The Weight of Living

by Michael Daigle

  He touched the computer screen to close the story. He wanted to let it sit a day before he posted it.

  I need to let this wash away.

  Dawson closed his eyes and waited for the rage to surface. That’s what would usually happen: A story so treacherous and sordid would easily spill into a ripping editorial or comment, his editorial anger flowing to the page. But that was newspaper anger, he once explained to someone. A unique form of displeasure that resulted in fire on the page, indignation in print, a high calling for change, that also allowed the writer the distance to carry on with their life.

  But Sarah’s story was more than distant disgust, he realized.

  Did no one feel the need to call an authority about the outrage that was so easily scribbled on scraps of paper and stuffed into library books? Did no one leave that house disgusted and horrified by what they saw and heard? Perhaps there was no one to tell, he guessed. The cops and judges, the bankers, the controllers of all the parts of life beyond the mere existence of a butler or gardener — all the faces of authority — were there at the table of evil, partaking in the debauchery.

  When it is authority itself that is rancid, where does the good person turn?

  So only Sarah Lawton fought back, and for that the justice is delayed, and what is the phrase, when justice is delayed it is justice denied?

  All I can do, he thought, is hope that all names of the rich families in this story would be so embarrassed by the findings, they would call for an investigation to clear the names of their forefathers. Would they acknowledge that terrible past, purge it?

  Mostly likely they’ll just threaten to sue my sorry ass. But maybe there is justice for Sarah in that. Who knows?

  Who else has ever lived a life like that? he wondered.

  Calista.

  The thought burst into his head.

  She and Sarah Lawton were the same woman decades apart. The difference was that Calista was walking around, smoldering with rage and shame. That was the look on her face the day those books from the foundation arrived. The hated past, reborn.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Tank watch

  Nagler met Maria Ramirez and Dr. Mulligan, the medical examiner at his lab. The black bags rested on separate tables. Ramirez had her this-is-really-bad face on.

  “Three victims, it seems, Frank,” Mulligan said solemnly. But, Nagler had learned over the years, that judging anything by Mulligan’s voice was a guess; he always sounded solemn. He would be perfectly cast, the department decided long ago, as a black suited, end-of-the-world preacher in an old monster movie.

  “Seems, Doc?”

  “These three sets of remains were taken each from a different cavity in that mine shaft, numbers one, three, and four. There were nine such cavities dug into the sides of the walls before the shaft took a steep drop down toward, it could be presumed, the ore. Their use is under examination. Two sets of large pulleys connected to a heavy wooden framing brace were attached to the walls at the point of the drop. Quite primitive technology.”

  “Would they hold a person?”

  Mulligan frowned. “Probably. The college geologist, who seemed quite knowledgeable, felt they were used to haul up baskets filled with ore, which were then emptied into carts and rolled to the surface. Under strong light, tracks worn into the rock from that point to the opening of the shaft were visible.”

  “What would they have used to raise and lower the baskets?”

  “Rope.”

  “And that’s where it gets weird, Frank,” Ramirez said.

  “Gets?” Nagler smiled.

  “I would say intriguing,” Mulligan said. “These three are all prepubescent females; each were hanged. Rope at that place would have been plentiful. I have declared the entire site a crime scene. The field will be mowed, all depressions will be opened, and the material in the buildings will be preserved.”

  “This is more than just Tank,” Ramirez said. “This is generational, possibly historic, right, Doc?”

  “Given the sketchy information we have on the owner of that site, it is possible we are looking at serial rapists, which was known or strongly suggested, and now perhaps serial, even generational, killers. And then there is this. Miss Ramirez, please pull up those photographs you showed me.”

  “What photos? Nagler asked.

  “You know, Frank. The bedroom shots.”

  “Right.”

  Mulligan cleared his throat.

  “Miss Ramirez was correct to note that these images had been, what is the popular term, Photoshopped? The bodies are the same, but not only are the heads of these young women different, they are of different eras. Enlarge number one, please. Look, Frank. You can see that the edges of the neckline include some background material. That shows us that these are different photos combined. More important, are the hair styles. None are consistent with a specific time, and a couple seem quite old, from a different era. For example, number three seems to be from a modern decade, while number five, to my mind and casual view, could be from the 1940s. One of my staff is consulting with a fashion professor who might be able to more precisely date these hair styles. But generally, they show a range of several decades.”

  “Why would they do that?” Nagler asked.

  Mulligan and Ramirez shared a look. “Trophies,” she said.

  Nagler felt the blood drain from his face. Holy crap.

  “This’ll put you in the coroner hall of fame, Doc.”

  Mulligan scoffed. “I’d rather this information help you capture the present Mr. Garrettson before more damage is done.”

  Nagler offered a breathy, distant, “Yeah, me too.”

  “We’re all working, Frank.”

  “I know.”

  As Nagler and Ramirez turned to leave, Mulligan said, “As an aside, Frank, I understand you came across the Sarah Lawton death. That examination has been a blight on our profession since it occurred. I have taken a periodic interest in unraveling that travesty.”

