Silver Cross

by B. Kent Anderson

  Gray had watched Poe since he first arrived on the crime scene. Then she had been a tourist. In the Wilmington/Cape Fear area in the summer, that wasn’t a hard role to play either. But she didn’t know the short woman. She’d heard the name—Meg Tolman—when the woman first arrived at the ICU desk, but the name meant nothing. For now.

  Still, Poe wasn’t treating the Tolman woman like a typical friend or family member of a crime victim. He took her to his car, where she sat in the front seat next to him. Gray followed them, then watched as Poe took Tolman to a restaurant called Jackson’s Big Oak Barbeque. She smiled—she’d eaten there yesterday, sampling the vinegar-based sauce for which eastern North Carolina was famous.

  Gray waited. Forty-five minutes later the two emerged. She followed at a distance of three car lengths. When they crossed the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway onto Pleasure Island and turned south on U.S. 421, Gray sped up her rental and passed them. She knew where they were going. There was no need to follow—she would get there ahead of them and see what they did.

  She drove through the tourist haven of Carolina Beach, with its seaside cottage and condo rentals and T-shirt shops and all things nautical. That gave way to Kure Beach, which was more family oriented. She was fast running out of land.

  She passed the Fort Fisher Historic Site, with its remnants of the old fort, and the Aquarium at Fort Fisher, another tourist attraction. At the end of 421, the road widened into a parking lot. Only one car, a New Hanover County sheriff’s unit, was in the lot. With the seawall barricaded by yellow crime scene tape, there was nothing for the tourists here today. They might stand for a few moments, watching the Atlantic Ocean on the left of the wall, the Cape Fear River on the right, the rock wall curving between the two, winding for more than six miles from the end of the highway to the spot where the river emptied into the sea.

  Gray made sure she kept her camera around her neck as she got out of the car. A guidebook was another nice touch. She was a housewife whose husband had taken the kids to the public beach or the aquarium so she could have a few minutes of quiet contemplation. She wore navy blue walking shorts, a white polo shirt, and sneakers with white ankle socks. She was tanned, but not too tan. Just another middle-aged woman from Charlotte or Atlanta, admiring the water.

  Poe and Tolman arrived five minutes later. But Gray still didn’t know how Meg Tolman fit in to the equation, and why the sheriff’s man was taking her to the crime scene. Gray took a few pictures of the seawall and the boat ramp, the camera straying to where Poe and Tolman were talking with the uniformed deputy who stood watch at the entrance of the seawall, the yellow tape running between a tree and a picnic table. In a few hours, she would know everything she needed to know about Meg Tolman, and how she might fit into Gray’s new plans.

  From inside the rental car, Gray’s cell phone trilled. She reached in and looked at the caller ID, then smiled. “Hi, honey,” she said into it.

  “Hey, Mom,” said the voice on the other end. Since getting a phone for his thirteenth birthday, her son called or texted her every few hours when she went out of town. “How’s the conference?”

  “On a break right now,” Gray said. Poe and Tolman were stepping across the crime scene tape.

  “You still coming home tomorrow? Dad’s worried.”

  “Oh, Dad’s worried? Nice to know that Dad’s worried.” She smiled.

  “Um, and Ellis wants to know if I can sleep over this weekend. He got a new glass chess set from Germany.”

  Gray exhaled. How many thirteen-year-olds were more excited by chess than video games? “From Germany. Impressive. Tell Ellis’s mother it’s fine. See if they can pick you up, then Dad can get you from their house, if the house is still standing.”

  “The only way we’ll tear the house down is if Ellis gets me in check with only a rook and a pawn like he did last time. See you tomorrow?”

  Gray looked at the crime scene tape again. “I may be an extra day. One of our clients has a problem.”

  The boy sounded disappointed. “Okay. I’ll tell Dad.”

  “Love you, honey,” Gray said.

  The boy hung up. He was thirteen, so telling his mother he loved her on the phone wasn’t on the agenda. Still, he’d called her. There was something to be said for that.

