by Tom Lowe
“I can tell by the rambunctious wag of the tail. Look, I don’t want to impose. I’m prepared to pay you.”
“To do what?” O’Brien studied her face, the eyes that evaded his, a red patch appearing on her lower neck. “Would you like some water, soft drink, or something?”
“No, I’ll get right to the point. If you want to talk further, I’ll come inside. If not, I’ll turn away and never bother you again.”
O’Brien was silent.
“My grandfather was twenty-one when he was shot and killed off Matanzas Beach. The year was 1945, the nineteenth of May. The war in Europe had just ended. My grandfather had fought in the Army overseas where he was wounded and lost some of the function in his left leg. He was shipped back home, recuperating, and on active-reserve. One night he was surf-casting, trying to put food on the table, when he spotted something out in the ocean. Then he saw six men row to shore in a life raft. My grandfather hid, watched them bury something. Before they started back to their boat, he saw someone else, a man, walk down from the road to meet the men. Mr. O’Brien, four of those men were German soldiers, two were Japanese. The man they met, my grandfather said, looked American. They buried something in the sand that night. My grandfather saw it … he saw one of the Germans shoot and kill another one. Granddaddy managed to get to a phone booth to call my grandmother. He told her everything and said for her to call the Navy in Jacksonville and tell them what he saw.”
“Why the Navy?”
“Because the boat my grandfather saw that night was a U-boat. I think you may have found it. They killed my grandfather because he saw them and the submarine. Before grandfather was shot, my grandmother said he told her he’d seen the two Japanese men leave the Germans and walk toward Highway A1A. Don’t know what happened to the guy that came out of the bushes. Maybe he shot granddaddy. Maybe one of the Germans did. The U.S. Government never even acknowledged what he reported that night. He was the first and only American soldier in World War II killed on U.S. soil. His murder has gone unsolved for more than sixty-seven years. There’s not a day that goes by that my grandmother doesn’t think about him. She was pregnant with my mother when he was killed. My mother and father were killed in a car accident when I was twelve. Grandmother raised me. Maybe, before she passes, you could help her … help her by finding out who killed him. It would bring closure to a patriotic, old woman.”
O’Brien was quiet for a long moment. He looked at the gray head in the car, eyes peeking above the console. “Please, you and your grandmother, come inside.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Susan Schulman stood from behind her desk in an alcove of the Channel Nine newsroom and walked toward the restroom. Nicole Bradley looked up from the computer on her desk, her first assignment as an intern—searching through digitally-stored stock footage—and watched Susan disappear down the hallway.
“How are you coming?” asked the five o’ clock news producer, a no-nonsense, prematurely balding veteran of television news.
“Oh, fine,” Nicole said. “I found some shots of alligators for the story Rod’s doing on habitat destruction.”
“Good, punch in the reference numbers for Sam to pull them in. He’s in editing.”
“Okay.”
The producer looked at his watch. “I’ve got a story rundown meeting now.” He crossed the newsroom to sit with the executive producer.
Nicole walked down the hall to the restroom. She entered and saw Susan Schulman applying lip gloss. “I’m Nicole Bradley. I just want to tell you I’ve always thought you did great work. I watched you a lot before heading up to UF. Still watch you when I come home. You’re one of the reasons I’m studying journalism.”
Schulman didn’t miss a beat applying lip gloss. “You’re the new intern, right?”
“Third day.”
“So you want to get in the news biz?”
“Absolutely.”
“Lots of people do now. It looks like a sweet job, but you’ve got to work hard at it. To get to a larger market, the networks, CNN or Fox, you’ve got to really stand out, and that usually comes by finding a breakout, killer story.”
“Have you ever found that story?”
“Close, but no Emmy yet.” Susan picked up her purse and started for the door.
Nicole said, “Wait a sec. What if I had that killer story for you?”
“Excuse me?”
“The kind of story you could ride to the network.”
“This is your third day as an intern and you think you have a story of national significance?”
“I think it’s of international significance, and I’ll share it … if—”
“If what?”
