Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006

Bad Weather by William J. Carroll, Jr

The body in the wall began to sag outward as the whole cave started to sink around me, so I didn’t have time to pay it any final respects.

All I did have time for was a mad, semi-panicky scramble to the cave opening — and I made it — the mud walls oozing together behind me — just in time to feel the hurricane hit like the hammer of God.

Because this was, finally, the real Amanda — the real horrific deal — the night before being just a mild prelude — and I’d never seen anything like it.

Flying sheets of water and mud and vegetation flailing around me. The wind so fierce I had to crawl or be carried away. And the noise so loud I wanted to cry.

Some morning.

It was two hours until sunrise, and I couldn’t see a thing, having dropped my flashlight back in the cave, but the good news was that whoever shot me wouldn’t be around.

No one would.

So, aside from the hurricane, I was safe.

I slipped-slid down onto the rocks at the foot of the mud hill, where I got battered by the surging river, and fell I-don’t-know-how-many-times, but somehow dragged myself around the headland to the swamp.

Where the wind was a micron less fierce, but where I couldn’t find the trail back to the highway, because not only could I not see, nothing was as it had been.

So, with my head low, I stagger-walked in waist- to neck-deep water for what seemed like hours, until the water shallowed and I walked into a mangrove tree, a nasty curved branch jamming into my shoulder. That started it bleeding again, so I decided I was done for a while, and just hunkered down on the leeward side of the mangrove’s trunk, closed my eyes, and waited.

Not thinking I was too old for this, because I’d never been young enough; not thinking I should have had second thoughts about coming to look for the body with the hurricane hovering just off the North Carolina shore, because the damn thing must have changed direction.

And not thinking about who might have shot me, as much as what to do about it.

Not that it was much of a wound — just a groove in the skin below the shoulder, but it stung and kept me angry. Angry enough to want to do something about it.

So, that’s what occupied my thoughts until the storm passed and left me in a soft but persisting rain.

Which, in the relative calm, is when I got out my cell and made two calls.

The first, as I trudged back toward the highway, to the police, though I knew I wouldn’t be a high priority on their list of things-to-do-when-a-hurricane-hits.

And then, when I was finally sitting in my rented Explorer, which had been rolled off the road and into a ditch, I made the second, to Scotty McKey.

Who’d started it all. Two days ago, at the Fort Bragg BOQ.

I had just recently returned from a wasted TDY to Bosnia, and I was a day into a two weeks’ leave, which I was spending doing nothing whatever — and liking it. Scotty had left a message on my machine while I’d been away, and I’d intended to call him, but just hadn’t gotten around to it.

There was a new waitress at the Officers’ Club with whom I’d been semiflirting, and who for the moment had a lot of my attention. In fact, I’d been just about on my way to the club, with full-fledged flirting on my mind, and some wishful thinking for the days ahead, when Scotty called again.

“Virginiak, you cretin,” he said, when I answered, “don’t you ever return your calls?”

“Hey, Scotty, what’s happening?”

“How’re you doing pal?”

“I’m doing fine, Scotty,” I said. “How are you?”

“I’ve done better.”

“Where are you, man?”

“New place near Raleigh,” he told me. “Cormier Memorial.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Been here a couple years now.”

I felt like sudden death.

“It’s a dump, actually,” he went on, “but it’s country, and better than most, you know?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Reason I called,” he said, “I wonder if you could drop down to see me.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m on leave right now, as a matter of fact. How about next week?”

“Look,” he said, after a small hesitation. “I think you’d better come now. I don’t know how I’m gonna be, you know? I have good weeks and bad.” He laughed. “I may not even be around next week.”

“You heading back west?”

“No,” he told me with reluctance. “I’m kinda sick, you know?”

Oh Jesus, I thought.

“So,” he said. “What do you think?”

What could I think? What else could I do?

I told him I’d be there first thing in the morning.

Which pretty much bollixed up my vague plans, but in a way it was the price of my being alive today, or being in one fully functioning piece, at least, so I paid it.

Made an early night of it, got up at dawn, gassed my rented Explorer, and then headed down toward Raleigh.

Remembering Scotty McKey — Captain Robert R. McKey — and Honduras, 1984.

We’d been stationed at a forward staging area, supporting Contra forces in Nicaragua. A mission that was a waste of material, time, and lives that embarrasses me now to even think about — but, we were there.

Scotty was a veteran chopper pilot, and myself an area security officer. We’d spent some long drinking nights together in sundry Tegucigalpa bars and had gotten to be pretty good friends.

As good as friends became in the Army, anyway.

But then, on a routine supply mission on which I’d gone as courier for some sensitive material, we took a partial hit from a SAM in the tail rotor and spent a miserable twenty minutes trying to get back across the border.

With the cockpit smoked up and the aircraft wobbling all over the place, it was a miracle Scotty kept the thing in the air as long as he did.

All the way, in fact, to the Rios Coco — where he had the kicker and me drop into the river; but with no open ground on which to land and no way of landing the thing safely anyway, Scotty tried just letting the aircraft down into the water — but the thing spun away from him at the last minute. The aircraft hit a rock, the main rotor breaking free and hard-dumping the chopper upside down on the river bank.

Breaking Scotty’s back, and leaving him with a life without legs.

Because of other various related medical problems, he’d spent his life in a number of VA hospitals over the years. Though I’d visited with him from time to time, it never felt like I’d done enough.

I made it down to Raleigh the next day as promised and found Cormier Memorial easily enough, getting to the old ramshackle institution around noon. As VA nursing facilities went, I suppose, Cormier was better than most, but I can think of better places to be.

An ancient, wooden, rambling facility, it looked more like an old high school campus than a hospital.

I parked in a lot that was adjacent to an overgrown baseball field, nodded hello to some vets on wheels sitting on a shaded porch by the entrance, and after a bit of ducking in and out of corridors, found the critical care ward where Scotty McKey was bedded.

And, he didn’t look the same.

Not at all.

When I first met Scotty McKey, he’d been in his thirties, and owned a large, well-sculpted body that had that male-model look to it. Six three or four, about a hundred and ninety pounds, tight skin the color of chestnuts. He sported a short afro back then and a big, ever-ready smile that he used a lot, with his dark eyes glittering, as he laughed a deep, infectious laugh over anything at all.

That had been in 1984.

Flash forward to 1991 to a VA hospital outside San Diego. Now in his early forties and wheelchair bound, with a huge upper body and withered little legs. His smile had been the same and his eyes still glittered. Only the laugh had lost some of its timbre.

And now, Scotty McKey, who’d saved my life, was lying on a high, narrow bed. His eyes, yellowed and dulled, were open wide and staring at me. His hair had gone gray and sparse, his dark skin had become patchy white, and his body shrunken.

He lifted a thin arm and gave me a wave as I approached, trying to keep the shock out of my face.

“Hey, buddy!” he said.

“Hey, Scotty,” I replied, taking his slightly trembling hand to shake. “It’s good to see you.”

