by Andrew Gross
Hauck glanced at the clock. He saw it was going on eight. He never slept this late. “Come where?”
Karen, in a hotel robe, just out of the shower, shoved her BlackBerry in front of him as he tried to shake the sleep out of his eyes.
Karen. I’ve been going over what you said. I didn’t tell you all I knew. Neville will be at the dock at ten and will bring you to me. You can bring who you like. Maybe it’s time. Ch.
She latched onto Hauck’s hand and clasped it victoriously. “He’s gonna come in with us, Ty.”
They dressed quickly and met in the breakfast room downstairs. That was where Hauck informed Karen, afraid of under-cutting her excitement, that Charles would have to be arrested. Shaving, he had determined that the only way to make this work was to have Charles come back to the States with them of his own accord. Hauck could take him into custody there. Here, Charles would have to remain in a jail awaiting extradition. They’d have to produce a warrant, which meant going through everything with the people back home, including, in no small way, Hauck’s own part and what he’d done. That could take days, weeks. The extradition could be challenged. Charles might get cold feet. And Dietz and his people were already circling nearby.
Shortly before ten he and Karen made their way to the dock. Neville, at the helm of the white-hulled Sea Angel, was just cruising in.
Karen waved to him from the pier.
“Hello, ma’am.” The captain waved back as the boat pulled close. A dockhand from the hotel grabbed the line. He helped Karen climb aboard, Hauck following on his own.
“You’re taking us to Mr. Friedman?”
“To Mistuh Hon-son, ma’am. That’s what he ask me,” Neville replied dutifully.
“Are we going back to the same place?”
“No, ma’am. Not this time. The boat is at sea. It’s not far.”
Hauck took a seat in the rear, and Karen sat across from him as the dockhand threw Neville the line. Hauck felt in his pocket for the Beretta he’d brought along. Anything could happen out here.
They headed west, never more than a quarter mile out at sea, hugging the coastlines of tiny, speckled islands. The sky was blue but breezy, and the boat bounced, the twin engines kicking up a heavy wake.
Neither of them said much on the journey out. A new uneasiness had settled over them. Charles could give Hauck the line onto AJ Raymond’s killer, why he had started out in this from the beginning. Karen was quiet, too, maybe dealing with how she was going to explain all this to her kids.
About four islands east from St. Hubert, Neville brought the engines to a crawl. Hauck checked the map. It was a strip of land called Gavin’s Cay. There was a town on the north side of the island, Amysville. They were on a barely inhabited part, on the south. They came around a bend.
Neville pointed. “There he is!”
A large white boat sat at anchor in an isolated cove.
Hauck steadied himself on the railing and headed up to the bow. Karen followed. The boat was maybe sixty feet. Probably slept eight, Hauck figured. A Panamanian flag flew from the stern.
Neville slowed the engines to under ten knots. He traversed around a reef expertly, obviously knowing the way. Then he picked up a walkie-talkie receiver at the controls. “Sea Angel comin’ in, Mistuh Hon-son.”
No reply.
Charlie’s boat was about a quarter mile away. At anchor. Hauck couldn’t make out anyone on deck. Neville picked up the walkie-talkie again. The tone was scratchy.
“What’s going on?” Hauck called back to him.
The Trinidadian captain glanced at his watch and shrugged. “No one there.”
“What’s wrong, Ty?” Karen asked, suddenly worried.
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
At a slow speed, they crept up on the bobbing craft from the port side. An anchor cable stretched underwater from the bow. No sign of life on deck. Nothing.
“When is the last time you spoke with him?” Hauck called to Neville.
“Didn’t.” The captain shrugged. “He left me a message on my cell phone last night. Said to pick you up at ten and bring you here.” He brought the Sea Angel around to within about fifty feet.
Still nobody visible.
Hauck climbed as high as he could on the railing and peered over.
Neville coasted the Sea Angel closer in. He called out, “Mistuh Hon-son?”
Only silence. Worrisome silence.