“If, wherever you’re going, you promise to get me hired, too.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
O’Brien sipped a cup of coffee on his back porch and listened to Abby Lawson. She said, “My grandmother used to talk about what Florida was like in the days before, during and after the war. She said it was in the summer of ‘42 when the man who would become my grandfather decided to join the Army. He made the decision when he and my grandmother, and dozens of other people, witnessed a German U-boat blow up an American tanker a few miles off the coast of Jacksonville Beach. Right, grandma?”
Glenda Lawson smiled. “Right, honey. I’ll never forget that night.” Her white hair was combed neatly, parted off center and pulled back. Her face was pale, eyes the color of a budding leaf, pastel skin smooth for a woman in her eighties. She wore a trace of rose-colored lipstick. O’Brien thought she possessed a quiet dignity, and yet a sadness as faint as the small blue veins beneath her opaque forehead.
“Grandma told me it was horrible, bodies floated in with the oil slicks, right here on Florida beaches. It wasn’t long after Pearl Harbor was bombed. A lot of people don’t even know that kind of thing was going on so close to our shores until the Navy put a stop to it. The irony is that my grandfather went to war in Europe because of what he saw close to American shores. It infuriated him that the Germans had taken out some of our ships. He went over there, fought them, got shot, and came back here to see a U-boat in the summer of ‘45.”
O’Brien asked, “Why’d the authorities think he’d been killed in a mugging?”
“We don’t know,” Abby said. “They say they found him with his wallet scattered. What little money he had, gone. Or so their reports said. And this was after my grandmother told them everything he told her before his death.”
“If it was some kind of cover up, what would have been the reason?”
“We don’t know that either. It could have something to do with that mystery man who met the men from the submarine. Maybe it’s because they never caught the Japanese. Or maybe it’s because they did catch the Japanese.”
“I wonder what two Japanese men were doing riding in a German sub. Why didn’t they return to the sub?”
“Those are all good questions, Mr. O’Brien—”
“Please, call me Sean. What did the Germans and Japanese bury?”
“We don’t know that, either? Grandma, tell Sean what granddaddy told you.”
The old woman folded her hands, took a deep breath and said, “Billy told me they dug near the fort ... you know … Matanzas.”
O’Brien nodded. “Yes, I fished there as a kid.”
She slightly smiled and continued. “He said it was when the light from the St. Augustine lighthouse comes across the fort’s tower, it shines through an opening, makes a line. Billy said they buried some cylinders in the path of that line of light.”
O’Brien said, “The lighthouse is about twenty miles from the old fort.”
Glenda Lawson smiled and said, “Yes sir, it is.”
“Today,” said O’Brien, “the area of Matanzas Pass is a national park. There hasn’t been development. Did the authorities find what was buried?”
Glenda Lawson’s eyes grew wide and she leaned forward. “If they did, nobody bothered to tell me! I asked and they said they’d d
ug up dozens of sea turtle nests and could never find the hole Billy said was covered up.” She reached in her purse, her hand trembling, blue veins visible under milky skin. She retrieved a folded piece of newspaper, faded yellow. She carefully unfolded it and handed the paper to O’Brien. “They printed this the day after Billy died. There were a few other stories, but they stopped writing when police found nothing.”
O’Brien scanned the story. The sound of a boat came from the river and mixed with the full throttle of a mockingbird in a live oak. “Glenda, the night your husband called you, when he was shot … how many gunshots did you hear?”
“Three.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. I’ve heard those shots fire in my nightmares for many, many years, sir. It’s something I will never forget.”
“This story quotes a deputy sheriff saying Billy was shot once.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
O’Brien’s cell rang. “Excuse me,” he said to Glenda and Abby Lawson. It was Nick Cronus. “Sean, I got a call from some guy who said he’d give me a million dollars for the GPS numbers to the wreck. This is gettin’ more crazy by the minute—”
“Nick, I’ll call you in a minute. Keep the return number of the caller.”
“Can’t. Came in as an unknown number. Not traceable.”