“Good to see you too,” he told me.

I put myself on the edge of the bed next to him.

He shook his head at me. “Can’t believe you’re still in.”

“What else would I do?”

“Retire, for gosh sake. You got way more than twenty years in by now.”

“Way more,” I agreed.

“Lookin’ at thirty?”

I shrugged.

He sighed. “I would’a never stayed in,” he told me, but he didn’t explain why.

A sharp stab of pain struck him suddenly, his body stiffened, sweat stood out on his forehead, his teeth clenched.

“Damn,” he said, injecting himself. “Be okay in a minute.”

And a minute later the Demerol hit and cleared the sharp creases that furrowed his face. Then he got to the point of my being there.

“Reason I wanted to see you,” he explained. “A buddy of mine’s gone missing.”

“Oh?”

“Name’s Steensen. Ralph Steensen. He was here himself up till about a year ago.”

“He on wheels too?”

“No, but he had a screw or two loose. We called him Crash.” He smiled. “I know him from Nam. He was a chopper pilot too.”

“Uh-huh.”

He shrugged. “Anyway, like me, he had no family, and since Nam, he’s mostly just drifted around, but he’d always have some trouble and end up in one hospital or another. He was here, oh, about five years, I guess, before he left. He didn’t want to go, but they closed the nut wing here, so he was history.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The VA had a place for him at this new hospital in Atlanta, but Crash didn’t want that, so he just checked out and headed for the swamps. Ended up in this old cabin, outside a place called Polecat Springs, just south of Beauford.”

“That’s down near the coast.”

“Not too far.”

“But, you say he’s gone missing?”

“Yeah.”

He took some envelopes from the nightstand by his bed and showed me. They were addressed to a P.O. box, and had been returned to him with a no forwarding order on file label attached.

“He wrote me a couple of times,” Scotty continued. “Said he was doing good. Liked the swamps, liked living near the river. Liked being off by himself. Said he didn’t feel like no nutcase anymore cause there weren’t anybody around to make him feel like a nutcase.” He waved the envelopes at me. “Then the letters started coming back.”

“Those are almost a year old, Scotty.”

“I know,” he agreed.

“Maybe he’s in some other hospital.”

“Not a VA Hospital, ’cause I had the Red Cross check for me, and the VA stopped sending him his checks ’cause they started getting returned too.”

“Maybe he just started drifting again, Scotty.”

“Maybe.”

“Or maybe...”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Maybe, but I gotta know.”

Another shock of pain went through him, but he laid off the Demerol this time and just stood it.

“I take too much of this stuff now,” he told me through gritted teeth. “It won’t do me much good later when it’s bad.”

I didn’t ask him how good he thought it was now. I just sat there and watched him hurt.

It was longer than a minute this time.

Finally, he relaxed enough to continue.

“Thing is,” he told me in a whispery voice, “I — need to let him know. About my — about me.” He smiled. “About a year and a half ago — I don’t know when it was exactly — this insurance guy comes around here and offers us some term life insurance. We had to take a physical, and it wasn’t exactly cheap, but it isn’t as if guys like us here get a chance at life insurance every day, so I bought a policy, and so did Ralph. It was only for twenty-five thousand, but what the hell, you know?” He shrugged. “We named each other as beneficiaries.”

“I see.”

“So I — you know.”

“I know.”

“So he can collect.”

“I get it, Scotty.”

“I mean — maybe — whatever his problem is now, he could use the cash, you know?”

“Did you try the local cops?” I said.

“No,” he replied. “Crash and cops mix like fire and gunpowder. I don’t want to cause him any grief, you know? I mean, I want you to find him — but try and keep the cops out of it, okay?”

Right, I thought.

He pulled a folded map from the nightstand, opened it on his chest, and pointed. “Cabin’s not on any road. But it’s right here, by this waterway.”

“You know this place?”

“He told me about it.”

From the nightstand he handed me up an old Polaroid snapshot, saying, “That’s him. That’s Crash.”

I looked and saw a wild-eyed, redhaired, full-bearded, middle-aged man, sitting on the front step of tiny, gray-boarded cabin, and looking cross-eyed into the camera.

“He sent me that last year sometime.”

I nodded.

He nodded too, then smiled weakly. “They say I got six good months left, but the good part hasn’t kicked in yet.”

Right.

I put the map and the picture away and said, “Anything else I can do for you, Scotty?”

He shook his head and grinned. “You find Crash,” he told me, “you’ve done a real job.”

Which I began to get on with almost immediately, driving back to Fort Bragg, packing a bag, and then pointing the Explorer north and east on U.S. 64 to Polecat Springs.

Driving in a lashing rain that dogged me most of the way — a prelude, the radio informed me, to a hurricane named Amanda, which was just then raising hell off the Georgia coast. Not a long trip, but the weather dragged it out, so that I had a lot of time to think.

About friendships, their causes and obligations.

There was not a lot I wouldn’t do for Scotty McKey, including wild-goose chasing in the storm of the century. But I’d somehow neglected knowing where he’d been the past two years, which left me feeling rather sloppy.

And I didn’t like the feeling.

I got to Tarboro — north of where Polecat Springs showed on my map — around eight o’clock, too tired to do anything more than find a Motel 6, get a burger and fries for dinner, and get to bed.

I spent a lousy night of on-again, off-again sleep, full of cold-sweat dreams that left me when I woke at seven the next morning about as tired as I’d been to begin with.

And with that wild-goose-chase frame of mind I couldn’t shake.

Men like Crash Steensen, vets with “problems” and no family, or even with family, had a tendency to disappear, and there was no finding them no matter how motivated the search.

I wanted to find him, really wanted to, because Scotty McKey had never before asked me for anything, but the gone-for-good feeling I had about Steensen was running strong, and it felt like I was just going through the motions. Not the best frame of mind to start a search, but at least being conscious of it, I’d stay with it to the end.

So, feeling hopeless but determined, I hauled myself out of bed, got directions from the desk clerk, and put the Explorer on the road again, southwest.

To Polecat Springs, about twenty minutes from Tarboro, where I arrived in another downpour. I drove slowly through the tiny village of modest wood-frame homes, looking for the post office, which turned out to be a counter in the corner of the Polecat Springs General Store and Tattoo Emporium.

I stopped and got directions from the postmistress — a middle-aged woman, wearing jeans and a tube top, and sporting a variety of wildlife body art over her shoulders and chest and a flaming-red head of curly hair.

And she remembered Crash.

“Crazy-looking guy, sure,” she said. “Come in here couple times last year.”

“You haven’t seen him since?” I asked.

“Nah. Not since way last fall,” she told me. “Had a box, and came in to pick up his government check a few times, then — whoosh — never came back. Had to return the last couple checks that came for him and some other mail, ’cause he didn’t pay the rental on the box.”

“No forwarding address, then.”

She dug out a ledger from under the counter, flipped a couple of pages, and said, “No forwarding or residence address. Box rental paid through November last year, but I’ve got a note here that I returned his November and December’s VA checks, so the last I saw of him was probably October sometime.”