  She tossed her phone onto the car seat. Then she reached in the backseat of the car and straightened the overnight bag there. She zipped it up, making sure the CZ 75 semi-automatic pistol was covered.

  Everything has changed, she thought. Then Ann Gray turned and took a few more pictures.

  * * *

  Tolman stood still, gazing past the crime scene tape. A yellow diamond-shaped sign read, DANGER – SLIPPERY ROCKS – SWIFT CURRENT. She stepped over the tape, Poe following. “How far does this go?” she asked.

  “The seawall runs a good six miles to the point where the Cape Fear empties into the ocean,” Poe said.

  “How far out was Dana?”

  “Not much more than a mile. There’s a place where it makes a sharp curve to the left. That’s where some tourists found her.”

  Tolman kept walking. The paved sidewalk gave way to the seawall itself. The visible portion of the wall was less than twenty feet across, with irregularly shaped and sized rocks sloping down on both sides. Many of the rocks were broken, creating uncertain footing on the walkway. A little moss grew here and there. They stepped past a dirty white sock, an Aquafina bottle, a tangled ball of old twine. Tolman looked around. The parking lot behind them was deserted except for a woman with a camera.

  “Lots of tourists come out here?” Tolman said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Poe said. “And we get fatalities from time to time, people who take walks when they shouldn’t.”

  Tolman looked at him. “So what happened to Dana isn’t all that uncommon down here.”

  “The fact that it happened isn’t uncommon. Keep walking.”

  Tolman looked at him again, then returned to picking her way across the rocks. The wind came up. Water lapped at the base of the rocks on the ocean side. Ahead, she saw the wall begin its turn.

  “A few more steps,” Poe said, behind her. Then: “Stop. Look down.”

  Three steps into the curve, Tolman stopped. At her feet was a dark stain on the rocks. She raised her head, looking at the ocean on the left, the river on the right.

  “And last night was high tide?” she said.

  “Yep. You ever do much crime scene work up there with the Research and Investigations Office?”

  Tolman was quiet. She knelt down, touched the bloodstain, raked her hands across the rocks. She looked at the ocean again.

  “So she was walking this way,” Tolman said, “and the tide came in from this direction.” She pointed to her left. “Say the tide knocked her off her feet. It was coming from this way and this wall isn’t all that wide. Why didn’t she fall off into the river on the other side? How is it that this bloodstain is exactly in the center of the wall?” She touched the stain again.

  “That’s the question,” Poe said. “And the guy who found her said she was laid out straight on top of the wall, right in the center, and her feet were pointing toward shore.”

  Tolman looked up at that. “Toward shore? Are you sure about that?”

  “Paramedics confirmed it when they arrived on the scene.”

  “But if she was walking away from shore and a wave hit her, you would think her forward momentum would make her slip and fall with her feet in the direction she was going. Her body would have had to be turned completely around. Accidents don’t happen that way. People don’t wind up with their bodies neatly positioned like that.”

  “You see my problem, then.”

  “Someone else was out here with her.”

  “Maybe,” Poe said. “Doesn’t change the fact that she was legally drunk and in a bad place at a bad time.”

  Tolman stood up. “I don’t know about the alcohol, but—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know, she didn’t drink.” Poe
scratched his chin. “But dammit, this bothers me. A cello player from Philadelphia, with no connections to this area, on this wall alone in the middle of the night at high tide. And what? Someone knocks her in the head, positions her body very neatly, then leaves? Why? Not robbery. Her wallet was in the pocket of her jacket, and it had more than three hundred dollars in it. She was wearing an expensive necklace, a gold chain with a pendant in the shape of two music notes and two little diamonds inlaid into the notes.”

  “I remember that necklace. One of her brothers gave it to her as a graduation present, after her senior recital at Curtis.”

  Poe spread his hands apart. “Why was she in North Carolina? What was she doing here?”

  Tolman turned toward shore. She watched a Coast Guard cutter pass on the Cape Fear River. Then she started walking, taking long strides, passing Poe. She thought of the Beethoven piece she and Dana had played all those years ago. Then the music in her mind stopped as abruptly as if the cello had been broken in half. “I’d like to see her room, if you can arrange it,” she said. “I need that paper that says what to do in the event of her death. Did she have a laptop with her? I’ll need that, too.”

