The Letter Keeper

by Charles Martin

  “You want me to lie?”

  “I want you to lie your face off and tell them that a talented and gifted off-Broadway dancer gave up a career in sold-out shows to care for her daughter, who was recovering from an opioid addiction, plus two adopted daughters, both recovering from multiple issues, not the least of which was ritual sexual abuse.”

  Bones saw the ripple effects play out in his mind. “Which means I need to conduct a funeral this week.”

  “We need to publicly bury four memories.” I considered this. “Actually, make it five. Tell them Gunner died in the fire. All we found was his scorched collar.” I slipped Gunner’s collar off and handed it to Eddie. “Make this look burned.”

  Bones smiled. “You should write fiction in your spare time.”

  I continued, “Further, this selfless mother and her three daughters volunteered in the neonatal ICU taking care of and feeding premature babies born to other recovering mothers.”

  Bones sat down and crossed his legs. “You have real skill.”

  “You need to leak the video of them running into the building followed by the explosion. And, Eddie, you need to edit it in such a way as to leave no doubt that all four are buried beneath the rubble. More importantly”—I pointed to the dot moving westward across the screen—“we need whoever that is to believe that we believe they’re gone. End the video with Gunner racing into the flames followed by a fireball and the video goes to black.”

  Bones raised a finger. “All four ran into the hospital looking like they just came from a wedding. That may raise a few questions.”

  I shook my head. “All four had changed into their dancing dresses. Spin it that they were at a going-home party for one of the girls when they smelled smoke.”

  Bones nodded. “That’ll print.”

  I turned but Bones stopped me, pointing at one of the screens, a live feed from the gymnasium where mattresses had been brought in. All of Freetown was huddled in groups while armed men stood outside guarding the perimeter. “They need to hear from you before you disappear.”

  I nodded.

  “Do we tell them?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “But we said we’d never lie to them.”

  “You’re right. I said that.”

  “And you’re going to anyway.”

  “Yes. I am.”

  “We may never recover from that. They may leave Freetown in mass exodus when they learn the truth.”

  I pointed at the solid red light. “Is she worth it?” A pause while the satellite searched for the other three. “Are they?” Bones and I stared at the screen. “Right now they’re probably sitting in the dark. Scared beyond hope. No telling what’s been done or is being done to them. So is there anything you or I wouldn’t say or do to get them back?”

  Bones shook his head.

  I turned to Eddie. “You got a video camera?”

  He held up an iPhone.

  “Turn it on. I want you to record something. We may need it later.”

  Eddie stepped back and began videoing with burning Freetown as the background. With Bones standing next to me, I stared into the video. “It’s late. Freetown is burning, Clay is on life support, and Angel, Ellie, Casey, and”—I stuttered—“and Summer are gone. Initially, we thought we lost them in the blast.” I held up the handkerchief. “Now we’re not so sure. We think this was a coordinated attack to kidnap them for the purpose of revenge. I can’t go into all the details, but I need you all to understand what Bones and I are dealing with in this moment. We’re about to create a false narrative, which all of you are going to live out. You will suffer by the lies we’re about to tell. We’re going to sell it to the media that they’re all dead, including Gunner.” I waved to Gunner, and Eddie moved the camera, showing the dog with his tongue hanging out.

  “This week all of you are going to mourn and go to a funeral with five caskets, and you’ll put stuff in each because we’re going to talk about how their bodies were incinerated, and all of you will hurt and cry tears and your hearts will break. All the while, we in this room will know it is a fabrication.” I pointed to the screen. “We think they’re alive. But we don’t know for how much longer, so we’re trying to buy some time. Unfortunately, all of you are puppets in that play. I wish I could tell you I’m sorry, but . . .” I shook my head. “I can’t be. I’ve got to—” My voice cracked. “Try to find . . .” My voice trailed off.

  “When you came here, we told you we’d never lie to you. Until now I haven’t. But I’m about to. It’s a big lie. And when it’s over and you learn all of this, I’m asking that you forgive me. Why? Not because I deserve it but because I’d do the same for every one of you.”