I nodded, then showed her the map Scotty had given me, which she studied for a moment.

“Well, that’s Fort Allen Road, anyway,” she said. “Takes you right past the springs.”

“The springs?”

She rolled her eyes. “Duh — like Polecat Springs?”

“Oh.”

“Can’t miss it, you going up that way.”

I pointed to the spot where the cabin was indicated on the shore of the Tar River. “How about this place here?”

“Oh, that’s swampland, way past the springs, right along Nasty Creek.”

“Nasty Creek?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Polecat Springs?”

“Yup.”

“Sounds inviting.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she told me. “I never get out that way.” She smiled at me and added, “There’s nothing out there.”

I smiled back at her. “Probably something.”

“Like what?”

I nodded. “Well, thanks,” I told her, and started out.

“Got a special this week on dirty birds,” she said.

I looked back. “Dirty birds?”

She smiled broadly and pointed to her neck and the ring of pigeons she wore there, like a necklace.

I waved no thanks and said, “I’m saving my neck for dirty mice.”

“Mice?” she said, sticking the tip of her tongue out at the corner of her mouth in a that-makes-me-sick way. “How weird is that?”

Right.

Sometimes, irony is as lost as a vegetarian in a steakhouse.

I found Fort Allen Road easily enough — a winding, narrow ribbon of asphalt that paralleled the river for a few miles, then crossed a narrow, shaky-looking bridge, looped south for a few miles more, then forked.

I flipped a mental coin and went left about two hundred yards, where the road turned suddenly unpaved, rutted, and semi- overgrown, and after a few bumpy miles it finally ended at the edge of a gloomy-looking swamp.

Where a handmade sign informed the interested, POLECAT SPRINGS — ONE MILE — HOLD YOUR NOSE.

And though I wasn’t terribly interested, I put on a poncho, got out, found a semi-dry trail, and hiked into the swamp, which was thickly treed and unusually uneven with boggy mounds. It seemed to go on forever.

After about a twenty-minute walk, I came to a small flowing stream I knew was Nasty Creek. It flowed from a steamy, bubbling pond that I knew also was Polecat Springs.

I knew because the sulfuric emanation produced the deadliest smell I’ve ever encountered, and nose-holding was, indeed, well recommended.

Following the creek south a few hundred yards more, I came to the point where it flowed into the Tar, where I stopped and scanned the area with my binoculars.

I could see nothing of any cabin, though this was where my map showed it to be. After a few minutes, I gave it up and turned back to go upstream — and found it.

The cabin was about a hundred feet from where I stood, buried in a cluster of mangrove and resting on a gnarl of roots. I got my feet wet just hiking in.

It was a small thing, more of a hut than a cabin, with walls of weather-grayed planks, a slanted sheet metal roof, and a rusted pipe for a chimney. A boarded-up window in front had the remains of a bird’s nest in it, and the door seemed to hang in its frame a bit crookedly.

As I got close, that unmistakable sense of “nobody’s home” came through loud and clear, but when I got to the door, I gave it a good hard knock anyway, which scared a squirrel that’d been on the roof into leaping onto a tree branch right over my head, and also opened the door a little because it hadn’t actually been closed. I gave it a slight push and took a step inside, smelling the odor of rotting wood that had me stepping very gingerly over the deep-sagging plank floor.

The cabin was one room, roughly twenty by twenty, and the pine wood ceiling had a sag in the middle, giving the place a very cramped look. There was a cot in one corner with a rolled sleeping bag under it, and an overturned kerosene heater in the other corner with a broken flue hanging from the ceiling above it. Against the right wall, just under a broken window, was a rusted sink with a hand pump that was leaning down toward the floor. There was a folding card table and a broken chair in the middle of the room, and the whole place was littered with clothes, cooking utensils, books, papers, other odds and ends, tree leaves, and animal droppings — and everything was drenched and rotting.

Crash Steensen wasn’t home, and hadn’t been for a long while.

Walking carefully over the squishy mess on the floor, I came to where the card table stood, on which was spread a few sodden pages of the sports section of the Raleigh News and Observer for October 12th of the previous year.

The Yankees had won the World Series.

Not the sports scoop of the century.

Looking around myself in the dim light, I saw a pile of rubbish under the cot, so I walked over, squatted down, and poked through it, finding only... rubbish. But then farther under the cot near the wall was a large gray bag, and I reached and brought it out. I had found Steensen’s treasure.

A Zippo lighter, a pouch of marijuana, some cigarette papers, a few ancient issues of Rolling Stone, and a stained Purple Heart medal, dangling from its case.

The citation, on onionskin paper, was folded inside, and although the light in the cabin was too poor to make out the whole of the faded text, the name “Steensen, Ralph J., 1st Lt.” was clear enough.

So I was, at least, in the right place.

I put the ribbon and citation back in the bag with everything except the grass, which I prudently tossed onto the cot, then stood, looking around myself again.

“So, where’d you go, Crash?” I asked the dark room.

There was no reply, only the sound of the creaking floor and the rain thudding on the roof. The wild-goose-chase feeling was running strong in me.

It was plain that Steensen was long gone, but unless he’d done himself, he didn’t seem to have planned on being as long gone as he was, and that, I realized, made my job something that wouldn’t have a happy ending.

And as I started to leave, with a hard call to make to Scotty on my mind, I saw the map.

Tacked to the wall beside the door was a section of a standard road map, but with markings made on it, and a big X, beside which was the word “cave.”

It was clearly a map of the area I was in, and the marks made on the map were a kind of trail that led south through the swamp, following the east bank of Nasty Creek, but I didn’t know what to make of it.

I didn’t know what to make of anything.

And the whole business was starting to depress me, so I put the map in the bag and hiked back to my truck. I drove back to Tarboro in a harder rain, deciding on the way that despite Scotty’s warning, talking to the cops at this point was the best move to make.

Crowded by ancient trees, the Edgecomb County Sheriff’s substation, just south of Tarboro, was one of those new/old buildings — a newer, concrete structure extended back from and around either side of an older Victorian building, complete with broad porch and columns.

I parked outside, climbed up onto the porch, and went inside, told my story to a uniformed clerk, and was eventually directed to the office of Deputy Sheriff Gerald Matini.

A short balding man, with a weightlifter’s physique that threatened, in places, to burst through the khaki uniform he wore.

He looked at Crash’s picture after I’d introduced myself, then said, “I know him. Haven’t seen him in six, seven months.” He frowned at me. “He wanted?”

“Not that I know of,” I replied.

Matini motioned me to a chair beside his desk and we both sat.

“Steensen’s the friend of a friend,” I explained, “and I’m just trying to locate him.”

“Steensen?”

“Ralph Steensen, yes.”

He frowned at the picture again. “Pretty sure he lived in an old cabin, down past Polecat Springs...”

“I’ve been there, and he’s not.”

“Hmph.”