  Poe folded his arms and looked down at Tolman, not speaking.

  “Look, Inspector,” Tolman said, “I’m in this, officially or not. For some reason neither of us knows, Dana asked me to be here. I can bring some resources into the investigation. I’m not going to go all federal on you and pull rank—it’s your jurisdiction. But I need to do this, for Dana.”

  Without waiting for Poe to respond, Tolman began to trot along the wall. The woman with the camera was gone, the parking lot empty except for the deputy who stood guard. Her mind was racing. She needed her laptop. She needed RIO’s databases. She needed time.

  Poe’s cell phone rang, and he spoke for a moment, then snapped the phone closed and caught up with Tolman. “I’ve had people canvassing the area,” he said. “Someone at the Fort Fisher Museum remembers Cable. She was in there yesterday.”

  “Fort Fisher? What is that?”

  “It’s an old Civil War fort. It’s a state historic site now, just up the road. You know any Civil War history?”

  Tolman thought before she spoke. “More than I did a year ago.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Never mind. What about this place?”

  “Fisher was one of the last strongholds the South had on the coast. There was a big battle here at the end of the war. Lots of blockade runners came through here, too. I’m no historian, but you can’t grow up around here and not know at least some of the story. Lot of ships came through here.”

  “Was there ever one called the Rose? Or the Silver Cross?”

  Poe’s gaze sharpened. “I don’t know. Look, we don’t know why Cable was at the museum. Maybe she was doing the tourist thing herself. It happens.”

  “Maybe so. But I don’t like ‘maybe.’ I want to know.” She pulled out her phone as her feet left the seawall and she stepped onto the North Carolina shore. “If your Civil War fort has something to do with all this, we need an expert.”

  “Oh, and you know someone like that, do you?”

  “Yes,” Tolman said, and began punching buttons. “I do.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  Nick Journey only turned away for a few seconds, then Andrew was gone.

  He and Andrew and Sandra Kelly had eaten dinner at a new Mexican café on the square in downtown Carpenter Center, Oklahoma, where Journey taught history at South Central College of Oklahoma. Sandra was a colleague and friend—their relationship still wasn’t clear in his mind, and at forty-three he couldn’t bring himself to use the word “girlfriend.” But she’d been around a lot in the last few months, and Andrew had grown comfortable around her—a triumph no matter how he defined the relationship.

  Andrew hadn’t eaten much. He loaded up on warm flour tortillas but wouldn’t touch the cheese quesadillas his father ordered for him. He was still a bit wound up from his day. In the summer Andrew attended a day camp for special needs children, hosted by a church in nearby Madill. Today had been water play day. Andrew loved the water.

  They stepped out of the café and Andrew hooted loudly. Journey turned to say something to Sandra when his cell rang. “Hang on, Andrew,” he said as the boy—tall for his age at thirteen—shuffled his feet on the concrete. He took a step toward the street.

  Journey looked at the caller ID. He smiled and answered the call. “Well, hello, Meg,” he said. “What’s up in the world of RIO?”

  Sandra Kelly screamed.

  Journey jumped, losing his grip on the phone. Andrew was barreling straight into the middle of Texoma Plaza, the street that ran around all sides of the square. On the other side, a white pickup truck entered the square. The driver wouldn’t be able to see Andrew, and was moving fast.

  “Andrew!” Journey shouted.

  Andrew was still running, arms flapping, fingers making their unusual motions. He looked vaguely toward his father, though he didn’t make eye contact. The boy laughed, but it wasn’t his genuine, happy laughter—instead the hysterical laughter that the autistic mind sometimes produced in response to his environment.

  Journey began to run. “Stop!” he screamed. “Andrew, stop!”

  Fifteen years and thirty pounds ago, Journey had been a professional baseball player, topping out at the highest level of the minor leagues before hanging it up and going to graduate school. He’d been fairly quick then, but he was a long time removed from that world now, just an overweight professor with high blood pressure. But his only child—a child with no understanding of danger—had broken away from him and was running free toward the traffic.