  Eddie clicked off the video and I wiped the tears trailing down my face. I spoke to Eddie. “Make sure you save that someplace safe. If he blew us up, he can hack into most anything. And we don’t need him seeing that.”

  Eddie slid his phone in his pocket. “Check.”

  I walked into the gymnasium to muffled sobs and groups huddled and hugging one another. They’d spread out sleeping bags. A giant slumber party. Pajamas all around. Minus the smiles.

  They were scared. A few were shaking. I knew each one: Beth, Tilly, Ray, Tracy, Sally, Cindy, Billy, Amanda, Margaret, Jennifer, Ashley, Kristen, Simone, Lisa . . . Sixty-three girls were staring back at me. Along with several of their mothers and more than a few sisters. I knew their stories. Their horrors. And I’d seen them laugh. Seen joy return. Each one of these women had suffered the feeling of drowning, of some giant unseen hand holding their head beneath the water. They’d been dominated, manipulated, intimidated, and controlled—and in most cases, by a man who looked like me. They huddled in a circle. Or rather, lay across one another like pick-up sticks. Interwoven. Three strands are stronger than one. Their faces were puffy. Eyes red. Makeup smeared. The dresses of dance and celebration had been replaced by the comfort of sweats and pajamas. Something soft to counter a granite world.

  Bones read my hesitation. He put his hand on my shoulder. “If you were hiding Jews in your basement and the SS knocked on the door, what would you tell them?”

  I turned a chair around backward and sat leaning my chin on the top and studied their faces. Each was looking at me to rescue them again. To make the bad man stop. To drive a stake in the world and declare to the evil, “You will come no farther.”

  To tell them the truth.

  The faint smell of smoke wafted on the air. A reminder of what had been lost. Flashing red lights reflected off the foyer glass while men on extended ladders shot giant rainbows of water across the wreckage. Bones stood off to one corner.

  I hated myself for what I was about to do.

  When I studied each face, each story returned. I rubbed my hands together, willing my soul to spit out the lies. “We have yet to find Angel, Ellie, Casey, Summer, and Gunner.” A single shake of my head. “The video shows them running in, followed by the explosion. The heat melted metal and glass. So . . . it might be a day or two before . . .” The implication was clear: we might never find their bodies.

  The sobs were no longer muffled. The collective cry was excruciating. Each of these children of God had been exploited. Abused. And lied to ten thousand times over. For many, the idea that there is actually a truth that they can bank their lives on is a fantasy. It’s one of their deepest wounds—those they thought they could trust turned out not to be trustworthy. I scanned the sea of faces, all of whom trusted me. With their lives. It’s why they were sitting here. Until now, I’d never taken that for granted. But in this moment, Bones and I were using their emotions to prove to whoever did this that four people and one dog were dead.

  How will they respond to me when they discover otherwise?

  I knew that in order to pull this off, to sell it to whoever did this, we needed the girls’ unfiltered reactions. Or rather, that’s what I told myself.

  “Clay’s on life support.” I paused. “He’s a tough old man, but nob
ody knows.” Their faces spoke their stories. Stories of evil run rampant. And here I sat, inflicting more. “I’ve got a window where I maybe can find who did this. So . . . Bones will be here. I hope to make it back for the funeral . . .”

  At the word funeral, the floodgates broke loose.

  I waited for the wave to pass. “I know you’re scared. You’re wondering how’d they get in? How’d they find us? What will happen to us?” I shook my head. “I can’t answer any of those questions. But . . .” I turned to Beth: “I had no idea how we’d make it out of that trailer park.” And to Tilly: “Or that meth lab disguised as a motel.” And to Ray: “Or that hotel in Vegas.” To Sally: “That beach bungalow in Maui.” To Cindy: “A tractor trailer at a truck stop.” To Amanda: “A houseboat in the Gulf.”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t know then how we’d ever get here. But I hoped we would . . .” Tears slid down my cheeks. “Hope is what we have. It’s the fuel that feeds us.” I rubbed my hands together. “In ancient times, when kingdoms were attacked and once-impenetrable walls fell, people inside the city would emerge from the rubble, stare at the wreckage, and then ask the only question that remains: Do I stand in the breach, or do I run? Those who ran lived in fear, forever looking over their shoulder. Those who stood climbed up on the remains and spoke to the darkness. And when they did, the darkness rolled back like a scroll. It has to. Darkness can’t stand light.”