“And it doesn’t look like he moved out.”

I described the state of the cabin, and watched him do the math.

“That don’t sound good,” he said.

“I know.”

“Lot of wild country down that way. The swamp and all.”

He gave me a you-fill-in-the-blanks look, that I answered with a nod.

Matini handed me back Crash’s photograph, then leaned back in his chair. “Not a bad guy, as I recall, but a little loosely wrapped.”

“So I’ve been told.”

He smiled. “Came in here one day, all in a lather about something I couldn’t make heads or tails of.”

“Oh?”

“Something about finding a body somewhere, but he couldn’t tell me much that made any sense.”

“When was this?”

“Like I said, ’bout six, seven months back,” he shrugged. “But he just didn’t make sense, you know? Sounded more like he had a real bad dream. Couldn’t tell me where this cave was, except it was somewhere south of Polecat.”

“A cave?”

He nodded. “I told him to draw me a map, and he got all excited, like I had accused him of lying, and stormed off.”

I dug the map out of Steensen’s bag and showed him.

“Well, this is a map,” Matini said, after studying it. “Maybe he did find a body.”

“Did you follow up on it?”

He nodded patiently. “I gave Chief Gettis down in Bayette a call about it — that area south of Polecat is beyond the county line — but old Gettis couldn’t figure where that cave could be, and there weren’t nobody local reported missin’, so...” He shrugged.

I nodded.

“I’ll fax this on down to Chief Gettis; once we’re past this hurricane, I’m sure he’ll look into it.”

I nodded again.

“About your friend...” he began.

“What kind of man is Gettis?”

“The best kind,” he answered with no hesitation.

“I’m just wondering why Steensen didn’t go to him.”

Matini shrugged. “This station’s closer to where Steensen lived,” he pointed out.

“Okay.”

Matini gave me a long look, then said, “You figurin’ on goin’ down to Bayette, nosin’ around, you check in with Chief Gettis, you hear?”

“I will.”

He gave me another long look, then got to his feet, his hand extended. “Nice talkin’ with you, Mr. Virginiak.”

Before leaving, I got a copy of the map made, then headed back to my motel, showered, and changed into my uniform because I only had one other dry set of civvies that I wanted to save. Then I had an artery-clogging session at a nearby restaurant, and returned to my room to watch the latest news on Amanda, which was then five hundred miles to the southwest and trying to make up its mind where to go next. I debated whether to call Scotty then and there and tell him the hunt for Steensen was done, or to go on to Bayette.

But it wasn’t much of a debate.

And because it was just two P.M., and checkout was at three, I went ahead and checked out, then I gassed up the truck and put it on the road, heading south to Bayette.

Under even darker skies now, but with no rain for once, I drove again through Polecat Springs.

When I was about five miles north of Bayette, which according to my road map was a tiny speck nestled along the river, I saw flashing lights in my rearview.

I slowed and moved over, and when the police cruiser slowed itself and came up behind me, I knew I was the object of his attention, so I stopped.

Wondering what the problem was.

I got out my license and registration and insurance, then waited because he took his time. Took a long time, in fact. Ten minutes ticked by, then fifteen, and my edginess turned into irritation. Finally, I saw the door to the cruiser pop open, and a tall, skinny cop, wearing an orange poncho, emerged.

I rolled down my window as he came up to it and looked in at me.

“In kind of a hurry, ain’t ya?” he asked.

I hadn’t been, but I didn’t argue. I just handed up my paperwork, which he didn’t take.

“Asked you a question,” he said.

I looked at him.

He was thirty-fiveish, with a dark, pitted face and angry eyes.

“In-kind-of-a-hurry, ain’t ya?” he asked again, slowly.

“Not particularly,” I replied.

“Step out of the vehicle,” he told me, standing back from the door.

Right, I thought.

“If I was speeding,” I told him, “just give me the ticket, and...”

“I said, get out of that vehicle, boy!” he snapped, one hand going up under his poncho.

I smiled, nodded, and got out.

“Turn ’round,” he said, “put your hands on the roof, step back, spread your legs.”

I went along with it, not wanting to make more of the farce, and let him pat me down — looking for what, I don’t know — but he found only my wallet.

“Turn around,” he said.

I faced him again.

“Got yerself a real fancy rig there, don’t ya?”

It was just a truck.

“Pick up a lot’a girls, do ya?”

I hadn’t been fighting them off lately, but I said nothing.

He sneered and tossed my wallet at me, which I caught, then he came up close to me and said, “Soldiers comin’ down here, drivin’ like maniacs, got a lot’a nerve, thinkin’ they can get away with anythin’ just cause they got a uniform on.”

I guessed it was Old Grand-Dad, but it might have been any bourbon.

“Know what I think?” he whispered.

Not a lot, I thought.

“I think you’re all a bunch’a faggots.”

I looked down at his name placard that showed just inside his poncho.

“I think you’re a faggot,” he went on, trying hard to get a rise from me. “You got a problem with that?”

I said, “Which way is Bayette, Officer Mongon?”

He blinked, frowned, then made a sound of disgust and stepped back. “You ask me, you should just keep on goin’,” he told me.

I pointed down the road. “About five miles south, right?”

“Bayette ain’t for you, ya’ hear?”

I smiled. “Thanks for your help,” I said.

“You hear?!”

I waved, got back into the Explorer, and started it up.

Mongon got into his own vehicle, and fishtailed out from behind me, onto the highway — and was out of sight in seconds.

And I followed, but at a slower speed.

Bayette wasn’t much of a town — it took only an ounce of gas to run the length of Main Street — but what there was of it seemed pretty enough. There was a hardware/feed store, a tiny grocery, a diner, a drugstore, a place called Dixie’s Bar and Grille, and a touristy-looking little hotel, the Congaroo.

At either end of Main Street, on opposite sides, were The First Baptist Church of Bayette and The First United Baptist Church of Bayette. I imagined there was some interesting history there.

The police station was just off of Main Steet — a small, redbricked building with a huge flag flapping hard in front. The Bayette elementary and middle school, done in the same redbrick, stood opposite, next to a library. A new-looking Bayette Clinic stood on the broad, heavily treed levee that edged the Tar River.

I parked in front of the police station, right behind officer Mongon’s cruiser, and headed inside.

Where the air-conditioning hit me like a cold fist, and where in a large outer office cluttered with boxes, a huge, uniformed woman sat behind a counter, hand painting a road closed sign, one of about a dozen that were stacked by the counter.

She moved her eyes reluctantly toward me and said, “He’p you?”

“I’d like to see...”

“The hell you want?” Mongon shouted.

He’d just entered the outer office from somewhere in back.

To the woman, I said, “I’d like to see Chief Gettis...”

“I asked you a question,” Mongon demanded, coming up to the counter.

“The man wants to see the chief, Carl.”

“Ain’t talkin’ to you, Belle!” he snapped.

“You don’t take that tone to me, Carl Mongon...”

“You got a complaint to make,” Mongon told me, “you make it to my face, ya’ hear?”