Karen placed her hand on Hauck’s shoulder. “I don’t like this, Ty.”
“Neither do I.” Hauck took the Beretta from his pocket. He grasped for the railing of the larger boat as the Sea Angel came abreast. He said to Karen, “Just stay where you are.”
He jumped on board.
“Hello?” The main deck of Charlie’s boat was completely empty. But in troubling disarray. The seat cushions were upended. Compartment drawers were open. Hauck noticed an empty bottle of rum on the deck. He bent down and picked his finger at a small stain he noticed on one of the displaced cushions, and didn’t like what he saw.
Traces of blood.
He turned to Karen, who was still on the Sea Angel with a worried look on her face. “Stay on board.”
Shifting the gun off safety, Hauck climbed down to the cabin below. The first thing he encountered was a large galley. Someone had been here. The sink was filled with mugs and pots. Cabinets were open, pawed through, condiments strewn all over the floor. Farther along, toward the stern, Hauck ran into three staterooms. In the first two, the beds had been tossed, drawers open, empty. The larger one looked like the Perfect Storm had hit it. The mattress was askew, sheets ripped all about, drawers rifled through, clothes thrown everywhere.
Hauck knelt. His eye was caught by the same traces of red on the floor.
He went back up on deck. “It’s clear,” he called to Karen. Neville ran a line and helped her climb aboard. “No one’s here.”
“What do you mean, no one’s here? Where the hell is Charles, Ty?” said Karen, agitated now.
“Zodiac’s still here,” Neville said, pointing to the yellow inflatable raft, the one Karen had seen the day before, meaning that Charlie had not taken it ashore.
“Who knew he was here?” Hauck asked Neville.
“No one. Mr. Hanson kept to himself. We just moved our location yesterday afternoon.”
Karen’s face grew tense. “I don’t like this, Ty. He wanted us to come to him.”
Hauck gazed across the bay, toward the island, maybe about two or three hundred yards away. Charles could be anywhere. Dead. Taken. On another boat. He didn’t want to tell Karen about the blood, which complicated things.
“Where’s the nearest police station?” he asked Neville.
“Amysville,” the captain replied. “Six miles or so. Around north.”
Hauck nodded soberly. “Radio them in.”
“Oh, Charlie…” Karen shook her head, exhaling a troubled breath.
Hauck went up to the bow and examined the overturned forward seat cushions, looking at the drops of blood. They seemed to lead right to the edge. He leaned over the side. The anchor line went under the surface from there. Hauck ran his hand along the cable. “Neville, hang on!”
The captain turned back from the bridge, the radio in his hand.
Hauck asked, “Do you know where the anchor switch is?”
“Of course.”
“Raise it up for me.”
Karen inhaled nervously. “What?”
Neville stared quizzically himself, then flicked a switch at the helm. Instantly, the anchor cable began to slowly wind back up. Hauck leaned over as far as he could, holding on by the railing.
“Stay back,” he said to Karen.
“Ty, what do you think is going on?” she asked, a rising anxiousness in her tone.
“Just stay back!” The anchor motor whirred. The tightly threaded cable rewound. Finally something broke the surface. Like a kind of line. Fishing wire. Seaweed wrapped around it.
“T
y…?”
A grave dread ran through Hauck as he looked it over.
The wire was wound around a hand.
“Neville, stop!” he called, throwing up his own hand. Hauck turned back to Karen. The solemn feel in his gaze communicated everything.
“Oh, Jesus, Ty, no…”
She ran to the side to look, panicked. Hauck came back over and caught her, tucking her face firmly into his chest, hiding her from the ugly sight.
“No…”
He held on to her as she flinched, trying to break away from him. He motioned to Neville for him to raise the line a little higher.
The cable wound a few more turns. The hand that came out of the water locked tightly around the cable. Slowly, the rest of the body began to emerge.
Hauck’s heart sank.