  I glanced at Bones and then stood. “I know your walls are pretty thin and cracking, and disconnected pieces lay scattered. I know you’re hurting. And I know that you of all people deserve to not be in pain. To know joy and not sadness. Beauty and not ashes.” I waved my hands across the carnage spread across the streets below us. “Don’t despair. Any seed that is planted first must die and fall to the earth. Only then do we bury it and trust that what comes up is not the same as what we put in the ground. Nor could we ever have imagined it.”

  Tilly spoke for the group. The question on the tip of each one’s tongue. “Murph, are you going to rebuild Freetown?”

  I shook my head. “No . . .” The effect of my answer rippled through them. I studied each of their faces. And when I spoke, the ripple died. “You are.”

  Bones met me at the door. “I don’t need to tell you to be careful, but . . .”

  “I have no intention of being careful.”

  He knew that too. “What will you do when you find them?”

  “Haven’t gotten that far.”

  He prodded me. “What would you do to guarantee that any of these four women wouldn’t make a run for it?”

  “Tie up the youngest.”

  Bones finished my thought. “Exactly. They’d know what would happen to the youngest one if they bolt.”

  I studied the embers of Freetown. “Find this man. I want him.”

  Bones’s facial expression was one of deep pain. Torment even. He nodded. Then raised his hand and extended all five fingers, followed by four. Then one finger. One finger. And one finger. 9–1–1–1. Or 91:11.

  He will command His angels concerning you.

  I shut the door, bounded down the stairs, and began sprinting the trail to my house. Main Street lay to my right, lit up like a runway. Beyond that the hospital smoldered. Three firemen stood atop long extension boom ladders holding water cannons shooting high-pressured streams through the air like rainbows. The smell of burning rubber and chemicals stung my nostrils and eyes. I tried not to think about what was swirling beyond my control.

  Running through the night, Gunner matching me stride for stride, my breath exiting my lungs like smoke in the freezing temperature, I had one singular thought. Nothing else mattered. If I didn’t bring them home, then what was the point of all this? Not Freetown, not happiness, not living a long healthy life, not coffee on the porch, not wine at the Eagle’s Nest.

  I reached the door and the same echo sounded that I’d heard a thousand times since Bones plucked me from the academy:

  We always leave the ninety-nine to find the one.

  Why?

  Because the needs of the one outweigh those of the many.

  I flew down the stairs, ripped off my tux shirt, and punched the code into the keypad: “LOVESHOWSUP.”

  Chapter 35

  Three hours later, the plane touched down at Miami International. I felt certain the bad guys wouldn’t be looking over their shoulder. There was no way they could know we were on to them this quickly. If they had moved that far that fast, they were making a move to get the girls out of the country. While I was in the air, Eddie connected my phone with his portal, allowing me to watch the tracker in real time.

  By the time I landed, the signal from the tracker had exited a private plane and then walked into the private airport where it disappeared. That wasn’t uncommon since the GPS tracker required a line of sight to the satellite, and that line was broken as people walked into or out of buildings, cars, buses, etc.

  “Be patient,” Bones said.

  I bought a cup of coffee and rented a car just in case. Then I sat in an office cubicle near the lounge, where I alternated between watching the three exit doors leading to all private planes and staring at my screen.

  Six hours passed.

  When the red light next appeared, it was sixty miles from my location moving west down Alligator Alley at sixty-seven miles an hour. I exited the airport, started the rental car, and was turning onto the off-ramp when my phone rang. It was Bones. “Looks like they turned off the Alley and into the Glades.”