I said, “My complaint, Officer Mongon, is about your face.” I looked at the woman, who smirked. “You know what I mean, don’t you, Belle?”

She snorted.

Mongon, a little purple in his cheeks, pointed a finger at me just as a door in back opened slightly and a voice boomed, “The hell is goin’ on out there?”

Mongon’s eyes flicked worriedly back to the door, then to me, as he started to say something, then changed his mind, making a sound of disgust and stalking out.

Belle gave me a wink, then got up and waddled to the opened door in back, poked her head inside, said something, then turned to me and waved me forward.

So I entered the office of Bayette Chief of Police Harold Gettis, who sat behind a broad oak desk, feet up on the corner, building a fish fly.

“Chief Gettis,” I said, as I entered.

“Uh-huh.”

“My name’s Virginiak.” I handed him my ID, which he took and squinted at briefly, then returned, and went back to the fly.

Gettis was sixtyish and grayhaired, with a lined, weathered face and bright blue eyes. He was a tall, heavy-shouldered man, with a big man’s calmness about him.

“I’m sorry about Carl,” he said wearily.

“You should be.”

His eyes looked up at me now, as if I were a walking lawsuit. “He give you a ticket?”

“No, but he did stop me for no reason.”

Gettis sighed, shook his head, put the fly down, put his feet on the floor, and waved me to a chair saying, “All I can do for you, Mr. Virginiak, is apologize.”

I took the chair.

“He’s had some... family problems,” he explained.

Above him on the wall was a bronze plate with the words TO SERVE AND PROTECT etched into it, surrounded by about a dozen plaques, attesting to the law-enforcement virtues and community-spiritedness of Harold Gettis, and about half as many framed photographs of him handshaking different people, including a past president.

“Think we can just forget it?” he asked.

“It’s forgotten,” I told him.

He nodded, then squinted at me. “So, what can I do for Army Counterintelligence?”

“Nothing,” I assured him. “I’m here on personal business.” I took out Steensen’s picture and put it in front of him. “I’m looking for a man. Name’s Steensen, Ralph Steensen, and I was told by...”

“Oh God,” Gettis said, picking up the photograph and looking rattled. “I knew him.”

“Knew?”

He blinked at the picture, then at me. “He a friend of yours?”

“A friend of a friend,” I said.

He looked back at the picture and shook his head sadly. “Well, I’m sorry to say, he’s dead.”

“I see.”

He frowned. “You say his name was Steensen?”

I nodded.

“Never did get his name,” he told me. “Had no ID on him. I should’ve run his prints, but...” He put the picture down. “Well, I didn’t.”

“How did he die?”

Gettis rubbed a shaky hand over his brow. “He come around here a while back — must’a been last fall — started pestering some folks. I had to put him in the lock-up for a night.” He shook his head slowly. “Hanged himself in his cell.”

“Ah.”

“Felt guilty as hell about it, I can tell ya.”

Right, I thought.

“Still do,” he added.

Steensen, Ralph, 1st Lt., USA. RIP.

“He have kin?” Gettis asked me.

“Just a friend,” I told him. “Just friends.”

“It was a helluva thing,” he said quietly. “Finding him like that.”

Right.

“I should’ve run his prints,” Gettis went on. “I thought Belle did it, and she thought I did it, and then, well, the body was cremated, and come to find out, we never got him printed to start with, so he went out a John Doe.” He sighed a tired-old-man sigh and added, “I’m gettin’ too old for this job, I reckon.”

Which, I decided, was not my problem.

I stood up, and so did Gettis, extending his hand to me, which I took and shook; then he walked with me out of his office to the station entrance, where we stopped.

The dark, late afternoon sky was in motion, and rain fell.

I put on my hat and said, “Think that hurricane will hit?”

Gettis shrugged.

“They usually do,” he replied, then put a hand on my shoulder. “I am truly sorry about your friend,” he told me. “I truly am.”

Walking to my truck, the world seemed suddenly more distant, but realer somehow. As if I were seeing, hearing, and smelling things more acutely but at a remove nevertheless.

It was, I think, the organism telling me to slow down and take stock, to know the world now because nothing lasts. I never knew Crash Steensen, but the loss of him hit me pretty hard.

The rain had picked up by the time I got back behind the wheel, and I didn’t want to drive through it, didn’t want to do much of anything, so I drove to the small hotel I’d seen and got a room with a balcony that overlooked the river.

I had a cold shower, then just sat and watched the rain for a while, thinking to call Scotty, but I didn’t.

Bad news could always wait — both the giving and receiving — so I just sat there, on the balcony, until night came over everything.

The rain stopped around eight P.M., and I watched a little TV — Amanda was still hundreds of miles to the southwest and apparently not showing signs of moving toward land. I caught part of a baseball game, but couldn’t stay interested, and finally decided to go out for a beer.

There was a small bar off the lobby of the hotel, but it was empty except for the bartender, and I felt the need to be among people, so I headed out of the hotel.

The Dixie Bar and Grille across the street was closed, the sign in the boarded window read CLOSED BY ORDER OF AMANDA, so I got in my truck and started to cruise, south and out of town.

And about five miles along, I found a place — The Last Chance.

It was a small, slate-roofed, pine-walled building, with a satellite dish on top and a business-could-be-a-lot-better air about it that I found appropriately depressing.

I parked next to an old rusted pickup in front, got out, and heard the mournful strains of a country-western song that leaked from the interior. Fighting back a what-are-you-doing-here? feeling that rose up suddenly, I went inside.

There were several tables to my left, at one of which a heavily made-up woman in a too-tight dress sat watching a large-screen TV on the wall in the corner. Several men stood around a pool table to the side of the TV. A wide bar ran along the right wall, behind which a scrawny old man stood, looking at me with what seemed suspicious surprise.

“What can I do you fer?” he asked as I took a seat on a stool.

I asked for a draft and got it, and I’d just taken a sip when the door to the “Gents” at the back of the place slammed open — and Carl Mongon swaggered out.

He went to the pool table, grabbed a cue, looked at the table for a second, then looked up and saw me.

“Well, if it ain’t the Yankee faggot,” he said.

Right, I thought.

“How ya’ll doin’ tonight, faggot?”

I looked at my face in the mirror behind the bar as Mongon made his way up to me, saying, “Well, well, well.”

I had another sip of my beer.

“Ya know,” Mongon said, tapping my shoulder with the cue, “correct me if I’m wrong, but I told you to pass on through Bayette.”

I watched him in the mirror and saw the woman at the table, looking at us with anticipation.

“You remember me tellin’ you that?”

“Carl!” one of the other pool players called out warningly.

“I’m talkin’ to you, faggot!” Mongon said to me, now angry.

There was, as before, liquor on his breath.

I stood up and put money on the counter.

“You hear me?!”

I smiled at him.

“Boy, you’d better answer me or...”

I turned away and started out, but Mongon grabbed my shoulder — and then I lost it.