O’Brien said nothing.
“Another guy called and said I looked like a towel head on TV, a terrorist.”
“I’ll get back with you in a few minutes, Nick.” O’Brien ended the call, looked at Glenda Lawson and, again, said, “The newspaper story indicates one bullet fired.”
“They were wrong.”
“Did they do an autopsy on your husband?”
“No, sir. I don’t know why.”
“Did your husband ... did Billy have a gun?”
“He carried a pistol when he came back from the war. The war changed him.”
“Wars can do that. Do you know if his gun was fired that night? Did you hear him return fire, or did someone take his gun and use it to kill him?”
The old woman looked out the screen porch, her eyes falling on the river, her thoughts flowing through decades lost without the one she had loved. “All three gunshots sounded the same … and I’d heard Billy shooting lots of times at cans he’d set up in our backyard. His gun didn’t sound like the shots I heard that awful night.”
“Who investigated your husband’s death? And can you remember what was said?”
Glenda watched Max sleeping on a rocking chair. “I had a dachshund once,” she said softly. “She was such a fine little dog. Slept in my bed. Does your dog sleep in your bed?”
“She’s a bed hog,” O’Brien said, letting the old woman take her time.
“So was mine … you asked me who investigated Billy’s death, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, let me see. The sheriff, at least his deputies did … then there was a fella from the FBI … and some men from the Navy, and one from the Army because Billy was still enlisted, but on disability ‘till his leg was properly healed.”
“And they told you Billy died in a robbery … a mugging?”
“That’s what I was told.”
“Did the sheriff tell you that?”
“Yes, at least the deputy assigned to the case. An FBI agent told me that, too. Even after I insisted it wasn’t a mugging … not after what Billy told me. But the police, especially the FBI fella, didn’t pay me any mind. Billy wasn’t mugged. He was murdered.”
“Your husband was fishing that night. How much money could a twenty-one-year-old fisherman have on him to get him killed?”
Abby said, “Exactly. My grandfather might have had a couple of dollars on him. Who would kill a man for that, steal his truck, and then abandon it?”
“Strange,” O’Brien said. “No one was ever arrested or even questioned, right?”
“Right,” said Glenda. “His killer, or killers, walked free.”
“Maybe not,” O’Brien said. “Not if your husband was killed by one of the Germans, and it was their submarine sunk that night.”
“Oh dear.”
Abby said, “Your finding the submarine proves it!”
“I didn’t say I found a sub.”
“If you did, it might be connected to my grandfather’s murder. Maybe whoever gunned down granddaddy was killed when that U-boat sank.”
O’Brien was silent. He stared down to the river, glanced at the yellowed newspaper story, and then said, “Look, Abby … Glenda … I think it was tragic that your grandfather—your husband—was killed. If he was murdered, it was more than sixty years ago, and whoever did it is probably dead. If it’s tied to German soldiers landing on the beach, the police, Navy, FBI and the Army, should have a record.”
Abby shook her head. “We couldn’t find it. FBI people in the Miami office told us they checked records, files stored in Washington and couldn’t find anything about my grandfather’s killing. Navy says they did get a report of a U-boat sighting that night, the call from my grandmother, and said they dispatched a gunboat and two planes but saw nothing suspicious. If you found a German sub, it’s the closest thing we have to bringing closure to an old wound. Not so much for me, I never knew granddaddy. He never got a chance to know the baby he’d fathered, my mother. When she was alive, we never had closure. But we might find it for an eighty-eight-year-old woman who never remarried, raised a daughter and granddaughter by herself, practiced the Ten Commandments better than anyone I’ve ever known, and still says goodnight to her dead husband’s picture by her bed. In that photo, he’s dressed in his Army uniform, and he was buried in it.”
“I’m not a homicide detective anymore. I’m trying a new career as a fishing guide. I think what happened to your grandfather is horrible. If it was connected to a sub on the bottom of the sea, it doesn’t mean you’d ever prove anything. No witnesses, or if there were, probably long dead. If the authorities covered up his death, it’s a shame. Without knowing why—a probable reason—it’s hard to prove it ever happened. I wish there was something I could do—”
“I said I’d pay you,” Abby said
“It has nothing to do with money.”