He had never seen Charles except in Karen’s photos. What he was staring at now was a swollen, ghostly version of him. He hid Karen’s face away and held her firmly to his chest.
“Is it him?” she asked, eyes averted, unable to look.
Charles’s bloated white face rose above the surface—staring widely.
Hauck raised his hand and signaled for Neville to stop.
“Is it him, Ty?” Karen asked again, fighting back tears.
“Yeah, it’s him.” He nodded. He pressed her face close to his chest and held her as she shook. “It’s him.”
CHAPTER NINETY-ONE
A launch of white-uniformed officers from the town of Amysville arrived an hour later with a local detective on board.
Together, they raised him.
Karen and Hauck stood by, watching Charles’s body pulled up on deck, stripped of the oily seaweed and debris that had clung to him and the wires that had bound him to the anchor line.
Hauck identified himself as a police detective from the States and spoke with the local official, who was named Wilson, while Karen stood by, holding her face in her hands. Hauck identified her as Hanson’s ex-wife and said they had gotten back in touch after a year and had come to visit. They both said they had no idea who would want to do such a horrible thing. Robbers, maybe. Look at the boat. That seemed easiest, without opening everything up. Whatever happened next, Hauck determined it was important that he control the investigation from the States, and if they came entirely clean with the local authorities, that wouldn’t happen. They gave their names and their addresses back in the States. A brief statement. They told the detective what line of work Hanson had been in—investments. Hauck knew, once they checked, that Charles’s new name wouldn’t yield much.
The detective thanked them cordially but seemed to regard their stories with a skeptical eye.
Two of his men lifted Charles over to a yellow body bag. Karen asked if she could have a moment. They agreed.
She knelt down next to him. She felt she had already said her good-byes to him so many times before, shed her tears. But now, as she looked into the strange calm of his face, the puffy, bluish skin, recalling both the anguish and the resigned smile he had displayed on the beach the day before, the tears began to flow, all over again. Unjudging this time. Hot streaming rivers down her cheeks.
Oh, Charlie… Karen picked a piece of debris out of his hair.
So many things hurtled back to her. The night they first met—at the arts benefit—Charlie all decked out in his tux, with a bright red tie. The horn-rim frames he always wore. What had he said that charmed her? “What did you do to deserve to sit with this boring crowd?” Their wedding at the Pierre. The day he opened Harbor, that first trade—Halliburton, she recalled—everything so full of hope and promise. How he would run along the sidelines at Alex’s lacrosse games, living and dying with each goal, shouting out his name—“Go, Alex, go!” clapping exuberantly.
The morning he’d called to her up in the bathroom and said he had to take the train into the city.
Karen brushed her fingers along his face. “How did you let this happen, Charlie? What do I tell the kids? Who’s gonna mourn you now, Charlie? What the hell do I do with you?”
As much as she tried, she could not forgive him. But he was still the man with whom she’d shared her life for almost twenty years. Who’d been a part of every important moment in her life. Still the father of her kids.
And she had seen, in the repentance of his eyes yesterday, a picture of what he so desperately missed.
Sam. Alex. Her.
What the hell am I gonna do with you, Charlie?
“Karen…” Hauck came up behind her and placed his hands softly on her shoulders. “It’s time to let them do their job.”
She nodded. She put her fingers on Charlie’s eyelids and closed them for the last time. That was better. That was the face she wanted to carry with her. She lifted herself up and leaned ever so slightly against Hauck.
One of the officers stepped over to Charles and zipped up the protective bag.
And that was all. He was gone.
“They’re going to let us go,” Hauck said in her ear. “I gave them my contact info. If stuff comes out, and it’s likely it will, they’ll want to talk with us again.”
Karen nodded. “He came back to the States, you know.” She looked at him. “For Samantha’s graduation. He sat there in a car across the street and watched. I want him home, Ty. I want him back with us. I want the kids to know what happened. He was their dad.”
“We can request that the body be sent back once the medical examiner has gone over it.”
Karen sniffed. “Okay.”