  The white truck turned the corner of the square. It hadn’t slowed down.

  Journey pounded the pavement. Andrew had stopped, mesmerized by the light in the window of a store on the other side of the square. He flapped his arms. He hooted and laughed.

  Journey ran. He heard Sandra behind him, a few steps away. She was running, too. He could see the truck’s driver now, a man, big, with crew cut blond hair. Journey waved his arms. The man was thumping his hand on the steering wheel, listening to music, in a hurry to get where he was going.

  Andrew was ten steps away, flapping and laughing.

  “Andrew!”

  His son looked at him. The truck’s driver finally saw Andrew, laid on his horn. Tires screeched. Journey reached his son and grabbed a handful of his T-shirt. Andrew half-turned toward him and Journey wrapped his arms around him. The truck fishtailed. Journey enveloped Andrew in his grasp and angled their bodies toward the curb. Andrew stopped laughing as if an off button had been pressed.

  Journey’s leg went out from under him and he and Andrew tumbled to the pavement. The truck screeched to a stop, its grill three feet away from where they landed.

  The burly driver erupted out of the truck. “Fucking retard,” he screamed. “What’s he think he’s doing, running out in the street and standing there?”

  Journey was breathing hard, cradling Andrew underneath him. The boy was squirming. Journey looked up at the driver. He was close enough to smell the man’s sour breath. “My son is not a retard, and don’t call him that. He has autism.”

  “I don’t give a fiddler’s fuck what he has. If you can’t keep him out of the street, he ought to be somewhere he can’t cause trouble.”

  Journey uncoiled himself from Andrew and got to his feet. He took a step toward the driver. “Look, he got away from me and that’s my responsibility, but he has as much right to be here as you do. Probably more, with the way you were driving. You were going way too fast for the square, and not paying attention.”

  “Bullshit,” the man said, and took a swing at Journey.

  The driver had a good three inches and fifty pounds on him, but Journey was still quick enough to dodge the clumsy punch. In one motion, he stepped to the side and shoved the driver back until he was pinned against his truck.

  “Fu
ck,” the man spat.

  Journey got an arm on each side of the man’s chest and slammed him once against the hood of the truck. “Pay attention to your driving and watch your mouth, understand?” He never raised his voice. The driver’s eyes widened.

  A small crowd had gathered on both sides of the square, and a Carpenter Center police officer made his way through it. “Move along, Denny,” he said to the driver. “You’re lucky I don’t cite you for both reckless driving and speeding. Speed limit on the square is twenty-five, and you were doing at least forty.”

  “The hell I was! There’s no traffic here, and this stupid little—”

  “Get in the truck and go home, Denny,” the cop said. “And like Dr. Journey said, watch your mouth. I know Dr. Journey and I know Andrew, and we’re all lucky that no one was hurt.”

  “This guy assaulted me! I want to file charges!”

  “You swung at him first, Denny, and about forty people saw you. He was defending himself and his son. You’re lucky Dr. Journey’s a nicer guy than I am. If you’d said those things about my kid, you’d be spitting out some teeth right about now. So just go home.”

  The cop’s name was Dale Gardner. He had a teenage daughter with cerebral palsy, and he volunteered at the therapeutic horseback-riding program Andrew attended twice a week. Journey knew him fairly well, almost to the point of thinking him a friend.

  Journey let the driver off the hood and backed away several steps. “Go on, now,” Gardner said. The driver shot a glare to all of them, climbed in the cab, and drove away.

  “You okay, Nick?” Gardner asked.

  “Fine,” Journey said. He turned toward Andrew.

  “You okay, Andrew?” Gardner said.

  Andrew didn’t hoot or whistle or laugh. His face had darkened. Journey said a few more words to Gardner, then when Journey turned back toward his son, Andrew shoved him backward into Gardner.

  “Andrew!” Journey said.

  Andrew made a throaty noise, stamped his feet, and spat in Journey’s face.