  “I see that.”

  “You following?”

  “Got to make a stop first.”

  “Get ready to navigate rough terrain.”

  I stopped at my storage unit and swapped out the rental for my BMW 1250 GS motorcycle, along with some gear. Four minutes later, I was back on the road. The thought did not escape me that the last time I’d ridden this bike, Summer was behind me, her arms wrapped around my chest as we traced Angel to a house in the Everglades.

  I rolled west on 98 to the southern tip of Lake Okeechobee. Just south of the lake, I turned due south on 27 to the Miccosukee Casino and then west on 41. The road was bordered on either side by canals, which were part of the intricate network of the more than eight hundred square miles called the Everglades.

  I was once again looking for a needle in a haystack.

  I passed the Everglades Safari Park and the ValuJet Flight 592 Memorial, followed by the Miccosukee Indian Village, until I turned north on a limestone road paralleling the L-28 Canal Eden Station. This all felt eerily familiar, and I did not like where it was going.

  I traveled this same limestone-dusted road for thirty minutes until both the road and canal abruptly ended at a thin trail marked by fresh four-wheel-drive tracks. I followed the trail, which eventually ended on a dirt road that did not appear on my GPS map. A mile away I saw a house and the shine of a vehicle. Looking at my phone, the red light appeared to exit the vehicle and enter the building, where it disappeared once again.

  To advance during daylight would be a mistake. So I parked the bike and stared through binoculars throughout the afternoon and into the evening. Just before dark, a man exited the house, smoked several cigarettes, then returned inside. I highly doubted one man had been sent to guard the girls, but I needed to make certain. Barging into a house I think is guarded by a single man only to find five would not be good.

  Under cover of darkness, I crept within two hundred yards of the house. At 10 p.m., a man walked out of the house backward, dragging a limp body. As he did this, the tracker returned on my screen. Solid. No flash. The man dragged Ellie across the yard and tied her to a tree. Then he quickly loaded into the vehicle and drove out the dirt road away from the house and away from me.

  The light remained unflashing, and there was no movement at the house.

  I crawled through the grass within sixty yards. Ellie had been tied to the back side of a tree and left sitting with her back to me, slumped over.

  I circled c
ounterclockwise, putting the tree between me and the house, where every light had been left on. Seeing no movement, I sprinted for the tree.

  But I did not find Ellie.

  I found a mannequin wearing a wig, Ellie’s reception dress, and her necklace. The sight of the mannequin’s blank stare caught me off guard and it took a minute for the absurdity to register. When it did, I ran to the house, pushed through the front door, and sprinted into and out of each room—but there were no bodies. No people. Just me.

  When I returned to the tree, the mannequin appeared to be smiling. That’s when I glanced into the tree above the mannequin and saw the phone. Filming me.

  I’d been worked. The screen of the phone projected my image back to me, proving someone was on the other end watching the same picture of me. As I stared, the phone received a text picture. I touched the screen and the picture expanded. It was Ellie. And it was not a good picture. My anger flared and I felt the first wave of hopelessness.

  I knew if I was going to be any good to the girls, I had to control both emotions. If I raged, I’d lose the ability to think clearly, and they needed me to think . . . clearly. If I despaired, I’d never find them.

  I ended the call on the phone taped to the tree and dialed Bones. He answered mid-ring. “Find her?”

  “We’ve been played.”

  A pause. “Talk to me.”

  “Ellie’s not here. None of them are. The tracker was hanging around the neck of a mannequin with a live phone taped in the tree above.”

  “Seems we’ve played this game before.”

  “Or some variation of it. Any sign of the other trackers?”

  “Not yet. Grab the phone and let’s see if Eddie can pull anything off it. You’d better get back to Miami. There’s no telling where the trail will lead next.”

  “Chances are good he will do this with each tracker while he flies the girls to Siberia. And we can quit trying to sell the story to the media. He knows we’re on to him.”