They climbed back onto the Sea Angel and watched Charles being lifted into the police launch.
“Those people found him, Ty….” Karen fought back a rising anger in her blood. “He would’ve come back with us. I know it. That’s why he called.”
“They didn’t find him, Karen.” The troubling image of the large black schooner he’d seen grew vivid in his mind. “We did. We led them directly to him.” He looked over Charles’s ransacked boat. “And the real question is, what the hell would they be looking for?”
CHAPTER NINETY-TWO
Maybe they had been, Karen finally admitted as she went over and over the horrible image of Charles the next few days.
Maybe they had been set up. Maybe they did lead them directly to him.
Who?
Hauck told her about the black sailing ship he’d seen the day before. That he’d also seen on Dietz’s wall. Karen even remembered a plane circling high above the island as she and Charles said good-bye, though it hadn’t registered at the time.
Still, none of that mattered to her now.
Seeing Charlie—his poor, bloated body, whatever he’d done, whatever pain he’d caused, that’s what haunted her. They’d spent half their lives together. They had shared just about every joyful moment in each other’s life. As Karen reflected, it was hard to even separate her life from his, they were so intertwined. The tears returned, and they came back with mixed, hard-to-understand emotions. He had died all over again for her. She could not have imagined, having lost him a year ago, then having held in such pent-up anger toward him, that it could be so cruel. The who or the why—that was for Ty to solve.
They flew home the following day. Hauck wanted to get back into the country, before the investigation there rooted out that Steven Hanson had no past. Before they would have to explain things in full.
And Karen…she wanted to get out of that nightmare world as quickly as possible. When they got home, Hauck left her with her friend Paula. No way she could be alone. She had to finally open up to someone.
“I don’t even know how to begin,” Karen said. Paula took her hand. “You just have to swear, Paula, this is something between us. Us alone. You can’t tell anyone. Not even Rick.”
“Of course I won’t, Karen,” Paula vowed.
Karen swallowed. She shook her head and let out a breath that felt like it had been kept inside her for weeks. And it had. She looked at her friend with a flustered smile. “You remember that documentary, Paula?”
THAT SAME AFTERNOON Hauck went into Greenwich. To the station. He bypassed saying hello to his unit and went straight to Chief Fitzpatrick’s office on the fourth floor.
“Ty!” Fitzpatrick stood up, as if elated. “Everyone’s been wondering when we’d see you again. We got a few doozies waiting for you if you’re ready to come back. Where you been?”
“Sit down, Carl.”
The chief slowly retook his seat. “Not sure I like the sound of that, guy.”
“You won’t.” Before he started in, Hauck looked his boss firmly in the eye. “You remember that hit-and-run I was handling?”
Fitzpatrick inhaled. “Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, I have a little more information I can add.”
Hauck took him through everything. From the top.
Karen. Charles’s number in the victim’s pocket. His trip down south to Pensacola. Finding the offshore accounts, how they all tied back to Charles. Soberly, he took Fitzpatrick through his escapade down at Dietz’s house. The chief ’s eyes grew wide. Then his scuffle with Hodges…
“You must be fucking shitting me, Lieutenant.” The chief pushed back from his desk. “What sort of evidence did you have? What went on down there—not to mention not reporting back immediately that you fucking shot someone—was totally illegal.”
“I don’t need a handbook refresher, Carl.”
“I don’t know, Ty.” The chief stared. “Maybe you do!”
“Well, before that, there’s more.”
Hauck went on and told him about the second hit-and-run in New Jersey. How Dietz had been a witness at that one, too.
“They were hits, Carl. To keep people silent. To cover up their investment losses. I know that what I did was wrong. I know I may have to be cited. But the accidents were set up. Murders, Carl.”
The chief put his fingers over his face and pressed the skin around his eyes. “The good news is, you may have found enough to reopen the case. The bad news is—it may be part of the case against you. You know better, Ty. Why the hell didn’t you stop right there?”