“Leslie told me you once said to her you felt an obligation to speak for the dead—the ones murdered because they had no one else. Sorry for wasting your time.” She stood and started to help her grandmother out of the chair.
Glenda Lawson took a small step toward O’Brien. “Sir, my husband gave his life for his country. He died on American soil trying to let us know we’d been invaded. My Billy was a hero, and they said he was killed in a robbery. The killers robbed him of his life, dignity … they robbed him of our unborn daughter. And they robbed Abby. I’ve often thought how the history books tell us about Paul Revere, the man who warned us that the British were coming. He saved Boston and became a hero. What about my husband, sir, what if he saved the nation?”
O’Brien was silent.
“They tell me my time left in this world’s short … I’ve lived a good life … sometimes a lonely life … but a good life. A free life. I’d like to think my husband calling that night had something to do with that. If you did find that submarine, it proves what Billy told me that night. Whatever those men buried was worth more to them than my husband’s life. Was his death in vain?” Her green eyes were alive, searching. Her nostrils flared, and she made a clicking sound with her mouth.
“Come on Grandma,” Abby said.
“I apologize, sir, for my show of temper. I just want to know who killed Billy. If he was shot by our enemy at a time of war, a war that had just ended, then why didn’t our military stand up for him when he stood for us and everything that is American?”
***
O’BRIEN LISTENED FOR A HALF MINUTE to the sound of her car as Abby drove away. He picked up his cell and called Dave Collins. “I have no idea if a murder mystery that happened sixty-seven years ago can be connected to the discovery Nick and I found. Maybe y
ou can check your sources.”
“Sixty-seven years ago? What do you have?”
“You might want to take notes, Dave. This one begins May 19, 1945. It’s a war story that starts after the war officially ended.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The news director, assistant news director, executive producer, two reporters and Susan Schulman crowded around Nicole Bradley’s desk and watched her open the computer to her Facebook page. Nicole felt more excited than she had in a long time. She had the attention of the people who ran the number-one-rated newscast. She was going to be working on a big story with Susan Schulman.
“Here they are,” said Nicole, her eyes dancing with excitement, her fingers trembling as she pointed to each picture. “My boyfriend, Jason, said this is some kind of rocket … and these parts are from fighter jets.”
“Must be an enormous sub,” said the news director.
“Look at that … wow,” Susan’s said. “That’s the ID of the sub, U-235.”
“I don’t know,” said Nicole, “because there’s like another number, too.” She clicked to the image of the conning tower. “Jason said this is what’s on the outside of the sub. Looks kinda like a fat chimney, don’t you think?”
“Then what are the boxes labeled U-235?” asked Susan.
The portly news director crossed his arms over his chest and said, “Those boxes are labeled with the short, abbreviated name of enriched uranium, U-235.”
“What?” Susan asked. “As in the guts of a nuclear bomb?”
“Yes,” said the news director. “But only if it’s highly enriched uranium.”
“What a story!” Susan pounded her fists on the back of Nicole’s chair.
“Ohmygod!” squealed Nicole. “I told you it was big!”
“You did, girlfriend!” They slapped hands in a high-five.
The executive producer said, “Hold on. We don’t know what that U-235 means. However, if it’s the stuff of nuclear bombs … oh boy. This could be huge!”
The news director said, “Susan, you run with the lead piece. Bob, you find out everything you can on U-235. Todd, call some of the universities, talk to historians, physicists, whomever, see if you can find out how advanced we think the Germans were with this stuff. Karen, you get on the line to Homeland Security, work those ‘potential threat’ angles. Susan, pictures are good, but it’d be enormous to have video from the U-boat. Take Johnny, he’s a certified expert diver. See if you can find that boat captain, the one who lied to you, O’Brien, and get him to take you out there. Let’s move people!”