  “What do you mean?” Nagler asked as he smiled at Ramirez, who was grinning.

  “That young lady did not hang herself, Frank, as I’m sure you understand. Clear as day. It was murder. The coroner at the time must have been bribed by the powerful interests who were involved. Clear as day, I say. And I suspect as we examine this now widening crime scene, we might also find the information we need to tie that mysterious ‘Mr. Garrettson’ to her death.”

  “Speak with Jimmy Dawson, the reporter. He’s working on a story.”

  “I shall. Thank you.”

  As they left together, and out of earshot of Mulligan, Nagler said, “Miss Ramirez?”

  She patted Nagler’s cheek twice. “He’s so cute.”

  ****

  Three a.m.

  The ice of winter’s night had faded into the softer chill of spring; the city draped in darkness and silence.

  There was noise and light when I was a child, Nagler thought from the back porch while wearing a t-shirt and boxers. The sound of labor and prosperity, as ephemeral as it was. We labored; they prospered. Ten thousand more nails, a thousand wheels, a million bolts and pins, the pieces that connected this to that, and each of us to another, all lighted by the yellow-orange glow of hot iron, driven by the hellish hiss as it cooled. Then it all cracked, rusted, fell to disuse and from that grew the silence. And from that silence emerged the Warren Appletons of the world, and perhaps the Tank Garrettsons. The smiling face of shysterdom.

  Nagler rubbed the chill from his arms, stepped back into the kitchen, and started to make coffee.

  Appleton in his time disappeared, it seemed; and Garrettson had vanished in plain sight. The properties on Hapworth’s lists were regularly checked for signs of occupation. They had seized his allies and assets and were even digging up what they presumed to be his ancestral home.

  “And we still can’t find him,” he said softly. He fingered through a pile of papers on the table then gave up, all familiar, all incomprehensible.

/>   “Tank watch?”

  Lauren pushed into the room.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, he ain’t in this house, Nagler-boy. Guess you’re gonna have to look someplace else.” She rubbed his hair and kissed it. “Why are you driving yourself crazy? You will get him.”

  He pulled her close, his face against her bare neck. Martha favored lavender; Lauren smelled like mountain air.

  “I know. Just want to get him before someone else gets hurt. Where is he living? He called me on a pre-paid phone and the recent phones of Jerrold McCann, Alton Garrett and Calista have all gone dead. So maybe he doesn’t need to talk to them because they’re all in the same place. But where is that?”

  Nagler poured them both coffee.

  “The other problem? I need something that ties him to that little girl. It seems like such a straight line: Garrett, Calista, even Sister Katherine, then Tank. I don’t know.”

  Lauren flipped her hair back and started sorting the pages on the table.

  “What is all that stuff?” Nagler asked.

  “Census lists. Remember how I thought there was something wrong in the Garrettson time line? There seems to have been two Remington Garrettsons, probably father and son. Records showed one died in 1893, at age forty-seven. Doesn’t say how. So that’s not the one your lime-green golfing buddy saw waving a shotgun and calling out for God, right? The fount of all evil, as Calista called him, seems to be the son.” She shrugged and sipped more coffee. “I can’t swear by it, Frank, because there are gaps and errors in these records.”

  “Do the records show when the son Remington Garrettson died?”

  “No. Couldn’t find it. But for argument’s sake, let say the son was born in the late 1880s. In the 1920s, when your golfing buddy told you that people in the area recalled a Remington Garrettson, he would have been about forty to fifty. Sound right?”

  “Where’s the older Remington Garrettson buried?” Nagler asked abstractly. Then he framed his face with his fingers and smiled. “On the compound. Son of a bitch. They’re going to find a lot more than mining records up there.”

  “That was what, the twenties” she asked while shuffling through the papers. “Yeah, okay,” and she pulled out a paper. “That was about the time they stopped paying property taxes on the place. Look. Twenty, twenty-one through twenty-six, taxes paid. Then a smudge, so I don’t know. Then, Frank, twenty-seven, twenty-eight. No taxes. The kids were taken in twenty-eight.”

  “So a Remington Garrettson was around in 1928,” Nagler said. “Don’t think that helps me, but it might help Dr. Mulligan determine who Sarah Lawton’s ‘Mr. Garrettson’ was.”

  “Oh, then there’s this oddity,” Lauren said. “I was going tell you in the morning, but...” she mock-glared at him. “A property sale from a CWA Corp. to a Garrett. 1932. No, 1933. I’ll have to hit the courthouse. Something seemed wrong with the online listing.”

  Nagler leaned over and kissed her. “You are something.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Maybe she is stronger than they are

  “I finally understand what it means to go viral.”

  Jimmy Dawson laughed at the first line of his column. It wasn’t that he had not hoped an item on his website might reach that Internet level of exciting pass-through that it could be declared viral; most days he was happy enough to have walked into Barry’s and seen his headline on a few cell phones or tablets.

  “So I thank you all.

  “The first story was bad enough in the general sense because it shook the community’s faith in our police department. But the entire force should not be judged: It is the story of one man. Police Commissioner Jarred McCann.

