked their heads out of offices up and down the hall.

  “The First Family certainly thinks you did, and it’s just fortunate for you that the governor has more important matters on his mind,” Trader retorted haughtily. “I’d hate to be the one who reminds him that you aren’t very popular in the mansion these days. You certainly wouldn’t be the first EPU trooper to find himself back in uniform, riding around in a car all day and night.”

  “Well, Superintendent Hammer ain’t gonna do that to me, ’cause then who’s gonna fly the governor’s old, blind ass around, huh? Who’s gonna fly the First Family’s lazy big asses around, huh?”

  “Would you please lower your voice?” Trader raised his.

  Macovich stepped closer to the faux colonial desk, his sunglasses glaring at Trader. “In case you’ve forgotten,” Macovich snarled, “we’re down to two helicopter pilots ’cause First Lady Crimm runs ’em all off.” Macovich turned to walk out, then spun back around. “And guess what else, Trader? Life
ain’t no big plantation anymore, and one of these days you’re gonna wake up and find yourself smack in the goddamn middle of Gone With the Wind!”

  UNIQUE First had never seen Gone With the Wind or read the novel, but she could relate to the expression. She had always been able to disappear without a trace, and as a child had discovered that if she rearranged her molecules while trespassing or breaking into her neighbors’ homes, she would become invisible. She followed the cobblestone of Shockhoe Slip and slipped inside Tobacco Company, an upscale restaurant and bar in a renovated old tobacco warehouse not far from the river. Unique sat near the piano and ordered a beer and began to smoke as she relived last night.

  Acting as a decoy for the highway pirates was getting boring, if she were to be honest about it. The road dogs she had begun to associate with months ago were small-minded and stoned most of the time. Their leader, in particular, was frying his brain with booze and pot and was so out of it that Unique no longer bothered having sex with him. She tapped an ash and signaled the waitress to bring another beer as she felt the stare of a woman sitting alone at the bar.

  “You from out of town?” the woman asked, and her strong energy and hot eyes registered clearly on Unique’s sexual radar.

  “In and out,” Unique evasively replied with her sweet smile.

  “Oh.” The woman got up and marveled over this pretty woman’s unique way of expressing herself. “Mind if I join you?” She set her beer down on Unique’s table and pulled out a chair. “My name’s T. T., which is really funny now that this Trooper Truth stuff is all over the place. You won’t believe it, but people who know me and even strangers all of a sudden got this crazy notion that my initials T.T. stand for Trooper Truth, and just because I wrote for my high school newspaper, I’m supposedly Trooper Truth but don’t want anybody to know!”

  Unique held T. T.’s gaze and sipped beer.

  “Well, I’m not,” T.T. went on. “But I wish like hell I was because that’s the new mystery in this town: Who is Trooper Truth? What’s the truth about Trooper Truth? Like he’s Robin Hood or something. You got any guesses? And you sure have amazing hair. You must brush it all the time.”

  “I don’t know,” Unique replied as T. T. bounced her foot and fidgeted nervously like a schoolboy with a crush. “My car’s broke down. Maybe you could give me a ride home?”

  “Sure!” T.T. said. “Hey, no problem. Man, you got such a quiet voice. Sorry about your car. Man, that’s such a bitch when your car fucks up, you know?”

  T. T. continued to rattle on as she smacked a ten-dollar bill on the bar and put on her leather biker’s jacket. She usually wasn’t this successful when she tried to pick up women, but it was about damn time her luck changed. T.T. worked for the state and had to wear dresses and other feminine attire in the office, where no one knew the truth about her private life. So the only opportunity she had for assuaging her loneliness was to dress the part and hang out in bars at night and on weekends. This was expensive and largely unproductive, and her hands were shaking with excitement as she let Unique into her old Honda.

  “Which way?” T.T. asked as she pulled out onto Cary Street.

  “Let’s go down to the dock, you know, off Canal. I love looking at the river. We’ll walk on Belle Island,” Unique replied in her tiny, hushed voice as her Purpose, as she thought of it, throbbed inside her and a slow burn of ancient rage began to consume her brain.

  Minutes later, she and T. T. got out of the Honda and stood along the water, the chilled September air blowing Unique’s hair like black fire. There wasn’t another person around and it vaguely penetrated Unique’s spell that T.T. was incredibly stupid to wander off with a perfect stranger, and how dare she just assume that Unique was of her persuasion and would be interested. How incredibly stupid the other ones had been, too. Unique took T.T.’s hand and they walked over a footbridge that led to Belle Island, where Union soldiers had been imprisoned during the Civil War. The island was densely wooded and cut with bike paths and trails. Unique pulled T. T. behind a tree and began to kiss and fondle her into a frenzy.

  “I want you to have a unique experience,” Unique whispered as she dug her tongue into T.T.’s mouth and slipped a box cutter out of a pocket.