I turned fast and backhanded him hard across the face, sending him against the bar and knocking over a barstool.

He blinked at me, felt blood coming from his nose, touched it with his fingers, looked at it, then at me, and said, “Oh boy. You really done it now.”

I waited.

He straightened up, held the cue out to his side, and said, “That was assault, faggot.”

“No,” I told him. “This is assault.”

I kicked hard into his groin — harder than I should, but I was pretty worked up — then took the cue from him and whacked him with it on the shoulders and back, until he fell on his face, where he groaned there at my feet, holding himself.

His pool-playing friends came toward me, and I readied myself, but there was, curiously, no threat in them.

We did a stare-off thing for a few seconds, then two of them got Mongon to his feet and over to a table, where he sat and groaned, still holding himself. The third — young and wary — just kept staring, as did the wide-eyed woman in the too-tight dress.

And I felt suddenly disgusted. I tossed the pool cue onto the floor, then walked out.

I’d just gotten the door to the Explorer open when the third man — the young one — came out of the bar and said, “Excuse me?”

I looked at him. He seemed to be about twenty and he was bigger than I was, but no threat.

“I’m sorry about that stuff,” he told me, nodding back over his shoulder.

I wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for.

“Carl’s my cousin,” he told me. “He’s not like this — usually.”

“That’s good to know.”

“Picked a fight with me, little while ago,” he added, as if to unmake his point.

“A lot of anger in him,” I agreed.

He nodded, then shrugged and started back inside, but then stopped and said, “His wife run off ’bout a month ago.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Went off with some soldier, and Carl’s been in a bottle since it happened.”

“Well,” I said to the young man, “Carl’s going to be sore about a day.” I got into my truck. “Ice is the best thing for it.”

And figuring I’d had my fill of Bayette night life, I went back to the Congaroo and took another cold shower. Then I had a pipe back out on the balcony and watched the moon peek through some dark clouds, until I was sleepy enough to sleep.

And I did a good job of it, not getting up until after ten the next morning.

I grabbed a big breakfast in the café downstairs and decided to drive straight back to Raleigh and give Scotty the news about Crash in person.

So, I started packing up the few things I had, listening to the TV news on Amanda, now a hundred miles off the coast, but bearing northeast — it looked like good weather for the drive. I was just stuffing Steensen’s sack of “valuables” into my suitcase when I finally noticed the stenciling on that old bag.

Faded to a bare whisper and stained-over, just below the cracked handle, were the words FEDERAL RESERVE BANK — ATLANTA, GA.

I wondered about it as I packed it away. Wondered how Steensen came by such a thing. Wondered enough to unpack it and give it another look-over. Heavy gray canvas, black handle, zippered top, and those words.

Might have found it anywhere, I reasoned, but my head put it together with the map, the “cave,” and the body he’d said he’d found, and I couldn’t let it go.

Which has always been my curse — or virtue, as the case may be.

So I didn’t check out, after all, I went out, instead, into semi-sunshine and put myself in the Bayette Public Library, behind a computer, putting in hit after hit on “Federal Reserve Bank, Atlanta.”

After about an hour, I came up with a headline and story in the Atlanta Constitution, dated fifteen years earlier, which read:

Which in itself made no connection, but another hit — this one from the pages of the Raleigh News and Observer, dated the next day — did.

Reading this second article gave me a shudder of excitement, as if I were on the verge of knowing something important.

But sitting there thinking about it, all I knew that I knew was that Crash Steensen had been using an old cash bag, which may or may not have been the fourth bag taken in an armed robbery fifteen years ago, that he’d hung himself in Harold Gettis’s jail, and that this was all ancient history.

So I didn’t get too excited.

I just walked back to the Congaroo, trying to make up my mind what, if anything, to do next, and decided to see Gettis.

I grabbed the old money bag from my room and drove to the police station.

Where I caught the man, just as he was on his way out.

“Figured to see you today,” he told me with resignation, as we again took seats in his office. “I heard about what happened at The Last Chance last night.”

“I’m sorry about that,” I said.

“I’m sorrier than you, Mr. Virginiak. Carl Mongon is havin’ a hard time right now, and everybody’s his target, one way or another.”

“It’s all right,” I assured him, then I handed him Steensen’s bag.

“What’s this?” he asked, looking it over.

“See what’s stenciled on the side?” I said.

He squinted, held it away, then put his glasses on, read it, and said, “I’ll be damned.”

“This bag was probably one of those taken in an armored car robbery fifteen years ago,” I explained. “I read about it at the library.”

“And just where did you get it?”

“Steensen’s cabin,” I told him. “He was using it to store his stash.”

“Hmmph,” he said, turning the bag around.

“I also read that you killed one of the men involved in that robbery.”

“I surely did,” he agreed. “That was back when I was Highway Patrol. My last week, in fact, before I took the job here. Pulled him over ’cause he was doin’ double the speed limit up on Route 123.” Gettis shook his head in mild amazement. “Damn fool just started pluggin’ away at me.”

“The second man was never found.”

“That’s right,” he said, then frowned it over. “You thinkin’ that the body your friend said he found was that second man?”

“It’s possible. Steensen got this bag somewhere, and he said he’d found a body.”

“Huh.”

“And I found a map he’d drawn.”

“Gerry Matini faxed me this,” he said, showing me his copy of the map and pointing to it. “That’s all swampland,” he told me. “Never heard of no cave up in there.”

“Might be worth a look,” I offered.

“You’re probably right,” he agreed, “but I kind’a got my hands full at the moment. That hurricane ain’t actin’ right, and I gotta be close by in case it shifts on us.”

I nodded. “Well, I’ve got nothing on my hands at the moment, Chief Gettis,” I shrugged. “I think I’ll give it a look myself. At least, see if I can find the cave.”

“Fair enough,” he said easily. “Mind you’re not in the swamp when that damned hurricane hits.”

So that’s what I did. Instead of leaving Bayette, I headed back into the swamp.

Not for any reason easy to explain, but something along the line of connecting the final dots of Steensen’s life. Making some sense of it. Something like that.

In any case, I went.

But, rather than take the route Steensen had outlined on his map, a trail he’d marked to show the way he’d taken from his cabin, through the swamp, and along the creek to the cave, I got in the truck and drove east, out of Bayette, toward the ocean on Highway 10, paralleling his route just to the north.

The sky was darkening, but the radio still reported Amanda bearing to the northeast, and there was no rain, so I didn’t anticipate a weather problem — and all I really wanted to do just then was verify the fact that the cave was there.

I mean, what could go wrong?

But about a mile from the shore, the road ended, curving south and becoming little more than a muddy path, which dissolved itself into an endless swamp, where I stopped.

According to Steensen’s map, the creek ran southeast at this point, but there was a hilly section of land that blocked my view, so I got out and, seeing a fairly dry trail that snaked out through the swamp, decided to walk it. I grabbed a flashlight because it was getting darker by the minute, and started in.