  “It is a story about cowardice and lies and greed and it began on a misty early September morning in 1999. The weather was at that edge when summer is nosed aside by autumn and dew squeezed from the cooling air settled in the low spots.

  “A slim young man stood above a rural highway overpass in that primordial ooze, waiting. A fuzzy glimmer of light approached, then more solid, it became the beams of a truck. He heard the grunt of the gears as the truck cleared the grade and regained highways speeds; in the fog it was hard to tell how far away it was. What if he had missed?

  “Then there was the truck, looming, shoving aside the mist like a beast on Hell’s mission. But it was not Hell’s mission. It was the mission of David Delmar III.

  “He waited. Then he threw what he was holding over the railing and ran. It did not matter to him whether what he had thrown was struck by the truck’s wheels, grill, or trailer. He had heard the thump of the collision and the screaming of the truck as it was wrestled to a stop; he had heard the faint voice of the driver: ‘What the hell was that?’

  “Despite David Delmar III’s epic sprint — he ran five miles. He had thought that parking his car, that classic Jaguar, alongside the highway might be seen — it was easy enough for the police to track him down.

  “What he had thrown off the highway was his girlfriend, Martina Alvarez, eighteen, who in the mind of David Delmar III was not his girlfriend, but his hot Latin fuck, as he told his Princeton classmates; his not-girlfriend was in fact pregnant and had refused his offer of two grand plus the cost of the trip out of state to have an abortion. So he killed her. He shot her full of coke and heroin, and sloppily left the works in an alley outside her apartment in Raritan, and then drove to what he presumed had been a safe distance up Route 287 to what he hoped would be a rural spot, forgetting that he lived in New Jersey, where there were no truly rural spots along interstate highways, and threw her in front of Bobby McDonald’s five-year-old Freightliner.

  “But that story was not really about David Delmar III. He was never charged, but apparently weighed by the guilt of his act, shot himself in the Sonora Desert three years later.

  “And it is not really a story about David Delmar II, whose company owned thousands of apartments and swanky condos in the swell places of the world, and whose offer of a million dollars to the Alvarez family was rejected.

  “It was a bribe that until recently was hidden from view, as was the entire story of David Delmar III, because the officer who investigated the crime, and who, being a good cop, a smart cop, quickly found the trail of David Delmar III. That cop was Jerrold McCann, until a few weeks ago the police commissioner in Ironton, and who now is a fugitive.

  “Because McCann took a bribe, a payment to bury the crime of David Delmar III. Money talks. The records show the transfers, six of them, six figures each.

  “McCann was last seen in the company of one Randolph Garrettson, also known in Georgia as Arthur Harrison, who is wanted in at least six states for questioning in a series of murders, rapes, acts of alleged incest, and enough financial crimes to keep Hollywood busy for years. Garrettson’s business, known locally as the Mine Hill Foundation, is under investigation for numerous alleged fraudulent financial transactions, code violations, and late payment of taxes, some cases going back years. Here’s a link to a story I wrote about them a few weeks ago.

  “But it was the second story that got the attention of all of you.

  “I’ll briefly retell it.

  “Ironton Mayor Rashad Jackson was arrested for attempting in a county foreclosure hearing to claim the home of Adrienne Fox. Mrs. Fox’s attorney told the court that her mortgage was not in foreclosure, had never been in foreclosure, and that the company claiming to hold the mortgage was a fraud. A representative of Mrs. Fox’s actual bank presented documents to the court supporting her statements.

  “The judge had called for Bruno Hapworth, the attorney of record for the plaintiff, the Mine Hill Foundation, to step forward. He failed. At the last moment, just as the judge was in the process of dismissing the case, Mayor Jackson entered the courtroom, claiming to be Hapworth’s stand-in. He was taken into custody by Ironton Detective Frank Nagler, county sheriff’s officers and a representative from the state’s attorney general’s office.

  “So, rage on Internet.
Rage on. I don’t want to hear that Jackson was entrapped. I happen to know that this case was weeks in planning. Any attorney walking in that door professing to represent the Mine Hill Foundation was going to be arrested. Ask instead why a seemingly good man went bad. What are the pressures in his life? But do not mistake it. Rashad Jackson is not a victim. He is a traitor to the kids at the community center who believed in him and followed him and worked to rebuild that center after the fire three years ago, the kids who saw in Jackson a path out of the poverty they had been handed, the kids whose drum line you all cheered, the kids whose lives are now suspended above the San Andreas fault, hoping there are no aftershocks. It is time to rise, Ironton.”

  ****

  Frank Nagler nodded to Barry for a coffee refill.

  “You look a little beat up there, Jimmy.”

  “You should talk. What a sucker punch.” Dawson shut down his computer. “Why’s he doing it, Frank, throwing McCann and Jackson under the bus?”

  Nagler nodded to Barry after the cups were filled.

  “What’s going on here, Frank?” Barry asked. “Ain’t been this bad since that old mayor Howie Newton was in charge. Ain’t there no honest men left?”

  Nagler just shrugged. There was no answer to that.