  Three

  Major Trader had served in the Crimm administration long enough to realize several things. First, the governor did indeed have a lot on his mind and was therefore easily persuaded to endorse a policy or suggestion that differed from his original conception. Second, as if he weren’t already confused and almost blind, he was forgetful and easily distracted, especially if his bowels acted up. Third, Trader was best served if he stole good ideas and blamed other people for bad ones.

  As Trader sat in his office, looking out the window at Macovich’s cloud of smoke retreating across the graceful Capitol grounds, he considered the governor’s positions on various agendas and reminded himself that Crimm had been pounded repeatedly for transportation problems throughout the Commonwealth. Traffic continued to be impossibly congested and motorists were getting increasingly hostile in northern Virginia. Roads and bridges were falling apart. Trains did not always run on time or at all and were overcrowded, and nobody liked to fly anymore. The governor was blamed for all of it and more.

  Although Trader did not intend to give Macovich credit for warning him about the people of Tangier, Trader was certain that the governor’s latest notion about speed traps on the island was going to be met with stinging resentment, and it was therefore probably best to give someone else the credit. He jotted some quick notes on a pad of paper, wondering what the new initiative should be called. He tried Speed Check Aviation Regulation but decided SCAR wasn’t quite what he was looking for, but he was rather pleased with SCARE, which could be an acronym for Speed Check Aviation Regulation Emergency. Yes, he thought, that could work very well. SCARE would make the governor’s point about scaring people into behaving, and Emergency hinted to the public that the governor believed that stopping speeders on Tangier Island and elsewhere was a matter of life and death. No matter what Trooper Truth leaked about pirates, the public wouldn’t pay any attention, because citizens would be in a lather about speed traps. Trader tried the governor’s private line.

  “Yes?” Crimm sounded weak and bleary.

  “I think I’ve come up with something. How would SCARE work for you?” Trader tapped his pen on his notepad. “It certainly sends the message you want. Just imagine SCARE painted on signs across the Commonwealth.”

  Crimm’s rump was raw. He was shaky and soaked in cold sweat, and as he tried to remember what he and Trader might have talked about right before Crimm’s terrible gastrointestinal eruption, all the governor could piece together was something about Trooper Truth’s riddle.

  “You mean, scare him into revealing his true identity?” The governor sat down in his big leather chair, picked up the magnifying glass, and discovered a new pile of memos and news clips. “Now where did those come from?”

  “Where did what come from? You mean the SCARE signs?” Trader was befuddled, which was fairly routine when he talked to the governor.

  “Oh, I see.” It was a figure of speech, of course. “I suppose you’re talking about scaring Trooper Truth into telling the truth about who he is. I suppose he could be a she. I don’t feel well and really can’t discuss this further.”

  “I was talking about the speed traps.” Trader hated it when the governor cut him off. “We have to come up with a name for the program and I thought SCARE would do exactly what you were hoping . . .”

  “Nonsense!” The governor suddenly remembered the gist of their earlier conversation. “If you call something SCARE, then everybody on Tangier Island will know the point is to scare them and they’ll suspect it’s an empty threat. Come up with a name that sounds more bureaucratic and rather meaningless, then the Islanders will take it seriously.”

  “Well, those Islanders are going to be difficult, as I’ve already said.” Trader took credit for warnin
g the governor. “Just remember, you heard it from me first. So don’t blame me if there’s controversy.”

  “If I look bad, I most assuredly will blame you.”

  “As you should,” Trader said. “But don’t let my warning stop you from laying down the law, Governor.” Trader had long since mastered the art of doublespeak. “I think we should send a helicopter down there immediately and try out our program. Don’t you?”

  “We send helicopters down there anyway to pick up my seafood. So I don’t see why not.”

  “That’s exactly my point,” Trader agreed.

  TRADER hung up and scribbled on his notepad for an hour, trying every combination of meaningless words he could conjure up or find in the thesaurus. By the end of the afternoon, he came up with VASCAR, which stood for Visual Average Speed Computer, more or less, and implied that if a motorist was visibly speeding, then an objective nonhuman device—a computer—would decide if the person was guilty by calculating the average speed he was going when he moved from point A to point B. Points A and B would be white stripes painted across pavement that could easily be spotted from the air. Trader was certain the acronym would be appropriately confusing and bureaucratic enough to strike fear in the hearts of all. Most important, he would make sure that any public outrage would be directed at the state police, and not the governor or him.

  This is brilliant, he happily thought as he logged on to the Internet, using an alias screen name. A scheme was rapidly unfolding in his mind, and there was much to do. He pulled up the Trooper Truth website, his pulse breaking into a gallop. Nothing excited him more than his own cleverness and skills at manipulation. He would make sure the news of VASCAR raced through cyberspace and alerted people around the world that Virginia would not tolerate speeders and never had, and that the Commonwealth was a big bully that sent in powerful helicopters to persecute an island of quiet watermen, few of whom owned cars. He would see to it that citizens were furious and complained directly to State Police Superintendent Judy Hammer, thus diverting transportation criticism and pirate problems away from the governor and, of course, away from Trader.