And I didn’t like the look of the sky, which resembled a black mass of swirling fudge, tinged with red. To the southeast, where Amanda was throwing a fit, the sky was just dead black — but it wasn’t raining yet, so I kept on.

I got to the base of a rocky, black-mudded, gnarl-treed hill, and skirted around it to the south, where I could see the swollen creek through the mangrove. More like a river, at the moment, running hard and high. I made my way down closer to it and stood there on the bank, took out the map again, studied it, turned it, turned myself, looked up, swung the flashlight around — and saw the cave.

About halfway up the mud hill was a dark hole, the opening as big as a refrigerator door on its side.

And then it started to rain. Hard.

So hard that in just seconds I was soaked through.

And I was just thinking to get myself the hell out of there because Amanda wasn’t bearing northeast at all, but damn well right down on me, when I heard the first bang of the rifle.

It came from somewhere in the swamp behind me. I froze, wondering who would be hunting what in the middle of a hurricane. I then heard a second shot that spanged off a rock by my feet, and I knew.

I moved as fast as I could, up over the rocks and into the ankle-deep ooze of the side of the hill. I got ten feet from the cave opening when I felt a hammer hit my left shoulder, and I was down, face first in the mud.

Feeling dazed, but sufficiently afraid, I didn’t kid around. I got my feet under me again and scrambled the rest of the way to the cave and inside — just as two more shots hit the ground behind me.

Lying in mud, just inside the cave opening, I was safe, for the moment, or so I told myself. My arm was numb with pain and I needed a breather, but reason came shouting down at me that I was just lying in a hole waiting for some killer to show up and finish the job.

So I moved farther into the pitch-dark cave.

Which got a bit bigger — enough so I could stand, but when I did, my head hit a tangle of roots. I crouched again and moved on, thinking there might be a back door, but with little hope of that.

Little hope of anything, in fact, but what could I do?

More shots rang out that came from the cave opening, and I went flat again, on my back, pressing myself into the mud. Whoever it was, was firing blind, but he could get lucky, so I made myself a part of the cave floor and wall.

Heard the wind and rain start sounding like a runaway train.

Heard a couple more shots, which hit I don’t know where.

Pressed myself deeper into soft, wet earth.

Heard another shot that brought some mud down into my face.

And then he got lucky.

Not that lucky. It was only a nick in my scalp above my right ear, but my lights went out, and I was down for the count.

About twelve hours’ worth because it was after four A.M. the next morning when I did the God-my-head-hurts and where-am-I thing.

It was completely dark, and I was lying in six inches of water under a waterfall. As I felt around for my flashlight, I had the sense that the cave had gotten smaller while I was away — and when I found the flash and flicked the light on, I could see why.

The pounding rain above was melting the walls of my little hole, and they’d soon simply flow together. I decided I didn’t want to be around for that; I’d take my chances with my would-be killer outside.

But then I saw a bone-hand reaching out from the wall.

A hand connected to a wrist, to the rest of a skeleton. It was half in, half out of the wall, and draping the remains were two black, rotting — empty — cash bags.

It was the body Steensen had found.

It was the remains of the second man in the armed robbery of the Atlanta Federal Reserve.

The one who “got away.”

And there was a hole the size of a half dollar in the middle of his forehead, and there was something attached to his wrist that wasn’t a watch.

But before I could give this any thought, the body in the wall began to sag outward as the whole cave started to sink around me.

So I got out of there despite the hurricane, and got back to my truck and made my calls — and then I waited.

And it took time because Amanda had hit hard and everyone was busy at other things.

But it all worked out.

I was standing outside my truck, still nose down in a ditch, around five P.M., when Gettis pulled up beside me and got out.

And because of the blood on my face and shirt, and my muddy-wet look, he stared and said, “The hell happened to you?”

“Long story.”

He looked over the condition of my truck, then waved me to his Jeep. “Can worry about your ride later. We better get you to a hospital.”

So I got in, and he started us toward town, saying, “You been lookin’ for that cave?”

“Got shot at,” I told him.

He looked amazed. “Somebody shot you?”

“That’s right.”

He thought that over, then said, “You think Mongon?”

“No,” I said. “Not Mongon.”

He gave me a questioning look.

“I found the body, Chief. I found the body of the second man in that armored car robbery.”

Gettis stared at me.

“I found the other two empty cash bags.”

He looked back at the road.

I said, “I found that body, Chief, and he was wearing handcuffs.”

“Handcuffs?”

I waited until he glanced at me again, then said, “You know a good lawyer?”

“What do you mean?”

I only looked back at him.

He shook his head and laughed. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about...”

“Must have been a hell of a night,” I said.

He frowned.

“Routine stop of a speeder,” I explained, “turns into a shoot-out — turns into a life-changing event.”

He tried looking mystified, but he couldn’t keep it up.

I shook my head at the futility of his denials. “You know what forensics can do these days, Chief. That body had a hole in its skull in front, and no exit wound, so the bullet is still in there — and they’ll know it came from your gun — the one you used on his partner.”

Gettis took a bit of lower lip between his teeth.

“They might even be able to trace the handcuffs and — there’s the money. I mean, you had to have done something with that money, and they’ll track it down...”

“You’re crazy!”

“I’m not crazy, Chief, and you’re done.”

He thought about it, but there was too much certainty in me, so he pulled his gun from its holster with his left hand, and held it on his lap.

Right, I thought.

“Jesus Christ,” Gettis laughed. “I forgot clean about those handcuffs.” He shook his head. “God’s truth, I havn’t given them a damn thought in all these years.” He gave me a can-you-believe-this look. “I am some criminal mastermind.”

I said, “Are you pointing that gun at me, Chief?”

He snorted. “And you are right. It was one hell of a night.”

Gettis turned us off Route 64, onto a small road that headed us toward the river.

“So what happened?” I said.

“What happened,” he echoed vaguely.

I waited.

“What happened was,” he went on, “they shot me, I shot back. Killed one, and nicked the other.” He looked at me and snorted. “Handcuffed him.”

“Uh-huh.”

He sighed and put his eyes back on the road. “And then he started talkin’ about money, and makin’ me rich if I let him go.” He shrugged. “Money was in the trunk,” he said, with a disbelieving head shake. “I could not believe it.”

“Where are we going, Chief?”

Gettis frowned hard. “I’d never done a dishonest thing in my whole life until that night — but — lookin’ at all that money, the idea just — come into me — you know?”

“You killed him.”

He kept the frown in place for a moment, then said, “I killed him. Buried him out on the bog.” He laughed shortly. “Where he’d never be found.” He shook his head. “I belong in the Bad Guy Special Olympics, I surely do.”

“Where are we going, Chief?” I asked again.

He looked at me with some regret. “Cross the river,” he told me sadly. “You can get it now or later. It’s up to you.”

I decided later.

I said, “And Steensen?”

Gettis sighed. “Right,” he said. “Steensen.”

“You killed him too.”

He didn’t deny it.

