The Black Bullet

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

The backhoe operator waited for the old woman to finish her prayer.

“Amen.” Glenda Lawson whispered. She opened her eyes and stared at the headstone for a few seconds…

Abby Lawson stood next to her grandmother. Sensing the mood of the investigators, keeping a respectable distance away, she said, “Grandma, we should be going. They need to do what they came to do.”

Glenda Lawson lowered a long stem yellow rose to the headstone that read:

Billy Lawson

Beloved Husband

1924–1945

Glenda looked at the headstone through blue eyes damp from memories. “As much as I hate to let them lift you out of your resting place … it’s for the best, darling.”

Abby Lawson put a gentle hand on her grandmother’s shoulder. “It’ll be done soon. Everyone’s waiting … there’s no need for us to stay here any longer. Grandma, let me take you home.”

Glenda nodded and stepped slowly with her granddaughter back to the car.

Detective Dan Grant, two uniformed officers, and two men from the medical examiner’s office, watched as the backhoe claw bit into the soft earth and scraped away six decades of sandy soil over Billy Lawson’s casket.

O’Brien arrived in his Jeep as Abby helped her grandmother get into the passenger side of their car. Abby turned toward O’Brien when he approached. “Fine morning to exhume a body,” she said, lips tight, face heavy from a listless sleep.

“I’m sorry we have to do this.”

“No, it’s what makes sense.” She glanced down at her grandmother who stared straight ahead, her eyes following the dark puff of diesel smoke from the backhoe, the men now working to place wide leather straps beneath the coffin to lift it from the earth. Abby smiled and said, “Thank you, Sean. Thank you for coming.”

O’Brien glanced toward the gravesite. “You’re welcome. Go ahead and take her home, Abby. I’ll call you when I know something.” As O’Brien turned to walk away, he looked back at Glenda through the reflection of blooming magnolias splattered across the car’s windshield. Her blue eyes, framed by the white flowers, looked like robin’s eggs tucked in a nest of leaves, making her face appear somehow younger and filled with promise-a bud of life from trees rooted in fields of death.

Dan Grant motioned for O’Brien to follow him where there was less noise. “Sean, we’ll have the coffin loaded in less than a half hour. The ME and her assistants were called in early this morning to autopsy the poor agents that got slaughtered last night. Cause of death seems the same-gunshot, mostly to the head on all the bodies. They must have a hundred FBI agents and assorted federal folk working this nuclear trail, along with our people, and this still happens.”

“I rendezvoused with those FBI agents before they were killed last night. Nick Cronus and I had found the remaining HEU buried on Rattlesnake Island.” O’Brien watched the casket being lifted from the grave. “We found it where the man buried in that hole saw it.”

Dan looked at the casket. It was gently lowered to the ground next to the open grave. “So the guy in that box was the last person alive to see German troops bury those canisters on Rattlesnake Island. Now we’re digging him up, and, in turn, we’ll be burying men who just saw the stuff after it was pulled out of the ground all these years later. Some evil irony, Sean.”

“Feds think the Russian mafia is behind the killings and HEU theft, a guy named Yuri Volkow. If it’s him and the same thugs who took the first two from the storage building, they now have ten. So, in addition to a nuclear arsenal, they have Jason Canfield as their hostage.”

“Why weren’t you with the feds during transport?”

“Same reason they pulled rank on your guys: national security, Homeland rules, whatever excuse they manufacture at the moment. I was told my services were no longer needed.”

Dan looked down and shook his head. “What do you do now?”

“I don’t know … I’m not sure who I can trust.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure one of the feds is who he’s supposed to be. There isn’t anybody I can raise a red flag with because it’s hard to tell who’s working for whom.”

“How about Lauren Miles? Man, you two worked well together when you found the asshole that killed the supermodel. You and Lauren went out, right?”

“For a while. She’s doing some digging, and she’s very good at it.”

“Oh, almost forgot.” Dan reached into the left, inside pocket of his sports coat and retrieved an envelope. “Here are the homicide reports Brad Ford did. He was a deputy investigator who worked the case of the man inside that coffin. Pulled them off microfiche, which we had stored in our digital files, and printed them for you.”

“Thanks. What’s it say?”

“The Reader’s Digest version is that Billy Lawson was shot by an ‘unknown assailant or assailants.’ Ford questioned dozens of people. Ran down possible leads. But the murder weapon was never recovered. No real suspects. No witnesses.”

O’Brien opened the report and scanned it. “There was a witness.”

“Who?”

“Glenda Lawson. You saw her leave with her granddaughter.”

“But she wasn’t there, Sean, at the time of the murder.”

“No, but she was on the phone and heard something that differs from this report. Brad Ford writes, ‘one shot fired from a.38 caliber handgun; victim died from a single gunshot wound to the stomach.’ Do you have a current address for Brad Ford?”

“Wrote it on the other side of the envelope. He lives near Orange City in an old house that’s been part of his family for a lot of years. Lives alone. That’s all I know.”

“Soon you’ll know a lot more.”

“Maybe.”

“When they pry the lid off the box back at the ME’s office, you’ll soon know if what deputy Ford wrote was the truth.”

“I just hope to God we’re not opening some Pandora’s Box.” Dan shook his head. “But, I guess you already found that one in the sub.”

O’Brien was silent, watching the men load the casket into the back of full-sized cargo van. “You know anybody who’s good at restoring old guns?”

“What do you mean?”

“One that’s seen salt water.”

“There’s a guy who runs a little gun shop off Ninth and Lilac. He’s damn good. Getting up there in years but knows guns and how to bring them back to life. Still has a slight accent, although he’s been here for years. Grunts more than he talks.”

“The accent, what is it?”

“German.”