“Thing is,” he told me, “you get old, and you get more scared of things. The way he was talkin’, I knew he’d found that body, and he wasn’t gonna let it go, and sooner or later he’d talk to somebody who’d listen. I couldn’t handle the idea of prison.” He looked at me again. “Still can’t,” he added with meaning.

“So you tried to kill me,” I said.

“What else could I do?”

“And now you’re going to finish the job?”

“Can’t let you talk either.”

Right, I thought, and that was that.

“Well,” I told him, “I already have.”

He frowned at me, and I showed him the small black microphone I was wearing just under my collar, and said, “What do you think I’ve been doing all day, Chief?”

At which point, and dead on cue, a siren began behind us.

We were just then approaching an ancient-looking bridge. Gettis floored the accelerator, fishtailing the vehicle so that it slammed the rail of the bridge as we started over it.

We were about halfway across the bridge when two state patrol cruisers appeared ahead, blocking the way.

“It’s over,” I told him. “It’s over!”

But he didn’t hear me, and he was past caring.

Past thinking, too, because there was no way out, but he stomped on the brake, put the Jeep in reverse, and swung us around, slamming the back end into the wooden rail. Then he went forward, trying to turn the vehicle around, smashing the front into the opposite rail. Then he turned back again, trying to gain an angle, but this time went too far.

The back of the Jeep went through the rail, and we tilted, front end up.

We held there for a second or two — a very long second or two — then we flipped. Over and down, and hit the river hard.

And I was out for a while. The roof of the Jeep collapsed with the impact, and my head had gotten a bang, but I became aware again just as the water rose to cover my face. I got a good deep breath as the river current dragged us down and under and into a black, unforgiving world.

I got my seat belt off and pulled on the door handle, but it was jammed tight, and though I hit it with everything I had, it didn’t budge, so I raised my feet — or lowered them in my upside down world — and kicked out at the windshield twice before I felt it give. I managed to slip out of the vehicle just as it hit the soft river bottom.

I turned myself right side up under the hood of the Jeep, my knees sinking into the muck. Hanging onto the steering wheel with one hand because the current was pulling at me hard, I reached back inside for Gettis.

Who was still upside down in his seat, and he was conscious and looking at me.

I couldn’t read his eyes, but if I could, I would have seen that the heart had gone out of him.

His seat belt hadn’t been on, but when I grabbed for the front of his shirt, he pushed my hand away, and when I reached for him again, he reached up himself and pulled my hand from the steering wheel, and shoved me back.

He wasn’t going anywhere.

I tried to grab for the dashboard, but the current had me, and then I saw him smile — a kind of thanks-for-nothing smile — and finally, I was swept away. And he was gone in the dark.

I broke the surface of the river near to the east bank, about a hundred yards from the bridge, and hauled myself onto the muddy shore, then just sat there, watching the river.

Matini’s men spotted me, but I was too tired to budge, so I stayed put, sitting in the mud.

Eventually, they came down to me, and Matini himself after a while, and there was a lot of talk about what to do, but it was all their business, so I kept quiet.

An ambulance came for me, despite my protest, but once the EMT took a look at the top of my head, and the ugly welt I had along the side of my skull, he convinced me it might be serious.

A head can take only so many bangs.

I spent the night in the hospital, but the X-rays were clear, so I left the following morning, and did a long Q and A with the county D.A. that afternoon. By six o’clock I was back at the Congaroo.

I hung around a few days, there being no rush to be anywhere, and asked some questions — about Gettis, whom no one believed could have ever done anything wrong regardless of the news that was flooding the local media, and about the missing money.

About which I ended up talking with a very, very old man, a lawyer who lived in nearby Waverly.

He was an ex-judge, in fact, who’d been Gettis’s friend, and who, after we’d chatted most of an afternoon, in a getting-a-feel-for-each-other way, told me some things “in a hypothetical sense” that put everything together.

So it was almost a week since I’d last seen Scotty, before I went to visit again.

On one of his “good days,” he told me. A day when he could get out of bed and maneuver around on his wheels.

And now, sharing a six pack I brought, on the shaded porch that overlooked the ball field at Cormier Memorial, watching a September shower muddy up the world, I told him the whole story, and gave him the Purple Heart I’d taken from Steensen’s cabin.

Which he held and looked at for a long, quiet time, then finally said, “Crash got this saving my ass.”

“Oh?”

He nodded. “In Nam, a zillion years ago.”

I watched him remember.

“I’d only been in-country about a week,” he told me, “and my chopper went down up near Phu Bai. Dislocated my shoulder.” He shook his head. “The area was red with Cong, but old Crash come lookin’ for me anyway, and got me out.” He frowned sharply. “We was about a mile from the LZ, and we started taking ground fire, and a round hit Crash—” He pointed to his left temple. “—right there. Took out a chunk of brain. Blood everywhere.” He shook his head again. “Don’t know how he got us down to the LZ in one piece.”

“A good man,” I said.

Scotty nodded, sipped beer, and sighed. “Didn’t stay in touch with him much over the years,” he told me quietly. “Like I should have.”

“It’s like we’re all related,” I said. “Crash saved your ass, you saved mine.”

Scotty shrugged, then frowned at me. “So what did he do with the money?” he asked. “Gettis, I mean.”

I finished off the can of beer I held, and opened another saying, “Fourteen million, five hundred and fifty thousand in bearer bonds.”

“Whoa!”

I laughed, sipped some of my own beer, and said, “Turns out, he gave it away.”

Scotty stared. “You’re shittin’ me.”

I shook my head, then settled back in the big wicker chair I was in and explained. “Back fifteen years, three hurricanes, one after the other, hit the area down around Bayette hard. Dumped a lot of rain — too much — and Bayette was flooded out. Nothing was left.”

Scotty gave me a get-on-with-it hand wave.

“Bayette’s a real small town,” I went on, “right on the Neuse, and it had been flooded out before, and the man I talked to told me the people there just lost their will to start over. There wasn’t enough money coming in to rebuild anyway, so the town was going to disappear.” I smiled. “Harold Gettis had just been made chief of police of a town that wasn’t there anymore.”

I had some more of my beer. “But then Gettis stops a speeder, finds the money, and gets his big idea.”

“I’ll bet the sonofabitch did,” Scotty sneered.

I held a hand up. “Through a lawyer,” I told him, “who knows a lot more than he’ll admit to, Gettis made anonymous donations to people and to the town itself. Got homes rebuilt. Got a new levee constructed. Got better drainage. Kept Bayette on the map.”

“He gave it all away?” Scotty complained.

“No indication he ever spent a dime of that money on himself.”

He frowned all this over hard, then put his eyes back out into the rain-swept ball field, and for a while neither of us said anything, just watched the dark world outside, the rain sheeting across the field, the wind whipping some of the wet in on us. Then Scotty finished the can he was holding, popped another open, and said, “But — the sonofabitch killed Crash.”

I nodded, and agreed. “The sonofabitch killed Crash.”

And we mourned the loss of our brother.